Goodstuff decks are frustrating for opponents not only because they win a lot, but because they're formless- your opponents can't expect anything specific about what you'll do, besides playing the format's best cards. But even if your deck is pretty good, having a distinct theme you're trying to accomplish will be more enjoyable for your opponents to play against than just 'great cards'.
I'm a big fan of restrictions breed creativity. Try thinking of theme/goal that would be fun to explore (like, "I will only win with creatures stolen from my opponents graveyards"), and then build the best deck you can that doesn't stray from that theme.
Or in a similar vein, try and break and otherwise lackluster general. Rather than taking a superlatively good general (Jhoira, Sharuum) and trying to tone it down, take something no one would expect and try to break it. Gaka's Norin the Wary deck is a great example of this. One I've always thought would be funny is to use Ramses Overdark with recurring auras like Screams from Within for card advantage and profit.
I think that could be a route that's fun for both you and your friends.
I recently dismantled my first three (paper) decks, all for reasons similar to other people's.
My first deck was Jhoira of the Ghitu, and was a finely tuned monster. I took it apart because it wasn't rewarding to play or play against. It was a glass howitzer- from the opening hand I could tell if the table would be scooping in a few turns, or if I'd be sputtering out and not doing much. It amounted to, "Want to play EDH? Cool, let's flip a coin- oh man I won, want to play again?"
I took apart Momir Vig, Simic Visionary for the same reason as bobthefunny: too much shuffling. It just ate up so much play time- when you're tutoring multiple (sometimes infinitely) times a turn, I found it just not that much fun.
The last one I took apart was Teysa, Orzhov Scion, which I had built as a sort of BW reanimator, but that really wanted to be a combo deck. But I don't like playing combo, so it was just sort of lackluster. I decided to just scrap it.
I've used it on occasion, I think it's a nice card, especially if you aren't running blue. The fact that it hits abilities as well as spells is nice as well. It is a little narrow (it won't stop any sweepers), but you don't need to leave any mana open for it. And remember auras target while on the stack too, so it can hit more than just instants, sorceries and abilities.
Off topic, I see this [SCD] tag a lot. What does that stand for? From context clues I think it's Something Card Discussion. Special Card Discussion? So Called Dat? Seeking Commentary, Daddyo?
I would be surprised if the reason Coalition Victory was banned was because 'it's an anti-climatic victory'. If that were the case, all combos that result in a win, all board lockdowns, all mass land destruction, and especially, all 'you win the game' cards would be banned. All those are 'anti-climatic' in the same sense, imo.
I don't think anything is as anti-climatic as an auto-win card for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Basically every way to win the game, even via combo, is going to change the board state somehow. So when you win, everyone has certainly lost. The auto-win cards are weird in that they don't change the game at all, so opponents can (and in my experience will) say, "Ok. You win. We're going to keep playing though." People will let slide a lifegain deck that occasionally wins via Test of Endurance, but a deck dedicated to that exclusively will probably get ignored after a few games.
The 12 auto-win cards that aren't banned are fundamentally different than Coalition Victory for the reasons people have pointed out. Regardless of its ability to be answered, it's the only sorcery in the game that says "You win", so surely we can infer some correlation there.
I think banning is a function of lameness and powerlevel. If something is really powerful but varied in its uses or interactive, it probably won't be banned. This is what keeps Tooth and Nail in the safe zone for now. And likewise, something that can end the game really unsatisfyingly but isn't powerful (like the 12 auto-win enchantments/artifact, or the hilarious Divine Intervention), it's fine.
@PopeHilarius Coalition Victory doesn't simply say 'you win the game'. It says 'IF you control each basic land and IF you control creatures on the board for all the colors (that being a 5 color general being the simplest way to achieve that), THEN you win the game.'
There is a big difference. I've played a 5 color deck and it's a great deal harder to get all 5 basic land out then it seems. Often I'm playing with mana fixers to achieve my spells. In addition, there are three ways of dealing with Coalition Victory: Counter it, instant removal on a key creature, instant removal on a basic land.
No of course, there's no card that says just "Win the game." But it does say, "you win the game", which is unsatisfying for the reasons I mentioned earlier. What makes Coalition Victory different is that of the 13 auto-win cards, 11 of them trigger in your upkeep (Test of Endurance, Helix Pinnacle, etc.), giving opponents substantial time to disrupt the auto-win. The newest one Laboratory Maniac can be triggered immediately after being played, but only with some way to draw a card and substantial preparation, and unlike Coalition Victory, if the maniac is disrupted, you're very likely to lose instead.
So while yes, Coalition Victory requires set-up and can be disrupted (mostly by creature removal. Very few cards have instant speed land removal, and few of those are playable in EDH), it's still unique in that it's an auto-win sorcery. Have 5 basic lands and your commander? Then it's "Hey, anyone have counters or instant speed removal? Ok cool then I win." That's worlds different than every other auto-win card, and again, not really rewarding to lose to.
I don't mean to start a debate on Coalition Victory, my point is that while both are very powerful sorceries, its in a different league than Tooth and Nail when it comes to annoying wins.
People get worried over the banned Coalition Victory and it's only a 8-mana sorcery speed combo.....requiring your 5 color general to be in play to make it work. One piece of instant removal and the combo falls apart.
I can totally see Tooth and Nail on the chopping block
I think Coalition Victory is banned not just because it's an 8-mana sorcery that auto-wins, but because it auto-wins by literally saying "You win the game." If someone plays that for the win, not only is it anticlimactic, but it's also really prone to "Okay, you win, now the rest of us are going to play for 2nd" (which is a problem a lot of auto-win cards have). It's underwhelming to lose to and to win with. It isn't necessarily that overpowered (it is really powerful), but also has a lameness factor. It'd almost be least contentious if it said, "Exile all permanents you don't control, and you win the game." It's the "You just... win. The end", even at sorcery speed, is somewhat unsatisfying.
Compare Tooth and Nail, which doesn't fetch a combo that says "You win the game", it fetches combo pieces to... do something to win the game (deal infinite damage, attack with infinite creatures, make people draw infinite cards, whatever). This is more interactive and gives opponents more of a feeling they're actually losing the game. Plus, if the board state is affected, it eliminates the "play for 2nd" problem. And lastly, TaN can and does grab non-combo pairs of creatures. Just this week I saw a normally combo heavy player grab Massacre Wurm (and something unrelated) to kill off a single player who had a token swarm.
I can imagine TaN getting banned as the "grabbing two big creatures, woo!" percentage of use falls and "grabbing a two card combo" use rises, but I'd still be surprised. For now though, I don't think it's a problematic card.
Ha, I think that's awesome. You'd get props from people where I play for going all out with something like that (unless the print quality was awful or something). My girlfriend makes hilarious hand-drawn proxies (using the blank cards from the old Pro Tour decks) and people never mind- her Tooth and Nail is a smiley cartoon tooth and a nail.
Especially since you're doing the whole deck, even the cheap cards, it's clearly a theme thing so I think even sticklers wouldn't mind. I say go for it.
No suggestions, but I wanted to chime in with more praise for Gaka/endorse the deck for people wondering if Norin is for them (it is). I've built a paper version of Norin (some meta-based tweaks) that has been an absolute blast to play. In a game I played last night, I got Vicious Shadows out, so everyone was being cautious on their turns, and my opponent passes to me, and... Puppet's Verdict, Fork'd, with Krark's Thumb on the table! Surprise! I win!
I really enjoy the paradoxical combination of high power level with play variability. Most decks win by consistency, and I love how Norin can pull out a victory a different way each game. So cheers for sharing Gaka, it's really inspired deckbuilding.
I think WotC is just trying to re categorize terminology for today's culture of "we need simple words"...sad but true
I don't think it's sad- use of simple words is only a problem if meaning is lost or reduced, but brevity on cards improves readability. I'm okay with losing the earlier, "When this creature is put into a graveyard from play" in favor of "When this creature dies".
Vocabulary changes do feel weird, like when 'Exile' & 'Battlefield' were introduced, but I've definitely acclimated to both of them. 'In play' always had a sort of ambiguity (in its non-intuitive interaction with 'playing' a spell), and I haven't missed 'remove from the game' at all, since it's wordy and untrue. I think we'll get used to 'die' pretty quickly, as it's pithy and natural in a way that 'put into a graveyard from the battlefield' just isn't.
Hexproof does sound weird though. I did want a keyworded trollshroud (that isn't "trollshroud"), but hexproof sounds a little goofy for some reason.
The phyrexian are pretty much like the (not trying to be rude or offensive just making an observation) Nazi.
An apt comparison, but this really made me laugh. Who were you worried about offending? Phyrexians, or Nazis?
On topic though...
I think the greatest threat ought to be the Eldrazi, the Phyrexians, and Bolas, in that order. Planar-eating trumps planar-conquering, which trumps planar meddling.
But, I like the argument that in creative's hands, the order is reversed. Bolas is the biggest threat, because he can be inserted into any situation. In any disaster, conflict or unusual happening, on any plane anywhere or at any time, you can just toss in "Oh yeah and Bolas might have something to do with it." He's like the Illuminati in dragon-form: anything can and will be attributed to him. He's been around forever too- so like... Yawgmoth creating the Phyrexians as described in 'The Thran'? You might not know it but Bolas was behind that. It'll be in a future block novel.
Phyrexians are probably next up- though they've shown indications of tossing them aside at a later date (Melira being the possibility of hope, Karn's redemption, yadda yadda). But I'm hopeful they use them to threaten other planes. Eldrazi probably last because they're not that interesting a villain and its hard to do anything different with them. They're giant apocalyptic world destroyers... how can you make their second appearance different from their first? Their motivations are pretty basic (eat planes), and their means are bombastic but pretty simple (eat the plane). The Eldrazi are better as a lingering problem, not as a central villain.
The reserved list therefore exists for two reasons: it keeps collectors happy, but, more importantly, it gives Wizards an excuse not to support the older formats. "Oh, we won't hold eternal tournaments because there aren't enough players. Why don't you plays some nice standard/limited instead? Buy our new expansion!"
I never really thought of this angle- but I think this is a sound analysis. I've always thought that Wizards' adherence to the list was strange. On the face of it, I don't think abolishing the reserved list would really anger that many customers, and it's a massive net win for the playerbase overall. But they keep it, for the stated reason of 'integrity', which is always a fishy thing for a corporation to espouse. I think your hypothesis that they're thinking "We don't want people buying old cards, but new ones" makes sense. Or made sense, rather. I think that'd be a sound business decision when they made the list in 1996. But not 15 years later. Now, they would stand to make money by having reprints in new sets or Duel Deck products to fuel sales.
Thank you all so much for the suggestions- much appreciated! I've definitely got a lot to go on.
Fallout 3/NV: These two totally slipped my mind- we had been playing Fallout 3, but had stopped when Dragon Age 2 came out.
Arkham Asylum: I can't believe I've never heard of this game, the reviews are glowing. This seems really promising, I'll definitely check it out.
Sacred 2: This one seems pretty promising- and if its not up my girlfriend's alley, I think I'll probably check it out anyway.
Borderlands: I forgot about this one, I remember when it was released- I think first person perspective might rule this one out, but I'll check it out.
Stars Wars KOTOR: This looks pretty solid- and the graphics don't look too dated.
Deathsmiles: Premise looks good- a 2 player game would be great.
Castle Crashers: Ditto for this one- seems pretty fun, I think I'll definitely download this.
Bayonetta: I'm not sure I understand the gameplay of this one. Is it a fighting game a la Mortal Kombat or something? Wikipedia unhelpfully describes it as an 'action game' (I suppose in contrast to all those inaction games).
Lost Odyssey: I'm sold by the setting alone, I really love magic industrialization (like my favorite older rpg, Arcanum). The reviews are somewhat mixed though- jskura, was there anything you didn't like about it?
I'll check it out. One more thing is it hard to find like Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle?
It's not hard to find the roms for an emulator.
I'll second that- Tactics Ogre is easy to find via ROM, and is a lot of fun. And if you enjoy it, give Final Fantasy Tactics a try, which is an extremely similar game (better in some respects, worse in others).
So I've been waging a protracted but successful campaign of introducing my girlfriend to my somewhat geekier interests (She's picked up and enjoys Mtg, which is great). A year and a half ago she got me an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and since then we've had a lot of fun playing a few games together. I'm trying to find some other games we might enjoy, and I'm not a huge gamer (prior to the xbox, I mostly just played a SNES emulator), so I could use some advice.
So, games we've played through together that she really enjoyed: all Assassin's Creed titles, she loved Red Dead Redemption, and loved Dragon Age 2. Misses have included GTA4 (didn't like the setting), Bioshock (really doesn't like FPS), Mass Effect (loved the setting, but didn't like combat, too much like a FPS). So I think I'm after titles that:
Have a strong story & interesting setting
Are not first person perspective / Combat doesn't require manual aiming
Customizable protagonist is a plus
So... most RPGs basically fit the bill. But I'm hard-pressed on ideas. Any suggestions?
Hmm, bummer! Thanks for all the input- it's a bummer they're all white (I missed Hunters' Feast though, thanks Tspice). Grollub is a pretty funny card also. Probably not worth a slot, but the idea of swinging with him equipped with Grafted Exoskeleton is pretty funny. But I guess it was hoping too much for some sort of Howling Mine of lifegain or something.
I'm a big fan of restrictions breed creativity. Try thinking of theme/goal that would be fun to explore (like, "I will only win with creatures stolen from my opponents graveyards"), and then build the best deck you can that doesn't stray from that theme.
Or in a similar vein, try and break and otherwise lackluster general. Rather than taking a superlatively good general (Jhoira, Sharuum) and trying to tone it down, take something no one would expect and try to break it. Gaka's Norin the Wary deck is a great example of this. One I've always thought would be funny is to use Ramses Overdark with recurring auras like Screams from Within for card advantage and profit.
I think that could be a route that's fun for both you and your friends.
My first deck was Jhoira of the Ghitu, and was a finely tuned monster. I took it apart because it wasn't rewarding to play or play against. It was a glass howitzer- from the opening hand I could tell if the table would be scooping in a few turns, or if I'd be sputtering out and not doing much. It amounted to, "Want to play EDH? Cool, let's flip a coin- oh man I won, want to play again?"
I took apart Momir Vig, Simic Visionary for the same reason as bobthefunny: too much shuffling. It just ate up so much play time- when you're tutoring multiple (sometimes infinitely) times a turn, I found it just not that much fun.
The last one I took apart was Teysa, Orzhov Scion, which I had built as a sort of BW reanimator, but that really wanted to be a combo deck. But I don't like playing combo, so it was just sort of lackluster. I decided to just scrap it.
Off topic, I see this [SCD] tag a lot. What does that stand for? From context clues I think it's Something Card Discussion. Special Card Discussion? So Called Dat? Seeking Commentary, Daddyo?
I don't think anything is as anti-climatic as an auto-win card for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Basically every way to win the game, even via combo, is going to change the board state somehow. So when you win, everyone has certainly lost. The auto-win cards are weird in that they don't change the game at all, so opponents can (and in my experience will) say, "Ok. You win. We're going to keep playing though." People will let slide a lifegain deck that occasionally wins via Test of Endurance, but a deck dedicated to that exclusively will probably get ignored after a few games.
The 12 auto-win cards that aren't banned are fundamentally different than Coalition Victory for the reasons people have pointed out. Regardless of its ability to be answered, it's the only sorcery in the game that says "You win", so surely we can infer some correlation there.
Secondly- combos that result in a win, board lockdowns and mass destruction are banned, when they're annoying enough. Staff of Domination, Fastbond and Biorhythm are game winning combos, Painter's Servant was banned in part because of a lockdown combo, and Balance, Limited Resources and Upheaval all wreck manabases.
I think banning is a function of lameness and powerlevel. If something is really powerful but varied in its uses or interactive, it probably won't be banned. This is what keeps Tooth and Nail in the safe zone for now. And likewise, something that can end the game really unsatisfyingly but isn't powerful (like the 12 auto-win enchantments/artifact, or the hilarious Divine Intervention), it's fine.
No of course, there's no card that says just "Win the game." But it does say, "you win the game", which is unsatisfying for the reasons I mentioned earlier. What makes Coalition Victory different is that of the 13 auto-win cards, 11 of them trigger in your upkeep (Test of Endurance, Helix Pinnacle, etc.), giving opponents substantial time to disrupt the auto-win. The newest one Laboratory Maniac can be triggered immediately after being played, but only with some way to draw a card and substantial preparation, and unlike Coalition Victory, if the maniac is disrupted, you're very likely to lose instead.
So while yes, Coalition Victory requires set-up and can be disrupted (mostly by creature removal. Very few cards have instant speed land removal, and few of those are playable in EDH), it's still unique in that it's an auto-win sorcery. Have 5 basic lands and your commander? Then it's "Hey, anyone have counters or instant speed removal? Ok cool then I win." That's worlds different than every other auto-win card, and again, not really rewarding to lose to.
I don't mean to start a debate on Coalition Victory, my point is that while both are very powerful sorceries, its in a different league than Tooth and Nail when it comes to annoying wins.
I think Coalition Victory is banned not just because it's an 8-mana sorcery that auto-wins, but because it auto-wins by literally saying "You win the game." If someone plays that for the win, not only is it anticlimactic, but it's also really prone to "Okay, you win, now the rest of us are going to play for 2nd" (which is a problem a lot of auto-win cards have). It's underwhelming to lose to and to win with. It isn't necessarily that overpowered (it is really powerful), but also has a lameness factor. It'd almost be least contentious if it said, "Exile all permanents you don't control, and you win the game." It's the "You just... win. The end", even at sorcery speed, is somewhat unsatisfying.
Compare Tooth and Nail, which doesn't fetch a combo that says "You win the game", it fetches combo pieces to... do something to win the game (deal infinite damage, attack with infinite creatures, make people draw infinite cards, whatever). This is more interactive and gives opponents more of a feeling they're actually losing the game. Plus, if the board state is affected, it eliminates the "play for 2nd" problem. And lastly, TaN can and does grab non-combo pairs of creatures. Just this week I saw a normally combo heavy player grab Massacre Wurm (and something unrelated) to kill off a single player who had a token swarm.
I can imagine TaN getting banned as the "grabbing two big creatures, woo!" percentage of use falls and "grabbing a two card combo" use rises, but I'd still be surprised. For now though, I don't think it's a problematic card.
Especially since you're doing the whole deck, even the cheap cards, it's clearly a theme thing so I think even sticklers wouldn't mind. I say go for it.
I really enjoy the paradoxical combination of high power level with play variability. Most decks win by consistency, and I love how Norin can pull out a victory a different way each game. So cheers for sharing Gaka, it's really inspired deckbuilding.
I don't think it's sad- use of simple words is only a problem if meaning is lost or reduced, but brevity on cards improves readability. I'm okay with losing the earlier, "When this creature is put into a graveyard from play" in favor of "When this creature dies".
Vocabulary changes do feel weird, like when 'Exile' & 'Battlefield' were introduced, but I've definitely acclimated to both of them. 'In play' always had a sort of ambiguity (in its non-intuitive interaction with 'playing' a spell), and I haven't missed 'remove from the game' at all, since it's wordy and untrue. I think we'll get used to 'die' pretty quickly, as it's pithy and natural in a way that 'put into a graveyard from the battlefield' just isn't.
Hexproof does sound weird though. I did want a keyworded trollshroud (that isn't "trollshroud"), but hexproof sounds a little goofy for some reason.
An apt comparison, but this really made me laugh. Who were you worried about offending? Phyrexians, or Nazis?
On topic though...
I think the greatest threat ought to be the Eldrazi, the Phyrexians, and Bolas, in that order. Planar-eating trumps planar-conquering, which trumps planar meddling.
But, I like the argument that in creative's hands, the order is reversed. Bolas is the biggest threat, because he can be inserted into any situation. In any disaster, conflict or unusual happening, on any plane anywhere or at any time, you can just toss in "Oh yeah and Bolas might have something to do with it." He's like the Illuminati in dragon-form: anything can and will be attributed to him. He's been around forever too- so like... Yawgmoth creating the Phyrexians as described in 'The Thran'? You might not know it but Bolas was behind that. It'll be in a future block novel.
Phyrexians are probably next up- though they've shown indications of tossing them aside at a later date (Melira being the possibility of hope, Karn's redemption, yadda yadda). But I'm hopeful they use them to threaten other planes. Eldrazi probably last because they're not that interesting a villain and its hard to do anything different with them. They're giant apocalyptic world destroyers... how can you make their second appearance different from their first? Their motivations are pretty basic (eat planes), and their means are bombastic but pretty simple (eat the plane). The Eldrazi are better as a lingering problem, not as a central villain.
I never really thought of this angle- but I think this is a sound analysis. I've always thought that Wizards' adherence to the list was strange. On the face of it, I don't think abolishing the reserved list would really anger that many customers, and it's a massive net win for the playerbase overall. But they keep it, for the stated reason of 'integrity', which is always a fishy thing for a corporation to espouse. I think your hypothesis that they're thinking "We don't want people buying old cards, but new ones" makes sense. Or made sense, rather. I think that'd be a sound business decision when they made the list in 1996. But not 15 years later. Now, they would stand to make money by having reprints in new sets or Duel Deck products to fuel sales.
Fallout 3/NV: These two totally slipped my mind- we had been playing Fallout 3, but had stopped when Dragon Age 2 came out.
Arkham Asylum: I can't believe I've never heard of this game, the reviews are glowing. This seems really promising, I'll definitely check it out.
Sacred 2: This one seems pretty promising- and if its not up my girlfriend's alley, I think I'll probably check it out anyway.
Borderlands: I forgot about this one, I remember when it was released- I think first person perspective might rule this one out, but I'll check it out.
Stars Wars KOTOR: This looks pretty solid- and the graphics don't look too dated.
Deathsmiles: Premise looks good- a 2 player game would be great.
Castle Crashers: Ditto for this one- seems pretty fun, I think I'll definitely download this.
Bayonetta: I'm not sure I understand the gameplay of this one. Is it a fighting game a la Mortal Kombat or something? Wikipedia unhelpfully describes it as an 'action game' (I suppose in contrast to all those inaction games).
Lost Odyssey: I'm sold by the setting alone, I really love magic industrialization (like my favorite older rpg, Arcanum). The reviews are somewhat mixed though- jskura, was there anything you didn't like about it?
I'll second that- Tactics Ogre is easy to find via ROM, and is a lot of fun. And if you enjoy it, give Final Fantasy Tactics a try, which is an extremely similar game (better in some respects, worse in others).
So I've been waging a protracted but successful campaign of introducing my girlfriend to my somewhat geekier interests (She's picked up and enjoys Mtg, which is great). A year and a half ago she got me an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and since then we've had a lot of fun playing a few games together. I'm trying to find some other games we might enjoy, and I'm not a huge gamer (prior to the xbox, I mostly just played a SNES emulator), so I could use some advice.
So, games we've played through together that she really enjoyed: all Assassin's Creed titles, she loved Red Dead Redemption, and loved Dragon Age 2. Misses have included GTA4 (didn't like the setting), Bioshock (really doesn't like FPS), Mass Effect (loved the setting, but didn't like combat, too much like a FPS). So I think I'm after titles that:
Have a strong story & interesting setting
Are not first person perspective / Combat doesn't require manual aiming
Customizable protagonist is a plus
So... most RPGs basically fit the bill. But I'm hard-pressed on ideas. Any suggestions?
Thank you all for the advice!