With the Pre-Con Mizzix deck and 50 $ worth of cards, I would not know how to play the way you describe it.
All in all, to me, it sounds as if your decks are not very strong at all.
Finish of the whole table before he gets the mana for an overloaded Rift, I'd say.
Run more removal, use Counterspells. 2-3 hours for a normal game are long! 6 hours? No way!
If anybody needs advice against my own Mizzix deck: kill Mizzix! Often! That's why the deck is so fragile. I obviously don't know your friends deck, but without a lot of effort, I don't think it will be much different.
What decks are the other players playing?
Our games use to be the longest / worst with 3 players that are basically neutrazing one another or teaming 1vs2 all the time. Better, faster decks help with this.
Again, it isn't that his deck is powerful. It's just that we don't really *want* to take him out early because it's like he isn't even playing then. It's also the archetypes within our group. Besides him, there is only one other person who plays control. Plenty of people run removal, but you have to realize Mizzix is insanely easy to pull back out. This player constantly has mana rocks that just aren't worth destroying in the game.
IF he was actually winning by doing the things I mentioned, then sure, we would all get up and improve our decks. Our decks are fine. The one friend runs a deck so powerful that I usually have to clash head-to-head with him a lot of games (mine is subsequently as powerful.) None of them have complained anyone's deck is *too* powerful because we all play smart. Our issue is, the only way to play smart with him is to kill him early.
In essence, we aren't blaming him for the act of control, we are blaming him for the massive slow-down. His deck is garbage. Most of the $50 worth of cards he added are junk bounce, counter or removal. He's constantly destroying mana rocks, bouncing creatures, and countering spells for absolutely no good reason. It'd be the equivalent of me playing a black-red deck and ONLY putting in removal, burn and ONE combo, lol. I absolutely mean it when I say 6 hours. My friends attest. In contrast, I invited 3 friends over last night for a game of commander. We got 3 in within 4 hours. None of those players were Mizzix.
We were actually able to get him to play a game where he didn't do these things. He was playing smart the whole game. Unfortunately, the circumstances actually didn't allow him to stop the strongest player because his creatures couldn't be countered. After the game, what he said really annoyed me and showed he just isn't capable of playing control...
Us: "Sucks you didn't have a counter for his creature that makes it so other creatures can't be countered. You played well otherwise, but after that you were screwed."
Him: "I had a counter."
Me: "Why didn't you use it?"
Him: "You told me not to use any counters!"
(This guy is old enough to know better. I said nothing like this and he's either being salty because people don't like his deck the way he plays, or he isn't capable of playing smart control.)
Anyways. I made a really good deck for him to try. I hope he enjoys it. We will see how it goes.
As a general update, since I do not have time to reply to everyone individually...
This person did not invest much time and money into the deck. He added about $10 worth of cards to the deck after buying the pre-made one (plus another $40 worth of cards he already had since his first deck ever that he carries down.) It isn't that it is too powerful, or not powerful enough, it's just it's a deck built to be evasive but played aggressive. He plays control like it's a B/R deck that has burn and murder spells, which it isn't/doesn't. We tried getting him to make new decks, teach him how to play, etc.
Also, I can't really say, like Blackvise did, that he enjoys playing it, because nowadays he's only in the game for 20 minutes before he is targetted out of pure fear that he will prolong the game or do something stupid.
SavannahLion - Our games when he is eliminated early on without him able to stop it take about 3-4 hours. The reason it takes 6-7 hours with him is that he constantly uses slow-down spells and gets them back from the graveyard to play them again. Cyclonic rift is the worst of them all. He could have 40 health, a 4/4 defender, and be swung at with a 10/10 trample and decide it's time to overload cyclonic rift... Of course he does this again later in the game. We wouldn't mind this except, it doesn't save his life NOR does it win him the game. It saves him 6 life and that is it. He knows decisions like this get him targeted hardcore and so it bewilders us he still does it. Also, believe me, he is awkward, but not anti-social around us. He's always on his phone talking to someone even mid-game.
That's the worst of it. When that 10/10 is swung at him, he looks up from his phone and plays cyclonic rift without even glancing at the board...
Anyways. We have gotten him to agree to play a deck of my choice. I plan to give him something that doesn't allow him to interact at all outside of using creatures or creature abilities, while still being immensely fun. The goal is to get him in the habit of NOT being able to bounce willy nilly, so when he returns to Mizzix, he hopefully picks up on the fact that if he plays it safe he won't be a target. If that doesn't work, I will hand him a deck that is all about hurting someone hard and fast since this would indicate his playstyle is more akin to aggressive play rather than evasive. Then we would refuse to play with Mizzix.
What is the context of this EDH group? Are you all friends outside of the group? Do you particularly care about what happens during the game, or is the EDH thing an excuse to hang out with your friends?
If it's the latter, does it upset him when he's killed off early? (Presumably he still gets to hang out and have a beer while you finish your game?)
If it's the former, and he acknowledges that y'all have more fun in a game that he is not in, can you just...hang out with him in a not-EDH context?
At this point it sounds like you've tried multiple different variants of nagging him about his playstyle, and none of them have stuck - and why should they? By continuing to include him in games where he gets to play the same boring deck over and over, all you're doing is preserving status quo (assuming the nagging doesn't actually bother him; all he has to do is say "yeah I'll consider changing xyz thing" and then not do it). If you don't want to hard exclude him, could you "start small" by, say, making him make a new deck and play a general that isn't UR? That will give you a hint as to whether the problem is "his playstyle" or something else entirely. If he refuses to make a new deck (hard to blame him, crack ain't cheap), maybe lend him an extra deck that people have demonstrated that they do have fun playing against. Ideally one that's aggro/midrange and doesn't let him take 20+ minute turns.
We care about what happens in the game. We all really love the format. It's not just social, it's also a way to express ourselves and we (used to) have some stupid fun games.
He doesn't get too upset when he's killed off early, but he usually just goes to the other room on his phone rather than hang with us.
We play EDH every week. We love to play it when it's fun. So, excluding him would practically exclude him from most of our meet ups. The irony is, we would have more time to do other things if he didn't slow the game so much.
We have all given him tips on how to make his deck more fun, offered to help him make decks, etc.
However...
We have never tried to give him an already made deck outside of blue and ask him to play it wholeheartedly. Perhaps I will try this.
While on the topic...
For a control player, what would be the best deck for me to make him? I want something that is miles away from control so that he doesn't try to play it like control. We once gave him a artifact-based deck to play when he forgot his deck and he tried playing it as control, aye... I want to give him a far-stretch from control, but also something ridiculously fun so that there's a chance it will stick with him.
I used to be the guy that got teamed up on in my old group for having too powerful of a deck (my Sharuum...popular general to hate). Eventually, I just got sick of being teamed up on so I made more fun decks and mostly played them instead. After that, I didn't get teamed up on that much
I find that's one way to get people to stop playing powerful decks in EDH
To specify, his deck isn't too powerful. He rarely wins even when we leave him alone. The reason his deck is so boring is because he not only rarely wins, but he simply slows the game down to a halt, hurts the wrong players for no reason, wipes the board even though no one was hurting him and he doesn't have a win condition, etc. The reason everyone teams on him is *because* he makes the games last so long without ever winning.
Have you ever been caught up in a situation where a very close friend of yours refuses to play a deck other than the one no one in your group enjoys playing against?
A friend of mine plays Mizzix. No commander is boring in essence, not at all. It's the way he plays it, and the way we *have* to play against it.
He only has two win conditions, both of which are infinite combos he can cast at instant speed. Other than that, he only wins by barely burning the last remaining player alive (which it almost never comes to.) Since he can win the game with infinite combos at instant speed (that he also tutors for), and nothing else, it usually boils down to this...
1. We start the game and leave him alone. We don't like to target sole players based on past games.
2. He targets a player for no reason at all. He will hurt that player even though that player is of no threat to him.
3. Now that he has no mana left, another play gets ridiculous powerful because A. That player from play 2 can't stop him and B. The Mizzix player has no more spells or mana.
4. He makes a blatantly stupid play that hurts everyone EXCEPT the stronger player.
5. The strong player wins.
It evolved into...
1. We start the game and leave him alone.
2. He slows down everyone in the game, hurts them all in some way, all while not creating any board state on his own field.
3. Everyone gets annoyed that he has literally had 2-3 hours to the game and decides to target him (Which takes another hour to actually kill him.)
4. People get too tired to play and scoop.
And finally, it evolved into...
1. Everyone kills him off early.
I really don't think it should be this way. He has played control for 3 years (we meet every week.) We are constantly giving him tips to play better control, suggesting more fun cards, suggesting he tries other color schemes, etc. He is just a blatantly bad control player, acknowledges his mistakes and never changes them (they are easy to change.) Once in awhile we get a good game where he doesn't do those things (and he even wins w/o infinite combo!), but it only makes us question why he can't do that most games, as it is pretty much a decision not to do stupid things. He refuses to try other decks, even when we offer to help him make them. We offer other cards and combos for the deck, which he never really took.
It's everyone in the group though. We had one player give him the benefit of the doubt and claim he was better now, but then the next few games he says he changed his mind and agreed his deck is super boring to play against and only makes the game last way longer than it should.
He is a good friend of ours. We don't want to not play with him, but at the same time, the group almost never wants to play on grounds the game will take too long (we start at 10pm and end at 4-5am... 6-7 hours).
Any suggestions would be awesome. Maybe anything I can say to him that would make him change his playstyle without sounding too petty or mean.
Thanks guys!
EDIT: What does everyone think about me making a Zendruu group-hug deck? The goal would be to basically hurt players who hurt fun, and help players who promote fun. I could stop my friend's slow down gameplay, and, if he is too weak after not being able to slow the game down at all, I could help him or hurt others.
As everyone knows, the "usual" cube is singleton, intended to have the perfect amount of cards for those drafting it (you would have a 360 card cube for 8 players.) Even without singleton rules, the perfect card amount usually applies. At least, that's where my experience lies.
With that being said, a conspriacy cube woudl be different. At least the one I want to build.
My goal is to recreate the actual drafting experience. The fun of Conspiracy is building a really (would-be) jank deck and making it work through draft-affecting cards and conspiracies. The unpredictability of the draft is what I want to achieve here. My Ravnica unified cube is a perfectly (as perfect as it can be) balanced cube, but that's a different situation. I want every draft from this cube to feel like you just cracked packs and got random cards.
So. How would one achieve this? Here's how I thought to make it work. Keep the conspiracies separate, have 4 of each conspiracy, shuffle them, give one per pack (15 cards) to each player as part of their first/second/third round pack. Then, for the actual cube, have 2 of each rare in the set, 3 of each uncommon, and 4 of each common (similar ration... 4 of each rare, 5 of each uncommon, 6 of each common) to sort of simulate the likelihood of getting two of the same cards depending on rarity.
Then, for the actual draft, even though you might have more cards than people, you only draft enough for everyone to get 3 packs of 15, extra cards unused, to make it *feel* like a real conspiracy draft from the set.
So, what does everyone think? Please, if you have any better ideas, or feel this would just be far less fun than a tight-knit, carefully constructed and hand-picked conspiracy cube, let me know!
As a person who mostly plays casual magic, I often get to enjoy a pure magic experience. I play pauper, cube, sorcerer (fringe format), and EDH. EDH is as close as it gets to those less-than-pure times...
It's honestly just one person in particular, but these two other guys make it a bit annoying too. Essentially, the one guy is notorious for a lot of things. He frequently counts his mana wrong so that he doesn't pay the proper costs, always netdecks, and usually makes the worst decisions possible.
Now I understand that we tend to pay the wrong mana sometimes, or we netdeck when we aren't that good at a color, and we make bad decisions sometimes. Out of the 9 magic players in my group, he is part of the 3 that have been playing the longest, 4 years or so now (consistently). He *constantly* taps mana wrong, always netdecks (and it's always blue), and he makes decisions that make *everyone* angry, then complains when he gets targeted. It makes it a complete chore to play with him because we have to babysit his mana and watch for his chaotic decision making, plus he constantly tells the newer players to add or remove certain cards even though he only plays blue and has never once made his own deck from scratch, so those players end up suffering. Meanwhile, the one friend has only been playing 5 months and doesn't make any of these mistakes.
As annoying as it is, we don't hold any grudges or prevent him from playing. He's our friend, and the games, while sometimes feeling like a chore, are still very fun with him. We only wish he would stop making excuses so the game would be even *more* fun.
The worst I ever dealt with was a store where you couldn't buy anything if the owner was in, since the owner normally didn't have help when he was on duty, and would never stop playing maple story long enough to run the register.
he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
Everything else sounds annoying, but I never understood why people god mad at this. You think you should be able to pull one over on the store because prices spiked overnight and they haven't had time to change all of their stickers? Why do you want to basically take money from your LGS? What's wrong with them charging market price for cards?
I don't mind if the price changes at the register, as long as they tell me what it changed to and let me decide if I still want it. I've never had it happen at a card store, but I bought old video games once, where the price on several of the games I was buying had apparently spiked to 10x the sticker price since the stickers were printed. Then, the cashier didn't want to let me put any back when I decided I didn't want to pay $50 for what I thought was $10 of games.
That's different. A good shop will let you call ahead/message on FB to ask for what cards you want, pull them aside for you, and then let you decide if you want to keep them all or not after they check the prices. If they don't let you put some back after, just tell them you don't wish to buy them at all then.
I dislike shop owners that scream during events. Nobody wants to hear them, especially at pre-release. People just go there to play the game and should have optimum conditions.
I'm unsure what you mean. Do you mean they scream when trying to get everyone's attention, or when someone does something wrong?
There's a place near me that does magic as a side, and while I used to go to it fairly frequently, they always treat everyone who walks in the door like they're thieves looking for a chance.
When you want to look at their bulk selection they take you to a separate, tiny cramped area with multiple cameras on you, and one of the employees stands literally a foot away from you watching your every move. It's pretty uncomfortable. Plus, when something does actually get stolen at one of their events, they don't care at all. So I stopped going there a long time ago.
I know exactly what you mean, and it's pathetic because the one good store that I go to has everything organized so perfectly, valuable merchandise set in plain site that it's near impossible to steal, and that's how it should be done. Also, the only bulk storage bins they let you look through is bulk commons, because any bulk rares, bulk foils, etc. they do this awesome thing where they randomly put them into 15 card lumps, sleeve them, and call it "blind repacks". They're like $2 each, you can get some really good cards, plus some will contain a piece of paper that says something like "free drink" or "free cookies". It's actually more fun than cracking actual packs. If stores were more ingenious like this, there would be no need for that awkward defense system you speak of.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the best thing about this place is that they reward good players. I've been told before that they like when I'm there because I am usually very helpful in games, and I will usually allow my opponent a chance to win as opposed to me win because of a bad starting hand or a genuine mistake about a card on their end. When I am at the shop playing EDH, I'll often go to the counter and buy more cards for one of the decks I am working on, and sometimes they will throw in cards for free. I got Teysa, Orzhov Scion for free (my commander), and I got multiple cheap-o lands for free (sure, they are only like 30 cents a pop, but over time that can pile up to $5+.) and so on. You never feel like stealing from a shop that rewards you for being a genuinely nice person.
I have lots of shops in my general area. The best of these is dedicated entirely to magic.
The worst of these stores is located in a filthy mall. The store is too small, when he runs events, they always take at least 2 hours too long, and we have to play on mall tables. His single selection involves looking at binders. You are not allowed to look at the binders, unless 2 people are in the store(one person is usually out). The worst part, however, is that he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
This is common practice where I live to look at card prices at the register. You have to understand that they do this in case prices go up OR down. They don't want to rip YOU off either.
After the popular thread of "rudest/worst mtg opponent" (NOT my thread)I decided to start this one about MTG shops, because sometimes the employees and owners can be 10x worse than the players.
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
I think you're confusing "immaturity" with "competitiveness". It's just a fact of any game tournament ever held in the history of the world that the greater the incentive to do well, the better and more serious those players are going to be.
Let me clarify a bit more.
It does NOT have better prizes in comparison to other stores for doing well/undefeated. It DOES have better prizes for the average person who is only going to win 1-3 games. This attracts a lot of people who go there simply for the prizes and could care less about the fun of the game. People will get really, really whiny if they lose because it's one less free booster. However, to be fair, there are some cool people there. The other store, however, is amazing by comparison. I once played against an opponent who would not only let me mulligan up to 7 cards again, but allowed me to switch cards out mid-game when I realized I put in a card with a different colored ability that I didn't notice. When I asked why he allowed this (it resulted in his loss, but I gave the win to game by forfeit for his kindness) he said "I am here to have fun, not to win, and I'd rather go home knowing I had a good match rather than a good prize."
After the popular thread of "rudest/worst mtg opponent" (NOT my thread)I decided to start this one about MTG shops, because sometimes the employees and owners can be 10x worse than the players.
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
However, that last shop, ooooh no. Where do I begin, the rude employees, the lazy owner, or the dishonest marketing? Well, let's start with the shop itself. They aren't afraid to find a way to rip you off, and they make you work for it too. First of all, you can't call ahead and ask them to pull aside cards for you. Instead, you have to go in, they hand you a binder that isn't organized, and you dig through it all. The prices are average for the cards, but pretty much everything else is overpriced. If you even once stop and think maybe you are getting a good deal, it's probably not. My friend once bought a bag of dice there, "wow, 100 random dice for $25? That's good." Well, guess what, a lot of them were misprints. Most dice would have repeats of numbers and so never actually be useable for anything.
So, then there are the employees. The first time me and my friends went in, we were looking through magic cards (this store is half the drive as the other one) and the one employee comes over and starts poking fun at us about how we are playing magic and not Yu-Gi-Oh. We thought he was joking until he started saying things like, quote, "magic is gay" and "that's a bad card because that's a bad game", all while he was looking through yu-gi-oh cards behind the counter. The second time we went in, the other employee was listening to music with both earbuds the entire time, and we kept having to get their attention so they could take off the headphones to hear us, but as soon as our question ended they put it right back on.
The owner as you can imagine isn't that great either. He seemed nice at first, offering to play with us while we waited for the draft to start, but later it became obvious he was just interested in the money. He would constantly try and promote things to buy, "Oh, you use that deckbox, the Satin Tower is a lot better" ok, fair enough I thought. "using an app isn't really that good for life counting. You should buy count-downs and a dice tower." ok...? "Why did you even bother with Ultra Pro sleeves when you can just buy Dragon Shields that are way better?" Alright, now I started getting annoyed, let me buy what I damn want! Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't that he was constantly pushy and usually favored his long-term customers no matter how in-the-wrong they were.
It's been theorized in the past that destroying the titans can cause tears that would blend the blind eternities and the physical planes that people inhabit. If this is the case, it's very possible that this "insanity" could be the cause of the blind eternities (and emrakul within them.) What we have to realize here is that the set is called "shadows over Innistrad" and not "shadow", meaning it's more than likely a metaphorical shadow and not a physical one.
And this fits with the lovecraftian theme *very* well. Emrakul appears in the physical planes as she does on the cards, but what if someone caught a glimpse of her form in the blind eternities? They would go mad, because mortal minds can not even begin to fathom what they would see. It's the equivalent of dropping a human from earth into a fourth dimensional plane that has 128 more color spectrums (that the human eye can see). On their return, they would probably be mentally damaged beyond repair. So too is it with the blind eternities in which, with the tears (which, since the BE are not like the physical planes, could not be a literal tear that we think of) could cause those who glimpse them to go insane.
Who stated that SOI was to be the third set in BFZ block?
I always thought they basically jammed three sets into two, and SOI was always going to be the next block.
Tolarian stated it in his video about his own theories. He states "while I hope this isn't true, we have to remember that SOI was going to be the third set in BFZ back when the 3 set in a block turned into 2 format."
There are a lot of potential reasons for what's going on in Innistrad. While Emrakul would explain biological distortions, she's not associated with Insanity. I have a feel we'll be seeing a 'new' or different Eldritch entity on Innistrad, or at least I hope so.
I would LOVE to see Emrakul pop up in a new Kamigawa block, where the plane responds with Kaiju and other things that emulate more modern Japanese Pop Culture, rather than classical Japanese lore.
Eh... Well, Emrakul is kind of associated with insanity though it's not really talked about at any length anywhere recently but the artbook. All the Titans are in one capacity or another, though, so the point is still a a little moot.
Has there been *any* magic set that has had a proper cult? I feel like a lot of magic sets dive too deep into "magic" and never really focus on a realistic appeal. I would love to see a set inspired by real life history and mythology. The closest we got was greek mythology, but it just didn't feel relatable enough. Would love to see a set where magic is practiced by a select few, where gods are man-like and fight beside their followers, and especially where we see subtle magical properties like historic berserkers (who claimed that the blessings of their gods or a god, mixed with divination, granted them madness and skill in combat) as opposed to full blown mages.
And dwarves. What's with the bloody lack of dwarves?
Back to topic: The closest thing to a "realistic approach" has always been innistrad for me (though Ravnica is my favorite set), so while I understand them wanting to shake it up a bit, I really do hope they keep the focus on Innistrad's events, I want to see the events going on before the Shadow continue going after it's appearanance, as opposed to "hold the presses! Everyone focus on Emrakul and eldritch stuff! No one take advantage of the distraction!"
Again, it isn't that his deck is powerful. It's just that we don't really *want* to take him out early because it's like he isn't even playing then. It's also the archetypes within our group. Besides him, there is only one other person who plays control. Plenty of people run removal, but you have to realize Mizzix is insanely easy to pull back out. This player constantly has mana rocks that just aren't worth destroying in the game.
IF he was actually winning by doing the things I mentioned, then sure, we would all get up and improve our decks. Our decks are fine. The one friend runs a deck so powerful that I usually have to clash head-to-head with him a lot of games (mine is subsequently as powerful.) None of them have complained anyone's deck is *too* powerful because we all play smart. Our issue is, the only way to play smart with him is to kill him early.
In essence, we aren't blaming him for the act of control, we are blaming him for the massive slow-down. His deck is garbage. Most of the $50 worth of cards he added are junk bounce, counter or removal. He's constantly destroying mana rocks, bouncing creatures, and countering spells for absolutely no good reason. It'd be the equivalent of me playing a black-red deck and ONLY putting in removal, burn and ONE combo, lol. I absolutely mean it when I say 6 hours. My friends attest. In contrast, I invited 3 friends over last night for a game of commander. We got 3 in within 4 hours. None of those players were Mizzix.
We were actually able to get him to play a game where he didn't do these things. He was playing smart the whole game. Unfortunately, the circumstances actually didn't allow him to stop the strongest player because his creatures couldn't be countered. After the game, what he said really annoyed me and showed he just isn't capable of playing control...
Us: "Sucks you didn't have a counter for his creature that makes it so other creatures can't be countered. You played well otherwise, but after that you were screwed."
Him: "I had a counter."
Me: "Why didn't you use it?"
Him: "You told me not to use any counters!"
(This guy is old enough to know better. I said nothing like this and he's either being salty because people don't like his deck the way he plays, or he isn't capable of playing smart control.)
Anyways. I made a really good deck for him to try. I hope he enjoys it. We will see how it goes.
This person did not invest much time and money into the deck. He added about $10 worth of cards to the deck after buying the pre-made one (plus another $40 worth of cards he already had since his first deck ever that he carries down.) It isn't that it is too powerful, or not powerful enough, it's just it's a deck built to be evasive but played aggressive. He plays control like it's a B/R deck that has burn and murder spells, which it isn't/doesn't. We tried getting him to make new decks, teach him how to play, etc.
Also, I can't really say, like Blackvise did, that he enjoys playing it, because nowadays he's only in the game for 20 minutes before he is targetted out of pure fear that he will prolong the game or do something stupid.
SavannahLion - Our games when he is eliminated early on without him able to stop it take about 3-4 hours. The reason it takes 6-7 hours with him is that he constantly uses slow-down spells and gets them back from the graveyard to play them again. Cyclonic rift is the worst of them all. He could have 40 health, a 4/4 defender, and be swung at with a 10/10 trample and decide it's time to overload cyclonic rift... Of course he does this again later in the game. We wouldn't mind this except, it doesn't save his life NOR does it win him the game. It saves him 6 life and that is it. He knows decisions like this get him targeted hardcore and so it bewilders us he still does it. Also, believe me, he is awkward, but not anti-social around us. He's always on his phone talking to someone even mid-game.
That's the worst of it. When that 10/10 is swung at him, he looks up from his phone and plays cyclonic rift without even glancing at the board...
Anyways. We have gotten him to agree to play a deck of my choice. I plan to give him something that doesn't allow him to interact at all outside of using creatures or creature abilities, while still being immensely fun. The goal is to get him in the habit of NOT being able to bounce willy nilly, so when he returns to Mizzix, he hopefully picks up on the fact that if he plays it safe he won't be a target. If that doesn't work, I will hand him a deck that is all about hurting someone hard and fast since this would indicate his playstyle is more akin to aggressive play rather than evasive. Then we would refuse to play with Mizzix.
We care about what happens in the game. We all really love the format. It's not just social, it's also a way to express ourselves and we (used to) have some stupid fun games.
He doesn't get too upset when he's killed off early, but he usually just goes to the other room on his phone rather than hang with us.
We play EDH every week. We love to play it when it's fun. So, excluding him would practically exclude him from most of our meet ups. The irony is, we would have more time to do other things if he didn't slow the game so much.
We have all given him tips on how to make his deck more fun, offered to help him make decks, etc.
However...
We have never tried to give him an already made deck outside of blue and ask him to play it wholeheartedly. Perhaps I will try this.
While on the topic...
For a control player, what would be the best deck for me to make him? I want something that is miles away from control so that he doesn't try to play it like control. We once gave him a artifact-based deck to play when he forgot his deck and he tried playing it as control, aye... I want to give him a far-stretch from control, but also something ridiculously fun so that there's a chance it will stick with him.
To specify, his deck isn't too powerful. He rarely wins even when we leave him alone. The reason his deck is so boring is because he not only rarely wins, but he simply slows the game down to a halt, hurts the wrong players for no reason, wipes the board even though no one was hurting him and he doesn't have a win condition, etc. The reason everyone teams on him is *because* he makes the games last so long without ever winning.
A friend of mine plays Mizzix. No commander is boring in essence, not at all. It's the way he plays it, and the way we *have* to play against it.
He only has two win conditions, both of which are infinite combos he can cast at instant speed. Other than that, he only wins by barely burning the last remaining player alive (which it almost never comes to.) Since he can win the game with infinite combos at instant speed (that he also tutors for), and nothing else, it usually boils down to this...
1. We start the game and leave him alone. We don't like to target sole players based on past games.
2. He targets a player for no reason at all. He will hurt that player even though that player is of no threat to him.
3. Now that he has no mana left, another play gets ridiculous powerful because A. That player from play 2 can't stop him and B. The Mizzix player has no more spells or mana.
4. He makes a blatantly stupid play that hurts everyone EXCEPT the stronger player.
5. The strong player wins.
It evolved into...
1. We start the game and leave him alone.
2. He slows down everyone in the game, hurts them all in some way, all while not creating any board state on his own field.
3. Everyone gets annoyed that he has literally had 2-3 hours to the game and decides to target him (Which takes another hour to actually kill him.)
4. People get too tired to play and scoop.
And finally, it evolved into...
1. Everyone kills him off early.
I really don't think it should be this way. He has played control for 3 years (we meet every week.) We are constantly giving him tips to play better control, suggesting more fun cards, suggesting he tries other color schemes, etc. He is just a blatantly bad control player, acknowledges his mistakes and never changes them (they are easy to change.) Once in awhile we get a good game where he doesn't do those things (and he even wins w/o infinite combo!), but it only makes us question why he can't do that most games, as it is pretty much a decision not to do stupid things. He refuses to try other decks, even when we offer to help him make them. We offer other cards and combos for the deck, which he never really took.
It's everyone in the group though. We had one player give him the benefit of the doubt and claim he was better now, but then the next few games he says he changed his mind and agreed his deck is super boring to play against and only makes the game last way longer than it should.
He is a good friend of ours. We don't want to not play with him, but at the same time, the group almost never wants to play on grounds the game will take too long (we start at 10pm and end at 4-5am... 6-7 hours).
Any suggestions would be awesome. Maybe anything I can say to him that would make him change his playstyle without sounding too petty or mean.
Thanks guys!
EDIT: What does everyone think about me making a Zendruu group-hug deck? The goal would be to basically hurt players who hurt fun, and help players who promote fun. I could stop my friend's slow down gameplay, and, if he is too weak after not being able to slow the game down at all, I could help him or hurt others.
As everyone knows, the "usual" cube is singleton, intended to have the perfect amount of cards for those drafting it (you would have a 360 card cube for 8 players.) Even without singleton rules, the perfect card amount usually applies. At least, that's where my experience lies.
With that being said, a conspriacy cube woudl be different. At least the one I want to build.
My goal is to recreate the actual drafting experience. The fun of Conspiracy is building a really (would-be) jank deck and making it work through draft-affecting cards and conspiracies. The unpredictability of the draft is what I want to achieve here. My Ravnica unified cube is a perfectly (as perfect as it can be) balanced cube, but that's a different situation. I want every draft from this cube to feel like you just cracked packs and got random cards.
So. How would one achieve this? Here's how I thought to make it work. Keep the conspiracies separate, have 4 of each conspiracy, shuffle them, give one per pack (15 cards) to each player as part of their first/second/third round pack. Then, for the actual cube, have 2 of each rare in the set, 3 of each uncommon, and 4 of each common (similar ration... 4 of each rare, 5 of each uncommon, 6 of each common) to sort of simulate the likelihood of getting two of the same cards depending on rarity.
Then, for the actual draft, even though you might have more cards than people, you only draft enough for everyone to get 3 packs of 15, extra cards unused, to make it *feel* like a real conspiracy draft from the set.
So, what does everyone think? Please, if you have any better ideas, or feel this would just be far less fun than a tight-knit, carefully constructed and hand-picked conspiracy cube, let me know!
It's honestly just one person in particular, but these two other guys make it a bit annoying too. Essentially, the one guy is notorious for a lot of things. He frequently counts his mana wrong so that he doesn't pay the proper costs, always netdecks, and usually makes the worst decisions possible.
Now I understand that we tend to pay the wrong mana sometimes, or we netdeck when we aren't that good at a color, and we make bad decisions sometimes. Out of the 9 magic players in my group, he is part of the 3 that have been playing the longest, 4 years or so now (consistently). He *constantly* taps mana wrong, always netdecks (and it's always blue), and he makes decisions that make *everyone* angry, then complains when he gets targeted. It makes it a complete chore to play with him because we have to babysit his mana and watch for his chaotic decision making, plus he constantly tells the newer players to add or remove certain cards even though he only plays blue and has never once made his own deck from scratch, so those players end up suffering. Meanwhile, the one friend has only been playing 5 months and doesn't make any of these mistakes.
As annoying as it is, we don't hold any grudges or prevent him from playing. He's our friend, and the games, while sometimes feeling like a chore, are still very fun with him. We only wish he would stop making excuses so the game would be even *more* fun.
That's different. A good shop will let you call ahead/message on FB to ask for what cards you want, pull them aside for you, and then let you decide if you want to keep them all or not after they check the prices. If they don't let you put some back after, just tell them you don't wish to buy them at all then.
I'm unsure what you mean. Do you mean they scream when trying to get everyone's attention, or when someone does something wrong?
I know exactly what you mean, and it's pathetic because the one good store that I go to has everything organized so perfectly, valuable merchandise set in plain site that it's near impossible to steal, and that's how it should be done. Also, the only bulk storage bins they let you look through is bulk commons, because any bulk rares, bulk foils, etc. they do this awesome thing where they randomly put them into 15 card lumps, sleeve them, and call it "blind repacks". They're like $2 each, you can get some really good cards, plus some will contain a piece of paper that says something like "free drink" or "free cookies". It's actually more fun than cracking actual packs. If stores were more ingenious like this, there would be no need for that awkward defense system you speak of.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the best thing about this place is that they reward good players. I've been told before that they like when I'm there because I am usually very helpful in games, and I will usually allow my opponent a chance to win as opposed to me win because of a bad starting hand or a genuine mistake about a card on their end. When I am at the shop playing EDH, I'll often go to the counter and buy more cards for one of the decks I am working on, and sometimes they will throw in cards for free. I got Teysa, Orzhov Scion for free (my commander), and I got multiple cheap-o lands for free (sure, they are only like 30 cents a pop, but over time that can pile up to $5+.) and so on. You never feel like stealing from a shop that rewards you for being a genuinely nice person.
This is common practice where I live to look at card prices at the register. You have to understand that they do this in case prices go up OR down. They don't want to rip YOU off either.
See the other thread about worst MTG opponents. Names are also not allowed there.
Let me clarify a bit more.
It does NOT have better prizes in comparison to other stores for doing well/undefeated. It DOES have better prizes for the average person who is only going to win 1-3 games. This attracts a lot of people who go there simply for the prizes and could care less about the fun of the game. People will get really, really whiny if they lose because it's one less free booster. However, to be fair, there are some cool people there. The other store, however, is amazing by comparison. I once played against an opponent who would not only let me mulligan up to 7 cards again, but allowed me to switch cards out mid-game when I realized I put in a card with a different colored ability that I didn't notice. When I asked why he allowed this (it resulted in his loss, but I gave the win to game by forfeit for his kindness) he said "I am here to have fun, not to win, and I'd rather go home knowing I had a good match rather than a good prize."
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
However, that last shop, ooooh no. Where do I begin, the rude employees, the lazy owner, or the dishonest marketing? Well, let's start with the shop itself. They aren't afraid to find a way to rip you off, and they make you work for it too. First of all, you can't call ahead and ask them to pull aside cards for you. Instead, you have to go in, they hand you a binder that isn't organized, and you dig through it all. The prices are average for the cards, but pretty much everything else is overpriced. If you even once stop and think maybe you are getting a good deal, it's probably not. My friend once bought a bag of dice there, "wow, 100 random dice for $25? That's good." Well, guess what, a lot of them were misprints. Most dice would have repeats of numbers and so never actually be useable for anything.
So, then there are the employees. The first time me and my friends went in, we were looking through magic cards (this store is half the drive as the other one) and the one employee comes over and starts poking fun at us about how we are playing magic and not Yu-Gi-Oh. We thought he was joking until he started saying things like, quote, "magic is gay" and "that's a bad card because that's a bad game", all while he was looking through yu-gi-oh cards behind the counter. The second time we went in, the other employee was listening to music with both earbuds the entire time, and we kept having to get their attention so they could take off the headphones to hear us, but as soon as our question ended they put it right back on.
The owner as you can imagine isn't that great either. He seemed nice at first, offering to play with us while we waited for the draft to start, but later it became obvious he was just interested in the money. He would constantly try and promote things to buy, "Oh, you use that deckbox, the Satin Tower is a lot better" ok, fair enough I thought. "using an app isn't really that good for life counting. You should buy count-downs and a dice tower." ok...? "Why did you even bother with Ultra Pro sleeves when you can just buy Dragon Shields that are way better?" Alright, now I started getting annoyed, let me buy what I damn want! Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't that he was constantly pushy and usually favored his long-term customers no matter how in-the-wrong they were.
Anyways, there's my rant, I wanna hear yours!
It's been theorized in the past that destroying the titans can cause tears that would blend the blind eternities and the physical planes that people inhabit. If this is the case, it's very possible that this "insanity" could be the cause of the blind eternities (and emrakul within them.) What we have to realize here is that the set is called "shadows over Innistrad" and not "shadow", meaning it's more than likely a metaphorical shadow and not a physical one.
And this fits with the lovecraftian theme *very* well. Emrakul appears in the physical planes as she does on the cards, but what if someone caught a glimpse of her form in the blind eternities? They would go mad, because mortal minds can not even begin to fathom what they would see. It's the equivalent of dropping a human from earth into a fourth dimensional plane that has 128 more color spectrums (that the human eye can see). On their return, they would probably be mentally damaged beyond repair. So too is it with the blind eternities in which, with the tears (which, since the BE are not like the physical planes, could not be a literal tear that we think of) could cause those who glimpse them to go insane.
Tolarian stated it in his video about his own theories. He states "while I hope this isn't true, we have to remember that SOI was going to be the third set in BFZ back when the 3 set in a block turned into 2 format."
Has there been *any* magic set that has had a proper cult? I feel like a lot of magic sets dive too deep into "magic" and never really focus on a realistic appeal. I would love to see a set inspired by real life history and mythology. The closest we got was greek mythology, but it just didn't feel relatable enough. Would love to see a set where magic is practiced by a select few, where gods are man-like and fight beside their followers, and especially where we see subtle magical properties like historic berserkers (who claimed that the blessings of their gods or a god, mixed with divination, granted them madness and skill in combat) as opposed to full blown mages.
And dwarves. What's with the bloody lack of dwarves?
Back to topic: The closest thing to a "realistic approach" has always been innistrad for me (though Ravnica is my favorite set), so while I understand them wanting to shake it up a bit, I really do hope they keep the focus on Innistrad's events, I want to see the events going on before the Shadow continue going after it's appearanance, as opposed to "hold the presses! Everyone focus on Emrakul and eldritch stuff! No one take advantage of the distraction!"