For the record, I'm not concerned about winning myself. I play for the social aspect as well. I just thought the notion of 'solving' a format like EDH was an intriguing one and it contributes to how I plan my decks, given my meta plays all sorts of different variants of commander with different numbers of players and decks each time. I thereby seek for myself well-rounded, capable, flexible, and interactive decks.
Funnily enough, my choices don't tend to prefer that which is 'highly likely to win' because my primary preference isn't about winning, but not getting bored. I *hate* straightforward decks that have only one plan and just work in one single direction. I like a deck that I can choose to play in about 3 different ways or more every game to equal effective odds at success, so that rules out a lot of commanders for me. Narset? Powerful but boring. Prossh? Yawwwwn. Anything voltron? - how about never!
That's why I like Maelstrom Wanderer so much - I took it apart and rebuilt it 3 times over the years. It's not very consistent (by design, it has few tutors, doesn't even run Tooth and Nail for example), it doesn't necessarily run all of the same cards the most competitively oriented ones do (No Sunder or Jokulhaups, no extra turn cards), but it's flexible and 'just seems to work or otherwise make a good attempt' every game. It doesn't bother my friends at all, seems like I found just the right balance for my meta at least with that one. I like decks like that and want to find more commanders this flexible.
In addition, one of my other weird goals is playgroup-considerate for both friendly and roundabout-competitive purposes. I don't want to play decks that win more than 50% of the games I play them in. I have a deck that does, and I play it the least of all my decks because of it. I don't want to draw too much attention to myself by winning too much, so while I like to optimize my decks very heavily, I actually aim for making decks only capable of winning games 1/3rd-1/4th of the time even as I play them as well as I can. This means everyone else can get their wins and be happy about it, and if I'm not winning too much, I'm not high profile to be focused out in multiplayer games. This, in an unintuitive way, I think increases my odds at the times when I really am intending to win a game, particularly when an opponent brings out one of the decks that has been giving the whole playgroup a lot of trouble and I want to overcome it.
Does anyone else do anything similar to that or something different?
A precipitous notion of a topic, I am curious of everyone's input on what they think about 'solving' EDH as a game. The factors of randomness, politics, the sheer possibilities of near-incalculably many interactions that can occur in a game, how the game changes depending of how many players are involved, if planechase is being played, or if some variant like kingdoms, archenemy, or two-headed giant is being played, and the fact that new sets and product releases introduce format-altering possibilities in new cards several times a year make this a very difficult question.
There are a number of ideas that exist trying to approach this, suggested deckbuilding strategies and gameplay techniques that help increase the odds of a deck, but for everything, there's an exception. Blue, black, and green may be the deciding colors of the format in that order, and some color combinations, such as R/W, just don't seem to compare in aggregate to most decks of other combinations.
So, I'll frame the question like this: Say you took every commander (or partnered pair) that can be legally used in commander, and subjected them all to the best-played games against each other you could, maybe 10x per single combination of identical factors. The criteria these decks would be subject to are as follows: No sideboards, and played in all non-rarity/card-restricted-based commander variants (from 1v1 up to including, say, 6 players at once playing free for all or some form of team-up variant) an equal number of times each, in every combination of opposing decks. These many, many decks would be built accordingly to be as flexible and consistent as they can manage to rack up wins against all the other decks.
Which decks do you think would have the highest percentages of wins, and why? I wouldn't take the numbers of what decks exist of each commander on EDHREC or elsewhere as much indication of what is best, because those decks are partly being chosen in the vacuum of popularity and other factors not controlled for.
Moreover, what is the closest you think you can get to a deck that adapts to and overcomes the majority of matchups and conditions it finds itself in, and how would you do it?
Funnily enough, my choices don't tend to prefer that which is 'highly likely to win' because my primary preference isn't about winning, but not getting bored. I *hate* straightforward decks that have only one plan and just work in one single direction. I like a deck that I can choose to play in about 3 different ways or more every game to equal effective odds at success, so that rules out a lot of commanders for me. Narset? Powerful but boring. Prossh? Yawwwwn. Anything voltron? - how about never!
That's why I like Maelstrom Wanderer so much - I took it apart and rebuilt it 3 times over the years. It's not very consistent (by design, it has few tutors, doesn't even run Tooth and Nail for example), it doesn't necessarily run all of the same cards the most competitively oriented ones do (No Sunder or Jokulhaups, no extra turn cards), but it's flexible and 'just seems to work or otherwise make a good attempt' every game. It doesn't bother my friends at all, seems like I found just the right balance for my meta at least with that one. I like decks like that and want to find more commanders this flexible.
In addition, one of my other weird goals is playgroup-considerate for both friendly and roundabout-competitive purposes. I don't want to play decks that win more than 50% of the games I play them in. I have a deck that does, and I play it the least of all my decks because of it. I don't want to draw too much attention to myself by winning too much, so while I like to optimize my decks very heavily, I actually aim for making decks only capable of winning games 1/3rd-1/4th of the time even as I play them as well as I can. This means everyone else can get their wins and be happy about it, and if I'm not winning too much, I'm not high profile to be focused out in multiplayer games. This, in an unintuitive way, I think increases my odds at the times when I really am intending to win a game, particularly when an opponent brings out one of the decks that has been giving the whole playgroup a lot of trouble and I want to overcome it.
Does anyone else do anything similar to that or something different?
There are a number of ideas that exist trying to approach this, suggested deckbuilding strategies and gameplay techniques that help increase the odds of a deck, but for everything, there's an exception. Blue, black, and green may be the deciding colors of the format in that order, and some color combinations, such as R/W, just don't seem to compare in aggregate to most decks of other combinations.
So, I'll frame the question like this: Say you took every commander (or partnered pair) that can be legally used in commander, and subjected them all to the best-played games against each other you could, maybe 10x per single combination of identical factors. The criteria these decks would be subject to are as follows: No sideboards, and played in all non-rarity/card-restricted-based commander variants (from 1v1 up to including, say, 6 players at once playing free for all or some form of team-up variant) an equal number of times each, in every combination of opposing decks. These many, many decks would be built accordingly to be as flexible and consistent as they can manage to rack up wins against all the other decks.
Which decks do you think would have the highest percentages of wins, and why? I wouldn't take the numbers of what decks exist of each commander on EDHREC or elsewhere as much indication of what is best, because those decks are partly being chosen in the vacuum of popularity and other factors not controlled for.
Moreover, what is the closest you think you can get to a deck that adapts to and overcomes the majority of matchups and conditions it finds itself in, and how would you do it?