I still stand by that communication is your friend. Talk to people before making assumptions.
I don't want to have a conversation about what is or isn't acceptable in a given group of veritable strangers. I want to play Magic. I want a banlist that promotes balanced play so that gaps in power level aren't as large so that enjoyment is more homogeneous. The EDH banlist is currently at 38 cards; Vintage has 46 restricted cards. I'm not saying that we should ban all powerful cards because they're part of the charm of EDH and Eternal formats in general but there are certain cards that are format warping. I think fast mana, cheap combo enablers, efficient lock pieces, and disproportionately powerful card draw do more harm to the format than good. The question, then, is where do you draw the line? If, say, Sol Ring is too good, what about Mana Vault? Grim Monolith? Worn Powerstone? I'm not denying that it's a difficult discussion with lots of complex, controversial decisions, but I think it will ultimately make the format healthier in the long run. Competitive EDH players will adapt to a new meta and still enjoy the game. Casual EDH players will have to worry less about being pubstomped by some jerk and enjoy the game. Of course, none of this will happen anytime soon, and I don't think that banning 30+ cards in one fell swoop is a good idea, but a slow, winding down of power in the format would solve a lot of issues, I think.
So, to clarify your stance, you find it perfectly acceptable to sit down at an unknown table and bust out a grief-y deck? No warning? No conversation prior? That is your go-to?
I'm interested in how you think the text supports this conclusion, considering I've been advocating for common grief cards and strategies to be banned so that such communications don't have to happen.
No its playing what most people generally want to do. Groups can of course do their own thing, but you just packing this sort of thing into an LGS is specifically anti-social.
You don't think applying social pressure to cause people to not play certain decks is anti-social? It's a two-way street, and the tyranny of the majority can be just as oppressive as a stax deck. Your opinions and feelings are not more important than someone else's just because they happen to be popular.
I also run more casual staxy decks that don't get hated, because the key is building them where you worry less about the stax and more about creating a winning gamestate. This let's them be a bit less powerful, and I don't lock down the board without being able to win. Instead, I'm more likely to be able to take advantage of a lock without the lock manifesting. One is tribal vampires and the other is Mogis group slug. in both, the stax exists to slow down my opponents while I kill them, rather than to lock them down so I can kill them.
I pretty much agree with your entire post, but I quoted this excerpt because it is exactly what my primary deck does. It's not about locking opponents out of the game, it's about slowing the game down so that I can win because of my deck's superior inevitability. I play stax-y cards like Oppression, Tainted Aether, and Torpor Orb, but rather than lock someone out of the game they simply make it harder for them to advance their strategy. Okay, I run Infernal Darkness as well, and it's caused a few greedy non-black ramp decks to scoop, but maybe they shouldn't expect to resolve Boundless Realms unhindered. I treat Darkness as a pseudo-Time Walk that lasts for 3-4 turns, not a lock piece. Does this make my deck a stax deck?
I have issues with the argument you, and others, have made here. It's based on the idea that the strategies are allowed within the rules and that the game is inherently competitive. Both of these arguments are not relevant as the issue is a social one. To the greater community the game is not inherently competitive. No one, whether it be Wizards, the Rules committee, or the average players, would call EDH "competitive." You may view it that way, and you have every right to do so, but the greater community does not.
com·pe·ti·tion
noun
1) the activity or condition of competing.
2) an event or contest in which people compete.
Magic, as designed, is a competitive game. EDH, as designed, is a social game. Those two aspects conflict but are not mutually exclusive. I can't put it any simpler.
Same goes for the "stax" is part of the game argument, it is known to be looked upon by the majority with distaste. Evidence for this can be seen in modern card design, relative popularity on EDHRec of MLD and Stax pieces, and anecdotal evidence from the community at-large. Once again, you may hold this belief that Stax is reasonable and should be fine, and you have every right to believe that. However, you are at odds with the majority of players with-in the community in that respect.
Personally, I dislike playing against stax because it hoses my primary deck pretty hard and due to stax being a rarity around my parts I'm not equipped to deal with it.
I don't play stax, though I guess some people would argue that mono-black control is just as bad. Where do people draw the line between control strategies and stax strategies?
The argument here is a social one. Is it socially acceptable to ambush people with strategies that are known to be widely disliked? That seems to be antagonistic to sociable practices of the greater EDH community, and that's literally the definition of "anti-social." In my view, people who want to play these less popular strategies owe a simple warning to the people they intend to play with. Not providing any warning, given how common knowledge the distaste for the strategies is, seems to just be disrespectful of those at the table.
That is just my opinion. Be social, friendly, and courteous to others. The game is more fun when everyone is on the same page.
I don't disagree and haven't argued otherwise. Why did you quote me, again?
If you don't like their recommended banlist, don't use it, or make your own.
This is completely impossible to do for a player without a set playgroup, though. It's the ideal solution, of course, but for pick up games at the local shop it just ain't happening. It's my opinion that the banlist should be used to police those games so that there is no need for communicating that you might be playing an anti-social deck. The situations that many people complain about, like the guy who Armageddons then scoops, the stax guy, the t3 combo guy, are all symptoms of a permissive banlist. If those strategies are the exception rather than the rule, then banning the cards that enable those strategies so that individual playgroups can green light them is a more effective course of action than passive-aggressively judging the player and discouraging those strategies via social pressure.
Pick up games need to be more regulated than private games because the expectations are more open-ended in pick up games. If you have a set group that meets every week, then great, make your own banlist. But for a significant percentage of the EDH playing population that's not an option and creating an environment in which those players have a more homogeneous experience from shop to shop is more important than some cold, dead philosophy.
... contradicting the very nature of what a FFA Multi-player game should be.
What nature is that? Why should it be that way? Aren't you attempting to force your viewpoint on others with such an attitude?
After all of that, what really bothered me the most was your final line. That’s a pretty pessimistic view point. I have played thousands of games with people that have never felt as though I was playing against them. Just sayin’, but, I wouldn’t neccisairly judge somebody based on the contents of their favored EDH deck, however, I would judge them if I heard them mutter a line like that before taking a seat.
I mean, it's objectively true. A competitive game with a clearly defined goal and a format that emphasizes mutual enjoyment are strange bedfellows. They're inherently at odds with one another, which leads to all kinds of feelbads. This is exacerbated by an unnecessarily permissive banlist that accommodates playstyles that the RC pooh-poohs. Contrasted with Dungeons and Dragons, a collaborative storytelling game, it's easy to see the distinction.
Dude, you haven’t “denied” me anything. You are answering threats. That’s the way the game works. Stax, on the other hand, proactively answers threats by keeping them nice and non-threatening in your hand, on the bottom of your deck, in your GY etc. That’s denial. I’m not asking you to let me slam my 10/10 into your life points. I’m just asking that you give me the opprotunity to do so. Draw-pass isn’t exactly my idea of a “good time”. Punch-counter punch? Now that’s entertaining.
Ah, yes, the illusion of free will. You strike again.
This paragraph betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the subtle nuances of high level Magic play. To use a simple, obvious example, let's say you've cast Craw Wurm with no other nonland permanents in play or cards in hand. In this situation, there is no functional difference between a counterspell and a removal spell, so the distinction between denied and answered is semantic at best. Of course, things get more complicated in a real game, with on cast triggers, enter the battlefield effects, supporting permanents in play, and so on, but the fundamental differences between proactive denial and reactive removal are functionally nonexistent. Honestly, it sounds like you're salty about primarily disruptive strategies and for some reason don't think those are "punch-counterpunch" approaches. They are, of course. Interactive spells are the definition of "punch-counterpunch" and control decks run them in spades.
I'm not disagreeing with the argument that proactive denial creates more feelbads than removal since the illusion that you were going to do something with a given card is strong. Personally, I dislike playing against stax because it hoses my primary deck pretty hard and due to stax being a rarity around my parts I'm not equipped to deal with it. But that doesn't mean I think people who play such strategies are bad people. It's two-thousand-goddamned-nineteen and we're still arguing about badwrongfun. This all goes back to arrogantAxolotl's observation that as a mod of Magic, EDH will always fail to live up to both the RC's and player's expectations. The idea that a competitive game is something you play with people and not against them is pretty contradictory, right?
Lil' Timmy: I think it's fun to play Magic! I like to play cards! If I can just play my cards, I am happy!
STAX the Destroyer: I think it's fun to deny you the thing you find fun. I can only have fun by ensuring you cannot play any cards. At all.
Your inference that the stax player is deliberately playing to ruin the enjoyment of others says more about you and your psychological makeup than what deck someone is playing.
Fun is subjective. It varies from person to person. One person might find it fun to run a marathon. The next person might find it an exhausting and painful impossibility. The fact that different people find different things fun isn't really disputable. What I believe is worth mentioning though is the fact that large groups of people commonly find certain things to be fun or unfun. That's important because that allows us to agree upon a commonly recognized version of what's considered fun, making the subjectivity of fun mostly irrelevant. We don't have to worry about the guy who thinks watching paint dry is fun. He doesn't share the commonly accepted version of fun that the rest of us do. And there's nothing wrong with that. If watching paint dry is truly the activity said individual wants to participate in because that is what they get the most enjoyment from, then by all means, let them go do that. All I'm trying to say here is that that person, the person who doesn't share what is commonly considered fun in Commander, isn't of concern. If they don't find Commander fun and they aren't a constituent, they don't have to play it.
Basically, when you design something, like a game, you're trying to craft an intended experience. Commander suffers from the fact that its rules alone can't adequately craft the experience the RC would like since Commander is a mod of Magic and therefore uses its cardpool, relying upon players to craft the desired experience instead of the rules. This causes a host of problems since players are selfishly motivated and (rightfully) believe they shouldn't be responsible for crafting the experience that Commander promises. Thus, you end up with lots of games of Commander that don't look like what the RC intended, and a lot of unhappy players.
Lemme know if I need to elaborate on that some more. I'm kind of writing this on the fly, sorry.
It may be outside the scope of this thread, but I've been dabbling in amateur game design for a few years now so this topic is incredibly fascinating to me.
Hopefully I'm not misrepresenting you, but I agree 100% with the idea that EDH, being a mod of Magic, is fundamentally unsuitable for the vision the RC has. It can approximate their vision, of course, but will never be fully realized because of the limitations of the base game. Sheldon has said something to the effect of that they don't mind alienating swaths of players if they don't like the format's philosophy, but that such exclusion is unintentional (I forget the exact quote but someone around here has it in their sig). I think that's a foolish perspective. In the early days when it was a small, insular format I could see adhering to a particular philosophy over balance, but now that WotC is producing Commander product and EDH is the de facto casual format I think it's past time to reevaluate the format's philosophy and take a serious look at balance.
Ultimately, this is why I favor a more robust banlist. If you balance the highest echelons of play, that balance trickles down to non-competitive gamers and creates a healthier format overall. If you don't want someone playing Armageddon or stax, ban the ****ers and be done with it. Sure, you'll still have some clown who pubstomps little Billy's pirate tribal pile with a tuned combo deck, but you get that in any format and is outside the purview of any banlist due to the nature of a deckbuilding game with 20,000+ moving parts. However, lowering the overall power level of the format flattens things out and, in my mind, creates a more homogeneous meta in which more decks can flourish. The gap between a tuned combo deck with fast mana and cheap enablers banned and pirate tribal would be much smaller. Ironically, I think a bigger, saner banlist would fulfill the current vision of the format a lot better than the current list does.
To elaborate a bit, I thought this bit was the most important since it seems to me that Sheldon is learning that players in general aren't really that interested in crafting great games of Magic. It's something they just sort of naturally expect from the format, whether they ought to expect that or not.
Well, what constitutes a "great game" of Magic? Memorable ones? Because I have plenty of memories of losing to T1 Sol Ring or early combo I can't disrupt or being locked out of the game on turn 3. Lots of good ones, too, sure, but I think the concept of a "great game" is a little too nebulous for them to hinge an entire format on.
Yeah this is where I stopped reading, actually. It's 2019 and the guy in charge of my preferred format still believes in badwrongfun instead of understanding that different people like different things and that play problems almost 100% arise from gaps in power level and play philosophy.
I love EDH, but I enjoy it despite its leadership and banlist, not because of them.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
I'm interested in how you think the text supports this conclusion, considering I've been advocating for common grief cards and strategies to be banned so that such communications don't have to happen.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
You don't think applying social pressure to cause people to not play certain decks is anti-social? It's a two-way street, and the tyranny of the majority can be just as oppressive as a stax deck. Your opinions and feelings are not more important than someone else's just because they happen to be popular.
I pretty much agree with your entire post, but I quoted this excerpt because it is exactly what my primary deck does. It's not about locking opponents out of the game, it's about slowing the game down so that I can win because of my deck's superior inevitability. I play stax-y cards like Oppression, Tainted Aether, and Torpor Orb, but rather than lock someone out of the game they simply make it harder for them to advance their strategy. Okay, I run Infernal Darkness as well, and it's caused a few greedy non-black ramp decks to scoop, but maybe they shouldn't expect to resolve Boundless Realms unhindered. I treat Darkness as a pseudo-Time Walk that lasts for 3-4 turns, not a lock piece. Does this make my deck a stax deck?
EDIT: I'm at 400 posts.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
noun
1) the activity or condition of competing.
2) an event or contest in which people compete.
Magic, as designed, is a competitive game. EDH, as designed, is a social game. Those two aspects conflict but are not mutually exclusive. I can't put it any simpler.
I don't play stax, though I guess some people would argue that mono-black control is just as bad. Where do people draw the line between control strategies and stax strategies?
I don't disagree and haven't argued otherwise. Why did you quote me, again?
This is completely impossible to do for a player without a set playgroup, though. It's the ideal solution, of course, but for pick up games at the local shop it just ain't happening. It's my opinion that the banlist should be used to police those games so that there is no need for communicating that you might be playing an anti-social deck. The situations that many people complain about, like the guy who Armageddons then scoops, the stax guy, the t3 combo guy, are all symptoms of a permissive banlist. If those strategies are the exception rather than the rule, then banning the cards that enable those strategies so that individual playgroups can green light them is a more effective course of action than passive-aggressively judging the player and discouraging those strategies via social pressure.
Pick up games need to be more regulated than private games because the expectations are more open-ended in pick up games. If you have a set group that meets every week, then great, make your own banlist. But for a significant percentage of the EDH playing population that's not an option and creating an environment in which those players have a more homogeneous experience from shop to shop is more important than some cold, dead philosophy.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
What nature is that? Why should it be that way? Aren't you attempting to force your viewpoint on others with such an attitude?
I mean, it's objectively true. A competitive game with a clearly defined goal and a format that emphasizes mutual enjoyment are strange bedfellows. They're inherently at odds with one another, which leads to all kinds of feelbads. This is exacerbated by an unnecessarily permissive banlist that accommodates playstyles that the RC pooh-poohs. Contrasted with Dungeons and Dragons, a collaborative storytelling game, it's easy to see the distinction.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
Ramp is not a basic blue mechanic.
Ah, yes, the illusion of free will. You strike again.
This paragraph betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the subtle nuances of high level Magic play. To use a simple, obvious example, let's say you've cast Craw Wurm with no other nonland permanents in play or cards in hand. In this situation, there is no functional difference between a counterspell and a removal spell, so the distinction between denied and answered is semantic at best. Of course, things get more complicated in a real game, with on cast triggers, enter the battlefield effects, supporting permanents in play, and so on, but the fundamental differences between proactive denial and reactive removal are functionally nonexistent. Honestly, it sounds like you're salty about primarily disruptive strategies and for some reason don't think those are "punch-counterpunch" approaches. They are, of course. Interactive spells are the definition of "punch-counterpunch" and control decks run them in spades.
I'm not disagreeing with the argument that proactive denial creates more feelbads than removal since the illusion that you were going to do something with a given card is strong. Personally, I dislike playing against stax because it hoses my primary deck pretty hard and due to stax being a rarity around my parts I'm not equipped to deal with it. But that doesn't mean I think people who play such strategies are bad people. It's two-thousand-goddamned-nineteen and we're still arguing about badwrongfun. This all goes back to arrogantAxolotl's observation that as a mod of Magic, EDH will always fail to live up to both the RC's and player's expectations. The idea that a competitive game is something you play with people and not against them is pretty contradictory, right?
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
Your inference that the stax player is deliberately playing to ruin the enjoyment of others says more about you and your psychological makeup than what deck someone is playing.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
Hopefully I'm not misrepresenting you, but I agree 100% with the idea that EDH, being a mod of Magic, is fundamentally unsuitable for the vision the RC has. It can approximate their vision, of course, but will never be fully realized because of the limitations of the base game. Sheldon has said something to the effect of that they don't mind alienating swaths of players if they don't like the format's philosophy, but that such exclusion is unintentional (I forget the exact quote but someone around here has it in their sig). I think that's a foolish perspective. In the early days when it was a small, insular format I could see adhering to a particular philosophy over balance, but now that WotC is producing Commander product and EDH is the de facto casual format I think it's past time to reevaluate the format's philosophy and take a serious look at balance.
Ultimately, this is why I favor a more robust banlist. If you balance the highest echelons of play, that balance trickles down to non-competitive gamers and creates a healthier format overall. If you don't want someone playing Armageddon or stax, ban the ****ers and be done with it. Sure, you'll still have some clown who pubstomps little Billy's pirate tribal pile with a tuned combo deck, but you get that in any format and is outside the purview of any banlist due to the nature of a deckbuilding game with 20,000+ moving parts. However, lowering the overall power level of the format flattens things out and, in my mind, creates a more homogeneous meta in which more decks can flourish. The gap between a tuned combo deck with fast mana and cheap enablers banned and pirate tribal would be much smaller. Ironically, I think a bigger, saner banlist would fulfill the current vision of the format a lot better than the current list does.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
I love EDH, but I enjoy it despite its leadership and banlist, not because of them.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK