MTG Salvation

So, I was reading this article today, and it got me thinking.

For those that don't want to click, The Social Contract as discussed in this article boils down to four key points:

[1] Come in the Spirit of Friendly Play
[2] Give Everyone Else a Chance to Play
[3] It’s Not Personal
[4] Take in the Big Picture

Are there Commanders out there that lend themselves, or at least tend to lend themselves to following the Social Contract? Sure, any Commander can be used in a way to not violate the contract, but which ones do so the easiest?

Phelddagrif?

I would say that any general which is not inherently against the social contract (I'm looking at you, GAIIV). But maybe to narrow it down, any general which makes you a part of the game and interacting with the table, such as Rafiq.

Quote from cryogen »

I would say that any general which is not inherently against the social contract (I'm looking at you, GAIIV). But maybe to narrow it down, any general which makes you a part of the game and interacting with the table, such as Rafiq.

Given that Rafiq of the Many is quite well known for suiting up then Armageddoning, I'm not so sure that he's in the right vein for what OP is asking.

Quote from ZenN »

Given that Rafiq of the Many is quite well known for suiting up then Armageddoning, I'm not so sure that he's in the right vein for what OP is asking.

But what is it about Rafiq that makes you want to do that? I've played him many times and played against him with at least three different people, and none of them cast Armageddon. As Jivan said, that sounds like a player either choosing to ignore the social contract or one who is in a group where that sort of thing is acceptable.

I admit, I will be much more inclined to go after players that have griefer commanders - regardless of what the deck itself contains. I don't care if little Timmy's Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck isn't running Curiosity/Ophidian Eye - he is never untapping with his commander if I have anything to say about it. I'll apologize later.

Exactly what WyvernSlayer just said.
If I don't know a person or his/her deck very well, I'm going to generally assume the worst about it and play accordingly.

Quote from WyvernSlayer »

I admit, I will be much more inclined to go after players that have griefer commanders - regardless of what the deck itself contains. I don't care if little Timmy's Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck isn't running Curiosity/Ophidian Eye - he is never untapping with his commander if I have anything to say about it. I'll apologize later.

There's no way for me to respond to this without getting called out for flaming. So I'll just say this sounds like a terrible way to play Magic and I hope you don't assess people in everyday life based on the clothes they're wearing.

On topic, Jivan - as usual - hit the nail on the head. Any commander can be social. The cards don't make the contract, you - the player - does. And that requires communication before, during and after the game.

Quote from Jivanmukta »

It's almost like EDH being a social format depends on the players rather than the cards being social!

Get out of here with that crazy talk!!!!

Quote from WyvernSlayer »

I admit, I will be much more inclined to go after players that have griefer commanders - regardless of what the deck itself contains. I don't care if little Timmy's Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck isn't running Curiosity/Ophidian Eye - he is never untapping with his commander if I have anything to say about it. I'll apologize later.

I'm the exact opposite. I give a new player the benefit of the doubt on Game 1, because social format and all that. After I get a fair assessment of them and their deck, all bets are off.

Played games with people who seem like they are going to cry after their elvish mystic gets killed and they attempt to declare vengeance upon you for the next two weeks.

Its the player, not the commander, that creates the social contract.

Quote from Jivanmukta »

Quote from WyvernSlayer »

I admit, I will be much more inclined to go after players that have griefer commanders - regardless of what the deck itself contains. I don't care if little Timmy's Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck isn't running Curiosity/Ophidian Eye - he is never untapping with his commander if I have anything to say about it. I'll apologize later.

Works for game one. But if you keep doing it then you've become what you hate.

Yes, I agree. I'm not going to keep my boot on someone's back every time I see their commander - it's usually just for the first game with an unfamiliar opponent.

Quote from Vandar »

Quote from WyvernSlayer »

I admit, I will be much more inclined to go after players that have griefer commanders - regardless of what the deck itself contains. I don't care if little Timmy's Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck isn't running Curiosity/Ophidian Eye - he is never untapping with his commander if I have anything to say about it. I'll apologize later.

There's no way for me to respond to this without getting called out for flaming. So I'll just say this sounds like a terrible way to play Magic and I hope you don't assess people in everyday life based on the clothes they're wearing.

That's sort of a big leap to make, don't you think? I hope you don't assess people on the internet based on singular posts. (Don't worry - I'm not offended.)


But getting to the "players make the contract" argument, I do agree that pre-game communication would keep my "being a terrible person" scenario from happening.

Shaping the social atmosphere during a game depends on how greatly your playgroup puts stock in politics. My group is all about truces, bluffs, backstabbing, and misinformation - its hard to take a comment like "I'm not gonna lock you guys out of the game" to heart.

If I come to the table and feel like the other three players are focusing on me and not giving me a chance to play my deck (all my spells are countered, and in general being the focus of everyones removal) while they build up their boards I will try to time my concession of the game and wait for the point when another player who isn't being hated upon is about to attack and kill me with lethal general damage or something like Blightsteel Colossus. I then will concede so they can use their attack to take out another player. Some view this as being un-sportsman like, but I do it to try to show other players how they screw themselves when they aim all their hate at one player at the table and don't make any effort to keep their other two opponents in check.

Braids, Conjurer Adept

Quote from Jivanmukta »

It's almost like EDH being a social format depends on the players rather than the cards being social!

Right. That's why I started the conversation like this:

Are there Commanders out there that lend themselves, or at least tend to lend themselves to following the Social Contract? Sure, any Commander can be used in a way to not violate the contract, but which ones do so the easiest?

I think you guys are absolutely right in that any Commander can lead a deck that follows the Social Contract. But there are those Commanders that tend to go down a darker path.

For instance: for every one zombie tribal Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck there are a ton of wheel-and-deal versions, for every Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind Izzet watermark only deck there are many that run Curiosity, Ophidian Eye, etc.

So, using that last example, I would argue that Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius lends itself better to helping follow the Social Contract more so than Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.

That's all I was asking, what other Commanders help their deck stay honest?

I don't think a Nekusar wheel-and-deal deck violates the contract at all.

That said, I'm sure Sheldon and I - or Sheldon's playgroup and mine - have different goals for an EDH game and different lines to cross. I'm a big fan of the social contract as he laid it out, but I'm sure we apply it in different ways. I'm almost positive we do, and I think that's, to some degree, the point.

Quote from dorino »

I don't think a Nekusar wheel-and-deal deck violates the contract at all.

That said, I'm sure Sheldon and I - or Sheldon's playgroup and mine - have different goals for an EDH game and different lines to cross. I'm a big fan of the social contract as he laid it out, but I'm sure we apply it in different ways. I'm almost positive we do, and I think that's, to some degree, the point.

I think there is a distinct difference between "extremely linear deck which plays out the same every time" and actually violating the social contract. You group can dislike the first, which leads to breaking the second.

If you wanna avoid pissing people off just by them looking at your Commander alone, there's always Haakon, Stromgald Scourge. In which case the only thing they can get pissed off at is that you picked Mono-B.

Quote from ajacobik »

Selvala, Explorer Returned does this in spades.

I think she has great potential to be a cool social deck, but I have only ever seen her as an infinite combo deck.

That being said, if I decide to turn my most recent deck which is mono-green elves into selesnya, she will definitely be the commander.

It's really hard because people will always get upset. These EDH polemics always seem really odd to me in the context of a game. Sheldon starts off like this:

Quote from Sheldon »

Social contracts are rarely about right and wrong, despite what some might try to make you believe, but about the points which are important to the society, a path to walk towards the end that we desire, namely the benefit of all. In fact, there’s no legitimacy to elements of the contract that don’t forward the end goals. “Don’t play counterspells” isn’t a valid contractual obligation. “Don’t play counterspells just to annoy people” probably is.

(punctuation mine)

The first statement hints at some sort of utilitarian philosophy on ethics. But it's done in a way that imputes motive (don't annoy people), which is subjective, emotional and moral, rather than pointing to the effect of actions, whose utility is objective and measurable. Basically, it's utilitarian rather than moral, with the utility being the moral good. Think about that. It doesn't compute at all. The first part of the paragraph is the complete philosophical opposite of the second part of the paragraph. So no surprise, the role of law in a society governed by the "social contract" gets minimized, because by denying both objective morality and objective utility, you're left without anything that could serve as the objective basis of law.

I'm supposing that's why all the resilience to put these ideals into law, i.e. a ban list. The whole point of the rhetoric seems to be to deny the role of law and frame everything neither in terms of utility or morality, just subjective, arbitrary social convention.

Quote from Sheldon »

There’s no law that says you can’t butt up in line at the movie theater or that you’re required to be courteous when addressing people but we generally agree in polite society to take our turn and to say please and thank you. "cutting in line at the movie theater".

If it were the custom of a society to buy tickets on-line or to not take turns, I'm not sure what there would be to say about it then since both morality and utility have been disarmed as the possible basis of action. It becomes totally arbitrary. Convention seems to be the only remaining weight of the argument. And the convention is explained as follows:

Quote from Sheldon »

In its simplest form in the EDH community this comes as a message like “look if you’re going to play your kill-everyone-third-turn-combo-deck you’re not welcome to play with us” a message that I’m willing to go to great lengths to defend. That particular message at least in broad terms falls into what I want personally for the global format but I certainly support the right of sub-groups to have a different message even if it’s something like “if you play with more than 30 creatures please play elsewhere.”

I guess that's all he's really trying to say. He doesn't like playing against Combo. They're not framing it as a question of moral right, and its utility is only measured in moral terms, but nevermind that contradiction. It's their convention not to play Combo decks. And they won't formalize that convention into the rules (law) of the format, because they've talked themselves out of it.



To answer your question about what General to use then, it doesn't matter. Just don't play combo. Or more specifically, don't play combo against Sheldon. You can continue to play combo in EDH, since Sheldon and the RC left all the Vintage combo enablers legal for the sake of funsies, just don't play it against those players whose arbitrary social convention is to not play combo decks. No moral judgment of playing a coin flip game instead of a strategy game, really.

I think that any commander that isn't inherently trying to prevent people from doing anything can be built "socially" or "anti-socially". Commanders like Braids, Cabal Minion and Erayo, Soratami Ascendant are banned because if this, but even commanders like Gaddock Teeg, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Hokori, Dust Drinker, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and Iona, Shield of Emeria can be considered "anti-social" because of their abilities to severely impede one or more players from playing anything.

I think that in general, any commander that falls into the category of "anti-social" usually falls into one of four categories; 1) Lock-down commanders preventing people from ever playing anything (Braids, Erayo, Iona, etc.), 2) commanders who easily facilitate lockdown situations (Derevi, Zur, Arcum, etc.), 3) having multiple 2-card infinite combos with your commander (Niv-Mizzet, Azami, Ghave, Prossh, etc.), and 4) are typically built in a manner that produces boring and repetitive gameplay (Nekusar, Uril, Narset, etc.).

But overall, this is a small number of commanders out there. The other 95% of available commanders that are actually worth playing are totally neutral when it comes to "sociability". It's the other 99 cards in the deck that determine that. On top of that, I would say that the last three categories above can all be avoided if you build your deck with that issue in mind. I think some people forget that you don't have to include a card that other people consider an auto-include...

Your deck's card choices will determine how "Social Contract"-friendly you are, not your choice of Commander. That said, as you've seen above, many people will presume that if you are playing a Commander whose main deck building variant is messed up (e.g. Sharuum), your deck is too.