I think quarantining certain cards in cEDH-ville while you are thinking about Commander can also be disastrous.
I guess to go back to an older style of doing this so much of this post is people posting reasons why we should have life totals lower than 40 and why that would be good and people responding as to why those things are bad.
What are the reasons other than it already being at 40 that it being at 40 is a good number?
I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive as you point out.
(Also I am still not convinced this format is casual beyond it being a kitchen table space for multiplayer games of magic, the cards put into the format just go so strongly against that view of it)
I would slot 3 mana Thalia into the really good EDH hatebear slot especially if like mine the manabase of the people you play with gets better over time, same with Aven Mindcensor which is the best of that style of library hate card. Dryad Militant also very good and has a huge target on it for a lot of decks.
I never see Alms Collector at all, and Notion Thief like new Narset I look at as a control/combo card moreso than a hatebear.
Lowering the effectiveness of necro and other cards that exploit the high life total is just one aspect of lowering starting life totals. It's not even close to my primary reason for wanting to do so. My primary reason I think is best summed up here:
right now a LOT of people put combos in their decks as a "safety valve" for if the game is going too long. And I think this safety valve mentality is what's increased the prevalence of combos in otherwise noncompetitive metas, and made those combos faster and faster. With lower life totals, ending the game without an infinite combo becomes less difficult, and people are less likely to resort to infinite combos as their only reliable option.
Right now EDH has a reputation for creating games so long that they wear out their welcome, and then keep going for another two hours. Cutting down the absurd starting life totals would at least help put a dent in that.
it's pretty rare for someone to try to win except by a dedicated "I win" button, which I personally find very unsatisfying. Rarely is incremental damage relevant when other players are trying to win. Which is supposed to be most of the game. 30 life brings that incremental damage into sharper focus (not as much as 20 life, but baby steps).
I agree with this but also an increase in the relevance of incremental damage and life loss also hurts those cards.
Playing in formats where it is 20 recently has really nailed down my outlook that 40 is way too much and 30 might even still be too much but 20 is never going to happen in this format at this point.
1) On 30 Life
I think something that gets quickly lost in these threads when changing the starting life total comes up is that it isn't that the Aggro player has to deal 90 damage instead of 120.
It is that cracking a fetch and shocking a land into play puts you at 27 instead of 37, that is the change that is HUGE, a lost Mana Crypt flip to name another card that comes up here a bunch is a 1/10th of your life, even higher power staples like Fire Covenant and Toxic Deluge really change as the life total does.
You take the forms of life loss that are largely incidental in a game of Commander right now and then add them to more aggressive decks that could be spawned from this change and the math for the combo players changes greatly.
Things become more risky because no longer does that player have the cushion to just wait for the perfect time and having to go for it early can often lead you into stalls or into other disruption.
Which both makes the combo less resilient, and makes it when it works all that more satisfying.
2) On playing Combo
There is a sentiment in this thread that certain combo is fine as long as you aren't going for it right away, but that betrays how decks in MTG are built. If I am making a combo deck and where the deck fits into archetypes is one of the earliest things I am thinking about when building, it is designed from the jump to work towards that game plan, every magic deck ever made is the same way. People aren't gonna wait to counter spells or remove pieces from the board, so the idea that opportunities should not be taken in this game to forward the game plan designed in the deck being played.
Finally I am never sure what the actual style of combo people want gone if only because I am seeing far fewer infinite combos in the games I am in (in fact Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal is the only one I can count on reliably showing up), everything else is more traditional mtg combo building be it eggs, or storm or nauseam or Animar creature combos or some form of elf ball all of which are not infinite and require certain situations to reallly go off generally. Oh and Bomberman but I play that one because I have an LED and it also works so well with the new Wheel on MH1.
I feel like 30 life is the simplest and biggest change that I would like to see implemented.
It is kinda annoying because I play in mostly circles that people determine outside the scope and purview of the RC and Commander but cards being banned or not will still largely effect how I play the game even if I or the people I play with have no problem with those cards. However this has been happening since Prophet was banned so whatever.
That still doesn't make sense because combo is one of the pillar archetypes of the format and of magic the gathering and magic cards are deigned to interact together in combos.
Combo isn't one of the pillars of EDH. There was a time when strong combo pieces were outright banned. People can make a lot of arguments in favor of combo, but that surely isn't one of them.
Again, the point of the post was about unknown groups (LGS, MagicFest, etc) and how those have deteriorated to such a degree. It has not always been like this. I had the absolute worst game of EDH I have ever played this last weekend at MagicFest Seattle.
And cards obviously are not designed to combo together, they banned it out of Standard recently. Yes many cards within the decades do so, and I honestly get why people play them: Some games need to end.
I think its socially lacking to pub stomp people because you know they are playing '75%' and likely wont be able to stop a combo with counter back-up.
I am unsure what game you are playing because MTG surely is not it.
People seem to be purposely missing his point. He didn't say 'don't play combo' or anything that approached that. His issue was with going straight for combo every time as option #1, perhaps your only win-con. And again, only in an unknown group, where such a thing should have social consequences.
People straight up straw-manning his stance is a sad thing on MTGS.
That still doesn't make sense because combo is one of the pillar archetypes of the format and of magic the gathering and magic cards are deigned to interact together in combos.
The approach I would take is rather than trying to approach it as a statistical problem(which I think is very difficult)is to start with a pros/cons analysis (which is in itself objective, though the degree of impact of each of the pros/cons bleeds subjective).
I found the pros/cons analysis to be the most helpful part of talking about Planeswalkers as Commanders for me. The cons list was a mile long and the pros list very short, and it was obvious to me that it was not a very good risk to take for the format.
To do that, we need a proposal. What fast mana do you want to ban?
This isn't even close to true, everyone's starting place is subjective so how can their determined pros/cons be anything but?
Treating combo as a back door and not as an archetype that it is, is the problem in and of itself and expecting any length of game or 'story' to develop is also part of the problem IMO.
Not opposed to long involved games of magic, opposed to slogs.
Also the idea that if the opening comes up to play some cards in your deck and you choose not to is baffling to me, you put cards in deck to use them when the situation presents.
It is funny to see this come back around because I have been playing both Canadian Highlander and Oathbreaker alongside Commander and the change in life total has been refreshing in opening the door to so many different strategies and putting in your head, okay I have a plan it works but will I survive to execute that plan.
I think 20 is too big a step for this format but more and more I think 30 is just right.
Think about how many times with 40 life you shock a land into play without a second thought.
I guess to go back to an older style of doing this so much of this post is people posting reasons why we should have life totals lower than 40 and why that would be good and people responding as to why those things are bad.
What are the reasons other than it already being at 40 that it being at 40 is a good number?
(Also I am still not convinced this format is casual beyond it being a kitchen table space for multiplayer games of magic, the cards put into the format just go so strongly against that view of it)
I never see Alms Collector at all, and Notion Thief like new Narset I look at as a control/combo card moreso than a hatebear.
I agree with this but also an increase in the relevance of incremental damage and life loss also hurts those cards.
Playing in formats where it is 20 recently has really nailed down my outlook that 40 is way too much and 30 might even still be too much but 20 is never going to happen in this format at this point.
Ad Naus, Citadel, Deluge and Fire Covenant are the first things that come to mind as absurd cards with 40 life that get reigned in with a change.
1) On 30 Life
I think something that gets quickly lost in these threads when changing the starting life total comes up is that it isn't that the Aggro player has to deal 90 damage instead of 120.
It is that cracking a fetch and shocking a land into play puts you at 27 instead of 37, that is the change that is HUGE, a lost Mana Crypt flip to name another card that comes up here a bunch is a 1/10th of your life, even higher power staples like Fire Covenant and Toxic Deluge really change as the life total does.
You take the forms of life loss that are largely incidental in a game of Commander right now and then add them to more aggressive decks that could be spawned from this change and the math for the combo players changes greatly.
Things become more risky because no longer does that player have the cushion to just wait for the perfect time and having to go for it early can often lead you into stalls or into other disruption.
Which both makes the combo less resilient, and makes it when it works all that more satisfying.
2) On playing Combo
There is a sentiment in this thread that certain combo is fine as long as you aren't going for it right away, but that betrays how decks in MTG are built. If I am making a combo deck and where the deck fits into archetypes is one of the earliest things I am thinking about when building, it is designed from the jump to work towards that game plan, every magic deck ever made is the same way. People aren't gonna wait to counter spells or remove pieces from the board, so the idea that opportunities should not be taken in this game to forward the game plan designed in the deck being played.
Finally I am never sure what the actual style of combo people want gone if only because I am seeing far fewer infinite combos in the games I am in (in fact Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal is the only one I can count on reliably showing up), everything else is more traditional mtg combo building be it eggs, or storm or nauseam or Animar creature combos or some form of elf ball all of which are not infinite and require certain situations to reallly go off generally. Oh and Bomberman but I play that one because I have an LED and it also works so well with the new Wheel on MH1.
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I feel like 30 life is the simplest and biggest change that I would like to see implemented.
It is kinda annoying because I play in mostly circles that people determine outside the scope and purview of the RC and Commander but cards being banned or not will still largely effect how I play the game even if I or the people I play with have no problem with those cards. However this has been happening since Prophet was banned so whatever.
It is one of the most factually inaccurate things I have ever seen anyone say about this game.
I am unsure what game you are playing because MTG surely is not it.
That still doesn't make sense because combo is one of the pillar archetypes of the format and of magic the gathering and magic cards are deigned to interact together in combos.
This isn't even close to true, everyone's starting place is subjective so how can their determined pros/cons be anything but?
Not opposed to long involved games of magic, opposed to slogs.
Also the idea that if the opening comes up to play some cards in your deck and you choose not to is baffling to me, you put cards in deck to use them when the situation presents.
I think 20 is too big a step for this format but more and more I think 30 is just right.
Think about how many times with 40 life you shock a land into play without a second thought.