There is not a single answer to this question, but multiple.
Most have been touched upon by the discussion however, the arguments back and forth are mostly about game balance, and the necessity to win the game at one point over the metagame where one player simply snowballs to victory.
I am opposed to infinite combos off multiple reasons.
First is how an inf combo deck will either end the game, or have no impact.
- This creates gameplay where either i am happy and did my thing. Or i did nothing. Or i am waiting to be able to do my thing, and everything else happening is irrelevant.
If one player at a table is playing like this it is usually fine, but if everyone is, then I personally do not like the way the games play out. My playgroup seems to agree with me and we frown upon infinite combos, but they are not outright banned.
Second is how it narrows down the approach towards deck building
- say i build a Niv mizzet deck, i could run a lot of different win cons and strategies. But if i include curiosity, it will always be the most effective way to win. Therefore, no matter how i build the deck, seeing as magic is competitive it will always be a deck with "primary" win con to combo off.
Third is how inf combos disregard (for the most part) the boardstate and life totals of other players. In a meta where everyone runs infinites, combat, tempo, and to some degree card advantage. All important aspects of other formats does not matter, as you are just as safe at 3 life and 1000000000 life. Having 20 power on the board does not matter, and having your deck in hand does not matter if it does not contain a way to stop the combo.
- I often hear people comparing Kiki-pestermite with Jarad, golgari lich lord + Lord of extinction in these kind of discussions because both are two card win conditions that kill all opponents at once.
However for the latter, life totals will matter, it requires a lot more setup than just those two cards to win on turn 1-3 (even 3-6), And quite often combos like this will be more mana intensive.
I dont mind infinite combos, but they create gameplay where one draw you "just had it", and combo killed the table turn 3. Even if your deck isn't buildt exclusivly for the combo.
God hands become much more god hands. Due to the nature of the singleton format, if the'res only 2-3 cards that effectivly deal with the combo it is very unlikely that your opponent has it in their starter etc, where it is much easier to sideboard against particular combo strategies in other formats.
To summarize, i dislike infinites, not because of balance purpouses. But because games and deck building is a lot more enjoyable for me without them.
edit: Both as the one playing them, and as the opponent.
Bitter feud works in two scenarios in my experience.
1. Put it on yourself and the last remaining player, or while in the middle of the game put it one the control/lifegain deck, as the others at the table will agree on your priority and those decks don't really push damage to your face quite often.
2. In an archenemy scenario it is possible to give the green beatdown deck double damage against the archenemy. But this only works if the green dude is first after your turn.
So a summary, i prefer it to furnace of rath if you only need the double damage to kill one of the opponents as playing furnance in a green heavy group has a tendency to backfire. Other than this its uses are pretty narrow, and i have frequently found myself sandbagging the card beause it either isn't doing enough or playing it would be political suicide.
Any one mana oops i won the game spell... Be it 2 card combo with the commander or T&N etc.
I don't see the "he got to 9 mana therefore he should be able to topdeck a win with empty hand and board" argument. And from a meta without a lot of blue running around it is extremely frustrating loosing to play like this.
The same with doomsday, the same with ad naus and necropotence.
It isn't as frustrating when 1 guy tries to pull of this kind of thing once in a while because you should have answers up etc. But dont expect every deck to run 5+ counterspells and always have blue mana up.
Its fine if it happens once in a while or it's very clear which dude at the table runs this sort of thing... since then we will just gang up and kill him. Effectively making a race. But if 4 people at the table have 2-3 of theese kind of cards + tutors in their deck.... bleh!
Commander is at is best and its most interactive if the group is fairly balanced in both skill and deck strength. So while they might need a turn or two or three to actually kill you, you should always need to be wary of the other decks.
In the so called low powered games you trade the min-maxing of trying to resolve your plan while keeping answers up, for threading a fine balance with both politics and conservation of resources, as well as when to push for damage. While the decisions being made are different, i'd say that in my experience the game plays it self out in both cases, at least early game.
In competitive games (my experience) it's a complex rock - papers- scissors where it is usually very obvious what needs to be answered (but not necessarily by who), and games are usually decided by who had the fastest/most resilient opener. This demands good sequencing and is typically very interactive because not interacting with a players gameplan by turn 4 or 5 usually means they win. However spending opponents turns shields down or not, is the only real decision to be made. In my opinion.
(Optimizing land drops, thinking of what you would draw next are all things you would do while goldfishing anyways. You do this playing low powered as well, however you usually have a lot more turns ahead to consider, and thus it is a lot more forgiving.)
In more low powered games, there aren't usually that many lines of play to take, it's either try to push an advantage or slowroll to keep yourself off peoples radar. The decisions here are much more based on politics, deception, and resource management. As said earlier, it's decisions along the lines of kill a grave titan? or let it go wild for a few turns and save your spot removal for something scarier.
However i'd say player skill both in sequencing(not necessarily) and politics will have much higher impact on the game, since you have a lot of turns to push that incremental advantage. (In my experience, the people in my group that are skilled at both of these aspects win significantly more than those who are not, even when swapping decks).
So I'll make the case that, at least in my opinion. While higher powered EDH is very interactive it is more of a formality. While the skills being tested are heavy on sequencing and knowing when you can let your guard down or when to push for a win. Lower powered EDH is more forgiving in both sequencing and missing a window of interaction. However it usually requires both social and in-game interaction with careful precision to master. In addition, winning a game is a lot harder if your opponents continue to interact when your win condition has resolved. (witch is not the case for inf combo or lockdown wins.)
I assume here that even low powered decks run a decent amount of interaction, which is the case with my playgroup. However not everyone does this.
Assuming that every player has disruption, some sort of ramp (artifact or not). And you're playing in a meta without half the decks running ad nauseam or similarly effective decks and there are atleast someone attemping to play control. most players will often be at around 9 mana or higher when the game ends. (not that unusual to live until turn 8...).
What i generally dislike about a lot of the mentality on this forum, and sometimes randoms i play with is the over-reliance on infinite combos. Like somehow it is the only possible way to end games.
I'm fine with loosing to infinite combos once in a while, but if you bring 4+ decks for "variety". But all those decks just tutor up some 2 card combo and combo out turn 5-7 (or turn 9 for your casual deck) every single game, I personally wouldn't enjoy loosing to you.
It is kinda the same as with overly linear strategies... You either wipe the floor with the other players or you do nothing all game (killed before you can assemble your combo). Or because someone used sadistic sacrament on you and took out your combo pieces.
Consistency of said combos is also a big factor. a combo with more than 2 pieces takes some effort, but 1 card i wins such as T&N and ad nauseam (or to some degree mind over matter + azami), get really stale as they can be fetched with a single tutor. Or just top-decked for the win without a single nonland permanent on the field.
The fact that boardstates aren't relevant most of the time in the presence of infinite combos is possibly the biggest reason i generally dislike loosing to it.
_____
I enjoy losses where i felt i had a fighting chance, or the game was a back and forth experience and more than 1 player had a chance to win during the duration of the game.
You say your leovold deck has a 50% winrate?? You are aware of the fact that it means you win as much as the 3 other players combined right? They have every right to take you down first in my opinion as you are clearly bringing decks with higher powerlevel to the table.
Depending on your group, how your attitude was when you played the cards etc. I would say that playing leovold lock-down says a lot about play style and attitude towards multiplayer games. If you build decks able to cripple all opponents and/or win 3v1's reliably. Then I would gladly encourage the table to give you that 3v1 and take you out first. Pretty much no matter what your commander is. Because i know you will run consistent and hard to disrupt strategies (tutors for 2 card inf combos etc.). And i don't necessarily know what the others will run yet, so if they play political, my priority target would always be you.
There's also a thing called tunnelvision. You said early lockdown, but not early win? I assume it was a long game where you played with a full grip vs. 3 other players with some sort of puzzle box lock in place? Being the archenemy for a long time creates focus on beating you. Ifa person can't beat you this game, they will most likely subconsciously want to beat you (and specifically you) the next game. Especially if their defeat was a long and grindy one.
edit: tl:dr: Playing oppressive decks will cause you to get all the "random" hate of the table the next round unless some other player is equally oppressive that game.
In my opinion is more about the player than the deck.
I think the most unfun to play against are players that do not respect the "social contract"... While magic is about winning, the ultimate goal is to have fun. (winning is fun, but loosing while having a beer and friendly conversation is also fun). A game of commander in my playgroup is a very social thing, and it is very unfun to play when the occasional antisocial player joins up.
Be it refusing to switch off extremely competitive decks when the rest of the group are playing their jank lists or precons, or starting to whine and/or tilt when all their combo pieces gets answered while the janky timmy threats go unanswered.
To answer the question though, most generals that you cannot prevent the value from anymore since the tuck rule is gone, are really annoying. see: Darevi
First of burn spells that are good in constructed such as lightning bolt etc. are rarely good enough in edh unless you find an effective way of recurring them or cantrip them.
What you want are spells like acidic soil, Fiery confluence or just burn able to hit more than one target. (even things like searing blood is in my opinion a LOT better than ligthning bolt for edh)
You can combine this with either big mana like Mana Geyser for X spells or damage doublers (i strongly recommend Dictate of the twin gods) and spell doublers like reiterate. As they make things go from inefficient to "efficient" quite fast. Enchantments like dictate works especially well with vial smasher since it doubles her damage as well.
Spell doublers is in my opinion the most important part of this, running enough burn to deal 40 damage reliably is tough and having some more flexible cards are nice: howl of the horde, into fiery confluence is 18 damage to each opponent or 54 damage for two cards and 7 mana in a 4 player game. Only requiring an attacker.
edit: to clarify my last point, you dont want to sit with a grip of 1 land and 6 incinerate like cards. Spell doublers can be seen as extra copies of your best burn spell, and can even serve as counterspells vs blue players or ramp vs green players.
The easier solution is to house rule banned cards as legal, instead of the other way around.
Your playgroup and others that want to play cards on the banlist? Then do so! If your group don't like it then they will call you out on it. The only possible consequence is that your group doesn't want to play against your deck if it has to many banned cards, and you might be asked to remove them again.
In addition: If your playing with cards breaking the rules of commander (banned/unhinged/non legend commander etc.) ask your group first, most people tend to be ok with it as long as you keep it to a reasonable level
Something like:
Aether Blast 1R
Instant
Aether Blast deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Aether Amplification 1 (if C was paid to cast this spell, it deals 1 additional damage).
Or on creatures:
Aetherwork Servant 3
Creature - Construct
Aether Amplification 1 (if C was paid to cast this spell, Aether Construct comes into play with a +1/+1 counter).
2/2
Would be a really cool effect, either have it be static at a certian limit or do something for each C spendt to cast the spell.
Wouldn't be to surprised to see some form of either colored fix to colorless spells/creatures. As in a keyword thats similar to devoid but specifies other colors.
- You could have small artifacts that mimic a certain type of mana
- Or permanents that are colored based on the mana spendt to cast them.
If the set is based on Indian culture it would be cool with some sort of reincarnation ability (as in soulshift from kamigawa) but maybe letting non-artifact creatures posses a lower cmc artifact creature or something.
I would recommend you to have a damage doubler or two in your deck.
Cast them for free, and follow up with a combination of the cheap all player burn spells. Acidic soil, Price of progress (people tend to go overboard with nonbasics in my opinion), Fiery confluence.
hitting a doubler with narset holding any variant of twincast means most of the above will hit for 20+ damage. (on the first two this depends on the deck).
also recommend you to play, some sort of way to avoid killing yourself in this manner, but as long as you're at one or above a win is a win.
Not sure about that commander though... While he could handle it pretty easily your basically begging to play archenemy for the rest of your games with that group.
While he' powerful to say the least, he basically screams kill me. Being able to soft lock opponents as early as turn 3 by a 2 card combo, where one is the commander (the other: teferi's puzzle box). And no quick way to finish off players would probably cause both salty and spikey to target you and only you no matter what.
In my playgroup, you wouldn't be able to politics your way out of a 3v1 situation no matter how underpowered your deck was if you're playing that commander somewhat competitively.
it depends on what you want:
Do you want to build a deck able to win 3v1's somewhat consistently?, if so i guess new elf guy is great.
Or do you want to build a deck able to compete with your group without making them 3v1 you?
ps: while its frustrating, your not really meant to win more than 25% of your games in a 4-player-free-for-all, no one is going to act as your team mate, whenever you get ahead expect it to be a 3v1. If your decks are hard to interact with, counters the others or very explosive, i think that to systematically ruin your manabase is a perfectly legit answer to the threat you're presenting, although not a fun one. (if not anything else, expect to be picked on if you brought the most powerful deck to the table!)
Failing to notice the other players board presence is either bad threat assessment or respect for what your deck is capable off. While your rival friend may target you over the other players because of the rivalry, i'm betting that salty's tendency to target you is justified from his point of view.
Most have been touched upon by the discussion however, the arguments back and forth are mostly about game balance, and the necessity to win the game at one point over the metagame where one player simply snowballs to victory.
I am opposed to infinite combos off multiple reasons.
First is how an inf combo deck will either end the game, or have no impact.
- This creates gameplay where either i am happy and did my thing. Or i did nothing. Or i am waiting to be able to do my thing, and everything else happening is irrelevant.
If one player at a table is playing like this it is usually fine, but if everyone is, then I personally do not like the way the games play out. My playgroup seems to agree with me and we frown upon infinite combos, but they are not outright banned.
Second is how it narrows down the approach towards deck building
- say i build a Niv mizzet deck, i could run a lot of different win cons and strategies. But if i include curiosity, it will always be the most effective way to win. Therefore, no matter how i build the deck, seeing as magic is competitive it will always be a deck with "primary" win con to combo off.
Third is how inf combos disregard (for the most part) the boardstate and life totals of other players. In a meta where everyone runs infinites, combat, tempo, and to some degree card advantage. All important aspects of other formats does not matter, as you are just as safe at 3 life and 1000000000 life. Having 20 power on the board does not matter, and having your deck in hand does not matter if it does not contain a way to stop the combo.
- I often hear people comparing Kiki-pestermite with Jarad, golgari lich lord + Lord of extinction in these kind of discussions because both are two card win conditions that kill all opponents at once.
However for the latter, life totals will matter, it requires a lot more setup than just those two cards to win on turn 1-3 (even 3-6), And quite often combos like this will be more mana intensive.
I dont mind infinite combos, but they create gameplay where one draw you "just had it", and combo killed the table turn 3. Even if your deck isn't buildt exclusivly for the combo.
God hands become much more god hands. Due to the nature of the singleton format, if the'res only 2-3 cards that effectivly deal with the combo it is very unlikely that your opponent has it in their starter etc, where it is much easier to sideboard against particular combo strategies in other formats.
To summarize, i dislike infinites, not because of balance purpouses. But because games and deck building is a lot more enjoyable for me without them.
edit: Both as the one playing them, and as the opponent.
Bitter feud works in two scenarios in my experience.
1. Put it on yourself and the last remaining player, or while in the middle of the game put it one the control/lifegain deck, as the others at the table will agree on your priority and those decks don't really push damage to your face quite often.
2. In an archenemy scenario it is possible to give the green beatdown deck double damage against the archenemy. But this only works if the green dude is first after your turn.
So a summary, i prefer it to furnace of rath if you only need the double damage to kill one of the opponents as playing furnance in a green heavy group has a tendency to backfire. Other than this its uses are pretty narrow, and i have frequently found myself sandbagging the card beause it either isn't doing enough or playing it would be political suicide.
I don't see the "he got to 9 mana therefore he should be able to topdeck a win with empty hand and board" argument. And from a meta without a lot of blue running around it is extremely frustrating loosing to play like this.
The same with doomsday, the same with ad naus and necropotence.
It isn't as frustrating when 1 guy tries to pull of this kind of thing once in a while because you should have answers up etc. But dont expect every deck to run 5+ counterspells and always have blue mana up.
Its fine if it happens once in a while or it's very clear which dude at the table runs this sort of thing... since then we will just gang up and kill him. Effectively making a race. But if 4 people at the table have 2-3 of theese kind of cards + tutors in their deck.... bleh!
Commander is at is best and its most interactive if the group is fairly balanced in both skill and deck strength. So while they might need a turn or two or three to actually kill you, you should always need to be wary of the other decks.
In the so called low powered games you trade the min-maxing of trying to resolve your plan while keeping answers up, for threading a fine balance with both politics and conservation of resources, as well as when to push for damage. While the decisions being made are different, i'd say that in my experience the game plays it self out in both cases, at least early game.
In competitive games (my experience) it's a complex rock - papers- scissors where it is usually very obvious what needs to be answered (but not necessarily by who), and games are usually decided by who had the fastest/most resilient opener. This demands good sequencing and is typically very interactive because not interacting with a players gameplan by turn 4 or 5 usually means they win. However spending opponents turns shields down or not, is the only real decision to be made. In my opinion.
(Optimizing land drops, thinking of what you would draw next are all things you would do while goldfishing anyways. You do this playing low powered as well, however you usually have a lot more turns ahead to consider, and thus it is a lot more forgiving.)
In more low powered games, there aren't usually that many lines of play to take, it's either try to push an advantage or slowroll to keep yourself off peoples radar. The decisions here are much more based on politics, deception, and resource management. As said earlier, it's decisions along the lines of kill a grave titan? or let it go wild for a few turns and save your spot removal for something scarier.
However i'd say player skill both in sequencing(not necessarily) and politics will have much higher impact on the game, since you have a lot of turns to push that incremental advantage. (In my experience, the people in my group that are skilled at both of these aspects win significantly more than those who are not, even when swapping decks).
So I'll make the case that, at least in my opinion. While higher powered EDH is very interactive it is more of a formality. While the skills being tested are heavy on sequencing and knowing when you can let your guard down or when to push for a win. Lower powered EDH is more forgiving in both sequencing and missing a window of interaction. However it usually requires both social and in-game interaction with careful precision to master. In addition, winning a game is a lot harder if your opponents continue to interact when your win condition has resolved. (witch is not the case for inf combo or lockdown wins.)
I assume here that even low powered decks run a decent amount of interaction, which is the case with my playgroup. However not everyone does this.
Assuming that every player has disruption, some sort of ramp (artifact or not). And you're playing in a meta without half the decks running ad nauseam or similarly effective decks and there are atleast someone attemping to play control. most players will often be at around 9 mana or higher when the game ends. (not that unusual to live until turn 8...).
What i generally dislike about a lot of the mentality on this forum, and sometimes randoms i play with is the over-reliance on infinite combos. Like somehow it is the only possible way to end games.
I'm fine with loosing to infinite combos once in a while, but if you bring 4+ decks for "variety". But all those decks just tutor up some 2 card combo and combo out turn 5-7 (or turn 9 for your casual deck) every single game, I personally wouldn't enjoy loosing to you.
It is kinda the same as with overly linear strategies... You either wipe the floor with the other players or you do nothing all game (killed before you can assemble your combo). Or because someone used sadistic sacrament on you and took out your combo pieces.
Consistency of said combos is also a big factor. a combo with more than 2 pieces takes some effort, but 1 card i wins such as T&N and ad nauseam (or to some degree mind over matter + azami), get really stale as they can be fetched with a single tutor. Or just top-decked for the win without a single nonland permanent on the field.
The fact that boardstates aren't relevant most of the time in the presence of infinite combos is possibly the biggest reason i generally dislike loosing to it.
_____
I enjoy losses where i felt i had a fighting chance, or the game was a back and forth experience and more than 1 player had a chance to win during the duration of the game.
Depending on your group, how your attitude was when you played the cards etc. I would say that playing leovold lock-down says a lot about play style and attitude towards multiplayer games. If you build decks able to cripple all opponents and/or win 3v1's reliably. Then I would gladly encourage the table to give you that 3v1 and take you out first. Pretty much no matter what your commander is. Because i know you will run consistent and hard to disrupt strategies (tutors for 2 card inf combos etc.). And i don't necessarily know what the others will run yet, so if they play political, my priority target would always be you.
There's also a thing called tunnelvision. You said early lockdown, but not early win? I assume it was a long game where you played with a full grip vs. 3 other players with some sort of puzzle box lock in place? Being the archenemy for a long time creates focus on beating you. Ifa person can't beat you this game, they will most likely subconsciously want to beat you (and specifically you) the next game. Especially if their defeat was a long and grindy one.
edit: tl:dr: Playing oppressive decks will cause you to get all the "random" hate of the table the next round unless some other player is equally oppressive that game.
I think the most unfun to play against are players that do not respect the "social contract"... While magic is about winning, the ultimate goal is to have fun. (winning is fun, but loosing while having a beer and friendly conversation is also fun). A game of commander in my playgroup is a very social thing, and it is very unfun to play when the occasional antisocial player joins up.
Be it refusing to switch off extremely competitive decks when the rest of the group are playing their jank lists or precons, or starting to whine and/or tilt when all their combo pieces gets answered while the janky timmy threats go unanswered.
To answer the question though, most generals that you cannot prevent the value from anymore since the tuck rule is gone, are really annoying. see: Darevi
green/x player trying to downplay a turn one exploration or burgeoning. a bit more socially unacceptable to deal with lands than artifact mana.
Any commander thats a part of a 2 card combo, playing any form of tutor or huge card draw spell (meaning A LOT of the popular commanders).
First of burn spells that are good in constructed such as lightning bolt etc. are rarely good enough in edh unless you find an effective way of recurring them or cantrip them.
What you want are spells like acidic soil, Fiery confluence or just burn able to hit more than one target. (even things like searing blood is in my opinion a LOT better than ligthning bolt for edh)
You can combine this with either big mana like Mana Geyser for X spells or damage doublers (i strongly recommend Dictate of the twin gods) and spell doublers like reiterate. As they make things go from inefficient to "efficient" quite fast. Enchantments like dictate works especially well with vial smasher since it doubles her damage as well.
Spell doublers is in my opinion the most important part of this, running enough burn to deal 40 damage reliably is tough and having some more flexible cards are nice:
howl of the horde, into fiery confluence is 18 damage to each opponent or 54 damage for two cards and 7 mana in a 4 player game. Only requiring an attacker.
edit: to clarify my last point, you dont want to sit with a grip of 1 land and 6 incinerate like cards. Spell doublers can be seen as extra copies of your best burn spell, and can even serve as counterspells vs blue players or ramp vs green players.
Your playgroup and others that want to play cards on the banlist? Then do so! If your group don't like it then they will call you out on it. The only possible consequence is that your group doesn't want to play against your deck if it has to many banned cards, and you might be asked to remove them again.
In addition: If your playing with cards breaking the rules of commander (banned/unhinged/non legend commander etc.) ask your group first, most people tend to be ok with it as long as you keep it to a reasonable level
Would be a really cool effect, either have it be static at a certian limit or do something for each C spendt to cast the spell.
Wouldn't be to surprised to see some form of either colored fix to colorless spells/creatures. As in a keyword thats similar to devoid but specifies other colors.
- You could have small artifacts that mimic a certain type of mana
- Or permanents that are colored based on the mana spendt to cast them.
If the set is based on Indian culture it would be cool with some sort of reincarnation ability (as in soulshift from kamigawa) but maybe letting non-artifact creatures posses a lower cmc artifact creature or something.
Cast them for free, and follow up with a combination of the cheap all player burn spells. Acidic soil, Price of progress (people tend to go overboard with nonbasics in my opinion), Fiery confluence.
hitting a doubler with narset holding any variant of twincast means most of the above will hit for 20+ damage. (on the first two this depends on the deck).
also recommend you to play, some sort of way to avoid killing yourself in this manner, but as long as you're at one or above a win is a win.
While he' powerful to say the least, he basically screams kill me. Being able to soft lock opponents as early as turn 3 by a 2 card combo, where one is the commander (the other: teferi's puzzle box). And no quick way to finish off players would probably cause both salty and spikey to target you and only you no matter what.
In my playgroup, you wouldn't be able to politics your way out of a 3v1 situation no matter how underpowered your deck was if you're playing that commander somewhat competitively.
it depends on what you want:
Do you want to build a deck able to win 3v1's somewhat consistently?, if so i guess new elf guy is great.
Or do you want to build a deck able to compete with your group without making them 3v1 you?
ps: while its frustrating, your not really meant to win more than 25% of your games in a 4-player-free-for-all, no one is going to act as your team mate, whenever you get ahead expect it to be a 3v1. If your decks are hard to interact with, counters the others or very explosive, i think that to systematically ruin your manabase is a perfectly legit answer to the threat you're presenting, although not a fun one. (if not anything else, expect to be picked on if you brought the most powerful deck to the table!)
Failing to notice the other players board presence is either bad threat assessment or respect for what your deck is capable off. While your rival friend may target you over the other players because of the rivalry, i'm betting that salty's tendency to target you is justified from his point of view.
Seems exceptionally powerfull, I dont see you surviving long with him at your helm though