EDH Achievements
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on July 18, 2017, 3:07 a.m. by EgyptianSpaceGamer
- Courage Kill: Kill someone with Norin the Wary (combat dmg only!)
- One With Everything: Control a permanent that is all permanent types
- Holding a Grudge: Counter 5 spells a single opponent casts throughout the game
- Round and Around: Have the whole table empty their hands, and draw new ones (Wheel-like effects) 5 times in one turn
All of these scenarios were up for mild interpretation, but still pretty impressive when pulled off.
A good comparison to what I'm looking for would be those million dollar math questions! I would like to build a list of cool achievements, and post them here on TappedOut for the same reasons I introduced it to my own playgroup: to spur creativity among the EDH community, to teach specific rulings in a fun way, and to restore the balance between Good (casual play) and Evil (competitive play) in the EDH meta.
This discussion is for anybody with ideas of fun, creative, but possible achievements for casual or league games of EDH. Examples are in the "Original Post Idea" panel in the description, and more throughout the comments. Try to make the achievements as casual as possible, and make sure that it doesn't tarnish or prolong casual gameplay. Remember, this is just for fun.
Note: Achievement numbers may be "nerfed" in order to assure that players don't go too far out of their way, and ruin gameplay for others. If you can win, don't "farm" achievements; start over, and let other people have a chance.
There should be a quirky or clever name for your achievement (but don't worry if you can't think of one, it's not absolutely necessary), a short and simple description of the achievement with added restrictions in parentheses like: (only finite actions, no infinite loops), and a rational 5-star difficulty level you would give the achievement (based on pieces needed, players/permanents affected, how easily replicable, etc.).
A good template to use would be:
Achievement Name: Description. (restrictions, if any) 1/5: Very Easy 2/5: Easy
3/5: Medium (Normal) 4/5:Hard 5/5: Near Impossible
Have fun brewing!
EDH ACHIEVEMENT LIST
"Win the Game" Show
"Elimination" Show
"Board State" Show
MindAblaze says... #3
I have to agree with BlueScope's sentiment. You have to find a way to balance the achievements so everybody gets to play without having to farm. I've been working on a point system off and on that may work for our 75% group, and it turns out "Winning the game" has to be a significant enough point value to still be worth going after.
Stuff like "control X creatures of the same type" tends to be useful, and possible while still kind of improbable if you set the number high enough.
Counter X spells in X turns is decent without having to put one player out of the game.
My personalized achievement is called "Just a Minute"; search your library X times in X turns.
July 18, 2017 1:53 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #4
Thank you guys so much! You're right, my question shouldn't have been about the impossible, but about the most creative and still achievable challenge. And they shouldn't be too ludicrous that people would have to sculpt new decks. I will definitely take your points into consideration, as I build the list.
July 18, 2017 9:54 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #5
And the Norin the Wary achievement wouldn't work with stifle effects, but would work with Crown of the Ages and Darksteel Mutation and a whole bunch of other stuff: . Overall, the list is supposed to be full of fun and hard-to-figure-out situations that would look cool in a casual game.
July 18, 2017 10:25 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #6
Been wanting to do an EDH league using a points system and have drawn up a few possible lists as far as achievements go. My favorites so far are:
No Peaking - Win without any tutor effects (still going back and forth on whether or not to include fetch lands as tutors under this one).
By the Seat of Your Pants - Win with 5 or less LP remaining.
July 21, 2017 11:02 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #7
Awesome! Yeah that's what I was trying to come up with. Is there any way to make one for the public here on tapped out DarkMagician?
July 24, 2017 12:16 a.m.
DarkMagician says... #8
EgyptianSpaceGamer I don't know but I know I've seen quite a few of these posts about point based leagues since I joined this site. Maybe one of the Mods can make a sticky for people to post their ideas as far as goals and points earned would go. Epochalyptik? yeaGO? Think yal are mods, my apologies if not
July 24, 2017 1:27 a.m.
- features discussion *
looks interesting. hope you get a vibrant list going.
July 24, 2017 2:17 a.m.
RoarMaster says... #10
Cool idea, I like it!
Overkill - Kill a Player by attacking for over 100 damage. Infinite Creatures does not count.
Killtrocity - Deal 1000 points of non-infinite damage in a round.
Fool's Game - Manipulate your top-deck 5 or more times in a turn.
Thorns - Kill a Player who would kill you by the end of the stack or phase. As in kill some one who targeted you with a lethal Fireball, or kill a player who is attacking you with unblocked lethal damage.
Justice for All - Have all starting players lose, win, or tie at the same time.
End Bringer - Kill all starting opponents in the same turn(Or phase for slightly more difficulty). Non-Infinite methods only.
Why We Cant Have Nice Things - Destroy or Perma-Exile 10 permanents using targeted spells or abilities.
July 24, 2017 5:39 a.m.
Winterblast says... #11
If you want to give points for certain actions I personally would do that with stuff that doesn't distract too much from winning, which should always be the primary goal. Thats my opinion on that topic, mostly because I really dislike games in which people do stuff just for the sale of doing something without any reason or purpose. If you can win at a certain moment, you should go for it and start another game if it worked, not drag the game out because you are after some more achievements for extra points.
I would suggest achievements that discourage weak or strategically bad plays and instead honor flavourful situations that might come up in a game, for example:
Pull off a combo with at least one card owned by another player
Win because everyone else conceded
Disrupt an opponent's combo that is already assembled on the battlefield or disrupt someone's combo turn (for combos that don't involve permanents)
Kill someone with commander dmg
Deal 21 commander dmg with a single attack
Kill at least one opponent before turn 4
Win without having attempted to cast your commander at all
Win with an alternative win condition
Counter a spell in a non-blue deck
that would be achievements which don't make players build decks in order to get them but just reward situations that come up anyway and they are all related to the primary goal of winning and not losing.
July 24, 2017 9:08 a.m.
So just to give you some ideas on how a point system could be managed, I'd like to share how this one LGS I played at handled it.
The store had around 5 or so core lists of 5 achievements. Once everyone had selected their commanders and were organized into their pods by random draw, the store manager would place one of the core lists up on the wall, and those achievements could be earned by anyone at any table, but only by one person at each table per round. Then the store manager would go to each table and draw 8 random achievement cards for that table. The people at the table could vote to have that selection of 8 achievements shuffled back into the pile for a new selection of achievements, but each table could only do that once a round. This system allowed enough variance that it prevented people from completely optimizing their decks to just score achievements.
The variance was important, because these commander games competed for physical prizes. Each person payed $5 to play in a round, and each table was given 5 booster packs. If you scored an achievement, you got a booster pack and no one else could claim that same achievement that round. Each achievement was worth 1 booster pack, but being the last man standing was worth 2 booster packs. If a game ended before all the packs were claimed, then the remaining packs were taken and added to the next pool of reward packs for the next round. Of course, you had to pay $5 again if you wanted to play in the following round. This system generally prevented people from just winning with an infinite combo on turn 3, because that meant that packs would go unclaimed and everyone else at the table would hate you for not giving them a chance at the other packs just so that you could claim 2 of them.
Of course, your system doesn't need to have packs as rewards like that, you can just claim achievements for points.
The downside of a system where an achievement can only be claimed once is that it encourages people to work together to lock other people out of the game and drag the game on until they could claim all the achievements. This was a particular issue if friends got placed together in the same pod.
Anyway, I found it to be an interesting system with a lot of positive points that could probably be adapted to your own system. I particularly liked how each table got a randomized selection of achievements each round, while the core lists provided enough generic achievements that just about everybody could sit down and feel like they had the chance of winning at least one pack. Greed kept people from just giving one pack to each person and fighting over the last one. The team-up of store regulars against people who didn't show up as often was an issue though.
I hope this gives you some ideas to work with.
July 24, 2017 9:12 a.m.
How about "Control an opponent's turn and have that player win" ?
July 24, 2017 12:15 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #14
You're not supposed to control an opponent into winning the game...lol
July 24, 2017 1:25 p.m.
Monkeylordz says... #15
I have some ideas:
"Control 5 permanents your opponents own at the same time"
"Draw 100 cards in one turn" (possible with shuffle effects)
"Cast your commander 8 times in one game"
"Control 35 or more lands at the same time"
"Have your commander enter your hand, battlefield, library, graveyard and exile zone all in one game"
"Win a game without controlling any artifacts the entire game"
"Cast an X spell with X being 30 or greater"
"Control a creature with between 6 and 10 different creature types" (limit to stop changeling effects)
"Put 50 counters on a single permanent"
"Kill an opponent with a land through combat damage"
Achievements should not restrict deckbuilding, but rather encourage open-ended and creative deckbuilding to achieve those goals. These achievements don't call for making a subpar deck for the sake of farming points, but rather encourage "normal" gameplay to a more challenging extent, all while leading to winning. You might even see these achievements being completed in a regular game of commander, and that was my goal.
July 24, 2017 2:44 p.m.
zephramtripp says... #16
One simple achievement might just be Coalition Victory plus Wastes plus a colorless creature.
July 24, 2017 4:10 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #17
HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME! I love all of these ideas. I think there definitely should be a list of these on the site, although I don't know how to make one. All the names and ideas are crazy creative and aren't too impossible to achieve at all! You guys are amazing, this is exactly what I was looking for.
July 24, 2017 5:03 p.m.
zephramtripp says... #18
In addition to "Kill a player with commander damage", you might also want:
Betrayal - "Kill a player with their own commander."
Unwilling - "Kill a player with commander damage from another player's commander."
July 24, 2017 5:24 p.m.
Winterblast says... #19
Monkeylordz if you don't want people to build decks for farming achievement points you have to scrap pretty much all your suggestions because these events are not just going to happen by chance:
"Control 5 permanents your opponents own at the same time" - unless you are running Memnarch with an infinite mana combo this won't happen. How many control effects do you want to stuff in a deck? and How many do you think you can pull off against opponents that aren't so much weaker than you already?
"Draw 100 cards in one turn" (possible with shuffle effects) - if you are able to draw your entire library you will have won before you get to 100 cards
"Cast your commander 8 times in one game" - in a lot of games the commander is maybe cast once or twice, how would you possibly cast it 8(!) times? What deck would even want to attempt to cast a commander that often?
"Control 35 or more lands at the same time" - why, just why? could only happen with Gitrog Monster, after you have already had the chance to win like 5 times (and then you might not even have 35 lands in the deck)
"Have your commander enter your hand, battlefield, library, graveyard and exile zone all in one game" - why take the effort to get it there and back in the first place?
"Win a game without controlling any artifacts the entire game" - you'd need to run such a heavy artifact hate suite to achieve that (I do in one deck, but having that as an achievement makes people build especially to get achievement points)
"Cast an X spell with X being 30 or greater" - doesn't matter if it resolves? if you manage to cast such a spell and it isn't countered you have probably won anyway. Or actually you will have won long before you can cast something for 30 mana.
"Control a creature with between 6 and 10 different creature types" (limit to stop changeling effects) - this makes people include stuff in decks that isn't needed just to achieve that. What's the point of accumulating that many creature types if it wasn't just for an achievement?
"Put 50 counters on a single permanent" - possible, but most likely it will be a mediocre infinite loop or doubling season trick that otherwise no one would play
"Kill an opponent with a land through combat damage" - that's probably the best one imo, but it's just the final blow and doesn't really tell anything about how the game went until then. You could just steal this achievement from your opponents by running a few manlands in every deck and then try to get the last dmg through with one of these lands. Doesn't really encourage strategically correct gameplay.
So, while the ideas sound like great fun on paper, basically all of them encourage people to play how you normally wouldn't play and to build decks in order to be able to achieve these points. It also doesn't make people build good decks, only achievement collector decks.
July 24, 2017 6:30 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #20
I like RoarMaster's ideas, but I have to agree. Some of the numbers may need to be nerfed.How do you guys suggest the achievements be reworded, to ensure casual gameplay without "achievement hunting" like Winterblast says?
July 24, 2017 7:09 p.m.
Winterblast says... #21
EgyptianSpaceGamer as I've said above I would simply reward flavourful but objectively good deckbuilding and play. It would also make people build better decks if they only watch out for the achievements, which means that players who aren't yet as good in deckbuilding will learn how to build objectively good decks by wanting to get the achievements.
For example take my idea of "puling off a combo with a card an opponent owns"...you need to know the meta, need to have a good combo shell in your own build AND notice when there's a situation in which you can use your opponent's resources to complete one of your own tricks. If you want to get that achievement you need to learn how to make a good deck and you need to play well. It's nothing that happens by randomly throwing spells for two hours straight.
I think if you play with achievements they should make commander a more skillful format than many people think it is, not encourage more randomness. Giving points for actions that you don't want to do in a normal game makes absolutely no sense...like awarding points for winning slower or more complicated than you could in a certain situation. That's completely against the nature of the game as a whole.
July 24, 2017 7:26 p.m.
One mention: Just a Minute only requires the commander to be Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. I can easily shuffle 5+ times in a turn with my Momir deck.
Suggested additions:
So Many Possible Actions: Activate a loyalty ability, ability, and an ability of an artifact, then deal combat damage with and sacrifice that permanent to do lethal damage to yourself. Then return it to the battlefield under your control with a +1/+1 counter on it. Pass the turn after activating the loyalty ability again. (5/5) (JK, but it's possible. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out how!)
I Hate Everybody: Cast the fifth wrath in the game. (Creature wraths only!) (4/5)
You Must be Cheating: Win the game with 0 or less life. (3/5)
Stop punching yourself: Deal combat damage to a player with a creature you permanently control that is owned by that player. (I.E. with Control Magic rather than Insurrection) (2/5)
Your Own Worst Enemy: Cause the most life loss to yourself in a game without gaining life because of cards you own. Lose at least 10 life this way. (3/5)
July 24, 2017 9:04 p.m.
RazortoothMtg says... #24
"Cause another player to lose the game while a spell they control is on the stack." You could also change it to say "Cause another player to lose the game on their turn"
July 24, 2017 9:19 p.m.
EgyptianSpaceGamer says... #25
piemanDW Yeah, back home the "One With Everything" was one of our first ideas. It involves Life and Limb, any gideon planeswalker, Mycosynth Lattice, Enchanted Evening, and Conspiracy
July 24, 2017 9:49 p.m.
RazortoothMtg says... #26
The closest you can get to having a permanent with all types is Mycosynth Lattice + Enchanted Evening + Gideon Jura + Life and Limb + Conspiracy. That's everything except tribal, which I think is impossible. And not counting Instant/Sorcery and card types from other formats like Conspiracy, Plane, and Scheme.
July 24, 2017 9:51 p.m.
Monkeylordz says... #27
Now that I look back at my comment, I do agree that some of the numbers need to be lowered. I originally used those numbers because I wanted it to be a challenge so that it doesn't just randomly happen in any commander game. What's the point of having an achievement for something you see every other commander game? It has to be special, and that's why I chose higher numbers. However, the numbers should be lowered, because otherwise, as Winterblast said, they "encourage people to play how you normally wouldn't play". With optimal numbers, most of my suggested achievements (as well as others) should viable with regular decks while still posing a challenge.
For example, referring to my achievement that wants 35 lands, the land count is too high. However, it should not be scrapped but rather changed. 10 lands is too little, but somewhere around 20 lands is feasible for most ramp or even control decks, while not happening every game. This does not require any changes to the deck.
Another problem arises: How much is too much/too little to merit a challenging achievement while not encouraging hunting? I personally think that the numbers will have to be determined through testing. Here are my revisions, with names and stuff, and anybody may give suggestions for tweaks:
Nice Permanents You Got There... - "Control 3 permanents your opponents own at the same time" - 4/5
The Upper Hand - "Draw 40 or more cards in one turn" - 3/5
In the Zone! - "Cast your commander 4 times in one game" - 3/5
Developing Infrastructure - "Control 20 or more lands at the same time" - 2/5
Rockless Victory - "Win a game without casting more than 1 artifact the entire game" - 5/5
X gon' Give it to Ya - "Cast an X spell with X being 10 or greater" - 2/5
Not your Type-ical Creature - "Control a creature with exactly 4 creature types" - 4/5
Count em' up! - "Put 20 counters on a single permanent" - 3/5
Ground Pound - "Kill an opponent with a land through combat damage" - 4.5/5
July 25, 2017 12:05 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #28
Someone forgot to close a size and bold tag. Can we get those closed to make this readable please?
July 25, 2017 12:33 a.m.
RoarMaster says... #29
So if this is some kind of scoring method, how will it work exactly? Since winning is the logical point of the game, its points value should be set higher than multiple other achievements combined. What sort of scale should we be looking at implementing?
Looking at points scales:
A 1-3 scale is stable, but lacks range. Doing an Average task and getting 2 points, then doing something Epic and only getting 3 points seems pretty "Meh".
A 1-5 scale has a higher range, but makes 1 pointers seem underwhelming and ups the complexity of scorekeeping. Balancing becomes more difficult as well.
A 2/3/5 system has the benefits of having a larger range, while still maintaining a stable progression system. With only three points values to remember, it is also simpler than the 5 digit ranking system. Its a nice progression, 2 basic achievements is slightly better than 1 medium achievement(Acmt*). 3 basic Acmt is equal to 2 medium Acmt, and slightly better than 1 Hard Acmt. Ect Ect. Its a nice and stable platform to work with.
So my vote would be for the 2/3/5 points based scoring method myself, but what have you all to say?
Also, what points value should be ascribed to winning? 7? 10? As the points system is sort of in place to make it that winning isnt EVERYTHING, it should not be so high that it is impossible to "Win" after coming in second for example. But at the same time you want to set the value high enough that the game does not degrade into points farming as people pointed out. What do you think is a good starting point?
July 25, 2017 6:10 a.m.
zephramtripp says... #30
@piemanDW: Your So Many Possible Actions has got to be done with Experiment Kraj, right?
July 25, 2017 9:09 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #31
Please edit your thread and close all open HTML tags. And do the same for your profile (I would have posted there, but the coding errors make the post button inaccessible on my platform).
July 25, 2017 12:46 p.m.
Given the You Must Be Cheating achievement, I think that Fateful Hour should be if you win between 1 and 5 life.
July 25, 2017 5:46 p.m.
For:
"An Arm And A Leg: Sacrifice a permanent, discard/exile a card, or pay life to pay the cost of a spell or ability. 2/5: Easy"
Would paying 2 life to get a Breeding Pool out untapped, or taking 1 damage from a Polluted Delta count towards achieving this goal? If so, I would drop it to 1/5 since it would be incredibly easy to achieve just through your manabase.
July 26, 2017 4:24 p.m.
RazortoothMtg says... #34
For the "One with Everything" achievement, Tribal, ala Bitterblossom, is a permanent type as well, so Bitterblossom + Opalescence gets it.
July 26, 2017 5:12 p.m.
Closed until the poster can fix the html as this is unacceptable for a featured discussion.
BlueScope says... #2
This is going to be more of a general draft of my experiences, rather than a direct answer
Are you wondering about improbable, or actually impossible? There are a lot of things falling in the latter category, but seeing as they're impossible to achieve, you won't need to prepare a lot of cards to sign - noone will achieve them. As an example, consider "win the game through Battle of Wits's triggered ability".
If you're looking for improbable, your Norin the Wary scenario is right up there, however I believe it's too specific to promote good game play. In practice, someone willing to strive for the achievement will probably build a UR control/burn deck with a single Norin in it, along with a few Stifle effects. They may as well get there, or snipe someone, but they likely won't present a very fun deck to play with because of its utterly weak concept in comparison to your average Commander deck, and will even lack win conditions (as burn in Commander tends to not work very well).
On the opposite end, countering five decks in a row is quite competitive, relatively easy to pull off, will reward players for playing "that blue deck" noone likes in casual Commander, yet cause them to make game decisions that are bad for them, such as not counterin a spell because they need to save their counterspell for countering the fifth spell of that one player that's already entirely out of the game because they had all their mana rocks and ramp countered. It seems like a scenario that's probably going to leave a lot of players at the table feeling cheated out of a good game, or possibly even playing into that player's strategy because they just want to get the achievement out of the way.
Other things, such as a permanent that is all permanent types, is either not currently achieveable because there are no cards that would allow you to do that - or they suddenly are, because a new card is released. In that case, a player can build a deck going for it, but again, you're still not having a game of Commander, but one of achievement farming - someone will be likely be unhappy.
In general, you have to consider that not everyone will necessarily like the idea, and if it's only one player interested in those goals, you will neither get a lot of acceptance for specific deck builds, nor will that player have a great sense of achievement for his awards, as they already know noone else cares about them.
That said, a number of Commander groups are using point-based victory awards, and those points are usually awarded for something similar to your list of achievements, while being a lot more achieveable in nature. Those lists share the same problems, and I've often seen that there's arguments about exact interpretations of those awards, but they're nevertheless a concept to make games more fun than "oh look, my combo decided the game, yay!", if your game group feels that way. In the same sense, I can imagine your idea working out to the better, but I'd strongly advise towards leaning in a direction that doesn't leave everyone in the dust that tries to just play Magic.
In the end, I guess what I'm trying to say is to go for goals that encourage fun games, not ones that could possibly do quite the opposite. I'm thinking of things like "put a player's land or mana rock that's been destroyed by a third player back on the battlefield, under the first player's control", but depending on your game group, you might have other things people don't like to see. I also just blabbered this out, it might have the same or even more pit holes as I've criticised above, but I feel like putting it here for brainstorming purposes.
Last but not least, I suggest making it a public list rather than a signed card system, simply because a public monument usually works better than a cup, as evidenced by arcade high score lists. I suggest having a single person that's mostly present (from the sound of it, that might be you) to take care of both judging whether the achievement's requirements have been met, as well as update the list with players who achieved those goals, possibly in chronological order.
July 18, 2017 4:40 a.m.