Fairness in Multiplayer
To give you a bit of insight into my metagame we have a solid mix of pros and Joes and so we usually play one of my multiplayer cubes to ensure that some people aren't playing with bad decks. Still, we do play constructed from time-to-time and I'm still pretty good at taking down our big FFAs (7-9 people usually). In the past I've ran actual combo decks that win on the spot but I want to stress that so did everyone else. The only consistent way to beat degenerate decks is with degenerate decks and since we've never had a formal banned list or house restrictions in 12 years none of us were keen on starting. Rather, we just all built stupidly unfair decks. Still, we're all chill guys and girls and we wanted games to last longer and be more interactive. As such, we all moved away from "win-on-the-spot" combo decks in favor of ones that were more interactive. Again, we didn't ban it out anything, we just all came to the inclusion that it wasn't very interesting. Again, we also cube a LOT which solves the problem nicely, but hey, actual constructed decks are still fun to play too.
Anyways, fast forward to today and I'm starting to wonder if what I'm doing is significantly better than playing a combo deck. I like winning. I'm not a poor sport and losing doesn't upset me but all things being equal I'd rather win than lose. What can I say? I'm competitive and so are most of my peers. As such, I've still been perfecting ways to take home wins without resorting to actual combos. Again, it's not because they're banned or because I think that they're weak, it's just that I'd rather sit down and play for more than 5 turns. Still, sometimes I question if I've accomplished that goal.
You see, I don't consider a game to be over when a winner is declared. The game is often "virtually" concluded long before that ever happens (at least in my mind). While it may take another 15-20 minutes to formally close it out you can usually see the writing on the wall well in advance. Something that I've noticed about my decks is that they're all ones designed to "virtually" end games at around the same time that a slow combo deck would win.
To give you an idea of the decks that I like to play, they often feature a fair number of sacrifice outlets (High Market, Phyrexian Tower, Altar of Dementia, a fair number of stupidly powerful creatures (Wurmcoil Engine, Sepulchral Primordial, Demigod of Revenge) and a fair number of revival engines (Oversold Cemetery, Phyrexian Reclamation, Haunted Crossroads). While nothing I do ever wins the game on the spot I usually create board states where nothing except an All is Dust effect can significantly hinder me. If my revival option is Volrath's Stronghold then even that can fall short. From then on I can just slam ridiculously overpowered creatures into play every turn and that's usually good enough to win. I mean, Buried Aliveing 3 Demigods into your GY and casting a 4th every turn is just plain going to end games. You try and exile them? I'm just going to mill you out with Altar of Dementia or sac them to my lands for free. Good luck stopping my 20 flying, trampling damage coming at you each and every turn.
This isn't just my Black decks either. Angel of Glory's Rise + Emeria, the Sky Ruin is doing a lot of work in my White decks. You better believe I'm playing value Mesmeric Orbs and Unburial Rites in them too. Slamming humans into play every turn and having that as your finisher is absurd. Did I mention that Dearly Departed likes to be milled and likes humans? Green decks? It's all about Lurking Predators and Kessig Wolf Run. LP casts your spells for you so KWR just Fireballs someone every turn while you still advance your board. Blue? It's all about Tron/Cloudpost decks that use Treasure Mage and Grand Architect as blockers only to power out creatures like Wurmcoil Engine and Sundering Titan and recurring them with Academy Ruins. Red? I'm just powering out big Inferno Titans and sealing the game with Destructive Force and Greater Gargadon and the likes. Suspending stuff and supporting it with Apocalypse effects works very well in my experience.
You get the idea. Nothing that I play is an actual "I win" combo but at the same time my decks are all looking to virtually end games relatively early on. People still get to play Magic but I mean what they're doing is rarely significant to me. I mean yes, actual combo is, but no one plays actual combo decks any more. I mean maaaaaaaaaaybe once a month or something but even then we usually all play a combo deck just to troll around for a few minutes. After a couple fast and furious games we go back to "normal" decks.
Now, with respect to my decks, notice anything about them? The backbone of their cores is usually enchantments/artifacts and lands. Guess what people don't pack enough answers for on average? Look, I'm human, I can't help it if I play things that work. I don't like decks that lose to spot removal and Wraths because everyone plays those. I don't like playing decks that stall out and do nothing because everyone plays those too. I like decks that laugh at those kinds of things. You wanna to try and grind Sepulchral Primordials out? Good luck folks! You wanna Wrath my Angel of Glory's Rise deck? She's coming back next turn and she's bringing an army with her. I hope that you have 20 more of those! I dunno, what I'm doing isn't unfair, but is it actually fair? Am I just abusing the fact that no one is playing land destruction and many decks won't have MD enchantment removal? There's no "right" or "wrong" answer but I'm sure that people have opinions on this type of thing.
Anyways, I'm wondering what people think about this subject. Do people play "unfair" fair decks in your meta? Do you? Do they win as much in your metagame as they do in mine? Do you think that they're a bad thing to have? Are they just as bad as actual combo decks? Any ideas or input would be much appreciated.
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Posted May 2, 2013That hasn't been my experience at all. Every big multiplayer group will probably have a wide gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" and so building the best deck possible isn't going to make them feel very good. The good players in our circles just run weaker decks on purpose to give everyone a fighting chance. Everyone wins games, everyone has fun, works for us.
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Posted Apr 28, 2013Obviously, the "everything goes" way while being the only literally fair way isn't what should happen since it's not the state that most people wants to be in. I would say that as long as everyone has a reasonable chance to win the game and to enjoy playing then your deck is fine. If people start to gang up on you every games or tell you that they don't enjoy playing against a deck, then it means that you're "unfair". When I say don't enjoy, I'm not talking about them disliking your deck because it interacts with their game plan but because you're ruining the fun with your Eggs deck.
This means that everything is metagame dependant and you shouldn't strive to beat the metagame but to simply be part of it. I think it's fine to play Blood Moon if your opponents play 3 colors monstrosity without basic lands. It's also fine for your opponents to play Rest in Peace if the graveyard is abused all the time. You can also play Armageddon if your opponents abuse the multiplayer dynamics and politics by skewing their mana curves with high casting costs or simply if ramping becomes degenerate.
I think any aspect of the game can be frowned apart by your group but usually removing one aspect of the game will allow another one to abuse the absence and this other aspect will become "unfair".
My EDH playgroup is currently highly frowning upon anything infinite and my old group frowns upon combos killing everyone at once (They still talk about the time I played a Chimera combo deck 10 years ago.)
On another topic, I'm not sure if it is the case and I plan to test it someday, but I think that the absolute best multiplayer decks are not all "unfair" combo decks. Has anyone ever did a special night where everyone brought the absolute best deck they could built?
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Posted Mar 25, 2013Sure thing. I'll write a new blog post for it though.
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Posted Mar 25, 2013I have the soul sisters in there currently, mentor of the meek, and the rest of the core you were talking about. Currently she only has one deck that she enjoys playing, and it's rather lackluster.
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Posted Mar 21, 2013First of all, I win far less now than I ever did in the past. Like, people need to understand that I'm a realist. When I say that I win or do well often, that's something like "get to top 3-4 75% of the time" and win the thing a little over 20% (maybe 25%) of the time. Is that oppressive? I don't think so. Is it above average in a 9 player game? Statistically speaking it is. I dunno, I get the comment "boy it would suck to play against you" a lot but like people don't seem to get where I'm coming from with my comments. I'm not winning the vast majority of our games. Far from it. I'm just winning more often than I realistically should be.
Also, as I've explained many times, we Cube the overwhelming majority of the time. My advantages are starkly diminished in a Cube draft. Yes, good players are still favorites, but many of my friends have many more + higher tournament finishes than I do. When I say that we have pros, I mean that I've read articles on the WOTC website with them in it. Like, these are not all casual Joes. We have those people with collections worth tens of thousands of dollars too.
So yeah, just wanted to start by saying that my presence is probably a lot less obnoxious than what people probably think it is. Competition breeds success. I got to where I am today by playing against other very strong players. A big fish in a little pond doesn't usually evolve much because there's no need to.
With respect to drawing poorly, hey, I'm human too. Anyone who plays as much Magic as people like you and I know full well that sometimes you get a **** draw and lose. You can play 24-26 lands and 4-6 draw engines in your lists but that doesn't guarantee at all that you'll get a solid mix of lands and spells. No sir. Does that bother me? Not really. First of all, most people are probably aware that the vast majority of my decks are just "goodstuffs.deck." I don't rely on synergy or combos very often. I'm boring. I play the subjectively best cards at each CMC and little else. Is that fun or appealing to everyone? Hell no. Does it appeal to ME? Yeah, it does. I play with a lot of land, a lot of card draw and a lot of generically powerful cards. My draws, on average, are strong.
Moving on, I want to talk about discard for a second. Discard is actually very weak because most multiplayer decks are inherently good against it. The fatal flaw of discard is that it doesn't affect the board and that it can't beat topdecked threats. You don't need Smiters/Lieges/etc. You just need to draw into more creatures. That's why discard decks tend to suck in general. They spend too much time playing cards that have no board impact and that are useless topdecks. I actually think that discard decks are incredibly underpowered and that's why I don't play them very often. If any removal heads your way and if anyone topdecks into threats then you are just dead.
Now, I understand that some metas are weaker than mine and that many people play lists with no outs to Ensnaring Bridge. Why do you think I championed that card for like 6 years? If people can't answer stuff in play then discard decks are fine. Still, if they can, I feel as though they're almost unplayable. That's my experience anyways.
Moving on, I want to stress that I do empathize with my opponents. My philosophy is to play decks that I would be fine playing against myself. What this means is that I don't whip up a Contamination list every time we sit down to play. Sure, once every 2 weeks we ALL pull something stupid out for a few games, but we're all clear that it's an "anything goes" game. I normally play something much more midrangey/rampy/controly. And again, I can't stress this enough, but we Cube 90% of the time. The amount of time that we spend playing constructed decks is TRIVIAL by comparison.
With respect to Skullclamp, Potence, Bargain, etc, well, I've been playing Phyrexian Arena for 12 years and that's probably not changing anytime soon. I too realize that it's important to play with fair cards for the most part.
With respect to competitive/broken decks, my goal as a "teacher" (use whatever term you want) is mostly to help weak players get stronger and not help strong players dominate. I want the person who doesn't win his or her fair share of the games to start taking them down. Again, this is why we Cube like 90% of the time. Everyone gets to play with my cards and they're all multiplayer staples so everyone wins games. I like that. Other players like that. People like drafting and people like slinging "overpowered" spells at one another. Cubing also means that we can keep combo decks and such out of the equation. That's another big bonus right there.
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Posted Mar 21, 2013Hey, who says Craterhoof Behemoth can't be competitive? A hasted Overrun on crack is nothing to scoff at. I've seen that card end plenty of games; there's nothing wrong with it lol. I'd be happy to play that as a finisher in a Green deck full of dudes.
Sneak Attack and Pod are great examples of unfair "fair" cards though. Obviously, they're enchantments too which, as I've already discussed, really makes them a pain to deal with.
Agreed on fair vs fair although sometimes I wonder how closely I'm treading on that unfair line.
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Posted Mar 20, 2013Therefor the decks aren't unfair like you put it but we always have one guy playing some kind of "combo" deck. I say "combo" because it isn't a win on the spot but he can take out the table pretty quickly (compared to the rest of us) if he isn't kept in check.
That used to be a problem before I started running dedicated artifact/enchantment removal (which most of his combos used - like Sneak Attack + Eldrazis for example).
This allowed me to slow him down enough that my fair decks would have time to set up and eventually lock him out. I could handle the others given time so it was all I needed.
My favorite fair "unfair" deck is a Birthing Pod deck bursting with value and with Craterhoof Behemoth as a "surprise" finisher (as I said, not a competitive meta!).
I like them a lot more than combo decks since once your meta figures out that they should be packing that extra removal, they might give you a run for your money. Plus I find that fair vs fair is a lot more fun than combo vs combo.