General "Looking for a card"-Thread

[Erik Twice]

I knew this was going to be a galaxy brain take after this intro, but hoooo boy, I wasn't expecting the "gaming isn't and shouldn't be a social interaction" argument.

I don't think I've said "gaming isn't and shouldn't be a social interaction" anywhere in my post.What I've said is that balance is a design problem, not a social one.

For the record, there's nothing "galaxy brain" about calling D&D a toy. It's a purely descriptive term no better or worse than "game" or "puzzle". It's just that it's not the same kind of activity as Magic.

 

[dbs]

I don't think I've said "gaming isn't and shouldn't be a social interaction" anywhere in my post.What I've said is that balance is a design problem, not a social one.

For the record, there's nothing "galaxy brain" about calling D&D a toy. It's a purely descriptive term no better or worse than "game" or "puzzle". It's just that it's not the same kind of activity as Magic.

But I think it's important to realize that's exactly what this flavor of reasoning suggests. Magic is play, and play carried out socially between human beings. Even "balance" and "rules" are socially-constituted in this context - and you see that happen especially often on this forum where it's common for people to errata and proxy cards, adopt specialized drafting rules, and even special-case game rules. The game is not objectively fixed or concretely metaphysically determined: we do it socially together with friends! This becomes relevant because your view of balance evinces a very particular mindset: that when we play games, we ought to narrowly chase optimal play. But even though we could build EDH decks aggressively tuned to win on turn 2 or 3, we don't have to - and many of us don't! And in fact, there's absolutely nothing stopping you and your friends from having a delightful multiplayer Commander experience together without fun-crushing decklists precisely because play is social and you can collectively foster that environment... together!

So to come out and claim - returning to the original point of contention - that multiplayer EDH is somehow "the worst" format (let's set aside issues of heterogeneous preference orderings) is merely a symptom of an impoverished relationship to play! You don't have to adopt the min-max mindset, just as you don't have to build a power-max cube even if Wizards have printed more powerful cards than the ones you might choose to include. I went off in the same way on some guy posting about how you should always betray people if it's to your advantage in multiplayer games because apparently when you sit down to play a game you all collectively agree to be vicious little utility optimizers. It reminds me of the econ undergrads I teach, it's infuriating.

In precisely the same sense, D&D is social play, it can just as easily be about delight and story-telling rather than about tuning stats to achieve objectives - I mocked your semantic distinction between "game" and "toy" because I'm a catty bitch, but also because I thought we finished litigating this reductionist garbage in like 2007. Both D&D and Magic can be played with and without extrinsic motivation, with as much structure or lack of structure as you and your players would like. I see that as a motivating philosophy that underlies much Riptide Lab - there's a lot of emphasis on play experience and what's fun to play, without so much bothering over semantics, power-max, hard rules w.r.t duplicates, proxies, errata, draft rules, and the like. I mean, hell, Kirblinx has a dedicated cube that scraps the mana system entirely. So honestly, who cares if Wizards printed Sol Ring. Getting over a hyper-objective and reductionist view of Magic is what makes us capable of more creative, flexible, social, and inclusive play.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Well, I can agree on that, and I do consider myself lucky for having a play group which roughly operates in the same power band. I think the difference is that I don't count that as a flaw of the format, but more a flaw of how the format is managed.

I agree with you there. If you didn't have a playgroup operating in the same power band, I would be willing to bet you'd feel more like I do about the format. None of my normal magic-playing friends really have EDH decks, so I usually just play online or with randies at my LGS. It's extremely frustrating when you sit down at a table with a powerful semi-casual/semi-competitive deck, but your staring down one player with a competitive Grenzo, Dungeon Warden combo deck with consistent turn three kills, another player with a goblin tribal vorthos/flavor deck, and a final player running a deck trying to lock everyone out of the game with Yosei, Morning Star and Stolen Identity. I'm not even making that up for rhetorical purposes, I literally had that game about 4 months ago.

Games have to be "regulated" and it's bad to rely on social relations between human beings to have a fun experience with your friends?

Fuck, I've been gaming wrong this whole time. Oh man, this is a really really bad sign for D&D, might be time to retire the old DM screen.

Your missing my point, and comparing D&D with commander is not entirely fair.

First, I'll adress the D&D/Commander comparison. You're trying to do fundamentally different things in D&D and Commander. In D&D, every player is working together to achieve a common goal- surviving the campaign. They do that by working together. A good DM -it is to be hoped- is simply trying to challenge their players, not murder them. The DM doesn't "win" the campaign by killing their players. They win by providing challenging experience. That can include murdering the players, but that's not always the best thing to do. For everyone involved, D&D is mainly constructive. D&D players aren't in need of a social contract for balance because they're all working towards the same goal. If the players ramp up the power level of what they're doing, the DM can adjust on the fly as well.

EDH, on the other hand, is primarily destructive. Sure, the game itself can have constructive elements and times when players must band together to defeat a common foe, but ultimately, you're all still trying to kill each other. That's also not bad (killing each other is the goal of normal magic, after all), but it requires a different set of rules to balance things out. Without some form of social contract, the game just breaks wide open.

Here is the point I was trying to make originally. When imbalance is not handled correctly, it can ruin a game. Part of the reason why pre EULA Minecraft mini games were so unfriendly to newer or f2p players was because imbalance was treated as a way to make people donate to the servers instead of an interesting game mechanic. There is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of EDH, but the execution is heavily flawed. Without a social contract, it is entirely miserable. As I stated earlier, this the general context I have to play the format under if I want to play it- and I'm frankly sick of it. If I thought the format was just trash and I had no vested interest in it, I wouldn't be talking about it. You're not going to see me write a denunciation on Duo Standard or Masques block draft because I just don't care about those formats, and there's not a ton of value in playing them. But commander can be very fun. That's what is so disappointing about it. The inherent imbalance of people's deck construction has a tendency to ruin more games than other formats, and the extra consistency in this ruination provided by some generals really causes the cracks of the format to show. At least when you sit down to play Standard, Modern, Legacy, or even CanLander, you at least have an idea of what your opponent is going to be doing from a power perspective. It won't always be what you expect, but you can plan accordingly. You really can't in any EDH game that isn't with your specific playgroup, provided you even have one of those.

I knew this was going to be a galaxy brain take after this intro, but hoooo boy, I wasn't expecting the "gaming isn't and shouldn't be a social interaction" argument.

That's not what I'm saying at all though. Maybe that's what Erik is going at, although I don't think that's the case. Gaming is inherently a social interaction. But that doesn't mean that social norms should stand in the place of rules. The best games, I would argue, are both social and have balanced rules. Take Civilization 5 as an example. The game is really well balanced even though the main gimmick is randomly generated worlds and empires with different abilities. If I'm playing Poland and You're playing The Maya, we're going to be having very different game experiences. Not every civ is on the same power level. Carthage, is no where near as good as Babylon. However, the difference in power is more akin to bringing a modern deck to legacy night than bringing Emmara Tandris to a Nekusar, Mindrazer game. In addition, the random terrain generation means that you can make up what your civ lacks in bonuses with good city placement and efficient resource usage. Even though imbalance exists in Civ 5, it's not toxic to the game and simply rewards skill. A 4-hour civ game with a bunch of randoms is usually going to end in a more satisfying matter than a 4-hour EDH game with a bunch of randoms.

So to come out and claim - returning to the original point of contention - that multiplayer EDH is somehow "the worst" format (let's set aside issues of heterogeneous preference orderings) is merely a symptom of an impoverished relationship to play! You don't have to adopt the min-max mindset, just as you don't have to build a power-
max cube even if Wizards have printed more powerful cards than the ones you might choose to include. I went off in the same way on some guy posting about how you should always betray people if it's to your advantage in multiplayer games because apparently when you sit down to play a game you all collectively agree to be vicious little utility optimizers. It reminds me of the econ undergrads I teach, it's infuriating.

The whole point of what I am saying is that if you're playing against min-maxers, and you're not playing a min-maxed deck, it's no fun. I can't fully enjoy or appreciate a format where balance is thrown out the window because some people suck. This issue which I have been trying to outline is systematic, you can't fix it by banning cards like you can with other formats. Unfortunately, the format sucks without social contract. That's why I don't like it in practice- it's fundamentally broken. You have to fix it yourself to have an enjoyable experience. That doesn't make the format as a whole bad, but out of the box, it's not really workable.



I love the concept of EDH. Having a singleton deck with an overarching consistent factor is a really cool evolution on base magic. It is probably the single most fun format to brew for. However, the lack of balance wrecks things because not everyone is just playing to have fun and that can be very difficult to cope with, especially in the absence of a social contract. Everyone should be able to sit down with anyone else and play a fun game of magic. That can't always happen in EDH for the reasons I have outlined above.

 

[dbs]

Your missing my point, and comparing D&D with commander is not entirely fair.

First, I'll adress the D&D/Commander comparison. You're trying to do fundamentally different things in D&D and Commander. In D&D, every player is working together to achieve a common goal- surviving the campaign. They do that by working together. ...

EDH, on the other hand, is primarily destructive. Sure, the game itself can have constructive elements and times when players must band together to defeat a common foe, but ultimately, you're all still trying to kill each other. That's also not bad (killing each other is the goal of normal magic, after all), but it requires a different set of rules to balance things out. Without some form of social contract, the game just breaks wide open.
...
However, the lack of balance wrecks things because not everyone is just playing to have fun and that can be very difficult to cope with, especially in the absence of a social contract. Everyone should be able to sit down with anyone else and play a fun game of magic. That can't always happen in EDH for the reasons I have outlined above.

This narrow way of thinking is precisely the sort of prescriptivist notion, I'm suggesting we should avoid. To start, you're wrong on the merits. A D&D campaign can also be competitive or even feature explicitly antagonistic relationships between the players - I've run such campaigns before. But honestly that's completely beside the point - it's the wrong way of thinking about the goal. The goal of D&D is not to defeat a common foe, and the goal of multiplayer EDH is not to destroy your opponents. The goal is play - it's to enjoy a shared social experience. Ala the aforementioned heterogeneous preference ordering, that can (of course) mean different things for different people but regardless the goal need not be strictly tied in some "objective" sense to the rules of the game. In a multiplayer game of Magic, for instance, I could intentionally make a decision that loses me the match in order to create a cool moment at the table: I could leave myself defenseless and let myself be killed to screw over someone who double-crossed me, I could intentionally make a sub-optimal decision in order to keep a political promise to another player, I could pull off some crazy combo just for the fun of it even if it doesn't win me the game and gets me killed immediately afterwards. All of these are perfectly legitimate and delightful forms of play - we not bind ourselves to a narrow ontology in which we mindlessly chase a single objective we see as having been laid out for us.

And of course, this requires some sort of "social contract"! Both Magic and D&D are inherently social, they demand a social contract regardless. This is true above and beyond any of the game mechanics - when we sit down to play together, I expect you to not be a nasty and disagreeable person and not to say cruel or uncalled-for things to other players (myself or others). I'm not going to keep playing with someone if that happens and it has nothing to do with the specific structure of the game! All games of Magic require this - we have social understandings with each other about what the rules will be, about abiding by those rules and not cheating, about being good sports, etc. The idea that EDH is "the worst" unless it can stand on its own in an imaginary world where everything is entirely objective and follows fixed and determined rules like clockwork is absurd. There is precisely no difference between "rules" and "social norms".

If for you having a fun game of EDH means not playing power-max turn-2 combo games of Commander, then... don't! If all-singleton decks and multiplayer gameplay are appealing to you, find like-minded people and enjoy yourself a game that isn't like that! If not, then don't play and leave it for others to enjoy, also perfectly reasonable.

 

[Erik Twice]

This becomes relevant because your view of balance evinces a very particular mindset: that when we play games, we ought to narrowly chase optimal play.

This is a bit like saying that we shouldn't "narrowly chase playing the right notes" when playing a song on the piano. EDH is a competitive game. If we aren't supposed to try and win or compete with other players, why is it a competitive game in the first place?

The problem with EDH is that it's flawed as an activity. It's a game, but one you shouldn't win. It's competitive, but you shouldn't compete too much. Ruination isn't banned, but you shouldn't play it. As a format, it constantly undermines itself. You can "just not play it that way", but that only highlights that the format is broken and it's up to players to attempt and patch it up.

Let's put it this way. The EDH "social contract" is like putting Recurring Nightmate in your cube and then complaining people draft it.

So to come out and claim - returning to the original point of contention - that multiplayer EDH is somehow "the worst" format (let's set aside issues of heterogeneous preference orderings) is merely a symptom of an impoverished relationship to play!

This is the Monte Cook argument. It's not that EDH is flawed, that balance is questionable or that Magic doesn't make for a good political game, the problem is our "impoverished relationship to play".

To follow with my piano example. If a piano has broken keys, is that a problem or the problem is me and my "improverished relationship to music"? You could say the same thing "Well, if you don't like pressing these broken keys, then...don't!"

Because, again, this doesn't happen when I sit down at the Cosmic Encounter table. Or when I sit down to play VTES despite the game's many flaws. It only happens with EDH because EDH is a poorly made game.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

EDH is a competitive game. If we aren't supposed to try and win or compete with other players, why is it a competitive game in the first place?

Is it a competitive game though? I mean, sure, I'm trying to win my games, but I'm not ruthlessly playing the most optimal deck to do so. I want to have fun, and I want the other players to have an enjoyable night as well. In fact, winning isn't even required to get a kick out of a night of Commander. I'ld argue that, as far as competitiveness goes, Commander is nowhere on the same scale as, say, a relay race, a game of chess, or a darts match. None of these offer you the chance to express yourself by building a cool deck around a commander noone else has thought to use, building intricate and unexpected synergies into your deck. For a lot of people, Commander is more about the deckbuilding process and about playing your cool combos than it is about being comptetitive.

The problem with EDH is that it's flawed as an activity. It's a game, but one you shouldn't win. It's competitive, but you shouldn't compete too much. Ruination isn't banned, but you shouldn't play it. As a format, it constantly undermines itself. You can "just not play it that way", but that only highlights that the format is broken and it's up to players to attempt and patch it up.

This is the Monte Cook argument. It's not that EDH is flawed, that balance is questionable or that Magic doesn't make for a good political game, the problem is our "impoverished relationship to play".

To follow with my piano example. If a piano has broken keys, is that a problem or the problem is me and my "improverished relationship to music"? You could say the same thing "Well, if you don't like pressing these broken keys, then...don't!"

Because, again, this doesn't happen when I sit down at the Cosmic Encounter table. Or when I sit down to play VTES despite the game's many flaws. It only happens with EDH because EDH is a poorly made game.

You know what, after mulling it over a bit, I think I have to retract my earlier agreement with TrainmasterGT that "commander is poorly regulated and relies far too heavily on social contracts to do the heavy lifting in the balance department." I don't think Commander is flawed, it's all about perspective. There are people who enjoy playing with and against the cutthroat, turn 3 kill decks, just as there are people who enjoy building around amazing concepts like Ladies Looking Left. The thing is, EDH caters to many different play styles, and that's why Commander is "poorly" regulated. The rules committee doesn't want to tell you how to enjoy Magic, because different players enjoy Magic in different ways, and they don't want to tell you: "No, that's not how you're supposed to play Commander". And that's a good thing! I feel for TMGT's bad experiences, when they obviously just want to enjoy a good, old fun Commander game, but the real problem here isn't Commander as a format, it's the matchmaking that doesn't take into account this fundamental philosophy of embracing different play styles. The truth of the matter is that Magic players don't all have the same needs, wants, motivations, expectations, and indeed, there isn't a single correct way to play Commander, or indeed, Magic in general. I don't think that's a flaw, it's a core strength of the game, and makes it appeal to such a broad demographic.

 

[Aston]

Anyways: Arcbound Ravager. Can it work in a non-dedicated cube?

I've been running for a bit, with some other artifact aggro cards, and it's been pretty good. The existence of Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista go a long way to making it playable. Obviously you still need to have a bunch of artifacts for it to do anything.

For the EDH vs D&D argument, I wouldn't consider those games particularly analogous, and I fall into the camp of "EDH is a badly designed game". EDH is still Magic, and the stated goal of a Magic game is to win, but the culture of EDH is at odds with this. Any game where the most fun way to play and the highest win percentage way to play are fighting against each other is badly designed. That's not to say it can't still be fun, and I do like to play EDH, but the fact that unless everyone has to agree on a power level of their decks beforehand indicates that maybe there's something in the rules that should be adjusted to avoid this.

If I sit down to play A Feast for Odin or Dominion or any number of other board games I'd consider well designed, there's nothing that's allowed by the rules of the game that I'd consider off-limits due to the social contract. That's what makes those games well designed.

D&D kind of falls into another category altogether because whilst EDH or any other competitive boardgames had a stated goal of "win the game", D&D doesn't really have a stated goal you're trying to achieve. You might have a shared goal as a group (defeat the Necromancer), an individual goal as a character (find out what happened to my father), or some meta-goal as a player (build my character towards a particular prestige class that sounds fun to play). And you might not achieve any of those without it becoming a loss condition, unlike a regular game where if you don't win, you lose.

I'm sort of rambling at this point but to boil it down my views are that a good game will allow you to pursue its stated goal with no holds barred and it will still be a fun experience for all players, whilst a badly designed game may require something external (social pressure, house rules) to fix its broken rules. D&D can't really be used as a comparison to these games as it has no stated goal.

The goal of D&D is not to defeat a common foe, and the goal of multiplayer EDH is not to destroy your opponents. The goal is play - it's to enjoy a shared social experience.

I find this take interesting because I kind of half agree and half disagree. The meta goal of any game is play, sure, but part of that play includes following the rules, and one of the rules of Magic is that the goal is to win. If I played Magic with someone who had an explicit goal other than to win the game, I'd find that probably just as frustrating as someone who insisted they got to play two lands every turn.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

EDH is still Magic, and the stated goal of a Magic game is to win, but the culture of EDH is at odds with this. Any game where the most fun way to play and the highest win percentage way to play are fighting against each other is badly designed.

I think this is a good way to sum up this particular perspective. I can see why people might argue against it, but I basically agree with what you stated here.

 

[Erik Twice]

I've been running for a bit, with some other artifact aggro cards, and it's been pretty good. The existence of Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista go a long way to making it playable. Obviously you still need to have a bunch of artifacts for it to do anything.

Nice! Looking at your list I can see you play more artifact creatures than usual (27). That's probably a good part of it, specially when several of these artifact creatures seems generally useful for all drafters.

EDH is still Magic, and the stated goal of a Magic game is to win, but the culture of EDH is at odds with this. Any game where the most fun way to play and the highest win percentage way to play are fighting against each other is badly designed.

This is a great way to put it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

EDH is still Magic, and the stated goal of a Magic game is to win, but the culture of EDH is at odds with this. Any game where the most fun way to play and the highest win percentage way to play are fighting against each other is badly designed.

Yup, still disagree. But I don't think these two camps are going to see eye to eye on this issue.

Again, Commander's not badly designed, it caters, on purpose, to multiple play styles. Yes, you could design CommanderA (for competitive people), CommanderB (for people who want to have a fun night without their lands getting destroyed / getting one-shotted on turn 3), and CommanderC (for people who want to build janky "combo" decks around an obviously suboptimal commander), but... Those would all be exactly the same format, just with different banlists! Moreover, that doesn't even solve the "problem", since different playgroups would still disagree on the banlist in- and exclusions. I think the leap from "the stated goal of a Magic game is to win" to "and thus I need to play the highest win percentage deck" is a flawed leap of logic. In fact, the premise may already be the problem. Is the stated goal of a game of Commander reallly to win? I don't think so. Sure, the conclusion of a game of Magic is that one player wins, but that doesn't mean it's the goal of the game. Most Commander players I've played with try to win, yes, but that is not their main goal. It's more of a side quest. Instead, their stated goal, is to have a fun. Now, fun is subjective, and that's why you sometimes/often (depending on your playgroup) end up with lopsided games. Again, though, not a shortcoming of the format. I don't want Commander to be regulated to the level I like to play at, because I know there's players who like more cutthroat, spike-y games, as well as people who like to play even more depowered environments.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

There is precisely no difference between "rules" and "social norms".

I don't really want to argue semantics here but there is a pretty big difference between the two. Social norms are unwritten, ever-evolving dynamics which change slowly at a semi-constant rate. Rules, on the other hand, are written down somewhere, and don't change unless someone or some group explicitly decides to change them. If you go to your LGS to play a casual game of commander, the social norm might be to not play Armageddon in your deck, but you still can. However, you would be breaking a rule of the format to put Prophet of Kruphix in your deck, unless the rest of the group agrees that it's ok. In which case, they've explicitly changed a rule.

It's a minor difference, but it's an important one.

And of course, this requires some sort of "social contract"! Both Magic and D&D are inherently social, they demand a social contract regardless. This is true above and beyond any of the game mechanics - when we sit down to play together, I expect you to not be a nasty and disagreeable person and not to say cruel or uncalled-for things to other players (myself or others).

If for you having a fun game of EDH means not playing power-max turn-2 combo games of Commander, then... don't! If all-singleton decks and multiplayer gameplay are appealing to you, find like-minded people and enjoy yourself a game that isn't like that! If not, then don't play and leave it for others to enjoy, also perfectly reasonable.

Is it a competitive game though? I mean, sure, I'm trying to win my games, but I'm not ruthlessly playing the most optimal deck to do so. I want to have fun, and I want the other players to have an enjoyable night as well. In fact, winning isn't even required to get a kick out of a night of Commander. I'ld argue that, as far as competitiveness goes, Commander is nowhere on the same scale as, say, a relay race, a game of chess, or a darts match. None of these offer you the chance to express yourself by building a cool deck around a commander noone else has thought to use, building intricate and unexpected synergies into your deck. For a lot of people, Commander is more about the deckbuilding process and about playing your cool combos than it is about being comptetitive.



You know what, after mulling it over a bit, I think I have to retract my earlier agreement with TrainmasterGT that "commander is poorly regulated and relies far too heavily on social contracts to do the heavy lifting in the balance department." I don't think Commander is flawed, it's all about perspective. There are people who enjoy playing with and against the cutthroat, turn 3 kill decks, just as there are people who enjoy building around amazing concepts like Ladies Looking Left. The thing is, EDH caters to many different play styles, and that's why Commander is "poorly" regulated. The rules committee doesn't want to tell you how to enjoy Magic, because different players enjoy Magic in different ways, and they don't want to tell you: "No, that's not how you're supposed to play Commander". And that's a good thing! I feel for TMGT's bad experiences, when they obviously just want to enjoy a good, old fun Commander game, but the real problem here isn't Commander as a format, it's the matchmaking that doesn't take into account this fundamental philosophy of embracing different play styles. The truth of the matter is that Magic players don't all have the same needs, wants, motivations, expectations, and indeed, there isn't a single correct way to play Commander, or indeed, Magic in general. I don't think that's a flaw, it's a core strength of the game, and makes it appeal to such a broad demographic.

I've been running for a bit, with some other artifact aggro cards, and it's been pretty good. The existence of Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista go a long way to making it playable. Obviously you still need to have a bunch of artifacts for it to do anything.

For the EDH vs D&D argument, I wouldn't consider those games particularly analogous, and I fall into the camp of "EDH is a badly designed game". EDH is still Magic, and the stated goal of a Magic game is to win, but the culture of EDH is at odds with this. Any game where the most fun way to play and the highest win percentage way to play are fighting against each other is badly designed. That's not to say it can't still be fun, and I do like to play EDH, but the fact that unless everyone has to agree on a power level of their decks beforehand indicates that maybe there's something in the rules that should be adjusted to avoid this.

If I sit down to play A Feast for Odin or Dominion or any number of other board games I'd consider well designed, there's nothing that's allowed by the rules of the game that I'd consider off-limits due to the social contract. That's what makes those games well designed.

D&D kind of falls into another category altogether because whilst EDH or any other competitive boardgames had a stated goal of "win the game", D&D doesn't really have a stated goal you're trying to achieve. You might have a shared goal as a group (defeat the Necromancer), an individual goal as a character (find out what happened to my father), or some meta-goal as a player (build my character towards a particular prestige class that sounds fun to play). And you might not achieve any of those without it becoming a loss condition, unlike a regular game where if you don't win, you lose.

I'm sort of rambling at this point but to boil it down my views are that a good game will allow you to pursue its stated goal with no holds barred and it will still be a fun experience for all players, whilst a badly designed game may require something external (social pressure, house rules) to fix its broken rules. D&D can't really be used as a comparison to these games as it has no stated goal.



I find this take interesting because I kind of half agree and half disagree. The meta goal of any game is play, sure, but part of that play includes following the rules, and one of the rules of Magic is that the goal is to win. If I played Magic with someone who had an explicit goal other than to win the game, I'd find that probably just as frustrating as someone who insisted they got to play two lands every turn.

Here's the problem.

You shouldn't have to make a Fifty Shades of Grey style contract to sit down and play a fun game of EDH. Unfortunately, you kind of have to set some sort of ground rules with whomever your playing with or else your going to run the risk of ruining the game for at least one of you. In my opinion, that's a flaw.

When you sit down to play any other magic format, there's some sort of expectation going into the match. If you're playing Legacy, Standard, or Modern, you have an idea of what to expect before you start playing. You're always going to have more or less competitive players, but in these other formats that's the difference between Affinity and Rage Forger tribal, not "Kill you on turn three" or Squeaking Pie Sneak.

I'm not saying that people playing other constructed formats have the same play goals or expectations, but they're usually going to line up a bit more in-sync. I can sit down with someone who I've never met before to play modern and have an experience consistent with what I might have with one of my friend's I've known for a decade. The same can't be said for commander.

Commander can be very fun. I've said multiple times that I think it's a fun format to brew for and it can be fun to play. But it's also fundamentally broken, to the point where you have to invent your own rules in order to have anything close to a functioning game. Due to the massive inconsistencies this usually causes, especially when you're not playing with an established playgroup, I think it is more than fair to say that EDH is arguably one of the worst formats to play.

For a closing argument, I'd like to return to something DBS said earlier:

The goal of multiplayer EDH is not to destroy your opponents. The goal is play - it's to enjoy a shared social experience.

If to play is the goal, how am I supposed to do that if everyone sits down with different expectations of the game? Did I really get to play if I only got to play a Sol Ring and Cultivate before losing to a CEDH combo player? Did the guy playing a Hot Soup goblins deck really get to play if I ran him over with Dinosaurs before he had a chance to use his goblins? I would argue no.

The problem with EDH isn't the fact that it can be played differently. The problem arises when people play it so differently in the same match that they aren't even really playing the same game. A social contract can remedy this amongst a group of friends, but it can't fix play at an LGS or Online. Any format is going to be more fun when you're tailoring it to your playgroup's needs. That doesn't mean that the format isn't inherently flawed.

 

[sigh]

Yeah EDH is definitely flawed. But I'd only call it "the worst format" (or one of the worst) exactly in the context of trying to curate a regulated event. I argue that may not even be the case, considering participation in a curated event should immediately apply some level of expectations just like the other formats. Outside of that it's just a more bombastic variant of kitchen table magic, which is far and away the biggest "format", and is even less consistent than EDH.

Like, if we are using playability to define the goodness of the format, Legacy and Vintage are even worse thanks to a non-zero number of turn 1 wins. How am I playing the game if all I did was shuffle, draw and hand, and then lose?

 

[CaptnIrony]

I find this very interesting, and talked to a knowledgeable friend about it. Hilariously we came to an agreement when he brought up the idea of what games really are. Here's an excerpt of the conversation:

Spoiler

Without getting into the real serious developmental psychology and philosophy stuff behind it, games are probably an evolved social mechanism for acting out possible futures without suffering the consequences. So, you can play fight without someone getting hurt or dying and still learn to fight. Or you can play some social game and become more encultured into the social norms of your society without actually breaking taboos or suffering reputationally. Young children will spontaneously play games with each other that seem to have defined rules, but if you ask them the rules, they'll all give you different rules, and yet they still play.
Like, games are an innate social function.
And so what happens as kids get older is they start to formalise rules for some reason, probably because older children get more devious.
And so there needs to be bounds on what behaviours are allowed and which aren't. The games existed before the rules, but as the field of possible actions opens up those bounds become formal since the players become more complex
They allow people to agree on what their goal is
Young children don't need the rules
They already agree on what they're doing informally
But older children need the rules
If you have a situation with both high trust and high agreement on a goal you can still have an informal ruleset or a game without rules
Regardless of age
But if you reduce the trust or you reduce the agreement on goal, you need rules
Cook is describing an rpg, where in theory there should be high trust and high agreement
And so he can fallback on the social contract, which I suspect he hasn't thought deeply about
But rpgs in an intimate setting are nothing like Magic
The more often you have to play the same people, the less formal rules matter
But if you're only expected to play the "game" and not the "sport" (ie: playing as if you're going to keep iterating with the same people and your behaviour must reflect the long term goals of everyone who plays the game, sportsmanship vs gamesmanship) then you need formal rules
And the rules need to be tight
It's not a question of assholes
It's a question of systems
Because with low social trust and low agreement on what a good match looks like, you will default to game theoretic incentives
And the person who doesn't exploit is a fool who loses and is removed from the pool

What can be extracted from this is that the importance of rules seems to be tied to a lack of "social trust". The more I trust the players around me, the less I should require rules in the games I play.

It seems that I happen to like commander because I have a high amount of trust is others. I tend to expect the best from people. My friend does not, and while we agreed on how and why trust and rules were linked, we didn't have the same trust in people. He also happens to dislike the format. I tend to make decks that match the powerlevel of those around me and dislike highly competitive games of commander (and so have only rarely made competitive decks) while he doesn't trust others to not make increasingly stronger and stronger decks until his are obsolete. I've had many consistent playgroups, but he has not.

This leads me to believe that EDH's "fun" is linked to the individual's playgroup and how much they trust me. People intentionally trying to ruin things for others or with poor social skills absolutely have the power to ruin games of EDH, probably more-so than in other formats, but I don't see this as a very negative thing. This is the same as someone showing up to a modern even with a deck that loses but makes every game as miserable as possible. The only difference is that in the modern example, you can feel a bit of solace in the fact that at the end of the 50 minutes, you have won the round.

I believe that EDH does succeed in doing what it sets out to do. It provides a framework for a good games and gives you a bit of help by getting rid of the more egregious issues with the system. Anything else is up to the individuals involved. Expecting more is fine if you don't trust those around you, but I feel like the format as a whole would be worse if the RC tried to cater to that.

On the other hand, early magic tried the same thing, they didn't expect people to go out and try to get as many of the good cards as possible and as such didn't institute the 4 card limit. This seems to be a failure for a competitive game. I don't consider EDH to be one though.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Looking for-

-A White Card.
-Mana cost is .
-Is a Creature.
-Is Not in Highball but would fit it's power level.

 

[Felipe Budinich]

Looking for-

-A White Card.
-Mana cost is .
-Is a Creature.
-Is Not in Highball but would fit it's power level.

You have:
- 47 enchantments (of which 11 are enchantment creatures).
- 35 artifacts (of which 12 are artifact creatures).
- 2 enchantment artifacts (of which none are creatures).

This aggregates to 80 total cards (of which 23 are creatures, but 5 are indestructible).

I suggest



Alternatively



Because you have:
- 23 legendary creatures
- 7 legendary enchantments (of which 5 are creatures, and 2 are artifacts)
- 3 legendary artifacts (of which 2 are enchantments)

This aggregates to 26 cards (of which 23 are creatures, but 5 are indestructible)

PS: I think your cube is awesome, I don't think there is any other place where Capashen Unicorn could impact 22% of the possible cards in the set and outperform Bounty Agent as removal.

PS2: Forgot that gods are indestructible, so both of my suggestions hit 18 creatures.

 

[ravnic]

Question: What is highball?

 

[Aston]

I think it's Trainmaster's new(?) cube.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Question: What is highball?

I think it's Trainmaster's new(?) cube.

Yes

 

[Nanonox]

Looking to spread the Stax archetype to red and hopefully a tie with lands.
All I have is Wildfire. Should I double up on it or are there alternatives?

Edit: I like the idea of Devastating Dreams but the random discard really scares me. Any experience with the card vs Wildfire?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I just run two Wildfires, and that deck does get drafted every now and then, but I've never seen it combined with Smokestack (which is in my cube).

 

[inscho]

I really enjoy devastating dreams in my cube, but feel like you need a lot of discard/graveyard payoffs to make it a valuable pick.

 

[Nanonox]

I really enjoy devastating dreams in my cube, but feel like you need a lot of discard/graveyard payoffs to make it a valuable pick.

How many cards do you usually discard to it?

I could see it as a speed bump to ensure the win, as a reset button for when behind or a wrath for when you have the biggest butt on the battlefield.

 

[ravnic]

In my cube, people tend to just concede to a well set up wildfire (usually at least 1 creature that stays like Tuk Tuk, the Explorer and some artifact mana), so I could imagine the discard drawback of Dreams to not matter too much. I'm more worried about having to have the cards in hand to make 4+ damage.

 

[Erik Twice]

Looking to spread the Stax archetype to red and hopefully a tie with lands.
All I have is Wildfire. Should I double up on it or are there alternatives?

Edit: I like the idea of Devastating Dreams but the random discard really scares me. Any experience with the card vs Wildfire?

I doubled it up and it comes up naturally on its own. I don't think you need a lot of artifact mana, either, the control is enough to make the card good, I think.

I'm looking for a replacement for Nezumi Graverobber because I want to avoid the split cards, if possible:

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I doubled it up and it comes up naturally on its own. I don't think you need a lot of artifact mana, either, the control is enough to make the card good, I think.

I'm looking for a replacement for Nezumi Graverobber because I want to avoid the split cards, if possible:

What are you trying to replace? The 2/1 for , the Graveyard Hate, or the Reanimation?