The Tens of EDH

miracleHat

Way back in the day (Legends era) my play group would get together and made a pile of world effect cards. Things like Mana Flare, Wrath of God, Concordant Crossroads and so forth. Every round we'd flip one card over and it was in play for that whole round.

What I do for special deck building is my favorite thing to do actually, Tribal. Of course don't always build the strong Tribal decks, just today I built a Minotaur Tribal. Have you seen one of those before? Most likely not. The best part, when you play stuff like that for fun, you are playing something that your opponents most likely have not played against before. I may just have a Tribal addiction though.....

One time I had just played my BR group slug deck, lost every time because everyone ganged up on me early on rather than get pinged to death for everything they did, and afterwards I asked them whether they could instead come up with a concept deck that didn't make sense that they might want me to try to make. One said, since I usually hate playing white, make a mono white deck. Later on, I also had the thought of making a mono-green mill deck. Those have been built now, and are really freaking fun, especially as the white one isn't soldiers, but spirit tribal with an enchantment subtheme. The mono green mill deck can make, at its peak capacity, 6242 mana per turn without having any infinite combos in the entire deck. It'll never win a game, but trying to build these concept decks absolutely made commander more interesting.

Also, I am one of those people who has a deck that will play Warp World up to three times in one turn. And sometimes have a board state that includes Grip of Chaos, Knowledge Pool, Eye of the Storm, Confusion in the Ranks, Wild Evocation, Gate to the AEther, Hive Mind, Conjured Currency, Puca's Mischief, the list goes one. You have no idea what will happen sometimes because there's the element of randomness that completely screws with anybody's plans.

Something my playgroup has been dealing with is power creep. I think it's a pretty significant issue for groups that have been playing 3+ years. It's hard to make new fun deck when it's pitted against a tried and true build

That's all we ever do in my playgroup is just constantly scrap EDH decks and make new ones. Oppressive decks usually don't fare well (or for very long) in my group. I ran Rakdos, Lord of Riots stax for about two weeks, then got rid of it because no one wanted to play it. Lol

SamCre1993 Power creeping is definitely a real concern. In my playgroup we dealt with that problem primarily by banning all but the most convoluted infinite combos and banning mass land destruction entirely to avoid stuff like someone having a Kaalia of the Vast on the board with no one being able to do anything about it and then that person just subsequently winning the game because they went Kaalia -> Armageddon with no one having a counter in hand.

Removing the easiest infinite combos from the game somewhat discourages hard lock/control decks because those decks can't just stall the game until they draw an easy infinite combo to end the game off of. Instead, we kill each other primarily with creatures or masses of copied spells and other shenanigans. The prevalence of board wipes keep the creatures from dominating too hard every game as well, and I think it's a pretty decent balance. And when someone manages to fire off a 5+ card infinite combo without the use of tutors to fetch the parts, no one feels salty about it.

One of my friends made up Knowledge Pool EDH. We edited the rules so that if a land is part of your initial pool, you have to keep doing it until you get a nonland, and then shuffle the lands back. Also, we changed it so cards like Eidolon of Rhetoric don't kill the format. We've been having quite a bit of fun with it, fetching decks from this site even to playtest (cuz all our actual decks are control based and that's no fun with Knowledge Pool). I'd appreciate suggestions/cards that kill the format so we can further evolve the format. Thanks.

Ohhhh Knowledge Pool looks like fun! Thanks for the idea...

Spisepinden, that's why I always ensure that my decks never have an infinite combo. Now there might be combos in there, but they are the sort of combo that says, "Thus far, and no further" to itself, where there is a built in limit to what I am capable of producing out of that combo. To me, winning with those proves to be far more satisfactory, because it means that I won despite the fact that the combo could be interacted with, could stall out, could be interrupted, or just plain removed. Also, it means that when I win with it, it seems like a fairer win than if I just say, "this and this and I win." To me, there's no greater buzzkill to a good game than someone just winning from something that gets to completely disregard the board state as it goes off. This way, people are left feeling like, "if only I had this, I could have stopped that" far more often than not, which gives hope for a future occurrence. Does that seem like an attitude that describes your playgroup and their approach to infinite combos?

In the spirit of trying new things, EDH King is fantastic. It really gives some direction to larger games.

5 person version:Deal out 5 facedown cards signifying these 5 roles... Only the king reveals his role at the start...

1 King - 50 life, wins as the last man standing1 Knight - be the last standing with the king2 Assassins - kill the king1 Usurper - kill the king to become the king

We also use a house rule that anyone can block for anyone in king. It was felt that this gave much more utility to creature decks and gave many more political opportunities (e.g. the usurper can block for the king and make everyone think he's the knight).

For 6 players just add one more knight. With 7 players we've been playing with the Fool - he wins if he is still alive at the end of the last player's 10th turn (that number is subjective - tune to your group, though I warn that most games are shorter than you think).

In the spirit of trying new things, EDH King is fantastic. It really gives some direction to larger games.

5 person version:

Deal out 5 facedown cards signifying these 5 roles...

Only the king reveals his role at the start...

1 King - 50 life, wins as the last man standing

1 Knight - be the last standing with the king

2 Assassins - kill the king

1 Usurper - kill the king to become the king

We also use a house rule that anyone can block for anyone in king. It was felt that this gave much more utility to creature decks and gave many more political opportunities (e.g. the usurper can block for the king and make everyone think he's the knight).

For 6 players just add one more knight. With 7 players we've been playing with the Fool - he wins if he is still alive at the end of the last player's 10th turn (that number is subjective - tune to your group, though I warn that most games are shorter than you think).

For me, one thing I found that helped greatly was having a second format to play. Recently, my playgroup has been getting into Canadian Highlander. It's still 100 card singleton but there is no restriction on colour identitiy as you don't have a commander. Or if that isn't your particular flavour then there is also duel commander.

The benefit of both of these formats is that they're 1v1, meaning that the games are over much more quickly. Honestly, one of the biggest turnoffs for EDH was having to sit through a boring 2hr game where nothing was happening.

So being able to play 3 games in 40 minutes is a very welocme change of pace, and becasue of the variance it means that when I do sit down to a game of EDH it doesn't feel stale.

nyctophasm that is exactly how I prefer to play EDH, and how my playgroup generally plays. And you really hit the nail on the head; by far my biggest beef with infinite combos is that they more or less end the game immediately regardless of how the rest of the game played out.

I think, generally, what I want from a game of Magic - especially when it comes to EDH - is a story. A game with lots and back and forth, surprises, epic spells, huge creatures and awesome effects. Therefore, an easy-to-assemble infinite combo is to a game of magic like a sudden ending is to a good book - "The bad guys die, the end." It's not fun - it's just disappointing and anticlimactic.The only exception I've experienced is when one of my friends assembled a 7-card infinite loop with no tutors in his deck. We laughed for a good 20 minutes at the ridiculousness of it all because no one saw it coming. When the combo requires that many pieces, not only is it unlikely that you'll ever draw them without tutors, but it's also unlikely that you'll get to assemble everything without your opponents stopping you in the process. It allows for interaction, and it allows more room for a story - "after much painstaking, probably filled with much resistance from other planeswalkers, the mad scientist finally manages to fit the final piece of machinery into his or her doomsday machine," essentially. It builds suspension, creates tension and puts pressure on the other players to end the game before the pieces are all in play, but there's plenty of fair shots at stopping the instant win unless some of them starts protecting the combo player (politics is also a big part of the fun of EDH).

Spisepinden: Part of that sounds like you need to run more removal in your deck if you don't like combo.

Playing combo in a meta with answers is actually a lot of work. You may not see it from the outside, but combo players actually are continually weighing up the board state and picking their moment.

There is a lot of balancing what's going on board state wise, dealing with threats and having to deal with opponents' answers to their combo. But part of what makes a good combo players is their poker face, ability to bluff answers and threat analysis. And personally I find that a hell of a lot mote fun than "big thing smash into other big thing".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to change what you're doing. Just offering a point of view from the other side of the fence, that's all.

The problem with combos is when that is all EVERYBODY is playing.

The games then becoe seeing who can get their combo pieces out the first. Usually not very interactive.

Even with pieces of combos being removed it is still just a waiting game of who gets to combo off.

That's what my playgroup was like and why I stopped playing EDH and went back to Standard.

It's a shame because I loved the format at first.