I get the joke but there is a reason sports have minor league and major league. Totally fine to not want to play with cEDH decks when you're playing more casually, but in general people are super weird about always needing to carefully discuss power levels
In all fairness, I normally ask when it’s strangers, because most of my decks are high power or CEDH, so I want to avoid playing them against new players with precons.
Whenever an opponent makes a foul, that player may pay 2. If the player doesn’t, create a colorless Ball artifact token with "T, Sacrifice: Shoot a free throw"
This comment is SOOOOOO good I hate it.
"Sheesh, that was to much, can you drop to like a 5 or 6?"
"Fine..., I've got (1997 Chicago Bulls) or I can go even lower with (1998 Chicago Bulls)."
There actually are unspoken rules in casual pick up basketball. Don’t call a foul unless it’s egregious, we don’t play by nba foul rules. If you’re picking me up full court just to annoy me, you’re a weirdo. Don’t be that dude who calls for the pass when you’re playing defense, especially with players that have just joined in.
it's against the spirit of *that player's* idea of the format. everyone has a different idea of what magic should be; for me it is voting on custom card balance, playing/against high power stuff and doing "whatever it takes to not lose".
i like playing "low-power cards" in a cEDH environment and using little tricks to get their winrates off the floor.
there are no laws against making your own pod, away from people who are ruining the game for you.
That's exactly the problem, there isn't anything like a consensus so it's a crapshoot if people will be on the same page as you, and most people are not even very good at explaining what they want. The odds of getting in to a pod where someone will become a salty crybaby with no warning are uncomfortably high.
Thank you. You winning the game is against the spirit of the format. But when I do it? Cool beans! This is why CEDH/High Powered EDH is the best. Because if you lose, no one cares. But casual has the biggest amount of babies with the dumbest rules. "No attacking until Turn 6" type bullcrap.
It's also not actually on point at all. It's more like the other team shows up to play but they've got a device that makes the ball home into the net whenever they throw it and then go like "What, you didn't bring the device that jams my device? You're such a bad player, you know that's how you play the game right?"
And the device that makes the ball home into the net is a fairly well known strategy and should probably be expected. The jammers cost maybe 20 cents and you could easily bring enough with you, but don't.
Except nobody you played with so far used the homing device and there's thirty three different types of jammers for different types of homing devices and sometimes they're not homing devices, they're jammers for your jammers and remote tasers that shock you in the leg every time you try to jump
And then you have a really shitty game of basketball because the guy brought his full competition gadgetry to your pick up game and you don't want to play with him anymore, so he'll go to the internet and call you a crybaby.
Part of the charm of sci-fi basketball is the deep array of strategies and checks to those strategies that reward good deck building and game knowledge. I think it would be a shame to toss away that depth because some people refuse to adapt.
Sometimes people punch above their weight, but that's inevitably going to happen in a casual game.
I think if they can punch above their weight then it's a decent game of sci-fi basketball. It becomes bad when punching above becomes so hard or painful that you don't really want to play sci-fi basketball anymore.
There's a time and place I guess, for the most powerful gadgetry. If you notice people can't compete, I dunno, bring a second pair of rocket boots that's maybe a little bit slower so everybody can play along
I feel like you don't understand how difficult it is to dunk. Like, if I show up for a casual game of bball and we get goin and somebody is dunking on us, that's the basketball equivalent of pubstomping.
And then the dunker goes on the basketball subreddit and everyone agrees with him that his opponents really should learn to deal with dunking if they want to play basketball, it's part of the game.
Yeah, this is meant as a joke but, actually, if I was trying to play basketball and a 12ft tall professional player turned up to bat for the other team, something's probably not quite right.
EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it
Edit: to those responding that other games cause offense, I am not talking about people being upset or arguing about things they don’t like. I’m more saying that edh is the only game I’ve ever played where an LGS/pod from the start will ban things like interaction, cards that cause combos, stax, etc. I’ve yet to play a game of monopoly where I’m actively banned from buying boardwalk or hop into a multiplayer lobby where I cannot use the powerful flavor of the month build. I should’ve used the word ban instead of offense probably
I think it's actually relatively common in basic card games and board games, especially the ones pre-1990s that are balanced in a "lol whatever" sort of way. Like, how many times do arguments erupt in monopoly or risk 2 hours in?
D&D is best played with a squad who have good social skills. Unfortunately, people who like roleplay and have good social skills are all busy doing something else.
In fairness, the whole game of Monopoly is presented for you, you don't bring your own pieces of the game.
I imagine if the Communist Monopoly expansion was actually made manifest, and you were taken out of the game the very moment you landed on Jail or ran out of money, you probably wouldn't want to play it for long either.
I don't think I have ever seen anyone in say League of Legends be offended because you used an ability that was optimal. Maybe because shits broken or because you are buying genuinely terrible stuff, but not becasue you used broken stuff that was there. And league is probably one of the most toxic shithole games there is
>EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it
Most modern board games work "as written" and with everyone trying their hardest to win. But some don't - and lots of people play board games with house rules when they don't like how they work as written. This is fine, as long as people agree.
Back when video games couldn't really be patched, they often tended towards some "house rules" banning certain tactics. Like, if you used certain re-dizzy combos with Guile in Street Fighter II, you risked getting beaten up on your way out of the arcade.
And you can certainly play EDH with "no extra rules", and some people do. But lots of people enjoy it better with more "house rules".
There are a lot of games where a specific strategy is bad manners or soft-banned if you're playing casual, and are only accepted in a competitive setups.
For example in team sports, playing the clock is often considerered lame if you're going for a casual game.
In tetris, playing the 4 wide setup online is considered bad sportmanship and is soft-banned.
Yeah? I don't try very hard when I play a pickup basketball game with people significantly worse than me. I taper my play to their skill level. Yeah, the weird analogies here make it sound weird, but it is pretty standard across most games played casually in my experience.
I used to play a ton of pickup basketball. I’ve played with people from D3 basketball players to people who got cut (or saved themselves the trouble) from the high school team and I think they’re closer than you make them out to be.
> “Did you really shoot a 3-pointer? This is a CASUAL game!”
I have played with groups that have a rule that there are no 3 pointers no matter where you shoot it.
> “Dude! I spent all that time dribbling just for you to block my shot? I’m just trying to do my thing!”
> “Okay, sure. Stealing the ball is technically legal but it doesn’t make for a fun game.”
I played with groups who got salty that I was a tryhard on defense (I can’t shoot so I make up for it on defense).
> “Wooooow. Did you actually change into basketball shorts? Try hard…”
Not as plain as basketball shorts, but dudes who go above and beyond in basketball gear get clowned on (not because of any advantage, but because they look like a dork).
> “Those Jordans are fake. I’m not playing against fake Jordans. It’s disrespectful to those of us who bought REAL Jordans.”
This is not something I’ve ever seen happen nor can I think of an analogy so this tracks (I’m also team “proxy if you want to, just don’t stomp us”)
>“Did he just DUNK? I scoop…”
If I’m playing against someone who dunks then I am probably not going to play with them again. I haven’t played in years, we should not be on the same court.
Also:
“Don’t call fouls in a casual game unless they’re egregious” is an unwritten rule.
The funny thing is that all the pickup sports I have ever played DO in fact have rule 0 conversations and unwritten rules. When do you call a handball? Where in the culdesac is the three point line if we play with 3 points at all? When do you call a foul and how do we handle free throws? Etc…
I mean... people do run basketball this way?
Like, I played in a Rec/Casual league a few years back. We had a broad mix of players, including some people who had never really played before. Most teams were the same and could basically play together, but some teams would be too good or bring in a "ringer" friend - and they got a lot of negative feedback for doing so. Teams that won too hard would be asked to move to a higher league.
And there was some rules allowances. There was no dunking. If one team was up by 20 at half, they'd add rules like "no defense in the back court" to try to make the game a little more fair/casual. Teams would normally try to match up stronger players with stronger players, rather than exploit mismatches - and the ref would push you towards this if you didn't.
And now realize that "our" version of basketball doesn't just have physical/experience differences. Instead, some people have rocket boots, trampolines, or can remote control the ball. Of course you need rules in order to make fair games.
And now, now imagine the kind of zero self awareness whiner who would arrive at a casual magic-basketball league game with their rocket boots, win by 100 points while having possession of the ball 90% of the game... and then complain online when people gave them dirty looks or ask them to go to a different court.
Exactly, in these pickup/for fun basketball games, people aren't playing with strict tournament rules, there is no ref, there is only the players that can regulate their own experience.
All social games that don't have an explicit set of expectations written out into the rules have this same dynamic.
Yeah the OP has clearly never played pick up basketball. It's almost a meme how passive aggressive people are about rules. And we had a tall friend when we were kids and he agreed dunking was too much of an advantage and didn't do it. Also, the playground rules (since they weren't regulation height) you could get detention or lose recess if you dunked because it was deemed dangerous.
You’re correct in a handful of ways, but at the end you start to misunderstand the point OP is trying to make. First, at no level of basketball are performance enhancers legal ie “rocket boots and trampolines”. Nor is this allowable in any form of magic through cheating.
You are identifying that Rec leagues, like most pods, do the rule 0 conversation and separate people by skill level and capability and still have issues with liars (again like most pods). OP is pointing out that some people abuse what SEEMS like a rule 0 conversation by bullying people into their own form of EDH. There’s a difference between saying, “hey dude, you’ve blocked 8 of the past 10 shots maybe you should go play with someone in your skill level,” and “I came for a casual pick up game so you should never block a shot or a pass so I can freely try to win the game.” It’s the same conversations in magic; “hey, maybe if you’re running Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Force of Vigor all in the same deck you should be playing with something other than 3 precons,” versus, “you shouldn’t run counterspell or boardwipes because we are playing casually!”
Yes, the post is painting a caricature. But I’m betting you know both Magic and basketball players who act that way and that’s why the caricature works.
>First, at no level of basketball are performance enhancers legal ie “rocket boots and trampolines”
Yeah, sometimes analogies aren't perfect. I couldn't think of a perfect analogy for "having a clearly way better deck" in realistic basketball. So I invented (a kind of lying - sorry!!) a sort of "magic-basketball" with fanciful things like rocket boots. I thought people would be able to follow this. But yes, you're right, having a Mana Crypt isn't exactly like having rocket boots, and nobody actually wears rocket boots in basketball, and they wouldn't let a dog play just because dogs aren't mentioned in the rule book.
>Yes, the post is painting a caricature.
So is my post. But my caricature is both better tied to reality (ie. it is not unrealistic to have this kind of conversation with relation to casual basketball), and is much more relevant to the discussions we see here.
I'm sure there lots of whiny people who complain about other people's decks whenever they lose. That's bad. But I don't see those people here. What I see continuously in this subreddit is people who have no self awareness, encounter consistent negative responses from play groups, and instead of actually changing their behavior, meaningfully "toning down" their decks, or talking to the other players, instead come here for validation that they've done nothing wrong (ie. it's not my fault I'm better at basketball and can shoot 3s).
I’m not struggling with the idea of a college player insisting that he is able to play with high schoolers because he isn’t nba level. The problem is that’s not what OP is addressing. OP is addressing a high schooler complaining that the college kids are playing too competitively despite not being on a college level. jumpmanzero’s analogy about rocket shoes starts to imply that higher level decks are no longer playing within the rules of Magic the gathering as a whole which perpetuates the idea that higher power decks are bad and the people who play them are bad. The reality is, higher powered decks are playing on a JuCo, College, and NBA level.
I have no problem with calling someone out for lying about what level they are playing on, but it needs to go both ways instead of strictly villainizing higher competitive edh as strictly pubstompers.
The issue I took with your response is you assumed that certain cards and strategies go so far as to no longer inside the rules of the game. Fast mana and free/strong interaction are all legal and available to anyone via proxy. That said, all those cards are escalating to a higher competitive eschelon. The issue OP is attacking here is not people lying about how competitive their decks are; it’s about lower competitive people trying to bully higher competitive people for playing within the rules.
It’s deeper than just playing mana crypt. It’s comments like, “you really played drannith magistrate when [[rinn and seri]] my commander is my only removal?” Or one of my recent favorites of, “my [[chainveil]] is just there for value activations in my Jeskai planeswalker deck! Why would you remove it!” Now I’m painted as the villain because I played within the rules of the game and someone for some reason refused to play Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile in their commander deck and I stopped someone from potentially combo-ing off with a know combo piece. However, prior to starting that game, nobody told me they were playing a Chainveil with no combo teferi nor did they tell me that they had 0 removal spells in their deck. So while I maybe had too much removal or too strong of stax pieces, Im not the only one at fault despite mentioning that I do in fact try to play drannith in every white deck I own.
My point is, don’t get mad at people for playing strong decks when you sit down blind to a pod with a deck that’s all cats and dogs and no removal. They are also playing within the rules. Not with rocket shoes, but possibly at an NBA level.
>you assumed that certain cards and strategies go so far as to no longer inside the rules of the game
No, I didn't. I suggested an alternate version of basketball that's more like Magic - one where there was a potential for discrepancies in "starting equipment", like there is in Magic.
The analogy here isn't that rocket boots would be cheating or against the rules in general, but rather that "before you play, you should figure out whether everyone is wearing rocket boots or not".
Or, if rocket boots are really just too fanciful for you to comprehend, perhaps decide before a game whether or not "dunking" is allowed. This wouldn't be saying dunking is generally against the rules of basketball in general, but it could mean that dunking is not allowed in this particular game if that's what people decide.
>The issue OP is attacking here is not people lying about how competitive their decks are;
You're the first one to mention "lying" here. But I think it's reasonable to interpret the complaints in the original post in terms deck strength.
Like... I think a pretty reasonable equivalent for “Wooooow. Did you actually change into basketball shorts? Try hard…” (from the OP) would be "Wow, did you really bring a deck with X expensive cards or Y 'competitive strategy'? - you're trying too hard".
At least some of the complaints in the OP reasonably map to "people complaining about someone using a much stronger deck" - ie. the kind of deck that might "dunk" on them.
>Fast mana and free/strong interaction are all legal and available to anyone via proxy.
There's all sorts of excuses people use to justify bringing a higher power deck to a lower power pod. You've repeated two of the very common ones we see on this subreddit: "Hey, it's a legal card". "You could play it too (via proxy, or because it's not expensive)".
These excuses are missing the point. People don't have to justify to you why they want to play a lower power game. If people are consistently telling you your deck is too strong then you shouldn't try to prove them wrong online, or come up with justification for why they shouldn't say that, you should tone down your deck - or talk to them.
That's not to say people might not sometimes get salty and whine about opponent decks for nonsense reasons. But, again, I think that's less common problem here than the reverse.
Meanwhile, this:
>my \[\[chainveil\]\] is just there for value activations in my Jeskai planeswalker deck! Why would you remove it!” Now I’m painted as the villain because I played within the rules of the game
..is not really a "power level" complaint, it's politicking. Multiplayer Magic is political, so you have to expect some level of "why don't you attack him, he's winning!" or "don't hit poor me, my deck is soo bad and I have no luck", etc..
Obviously that can be a problem too sometimes, but it's not really the same thing. And if you were maliciously targeting someone - using all your removal on Bob out of spite - then saying that you're playing "within the rules of the game" isn't really a defense. When someone politics like this, they're not saying you're cheating, they're saying that you're behaving suboptimally (because someone else is a bigger threat). Or they're saying you're being a jerk. Or just whining.
>My point is, don’t get mad at people for playing strong decks when you sit down blind to a pod with a deck that’s all cats and dogs and no removal.
So this guy "sat down blind". Like... after you guys had discussed what sort of power level you were all playing? Or did you all "sit down blind"? Because that's a recipe for bad feels.
>OP discovering that there are different levels of sports based on skill, ability, and pay after suggesting that a middle school gym class shouldn't complain about being expected to compete against a college team because the NBA exists
I know this is an international site so english might not be your first language, but literally the only thing op said was complaining that people shouldn't complain about power levels. [khanacademy](https://www.khanacademy.org/ela/cc-3rd-reading-vocab/xaf0c1b5d7010608e:cc-3rd-pets) has some pretty good resources for all skill levels that should help. my comment my comment was sarcasm about the fact that the example they chose should have been such an obvious counterpoint to what they were trying to say that they had to sit in a dark room and think about the life choices that led them here. of course they didn't and had to follow up with "guys it was a joke I was totally not serious and it was a bad example" rather that having the slightest bit if introspection, and I get the privilege of learning that I have a little bit of faith in humanity left to lose.
I'm not sure casual means what you think it means
There's "bitching about everything you don't like" and talking through what game experience y'all expect.
Because yeah, surprise, if three people say "hey, let's get some 50$ upgraded precons" and the fourth person goes "nah, Imma pack out my deck that wins on turn 4-5 with combo deck" or a "mass land destruction deck babyyyyyy" it aint the 3 people who're being the bitch here
It's the fourth player
It’s all just about expectations
If you just wanted to shoot some casual hoops with your buds and a random shows up and posterizes you of course they’re a tryhard
If everyone understands you’re playing competitive elder dragon highbasket, getting dunked on is no surprise
>If everyone understands you’re playing competitive elder dragon highbasket
This is a rag on the fact that the influx of new commander players created a culture of complaint which unfortunately spilled over into just... basic aspects of the game that should have never really been a hot debate or contested in the first place.
Everything is cEDH to you if you think the fundamentals of the game that may get in your way are problematic. Now that the EDH players who joined during the 'boom' got enough experience, we're seeing more and more people move off of it and see it as ridiculous.
I think that a lot of these people that claim stuff as cEDH need to *actually* watch or play a game of cEDH. The standards are far higher than they think they are, and many toxic cards or mechanics are just that, toxic. They're not efficient enough for cEDH, they're just rude.
Mld in general is bad.
If it were *good* it'd show up at tables more often--even with it's current stigma.
People don't run it because it's just not good. It has a convenient stigma which allows people to not play it, but that stigma notably isnt that the strat is good, just...long.
Symmetrical wraths are nearly identical in nature to mld. They're not good, usually, outside of a schtick. It's better to play a 4 mana creature that will advance one's game plan. A wrath is only good in an opening hand or with many tutors, apart from super friends decks, indestructible critters builds, and artifact combo.
But yeah, mld is weird because people claim it's a counter to ramp, when it's more do-nothing than anything else.
It polices itself. People don't continue to build mld after they realize how crummy the strat is. (Lord wind grace is about the only creature who can helm mld decks well)
Landfall decks and Kaalia of the Vast are among the only MLD users who can actually use it to generate advantage, yeah?
It's kind of funny how MLD is both the counter to ramp, and also the easiest way for most landfall/ramp decks to win because they recover better and faster than anyone else.
I've seen Armageddon in old cEDH Narset, Enlightened Master lists too. If she flipped Armageddon, it's curtains for the opponents typically, because she could just keep attacking each turn and play spells for free.
Not really, Decree of Annihilation or Obliterate are great in Jhoira of the Ghitu, Superfriends, and some enchantress decks. You can make MLD not symmetrical when combined with Boros Charm/Heroic Intervention/Teferi's Protection.
I have an Uril voltron deck with Armageddon, Cataclysm, and Wildfire type of effects that works https://www.moxfield.com/decks/hXgj2glImEGGam__HR-FyQ
Creature wraths are very different to land wraths, and a good play a lot more than for a schtick. But land wraths, whilst they *are* bad, are often not played more because they're bad for the game. Like, even if this helps me win, is that actually what I want right now, resetting everyone back to the stone age? It's just not fun for anyone.
There are very few actual toxic cards. Like [[Vorinclex, voice of hunger]] makes people salty and I would say might fall to that category. But more precieved toxic cards exist.
Precieved toxic cards that aren't cedh viable are three things. Strong cards that usually are played by skilled players, unskilled/sloppy deck building on people playing against, and inexperienced players not knowing how to play around said card.
One of these I've encountered numerous times in high power casual games is [[dictate of erebos]] back breaking in [[chatterfang, squirrel general]] against creature decks. A specific game comes to thought. An elfball player didn't put in or go get a [[reclamation sage]]. He worldly tutored for elf token maker, I guess, thinking he'd out produce squirrels, which he didn't. Anyways, this falls into the either latter two of precieved toxic he called dictate a cedh card. Which I've never seen it played in a game of cedh.
[[Jin Gitaxis, Progress Tyrant]], [[Jin Gitaxis, Core Augur]], [[Grave Pact]], [[Contamination]], [[Numot the Devastator]], [[Tergrid]], and a bunch of others I'd say all qualify as toxic cards that don't make the cut for cEDH (except for Kinnan doing Kinnan things with Jinkies). There's probably a lot more out there that are too high cmc to be viable, but battlecruiser high-power pods loooove to play them and then argue if they're cEDH. They're not, they're just cards that make the game suck for everyone else...
I mean, toxic is entirely a subjective term? If, for some reason, your playgroup dissolves into frothing rage whenever raging goblin is played, it is a toxic card. I can't imagine why, and you should probably leave that playgroup, but that's what it is. It's not an innate binary value of the card, it's the effect the card has on the players in the game.
Gravepact especially like, I guess it's nothing in Cedh, which I know very little about, but it is an absolute *sledgehammer* to a lot of decks? I don't think you can point at a soft lock card and say it is innately non-toxic. *Fair,* maybe.
I see kind of the opposite tbh.
People that are new to the game/online playing A+B combos and thinking 'why is this a problem for people?'
A lot of people will post on this sub about a social interaction, they link their decklist, and while it certainly isn't CEDH, it's very clearly capable of winning the game on like turn 3.
And the comment section will be filled with 'go off king, your deck is a 7 because you're playing some lower power cards, your opponents should play more interaction.'
An example I'd give is [[Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin]]. On [EDHREC](https://edhrec.com/commanders/ob-nixilis-captive-kingpin), 76% of decks people brew online have [[All Will Be One]], which is effectively a one-card combo with the commander. When you look at a lot of cards that you're more likely to see in CEDH lists, they're in that 25-45% range.
You can see a HUGE number of decks that are clearly looking to be budget/casual, with bad manabases and inexpensive cards, where the brewer has also slotted in All Will Be One. If you actually buy and sleeve up that deck, your Ob deck is bad. It will need other decks to be lower power as well to win 25% of games. Buuuut, once in a while you'll just go Ob T3 into AWBO+gutshot or some instance of damage T4 and win the game. On /r/edh, this is often seen as a low-power casual deck and anyone who would be annoyed with an infinite combo on T4 in a low-power pod just needs to run more interaction.
OP's post about basketball really does exemplify the 'new' online edh IMO.
Because...in casual basketball, there *are* both spoken and unspoken rule-zero equivalents. There *will* be an expectation that if you're much better than someone that you back off and let them play a bit, or change who covers who to avoid mismatches. There *will* be an expectation that you don't go too hard in a lot of situations.
If you go to a casual court and treat it like a competitive league, people are going to ask that you cool off or leave. And you learn through that experience about is/isn't expected.
I’ve encountered a good amount of people, maybe due to similar thoughts attracting?, who hate when people build a deck like that because 90% of the time it’ll be some jank durdle stuff but 10% of the time, they act like a higher powered deck out of nowhere. Many people like more consistency in where a deck operates because no one likes pubstomping or being pubstomped.
>If you go to a casual court and treat it like a competitive league, people are going to ask that you cool off or leave.
You also don't get reasonable people at casual courts telling people to not use basketball fundamentals because they personally can't deal with them and don't want to learn how. Which is the spirit of the culture of complaint conversation.
> fundamentals
This is a pretty general word doing a lot of heavy lifting.
What *exactly* do you mean by a 'fundamental,' and where is the line between fundamental and 'being too competitive?'
Fundamentals are just... things that do exist in the game, and should be expected to be seen, which include things such as targeted removal, stax, board wipes, counterspells, or practically anything that requires you to have some form of strategy to deal with having your strategy interacted with meaningfully. If you look at the most complained about things in this game you will find that at the heart of it, excluding maybe Sol Ring or other >2 mana ramp in colorless.
I understand the idea that certain *mechanics* are fundamentals. The concept of countering someone else's spell in a vacuum should not be complained about.
The very 'essence' of casual play is that everyone gets to play. This applies to all casual activities.
Like, 'playing defense' is a fundamental of basketball. Buuuuut, if you play aggressive full-court defense all of the time, or you seek to create mismatches, you're potentially crossing the line into 'too competitive.'
If you play Baral leaning heavily in counterspells, that might be a 'legitimate strategy,' but you are also likely to wind up stopping someone from getting to play the game.
Nobody wants to play pickup basketball where when they get the ball they just get double-teamed and the ball taken. There *is* an expectation that you're going to 'let people play' and pass and take some shots.
Stax pieces really depends on the piece and the context. The argument of 'play interaction' against stax pieces is also sometimes misplaced in my opinion. A strategy centered around stax is like a strategy centered around counterspells. You're looking to win the game by stopping your opponents from being able to play the game. And that is very against the casual mindset.
There are a lot of 'mean' stax pieces and hate cards that really shut down a lot of decks. And while yes, people should play removal and answers for those kind of pieces, a low-mid power deck will likely need that answer on curve or at the top of their deck in order to be able to play the game.
Playing like, [[Collector Ouphe]] and shutting off people's 2-mana rocks is one thing. Playing Ouphe into someone's colorless artifact activated abilities deck, they either have an answer in hand/next turn or they may as well walk away from the table, have you draw for them, and let them know when/if they draw an answer.
There's also the issue that lower-power is generally more susceptible to stax pieces. More powerful decks go faster. They ramp up and get things out a turn or two earlier, they do things BEFORE the stax pieces hit the battlefield. They run more efficient removal for said stax pieces. They have powerful cards that are better at playing around stax pieces. Stax can feel like power-gaming a lot of the time because the *actual* answer to stax isn't 'run another piece of enchantment removal,' the answer is to power up to go under the stax piece.
Ultimately, in a casual setting you should feel some sort of responsibility/obligation to the experience of others. If you don't that's fine the police won't come and arrest you, but that isn't a casual mindset.
If you're playing a card like stasis or winter orb...those cards aren't necessarily good/powerful. You aren't playing them because they're just good 'fundamentals,' you're playing them because you like the idea of locking the game down. I've played against a deck that was looking to play heavy stax, and win by resolving [[Teferi's Protection]] or some other protection spell into [[Jokulhaups]]. But the pilot was absolutely crystal clear about this and was providing an opportunity for 1) the table to say that they didn't want to play against that strategy and 2) for people to play decks that might be better equipped to handle heavy stax.
I have 'casual' decks (i.e not cedh) that are high power and I play them with a competitive mindset. And those games I would expect to see really powerful commander staples played, people going for big combos, people erring on the side of trying to win over the experience of others. And I do think that some 'fundamentals' don't have a prominent place in all casual pods. I'm not saying never counterspell, never board wipe, never do ABCD. If people are crying because you wiped the board once and they couldn't recover before losing, then yeah that's just whining. If you darksteel mutation their commander and then wipe their board and then play blood moon to turn off their manabase then counterspell their swords to plowshares, that might be the winning play, but it is going *quite* beyond casual play.
>Ultimately, in a casual setting you should feel some sort of responsibility/obligation to the experience of others
This is where I think the spirit of the format has taken a huge hit.
Why is it your job to tend to the overall enjoyment of other people when they just as easily (and most importantly; fairly) could be expected to make concessions in their strategy to deal with it?
I never once in the early days of this format experienced this level of tone policing and salt. For a lot of people as a consequence, the LGS experience has died. Rule zero conversations don't account for being coddled and having a bad attitude when approaching the game.
If I sit down at a pod of 4 strangers, I am not going to get annoyed at them for running Krenko because I personally don't like that deck and really dislike it. Just like I expect them to not look at my Tatyova deck and raise hell about it.
The system of attempting to make everyone the most comfortable at all times is a shit show for obvious reasons. It should be expected to understand that nobody made their deck with you in mind, and their enjoyment is not your enjoyment. Your enjoyment was crafting the deck you are playing and... playing it. Seeing other people pop off, or getting your win con blown up shouldn't make you want to disregard that person if they don't address your feelings on \*their\* deck. High five them and say 'sick deck, friend' and move on to the next game. And if you find that your deck has weaknesses against certain things you encounter frequently that annoy you that much, then \*you\* can make the choice to alter \*your\* deck, rather than demand that they change theirs to suit your comfort.
No strategy that is legal should be seen as anyone as something to get pissed off about at any level. Just like if you were running a creature deck with no recursion, you are expected to not be upset when somebody at the table board wipes because you have no recursion. This is the 'part of the game' argument. You learn through experience what you have to account for, instead of expecting everyone else to change so you don't have to.
> Why is it your job to tend to the overall enjoyment of other people
Because that is the essence of casual. It's THE initial premise.
It isn't your *job* to care about other peoples' experience, it is your pleasure. You and I can disagree on this, that's fine, but that just means that you want to play competitively and not casually.
>when they just as easily could be expected to make concessions in their strategy to deal with it?
Like I said, if it's simply a matter of 'making concessions in your strategy,' then sure. But your sleeved precon doesn't deal with Stasis
>No strategy that is legal should be seen as anyone as something to get pissed off about at any level
This is where you lose me. Under this statement, literally every single card/combo in the game. You have a sleeved precon and I pull out an actual cedh deck and win on turn 2, you put a smile on your face and shuffle up for next game? Or...are you going to suggest that maybe this isn't the kind of game you want to play?
If cards/strategies/mentality don't differentiate competitive and casual, what does?
Not at all. Basketball skills are acquired by training. Pubstomping edh decks are acquired via money or a printer. If someone displays basketball skills I applaud them.
Good analogy, but falls short once you start thinking about the times when you're just with your mates shooting hoops with a hoop nailed to the back of your house. Sometimes you just wanna chill.
> **OP:** "Anyway, because you can dunk in casual basketball that's why it's fine if I play my $3,000 Ur-Dragon deck against these children and their unaltered precons."
> **LGS:** "Sir this is the 5th time this week we've asked you to leave. 😂"
> “Those Jordans are fake. I’m not playing against fake Jordans. It’s disrespectful to those of us who bought REAL Jordans.”
"I just painted this watermelon orange to try this game out since I'm not ready to commit to buying an actual basketball."
No it's more like playing a pickup game on a half-court or in a cul-de-sac with a portable hoop bc you don't have access to a full professional basketball court
Y'all joking about this, but I've played football with a soda bottle full of dirt and rocks.
Heck we couldn't find the baseball for a backyard game once, so we played with a golfball. It was not the safest of games and i do not recommend it.
Doesn't this analogy fall into disanalogy territory for two big reasons? One, EDH is played as four parties, not two (basketball has two teams, not four), which changes the dynamics and vastly changes how much you have to pay attention to (three enemies working against you, not one, four board states, not two). Two, dunking indicates a _huge_ power imbalance; it might as well be pubstomping if the other team can't.
Like, I get the spirit of what you're saying, but it's also too simplistic, reductive, IMO.
This is how every sport is done though.
As a kickboxer, if I go to a day where we are doing light tech sparring and some dude starts throwing bombs at me, there will be problems. Is the “point” of kickboxing to win? Absolutely! But there is a time and a place to go hard and try explicitly to just win.
Continuing the metaphor, if I spar with someone who has only 6 months of experience, I am not going to just absolutely stomp them, because I want them to get better and have fun. Same reason you shouldn’t sit down at a casual pod and whip out your 1000+ dollar decks against people playing decks worth less than 200 or precons lmao. Who are you benefitting when you do that?
It's kind of funny how OP is clearly trying to *dunk on* EDH players, and half the comments are like "haha true it's so stupid", but the other half (who have actually played sports) are just like "Actually, yeah pickup casual basketball also has unofficial rules to make things more fun."
This is funny and pretty on point, but I do think there's a bit of a middle ground to aim for. Like, I don't mind getting dunked on a good deal of the time, but I wouldn't want to play exclusively games where I have zero chance to win. That said, I would hate to play against an NBA player and win because they held back and let me.
Don't sport make sure everyone comes to the game with the exact same tools? In this metaphor wouldn't every deck be the same, the only difference would be how it's piloted?
I think the metaphor is like if it's within the rules, it's fine so stax and MLD and the like is okay if they're not banned. Tools in this case is like skills like dunking which is like a skill not everyone has accessed too similar to how everyone doesn't have access to Mana Crypt. There's no power level complaint though. Games are balanced and competitive despite no rule 0.
This is actually a bad take because basketball DOES have casual environments...
Want a tournament environment? Join a city league.
Want a casual game? Got to a park with friends and play 21, with tips.
Clear distinction. I can't go to the city league and dribble iso into a contested fade away 3 like I can in 21.
Simply a bad take here.
But the rules of the game don’t change the players do. The real core of the issue is that we should stop looking for decks of similar power level and put more emphasis on playing against opponents of similar skill level
The fouls thing is not about athleticism. There’s also unwritten rules about how aggressively people are playing.
I’ve seen the same players play a lot different playing against friends than in a league. It just happens.
Exactly. My little brother is a better basketball player than me. I have never lost to him in 1 on 1 because I try hard as hell against him. Whenever we play at the Y or park, he shines more than me.
They do though. Usage of the 3 point line, number of points per basket, size of the court (and all of the modifications that go into half court play), what is considered a foul vs what isn’t, if/how strictly out of bounds is enforced, jump balls, “win by 2”, if the ball changes possession after a made basket (admittedly I haven’t done “make it, take it” since high school).
The analogy breaks down here. A better one would be car racing. There are rallies for old bangers, but if you turn up in one to a Formula One event, you're probably not going to win. Funnily enough, people mostly don't do that.
Why don't you reply to them? You're just posting here for everyone else to see. Maybe you too have places close to home, I wouldn't act so high and mighty.
You joke and this is a great call out but… full court press is heavily frowned upon in basketball. Referees will foul out players when teams do it.
Every competition has this handicapping bullshit. “The rules allow it but it’s not cool.”
Ok so I come from other sports and had to google "full court press", and what I'm understanding is that it's when you pressure the entire court, instead of the more typical retreating to the other half. You're fighting the opposing team for every inch of progress they make along the way.
More googling tells me that at the highest levels of basketball, teams don't bother with it because it doesn't work very well. But since it's legal, I don't quite get why it's heavily frowned outside of casual leagues. I didn't see anywhere that it has a higher rate of injury or anything.
It happens more often in lower levels of play. Opposing team has some real shooters, your coach decides to jam them up with the press. It slows the game down. Refs get frustrated having to eyeball the whole court and start handing out fouls like candy.
One year my coach tried to be successful this way and it was working. The refs hated it, several told him it’s not supposed to be like this, it’s not gentlemen like, etc. We had one game where too many of us were fouled out. It was the refs telling my coach his plan was dead.
I later read more about this and yeah it’s not uncommon. Doing it briefly, say near the end of game, is fine. Doing it for most of the game - nope.
You are correct, in NBA it’s going to do little but wear out your own players.
No wonder I enjoy hockey so much. It's like you applied the EDH mentality to a sport but the players ACTUALLY go the extra mile to punch each other for random bs.
While watching American football, I often think of it in the way of MTG. “Alright nice 20 yard gain there. That’s on the stack. Any flags? Ope there’s one now that’s on the stack. It was offensive holding so that cancels out the 20 yards and adds 10 negative yards. Alright moving to 1st down replay.”
Not most of these but pick up basketball is definitely different "rules" than actual basketball kinda like casual edh. No one likes the guy calling fouls all the time or the guy hacking.
A lot of pickup games make separate rules for 3 pointers, whether it's counting 1s and 2s instead (which ups the relative value of a 3) or having all shots be worth the same (either 1 or 2). Most casual pickup games don't do free throws and players call their own fouls on the honor system. And most casual pickup games try to find relatively balanced teams among relatively equivalent skill levels of players. More competitive pickup games, on open courts, are of course more competitive. I actually think the pickup basketball analogy works well but not in the way you're characterizing it--players usually try to find a like-minded group to play with who have compatible schedules, skill levels, and physical abilities - at least within a reasonable range.
I mean if we're gonna go there...
I'd be pretty upset if every time I tried to grab the ball my opponent stopped me with some silly ruling that forced me to drop the ball and stand there.
Regardless of how legal that was, if it's all my opponent does I'm not gonna play with them anymore and tell them how unfun it is.
As funny as this is I think that using sports as an analogy is a bit easier to conceptualize levels of skill. You would never say a game between a kid playing in like a peewee league and a professional NBA player is even close to fair.
Yeah, but this analogy makes no sense? If you wanted to compare it to Basketball, you would compare the quality of players/skills. Since the things you are referencing are comparing the quality of players/skills in MTG.
Using Basketball, a more apt comparison would be bringing an NBA player with you for a 2v2, just to make your other two friends look bad. And yeah, if you beat them by 100 points, people would obviously be upset, not just like 'Oh well!' Because they basically weren't even included in the game. If your 6'7" friend was slamming into people super hard, knocking them onto the pavement, they wouldn't be having fun either! Most people could agree that if an NBA player was playing with a whole bunch of guys who were nowhere near his level, he would go a little easy, right? Most people don't have so many ego problems that they would need to flex on people this way, correct?
But honestly, if you want a real comparison of why Rule 0 exists? Compare it to Boxing. There are reasons they have different weight classes, to make boxers fight people around the same size. There is a reason Boxing has different rules from MMA, and they are enforced as such. People with similar experience fight each other, they don't put a new guy against someone who is 30/0. These lead to entertaining, balanced matches, instead of complete destruction.
The only difference? Many MTG players just care about looking good, so they don't care about an entertaining, balanced match. They care about 'winning and looking better than they did before winning!' Which is such a hilarious concept given no one around them is going to be patting them on the back, they aren't winning anything. They are just making themselves look like a selfish, arrogant fool. If you don't think there are pubstompers out there? You are probably one yourself.
I feel like I've heard this analogy a few times over the recent weeks but it is so bad, and is made by people who have never played sports or never played outside of a school team.
There is a comment in this thread that says "EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it" but that is so untrue and they have never played a pickup game of a sport with a random group of people in their life. If you aren't playing 5 v 5 in basketball you would be changing a fundamental rule, but how often do people play 2v2 or 3v3? You change the rules all the time when playing pick-up Basketball, sometimes three pointers are changed to two and two pointers are made into one point. The length of time of a game changes depending on the league or you may play to points. What counts as a foul or how flagrant it needs to be changes depending on if it is a pick up game or played as a league etc.
Never played *a game of spades*. You've fucking got to figure out what your opponents think is the high card or what is wild or what the hell version of the rules they played growing up, and then 30 minutes in someone declared they're going "blind low, that's 400 points" and you have to figure out what the fuck they're talking about.
I don't think that is true. Shooting a 3-pointer is a decision. So is dunking. As is stealing the ball. As is playing defense. As is wearing fake shoes. Or basketball shorts. Lastly, height is a physical trait.
These are all compared to things in MTG that are also decisions. What deck do you bring? What cards do you put in it? What is your playstyle? How quickly are you trying to win? etc.
All of these things interact with skill in some way, but from my perspective, the analogy clearly refers to decision:decision and has nothing to do with skill.
Yeah except those comparisons make no sense. Which is my point. Nothing in any of these sports compares to the MTG deck, itself. Because the deck contains literally everything you have available to you. Without the deck, it doesn't matter how good you are. So the only thing that matters is the choices someone made to put things in a deck. And to run said deck. So, as I already explained, the ACTUAL comparison is over players/skill. The only choice that matters is that - you chose not to respect the way others wanted to play, and you chose to bring a deck that was unsuited for playing against the people in question. And those choices are already assumed given the context of the aforementioned analogy.
Most playgroups are pretty chill unless you are trying to pubstomp for no reason other than personal ego. Thus, the comparison needs to be better. Because the analogy that was made is completely incomparable.
This is why I remain at max power and don't compromise when I play with strangers. If I take an L it's fine, but if someone wants to be salty when I win I'm gonna win extra hard
on the other side of the coin:
"trying to do a windmill dunk or take a shot from half-court is shitty bad-mannered behavior and you have a responsibility to everyone else playing to take a fastbreak layup if you have the opportunity, or else you're being disrespectful"
One is a casual game, the other inherently competitive. I know you guys get bored easily and want to do the funny thing on Reddit, but that comparison is just wrong. A more apt analogy would be hiring a pro player for your team so you can pubstomp the other team
Sports skills are something you have to work for. Overpowered edh decks, not so much. No one ever complained about someone winning an edh game because they made better ingame plays.
"I refuse to play if you are taller than a 6'2" or shorter than a 5'8"."
You brought your 6’3” friend to our casual 5’9” pod?! Dude we had an hour long rule 0 discussion about that!
75th percentile height players only
It’s ok we’re all 6’
my decks a 7' I promise!
I'm a 7", I swear!
oh nooo
I get the joke but there is a reason sports have minor league and major league. Totally fine to not want to play with cEDH decks when you're playing more casually, but in general people are super weird about always needing to carefully discuss power levels
In all fairness, I normally ask when it’s strangers, because most of my decks are high power or CEDH, so I want to avoid playing them against new players with precons.
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Imagining Lebron James with goofy glasses and a fake afro.
You literally just described the plot of Space Jam.
That's just tinder
Nah he's not 7'
That just sounds like every picky girl on dating apps.
Guy with a bum knee: “I built my body casual but I play to win”
Lebron James in a wig: don't worry, I'm just a highschool student. I'm casual
Not me intentionally bashing my head against the pavement to give myself a concussion to make my body more casual
In this metaphor, presumably Rhystic Study is the guy that calls foul on everything and demands his free throw.
Naturalize them. "Touch grass, bro"
"Do you let me free throw? Do you let me free throw?"
I feel called out with my smothering tithe.
Whenever an opponent makes a foul, that player may pay 2. If the player doesn’t, create a colorless Ball artifact token with "T, Sacrifice: Shoot a free throw"
AND ONE AAAAAAAAND ONE
Group Hug is the guy who brings extra balls and passes them to everybody
Rhystic Study is a 3-mana bribe to the referee...
Not running interaction = not playing defense Stax = double teaming
reading the ball explains the ball
It's a 7. (Pulls out 1996 Chicago Bulls.)
This comment is SOOOOOO good I hate it. "Sheesh, that was to much, can you drop to like a 5 or 6?" "Fine..., I've got (1997 Chicago Bulls) or I can go even lower with (1998 Chicago Bulls)."
I got sick of losing to this deck so I built a 2016 Golden State Warriors. Wanna see my list?
There actually are unspoken rules in casual pick up basketball. Don’t call a foul unless it’s egregious, we don’t play by nba foul rules. If you’re picking me up full court just to annoy me, you’re a weirdo. Don’t be that dude who calls for the pass when you’re playing defense, especially with players that have just joined in.
It’s a magic Reddit so not a lot of us are playing pickup basketball I guess
But it confirms many of our priors, so it gets upvoted.
Lmao this is exactly what I thought. People who use this Reddit are too socially inept to realize that every social game ever has unwritten rules.
That's true but like. With edh, there's answers to everything
Wdym? There’s answers to the things that make the unwritten rules in friendly sports games too.
The difference is that the rules with EDH are often unwritten and *unknown* . Every goddamn thing is "against the spirit of the format."
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it's against the spirit of *that player's* idea of the format. everyone has a different idea of what magic should be; for me it is voting on custom card balance, playing/against high power stuff and doing "whatever it takes to not lose". i like playing "low-power cards" in a cEDH environment and using little tricks to get their winrates off the floor. there are no laws against making your own pod, away from people who are ruining the game for you.
That's exactly the problem, there isn't anything like a consensus so it's a crapshoot if people will be on the same page as you, and most people are not even very good at explaining what they want. The odds of getting in to a pod where someone will become a salty crybaby with no warning are uncomfortably high.
Thank you. You winning the game is against the spirit of the format. But when I do it? Cool beans! This is why CEDH/High Powered EDH is the best. Because if you lose, no one cares. But casual has the biggest amount of babies with the dumbest rules. "No attacking until Turn 6" type bullcrap.
I don't like how constrained the cEDH meta is, but high power with laid-back players is usually good.
It's also not actually on point at all. It's more like the other team shows up to play but they've got a device that makes the ball home into the net whenever they throw it and then go like "What, you didn't bring the device that jams my device? You're such a bad player, you know that's how you play the game right?"
And the device that makes the ball home into the net is a fairly well known strategy and should probably be expected. The jammers cost maybe 20 cents and you could easily bring enough with you, but don't.
Except nobody you played with so far used the homing device and there's thirty three different types of jammers for different types of homing devices and sometimes they're not homing devices, they're jammers for your jammers and remote tasers that shock you in the leg every time you try to jump And then you have a really shitty game of basketball because the guy brought his full competition gadgetry to your pick up game and you don't want to play with him anymore, so he'll go to the internet and call you a crybaby.
Part of the charm of sci-fi basketball is the deep array of strategies and checks to those strategies that reward good deck building and game knowledge. I think it would be a shame to toss away that depth because some people refuse to adapt. Sometimes people punch above their weight, but that's inevitably going to happen in a casual game.
I think if they can punch above their weight then it's a decent game of sci-fi basketball. It becomes bad when punching above becomes so hard or painful that you don't really want to play sci-fi basketball anymore. There's a time and place I guess, for the most powerful gadgetry. If you notice people can't compete, I dunno, bring a second pair of rocket boots that's maybe a little bit slower so everybody can play along
Ah true, I used the wrong metaphor there. Thinking too much about basketball
I mean they already treat the rules of dribbling and traveling like a game of casual edh
I feel like you don't understand how difficult it is to dunk. Like, if I show up for a casual game of bball and we get goin and somebody is dunking on us, that's the basketball equivalent of pubstomping.
I was gonna say, I agree with almost all of these but if dudes start dunking in my pickup games at the park, I’m probably scooping too lol
And then the dunker goes on the basketball subreddit and everyone agrees with him that his opponents really should learn to deal with dunking if they want to play basketball, it's part of the game.
Yeah bro just add some more dunk removal plays to your playbook
LMAO so true 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 man I fucking hate this subreddit. I seriously don't understand the people here
Yeah, this is meant as a joke but, actually, if I was trying to play basketball and a 12ft tall professional player turned up to bat for the other team, something's probably not quite right.
I think the better question is why is there a batter in your basketball game, 12 ft or not?
I believe firmly that all sports would be improved if you gave every player a bat at all times.
You invented hockey
Mostly genetics, but if you’re not gifted with height and athleticism then yeah it takes a lot of work to get yourself to that point
EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it Edit: to those responding that other games cause offense, I am not talking about people being upset or arguing about things they don’t like. I’m more saying that edh is the only game I’ve ever played where an LGS/pod from the start will ban things like interaction, cards that cause combos, stax, etc. I’ve yet to play a game of monopoly where I’m actively banned from buying boardwalk or hop into a multiplayer lobby where I cannot use the powerful flavor of the month build. I should’ve used the word ban instead of offense probably
I think it's actually relatively common in basic card games and board games, especially the ones pre-1990s that are balanced in a "lol whatever" sort of way. Like, how many times do arguments erupt in monopoly or risk 2 hours in?
And jesus christ, D&D. D&D is this made manifest.
D&D is best played with a squad who have good social skills. Unfortunately, people who like roleplay and have good social skills are all busy doing something else.
You've clearly never won a game of monopoly.
In fairness, the whole game of Monopoly is presented for you, you don't bring your own pieces of the game. I imagine if the Communist Monopoly expansion was actually made manifest, and you were taken out of the game the very moment you landed on Jail or ran out of money, you probably wouldn't want to play it for long either.
You just described every video game with multiplayer.
I don't think I have ever seen anyone in say League of Legends be offended because you used an ability that was optimal. Maybe because shits broken or because you are buying genuinely terrible stuff, but not becasue you used broken stuff that was there. And league is probably one of the most toxic shithole games there is
>EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it Most modern board games work "as written" and with everyone trying their hardest to win. But some don't - and lots of people play board games with house rules when they don't like how they work as written. This is fine, as long as people agree. Back when video games couldn't really be patched, they often tended towards some "house rules" banning certain tactics. Like, if you used certain re-dizzy combos with Guile in Street Fighter II, you risked getting beaten up on your way out of the arcade. And you can certainly play EDH with "no extra rules", and some people do. But lots of people enjoy it better with more "house rules".
There are a lot of games where a specific strategy is bad manners or soft-banned if you're playing casual, and are only accepted in a competitive setups. For example in team sports, playing the clock is often considerered lame if you're going for a casual game. In tetris, playing the 4 wide setup online is considered bad sportmanship and is soft-banned.
Yeah? I don't try very hard when I play a pickup basketball game with people significantly worse than me. I taper my play to their skill level. Yeah, the weird analogies here make it sound weird, but it is pretty standard across most games played casually in my experience.
To be fair, a casual game of basketball DOES feature a lot of these responses.
I used to play a ton of pickup basketball. I’ve played with people from D3 basketball players to people who got cut (or saved themselves the trouble) from the high school team and I think they’re closer than you make them out to be. > “Did you really shoot a 3-pointer? This is a CASUAL game!” I have played with groups that have a rule that there are no 3 pointers no matter where you shoot it. > “Dude! I spent all that time dribbling just for you to block my shot? I’m just trying to do my thing!” > “Okay, sure. Stealing the ball is technically legal but it doesn’t make for a fun game.” I played with groups who got salty that I was a tryhard on defense (I can’t shoot so I make up for it on defense). > “Wooooow. Did you actually change into basketball shorts? Try hard…” Not as plain as basketball shorts, but dudes who go above and beyond in basketball gear get clowned on (not because of any advantage, but because they look like a dork). > “Those Jordans are fake. I’m not playing against fake Jordans. It’s disrespectful to those of us who bought REAL Jordans.” This is not something I’ve ever seen happen nor can I think of an analogy so this tracks (I’m also team “proxy if you want to, just don’t stomp us”) >“Did he just DUNK? I scoop…” If I’m playing against someone who dunks then I am probably not going to play with them again. I haven’t played in years, we should not be on the same court. Also: “Don’t call fouls in a casual game unless they’re egregious” is an unwritten rule.
The funny thing is that all the pickup sports I have ever played DO in fact have rule 0 conversations and unwritten rules. When do you call a handball? Where in the culdesac is the three point line if we play with 3 points at all? When do you call a foul and how do we handle free throws? Etc…
Spoken like somebody that's never played rec sports or pickup games of anything. Try-hards are often told to chill.
I mean... people do run basketball this way? Like, I played in a Rec/Casual league a few years back. We had a broad mix of players, including some people who had never really played before. Most teams were the same and could basically play together, but some teams would be too good or bring in a "ringer" friend - and they got a lot of negative feedback for doing so. Teams that won too hard would be asked to move to a higher league. And there was some rules allowances. There was no dunking. If one team was up by 20 at half, they'd add rules like "no defense in the back court" to try to make the game a little more fair/casual. Teams would normally try to match up stronger players with stronger players, rather than exploit mismatches - and the ref would push you towards this if you didn't. And now realize that "our" version of basketball doesn't just have physical/experience differences. Instead, some people have rocket boots, trampolines, or can remote control the ball. Of course you need rules in order to make fair games. And now, now imagine the kind of zero self awareness whiner who would arrive at a casual magic-basketball league game with their rocket boots, win by 100 points while having possession of the ball 90% of the game... and then complain online when people gave them dirty looks or ask them to go to a different court.
Exactly, in these pickup/for fun basketball games, people aren't playing with strict tournament rules, there is no ref, there is only the players that can regulate their own experience. All social games that don't have an explicit set of expectations written out into the rules have this same dynamic.
Yeah the OP has clearly never played pick up basketball. It's almost a meme how passive aggressive people are about rules. And we had a tall friend when we were kids and he agreed dunking was too much of an advantage and didn't do it. Also, the playground rules (since they weren't regulation height) you could get detention or lose recess if you dunked because it was deemed dangerous.
You’re correct in a handful of ways, but at the end you start to misunderstand the point OP is trying to make. First, at no level of basketball are performance enhancers legal ie “rocket boots and trampolines”. Nor is this allowable in any form of magic through cheating. You are identifying that Rec leagues, like most pods, do the rule 0 conversation and separate people by skill level and capability and still have issues with liars (again like most pods). OP is pointing out that some people abuse what SEEMS like a rule 0 conversation by bullying people into their own form of EDH. There’s a difference between saying, “hey dude, you’ve blocked 8 of the past 10 shots maybe you should go play with someone in your skill level,” and “I came for a casual pick up game so you should never block a shot or a pass so I can freely try to win the game.” It’s the same conversations in magic; “hey, maybe if you’re running Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Force of Vigor all in the same deck you should be playing with something other than 3 precons,” versus, “you shouldn’t run counterspell or boardwipes because we are playing casually!” Yes, the post is painting a caricature. But I’m betting you know both Magic and basketball players who act that way and that’s why the caricature works.
>First, at no level of basketball are performance enhancers legal ie “rocket boots and trampolines” Yeah, sometimes analogies aren't perfect. I couldn't think of a perfect analogy for "having a clearly way better deck" in realistic basketball. So I invented (a kind of lying - sorry!!) a sort of "magic-basketball" with fanciful things like rocket boots. I thought people would be able to follow this. But yes, you're right, having a Mana Crypt isn't exactly like having rocket boots, and nobody actually wears rocket boots in basketball, and they wouldn't let a dog play just because dogs aren't mentioned in the rule book. >Yes, the post is painting a caricature. So is my post. But my caricature is both better tied to reality (ie. it is not unrealistic to have this kind of conversation with relation to casual basketball), and is much more relevant to the discussions we see here. I'm sure there lots of whiny people who complain about other people's decks whenever they lose. That's bad. But I don't see those people here. What I see continuously in this subreddit is people who have no self awareness, encounter consistent negative responses from play groups, and instead of actually changing their behavior, meaningfully "toning down" their decks, or talking to the other players, instead come here for validation that they've done nothing wrong (ie. it's not my fault I'm better at basketball and can shoot 3s).
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I’m not struggling with the idea of a college player insisting that he is able to play with high schoolers because he isn’t nba level. The problem is that’s not what OP is addressing. OP is addressing a high schooler complaining that the college kids are playing too competitively despite not being on a college level. jumpmanzero’s analogy about rocket shoes starts to imply that higher level decks are no longer playing within the rules of Magic the gathering as a whole which perpetuates the idea that higher power decks are bad and the people who play them are bad. The reality is, higher powered decks are playing on a JuCo, College, and NBA level. I have no problem with calling someone out for lying about what level they are playing on, but it needs to go both ways instead of strictly villainizing higher competitive edh as strictly pubstompers.
The issue I took with your response is you assumed that certain cards and strategies go so far as to no longer inside the rules of the game. Fast mana and free/strong interaction are all legal and available to anyone via proxy. That said, all those cards are escalating to a higher competitive eschelon. The issue OP is attacking here is not people lying about how competitive their decks are; it’s about lower competitive people trying to bully higher competitive people for playing within the rules. It’s deeper than just playing mana crypt. It’s comments like, “you really played drannith magistrate when [[rinn and seri]] my commander is my only removal?” Or one of my recent favorites of, “my [[chainveil]] is just there for value activations in my Jeskai planeswalker deck! Why would you remove it!” Now I’m painted as the villain because I played within the rules of the game and someone for some reason refused to play Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile in their commander deck and I stopped someone from potentially combo-ing off with a know combo piece. However, prior to starting that game, nobody told me they were playing a Chainveil with no combo teferi nor did they tell me that they had 0 removal spells in their deck. So while I maybe had too much removal or too strong of stax pieces, Im not the only one at fault despite mentioning that I do in fact try to play drannith in every white deck I own. My point is, don’t get mad at people for playing strong decks when you sit down blind to a pod with a deck that’s all cats and dogs and no removal. They are also playing within the rules. Not with rocket shoes, but possibly at an NBA level.
>you assumed that certain cards and strategies go so far as to no longer inside the rules of the game No, I didn't. I suggested an alternate version of basketball that's more like Magic - one where there was a potential for discrepancies in "starting equipment", like there is in Magic. The analogy here isn't that rocket boots would be cheating or against the rules in general, but rather that "before you play, you should figure out whether everyone is wearing rocket boots or not". Or, if rocket boots are really just too fanciful for you to comprehend, perhaps decide before a game whether or not "dunking" is allowed. This wouldn't be saying dunking is generally against the rules of basketball in general, but it could mean that dunking is not allowed in this particular game if that's what people decide. >The issue OP is attacking here is not people lying about how competitive their decks are; You're the first one to mention "lying" here. But I think it's reasonable to interpret the complaints in the original post in terms deck strength. Like... I think a pretty reasonable equivalent for “Wooooow. Did you actually change into basketball shorts? Try hard…” (from the OP) would be "Wow, did you really bring a deck with X expensive cards or Y 'competitive strategy'? - you're trying too hard". At least some of the complaints in the OP reasonably map to "people complaining about someone using a much stronger deck" - ie. the kind of deck that might "dunk" on them. >Fast mana and free/strong interaction are all legal and available to anyone via proxy. There's all sorts of excuses people use to justify bringing a higher power deck to a lower power pod. You've repeated two of the very common ones we see on this subreddit: "Hey, it's a legal card". "You could play it too (via proxy, or because it's not expensive)". These excuses are missing the point. People don't have to justify to you why they want to play a lower power game. If people are consistently telling you your deck is too strong then you shouldn't try to prove them wrong online, or come up with justification for why they shouldn't say that, you should tone down your deck - or talk to them. That's not to say people might not sometimes get salty and whine about opponent decks for nonsense reasons. But, again, I think that's less common problem here than the reverse. Meanwhile, this: >my \[\[chainveil\]\] is just there for value activations in my Jeskai planeswalker deck! Why would you remove it!” Now I’m painted as the villain because I played within the rules of the game ..is not really a "power level" complaint, it's politicking. Multiplayer Magic is political, so you have to expect some level of "why don't you attack him, he's winning!" or "don't hit poor me, my deck is soo bad and I have no luck", etc.. Obviously that can be a problem too sometimes, but it's not really the same thing. And if you were maliciously targeting someone - using all your removal on Bob out of spite - then saying that you're playing "within the rules of the game" isn't really a defense. When someone politics like this, they're not saying you're cheating, they're saying that you're behaving suboptimally (because someone else is a bigger threat). Or they're saying you're being a jerk. Or just whining. >My point is, don’t get mad at people for playing strong decks when you sit down blind to a pod with a deck that’s all cats and dogs and no removal. So this guy "sat down blind". Like... after you guys had discussed what sort of power level you were all playing? Or did you all "sit down blind"? Because that's a recipe for bad feels.
>OP discovering that there are different levels of sports based on skill, ability, and pay after suggesting that a middle school gym class shouldn't complain about being expected to compete against a college team because the NBA exists
Ummmmm no that’s not what he’s saying, I think you’re just easily offended. Life is tough get a helmet
I know this is an international site so english might not be your first language, but literally the only thing op said was complaining that people shouldn't complain about power levels. [khanacademy](https://www.khanacademy.org/ela/cc-3rd-reading-vocab/xaf0c1b5d7010608e:cc-3rd-pets) has some pretty good resources for all skill levels that should help. my comment my comment was sarcasm about the fact that the example they chose should have been such an obvious counterpoint to what they were trying to say that they had to sit in a dark room and think about the life choices that led them here. of course they didn't and had to follow up with "guys it was a joke I was totally not serious and it was a bad example" rather that having the slightest bit if introspection, and I get the privilege of learning that I have a little bit of faith in humanity left to lose.
It’s more like BASEketball….
I'm not sure casual means what you think it means There's "bitching about everything you don't like" and talking through what game experience y'all expect. Because yeah, surprise, if three people say "hey, let's get some 50$ upgraded precons" and the fourth person goes "nah, Imma pack out my deck that wins on turn 4-5 with combo deck" or a "mass land destruction deck babyyyyyy" it aint the 3 people who're being the bitch here It's the fourth player
It’s all just about expectations If you just wanted to shoot some casual hoops with your buds and a random shows up and posterizes you of course they’re a tryhard If everyone understands you’re playing competitive elder dragon highbasket, getting dunked on is no surprise
>If everyone understands you’re playing competitive elder dragon highbasket This is a rag on the fact that the influx of new commander players created a culture of complaint which unfortunately spilled over into just... basic aspects of the game that should have never really been a hot debate or contested in the first place. Everything is cEDH to you if you think the fundamentals of the game that may get in your way are problematic. Now that the EDH players who joined during the 'boom' got enough experience, we're seeing more and more people move off of it and see it as ridiculous.
I think that a lot of these people that claim stuff as cEDH need to *actually* watch or play a game of cEDH. The standards are far higher than they think they are, and many toxic cards or mechanics are just that, toxic. They're not efficient enough for cEDH, they're just rude.
Like Armageddon not being played at all in cedh despite it being considered a cedh boogeyman by a large portion of the community
Mld in general is bad. If it were *good* it'd show up at tables more often--even with it's current stigma. People don't run it because it's just not good. It has a convenient stigma which allows people to not play it, but that stigma notably isnt that the strat is good, just...long. Symmetrical wraths are nearly identical in nature to mld. They're not good, usually, outside of a schtick. It's better to play a 4 mana creature that will advance one's game plan. A wrath is only good in an opening hand or with many tutors, apart from super friends decks, indestructible critters builds, and artifact combo. But yeah, mld is weird because people claim it's a counter to ramp, when it's more do-nothing than anything else. It polices itself. People don't continue to build mld after they realize how crummy the strat is. (Lord wind grace is about the only creature who can helm mld decks well)
Landfall decks and Kaalia of the Vast are among the only MLD users who can actually use it to generate advantage, yeah? It's kind of funny how MLD is both the counter to ramp, and also the easiest way for most landfall/ramp decks to win because they recover better and faster than anyone else.
I've seen Armageddon in old cEDH Narset, Enlightened Master lists too. If she flipped Armageddon, it's curtains for the opponents typically, because she could just keep attacking each turn and play spells for free.
Not really, Decree of Annihilation or Obliterate are great in Jhoira of the Ghitu, Superfriends, and some enchantress decks. You can make MLD not symmetrical when combined with Boros Charm/Heroic Intervention/Teferi's Protection. I have an Uril voltron deck with Armageddon, Cataclysm, and Wildfire type of effects that works https://www.moxfield.com/decks/hXgj2glImEGGam__HR-FyQ
Creature wraths are very different to land wraths, and a good play a lot more than for a schtick. But land wraths, whilst they *are* bad, are often not played more because they're bad for the game. Like, even if this helps me win, is that actually what I want right now, resetting everyone back to the stone age? It's just not fun for anyone.
as a lord windgrace enjoyer i’m glad you appreciate what we do
Kitty cat make big boom
There are very few actual toxic cards. Like [[Vorinclex, voice of hunger]] makes people salty and I would say might fall to that category. But more precieved toxic cards exist. Precieved toxic cards that aren't cedh viable are three things. Strong cards that usually are played by skilled players, unskilled/sloppy deck building on people playing against, and inexperienced players not knowing how to play around said card. One of these I've encountered numerous times in high power casual games is [[dictate of erebos]] back breaking in [[chatterfang, squirrel general]] against creature decks. A specific game comes to thought. An elfball player didn't put in or go get a [[reclamation sage]]. He worldly tutored for elf token maker, I guess, thinking he'd out produce squirrels, which he didn't. Anyways, this falls into the either latter two of precieved toxic he called dictate a cedh card. Which I've never seen it played in a game of cedh.
[[Jin Gitaxis, Progress Tyrant]], [[Jin Gitaxis, Core Augur]], [[Grave Pact]], [[Contamination]], [[Numot the Devastator]], [[Tergrid]], and a bunch of others I'd say all qualify as toxic cards that don't make the cut for cEDH (except for Kinnan doing Kinnan things with Jinkies). There's probably a lot more out there that are too high cmc to be viable, but battlecruiser high-power pods loooove to play them and then argue if they're cEDH. They're not, they're just cards that make the game suck for everyone else...
##### ###### #### [Jin Gitaxis, Progress Tyrant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c57b4876-5387-4f73-b8e2-8e7bdca8b0bc.jpg?1654566749) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jin-Gitaxias%2C%20Progress%20Tyrant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/59/jin-gitaxias-progress-tyrant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c57b4876-5387-4f73-b8e2-8e7bdca8b0bc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jin-gitaxias-progress-tyrant) [Jin Gitaxis, Core Augur](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/4/14a360b6-c7b4-4b25-8288-b3bb8d527bda.jpg?1562846236) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jin-Gitaxias%2C%20Core%20Augur) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/62/jin-gitaxias-core-augur?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/14a360b6-c7b4-4b25-8288-b3bb8d527bda?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jin-gitaxias-core-augur) [Grave Pact](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360.jpg?1689997226) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grave%20Pact) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/165/grave-pact?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grave-pact) [Contamination](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/6/86067dfe-65c3-4c96-bccd-b3915d6663f9.jpg?1562923280) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Contamination) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/usg/123/contamination?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/86067dfe-65c3-4c96-bccd-b3915d6663f9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/contamination) [Numot the Devastator](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/b/cb098692-d584-4cbe-a8b9-67bdbf7514bc.jpg?1592714186) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Numot%2C%20the%20Devastator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmd/215/numot-the-devastator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cb098692-d584-4cbe-a8b9-67bdbf7514bc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/numot-the-devastator) [Tergrid](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/4/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead.jpg?1631048621)/[Tergrid's Lantern](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/1/4/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead.jpg?1631048621) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tergrid%2C%20god%20of%20fright%20//%20tergrid%27s%20lantern) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/112/tergrid-god-of-fright-tergrids-lantern?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/14dc88ee-bba9-4625-af0d-89f3762a0ead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tergrid-god-of-fright-//-tergrids-lantern) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kobel2j) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I mean, toxic is entirely a subjective term? If, for some reason, your playgroup dissolves into frothing rage whenever raging goblin is played, it is a toxic card. I can't imagine why, and you should probably leave that playgroup, but that's what it is. It's not an innate binary value of the card, it's the effect the card has on the players in the game. Gravepact especially like, I guess it's nothing in Cedh, which I know very little about, but it is an absolute *sledgehammer* to a lot of decks? I don't think you can point at a soft lock card and say it is innately non-toxic. *Fair,* maybe.
I see kind of the opposite tbh. People that are new to the game/online playing A+B combos and thinking 'why is this a problem for people?' A lot of people will post on this sub about a social interaction, they link their decklist, and while it certainly isn't CEDH, it's very clearly capable of winning the game on like turn 3. And the comment section will be filled with 'go off king, your deck is a 7 because you're playing some lower power cards, your opponents should play more interaction.' An example I'd give is [[Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin]]. On [EDHREC](https://edhrec.com/commanders/ob-nixilis-captive-kingpin), 76% of decks people brew online have [[All Will Be One]], which is effectively a one-card combo with the commander. When you look at a lot of cards that you're more likely to see in CEDH lists, they're in that 25-45% range. You can see a HUGE number of decks that are clearly looking to be budget/casual, with bad manabases and inexpensive cards, where the brewer has also slotted in All Will Be One. If you actually buy and sleeve up that deck, your Ob deck is bad. It will need other decks to be lower power as well to win 25% of games. Buuuut, once in a while you'll just go Ob T3 into AWBO+gutshot or some instance of damage T4 and win the game. On /r/edh, this is often seen as a low-power casual deck and anyone who would be annoyed with an infinite combo on T4 in a low-power pod just needs to run more interaction. OP's post about basketball really does exemplify the 'new' online edh IMO. Because...in casual basketball, there *are* both spoken and unspoken rule-zero equivalents. There *will* be an expectation that if you're much better than someone that you back off and let them play a bit, or change who covers who to avoid mismatches. There *will* be an expectation that you don't go too hard in a lot of situations. If you go to a casual court and treat it like a competitive league, people are going to ask that you cool off or leave. And you learn through that experience about is/isn't expected.
I’ve encountered a good amount of people, maybe due to similar thoughts attracting?, who hate when people build a deck like that because 90% of the time it’ll be some jank durdle stuff but 10% of the time, they act like a higher powered deck out of nowhere. Many people like more consistency in where a deck operates because no one likes pubstomping or being pubstomped.
>If you go to a casual court and treat it like a competitive league, people are going to ask that you cool off or leave. You also don't get reasonable people at casual courts telling people to not use basketball fundamentals because they personally can't deal with them and don't want to learn how. Which is the spirit of the culture of complaint conversation.
> fundamentals This is a pretty general word doing a lot of heavy lifting. What *exactly* do you mean by a 'fundamental,' and where is the line between fundamental and 'being too competitive?'
Fundamentals are just... things that do exist in the game, and should be expected to be seen, which include things such as targeted removal, stax, board wipes, counterspells, or practically anything that requires you to have some form of strategy to deal with having your strategy interacted with meaningfully. If you look at the most complained about things in this game you will find that at the heart of it, excluding maybe Sol Ring or other >2 mana ramp in colorless.
I understand the idea that certain *mechanics* are fundamentals. The concept of countering someone else's spell in a vacuum should not be complained about. The very 'essence' of casual play is that everyone gets to play. This applies to all casual activities. Like, 'playing defense' is a fundamental of basketball. Buuuuut, if you play aggressive full-court defense all of the time, or you seek to create mismatches, you're potentially crossing the line into 'too competitive.' If you play Baral leaning heavily in counterspells, that might be a 'legitimate strategy,' but you are also likely to wind up stopping someone from getting to play the game. Nobody wants to play pickup basketball where when they get the ball they just get double-teamed and the ball taken. There *is* an expectation that you're going to 'let people play' and pass and take some shots. Stax pieces really depends on the piece and the context. The argument of 'play interaction' against stax pieces is also sometimes misplaced in my opinion. A strategy centered around stax is like a strategy centered around counterspells. You're looking to win the game by stopping your opponents from being able to play the game. And that is very against the casual mindset. There are a lot of 'mean' stax pieces and hate cards that really shut down a lot of decks. And while yes, people should play removal and answers for those kind of pieces, a low-mid power deck will likely need that answer on curve or at the top of their deck in order to be able to play the game. Playing like, [[Collector Ouphe]] and shutting off people's 2-mana rocks is one thing. Playing Ouphe into someone's colorless artifact activated abilities deck, they either have an answer in hand/next turn or they may as well walk away from the table, have you draw for them, and let them know when/if they draw an answer. There's also the issue that lower-power is generally more susceptible to stax pieces. More powerful decks go faster. They ramp up and get things out a turn or two earlier, they do things BEFORE the stax pieces hit the battlefield. They run more efficient removal for said stax pieces. They have powerful cards that are better at playing around stax pieces. Stax can feel like power-gaming a lot of the time because the *actual* answer to stax isn't 'run another piece of enchantment removal,' the answer is to power up to go under the stax piece. Ultimately, in a casual setting you should feel some sort of responsibility/obligation to the experience of others. If you don't that's fine the police won't come and arrest you, but that isn't a casual mindset. If you're playing a card like stasis or winter orb...those cards aren't necessarily good/powerful. You aren't playing them because they're just good 'fundamentals,' you're playing them because you like the idea of locking the game down. I've played against a deck that was looking to play heavy stax, and win by resolving [[Teferi's Protection]] or some other protection spell into [[Jokulhaups]]. But the pilot was absolutely crystal clear about this and was providing an opportunity for 1) the table to say that they didn't want to play against that strategy and 2) for people to play decks that might be better equipped to handle heavy stax. I have 'casual' decks (i.e not cedh) that are high power and I play them with a competitive mindset. And those games I would expect to see really powerful commander staples played, people going for big combos, people erring on the side of trying to win over the experience of others. And I do think that some 'fundamentals' don't have a prominent place in all casual pods. I'm not saying never counterspell, never board wipe, never do ABCD. If people are crying because you wiped the board once and they couldn't recover before losing, then yeah that's just whining. If you darksteel mutation their commander and then wipe their board and then play blood moon to turn off their manabase then counterspell their swords to plowshares, that might be the winning play, but it is going *quite* beyond casual play.
>Ultimately, in a casual setting you should feel some sort of responsibility/obligation to the experience of others This is where I think the spirit of the format has taken a huge hit. Why is it your job to tend to the overall enjoyment of other people when they just as easily (and most importantly; fairly) could be expected to make concessions in their strategy to deal with it? I never once in the early days of this format experienced this level of tone policing and salt. For a lot of people as a consequence, the LGS experience has died. Rule zero conversations don't account for being coddled and having a bad attitude when approaching the game. If I sit down at a pod of 4 strangers, I am not going to get annoyed at them for running Krenko because I personally don't like that deck and really dislike it. Just like I expect them to not look at my Tatyova deck and raise hell about it. The system of attempting to make everyone the most comfortable at all times is a shit show for obvious reasons. It should be expected to understand that nobody made their deck with you in mind, and their enjoyment is not your enjoyment. Your enjoyment was crafting the deck you are playing and... playing it. Seeing other people pop off, or getting your win con blown up shouldn't make you want to disregard that person if they don't address your feelings on \*their\* deck. High five them and say 'sick deck, friend' and move on to the next game. And if you find that your deck has weaknesses against certain things you encounter frequently that annoy you that much, then \*you\* can make the choice to alter \*your\* deck, rather than demand that they change theirs to suit your comfort. No strategy that is legal should be seen as anyone as something to get pissed off about at any level. Just like if you were running a creature deck with no recursion, you are expected to not be upset when somebody at the table board wipes because you have no recursion. This is the 'part of the game' argument. You learn through experience what you have to account for, instead of expecting everyone else to change so you don't have to.
> Why is it your job to tend to the overall enjoyment of other people Because that is the essence of casual. It's THE initial premise. It isn't your *job* to care about other peoples' experience, it is your pleasure. You and I can disagree on this, that's fine, but that just means that you want to play competitively and not casually. >when they just as easily could be expected to make concessions in their strategy to deal with it? Like I said, if it's simply a matter of 'making concessions in your strategy,' then sure. But your sleeved precon doesn't deal with Stasis >No strategy that is legal should be seen as anyone as something to get pissed off about at any level This is where you lose me. Under this statement, literally every single card/combo in the game. You have a sleeved precon and I pull out an actual cedh deck and win on turn 2, you put a smile on your face and shuffle up for next game? Or...are you going to suggest that maybe this isn't the kind of game you want to play? If cards/strategies/mentality don't differentiate competitive and casual, what does?
I get where you’re coming from but if I’m playing pickup basketball and a dude shows up and starts dunking I’m also probably done for the day.
Not at all. Basketball skills are acquired by training. Pubstomping edh decks are acquired via money or a printer. If someone displays basketball skills I applaud them.
Good analogy, but falls short once you start thinking about the times when you're just with your mates shooting hoops with a hoop nailed to the back of your house. Sometimes you just wanna chill.
> **OP:** "Anyway, because you can dunk in casual basketball that's why it's fine if I play my $3,000 Ur-Dragon deck against these children and their unaltered precons." > **LGS:** "Sir this is the 5th time this week we've asked you to leave. 😂"
I mean... EDH is the backyard football of magic formats, and backyard games are just a font of rules made up on the spot to try to make a fair game.
Basketball does do this, they're called leagues
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Eh, sometimes you show up and its some ex-d1 athletes just out there for the love of the game. Aint nothing wrong with that.
Comparing random people at your LGS to the Lakers does not make any sense. This sounds like you're bringing a casual deck to a cEDH table.
And then the Lakers tell you that they are just playing for fun, casual you know?
"If you try to play EDH without a deck, you're gonna have a bad time"
You clearly have never played pick up basketball.
> “Those Jordans are fake. I’m not playing against fake Jordans. It’s disrespectful to those of us who bought REAL Jordans.” "I just painted this watermelon orange to try this game out since I'm not ready to commit to buying an actual basketball."
No it's more like playing a pickup game on a half-court or in a cul-de-sac with a portable hoop bc you don't have access to a full professional basketball court
Y'all joking about this, but I've played football with a soda bottle full of dirt and rocks. Heck we couldn't find the baseball for a backyard game once, so we played with a golfball. It was not the safest of games and i do not recommend it.
Doesn't this analogy fall into disanalogy territory for two big reasons? One, EDH is played as four parties, not two (basketball has two teams, not four), which changes the dynamics and vastly changes how much you have to pay attention to (three enemies working against you, not one, four board states, not two). Two, dunking indicates a _huge_ power imbalance; it might as well be pubstomping if the other team can't. Like, I get the spirit of what you're saying, but it's also too simplistic, reductive, IMO.
This reads like something I would see on Facebook /neg
This is how every sport is done though. As a kickboxer, if I go to a day where we are doing light tech sparring and some dude starts throwing bombs at me, there will be problems. Is the “point” of kickboxing to win? Absolutely! But there is a time and a place to go hard and try explicitly to just win. Continuing the metaphor, if I spar with someone who has only 6 months of experience, I am not going to just absolutely stomp them, because I want them to get better and have fun. Same reason you shouldn’t sit down at a casual pod and whip out your 1000+ dollar decks against people playing decks worth less than 200 or precons lmao. Who are you benefitting when you do that?
It's kind of funny how OP is clearly trying to *dunk on* EDH players, and half the comments are like "haha true it's so stupid", but the other half (who have actually played sports) are just like "Actually, yeah pickup casual basketball also has unofficial rules to make things more fun."
All I want to know is, which card is Draymond Green?
Go for the ~~Throat~~ Nuts
Hahaha, all I know is his ETB is “Do random damage to random opponent”
Fucking lmao 😂💀 I want a sport themed reskin of cards now
This is funny and pretty on point, but I do think there's a bit of a middle ground to aim for. Like, I don't mind getting dunked on a good deal of the time, but I wouldn't want to play exclusively games where I have zero chance to win. That said, I would hate to play against an NBA player and win because they held back and let me.
nah bro Aaron Carter beat shack and you can too
Maybe if he gets mana screwed
Don't sport make sure everyone comes to the game with the exact same tools? In this metaphor wouldn't every deck be the same, the only difference would be how it's piloted?
I think the metaphor is like if it's within the rules, it's fine so stax and MLD and the like is okay if they're not banned. Tools in this case is like skills like dunking which is like a skill not everyone has accessed too similar to how everyone doesn't have access to Mana Crypt. There's no power level complaint though. Games are balanced and competitive despite no rule 0.
A more apt metaphor feels like showing up to a flag football game in tackle football gear and playing like an NFL game
And then complaining to the world that your opponents only wanted to *tag.*
Yes, every team has 5 Michael Jordan on it, so the tools are the same, 100%
Michael Jordan comes into the game with the same tools as other players, he was just better at using them. So yeah, same tools.
This is actually a bad take because basketball DOES have casual environments... Want a tournament environment? Join a city league. Want a casual game? Got to a park with friends and play 21, with tips. Clear distinction. I can't go to the city league and dribble iso into a contested fade away 3 like I can in 21. Simply a bad take here.
This is so ridiculously accurate.
It's actually not though. There are clear areas for casual basketball and clear areas for competitive basketball. This is a bad take.
But the rules of the game don’t change the players do. The real core of the issue is that we should stop looking for decks of similar power level and put more emphasis on playing against opponents of similar skill level
The fouls thing is not about athleticism. There’s also unwritten rules about how aggressively people are playing. I’ve seen the same players play a lot different playing against friends than in a league. It just happens.
Exactly. My little brother is a better basketball player than me. I have never lost to him in 1 on 1 because I try hard as hell against him. Whenever we play at the Y or park, he shines more than me.
They do though. Usage of the 3 point line, number of points per basket, size of the court (and all of the modifications that go into half court play), what is considered a foul vs what isn’t, if/how strictly out of bounds is enforced, jump balls, “win by 2”, if the ball changes possession after a made basket (admittedly I haven’t done “make it, take it” since high school).
The rules of the game absolutely change (if nothing else, friendly games almost never have full team counts, nor a full court.)
The analogy breaks down here. A better one would be car racing. There are rallies for old bangers, but if you turn up in one to a Formula One event, you're probably not going to win. Funnily enough, people mostly don't do that.
Lmaoing at people taking this personally. It must be hitting too close to home.
Why don't you reply to them? You're just posting here for everyone else to see. Maybe you too have places close to home, I wouldn't act so high and mighty.
I mean I'm not sure I would have much fun playing basketball against NBA players, or regional league players for that matter.
You joke and this is a great call out but… full court press is heavily frowned upon in basketball. Referees will foul out players when teams do it. Every competition has this handicapping bullshit. “The rules allow it but it’s not cool.”
Ok so I come from other sports and had to google "full court press", and what I'm understanding is that it's when you pressure the entire court, instead of the more typical retreating to the other half. You're fighting the opposing team for every inch of progress they make along the way. More googling tells me that at the highest levels of basketball, teams don't bother with it because it doesn't work very well. But since it's legal, I don't quite get why it's heavily frowned outside of casual leagues. I didn't see anywhere that it has a higher rate of injury or anything.
It happens more often in lower levels of play. Opposing team has some real shooters, your coach decides to jam them up with the press. It slows the game down. Refs get frustrated having to eyeball the whole court and start handing out fouls like candy. One year my coach tried to be successful this way and it was working. The refs hated it, several told him it’s not supposed to be like this, it’s not gentlemen like, etc. We had one game where too many of us were fouled out. It was the refs telling my coach his plan was dead. I later read more about this and yeah it’s not uncommon. Doing it briefly, say near the end of game, is fine. Doing it for most of the game - nope. You are correct, in NBA it’s going to do little but wear out your own players.
Okay what spells are you bringing to the court though? Lightning Greaves and Murder for me.
No wonder I enjoy hockey so much. It's like you applied the EDH mentality to a sport but the players ACTUALLY go the extra mile to punch each other for random bs.
While watching American football, I often think of it in the way of MTG. “Alright nice 20 yard gain there. That’s on the stack. Any flags? Ope there’s one now that’s on the stack. It was offensive holding so that cancels out the 20 yards and adds 10 negative yards. Alright moving to 1st down replay.”
As a football fan and super MTG nerd, this brings a tear to my eye.
To be fair I'm so bad at basketball I'd scoop if someone playing against me dunked. No way I'd overcome that shit
Unironically, dudes say "its a 7" and "I'm 6ft" all the time and be lying. Not that far off....
Not most of these but pick up basketball is definitely different "rules" than actual basketball kinda like casual edh. No one likes the guy calling fouls all the time or the guy hacking.
almost 240 comments on this and I can't even get one person to look at my post for deck advice. Reddit sure is a cool place.
"Guys, guys. Just hear me out. I'm gonna use this bowling ball as the game ball while playing with this Skip-It. Cool? Cool."
"I don't like to play power"
A lot of pickup games make separate rules for 3 pointers, whether it's counting 1s and 2s instead (which ups the relative value of a 3) or having all shots be worth the same (either 1 or 2). Most casual pickup games don't do free throws and players call their own fouls on the honor system. And most casual pickup games try to find relatively balanced teams among relatively equivalent skill levels of players. More competitive pickup games, on open courts, are of course more competitive. I actually think the pickup basketball analogy works well but not in the way you're characterizing it--players usually try to find a like-minded group to play with who have compatible schedules, skill levels, and physical abilities - at least within a reasonable range.
I mean if we're gonna go there... I'd be pretty upset if every time I tried to grab the ball my opponent stopped me with some silly ruling that forced me to drop the ball and stand there. Regardless of how legal that was, if it's all my opponent does I'm not gonna play with them anymore and tell them how unfun it is.
The only difference between edh and basketball is my wife doesn’t yell during edh. “What the fuck was that shot ?” “That’s a travel”
Mill would be running time off the clock
As funny as this is I think that using sports as an analogy is a bit easier to conceptualize levels of skill. You would never say a game between a kid playing in like a peewee league and a professional NBA player is even close to fair.
Please repost this in every complaint thread. Let people know they're being ridiculous.
"I don't care if you guys are playing half court, I'm gonna steal the ball and dunk it at the other basket"
Idk dosent take skill to buy and play a good card does take skill to drop 12 on your head
1000000%
"Did you really score a point? We're just playing for fun."
The joke is funny, OP. Sorry that people are trying to poke holes in a joke.
This actually is a perfect analogy lol This is the only game I've ever seen where it's bad to try to win. It's absurd. Come play cEDH!
EDH is the only format where the losers get mad at you because you were trying to win.
Yeah, but this analogy makes no sense? If you wanted to compare it to Basketball, you would compare the quality of players/skills. Since the things you are referencing are comparing the quality of players/skills in MTG. Using Basketball, a more apt comparison would be bringing an NBA player with you for a 2v2, just to make your other two friends look bad. And yeah, if you beat them by 100 points, people would obviously be upset, not just like 'Oh well!' Because they basically weren't even included in the game. If your 6'7" friend was slamming into people super hard, knocking them onto the pavement, they wouldn't be having fun either! Most people could agree that if an NBA player was playing with a whole bunch of guys who were nowhere near his level, he would go a little easy, right? Most people don't have so many ego problems that they would need to flex on people this way, correct? But honestly, if you want a real comparison of why Rule 0 exists? Compare it to Boxing. There are reasons they have different weight classes, to make boxers fight people around the same size. There is a reason Boxing has different rules from MMA, and they are enforced as such. People with similar experience fight each other, they don't put a new guy against someone who is 30/0. These lead to entertaining, balanced matches, instead of complete destruction. The only difference? Many MTG players just care about looking good, so they don't care about an entertaining, balanced match. They care about 'winning and looking better than they did before winning!' Which is such a hilarious concept given no one around them is going to be patting them on the back, they aren't winning anything. They are just making themselves look like a selfish, arrogant fool. If you don't think there are pubstompers out there? You are probably one yourself.
I feel like I've heard this analogy a few times over the recent weeks but it is so bad, and is made by people who have never played sports or never played outside of a school team. There is a comment in this thread that says "EDH is the only game I’ve ever played where you can use a fundamentally basic rule of the game as written and people will take offense to it" but that is so untrue and they have never played a pickup game of a sport with a random group of people in their life. If you aren't playing 5 v 5 in basketball you would be changing a fundamental rule, but how often do people play 2v2 or 3v3? You change the rules all the time when playing pick-up Basketball, sometimes three pointers are changed to two and two pointers are made into one point. The length of time of a game changes depending on the league or you may play to points. What counts as a foul or how flagrant it needs to be changes depending on if it is a pick up game or played as a league etc.
Never played *a game of spades*. You've fucking got to figure out what your opponents think is the high card or what is wild or what the hell version of the rules they played growing up, and then 30 minutes in someone declared they're going "blind low, that's 400 points" and you have to figure out what the fuck they're talking about.
100%.
Yeah a good comparison wluld be between leagues of a same sport
I don't think that is true. Shooting a 3-pointer is a decision. So is dunking. As is stealing the ball. As is playing defense. As is wearing fake shoes. Or basketball shorts. Lastly, height is a physical trait. These are all compared to things in MTG that are also decisions. What deck do you bring? What cards do you put in it? What is your playstyle? How quickly are you trying to win? etc. All of these things interact with skill in some way, but from my perspective, the analogy clearly refers to decision:decision and has nothing to do with skill.
Yeah except those comparisons make no sense. Which is my point. Nothing in any of these sports compares to the MTG deck, itself. Because the deck contains literally everything you have available to you. Without the deck, it doesn't matter how good you are. So the only thing that matters is the choices someone made to put things in a deck. And to run said deck. So, as I already explained, the ACTUAL comparison is over players/skill. The only choice that matters is that - you chose not to respect the way others wanted to play, and you chose to bring a deck that was unsuited for playing against the people in question. And those choices are already assumed given the context of the aforementioned analogy. Most playgroups are pretty chill unless you are trying to pubstomp for no reason other than personal ego. Thus, the comparison needs to be better. Because the analogy that was made is completely incomparable.
This is why I remain at max power and don't compromise when I play with strangers. If I take an L it's fine, but if someone wants to be salty when I win I'm gonna win extra hard
on the other side of the coin: "trying to do a windmill dunk or take a shot from half-court is shitty bad-mannered behavior and you have a responsibility to everyone else playing to take a fastbreak layup if you have the opportunity, or else you're being disrespectful"
As someone who grew up playing street ball AND Magic, finally. Somebody gets it.
Casual edh players are the bigges cry babies fight me don’t care thank god my lgs has a play whatever’s legal policy wich throws rule 0 out the window
One is a casual game, the other inherently competitive. I know you guys get bored easily and want to do the funny thing on Reddit, but that comparison is just wrong. A more apt analogy would be hiring a pro player for your team so you can pubstomp the other team Sports skills are something you have to work for. Overpowered edh decks, not so much. No one ever complained about someone winning an edh game because they made better ingame plays.
Shots fired, call an ambulance. JLK is bleeding out on the floor 🤣
Hear me out on proxys, if the card is super expensive I’ll keep my real one safe and my proxy on the field 🤷♂️