I do think getting stuck not playing your cards is part of the game. The mana system is at the heart of Magic. Lots of people don't like it, and those people now have plenty of similar games to play where screw or flood isn't a threat.
Yes, it’s part of the game, as in cards were printed that say “Destroy All Lands”, so on. Also true, lots of people don’t like it. In fact, most people don’t like it. Just about every TCG created over the past 10 years does not have a mana system like this where you are just staring at your cards a certain percentage of the time. And, that includes TCG’s that were made by developers who originally developed Magic. Magic is the game that has to justify itself for why screw is a good thing in certain ways, see Maro, and most people don’t buy the arguments.
But, there’re more here. It’s not just that some people don’t like it, some people are ok with it. Because truth be told, I find myself much more often in the camp of people who are ok with it. It’s that people playing 4-color decks, by the very act of doing so, are sending a clear signal that they’re not ok with it. They are not intending to play around mana screw and LD, because otherwise, they’d play a deck that doesn’t have such a high internal fail rate, much less such a high fail rate when facing cards designed to exploit that weakness.
They just want to play the new product, not be taught a lesson about the stability of mana bases. Because if you recall, most people were not thrilled about the announcement of 4-color generals, because we all knew that more than 3 colors is highly risky deck design. But, now we have them. No reason to prove everyone right and just ignore that the new cards exist.
I was playing against a monored player the other day who I watched not be able to cast his spells for two games. Between those two games, over probably 20 total turns, I saw him play about 11 lands. And 4 of them died to a Wildfire. 'Way she goes,' he said. We asked how many lands in his deck. He had 34. That's equivalent to 20.4 lands in a 60 card deck. You can do that in Legacy and Vintage and even some Modern decks, where you can run 10 fetches to make sure you get the 2 mana you need to make your deck go. But in EDH? That's absurd.
I mean, this guy was playing mono Mountains, playing Blood Moon, etc, and he still got mana screwed. Should I feel bad about that, especially when his deck construction was so bad? I don't. And I feel exactly the same about nuking peoples' duals and shocks.
If you actually run the math though, having 34 land versus 40 land reduces the chance of having 0 land in your opener by less than 2%. With 34 land of 99, upping your count to 40 only increases the chances of a given card being land by 7%, while drawing one more card increases your chances of a land by 15%. Point being, screw has much more to do with the fact of this game having you draw mana from you deck and an opener of 7 cards than does any of these axioms about good deck construction.
In fact, if he’s playing Goblin Pope or something similar, 34 land might not be far off. There are cards in Red like Faithless Looting, Wild Guess, etc, where you’re actually better off in terms of land by casting them rather than passing and waiting on your deck, provided you can do something with your graveyard.
Even so, convention will tell you that running 34 land is “bad”. How much or why, let’s just take that aside. It’s just “bad”, ok. Well, the same conventions will tell you that running more than 3 colors is “bad”. Same with every format. Temur Delver is fine, for example, but Temur plus Black for the DRS activation better not be more than one Bayou, and even then most Legacy players opt against it.
The difference is, you can run more land. You can run better fixing, more artifacts, more tutors. What you can’t do is cast a 4-color general with a 3-color mana base. You’re sending the message that you will either have a bad mana base, run a different deck, or get hosed. A player running 4-colors is already breaking a long-standing axiom not to do that. So, hose people for playing the new cards? Doesn't seem fun.
I agree. The issue here is that you are using a strategy that punishes people that intentionally play in a suboptimal fashion. If they wanted an optimized/streamlined deck they wouldn't be playing 4-color in the first place. The people that you punish the most with Ruination are the people that choose to not play with that strategy in mind. It's just like showing up with tuned combo deck in a meta that is full of durdly battlecruiser decks. You are the one with the problem, not them. It's a simple matter to build a deck that is 2-3 colors, very powerful, and does not give a damn about Ruination, but if someone wants to try the new 4-color generals they are opening themselves up to be punished simply for choosing to use the new thing.
I don't agree at all. Choosing a specific commander/strategy will have benefits and disadvantages, and that's how the game is. Just because a product is new, doesn't it should be safeguarded. It's not like tell people not to play artifact removal, when I play with Karn, Silver Golem. It's mono-brown and with it follows a huge risk, because almost every deck packs artifact removal. It's the same when you play lots of non-basics. You know the hate for them exsist, so why not prepare for it?
I agree. The issue here is that you are using a strategy that punishes people that intentionally play in a suboptimal fashion. If they wanted an optimized/streamlined deck they wouldn't be playing 4-color in the first place. The people that you punish the most with Ruination are the people that choose to not play with that strategy in mind. It's just like showing up with tuned combo deck in a meta that is full of durdly battlecruiser decks. You are the one with the problem, not them. It's a simple matter to build a deck that is 2-3 colors, very powerful, and does not give a damn about Ruination, but if someone wants to try the new 4-color generals they are opening themselves up to be punished simply for choosing to use the new thing.
I don't agree at all. Choosing a specific commander/strategy will have benefits and disadvantages, and that's how the game is. Just because a product is new, doesn't it should be safeguarded. It's not like tell people not to play artifact removal, when I play with Karn, Silver Golem. It's mono-brown and with it follows a huge risk, because almost every deck packs artifact removal. It's the same when you play lots of non-basics. You know the hate for them exsist, so why not prepare for it?
How do you "prepare for it" in Karn? Is it by a) losing to your own deck while trying to build around a self-imposed restriction, or b) not playing the deck? Because that's the choice you are presenting to people playing 4-color in your meta. The end result here is people not playing the cards because you bullied them out of it, not some manabase building epiphany.
It’s that people playing 4-color decks, by the very act of doing so, are sending a clear signal that they’re not ok with it. They are not intending to play around mana screw and LD, because otherwise, they’d play a deck that doesn’t have such a high internal fail rate, much less such a high fail rate when facing cards designed to exploit that weakness.
They just want to play the new product, not be taught a lesson about the stability of mana bases. Because if you recall, most people were not thrilled about the announcement of 4-color generals, because we all knew that more than 3 colors is highly risky deck design. But, now we have them.
As you have been repeatedly told, that is not the case, and blatantly and severely incorrect
It is trivially easy to construct a four or five color mana base that is both incredibly consistent, and does not simply lose to nonbasic hate. I play a four color deck, and actively encourage those around me to play Back to Basics and Ruination effects.
If you actually run the math though, having 34 land versus 40 land reduces the chance of having 0 land in your opener by less than 2%.
You yet again have no apparent understanding of what you are talking about.
Reducing a 04.68% probability of zero lands to a 02.29% probability is a 51.06% reduction. You will literally have fewer than half as many opening hands with 0 lands. Nearly a 40% reduction in the number of opening hands with fewer than two lands. The difference is considerably more significant once you factor Mulligan's as well.
Even if you only look at the percentage points, rather than the actual percentage reduction, it is still greater than your claimed "less than 2%"
You spew bull*****, with the only support being your assertion that they are true. When you finally try to provide actual supporting evidence, you get it wrong.
You very clearly have no idea how four color mana bases or decks work, and you very clearly have little to no idea how probabilities actually work.
I am done with you, and would encourage everyone else to ignore you as well.
It’s that people playing 4-color decks, by the very act of doing so, are sending a clear signal that they’re not ok with it. They are not intending to play around mana screw and LD, because otherwise, they’d play a deck that doesn’t have such a high internal fail rate, much less such a high fail rate when facing cards designed to exploit that weakness.
They just want to play the new product, not be taught a lesson about the stability of mana bases. Because if you recall, most people were not thrilled about the announcement of 4-color generals, because we all knew that more than 3 colors is highly risky deck design. But, now we have them.
As you have been repeatedly told, that is not the case, and blatantly and severely incorrect
It is trivially easy to construct a four or five color mana base that is both incredibly consistent, and does not simply lose to nonbasic hate. I play a four color deck, and actively encourage those around me to play Back to Basics and Ruination effects.
If you actually run the math though, having 34 land versus 40 land reduces the chance of having 0 land in your opener by less than 2%.
You yet again have no apparent understanding of what you are talking about.
Reducing a 04.68% probability of zero lands to a 02.29% probability is a 51.06% reduction. You will literally have fewer than half as many opening hands with 0 lands. Nearly a 40% reduction in the number of opening hands with fewer than two lands. The difference is considerably more significant once you factor Mulligan's as well.
Even if you only look at the percentage points, rather than the actual percentage reduction, it is still greater than your claimed "less than 2%"
You spew bull*****, with the only support being your assertion that they are true. When you finally try to provide actual supporting evidence, you get it wrong.
You very clearly have no idea how four color mana bases or decks work, and you very clearly have little to no idea how probabilities actually work.
I am done with you, and would encourage everyone else to ignore you as well.
Yea, he's gotten pretty good at lying with statistics by not showing the full picture. He's also gotten pretty mediocre at telling people who build the decks he's never built that he knows better than them. He's still crappy at constructing believable strawmen.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I agree. The issue here is that you are using a strategy that punishes people that intentionally play in a suboptimal fashion. If they wanted an optimized/streamlined deck they wouldn't be playing 4-color in the first place. The people that you punish the most with Ruination are the people that choose to not play with that strategy in mind. It's just like showing up with tuned combo deck in a meta that is full of durdly battlecruiser decks. You are the one with the problem, not them. It's a simple matter to build a deck that is 2-3 colors, very powerful, and does not give a damn about Ruination, but if someone wants to try the new 4-color generals they are opening themselves up to be punished simply for choosing to use the new thing.
I don't agree at all. Choosing a specific commander/strategy will have benefits and disadvantages, and that's how the game is. Just because a product is new, doesn't it should be safeguarded. It's not like tell people not to play artifact removal, when I play with Karn, Silver Golem. It's mono-brown and with it follows a huge risk, because almost every deck packs artifact removal. It's the same when you play lots of non-basics. You know the hate for them exsist, so why not prepare for it?
How do you "prepare for it" in Karn? Is it by a) losing to your own deck while trying to build around a self-imposed restriction, or b) not playing the deck? Because that's the choice you are presenting to people playing 4-color in your meta. The end result here is people not playing the cards because you bullied them out of it, not some manabase building epiphany.
Well, you can build in some form of recursion and ways to get Darksteel Forge into play. Those are generally things that make the deck more resilient to the odd Vandalblast without compromising the deck's gameplan or weakening it. Similarly, you can actually read what the people who run 4 color have said they do, and you'd see that making room for 2-3 basics of each color and relying on fetches as a starting point, which lets green (read 4/5 of the 4 color decks) to run things like Cultivate and Kodoma's Reach (Two of the best green spells in the format!) to fix their mana with basics and ramp, while Breya colors can through in a few choice counter spells (which not only stop Ruination and other effects, but also anything else that would take you out of the game, be it infinite combo or a key stax piece). Yeah, maybe you should have read the thread before spouting off.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
How do you "prepare for it" in Karn? Is it by a) losing to your own deck while trying to build around a self-imposed restriction, or b) not playing the deck? Because that's the choice you are presenting to people playing 4-color in your meta. The end result here is people not playing the cards because you bullied them out of it, not some manabase building epiphany.
lol, really? I get to choose between a and b...? You must be right then - I choose... not to venture futher because you don't seem to wanting to hear the other voice Have a great day.
How do you "prepare for it" in Karn? Is it by a) losing to your own deck while trying to build around a self-imposed restriction, or b) not playing the deck? Because that's the choice you are presenting to people playing 4-color in your meta. The end result here is people not playing the cards because you bullied them out of it, not some manabase building epiphany.
lol, really? I get to choose between a and b...? You must be right then - I choose... not to venture futher because you don't seem to wanting to hear the other voice Have a great day.
Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
What question? The a or b one? Or did you actually want some advice to how prepare for artifact-hate in a monobrown deck?
What ProfessorWhen is trying to convey is that there really aren't any great options for players who want to play certain color combinations in terms of countering hate cards. As such, those hate cards are kind of a low blow. Realistically, players can only do a few things to circumvent this problem.
Players can break their backs trying to find possible solutions to weaknesses that their color combination cannot naturally counter
Players can just accept that their color combination cannot effectively counter certain cards/effects and choose to play that color combination anyway
Players can opt to not play that color combination entirely
None of these options are stellar.
Beginning with the last option I listed, nobody wants to not be able to play with a commander they think is cool just because it happens to get absolutely destroyed by specific hate cards. Players should have the freedom to choose whichever commander they want and at least stand a reasonable chance at the kitchen table, so suggesting that players should outright refuse to play certain color combinations simply because they can be hated out too easily isn't a very constructive option.
Regarding the first option, ProfessorWhen is using a mono brown deck as an example (since it has access to the fewest cards in Magic) to demonstrate that certain color combinations may not be able to compete against specific hate cards, and that's really lousy. Mono brown is an especially good example pre-Wastes since one of its weaknesses at the time was being unable to play basic lands. There really wasn't any advantage to playing with a mono brown deck. It had the fewest number of cards available, and it realistically had no way to stop things like Ruination from ruining their day. Players would just play with mono brown because they liked the novelty of it or felt attached to a specific legendary creature that happened to be colorless.
I believe the meat of this discussion really revolves around the second option I listed though: is it socially permissible for players to play with cards such as Ruination if players cannot realistically construct their deck in such a way to circumvent it? Personally, I don't believe so. Imagine the following card exists and isn't banned. Would you find this card acceptable to play with?
Good Riddance3WW Sorcery
Target opponent with a red Commander loses the game.
Now, you can argue that this card is blatantly broken (it is), shouldn't exist (it shouldn't), that Wizards will never print such a thing (they won't), and that, if it ever did exist, the Rules Committee would ban it in a heartbeat (they would), but none of those arguments address the hypothetical question at heart. Would you find this card acceptable to put into a deck if it existed? Personally, I wouldn't find it acceptable to play with. Sure, the card can be played around. If you're a red player, you can try to ramp into a Platinum Angel before an opponent casts it or Shunt Good Riddance to another player. There are always going to be solutions to these kinds of things but that doesn't necessarily make those solutions feasible. When Good Riddance gets cast on a mono red player, nine times out of ten, if not more, that player is going to pick up their cards. That isn't good for the game, and it's up to players to self-regulate their playgroups so that these sorts of things don't happen.
The reason I created this hypothetical card is to demonstrate that while no card in Magic does what Good Riddance does explicitly (EDIT: Well, I guess Door to Nothingness almost does, but that's a bit different), certain cards like Ruination can sometimes implicitly do just that. I don't believe that can really be denied. You could argue how frequently certain cards create these sorts of situations, but not outright dismiss the notion. As such, I find the question regarding Ruination being an acceptable card against four color decks to be more about how often it ruins games for four-colored players rather than whether or not it is acceptable to play game ruining cards in Commander.
Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
What question? The a or b one? Or did you actually want some advice to how prepare for artifact-hate in a monobrown deck?
That fact that you're being so obtuse tells me that you have no good answer. It seems you'd just like to declare that you are such a good player that math doesn't apply to you. You can admit to being wrong on the internet, it won't hurt, I promise.
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
What question? The a or b one? Or did you actually want some advice to how prepare for artifact-hate in a monobrown deck?
What ProfessorWhen is trying to convey is that there really aren't any great options for players who want to play certain color combinations in terms of countering hate cards. As such, those hate cards are kind of a low blow. Realistically, players can only do a few things to circumvent this problem.
Players can break their backs trying to find possible solutions to weaknesses that their color combination cannot naturally counter
Players can just accept that their color combination cannot effectively counter certain cards/effects and choose to play that color combination anyway
Players can opt to not play that color combination entirely
None of these options are stellar.
Beginning with the last option I listed, nobody wants to not be able to play with a commander they think is cool just because it happens to get absolutely destroyed by specific hate cards. Players should have the freedom to choose whichever commander they want and at least stand a reasonable chance at the kitchen table, so suggesting that players should outright refuse to play certain color combinations simply because they can be hated out too easily isn't a very constructive option.
Regarding the first option, ProfessorWhen is using a mono brown deck as an example (since it has access to the fewest cards in Magic) to demonstrate that certain color combinations may not be able to compete against specific hate cards, and that's really lousy. Mono brown is an especially good example pre-Wastes since one of its weaknesses at the time was being unable to play basic lands. There really wasn't any advantage to playing with a mono brown deck. It had the fewest number of cards available, and it realistically had no way to stop things like Ruination from ruining their day. Players would just play with mono brown because they liked the novelty of it or felt attached to a specific legendary creature that happened to be colorless.
I believe the meat of this discussion really revolves around the second option I listed though: is it socially permissible for players to play with cards such as Ruination if players cannot realistically construct their deck in such a way to circumvent it? Personally, I don't believe so. Imagine the following card exists and isn't banned. Would you find this card acceptable to play with?
Good Riddance3WW Sorcery
Target opponent with a red Commander loses the game.
Now, you can argue that this card is blatantly broken (it is), shouldn't exist (it shouldn't), that Wizards will never print such a thing (they won't), and that, if it ever did exist, the Rules Committee would ban it in a heartbeat (they would), but none of those arguments address the hypothetical question at heart. Would you find this card acceptable to put into a deck if it existed? Personally, I wouldn't find it acceptable to play with. Sure, the card can be played around. If you're a red player, you can try to ramp into a Platinum Angel before an opponent casts it or Shunt Good Riddance to another player. There are always going to be solutions to these kinds of things but that doesn't necessarily make those solutions feasible. When Good Riddance gets cast on a mono red player, nine times out of ten, if not more, that player is going to pick up their cards. That isn't good for the game, and it's up to players to self-regulate their playgroups so that these sorts of things don't happen.
The reason I created this hypothetical card is to demonstrate that while no card in Magic does what Good Riddance does explicitly (EDIT: Well, I guess Door to Nothingness almost does, but that's a bit different), certain cards like Ruination can sometimes implicitly do just that. I don't believe that can really be denied. You could argue how frequently certain cards create these sorts of situations, but not outright dismiss the notion. As such, I find the question regarding Ruination being an acceptable card against four color decks to be more about how often it ruins games for four-colored players rather than whether or not it is acceptable to play game ruining cards in Commander.
But by that logic, using Vandalblast vs Mono-Brown is a low blow. Or using Iona vs any mono-colored or 2 colored decks. The very point of debating between Mono/dual vs 3/4 color decks is precisely BECAUSE being in a smaller color set opens you to major weaknesses in the color vs having a wider color set opens you up to color disuption/mana issues.
For instance, B has a REALLY hard time dealing with Artifacts or enchantments. If you are against Enchantress, your only choice is to kill it before it can do anything. That is the risk you take for playing mono-B. You can add W or G to mitigate the weakness, but you introduce a new weakness of having a shakier mana base. That is the risk you take for doing such. Keep adding colors, you increase that risk but gain coverage in other weaknesses. If there is no risk to your mana base, you remove one of the benefits of playing Mono colored in the first place. At that point, there is little reason NOT to augment your deck by adding more colors to it to cover your weaknesses (why play Mono-U when you can add B and give you ways to cover your issues with creatures?)
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Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
What question? The a or b one? Or did you actually want some advice to how prepare for artifact-hate in a monobrown deck?
That fact that you're being so obtuse tells me that you have no good answer. It seems you'd just like to declare that you are such a good player that math doesn't apply to you. You can admit to being wrong on the internet, it won't hurt, I promise.
Maybe he just saw that I already addressed your idiotic statement, as did other people throughout the thread you didn't read, and there wasn't really much more to do than realize you don't actually have a valid point to make, so you relied on cheap snark. You can actually read a thread before commenting, it won't hurt you, I promise.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
The very point of debating between Mono/dual vs 3/4 color decks is precisely BECAUSE being in a smaller color set opens you to major weaknesses in the color vs having a wider color set opens you up to color disuption/mana issues.
I don't think there is any kind of debate between players consciously choosing a mono/dual-colored deck or a three/four color one to avoid specific weaknesses. I think most Commander players just choose a particular Commander because they're intrigued by it. For most players, different commanders are just different flavors of ice cream to try out. Take Zedruu the Greathearted for instance. The idea of a "bad Christmas" style deck that gives your opponents poisonous gifts is a really cool deck idea that's evocative for many players. Players intrigued by Zedruu didn't choose it because they were concerned about being vulnerable to cards that hate out a given color like Iona. They choose Zedruu because they're excited about what the deck represents: a style. The fact that Zedruu happens to be three color and can be hated out by certain cards that hate out three color decks is just coincidental. Players can't build a Zedruu deck with whatever colors they want; they can only build them with white, red, and blue cards, and while players could choose not to play with all three of those colors, they mostly have to if they want any reasonable shot at actually casting their own commander, most deck's focal point.
For instance, B has a REALLY hard time dealing with Artifacts or enchantments. If you are against Enchantress, your only choice is to kill it before it can do anything. That is the risk you take for playing mono-B. You can add W or G to mitigate the weakness, but you introduce a new weakness of having a shakier mana base. That is the risk you take for doing such. Keep adding colors, you increase that risk but gain coverage in other weaknesses.
I totally agree with everything you're saying here. There's definitely a trade-off between playing a deck with fewer colors and being subject to that color's given weaknesses versus playing a deck with multiple colors and a less stable manabase. The only idea I'm trying to convey is that certain cards which exploit these weaknesses too heavily may be socially inappropriate to play with due to the way players build Commander decks. If I want to build my Commander deck around Gonti, Lord of Luxury because I think he's novel and cool, I can't add white or green to make it less susceptible to enchantments. Commander's rules forbid players from adding cards to their decks outside their commander's color identity, and there isn't any legendary creature in WBG that does what Gonti does either, so I can't just change my commander into something else and have the same style of deck. My only other choices are to either suck it up and just accept that Gonti has debilitating weaknesses baked into it or to break my back trying to find ways that may or may not be all that effective at counteracting those weaknesses.
Since none of those options are great, I believe it is up to each individual's playgroup to self-moderate one another in order to prevent poor games of Commander from occurring. Without doing so, they certainly can. Some cards are just capable of exploiting a deck's weaknesses in too dire a fashion and that can cause miserable games of Commander, so they may not be appropriate to play with. I know I don't need to explain this to you; you already understand this, but Commander isn't like other formats in Magic. It's a casual, social format. Behaviors permissible in other formats aren't necessarily permissible in Commander because Commander is about creating good games of Magic for everyone above all else. Some cards just have the potential to create unpleasant games for one reason or another. What those kinds of cards are will differ from one playgroup to another, but, hypothetically speaking, I think it would suck if my Zedruu deck got took out of the game by a Ruination just because a byproduct of the deck I wanted to play is that it just so happens to be three color. I probably wouldn't find that to be a great game of Commander.
But by that logic, using Vandalblast vs Mono-Brown is a low blow. Or using Iona vs any mono-colored or 2 colored decks.
It can be, yeah. I'm not going to say it will be 100% of the time because that's not the case, but cards like Vandalblast or Iona certainly have the potential to create lousy games of Commander. Public sentiment of Iona is especially poor. It's really just up to you and your playgroups. My playgroup would definitely find something like Ruination unacceptable because, in our experience, it tends to always create shoddy games of Commander.
If there is no risk to your mana base, you remove one of the benefits of playing Mono colored in the first place. At that point, there is little reason NOT to augment your deck by adding more colors to it to cover your weaknesses (why play Mono-U when you can add B and give you ways to cover your issues with creatures?)
The risk to playing more colors other than nonbasic land destruction is like you said earlier. The more colors a player adds to their deck, the more inconsistent their mana base will be. Furthermore, even if adding additional colors to a deck came without consequence, I'm not sure I would see that as a problem.
Anyway, I spent a good chunk of time typing all of that out, but I have to get ready to go to work now. If I'm misinterpreting anything, let me know so we can sort that out and understand each other better.
The very point of debating between Mono/dual vs 3/4 color decks is precisely BECAUSE being in a smaller color set opens you to major weaknesses in the color vs having a wider color set opens you up to color disuption/mana issues.
I don't think there is any kind of debate between players consciously choosing a mono/dual-colored deck or a three/four color one to avoid specific weaknesses. I think most Commander players just choose a particular Commander because they're intrigued by it. For most players, different commanders are just different flavors of ice cream to try out. Take Zedruu the Greathearted for instance. The idea of a "bad Christmas" style deck that gives your opponents poisonous gifts is a really cool deck idea that's evocative for many players. Players intrigued by Zedruu didn't choose it because they were concerned about being vulnerable to cards that hate out a given color like Iona. They choose Zedruu because they're excited about what the deck represents: a style. The fact that Zedruu happens to be three color and can be hated out by certain cards that hate out three color decks is just coincidental. Players can't build a Zedruu deck with whatever colors they want; they can only build them with white, red, and blue cards, and while players could choose not to play with all three of those colors, they mostly have to if they want any reasonable shot at actually casting their own commander, most deck's focal point.
For instance, B has a REALLY hard time dealing with Artifacts or enchantments. If you are against Enchantress, your only choice is to kill it before it can do anything. That is the risk you take for playing mono-B. You can add W or G to mitigate the weakness, but you introduce a new weakness of having a shakier mana base. That is the risk you take for doing such. Keep adding colors, you increase that risk but gain coverage in other weaknesses.
I totally agree with everything you're saying here. There's definitely a trade-off between playing a deck with fewer colors and being subject to that color's given weaknesses versus playing a deck with multiple colors and a less stable manabase. The only idea I'm trying to convey is that certain cards which exploit these weaknesses too heavily may be socially inappropriate to play with due to the way players build Commander decks. If I want to build my Commander deck around Gonti, Lord of Luxury because I think he's novel and cool, I can't add white or green to make it less susceptible to enchantments. Commander's rules forbid players from adding cards to their decks outside their commander's color identity, and there isn't any legendary creature in WBG that does what Gonti does either, so I can't just change my commander into something else and have the same style of deck. My only other choices are to either suck it up and just accept that Gonti has debilitating weaknesses baked into it or to break my back trying to find ways that may or may not be all that effective at counteracting those weaknesses.
Since none of those options are great, I believe it is up to each individual's playgroup to self-moderate one another in order to prevent poor games of Commander from occurring. Without doing so, they certainly can. Some cards are just capable of exploiting a deck's weaknesses in too dire a fashion and that can cause miserable games of Commander, so they may not be appropriate to play with. I know I don't need to explain this to you; you already understand this, but Commander isn't like other formats in Magic. It's a casual, social format. Behaviors permissible in other formats aren't necessarily permissible in Commander because Commander is about creating good games of Magic for everyone above all else. Some cards just have the potential to create unpleasant games for one reason or another. What those kinds of cards are will differ from one playgroup to another, but, hypothetically speaking, I think it would suck if my Zedruu deck got took out of the game by a Ruination just because a byproduct of the deck I wanted to play is that it just so happens to be three color. I probably wouldn't find that to be a great game of Commander.
But by that logic, using Vandalblast vs Mono-Brown is a low blow. Or using Iona vs any mono-colored or 2 colored decks.
It can be, yeah. I'm not going to say it will be 100% of the time because that's not the case, but cards like Vandalblast or Iona certainly have the potential to create lousy games of Commander. Public sentiment of Iona is especially poor. It's really just up to you and your playgroups. My playgroup would definitely find something like Ruination unacceptable because, in our experience, it tends to always create shoddy games of Commander.
If there is no risk to your mana base, you remove one of the benefits of playing Mono colored in the first place. At that point, there is little reason NOT to augment your deck by adding more colors to it to cover your weaknesses (why play Mono-U when you can add B and give you ways to cover your issues with creatures?)
The risk to playing more colors other than nonbasic land destruction is like you said earlier. The more colors a player adds to their deck, the more inconsistent their mana base will be. Furthermore, even if adding additional colors to a deck came without consequence, I'm not sure I would see that as a problem.
Anyway, I spent a good chunk of time typing all of that out, but I have to get ready to go to work now. If I'm misinterpreting anything, let me know so we can sort that out and understand each other better.
You've made the best and most thoughtful arguments against using nonbasic land hate, but it still comes down to the playgroup. Your playgroup has done a good job by actually discussing what you find fun and unfun and why, and coming to an agreement on that. OP's playgroup runs stax and GAAIV, so they are obviously accepting of the sort of effects capable of making it so people aren't able to play, and Ruination et al are merely minor riffs on what decks in his meta are dedicated to doing. In a more general sense, magic is a game of threats and answers, and the point of running these cards is to either feast on opponents with greedy mana bases or force them to make their decks less efficient to avoid getting blown out. This is pretty much the purpose of not only every hate card, but every answer card, all the way back to making sure your opponents strategy of playing craw wurm and Shivan Dragon got burned by Terror and counterspell. When it comes to playgroups, every one is different and pretty much anything is on the table so long as the group is in agreement, so a playgroup even banning counter heavy decks or combos just boils down to the group rolling that way. I base my feel for it when speaking generally, rather than on a playgroup by playgroup basis, on the kind of decks and cards I see on mtgo, as its basically a free for all where you get paired with randos. In such an environment, I would recommend responding to trends with whatever will help you win. Unless a playgroup is already against MLD (or already against stax or tax decks, which have a similar effect), the nbl hate is fine. So, for the original question, if the 4 color decks your seeing are jank, don't run it, but if people are bringing Ydris storm and Atraxa Stax to the table, they have no room to complain about being on the receiving end of ruination.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
As you have been repeatedly told, that is not the case, and blatantly and severely incorrect
It is trivially easy to construct a four or five color mana base that is both incredibly consistent, and does not simply lose to nonbasic hate. I play a four color deck, and actively encourage those around me to play Back to Basics and Ruination effects.
All you’ve done is state a counter-claim. And used boldface. And boldface italics. Not persuasive.
Post a 4-color decklist with this incredibly consistent, Ruination-resilient manabase. Then tell us how often it fails to allow the general to be cast on time, probabilities at each turn window of failing to make a 4th color, and chances of being simultaneously stuck with cards in hand of the 4th color. Then, I can tell you exactly why I’m not ok with an internal fail rate that high as a matter of what I do with an hour or more of my time, why it’s a strategically better choice to go 2-color or 3-color in all situations, and why therefore I’d reasonably expect opponents to understand those things and build accordingly if they have any interest at all in seeing what their opponents 4-color decks do.
If you actually run the math though, having 34 land versus 40 land reduces the chance of having 0 land in your opener by less than 2%.
You yet again have no apparent understanding of what you are talking about.
Reducing a 04.68% probability of zero lands to a 02.29% probability is a 51.06% reduction. You will literally have fewer than half as many opening hands with 0 lands. Nearly a 40% reduction in the number of opening hands with fewer than two lands. The difference is considerably more significant once you factor Mulligan's as well.
Even if you only look at the percentage points, rather than the actual percentage reduction, it is still greater than your claimed "less than 2%"
You spew bull*****, with the only support being your assertion that they are true. When you finally try to provide actual supporting evidence, you get it wrong.
You very clearly have no idea how four color mana bases or decks work, and you very clearly have little to no idea how probabilities actually work.
I am done with you, and would encourage everyone else to ignore you as well.
All you’ve done here is deflect what I intended the probability to express to what you’d rather it express.
I understand that something happening a miniscule amount of the time to something happening a miniscule x .5 amount of the time is roughly 50%. But, no one is concerned with what happens relative to that miniscule percent of the time. When it happens, that is a mulligan. What people are concerned with is their overall chance in any given instance to shuffle up and draw a dud. So, going from 2’ish to 4’ish percent of that happening being a difference of 2%, relative to the entire set of outcomes, is what that probability expresses. It’s what people are really concerned with.
My point was that the difference is small relative to the entire set of possible outcomes from your deck. Overarching point being, there are certain things in deck construction that are widely accepted rules, but have a smaller effect than people realize. And, there are those aspects that have an immense impact, to the degree that they are intractable.
Specifically, the difference between a realistic upper bound of land count and a realistic lower bound is one of those smaller ones. The overall quantity of cards producing a given color of mana is bigger than that, but it is still on the smaller side of factors, because there is a realistic upper and lower bound. Small draw spells have a bigger impact than either of those. But by far the greatest factor leading to screw with 4-color and 5-color decks is the number of colors you are running. That’s because relative to a 3-color model, you are going from having dual lands that get you 2/3 of your colors to only getting you 2/4 or 2/5 of your colors, and the game of Magic happens to be full of lands that tap for 2-colors (aside from the few 5-color lands and CIPT tri-lands).
So, anything you could possibly do with a 4-color manabase is worse than what you could’ve done just by dropping the 4th color. Playing a 4-color deck is knowingly suboptimal. And playing hate of the magnitude of Ruination against players you know are already deciding to play suboptimally because they want to is, in my opinion, punching down. Your opinion might be different. But, don’t expect it to be shared among very many people, because by the facts, the decision to play 4-color is incompatible with the anticipation of having a sporting back and forth with Ruination effects. The "correct" thing to do when you anticipate Ruination is not play any more than 3 colors.
As a mono-RBen-Ben, Akki Hermit player I'll gladly play Ruination and NBL effects against the players in my group with 4/5 colour commanders. In my playgroup I may be upsetting them by slowing-down their next play of entwining Tooth and Nail for the win, but I know they're not bothered by me being upset they had a clear path to entwining Tooth and Nail for the win. But I feel the same way about Iona, MLD, ect. Yeah it sucks losing hard, but then I just play another game or enjoy watching how the rest of the match turns out.
A closer analogy would be those players packing conversion to hate out your mono-red deck.
Although, where is a moderator to close this topic down? The topic devolved. Bad math, people trying to prove negatives, and arguments over qualitative values have started to whir.
I'm always happy to critize with writhing vitriol, but good sportsmanship is needed.
A closer analogy would be those players packing conversion to hate out your mono-red deck.
I use artifact mana and Chaos Warp, but if they did that I respect the fact they consider Ben-Ben enough of a threat that they need an answer for it. Thats a huge compliment, since we run multiple players and games per night without sideboarding.
If its just some random match with someone I never met, well thats life sometimes you don't win every game.
It almost certainly wouldn't be that much of a threat, you'd just be rationalizing. they would be doing it because they can. There's nothing a 4-color deck can do that a 3-color deck couldn't do just as well with less inconsistency and frailty.
Not really. If I want to take up space in my deck with hate it's going to be hate that's always useful in EDH like Relic of Progenitus, and City of Solitude. Not "Oh you want to try the new thing you just bought for EDH well FORGET YOU ".
As a mono-RBen-Ben, Akki Hermit player I'll gladly play Ruination and NBL effects against the players in my group with 4/5 colour commanders. In my playgroup I may be upsetting them by slowing-down their next play of entwining Tooth and Nail for the win, but I know they're not bothered by me being upset they had a clear path to entwining Tooth and Nail for the win. But I feel the same way about Iona, MLD, ect. Yeah it sucks losing hard, but then I just play another game or enjoy watching how the rest of the match turns out.
A closer analogy would be those players packing conversion to hate out your mono-red deck.
Nope, since Conversion is a continuously effect which is very narrow. Ruination is a one time effect, with a much wider range of targets, and will properly hit yourself aswell as opponents.
Not really. If I want to take up space in my deck with hate it's going to be hate that's always useful in EDH like Relic of Progenitus, and City of Solitude. Not "Oh you want to try the new thing you just bought for EDH well FORGET YOU ".
Was it wrong to play Relic when Meren got super popular? Was it wrong to play City of Solitude when Mizzix came out? Is it wrong to play Leyline of the Void in a graveyard-heavy meta?
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EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Graveyards and Response hate were useful before Meren and Mizzix made it cool
What I'm saying is I'm no more likely to pack nonbasic land hate now than I would be before.
NBL hate was useful before 4 color decks as well, which is why Ruination, Blood Moon, and others always made it into my mono red decks for years. See, that's the flip side of this little argument. If your against running NBL hate in response to 4 color decks like Atraxa stax + superfriends, are you also for people who were already running these cards taking them out of their decks because 4 color is now popular?
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
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Yes, it’s part of the game, as in cards were printed that say “Destroy All Lands”, so on. Also true, lots of people don’t like it. In fact, most people don’t like it. Just about every TCG created over the past 10 years does not have a mana system like this where you are just staring at your cards a certain percentage of the time. And, that includes TCG’s that were made by developers who originally developed Magic. Magic is the game that has to justify itself for why screw is a good thing in certain ways, see Maro, and most people don’t buy the arguments.
But, there’re more here. It’s not just that some people don’t like it, some people are ok with it. Because truth be told, I find myself much more often in the camp of people who are ok with it. It’s that people playing 4-color decks, by the very act of doing so, are sending a clear signal that they’re not ok with it. They are not intending to play around mana screw and LD, because otherwise, they’d play a deck that doesn’t have such a high internal fail rate, much less such a high fail rate when facing cards designed to exploit that weakness.
They just want to play the new product, not be taught a lesson about the stability of mana bases. Because if you recall, most people were not thrilled about the announcement of 4-color generals, because we all knew that more than 3 colors is highly risky deck design. But, now we have them. No reason to prove everyone right and just ignore that the new cards exist.
If you actually run the math though, having 34 land versus 40 land reduces the chance of having 0 land in your opener by less than 2%. With 34 land of 99, upping your count to 40 only increases the chances of a given card being land by 7%, while drawing one more card increases your chances of a land by 15%. Point being, screw has much more to do with the fact of this game having you draw mana from you deck and an opener of 7 cards than does any of these axioms about good deck construction.
In fact, if he’s playing Goblin Pope or something similar, 34 land might not be far off. There are cards in Red like Faithless Looting, Wild Guess, etc, where you’re actually better off in terms of land by casting them rather than passing and waiting on your deck, provided you can do something with your graveyard.
Even so, convention will tell you that running 34 land is “bad”. How much or why, let’s just take that aside. It’s just “bad”, ok. Well, the same conventions will tell you that running more than 3 colors is “bad”. Same with every format. Temur Delver is fine, for example, but Temur plus Black for the DRS activation better not be more than one Bayou, and even then most Legacy players opt against it.
The difference is, you can run more land. You can run better fixing, more artifacts, more tutors. What you can’t do is cast a 4-color general with a 3-color mana base. You’re sending the message that you will either have a bad mana base, run a different deck, or get hosed. A player running 4-colors is already breaking a long-standing axiom not to do that. So, hose people for playing the new cards? Doesn't seem fun.
I don't agree at all. Choosing a specific commander/strategy will have benefits and disadvantages, and that's how the game is. Just because a product is new, doesn't it should be safeguarded. It's not like tell people not to play artifact removal, when I play with Karn, Silver Golem. It's mono-brown and with it follows a huge risk, because almost every deck packs artifact removal. It's the same when you play lots of non-basics. You know the hate for them exsist, so why not prepare for it?
How do you "prepare for it" in Karn? Is it by a) losing to your own deck while trying to build around a self-imposed restriction, or b) not playing the deck? Because that's the choice you are presenting to people playing 4-color in your meta. The end result here is people not playing the cards because you bullied them out of it, not some manabase building epiphany.
As you have been repeatedly told, that is not the case, and blatantly and severely incorrect
It is trivially easy to construct a four or five color mana base that is both incredibly consistent, and does not simply lose to nonbasic hate. I play a four color deck, and actively encourage those around me to play Back to Basics and Ruination effects.
You yet again have no apparent understanding of what you are talking about.
Reducing a 04.68% probability of zero lands to a 02.29% probability is a 51.06% reduction. You will literally have fewer than half as many opening hands with 0 lands. Nearly a 40% reduction in the number of opening hands with fewer than two lands. The difference is considerably more significant once you factor Mulligan's as well.
Even if you only look at the percentage points, rather than the actual percentage reduction, it is still greater than your claimed "less than 2%"
You spew bull*****, with the only support being your assertion that they are true. When you finally try to provide actual supporting evidence, you get it wrong.
You very clearly have no idea how four color mana bases or decks work, and you very clearly have little to no idea how probabilities actually work.
I am done with you, and would encourage everyone else to ignore you as well.
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Yea, he's gotten pretty good at lying with statistics by not showing the full picture. He's also gotten pretty mediocre at telling people who build the decks he's never built that he knows better than them. He's still crappy at constructing believable strawmen.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Well, you can build in some form of recursion and ways to get Darksteel Forge into play. Those are generally things that make the deck more resilient to the odd Vandalblast without compromising the deck's gameplan or weakening it. Similarly, you can actually read what the people who run 4 color have said they do, and you'd see that making room for 2-3 basics of each color and relying on fetches as a starting point, which lets green (read 4/5 of the 4 color decks) to run things like Cultivate and Kodoma's Reach (Two of the best green spells in the format!) to fix their mana with basics and ramp, while Breya colors can through in a few choice counter spells (which not only stop Ruination and other effects, but also anything else that would take you out of the game, be it infinite combo or a key stax piece). Yeah, maybe you should have read the thread before spouting off.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
lol, really? I get to choose between a and b...? You must be right then - I choose... not to venture futher because you don't seem to wanting to hear the other voice Have a great day.
Excellent job avoiding the question. I guess we'll just take your word for it.
What question? The a or b one? Or did you actually want some advice to how prepare for artifact-hate in a monobrown deck?
Beginning with the last option I listed, nobody wants to not be able to play with a commander they think is cool just because it happens to get absolutely destroyed by specific hate cards. Players should have the freedom to choose whichever commander they want and at least stand a reasonable chance at the kitchen table, so suggesting that players should outright refuse to play certain color combinations simply because they can be hated out too easily isn't a very constructive option.
Regarding the first option, ProfessorWhen is using a mono brown deck as an example (since it has access to the fewest cards in Magic) to demonstrate that certain color combinations may not be able to compete against specific hate cards, and that's really lousy. Mono brown is an especially good example pre-Wastes since one of its weaknesses at the time was being unable to play basic lands. There really wasn't any advantage to playing with a mono brown deck. It had the fewest number of cards available, and it realistically had no way to stop things like Ruination from ruining their day. Players would just play with mono brown because they liked the novelty of it or felt attached to a specific legendary creature that happened to be colorless.
I believe the meat of this discussion really revolves around the second option I listed though: is it socially permissible for players to play with cards such as Ruination if players cannot realistically construct their deck in such a way to circumvent it? Personally, I don't believe so. Imagine the following card exists and isn't banned. Would you find this card acceptable to play with?
Good Riddance 3WW
Sorcery
Target opponent with a red Commander loses the game.
Now, you can argue that this card is blatantly broken (it is), shouldn't exist (it shouldn't), that Wizards will never print such a thing (they won't), and that, if it ever did exist, the Rules Committee would ban it in a heartbeat (they would), but none of those arguments address the hypothetical question at heart. Would you find this card acceptable to put into a deck if it existed? Personally, I wouldn't find it acceptable to play with. Sure, the card can be played around. If you're a red player, you can try to ramp into a Platinum Angel before an opponent casts it or Shunt Good Riddance to another player. There are always going to be solutions to these kinds of things but that doesn't necessarily make those solutions feasible. When Good Riddance gets cast on a mono red player, nine times out of ten, if not more, that player is going to pick up their cards. That isn't good for the game, and it's up to players to self-regulate their playgroups so that these sorts of things don't happen.
The reason I created this hypothetical card is to demonstrate that while no card in Magic does what Good Riddance does explicitly (EDIT: Well, I guess Door to Nothingness almost does, but that's a bit different), certain cards like Ruination can sometimes implicitly do just that. I don't believe that can really be denied. You could argue how frequently certain cards create these sorts of situations, but not outright dismiss the notion. As such, I find the question regarding Ruination being an acceptable card against four color decks to be more about how often it ruins games for four-colored players rather than whether or not it is acceptable to play game ruining cards in Commander.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
That fact that you're being so obtuse tells me that you have no good answer. It seems you'd just like to declare that you are such a good player that math doesn't apply to you. You can admit to being wrong on the internet, it won't hurt, I promise.
I have the tech for that!
On phasing:
But by that logic, using Vandalblast vs Mono-Brown is a low blow. Or using Iona vs any mono-colored or 2 colored decks. The very point of debating between Mono/dual vs 3/4 color decks is precisely BECAUSE being in a smaller color set opens you to major weaknesses in the color vs having a wider color set opens you up to color disuption/mana issues.
For instance, B has a REALLY hard time dealing with Artifacts or enchantments. If you are against Enchantress, your only choice is to kill it before it can do anything. That is the risk you take for playing mono-B. You can add W or G to mitigate the weakness, but you introduce a new weakness of having a shakier mana base. That is the risk you take for doing such. Keep adding colors, you increase that risk but gain coverage in other weaknesses. If there is no risk to your mana base, you remove one of the benefits of playing Mono colored in the first place. At that point, there is little reason NOT to augment your deck by adding more colors to it to cover your weaknesses (why play Mono-U when you can add B and give you ways to cover your issues with creatures?)
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
Maybe he just saw that I already addressed your idiotic statement, as did other people throughout the thread you didn't read, and there wasn't really much more to do than realize you don't actually have a valid point to make, so you relied on cheap snark. You can actually read a thread before commenting, it won't hurt you, I promise.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I don't think there is any kind of debate between players consciously choosing a mono/dual-colored deck or a three/four color one to avoid specific weaknesses. I think most Commander players just choose a particular Commander because they're intrigued by it. For most players, different commanders are just different flavors of ice cream to try out. Take Zedruu the Greathearted for instance. The idea of a "bad Christmas" style deck that gives your opponents poisonous gifts is a really cool deck idea that's evocative for many players. Players intrigued by Zedruu didn't choose it because they were concerned about being vulnerable to cards that hate out a given color like Iona. They choose Zedruu because they're excited about what the deck represents: a style. The fact that Zedruu happens to be three color and can be hated out by certain cards that hate out three color decks is just coincidental. Players can't build a Zedruu deck with whatever colors they want; they can only build them with white, red, and blue cards, and while players could choose not to play with all three of those colors, they mostly have to if they want any reasonable shot at actually casting their own commander, most deck's focal point.
I totally agree with everything you're saying here. There's definitely a trade-off between playing a deck with fewer colors and being subject to that color's given weaknesses versus playing a deck with multiple colors and a less stable manabase. The only idea I'm trying to convey is that certain cards which exploit these weaknesses too heavily may be socially inappropriate to play with due to the way players build Commander decks. If I want to build my Commander deck around Gonti, Lord of Luxury because I think he's novel and cool, I can't add white or green to make it less susceptible to enchantments. Commander's rules forbid players from adding cards to their decks outside their commander's color identity, and there isn't any legendary creature in WBG that does what Gonti does either, so I can't just change my commander into something else and have the same style of deck. My only other choices are to either suck it up and just accept that Gonti has debilitating weaknesses baked into it or to break my back trying to find ways that may or may not be all that effective at counteracting those weaknesses.
Since none of those options are great, I believe it is up to each individual's playgroup to self-moderate one another in order to prevent poor games of Commander from occurring. Without doing so, they certainly can. Some cards are just capable of exploiting a deck's weaknesses in too dire a fashion and that can cause miserable games of Commander, so they may not be appropriate to play with. I know I don't need to explain this to you; you already understand this, but Commander isn't like other formats in Magic. It's a casual, social format. Behaviors permissible in other formats aren't necessarily permissible in Commander because Commander is about creating good games of Magic for everyone above all else. Some cards just have the potential to create unpleasant games for one reason or another. What those kinds of cards are will differ from one playgroup to another, but, hypothetically speaking, I think it would suck if my Zedruu deck got took out of the game by a Ruination just because a byproduct of the deck I wanted to play is that it just so happens to be three color. I probably wouldn't find that to be a great game of Commander.
It can be, yeah. I'm not going to say it will be 100% of the time because that's not the case, but cards like Vandalblast or Iona certainly have the potential to create lousy games of Commander. Public sentiment of Iona is especially poor. It's really just up to you and your playgroups. My playgroup would definitely find something like Ruination unacceptable because, in our experience, it tends to always create shoddy games of Commander.
The risk to playing more colors other than nonbasic land destruction is like you said earlier. The more colors a player adds to their deck, the more inconsistent their mana base will be. Furthermore, even if adding additional colors to a deck came without consequence, I'm not sure I would see that as a problem.
Anyway, I spent a good chunk of time typing all of that out, but I have to get ready to go to work now. If I'm misinterpreting anything, let me know so we can sort that out and understand each other better.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
You've made the best and most thoughtful arguments against using nonbasic land hate, but it still comes down to the playgroup. Your playgroup has done a good job by actually discussing what you find fun and unfun and why, and coming to an agreement on that. OP's playgroup runs stax and GAAIV, so they are obviously accepting of the sort of effects capable of making it so people aren't able to play, and Ruination et al are merely minor riffs on what decks in his meta are dedicated to doing. In a more general sense, magic is a game of threats and answers, and the point of running these cards is to either feast on opponents with greedy mana bases or force them to make their decks less efficient to avoid getting blown out. This is pretty much the purpose of not only every hate card, but every answer card, all the way back to making sure your opponents strategy of playing craw wurm and Shivan Dragon got burned by Terror and counterspell. When it comes to playgroups, every one is different and pretty much anything is on the table so long as the group is in agreement, so a playgroup even banning counter heavy decks or combos just boils down to the group rolling that way. I base my feel for it when speaking generally, rather than on a playgroup by playgroup basis, on the kind of decks and cards I see on mtgo, as its basically a free for all where you get paired with randos. In such an environment, I would recommend responding to trends with whatever will help you win. Unless a playgroup is already against MLD (or already against stax or tax decks, which have a similar effect), the nbl hate is fine. So, for the original question, if the 4 color decks your seeing are jank, don't run it, but if people are bringing Ydris storm and Atraxa Stax to the table, they have no room to complain about being on the receiving end of ruination.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
All you’ve done is state a counter-claim. And used boldface. And boldface italics. Not persuasive.
Post a 4-color decklist with this incredibly consistent, Ruination-resilient manabase. Then tell us how often it fails to allow the general to be cast on time, probabilities at each turn window of failing to make a 4th color, and chances of being simultaneously stuck with cards in hand of the 4th color. Then, I can tell you exactly why I’m not ok with an internal fail rate that high as a matter of what I do with an hour or more of my time, why it’s a strategically better choice to go 2-color or 3-color in all situations, and why therefore I’d reasonably expect opponents to understand those things and build accordingly if they have any interest at all in seeing what their opponents 4-color decks do.
All you’ve done here is deflect what I intended the probability to express to what you’d rather it express.
I understand that something happening a miniscule amount of the time to something happening a miniscule x .5 amount of the time is roughly 50%. But, no one is concerned with what happens relative to that miniscule percent of the time. When it happens, that is a mulligan. What people are concerned with is their overall chance in any given instance to shuffle up and draw a dud. So, going from 2’ish to 4’ish percent of that happening being a difference of 2%, relative to the entire set of outcomes, is what that probability expresses. It’s what people are really concerned with.
My point was that the difference is small relative to the entire set of possible outcomes from your deck. Overarching point being, there are certain things in deck construction that are widely accepted rules, but have a smaller effect than people realize. And, there are those aspects that have an immense impact, to the degree that they are intractable.
Specifically, the difference between a realistic upper bound of land count and a realistic lower bound is one of those smaller ones. The overall quantity of cards producing a given color of mana is bigger than that, but it is still on the smaller side of factors, because there is a realistic upper and lower bound. Small draw spells have a bigger impact than either of those. But by far the greatest factor leading to screw with 4-color and 5-color decks is the number of colors you are running. That’s because relative to a 3-color model, you are going from having dual lands that get you 2/3 of your colors to only getting you 2/4 or 2/5 of your colors, and the game of Magic happens to be full of lands that tap for 2-colors (aside from the few 5-color lands and CIPT tri-lands).
So, anything you could possibly do with a 4-color manabase is worse than what you could’ve done just by dropping the 4th color. Playing a 4-color deck is knowingly suboptimal. And playing hate of the magnitude of Ruination against players you know are already deciding to play suboptimally because they want to is, in my opinion, punching down. Your opinion might be different. But, don’t expect it to be shared among very many people, because by the facts, the decision to play 4-color is incompatible with the anticipation of having a sporting back and forth with Ruination effects. The "correct" thing to do when you anticipate Ruination is not play any more than 3 colors.
A closer analogy would be those players packing conversion to hate out your mono-red deck.
Although, where is a moderator to close this topic down? The topic devolved. Bad math, people trying to prove negatives, and arguments over qualitative values have started to whir.
I'm always happy to critize with writhing vitriol, but good sportsmanship is needed.
Shut it down.
It almost certainly wouldn't be that much of a threat, you'd just be rationalizing. they would be doing it because they can. There's nothing a 4-color deck can do that a 3-color deck couldn't do just as well with less inconsistency and frailty.
Nope, since Conversion is a continuously effect which is very narrow. Ruination is a one time effect, with a much wider range of targets, and will properly hit yourself aswell as opponents.
Was it wrong to play Relic when Meren got super popular? Was it wrong to play City of Solitude when Mizzix came out? Is it wrong to play Leyline of the Void in a graveyard-heavy meta?
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
What I'm saying is I'm no more likely to pack nonbasic land hate now than I would be before.
NBL hate was useful before 4 color decks as well, which is why Ruination, Blood Moon, and others always made it into my mono red decks for years. See, that's the flip side of this little argument. If your against running NBL hate in response to 4 color decks like Atraxa stax + superfriends, are you also for people who were already running these cards taking them out of their decks because 4 color is now popular?
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!