If you end up pissing off everyone to the point where you're public enemy number 1, then you've failed at your politics. It does happen at times, even when you do the "right" things, but your goal is to avoid it. And, frankly, you probably shouldn't try to cover all avenues of attack with stax pieces, not only because it annoys everyone, but also for the simple fact that it's rarely feasible. Try to lock off the biggest chances of you losing (for a competitive deck, that's fast combo and storm), but don't necessarily go so far as to alienate potential allies. In particular, having a control player around is great. They want the same thing as you - a slow game - so avoiding needlessly antagonising them can be a good way to get them to help you. That's not to say you don't want to have some anti-control tools in your locker, just that you don't always want to play everything you have. Consider who you're playing against, what they're playing and what the board state is. Basically, be like a politician and tailor your message (plays) to your audience (opponents)
This sort of ties in with a mistake that many people make with stax - you should not be trying to completely lock everyone else out of the game. Why? Because it's really hard to do against 3-4 opponents. There's too many angles of attack that you need to interact with, and too much removal. Instead, stax should be considered to be a tool for keeping the game in check long enough for you to win (much like a good countermagic/removal suite). A good stax deck wants to slow things down, allowing them to develop their board and hand in relative safety, then see things out with reliable wincons (for example,the popular "BloodPod" competitive list runs a KikiJiki combo with several tutors for it).
The problem with Grand Arbiter as I see it from a political perspective, at least regarding the general, is that it's often harder to come up with reasons why others will want him around. Unless there's a known storm deck around, he's going to be effecting the players in a roughly similar way - decks with lower curves will typically be built to have less mana sources - and he gives a significant benefit to his controller. He also suffers from the classic Azorious problem of not having good wincons. As I said before, having some way to see the game out in the end is important, and UW isn't that good at doing it, especially at a competitive level. So GAAIV tends to fall into the kind of deck that people really don't like playing - asymmetrical stax which takes ages to actually get to the end of the game.
Diaochan is a really fun card, and lets you do all sorts of shenanigans (hint: give her protection from red) but she's not going to get to the competitive level. That said, if you like her, go for it. Not every EDH deck needs to be (or indeed should be) competitive.
I'm currently having a lot of fun with my Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage deck. Being able to play almost every spell in the deck at instant speed allows for all sorts of interesting tricks, plus it encourages an interactive control strategy which is always good fun.
To expand on Dirk's points, another example that sums up how stax and politics really work is with Winter Orb. Most people's initial reaction to that card is (probably understandably) "KILL IT WITH FIRE". But there's a decent chance that, while it is certainly hurting you, it's hurting someone else more. Lets say that the stax player and you both have a 2-3 mana rocks or dorks, one of the other players has one of those, and the last player has nothing to get mana from but a load of land they've been tutoring up. Sure, you can't work to the full capabilities of your deck. But you're a fair bit better off that the last player (who is probably the biggest immediate threat), and no worse than the stax player. In this case, it's usually in your interest to keep the Winter Orb around - possibly even to the extent of using countermagic on the land ramp player's removal. Of course, keeping a Nature's Claim or Disenchant up your sleeve is a good idea - not only can you pop the Orb when you want (i.e. on the player before you's EoT), but you can react to the stax player going for some nasty asymmetry like a Sword of Feast and Famine.
As the stax player, you want to try to get other players to buy into this kind of attitude - that while your effects are hurting them, they're also hurting one or two of the other players even more and thus it's in their interest to help you out, at least in the short term. It doesn't have to be some kind of formal deal, just point out the impact of them trying to take out your disruption ("kill the Winter Orb and Mr. Lands over there is gonna go off...").
Imo, its unpolitocal because it pisses everyone off making you target number 1. When no one gets to play magic except the stax player, usually people don't want to team up with them. Thats been my experience at least. Anytime someone brings something like a Grand Arbiter Augustin deck to the table, they die first if thay can't keep everyone down before assembling a combo
And that's why you have to be political when playing stax. If you just sit there and play your cards, people will kill you. You need to interact with them, convince them to support what you're doing. There are usually good reasons for at least one other player to want the stax effects in play, you just need to get them to see them....
I think it's weird that your defense of MLD in a thread about combatting ramp is "well, it's not that bad as long as you're ramping".
If a deck consistently has ramp in the first few turns, you'd expect probably like 10% ramp? Idk, I'd call that a ramp deck. Doesn't have to be all-in.
To me, that's a pretty typical EDH deck - 33-37 lands, 6-10 ramp spells. The kind of thing I see all over the place with all sorts of strategies and power levels. Even if your deck is mainly CMC 4 or less, getting to the top of the curve a turn early, is great and such things can really help with fixing if you're 3+ colours. I don't consider putting in a few rocks, dorks and/or land fetching spells to be anything even worth remarking on. So yeah, maybe this is just a definitions thing. When I see the OP complaining about ramp, I assumed it was the kind of decks that have 10 mana on T6, not the ones that untap with 4 mana T4 then maybe miss a land drop. And, yeah, I certainly don't regard MLD as a particularly good answer to all in ramp - not only will a well built ramp deck have non-land based acceleration, they can also recover quicker from the wipe.
And null rod you can just remove, that's way more interactive than geddon, even ignoring the part where geddon can completely remove mana while null rod usually cannot.
Sometimes. Sometimes you're dependent on your artifacts to make the mana you need to remove it (you try finding efficiently costed removal when you're playing a colourless deck - or how about any enchantment removal barring the one Chaos Warp if you're a red artifact deck and it was a Stony Silence). Also, Armageddon negates the land you've played prior to it but then leaves you free to recover. Null Rod negates both the stuff you've already played and and such cards you play in the future. Not saying it's always more damaging to your ability to play than a 'Geddon, but against some decks it certainly can be worse.
It's an odd one - if I see someone casting it from their hand, I'm usually not that scared. If I see someone trying to put it on an Isochron Scepter, I'm in full panic mode....
I mean, it's fine anywhere people are fine with it.
You won't find me disagreeing with that, and I certainly wouldn't force a group that didn't want to play MLD to start running it or vice-versa (and for the record, my playrgoup's attitude to MLD [as with most strategies] is "fine, but not every game"). I'm really just trying to get my head round the attitude of "MLD is uniquely bad" that some people seem to have by pointing out the experiences I've had with this format in which other effects that seem far more tolerated will do the same thing as 'Geddon and that the "can't play at all" experience of the latter isn't something I see that often.
That said, I think it's a sad state of affairs when all decks are ramp decks. Yawn.
I think there's a difference between a full on ramp deck which is trying to completely break the 1 mana/turn baseline, and a "normal" deck that still wants to have a bit of acceleration/fixing from spells. My group is mainly the latter, although we certainly have a few "big mana" decks around (mostly green based, though I do have a Kozilek deck with a rather ridiculous amount of rocks - that's a deck for which a Bane of Progress or, god forbid, an early Null Rod is far more harmful to my ability to play Magic than an Armageddon).
Maybe it's just my playgroup, but even in casual games, I rarely seem a player in a position where all their mana comes from lands outside of the first few turns. Most of it, quite possibly, but rocks, dorks and some oddities like Frontier Siege are pretty widespread. So, is Armageddon fine in that kind of environment then?
How is Stax anti-political? From my experience, the opposite is true when I'm playing it. I'm always having to play politics. A stax deck cannot keep 3-4 other players down on it's own for the entire game. You need some help. Things like getting people to protect my stax cards that are hurting the other opponents more than them. I'm always talking to other players, trying to get them to support what I'm doing, pointing out how dangerous their other rivals are even if I'm the one with the annoying lock piece in play. That's more political to me than deciding who to hit with an 8/8.
In general, I view politics as less about specific cards, and more about your interactions with the players. And at a competitive level, while you do get some games where someone just rushes into a combo before anyone else can react, often, due to the high amount of interaction the decks run as a reaction to said fast combo, there is a lot of interplay between the players. Threat assessment is often pretty difficult when the biggest dangers aren't sitting obviously on the board, so there's a good amount of advantage to be gained through playing politically, talking to the other players.
If a player (or players) has a significant proportion of their mana generation tied up in artifacts, is it against the "social contract" to play Bane of Progress? Likewise for a bunch of elves and a Wrath of God?
(and I'm not meaning this as a "gotcha". I'm genuinely interested what peoples' thoughts on attacking non-land mana sources, and, if they are OK with it, why they view them differently from lands)
You are not limited to one artifact or creature per turn by rules. You don't have to have artifact mana or dorks to play the game. You must have lands, and there is a limit per turn, to start any sort of meaningful game (with a few corner cases). You do not turn off people's ability to play the game with destruction of artifacts or mana dorks. In a format where we are supposed to care about others having fun, that should matter.
Well, for a start, you are not really limited to one land per turn. That's kind the whole point of the thread - people ramping, typically by getting extra land into play. What's the difference between a Rampant Growth and a Sky Diamond? But even then, so what? I'm wondering what the difference between destroying land based mana sources in play and destroying non-land mana sources in play is. I've had plenty of games where the majority of my mana came from artifacts or creatures. Having them destroyed would turn off my ability to play the game far more than someone blowing up my lands. So why is it OK to do one of those things but not the other?
If people agree to not play Bane of Progress or Vandalblast or Austere Command or Wrath of God when I'm dependent on things they destroy for the bulk of my mana, I'd be fine to not use Armageddon when people are dependent on land for the bulk of their mana.
For me, and my experience many other Magic players, the most iconic Boros card (the guild as well as the colour combination in general) is Lightning Helix. And I've long wanted a commander to work like that card, rather than creature centric beats.Firesong and Sunspeaker has the text box, but a horrific mana cost for a RW card that does nothing on its own. A smaller body, lower CMC and maybe turning the bolt into a shock and it'd've been great. Still, I like that Wizards are at least thinking about that side of Boros.
The other problem, along with too many legendary beatsticks, it the card advantage problem. There are some workarounds available, but in general, keeping a steady flow of cards is a problem in these colours. This is made doubly bad by the fact that so many of the available legends want you to commit heavily to the board and thus get really hurt by boardwipes which you don't have the resources recover from. I used to have a aggressive Boros equipment deck (a mix of voltron and small creatures that carried swords well). It went through several commanders over the years, with OG Aurelia being the one I had settled on. When the partners came out, I switched it over to Akiri/Tymna with relatively few changes - there are only 4 black cards including Tymna, plus Cranial Plating. And yet the deck is so much more effective, simply because I have a Phyrexian Arena in the command zone. A Boros legend that allowed me to make up for this weakness would be very welcome. I'm not asking for a straight up "draw a card every turn" type effect, but there are things that can be done that are more in the colours' slice of the pie - recent cards like Dawn of Hope and Light up the Stage could be starting points for the design of an interesting commander, particularly if it didn't require you to commit heavily to combat as a strategy (thus making it a flexible choice for a variety of builds).
If a player (or players) has a significant proportion of their mana generation tied up in artifacts, is it against the "social contract" to play Bane of Progress? Likewise for a bunch of elves and a Wrath of God?
(and I'm not meaning this as a "gotcha". I'm genuinely interested what peoples' thoughts on attacking non-land mana sources, and, if they are OK with it, why they view them differently from lands)
Probably the closest thing to a auto-include planeswalker in EDH - if you're in UR, you need a pretty good reason not to run him. He's cheap, has two good non-ult abilities and is relevant in pretty much all stages of the game. If all you do is steal a Sol Ring, you're happy. If he actually sticks around and gets to add looting or god forbid a second theft, you've gotten some fantastic value for 3 mana and one card.
This sort of ties in with a mistake that many people make with stax - you should not be trying to completely lock everyone else out of the game. Why? Because it's really hard to do against 3-4 opponents. There's too many angles of attack that you need to interact with, and too much removal. Instead, stax should be considered to be a tool for keeping the game in check long enough for you to win (much like a good countermagic/removal suite). A good stax deck wants to slow things down, allowing them to develop their board and hand in relative safety, then see things out with reliable wincons (for example,the popular "BloodPod" competitive list runs a KikiJiki combo with several tutors for it).
The problem with Grand Arbiter as I see it from a political perspective, at least regarding the general, is that it's often harder to come up with reasons why others will want him around. Unless there's a known storm deck around, he's going to be effecting the players in a roughly similar way - decks with lower curves will typically be built to have less mana sources - and he gives a significant benefit to his controller. He also suffers from the classic Azorious problem of not having good wincons. As I said before, having some way to see the game out in the end is important, and UW isn't that good at doing it, especially at a competitive level. So GAAIV tends to fall into the kind of deck that people really don't like playing - asymmetrical stax which takes ages to actually get to the end of the game.
Diaochan is a really fun card, and lets you do all sorts of shenanigans (hint: give her protection from red) but she's not going to get to the competitive level. That said, if you like her, go for it. Not every EDH deck needs to be (or indeed should be) competitive.
As the stax player, you want to try to get other players to buy into this kind of attitude - that while your effects are hurting them, they're also hurting one or two of the other players even more and thus it's in their interest to help you out, at least in the short term. It doesn't have to be some kind of formal deal, just point out the impact of them trying to take out your disruption ("kill the Winter Orb and Mr. Lands over there is gonna go off...").
And that's why you have to be political when playing stax. If you just sit there and play your cards, people will kill you. You need to interact with them, convince them to support what you're doing. There are usually good reasons for at least one other player to want the stax effects in play, you just need to get them to see them....
To me, that's a pretty typical EDH deck - 33-37 lands, 6-10 ramp spells. The kind of thing I see all over the place with all sorts of strategies and power levels. Even if your deck is mainly CMC 4 or less, getting to the top of the curve a turn early, is great and such things can really help with fixing if you're 3+ colours. I don't consider putting in a few rocks, dorks and/or land fetching spells to be anything even worth remarking on. So yeah, maybe this is just a definitions thing. When I see the OP complaining about ramp, I assumed it was the kind of decks that have 10 mana on T6, not the ones that untap with 4 mana T4 then maybe miss a land drop. And, yeah, I certainly don't regard MLD as a particularly good answer to all in ramp - not only will a well built ramp deck have non-land based acceleration, they can also recover quicker from the wipe.
Sometimes. Sometimes you're dependent on your artifacts to make the mana you need to remove it (you try finding efficiently costed removal when you're playing a colourless deck - or how about any enchantment removal barring the one Chaos Warp if you're a red artifact deck and it was a Stony Silence). Also, Armageddon negates the land you've played prior to it but then leaves you free to recover. Null Rod negates both the stuff you've already played and and such cards you play in the future. Not saying it's always more damaging to your ability to play than a 'Geddon, but against some decks it certainly can be worse.
You won't find me disagreeing with that, and I certainly wouldn't force a group that didn't want to play MLD to start running it or vice-versa (and for the record, my playrgoup's attitude to MLD [as with most strategies] is "fine, but not every game"). I'm really just trying to get my head round the attitude of "MLD is uniquely bad" that some people seem to have by pointing out the experiences I've had with this format in which other effects that seem far more tolerated will do the same thing as 'Geddon and that the "can't play at all" experience of the latter isn't something I see that often.
I think there's a difference between a full on ramp deck which is trying to completely break the 1 mana/turn baseline, and a "normal" deck that still wants to have a bit of acceleration/fixing from spells. My group is mainly the latter, although we certainly have a few "big mana" decks around (mostly green based, though I do have a Kozilek deck with a rather ridiculous amount of rocks - that's a deck for which a Bane of Progress or, god forbid, an early Null Rod is far more harmful to my ability to play Magic than an Armageddon).
I'll say it again. Lightning Helix. Probably the most iconic Boros card in Magic. Nothing to do with turning sideways.
Ah, that brings back great memories of flipping Exalted Angels for free. My old RW Slide deck was probably the most fun I ever had in 60 card Magic.
In general, I view politics as less about specific cards, and more about your interactions with the players. And at a competitive level, while you do get some games where someone just rushes into a combo before anyone else can react, often, due to the high amount of interaction the decks run as a reaction to said fast combo, there is a lot of interplay between the players. Threat assessment is often pretty difficult when the biggest dangers aren't sitting obviously on the board, so there's a good amount of advantage to be gained through playing politically, talking to the other players.
Well, for a start, you are not really limited to one land per turn. That's kind the whole point of the thread - people ramping, typically by getting extra land into play. What's the difference between a Rampant Growth and a Sky Diamond? But even then, so what? I'm wondering what the difference between destroying land based mana sources in play and destroying non-land mana sources in play is. I've had plenty of games where the majority of my mana came from artifacts or creatures. Having them destroyed would turn off my ability to play the game far more than someone blowing up my lands. So why is it OK to do one of those things but not the other?
If people agree to not play Bane of Progress or Vandalblast or Austere Command or Wrath of God when I'm dependent on things they destroy for the bulk of my mana, I'd be fine to not use Armageddon when people are dependent on land for the bulk of their mana.
The other problem, along with too many legendary beatsticks, it the card advantage problem. There are some workarounds available, but in general, keeping a steady flow of cards is a problem in these colours. This is made doubly bad by the fact that so many of the available legends want you to commit heavily to the board and thus get really hurt by boardwipes which you don't have the resources recover from. I used to have a aggressive Boros equipment deck (a mix of voltron and small creatures that carried swords well). It went through several commanders over the years, with OG Aurelia being the one I had settled on. When the partners came out, I switched it over to Akiri/Tymna with relatively few changes - there are only 4 black cards including Tymna, plus Cranial Plating. And yet the deck is so much more effective, simply because I have a Phyrexian Arena in the command zone. A Boros legend that allowed me to make up for this weakness would be very welcome. I'm not asking for a straight up "draw a card every turn" type effect, but there are things that can be done that are more in the colours' slice of the pie - recent cards like Dawn of Hope and Light up the Stage could be starting points for the design of an interesting commander, particularly if it didn't require you to commit heavily to combat as a strategy (thus making it a flexible choice for a variety of builds).
(and I'm not meaning this as a "gotcha". I'm genuinely interested what peoples' thoughts on attacking non-land mana sources, and, if they are OK with it, why they view them differently from lands)