Just watched some Playing with Power vids on youtube...
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on March 24, 2022, 5:17 a.m. by jaymc1130
For the first time in a long while and was immediately reminded why I had to stop watching their game play videos. Holy moly is the level of play just absolutely atrocious. Not remotely close to high level competitive play despite being billed as such. Watching so many blatant mistakes one after another is very, very difficult to stomach.
Folks, if you want to play cEDH at a high level of play then places like Playing with Power or Lab Maniacs is only going to help you learn the most basic fundamentals. Unfortunately they will also simultaneously cause you to develop a whole host of awful habits that will later have to be unlearnt in order to play high level cEDH correctly.
Goodness that was tough to watch.
Haven't watched any of their content, I'll have to check it out. Don't get me wrong, I find the folks who work on content like this personable and entertaining, if I didn't I wouldn't bother to watch at all. It's just that sometimes the quality of play is awful and it's not even addressed.
For example, the last vid I watched was a Ramos. K'rrik, Koll, Thrasios/Vial match where the games only lasted like 3 turns and there were like 20 mistakes made in those 3 turns... And they were super duper obvious, not just in hindsight, but legitimately obvious that these plays would be mistakes before they were even made. It was horrendous, there was no content worth watching, there was no entertaining banter, no cool deck tech, it was just a litany of mistakes thrown together into a super cringe video that's impossible to stomach for any true cEDH player.
March 24, 2022 9:32 a.m.
Got you : ) So, is it more of like a deck-tech, deck building channel? I guess I could understand fast and loose gameplay if they are mostly just testing decks and things. It may not be ideal, for sure, but I know when I'm testing decks I'm not playing super serious. But at the same time, they are a youtube channel and I'm just a random person : )
But yeah, I really enjoy cEDHtv, and for casual there really is nothing better than the Nitpicking Nerds. They have pleasant host bantering down to a science!
March 24, 2022 10:22 a.m.
I think playing with power is mostly a cEDH community, I know they have a large discord server contingent and leagues through that. Usually their vids are rather short, it's just the condensed game play so the videos aren't an hour long, which usually makes for a good viewing experience. In this case it didn't work out that way because the level of play was terrible and the only content the video offered was that game play...
March 24, 2022 10:40 a.m.
I personally like watching command zone. Game knights and Extra turns see some insane plays. Manson's Zada deck in extra turns #9 had a one-turn kill basically. It was insane. One of the greatest plays I've personally witnessed.
March 24, 2022 10:53 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #7
Big fan of Play to Win. Any cEDH channel playing a lot of decks is going to make mistakes, but ptw acknowledges them immediately, which imo just makes it more entertaining.
I definitely make plenty of misplays in cEDH, and I'm really only working on one deck. lol
March 24, 2022 10:59 a.m.
@ Ashdust I love Game Knights. Wildly entertaining content. Very amusing content. Always nifty decks (sure, not the most powerful, but always cool and well themed). Amazing content all told. Highly recommend this channel for a fun viewing experience.
March 24, 2022 11:02 a.m.
@ Grubbernaut I'll have to give them a looksie too. We all make misplays, I think should go without saying, lol. None of us is perfect, but there are some misplays that I personally find unforgivable in high level competitive environments because these types of misplays prevent the game from actually being a high level competitive affair. And this always leaves me feeling like I got got. Like some one played a trick on me and lured me in with false advertisement.
March 24, 2022 11:04 a.m.
I second Play to Win, they are really fun in general. I also loved, loved Brew Wars, but as far as I know they aren't doing newer episodes. Patrick is such an awesome host and the decks were really good, but it also seemed like everyone was having fun, which is huge. That's the reason I can't watch Star City Games' commander channel (I tried it twice and was very bleh about it). The whole group seems like they'd rather be doing something else, or at least that's how it seems to me. I can forgive almost anything if they make the game interesting, and Play to Win nails that : )
March 24, 2022 4:21 p.m.
Gotta respectfully disagree with this take, PWP is one of my favorites - they're the ones who got me into cEDH and I've had great success with their tips and tricks
March 24, 2022 4:45 p.m.
x12721 When I first got into cEDH (our whole playgroup actually) watched a ton of PwP and Lab Maniacs. It was a huge help in terms of introducing ourselves to the most basic fundamental elements of cEDH. We quickly learned, within about a years time or so, that while these creators had done a great job of providing a stepping stone into the pool of wider cEDH game play, none of them had ever played MTG at a professional level while our entire playgroup played MTG professionally for most of the decade from 2000-2010. We very rapidly began to realize that the skill level of play seen from such videos was NOT conducive to learning to play cEDH at a high level of competitiveness, these players force everything, tap out constantly, throw out combos as soon as they assemble the pieces in hand (regardless of whether opponents are shields up or shields down), make constant errors in game state evaluation for multiplayer (cEDH is NOT exclusively a competitive format, it is simultaneously also a COOPERATIVE format, you must team up with every other player against every other player and those alliances are short lived and fluid) and don't use advanced analytics or metrics to collect data about their own play to discover if certain cards under or over perform in certain environments. These are the folks who got Flash banned because they all complained so much about Flash Hulk, a deck that was literally unplayable in our groups meta because we found archetypes that easily dismantled all glass cannon fast combo strategies (while the PwP community and LM never even bother to look for a counter strategy, they just moaned and whined and browbeat wizards into banning a card that couldn't even post a 20%+ win rate over a 1000 game sample size).
You can disagree as much as you'd like, but facts are facts. The quality of play you will find from these channels is NOT high level cEDH. It is amateur cEDH and you MUST recognize this as a player if you want to improve your skills beyond that amateur level. I'm sad too that this is the case because I do have very fond memories of these channels when I was first picking up cEDH, but I have to state it, time and again, as I have for most of the las 4ish years here on TO, that these are fine places to learn THE BASIC FUNDAMENTALS but you will need to find other sources and superior players to improve beyond that level of play.
March 24, 2022 7:17 p.m.
Grubbernaut says... #13
You're not wrong, but my experience in the modern-era cEDH community is that it's about 90% relatively normal players who just want to play with the most powerful cards. The "absolute max power, competitive rules enforcement" side seems to be substantially smaller, at least by Spelltable and social media, but obviously my outlook is biased and informed by my own experiences.
March 24, 2022 8:46 p.m.
Grubbernaut Might be biased, but your experiences align with mine, that's pretty much exactly what I've seen as well.
March 24, 2022 9:21 p.m.
I think "blooper" segments with hilarious sound effects would be REALLY good & would set one of these content creators apart a bit. I think Star City Games would be the perfect place for this, though they are blatantly not playing cEDH usually, which I like. I get bothered very little by mistakes because when I am playing a new deck they come out the woodwork, it is the difference between working with a complete unknown versus knowing several of your options beforehand. I imagine these content creators, especially the cEDH ones, run into that with the sheer amount of new decks they are playing all the time.
I want to see a segment where the old Ultima Online spell fizzle sound plays when this happens... That would be solid gold
March 26, 2022 11:33 a.m.
Gleeock Oh my goodness that's an amazing idea! I would go nuts over that kind of thing, it would be unbelievably funny and entertaining if these channels would start to do stuff like this for their vods. Definitely something that would improve the quality of content on an episode by episode basis.
March 26, 2022 5 p.m.
jaymc1130 It really would.. It would mean they would need a really strong editor/producer, though viewers can do alot of the legwork by spotting & calling things out - they often already do.
March 26, 2022 6:11 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #18
I've fallen out of love for Game Knights because of how many advertisements they have now, back-to-back in large blocks, multiple times per episode.
I get it, they gotta get paid. But my God is it annoying to get through those if I am not immediately able to skip ahead because it's background noise.
March 27, 2022 6:21 p.m.
I certainly watch them a less often than some other channels, but it's mostly due to the fact that their vods are very often an hour+. I think they have amazing guests and cool features, awesome interactions and hilarity always ensues, but I just don't always have an hour+ to watch an episode. That's one of the things that I think PwP does extremely well, keep the episodes condensed enough that viewing them isn't super time consuming.
March 27, 2022 7:39 p.m. Edited.
TypicalTimmy says... #20
Their newest Guest episode for the fans is 2 hours long. It took me two days to watch because I don't have the time to sit for 2 hours and watch 1 episode.
Niko9 says... #2
I've seen a few, but haven't had a chance to watch too much of their stuff so far. As somebody who doesn't play cEDH, I find it entertaining, but I'm also not necessarily looking to watch super optimized play, just more to see different styles and ideas.
Have you ever checked out cEDHtv? I really enjoy their approach, and I especially like the recap at the end where the host goes over possible play mistakes, particularly good turns, and things like that. It's nice to see that they acknowledge that the play isn't always perfect, but also look at it and help the viewer learn from it. Mons is kinda awesome : )
March 24, 2022 9:08 a.m.