This person is not only playing an all-in deck, but is playing one where there are only situational synergy pieces.
Like, if he mulls to 4 and uses a topdeck tutor, he essentially mulled to 3 and set up his top card.
If he draws fast mana, loyalty doubler, infect creature, he loses.
If he draws a planeswalker and a indestructible enabler, he loses. There are so many pieces that only have synergy with a few other cards, rather than the whole deck.
This deck is so unstable that the only way he can be remotely consistent is by cheating.
Even if he was, one piece of 1 mana spot removal played at the right time causes him to lose because if he mulls a lot, then he has effectively lost 3-4 cards compared to 0-1 of everyone else. He loses.
You can't have the fast mana, the lands, and two different and correctly matching synergy pieces every game. If this person is, this person is cheating,
Bouncelands in a 4-color mana base with fast colorless rocks? Not sold on the stability of the mana either.
Something tells me that he is cheating.... his openings seem to either involve a blighted agent with enlarge or might of oaks, or Atraxa with Triumph of the Hordes or Tainted Strike with a one or 2 mana +4/+4 and a spell to counter blockers, now that I think on it those are consistently always his openings a 1/1 that becomes an 8/8 or a 4/4 that becomes an 8/8, two opponents have 8 or 9 poison suddenly and he almost always opens with Mirari's Wake
I think I'm going to set up my phone as a life counter and secretly record a few sessions with him and a couple others in the group and send it to wizards or a judge, I began playing in Australia and I've never seen so many people end up pulling the same opening hands in commander formats but in this case without us having a judge I believe 3 or 4 of our regulars are playing with stacked decks or padding their decks with 2 or 3 of the same cards.
In the 6 or 8 months I have frequented the small establishment I can recall seeing 3 or 4 players himself included who consistently pull literally the same exact cards out of their asses during the first 3 turns. One of them plays infect and always manages to put out thrumming bird, blighted agent or drops Atraxa, another plays a dragon deck an I have never seen any more than 10 of the exact same cards consistently in play, in a similar vein he also plays feline ferocity and I haven't seen him play any more than his commander ending up with a roulette of the same 4-5 equipment or mirri duelist, the third player is an antagonist of my own since I caught him cheating, he plays Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca with a fleet swallower which always seems to be in his hand along with fraying sanity and/or traumatize
I had not put much thought into it, however the win ratio whenever I play without said players is far more randomized and they always seems to group themselves together with at least one of them winning a tournament whilst in tournament play they never directly attack each other.
I recall one tournament where "said antagonist" started screaming about someone taking a +500 dollar deck he left sitting out while playing, however when one of the owners offered to review the security footage he adamantly declined and couldn't leave the store fast enough despite everyone in the store offering to open their packs for searching.
mind you all of this is pure speculation and could very well be me pulling conspiracy theories out of my arse however I cant help thinking again of how I have never seen any more the 10 cards of each of their 1 or 2 commander decks they have built they're very secretive and quickly return their decks to a fancy cube quickly between matches and never want to share with the group on what exactly they run in their decks.
One thing remains, I have never felt more uncomfortable and more unwelcome in matches or casual play then when I am around those same 4 players and I would certainly give up my right leg to find another shop within reasonable distance or simply move to another area.
The list is somewhat more of a rough estimate from what I've seen him play, it seems like he is always reformatting it for our weekly tournaments, I've tried to play a Narset super friends, Tishana control, Mono white Thalia, and a Freyalise green elf agaist him but somehow he always manages to get Atraxa out with some kind of infect attachment and indestructible by turn 3, either that or he plays a hex proof unblockable creature with infect.
We allow the first mulligan for free and he often drops down 4 cards and scrys 1 plays vampiric tutor and enlightened tutor pulls sol ring and voltaic key unless he already has them and drops miroris wake early, with one land hes played sol ring and voltaic key already turn 2 he drops a bounce land and plays miroris wake turn 3 he moves to play a creature with infect or an infect attachment atraxa or skittles with a growth spell any blockers are usually countered by slip through space.
by the end of his 3rd turn he always has at least someone with 9 poison counters occasionally its 8 but thats rare and in his end step the first player is out, by turn four he always seems to be able to cast an extra turn usually with time sieve or time warp occasionally he will pull a cascade spell and fill his graveyard with enough cards to play temporal trespass via delve backed by counter spells, turn 4 see's another opponent out and if his time spell was successful he often hits 2 opponents with 8 or 9 poison and proliferates at least once when it hits past 5 turns he starts playing his "cant lose the game" spells and starts dropping ghostly prison, propaganda and sometimes adds artifacts enchantments or creatures to the board that allow him to play spells cheaper, at least one of the thalia's come into play at which point if you have survived him you have to pay 2 or more mana to attack him or your spells come into play tapped meaning he can slam you with infect relatively easily if not play his -7 vraska usually sacrificing her for 3 assassins, if you manage to block any of the assassins he seems to have a trample spell handy in each of those occasions, if the board becomes tipped out of his favor hes all to happy to play Nevinyrral's Disk which usually results in triggering his time sieve he plays atraxa in the wake, infect, growth spell, and someone gains at least 8 damage unless he drops his thrumming bird and hits for 5 infect proliferates to 6 and finishes you off with skittles or atraxa via poison in the next 2 turns.
Im not entirely sure of everything that he runs as hes very secretive with his build but more often than not he plays a creature that cant be blocked with infect within turn 2 or 3 and manages to infect me with at least 8 every single time as if he's shuffled his deck in such a way that it always produces or simply mulligans, but I find it particularly unnerving that he will always mulligan draw 7, mulligan draw 6, mulligan draw 5, mulligan draw 4 until he draws his preferred combos and drops at least 1 player from the game usually being the most threatening to his deck but to make us sit for up to 30 minutes as he redraws shuffles redraws shuffles before starting the game irritates me to wanting to punch him a good one.
I suspect that he may be playing a land heavy deck with his fetch spells, infect, extra turns, and a few creatures so he drops down to 4 cards scrys and burys it if it doesnt help him draws to 5 for his first turn and plays one of the many tutor cards available unless he's happened to draw one of his combos out of mulligans.
Ive probably overstated, but I haven't managed to find a way to win against him and neither have I seen any others successfully win against him, it always seems to play out where I build some kind of board out of my decks and he swings so I attempt to block "hes unblockable" or I play a removal spell of some kind "hexproof" and I end up with 8 poison turn 2 or 3 becoming 9 poison with proliferate and in the next turn its "hes unblockable" "hexproof".. game over. The few times I've managed to block I still take trample damage 4 poison becoming 5, turn three 5 poison becomes 9 proliferate once or twice and Im out again, the next player runs a similar go and he mops up with an extra combat phase or takes an extra turn leaving the 2 remaining players with high poison counts, finishing them off soon after.
Perhaps the issue is that our limited card stock and group are all focused on combo decks which are very vulnerable to fast poison attacks and if hes not in tournaments with his friends who back him up by refusing to target him until it becomes 1 v 1 hes up against those of us still learning to build decks.
basically the goal is to have as many creatures with infect in his deck as possible, as many proliferates as possible, as many extra turns as possible, cards that give him extra and infinite mana, tutor cards, cards that give his creatures as many +1/+1 as possible, any cards he can find that prevent him from losing the game, and bounce lands to ramp up his mana as high as possible as well as delves to get out the largest creatures and spells, cards he can play from his grave yard, cards that give him rebound.
Its a pain in the butt to play against him, he usually mulligans himself down until he ends up with the best playable hand which can take time during tournament play waiting for him to shuffle, hes usually able to play his extra turn spells during the first few turns thanks to scry and peer through time type spells.
TLDR
He usually opens with temporal trespass or or temporal mastery if hes lucky enough. He plays a land then bounces it and bounces it again thanks to the many "play an extra land each turn" cards available, thanks to voltaic key and sol ring he can often play mirari's wake immediately on turn one or two by turn 3 he usually has 2-4 bounce lands on the field giving him access to 8+ mana he uses to play his extra turns which ramps things up quickly, usually by turn 3 he has Atraxa out on the field with infect attached to it sometimes this occurs during turn two, at this point he plays his extra combat phases and takes out 2 opponents if he doesn't have any enlarge spells or double strike, if hes in trouble he will sacrifice artifacts and tap time seive most of the artifacts usually being treasure tokens as Ixilan has given his deck a new breath of annoyance.
all in all getting his opponents to 10 damage comes quickly usually happening by turn 3, in worst cases he has only killed one opponent by turn 3 and he plays gideon of the trials, followed by a platinum angel or exquisite archangel, everyone plays heavy spells to remove these cards or attacks said cards although by then hes filled the board with enough infect and proliferate that he makes quick work of any remaining players, the only decks he seems to struggle against are other infect decks but I haven't seen anyone with the funds to build anything as unique as the deck he runs.
To date he continues to win all EDH tournaments in our small town and remains unopposed as the quickest turn 2 or 3 win deck in the area.
I know there are a lot of quick win decks out there but I have yet to see one come close to trifling his, he either infects you, or plays vraska early with doubling season and oath of gideon, or drops gideon of T early.
honestly I would love to see the infect become 15 or 20 within commander because he continues to suck all of the fun out of EDH by constantly playing and improving this deck to deal poison death quickly and in spite we have gone from 12 to 18 person commander pods to 8 at the most and most of the players have adapted his poison/take extra turns strategy to the point that after 1 year of playing we still have sucky 8 person commander pods where everyone is either playing kikijiki or infect with any and all tutoring cards attached leaving the commander venue as non-unique as possible and yet being the only tournament style gameplay offered in our 200 mile radius.
Thanks I hadn't thought about a note pad but that would be very useful, we happen to have a few OCD players who insist on tokens being represented by proper token cards "clearly visible upon the board, not represented by a token card with dice"
I shouldn't try to flood the board however I try to keep "draw cards/discard cards" planeswalkers in play in an effort to retrieve beacon of tomorrows after shuffling it into my deck, I play with artifacts that add multiple colors of mana instead of using lands as Narset's ability tends to exile a lot of lands.
hopefully I can get away with stacking and chronicling my plays on paper, with beacon being 8 mana I like to drop a lot of mana generation artifacts into play and keep counter spells in my hand. They didn't seem to mind me casting copies of token generators with swarm, but when it came to a 3rd extra turn it was a step too far.
Id give just about anything for an opportunity to move to a different area as its largely a insiders club and if you are new your subject to a lot of bullying.
I happened to encounter a situation where I cast Pact of Negation to counter a negate in response to casting mind funeral on an opponent which caused me to mill him out of his last 10 cards ending the game.
however it was stated that because I couldn't pay the 5 mana on my next upkeep I also lost the game as well resulting in a draw for that round
Unfortunately I come from a small town which luckily has 1 MTG shop that has formed out of the closing of all the nearby shops in all of the surrounding towns as far away as 3 hours. We host a weekly Commander Tournament with small prizes so long as we have enough members to form the tournament and every tournament brings the store access to more promotional and other card stock.
I recently managed to build a Narset, Enlightened Master commander deck with super friends, I play with 10 Plainswalkers, a lot of enchantments such as Oath of Chandra or Oath of Gideon artifacts and a lot of powerful instants and sorceresses.
One particular tournament I managed to cast a Mana Drain successfully on an opponent who was mana ramping up to 50 mana with a mono green deck which he used to cast a Genesis Wave effectively giving me 50 mana to spend. Naturally he was beyond angry and pissed off and called a judge over to ensure that the rulings were followed. The judge verified that I would be given his 50 mana to which he uttered colorful phrases.
My next turn came up and I played a couple draw spells to enlarge my hand size and then I began to slowly spend the 50 mana placing planeswalkers and enchantments onto the battlefield, the field became insanely large, one of the final cards I played was Swarm Intelligence setting it on the far side of my table as there was simply no more room.
I attacked with Narset and managed to pull a ring of three wishes from my deck, I used the remaining mana to tap the ring and search my deck for my Beacon and paid the 8 mana to cast it, I untapped my lands and took my second turn, attacked with Narset and exiled 4 cards which happened to be a planeswalker and 3 artifacts, I ran through upkeep, artifacts and then proceeded to take another turn as per the rules of Swarm intelligence and at this point my opponents balked especially the opponent I had countered for 50 mana, they claimed that my swarm intelligence was not visible on the board, it was so far away from my opponents vision that they claimed they had never seen me play it, arguments ensued and that one opponent made sure to cause a big stink about it, he claimed that I had probably dropped it while tutoring my library setting so far to the side with the hopes that nobody would notice it and said that since nobody can see it properly even if I had played it legally it was not a legal move.
The judges chose to side with him especially seeing that my opponents weren't too happy with the board state as I probably had at least 30+ cards in play as well as players aren't too happy with Narset combos and many consider her abilities to be a cheat.
TLDR, I play a narset combo commander with a lot of cards that end up on the battlefield usually resulting in a clogged state which ends up allotting me extra mana and turns, I happened to play a card which players thought wasn't visible enough to be a legal move and with the clutter of 30+ cards on the board they called in a judge to verify cheating and I lost the round.
With this being the case, I have to ask how do I properly play Narset to keep this from happening? can I stack enchantments and artifacts into a pile legally as long as all the card names are visable? Can I pile my lands into a stack without fear of upsetting opponents?
Thing is I really love this deck but unfortunately her abilities upset a lot of the other players in my arena especially since I can often put her into play quickly with a sol ringthran dynamo and begin filling the board with unpaid cards, I have spent a lot of time forging the deck into a combo win scenario, however the fact that she can quickly fill the battlefield with an alarming amount of cards seems to really irritate other players to the point that I often have a lot of judges called over confusion basically they cant be bothered to keep track of such a large board state and try just about anything to claim it illegal. It has especially become a problem with goblin/elves players because I have a clone legion in my deck and suddenly the 20 creatures/tokens on the board become 40.
If I catch someone messing with my deck, if I suspect they may have slipped some cards in upside down do I need to call a judge to shuffle and cut my deck instead?
Until I can move to a new area I am probably going to run into this fun guy again and I've seen him playing his same tricks on others especially new players.
I missed out on a small tourney and saw him stalling. When it came to the final game he knew he couldn't win so he insisted on a coin toss(the tournament was out of time)
He won the coin toss and got his prizes.
He may be finished with our area however he no longer shows up and others are fed up.
If you want to play competitively it would seem that your your going to want some very good sleeves. I had and opponent break one of my sleeves while looking over one of my cards wether it was on purpose or not because there was a split in the sleeve it was deemed that I either needed to re-sleeve the card or remove it from the game and we had to replay the round
I found out the hard way that some can be stickers about decks. Any damage or a fold or curve in the card can give cause you to be called on for cheating.
I've played in Australia a few times and I would recommend double sleeving. Because of the very humid environment even sitting in storage cards can warp or become slightly thicker than other cards and that enough for another player to refuse your deck.
Even in casual play it's smart to use a good quality sleeve because excessive shuffling can change the quality of your card and any discernable indents or scuffs on a card can cause it to be disallowed from tournament gameplay.
It is more of a rare case however some players are so competitive that they scrutinize any deck with blemishes.
More importantly card prices are always rising and falling so you could have a card in your deck that suddenly becomes expensive and in that case any damage devalues it significantly.
So I'm new to magic and recently attended my first large modern tournament and promptly was asked to leave
Here's what happened, during my second vs I played a irritating stickler of a player upon the first game he was losing and I'm not certain if one of my sleeves was damaged or if he damaged it purposely. He asked if he could read one of my cards and promptly picked it up and I swear that he pushed down on the top of the card until the double sleeving caused it to split through the bottom, I can't think of any other reason why he placed his thumb over the top in such a way and I'm certain that it was not broken beforehand.
Immediately he yelled for a judge who came over and stated that the game had to be replayed and the card properly sleeved because apparently in shuffling I could feel the card and supposedly make sure it gets into my hand. I have mid range sleeves with thin plastic inserts for air protection and it does take considerable force to cause them to split at the bottom however upon testing myself if you place your thumb as he did at the top and push down enough it can happen and it merely looks like you are just reading the card. So obviously if anyone wants to do so in the future I won't let them pick it up.
During the second game when he cut my deck he set the top pile on the table and quickly moved to set it on top. During this he bumped a small section off of it and apologized replaced them, at this point I did not realize that he had replaced them upside down.
The replay began and even without the card he broke open he was losing. During all thishe kept shuffling his hand quickly making noise scowling at me and snapping at me double checking all my plays making sure I used enough mana and reminding me again and again that I only had a small time to decide on my plays which he always insisted on double checking.
As I got closer to the cards he had placed upside down he suddenly acted as if he noticed my deck and called a judge over who noticed that around 5 of my cards were upside down. For me I really can't tell as I play sleeves that are only one color with no discernable indents or markings.
Sure enough the judge had to warn me and again we started the round over and we were told to hurry instead of 3 rounds we would only get one due to time constraints.
This time I was watching when he cut my deck and he didn't do anything wrong. He was losing so he played a card that allowed him to search my deck and in doing so I hadn't noticed at first but he carefully placed a single card in it upside down before returning it. I went to pick up my deck merely to run my finger across it to make sure that he was not playing any tricks and upon doing so he became uncontrollable jumped up and said "hey hey put that deck down!!! We're already close to running out of time and I'm not letting you stack your deck again!!"
A judge came over looked at my deck and found one card upside down and that was the final straw.
I accused him and shared my side of the story, he accused me flagrantly and boisterously. The judges decided they had no choice but to remove me from the tournament and left me with a warning.
Now the strangest thing is that after it all I realized that all of his opening plays were identical. He always played the same exact cards and some how had the same spells and creatures available to him. I honestly don't think this is possible unless he plays 2 or 3 of the same exact cards in his deck repeatedly one enchantment and 3 different vampires with lifelink and one or two identical spells allowing you to remove cards from an opponent.
Sorry for the long thread but as a new player I haven't encountered such a volatile player in my roughly 2 years of little experience in the game. I do a lot of traveling around the world so I just carry decks with me and if the opportunity every comes I would like to continue playing tournaments or GP if at all possible which unfortunately due to my job is going to be rare.
So I'm just wondering how do you protect yourself against these types of players?
Im currently playing a Wizards/monk's commander deck with copy spells, retrieve spells and cast from graveyard abilities and im wondering if beacon of tomorrows is ever put into the graveyard during its phase? Am I able to return it to hand at any time? Or is it cast and immediately shuffled into my library? Ive had some interesting arguments because my opponents play creatures with "you may cast sorcery or instants from target opponents graveyards" and feasibly once you cast beacon you set it on your graveyard and take your extra turn then you shuffle it into your library.
In response I play a soulfire grand master and bounce it to my hand to keep from having to deal with opponents copying it from my graveyard as some decks thrive upon waiting for an opponent to play a powerful spell and flashing a creature into play and then using combos to infinitely copy said creature 1000 times and thus casting your spell an infinite number of times.
Does beacon of tomorrows ever touch your graveyard allowing opponents the opportunity to cast it before its shuffled? And if I bounce it to my hand to I need to then shuffle it into my library from my hand? Or should I keep a few counter spells for creatures to defend myself?
Something tells me that he is cheating.... his openings seem to either involve a blighted agent with enlarge or might of oaks, or Atraxa with Triumph of the Hordes or Tainted Strike with a one or 2 mana +4/+4 and a spell to counter blockers, now that I think on it those are consistently always his openings a 1/1 that becomes an 8/8 or a 4/4 that becomes an 8/8, two opponents have 8 or 9 poison suddenly and he almost always opens with Mirari's Wake
I think I'm going to set up my phone as a life counter and secretly record a few sessions with him and a couple others in the group and send it to wizards or a judge, I began playing in Australia and I've never seen so many people end up pulling the same opening hands in commander formats but in this case without us having a judge I believe 3 or 4 of our regulars are playing with stacked decks or padding their decks with 2 or 3 of the same cards.
In the 6 or 8 months I have frequented the small establishment I can recall seeing 3 or 4 players himself included who consistently pull literally the same exact cards out of their asses during the first 3 turns. One of them plays infect and always manages to put out thrumming bird, blighted agent or drops Atraxa, another plays a dragon deck an I have never seen any more than 10 of the exact same cards consistently in play, in a similar vein he also plays feline ferocity and I haven't seen him play any more than his commander ending up with a roulette of the same 4-5 equipment or mirri duelist, the third player is an antagonist of my own since I caught him cheating, he plays Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca with a fleet swallower which always seems to be in his hand along with fraying sanity and/or traumatize
I had not put much thought into it, however the win ratio whenever I play without said players is far more randomized and they always seems to group themselves together with at least one of them winning a tournament whilst in tournament play they never directly attack each other.
I recall one tournament where "said antagonist" started screaming about someone taking a +500 dollar deck he left sitting out while playing, however when one of the owners offered to review the security footage he adamantly declined and couldn't leave the store fast enough despite everyone in the store offering to open their packs for searching.
mind you all of this is pure speculation and could very well be me pulling conspiracy theories out of my arse however I cant help thinking again of how I have never seen any more the 10 cards of each of their 1 or 2 commander decks they have built they're very secretive and quickly return their decks to a fancy cube quickly between matches and never want to share with the group on what exactly they run in their decks.
One thing remains, I have never felt more uncomfortable and more unwelcome in matches or casual play then when I am around those same 4 players and I would certainly give up my right leg to find another shop within reasonable distance or simply move to another area.
We allow the first mulligan for free and he often drops down 4 cards and scrys 1 plays vampiric tutor and enlightened tutor pulls sol ring and voltaic key unless he already has them and drops miroris wake early, with one land hes played sol ring and voltaic key already turn 2 he drops a bounce land and plays miroris wake turn 3 he moves to play a creature with infect or an infect attachment atraxa or skittles with a growth spell any blockers are usually countered by slip through space.
by the end of his 3rd turn he always has at least someone with 9 poison counters occasionally its 8 but thats rare and in his end step the first player is out, by turn four he always seems to be able to cast an extra turn usually with time sieve or time warp occasionally he will pull a cascade spell and fill his graveyard with enough cards to play temporal trespass via delve backed by counter spells, turn 4 see's another opponent out and if his time spell was successful he often hits 2 opponents with 8 or 9 poison and proliferates at least once when it hits past 5 turns he starts playing his "cant lose the game" spells and starts dropping ghostly prison, propaganda and sometimes adds artifacts enchantments or creatures to the board that allow him to play spells cheaper, at least one of the thalia's come into play at which point if you have survived him you have to pay 2 or more mana to attack him or your spells come into play tapped meaning he can slam you with infect relatively easily if not play his -7 vraska usually sacrificing her for 3 assassins, if you manage to block any of the assassins he seems to have a trample spell handy in each of those occasions, if the board becomes tipped out of his favor hes all to happy to play Nevinyrral's Disk which usually results in triggering his time sieve he plays atraxa in the wake, infect, growth spell, and someone gains at least 8 damage unless he drops his thrumming bird and hits for 5 infect proliferates to 6 and finishes you off with skittles or atraxa via poison in the next 2 turns.
Im not entirely sure of everything that he runs as hes very secretive with his build but more often than not he plays a creature that cant be blocked with infect within turn 2 or 3 and manages to infect me with at least 8 every single time as if he's shuffled his deck in such a way that it always produces or simply mulligans, but I find it particularly unnerving that he will always mulligan draw 7, mulligan draw 6, mulligan draw 5, mulligan draw 4 until he draws his preferred combos and drops at least 1 player from the game usually being the most threatening to his deck but to make us sit for up to 30 minutes as he redraws shuffles redraws shuffles before starting the game irritates me to wanting to punch him a good one.
I suspect that he may be playing a land heavy deck with his fetch spells, infect, extra turns, and a few creatures so he drops down to 4 cards scrys and burys it if it doesnt help him draws to 5 for his first turn and plays one of the many tutor cards available unless he's happened to draw one of his combos out of mulligans.
Ive probably overstated, but I haven't managed to find a way to win against him and neither have I seen any others successfully win against him, it always seems to play out where I build some kind of board out of my decks and he swings so I attempt to block "hes unblockable" or I play a removal spell of some kind "hexproof" and I end up with 8 poison turn 2 or 3 becoming 9 poison with proliferate and in the next turn its "hes unblockable" "hexproof".. game over. The few times I've managed to block I still take trample damage 4 poison becoming 5, turn three 5 poison becomes 9 proliferate once or twice and Im out again, the next player runs a similar go and he mops up with an extra combat phase or takes an extra turn leaving the 2 remaining players with high poison counts, finishing them off soon after.
Perhaps the issue is that our limited card stock and group are all focused on combo decks which are very vulnerable to fast poison attacks and if hes not in tournaments with his friends who back him up by refusing to target him until it becomes 1 v 1 hes up against those of us still learning to build decks.
beacon of tomorrows
Part the Waterveil
walk the aeons
temporal mastery
time stretch
temporal trespass
time sieve
marionette master
time warp
serum visions
strionic resonator
demonic tutor
enlightened tutor
ring of three wishes
voltaic key
grafted exoskeleton
triumph of the hordes
tainted strike
thalia, heretic cathar
thalia, guardian of thraben
contagion engine
inexorable tide
rishkar, peema renegade
ghave, guru of spores
read the bones
swarm intelligence
dictate of erebos
Mirari's Wake
platinum angel
exquisite archangel
vraska the unseen
spirit of the hearth
basically the goal is to have as many creatures with infect in his deck as possible, as many proliferates as possible, as many extra turns as possible, cards that give him extra and infinite mana, tutor cards, cards that give his creatures as many +1/+1 as possible, any cards he can find that prevent him from losing the game, and bounce lands to ramp up his mana as high as possible as well as delves to get out the largest creatures and spells, cards he can play from his grave yard, cards that give him rebound.
Its a pain in the butt to play against him, he usually mulligans himself down until he ends up with the best playable hand which can take time during tournament play waiting for him to shuffle, hes usually able to play his extra turn spells during the first few turns thanks to scry and peer through time type spells.
TLDR
He usually opens with temporal trespass or or temporal mastery if hes lucky enough. He plays a land then bounces it and bounces it again thanks to the many "play an extra land each turn" cards available, thanks to voltaic key and sol ring he can often play mirari's wake immediately on turn one or two by turn 3 he usually has 2-4 bounce lands on the field giving him access to 8+ mana he uses to play his extra turns which ramps things up quickly, usually by turn 3 he has Atraxa out on the field with infect attached to it sometimes this occurs during turn two, at this point he plays his extra combat phases and takes out 2 opponents if he doesn't have any enlarge spells or double strike, if hes in trouble he will sacrifice artifacts and tap time seive most of the artifacts usually being treasure tokens as Ixilan has given his deck a new breath of annoyance.
all in all getting his opponents to 10 damage comes quickly usually happening by turn 3, in worst cases he has only killed one opponent by turn 3 and he plays gideon of the trials, followed by a platinum angel or exquisite archangel, everyone plays heavy spells to remove these cards or attacks said cards although by then hes filled the board with enough infect and proliferate that he makes quick work of any remaining players, the only decks he seems to struggle against are other infect decks but I haven't seen anyone with the funds to build anything as unique as the deck he runs.
To date he continues to win all EDH tournaments in our small town and remains unopposed as the quickest turn 2 or 3 win deck in the area.
I know there are a lot of quick win decks out there but I have yet to see one come close to trifling his, he either infects you, or plays vraska early with doubling season and oath of gideon, or drops gideon of T early.
honestly I would love to see the infect become 15 or 20 within commander because he continues to suck all of the fun out of EDH by constantly playing and improving this deck to deal poison death quickly and in spite we have gone from 12 to 18 person commander pods to 8 at the most and most of the players have adapted his poison/take extra turns strategy to the point that after 1 year of playing we still have sucky 8 person commander pods where everyone is either playing kikijiki or infect with any and all tutoring cards attached leaving the commander venue as non-unique as possible and yet being the only tournament style gameplay offered in our 200 mile radius.
I shouldn't try to flood the board however I try to keep "draw cards/discard cards" planeswalkers in play in an effort to retrieve beacon of tomorrows after shuffling it into my deck, I play with artifacts that add multiple colors of mana instead of using lands as Narset's ability tends to exile a lot of lands.
hopefully I can get away with stacking and chronicling my plays on paper, with beacon being 8 mana I like to drop a lot of mana generation artifacts into play and keep counter spells in my hand. They didn't seem to mind me casting copies of token generators with swarm, but when it came to a 3rd extra turn it was a step too far.
Id give just about anything for an opportunity to move to a different area as its largely a insiders club and if you are new your subject to a lot of bullying.
however it was stated that because I couldn't pay the 5 mana on my next upkeep I also lost the game as well resulting in a draw for that round
I recently managed to build a Narset, Enlightened Master commander deck with super friends, I play with 10 Plainswalkers, a lot of enchantments such as Oath of Chandra or Oath of Gideon artifacts and a lot of powerful instants and sorceresses.
Naturally the board manages to get extremely cluttered as my combo is voltaic key Strionic Resonator allowing me to trigger Narset's ability an extra two times. I run a Beacon of Tomorrows as well as Swarm Intelligence in the deck.
One particular tournament I managed to cast a Mana Drain successfully on an opponent who was mana ramping up to 50 mana with a mono green deck which he used to cast a Genesis Wave effectively giving me 50 mana to spend. Naturally he was beyond angry and pissed off and called a judge over to ensure that the rulings were followed. The judge verified that I would be given his 50 mana to which he uttered colorful phrases.
My next turn came up and I played a couple draw spells to enlarge my hand size and then I began to slowly spend the 50 mana placing planeswalkers and enchantments onto the battlefield, the field became insanely large, one of the final cards I played was Swarm Intelligence setting it on the far side of my table as there was simply no more room.
I attacked with Narset and managed to pull a ring of three wishes from my deck, I used the remaining mana to tap the ring and search my deck for my Beacon and paid the 8 mana to cast it, I untapped my lands and took my second turn, attacked with Narset and exiled 4 cards which happened to be a planeswalker and 3 artifacts, I ran through upkeep, artifacts and then proceeded to take another turn as per the rules of Swarm intelligence and at this point my opponents balked especially the opponent I had countered for 50 mana, they claimed that my swarm intelligence was not visible on the board, it was so far away from my opponents vision that they claimed they had never seen me play it, arguments ensued and that one opponent made sure to cause a big stink about it, he claimed that I had probably dropped it while tutoring my library setting so far to the side with the hopes that nobody would notice it and said that since nobody can see it properly even if I had played it legally it was not a legal move.
The judges chose to side with him especially seeing that my opponents weren't too happy with the board state as I probably had at least 30+ cards in play as well as players aren't too happy with Narset combos and many consider her abilities to be a cheat.
TLDR, I play a narset combo commander with a lot of cards that end up on the battlefield usually resulting in a clogged state which ends up allotting me extra mana and turns, I happened to play a card which players thought wasn't visible enough to be a legal move and with the clutter of 30+ cards on the board they called in a judge to verify cheating and I lost the round.
With this being the case, I have to ask how do I properly play Narset to keep this from happening? can I stack enchantments and artifacts into a pile legally as long as all the card names are visable? Can I pile my lands into a stack without fear of upsetting opponents?
Thing is I really love this deck but unfortunately her abilities upset a lot of the other players in my arena especially since I can often put her into play quickly with a sol ring thran dynamo and begin filling the board with unpaid cards, I have spent a lot of time forging the deck into a combo win scenario, however the fact that she can quickly fill the battlefield with an alarming amount of cards seems to really irritate other players to the point that I often have a lot of judges called over confusion basically they cant be bothered to keep track of such a large board state and try just about anything to claim it illegal. It has especially become a problem with goblin/elves players because I have a clone legion in my deck and suddenly the 20 creatures/tokens on the board become 40.
If I catch someone messing with my deck, if I suspect they may have slipped some cards in upside down do I need to call a judge to shuffle and cut my deck instead?
Until I can move to a new area I am probably going to run into this fun guy again and I've seen him playing his same tricks on others especially new players.
I missed out on a small tourney and saw him stalling. When it came to the final game he knew he couldn't win so he insisted on a coin toss(the tournament was out of time)
He won the coin toss and got his prizes.
He may be finished with our area however he no longer shows up and others are fed up.
I found out the hard way that some can be stickers about decks. Any damage or a fold or curve in the card can give cause you to be called on for cheating.
I've played in Australia a few times and I would recommend double sleeving. Because of the very humid environment even sitting in storage cards can warp or become slightly thicker than other cards and that enough for another player to refuse your deck.
Even in casual play it's smart to use a good quality sleeve because excessive shuffling can change the quality of your card and any discernable indents or scuffs on a card can cause it to be disallowed from tournament gameplay.
It is more of a rare case however some players are so competitive that they scrutinize any deck with blemishes.
More importantly card prices are always rising and falling so you could have a card in your deck that suddenly becomes expensive and in that case any damage devalues it significantly.
Should I single sleeve for competitive? Or should I invest in some expensive sleeves?
Here's what happened, during my second vs I played a irritating stickler of a player upon the first game he was losing and I'm not certain if one of my sleeves was damaged or if he damaged it purposely. He asked if he could read one of my cards and promptly picked it up and I swear that he pushed down on the top of the card until the double sleeving caused it to split through the bottom, I can't think of any other reason why he placed his thumb over the top in such a way and I'm certain that it was not broken beforehand.
Immediately he yelled for a judge who came over and stated that the game had to be replayed and the card properly sleeved because apparently in shuffling I could feel the card and supposedly make sure it gets into my hand. I have mid range sleeves with thin plastic inserts for air protection and it does take considerable force to cause them to split at the bottom however upon testing myself if you place your thumb as he did at the top and push down enough it can happen and it merely looks like you are just reading the card. So obviously if anyone wants to do so in the future I won't let them pick it up.
During the second game when he cut my deck he set the top pile on the table and quickly moved to set it on top. During this he bumped a small section off of it and apologized replaced them, at this point I did not realize that he had replaced them upside down.
The replay began and even without the card he broke open he was losing. During all thishe kept shuffling his hand quickly making noise scowling at me and snapping at me double checking all my plays making sure I used enough mana and reminding me again and again that I only had a small time to decide on my plays which he always insisted on double checking.
As I got closer to the cards he had placed upside down he suddenly acted as if he noticed my deck and called a judge over who noticed that around 5 of my cards were upside down. For me I really can't tell as I play sleeves that are only one color with no discernable indents or markings.
Sure enough the judge had to warn me and again we started the round over and we were told to hurry instead of 3 rounds we would only get one due to time constraints.
This time I was watching when he cut my deck and he didn't do anything wrong. He was losing so he played a card that allowed him to search my deck and in doing so I hadn't noticed at first but he carefully placed a single card in it upside down before returning it. I went to pick up my deck merely to run my finger across it to make sure that he was not playing any tricks and upon doing so he became uncontrollable jumped up and said "hey hey put that deck down!!! We're already close to running out of time and I'm not letting you stack your deck again!!"
A judge came over looked at my deck and found one card upside down and that was the final straw.
I accused him and shared my side of the story, he accused me flagrantly and boisterously. The judges decided they had no choice but to remove me from the tournament and left me with a warning.
Now the strangest thing is that after it all I realized that all of his opening plays were identical. He always played the same exact cards and some how had the same spells and creatures available to him. I honestly don't think this is possible unless he plays 2 or 3 of the same exact cards in his deck repeatedly one enchantment and 3 different vampires with lifelink and one or two identical spells allowing you to remove cards from an opponent.
Sorry for the long thread but as a new player I haven't encountered such a volatile player in my roughly 2 years of little experience in the game. I do a lot of traveling around the world so I just carry decks with me and if the opportunity every comes I would like to continue playing tournaments or GP if at all possible which unfortunately due to my job is going to be rare.
So I'm just wondering how do you protect yourself against these types of players?
In response I play a soulfire grand master and bounce it to my hand to keep from having to deal with opponents copying it from my graveyard as some decks thrive upon waiting for an opponent to play a powerful spell and flashing a creature into play and then using combos to infinitely copy said creature 1000 times and thus casting your spell an infinite number of times.
Does beacon of tomorrows ever touch your graveyard allowing opponents the opportunity to cast it before its shuffled? And if I bounce it to my hand to I need to then shuffle it into my library from my hand? Or should I keep a few counter spells for creatures to defend myself?