I never suggest playing with houserules but occasionally I play with others who do, and the most common one is playing with infect at 20.
Its an odd rule since it basically says 'combo decks ruin the game for us and we like aggro decks but they always lose to combo, so we decided to make a rule that strengthens the decks we hate and hurts the decks we love, because a rule that does the opposite of what we want is fun.'
if you want aggro to be viable, lower the infect back to 10, and play 30 life. try to get your group to give it a go. its done wonders for us here (it was mostly against the control decks actually, but it probably has a similar effect against combo, possibly dependant on the combo). Having said that, if the 'combo' you're talking about involves the blightsteel colossus or grafted exoskeleton one-shotting people, i suppose it kinda makes sense - but then again, infect at 20 isn't gonna slow that sort of play down i think.
on the off-chance you can't convince them, make them take a note of what life total the combo/control player is on after he/she wins. if it was anything like our group here, it'd be low 10s. i think we discovered that the first 25-30 points of health is really easy to knock off; its the last 15 or so thats the hard grindy bit.
Our group does not play with Commander damage. Despite it's history, we find it cumbersome instead using a gentleman's aggreement to avoid excessive life gain.
I was unaware that player's cannot use Legendary's in their 99 when an opponent uses it a their Commander...so I guess our group uses that one too.
We also draw 7 until 3 lands + 1 playable to help generate interesting games.
We have been playing with the idea of increasing the poison requirement to 15 to help temper the mechanic's power level.
We recently retired tucking and cloning houserule and now conform, though I am really missing Tuck.
Our group does not play with Commander damage. Despite it's history, we find it cumbersome instead using a gentleman's aggreement to avoid excessive life gain.
I was unaware that player's cannot use Legendary's in their 99 when an opponent uses it a their Commander...so I guess our group uses that one too.
We also draw 7 until 3 lands + 1 playable to help generate interesting games.
We have been playing with the idea of increasing the poison requirement to 15 to help temper the mechanic's power level.
We recently retired tucking and cloning houserule and now conform, though I am really missing Tuck.
The commander in opponent's 99 actually isn't a rule, I checked the commander site. It turns out I was misled from the beginning of my EDH career!
The commander in opponent's 99 actually isn't a rule, I checked the commander site. It turns out I was misled from the beginning of my EDH career!
I actually seem to remember there being something in place a long time ago, can't remember if 2 people couldn't have the same commander or nobody else could have one in their deck. Or maybe the commander couldn't be legend ruled by a non commander. I think it was back when Karakas was still legal.
The commander in opponent's 99 actually isn't a rule, I checked the commander site. It turns out I was misled from the beginning of my EDH career!
I actually seem to remember there being something in place a long time ago, can't remember if 2 people couldn't have the same commander or nobody else could have one in their deck. Or maybe the commander couldn't be legend ruled by a non commander. I think it was back when Karakas was still legal.
That's my general assumption, but I can't prove it off the commander rules list history. It looks like it was a rule that got phased out sometime between the fall of "EDH" and the rise of "Commander".
We cut our decks and the card with the highest $$$ value goes first.
S Divining Top is banned
Armageddons are banned
Cyclonic Rift is banned
gold bordered cards are cool
un-cards are cool especially Not another Ather Vortex
Mulligans are unenforced
When a deck wins it is retired for the night (we have many backup decks to work with).
A player can walk away from the table for an extended period of time. They pass all priority and dont attack or block until they come back. Its a good rule for taco night.
My playgroup has a 20 infect dmg to lose rule that i really dont like because it basically shuts down any infect deck builds. Its similar to when i first started playing we had a rule that once your hand was empty you could draw 7 more cards (was with a different group of friends not at a card shop) which made discard spells fairly useless. I dont like when these rules completely invalidate a certain deck type.
Can I just point out that this is by far the worst rule I have ever heard? It's worse than "all-mana-down" where everyone starts with all their lands in play to "make the game faster" lol.
With free re-draws, you could go infinite with any discard outlet in the game. Hell, you could use a carrion feeder with an eldrazi in your deck (to reshuffle your graveyard) and kill everyone with it. Run every random 1-drop discard outlet and as soon as you hit one, you have something more overpowered than ad nauseam. That's a turn 1 win in a lot of cases. You'd basically have ad nauseam tendrils deck without even having to try since the mana cost of cards can be anything.
The only house rules I've played with are free first mulligan (which I dislike since people hit sol ring almost every game with this rule). It was especially bad because the group insisted that we do partial paris as well, so you could keep your sol ring and fish for broken turn 1 and 2 cards. It was actually the worst.
That said, there is always that unspoken rule of not being a douche by playing a deck out of everyone's league (or strategies people are clearly not okay with). I have many differently powered decks / decks with different strategies and I try to make sure I am playing the right ones at the right tables.
I have been toying with some sort of Dollar Value Rubberbanding mechanic, since I have one or two friends willing to sink a lot of dollars into their EDH Decks. Soemthing along the lines of a Mana Bonus for all opponants when a card with a Current sale value of $10+ is played. My original idea was CardValue/10 rounded down colorless mana added to your opponents manapool. That colorless mana does not go away until the players next end step.
That feels a little harsh but would really cut down on a player wanting to run a turn 1 Manacrypt. Maybe $$$/20 or ($$$/10)-1 would be more balanced?
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
1) My group does not obey the recent change to tucking rules. If a general is shuffled into a library, it does not go back to the command zone. My group consider tucking an acceptable risk in this game.
I think I'm going to ask my group about going back to this, Cards like Oblation and Spin into Myth were staples but now out of most of the decks played.
My group pretty much follows the RC rules.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH DECKS:
GBW Ghave - BWR Kaalia - UBG Mineoplasm - URG Riku - GRW Uril - GBRProssh, I need food - BWU Oloro Lock - UGW Derevi Blink - RBU Nekusar, the Wheeler - UBRWGProgenitus - BR Lyzolda - UBGisa & Geralf Zombies - UG Edric, Spymaster of Trest +1 Counters matter - W Lin Sivvi - BWU Sydri Artifact Control - RWU Narset, the Attacker - GRW Mayael, the Cheater - RWUG Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis Landfall - GBW Doran, I like Big Butts -UR Mizzix Buyback BWR Edgar and his Vamps
MLD and infinite combos are the only ones my group and I unanimously agreed upon. Depending on who is hosting, mulligans can be strict or lenient - one guy has a rule about revealing the 2/3 lands once you got them if you'd reshuffled multiple times (someone had a habit of abusing it for the "perfect hand"). We have a gentleman's agreement on the more overpowered Eldrazi, though most of us are budget players anyway, so it's more of an understanding if an Ulamog hits the field that person needs to be high humoured and an empty salt shaker, because they'll be lined up by everyone else for the rest of the game.
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
Awful, awful rule.
Agreed. If this were done in my meta, I can see every deck becoming Green-Blue. Imo, it just isn't a healthy environment for long term gaming.
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
Awful, awful rule.
Agreed. If this were done in my meta, I can see every deck becoming Green-Blue. Imo, it just isn't a healthy environment for long term gaming.
I made a lengthy thread no to far down --- I got kicked out of the playgroup. Long story short, I pushed a little too hard in the Facebook group chat about wanting to use Words of Wind. But the conclusion was a no because it 'could' potentially begin affecting lands. One of my counters: run more permanents. Response: people play spell decks.
Here is the kicker: I never EVER played an unfun card, locked the board down, or did an infinite combo before turn 8ish. It was all because of a chat group...
Other rules:
-they insta banned the new magus.
-no gold/silver border
-no non-english unless it is a common EDH card
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
Awful, awful rule.
Tell me about it...one guy destroy his own land when he played Decimate.
We allow most sliver boarder cards along with cards from the world champ decks IF you already own a copy of the card you're using. For example I have a flooded strand but it's in a deck and everyone knows I have it, so I ordered the world champ edition of it for another deck.
We don't force people to shuffle between mulligans. Just set your hand aside and draw the next 7/6/5/etc. and shuffle everything when you're all done. The odds of getting cards from the original hand are low enough that we don't really mind the difference this makes to opening hand odds, and it makes the mulligan process a lot faster with 98-99 card decks.
We're not super sticklers for playing the real cards, but most if not all of the people who run proxies/gold-border cards have at least one copy of the real version. I frown a little bit at the proxies (especially one guy who runs foil borderless ABU proxy sticker lands that have, in my opinion, super ugly art) and don't run any myself, but I don't bother saying anything. I think the only time I've bothered commenting on the proxies was when one guy (not a regular) was offering to make foil proxy stickers for people of any card they wanted, and that was mostly to voice my opinion about how super tacky proxy stickers are.
Not exactly a house rule, but when people make serious mistakes (more than simple out of order sequencing or something) that the table allows them to correct (or the rules would require them to correct), we make fun of them by calling out "cheat count 1!", "cheat count 2!" etc. depending on how many times the same player has done it during the game.
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
Awful, awful rule.
Agreed. If this were done in my meta, I can see every deck becoming Green-Blue. Imo, it just isn't a healthy environment for long term gaming.
I made a lengthy thread no to far down --- I got kicked out of the playgroup. Long story short, I pushed a little too hard in the Facebook group chat about wanting to use Words of Wind. But the conclusion was a no because it 'could' potentially begin affecting lands. One of my counters: run more permanents. Response: people play spell decks.
Here is the kicker: I never EVER played an unfun card, locked the board down, or did an infinite combo before turn 8ish. It was all because of a chat group...
Other rules:
-they insta banned the new magus.
-no gold/silver border
-no non-english unless it is a common EDH card
no non English. Okay that is just unfair. If you can support a li k the card to prove it does what you say it does no questions should be asked. That just seems to be poor taste.
As for words of wind. It's not a banned card and sadly... I am tempted to build a deck around it now. WIZARDS
As for words of wind. It's not a banned card and sadly... I am tempted to build a deck around it now. WIZARDS
One of my decks likes to do Words of Wind + Delaying Shield. Rack up delay counters, use a card draw effect + 1 mana, bounce the shield before it makes you lose life.
Unlike something along the lines of Platinum Emperion, it also stops you from losing to commander damage.
if you want aggro to be viable, lower the infect back to 10, and play 30 life. try to get your group to give it a go. its done wonders for us here (it was mostly against the control decks actually, but it probably has a similar effect against combo, possibly dependant on the combo). Having said that, if the 'combo' you're talking about involves the blightsteel colossus or grafted exoskeleton one-shotting people, i suppose it kinda makes sense - but then again, infect at 20 isn't gonna slow that sort of play down i think.
on the off-chance you can't convince them, make them take a note of what life total the combo/control player is on after he/she wins. if it was anything like our group here, it'd be low 10s. i think we discovered that the first 25-30 points of health is really easy to knock off; its the last 15 or so thats the hard grindy bit.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
I was unaware that player's cannot use Legendary's in their 99 when an opponent uses it a their Commander...so I guess our group uses that one too.
We also draw 7 until 3 lands + 1 playable to help generate interesting games.
We have been playing with the idea of increasing the poison requirement to 15 to help temper the mechanic's power level.
We recently retired tucking and cloning houserule and now conform, though I am really missing Tuck.
| B Erebos, God of VampiresB | GYeva SmashG | RBosh ArtifactsR | GURAnimar +1 BeatsGUR | RBVial's Secret Hot SauceRB | UBRNekusar, Draw if you DareUBR | RGBDarigaaz'z DragonsRGB | GBSlimeFEETGB | UBOn-Hit LazavUB | URBrudiclad's Artificer InventionsUR | GUBMuldrotha's ElementalsGUB | WUGKestia's EnchantmentsWUG | GUTatyova - Draw, Land, Go!GU | WGArahbo's EquipmentWG | BUWVarina's ZOMBIE HORDESBUW | WLyra's Angelic SalvationW | WBChurch of TeysaWB | UAzami...WizardsU
In practice, I believe that only Genju of the Realm, Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, Elbrus, the Binding Blade, and one or two of the Nephilim have actually been used.
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
I'd love to see a deck with Tibalt as the commander.
The commander in opponent's 99 actually isn't a rule, I checked the commander site. It turns out I was misled from the beginning of my EDH career!
That's my general assumption, but I can't prove it off the commander rules list history. It looks like it was a rule that got phased out sometime between the fall of "EDH" and the rise of "Commander".
Here are my house rules.
We cut our decks and the card with the highest $$$ value goes first.
S Divining Top is banned
Armageddons are banned
Cyclonic Rift is banned
gold bordered cards are cool
un-cards are cool especially Not another Ather Vortex
Mulligans are unenforced
When a deck wins it is retired for the night (we have many backup decks to work with).
A player can walk away from the table for an extended period of time. They pass all priority and dont attack or block until they come back. Its a good rule for taco night.
In Progress
GBIshkanah, Grafwidow ~ BWGRTymna the Weaver & Tana, the Bloodsower ~ UGRashmi, Eternities Crafter ~ RGAtarka, World Render
Can I just point out that this is by far the worst rule I have ever heard? It's worse than "all-mana-down" where everyone starts with all their lands in play to "make the game faster" lol.
With free re-draws, you could go infinite with any discard outlet in the game. Hell, you could use a carrion feeder with an eldrazi in your deck (to reshuffle your graveyard) and kill everyone with it. Run every random 1-drop discard outlet and as soon as you hit one, you have something more overpowered than ad nauseam. That's a turn 1 win in a lot of cases. You'd basically have ad nauseam tendrils deck without even having to try since the mana cost of cards can be anything.
The only house rules I've played with are free first mulligan (which I dislike since people hit sol ring almost every game with this rule). It was especially bad because the group insisted that we do partial paris as well, so you could keep your sol ring and fish for broken turn 1 and 2 cards. It was actually the worst.
That said, there is always that unspoken rule of not being a douche by playing a deck out of everyone's league (or strategies people are clearly not okay with). I have many differently powered decks / decks with different strategies and I try to make sure I am playing the right ones at the right tables.
That feels a little harsh but would really cut down on a player wanting to run a turn 1 Manacrypt. Maybe $$$/20 or ($$$/10)-1 would be more balanced?
Do not mess with lands. Period.
No bouncing, destroying, changing what they can tap for (ie Blood Moon), and modifying their type (turning them into a creature, artifact, or enchantment).
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
I think I'm going to ask my group about going back to this, Cards like Oblation and Spin into Myth were staples but now out of most of the decks played.
My group pretty much follows the RC rules.
GBW Ghave - BWR Kaalia - UBG Mineoplasm - URG Riku - GRW Uril - GBR Prossh, I need food - BWU Oloro Lock - UGW Derevi Blink - RBU Nekusar, the Wheeler - UBRWG Progenitus - BR Lyzolda - UB Gisa & Geralf Zombies - UG Edric, Spymaster of Trest +1 Counters matter - W Lin Sivvi - BWU Sydri Artifact Control - RWU Narset, the Attacker - GRW Mayael, the Cheater - RWUG Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis Landfall - GBW Doran, I like Big Butts - UR Mizzix Buyback BWR Edgar and his Vamps
Awful, awful rule.
Agreed. If this were done in my meta, I can see every deck becoming Green-Blue. Imo, it just isn't a healthy environment for long term gaming.
| B Erebos, God of VampiresB | GYeva SmashG | RBosh ArtifactsR | GURAnimar +1 BeatsGUR | RBVial's Secret Hot SauceRB | UBRNekusar, Draw if you DareUBR | RGBDarigaaz'z DragonsRGB | GBSlimeFEETGB | UBOn-Hit LazavUB | URBrudiclad's Artificer InventionsUR | GUBMuldrotha's ElementalsGUB | WUGKestia's EnchantmentsWUG | GUTatyova - Draw, Land, Go!GU | WGArahbo's EquipmentWG | BUWVarina's ZOMBIE HORDESBUW | WLyra's Angelic SalvationW | WBChurch of TeysaWB | UAzami...WizardsU
I made a lengthy thread no to far down --- I got kicked out of the playgroup. Long story short, I pushed a little too hard in the Facebook group chat about wanting to use Words of Wind. But the conclusion was a no because it 'could' potentially begin affecting lands. One of my counters: run more permanents. Response: people play spell decks.
Here is the kicker: I never EVER played an unfun card, locked the board down, or did an infinite combo before turn 8ish. It was all because of a chat group...
Other rules:
-they insta banned the new magus.
-no gold/silver border
-no non-english unless it is a common EDH card
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
Tell me about it...one guy destroy his own land when he played Decimate.
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
We're not super sticklers for playing the real cards, but most if not all of the people who run proxies/gold-border cards have at least one copy of the real version. I frown a little bit at the proxies (especially one guy who runs foil borderless ABU proxy sticker lands that have, in my opinion, super ugly art) and don't run any myself, but I don't bother saying anything. I think the only time I've bothered commenting on the proxies was when one guy (not a regular) was offering to make foil proxy stickers for people of any card they wanted, and that was mostly to voice my opinion about how super tacky proxy stickers are.
Not exactly a house rule, but when people make serious mistakes (more than simple out of order sequencing or something) that the table allows them to correct (or the rules would require them to correct), we make fun of them by calling out "cheat count 1!", "cheat count 2!" etc. depending on how many times the same player has done it during the game.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
As for words of wind. It's not a banned card and sadly... I am tempted to build a deck around it now. WIZARDS
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
Unlike something along the lines of Platinum Emperion, it also stops you from losing to commander damage.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)