Magic discussion pet peeve

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Posted on Nov. 26, 2018, 6:44 p.m. by Suns_Champion

I have a pet peeve to share with you all. It comes up often when talking about magic, especially which strangers on discord for example. The thing I'm talking about is the verbal arms race that happens with everyone throwing out counters to each other's plans, which creates a roadblock in the conversation.

Here's the scenario:

Person A brings up the topic of RW land destruction. Land destructive cards are brought up, support cards, tutors, etc. Person A then says their win-con is Teferi's Protection in response to their own Armageddon.

Person B says they'll just Counterspell one of them, either to save all the lands or to stop the protection leaving them all landless.

Person A replies that since they're in red also, they will copy the counter using Reverberate or the like.

Person B says they still has mana untapped, and they'll play Time Stop also!

Can you see how far off track we've gotten already?

Person A continues, saying they'd have Grand Abolisher and Price of Glory in the deck/already out to help with this situation.

Person B, as a knowledgeable blue player, says they'd counter those early game, no questions asked.

Person A, trying to move on, says they might not always get the opportunity.

Person B: "Not if I tuck a counter spell under Isochron Scepter, then I'll always be able to!"

Moral of the story: please don't do this. It kills what would have been a productive conversation about a deck idea and turns it into a counter this-counter that dialogue that could potentially never end.

We all know stuff can be countered. Magic is a infinitely complex game with multiple ways to answer any strategy or answer any answers. We know. We don't need to have this conversation.

What if Person A just... wants to make a cool deck? Wants to get ideas from other players? What if they're new to the game and you just dashed they're hopes and dreams with "I'll just counter it lol" ?

Does anyone else see this and find it annoying and rude?

ninjaclevs13 says... #2

Yeah, that gets annoying. I know one guy that does that aaaaaall the time, even if you're just getting excited about a deck you built.

"Hey I just finished optimizing my Karador, Ghost Chieftan deck and it's looking pretty swee-"

"Haha that's cool Rest in Peace"

Or when someone dies and they say "if I had these 6 specific cards you would've been screwed"...especially when they're salty about it. So yeah, I get it.

November 26, 2018 8:01 p.m.

Rzepkanut says... #3

It's like two people playing mental magic with no rules or deck. Seems annoying for sure.

November 26, 2018 8:05 p.m.

legendofa says... #4

Instead of saying "I Counterspell your awesomeness," I've found that asking "How well does your deck respond to Counterspell?" often leads to positive discussion, and a couple of times has actually led to the other person making revisions and improving their deck while still staying interested in it.

Basically, make the discussion about their deck, and not what you you would do if you knew in advance you were going to face it.

November 26, 2018 9:20 p.m.

Arvail says... #5

I've literally never had this conversation. I imagine if someone tried to bring something like this up to me, I'd appeal to opportunity cost in running all those cards. Being strong in some cases will inevitably lead you to be weaker in others. Their suggestions, though maybe well intended, can actually make the deck weaker in the context of your group, stereotypical LGS EDH, or whatever meta that you're in.

Also, sometimes it's healthy to design decks specifically to have weaknesses. My Karador deck is intended to suffer at the hands of mana denial, flyers, and yard hate, but none of those things ever get the deck to a point where it has no outs or can't function. It gives people axes to attack the deck on and leads to more varied games. It also allows me to put some more powerful things into the deck so I can have games where I can do utterly nutty things. All that helps make the whole game experience more fun for everyone.

Being a spike in EDH requires you to be mindful of your objectives in deck construction. It's fine to want to tune for perfection, but that's not always desirable.

November 27, 2018 12:15 a.m.

Winterblast says... #6

The funny aspect of such "discussions" is that the people who always have all answers in theory will most likely never have them in actual games because they build decks like "card X is a solution to Y, card A a solution to B..." making the whole pile completely random and they never have what is really needed.

Arvail I don't think anyone needs to build decks with intentional weaknesses because there is no deck without any weakness anyway. You can build a deck perfectly and it will still have effects that it doesn't want to see. It's upon the opponents to choose their disruption in order to have a good chance against what they think is most dangerous for their own gameplan.

November 27, 2018 4:32 a.m.

There s a few at my LGS that are really bad for this. One of them is really bad about it. He will say can deal with said thing this way or that not to mention he is extremely bad about hyping up his own decks and cards he might put in. I wouldn't generally mind it, but he comes off very smug about it every single time.

He is a newer player and is a cool dude ususally, but it comes across to me that just because he's won a few games he's the be all end all to MTG.

November 27, 2018 5:48 a.m.

SynergyBuild says... #8

You: Krosan Grip your Sanguine Bond before you combo off. How are you going to deal with that, lifegain deck?

Opponent: Tap's Forbidden Orchard, trigger on it goes off, causing the Soul Warden the opponent has to gain 1 life, which causes Sanguine Bond to trigger, to cause their opponent to lose a life, which triggers Exquisite Blood, causing a loop to kill each opponent.


Everything has a counter, the question is, how often do you have it?

I don't mind the conversation, but only if the deck has enough chances of finding the answer, an equivalent, or a tutor that can fetch it. Otherwise the conversation is started on a false premise in which one player already has a perfectly sculpted hand made for an opponent who has cards they do not know.

November 27, 2018 9:08 a.m. Edited.

I've run into this at game shops before. 2 occasions come to mind. Both were actually people talking about storm in modern. I thought (and still think) I have a good storm matchup because I have counterspells and I can apply early pressure. One guy was insistent my storm matchup is bad because every time I pointed out a way my deck could pressure storm he pointed out a possible way for storm to get around it. The other guy was insistent that I can't beat storm if they can play Empty the Warrens on turn 2 for a lot of dudes. He didn't draw the unlikely combo and lost the match in like 12 minutes. He spent the rest of the round telling me how to rebuild my bad deck and how to play the matchup.

November 27, 2018 4:15 p.m.

Grixis776 says... #10

Oh man have I got a story for you guys. FNM, me and two other friends play in a pod with another regular at the store. I’m playing Vorthos bolas, Friend A is playing karlov, Friend B is new to EDH and is playing a jank Chromium, the Mutable deck, regular is playing karthus. Now we all were pretty calm and were looking to have fun. Pretty early we all start talking about what our decks are supposed to do. Karthus player just tries to shut down all of our decks with “oh I’ll just kill that lol” and “I can just steal it with my commander!” Statements. Karlov player just kills all of his ramp out of fear of karthus comboing off or killing us all super easily, fair reasoning. Karlov exiles a Goreclaw, again, out of fear of karthus progressing extremely quickly. Karthus player immediately turns into a child, concedes and whines “I was triple teamed!” I wanted a fair game!” He was above 35 life when he conceded and only the karlov player targeted him. Moral of the story? Don’t try to brag about your deck on turn 3 or threaten to destroy everyone easily if you wanted a “fair game.” Also this is just another reason why you shouldn’t have hypothetical arguments, it starts to put fear in your opponents so now they all begin to target you for the rest of the game when in reality your deck isn’t even that powerful. Oh and be a good sport.

November 27, 2018 5:39 p.m.

Tarmogoyf dies to Doom Blade, therefore it is garbage” lol..

In the world of Martial Arts, we call it being an “armchair warrior” (or a “keyboard warrior” if over the Internet).. Similiarly, I’ve always found the best way to shut them down (in person) is: “Show me”..

November 27, 2018 6:53 p.m.

Suns_Champion says... #12

Glad others feel the same way I do.

ninjaclevs13 I'm totally guilty of the "if I just had ____ card..." but never in a salty way and I try to limit it to one or two haha

legendofa exactly! It's all about how you approach the conversation.

Grixis776 that's just terrible politics from him, I don't care who you are! Never draw attention to yourself haha. Good lessons there.

November 27, 2018 11:22 p.m.

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