From his FB page today "A Commander game trend I noticed both at #SCGCon and in the few times I've been to my new LGS is "descent to the infinite." I'm not talking about competitive decks that want to go infinite as quickly as possible, but even more casual builds--and most of them have an eventual infinite combo of some kind. It's not "go infinite," it's "do some stuff for a while, then go infinite."
This is not a healthy trend for the format. It's probably a natural progression of things, but it's still leading in a bad direction. In Commander, it's easy to fall into the trap of spiraling upward--going infinite is the easy way to win multiplayer games. It's the efficient way, even. The problem comes from the tendency to want to do it a little earlier next time because someone beat you to it. And then earlier after that. Arms races lead to bad places.
I'm not demonizing combos here. What's of concern is that when they're the primary win condition, the format devolves. Games need to end at some point, so having a Backup Plan isn't all that bad. When the nuclear option becomes the first choice, then we get into trouble."
Tuesday night we sat through someone's stunningly boring 20 minute turn as he drew and cast practically every card in his deck (basically Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain Eggs using cost reducers and artifact bounce to keep it going) before finally drawing and casting Laboratory Maniac and drawing from an empty library. And that seems to be his only wincon, from the looks of the deck; he was running too many bad cards to fuel the combo.
It sucked. Worst game I've had in a long time.
I had already spent all three counterspells in hand stopping the Maelstrom Wanderer player from playing extra-turns-solitaire, so I had nothing when the slow combo death began.
Infinite combos have their place, but when used wrong (like the only gameplan of a deck), they often lead to very boring game endings - usually because they try to be uninteractive and ignore everything that has previously taken place in the game, which feels very anticlimactic and unsatisfying to many players.Of the four players in our game, two of us were bored out of our minds and not very happy. The third guy thought it was cool to see, but I doubt he would have if it happened a second time. And the combo-player, after wasting everyone's time, left. That was probably a good thing.
Some infinite combos are so increedibly anti climatic. I don't mind havingg some, when it fits the theme of the deck like for example, my Scarab God has Gravecrawler + Rooftop Storm combo because they are thematic and usefull to my deck individually that happens to be a combo. But stuff like Tooth and Nail for Mikaeus + triskelion feels so boring and anti climatic. The abd part is when this becomes way too constant, forcing to build your deck more competitivelly, in the end slowlly losing its identity. Basically becames an arm race. Thats anoying, specially for the casual group.
I guess the plan is make casual decks and 1 very competitive and opressive deck that makes the combo player suffer to a point he will stop doing it.
Infinite combos have their place........only if moderate, in my opinion ofcourse. used to have combo decks, but they got so boring so i just scratched them and went for thematic and fun decks.
Sheldon: creates multiplayer format with 40 life, fast mana, under costed tutours with expectancy that nobody does anything aside from playing creatures and pass turn.
Players: creates efficient game plan to - gasp - complete the game objective. which is to win the game, in an efficient manner such that they don't lose to the other guy you didn't eliminate.
Sheldon: creates multiplayer format with expectancy that nobody does anything aside from playing creatures and pass turn.
Funny that this is what made the format popular in the first place
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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.
complete the game objective. which is to win the game,
I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives
* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time
Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.
I've been saying this for almost a decade now, experiencing the arms race in every playgroup I've been a part of.
Combos need to be policed hard in multiplayer games. Expecting players to do it themselves will never happen.
This is the future of edh if something substantial doesn't change. The format only truly supports combo with its ruleset if you want to win games. Cedh games are almost entirely ad nauseum, dramatic scepter, paradox engine. There's basically no combat damage wins outside of the occasional craterhoof line.
Sheldon: creates multiplayer format with 40 life, fast mana, under costed tutours with expectancy that nobody does anything aside from playing creatures and pass turn.
Players: creates efficient game plan to - gasp - complete the game objective. which is to win the game, in an efficient manner such that they don't lose to the other guy you didn't eliminate.
Sheldon:
There are a ton of competitive formats to where both players innately agree that the only thing that matters is trying to win the game. EDH is not one of them. EDH is explicitly designed as a casual format to have fun.
Look at the official commander page:
Commander is a Magic:The Gathering format which emphasises multiplayer play, social interactions, interesting games, and creative deckbuilding.
These are the official rules for Commander. Players often play with house rules, and are encouraged to, but this consensus version exists so that players know what to expect if they join a game outside their local play area.
This is clearly not a format encouraging competitive play.
I've been saying this for almost a decade now, experiencing the arms race in every playgroup I've been a part of.
Combos need to be policed hard in multiplayer games. Expecting players to do it themselves will never happen.
This is the future of edh if something substantial doesn't change. The format only truly supports combo with its ruleset if you want to win games. Cedh games are almost entirely ad nauseum, dramatic scepter, paradox engine. There's basically no combat damage wins outside of the occasional craterhoof line.
The issue I have with policing combos is that there are too many pseudo-combos in EDH. Stuff like Craterhoof Behemoth and Jarad/Lord of Extinction and even dumb stuff like Rite of Replication + Scourge of Valkas. So you wind up with these stupid arguments about what's a combo and what's just a strong synergy that happens to count to 40.
The policing people need to do in my experience is mostly just making sure their gameplans aren't too strong. It's more general than combo related. And I think this is a problem Sheldon has in general which is ascribing to combos what is really a more general problem of gameplan strength.
This comment, plus the addition of the consultation sub-group, could lead to some substantial changes to the banned list.
Though, it doesn’t help that WotC prints commanders at every turn that are just begging to be broken, and this really shouldn’t surprise him. Think of it this way. Damia, Sage of Stone was a pretty popular commander back in her day, and was also very strong. She cost 4BUG. You can achieve those insane levels of draw for B in that same color combination by running Taisgur, the Golden Fang. Power creep is real.
so in my voltron deck I have Godo, Bandit Warlord and Helm of the Host,but I don't intentionally go for that unless I feel like it or rmember that I have it. Otherwise,it's stick as many equipment i can on Akiri, Line-Slinger and try to take out at least one person.
My Johira deck is suspend big things/spells,while dragons is..well dragons and my Zed deck currently doesn't have a clear cut wincon yet...so I think Jiva is correct to a degree and I've brought this up with in my group that we're currently in the combo phase of battle-cruiser to combo swing depending on who is playing in a pod.
I've always been a Johnny combo player, with a splash of Spike, a lot of Melvin and the occasionally Vorthos.
I love combos and I like playing with almost any card in Magic as I've been collecting for 25 years. So sure I could play Vintage, but there are only so many decks you can make.
So from a format point of view this provides me with the closest thing that me and my friends like. But we are super competitive.
So you can't have a format that is literally the most powerful format in Magic and expect people not to do broken things. That's just being naive.
The problem stems that people play the game for various different reasons, and it's when these worlds collide that the problems start.
This is a tough one, because worlds do collide, at your LGS, or online, or maybe even at a friends house.
How to fix it? Honestly I think going forward there needs to be officially rated tiers of play and so when you go to sit at a table you can join knowing what you're in for.
We already have cEDH. With more education, people will understand that it's literally an "anything goes" format.
Maybe a format called "casual commander" is officially established, and you have rules like "can only do a repeated loop 5 times maximum, and only one extra turn in a row, no effects that destroy more than 2 of opponents lands, and whatever else would be thought of as un-casual like.
I don't know exactly what this would look like, but it's certainly worth looking at because the demand is there. Supply..demand..how the world works..
It might involve separate ban-lists as they are separate formats, or you might just have effects not work to the full extent. Like an Armageddon can only destroy 2 lands of each player (players choice), and something like Expropriate can only provide one extra turn.
I think there is just too much passiveness towards progressing the game in a positive experience for others. Basically I would do a much better job of leading commander to a more healthy future...just saying, make me your overlord.
You can't play your normal form of Control or Tempo or Aggro in this format unless you have a back door because multiplayer + 40 life facilitates the need for ways to close out a game. People have a buffer and room to breath in the format it is no wonder that style of play flourishes. Every control deck I make the last question is how do I lock the game or how do I finish it because it is the only way to be sure when building.
If you don't the game just becomes 3 hour battlecruiser fests of board resets, which I would say generally are worse.
EDH is not a natural fit for combo decks if you were to ask me.
For one, you're sitting down with 3 to 4 players, so whenever you're trying to combo off with something that might wiff - e.g. The Gitrog Monster + Underrealm Lich - chances are you're wasting a lot of time "just" to win or fall short and have everyone just as annoyed, including yourself propably. On the other hand fail-safe combos can be painfully anti climatic. Since there's more or less no healthy middle ground between the two i try to avoid infinite combos as much as i can.
In my experience "games will have to end eventually" is a poor excuse to run more combos. E.g. In our meta an overabundance of board wipes was the prime concern years back when our decks looked vastly different and games actually could take 2-3 hours each. As a rough estimate every player ran at least 5 of them back then. By going down to 2-3 each match lengths shortened considerably. Usually rounds take ~45 mins now, 1,5 hours max in rare cases. Plus, since people get to use their stuff the games "tell" stories more consistently.
And that's another point against combos. Combos don't tell a story - at all. Say we're sitting down and 3/4 players play their decks, develop a board, showcase their deck tech and card selection with the 4th player going "generic combo, lolz" that'd bug me. Especially since those combo pieces take up deck slots that could've been used for fitting synergies.
The only possible exception for me would be that most of the games i play would be with randoms at an LGS with a high chance of several poorly built decks that don't come with means to finish the game eventually. I'd come prepared with a few game winning synergies to win when the table's about to stall.
Long story short:
EDH is about the journey, not the destination. And combo wins are no desirable destinations for myself.
While I still stand by that the RC as a whole should never cater to a specific bubble, Sheldon's personal experiences still always strike me that he's really stuck in a bubble (not that it affects his decision-making). I'll be blunt - what he noticed I already realized years ago and the context in which he states it sort of proves it - in these past few years I've been basically occasionally playing at my LGS, but I very, very seldom play with friends (when we do get together we favor Cube). Meanwhile, just from reading Sheldon's articles/posts/responses I generally assess that he plays the format mostly with friends.
Okay, to clarify it better... it's more of playing at the LGS with strangers or acquaintances-at-best VS playing at friends that's the real issue here, because you can play with friends at the LGS, so I think this might confuse some people. You can play with friends almost anywhere, but you don't usually play with strangers/acquaintances other than the LGS/Events. Not everyone has (or want) the luxury of having friends to play EDH with and they're perfectly fine with EDH being the "game we play with strangers/acquaintances at the LGS".
I know I'm harping on making these distinctions, but it's important because Sheldon's post heavily implies he's basically new to the "strangers/acquaintances meta", so to speak, if he's using Open Events and a NEW LGS as the examples.
Also very important is that with everyone talking about "social contracts/communication" and "winning the game is not the only objective", that the "LGS stranger/acquaintances meta" has to operate on a more nuanced/silent version of the rule. The RC encouraging the above statements does not automatically equate to everyone in the LGS automatically becoming "friends". Just like the RC has to adopt a minimalist approach to keep the game open to as many bubbles as possible, communication/contracts at the LGS are also minimalized to cater to various strangers/acquaintances dropping at different times.
Combine that minimalism with the "the only actual rule of winning is... winning the actual game", that becomes the silent agreement that is most easily accepted by most "stranger/acquaintances meta" players adopt by, which leads to the "natural progression" of things Sheldon himself said. As I read somewhere, it's easier to go infinite that it is to go 120 divided 3 evenly in the game anyway.
Before anyone points out "but my LGS pulls off communication and house rules successfully", let me preempt that not all LGS operate like that and considering the general turbulence/turnovers LGS are going through overall now, I daresay statistics would favor the silent agreement and those with vocalized different ones are actually the minority of exceptions, especially once you throw open events into the calculations as well.
Like I said at the start, this is not aimed at RC at any way, they're doing great keeping the minimalist approach so different type of "metas" can exists, I'm just baffled every time Sheldon cites his personal experience (years late at that) that he's surprised by the "naturally progressed silent agreement stranger/acquaintance meta" out there and I don't quite agree that it would get the format in trouble - every participant in said meta silently agreed to it and after years, I daresay it actually regulates itself somewhat, it doesn't actually outright (de)volve right into cEDH territory.
Talk is cheap. You've identified a major problem with the format, so do something about it? On the off chance you do read this,everyone is looking at you to make aggro a viable option. So just... Make the changes? Start with the cards that are doing exactly what you're saying; laboratory maniac, isochron scepter, ad nauseam and food chain for example?
complete the game objective. which is to win the game,
I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives
* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time
Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.
Yep. Statistically, you're going to win approximately 25% of your four-player games, which means if winning is your only goal, you fail 75% of the time. If you're looking for a good game with plenty of challenge and interaction, though, you can appreciate the ones you lose, too.
I've been saying this for almost a decade now, experiencing the arms race in every playgroup I've been a part of.
Combos need to be policed hard in multiplayer games. Expecting players to do it themselves will never happen.
This is the future of edh if something substantial doesn't change. The format only truly supports combo with its ruleset if you want to win games. Cedh games are almost entirely ad nauseum, dramatic scepter, paradox engine. There's basically no combat damage wins outside of the occasional craterhoof line.
The issue I have with policing combos is that there are too many pseudo-combos in EDH. Stuff like Craterhoof Behemoth and Jarad/Lord of Extinction and even dumb stuff like Rite of Replication + Scourge of Valkas. So you wind up with these stupid arguments about what's a combo and what's just a strong synergy that happens to count to 40.
The policing people need to do in my experience is mostly just making sure their gameplans aren't too strong. It's more general than combo related. And I think this is a problem Sheldon has in general which is ascribing to combos what is really a more general problem of gameplan strength.
As a general metric I like to think that if the play gives the table a full round to answer it, and it is answerable by commonly played cards, or cost double digit amounts of mana spent in a single turn, it's ok.
For example, if I have to have scourge of valkas in play, and the whole table has a turn cycle to remove it, and then I spend 9 mana on rite of replication, I am ok with that. It both cost a bunch of mana AND required setup that could be answered by commonly played cards at sorcery speed.
The less mana it costs, the less spells interact with it, the less time you have to react, the more likely I am to say it pushes into "makes the game worse by existing".
Watching a casual game end because one guy had his infinite combo answered and then the guy who went next playing his own infinite while everyone is tapped out is not what I want out of non-cedh games. There is so much more the game can be than just trying to resolve one or two key spells when people can't answer them.
complete the game objective. which is to win the game,
I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives
* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time
Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.
It is weird when someone says winning is the goal in a game with a win condition and people take that to me mean people who are playing to that don't also do everything you just listed.
Winning isn't the only objective and no one is saying that so trying to spin something into that is misleading.
I don't recall where I saw it but I think we're going to get an announcement on the 8th regarding the philosophy document along with other bits from both the RC and the CAG.
I would say that close to half of my 17 decks have infinite combos.
But they came into being for the most part due to:
1. highly synergistic cards that go infinite if I have 3-6 pieces in play at the same time. Decks were not made to combo, but sometimes when the right cards are in play it does go infinite.
2. Deck was super grindy and people would not concede to soft locks... so instead of soft locking the table and attacking for 4 every turn, I put in an infinite combo to put an end to the game.
The problem is not that combo exists. The problem is that one-card combos exist and that tutors exist to enable 2-card combos.
I don't recall where I saw it but I think we're going to get an announcement on the 8th regarding the philosophy document along with other bits from both the RC and the CAG.
Sheldon mentioned a while back on a podcast that looking at the philosophy document was one of the first tasks for the CAG. I dont think there is an official date for this to be completed, but next ban list announcement seems like a reasonable guess.
complete the game objective. which is to win the game,
I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives
* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time
Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.
It is weird when someone says winning is the goal in a game with a win condition and people take that to me mean people who are playing to that don't also do everything you just listed.
Winning isn't the only objective and no one is saying that so trying to spin something into that is misleading.
When the language used says winning is THE goal, not a goal, of course it will be interpreted that everything will take a backseat to winning.
Also, winning and the other goals are often in direct conflict. Would my deck win more with armageddon? Yep. Should I put it in? For most playgroups I've seen, no.
Deck design for a casual multiplayer format has multiple targets, and it seems that most players ignore one of the most important ones. Is your deck fun to play against? Ignoring this is not unique to competitive players, but they tend to have the card pools to make the most oppressive decks. Casual players get there more gradually through arms race over months or years. There needs to be more of a focus on making decks fun to play against in casual edh deckbuilding.
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This is not a healthy trend for the format. It's probably a natural progression of things, but it's still leading in a bad direction. In Commander, it's easy to fall into the trap of spiraling upward--going infinite is the easy way to win multiplayer games. It's the efficient way, even. The problem comes from the tendency to want to do it a little earlier next time because someone beat you to it. And then earlier after that. Arms races lead to bad places.
I'm not demonizing combos here. What's of concern is that when they're the primary win condition, the format devolves. Games need to end at some point, so having a Backup Plan isn't all that bad. When the nuclear option becomes the first choice, then we get into trouble."
It sucked. Worst game I've had in a long time.
I had already spent all three counterspells in hand stopping the Maelstrom Wanderer player from playing extra-turns-solitaire, so I had nothing when the slow combo death began.
Infinite combos have their place, but when used wrong (like the only gameplan of a deck), they often lead to very boring game endings - usually because they try to be uninteractive and ignore everything that has previously taken place in the game, which feels very anticlimactic and unsatisfying to many players.Of the four players in our game, two of us were bored out of our minds and not very happy. The third guy thought it was cool to see, but I doubt he would have if it happened a second time. And the combo-player, after wasting everyone's time, left. That was probably a good thing.
So, yeah. I agree with Sheldon.
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I guess the plan is make casual decks and 1 very competitive and opressive deck that makes the combo player suffer to a point he will stop doing it.
Infinite combos have their place........only if moderate, in my opinion ofcourse. used to have combo decks, but they got so boring so i just scratched them and went for thematic and fun decks.
Players: creates efficient game plan to - gasp - complete the game objective. which is to win the game, in an efficient manner such that they don't lose to the other guy you didn't eliminate.
Sheldon:
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
Funny that this is what made the format popular in the first place
I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives
* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time
Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Combos need to be policed hard in multiplayer games. Expecting players to do it themselves will never happen.
This is the future of edh if something substantial doesn't change. The format only truly supports combo with its ruleset if you want to win games. Cedh games are almost entirely ad nauseum, dramatic scepter, paradox engine. There's basically no combat damage wins outside of the occasional craterhoof line.
There are a ton of competitive formats to where both players innately agree that the only thing that matters is trying to win the game. EDH is not one of them. EDH is explicitly designed as a casual format to have fun.
Look at the official commander page:
This is clearly not a format encouraging competitive play.
The issue I have with policing combos is that there are too many pseudo-combos in EDH. Stuff like Craterhoof Behemoth and Jarad/Lord of Extinction and even dumb stuff like Rite of Replication + Scourge of Valkas. So you wind up with these stupid arguments about what's a combo and what's just a strong synergy that happens to count to 40.
Cards like Shared Animosity and Coat of arms get kinda nonsensical, even Cathars' Crusade becomes kinda stupid.
The policing people need to do in my experience is mostly just making sure their gameplans aren't too strong. It's more general than combo related. And I think this is a problem Sheldon has in general which is ascribing to combos what is really a more general problem of gameplan strength.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Though, it doesn’t help that WotC prints commanders at every turn that are just begging to be broken, and this really shouldn’t surprise him. Think of it this way. Damia, Sage of Stone was a pretty popular commander back in her day, and was also very strong. She cost 4BUG. You can achieve those insane levels of draw for B in that same color combination by running Taisgur, the Golden Fang. Power creep is real.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
My Johira deck is suspend big things/spells,while dragons is..well dragons and my Zed deck currently doesn't have a clear cut wincon yet...so I think Jiva is correct to a degree and I've brought this up with in my group that we're currently in the combo phase of battle-cruiser to combo swing depending on who is playing in a pod.
I love combos and I like playing with almost any card in Magic as I've been collecting for 25 years. So sure I could play Vintage, but there are only so many decks you can make.
So from a format point of view this provides me with the closest thing that me and my friends like. But we are super competitive.
So you can't have a format that is literally the most powerful format in Magic and expect people not to do broken things. That's just being naive.
The problem stems that people play the game for various different reasons, and it's when these worlds collide that the problems start.
This is a tough one, because worlds do collide, at your LGS, or online, or maybe even at a friends house.
How to fix it? Honestly I think going forward there needs to be officially rated tiers of play and so when you go to sit at a table you can join knowing what you're in for.
We already have cEDH. With more education, people will understand that it's literally an "anything goes" format.
Maybe a format called "casual commander" is officially established, and you have rules like "can only do a repeated loop 5 times maximum, and only one extra turn in a row, no effects that destroy more than 2 of opponents lands, and whatever else would be thought of as un-casual like.
I don't know exactly what this would look like, but it's certainly worth looking at because the demand is there. Supply..demand..how the world works..
It might involve separate ban-lists as they are separate formats, or you might just have effects not work to the full extent. Like an Armageddon can only destroy 2 lands of each player (players choice), and something like Expropriate can only provide one extra turn.
I think there is just too much passiveness towards progressing the game in a positive experience for others. Basically I would do a much better job of leading commander to a more healthy future...just saying, make me your overlord.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
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Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
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If you don't the game just becomes 3 hour battlecruiser fests of board resets, which I would say generally are worse.
This is where I am with the game.
For one, you're sitting down with 3 to 4 players, so whenever you're trying to combo off with something that might wiff - e.g. The Gitrog Monster + Underrealm Lich - chances are you're wasting a lot of time "just" to win or fall short and have everyone just as annoyed, including yourself propably. On the other hand fail-safe combos can be painfully anti climatic. Since there's more or less no healthy middle ground between the two i try to avoid infinite combos as much as i can.
In my experience "games will have to end eventually" is a poor excuse to run more combos. E.g. In our meta an overabundance of board wipes was the prime concern years back when our decks looked vastly different and games actually could take 2-3 hours each. As a rough estimate every player ran at least 5 of them back then. By going down to 2-3 each match lengths shortened considerably. Usually rounds take ~45 mins now, 1,5 hours max in rare cases. Plus, since people get to use their stuff the games "tell" stories more consistently.
And that's another point against combos. Combos don't tell a story - at all. Say we're sitting down and 3/4 players play their decks, develop a board, showcase their deck tech and card selection with the 4th player going "generic combo, lolz" that'd bug me. Especially since those combo pieces take up deck slots that could've been used for fitting synergies.
The only possible exception for me would be that most of the games i play would be with randoms at an LGS with a high chance of several poorly built decks that don't come with means to finish the game eventually. I'd come prepared with a few game winning synergies to win when the table's about to stall.
Long story short:
EDH is about the journey, not the destination. And combo wins are no desirable destinations for myself.
Okay, to clarify it better... it's more of playing at the LGS with strangers or acquaintances-at-best VS playing at friends that's the real issue here, because you can play with friends at the LGS, so I think this might confuse some people. You can play with friends almost anywhere, but you don't usually play with strangers/acquaintances other than the LGS/Events. Not everyone has (or want) the luxury of having friends to play EDH with and they're perfectly fine with EDH being the "game we play with strangers/acquaintances at the LGS".
I know I'm harping on making these distinctions, but it's important because Sheldon's post heavily implies he's basically new to the "strangers/acquaintances meta", so to speak, if he's using Open Events and a NEW LGS as the examples.
Also very important is that with everyone talking about "social contracts/communication" and "winning the game is not the only objective", that the "LGS stranger/acquaintances meta" has to operate on a more nuanced/silent version of the rule. The RC encouraging the above statements does not automatically equate to everyone in the LGS automatically becoming "friends". Just like the RC has to adopt a minimalist approach to keep the game open to as many bubbles as possible, communication/contracts at the LGS are also minimalized to cater to various strangers/acquaintances dropping at different times.
Combine that minimalism with the "the only actual rule of winning is... winning the actual game", that becomes the silent agreement that is most easily accepted by most "stranger/acquaintances meta" players adopt by, which leads to the "natural progression" of things Sheldon himself said. As I read somewhere, it's easier to go infinite that it is to go 120 divided 3 evenly in the game anyway.
Before anyone points out "but my LGS pulls off communication and house rules successfully", let me preempt that not all LGS operate like that and considering the general turbulence/turnovers LGS are going through overall now, I daresay statistics would favor the silent agreement and those with vocalized different ones are actually the minority of exceptions, especially once you throw open events into the calculations as well.
Like I said at the start, this is not aimed at RC at any way, they're doing great keeping the minimalist approach so different type of "metas" can exists, I'm just baffled every time Sheldon cites his personal experience (years late at that) that he's surprised by the "naturally progressed silent agreement stranger/acquaintance meta" out there and I don't quite agree that it would get the format in trouble - every participant in said meta silently agreed to it and after years, I daresay it actually regulates itself somewhat, it doesn't actually outright (de)volve right into cEDH territory.
Talk is cheap. You've identified a major problem with the format, so do something about it? On the off chance you do read this,everyone is looking at you to make aggro a viable option. So just... Make the changes? Start with the cards that are doing exactly what you're saying; laboratory maniac, isochron scepter, ad nauseam and food chain for example?
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
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As a general metric I like to think that if the play gives the table a full round to answer it, and it is answerable by commonly played cards, or cost double digit amounts of mana spent in a single turn, it's ok.
For example, if I have to have scourge of valkas in play, and the whole table has a turn cycle to remove it, and then I spend 9 mana on rite of replication, I am ok with that. It both cost a bunch of mana AND required setup that could be answered by commonly played cards at sorcery speed.
The less mana it costs, the less spells interact with it, the less time you have to react, the more likely I am to say it pushes into "makes the game worse by existing".
Watching a casual game end because one guy had his infinite combo answered and then the guy who went next playing his own infinite while everyone is tapped out is not what I want out of non-cedh games. There is so much more the game can be than just trying to resolve one or two key spells when people can't answer them.
It is weird when someone says winning is the goal in a game with a win condition and people take that to me mean people who are playing to that don't also do everything you just listed.
Winning isn't the only objective and no one is saying that so trying to spin something into that is misleading.
But they came into being for the most part due to:
1. highly synergistic cards that go infinite if I have 3-6 pieces in play at the same time. Decks were not made to combo, but sometimes when the right cards are in play it does go infinite.
2. Deck was super grindy and people would not concede to soft locks... so instead of soft locking the table and attacking for 4 every turn, I put in an infinite combo to put an end to the game.
The problem is not that combo exists. The problem is that one-card combos exist and that tutors exist to enable 2-card combos.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Sheldon mentioned a while back on a podcast that looking at the philosophy document was one of the first tasks for the CAG. I dont think there is an official date for this to be completed, but next ban list announcement seems like a reasonable guess.
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Resources:Commander Rulings FAQ | Commander Deckbuilding Guide
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When the language used says winning is THE goal, not a goal, of course it will be interpreted that everything will take a backseat to winning.
Also, winning and the other goals are often in direct conflict. Would my deck win more with armageddon? Yep. Should I put it in? For most playgroups I've seen, no.
Deck design for a casual multiplayer format has multiple targets, and it seems that most players ignore one of the most important ones. Is your deck fun to play against? Ignoring this is not unique to competitive players, but they tend to have the card pools to make the most oppressive decks. Casual players get there more gradually through arms race over months or years. There needs to be more of a focus on making decks fun to play against in casual edh deckbuilding.