Everyone focuses on the disaster scenario of a god-hand with fast mana openers. Yes, those games are incredibly unfair, but they are also occasional. Focusing on the best-case scenario ignores that fast mana is a terrible late-game draw. You're losing something by running it because it means you're not running a late-game card in that slot.
But cheap tutors are always good, because they are always the best and most appropriate card in your deck for the current situation. There's zero opportunity cost to run them and no effective hate against them. And no, a one-of copy of Mindcensor or Stranglehold is not effective hate so much as an occasional inconvenience; the tutors are cheaper than any of the hate, more numerous, and more widely applicable so that you're not hurting yourself by running a bunch of them. That's like saying Ancestral Recall is fine because Omen Machine exists.
Sol Ring is not just good on turn 1. It's 99% better than a land in the late game and 1 mana difference often decides between winning and losing.
Everyone focuses on the disaster scenario of a god-hand with fast mana openers. Yes, those games are incredibly unfair, but they are also occasional. Focusing on the best-case scenario ignores that fast mana is a terrible late-game draw. You're losing something by running it because it means you're not running a late-game card in that slot.
But cheap tutors are always good, because they are always the best and most appropriate card in your deck for the current situation. There's zero opportunity cost to run them and no effective hate against them. And no, a one-of copy of Mindcensor or Stranglehold is not effective hate so much as an occasional inconvenience; the tutors are cheaper than any of the hate, more numerous, and more widely applicable so that you're not hurting yourself by running a bunch of them. That's like saying Ancestral Recall is fine because Omen Machine exists.
Sol Ring is not just good on turn 1. It's 99% better than a land in the late game and 1 mana difference often decides between winning and losing.
Which is irrelevant because this isn't a conversation about what's good, it's a conversation about which is more harmful. Sol Ring is still good turn 7, it's just not great, and nowhere near harmful to the format. The only time that fast Mana can be argued to have a harmful effect on the format is the first turn or two. I've never heard of anyone complain about a turn 5 or 6 Sol Ring, and if I ever do my only response will be derisive forced laughter that goes on way too long. Cheap tutors have their "harmful" effect, undermining variance at a low cost, at every stage of the game. Not that either actually harms tbe format, but the effect of the tutors at least goes against a feature of the format.
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A well build deck will make tutors worse (except for combo decks) because of redundancy. Yes, tutors are still good in well build decks but not as good as in badly build dittos. E.g. consider rampart growth (a fairly standard 2 cmc mana accel card) vs. 2 cmc tutor into sakura tribe elder (the gold standard of 2 cmc mana accel). The first is cheaper while the latter is more expensive but can instead do other things if you draw it latter. A good deck that wants to accel mana will therefore not add as many tutors as possible with only a few gold standard mana accel cards, but remove some of the worse tutors for some more (but slightly weaker) mana accel cards. Another example could be that enough straight card draw + redundancy will make tutors worse (e.g. I have a pauper (EDH) control deck and some of the tutors are starting to be the weakest cards in the deck, because the deck simply never needs to find anything in particular - outside combo pieces).
Thus, tutors help worse deck builders and make games more fair and interesting (in the sense that the probability that a given person wins is closer to uniform)!
On the other hand, fast mana makes games more predictable and thus less interesting (in the sense that if you start with some fast mana piece, then you chance of winning or being the big bad increases a lot)
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I think both of these things are problematic to the format. I mean, I love getting a T1 Land -> Sol Ring -> Signet as much as the next guy, but those games to tend to go overwhelmingly in my favor, and aren't typically much fun for other people, especially if it's a 1-on-1 game. Not the greatest way for people to have fun and enjoyable games. Sol Ring can probably stand to be banned, with that in mind, but I'm not opposed to Mana Crypt and the like due to the strongly apparent downsides associated with such cards. With regards to tutors, I think the ones that cost 1-3 or 4 are probably a tad undercosted for the format. I love cards like Rune-Scarred Demon and Sidisi, Undead Vizier, but Demonic Tutor can go and stay go. One of Commander's biggest draws is the diversity and inconsistency in the format - if you want to draw a specific card effect more often, put more of that type of card in your deck. Putting in cheap tutors is against the spirit of the format, IMO.
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I think, built optimally, fast mana is easier to ride to victory than tutors. In Commander, it's not so much what you can do that's powerful, but when you can do it. Eventually, every Commander deck will do something game winning. The winning Commander deck does so first. A deck built with fast mana and generous card advantage will come into as many game winning plays as its builder can imagine, and with less predictability.
It will be about the same actually since this is a singleton format. Also if all the Commander decks there are okay with those being the decks it also will not be a problem.
Sorry, I just don't see the problem with fast mana. Fast mana = Fast start = Massive target on your back.
As a spikey Spike, I had to learn the hard way that multiplayer games don't play out the same way as 1v1. It feels great dumping your hand out by turn 3 and steamrolling over one of your opponents... until you realize you've run out of gas and there's 3 other people who now want nothing more than to see you lose. That's about the same time you're wishing your next draw is a Demonic Tutor.
Sorry, I just don't see the problem with fast mana. Fast mana = Fast start = Massive target on your back.
As a spikey Spike, I had to learn the hard way that multiplayer games don't play out the same way as 1v1. It feels great dumping your hand out by turn 3 and steamrolling over one of your opponents... until you realize you've run out of gas and there's 3 other people who now want nothing more than to see you lose. That's about the same time you're wishing your next draw is a Demonic Tutor.
This is exactly it. Getting your high cost general out by T3 is a very good way to start a game of Archenemy. That person doesn't usually get very far because every piece of removal is pointed straight at them.
I've played against a lot of turn one Sol Rings, and some of them were followed by a signet into a turn two (with more ramp or reanimation) game-wrecker like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. That sucks. But far more often, I see them drop Ring and leave it untapped because they have no colorless two-drops in hand; this leads to a powerful turn two that certainly is hard to answer or race, but it isn't unbeatable. Fast mana can ruin games, but it all depends on what they use it for.
Tutors are actually pretty similar - it depends entirely on how they are played. Are you tutoring the same combo every game? Boring! Are you tutoring broken stuff? Lame. Are you just tutoring a good threat or an answer to someone else's board? Cool with me.
Of the two, I'd say fast mana is the bigger problem. You can use cheap tutors all you want, but you still need the mana to cast whatever you tutored.
I've never heard of anyone complain about a turn 5 or 6 Sol Ring, and if I ever do my only response will be derisive forced laughter that goes on way too long.
They used statistics to break down some important questions using statistical analysis. The most important for this topic being: Does a T1 Sol Ring lead to a win.
A T1 Sol Ring led to a reduced win percentage. I believe that Josh and DJ were spot on with their analysis. A T1 Sol Ring does let you get your 4 drop out on T2, but 4 drops don't really win the game. It's 8-9 mana worth of cards that lead to wins.*
*Disclaimer, I am not talking about CEDH.
Disclaimer: They only used ~300 games to come to these conclusions, so the sample size is small, but it's better than nothing.
i think its definitely tutors. not just fast tutors, but tutors in general.
one thing that makes EDH fun is its singleton format, right? the crazy format, where we have unique cards that all do different things in 100 cards..
tutors go against that completely. it makes consistency and reliability a thing. It might be what you're looking for, but that's not what EDH is supposed to be about, i think. this isn't 100-card vintage; it's supposed to be more chaotic and players are supposed to be trying to work out a strategy with a given starting hand. if i turn 1 demonic consultation, I'm naming whatever combo piece i happen to need to win the game. every time. that makes games samey...
...and if i DON'T name whatever game-ending combo piece it is that i need, then i'm just pulling punches on the table (and i can't stand that).
fast mana can turn individual games into degenerate races to win/not lose, but it is random whether or not it occurs (up to a point), and it's for just that one game. a glut of tutors makes every game turn out exactly the same. and that is (in my opinion) anathema to "the spirit of EDH".
i think its definitely tutors. not just fast tutors, but tutors in general.
one thing that makes EDH fun is its singleton format, right? the crazy format, where we have unique cards that all do different things in 100 cards..
tutors go against that completely. it makes consistency and reliability a thing. It might be what you're looking for, but that's not what EDH is supposed to be about, i think. this isn't 100-card vintage; it's supposed to be more chaotic and players are supposed to be trying to work out a strategy with a given starting hand. if i turn 1 demonic consultation, I'm naming whatever combo piece i happen to need to win the game. every time. that makes games samey...
...and if i DON'T name whatever game-ending combo piece it is that i need, then i'm just pulling punches on the table (and i can't stand that).
fast mana can turn individual games into degenerate races to win/not lose, but it is random whether or not it occurs (up to a point), and it's for just that one game. a glut of tutors makes every game turn out exactly the same. and that is (in my opinion) anathema to "the spirit of EDH".
This isn't a problem with tutoring, this is a problem with how people play that you are describing here.
A tutor is a second copy of *any* card it can find that is in your deck so that doesn't necessarily have to the be the same card every time nor does it have to be a 'good' or 'game winning' card.
If a person will cast a tutor to find the same card every time then your problem is not with the Tutor it is with the player.
That is also partially why I lean the side of fast mana, tutors can be ambiguous the mana is just straight advantage always.
i think its definitely tutors. not just fast tutors, but tutors in general.
one thing that makes EDH fun is its singleton format, right? the crazy format, where we have unique cards that all do different things in 100 cards..
tutors go against that completely. it makes consistency and reliability a thing. It might be what you're looking for, but that's not what EDH is supposed to be about, i think. this isn't 100-card vintage; it's supposed to be more chaotic and players are supposed to be trying to work out a strategy with a given starting hand. if i turn 1 demonic consultation, I'm naming whatever combo piece i happen to need to win the game. every time. that makes games samey...
...and if i DON'T name whatever game-ending combo piece it is that i need, then i'm just pulling punches on the table (and i can't stand that).
fast mana can turn individual games into degenerate races to win/not lose, but it is random whether or not it occurs (up to a point), and it's for just that one game. a glut of tutors makes every game turn out exactly the same. and that is (in my opinion) anathema to "the spirit of EDH".
This isn't a problem with tutoring, this is a problem with how people play that you are describing here.
A tutor is a second copy of *any* card it can find that is in your deck so that doesn't necessarily have to the be the same card every time nor does it have to be a 'good' or 'game winning' card.
If a person will cast a tutor to find the same card every time then your problem is not with the Tutor it is with the player.
That is also partially why I lean the side of fast mana, tutors can be ambiguous the mana is just straight advantage always.
That is definitely fair enough. at the same time, doesn't that apply to the same degree to fast mana? i.e. if i have a mana crypt and sol ring in my opening hand, wouldn't i want to play it every time (because i want to win)... in as much as i'd throw my tutors at my win-cons (because i want to win)? the end result is still the same; it's a game state that isn't what i'd be looking for. but again, i'm happy with the state of my meta; i'm just commenting on the abstract "what everyone else in the world does" meta.
at the end of the day, i think you've sort of cracked it; it's not fast mana nor tutors that are problematic; it's a combination of the player/deck in question. my pet deck features fast mana and weird tutors like demonic consultation, insidious dreams and doomsday. whenever i tutor for stuff though, i usually end up choosing the first thing i'd fancy (like kaervek's spite and last laugh), and not necessarily something to wipe the table with. That, and I'm not a particularly competitive player.
A tutor is a second copy of *any* card it can find that is in your deck
And this doesn't make tutors "straight advantage always" in a singleton format? Especially if to bypass the rule you only need to pay 1-2 mana?
You are mistaking what I am intending by that statement. A Sol Ring or Mana Crypt always just accelerates everything else the deck can do by 1 or 2 mana respectively they are very linear things that can not do anything else and just fuel advantage into the deck. A tutor as I also said is ambiguous it is both the best card in your deck and the card you like the most in a deck and the card right at that time however those three things are often not the same thing in terms of Commander decks.
Fast Mana without a doubt, it puts the other 3 players into reactive mode dealing with the player who is on turn 3/4/5 mana when everyone else is on turn 2 mana.
Not towards you. My personal opinion of what i think hurts the game is people trying to ban things, and complaining about things being broken. It hurts creativity. Will you lose lots of games to some strategies? Yes! Should you moan about it ... no! There is different play groups for different people. This is a strategy game if you don't like mana ramps figure out how to stop them, don't like tutors stop them. Thats what control cards are for.
Again just my opinion for what its worth. I am super competitive and if things get watered down i can't be the better version of me i possibly can at the game. In this game just like my jiujitsu, and everything i do...
They used statistics to break down some important questions using statistical analysis. The most important for this topic being: Does a T1 Sol Ring lead to a win.
A T1 Sol Ring led to a reduced win percentage. I believe that Josh and DJ were spot on with their analysis. A T1 Sol Ring does let you get your 4 drop out on T2, but 4 drops don't really win the game. It's 8-9 mana worth of cards that lead to wins.*
*Disclaimer, I am not talking about CEDH.
Disclaimer: They only used ~300 games to come to these conclusions, so the sample size is small, but it's better than nothing.
I expected a very modest improvement in chances (in contrast to the "zomg turn 1 Sol ring just wins ban nao" perception that is rampant), interesting to see it actually tested and it actually coming in as reducing win percentages. I wonder how those losses played out. Was it a statistical artifact unrelated to the t1 ring that is skewing it, say another player getting a combo off ftw despite the t1 ring player otherwise dominating, or was it something related to getting a t1 ring, like becoming the archenemy and the damage that does outweighing the benefit of the accelerated Mana, or possibly a tendency to overextend when you get a t1 ring. The latter would be something that could be mitigated by the t1 ring player, simply play less aggressively, and lead to higher win percentages, while the former, t1 ring = archenemy, would be just baked in and would be a structural disadvantage to a t1 ring. I know that if I have a rock in my opening hand but I don't have a way leverage playing it t1 into significant advantage, I'll hold off on casting it to avoid becoming a target. I've noticed that people get less worried about a turn 3 or 4 Sol ring or mana crypt than a turn 1 rock, even if both would accomplish the same thing. Nothing worse than playing a turn 1 rock with nothing special to do with it turn 2 and seeing it get Reclamation Saged or seeing the table start gunning for you. Oh sure, I played my commander early, and it immediately ate an STP and now I have to wait just as long to cast it and have it stick, except now everyone hates me, great.
People remember when they get blown out by fast starts, then forget about all the times those fast starts just get stopped, and all the times a late rock helps someone get another cast out of their commander, or a turn 5 top decked Sol ring helps get the Mana screwed guy back in the game.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I would have voted into the "neither are an issue" category if there was one, but alas there wasn't. When it comes to fast mana I feel this is not the format where that is the problem. In commander we don't need to rush to 4-5 mana like you do in other formats, late game high CMC win more cards/combos are usually the end goal. If one player drops a turn 1 Sol Ring and then a different player does a turn 4 Cultivate that is automatically neutralized. Sure the turn 1 Sol Ring might have an extra permanent or one with a higher CMC slightly earlier, but in a game with 4 players fast mana is not that large of an issue. Even in situations where a player gets a perfect hand with fast mana the politics of the game should adjust for that slightly and even out the playing field due to that player becoming the focus of the table. When talking about tutors I feel it gets a little trickier because obviously being able to find whatever answer you need at any given time can be a powerful, but I do not feel it is game breaking. Tutors are the most flexible cards in the format since they can become whatever you need them to be. (Technically cards like Enlightened Tutor can only become an enchantment, but with correct deck building that will be the only thing you need out of it). For the sake of time I am going to talk strictly about Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor. In a 100 card singleton format the idea of deck thinning is important, but does not have as much of an impact as it would be in a game such as Hearthstone that only has 30 cards and allows duplicates. With as many cards per deck as we deal with in EDH thinning out the deck does not adjust the statistical advantage of finding future cards enough to be that important. But now moving onto the bigger deal which is the ability to find any card in your deck on a whim. Super behind on the board? Lets go find that Cyclonic Rift and just get a nice little reset. Oh the board is flooded with creatures why not find that Damnation and try again. About to lose to a spell lets find our Counterspell and stop that nonsense in its tracks. In these situations what is so wrong about finding a way back into the game when you are behind; if that were the case then whoever gets ahead the fastest should win the game. On the contrary I can see how when the person who is ahead has the key to every lock and can then stop you from having a chance back into the game. That does seem strong, but you cannot tell me that there are not games where somebody steamrolls a game. And finally that brings me to combos. Combos are hard enough to successfully get online most of the time they can use a little boost.
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Sol Ring is not just good on turn 1. It's 99% better than a land in the late game and 1 mana difference often decides between winning and losing.
Which is irrelevant because this isn't a conversation about what's good, it's a conversation about which is more harmful. Sol Ring is still good turn 7, it's just not great, and nowhere near harmful to the format. The only time that fast Mana can be argued to have a harmful effect on the format is the first turn or two. I've never heard of anyone complain about a turn 5 or 6 Sol Ring, and if I ever do my only response will be derisive forced laughter that goes on way too long. Cheap tutors have their "harmful" effect, undermining variance at a low cost, at every stage of the game. Not that either actually harms tbe format, but the effect of the tutors at least goes against a feature of the format.
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Thus, tutors help worse deck builders and make games more fair and interesting (in the sense that the probability that a given person wins is closer to uniform)!
On the other hand, fast mana makes games more predictable and thus less interesting (in the sense that if you start with some fast mana piece, then you chance of winning or being the big bad increases a lot)
Also, repeatable or infinite time magic = bad.
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Turn-1 win probability on the play: 0.0023% (once per 43,104 games on average)
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As a spikey Spike, I had to learn the hard way that multiplayer games don't play out the same way as 1v1. It feels great dumping your hand out by turn 3 and steamrolling over one of your opponents... until you realize you've run out of gas and there's 3 other people who now want nothing more than to see you lose. That's about the same time you're wishing your next draw is a Demonic Tutor.
This is exactly it. Getting your high cost general out by T3 is a very good way to start a game of Archenemy. That person doesn't usually get very far because every piece of removal is pointed straight at them.
Tutors are actually pretty similar - it depends entirely on how they are played. Are you tutoring the same combo every game? Boring! Are you tutoring broken stuff? Lame. Are you just tutoring a good threat or an answer to someone else's board? Cool with me.
Of the two, I'd say fast mana is the bigger problem. You can use cheap tutors all you want, but you still need the mana to cast whatever you tutored.
I would pay to see that.
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They used statistics to break down some important questions using statistical analysis. The most important for this topic being: Does a T1 Sol Ring lead to a win.
*Disclaimer, I am not talking about CEDH.
Disclaimer: They only used ~300 games to come to these conclusions, so the sample size is small, but it's better than nothing.
one thing that makes EDH fun is its singleton format, right? the crazy format, where we have unique cards that all do different things in 100 cards..
tutors go against that completely. it makes consistency and reliability a thing. It might be what you're looking for, but that's not what EDH is supposed to be about, i think. this isn't 100-card vintage; it's supposed to be more chaotic and players are supposed to be trying to work out a strategy with a given starting hand. if i turn 1 demonic consultation, I'm naming whatever combo piece i happen to need to win the game. every time. that makes games samey...
...and if i DON'T name whatever game-ending combo piece it is that i need, then i'm just pulling punches on the table (and i can't stand that).
fast mana can turn individual games into degenerate races to win/not lose, but it is random whether or not it occurs (up to a point), and it's for just that one game. a glut of tutors makes every game turn out exactly the same. and that is (in my opinion) anathema to "the spirit of EDH".
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This isn't a problem with tutoring, this is a problem with how people play that you are describing here.
A tutor is a second copy of *any* card it can find that is in your deck so that doesn't necessarily have to the be the same card every time nor does it have to be a 'good' or 'game winning' card.
If a person will cast a tutor to find the same card every time then your problem is not with the Tutor it is with the player.
That is also partially why I lean the side of fast mana, tutors can be ambiguous the mana is just straight advantage always.
That is definitely fair enough. at the same time, doesn't that apply to the same degree to fast mana? i.e. if i have a mana crypt and sol ring in my opening hand, wouldn't i want to play it every time (because i want to win)... in as much as i'd throw my tutors at my win-cons (because i want to win)? the end result is still the same; it's a game state that isn't what i'd be looking for. but again, i'm happy with the state of my meta; i'm just commenting on the abstract "what everyone else in the world does" meta.
at the end of the day, i think you've sort of cracked it; it's not fast mana nor tutors that are problematic; it's a combination of the player/deck in question. my pet deck features fast mana and weird tutors like demonic consultation, insidious dreams and doomsday. whenever i tutor for stuff though, i usually end up choosing the first thing i'd fancy (like kaervek's spite and last laugh), and not necessarily something to wipe the table with. That, and I'm not a particularly competitive player.
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You are mistaking what I am intending by that statement. A Sol Ring or Mana Crypt always just accelerates everything else the deck can do by 1 or 2 mana respectively they are very linear things that can not do anything else and just fuel advantage into the deck. A tutor as I also said is ambiguous it is both the best card in your deck and the card you like the most in a deck and the card right at that time however those three things are often not the same thing in terms of Commander decks.
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Again just my opinion for what its worth. I am super competitive and if things get watered down i can't be the better version of me i possibly can at the game. In this game just like my jiujitsu, and everything i do...
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I expected a very modest improvement in chances (in contrast to the "zomg turn 1 Sol ring just wins ban nao" perception that is rampant), interesting to see it actually tested and it actually coming in as reducing win percentages. I wonder how those losses played out. Was it a statistical artifact unrelated to the t1 ring that is skewing it, say another player getting a combo off ftw despite the t1 ring player otherwise dominating, or was it something related to getting a t1 ring, like becoming the archenemy and the damage that does outweighing the benefit of the accelerated Mana, or possibly a tendency to overextend when you get a t1 ring. The latter would be something that could be mitigated by the t1 ring player, simply play less aggressively, and lead to higher win percentages, while the former, t1 ring = archenemy, would be just baked in and would be a structural disadvantage to a t1 ring. I know that if I have a rock in my opening hand but I don't have a way leverage playing it t1 into significant advantage, I'll hold off on casting it to avoid becoming a target. I've noticed that people get less worried about a turn 3 or 4 Sol ring or mana crypt than a turn 1 rock, even if both would accomplish the same thing. Nothing worse than playing a turn 1 rock with nothing special to do with it turn 2 and seeing it get Reclamation Saged or seeing the table start gunning for you. Oh sure, I played my commander early, and it immediately ate an STP and now I have to wait just as long to cast it and have it stick, except now everyone hates me, great.
People remember when they get blown out by fast starts, then forget about all the times those fast starts just get stopped, and all the times a late rock helps someone get another cast out of their commander, or a turn 5 top decked Sol ring helps get the Mana screwed guy back in the game.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!