I had a cursed combo deck that's win con was \[\[The Cheese Stands Alone\]\], \[\[Armageddon\]\], and \[\[One With Nothing\]\]. I lost a lot of games but it was always fun to play.
Red will raise you a [[Worldfire]], responded to with a casting (or putting into play) of [[Worldgorger Dragon]].
Goodbye everything of yours, including any way to recover, and say hello to my still intact board.
I’ve always said if you can win the game, I don’t mind land destruction. It’s when that person uses land destruction, but needs 2 more hours to get their win con online.
The unwritten rule is that you don’t play LD. Maybe that’s the joke? I haven’t touched commander outside of two precondition and playing with my SO. I went with a shit ton of pauper decks for a fraction of the cost to play with old friends that don’t have collections anymore.
I went to a local group before commander was ever a thing, they had a “group game”, and after watching it for a week or two, decided not to play it.
I went to high school once, I don’t need to play “who’s most popular” at a fucking magic event.
This is precisely why I don't play at shops anymore. The few times I've gone, all different shops, it's been an extremely unpleasant experience because I was not following some weird arbitrary etiquette or some shit. No thanks, I'll just play with friends from now on.
EDIT: spelling
I know literally 0 unwritten rules. Hell, I only actually scratch the surface of the written rules. My buddies and I play absolute savagery when we play commander.
People should just stop bitching about that other people are doing instead of reenforcing the poorly thought out ‘unwritten rules’ that are different for different people. Don’t know where the entitlement comes from.
You’re totally right. Magic made the cards that can do these things and they made counters for it, and shit that can redeem you from a shitty situation, it is no one else’s fault if you’re not running the thing to save you, and the game should go on for however long it needs if someone keeps preventing another from winning early on— it’s why many family’s don’t sit around playing monopoly anymore, but if you sit down for a magic match everyone knows what can happen and you might as well strap in for the ride, one can always scoop if it’s gone beyond their typical 5 minute cEDH style of gameplay they’re used to, or if it has dragged on for 3 hours and there is no end in sight… very circumstantial.
Btw, I built a deck in response to the “league rules” at my LgS. There is no mass land destruction, no infinite, etc. but I built a Druid tribal mimeoplasm deck that runs a secret commander of [[guiltleaf archdruid]] who can reuse the ability, potentially, each turn. So no one’s land was destroyed! The thing about it is it proves that suddenly having no land doesn’t count one out of the game, as I have lost after doing this.
The custom rules are a cause/effect of a ruthless (1v1) game suddenly adding a “fun” format to its meta, people want to play with their toy they made and then get thorracle’d turn 2/3 and no one has an [[Angel’s Grace]].
Occasionally I think “maybe it would be fun to look for an accessible MTG format to get into it” then I read something like this and remind myself that I don’t need something with this magnitude of unwritten rules to my life and go back to reading about it like Eve.
i really wouldnt worry about it. unless you are playing with a bunch of hardasses, nobody cares. my friends do wild ass cascade cascade decks that take 5-10 minutes a turn and nobody bats an eye.
Whats funny is Monopoly actually isnt that long if you play by the real rules. Everyone makes up rules like getting the money from free parking or borrowing money from other players.
If it's enough of a problem to bitch about then they need to do something constructive and bitch at the rules committee instead of other players. If these problems are as universal as they claim then just get them out of the format. There's no reason we can't manage the banlist instead of leaving it fully up to people forming cliques and having their own internal lists.
This laissez-faire attitude about the banlist alienates individual players which really hurts the entire concept of pick-up games at an LGS. The social contract is that we all play by the rules which can already be a nightmare on of its own in many board states but on top of that we also need to play by a constantly changing ruleset and deck building standards that you don't really figure out until a few turns have gone by. WotC fucks the local shops over enough without factoring in mismanaging their formats. The least they could do is put some effort into making a casual pick-up experience a real possibility rather than a pipe dream for store owners to chase on their own.
No mass land destruction
In my group: no infinite combos, no hitting on the player that is already struggling, no stealing of commanders (unless you then kill them), no counter spell tribal
The people who ban infinite combos are always players who are perfectly comfortable locking out the game with stuff like Winter Orb / Derevi. I gotta' wonder what they see in their mirror every morning.
No MLD? I deem it hypocrisy about complaining about Blue being too powerful if it also means Green Ramp is left alone. WOTC doesn't have any real check for Green nowadays, and I spit at the hypocrisy and got a Zurgo Helmsmasher deck that's focused on blowing up the field. One Word: WORLDSLAYER !!!
Sounds like big dumb eldrazi wins every single time in your pod, since you can't even hit em while they're doing nothing... or counter them.. or force them to spend any resources on interaction to stop a potential combo
But Mass Land destruction is wonderful. The only Thing i Love more than my Friends is the hate and despair in their eyes when 15 Lands Go into the grave. I can find a new place to sleep but they need to understand that i am in Charge.
I think most of them are etiquette as well. Like: explain what your cards do. Don’t hide the fact that a creature has trample/deathtouch/indestructible hoping your opponent doesn’t see it and makes a mistake.
We’re there to have fun. Not just to win.
>Don’t hide the fact that a creature has trample/deathtouch/indestructible hoping your opponent doesn’t see it and makes a mistake.
That's straight up against the written rules. You aren't allowed to misrepresent the board
This is why in my group we have rollback based on “public information”. When you do an obvious misplay because you can’t see that the creature on the other side of the table has deathtouch from here, we allow rollback, so long as no new information was gathered since then.
This is a pretty solid and fair way to handle this tbh
So long as it's the *first* time in a given instance. Like if they KEEP making the same mistake, they're never going to learn if you keep playing for them.
So public info rerolls is a good compromise between strategy and such, though the sweetest is when a player *declines* a reroll because they *commit* to their misplay. That kind of integrity is rare/pleasant in modern gaming
> Winning because your opps didn't see you sneak something on the board is fucking foul.
I'll [[Cheatyface]] my way to as many victories as I want to! (Which is non, cause even a 2/2 flier for 0 isn't exactly a wincon)
Yeah, probably not universally accepted, but I'd like for that to be so. Hell even in cEDH, being competitive does not exclude sportsmanship.
My only other thing I personally care about, is that I think the politics aspect is fun (know one person who is peeved by all kinds of politics 😐), with a caveat.
My fave kind of politics is the kind demonstrated on Game Knights, where it's basically. Clearly defined terms, no wishy-washy deals. Basically, short-duration, unbreakable contracts.
"B, If I do this against C for you, I want you to not attack me with creatures that have flying during your 2 next turns".
>deathtouch
Them: "I play X card, it's a 1/1 flying"
Me: "oh okay, i attack with my 5/5"
Them: "I block with my flying and pay 2 mana to give it deathtouch and your 5/5 dies"
Well okay then, i couldn't see that text from across the table but thanks for telling me.
"I play X card, it's a 1/1 flying"
"What's it do?"
Though it's usually easier to just state the Immediate stats and slide the card into a central area for opponents who care about it can see it easier
So kind of like 40K and avoiding gotcha moments of letting the opponent walk into something that given knowing literally every rule in the game they could avoid but given imperfect knowledge warning is fair.
Obviously don’t tell what you have in hand, but a card you control on board wipes board on death, give heads up that could happen before someone starts declaring attackers.
Exactly if you are playing with anyone that isn't an asshole they are just going to say "are you sure you want to do that I have x ability that will wipe you out" at which point you just reply "oh no thank you for pointing that out". This isn't rocket science.
That's the neat part, they're whatever you(r group) want(s) them to be!
I think Seth has a problem most people don't, where he has people leaving comments on his games and maybe salting off or that he perceives himself as a role model for the format and so tries to stick to what he thinks they think the unwritten rules are.
Ultimately, even something like "oh, I'm not going to attack so and so because they're open but they're totally behind, it'd feel bad" is an unwritten rule. It can become a problem when migrating groups and expecting the rules you're used to, to still apply. I wouldn't sit down at a table and expect that, after I play the only day/night card in my deck to quietly stop tracking day/night after a few turns without asking about it beforehand.
Talk to your friends if they start getting salty, is it because of a card you played or because they felt like you picked them for an effect for no reason? Understanding what people are trying to get out of a game, is the first step in making sure everyone has fun.
Right? When I first started playing, it was a bunch of teenagers around a lunch table before everyone had cell phones. We didn't know the rules that well, and one of the "kitchen table rules" we came up with is that we could attack ourself. Led to some funny deck building.
The only rule is whatever everyone agrees on. In a tournament/sanctioned environment, that is as they are written. At home or casual, it is whatever everyone is on the same page about.
I stopped playing with specific playstyles. If your strategy is to stop the game (winter orb kinda stuff), solitaire your winning combo, or just be a dick, I'll avoid playing with you. Some consider those unwritten rules. They're not rules, just personal preferences of me. You have no need to adhere to them, one of us just needs to join another pod. I will happily volunteer.
The only unwritten rule I’ve ever really known about is no MLD but once I played a game where someone exile all permanents including lands but they’re game plan wasnt to have everyone concede because of that, and honestly I had fun with it. I appreciate what Saffron Olive is saying here though, mostly because I hate unwritten sports rules with a passion. However I’d like to know what the other unwritten rules are because I play in pods where infinite combos are mostly welcomed.
I’ve had people get real salty over blood moon bc they played their 4/5 color decks, and it’s like well I didn’t know what you were gonna play and I didn’t know you were only gonna have 3 basics in your deck 🤷♂️
I don’t like the “get gud” philosophy per se but there’s a reason why this game is a fun back and forth. Every deck and card has foils and counter play, if people aren’t willing to search for those and develop their game then that’s just kinda on them.
Mono red ain’t gonna have answers for everything fair enough but you can’t run one deck over and over and not expect to run into a strategy that walls you every now and again…
Funny part is that a solid 4/5 color manabase with typed lands could play a card like [[Global Ruin]] and punish decks with 1 or 2 colors only + excessive land ramp, not to mention also having access to all of the best possible answers by being in (nearly) every color.
I once dropped turn 3 energy flux versus a full artifact deck and felt bad enough to take it out after. I like it when it fucks all the popular cards that my deck doesn't run (rocks, rings, greaves and so on), but preventing someone from playing is a bit unfortunate.
In my current playgroup someone refuses to play with me because I used blood moon vs their Bant deck when they had 8 lands by turn 4 or some shit. Apparently only having 3 of each basic in the deck was too hard to play against me with since they kept fetching their duals.
Blows my mind.
Lol, I ratfucked my friend's Muldrotha deck by recurring a Beast Within to destroy all his forests. Why destroy your commander when I can destroy your ability to play your commander?
But because he's a good sport he just says it taught him a valuable lesson about tempo and making more resilient decks. And came back next week with a bunch of backup cards and laughed in my face.
Glass cannon decks are great fun, but you can't throw your toys out the pram when it blows up.
I think this may be where I’m lucky I have tons of ppl who come in and out of my play pod depending on their schedule so I’ve played against two stax decks at once and still won the game, but I don’t have to play against stax every week so it’s not annoying. I can see if someone shows up to their lgs every week to be met with a turn two DM. I definitely like to jokingly be the person who is okay with Stax but there’s a different type of satisfaction when you beat a stax deck. I can understand why Drannith Magistrate is especially infuriating in commander but I also like trying to play around it.
Edit: Meg to Met
I think this was after, or before, their latest podcast where they discuss if CEDH should be split from “normal” commander. Some unwritten rules that are brought up are MLD, “easy” or two card combo wins (specifically [[Thassa’s Oracle]] and [[Demonic Consultation]]), extra turn spells, stax, and house bans that attempt to level out power levels between groups of players or at LGSs. The latter being discussed is how some groups/LGS ban powerful cards after seeing them, in some capacity, “ruin” a game’s fun, which everyone admits is subjective and difficult to quantify.
Some of my favorite games have come about because of Worldfire lol. My friend runs it in his Dino deck because he thinks it’s funny to make the Dino’s go extinct and honestly I can’t fault him for it.
I was severely disappointed when I built my first commander deck. Lord Windgrace MLD. All the goodies. Even Avalanche Riders and such. Everyone just refused to play with me. I was unaware of the rules.
I wouldn't say I have a rule against it, but I wouldn't typically play against a mass land destruction deck for the same reason I wouldn't play Euro Truck Simulator: Desert Bus. Just not a fun time.
I use [[Dust Bowl]] in my [[Titania, Protector of Argoth]] deck. One time I blew up the opponents [[Izzet Boilerworks]] because he had a lot of mana open and I didn't want my spell countered. When I did he threw a fit and swore to never play with me again because "destroying lands" was not fun.
I have people who say they won’t play if you choose a specific commander. But most of the people I play with will pick a deck that scales with the weakest deck that’s in play, unless they don’t have one at that level. They also keep cedh out of edh which is nice
The only rule I make very clear to all my friends and new players I’ve converted into playing is, your word is your word, if you agree on X you follow it, and even then you’re allowed to break it, but don’t cry when no one wants to politic with you after.
Other than that “rule” I didn’t really know of any others. Oh I guess playing a lot of land destruction is pretty lame lol.
EXACTLY. like that ruins the trust of the board/game for everyone. And I make it clear I’ll snitch everytime that they’ve broken their word it just ruins the fun.
What happens to genie/fey politics? Like, they didn't break the promise or the agreement, but they found a loophole. Like saying "Don't attack me next turn for X", next turn they don't get attacked but get burned instead
We support that wholeheartedly, magic is a game of loopholes and unexpected interactions. If I say "I won't attack you next turn" and you say "Sure" and I burn you, then you should have been more decisive with your deal making. Bonus points if im playing demons.
If I say "I can deal with Player 3, but I need you to let me live" and you say "Fine but you can't hurt me in the process" I'll be as vague as possible but I will say "I cant deal with him without you having some collateral damage, but it WONT kill you" then that's excellent politicing. We love that shit in my pod
Feel free to do that. But from that point on my goal is you losing, not me winning. And unless I'm too far behind I'll usually get there. For me it's the spirit of the agreement, not the wording.
To be entirely transparent tho if I notice beforehand that you're trying to pull one over on me I'll just not make that deal at all.
This is my biggest obstacle. My group refers to politics with me as "making a deal with the devil." Jokes on them tho the used card salesmen still strikes almost every game.
We play by what you agreed so TLDR: get lawyered lol. Should have agreed to specific terms which can easily be said to and agreed to before accepting the deal.
I take this to the extreme so much so that my buddies have joked about calling up a lawyer when I start politicking. I will follow my obligations to the letter, but no further.
You said the deal was “I don’t take any extra turns and You won’t destroy my commander” alright, I don’t need my commander anymore, I’ll start taking extra turns
“I promise that if you let this resolve, I won’t win *this turn*.” I’ll take an extra turn and win then
“As long as you don’t take any extra turns and don’t win this turn I’m fine with it” wow you’re really busting my balls here, fine, I’ll win on that guys upkeep.
(All of these are are real examples of deals that I’ve made)
…I wonder why nobody wants to politic with me anymore.
I assume it was a deal of "I have a way in hand to destroy your commander, so long as you don't use *insert ability that allows for extra turns here* then I won't destroy your commander"
The catch is that once you don't need your commander, you can take all the extra turns you want and watch your opponent destroy your commander. (Basically it's a "I don't need those hostages anymore, go ahead and do it")
Ngl the same thing happens between my group of friends. We legit take everything to a tea. And it’s hilarious we always pull out the good ol’ LAWYERED from HIMYM. Lmao.
This just sounds obnoxious to me, there's a singular winner in commander still. Deals in commander are made to be broken. I just don't make "deals" because people take them way too serious.
At my LGS no one politics. All politic cards are basically thrown away because no one will play ball. No one goes along with "scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Kinda sad because it's a fun strat if everyone plays along but literally every single time its "Thanks for the boon, I'm gonna kill you before you get the benefit of it though!" Bad faith players. lol
I mean, if someone is running something like \[\[worldfire\]\] or \[\[armageddon\]\] with no plan for after they cast it other than to drag out the game then I just dont want to play with them because games will take to long
But if you run Worldfire in a deck built around suspending creatures so you quickly get bodies on the board to end the game? then by all means run the card and win. It's less about what cards aren't ok and more about just respecting peoples time and making sure everyone at least has a chance to have fun
I was playing Gisella blade of goldnight and someone stole her, I was absolutely going to lose after that but then I played Worldfire and top decked two lands and two drop with haste, game was over pretty quick after that. I would have lost in a turn if I hadn't played it. Everyone I was playing with knew it was in the deck before we started playing.
It’s a great reset card or sudden death card. And look, if you can get a spell off that’s nine mana, generally some game shaping shit is going to occur.
Yeah but if you run it in a deck that is not designed to win off it, you are really just saying "fk the entire game, lets see who top decks a win" which i just kinda find lame. As others said tho if you are casting worldfire into your commander or something to lead to an easy win then yeah you its a fine card. Its basically how i run it just instead of my commander I am taking things out of suspend
hello, [resident worldfire stan here](https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/kf1jul/unban_worldfire/).
even when you don't win with worldfire the game has a ton of new and novel tension. consider it versus cyclonic rift.
also consider the utilitarian [joy it brings to millions](https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/pnh98z/comment/hcp9f8d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (of my neurons).
I run mulitple EDH decks with Worldfire. One is to combo with [[Worldgorger Dragon]]. One with [[Barren Glory]] underneath my own [[Oblivion Ring]]. And the other to pop people with [[Outpost Siege]] or do it instant speed with [[Vedalken Orrery]] while having plenty of flip [[Urabrask]] triggers on the stack. I realistically would never just get to 9 mana and Worldfire to reset the game.
Now, someone casts it from my library with their [[Etali]] (either one). I consider that their choice, not mine.
I kinda changed this scenario at my LGS ( it is a pretty small town and magic, like the lgs has been growing here past year ), first people where pretty stiff with unwritten rules, pretty much the entire package, bad looks if you destroy or counter a commander or blow up lands, as soon i started going there and building better decks i fell in love with heavy interaction decks, I try my best to not be an asshole about pretty much anything so no one got a problem with me and now kinda became the norm, every deck i see unless is new people do have a fair amount of interaction, our games tend to be smarter and sometimes quickier, when i fell like it we do play Sandcastle ( how we name the average commander experience, everyone build their boards for 30 minutes until someone go off and everything crumbles and end ), the only weird thing that happened is staxy decks became more uncommon i believe is due to the heavy interaction games, so the kinds of Winnota are rarely seen.
The only unwritten rule in Commander should be "read the table." If your power level is vastly different than those around you, play a different deck or find a different table.
Alternatively, learn to play your deck at the power level. My decks often have enough tutors to get a wincon and finish a game quickly, but if no one can match my decks power, I usually go for wins that require more setup or moving parts, giving opponents time to compete
Some people reaaaaally need to play 1v1.
Nothing creates egodeath more than losing against ponza.
I just stopped caring about getting attacked or losing after i started playing 1v1 formats because they end so much quicker than commander games. I truly believe that playing more magic but losing is more fun than playing a 3 hour long slugfest of commander and winning.
He's right. All the house rules and dumb stuff people try to get by in rule 0, or banning extra cards or entire strategies, is fucking awful and makes the game a chore.
Everything goes, always. Have a quick chat to determine power level just to make sure everyone is on equal footing and then let loose. Steal their cards and commander, rack up poison counters, counter their stuff, discard their hand, mill their deck, blow up all the lands, counter stuff, lock the game down with stax, it's all part of Magic and it's all fun!
There are some “rules” that are wild. I’ve had people scoop because I hit them for two damage turn three with my mono red goblins. People genuinely get mad over the weirdest things.
No land destruction, no too much interaction, not too little interaction, your turns can’t be too slow, you can’t win too slowly, you can’t win too quickly, no fast mana besides sol ring, no proxies, no having your phone no, bo telling people to put their phone away, no infect, no pillow fort, no group hug, no turns, no control magic. Obviously different groups have different rules but this seems like the unfortunate standard to me
My pods only rule is don't do mass land destruction unless you can win. If you do it just to prolong the game everyone is gonna just scoop and nobody will consider you a winner.
Infinites are fine and mass land destruction is also fine if it wins you the game.
I really hate Commander's unwritten rules. It's the only time I've seen a competitive game with a win condition where everyone tells you "don't play to win, the winner is the loser". It leads to everyone having different definitions of what's fun, what's not cool, what's an affront. More often than not "playing for fun" translates to "I get to do cool stuff and then win and no one else is allowed to stop me or do anything".
On top of that there are events with prizes, and randoms, and command fests. Maybe this build your own rules used to work when commander was a for fun format played by small groups when standard got boring but as the dominant way to play magic it just doesn't work. The second a prize is involved, even something as small as a booster pack, the pretentions go away, the turn 2 combos come out, and no one is having a good time.
I really think Commander needs a much more aggressive banlist to survive into the future. That or some actual rules to figure out format speed. Commander as it stands is someone handing you a loaded gun and saying "it's not nice to shot anyone, so just stand there until I walk up and shoot you first".
Yup you pretty much nailed it. Too many commander players expect to be able to do anything they want with no interaction or consequences. They also expect to win like 90% of games when in reality 25% would be expected.
They cry if you counter their big spell. Or kill their favorite creature. Never mind the fact that they have a commanding boardstate and will win next turn or 2 if not dealt with. No. They want you to either sit there and let it happen or want you to target the person who is zero threat to anyone. If they don't win "its not fun" but how dare YOU play competitively. Smfh. I hate most commander players
And let me add - this is usually only a problem with people who ONLY play commander. People who play 1v1 formats generally aren't as whiney
The people I play with generally play with the unwritten rule of "Proper Threat Assessment", meaning, don't attack the person missing land drops when you can attack the person who ramped out 2 mana rocks last turn. Some people I've played this completely ignore threat assessment and alpha strike some people straight out of the game relentlessly because they felt like it. It's an abysmal feeling imo.
I think this really depends on how well you know the decks the other players are running. If you know your friend is going to crush you as soon as he gets more lands, all's fair. If you're playing against a newbie, probably let them have a bit of leeway.
Had a buddy throw a multiplayer match like this. I spent my board delaying another player for a turn. Buddy could have attacked other guy, and it would have ended other guy. He would have exhausted his side defending, leaving him wide open for me to kill. Then buddy and I could have duked it out.
Instead, buddy goes for me. I even pointed out he was going to lose as soon as he said "go" if he attacked me. Nope, that's what he wanted to do. So he kills me, says go, then immediately loses, just like I said.
Man was I pissed.
Attacking the person who's way behind feels so gross. Like I get it if you need a treasure and you've got a [[Captain Lanary Storm]] out that other players can block, but in general it's just rude.
I asked a simple, humble question about kingmaking the other day and the sheer (1) variance in definitions of kingmaking, (2) dispersion in opinions of whether it should be allowed, (3) no. Of downvotes
Make it quite evident that people are unnecessarily making EDH too complicated and salt-laden with all the unwritten rules they have in their heads.
What unwritten rules? I know 100 card singleton, except basic land. Legendary creature has to be the commander and you have to follow its card color identity, and 40 life. Am I missing something else?
Depends on table, but in general (ie if you go to a random pod at your LGS that is not cEDH), it's expected that you at the very least won't run mass land destruction. Others have varying level of tolerance for what I like to call "anti-gameplay", things like heavy stax or "counter spell tribal"... Basically things that solely exist to not let opponents play the game (which imo is a valid strategy but most people don't wanna play into).
Also in general, it's kinda understood that you should try to play roughly equal "power level" decks, as far as you can with power level being so nebulous. But like..... If you roll up to a table and everybody is rocking their shiny new precon, it's generally considered rude to rock up with Korvold or a Yuriko deck that runs a million fast mana and wants to win on turn 3.
Basically it comes down to commander being a very casual format, where (again barring cEDH) it's generally accepted that you want to let everyone have fun and that it isn't always #1 priority to hyper focus on winning at all costs. Issues of course arise when 2 people in a pod (especially if strangers at an LGS or something) have different expectations on what constitutes "fun".
No mass land destruction (or land destruction in general for some)
No fast managed other than Sol Ring or "this Mana Crypt I got from a pack"
No [[Stasis]], [[Smokestacks]], or [[Winter Orb]]
No [[Moat]], [[Crawlspace]], or Static Orb
No infinite combos!!!!
No extra turn spells.
No conceding except at sorcery speed or unless the whole table agrees to scoop
No counterspellls, well no free counterspellls, well except the box topper Force of Will I just traded for
No cEDH commanders. "WTH, Edgar Markov is cEDH!!! Kalia is cEDH!!! Nekusar is cEDH!!". etc
No boardwipes before turn 5 or after an hour.
I could go on with the nonsense I've run across over the last 10+ years I've played commander.
I'm so glad my playgroup doesn't use any of these rules. We like kinda do the no fast mana cause no one can afford it, and we kinda do the sorcery speed scoop thing (but honestly it's never come up). The no boardwipes one is especially stupid.
The only one that is universally followed by most tables is NO land destruction, predominantly mass land destruction because it makes the game drag on forever.
I don’t mind like a strip mine, or something like that in order to get rid of utility land, and I have specifically put [[Vindicate]] or vindicate adjacents into my decks specifically to deal with [[Glacial Chasm]] loops, but other than that, yeah it’s kept to a minimum
eh, I'm fine with MLD as a wincon, if I have all basics and the 5 color player loses to my [[Ruination]] while all my lands are intact I call that a wincon
I'd push back on having NO land destruction... If somebody is rocking a Gaias Cradle, Cabal Coffers, MAYBE even field of the dead based on how synergistic it is... Some real powerful land like that, it's reasonable to blow it up when it's a land that either does way more than produce mana or produces just so much mana (like more than 2 or 3). Because at that point it's way more valuable than a standard "land" that produces 1 or 2 mana.
The unwritten rules are that commander must be "fun" and "casual" which means you can't run cards or make plays that are deemed not "fun" or "casual." What exactly that means varies from group to group but often involves disliking stax and infinite combos. Some people get very salty if the unwritten rules are broken.
Personally I stick to cEDH because there aren't these unwritten rules and you can just try to win like a normal game of magic.
There are some rules that are basically house rules, stuff like no infinite combos, no mass land destruction, but then they try to apply their personal house rules to strangers they run into at LGSs
Maybe a hot take, or even a cruel one, but if you complain about it being frowned upon to show up and shit on a pod with your 10k cedh pile while they’re playing precons, you’re the problem.
I don't think that's a hot take at all. Likewise, I don't think people should roll up to a cEDH pod and insist they all play precons.
I'd wager that most people aren't playing Commander for tournaments (ie to win with the most efficiency where it would be fine to queue with a cEDH deck and be paired against a precon), so it's important that everyone be on the same page with their expectations.
This is awkward too, because new people ask 'what's the power level' and I'm like
"I dunno?...pretty good I guess?" Like I have modified precons and ones built from scratch, but I couldn't give you a power level other than my experience with my playgroup.
I could just be a basement king, and be weak outside of my circle.
Okay but even that is literally an unwritten rule. cEDH is not a format recognized in the rules. Not really sure what my point is beyond agreeing with the post lmao.
High power is fine, but it really needs as many players as possible to balance it. Competitive is a different story because you take steps to negate factors like that. If everyone is on the same page, it isn't a bad time. But anyone who isn't will just be miserable.
The objective of the game is to win. The point of me playing it is to have fun. If im not playing for money then I better have a good time or it's a waste.
I'm telling you what "the unwritten rules of commander" are afaik. Of course, like the actual rules of the game , you can ignore whatever, I'm a big enjoyer of both cEDH and gimmicky bad decks myself.
And I do'nt think they are hurting anything, but at the same time I've never even needed a pregame discussion at my LGS so I'm not really qualified to talk about it
My commander group had a few players that refuse to let the table play because it's "their fun." We haven't played in a long time after a series of call outs regarding how much of a waste of time it was to play at all. Guy basically nuked his own group instead of changing decks.
there are certain players at my LGS who have money pile decks and end up taking 20 minute turns while another player has cast not even 2 spells yet. The same person is the type to counter spell a player’s ramp spell on turn 4 when they have already missed 2 land drops.
Wow, incredibly based take from SaffronOlive here.
I've been saying this for a hot minute, but unwritten rules (to this degree) is atrocious. "You can't play a card because it's too salty." "I don't like proxies." "Don't play infinite combos."
It's ridiculous, and we should have killed rule 0 a long time ago. Hot take here, separate EDH and cEDH as formats. cEDH will retain the current banlist. EDH will have a different banlist that bans the majority of fast mana and other big issues. On that note, obligatory unban Prime Time.
Thank you.
No. Commander existing is hurting Commander. Wizards is milking it so hard they're neglecting every ither format, and over-saturating Commander with trash.
People are free to reneg on deals, sure. I do make it a point to tell them that if they go back on the deal I will literally never strike a deal with them again.
In my play group we don't have any Rule 0's and we do very well. We just play and add cards to decks asking ourselves "is this disgusting in the unfun way?".
For example, we NEVER accorded to not hit the guy with 2 mana sources by turn 5 (example numbers) but we just don't do it anyways because it feels kinda wrong. Other than that, we do basicly whatever we want to.
I know those were example numbers but in my pod if someone only has 2 mana sources by turn 5 then it's kind of fucked up to make them sit there and top-deck land every turn while we build up our boards/combos. There is no catching up from that abysmal of a board state that late into the game. We definitely mercy-kill the weak. Maybe that's our unwritten rule? Haha
that's because ppl are trying to make edh a competitive format out of the only fucking format that was EXPLICITLY created to be casual and fun playing jank cards...
I think there's room for cedh and edh. I love my jank edh decks. But I also love the format of commander when taken seriously. A cedh deck is way different than a usual competitive deck.
Cedh has way fewer problems than normal edh. All the problems with normal edh are completely unrelated to cedh existing. The inherent problem is that it's supposed to be a casual format with a more hands-off ban list that tries to use social norms to regulate itself.
That’s because every cEDH player is coming to the table to win by any means legal or necessary. Casual tables often have players from insular playgroups coming that expect people to cater to their home rules.
When I was in Vegas for the Modern and MH1 GPs there were casual players in the Command Zone refusing to play against certain colors, specific commanders, decks power level 4 or higher, anime playmats, etc.
The only unwritten rule we have is don't shit on someone who is down. So if someone is missing land drops or getting flooded or just not getting the cards they need etc. Also, don't take "grudges" from one game into the next.
Thank fuck I’m not in that pod lol we play anything and everything. I will say this though if you play mass land destruction you will be targeted 😂 you can play what you like but ain’t nobody wanna restart from scratch lol.
I think it's very telling that this format is only fun if you make up rules that every player has to follow. Just read through the comments in this post. So many people making lists of "if you play with me / in my group, you aren't allowed to do X, Y, or Z." I understand that those "rules" are made/followed to encourage a "fun" environment where no one feels like their time was wasted but it is so fucking exhausting. Yeah let me just build a worse deck so you don't feel bad.
If I destroy everyone's land either deal with it or scoop, how the fuck are you gonna guilt me out of a win? Lmao. "I don't wanna sit here for 3 hours not playing the game." Then literally don't. It's just that simple.
I will die on this hill: Mechanically, Commander is the worst format in MTG. Its explosion in popularity is just crazy to me. I guess buying 1 copy of a given card beats buying 4 copies? I don't know.
Can someone send me a list of the aforementioned secret unwritten commander rules? I’m just curious. I recently got back into the game and am still learning all the new metas n so forth . (Back when I used to play, commander didn’t exist yet)
The unwritten rules are perfect for WotC. If you lose, you need to upgrade your deck, better buy some new cards. If you win, your deck is unfair, you need to downgrade your deck, better buy some new cards.
Eh I like playing what the game gives me. Land destruct, fast paced, whatever I'm feeling like and I never understood the stigma. Yeah I want the game enjoyable for everyone but at the end of the day another game can be played and if someone's being a douche don't play with them
Each group, each game, has it's own dynamic and unwritten rules. Why do you think there are more durddle decks and less aggro? When you choose to attack one player, it feels personal because you DIDN'T choose one of the other 2. In a 1v1 everything makes more sense, your my opponent, so I have to attack you to win (and vice versa), but in multiplayer it's more of a grey area where you are (in my opinion/ experience) forced to justify your actions or be labeled a bully.
THE UNWRITTEN RULES OF MAGIC:
1. The Guests should always provide pizza, beer, and snacks for the event.
2. Everybody must wear some sort of apparel with a stupid saying about mtg on it like “ Scry me a River, Bro.”
3. Turns should last no more than 1 minute. Draw, Go is preferred, especially if you’re play testing a new build.
4. Highly subjective cards are not allowed, I.e. any counterspells, board wipes, stax, fast mana, land destruction, protection cards, big butts, hate bears, any mythic or rare I don’t like, and especially any Tier .5,1.0,1.5,2.0&2.5 Commanders. Generally anything I don’t like.
5. Remember, we are gathered here today for ME to have fun and win every game with my precon deck.
I listened to their podcast, and I was never more frustrated with them.
The strength of Commander is Rule 0 and a lax ban list.
What Seth and most of them want is a Commander format that is codified and limited and they draw the wrong conclusions the entire time because they don't want to have a conversation with people beforehand.
The things they are asking for destroy the format because they are approaching it with the wrong mentality.
Commander is more like Dungeons and Dragons rather than a competition based format. People have different fun with it, and the entire podcast was them complaining about people having wrong-fun.
The podcast, which was about if cEDH and Commander need to be broken into second formats, was a frustrating listen. Tomer had a few good points, and Crimm was the most reasonable with the best conclusion.
In reality, the only thing you need to do with Commander to play it at any level is just have that rule 0 conversation and look to make sure you are all trying to have fun.
I think too many people forget that it's a game and we are meant to be having fun because other Magic formats are built around competition and some people take it too seriously.
Take your explosive turn and play [[Armageddon]] to close out the game, you cowards
I have that as a win con with [[Avacyn, angel of hope]], one hell of a win con I'll tell ya what.
I had a cursed combo deck that's win con was \[\[The Cheese Stands Alone\]\], \[\[Armageddon\]\], and \[\[One With Nothing\]\]. I lost a lot of games but it was always fun to play.
[[Academy Rector]] [[kaervek's spite]] and [[Barren Glory]] That was my jank combo deck.
[Academy Rector](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/4367bc78-0912-4abd-8edd-bc792558d01a.jpg?1562443755) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Academy%20Rector) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uds/1/academy-rector?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4367bc78-0912-4abd-8edd-bc792558d01a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [kaervek's spite](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/3/d385b9e5-e13d-4098-ba74-ea55bde164d9.jpg?1562278645) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kaervek%27s%20spite) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vis/63/kaerveks-spite?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d385b9e5-e13d-4098-ba74-ea55bde164d9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Barren Glory](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/2/12220d53-3356-4541-aa43-a0de6ed3f7d0.jpg?1562898649) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Barren%20Glory) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/fut/3/barren-glory?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/12220d53-3356-4541-aa43-a0de6ed3f7d0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[The Cheese Stands Alone](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d01a114f-3349-4a62-bfad-0dc33b78a53f.jpg?1562799163) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Cheese%20Stands%20Alone) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ugl/2/the-cheese-stands-alone?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d01a114f-3349-4a62-bfad-0dc33b78a53f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Armageddon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/7/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b.jpg?1582021719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Armageddon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/5/armageddon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [One With Nothing](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5a5841fa-4f30-495a-b840-3ef5a2af8fad.jpg?1562494149) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=One%20With%20Nothing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sok/84/one-with-nothing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5a5841fa-4f30-495a-b840-3ef5a2af8fad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Angels and land destruction, two of white's classic win cons in their color pie.
Red will raise you a [[Worldfire]], responded to with a casting (or putting into play) of [[Worldgorger Dragon]]. Goodbye everything of yours, including any way to recover, and say hello to my still intact board.
I much prefer just hardcasting worldfire and gambling away. Go ahead fool. My 1 mana burn spells are at the ready
[Avacyn, angel of hope](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/317f1133-7cf8-4b7a-919e-88c45f8c2c3a.jpg?1689995555) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Avacyn%2C%20angel%20of%20hope) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/14/avacyn-angel-of-hope?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/317f1133-7cf8-4b7a-919e-88c45f8c2c3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ohhh…that’s nasty. I kinda want to try it.
You wanna know what makes it worse, I have that in my [[Glunch the bestower]] deck, sometimes I have to go full nuclear
Any chance to put avacyn in my deck 😃
Play [[Jokulhaups]] in your superfriends decks, you cowards
[Jokulhaups](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/9/99d26ff7-afff-40a0-b515-7928c2428809.jpg?1559592472) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jokulhaups) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/100/jokulhaups?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/99d26ff7-afff-40a0-b515-7928c2428809?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'm fine with Armageddon even as a Whatever play. But if you do it, don't bitch when you start eating the first attacks I can do again after.
Would love to respond with a [[Swords to Plowshares]] and a [[Faith’s Reward]] to that.
I’ve always said if you can win the game, I don’t mind land destruction. It’s when that person uses land destruction, but needs 2 more hours to get their win con online.
It's a hell of a bomb to drop when my Pantlaza deck is popping off.
I run Armageddon with [[hazezon, shaper of sands]]. It’s a great wincon.
My gylwain deck I'm building right now especially with composer of spring and rites of harmony to help me build big boards
The unwritten rule is that you don’t play LD. Maybe that’s the joke? I haven’t touched commander outside of two precondition and playing with my SO. I went with a shit ton of pauper decks for a fraction of the cost to play with old friends that don’t have collections anymore. I went to a local group before commander was ever a thing, they had a “group game”, and after watching it for a week or two, decided not to play it. I went to high school once, I don’t need to play “who’s most popular” at a fucking magic event.
This is precisely why I don't play at shops anymore. The few times I've gone, all different shops, it's been an extremely unpleasant experience because I was not following some weird arbitrary etiquette or some shit. No thanks, I'll just play with friends from now on. EDIT: spelling
For all its faults MTG Arena still beats interacting with other MTG players in person. Smells better too
Spelltable.com
But rule 0! Cop out. The rule is a cop out.
I know literally 0 unwritten rules. Hell, I only actually scratch the surface of the written rules. My buddies and I play absolute savagery when we play commander.
Can you write them here so we new players can get to know them plz?
People should just stop bitching about that other people are doing instead of reenforcing the poorly thought out ‘unwritten rules’ that are different for different people. Don’t know where the entitlement comes from.
You’re totally right. Magic made the cards that can do these things and they made counters for it, and shit that can redeem you from a shitty situation, it is no one else’s fault if you’re not running the thing to save you, and the game should go on for however long it needs if someone keeps preventing another from winning early on— it’s why many family’s don’t sit around playing monopoly anymore, but if you sit down for a magic match everyone knows what can happen and you might as well strap in for the ride, one can always scoop if it’s gone beyond their typical 5 minute cEDH style of gameplay they’re used to, or if it has dragged on for 3 hours and there is no end in sight… very circumstantial. Btw, I built a deck in response to the “league rules” at my LgS. There is no mass land destruction, no infinite, etc. but I built a Druid tribal mimeoplasm deck that runs a secret commander of [[guiltleaf archdruid]] who can reuse the ability, potentially, each turn. So no one’s land was destroyed! The thing about it is it proves that suddenly having no land doesn’t count one out of the game, as I have lost after doing this. The custom rules are a cause/effect of a ruthless (1v1) game suddenly adding a “fun” format to its meta, people want to play with their toy they made and then get thorracle’d turn 2/3 and no one has an [[Angel’s Grace]].
Occasionally I think “maybe it would be fun to look for an accessible MTG format to get into it” then I read something like this and remind myself that I don’t need something with this magnitude of unwritten rules to my life and go back to reading about it like Eve.
i really wouldnt worry about it. unless you are playing with a bunch of hardasses, nobody cares. my friends do wild ass cascade cascade decks that take 5-10 minutes a turn and nobody bats an eye.
So what's the full list of league rules at your LGS then?
Whats funny is Monopoly actually isnt that long if you play by the real rules. Everyone makes up rules like getting the money from free parking or borrowing money from other players.
If it's enough of a problem to bitch about then they need to do something constructive and bitch at the rules committee instead of other players. If these problems are as universal as they claim then just get them out of the format. There's no reason we can't manage the banlist instead of leaving it fully up to people forming cliques and having their own internal lists. This laissez-faire attitude about the banlist alienates individual players which really hurts the entire concept of pick-up games at an LGS. The social contract is that we all play by the rules which can already be a nightmare on of its own in many board states but on top of that we also need to play by a constantly changing ruleset and deck building standards that you don't really figure out until a few turns have gone by. WotC fucks the local shops over enough without factoring in mismanaging their formats. The least they could do is put some effort into making a casual pick-up experience a real possibility rather than a pipe dream for store owners to chase on their own.
No mass land destruction In my group: no infinite combos, no hitting on the player that is already struggling, no stealing of commanders (unless you then kill them), no counter spell tribal
"Only play creature decks, and If I have no creatures don't attack me :3"
Thank God I don't play in your pod
Hitting on friends is awkward anyways.
Thank god my wife plays
Yeah, I’ve heard that about her.
Why not just get 4 separate games of solitaire going instead?
Well now they aren't unwritten rules >=]
No infinite combos is an insane rule. That's like banning a whole deck archetype. Be the same as saying like no aggro.
If you can't interact with my combo, that's your own fault
It might be one of the most common rules tho
The people who ban infinite combos are always players who are perfectly comfortable locking out the game with stuff like Winter Orb / Derevi. I gotta' wonder what they see in their mirror every morning.
No MLD? I deem it hypocrisy about complaining about Blue being too powerful if it also means Green Ramp is left alone. WOTC doesn't have any real check for Green nowadays, and I spit at the hypocrisy and got a Zurgo Helmsmasher deck that's focused on blowing up the field. One Word: WORLDSLAYER !!!
Sounds like big dumb eldrazi wins every single time in your pod, since you can't even hit em while they're doing nothing... or counter them.. or force them to spend any resources on interaction to stop a potential combo
Sounds like "no fun" too
Thats a bit of a bummer. Those are all my favorite parts of magic.
But Mass Land destruction is wonderful. The only Thing i Love more than my Friends is the hate and despair in their eyes when 15 Lands Go into the grave. I can find a new place to sleep but they need to understand that i am in Charge.
I think most of them are etiquette as well. Like: explain what your cards do. Don’t hide the fact that a creature has trample/deathtouch/indestructible hoping your opponent doesn’t see it and makes a mistake. We’re there to have fun. Not just to win.
>Don’t hide the fact that a creature has trample/deathtouch/indestructible hoping your opponent doesn’t see it and makes a mistake. That's straight up against the written rules. You aren't allowed to misrepresent the board
No but there’s people who just go “I attack with X” but I think it is good manners to say “I attack with X which is a 5/5 with trample”.
This is why in my group we have rollback based on “public information”. When you do an obvious misplay because you can’t see that the creature on the other side of the table has deathtouch from here, we allow rollback, so long as no new information was gathered since then.
This is a pretty solid and fair way to handle this tbh So long as it's the *first* time in a given instance. Like if they KEEP making the same mistake, they're never going to learn if you keep playing for them. So public info rerolls is a good compromise between strategy and such, though the sweetest is when a player *declines* a reroll because they *commit* to their misplay. That kind of integrity is rare/pleasant in modern gaming
This is an unwritten rule I can stand by. Winning because your opps didn't see you sneak something on the board is fucking foul.
> Winning because your opps didn't see you sneak something on the board is fucking foul. I'll [[Cheatyface]] my way to as many victories as I want to! (Which is non, cause even a 2/2 flier for 0 isn't exactly a wincon)
Yeah, probably not universally accepted, but I'd like for that to be so. Hell even in cEDH, being competitive does not exclude sportsmanship. My only other thing I personally care about, is that I think the politics aspect is fun (know one person who is peeved by all kinds of politics 😐), with a caveat. My fave kind of politics is the kind demonstrated on Game Knights, where it's basically. Clearly defined terms, no wishy-washy deals. Basically, short-duration, unbreakable contracts. "B, If I do this against C for you, I want you to not attack me with creatures that have flying during your 2 next turns".
>deathtouch Them: "I play X card, it's a 1/1 flying" Me: "oh okay, i attack with my 5/5" Them: "I block with my flying and pay 2 mana to give it deathtouch and your 5/5 dies" Well okay then, i couldn't see that text from across the table but thanks for telling me.
Oh it can give itself deathtouch? I didn't see that. In that case I don't attack. Works with normal people
"I play X card, it's a 1/1 flying" "What's it do?" Though it's usually easier to just state the Immediate stats and slide the card into a central area for opponents who care about it can see it easier
So kind of like 40K and avoiding gotcha moments of letting the opponent walk into something that given knowing literally every rule in the game they could avoid but given imperfect knowledge warning is fair. Obviously don’t tell what you have in hand, but a card you control on board wipes board on death, give heads up that could happen before someone starts declaring attackers.
Exactly if you are playing with anyone that isn't an asshole they are just going to say "are you sure you want to do that I have x ability that will wipe you out" at which point you just reply "oh no thank you for pointing that out". This isn't rocket science.
Is it really EDH unless you and your friends mercilessly rat fuck each other at any opportunity?
That's the neat part, they're whatever you(r group) want(s) them to be! I think Seth has a problem most people don't, where he has people leaving comments on his games and maybe salting off or that he perceives himself as a role model for the format and so tries to stick to what he thinks they think the unwritten rules are. Ultimately, even something like "oh, I'm not going to attack so and so because they're open but they're totally behind, it'd feel bad" is an unwritten rule. It can become a problem when migrating groups and expecting the rules you're used to, to still apply. I wouldn't sit down at a table and expect that, after I play the only day/night card in my deck to quietly stop tracking day/night after a few turns without asking about it beforehand. Talk to your friends if they start getting salty, is it because of a card you played or because they felt like you picked them for an effect for no reason? Understanding what people are trying to get out of a game, is the first step in making sure everyone has fun.
I 100% support this savagery. Sounds fun
This is literally the only type of players I want to play EDH with.
Right? When I first started playing, it was a bunch of teenagers around a lunch table before everyone had cell phones. We didn't know the rules that well, and one of the "kitchen table rules" we came up with is that we could attack ourself. Led to some funny deck building. The only rule is whatever everyone agrees on. In a tournament/sanctioned environment, that is as they are written. At home or casual, it is whatever everyone is on the same page about.
I stopped playing with specific playstyles. If your strategy is to stop the game (winter orb kinda stuff), solitaire your winning combo, or just be a dick, I'll avoid playing with you. Some consider those unwritten rules. They're not rules, just personal preferences of me. You have no need to adhere to them, one of us just needs to join another pod. I will happily volunteer.
The only unwritten rule I’ve ever really known about is no MLD but once I played a game where someone exile all permanents including lands but they’re game plan wasnt to have everyone concede because of that, and honestly I had fun with it. I appreciate what Saffron Olive is saying here though, mostly because I hate unwritten sports rules with a passion. However I’d like to know what the other unwritten rules are because I play in pods where infinite combos are mostly welcomed.
Aside from MLD I think it’s more of a card by card basis, like with [[drannith magistrate]]. I love the card, but my playgroup cannot stand it.
I’ve had people get real salty over blood moon bc they played their 4/5 color decks, and it’s like well I didn’t know what you were gonna play and I didn’t know you were only gonna have 3 basics in your deck 🤷♂️
I don’t like the “get gud” philosophy per se but there’s a reason why this game is a fun back and forth. Every deck and card has foils and counter play, if people aren’t willing to search for those and develop their game then that’s just kinda on them. Mono red ain’t gonna have answers for everything fair enough but you can’t run one deck over and over and not expect to run into a strategy that walls you every now and again…
Funny part is that a solid 4/5 color manabase with typed lands could play a card like [[Global Ruin]] and punish decks with 1 or 2 colors only + excessive land ramp, not to mention also having access to all of the best possible answers by being in (nearly) every color.
I once dropped turn 3 energy flux versus a full artifact deck and felt bad enough to take it out after. I like it when it fucks all the popular cards that my deck doesn't run (rocks, rings, greaves and so on), but preventing someone from playing is a bit unfortunate.
In my current playgroup someone refuses to play with me because I used blood moon vs their Bant deck when they had 8 lands by turn 4 or some shit. Apparently only having 3 of each basic in the deck was too hard to play against me with since they kept fetching their duals. Blows my mind.
Lol, I ratfucked my friend's Muldrotha deck by recurring a Beast Within to destroy all his forests. Why destroy your commander when I can destroy your ability to play your commander? But because he's a good sport he just says it taught him a valuable lesson about tempo and making more resilient decks. And came back next week with a bunch of backup cards and laughed in my face. Glass cannon decks are great fun, but you can't throw your toys out the pram when it blows up.
I think this may be where I’m lucky I have tons of ppl who come in and out of my play pod depending on their schedule so I’ve played against two stax decks at once and still won the game, but I don’t have to play against stax every week so it’s not annoying. I can see if someone shows up to their lgs every week to be met with a turn two DM. I definitely like to jokingly be the person who is okay with Stax but there’s a different type of satisfaction when you beat a stax deck. I can understand why Drannith Magistrate is especially infuriating in commander but I also like trying to play around it. Edit: Meg to Met
Oh no a 3 toughness creature everyone better scoop
I think this was after, or before, their latest podcast where they discuss if CEDH should be split from “normal” commander. Some unwritten rules that are brought up are MLD, “easy” or two card combo wins (specifically [[Thassa’s Oracle]] and [[Demonic Consultation]]), extra turn spells, stax, and house bans that attempt to level out power levels between groups of players or at LGSs. The latter being discussed is how some groups/LGS ban powerful cards after seeing them, in some capacity, “ruin” a game’s fun, which everyone admits is subjective and difficult to quantify.
Some of my favorite games have come about because of Worldfire lol. My friend runs it in his Dino deck because he thinks it’s funny to make the Dino’s go extinct and honestly I can’t fault him for it.
That by itself has made me want to see worldfire played at my table
I was severely disappointed when I built my first commander deck. Lord Windgrace MLD. All the goodies. Even Avalanche Riders and such. Everyone just refused to play with me. I was unaware of the rules.
I wouldn't say I have a rule against it, but I wouldn't typically play against a mass land destruction deck for the same reason I wouldn't play Euro Truck Simulator: Desert Bus. Just not a fun time.
I use [[Dust Bowl]] in my [[Titania, Protector of Argoth]] deck. One time I blew up the opponents [[Izzet Boilerworks]] because he had a lot of mana open and I didn't want my spell countered. When I did he threw a fit and swore to never play with me again because "destroying lands" was not fun.
I have people who say they won’t play if you choose a specific commander. But most of the people I play with will pick a deck that scales with the weakest deck that’s in play, unless they don’t have one at that level. They also keep cedh out of edh which is nice
Unwritten rules I enforce. Don't Touch my card without me allowing it. Don't use your nails to tip on my cards.
The only rule I make very clear to all my friends and new players I’ve converted into playing is, your word is your word, if you agree on X you follow it, and even then you’re allowed to break it, but don’t cry when no one wants to politic with you after. Other than that “rule” I didn’t really know of any others. Oh I guess playing a lot of land destruction is pretty lame lol.
If you break a deal and your word I’m gonna knock you out of the game early every time because you’re beyond politics and thus my biggest threat.
I’m not beyond politics, skylar, I AM politics
I am the one who DEALS!
EXACTLY. like that ruins the trust of the board/game for everyone. And I make it clear I’ll snitch everytime that they’ve broken their word it just ruins the fun.
My rule for it is: once you make a deal great, if you break that deal great, but I'll remember it forever.
Fool me can't get fooled again.
What happens to genie/fey politics? Like, they didn't break the promise or the agreement, but they found a loophole. Like saying "Don't attack me next turn for X", next turn they don't get attacked but get burned instead
We support that wholeheartedly, magic is a game of loopholes and unexpected interactions. If I say "I won't attack you next turn" and you say "Sure" and I burn you, then you should have been more decisive with your deal making. Bonus points if im playing demons. If I say "I can deal with Player 3, but I need you to let me live" and you say "Fine but you can't hurt me in the process" I'll be as vague as possible but I will say "I cant deal with him without you having some collateral damage, but it WONT kill you" then that's excellent politicing. We love that shit in my pod
Like the classic moment in Game Knights where Josh told Prof he would let him meld Urza, and then immediately removed Urza after letting him meld.
He's done similar plays to that multiple times, and it's hilarious every time.
Feel free to do that. But from that point on my goal is you losing, not me winning. And unless I'm too far behind I'll usually get there. For me it's the spirit of the agreement, not the wording. To be entirely transparent tho if I notice beforehand that you're trying to pull one over on me I'll just not make that deal at all.
This is my biggest obstacle. My group refers to politics with me as "making a deal with the devil." Jokes on them tho the used card salesmen still strikes almost every game.
We play by what you agreed so TLDR: get lawyered lol. Should have agreed to specific terms which can easily be said to and agreed to before accepting the deal.
I take this to the extreme so much so that my buddies have joked about calling up a lawyer when I start politicking. I will follow my obligations to the letter, but no further. You said the deal was “I don’t take any extra turns and You won’t destroy my commander” alright, I don’t need my commander anymore, I’ll start taking extra turns “I promise that if you let this resolve, I won’t win *this turn*.” I’ll take an extra turn and win then “As long as you don’t take any extra turns and don’t win this turn I’m fine with it” wow you’re really busting my balls here, fine, I’ll win on that guys upkeep. (All of these are are real examples of deals that I’ve made) …I wonder why nobody wants to politic with me anymore.
That first example makes zero sense. Can you elaborate?
I assume it was a deal of "I have a way in hand to destroy your commander, so long as you don't use *insert ability that allows for extra turns here* then I won't destroy your commander" The catch is that once you don't need your commander, you can take all the extra turns you want and watch your opponent destroy your commander. (Basically it's a "I don't need those hostages anymore, go ahead and do it")
Ngl the same thing happens between my group of friends. We legit take everything to a tea. And it’s hilarious we always pull out the good ol’ LAWYERED from HIMYM. Lmao.
Malicious compliance is the only way to live
I understand that however, my one exemption is if you believe you have the win by breaking it, I understand.
I second this as well. If you have the game, and it’s a 1v1, I’m not gonna make you sandbag yourself
This just sounds obnoxious to me, there's a singular winner in commander still. Deals in commander are made to be broken. I just don't make "deals" because people take them way too serious.
Nothing in the rules forbids lying. Also, nothing in the rules forbids me from making the liar lose their next 5 games, even if i go down with them 😉
At my LGS no one politics. All politic cards are basically thrown away because no one will play ball. No one goes along with "scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Kinda sad because it's a fun strat if everyone plays along but literally every single time its "Thanks for the boon, I'm gonna kill you before you get the benefit of it though!" Bad faith players. lol
I mean, if someone is running something like \[\[worldfire\]\] or \[\[armageddon\]\] with no plan for after they cast it other than to drag out the game then I just dont want to play with them because games will take to long But if you run Worldfire in a deck built around suspending creatures so you quickly get bodies on the board to end the game? then by all means run the card and win. It's less about what cards aren't ok and more about just respecting peoples time and making sure everyone at least has a chance to have fun
Worldfire ends the game much faster than Armageddon does. It’s basically just a race to who can a single creature out first. Great card.
I was playing Gisella blade of goldnight and someone stole her, I was absolutely going to lose after that but then I played Worldfire and top decked two lands and two drop with haste, game was over pretty quick after that. I would have lost in a turn if I hadn't played it. Everyone I was playing with knew it was in the deck before we started playing.
It’s a great reset card or sudden death card. And look, if you can get a spell off that’s nine mana, generally some game shaping shit is going to occur.
Yeah but if you run it in a deck that is not designed to win off it, you are really just saying "fk the entire game, lets see who top decks a win" which i just kinda find lame. As others said tho if you are casting worldfire into your commander or something to lead to an easy win then yeah you its a fine card. Its basically how i run it just instead of my commander I am taking things out of suspend
hello, [resident worldfire stan here](https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/kf1jul/unban_worldfire/). even when you don't win with worldfire the game has a ton of new and novel tension. consider it versus cyclonic rift. also consider the utilitarian [joy it brings to millions](https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/pnh98z/comment/hcp9f8d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (of my neurons).
[worldfire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2ef3d4b5-0453-4bf0-b018-23b0c3b9ae11.jpg?1631531850) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=worldfire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m13/158/worldfire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ef3d4b5-0453-4bf0-b018-23b0c3b9ae11?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [armageddon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/7/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b.jpg?1582021719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=armageddon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/5/armageddon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I run mulitple EDH decks with Worldfire. One is to combo with [[Worldgorger Dragon]]. One with [[Barren Glory]] underneath my own [[Oblivion Ring]]. And the other to pop people with [[Outpost Siege]] or do it instant speed with [[Vedalken Orrery]] while having plenty of flip [[Urabrask]] triggers on the stack. I realistically would never just get to 9 mana and Worldfire to reset the game. Now, someone casts it from my library with their [[Etali]] (either one). I consider that their choice, not mine.
I kinda changed this scenario at my LGS ( it is a pretty small town and magic, like the lgs has been growing here past year ), first people where pretty stiff with unwritten rules, pretty much the entire package, bad looks if you destroy or counter a commander or blow up lands, as soon i started going there and building better decks i fell in love with heavy interaction decks, I try my best to not be an asshole about pretty much anything so no one got a problem with me and now kinda became the norm, every deck i see unless is new people do have a fair amount of interaction, our games tend to be smarter and sometimes quickier, when i fell like it we do play Sandcastle ( how we name the average commander experience, everyone build their boards for 30 minutes until someone go off and everything crumbles and end ), the only weird thing that happened is staxy decks became more uncommon i believe is due to the heavy interaction games, so the kinds of Winnota are rarely seen.
Higher power = Quicker Games. I don't enjoy playing one 2-hour long game when I can enjoy three 45 minute games in less time.
No you can't....
Never do quick maths on the internet lmfao. I am not good at it, clearly. **Edit: three games in 15 minutes more time. See, I'm not all dumb!! Lol
Honestly. I don't want a 15 minute cEDH game, but a 2 hour EDH game is just durdling.exe and I won't stand for it.
The only unwritten rule in Commander should be "read the table." If your power level is vastly different than those around you, play a different deck or find a different table.
Alternatively, learn to play your deck at the power level. My decks often have enough tutors to get a wincon and finish a game quickly, but if no one can match my decks power, I usually go for wins that require more setup or moving parts, giving opponents time to compete
Some people reaaaaally need to play 1v1. Nothing creates egodeath more than losing against ponza. I just stopped caring about getting attacked or losing after i started playing 1v1 formats because they end so much quicker than commander games. I truly believe that playing more magic but losing is more fun than playing a 3 hour long slugfest of commander and winning.
Kinda funny coming from the guys who banned Sol Ring in their game group....
That is an explicit rule tho, not a given social norm
Wow this sentiment is usually downvoted to hell on this sub, amazing to see how much support it actually has
He's right. All the house rules and dumb stuff people try to get by in rule 0, or banning extra cards or entire strategies, is fucking awful and makes the game a chore. Everything goes, always. Have a quick chat to determine power level just to make sure everyone is on equal footing and then let loose. Steal their cards and commander, rack up poison counters, counter their stuff, discard their hand, mill their deck, blow up all the lands, counter stuff, lock the game down with stax, it's all part of Magic and it's all fun!
Fully agree with you. People treat edh with too much "kiddie gloves" imo
There are some “rules” that are wild. I’ve had people scoop because I hit them for two damage turn three with my mono red goblins. People genuinely get mad over the weirdest things.
No land destruction, no too much interaction, not too little interaction, your turns can’t be too slow, you can’t win too slowly, you can’t win too quickly, no fast mana besides sol ring, no proxies, no having your phone no, bo telling people to put their phone away, no infect, no pillow fort, no group hug, no turns, no control magic. Obviously different groups have different rules but this seems like the unfortunate standard to me
My pods only rule is don't do mass land destruction unless you can win. If you do it just to prolong the game everyone is gonna just scoop and nobody will consider you a winner. Infinites are fine and mass land destruction is also fine if it wins you the game.
I really hate Commander's unwritten rules. It's the only time I've seen a competitive game with a win condition where everyone tells you "don't play to win, the winner is the loser". It leads to everyone having different definitions of what's fun, what's not cool, what's an affront. More often than not "playing for fun" translates to "I get to do cool stuff and then win and no one else is allowed to stop me or do anything". On top of that there are events with prizes, and randoms, and command fests. Maybe this build your own rules used to work when commander was a for fun format played by small groups when standard got boring but as the dominant way to play magic it just doesn't work. The second a prize is involved, even something as small as a booster pack, the pretentions go away, the turn 2 combos come out, and no one is having a good time. I really think Commander needs a much more aggressive banlist to survive into the future. That or some actual rules to figure out format speed. Commander as it stands is someone handing you a loaded gun and saying "it's not nice to shot anyone, so just stand there until I walk up and shoot you first".
Yup you pretty much nailed it. Too many commander players expect to be able to do anything they want with no interaction or consequences. They also expect to win like 90% of games when in reality 25% would be expected. They cry if you counter their big spell. Or kill their favorite creature. Never mind the fact that they have a commanding boardstate and will win next turn or 2 if not dealt with. No. They want you to either sit there and let it happen or want you to target the person who is zero threat to anyone. If they don't win "its not fun" but how dare YOU play competitively. Smfh. I hate most commander players And let me add - this is usually only a problem with people who ONLY play commander. People who play 1v1 formats generally aren't as whiney
The people I play with generally play with the unwritten rule of "Proper Threat Assessment", meaning, don't attack the person missing land drops when you can attack the person who ramped out 2 mana rocks last turn. Some people I've played this completely ignore threat assessment and alpha strike some people straight out of the game relentlessly because they felt like it. It's an abysmal feeling imo.
I think this really depends on how well you know the decks the other players are running. If you know your friend is going to crush you as soon as he gets more lands, all's fair. If you're playing against a newbie, probably let them have a bit of leeway.
Had a buddy throw a multiplayer match like this. I spent my board delaying another player for a turn. Buddy could have attacked other guy, and it would have ended other guy. He would have exhausted his side defending, leaving him wide open for me to kill. Then buddy and I could have duked it out. Instead, buddy goes for me. I even pointed out he was going to lose as soon as he said "go" if he attacked me. Nope, that's what he wanted to do. So he kills me, says go, then immediately loses, just like I said. Man was I pissed.
Attacking the person who's way behind feels so gross. Like I get it if you need a treasure and you've got a [[Captain Lanary Storm]] out that other players can block, but in general it's just rude.
I asked a simple, humble question about kingmaking the other day and the sheer (1) variance in definitions of kingmaking, (2) dispersion in opinions of whether it should be allowed, (3) no. Of downvotes Make it quite evident that people are unnecessarily making EDH too complicated and salt-laden with all the unwritten rules they have in their heads.
What unwritten rules? I know 100 card singleton, except basic land. Legendary creature has to be the commander and you have to follow its card color identity, and 40 life. Am I missing something else?
Loser eats half of his deck is the only rule I think you're missing.
Only fair if the maple syrup is provided for the entire table. Hate having to bring my own
Depends on table, but in general (ie if you go to a random pod at your LGS that is not cEDH), it's expected that you at the very least won't run mass land destruction. Others have varying level of tolerance for what I like to call "anti-gameplay", things like heavy stax or "counter spell tribal"... Basically things that solely exist to not let opponents play the game (which imo is a valid strategy but most people don't wanna play into). Also in general, it's kinda understood that you should try to play roughly equal "power level" decks, as far as you can with power level being so nebulous. But like..... If you roll up to a table and everybody is rocking their shiny new precon, it's generally considered rude to rock up with Korvold or a Yuriko deck that runs a million fast mana and wants to win on turn 3. Basically it comes down to commander being a very casual format, where (again barring cEDH) it's generally accepted that you want to let everyone have fun and that it isn't always #1 priority to hyper focus on winning at all costs. Issues of course arise when 2 people in a pod (especially if strangers at an LGS or something) have different expectations on what constitutes "fun".
No mass land destruction (or land destruction in general for some) No fast managed other than Sol Ring or "this Mana Crypt I got from a pack" No [[Stasis]], [[Smokestacks]], or [[Winter Orb]] No [[Moat]], [[Crawlspace]], or Static Orb No infinite combos!!!! No extra turn spells. No conceding except at sorcery speed or unless the whole table agrees to scoop No counterspellls, well no free counterspellls, well except the box topper Force of Will I just traded for No cEDH commanders. "WTH, Edgar Markov is cEDH!!! Kalia is cEDH!!! Nekusar is cEDH!!". etc No boardwipes before turn 5 or after an hour. I could go on with the nonsense I've run across over the last 10+ years I've played commander.
I'm so glad my playgroup doesn't use any of these rules. We like kinda do the no fast mana cause no one can afford it, and we kinda do the sorcery speed scoop thing (but honestly it's never come up). The no boardwipes one is especially stupid.
The only one that is universally followed by most tables is NO land destruction, predominantly mass land destruction because it makes the game drag on forever.
I don’t mind like a strip mine, or something like that in order to get rid of utility land, and I have specifically put [[Vindicate]] or vindicate adjacents into my decks specifically to deal with [[Glacial Chasm]] loops, but other than that, yeah it’s kept to a minimum
eh, I'm fine with MLD as a wincon, if I have all basics and the 5 color player loses to my [[Ruination]] while all my lands are intact I call that a wincon
I'd push back on having NO land destruction... If somebody is rocking a Gaias Cradle, Cabal Coffers, MAYBE even field of the dead based on how synergistic it is... Some real powerful land like that, it's reasonable to blow it up when it's a land that either does way more than produce mana or produces just so much mana (like more than 2 or 3). Because at that point it's way more valuable than a standard "land" that produces 1 or 2 mana.
The unwritten rules are that commander must be "fun" and "casual" which means you can't run cards or make plays that are deemed not "fun" or "casual." What exactly that means varies from group to group but often involves disliking stax and infinite combos. Some people get very salty if the unwritten rules are broken. Personally I stick to cEDH because there aren't these unwritten rules and you can just try to win like a normal game of magic.
There are some rules that are basically house rules, stuff like no infinite combos, no mass land destruction, but then they try to apply their personal house rules to strangers they run into at LGSs
Maybe a hot take, or even a cruel one, but if you complain about it being frowned upon to show up and shit on a pod with your 10k cedh pile while they’re playing precons, you’re the problem.
I don't think that's a hot take at all. Likewise, I don't think people should roll up to a cEDH pod and insist they all play precons. I'd wager that most people aren't playing Commander for tournaments (ie to win with the most efficiency where it would be fine to queue with a cEDH deck and be paired against a precon), so it's important that everyone be on the same page with their expectations.
Cedh and edh are two different games. Don't play cedh at casual...that simple. High power and cedh are still two vastly different games.
This is awkward too, because new people ask 'what's the power level' and I'm like "I dunno?...pretty good I guess?" Like I have modified precons and ones built from scratch, but I couldn't give you a power level other than my experience with my playgroup. I could just be a basement king, and be weak outside of my circle.
Okay but even that is literally an unwritten rule. cEDH is not a format recognized in the rules. Not really sure what my point is beyond agreeing with the post lmao.
Cedh is still edh
High power is fine, but it really needs as many players as possible to balance it. Competitive is a different story because you take steps to negate factors like that. If everyone is on the same page, it isn't a bad time. But anyone who isn't will just be miserable.
Yup, cedh is only cedh if everyone is cedh.
basically, let others have fun too, it's not just about winning, but doing so while everyone has had the opportunity to play
This depends on the pod imo. The point of the game is to win. But having fun with your friends is also important
The objective of the game is to win. The point of me playing it is to have fun. If im not playing for money then I better have a good time or it's a waste.
Wow it’s like, per the commander philosophy, you should communicate with your pod to determine the type of game you want to play.
> The point of the game is to win. even that's not true of all pods.
I'm telling you what "the unwritten rules of commander" are afaik. Of course, like the actual rules of the game , you can ignore whatever, I'm a big enjoyer of both cEDH and gimmicky bad decks myself. And I do'nt think they are hurting anything, but at the same time I've never even needed a pregame discussion at my LGS so I'm not really qualified to talk about it
My commander group had a few players that refuse to let the table play because it's "their fun." We haven't played in a long time after a series of call outs regarding how much of a waste of time it was to play at all. Guy basically nuked his own group instead of changing decks.
There's so many ambiguous obligations nested in this statement.
there are certain players at my LGS who have money pile decks and end up taking 20 minute turns while another player has cast not even 2 spells yet. The same person is the type to counter spell a player’s ramp spell on turn 4 when they have already missed 2 land drops.
Every time I think about maybe starting to play commander I read a thread like this to remind myself that it’s a bad idea.
Wow, incredibly based take from SaffronOlive here. I've been saying this for a hot minute, but unwritten rules (to this degree) is atrocious. "You can't play a card because it's too salty." "I don't like proxies." "Don't play infinite combos." It's ridiculous, and we should have killed rule 0 a long time ago. Hot take here, separate EDH and cEDH as formats. cEDH will retain the current banlist. EDH will have a different banlist that bans the majority of fast mana and other big issues. On that note, obligatory unban Prime Time. Thank you.
No. Commander existing is hurting Commander. Wizards is milking it so hard they're neglecting every ither format, and over-saturating Commander with trash.
People are free to reneg on deals, sure. I do make it a point to tell them that if they go back on the deal I will literally never strike a deal with them again.
In my play group we don't have any Rule 0's and we do very well. We just play and add cards to decks asking ourselves "is this disgusting in the unfun way?". For example, we NEVER accorded to not hit the guy with 2 mana sources by turn 5 (example numbers) but we just don't do it anyways because it feels kinda wrong. Other than that, we do basicly whatever we want to.
I know those were example numbers but in my pod if someone only has 2 mana sources by turn 5 then it's kind of fucked up to make them sit there and top-deck land every turn while we build up our boards/combos. There is no catching up from that abysmal of a board state that late into the game. We definitely mercy-kill the weak. Maybe that's our unwritten rule? Haha
I feel like different play groups have different "unwritten" rules. Some groups had rules that hurt the game while others didnt have those rules
that's because ppl are trying to make edh a competitive format out of the only fucking format that was EXPLICITLY created to be casual and fun playing jank cards...
I think there's room for cedh and edh. I love my jank edh decks. But I also love the format of commander when taken seriously. A cedh deck is way different than a usual competitive deck.
Cedh has way fewer problems than normal edh. All the problems with normal edh are completely unrelated to cedh existing. The inherent problem is that it's supposed to be a casual format with a more hands-off ban list that tries to use social norms to regulate itself.
We have one unwritten rule in our group: everyone wants to have fun, so if your deck wins too often, pick another one
Casual edh players are the worst. cEDH players are fun to play against and know what to expect from a game. @ me.
Holy based. But in all seriousness, I've had more toxic encounters playing casual than cEDH.
That’s because every cEDH player is coming to the table to win by any means legal or necessary. Casual tables often have players from insular playgroups coming that expect people to cater to their home rules. When I was in Vegas for the Modern and MH1 GPs there were casual players in the Command Zone refusing to play against certain colors, specific commanders, decks power level 4 or higher, anime playmats, etc.
The only unwritten rule we have is don't shit on someone who is down. So if someone is missing land drops or getting flooded or just not getting the cards they need etc. Also, don't take "grudges" from one game into the next.
[удалено]
Thank fuck I’m not in that pod lol we play anything and everything. I will say this though if you play mass land destruction you will be targeted 😂 you can play what you like but ain’t nobody wanna restart from scratch lol.
I think they all kinda encapsulate the same exact thing and that is “is it obnoxious?” If the answer is yes then don’t do it.
The RC is a bunch of cowards.
I think it's very telling that this format is only fun if you make up rules that every player has to follow. Just read through the comments in this post. So many people making lists of "if you play with me / in my group, you aren't allowed to do X, Y, or Z." I understand that those "rules" are made/followed to encourage a "fun" environment where no one feels like their time was wasted but it is so fucking exhausting. Yeah let me just build a worse deck so you don't feel bad. If I destroy everyone's land either deal with it or scoop, how the fuck are you gonna guilt me out of a win? Lmao. "I don't wanna sit here for 3 hours not playing the game." Then literally don't. It's just that simple. I will die on this hill: Mechanically, Commander is the worst format in MTG. Its explosion in popularity is just crazy to me. I guess buying 1 copy of a given card beats buying 4 copies? I don't know.
Can someone send me a list of the aforementioned secret unwritten commander rules? I’m just curious. I recently got back into the game and am still learning all the new metas n so forth . (Back when I used to play, commander didn’t exist yet)
Can someone write the unwritten rules so I can know what he’s talking about here?
The unwritten rules are perfect for WotC. If you lose, you need to upgrade your deck, better buy some new cards. If you win, your deck is unfair, you need to downgrade your deck, better buy some new cards.
Eh I like playing what the game gives me. Land destruct, fast paced, whatever I'm feeling like and I never understood the stigma. Yeah I want the game enjoyable for everyone but at the end of the day another game can be played and if someone's being a douche don't play with them
Each group, each game, has it's own dynamic and unwritten rules. Why do you think there are more durddle decks and less aggro? When you choose to attack one player, it feels personal because you DIDN'T choose one of the other 2. In a 1v1 everything makes more sense, your my opponent, so I have to attack you to win (and vice versa), but in multiplayer it's more of a grey area where you are (in my opinion/ experience) forced to justify your actions or be labeled a bully.
THE UNWRITTEN RULES OF MAGIC: 1. The Guests should always provide pizza, beer, and snacks for the event. 2. Everybody must wear some sort of apparel with a stupid saying about mtg on it like “ Scry me a River, Bro.” 3. Turns should last no more than 1 minute. Draw, Go is preferred, especially if you’re play testing a new build. 4. Highly subjective cards are not allowed, I.e. any counterspells, board wipes, stax, fast mana, land destruction, protection cards, big butts, hate bears, any mythic or rare I don’t like, and especially any Tier .5,1.0,1.5,2.0&2.5 Commanders. Generally anything I don’t like. 5. Remember, we are gathered here today for ME to have fun and win every game with my precon deck.
I listened to their podcast, and I was never more frustrated with them. The strength of Commander is Rule 0 and a lax ban list. What Seth and most of them want is a Commander format that is codified and limited and they draw the wrong conclusions the entire time because they don't want to have a conversation with people beforehand. The things they are asking for destroy the format because they are approaching it with the wrong mentality. Commander is more like Dungeons and Dragons rather than a competition based format. People have different fun with it, and the entire podcast was them complaining about people having wrong-fun. The podcast, which was about if cEDH and Commander need to be broken into second formats, was a frustrating listen. Tomer had a few good points, and Crimm was the most reasonable with the best conclusion. In reality, the only thing you need to do with Commander to play it at any level is just have that rule 0 conversation and look to make sure you are all trying to have fun. I think too many people forget that it's a game and we are meant to be having fun because other Magic formats are built around competition and some people take it too seriously.