Show me your house rules
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Sept. 3, 2018, 5:27 p.m. by shadow63
Like the title says I want to see your house rules. I prefer ones that aren't restrictive like banning combos or certain cards. The one thing my group does is when we roll 2 d20s to see who goes first you get a free card draw one time in the game whenever you want to use it
In pods of 4 or more, you get a free scry at the beginning of a turn after you miss a land drop, unless it was an extra turn.
September 3, 2018 6:36 p.m.
Azdranax does that count even if you have like 10 lands and it's turn 15? Or is it only early game
September 3, 2018 6:54 p.m.
Yeah, forgot that part, it’s six turns or commander CMC, whichever is higher.
September 3, 2018 7:27 p.m.
Azdranax: Play Emrakul, the Promised End just for that sweet, sweet scrying.
September 3, 2018 8:19 p.m. Edited.
jordybear2002 says... #8
For us we give you 2 free mulligans in any game and you always scry 1 at the beginning of your first turn. And no take backs. Also I am the only one who fights for poison counters so 10 poison is 10 poison in our house.
September 3, 2018 9:58 p.m.
If your opening hand has 0, 1, 6, or 7 lands, we allow free mulligans (without scry). This generally works for ensuring everyone has a fair start Mana-wise, without requiring drastic mid-game fixes.
Otherwise, we don’t have any specific rules other than a gentleman’s agreement not to make a deck vastly more powerful than the other decks.
September 3, 2018 10:18 p.m.
We do partial mulligans still. Set aside the cards you don't want and draw up again. First one is free and then you start going down. No scry.
September 3, 2018 10:47 p.m.
SteelSentry says... #11
If you miss land drops 2 turns in a row and aren't able to cast anything in the first few turns in a match, you can discard 2 cards at random and Cultivate. Most people don't use that in our group though because they keep good hands, but I had to use it because I had a Terminate in my hand upside down that I thought was a Darigaaz's Caldera at first when I was fanning through my hand and didn't notice until we started.
September 3, 2018 11:18 p.m.
Spammy mu group does the same I forgot that the mulligan rule changed
September 3, 2018 11:25 p.m.
- Partial paris mulligans + scry if you do take a mulligan.
- You can repeat infinite combos exactly 3 times.
- 15 poison counters.
- As a general rule that is merely passed by word of mouth, no mass land destruction.
September 4, 2018 2:44 a.m.
- first to land goes first,in the direction of the second one.
- free mulligan if you have 1 land or more than 4.
- no 2-3 card infinite combos.
- any amount proxies are fine aslong as you plan on buying them eventually.
- dont play cards like armageddon or something without a plan with it A.K.A dont be a di**
- if ur behind we allow free scrying every now and then coz whynot.
- we allow missed triggers but only if it hasnt gone around the table.
September 4, 2018 4:21 a.m.
oh also I started the mercy land. if someone is extremely mana drought for like 3-4 turns we just let them fetch one basic from the deck.
September 4, 2018 4:23 a.m.
A friend's commander house rules are the same for playing 1v1 there as it is for playing multiplayer there:
- 40 life points
- Draw a card too if you go first
- Mulligan until you get a hand worth playing
- No proxies
- Multiplayer banlist
I believe the rationale is that we are testing multiplayer decks so why use 1v1 rules? With the durdley ass decks that we usually play against each other its rarely even noticeable.
September 4, 2018 8:32 a.m.
I appreciate people doing what they want to make the game more fun for them, but I want to vomit at nearly all of these.
September 4, 2018 12:08 p.m.
griffstick says... #18
We have a house rule for mulligans.
Every time you draw a hand and if you have all lands or no lands you reveal your hand and you may exile that hand and you may shuffle then draw again with no penilty. Essentially a free mulligan. But we follow the new Mulligan rules of edh
If we decide to play competitive edh we do partial mulligans but we have to reveal what we put back
September 4, 2018 12:34 p.m. Edited.
TheDevicer, out of curiosity, which do you find distasteful? Personally, I take issue with the following
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Partial mulligans--accounting for RNG of your opening hand is an important part of deckbuilding, and I'm not a fan of easily engineering the perfect start.
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Any changes to the rules that occur once the game actually starts (extra scry/lands/etc. in middle of the game).
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Allowance of proxies - I'm pretty firmly of the belief you should own the cards you want to play with.
For the users of the first and second points (I understand the reasoning behind proxies), I'm genuinely curious--do you see any changes in how players build decks as a result? It seems to me such changes would encourage players to have slightly higher curves or run slightly fewer lands because the modified rules would provide some buffer/compensation for the gamble.
September 4, 2018 12:53 p.m.
RedUndead40 says... #20
- No proxies or gold borders
- No permanent mind control of a commander (this one doesn't come up often and has been in place since the early days of our playgroup. It could likely be removed but at the time this was put in place in a similar fashion to the tuck rule).
- You can rewind your turn as much as possible within the same phase. I.E. if you are in your main phase and cast 4 spells, then want to sequence them differently or missed a trigger, it's all fine as long as you are in the same phase. Move to combat? Too late for your Phyrexian Arena trigger.
September 4, 2018 1:05 p.m.
valhallatithing says... #21
Ok, my group is a little different:
-There is no H2H dueling. 60 card decks are multiplayer just like EDH. So if you want to play your super-powered and fast elves decks go ahead, you will more than likely be the first player to die as everyone gangs up on you. It is amazing in that it teaches a player how to hold back and be prepared for many situations.
-Free mulligan.
-No proxies.
-If someone rolls a three, then its party time, i.e. drinks or whatever you feel comfortable doing.
-As it is multi-player all the time, people can quit whenever they want during the game, although it is highly discouraged.
-The last player to win can ante up cards or various knick knacks (for instance, one player had MTG comic books that he would throw into the ante pool) if he or she would like, and the other players can respond accordingly, although it is not a requirement to do so, as some people in the group don’t like giving up any of their cards unless trading them.
Note: I would not use most of these rules unless the group you play with is a bunch of close friends who have been friends for years. Multi-player can seem a bit unfair when you are attacked 3 turns in a row before you even get to respond, so being able to laugh about it afterwards is paramount to a fun night.
September 4, 2018 3:35 p.m.
cdkime - I'm massively against house rules that alter the base game. Basically free mulligans, scry, draw, land drops, restrictions on archetypes or combat, etc.
I find that these house rules, along with point-based leagues, often set up these types of rules because they want to disincentivize certain types of gameplay, but mostly spikey behavior that's deemed to be too competitive or somehow anti-fun. What's tragic is that the people who push for these types of changes simply don't get that a spike who prioritizes winning above the needs of a group can and will find ways to abuse whatever system you put in place. House rules can radically alter what leading strategies are in the format, but they won't alter the fact that leading strategies will still exist.
In addition, a ton of house rules serve as training wheels for players and end up hurting their development as players. Missing land drops but given free scrys? Cool, I guess I don't need to look more critically at my deck construction or mulligans.
Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that EDH is a grassroots format and I implore everyone to find ways to make the format enjoyable for them and their group. My grumblings shouldn't affect anyone's enjoyment of the format or how they want to play. Still, I won't deny I think a lot of them are absolute BS and hurt diversity on the format if made into maxims.
September 4, 2018 5:13 p.m.
I gotta say I'm in agreement with TheDevicer about most of the mulligan stuff. Partial Paris mulligans and "Oh, just fish a few lands from your deck becasue you're behind" do encourage lazy deckbuilding with really heavy, almost unplayable curves.
If your deck has mana issues and the root cause of that is not enough land/ramp, you shouldn't bandaid the problem by using house rules. You should fix your deck.
On the topic of proxies - I'm not keen on them most of the time, but for competitive games I don't mind so much. And by that I don't mean tournament (You shouldn't allow proxies there), what I mean is a casual game where ewveryone is using top shelf decks. In those games, its assumed that everyone will have disgusting cards and so I don't mind so much if people proxy becasue those games are about deck constructiong and how well yo ucan play, not about how much you want to drop on a single card. That and MtG is expensive enough in Australia and I really don't feel like droppong ~$4000 on a single card to finish my deck.
September 4, 2018 7:53 p.m. Edited.
My group got into the game when we were broke ass college students and $150 for a deck was a ton. We also played a metric ton of EDH. I'm talking like a full day of EDH once a week minimum. Playing the same decks over and over again got really grating for us. We began proxying as a way to experiment and keep things fresh. The first few decks we did were at similar power levels than our real decks. Then things got crazy. We started a nuclear arms race of proxying the most broken things possible until people realized that maybe that's not the way they wanted to play the game (I love it, but I'm willing to sacrifice for my group).
People eventually tuned things back down and now you can play basically whatever you want in our group, but most decks are incredibly tuned decks centered around dumb ideas like Borborygmos Enraged, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf elfball, cleric tribal with Ravos and Tymna or something. My group has rotating faces, so most of the time it's jank like that. Other times we play full on cEDH.
The process I described above took years. By now, all of us have the ability to put together basically anything and everything. I might have to cannibalize a deck here or there, but I own everything I need or could reasonably acquire it. The only exception I have is the Alpha Timetwister that's still missing from my Arbiter cEDH deck. Basically we don't need to proxy to play degenerate decks if we feel like it.
HOWEVER, we often feel like doing something dumb on a whim. Like a few sessions ago, I got tired of using broken combos and wanted to play a fair creature-based deck. I proxied a full atraxa deck and played it only for one night. Just cuz. No reason. It's stuff like this that helps keep the format fresh for people that have been playing together for years.
Just whipping together a deck for a day without proxies like this would be incredibly annoying or impossible. Most decks in my group are real, but we still allow people to proxy whatever whenever because we build decks to suit our meta. I have an excellent idea of what flys in my group and how I can please my whims without losing friends. Mind you, my friends still allow me to do absolutely degenerate things, but this is only possible because we've been at this forever.
When I play outside of my group in public shops, I often struggle a ton. I don't like playing at a really low power level. For a very long time, the only deck I even owned was a fully decked out Grand Arbiter cEDH combo list. I made people miserable. It got to a point that I actually proxied a full deck priced at around $150 just to play with randos, but I got endless complaints even when I explained I was doing it to make everyone have a good time and not have to bring out my real deck. I also loathe the rampant ignorance among lower level players and how slow they tend to be to play against (both because they don't know jack about deck construction and because they're terrible pilots).
I like proxies but only in the context of my own group. I'd actually be totally fine with randos proxying too, but I dislike it because it tends to bring out insane salt and long conversations from other randos.
A prevailing attitude among the community is that proxies will inevitably power creep groups and lead to people shoehorning candelabras or other such nonesense into their decks just because they can. Having been through a massive proxy war and come out the other end, I can safely say they can also keep the jank alive and well.
September 4, 2018 9:26 p.m.
With regards to TheDevicer's and enpc dislike of special mulligan rules, I'll offer a brief defence of free mulligans when your opening hand is, on its face, mana flooded or screwed. Prior to the defence, I'll briefly mention I would personally prefer the regular mulligan rules, but was outvoted by the rest of my group.
In multiplayer games in particular, there's a pretty good chance that, even in a finely tuned meta, someone is going to end up with a mediocre opening hand. Putting them at a disadvantage not for their deckbuilding, but for RNG doesn't just hurt the player, it hurts everyone--after all, part of the fun is playing against a challenging, non-handicapped opponent. Further, their opening hand would have been unplayable to begin with--it isn't like they're willingly mulliganing to gain an advantage.
Obviously this system needs to be done with restraint--we only allow one such free mulligan, and none if you're mana flooded or screwed after having taken a regular mulligan. It also helps that, while most of the decks in my meta are pretty janky, their mana bases tend to be fairly solid, so we know the opening draw are not a result of poor deckbuilding.
Having said that, I think you make some pretty good points TheDevicer, particularly with regards to how many homerules unfairly try to limit Spike players, without realising Spikes will be Spikes, regardless of the limitations.
Building on that, there is a much better way of dealing with Spikes than trying to implement anti-Spike rules--talking with them. EDH, and kitchen table in general, tend to be between players who know and like one another. Generally informing the Spike player that their deck is far beyond the scope of everyone else's deck and it's making the game a tad less fun is sufficient. There's plenty of ways to nerf the power of a deck, without breaking the underlying spirit.
Speaking from experience, it kind of sucks to forcibly make a deck you've worked hard on worse, but it's far better than altering the rules or annoying your friends.
To clarify my own point regarding proxies, my, and my playgroup's issue with proxies is not the power creep, but the fact that they are not real. Granted, our playgroup is primarily attorneys, including one specialized in intellectual property. Perhaps foolishly, we're all a bit more protective of Wizards' IP than even they are.
September 4, 2018 9:58 p.m. Edited.
cdkime: Don't get me wrong, I personally own every card in each of my decks (excluding that Timetwister of course). Some of the people in out play group will proxy some of top end old cards (I'm talking ABURs, Imperial Seal, Timetwister, etc...) but we will buy any new cards. A $30 price tag on a card is not a problem for our group (people all working full time).
Proxying is always one of those topics that will draw a lot of discussion. I think for me the rule wit hproxying just comes down to "you can do it once you've proved you're not a [insert word of choice here]".
On the topic of mulligans - I'm not saying players should be punished because of RNG. But everyone gets a free mulligan (rule 103.4 c). After that, you go down one card and then get to scry. By the time you've shuffled up your third hand, you should be seeing some lands, and you're still at 6 cards by this point.
Sure, getting mana screwed sucks but getting mana flooded is a perfectly playable hand, albeit slow. As for mediocre hands, that's the risk you take. I got a hand with 2 lands, one ramp piece but no draw. This is where as a player I need to make the decision if I want to risk it for a potentially better hand but at the cost of one card. And if my opponent gets a good hand, then kudos to them. But next game they might get a crappy hand. But that's all part of the game.
September 4, 2018 10:47 p.m. Edited.
- Never mulligan below 5.
- Play to win.
- No Annihilator.
September 5, 2018 10:17 a.m.
Didn't know this would turn into a salt mine for the elite
September 5, 2018 10:48 a.m.
MagicalHacker says... #29
Our only rule is no conceding (unless its an emergency and you have to go, obviously). Each game plays out until the very end :)
September 5, 2018 1:33 p.m.
shadow63: when you spend a lot of time and money building and reworking a specific deck over and over to make it as competitive as you can, you want to be able to play it in the correct environment.
And is sucks for all involved when 3 people sit down at a commander game with tuned cEDH decks and the fourth is rocking a casual deck and a casual play mindset.
September 5, 2018 6:14 p.m.
Well to me that just seems like a bad game for the timmy while the spikes will just be spikes in that situation. And if your group has house rules and someone from outside the group comes to play you need to come to an agreement on what rules you'll play with
September 5, 2018 9:14 p.m.
shadow63: Yes, in those games everyone plays like a spike-timmy, a spike-johnny or a spike-spike. But that's the expectation going into the games. It's actually really fun because everyone is on the same page.
And we don't play those games with people new to the group, unless that's also why they are specifically joining in.
Just sucks sometimes having decks that you've spent a lot of time and effort on being shelved for weeks because not everyone is keen for one of those games.
September 6, 2018 1:10 a.m.
I know what you mean I have a few 60s that I dont like to use becuse they're more tuned then what my play group normally has
September 6, 2018 2:30 a.m.
I am from a group of about 4-5 players (6 on special occasions when a friend comes over from out of town) who all play pretty casually. we only have a couple of house rules that we use for general ease of play. We generally aim for mid tier powered decks.
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No infinite Combos
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No Mass Land Destruction
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Each player has one take-back (we usually use a custom counter or token to track it)
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Regular Mulligan rules are in effect with one addition: if you mulligan down to 5 and still have an unplayable hand, you may trade in your take-back to refresh your mulligan to 7.
We have a simple rule with proxies (more of a gentleman's agreement), any expensive cards you already own that are in another deck you can use a proxy for (saves us swapping our Doubling Seasons etc between decks).
September 6, 2018 11:50 a.m.
How do you feel about proxying staples like sol rings and draw engines if you dont have a copy for every deck. And what about playing with cards on the ban list as long as it's not the crazy otk stuff
September 7, 2018 12:13 p.m.
Honestly we are tripping over sol rings here and they tend to be quite cheap so we'd just give you one lol.
As for other cards like that, then as long as you own a copy in another deck that would be fine, though we buy as much of the decks as we can afford without breaking the bank over duplicate expensive cards (usually £30 or over for us) as most of our commander decks hit £150 without the duplicates.
We always adhere to the main Commander banlist so that everyone is reading from the same page :) Commander is a game we play casually with a beer and 8 drops mentality haha.
September 8, 2018 1:32 p.m.
We generally don't have that many.
- No mass land destruction unless it's part of a game-winning move. If you're just doing it to slow down the game, that's not fun and the point of EDH is fun.
- Proxies are allowed for expensive cards you actually own that are in other decks. This way you don't have to keep swapping cards between decks. Less-expensive cards everyone in the group just buys copies anyway.
- No silver-bordered cards unless the whole group agrees. Gold-border is fine if you happen to actually own them.
- Patience with the players who are not as experienced with the game. This is because we have new players join periodically, including the children of various group members, and patience is a must. Yes, this includes adult players who run fairly uncomplicated decks and are still slow with them.
- Not quite a house rule, but generally players will announce if there are certain planeswalker abilities they never plan to activate because those don't quite work with their deck's theme. Usually ultimates.
Otherwise we run with the regular banlist, the multiplayer Vancouver mulligan, no restrictions on deck archetypes (though you may find certain decks of yours ganged-up on if they become notorious), and politicking is fine (though some players insist that politics aren't part of the game, but will generally fall to politicking themselves if they need to).
September 8, 2018 10:28 p.m.
FunkiestBunch says... #38
In our group, first mulligan is free - beyond that it's regular rules.
Also, we have completely hated out 'Winter Orb' - anyone who plays it either has to take it out of their deck or leave the group.
September 10, 2018 2:37 p.m.
my opinion on people hating on special mulligans instead of fine tuning a deck. i think most playgroups that allow more and more mulligans or some form of it are groups with decks that cannot be tier 1 optimal. when u play tapped lands and such you just arent as consistent and need to mull. so a more casual playgroup who arent hyper competative tend to need or just enjoy those rules or else the gap between a player with fetches+shocks abnd a mana crypt vs a guy with a tap land would be too great.
Karns_Pyromancer says... #2
I've seen a lot but most don't stick around long. The longest lasting was 15 Poison counters.
September 3, 2018 5:54 p.m.