Don’t play wraths. Or is the casual crowd going too far?

[duducrash]

I was scrolling trough twitter and I found a recommended MTG tweet based on my likes





Board wipes can't be bad, right? Im 95% sure this is just clickbait to make a discussion where there is none. Nobody can argue against board control, right?

Wrong. Apparenty EDH is self expression and not allowing your opponent to win without putting up a fight is… censoring them? Im pretty low on the competitive side/power level of the format. Most of my decks arent much stronger than a precon but I am trully amazed by the replies. People even saying players who have wraths must have fun in … non casual.

Have you encountered these folks IRL? I completely understand and like the idea of purposey playing on a lower power level, but this is astonishing

[Sinis]

I don't know any serious advocates of the 'don't play wraths' crew. I think it's all made up drama for the sake of content creation.

[RowanKeltizar]

A guy wrathed 5 turns in a ROW in my playgroup yesterday. Most of us are used to it, and would expect nothing less from him. To be fair, the board probably needed to be wrathed that much. It was a 5 player game, so there were many more wraths than that. The game went on for nearly 3hrs in part due to those wraths. I can't really say if that was a good or bad thing, but at times it felt very tiresome especially for those of us trying to play creatures >.>

One can always respond to wraths by including more protection spells or reanimation. I've been really liking Cauldron Haze.

[Mookie]

raths R cheet PLZ no play
-sincerely,
55 creature Animar

More seriously, I can see arguments against playing too many board wipes (like 7+), but that's largely from the perspective of 'I want the game to actually end someday'. That said, I see no issues with playing 2-3 - indeed, I would call out decks with zero board wipes as being somewhat naive (or at the very least reckless). I can understand not playing board wipes if you're in a particularly creature-light meta (i.e. combo-heavy cEDH), but 'I am always going to be ahead and don't care about being behind' is a pretty arrogant stance to take in most metas.

(for the record, my Animar deck's board wipes are Bane of Progress, Diluvian Primordial, and Champion of Lambholt)

[toctheyounger]

You do see less of them at higher levels, but stuff like Rift and Deluge are still about here and there. Thats really the only way I'd make that xoncession, though, is for speed. If you're not adding wreaths because you don't want to upset anyone you're doing it wrong.

Aside - pleasantkenobi is worth a like/follow. His video content is good quality and often hilarious.

[Igzex]

Oh hey it's one of those people that make clickbait videos that youtube keeps shoving in my face. Pretty sure this person is just making stuff up to stir twitter discussions given how that's kinda his trade. Believe me, I've played with my share of scrubs and the only time I've ever, ever seen someone take issues with wraths is when someone's intentionally trolling like playing Child of Alara as their commander.

For the record I have nothing against those personalities. I can see how they can intrigue and entertain but honestly with all the pessimism, outrage, and cynicism I see every day on my twitter feed I just want none of it anymore. I just wanna see games.

[EonAon]

When I see Child of alara I always just kill it. Sure, it wraths the field but better now than when THEY decide or when the table gets more developed and the continual adding of 2 to the CC never hurt me.

On wraths it honestly varies in the amount I play but yeah min two is good especially if they are not just creature wraths but art enchant ect if possible

[ISBPathfinder]

In the past I usually included at least 3 sweepers in my decks but more recently it depends a lot on the design of my deck on if I plan to run any. I have no issues with sweepers being in my deck or being played against me but there is a point where sweeping every turn is excessive and annoying. Some of the commanders who are sweepers themselves fall into my "can get annoying" category so I tend to not play those.

Also, Cyclonic Rift isn't a wrath. Its an answer that can be a tempo nightmare. I don't mind Cyclonic only because I feel there are way more obnoxious things that are legal right now.

[Gentle Giant]

Yeah, not even worth discussing: wraths are fine in moderation. No one likes Child of Alara-loops.

This PleasantKenobi guy has a following on Twitter/Youtube, but I don't know why. His takes are always either contrarian, uninformed, or the 'I need to create discourse for a living' drips off of it.

EDIT: A bit too harsh, let's just say I don't like his tweets, as he leans a bit too much into the one-tweet 'let's create some discourse with it' side of tweeting.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, not even worth discussing: wraths are fine in moderation. No one likes Child of Alara-loops.

This PleasantKenobi guy has a following on Twitter/Youtube, but I don't know why. His takes are always either contrarian, uninformed, or the 'I need to create discourse for a living' drips off of it.

I'm a fan myself. And I don't know that I'd consider the guy contrarian, nor uninformed. He's been in and around multiple formats for a long time and knows what he's talking about. His comedy can come off pretty sarcastic and dry though so that could contribute.

To me this tweet reads as someone who's had this come up and can't understand why. I don't think he's arguing anything were not saying here. Perhaps this was just intended for an audience that isn't us. Say, newcomers to the format who think wipes are optional if you want to be mean. Idk, just spitballing there.

Either way, each to their own but I can certainly think of other creators that spin out some %$#%$#% more than Vince does.

[Gentle Giant]

Yeah, not even worth discussing: wraths are fine in moderation. No one likes Child of Alara-loops.

This PleasantKenobi guy has a following on Twitter/Youtube, but I don't know why. His takes are always either contrarian, uninformed, or the 'I need to create discourse for a living' drips off of it.

I'm a fan myself. And I don't know that I'd consider the guy contrarian, nor uninformed. He's been in and around multiple formats for a long time and knows what he's talking about. His comedy can come off pretty sarcastic and dry though so that could contribute.

To me this tweet reads as someone who's had this come up and can't understand why. I don't think he's arguing anything were not saying here. Perhaps this was just intended for an audience that isn't us. Say, newcomers to the format who think wipes are optional if you want to be mean. Idk, just spitballing there.

Either way, each to their own but I can certainly think of other creators that spin out some %$#%$#% more than Vince does.

Yeah, I was just coming back to my post to edit it because I was a bit too harsh. It's just that these kind of tweets always almost feel strawman-ish: who said this? And within what context? That's why I also don't like most MTG Twitter: the medium just doesn't lend itself to discuss certain things. You hypothesize it might be for a different audience, but I always have a hard time discerning that.

Additionally, and the reason I wanted to edit my post: I don't watch his videos (only see the titles). I did see him do an episode with The Prof recently that didn't make me inclined to watch his own videos: I guess I find his phrasing too normative, or at least lacking in nuance/depth.

And yes, there is much, MUCH, worse to be found in terms of content creators. But that makes the somewhat better ones more subject of scrutiny to me: they have a broader, more persuasive reach.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, not even worth discussing: wraths are fine in moderation. No one likes Child of Alara-loops.

This PleasantKenobi guy has a following on Twitter/Youtube, but I don't know why. His takes are always either contrarian, uninformed, or the 'I need to create discourse for a living' drips off of it.

I'm a fan myself. And I don't know that I'd consider the guy contrarian, nor uninformed. He's been in and around multiple formats for a long time and knows what he's talking about. His comedy can come off pretty sarcastic and dry though so that could contribute.

To me this tweet reads as someone who's had this come up and can't understand why. I don't think he's arguing anything were not saying here. Perhaps this was just intended for an audience that isn't us. Say, newcomers to the format who think wipes are optional if you want to be mean. Idk, just spitballing there.

Either way, each to their own but I can certainly think of other creators that spin out some %$#%$#% more than Vince does.

Yeah, I was just coming back to my post to edit it because I was a bit too harsh. It's just that these kind of tweets always almost feel strawman-ish: who said this? And within what context? That's why I also don't like most MTG Twitter: the medium just doesn't lend itself to discuss certain things. You hypothesize it might be for a different audience, but I always have a hard time discerning that.

Additionally, and the reason I wanted to edit my post: I don't watch his videos (only see the titles). I did see him do an episode with The Prof recently that didn't make me inclined to watch his own videos: I guess I find his phrasing too normative, or at least lacking in nuance/depth.

And yes, there is much, MUCH, worse to be found in terms of content creators. But that makes the somewhat better ones more subject of scrutiny to me: they have a broader, more persuasive reach.

Yeah, thats the medium to me. Twitter is, to me, clickbaitbook. Theres only so much sentiment you can get across in 400 characters or whatever it is now so it often ends up misconstrued.

PK is definitely an acquired taste, abd his video titles are definitely clickbaity. I think that's intended more ironically than anything, but he's a funny dude if you give him a shot. He does a whole podcast with Prof called Dies to Removal and some of the opening skits are pure gold.

[Dragonlover]

I remember the bad old days of 2012ish where everyone's running 6 wraths and nobody can ever have a board state for longer than a turn and a half. I can see a group that's hit that stage over reacting in the opposite direction, and I imagine there's quite a lot of new Commander players from the last few years who's groups have got there.

That said, I reckon 2-3 is probably the sweet spot. In a 4 player game that's 8-12 sweepers of varying stripes, which means if you're looking for the game to go to roughly turn 15 and everyone take a shot at the win, some of them get played but not all of them.

Piggybacking on @RowanKeltizar, any Commander game above 4 players is miserable and should not be played. One of my hard and fast rules is that if a game would be 5 players, I will drop and wait for the next one.

Dragonlover

[Gentle Giant]

I'm a fan myself. And I don't know that I'd consider the guy contrarian, nor uninformed. He's been in and around multiple formats for a long time and knows what he's talking about. His comedy can come off pretty sarcastic and dry though so that could contribute.

To me this tweet reads as someone who's had this come up and can't understand why. I don't think he's arguing anything were not saying here. Perhaps this was just intended for an audience that isn't us. Say, newcomers to the format who think wipes are optional if you want to be mean. Idk, just spitballing there.

Either way, each to their own but I can certainly think of other creators that spin out some %$#%$#% more than Vince does.

Yeah, I was just coming back to my post to edit it because I was a bit too harsh. It's just that these kind of tweets always almost feel strawman-ish: who said this? And within what context? That's why I also don't like most MTG Twitter: the medium just doesn't lend itself to discuss certain things. You hypothesize it might be for a different audience, but I always have a hard time discerning that.

Additionally, and the reason I wanted to edit my post: I don't watch his videos (only see the titles). I did see him do an episode with The Prof recently that didn't make me inclined to watch his own videos: I guess I find his phrasing too normative, or at least lacking in nuance/depth.

And yes, there is much, MUCH, worse to be found in terms of content creators. But that makes the somewhat better ones more subject of scrutiny to me: they have a broader, more persuasive reach.

Yeah, thats the medium to me. Twitter is, to me, clickbaitbook. Theres only so much sentiment you can get across in 400 characters or whatever it is now so it often ends up misconstrued.

PK is definitely an acquired taste, abd his video titles are definitely clickbaity. I think that's intended more ironically than anything, but he's a funny dude if you give him a shot. He does a whole podcast with Prof called Dies to Removal and some of the opening skits are pure gold.

It's specifically the dies to removal episode on 'Should Commander Players Stop Going Easy On Each Other?' where I thought his line of thinking was flawed. In the episode, they come to an analogy for EDH using StarCraft and Civilization, where a zerg rush is 'SC as it is meant to be played' and turtling is 'trying to play Civ in SC'. The premise is flawed: EDH is more of a mod, using the game system to achieve different gameplay dynamics and thus a different aesthetic/experience. That's not even starting with discussing why turtling is a perfectly fine to want to do within SC. (And Civ also has aggro strats)
It's the reason that such flawed analogies are now being used by others within the community (I count r/EDH here too) as a cudgel that makes me critical of people like PK. And it's not just him, the Prof was also a part of this.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I used to be on the 2-4 boardwipe train, but statistically even 4 hardly gives you a statistical edge on drawing one with such limited numbers. Imho any control deck worth it salt needs at least 5-6 and perhaps as many as 9-10. It also doesn't help that I play in a fairly proactivity-heavy, intetaction-lite meta. I can't count on anyone else being able to reliably solve problems, so my numbers always skew heavier in that direction.

Anyway, I've played cedh and lived in the land of 1/2 hour games. It's duller than dirt. Give me a 3 hour battle over a bunch of quick, forgettable sudden death matches anyday.

[Treamayne]

I try to let my strategy and deck type dictate the numbers of mass removal and their form (e.g. Harsh Mercy in a tribal deck, Soulscour in my Vehicle deck, Chandra's Ignition in my Sengir deck, etc.) and try to avoid just "adding a wipe to meet a quota." That said, if after a few playtest games I feel a real lack, I will relax the synergy preferences, bit-by-bit, trying to find options that feel right (or at least feel flexible - e.g. Austere Command).

any Commander game above 4 players is miserable and should not be played. One of my hard and fast rules is that if a game would be 5 players, I will drop and wait for the next one.

I feel sorry for you if you haven't experienced Star EDH (or had a bad experience). While games in a random crowd are probably best at four players, in a good playgroup (especially if the playgroup likes interaction and politics) Star is a wonderful change of pace. I wouldn't want to play nothing but that variant; but I certainly think that it is a version of a five-player EDH game that worth the experience in the right group.

[Dunharrow]

Yeah I am with Toc on this one I don't think Vince is arguing what you make him out to be arguing. There are people who flip out when you counter their spells, and similarly people who flip out when you wrath their board.
I think Vince is reacting to those kinds of people. People who just want to goldfish.

[duducrash]

Yeah I am with Toc on this one I don't think Vince is arguing what you make him out to be arguing. There are people who flip out when you counter their spells, and similarly people who flip out when you wrath their board.
I think Vince is reacting to those kinds of people. People who just want to goldfish.

Im not criticizing his point at all. Im criticizing people in the comments

I do not like board wipes. If someone managed to get that far ahead, then there should have either been a rule 0 talk or someone should have worked on taking them out sooner.
Having a board you worked hard on get nuked is a major feel bad, so I try not to take that from people.

And many more similar ones

[Dunharrow]

Yeah I am with Toc on this one I don't think Vince is arguing what you make him out to be arguing. There are people who flip out when you counter their spells, and similarly people who flip out when you wrath their board.
I think Vince is reacting to those kinds of people. People who just want to goldfish.

Im not criticizing his point at all. Im criticizing people in the comments

I do not like board wipes. If someone managed to get that far ahead, then there should have either been a rule 0 talk or someone should have worked on taking them out sooner.
Having a board you worked hard on get nuked is a major feel bad, so I try not to take that from people.

And many more similar ones

Sorry, I think I was responding to a few people saying that Vince was making up the drama. I know we are on the same page.

[pokken]

Personally I have started dialing back wrath usage a lot in my decks as of a few years ago. Much like ramp and card draw I'm steering toward trying to play synergistic sweepers instead of goodstuff. So doomwake giant in your enchantress deck, slaughter the strong in weenies, etc.

I find that the game gets too long and steers everyone toward combo and bombs if the game is constantly reset.

in breena even I have sweepers but they combo with a mass blink or Kalitas or flawless maneuver etc.

I'm a lot more on things that end up one sided like living death and winds of abandon.

I see a really valid point of that if a sweeper doesn't progress your board state it's potentially problematic. That's just me tho

[PrimevalCommander]

I'm playing less wraths in decks that want to win via combat. My control decks still play several since they don't get set back by them near as much. I think they are a necessary part of the balance of the format. Swarm decks are fun, but just like we are looking for ways to counter green ramp.dec, we need ways to counter go wide decks. I like the idea of synergistic wipes, and every year we get more options that may fit into a niche, but I still like the generally flexible wipes a lot as well. Honestly I haven't seen too many wraths that have synergy with my decks. Perplexing Test and Ezuri's Predation are probably the best. Damning Verdict was a great one for modified creature decks printed recently.

I generally play at least 2 sweepers in EVERY deck as a fail-safe. With All is Dust and Oblivion Stone, even full colorless decks could reach that threshold with ease. Control decks go to as many as 5-6, but no more, and I think my current max is 5. Going beyond that makes games go too long. They eventually need to end. If I need more board control than that I'll play a creature version that I can recur at will, which goes to the synergy side, where 1 creature sweeper can perform it's function 2-3 times for only 1 card slot.

I think if I had to wipe the field 6 times in a row, I would simply give up and concede to whoever could recover that many times and still be threatening enough to warrant yet another wipe. They deserved it at that point.

[Hawk]

It used to be the conventional wisdom was to run 7+ wraths and that feels really excessive to me these days unless you're a hard-control deck (Phelddy runs 9 or 10 and I think Daretti runs 8ish plus can recur Nevinyrral's Disk). I think a more nuanced take in 2022 is: "why are you running wraths"? My rule is...

- Every deck should run at least 1 boardwipe and ideally 2. Where possible, these wipes should be ones you can break the symmetry of be they one-sided (Cyclonic Rift, Winds of Abandon, In Garruk's Wake, Mizzium Mortars, etc) or just synergistic with your deck (Perplexing Test, Austere Command, Doomwake Giant)
- You shouldn't run much more than 3 boardwipes unless your deck is designed to come from behind as a slower deck. Decks with 1-4MV commanders or high creature counts should likely stick to the 1-3 plan; if you are way behind chances are a wipe is just going to draw out the game and your own death.
- Decks that want to play a more controlling game should settle around 4 or 5. More than five should be reserved for the truly pure control lists.

Obviously there are exceptions - a deck like Tajic, Blade of the Legion or Zurgo Helmsmasher is aggressive and also wants to spam wipes every. single. turn. But, that's my general guidance. At any rate, the "take" to not play any boardwipes is silly.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, I was just coming back to my post to edit it because I was a bit too harsh. It's just that these kind of tweets always almost feel strawman-ish: who said this? And within what context? That's why I also don't like most MTG Twitter: the medium just doesn't lend itself to discuss certain things. You hypothesize it might be for a different audience, but I always have a hard time discerning that.

Additionally, and the reason I wanted to edit my post: I don't watch his videos (only see the titles). I did see him do an episode with The Prof recently that didn't make me inclined to watch his own videos: I guess I find his phrasing too normative, or at least lacking in nuance/depth.

And yes, there is much, MUCH, worse to be found in terms of content creators. But that makes the somewhat better ones more subject of scrutiny to me: they have a broader, more persuasive reach.

Yeah, thats the medium to me. Twitter is, to me, clickbaitbook. Theres only so much sentiment you can get across in 400 characters or whatever it is now so it often ends up misconstrued.

PK is definitely an acquired taste, abd his video titles are definitely clickbaity. I think that's intended more ironically than anything, but he's a funny dude if you give him a shot. He does a whole podcast with Prof called Dies to Removal and some of the opening skits are pure gold.

It's specifically the dies to removal episode on 'Should Commander Players Stop Going Easy On Each Other?' where I thought his line of thinking was flawed. In the episode, they come to an analogy for EDH using StarCraft and Civilization, where a zerg rush is 'SC as it is meant to be played' and turtling is 'trying to play Civ in SC'. The premise is flawed: EDH is more of a mod, using the game system to achieve different gameplay dynamics and thus a different aesthetic/experience. That's not even starting with discussing why turtling is a perfectly fine to want to do within SC. (And Civ also has aggro strats)
It's the reason that such flawed analogies are now being used by others within the community (I count r/EDH here too) as a cudgel that makes me critical of people like PK. And it's not just him, the Prof was also a part of this.

Yeah fair enough. I think its important to keep in mind with content creators that they're not right all of the time, especially where edh is concerned, its a very subjective game. Thats part of the human experience too, no one is right all of the time. I follow PK because he's entertaining, to some degree same with Prof. Some of the cedh creators are more on the money more often, purely because they have to be and because its more of a rigid part of the format. But most of the creators around mtg are to be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, Vince is pretty astute most of the time. He's a net positive as an advocate for the community in a similar way to Prof.

I can't remember which episode it is, but they do a gag where Vince becomes a planeswalker in one of the D2R episodes and its just perfect.

At any rate, the moral is anyone can publish content on YouTube, doesn't mean they're right. Vince is more commonly accurate than others though. No shade, but JLK and Jimmy Wong are the primary example for me of big voices in the community that are commonly way off the mark. But I'm also not their target viewer so I take it with a grain of salt.

[TheGildedGoose]

There's no such thing as too many wraths.

There are no good major EDH content creators.

[Cyberium]

People are so afraid of setback these days, it's getting ridiculous. Upset at me for killing their creatures, upset at me for killing their mana rocks, upset at me for exiling their combo pieces... seriously? If it's a one-sided wipe like Cyclonic Rift,then I can see why it feels defeating, but feeling bad about a global removal effect they weren't prepared for? It's part of the game. If you have the right to set up your board or speed pass the table, others have the right to even the field and slow you down.