The rule has existed since multiplayer magic has been around. It didn't start with EDH. The reason is because there's no way to simulate a player making decisions. It gets ugly, and abusive when you have a player and permanents who can make no decisions. Think of all the interactions you have with a player in a given game. There's so many you can't. There's so many it's hard to remember a given turn. That's why they don't even design cards like "draw a card on the next upkeep" anymore.
Again, the goal of Magic is to make your opponents lose. Cards that say "You win the game are outliers". Concession is making them lose.
There is no more elegant and simple way to handle concession. If I'm playing an MMO and quit. I'm gone. If I play a FPS and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a MOBA and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a team tournament fighting game and quit, I'm gone. Look at all of gaming and show me a situation where this is NOT the norm.
I don't deny that the current rule is cleaner. My question is simply whether Wizards intended the types of interactions we see in multiplayer games which cause threads like this and the other one or if perhaps Wizards would change the rule if they had a clean way to do so. That's why I used the O-Ring example. Boomerang has existed forever and when they printed O-Ring it created an unintended loophole which they eventually fixed. It is possible that the same is true with the scoop rule: it was designed with one thing in mind (1v1 play) but causes problems in one specific instance.
What I am trying to show you is that there is no clean rule. The best solution I have seen in any game is probably the latest mortal Kombat where if someone quits mid match, their head explodes and you get a quitality.
Magic, by design, is filled with several decisions that need to be made each turn by each player. The ONLY way to deal with that is if a player's not present anymore, you remove them and all things pertaining to them.
This isn't O-ring, that created an unfavorable loop due to its wording. It's a simple, elegant rule that is in just about every game imaginable. I say just about because I'm leaving the door open for someone to find an outlier. you can't have the lost player be involved in any further decisions that need to be made and if they or a proxy or triggers based off them being present are, it's not simple or elegant. The thing is, people are looking for those juicy, juicy triggers. That's the heart of what I have seen so far. It's definitely the wrong focus.
For arguments sake, how about: if an opponent you are targeting or attacking concedes choose one: draw two cards, untap all of your lands, untap all of your creatures.
Now, you get something, but there's no need to get complicated with the lost player and decisions. Plus, stifling this trigger would be a sweet play
Gaddock Teeg. All day. G/W hatebears. Derevi stax is another option if you have the cash. It's easier to deny resources than it is to play counter magic, IMO.
Hold on. How do you all know that the effect scooping has in multiplayer is an intention and not an oversight? Wizards made plenty of cards like O-Ring and Reconnaissance which worked a certain way because it was the rules, but then were either changed or templated differently in subsequent versions because of the rules loophole. As we see in this thread, a new rule isn't a simple fix, and we already know thanks to the RC that not changing a rule which is clean and simple is sometimes preferable to creating a more inclusive but clunky rule.
The rule has existed since multiplayer magic has been around. It didn't start with EDH. The reason is because there's no way to simulate a player making decisions. It gets ugly, and abusive when you have a player and permanents who can make no decisions. Think of all the interactions you have with a player in a given game. There's so many you can't. There's so many it's hard to remember a given turn. That's why they don't even design cards like "draw a card on the next upkeep" anymore.
Again, the goal of Magic is to make your opponents lose. Cards that say "You win the game are outliers". Concession is making them lose.
There is no more elegant and simple way to handle concession. If I'm playing an MMO and quit. I'm gone. If I play a FPS and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a MOBA and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a team tournament fighting game and quit, I'm gone. Look at all of gaming and show me a situation where this is NOT the norm.
I guess I should have clarified, yes, after first asking him to remove it, and explaining it ruined peoples fun.
But what do you do when he then complains about your xyz card ruining his fun?
The fact that it's happened: ONE TIME, in six years, with about 12 players, and literally 100+ decks (I alone have 18 decks, and another player regularly shows up with 25 decks each week) and the fact it was group agreement that we all hated the one card, leads me to believe it won't happen again. We've all dealt with hundreds of powerful cards in that time, most of us are big spenders so there is no shortage of power, and we've all adapted to others cards, leads me to believe it's unlikely to happen again. It's not up to "him" to complain about one card in response/retaliation, because the B2B hatred was a decision made by 4 players against 1 players card that failed to listen to the groups complaints. If I run a card that 4 people hate, ask me to remove, and then I see a game has devolved into the table vs. me, I'll remove the card, but I'd have removed it before it ever came to that point.
While everyone in our group wants to win, and we all spend a lot of $ to do so and are not afraid of building strong decks, ultimately the group is about fun. All of us work hard in our real lives, 40+ hours per week, and we come together once per week for 5 hours. If we can't have fun in that time, and B2B drained the fun, there flat out isn't a reason to get together and play. This isn't a tournament where anything goes provided you stay within the parameters of the format, where an entrance fee was paid or prizes are at stake. In those instances I firmly believe in "build a better deck, adapt to it, etc, etc". Take your B2B enabled win, enjoy it, now remove it because you're making the rest of your friends have a negative experience. Again, we've come to a "gentleman's agreement" over ONE card in 6 years. It's never come up again, so it's not a case of editing someone's deck.
Emphasis mine. In your own words, that's exactly what it was. But tell yourself whatever you need to in order to sleep better or feel right.
To sleep better at night? Lol, get over yourself with that melodramatic nonsense. Yes, I lie awake at night in cold sweats, in agony over something that happened in 2010.
When you selectively put emphasis on something you conveniently IGNORE everything else. Like the fact it happened once in six years. One card. Hundreds of decks. GROUP CONCENSUS TO REMOVE THE CARD.
You know what I DO concern myself about? That the 5 people that I act as HOST to at MY house nearly every Wednesday for the last six years had a good time that night, and want to come back next week. Tell you what: YOU host a gathering. Watch 4-5 people sit miserably, unable to play the game to any reasonable degree. On successive weeks. Then tell me if you don't step in to remedy the situation? If the answer is remove one card from a pool of 10's of thousands vs everyone making changes to their decks to deal with it, which is most logical? Again, because you chose to focus on one part of my post, you're ignoring that we deal with strong cards every single week, things like Iona, Moat, Blood Moon, things that by their nature are restrictive. Nothing sucked the fun off the table like B2B, repeatedly. We're not afraid to adapt our decks. NO ONE WAS HAVING FUN.
Actually, one person was, I'd wager.
Doesn't change the fact that you took it upon yourself to edit his deck. No amount of details or excuses changes that. Grats to you and your awesome playgroup that only plays the best cards and has a million, bajillion dollars in every playthrough of all 600 decks.
But still can't handle a Back to basics?
:insert eyeroll emoji:
"It's MY house and YOU can't play that card!" Sounds like a great place to play.
If a rule were to be made, it would need to be simple. A proxy player is more complicated than most infinite combos.
Personally I dont like people scooping in response and screwing up expected results (denying triggers etc), but I dont think tactical scooping is a bad thing. My suggested rule would thus read, simply, a player cannot concede while they or a spell or permanent they control or own is being targeted, attacked or activated or has a delayed trigger waiting to resolve at end of turn, and the decision to concede is subject to the stack (players can respond by affecting the conceding players permanents, such as to activate stolen permanents before they leave the battlefield)
This allows tactical scooping - if I pass turn, the next guy is going to insurrection the table to death so I may as well scoop - but it doesnt let me scoop in response to bribery countering their spell. Once targeted, I must let it resolve. If they choose a creature... It gets complicated whether or not The proposed rule should allow me to then immediately concede or not, but if they only need etb triggers they can at least get those or one activation (or more if they can combo off the stolen permanent) and if the rule doesnt allow players to concede until end of turn effects (like control target permanent until end of turn) resolve, then once bribery is cast the unforunate dead player cant scoop until end of turn (since at minimum, at cleanup it is guaranteed that there are no effects affecting the player trying to concede).
This does open up some new areas for abuse like forcibly locking a player into the game until end of turn by reacting to their decision to concede with instants or activating random abilities towards them, but since there is a limit on the abuse, as stated previously at cleanup there are no effects at all and a player refusing to let a turn end is actively enforced, it should not be a major problem.
This would mean resolving infinite combos step by step if a player conceded. Step. By. Boring. Step. If it involved another player at all. It wouldn't even be one of those cases where you make someone play out the steps to see if they screw up. Nope. You would have to play it out for the whole table.
Guys... You can't make a rule that says "you can not quit playing this game." Never, not ever going to happen. Just think about that. You are contemplating making a rule that says "You HAVE to play this game." Or what? I lose? Ok. That was the point of conceding in the first place right? What game has that rule anywhere? I could be in the top 4 of a pro tour and guess what, I can just up and leave. I could be main stage at EVO in the middle of a match and just quit.
Edit: Magic, by design requires living, present players to function. There's no proxy player solution because there's a million interactions(probably more) that would require a person to make a decision. Someone's going to have to decide if that proxy token you're targeting gets sacrificed or not. Someone's going to benefit or not. Duels has AI. Real life does not and there's no way to simulate it with any proxy player rule.
Kinda skimming this and some of the issues being brought up are addressed in my proposal in the OP, such as players can't pass priority.
The origin for this rule stems from EDH tournaments. As we all know, EDH is pretty difficult to run competitively due to the nature of being a cutthroat format, so we do our best. With scooping it is usually a manner of issuing a warning that we wont invite them back due to its unethical influence. Still, players frequently are known to spite scoop in order to screw over the player killing them, vastly changing the inevitable winner who earned their lead (often new players to the scene or someone cashing in on their one freebie warning for it). As a Derevi player this is frequently done to deny combat triggers. It's also fairly common with players who use theft cards.
As is, scooping offers NOTHING positive for players or the game itself. It has no strategic value like 1v1, it punishes players for playing well, it promotes the concept of kingmaking and collusion (one of the hardest things to avoid in any cutthroat-esque game), and offers no pros for all the negatives it brings. There's literally no benefit to keeping the scoop rule in its current form. Something does need to be changed so that it takes away the impact of scooping to be a malicious and toxic option as well as makes players not feel bad if they have a legit reason to leave. Having a standardized rule allows players to easily agree upon what to do in those moments and removes the grey areas of spells on the stack and etc...
My solution is not perfect, it is very easy to construct situations where the rule has a blind spot (like a containment priest could suddenly vanish from the opponents field...changes things a bit). It is designed to cover the most common instances of where players would get spite scooped on and retain the easiest data to recreate. For example, It would be impractical to list off the opponents graveyard if they scooped and ran off. That info is likely not retained by the group.
This OP was the result of over a year of competitive events and is pushed for the communities benefit. This is not a cry thread, if anything it is to thwart the players who do cry and choose to low blow better players. The thread is to discuss the best rules to construct. If you are of the opinion scooping is a positive, there's yet to be an argument that is valid and doesn't simply lend itself to enabling maliciously toxic players. It's an excuse to be petty because of an oversight in comp multiplayer rules coverage.
Cutthroat games work on a basic principle that every move is an intention for YOU to win. Benefiting other players is assumed to be for your own personal gain. Scooping eliminates your option to win and thus nullifies any justification to aide other players.
It's not an oversight or a loophole. It's the rules. It's been a multiplayer magic rule forever. Sorry your pet Derevi deck suffers. We don't need to alter the entire game for you when it's working just fine. Your goal in multiplayer magic is to eliminate the other players? Congratulations. You eliminated the conceding player.
Cutthroat games do not operate with every intention is for you to win. Oh no. They operate where every move you make is to make the others lose. Winning just happens to do that. I'm pretty sure everyone who plays commander frequently has had no out but to help another player do something(destroy the o-ring in a combo piece say), that would only be done to help another player win, just so another player can't.
Edit: You're thinking about it the wrong way. What's the most common way to win at magic? Reduce opponents life to 0. But what's really happening here is you making them lose. Milling someone? Making them lose. Poison? Making them lose. Outside of weird "you win the game" cards like lab maniac, the majority of magic games are won because you were focusing on making your opponents lose. Maybe that's a loophole and oversight in the rules as well...
And their graveyard is relevant. Maybe I need to miraculous recovery their acidic slime to blow up that land your trying to untapped with Derevi.
I guess I should have clarified, yes, after first asking him to remove it, and explaining it ruined peoples fun.
But what do you do when he then complains about your xyz card ruining his fun?
The fact that it's happened: ONE TIME, in six years, with about 12 players, and literally 100+ decks (I alone have 18 decks, and another player regularly shows up with 25 decks each week) and the fact it was group agreement that we all hated the one card, leads me to believe it won't happen again. We've all dealt with hundreds of powerful cards in that time, most of us are big spenders so there is no shortage of power, and we've all adapted to others cards, leads me to believe it's unlikely to happen again. It's not up to "him" to complain about one card in response/retaliation, because the B2B hatred was a decision made by 4 players against 1 players card that failed to listen to the groups complaints. If I run a card that 4 people hate, ask me to remove, and then I see a game has devolved into the table vs. me, I'll remove the card, but I'd have removed it before it ever came to that point.
While everyone in our group wants to win, and we all spend a lot of $ to do so and are not afraid of building strong decks, ultimately the group is about fun. All of us work hard in our real lives, 40+ hours per week, and we come together once per week for 5 hours. If we can't have fun in that time, and B2B drained the fun, there flat out isn't a reason to get together and play. This isn't a tournament where anything goes provided you stay within the parameters of the format, where an entrance fee was paid or prizes are at stake. In those instances I firmly believe in "build a better deck, adapt to it, etc, etc". Take your B2B enabled win, enjoy it, now remove it because you're making the rest of your friends have a negative experience. Again, we've come to a "gentleman's agreement" over ONE card in 6 years. It's never come up again, so it's not a case of editing someone's deck.
Emphasis mine. In your own words, that's exactly what it was. But tell yourself whatever you need to in order to sleep better or feel right.
Here is what you do:
"I don't like that you are playing contamination, I do not enjoy the game when it is involved. Please take it out or play a different deck"
If your friend doesn't do this, then there is a deeper issue of caring about winning more than caring about having fun that should be addressed.
And I am a bit disgusted by the general response to this thread being "here is a way to start an arms race until no one enjoys the game anymore and is $500 poorer"
what answers to contamination cost $500? Hyperbole much? Pretty sure I can get 5-6 rocks and 5-6 disenchanted effects for under 5$ total. And they're just good utility cards good in just about any game.
The Rms race is actually what you've suggested. What happens when his friend asks him to remove a card? And now another player is asking. Why are we even playing the cards we bought?
Playing magic is not this complicated guys. You play with someone or you don't. I don't know why people feel "I don't like this card" entitles them to selectively edit someone else's deck. That's a huge dick move.
That's not the whole truth either. Example:
This past Sunday two new guys showed up at our store. New to our store, not new to magic. They had no cards newer than mercadian masques. Their decks were terribly underpowered. The four of us regulars playing split into two groups of three, each group consisting of two regulars, one new guy.
My pod went like this: two regulars playing high powered cards duking it out, throwing haymakers. New guy biding time, throwing a jab here and there. My friend kills me with him at 4 life. New guy wins the next turn with his sand warrior tokens.
We were happy. He was delighted. Everyone had fun. Three players, two different power levels. Good games.
Yeah, I suppose I said that a little backwards. I didn't intend to exclude all the fun times had playing decks that are not equally matched, but rather point out that the game is reliably fun when the decks are. I don't think it's difficult to have fun playing strong decks against weak ones, but rather that it is more likely to have a bad game than it is with evenly powered decks. What a strangely difficult concept to express succinctly.
I honestly don't think the decks matter, just the mindset of the players. Take what happened to me, now if I was playing new guy 1v1 I'm not tooth and nailing for Palinchron/DEN. I'd probably just grab some random fatty and a mana dork or something. I know I can one spell combo kill him, but what's the fun in that(to me there is none in this hypothetical instance). It'd be like Daigo screaming how I got pwned if we played a game of street fighter.
The worst thing you can do, to yourself and others, is refuse to learn and demand that others come down to your level so you can beat them.
That's not true. Magic is fun as long as the people are on the same level, no matter what level that is. As much as you like the situation where one person makes a powerful deck and other players adjust because the want to compete with it, the inverse is entirely possible where one person makes a particularly low powered deck and other players adjust because they want it to compete with them. That's what happens when people reach the experience to realize that they'd rather enjoy a game than win it.
I suppose I agree that demanding someone play down to your level is wrong and tasteless, but encouraging it is perfectly acceptable. Anyone who's okay with promoting stronger building to encourage competition but not okay with promoting weaker building to encourage competition is being narrow-minded.
That's not the whole truth either. Example:
This past Sunday two new guys showed up at our store. New to our store, not new to magic. They had no cards newer than mercadian masques. Their decks were terribly underpowered. The four of us regulars playing split into two groups of three, each group consisting of two regulars, one new guy.
My pod went like this: two regulars playing high powered cards duking it out, throwing haymakers. New guy biding time, throwing a jab here and there. My friend kills me with him at 4 life. New guy wins the next turn with his sand warrior tokens.
We were happy. He was delighted. Everyone had fun. Three players, two different power levels. Good games.
Is hating on contamination really starting an arms race though? "Hey guys, run some enchantment removal and maybe some mana rocks" doesn't seem like it's asking too much. If I'm playing green, white or blue I'm playing both of those things anyhow.
You're missing the greatest strength of contamination: it stops people from killing it. Unless you have enchantment removal AND mana rocks or instant enchantment removal in hand with mana available to cast it when Contamination is cast, your green and white and blue aren't going to do crap. Lands only make black mana, and black mana doesn't kill enchantments outside of high costed colorless answers. Its one of those cards like Possibility Storm where the effect isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it's still really frustrating to kill because it shuts down anything you would aim at it.
Oh I know how it works. I run it. Others in my group do as well.
I also run a five color deck that had no basics. I got tired of blood moon, so I added three plains and two forests. I didn't consider it an arms race, just adapting to overcome weaknesses in my deck.
I also don't play my staxos deck every game. I get the cards annoying. But it is answerable if you plan accordingly and those answers are useful in every game so I don't see it as an arms race so much as teaching you better deck building skills.
if the rest of the group doesn't want to make an EDH arms race, then teching your decks up with contamination-hate, better artifact mana and all of that stuff probably isn't the way you'd wanna go.
instead, like mr wildfire, i'd probably suggest just talking to your mate as a mate, and just explain to him that the rest of the group isn't able to compete at that kinda level, and it'd be brilliant if he'd take it out of his deck/replace it with something less 'hard-lock'-like/try building a different deck.
Is hating on contamination really starting an arms race though? "Hey guys, run some enchantment removal and maybe some mana rocks" doesn't seem like it's asking too much. It's really basic deck construction, to me. If I'm playing green, white or blue I'm playing both of those things anyhow. It's not really an arms race, IMO, as much as it is teaching people how to build decks and plan for what others may play.
The difference here is that counterspells, removal and the likes are cards in the game. Scooping is a mechanic originally meant as a way to ocncede the game, not to act kingmaker.
You'll note if you read the post he was quoting that I did not mention any plays about trying to increase other players chances to win. It's not about playing kingmaker or colluding, it's about increasing your own chances of winning games.
Just like you have to train people to respect counterspells by playing counterspells, you have to train people to understand there are potential game state changes that could happen if you scooped, by scooping.
Except I can play around Counterspells. I can judge someone's hand size, colors being played, and board state. I can't judge or work around someone's willingness to "Lolnope". I can force you to discard kill spells, I can force you to discard/Shush counterpells, but I can't do anything about anyone walking away from the table.
You literally can't train someone to prepare for something they have nothing to prepare with.
You prepare by not putting all of your eggs into one basket. You don't use all your resources to kill player A and not be prepared for retaliation from B. There. I've given you the knowledge to prepare with and for.
By showing your willingness to scoop, all you're doing is making it where other players (in any group that this is seen as wrong in) are less likely to play with you.
By showing your willingness to use counterspells, all you're doing is making it where other players (in any group that this is seen as wrong in) are less likely to play with you.
By showing your willingness to use removal, all you're doing is making it where other players (in any group that this is seen as wrong in) are less likely to play with you.
By showing your willingness to play combos, all you're doing is making it where other players (in any group that this is seen as wrong in) are less likely to play with you.
By showing your willingness to play to win, all you're doing is making it where other players (in any group that this is seen as wrong in) are less likely to play with you.
The difference here is that counterspells, removal and the likes are cards in the game. Scooping is a mechanic originally meant as a way to ocncede the game, not to act kingmaker.
I guess that this comment was menat as a "if your playgroup is okay with it then it is not a problem" which I wholeheartedly agree with.
But using scooping as a weapon to make sure a player doesn't win is imo the same as rigging the game. I love the politics of EDH and assesing which player is the bigest threat at the moment and getting the other players to attack the player you feel is the biggest threat to you. And collusion has its place when you need to work together against a bigger foe. But when you scoop you throw all thoughts about the core of the game out the window just to deny another player the win, and that's what I have a problem with.
ID's happen all the time in competitive magic. Where real actual money is on the line. And they deny people a chance at said money who need x player to lose, not draw. Those ID's involve two concessions and a round where both players agree to do nothing and draw.
What I am trying to show you is that there is no clean rule. The best solution I have seen in any game is probably the latest mortal Kombat where if someone quits mid match, their head explodes and you get a quitality.
Magic, by design, is filled with several decisions that need to be made each turn by each player. The ONLY way to deal with that is if a player's not present anymore, you remove them and all things pertaining to them.
This isn't O-ring, that created an unfavorable loop due to its wording. It's a simple, elegant rule that is in just about every game imaginable. I say just about because I'm leaving the door open for someone to find an outlier. you can't have the lost player be involved in any further decisions that need to be made and if they or a proxy or triggers based off them being present are, it's not simple or elegant. The thing is, people are looking for those juicy, juicy triggers. That's the heart of what I have seen so far. It's definitely the wrong focus.
For arguments sake, how about: if an opponent you are targeting or attacking concedes choose one: draw two cards, untap all of your lands, untap all of your creatures.
Now, you get something, but there's no need to get complicated with the lost player and decisions. Plus, stifling this trigger would be a sweet play
The rule has existed since multiplayer magic has been around. It didn't start with EDH. The reason is because there's no way to simulate a player making decisions. It gets ugly, and abusive when you have a player and permanents who can make no decisions. Think of all the interactions you have with a player in a given game. There's so many you can't. There's so many it's hard to remember a given turn. That's why they don't even design cards like "draw a card on the next upkeep" anymore.
Again, the goal of Magic is to make your opponents lose. Cards that say "You win the game are outliers". Concession is making them lose.
There is no more elegant and simple way to handle concession. If I'm playing an MMO and quit. I'm gone. If I play a FPS and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a MOBA and quit, I'm gone. If I'm playing a team tournament fighting game and quit, I'm gone. Look at all of gaming and show me a situation where this is NOT the norm.
Actually, one person was, I'd wager.
Doesn't change the fact that you took it upon yourself to edit his deck. No amount of details or excuses changes that. Grats to you and your awesome playgroup that only plays the best cards and has a million, bajillion dollars in every playthrough of all 600 decks.
But still can't handle a Back to basics?
:insert eyeroll emoji:
"It's MY house and YOU can't play that card!" Sounds like a great place to play.
This would mean resolving infinite combos step by step if a player conceded. Step. By. Boring. Step. If it involved another player at all. It wouldn't even be one of those cases where you make someone play out the steps to see if they screw up. Nope. You would have to play it out for the whole table.
Guys... You can't make a rule that says "you can not quit playing this game." Never, not ever going to happen. Just think about that. You are contemplating making a rule that says "You HAVE to play this game." Or what? I lose? Ok. That was the point of conceding in the first place right? What game has that rule anywhere? I could be in the top 4 of a pro tour and guess what, I can just up and leave. I could be main stage at EVO in the middle of a match and just quit.
Edit: Magic, by design requires living, present players to function. There's no proxy player solution because there's a million interactions(probably more) that would require a person to make a decision. Someone's going to have to decide if that proxy token you're targeting gets sacrificed or not. Someone's going to benefit or not. Duels has AI. Real life does not and there's no way to simulate it with any proxy player rule.
It's not an oversight or a loophole. It's the rules. It's been a multiplayer magic rule forever. Sorry your pet Derevi deck suffers. We don't need to alter the entire game for you when it's working just fine. Your goal in multiplayer magic is to eliminate the other players? Congratulations. You eliminated the conceding player.
Cutthroat games do not operate with every intention is for you to win. Oh no. They operate where every move you make is to make the others lose. Winning just happens to do that. I'm pretty sure everyone who plays commander frequently has had no out but to help another player do something(destroy the o-ring in a combo piece say), that would only be done to help another player win, just so another player can't.
Edit: You're thinking about it the wrong way. What's the most common way to win at magic? Reduce opponents life to 0. But what's really happening here is you making them lose. Milling someone? Making them lose. Poison? Making them lose. Outside of weird "you win the game" cards like lab maniac, the majority of magic games are won because you were focusing on making your opponents lose. Maybe that's a loophole and oversight in the rules as well...
And their graveyard is relevant. Maybe I need to miraculous recovery their acidic slime to blow up that land your trying to untapped with Derevi.
Emphasis mine. In your own words, that's exactly what it was. But tell yourself whatever you need to in order to sleep better or feel right.
what answers to contamination cost $500? Hyperbole much? Pretty sure I can get 5-6 rocks and 5-6 disenchanted effects for under 5$ total. And they're just good utility cards good in just about any game.
The Rms race is actually what you've suggested. What happens when his friend asks him to remove a card? And now another player is asking. Why are we even playing the cards we bought?
Playing magic is not this complicated guys. You play with someone or you don't. I don't know why people feel "I don't like this card" entitles them to selectively edit someone else's deck. That's a huge dick move.
But what do you do when he then complains about your xyz card ruining his fun?
I honestly don't think the decks matter, just the mindset of the players. Take what happened to me, now if I was playing new guy 1v1 I'm not tooth and nailing for Palinchron/DEN. I'd probably just grab some random fatty and a mana dork or something. I know I can one spell combo kill him, but what's the fun in that(to me there is none in this hypothetical instance). It'd be like Daigo screaming how I got pwned if we played a game of street fighter.
That's not the whole truth either. Example:
This past Sunday two new guys showed up at our store. New to our store, not new to magic. They had no cards newer than mercadian masques. Their decks were terribly underpowered. The four of us regulars playing split into two groups of three, each group consisting of two regulars, one new guy.
My pod went like this: two regulars playing high powered cards duking it out, throwing haymakers. New guy biding time, throwing a jab here and there. My friend kills me with him at 4 life. New guy wins the next turn with his sand warrior tokens.
We were happy. He was delighted. Everyone had fun. Three players, two different power levels. Good games.
Oh I know how it works. I run it. Others in my group do as well.
I also run a five color deck that had no basics. I got tired of blood moon, so I added three plains and two forests. I didn't consider it an arms race, just adapting to overcome weaknesses in my deck.
I also don't play my staxos deck every game. I get the cards annoying. But it is answerable if you plan accordingly and those answers are useful in every game so I don't see it as an arms race so much as teaching you better deck building skills.
Is hating on contamination really starting an arms race though? "Hey guys, run some enchantment removal and maybe some mana rocks" doesn't seem like it's asking too much. It's really basic deck construction, to me. If I'm playing green, white or blue I'm playing both of those things anyhow. It's not really an arms race, IMO, as much as it is teaching people how to build decks and plan for what others may play.
You prepare by not putting all of your eggs into one basket. You don't use all your resources to kill player A and not be prepared for retaliation from B. There. I've given you the knowledge to prepare with and for.
ID's happen all the time in competitive magic. Where real actual money is on the line. And they deny people a chance at said money who need x player to lose, not draw. Those ID's involve two concessions and a round where both players agree to do nothing and draw.
Welcome to magic.