I played at a card shop a couple of months ago and found myself in that same position. The guy to my left played a Magistrate and everyone else at the table agreed it had to go, so we all just kept attacking him, and he pitched the biggest fit over it. Honestly, it was one of the funnier things I've seen in a while.
@@Thoughtmage100 Like, people forget: If you attack one player with a lightning bolt, it's understandable to be upset when everyone attacks you. But if you jam / slow down 3 others players, you should totally expect the ire / focus of 3 players. If you didn't want to be targeted by 3 players, don't play something that negatively affects all of them (That's why I like forbidden orchard, it's a good political tool alongside you building yourself up)
I AM THE SALTY ONE IN MY POD! Or, I used to be. What's helped me the most is taking on the casual mindset while playing. I warn players about big turns, I help players know which creature of mine is the biggest threat, I explain my game-plan thoroughly before we start. If I don't build optimally, why should I play optimally?
Yea its basicly playing the entire game, not only your game. Other players big turns are also fun, as long as you are doing what you can to make the game interesting aswell.
The funny thing about drannith magistrate was that it was designed to be a hate card against companions in ikoria. Then they nerfed companions and forced you to put them into your hand before casting it. So now in the new rules he no longer can stop a companion from being cast. That means the whole point of the card being printed ended up going to waste in a way and now he exists as an annoying stax piece. He failed at his one goal in the end and lived long enough to see himself become the villain.
that actually makes sense, i never realized it was the case always assumed commander hate (and impulse draw i guess?) was the actual main intention behind the design
Little by little I've been showing my playgroup that not every deck needs to put 12 creatures on board to win a game. I tend to run low creature counts with lots of interaction, and I win in many different ways, tokens attacking, burn, combo, extra turns, etc. and for a while people got salty about it. After a lot of conversations where I kept explaining that winning with a bunch of haste dragons that you cast with reduced cost is not that different from a sacrifice loop. You set up, and once that setup is complete, it's normally GG. Or that if the Pantlaza player keeps getting creatures for zero mana every turn, why can't I play grave pact to deal with those creatures for zero mana as well? Lately I feel like they're getting more and more used to these different approaches to the game, which has been very positive. Anyway, great content as usual.
I really enjoy my Pantlaza deck because Grave Pact and other edict effects are common in my meta. The card advantage from the discover mechanic feels super strong, I don't fault anybody for aiming all their creature removal at me haha
I agree that there’s the most salt in commander, but there's definitely salt in formats like modern, especially when its a format dominated by decks like hogaak or scam
I found the best way to get over salt is to goldfish your decks against one another. When you are the one shutting yourself down you see why these cards get played and you obviously wont get mad at yourself. When you sit down with other players after that, you will be more chill. That said, I disagree that salt is fed by experienced players to new players. I started playing with only new players and I still felt salt. Don’t pretend salt isn’t a natural reaction that people can feel like any other emotion. Where it crosses the line is when you throw a fit over a game.
The problem with Yu-Gi-Oh floodgates is that game is too fast for those cards. If someone plays a floodgates in Magic, you will almost always have the couple of turns to get rid of it, but in Yu-Gi-Oh, if you can't do anything for one turn you're dead
I've certainly had similar interactions to your Humility story. My favourite deck is a grindy graveyard control deck helmed by Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. Experienced players are more likely to tilt off over discarding cards, while newer players are having fun learning that [[Vengeful Pharaoh]] is a card.
Vengeful Pharoah is fun, I got one for my Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer deck. Very unique form of "don't attack me" card in black, or even removal if your opponents don't realize what it does and that it's in the grave.
I found a great playgroup recently where the only opposition to stax decks were that nobody wanted to combine stax and group slug decks at the same time.
"What makes a casual deck" is probably one of those questions, that could easily become a standalone video or episode of Magic Mirror Podcast in and of itself. That's actually one of those topics, that interests me alot when discussing Magic with different players from different groups or even sometimes within my usual group as well. We're all ostensibly playing the same game, but with something like "casual commander", the definition of that game might be different with everyone at the table. I think that both recognizing your own definition of casual and realizing that your definition might differ from those of other players is a key to finding a path away from salt. It's a recognition, that you share your fun with everyone at the table and bring your own flavor of fun with you when you play. Getting caught up in someone having a different idea of fun from you is not just a waste of energy, but also disrespectful to others, barring obvious border-crossing stuff like your fun being actively hateful or belligerent.
I believe casual means you're playing more to savour the social experience or creative expression. I communicate my vibe because I expect most people view casual as "not cedh"
@@seanedgar164 That's a pretty good way of narrowing it down. Between these two, creative expression resonates more to what I think casual commander is. Much as the social experience of Commander is a factor that plays into all levels of the game, it's too complicated and long to be driven entirely by the social gathering. If I were to sum up what I believed casual EDH to be "A game of EDH you're trying to win conditionally" comes to mind. "My goal is to swing for game with a 30/30 Ragavan", "I'll win using Thoracle, but I'm only allowed to draw in order to thin the deck", "I'm going to beat each opponent with commander damage from their own commanders", stuff like that to make things more elaborate and give room for everyone to show off their cool and interesting ideas as well.
My favorite deck is yarok and if my opponent plays a torpor orb That's fine with me. Yes my entire deck is based around creature ETBs, but that's why I run non-creature based removal, counter magic, and other tools to help me restabilize. I wish that more Commander players were willing to simply include outs in their deck, rather than get upset that other people are trying to actually play the game to win. Like yeah, it is annoying when you're playing a game and someone is just making it go on forever with nothing happening. But there's a difference between that, and learning how to play around things
People will get very salty over any card. I remember one instance playing with strangers at my lgs where I stuck a smothering tithe kinda early like turn 3 and was making a bunch of treasures. One guy at the table paid for literally every smothering tithe trigger he could and then was super upset after the game and left. He didn't have an outburst or anything but I could tell he was very upset and he promptly left our playgroup. I think he was also upset that other people were not paying for the smothering tithe as well while he was. I think about that interaction a lot when thinking about salt because it just felt so strange to me. If I were a new player at the table I have no idea what I would think of that interaction but I might take smothering tithe out of my deck, even though smothering tithe is not crazy in the powerlevel that deck wants to play at.
I also really enjoy playing a lot of these roadblock cards like ghostly prison and thalia heretic cathar, I think that roadblock cards are what makes magic fun in the first place if the only thing stopping you from winning with all of your big dudes is that someone else put out a bigger dude already thats not very fun to me.
I'm honestly not surprised that Smothering Tithe was able to get this kind of reaction happen. It is a very specific kind of salty card, one that I find myself occasionally actually getting tripped up by whenever I think of the few things that get me frumpy during a game. So long as it's not removed, they're the kinds of cards, that in order to sufficiently counteract, requires a collective understanding about the threat of the card that just doesn't happen most of the time. All it takes is one weak-link, one person that refuses to play into the game or over-extends, thinking they'll just race it and it'll be fine for the card to spiral out of control. While nowhere near as strong as it, it's something of a cousin of Rhystic Study in this regard and the kind of salt I see thrown at both come from very similar places. One of the key ingredients to salt in pvp games is detachment from your failure. So long as you can convince yourself that your loss isn't related to your own decisions in the game and that there was "nothing to be done" about the situation that caused your loss, you can cultivate salt. Cards like Rhystic and Tithe are both really great at creating these kinds of detachments. It's the Magic: The Gathering equivalent of saying "Bot Fed" in League of Legends. It's a convenient excuse for a prideful mind to shunt the blame of someone getting out of hand to someone else, regardless of whether there was something you could have done about the situation yourself.
"People will get very salty over any card." What a load of disingenuous nonsense. Not all cards are equally salty. And if you're confused as to how an early Smothering Tithe would be salty, you're really not paying attention to the format.
@@AlluMan96 Thank you! Never thought about it that way, but it's true! It's a way to insulate yourself from failure. Should people take a game they play for fun so seriously that they need to do that? No. But, it's human nature.
I'm perfectly happy losing, I despise tithe though. It's an objectively powerful card that is so detrimental to try and play around while ignoring it boosts your opponent so far ahead. I see it as a must-answer card because it skews games so sharply. I just want a chill game to win down after a long week.
Roadblock? hehe, i guess you could use the term we use in YGO for cards with continuous effects that prevent the opponent from doing a certain action, they are called "Floodgates", a card that limits the times you can summon in a turn is a floodgate, a card that doesn't let your opponent play spell cards is a floodgate, etc
@SeriosSkies92 not necessarily, mostly since ygo is seen as "flooding the board" in a lot of decks, so things that hard stop it are the "floodgates" Although there is a card called floodgate trap hole, that if it's condition is met, puts a opponents card face down and not allow them to flip it back up at all, thus stopping you from performing a game action
@@SeriosSkies92It’s more of a functional name, think about in this way, a collector ouphe is on the field against an artifact deck, what happens when it’s removed? The “floodgate” is opened and I’ve seen artifact players immediately win after the ouphe is removed. Any yugioh stax piece is like that scenario
Preach. I've always been an advocate for just playing the game in your way and accepting the way others play. If commander is casual why pressure others to conform to your preferences. Be honest and try to match so the games are actually dynamic
About go-shintai and shrine decks, a buddy of mine has a sisay shrine deck he brings almost every time I see him. It plays out almost the same way every time, down to the order of the shrines he tutors out (and almost ends games when he gets Sanctum of All). Its still fun to play against. Its powerful enough to make people deal with it, and silly enough to lose games when people concentrate on it. Every time, its a puzzle to solve. Do I ram a large creature through, paying the Sphere of Safety tax *and* lose my beater to aurification? I have to ask myself and my "allies" different questions every game, despite seeing mostly the same cards from him. He likes playing the same cards, and I like attacking with different cards. If I can't deal with his board, that's on me as a deckbuilder.
I've always maintained EDH is a format primarily driven by salt. My pod plays high power casual "we're trying to win but not before turn 3" style Commander. We've gotten tired of people getting salty so we just created our own little "cEDH Jr." thing. I'd love to play cEDH too I imagine, but unfortunately at least in my area the cEDH players are all cliqueish dickwads that scare away everyone who wants to join them or learn cEDH. I just wish there was a more widely accepted version of our little high power casual but not cEDH format. I feel commander is best when its at that level.
High power player here. You're not alone, mate. I wish everyone were trying to actually play Magic with its complexities and try to win. TTM is one a of my fav creators for that reason. He's not into content booboo decks.
@@commanderpower99 but like? every format except for EDH is that? Just play pauper, standard, modern, legacy, vintage(lol) or whatever. go play pioneer :D
I’m a new commander player and the more I play and build decks, the more I learn, the more I realize that “fairness” and “balance” are Titanic lies. I just solitaired a 4 deck game wherein one deck died with 28 4/4 angels with vigilance on top of 16 scute swarms and hexproof everything and more creatures. Another deck died with eight creatures with total power of over 120. The third deck went from 54 life to -76 life because fourth deck ended up with Gisela, Blade of the Goldnight wearing Helm of The Host and producing three copies of her, and a Siege Gang Commander throwing goblins at players for 32 damage a goblin.
Yeah that's an insane game I'm glad to have avoided 😂 high power games like that are why I focus on the Casual when I say I play casually. I like seeing consistent decks doing chill stuff, I'm gonna get stressed or have to lock in against actually scary must-answer boards. I used and run removal well, but I'm here to chill out!
Honestly, this helps a lot. I remember I stopped going to my own lgs because everyone there was always so bitter and complained about every other card for a while, and that rubbed off onto me and made me hate playing the game with my friends while I was there. After a while I just stopped showing up entirely, because why drive somewhere just to get yelled at by someone for an hour for playing a precon, you know? Been playing with friends online ever since, and I'm honestly glad I did because its slowly been removing this horrible toxic mindset that I had gotten myself sucked into. I doubt what happened was a common occurrence, but the salt levels there nearly killed any fun I would have had with mtg tbh, and I genuinely hope what happened was an exception, and not the rule
Wait, so just whining and complaining about things isn't helpful and doesn't lead to healthy experiences? Craaaaaaaazy! 😮 The mindset you exemplify in this video is why I appreciate you the most of any of the other creators I listen to in this space. You constantly want to improve the quality of players while maintaining the general enjoyability of the game, and I applaud that. Keep up the good work, man.
I make a lot of rules for myself, but I do not expect anyone else to follow those rules. I also love disruptive "Roadblock" cards. However, drannith is basically the only one I won't run. This is mainly because I find the card uninteresting. It requires no deck building to make good. It's just a generic, good card (my least favorite kind of card).
Not everyone has that hipster deck building itch. Plenty of people at my LGS just want to make something competent without spending time away from their families to make something special. I definitely get seeing stuff over and over, but I also think it’s something that is just going to happen.
1) build a commander deck based around a weird, but interesting theme 2) bring in cards that swap players around like cruel entertainment and mindslaver, and target yourself with someone else 3) *politely* expand someone's horizons by having them play your weird deck for a turn simple fact is that some cards are just strong tho, and people will keep running them because they're just all-around good in many commander decks (things like rhystic study, craterhoof behemoth, and smothering tithe come to mind). Worst comes to worst, don't be afraid to throw some removal around
@ilshail153 ow I run alot of removal because I hate these cards because they come up to often so I'm known for nuking thinks like do you pay effect ls the second they touch to board or will deflecting swat an effect so someone has to sacrifice a stronger thing the just a token then bog their graveyard
I have a scuffed edh deck based off modern lantern control which would be really weak but I think I would enjoy playing it. Ive never played it because I just know people would get wayyy too mad
I play to have fun and win down with friends tho? I'm fine with roadblocks or some lockouts if I have fair warning. Why would I spend my Saturday night not playing the game I sat down for though?
I think the thing that’s hard to get away from is “My show and tell is the wincon”. And when people don’t get to do that, it feels bad on two fronts, not being able to show what their deck does, and not winning the game. And in a multiplayer format, there’s one winner and 3 losers. Everyone spent the same amount of time, but not everyone gets the same amount of fun
I think the only point I’d make is there is a good chance most new players are excited to see cool monsters and flashy spells, and want to play them to smash people’s faces with them. To a new player, a 7/7 dinosaur with trample is probably cooler than a Viscera Seer or some other value creature that an experienced player knows will likely have far greater impact than a French vanilla creature. Showing them cool toys and then introducing them to “no you don’t” effects can be an immediate interest killer for some that either aren’t interested in the intricacies of magic yet, or aren’t aware of them. It’s kind of like people trying a fighting game for the first time, where they only know the basic controls…then hitting them with a combo where they never even touch the ground or have a chance to fight back. SOME players will see that and keep playing so that THEY can learn that…while others will just give up because they never even got a chance to try. It really is in the other player’s best interest to help the new player understand that a Torpor Orb isn’t the end of the world, that in magic (especially with the card pool available in EDH) there is a solution to every problem, you just need to be prepared for it. Be a good mentor for new players, don’t coddle them but educate them at a pace that keeps them interested without feeling crushed or overwhelmed. That’s why I really like Two-Headed Giant as an introduction for new players, as you can pair the new player with an experienced player as a teammate without accidentally kingmaking.
Great episode! My playgroup generally has a policy of any non-banned (and even a few banned) cards are cool, but there are some cards we consider "rude" like free counter spells, original duals and cards that completely lock out the table *without a wincon on board (if you can end the game, do your infinite turn loops that's cool). Generally if someone plays them, there may be some moaning for a pinch but we're ok with it, but that player should also know any chip damage someone has with open blockers is probably coming at them until someone presents a bigger problem. Play what you want to play, but if you're trying to pull off Thoracle Shenanigans or mass land destruction against a precon, don't be surprised when you're the problem until proven otherwise
In the group I played in for about 4 years, while we were nowhere near cEDH, there definitely was a certain interpersonal competitive edge, and that ended up causing a serious salt streak for me in certain situations. During Covid, that group kind of fell apart, and with the 3 players we had left we started playing Gloomhaven instead. The last couple years we've connected with a different group and started playing regularly again and the time away had definitely given me the mental reset I needed to just sit down and have fun with my friends again.
A friend beat me with an infinite combo and I got salty, but now I'm over it. It's a casual game, who cares if one loses in an "unfair" way? There's a lot of behind-the-scenes decisions going on in the mind of the stax/combo/control/whatever people get salty about player that new/low power players don't see
This is a bit of a long one. So i got into magic with my highschool playgroup. They invited me in and showed me the ropes, and pretty quickly i was hooked. There were giant donation boxes of cards, so i built the jankiest, off kilter decks (i was adamant about recieving minimal help after the basics). The group had decks outside of the highschool jank pool, and they were obviously a cut above due to experienced players building and investing in them. We had this one guy who would always play red/white(Boros), a white/black/blue leaning control player(esper), a mono green enthusiast, and myself: the jank izzet player. Because this was highschool and our brains werent very big, but our emotions were, eventually Boros built up a heavy dislike for interaction/removal/boardwipes, claiming they slowed the game down too much. Esper has a bit of a complex and takes it personally when his stuff gets removed (HE likes to be in control), and eventually agrees with Boros about removal (mind you he still played control and has started leaning towards stax and less dedicated removalpieces). This leads to games where either Boros just wins because nobody can stop him without him getting angry and the game session ending (it was at his house) or Esper shutting the game down then dragging the game on for turns on end, delaying his win condition in hand to try and let people "win". Eventually the playgroup fizzles due to factors outside the game, and life goes on. Fast forward a few years and everyone are adults now, ive kept in touch with Esper (mainly because his roomate is one of my good friends), meanwhile Esper has kept in touch and still plays in a group with boros. My friend got into magic because of esper, and I've recently been able to play with them semi-regularly in a playgroup. I now play decks loaded with interaction (12-16 pieces usually), as i've learned the importan e and fun if it. The first game session I played with them I remember vividly: First deck was gishath. He comes out, swings, snowballs. On espers turn (he's playing black/red dargo, has an infinite mana/draw combo currently going on) he realizes he'll die on his turn due to etb pings (i forgot i had a creature that was doing that, and he was well into a combo). He gets visibility upset, stating that if i remembered my pings he would have taken a different route and drawn a boardwipe. I politely let him roll back his entire turn and confidently tell him there's no way he's winning. He proceeds to look through hIs entire deck TWICE, only to find he has no boardwipe or fog in his deck, and his removal option requires etb that will kill him. He concedes, wondering why his deck didnt have a boardwipe. Second game I choose Ghyrson starn, modified to be a pillow-fort ping deck that flips anything i cant ping back to hand. I get a good fort going early (Ghyrson starn, Kira, great glass spinner, shockmaw dragon). Both esper and my friend can't do anything as their boards get wiped constantly due to shockmaw, and they'd need to play two removal spells to take out anything on my board. They each converse to eachother, claiming they have nothing. They concede after a few turns naturally. After these games over a forbidden incense (so everyone be chillin), i casually suggest that if they played more interaction, i wouldn't've gotten so far ahead. They explain how their other playgroup (boros) dosent play with much interaction because they hate not getting to play their cards. I tell them that they can play anything they want whenever i play with them, as im up for anything. I say that the way i feel less salty in magic is to remember a few things: it'll take 10 turns to die to a 4/4, and boardwipes are only 4 mana. Now, the playgroup has expanded a little and there's more than just me with interaction. Esper still takes getting his things removed quite personally, but he's mellowed out greatly, but my friend and the others are all for interaction heavy games, and I've recently had some of the most engaging and fun magic games i've ever had! And it's all good games at the end because nobody is garunteed to win (we've all won some!)
i really love this video and ur takes on salt. i myself was that kind of player, i tought 'boring' decks were bad and unfun and landdistruction or discard was a sin to even consider brewing. in retrospect, it might just have been that way because my brother, who got me to play edh in the first place, had these opinions. thanks for the change in perspective!
I was at my LGS tonight and was playing against a new player (less than 2 months) and a player whose face I've frequently seen at that LGS for months. I was playing in Rakdos colors, so I cast a blood moon. The table already saw it coming because it was revealed with Protection Racket on my upkeep 2 turns before I played it. New player was playing G/R/W dinos, the older player was playing U/R/G/W Aragorn. I dropped Blood Moon on turn 5, oldhead player starts freaking out, despite having an answer to blood moon in that his lands were enchanted with I think Utopia Sprawl and the like to fix his colors anyway. He starts freaking out and mad-dogs me the rest of the game, acting super toxic towards the new player too just critiquing his dinos deck left and right, despite the Aragorn player making tons of mistakes himself. I remember the new dinos player seeing the card and his reaction being to the effect of "oh, ok cool. I already have my basic plains and forests anyway" and proceeded to end up lasting longer in that game because he wasn't focused on removing a card that he already found a way to play around. Crazy how the new player had a more rational approach than the "seasoned" player, who already was playing around my Blood Moon with his land enchantments to color-fix, but was too daft to realize he was already in the clear and mad-dogged me just for having one stax-y card out.
the new player wasn't hit too hard so he felt it was totally fine. But let him get hit by a blood moon with zero basics and a deck he invested more time and money in...
I think you should get the podcast together and come up with some budget removal "skeletons" for each color (and colorless). 10-15 cards that fit in that color that are universally good in almost every game (think generous gift or lantern of the lost). I see so many 4 player games of commander turn into virtual 1v1s because one player is dropping threats and the other is removing them while the other 2 players arent contributing in any meaningful way.
This is a great video that brings up a great point. There’s always a play group that’ll be just fine playing whatever you have, but be weary of what people like. Some of my friends don’t like my Azami, Lady of Scrolls deck because it’s a fringe CEDh deck and wins out of nowhere. I’ll tone it down and play something else with them. But, my brother and some different friends love to see who can pop off the fastest, so combos are fun for us. TLDR: Play what’s fun for the group, not just what’s fun for you.
I've had exactly this experience in a game yesterday night, a friend runs an "Omo, queen of Vesuva" deck, big simic that plays 3 lands per turn and do combos with gates lands and extra turns, I played mono white with a commander not a lot played "Kwende, Pride of Femeref". I run Archon of Emeria and shut down the table to win with attacking creatures since nobody could remove my archon. My friend was super salty because he couldn't play his 3-4 spells per turn, I just used the same argument as you, if I built my deck without any stax and just to go fast he would be dead turn 4 instead of 10 or I would just have watch him unfold his game plan and playing solitary, so I need a way to imbalance the game in my favor, it's called playing magic. I tend to be salty over free counter spell but soft tax is very good for magic, it makes the players more aware of others boards and think about what they do instead of just empty their hand on their board without strategy
While watching this video, I kinda got some parallels drawn in my head with me being a fighting game player. Salt originates from our perception, particularly if something is "too good", but something I've been working with and implementing is reflecting on what *I* can do when I'm in a bad position. For a FG, it could be being trapped in the corner, or for Commander, it could be a board starting to snowball into a big threat. It's a lot more productive for me to go "aw, dangit, I guessed wrong" or "ooh, this is bad, what can I do in this situation?" instead of "____ is broken and needs to be nerfed", for FGs it's almost like putting on house rules on other players who honestly won't ever see me again if I'm playing online or players I may not talk to all the time in-person. The burden of winning and adapting is always on me, no matter what my opponents do. Some of my friends (who are seasoned in MtG) are relatively anti-interaction, especially counterspells, or at least rather salty when I play these cards, and while I get it's annoying to have your gameplan be slowed down, that's just the game to me, it's still in a sense competitive (someone has to come out on top), even if the "stakes" are a lot lower. I'm given tools and you're given tools, and it's part of the fun to be able to navigate that, even in a more laid-back, casual setting imo (granted I don't usually play at LGSs and I mostly play against your typical snowbally midrange decks, so I don't see as wide of a deck pool). I'm also very glad you talked about content creator influence. It's very real and I think different content creators give different vibes to Magic that really do affect us. I really have to thank people like you for helping me make my deckbuilding more mindful.
a personal example: when a friend completely shut down my deck with overwhelming splendor (which nobody was gonna remove cause affected only me, the aggro player who was pulling ahead), i didn't complain, i put aura shards in the deck if you start looking for answers that get you out of things that hard counter your deck... well, suddenly no card is salty anymore
Thanks so much for making these kinds of videos as I have literally bought my first precon last week and I think all of the information is super helpful, and that goes with all of your other videos
I remember being a new player going to my first FNM with my first ever deck with kwain and I played a jace wielder of mysteries ( had no combos or anything nor was I in any position to win) and there was another player rolling their eyes and just looked super annoyed and I was just super confused. The guy was generally just unpleasant and because of that I never played commander at an LGS again.
While I agree with your points, there is a difference in how many times a week you get to play commander. If you play multiple games a week, then you look forward to games where you are hindered and have to find creative ways to get out of a removal loop, your commander being made into a forest, etc. But if it is one of your 2 games you get to play a week, then I understand why someone might actually look forward to just get to play out their game plan with limited resistance. I still think your main points hold, as you say some players come to a game with different expectations of what fun means.
The way I see a lot of stax pieces is that the tax they apply to me is the removal I have to go out of my way to cast instead of the cards they are actually taxing/blocking. I'm a spell slinger player so if anything that makes my cards cost more mana then I just have to remove that game piece to return to my game plan. My spellslinger decks can get incredibly out of hand so those stax pieces are incredibly necessary to slow me down and claiming otherwise would be ignorant and/or selfish xD
4:45 Learned today from cardmarket's latest staple or stinker video with a ygo player that they call these type of effects floodgates which honestly very similar to road block
The only cards I see that could make any deck go from casual to not is 2 card combos that can only be stopped with counter spells or weird interaction like forcing someone to draw stuff like that because their is no I destroy/extile it type effects all colors have access to when only blue can effectively stop the 2 card combo its not casual imo
As someone who plays a lot of stax decks, it's comical to have you define "roadblocks". Others have mentioned Floodgates similarly in Yu-Gi-Oh, but I feel that stax gets a bad name in EDH even though it should be a natural part of the anti combo meta game. No reason to redefine it as roadblocks when it's just good ol' fashion taxes.
YGO is actively limiting/banning their floodgates. They're not fun to play against or with and one dimensionally put a player in a "Draw the out or don't play the game" situation.
Funny thing is for me I get way more salty about 1v1 than Commander, not at the player, but at the game itself. Sheltered by Ghosts in Standard will get me tilted in a way Dranith Magistrate or Cyclonic Rift or Kiki-Jiki never could. Yeah your thing might hose _my_ deck and the cards I have in hand, but that means there’s probably political avenues to explore, or at the very least I probably get ignored and can mount a comeback.
There's 2 things I get salty about: 1. Mindslicer loops. However, I can handle this. I run a fair amount of exile-based removal so I'm not too worried about this. I only really get salty when the game goes another five or six turns before the Mindslicer player is actually able to take us out. If they Mindslicer us and then either immediately take us out or take us out next turn, it's not a big deal. 2. Solitaire turns, Korvold and Chulane are the biggest offenders here. I get it. I played enchantress for a while, the solitaire turns are fun to play. However, they are boring to watch. So I took my enchantress deck apart out of respect for the other players I play against. Pretty much the rest of it is fair game (pun intended). I play against Sheoldred, the Apocalypse a lot (a deck a lot of ppl say is salty) and it's one of my favorite matchups. Honestly, since I like to run a lot of cheap (not free, just cheap), I tend to make wheel decks my bitch by emptying my hand of removal while the wheel is on the stack, then draw into a new hand of removal. It's glorious 😊
2 cards i hate that i don't think people will agree with me on are farwell and overloaded rift. And it's not because it destroys or resets board states it's because it does that so well but 9 times out of 10 the person doesn't have a follow up so the game goes on way longer and turns into a slog mostly farwell my god farwell is annoying if someone doesn't have a fallow up to it
@ethanboyd2981 most would agree but they are also played alot i personly dont run any card i don't like playing into like exper the do you pay cards or these 2 board whipes but they are all very popular but very salty cards
I used to be the salty player because I was bad. I built my deck around a guy, and removing the guy caused me to no longer play the game whatsoever, so I became salty if the guy was removed. The #1 way to stop being salty (for most people) is to get better at the game.
There are a few ways to look at salt. Personally I think cards that continously prevent gameplans are not a great fit for casual commander, especially if they are hard to interact with. I have this opinion mainly because having a answer to anything at any time is what perpetuates an armsrace, thereby moving us away from playing dumb funny cards and ever closer to cedh. With that in mind i realy hope the bracket systhem works out, since people, like me, who have no lgs or playgroup are the ones who have to do a lot of rule 0 before any given game.
Yeah it is crazy how many people get salty during games. There's always fun to be had, and unless it's like for prizes or someone's targeting you for non-current in-game reasons (you killed their commander 3 turns ago, or they hate you sorta shtuff).
Granted mana crypt jeweled lotus and rhystic always sorta rubbed me the wrong way in casual. But I usually try not to salt too hard cuz yucking someone else's yum is never cool
i never understood the argument or ran into people IRL who say fetchlands or dual lands are not casual, since there are so many of them available and they are included in most precons
Have a sliver deck with fetches because I need to be able to get my mana so I can survive being archenemy from turn 1 I know it makes me the enemy and told the group as much Still got weird comments about the fetches and some of the other inclusions that were in there because I have had this deck for years and been slowly feeding it upgrades
I had a Yuriko player get salty at me for playing a Pithing Needle and naming Yuriko (so they couldn't use Commander Ninjitsu -- they could still cast Yuriko though) saying I was playing a "Drannith Magistrate like card".
At this point there's only two things I'm salty about, people who have consistently have 20 minute solitaire turns, and boardwipes. I used to be salty about so much stuff, but consistently playing against people who aren't afraid to use the annoying cards has helped me get over myself.
ive only been salty once at a casual game night. i was last in turn order and was targetted down by the table because there were prizes on the line and i was at a table of friends. not something explictly a problem with deck power levels just a problem with the mindset of that table.
People say these "no combo" type house rules are everywhere but I've been playing since 2013 and have never run into them. I've played with set groups and store pickup pods and at convention and I've never seen them. I've seen people complain or sigh when an annoying card comes out but I haven't seen anyone say not to play them. It appears send like an imagined issue.
3:20 this comment immediately brings up the looming topic of "brackets", which I really wonder how they will affect this conversation. Are roadblocks going to be soft banned from low power tables? Will putting them in a higher bracket even help in the slightest with the salt they carry? I get the feeling wagging your finger at someone and saying "You signed up for this for putting that Ancient Tomb you pulled in your dinosaur deck" won't immediately make someone like cards they don't like.
Im glad youve touched on this. My friend has a Tergrid in his deck and whenever he plays it my other friend always groans and complains. However every time I see the Tergrid its… fine? Like its a good card but having it in the command zone is a completely different experience than it being in the 99 of a group slug deck.
Yeah, often salt is based on learning what others get salty of and replicate it. If you cant get around the salt, also just take a break or stop playing.
Only salt I have is 10+ minute turns one after another, and I have to pay attention to all their triggers and bs abilities because apparently you are responsable for checking what they are doing and if you need to counter. I know you need to pay attention but it is impossible to watch someone take long turns all the time and not just doze off looking into a blank wall. Oh and when the pen and paper come out to follow all the triggers and effects, I am like "you better win or atleast kill someone with that! Kill me, release me from this torture"
I don't know about that roadblock take. I just think interaction do help keeping balance while not halting the game. I don't think it's much fun to be out of the game for 3 turn searching a way to get rid of a reast in peace, grave pact or aurashard. Now we shouldn't complain like baby when they show up, but I would much rather have my grave exiled than seeing a rest in peace, see a bane of progresse rather than a aura shard and a board whipe rather than a grave pact.
The problem with Dranith Magistrate isn't really that she's individually too strong. It's a creature that's manageable, the problem is that it's a real pain to deal with because it's going to exploit the rules of the commander too unfairly, in my opinion. This is also the case with cards like rysthic study. The fewer cards there are in a game, the better the game, so you might as well not play them. Any card can be removed, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem card. Putting your opponents in the situation of ‘either you have a way of removing this, or I'm going to take an insurmountable lead’ is not what I like about the format. Personally, I don't mind saying that this or that card shouldn't be played, just as I don't mind if someone points out that they didn't like a card in my own deck. And I think that's pretty healthy for the games.
Drannith was designed to counter the Companion mechanic which eventually was reworked to not interact with Drannith. THAT is my issue with it. When a card completely counters the namesake of the format, Commander, it shouldn't exist in the format.
I agree it’s much better to have the “how to overcome a problem” mindset than complaining about cards being OP and unfair. That being said, there are certain “road blocks” (i.e. humility, aura shards, gravepact) I find genuinely unfun in almost all casual games and if you care about the fun of the whole group, you should replace those with one-off effects (switch Bane of progress for aura shards!). Even if I am playing enough removal, I am going to reasonably have max 2-3 ways of dealing with enchantments in let’s say mono red or black deck. Is it fun for anyone to just sit there not able to play anything meaningful and hoping to draw one of those 3 cards?
I think when I feel salt in EDH it's because it's a best of one multiplayer format with no sideboarding, where you're strategically encouraged to build a deck with threats that can only be answered by very narrow sideboard card answers, like with a thoracle win, or some kind of lazy aetherflux reservoir stuff. Feels like they aren't tapping into the expressive nature of the format by just jamming the most strategically viable option. You might say, well gang up on that player with the other players- what do you do if it's three of them? I think there's a point where salt would be justified, but there's mature adult ways to navigate the situation as well.
I used to think Drannoth was a stupid card that totally went against the spirit of the format. Now that I play with more removal, and at tables with a lot of frightening commanders, honestly a turn or two of Drannith feels like a nice pause^^ (I'm still salty that the most commander-relevant of my beloved Ikoria is a lame human stax piece instead of one of the numerous cool monsters but that salt feels right (also free my boy Lutri, he did everything wrong but Alania needs him))
My first time playing against dranith magistrate was not a bad one. I had a turn 3 eyown the shieldmaiden into a lot of tokens however the turn two dranith stopped that I was annoyed and way put of my league on this table and needed my commander and proceded to aim at forcing him to block with the dranith. It got swordsd and I dealt all 40 damage to that guy for denying my commander. He wqs also in a late game value deck and try8ng to stall and get there so was a very valid target although I didnt understand at the time.
So I think lots of things can be true. 1. Salt is absolutely self-perpetuating and has its own “EDHREC Effect” to use the snail’s term. 2. If I tap out for keyword big and you play humility, that’s not really an issue, I play removal. The problem arises when you counter the removal, and play answers.deck. Imagine if you counterspell that desert twister how much less cool of a moment that is. 3. On the “play more interesting decks” idea, I would argue you should play more interesting ways to be the archenemy. Don’t play the card that makes the table groan when you announce its name. Instead play a card that makes them ask “what does that do?” and then after you explain, THEN it makes them groan. Don’t cast Humility, cast Witness Protection and Radiant Performer. It’s way cooler and way funnier. You don’t need the salt cards
You stated time and again that you like control decks that colors your perception of them. Salt inducing cards are cards that accue too much value for the amount of mana used to cast such thing or when cards prevent players from being able to play the game. No one gets salty when someone casts a jeska's will and gets 3 mana and 3 lands off the top. Someone will get mad when they cast it and get 7 mana and 3 non lands they can cast immediately after. Rhystic study is hated for obvious reasons but no one hate ever watching threshold. An oops all counterspell deck is going to be salt inducing as you are preventing players from using their cards.
Do people who play edh really not like any removal? Because when I started to play edh, the first thing I ever did was play as many cheap,fast, interruption as I could possibly find and it lead my jund deck to victory because of it. Mana rocks and ramp pieces died to all my artifact removal and eventually I managed to out grind the game to the point where i could living death and bring back half my deck to the battle field and win via burn. I mean I get that edh is meant to be causal but imo, I think limiting things (tutors, alt win cons, removal) end up limiting deck building as now instead of having stax, Timmy, aggro, or whatever jank strat. It instead becomes who has bigger stick because stax can’t play their pieces, the jank decks can’t get into their specific pieces, and aggro… doesn’t really suffer much
I like the definition of roadblock cards but wouldn't really counter grave pact towards those. While the others exclusively block opponent's actions (if you built your deck around it), grave pact only reaches its full potential if you generate creatures and sacrifice them. Unlike the others, actively removing opponents creatures can advance your gameplan by drawing cards (morbid opportunist), draining opponents or generating treasures to straight up win the game (revel in riches). Overall I fear that it isn't that simple to reduce salt. Spells like drannith magistrate and aura shards are pretty annoying to deal with and require you to have just the right sort of removal (or find it in the next few turns). But even if noone moans about the cards being "unfair", "unfun" or whatever else: If a new player has a cascade or artifact deck, they should realize quickly that their entire gameplan is getting sabotaged by one card. Losing to someone who out-tempoed you or assembled a combo first is infinitely prefarable to sitting around and hoping that *this* draw is going to be the one that lets you play the game again. A partifular problem are non-creature roadblocks. Depending on your color there are very few truly flexible removal options. And if we don't go flexible, creature removal is a priority. After all, every player has at least one creature in their deck (and always available to them).
The only time I've seen somebody whinge about a salty card it was somebody being completely ridiculous who eventually stormed out of the LGS - other than that I've seen everybody either play through or respectfully scoop - where are you finding all these whiny players? Compared to my actual experience, it really feels like something that only "exists" on reddit where the few who do act like that go to complain and generally get told to shut up by everybody else.
I didn’t want to get bogged down in the what is or isn’t stax argument since many of these are not agreed upon. Like aura shards for example. Or pillow fort effects
I think it isn't great to think of new players as gullible and unintelligent, the player in your second example clearly questioned why the other player was freaking out over fetches. my friend was always hyping up progenitus as an unbeatable card unless you had black sun's zenith or something, but I never was particularly interested or thought it mattered. maybe some players are more susceptible, but generally people are able to think for themselves. I do agree that being nice to people and generally being polite about cards you don't like is a pretty necessary attitude if you want to keep new players interested.
You’re treating this like it’s a simple choice, but “salt” is an emotion (more generally called “frustration”), and it’s not always possible to choose not to feel an emotion. That’s just not how brains work. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying as a stax player myself, but it seems really weird to ignore the fact that whether someone feels salty or not usually isn’t actually within their control.
So I disagree a little bit. "Roadblock cards" tends to be a silver bullet towards some deck types. It also tends to lock one player out of the game, not the rest of the table. Additionally, with how you said people normally run these cards to slow down other really fast decks, that implies that their deck is strong enough to compete with those fast and stronger decks. To me that means your deck is likely a higher power level because it's not only looking to play against higher power level decks, but also have roughly the same speed because they should be expecting the same amount of resistance. That doesn't mean me or my playgroup outright ban them, but we specifically ask to not have one card that's meant to stop one deck/player at the table from playing. I.e. dranith magistrate is okay, but aura shards probably isn't if we had like one deck in the playgroup that only plays enchantments or something.
Hot-Take: This sounds a little bit like "How to deal with difficult people in real life" in Magic slang: "Instead of berating them, show others how to deal with the problem..." Hm... 🤔
“I’m going to keep attacking you until you block with Dranath or die”
I played at a card shop a couple of months ago and found myself in that same position. The guy to my left played a Magistrate and everyone else at the table agreed it had to go, so we all just kept attacking him, and he pitched the biggest fit over it. Honestly, it was one of the funnier things I've seen in a while.
@@Thoughtmage100 Like, people forget: If you attack one player with a lightning bolt, it's understandable to be upset when everyone attacks you. But if you jam / slow down 3 others players, you should totally expect the ire / focus of 3 players. If you didn't want to be targeted by 3 players, don't play something that negatively affects all of them (That's why I like forbidden orchard, it's a good political tool alongside you building yourself up)
@ lol. He should have blocked.
Player removal is the best removal
I AM THE SALTY ONE IN MY POD! Or, I used to be. What's helped me the most is taking on the casual mindset while playing. I warn players about big turns, I help players know which creature of mine is the biggest threat, I explain my game-plan thoroughly before we start. If I don't build optimally, why should I play optimally?
Yea its basicly playing the entire game, not only your game. Other players big turns are also fun, as long as you are doing what you can to make the game interesting aswell.
The funny thing about drannith magistrate was that it was designed to be a hate card against companions in ikoria. Then they nerfed companions and forced you to put them into your hand before casting it. So now in the new rules he no longer can stop a companion from being cast. That means the whole point of the card being printed ended up going to waste in a way and now he exists as an annoying stax piece. He failed at his one goal in the end and lived long enough to see himself become the villain.
The companion errata situation is beyond funny
that actually makes sense, i never realized it was the case
always assumed commander hate (and impulse draw i guess?) was the actual main intention behind the design
Little by little I've been showing my playgroup that not every deck needs to put 12 creatures on board to win a game.
I tend to run low creature counts with lots of interaction, and I win in many different ways, tokens attacking, burn, combo, extra turns, etc. and for a while people got salty about it.
After a lot of conversations where I kept explaining that winning with a bunch of haste dragons that you cast with reduced cost is not that different from a sacrifice loop. You set up, and once that setup is complete, it's normally GG. Or that if the Pantlaza player keeps getting creatures for zero mana every turn, why can't I play grave pact to deal with those creatures for zero mana as well?
Lately I feel like they're getting more and more used to these different approaches to the game, which has been very positive. Anyway, great content as usual.
Got a list for your burn deck?
I really enjoy my Pantlaza deck because Grave Pact and other edict effects are common in my meta. The card advantage from the discover mechanic feels super strong, I don't fault anybody for aiming all their creature removal at me haha
I agree that there’s the most salt in commander, but there's definitely salt in formats like modern, especially when its a format dominated by decks like hogaak or scam
*insert Lantern Control here
Four Horsemen?
Nah. It just has the most babies
I used to be so salty about The Scarab God in standard. It was in half my games and I just wanted to play my jank -1 counters deck 😭
I found the best way to get over salt is to goldfish your decks against one another. When you are the one shutting yourself down you see why these cards get played and you obviously wont get mad at yourself. When you sit down with other players after that, you will be more chill.
That said, I disagree that salt is fed by experienced players to new players. I started playing with only new players and I still felt salt. Don’t pretend salt isn’t a natural reaction that people can feel like any other emotion. Where it crosses the line is when you throw a fit over a game.
4:45 As someone who enjoys too much cardboard I like the Yugioh term for cards like these. Floodgates.
Honestly a good term. Unfortunately Yu-Gi-Oh does take it a step too far and makes the game literally unplayable in some cases
The problem with Yu-Gi-Oh floodgates is that game is too fast for those cards.
If someone plays a floodgates in Magic, you will almost always have the couple of turns to get rid of it, but in Yu-Gi-Oh, if you can't do anything for one turn you're dead
“What do you do? Play floodgates”
I've certainly had similar interactions to your Humility story.
My favourite deck is a grindy graveyard control deck helmed by Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. Experienced players are more likely to tilt off over discarding cards, while newer players are having fun learning that [[Vengeful Pharaoh]] is a card.
What does Vengeful Pharaoh do?
Vengeful Pharoah is fun, I got one for my Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer deck. Very unique form of "don't attack me" card in black, or even removal if your opponents don't realize what it does and that it's in the grave.
This video convinced me to put spore frog back in muldrotha, new players are going to learn about graveyard hate or else
I found a great playgroup recently where the only opposition to stax decks were that nobody wanted to combine stax and group slug decks at the same time.
Makes sense!
"What makes a casual deck" is probably one of those questions, that could easily become a standalone video or episode of Magic Mirror Podcast in and of itself. That's actually one of those topics, that interests me alot when discussing Magic with different players from different groups or even sometimes within my usual group as well. We're all ostensibly playing the same game, but with something like "casual commander", the definition of that game might be different with everyone at the table. I think that both recognizing your own definition of casual and realizing that your definition might differ from those of other players is a key to finding a path away from salt. It's a recognition, that you share your fun with everyone at the table and bring your own flavor of fun with you when you play. Getting caught up in someone having a different idea of fun from you is not just a waste of energy, but also disrespectful to others, barring obvious border-crossing stuff like your fun being actively hateful or belligerent.
I believe casual means you're playing more to savour the social experience or creative expression. I communicate my vibe because I expect most people view casual as "not cedh"
@@seanedgar164
That's a pretty good way of narrowing it down. Between these two, creative expression resonates more to what I think casual commander is. Much as the social experience of Commander is a factor that plays into all levels of the game, it's too complicated and long to be driven entirely by the social gathering. If I were to sum up what I believed casual EDH to be "A game of EDH you're trying to win conditionally" comes to mind. "My goal is to swing for game with a 30/30 Ragavan", "I'll win using Thoracle, but I'm only allowed to draw in order to thin the deck", "I'm going to beat each opponent with commander damage from their own commanders", stuff like that to make things more elaborate and give room for everyone to show off their cool and interesting ideas as well.
My favorite deck is yarok and if my opponent plays a torpor orb That's fine with me. Yes my entire deck is based around creature ETBs, but that's why I run non-creature based removal, counter magic, and other tools to help me restabilize.
I wish that more Commander players were willing to simply include outs in their deck, rather than get upset that other people are trying to actually play the game to win. Like yeah, it is annoying when you're playing a game and someone is just making it go on forever with nothing happening. But there's a difference between that, and learning how to play around things
People will get very salty over any card. I remember one instance playing with strangers at my lgs where I stuck a smothering tithe kinda early like turn 3 and was making a bunch of treasures. One guy at the table paid for literally every smothering tithe trigger he could and then was super upset after the game and left. He didn't have an outburst or anything but I could tell he was very upset and he promptly left our playgroup. I think he was also upset that other people were not paying for the smothering tithe as well while he was. I think about that interaction a lot when thinking about salt because it just felt so strange to me. If I were a new player at the table I have no idea what I would think of that interaction but I might take smothering tithe out of my deck, even though smothering tithe is not crazy in the powerlevel that deck wants to play at.
I also really enjoy playing a lot of these roadblock cards like ghostly prison and thalia heretic cathar, I think that roadblock cards are what makes magic fun in the first place if the only thing stopping you from winning with all of your big dudes is that someone else put out a bigger dude already thats not very fun to me.
I'm honestly not surprised that Smothering Tithe was able to get this kind of reaction happen. It is a very specific kind of salty card, one that I find myself occasionally actually getting tripped up by whenever I think of the few things that get me frumpy during a game. So long as it's not removed, they're the kinds of cards, that in order to sufficiently counteract, requires a collective understanding about the threat of the card that just doesn't happen most of the time. All it takes is one weak-link, one person that refuses to play into the game or over-extends, thinking they'll just race it and it'll be fine for the card to spiral out of control. While nowhere near as strong as it, it's something of a cousin of Rhystic Study in this regard and the kind of salt I see thrown at both come from very similar places.
One of the key ingredients to salt in pvp games is detachment from your failure. So long as you can convince yourself that your loss isn't related to your own decisions in the game and that there was "nothing to be done" about the situation that caused your loss, you can cultivate salt. Cards like Rhystic and Tithe are both really great at creating these kinds of detachments. It's the Magic: The Gathering equivalent of saying "Bot Fed" in League of Legends. It's a convenient excuse for a prideful mind to shunt the blame of someone getting out of hand to someone else, regardless of whether there was something you could have done about the situation yourself.
"People will get very salty over any card."
What a load of disingenuous nonsense. Not all cards are equally salty.
And if you're confused as to how an early Smothering Tithe would be salty, you're really not paying attention to the format.
@@AlluMan96 Thank you! Never thought about it that way, but it's true! It's a way to insulate yourself from failure.
Should people take a game they play for fun so seriously that they need to do that? No. But, it's human nature.
I'm perfectly happy losing, I despise tithe though. It's an objectively powerful card that is so detrimental to try and play around while ignoring it boosts your opponent so far ahead. I see it as a must-answer card because it skews games so sharply. I just want a chill game to win down after a long week.
Roadblock? hehe, i guess you could use the term we use in YGO for cards with continuous effects that prevent the opponent from doing a certain action, they are called "Floodgates", a card that limits the times you can summon in a turn is a floodgate, a card that doesn't let your opponent play spell cards is a floodgate, etc
was there a name sake card that gave it that title?
@SeriosSkies92 not necessarily, mostly since ygo is seen as "flooding the board" in a lot of decks, so things that hard stop it are the "floodgates"
Although there is a card called floodgate trap hole, that if it's condition is met, puts a opponents card face down and not allow them to flip it back up at all, thus stopping you from performing a game action
Spell but not trap, sure combo player bias.
@@SeriosSkies92It’s more of a functional name, think about in this way, a collector ouphe is on the field against an artifact deck, what happens when it’s removed? The “floodgate” is opened and I’ve seen artifact players immediately win after the ouphe is removed. Any yugioh stax piece is like that scenario
Preach.
I've always been an advocate for just playing the game in your way and accepting the way others play. If commander is casual why pressure others to conform to your preferences. Be honest and try to match so the games are actually dynamic
If your preferences prevent others from having fun, nobody is going to want to play with you.
@@Cybertech134agreed
About go-shintai and shrine decks, a buddy of mine has a sisay shrine deck he brings almost every time I see him. It plays out almost the same way every time, down to the order of the shrines he tutors out (and almost ends games when he gets Sanctum of All).
Its still fun to play against. Its powerful enough to make people deal with it, and silly enough to lose games when people concentrate on it. Every time, its a puzzle to solve. Do I ram a large creature through, paying the Sphere of Safety tax *and* lose my beater to aurification? I have to ask myself and my "allies" different questions every game, despite seeing mostly the same cards from him. He likes playing the same cards, and I like attacking with different cards. If I can't deal with his board, that's on me as a deckbuilder.
I've always maintained EDH is a format primarily driven by salt. My pod plays high power casual "we're trying to win but not before turn 3" style Commander. We've gotten tired of people getting salty so we just created our own little "cEDH Jr." thing. I'd love to play cEDH too I imagine, but unfortunately at least in my area the cEDH players are all cliqueish dickwads that scare away everyone who wants to join them or learn cEDH. I just wish there was a more widely accepted version of our little high power casual but not cEDH format. I feel commander is best when its at that level.
High power player here. You're not alone, mate. I wish everyone were trying to actually play Magic with its complexities and try to win. TTM is one a of my fav creators for that reason. He's not into content booboo decks.
@@commanderpower99 but like? every format except for EDH is that? Just play pauper, standard, modern, legacy, vintage(lol) or whatever. go play pioneer :D
Kardur Doomscourge was my first precon. Fuck yeah.
He is a fun commander
Was my buddies’ first precon too. The goad hell inspired me to go out and get into goad, just proxied a Nelly Borca list and I think I’m addicted
I’m a new commander player and the more I play and build decks, the more I learn, the more I realize that “fairness” and “balance” are Titanic lies.
I just solitaired a 4 deck game wherein one deck died with 28 4/4 angels with vigilance on top of 16 scute swarms and hexproof everything and more creatures. Another deck died with eight creatures with total power of over 120. The third deck went from 54 life to -76 life because fourth deck ended up with Gisela, Blade of the Goldnight wearing Helm of The Host and producing three copies of her, and a Siege Gang Commander throwing goblins at players for 32 damage a goblin.
Yeah that's an insane game I'm glad to have avoided 😂 high power games like that are why I focus on the Casual when I say I play casually. I like seeing consistent decks doing chill stuff, I'm gonna get stressed or have to lock in against actually scary must-answer boards. I used and run removal well, but I'm here to chill out!
Honestly, this helps a lot. I remember I stopped going to my own lgs because everyone there was always so bitter and complained about every other card for a while, and that rubbed off onto me and made me hate playing the game with my friends while I was there. After a while I just stopped showing up entirely, because why drive somewhere just to get yelled at by someone for an hour for playing a precon, you know? Been playing with friends online ever since, and I'm honestly glad I did because its slowly been removing this horrible toxic mindset that I had gotten myself sucked into. I doubt what happened was a common occurrence, but the salt levels there nearly killed any fun I would have had with mtg tbh, and I genuinely hope what happened was an exception, and not the rule
Wait, so just whining and complaining about things isn't helpful and doesn't lead to healthy experiences? Craaaaaaaazy! 😮
The mindset you exemplify in this video is why I appreciate you the most of any of the other creators I listen to in this space. You constantly want to improve the quality of players while maintaining the general enjoyability of the game, and I applaud that. Keep up the good work, man.
I make a lot of rules for myself, but I do not expect anyone else to follow those rules. I also love disruptive "Roadblock" cards. However, drannith is basically the only one I won't run. This is mainly because I find the card uninteresting. It requires no deck building to make good. It's just a generic, good card (my least favorite kind of card).
I do agree dranith is lame because it’s one sided so any deck can play it without consequences
I hate some cards because I'm sick of seeing them over and over and over again
Not everyone has that hipster deck building itch. Plenty of people at my LGS just want to make something competent without spending time away from their families to make something special. I definitely get seeing stuff over and over, but I also think it’s something that is just going to happen.
For sure, even though mechanically similar I would always rather see End Raze Forerunners over another craterhoof...
1) build a commander deck based around a weird, but interesting theme
2) bring in cards that swap players around like cruel entertainment and mindslaver, and target yourself with someone else
3) *politely* expand someone's horizons by having them play your weird deck for a turn
simple fact is that some cards are just strong tho, and people will keep running them because they're just all-around good in many commander decks (things like rhystic study, craterhoof behemoth, and smothering tithe come to mind). Worst comes to worst, don't be afraid to throw some removal around
@ilshail153 ow I run alot of removal because I hate these cards because they come up to often so I'm known for nuking thinks like do you pay effect ls the second they touch to board or will deflecting swat an effect so someone has to sacrifice a stronger thing the just a token then bog their graveyard
The format is certainly homogeneous. I prefer seeing creative expression and a social experience vs generically good cards or win-hungry gameplay
As a new player I realized people don’t like it when they can’t play their cards. Which makes no sense when the point is to win.
Depends on whether you’re playing casual or not. Casual commander means, “I don’t care about winning, just playing cards”
@@kennellfrederick4367this is why I’m confused, so just play cards or play CEDH? Is there no middle ground?
I have a scuffed edh deck based off modern lantern control which would be really weak but I think I would enjoy playing it. Ive never played it because I just know people would get wayyy too mad
I play to have fun and win down with friends tho? I'm fine with roadblocks or some lockouts if I have fair warning. Why would I spend my Saturday night not playing the game I sat down for though?
I think the thing that’s hard to get away from is “My show and tell is the wincon”. And when people don’t get to do that, it feels bad on two fronts, not being able to show what their deck does, and not winning the game. And in a multiplayer format, there’s one winner and 3 losers.
Everyone spent the same amount of time, but not everyone gets the same amount of fun
Don't despair when the Drannith Magistrate hits the board. Wait until it's followed up with an Uba Mask.
That's bad, until Possibility Storm hits the table. Then it's basically game over unless someone has a counterspell
I think the only point I’d make is there is a good chance most new players are excited to see cool monsters and flashy spells, and want to play them to smash people’s faces with them. To a new player, a 7/7 dinosaur with trample is probably cooler than a Viscera Seer or some other value creature that an experienced player knows will likely have far greater impact than a French vanilla creature.
Showing them cool toys and then introducing them to “no you don’t” effects can be an immediate interest killer for some that either aren’t interested in the intricacies of magic yet, or aren’t aware of them. It’s kind of like people trying a fighting game for the first time, where they only know the basic controls…then hitting them with a combo where they never even touch the ground or have a chance to fight back. SOME players will see that and keep playing so that THEY can learn that…while others will just give up because they never even got a chance to try.
It really is in the other player’s best interest to help the new player understand that a Torpor Orb isn’t the end of the world, that in magic (especially with the card pool available in EDH) there is a solution to every problem, you just need to be prepared for it. Be a good mentor for new players, don’t coddle them but educate them at a pace that keeps them interested without feeling crushed or overwhelmed. That’s why I really like Two-Headed Giant as an introduction for new players, as you can pair the new player with an experienced player as a teammate without accidentally kingmaking.
This Trinket Mage guy is a chill guy
where is thiy meme coming from LOL
Great episode! My playgroup generally has a policy of any non-banned (and even a few banned) cards are cool, but there are some cards we consider "rude" like free counter spells, original duals and cards that completely lock out the table *without a wincon on board (if you can end the game, do your infinite turn loops that's cool). Generally if someone plays them, there may be some moaning for a pinch but we're ok with it, but that player should also know any chip damage someone has with open blockers is probably coming at them until someone presents a bigger problem. Play what you want to play, but if you're trying to pull off Thoracle Shenanigans or mass land destruction against a precon, don't be surprised when you're the problem until proven otherwise
In the group I played in for about 4 years, while we were nowhere near cEDH, there definitely was a certain interpersonal competitive edge, and that ended up causing a serious salt streak for me in certain situations. During Covid, that group kind of fell apart, and with the 3 players we had left we started playing Gloomhaven instead. The last couple years we've connected with a different group and started playing regularly again and the time away had definitely given me the mental reset I needed to just sit down and have fun with my friends again.
A friend beat me with an infinite combo and I got salty, but now I'm over it. It's a casual game, who cares if one loses in an "unfair" way? There's a lot of behind-the-scenes decisions going on in the mind of the stax/combo/control/whatever people get salty about player that new/low power players don't see
This is a bit of a long one.
So i got into magic with my highschool playgroup. They invited me in and showed me the ropes, and pretty quickly i was hooked. There were giant donation boxes of cards, so i built the jankiest, off kilter decks (i was adamant about recieving minimal help after the basics). The group had decks outside of the highschool jank pool, and they were obviously a cut above due to experienced players building and investing in them. We had this one guy who would always play red/white(Boros), a white/black/blue leaning control player(esper), a mono green enthusiast, and myself: the jank izzet player. Because this was highschool and our brains werent very big, but our emotions were, eventually Boros built up a heavy dislike for interaction/removal/boardwipes, claiming they slowed the game down too much. Esper has a bit of a complex and takes it personally when his stuff gets removed (HE likes to be in control), and eventually agrees with Boros about removal (mind you he still played control and has started leaning towards stax and less dedicated removalpieces). This leads to games where either Boros just wins because nobody can stop him without him getting angry and the game session ending (it was at his house) or Esper shutting the game down then dragging the game on for turns on end, delaying his win condition in hand to try and let people "win". Eventually the playgroup fizzles due to factors outside the game, and life goes on.
Fast forward a few years and everyone are adults now, ive kept in touch with Esper (mainly because his roomate is one of my good friends), meanwhile Esper has kept in touch and still plays in a group with boros. My friend got into magic because of esper, and I've recently been able to play with them semi-regularly in a playgroup. I now play decks loaded with interaction (12-16 pieces usually), as i've learned the importan e and fun if it. The first game session I played with them I remember vividly: First deck was gishath. He comes out, swings, snowballs. On espers turn (he's playing black/red dargo, has an infinite mana/draw combo currently going on) he realizes he'll die on his turn due to etb pings (i forgot i had a creature that was doing that, and he was well into a combo). He gets visibility upset, stating that if i remembered my pings he would have taken a different route and drawn a boardwipe. I politely let him roll back his entire turn and confidently tell him there's no way he's winning. He proceeds to look through hIs entire deck TWICE, only to find he has no boardwipe or fog in his deck, and his removal option requires etb that will kill him. He concedes, wondering why his deck didnt have a boardwipe. Second game I choose Ghyrson starn, modified to be a pillow-fort ping deck that flips anything i cant ping back to hand. I get a good fort going early (Ghyrson starn, Kira, great glass spinner, shockmaw dragon). Both esper and my friend can't do anything as their boards get wiped constantly due to shockmaw, and they'd need to play two removal spells to take out anything on my board. They each converse to eachother, claiming they have nothing. They concede after a few turns naturally.
After these games over a forbidden incense (so everyone be chillin), i casually suggest that if they played more interaction, i wouldn't've gotten so far ahead. They explain how their other playgroup (boros) dosent play with much interaction because they hate not getting to play their cards. I tell them that they can play anything they want whenever i play with them, as im up for anything. I say that the way i feel less salty in magic is to remember a few things: it'll take 10 turns to die to a 4/4, and boardwipes are only 4 mana. Now, the playgroup has expanded a little and there's more than just me with interaction.
Esper still takes getting his things removed quite personally, but he's mellowed out greatly, but my friend and the others are all for interaction heavy games, and I've recently had some of the most engaging and fun magic games i've ever had! And it's all good games at the end because nobody is garunteed to win (we've all won some!)
i really love this video and ur takes on salt. i myself was that kind of player, i tought 'boring' decks were bad and unfun and landdistruction or discard was a sin to even consider brewing. in retrospect, it might just have been that way because my brother, who got me to play edh in the first place, had these opinions. thanks for the change in perspective!
I was at my LGS tonight and was playing against a new player (less than 2 months) and a player whose face I've frequently seen at that LGS for months. I was playing in Rakdos colors, so I cast a blood moon. The table already saw it coming because it was revealed with Protection Racket on my upkeep 2 turns before I played it.
New player was playing G/R/W dinos, the older player was playing U/R/G/W Aragorn.
I dropped Blood Moon on turn 5, oldhead player starts freaking out, despite having an answer to blood moon in that his lands were enchanted with I think Utopia Sprawl and the like to fix his colors anyway. He starts freaking out and mad-dogs me the rest of the game, acting super toxic towards the new player too just critiquing his dinos deck left and right, despite the Aragorn player making tons of mistakes himself.
I remember the new dinos player seeing the card and his reaction being to the effect of "oh, ok cool. I already have my basic plains and forests anyway" and proceeded to end up lasting longer in that game because he wasn't focused on removing a card that he already found a way to play around.
Crazy how the new player had a more rational approach than the "seasoned" player, who already was playing around my Blood Moon with his land enchantments to color-fix, but was too daft to realize he was already in the clear and mad-dogged me just for having one stax-y card out.
the new player wasn't hit too hard so he felt it was totally fine. But let him get hit by a blood moon with zero basics and a deck he invested more time and money in...
I think you should get the podcast together and come up with some budget removal "skeletons" for each color (and colorless). 10-15 cards that fit in that color that are universally good in almost every game (think generous gift or lantern of the lost). I see so many 4 player games of commander turn into virtual 1v1s because one player is dropping threats and the other is removing them while the other 2 players arent contributing in any meaningful way.
Could be a fun idea
This is a great video that brings up a great point. There’s always a play group that’ll be just fine playing whatever you have, but be weary of what people like. Some of my friends don’t like my Azami, Lady of Scrolls deck because it’s a fringe CEDh deck and wins out of nowhere. I’ll tone it down and play something else with them. But, my brother and some different friends love to see who can pop off the fastest, so combos are fun for us.
TLDR: Play what’s fun for the group, not just what’s fun for you.
"if player x does his thing I don't getting to do mine" usually me against a timmy or combo player on stopping them continuosly
I've had exactly this experience in a game yesterday night, a friend runs an "Omo, queen of Vesuva" deck, big simic that plays 3 lands per turn and do combos with gates lands and extra turns, I played mono white with a commander not a lot played "Kwende, Pride of Femeref". I run Archon of Emeria and shut down the table to win with attacking creatures since nobody could remove my archon.
My friend was super salty because he couldn't play his 3-4 spells per turn, I just used the same argument as you, if I built my deck without any stax and just to go fast he would be dead turn 4 instead of 10 or I would just have watch him unfold his game plan and playing solitary, so I need a way to imbalance the game in my favor, it's called playing magic.
I tend to be salty over free counter spell but soft tax is very good for magic, it makes the players more aware of others boards and think about what they do instead of just empty their hand on their board without strategy
Wake up babe, new Trinket Mage vid just dropped
You must imagine him happy.
While watching this video, I kinda got some parallels drawn in my head with me being a fighting game player. Salt originates from our perception, particularly if something is "too good", but something I've been working with and implementing is reflecting on what *I* can do when I'm in a bad position. For a FG, it could be being trapped in the corner, or for Commander, it could be a board starting to snowball into a big threat. It's a lot more productive for me to go "aw, dangit, I guessed wrong" or "ooh, this is bad, what can I do in this situation?" instead of "____ is broken and needs to be nerfed", for FGs it's almost like putting on house rules on other players who honestly won't ever see me again if I'm playing online or players I may not talk to all the time in-person. The burden of winning and adapting is always on me, no matter what my opponents do.
Some of my friends (who are seasoned in MtG) are relatively anti-interaction, especially counterspells, or at least rather salty when I play these cards, and while I get it's annoying to have your gameplan be slowed down, that's just the game to me, it's still in a sense competitive (someone has to come out on top), even if the "stakes" are a lot lower. I'm given tools and you're given tools, and it's part of the fun to be able to navigate that, even in a more laid-back, casual setting imo (granted I don't usually play at LGSs and I mostly play against your typical snowbally midrange decks, so I don't see as wide of a deck pool).
I'm also very glad you talked about content creator influence. It's very real and I think different content creators give different vibes to Magic that really do affect us. I really have to thank people like you for helping me make my deckbuilding more mindful.
a personal example:
when a friend completely shut down my deck with overwhelming splendor (which nobody was gonna remove cause affected only me, the aggro player who was pulling ahead), i didn't complain, i put aura shards in the deck
if you start looking for answers that get you out of things that hard counter your deck... well, suddenly no card is salty anymore
Commander sometimes feels like a game of smash where the players are all just spamming taunts till the time runs out
Thanks so much for making these kinds of videos as I have literally bought my first precon last week and I think all of the information is super helpful, and that goes with all of your other videos
I remember being a new player going to my first FNM with my first ever deck with kwain and I played a jace wielder of mysteries ( had no combos or anything nor was I in any position to win) and there was another player rolling their eyes and just looked super annoyed and I was just super confused. The guy was generally just unpleasant and because of that I never played commander at an LGS again.
I’m the salty one. new perspective unlocked and gonna work on that. thanks for this video
Drannith to me is the best way to teach players to include interaction.
While I agree with your points, there is a difference in how many times a week you get to play commander. If you play multiple games a week, then you look forward to games where you are hindered and have to find creative ways to get out of a removal loop, your commander being made into a forest, etc.
But if it is one of your 2 games you get to play a week, then I understand why someone might actually look forward to just get to play out their game plan with limited resistance.
I still think your main points hold, as you say some players come to a game with different expectations of what fun means.
The way I see a lot of stax pieces is that the tax they apply to me is the removal I have to go out of my way to cast instead of the cards they are actually taxing/blocking.
I'm a spell slinger player so if anything that makes my cards cost more mana then I just have to remove that game piece to return to my game plan. My spellslinger decks can get incredibly out of hand so those stax pieces are incredibly necessary to slow me down and claiming otherwise would be ignorant and/or selfish xD
Trinket always brings up how fun Cedh is, I want to play it but no one at my shop plays the format
4:45 Learned today from cardmarket's latest staple or stinker video with a ygo player that they call these type of effects floodgates which honestly very similar to road block
The only cards I see that could make any deck go from casual to not is 2 card combos that can only be stopped with counter spells or weird interaction like forcing someone to draw stuff like that because their is no I destroy/extile it type effects all colors have access to when only blue can effectively stop the 2 card combo its not casual imo
*Sees humility, ooh that’s cool! Immediately destroys it and continues on 😂 all it takes is a piece of interaction
As someone who plays a lot of stax decks, it's comical to have you define "roadblocks". Others have mentioned Floodgates similarly in Yu-Gi-Oh, but I feel that stax gets a bad name in EDH even though it should be a natural part of the anti combo meta game. No reason to redefine it as roadblocks when it's just good ol' fashion taxes.
In YGO, we understand that floodgates are a mistake and terrible card design. MTG players are a bit behind.
Reducing the game to "Draw, pass." for the 20 turns it takes for someone finds an answer is generally a miserable experience for everyone involved.
YGO is actively limiting/banning their floodgates. They're not fun to play against or with and one dimensionally put a player in a "Draw the out or don't play the game" situation.
Funny thing is for me I get way more salty about 1v1 than Commander, not at the player, but at the game itself. Sheltered by Ghosts in Standard will get me tilted in a way Dranith Magistrate or Cyclonic Rift or Kiki-Jiki never could.
Yeah your thing might hose _my_ deck and the cards I have in hand, but that means there’s probably political avenues to explore, or at the very least I probably get ignored and can mount a comeback.
There's 2 things I get salty about:
1. Mindslicer loops. However, I can handle this. I run a fair amount of exile-based removal so I'm not too worried about this. I only really get salty when the game goes another five or six turns before the Mindslicer player is actually able to take us out. If they Mindslicer us and then either immediately take us out or take us out next turn, it's not a big deal.
2. Solitaire turns, Korvold and Chulane are the biggest offenders here. I get it. I played enchantress for a while, the solitaire turns are fun to play. However, they are boring to watch. So I took my enchantress deck apart out of respect for the other players I play against.
Pretty much the rest of it is fair game (pun intended). I play against Sheoldred, the Apocalypse a lot (a deck a lot of ppl say is salty) and it's one of my favorite matchups. Honestly, since I like to run a lot of cheap (not free, just cheap), I tend to make wheel decks my bitch by emptying my hand of removal while the wheel is on the stack, then draw into a new hand of removal. It's glorious 😊
2 cards i hate that i don't think people will agree with me on are farwell and overloaded rift. And it's not because it destroys or resets board states it's because it does that so well but 9 times out of 10 the person doesn't have a follow up so the game goes on way longer and turns into a slog mostly farwell my god farwell is annoying if someone doesn't have a fallow up to it
Seeing how both of those cards are in the top 50 for the saltiest cards in the format, I would say that most players would agree with you.
@ethanboyd2981 most would agree but they are also played alot i personly dont run any card i don't like playing into like exper the do you pay cards or these 2 board whipes but they are all very popular but very salty cards
Liking just for humilty, i'm a sicko
I used to be the salty player because I was bad. I built my deck around a guy, and removing the guy caused me to no longer play the game whatsoever, so I became salty if the guy was removed. The #1 way to stop being salty (for most people) is to get better at the game.
There are a few ways to look at salt.
Personally I think cards that continously prevent gameplans are not a great fit for casual commander, especially if they are hard to interact with.
I have this opinion mainly because having a answer to anything at any time is what perpetuates an armsrace, thereby moving us away from playing dumb funny cards and ever closer to cedh.
With that in mind i realy hope the bracket systhem works out, since people, like me, who have no lgs or playgroup are the ones who have to do a lot of rule 0 before any given game.
Hulk like little blue man.
Yeah it is crazy how many people get salty during games. There's always fun to be had, and unless it's like for prizes or someone's targeting you for non-current in-game reasons (you killed their commander 3 turns ago, or they hate you sorta shtuff).
Granted mana crypt jeweled lotus and rhystic always sorta rubbed me the wrong way in casual.
But I usually try not to salt too hard cuz yucking someone else's yum is never cool
i never understood the argument or ran into people IRL who say fetchlands or dual lands are not casual, since there are so many of them available and they are included in most precons
And proxies
Have a sliver deck with fetches because I need to be able to get my mana so I can survive being archenemy from turn 1
I know it makes me the enemy and told the group as much
Still got weird comments about the fetches and some of the other inclusions that were in there because I have had this deck for years and been slowly feeding it upgrades
I had a Yuriko player get salty at me for playing a Pithing Needle and naming Yuriko (so they couldn't use Commander Ninjitsu -- they could still cast Yuriko though) saying I was playing a "Drannith Magistrate like card".
The more I listen to you talk about subjects like this, the more I understand why you and Elk like playing against Stax cards
At this point there's only two things I'm salty about, people who have consistently have 20 minute solitaire turns, and boardwipes. I used to be salty about so much stuff, but consistently playing against people who aren't afraid to use the annoying cards has helped me get over myself.
ive only been salty once at a casual game night. i was last in turn order and was targetted down by the table because there were prizes on the line and i was at a table of friends. not something explictly a problem with deck power levels just a problem with the mindset of that table.
People say these "no combo" type house rules are everywhere but I've been playing since 2013 and have never run into them.
I've played with set groups and store pickup pods and at convention and I've never seen them.
I've seen people complain or sigh when an annoying card comes out but I haven't seen anyone say not to play them. It appears send like an imagined issue.
3:20 this comment immediately brings up the looming topic of "brackets", which I really wonder how they will affect this conversation. Are roadblocks going to be soft banned from low power tables? Will putting them in a higher bracket even help in the slightest with the salt they carry? I get the feeling wagging your finger at someone and saying "You signed up for this for putting that Ancient Tomb you pulled in your dinosaur deck" won't immediately make someone like cards they don't like.
Im glad youve touched on this. My friend has a Tergrid in his deck and whenever he plays it my other friend always groans and complains. However every time I see the Tergrid its… fine? Like its a good card but having it in the command zone is a completely different experience than it being in the 99 of a group slug deck.
Yeah, often salt is based on learning what others get salty of and replicate it. If you cant get around the salt, also just take a break or stop playing.
good argument, now is there a way to dumb it down so it actually works on someone who flips out over drannith magistrate being played?
If they have no interest in getting better, there’s not much you can say.
@@AgentMurphy286 yeah surprisingly I swapped my armageddons for storm cauldrons and it somehow flew under the radar with them.
Only salt I have is 10+ minute turns one after another, and I have to pay attention to all their triggers and bs abilities because apparently you are responsable for checking what they are doing and if you need to counter. I know you need to pay attention but it is impossible to watch someone take long turns all the time and not just doze off looking into a blank wall.
Oh and when the pen and paper come out to follow all the triggers and effects, I am like "you better win or atleast kill someone with that! Kill me, release me from this torture"
I don't know about that roadblock take. I just think interaction do help keeping balance while not halting the game. I don't think it's much fun to be out of the game for 3 turn searching a way to get rid of a reast in peace, grave pact or aurashard. Now we shouldn't complain like baby when they show up, but I would much rather have my grave exiled than seeing a rest in peace, see a bane of progresse rather than a aura shard and a board whipe rather than a grave pact.
The problem with Dranith Magistrate isn't really that she's individually too strong. It's a creature that's manageable, the problem is that it's a real pain to deal with because it's going to exploit the rules of the commander too unfairly, in my opinion. This is also the case with cards like rysthic study. The fewer cards there are in a game, the better the game, so you might as well not play them. Any card can be removed, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem card. Putting your opponents in the situation of ‘either you have a way of removing this, or I'm going to take an insurmountable lead’ is not what I like about the format.
Personally, I don't mind saying that this or that card shouldn't be played, just as I don't mind if someone points out that they didn't like a card in my own deck. And I think that's pretty healthy for the games.
Drannith was designed to counter the Companion mechanic which eventually was reworked to not interact with Drannith. THAT is my issue with it. When a card completely counters the namesake of the format, Commander, it shouldn't exist in the format.
I agree it’s much better to have the “how to overcome a problem” mindset than complaining about cards being OP and unfair. That being said, there are certain “road blocks” (i.e. humility, aura shards, gravepact) I find genuinely unfun in almost all casual games and if you care about the fun of the whole group, you should replace those with one-off effects (switch Bane of progress for aura shards!). Even if I am playing enough removal, I am going to reasonably have max 2-3 ways of dealing with enchantments in let’s say mono red or black deck. Is it fun for anyone to just sit there not able to play anything meaningful and hoping to draw one of those 3 cards?
I think when I feel salt in EDH it's because it's a best of one multiplayer format with no sideboarding, where you're strategically encouraged to build a deck with threats that can only be answered by very narrow sideboard card answers, like with a thoracle win, or some kind of lazy aetherflux reservoir stuff. Feels like they aren't tapping into the expressive nature of the format by just jamming the most strategically viable option. You might say, well gang up on that player with the other players- what do you do if it's three of them? I think there's a point where salt would be justified, but there's mature adult ways to navigate the situation as well.
island : salt levl unreal!
how can islands carry so much dsalt?
#ScienceQuestion in MTG
I used to think Drannoth was a stupid card that totally went against the spirit of the format. Now that I play with more removal, and at tables with a lot of frightening commanders, honestly a turn or two of Drannith feels like a nice pause^^ (I'm still salty that the most commander-relevant of my beloved Ikoria is a lame human stax piece instead of one of the numerous cool monsters but that salt feels right (also free my boy Lutri, he did everything wrong but Alania needs him))
This is why I play Simic I can win at turn 4 when my turn 4 is actually turn 12 already tentacle chess.
My first time playing against dranith magistrate was not a bad one. I had a turn 3 eyown the shieldmaiden into a lot of tokens however the turn two dranith stopped that I was annoyed and way put of my league on this table and needed my commander and proceded to aim at forcing him to block with the dranith. It got swordsd and I dealt all 40 damage to that guy for denying my commander. He wqs also in a late game value deck and try8ng to stall and get there so was a very valid target although I didnt understand at the time.
So I think lots of things can be true.
1. Salt is absolutely self-perpetuating and has its own “EDHREC Effect” to use the snail’s term.
2. If I tap out for keyword big and you play humility, that’s not really an issue, I play removal. The problem arises when you counter the removal, and play answers.deck. Imagine if you counterspell that desert twister how much less cool of a moment that is.
3. On the “play more interesting decks” idea, I would argue you should play more interesting ways to be the archenemy. Don’t play the card that makes the table groan when you announce its name. Instead play a card that makes them ask “what does that do?” and then after you explain, THEN it makes them groan. Don’t cast Humility, cast Witness Protection and Radiant Performer. It’s way cooler and way funnier. You don’t need the salt cards
not watched yet. just wanna say the thumbnail is goated.
You stated time and again that you like control decks that colors your perception of them.
Salt inducing cards are cards that accue too much value for the amount of mana used to cast such thing or when cards prevent players from being able to play the game.
No one gets salty when someone casts a jeska's will and gets 3 mana and 3 lands off the top. Someone will get mad when they cast it and get 7 mana and 3 non lands they can cast immediately after. Rhystic study is hated for obvious reasons but no one hate ever watching threshold.
An oops all counterspell deck is going to be salt inducing as you are preventing players from using their cards.
That is an interesting point about jeska’s will
Do people who play edh really not like any removal? Because when I started to play edh, the first thing I ever did was play as many cheap,fast, interruption as I could possibly find and it lead my jund deck to victory because of it.
Mana rocks and ramp pieces died to all my artifact removal and eventually I managed to out grind the game to the point where i could living death and bring back half my deck to the battle field and win via burn.
I mean I get that edh is meant to be causal but imo, I think limiting things (tutors, alt win cons, removal) end up limiting deck building as now instead of having stax, Timmy, aggro, or whatever jank strat. It instead becomes who has bigger stick because stax can’t play their pieces, the jank decks can’t get into their specific pieces, and aggro… doesn’t really suffer much
I like the definition of roadblock cards but wouldn't really counter grave pact towards those. While the others exclusively block opponent's actions (if you built your deck around it), grave pact only reaches its full potential if you generate creatures and sacrifice them. Unlike the others, actively removing opponents creatures can advance your gameplan by drawing cards (morbid opportunist), draining opponents or generating treasures to straight up win the game (revel in riches).
Overall I fear that it isn't that simple to reduce salt. Spells like drannith magistrate and aura shards are pretty annoying to deal with and require you to have just the right sort of removal (or find it in the next few turns). But even if noone moans about the cards being "unfair", "unfun" or whatever else: If a new player has a cascade or artifact deck, they should realize quickly that their entire gameplan is getting sabotaged by one card. Losing to someone who out-tempoed you or assembled a combo first is infinitely prefarable to sitting around and hoping that *this* draw is going to be the one that lets you play the game again.
A partifular problem are non-creature roadblocks. Depending on your color there are very few truly flexible removal options. And if we don't go flexible, creature removal is a priority. After all, every player has at least one creature in their deck (and always available to them).
The only time I've seen somebody whinge about a salty card it was somebody being completely ridiculous who eventually stormed out of the LGS - other than that I've seen everybody either play through or respectfully scoop - where are you finding all these whiny players? Compared to my actual experience, it really feels like something that only "exists" on reddit where the few who do act like that go to complain and generally get told to shut up by everybody else.
Roadblock lol thats stax buddy
I didn’t want to get bogged down in the what is or isn’t stax argument since many of these are not agreed upon. Like aura shards for example. Or pillow fort effects
In early and just in time for me sitting down at work.
ZABAZ MENTIONED WOOOOO
I think it isn't great to think of new players as gullible and unintelligent, the player in your second example clearly questioned why the other player was freaking out over fetches. my friend was always hyping up progenitus as an unbeatable card unless you had black sun's zenith or something, but I never was particularly interested or thought it mattered. maybe some players are more susceptible, but generally people are able to think for themselves. I do agree that being nice to people and generally being polite about cards you don't like is a pretty necessary attitude if you want to keep new players interested.
You make some very good points buutttttttt Dranith is still cringe don’t play it
Please give me a list of every "roadblock" card so I can make a deck with as many of them as possible.
Amen.
You’re treating this like it’s a simple choice, but “salt” is an emotion (more generally called “frustration”), and it’s not always possible to choose not to feel an emotion. That’s just not how brains work. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying as a stax player myself, but it seems really weird to ignore the fact that whether someone feels salty or not usually isn’t actually within their control.
Its all fun and games untill they cast drannith and knowledge pool trinket mage
So I disagree a little bit. "Roadblock cards" tends to be a silver bullet towards some deck types. It also tends to lock one player out of the game, not the rest of the table. Additionally, with how you said people normally run these cards to slow down other really fast decks, that implies that their deck is strong enough to compete with those fast and stronger decks. To me that means your deck is likely a higher power level because it's not only looking to play against higher power level decks, but also have roughly the same speed because they should be expecting the same amount of resistance.
That doesn't mean me or my playgroup outright ban them, but we specifically ask to not have one card that's meant to stop one deck/player at the table from playing. I.e. dranith magistrate is okay, but aura shards probably isn't if we had like one deck in the playgroup that only plays enchantments or something.
Hot-Take: This sounds a little bit like "How to deal with difficult people in real life" in Magic slang: "Instead of berating them, show others how to deal with the problem..." Hm... 🤔
Casual competitive; it's entertaining af. Cedh can be too bland.
Salt comes most from OP players.