Personally I don't think EDH tables "owe" it to boros to let them do annoying unpleasant things just so they can suck less.
Oh, you demand we find armageddon acceptable, boros? Well sultai demands you find T3 doomsday acceptable. And we're right back where we started, except without anyone having any fun.
If wotc wants commander to be better color balanced, they can print some good commanders and finishers for boros. Not keep printing trash and putting the onus on us to figure out how many winter orbs we'll have to play to make it viable.
Meanwhile, Thieves Auction is a goofy fun time card, not a viable card for making the color better, and Sheldon's argument is that it only promises goofy fun time and delivers the magic equivalent of filing your taxes.
Love that ending. We had a game years ago that still makes us cringe - Thieves' Auction with Confusion in the Ranks on the board - we had 97 ETB triggers to sort through and were stupid enough to try. I believe I would rather file my taxes than play that through again.
Deck viability should not Ride Down on others having fun with the game. At least in theory, most play Commander to have a fun pastime.
Does MLD and Winter Orbing make Boros midrange-aggro style more viable? Yep. Is it any fun for anyone else, at your average table? I don't think you can make that argument that much.
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X Hope of Ghirapur Swordpile W Ghosty Blinky Anafenza U Nezahal- Big, Blue and HERE! B Gonti Can Afford It R Etali, Primal 'Whatjusthappened?' G Polukranos Wants More Mana WU The Exalted Vizier Temmet WB Home, Athreos WR Basandra, Recursive Aggression WG Karametra, Momma of Lands UB Wrexial Eats Your Brains UR Arjun, the Mad Flame UG The Fable of Prime Speaker BR Hellbent, Malfegor Style BG Jarad, Death is Served RG Running Thromok WUB Varina and ALL the Zombies WUBYennett, the Odd Pain-Train WUR Zedruu the Furyhearted WUG Arcades' Strategy, Shmategy, Sausage and Spam WBR A Case of Mathas' Persistent F*ckery WBRLicia's League of Legendary Lifegain Layabouts WBG The Karador Advantage PackageWRG Gahiji Rattlesnake Collection UBR Jeleva... does... things UBG Damia's Just Deserts URG Yasova's Has More Power Than Sense BRG Wasitora, Bad Kitty WUBRBreya, Eggs, Breya'd Eggs WUBG Tymna and Kydele, Extended Borrowing WURG Kynaios and Tiro, Landfall Impersonations WBRG Saskia Pet Card EnchantressUBRG Yidris of the Chi-Ting Corporation WUBRG Tazri's Amazing Allies
I keep seeing people bringing up cEDH for Boros for some bizarre reasons. Can we put to bed that with Red and White's card pool alone, nevermind the commander options, that Boros just isn't close to it and therefore shouldn't be used as a factor. I mean, there's Godo with his Helm combo, but that is about it.
Now don't get me wrong, I'd love to see some competitively costed Boros generals that could use an aggro plan similar to Najeela to disrupt early game combo players and shake that format up, but there's the issue right now of threats and answers. If you can really only rely on Swords/Path/Chaos Warp to disrupt combos at instant speed hoping there's no counterspell or protection back-up, then you need to be able to threaten a game ending play turn 4 like the rest of the board. MLD isn't the savior to fix that either.
I keep seeing people bringing up cEDH for Boros for some bizarre reasons.
Even in casual boros has bad win conditions, because without combo is ver slow at winning
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Deck viability should not Ride Down on others having fun with the game. At least in theory, most play Commander to have a fun pastime.
Does MLD and Winter Orbing make Boros midrange-aggro style more viable? Yep. Is it any fun for anyone else, at your average table? I don't think you can make that argument that much.
I think the issue i have with this idea here is that I DO actually find that fun. And i suspect you'll find that there are many people who do find that fun (for some, me and most in my playgroup included, the fun is in the challenge of crawling out of a hole, straddling the line of not overcommitting, and not playing multiplayer solitaire for 3 hours). the metas where that isn't fun are those where the curve starts at 4 or higher, or battlecruiser style metas.
Also, i don't really get why a turn 3 doomsday or whatever other set-up-for-the-win card is necessarily a bad thing. If anyone can whip out a win and the other 3 players on the table aren't able to do anything about it, i feel like it should be a "good on ya, shuffle up, another game" sort of thing, no? rather that than another drawn out 5 hour grind fest where everyone is playing in top deck mode, i would have thought.
So again, we come back to the initial first-post; boros sucks is a cultural issue. Sure, for some metas where everyone doesn't do anything for the first 7 turns, wanting to play 3+ hour grind-fests, it'd be pretty sucky. But in metas where there are no real "taboo" strategies, it can hold its own well enough.
Speaking of, how do your metas look like? As in if you guys were to 'rate' it, on a scale of 1-100%, where 100% is the meta where every deck is as tuned as possible, and 1 where it's all just precons and janky decks. Maybe that makes a bit of a difference. My meta's i guess around 75-80%, but we also play with no real banlist, so maybe that changes things a bit too.
Deck viability should not Ride Down on others having fun with the game. At least in theory, most play Commander to have a fun pastime.
Does MLD and Winter Orbing make Boros midrange-aggro style more viable? Yep. Is it any fun for anyone else, at your average table? I don't think you can make that argument that much.
I mean if we’re going with the argument of what’s fun For everyone else then T3 doomsday shouldn’t be allowed, najeela infinite combo shouldn’t be allowed, Selvala combo shouldn’t be allowed, teferi chainveil shouldn’t be allowed. That’s really not a very good argument in general, because what’s “fun” changes by individual, playgroup and meta.
I would, however, agree that cEDH shouldn’t be in this conversation. We’re talking from a casual commander perspective, not from the perspective of turn 3 combo wins.
Again, all I am saying is that restricting the tools that a color group has through cultural bias is limiting what that combination of colors can accomplish. Which means then calling those colors terrible is a cultural issue.
As for my playgroup, I would say 75-80%. We have like 5 cEDH level decks and dozens of highly tuned decks between myself and 3 friends, and we allow MLD and the like. And honestly, that has made for more fun games. Those strategies can be frustrating, but it’s allowed my friend’s Isamaru, Hound of Konda deck to keep pace and win against any sub cEDH deck in our pool. I know that’s mono white, but it works the same with Boros colors. I plan on finishing my Boros deck as soon as it’s within budget and testing my theory.
If your group liked MLD, go nuts. Most people, in my experience, do not.
We could try to pick apart exactly why people dislike what they dislike. And you can call it a culture problem if you want. Could we make boros competitive with the "right culture"? Sure, if you label all of BUG's best cards BM then you can eventually make RW viable. But I think most people agree that MLD is disliked in casual metas for pretty obvious reasons, and that's not likely to change. And even if people loosen up and accept more cEDH-types-of-things into their metas, RW is still going to lag behind.
So you can complain about the culture that's not going to change and wouldn't favor RW even if it did, or you can put the blame where it actually belongs - on wotc's total misunderstanding of what's viable in EDH, their horrendous design choices for nearly every RW commander to date, and their seeming disinterest with fixing the problem.
I'm still pretty new to the meta as I just got back into regular gamestore-going after a long break, but from what I've seen I'm on the lower end of competitiveness of that playerbase myself, with most of the decks I've seen being in the 70-75% range. Most players certainly seem to play for the win more than to have fun on the way.
Something being allowed and something being socially unfun are two different things in a social multiplayer game. I would never say you can't play MLD, or Doomsday, or whatever and I'll play along with it for a game or two. But I don't find that very fun either, and would never craft such a deck, Boros or otherwise, myself.
So, yeah, it is something of a culture 'problem'; some folks like myself just aren't a fan of heavy mana denial and grinding the game to a halt. There is also a vast spectrum between 'nothing but ramp until turn 7' and 'cEDH where most games end by turn 5'. I'd even wager to argue most games exist somewhere in between and not on those extremes, even if I personally inhabit closer to the first one.
As for the actual problem Boros has... something something the commander quality of Boros. Boros might not have the best cardpool but it's still workable... if only the legendaries were anything write home about, as said plenty of times in these topics.
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X Hope of Ghirapur Swordpile W Ghosty Blinky Anafenza U Nezahal- Big, Blue and HERE! B Gonti Can Afford It R Etali, Primal 'Whatjusthappened?' G Polukranos Wants More Mana WU The Exalted Vizier Temmet WB Home, Athreos WR Basandra, Recursive Aggression WG Karametra, Momma of Lands UB Wrexial Eats Your Brains UR Arjun, the Mad Flame UG The Fable of Prime Speaker BR Hellbent, Malfegor Style BG Jarad, Death is Served RG Running Thromok WUB Varina and ALL the Zombies WUBYennett, the Odd Pain-Train WUR Zedruu the Furyhearted WUG Arcades' Strategy, Shmategy, Sausage and Spam WBR A Case of Mathas' Persistent F*ckery WBRLicia's League of Legendary Lifegain Layabouts WBG The Karador Advantage PackageWRG Gahiji Rattlesnake Collection UBR Jeleva... does... things UBG Damia's Just Deserts URG Yasova's Has More Power Than Sense BRG Wasitora, Bad Kitty WUBRBreya, Eggs, Breya'd Eggs WUBG Tymna and Kydele, Extended Borrowing WURG Kynaios and Tiro, Landfall Impersonations WBRG Saskia Pet Card EnchantressUBRG Yidris of the Chi-Ting Corporation WUBRG Tazri's Amazing Allies
If your group liked MLD, go nuts. Most people, in my experience, do not.
We could try to pick apart exactly why people dislike what they dislike. And you can call it a culture problem if you want. Could we make boros competitive with the "right culture"? Sure, if you label all of BUG's best cards BM then you can eventually make RW viable. But I think most people agree that MLD is disliked in casual metas for pretty obvious reasons, and that's not likely to change. And even if people loosen up and accept more cEDH-types-of-things into their metas, RW is still going to lag behind.
So you can complain about the culture that's not going to change and wouldn't favor RW even if it did, or you can put the blame where it actually belongs - on wotc's total misunderstanding of what's viable in EDH, their horrendous design choices for nearly every RW commander to date, and their seeming disinterest with fixing the problem.
What I've found is that what people really hate is badly played mld, while mld that seals the deal they are more ok with. At that point you are just in combo territory, or Craterhoof, you set things up to make the spell a game winner.
Some people still aren't going to like it, but generally they also aren't going to like combo or draw go or infect or anything else that could be considered "mean". In metas where they predominate, Boros should have no problem competing, and it's only hang ups become a cultural stigma that Boros is terrible and fewer interesting (ie, not aggro) commanders to choose from.
The anecdote I told early in the thread about the guy with the tuned combo list throwing a fit stands out because it's hypocritical (he's running a strategy that many find unfun and cheesey, then throwing a hissy fit because he couldn't fire off his combo before the lands went boom) and because it's been rare that I've seen that sort of reaction.
It took me awhile to change my opinion on mld. I used to hate it irrationally. The reason was because I had seen it used stupidly (ie, imma blow up all da lands without a plan) and that is indeed miserable. But then I lost a few games to mld, where it was turn 6-9 and someone had established a good board and then wiped the lands so it couldn't be answered, and I found that I wasn't really upset by it. When I thought about why it wasn't bothering me to lose to the most evil, hateful, feelbad strategy, I realized that it was because I had opportunities to answer his threats that I missed, and that my opponents had to work to set up the board to make mld a game winning play, and probably most importantly it didn't feel in practice like I had been denied interaction. The lands blew up and I was staring down a field that would kill me before I could stop it. I've seen that with turn 3 combos and fast commanders given infect before where I had less opportunity to interact. I also realized that the way to combat it is simply to maintain a board state yourself and try to answer threats, which is a pretty low bar to clear yet keeps you honest, so you can't just sit back and try to look nonthreatening so you can combo off in peace.
It's all anectdotal though, my experience and yours.
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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!
For me, a key point regarding Armageddon, Winter Orb and so on is moderation. While those are both cards I have no problem with someone playing, I would object if they came up every game, or even most games. Seeing how my decks can perform under those kind of effects and figuring out how best to solve the problems they pose can be very interesting and enjoyable. But it's not a problem I want to be solving all the time as it's also very fun to have full access to my resources and to play what I want to play. And to be honest, I feel this about pretty much any strategy in the game. Variety is the spice of life, and of EDH too.
So if someone wants to play a Boros deck that is using such effects to help overcome the colour combination's weaknesses, I'm fine with that. As long as they also have other decks they can play for when we want to mix things up.
Although, there is another factor that comes to mind regarding "unfun" strategies, and that's how the playgroup relates to each other. My group are mainly a bunch of friends who happen to play Magic while socialising with each other (although several of us only met through Magic). As such, if someone 'Geddons without a quick win to follow up, we're preferably happy to be sitting around and chatting with each other while the game gets back up to speed. I could see such plays being more problematic if you've not got that kind of relationship with the other players and you're only really there to play the game - thus having nothing to play means you have nothing to do.
many of his you shouldn't play cards are actually quite valid to r/w, but articles like this, from someone with a platform like his, speak volumes to push against acceptance of valid game plans to r/w. his words have weight.
Man what a biased point.
A black card is on the list too. A green card is on the list too. 3 blue cards are on the list. 3 colorless are on the list.
Four colorless cards. Just for the record. Even then, they're not ones you might see in Boros.:
Mindslaver: Getting to 6 mana and keeping it on the battlefield for a turn. (It does paint a pretty big target on itself.) Or get up to ten mana and have a way to untap it. Paradox Engine: Yeah, this definitely wants to be green or blue. Other colors can benefit, since mana rocks do exist, but it still feels like some sort of Reset or Vitalize on Isochron Scepter combo as a very simple way to abuse it. Even using it "fairly" probably requires one of those colors. Static Orb and Winter Orb: Oh, hey, there's a reason Stasis and Stompy decks tend to use everyone's favorite two colors in particular. (I'll admit, a deck with a lot of planeswalkers will lol at this whole arrangement, but still...) I will accept that Hokori, Dust Drinker is white, now tell me how white is better at using it (in contrast to Winter Orb and Rising Waters) than the colors that can untap lands, bounce lands, and in green's case, has at least one mana dork in every set.
I will say, MLD, especially specifically nonbasic hate, does have a place, and my own opinion about MLD is pretty much Sigmund Freud's alleged quip about masturbation: The only thing to be ashamed of about MLD is doing it badly (i.e., dropping an Armageddon when one opponent has a huge board presence that dwarfs everyone else's). And targeted land destruction must be allowed just because of what happens when a big mana land is dropped. I do, however, take issue with MLD as a color hoser, e.g. Flashfires, Acid Rain, Stench of Evil, Boil/Boiling Seas, Spreading Algae, Tsunami, and we can include Conversion, Glaciers, Naked Singularity and Reality Twist in the list.
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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!
Whomever changed the title to “Boros” from “Boris” I love you. Every time I saw this title, and after the first time I clicked on it and realized the OP meant to type Boros, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the eyeball.
Whomever changed the title to “Boros” from “Boris” I love you. Every time I saw this title, and after the first time I clicked on it and realized the OP meant to type Boros, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the eyeball.
Whomever changed the title to “Boros” from “Boris” I love you. Every time I saw this title, and after the first time I clicked on it and realized the OP meant to type Boros, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the eyeball.
Booo....
It was far more interesting with the old title.
But factually incorrect. Boris players were cool, running around in that ugly shirt and glasses. It was jaws that sucked, too big of a target with a huge melon head that was easy to hit. And odd-job was worse than anything you can do in magic.
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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!
Whomever changed the title to “Boros” from “Boris” I love you. Every time I saw this title, and after the first time I clicked on it and realized the OP meant to type Boros, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the eyeball.
Actually I did type Boros, but my stupid phone autocorrected. it Bugged me just as much as it bugged everyone else.
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Oh, you demand we find armageddon acceptable, boros? Well sultai demands you find T3 doomsday acceptable. And we're right back where we started, except without anyone having any fun.
If wotc wants commander to be better color balanced, they can print some good commanders and finishers for boros. Not keep printing trash and putting the onus on us to figure out how many winter orbs we'll have to play to make it viable.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
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Does MLD and Winter Orbing make Boros midrange-aggro style more viable? Yep. Is it any fun for anyone else, at your average table? I don't think you can make that argument that much.
Now don't get me wrong, I'd love to see some competitively costed Boros generals that could use an aggro plan similar to Najeela to disrupt early game combo players and shake that format up, but there's the issue right now of threats and answers. If you can really only rely on Swords/Path/Chaos Warp to disrupt combos at instant speed hoping there's no counterspell or protection back-up, then you need to be able to threaten a game ending play turn 4 like the rest of the board. MLD isn't the savior to fix that either.
Even in casual boros has bad win conditions, because without combo is ver slow at winning
I think the issue i have with this idea here is that I DO actually find that fun. And i suspect you'll find that there are many people who do find that fun (for some, me and most in my playgroup included, the fun is in the challenge of crawling out of a hole, straddling the line of not overcommitting, and not playing multiplayer solitaire for 3 hours). the metas where that isn't fun are those where the curve starts at 4 or higher, or battlecruiser style metas.
Also, i don't really get why a turn 3 doomsday or whatever other set-up-for-the-win card is necessarily a bad thing. If anyone can whip out a win and the other 3 players on the table aren't able to do anything about it, i feel like it should be a "good on ya, shuffle up, another game" sort of thing, no? rather that than another drawn out 5 hour grind fest where everyone is playing in top deck mode, i would have thought.
So again, we come back to the initial first-post; boros sucks is a cultural issue. Sure, for some metas where everyone doesn't do anything for the first 7 turns, wanting to play 3+ hour grind-fests, it'd be pretty sucky. But in metas where there are no real "taboo" strategies, it can hold its own well enough.
Speaking of, how do your metas look like? As in if you guys were to 'rate' it, on a scale of 1-100%, where 100% is the meta where every deck is as tuned as possible, and 1 where it's all just precons and janky decks. Maybe that makes a bit of a difference. My meta's i guess around 75-80%, but we also play with no real banlist, so maybe that changes things a bit too.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
I mean if we’re going with the argument of what’s fun For everyone else then T3 doomsday shouldn’t be allowed, najeela infinite combo shouldn’t be allowed, Selvala combo shouldn’t be allowed, teferi chainveil shouldn’t be allowed. That’s really not a very good argument in general, because what’s “fun” changes by individual, playgroup and meta.
I would, however, agree that cEDH shouldn’t be in this conversation. We’re talking from a casual commander perspective, not from the perspective of turn 3 combo wins.
Again, all I am saying is that restricting the tools that a color group has through cultural bias is limiting what that combination of colors can accomplish. Which means then calling those colors terrible is a cultural issue.
As for my playgroup, I would say 75-80%. We have like 5 cEDH level decks and dozens of highly tuned decks between myself and 3 friends, and we allow MLD and the like. And honestly, that has made for more fun games. Those strategies can be frustrating, but it’s allowed my friend’s Isamaru, Hound of Konda deck to keep pace and win against any sub cEDH deck in our pool. I know that’s mono white, but it works the same with Boros colors. I plan on finishing my Boros deck as soon as it’s within budget and testing my theory.
We could try to pick apart exactly why people dislike what they dislike. And you can call it a culture problem if you want. Could we make boros competitive with the "right culture"? Sure, if you label all of BUG's best cards BM then you can eventually make RW viable. But I think most people agree that MLD is disliked in casual metas for pretty obvious reasons, and that's not likely to change. And even if people loosen up and accept more cEDH-types-of-things into their metas, RW is still going to lag behind.
So you can complain about the culture that's not going to change and wouldn't favor RW even if it did, or you can put the blame where it actually belongs - on wotc's total misunderstanding of what's viable in EDH, their horrendous design choices for nearly every RW commander to date, and their seeming disinterest with fixing the problem.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Something being allowed and something being socially unfun are two different things in a social multiplayer game. I would never say you can't play MLD, or Doomsday, or whatever and I'll play along with it for a game or two. But I don't find that very fun either, and would never craft such a deck, Boros or otherwise, myself.
So, yeah, it is something of a culture 'problem'; some folks like myself just aren't a fan of heavy mana denial and grinding the game to a halt. There is also a vast spectrum between 'nothing but ramp until turn 7' and 'cEDH where most games end by turn 5'. I'd even wager to argue most games exist somewhere in between and not on those extremes, even if I personally inhabit closer to the first one.
As for the actual problem Boros has... something something the commander quality of Boros. Boros might not have the best cardpool but it's still workable... if only the legendaries were anything write home about, as said plenty of times in these topics.
What I've found is that what people really hate is badly played mld, while mld that seals the deal they are more ok with. At that point you are just in combo territory, or Craterhoof, you set things up to make the spell a game winner.
Some people still aren't going to like it, but generally they also aren't going to like combo or draw go or infect or anything else that could be considered "mean". In metas where they predominate, Boros should have no problem competing, and it's only hang ups become a cultural stigma that Boros is terrible and fewer interesting (ie, not aggro) commanders to choose from.
The anecdote I told early in the thread about the guy with the tuned combo list throwing a fit stands out because it's hypocritical (he's running a strategy that many find unfun and cheesey, then throwing a hissy fit because he couldn't fire off his combo before the lands went boom) and because it's been rare that I've seen that sort of reaction.
It took me awhile to change my opinion on mld. I used to hate it irrationally. The reason was because I had seen it used stupidly (ie, imma blow up all da lands without a plan) and that is indeed miserable. But then I lost a few games to mld, where it was turn 6-9 and someone had established a good board and then wiped the lands so it couldn't be answered, and I found that I wasn't really upset by it. When I thought about why it wasn't bothering me to lose to the most evil, hateful, feelbad strategy, I realized that it was because I had opportunities to answer his threats that I missed, and that my opponents had to work to set up the board to make mld a game winning play, and probably most importantly it didn't feel in practice like I had been denied interaction. The lands blew up and I was staring down a field that would kill me before I could stop it. I've seen that with turn 3 combos and fast commanders given infect before where I had less opportunity to interact. I also realized that the way to combat it is simply to maintain a board state yourself and try to answer threats, which is a pretty low bar to clear yet keeps you honest, so you can't just sit back and try to look nonthreatening so you can combo off in peace.
It's all anectdotal though, my experience and yours.
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!
So if someone wants to play a Boros deck that is using such effects to help overcome the colour combination's weaknesses, I'm fine with that. As long as they also have other decks they can play for when we want to mix things up.
Although, there is another factor that comes to mind regarding "unfun" strategies, and that's how the playgroup relates to each other. My group are mainly a bunch of friends who happen to play Magic while socialising with each other (although several of us only met through Magic). As such, if someone 'Geddons without a quick win to follow up, we're preferably happy to be sitting around and chatting with each other while the game gets back up to speed. I could see such plays being more problematic if you've not got that kind of relationship with the other players and you're only really there to play the game - thus having nothing to play means you have nothing to do.
Four colorless cards. Just for the record. Even then, they're not ones you might see in Boros.:
Mindslaver: Getting to 6 mana and keeping it on the battlefield for a turn. (It does paint a pretty big target on itself.) Or get up to ten mana and have a way to untap it.
Paradox Engine: Yeah, this definitely wants to be green or blue. Other colors can benefit, since mana rocks do exist, but it still feels like some sort of Reset or Vitalize on Isochron Scepter combo as a very simple way to abuse it. Even using it "fairly" probably requires one of those colors.
Static Orb and Winter Orb: Oh, hey, there's a reason Stasis and Stompy decks tend to use everyone's favorite two colors in particular. (I'll admit, a deck with a lot of planeswalkers will lol at this whole arrangement, but still...) I will accept that Hokori, Dust Drinker is white, now tell me how white is better at using it (in contrast to Winter Orb and Rising Waters) than the colors that can untap lands, bounce lands, and in green's case, has at least one mana dork in every set.
I will say, MLD, especially specifically nonbasic hate, does have a place, and my own opinion about MLD is pretty much Sigmund Freud's alleged quip about masturbation: The only thing to be ashamed of about MLD is doing it badly (i.e., dropping an Armageddon when one opponent has a huge board presence that dwarfs everyone else's). And targeted land destruction must be allowed just because of what happens when a big mana land is dropped. I do, however, take issue with MLD as a color hoser, e.g. Flashfires, Acid Rain, Stench of Evil, Boil/Boiling Seas, Spreading Algae, Tsunami, and we can include Conversion, Glaciers, Naked Singularity and Reality Twist in the list.
On phasing:
Currently Playing:
Multiplayer EDH Lists (click italics for a link to the thread!)
[Primer] Lord of Tresserhorn - Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do[Primer] Roon of the Hidden Realm - Rhino Blink
5 Color Tribal Guide (Slivers, Atogs, Allies, Spirits)
Also Playing (most decklists can be found on my profile)
MarathGeistKamahlGrenzoBolasThassaGitrog
PiratesZurVial Smasher&ThrasiosYennettJhoira(cEDH)Strix(Pauper)
Legacy: Maverick
Modern:
Melira PodRIP 1/19/15GWHatebearsBooo....
It was far more interesting with the old title.
But factually incorrect. Boris players were cool, running around in that ugly shirt and glasses. It was jaws that sucked, too big of a target with a huge melon head that was easy to hit. And odd-job was worse than anything you can do in magic.
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!
Actually I did type Boros, but my stupid phone autocorrected. it Bugged me just as much as it bugged everyone else.