Okay i built a U/R Chaos deck yesterday that I played and while the first game was okay, Knowledge pool in the second game and then Norin/Confusion in the ranks in the third game got to my playgroup going "PLAY A DIFFERENT DECK"
I had no response to this. Because i was not winning, all i did was stop them form being able to do their thing (And in the process had also managed to stop my friend from playing Cyclonic rift (And for those of you who have seen me around know my undying hatred for that card, so yea, that was an answer to it.)
Still All i did was mess up their plays, not end up being this all powerful all controlling player. (along with the ability to allow them to play 2 crads for free per turn, and make it so even the mana screwed players could play spells.
I guess when you play group hug type decks, you will get hated on.
I find Norin/Confusion to be very different from Knowledge Pool.
The former is chaotic, but it has a definite goal and benefit to you, wherein you end up with everyone's creatures and and beat the table down with them.
The latter is just disruptive to the game, and creates incredibly swingy situations wherein playskill is minimized and luck is maximized.
The former, I encourage. The latter, I detest.
Even disruptive Chaos can be worthwhile, as long as you use it to a certain end. Using Planar Chaos and Grip of Chaos on an empty board is annoying and nonconstructive. Using them to protect you resolved Eldrazi Titans is strategic and productive.
Chaos is like MLD. If you're playing it as a way to win, great. If you're just ruining everyone's game to no real end, I'm going to find someone else to play with.
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I have a Casual vampire deck, that tends to eat away all my friends creatures and kill them, rather dominantly, but they still play it. They complain about it, but they don't mind. It wins 9/10 times against all my friends.
And then i have this deck that just locks down their creatures. keeps them tapped and unable to do anything, but pretty much lacks a win condition, besides this big leviathian, and occasionally stealing their creatures to fling at them. It wins 2/10 times against my friends.
They would rather play the vampires though. It feels a lot better when you can't do anything, and your also getting your butt kicked, because then it makes sense.
But if the deck loses the whole time, but also doesn't let them have fun, it will just have them scrambling for a win. It's somehow less fun for me when i win, and don't get to do any of my fun stuff, than when i lose. Because if i lose, at least i can say "well that's why i lost, i couldn't get any of my good stuff." As opposed to "I have no idea how i won, i couldn't do anything fun, i just managed to batter him with that viscera seer 20 times.
But i may very well be very weird.
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Whats the big deal about black lotus you ask? Well you see, there is no big deal about it. It IS the big deal.
Any deck that doesn't seek to somehow win but still seeks to make the game super annoying to deal with is not very much fun to play with. I design my deck so the curve is nice and I have enough land. It's annoying when these problems are fixed for me by other players, but it's even more annoying when someone else's poorly designed deck feeds off of free stuff and pulls out wins due to your deck.
I like it when someone breaks the game into this state where it is painful to bust out because I like the challenge. It is interesting to see if my deck can overcome the situation. If this broken board state has no purpose, you are just removing strategy from the game.
I realize I'm probably in the minority, but I really like these kinds of cards. My friend used to play a deck with weird cards like Knowledge Pool, and I think he and I were the only ones who really enjoyed that card hitting play. It just turns the game on its ear and makes you think in a completely different way. I was playing a game where that same friend had out Zur's Weirding, and without thinking about the consequences I cast Mindmoil, cast another spell, and was forced to discard my entire hand. How often does THAT weird interaction come up? After the game, another friend was like, "I thought you were going to give away Mindmoil with Zedruu," and my reaction was basically, "Yeah that would have been a good idea; I'm an idiot." I run chaos cards like Confusion in the Ranks and Wild Evocation in Zedruu, because hey, why not? When other than in a goofy EDH deck are you going to get to run those types of effects? All that said, I understand that these types of cards can wear on people, and Commander is supposed to be a social format, not a "Let's see how much I can annoy my buddies" format. So I think it's best to bust out this type of deck somewhat sparingly, maybe once over the course of an evening of games.
I realize I'm probably in the minority, but I really like these kinds of cards. My friend used to play a deck with weird cards like Knowledge Pool, and I think he and I were the only ones who really enjoyed that card hitting play. It just turns the game on its ear and makes you think in a completely different way. I was playing a game where that same friend had out Zur's Weirding, and without thinking about the consequences I cast Mindmoil, cast another spell, and was forced to discard my entire hand. How often does THAT weird interaction come up? After the game, another friend was like, "I thought you were going to give away Mindmoil with Zedruu," and my reaction was basically, "Yeah that would have been a good idea; I'm an idiot." I run chaos cards like Confusion in the Ranks and Wild Evocation in Zedruu, because hey, why not? When other than in a goofy EDH deck are you going to get to run those types of effects? All that said, I understand that these types of cards can wear on people, and Commander is supposed to be a social format, not a "Let's see how much I can annoy my buddies" format. So I think it's best to bust out this type of deck somewhat sparingly, maybe once over the course of an evening of games.
Was your friend using the knowledge pool and zur's weirding to help himself at all? Ya, you could have made a cool play by donating the mindmoil, but if you are given this free combo, it is annoying because it is not your combo. Cool, weird interactions can happen, but when it's just one guy stirring up ***** and seeing what happens, it annoys me greatly.
Nope, he just enjoyed, as he called it, "messing up the mix." He was also a fairly new player at the time he was playing that deck, so it was pretty unfocused and random. I think he just liked having an effect on the game, even if he wasn't winning. His decks are a lot more focused and less goofy these days, but part of me misses that crazy old deck he had.
Ya, you could have made a cool play by donating the mindmoil, but if you are given this free combo, it is annoying because it is not your combo.
See, to me, in a way it's cooler to just find these random interactions with other people's cards on the fly. Anyone can come up with a plan ahead of time and revel in executing it, but thinking on your feet and pulling something out of your ass by carefully observing what's on the field is another skill entirely.
Cool, weird interactions can happen, but when it's just one guy stirring up ***** and seeing what happens, it annoys me greatly.
Like I said, I totally get that, and the other guys in our play group often got annoyed too. But I think it's fun to throw a monkey-wrench into games sometimes. It's just a game, after all, and everyone should be able to play what they think is fun. I try to be respectful of my opponents, and if I'm playing a deck that I can tell is just making everyone else miserable, I'll give it a break or retire it completely. It's all about finding that balance between the type of game you enjoy and the type of game that others enjoy.
i do plan on eventually converting it in a chaos group hug deck instead of just pure chaos. Will still keep some cheap nasty tricks in it like norin/confusion. But i am not going to run crap like, thought lash and i will rmeove some more annoying crap and add in a bit of white stuff.
and then Use Melek as an actual spellslinger deck.
Any deck that doesn't seek to somehow win but still seeks to make the game super annoying to deal with is not very much fun to play with.
Pretty much this. Divine Intervention + Vampire Hexmage is funny once. If you keep doing it, people aren't going to want to play with you.
You say that, but then you will have people in this forum who will say "Run more answers"
Its basically the same way i feel about C.rift. this deck was kind of my answer to how annoyed i am with that card. i don't like it, but the rest of my group plays it religiously. So yea, i have my answer, go ahead, play C.rift and I will play my Chaos deck. (I think from this point forwards, i'll keep it as is, and if my buddies pull out C.rift deck, i'll play Melek. Until they learn it is ONE card I hate to no end.
I also feel that the rule comitee should start looking into ore cards that should be banned. For starters, CYCLONIC RIFT
Many, possibly a majority, of typical chaos cards don't really stop Rift if it's overloaded and I assume that's the issue you have with it. Omen Machine, Knowledge Pool, Planar Chaos (half the time), and stuff that screws with their mana off the top of my head. Is that really a good answer?
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Many, possibly a majority, of typical chaos cards don't really stop Rift if it's overloaded and I assume that's the issue you have with it. Omen Machine, Knowledge Pool, Planar Chaos (half the time), and stuff that screws with their mana off the top of my head. Is that really a good answer?
Yea knowledge pool really screwed with him he was afraid to play the card knowing full well his opponents would have access to it, but alas, I wouldn;t have played it, no overload.
i do plan on eventually converting it in a chaos group hug deck instead of just pure chaos. Will still keep some cheap nasty tricks in it like norin/confusion. But i am not going to run crap like, thought lash and i will remove some more annoying crap and add in a bit of white stuff.
and then Use Melek as an actual spellslinger deck.
By groupfun I actually did mean grouptroll; no wincons or game enders is just pushing it a bit too far, IMO. I didn't know about Thought Lash, I'm totally picking up a copy to toss into Zedruu now.
My group tends to have a gentleman's agreement against cards that massively swap control of permanents. Generally because of the prices of cards, cards can go missing inadvertently and turn up when someone is shuffling a week later. It is just something to avoid. Even with cards the are just single swap effects we just give each other a proxy to represent. It keeps things organized.
By groupfun I actually did mean grouptroll; no wincons or game enders is just pushing it a bit too far, IMO. I didn't know about Thought Lash, I'm totally picking up a copy to toss into Zedruu now.
And this is why I love that they "fixed" Thought Lash, before it was fixed it was so just rude.
I honestly don't care about Chaos Decks, but I honestly feel like Norin + Confusion isn't chaos, because the benefit is just so absurd. I have learned to actively hate off the board people who play that combo, unless someone is playing a walker deck or a pillow fort deck it is so degenerate.
Again I don't mind cards like Knowledge Pools, but it depends how they are played. If you try playing it with Hive Mind or Eye of the Storm, things get silly. I would actually love to see a Possibility Storm, every once in a wild and despite how confusing Grip of Chaos can be it does make for some funny results especially for catch all spells like a "Vindicate" or stuff that can be rather frustrating like a Bribery.
I really love breaking random to be to my benefit. People will cry and moan about this sort of stuff but I love running things like Grip of Chaos in decks that dont target and things like that. It comes down to what you enjoy doing in my mind. If you dont like griefing your opponents, you can change tactics. I personally really love doing a little bit of griefing though.
If you are doing random where you gain no benefit from it, I have to wonder why to some degree other than just sort of a pet deck. I think its fine to use random where you take advantage from it as I think thats the smart way to play it. Your opponents could just pack answers or deal with it playing out. I dont really see whats so hard about norrin / confusion as the next thing that usually happens when I see that sort of setup is an oblivion stone that blows everything away.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
And this is why I love that they "fixed" Thought Lash, before it was fixed it was so just rude.
What did they do to fix it? The Oracle text lines up with how I interpreted the printed text.
It was a weird work around but basically you have thought lash, you do not pay the upkeep, the trigger is (Controller of thought lash now must sacrifice and exile their deck)
That is on the stack, you give control to someone else, then the trigger resolves they are now the controller of thought lash, they must sac it and exile deck.
Its still great in zedruu but not as evil as it once was.
To the person who started this thread, I think the main reason people generally dislike group hug decks or chaos decks is the fact if you're lucky enough to sit next to the person running the deck your chances of winning is high. When I use to have my hug deck, most of the time the person who goes after me would win because he or she was the first person to reap the rewards of what I did. When my friend was running his chaos deck, most of the time the person who goes before the controller of the chaos would win because by the time it's his or her turn the enchantment or artifact that was making everything crazy was destroy/exile so he or she didn't have to deal with the craziness.
Real quick (and funny) story about dealing with cyclonic rift: I was playing my Jolrael, Empress of the Beasts deck. I animate my lands to all be 3/3 creatures than I played Overrun and attack the one guy at the table that had all his islands untapped and was joking about how he has cyclonic rift in his hands and will cast it if anyone attacks him. I called his bluff and attacked him. He looked very disappointed when he realize cyclonic rift couldn't do anything against all of my land that are now 6/6 creatures with trample because cyclonic rift only deals with nonland permanents.
Chaos can get rather obnoxious. There is one guy in our playgroup who has a deck (yes, it's a troll deck with one win condition aka game of chance) with a deck he calls madworld. He plays most of the really obnoxious troll cards in there. I play Norin the wary with confusion in the ranks, but I do it because it is more fair than something like bribery ( I despise creature steal and only run confusion because it is eminently fair..EVERYONE gets to do it. For the same reason, I don't run boom/bust, but will run jokulhaups as a reset button) even though with a sufficient knowledge of stack triggers, I'll usually get more benefit out of it than anyone else.
Still All i did was mess up their plays, not end up being this all powerful all controlling player. (along with the ability to allow them to play 2 crads for free per turn, and make it so even the mana screwed players could play spells
I want to respond to just this one statement. IMO, "Control" as an archetype of Magic is often characterbized by countering your opponent's spells, limiting their resources or restricting options. In this case you are influencing the game by playing cards that keep their spells from having the intended effect and often disrupting the central strategy. You are controling the game state and restricting choice. You are a controlling element. To say otherwise a bit disingenuous. Your play style is controlling in a round about fashion. Giving them lands and extra cards while taking away certainty that their spells can resolve is simply a different sort of control.
A good friend's sister had this response to her old brother's when they tried to make a crappy deal with her. "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining."
I had no response to this. Because i was not winning, all i did was stop them form being able to do their thing (And in the process had also managed to stop my friend from playing Cyclonic rift (And for those of you who have seen me around know my undying hatred for that card, so yea, that was an answer to it.)
Still All i did was mess up their plays, not end up being this all powerful all controlling player. (along with the ability to allow them to play 2 crads for free per turn, and make it so even the mana screwed players could play spells.
I guess when you play group hug type decks, you will get hated on.
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The former is chaotic, but it has a definite goal and benefit to you, wherein you end up with everyone's creatures and and beat the table down with them.
The latter is just disruptive to the game, and creates incredibly swingy situations wherein playskill is minimized and luck is maximized.
The former, I encourage. The latter, I detest.
Even disruptive Chaos can be worthwhile, as long as you use it to a certain end. Using Planar Chaos and Grip of Chaos on an empty board is annoying and nonconstructive. Using them to protect you resolved Eldrazi Titans is strategic and productive.
Chaos is like MLD. If you're playing it as a way to win, great. If you're just ruining everyone's game to no real end, I'm going to find someone else to play with.
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I have a Casual vampire deck, that tends to eat away all my friends creatures and kill them, rather dominantly, but they still play it. They complain about it, but they don't mind. It wins 9/10 times against all my friends.
And then i have this deck that just locks down their creatures. keeps them tapped and unable to do anything, but pretty much lacks a win condition, besides this big leviathian, and occasionally stealing their creatures to fling at them. It wins 2/10 times against my friends.
They would rather play the vampires though. It feels a lot better when you can't do anything, and your also getting your butt kicked, because then it makes sense.
But if the deck loses the whole time, but also doesn't let them have fun, it will just have them scrambling for a win. It's somehow less fun for me when i win, and don't get to do any of my fun stuff, than when i lose. Because if i lose, at least i can say "well that's why i lost, i couldn't get any of my good stuff." As opposed to "I have no idea how i won, i couldn't do anything fun, i just managed to batter him with that viscera seer 20 times.
But i may very well be very weird.
I like it when someone breaks the game into this state where it is painful to bust out because I like the challenge. It is interesting to see if my deck can overcome the situation. If this broken board state has no purpose, you are just removing strategy from the game.
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Was your friend using the knowledge pool and zur's weirding to help himself at all? Ya, you could have made a cool play by donating the mindmoil, but if you are given this free combo, it is annoying because it is not your combo. Cool, weird interactions can happen, but when it's just one guy stirring up ***** and seeing what happens, it annoys me greatly.
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Like I said, I totally get that, and the other guys in our play group often got annoyed too. But I think it's fun to throw a monkey-wrench into games sometimes. It's just a game, after all, and everyone should be able to play what they think is fun. I try to be respectful of my opponents, and if I'm playing a deck that I can tell is just making everyone else miserable, I'll give it a break or retire it completely. It's all about finding that balance between the type of game you enjoy and the type of game that others enjoy.
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i do plan on eventually converting it in a chaos group hug deck instead of just pure chaos. Will still keep some cheap nasty tricks in it like norin/confusion. But i am not going to run crap like, thought lash and i will rmeove some more annoying crap and add in a bit of white stuff.
and then Use Melek as an actual spellslinger deck.
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Pretty much this. Divine Intervention + Vampire Hexmage is funny once. If you keep doing it, people aren't going to want to play with you.
You say that, but then you will have people in this forum who will say "Run more answers"
Its basically the same way i feel about C.rift. this deck was kind of my answer to how annoyed i am with that card. i don't like it, but the rest of my group plays it religiously. So yea, i have my answer, go ahead, play C.rift and I will play my Chaos deck. (I think from this point forwards, i'll keep it as is, and if my buddies pull out C.rift deck, i'll play Melek. Until they learn it is ONE card I hate to no end.
I also feel that the rule comitee should start looking into ore cards that should be banned. For starters, CYCLONIC RIFT
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Yea knowledge pool really screwed with him he was afraid to play the card knowing full well his opponents would have access to it, but alas, I wouldn;t have played it, no overload.
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I always enjoy playing with or against it, because it probably more then any other deck really feels like the spirit of EDH when you play it.
I've seen players at 200 life blown out by Reverse the Sands. I've lost to Thieve's Auction taking my Wound Reflection when I had Havoc Festival in play. I've seen an 8 player EDH won by a Wheel and Deal to mill out the last guy. I've seen Warp World flip into Dream Halls and Forced Fruition and the next player win immediately.
Chaos decks are great because they provide the perfect environment for powerful and crazy plays that make for great EDH stories.
By groupfun I actually did mean grouptroll; no wincons or game enders is just pushing it a bit too far, IMO. I didn't know about Thought Lash, I'm totally picking up a copy to toss into Zedruu now.
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Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
And this is why I love that they "fixed" Thought Lash, before it was fixed it was so just rude.
I honestly don't care about Chaos Decks, but I honestly feel like Norin + Confusion isn't chaos, because the benefit is just so absurd. I have learned to actively hate off the board people who play that combo, unless someone is playing a walker deck or a pillow fort deck it is so degenerate.
Again I don't mind cards like Knowledge Pools, but it depends how they are played. If you try playing it with Hive Mind or Eye of the Storm, things get silly. I would actually love to see a Possibility Storm, every once in a wild and despite how confusing Grip of Chaos can be it does make for some funny results especially for catch all spells like a "Vindicate" or stuff that can be rather frustrating like a Bribery.
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If you are doing random where you gain no benefit from it, I have to wonder why to some degree other than just sort of a pet deck. I think its fine to use random where you take advantage from it as I think thats the smart way to play it. Your opponents could just pack answers or deal with it playing out. I dont really see whats so hard about norrin / confusion as the next thing that usually happens when I see that sort of setup is an oblivion stone that blows everything away.
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What did they do to fix it? The Oracle text lines up with how I interpreted the printed text.
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Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
It was a weird work around but basically you have thought lash, you do not pay the upkeep, the trigger is (Controller of thought lash now must sacrifice and exile their deck)
That is on the stack, you give control to someone else, then the trigger resolves they are now the controller of thought lash, they must sac it and exile deck.
Its still great in zedruu but not as evil as it once was.
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Real quick (and funny) story about dealing with cyclonic rift: I was playing my Jolrael, Empress of the Beasts deck. I animate my lands to all be 3/3 creatures than I played Overrun and attack the one guy at the table that had all his islands untapped and was joking about how he has cyclonic rift in his hands and will cast it if anyone attacks him. I called his bluff and attacked him. He looked very disappointed when he realize cyclonic rift couldn't do anything against all of my land that are now 6/6 creatures with trample because cyclonic rift only deals with nonland permanents.
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I want to respond to just this one statement. IMO, "Control" as an archetype of Magic is often characterbized by countering your opponent's spells, limiting their resources or restricting options. In this case you are influencing the game by playing cards that keep their spells from having the intended effect and often disrupting the central strategy. You are controling the game state and restricting choice. You are a controlling element. To say otherwise a bit disingenuous. Your play style is controlling in a round about fashion. Giving them lands and extra cards while taking away certainty that their spells can resolve is simply a different sort of control.
A good friend's sister had this response to her old brother's when they tried to make a crappy deal with her. "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining."
Let me qualify my position by saying that Knowlege Pool, Confusion in the Ranks and Possibility Storm are some of my favorite cards. Let's just call them what they are.
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