I think you underestimate how good it is to be able to use all of your mana and still have interaction up. Even in casual EDH, most games are decided by only… probably 5 instances of targeted removal. The rest is simply about contesting the board and board wipes. So if you ALWAYS have one of those instances of removal, you can do whatever you want… like draw a billion cards… to fuel Force.
I think card advantage matters, but not in the way you describe. Casual commander is often a competition of value engines. Traditional aggro struggles to win quickly, and traditional control lacks the resources to completely shut down multiple opponents. So most decks focus on setting up and scaling up their resource base - this is why most early plays are ramp. In these environments, games are not lost because you went -2 cards in an interaction; they’re lost because your opponents got to do bigger things than you did. Back to force of will: the ability to protect your value engine from a wrath or a cyclonic rift or any targeted removal without ever leaving up mana is invaluable. If your commander generates card advantage, protecting it from a Swords is easily worth multiple cards, plus the 2 mana you didn’t need to spend on a normal counter spell, plus the 5-8 mana you’d need to recast it next turn. TL;DR: People go for big value in casual EDH, so minor disadvantages like force of will are negligible compared to the advantage of whatever synergy it’s protecting.
Card advantage doesnt matter for long when you are playing blue spells... Exile a blue card for counterspell that exists when you have no mana (and doesnt even need a permanent on the board) when you can play any number of extra draw next turn and lose all the negatives of a FREE counterspell.
If your goal is to be interactive without mana at an early point in order to save the day, yes, Force of Will. But if and only if you have enough U cards to support. The proportion should be about 20-25% if you always want to free cast it once it's in hand.
I pulled a Chrome Mox in Double Masters and I gotta say, it works. Like, I only run it in decks where I want my commander out on turn one or two, but in those decks? It's awesome. Also, my wife bought me a Jeweled Lotus for X-Mas, and it has won me every game I've played it. TLDR good cards are, in fact, really good if you know how to use them.
@@majinvegeta6364 I've noticed that as well whenever I see his card breakdowns. It feels like the guy has an insanely weak play group where no one is actually forced to optimize at all. Using removal or protection spells instead of counterspells screams low power to me. There's a ton of cards that end the game when they hit the table, and only counterspells stop that. EG, City of Solitude or Grand Abolisher.
Been watching a lot of your videos recently, great work on the content! However, something I'd like to call out is your choice of persuasion when it comes to explaining why you have your perspectives on these cards. There are many strong points regarding why card advantage should be evaluated highly, which is why card disadvantage should be evaluated equally as low. When you include points like "accelerating out a threat makes the removal feel worse" or "board wipes hurt more after developing permanents", these are true, albeit subjective statements regardless of the surrounding context about card disadvantage. Points like this would be good if you were trying to persuade someone emotionally by feeding into loss aversion, but I think it takes away from the analytical argument being made that quantifies why people shouldn't play FoW.
Hello, non-EDH player here. I play mostly 60 card-constructed but my favourite formats are Limited and I watch the occasionally SUAP and Game Knights EDH Gameplay vids. Just want to commend you on your content being extremely well balanced without losing your opinions, and was wondering if you would ever consider doing limited set review content. I am always interested to hear other people's thoughts on limited formats to find different perspectives and I find your delivery and opinions to be very well thought out and easy to understand. While it might not be what you are used to or maybe you don't feel 'qualified' enough, I believe limited assessment is a skill that improves with experience and everyone will always have blind spots regardless. Will definitely tune in to your upcoming content and I hope you can consider expanding your content in this direction :)
Gonna have to disagree here. Like you said, card advantage is king in commander, which means that most people are constantly either drawing or trying to be drawing cards. And unless you're being heavily interfered, you will quite often have 5+ cards in your hand, especially in blue decks and you usually have ways to get more. At that point, losing 1 extra card doesn't actually affect you much if at all. Drawing roughly 2+ cards each turn is quite common in EDH and you quite often have cards in your hand that you know you won't be playing anytime soon. Also, free protection from basically anything is INCREDIBLY powerful. Think about it this way, you have a commander or any other value card on the battle field or on the stack and that card will draw you 3 or more cards if it lives/resolves, at that point being able to reliably protect that card from almost anything is very valuable. Force does that while ALSO being a panic button for must answer threats/unbeatable spells. Also, the implication that holding up 2 or more mana is "easy" is quite ridiculous. Yes, if you're on turn 8, you likely have plenty of mana to hold up, but unless you're a "draw go" deck, that will make you fall very much behind when you're effectively playing with a 2+ mana tax every turn. And mana is arguably MORE valuable than card advantage in commander. Obviously force isn't necessary like it is in cEDH, but casual EDH ALSO has PLENTY of removal/counters/threats that you need to keep an eye out for and force is absolutely a VERY good card to include.
I do agree force is great as a panic button. The thing is in casual games how often does the must answer unbeatable card get cast? As for the 2 mana argument I think your point actually lines up with what I said. Yes holding up 2 mana interaction from turn 2 onwards is bad. But in casual commander do you need to do that? Is it not true that you have the early turns as times when you can fully tap out. I’m not expecting you to hold up UU until turn 6+ and by then with some ramp in the early turns it should not be that hard to do
@@thetrinketmage I'd say that the panic button mode is the least important part. It's there if you need it, but you don't run force because you're expecting a combo in casual EDH. You run it so you don't have to tax your mana to hold up counter spells and so that you can play and protect YOUR value engines/wincons/etc regardless of the current game state and available mana. You don't NEED it, but it's REALLY GOOD. The downside is hardly a downside (as long as your deck has reasonable card draw etc, which shouldn't be an issue for a blue deck) and the upside is undeniably strong.
I really enjoy videos like this. Staples seem like they encourage good stuff, non-synergistic decks that end up so much more expensive than they needed to be. Digging around for the right card for this deck feels so much more rewarding than the card no one needs to read because they've all seen it a thousand times. Having a moment with a card where everyone says "I've never seen/heard of that card" is one of the best feelings in a game.
I think the reason you're so low on fow is that you seem to conceptualize it as removal rather than protection. Being able to develop your board on curve without fear of board wipes is super beneficial especially since the extra turn that you have your engine established will likely more than recoup the loss in card advantage.
@@thetrinketmage it was more that you seem to value it less than most people (or at least me). The example deck you talked about playing it in is also basically the opposite of where I consider fow to be best. IMO it's at its best in decks looking to tap out for big advantage pieces that if protected will more than make up the card advantage rather than in a draw go control deck that intends to hold up lots of mana. I'd argue that applies to most commander decks since at the very least most commanders are themselves going to generate more than 1 card per turn. In the way you talked about fow as well as the moxen I think the main disagreement between us the the ratio of importance between mana and card advantage with you favoring card more than me
This fails to acknowledge that there very much will be plenty of times where you will simply not need every card you draw. If you’re playing blue or a 2 color deck featuring blue, then you likely shouldn’t be often staring down an empty hand thanks to a plethora of draw options, there’s bound to be something you can at least somewhat safely pitch. Not to counter something early, but to hold much in the same way as you would any other Counterspell, but instead of bleeding mana every turn, it doesn’t at all affect your curve other than by being a card you’re not casting, theoretically putting you down a card.
My Sheoldred deck disagrees. You have to learn how to use her. Sandbagging is very important. And you know you’re not looking to have everyone chip away for 2 dmg/turn. Often in my pods she is a pesky early game annoyance that speeds up the game while the Dino Discover deck is becoming more and more the problem or the Eldrazi are looking to annihilate the multiverse meanwhile I’m sitting back gathering resources looking to stack multiple effects and wheels to eliminate the inevitable aftermath of other decks popping off.
I'm willing to bet you are a much better player than every other Sheoldred player I have run into! I just see people jam this in random decks without any real benefit
@@thetrinketmage I would like to think so but I know I can always improve! I built my Sheoldred deck to be mono black control. I want the game to go longer. I pack a lot of removal and protection spells to dig me to my big pieces then when I have them in hand I attempt to remove the entire table in one or two turns. Sheoldred is important and ideal to my game plan but she is not the entire focus of the deck in stark contrast to my Faldorn deck. These are my two loves in this game! Thanks for the thoughtful discussion I really enjoy your videos and take on the game.
It's not about combos, I hardly ever use FoW to stop a combo I just run it because Simic exists and my opponents have 12+ mana by the time I have 6 and a few creatures on board. They drawn more cards than me, have way more resources and if I just tapped out to play my 6 mana commander I don't want it to be defenseless and get removed before I can even use him. Everything else is so incredibly powercrept at this point free counterspells only seem fair.
right but then why play force over other free spells or 1 mana disruption. You are right things are powercrept so you should play removal but if you don't lose on turn 1 why force
@@thetrinketmage A few reasons I guess. An unexpected counterspell is worth 10x the one that your opponent has sniffed out. There's 0 telegraph on it, it's practically unconditional and it WILL catch greedy players going for that Torment of Hailfire or Craterhoof. It just stops everything. Would it be better for me to run FoW, FoN and the likes to pitch a card for tempo or wait extra turns to hold up mana? The answer is always keep tempo. If there's one resource blue can stockpile it's cards in hand/draw, so pitching a card is not that much a punishment to a blue deck. This is blue's "ramp", I need free spells because my opponents have twice the mana I do and I don't have time to take off turns to play some kinda 1v1 control strategy in EDH.
cEDH says yes, your wallet says no, end of video. All casual Commander is an aping and approximation of cEDH, so you should play it at casual tables as well. You're not a better deckbuilder if you refuse to use FoW; you're unwilling to proxy or pay. Note the difference.
Wait I’m confused. You think saying cEDH and edh are not the same format is wrong. Which is my argument for the cEDH vid. Is this a double negative thing I am missing?
Yea, happens. Other vids have had names changed and thumbnails altered. I will try to have backup titles and thumbnails so I can test things and change things as needed ultimately still new to RUclips so I am experimenting
Bro, you make actually good content, you don't need to become like other channels and click bait. Even if you want to click bait, you can do it in a not purposefully misleading way. Please don't continue going this path
With the fast mana discussion, I think you greatly underestimate how powerful dropping a significant advantage engine on an earlier turn. A storm deck getting to drop archmage emeritus earlier or a proliferate deck getting to drop inexorable tide 2 or even 3 turns ahead of curve can easily take over a game. The card you're losing for the extra mana has to be worth it in being able to get more cards earlier through the faster mana in lower power.
Dropping a 4/5 cmc value card in turn 3 in certain decks is devastating if the board doesn't answer inmediately. I agree with you here. Especially in casual tables.
I see what you are saying. But why play chrome mox over mana crypt, sol ring, lotus petal, the spirit guides, or rituals? If you just need the value engine in play early is it not better to play fast mana that doesn’t cause card disadvantage?
@@thetrinketmage I feel like it really comes down to the gameplan and rather than just card adv, it matters what youre denying the opponent, if youre hitting something insane that is a crucial piece to a combo or just something you cannot let resolve as it tends to take over the game, losing that 1 card is often worth it when you look at the long term effects of not countering. additionally having the ability to tap out in some archetypes is huge obviously. I also don't really agree with the comparison since chrome mox while good doesnt always affect the game the same way.
@@thetrinketmageI feel like in reality people aren’t playing chrome Mox over those cards, but with those cards. Sure it’s probably on the lower end of that group but that group is that group for the reason.
@@thetrinketmage Chrome Mox is a permanent, colored mana source which only eats the exact worse card in hand. It's a known play pattern for spirit guides to go into a Chrome Mox because they're only temporary mana. It gives extra turns of use for many MDFC lands. If you lean into the collect evidence or delve mechanics, Squee and Misthollow don't even put you down a card. Wish-style effects are starting to be printed so they can grab from exile as well. Even the relatively common case of needing to dump cards after a big draw spell (oops, my Rishkar's Expertise drew 9 cards and I'm out of mana). But all that's theory, let's use some concrete commanders: Kalamax can drop T1 and eliminate a player T2 with Chrome Mox (Land-Ring-Guide-Manamorphose-Chrome Mox-MDFC with Battlerage/Twinferno + Invigorate/other pump spell with land in the remaining four) or start using copied draw spells to refresh the hand; Shanna drops T1 with Mox + Guide and starts regaining cards T2 (getting great use out of the continuous mana aspect); Urza, Prince of Kroog can dump a Sharding Sphinx to retrieve later with Karn the Great Creator, making it safe from hand disruption methods. Grist can even flip T1 with Flare-Guide-Mox-Reanimate/Unearth. There's plenty of reasons why a mid- to high-power casual deck would want a Chrome Mox in its ramp suite.
Sheoldred is pretty good in casual imo. The argument "dies to boardwipe" is just true for every commander thats not cheating like emry though. In a punisher type deck with stuff like Kambal you can quickly evaporate your opponents life total from them just playing the game.
Dies to removal is a weak argument, but I still maintain it does not slow down your opponents nor speed you up very much. I bet you can easily find a better 4 drop
it's just such a huge leap, any 20 health format, that card is a menace, not even needing any synergy "force the opponent to draw" cards, just putting a 10 turn clock and setting the health disparity is so strong, and it's got incredible stats. In edh stats like this are puny, and the life drain is miniscule due to 40 life. An aristocrats deck is going to deal similar damage per turn but without any risk of needing to draw the opponents cards or waiting around for them to draw each turn. Because of politics, regardless of whether it is the correct play or not, people often swing at the person with the highest life total because they don't wanna anger the other two players, so while the card certainly will keep you alive and steady despite said attacks on you, it's not effectively getting you very far ahead of the other players like it does in a 1v1 format.
I'll be honest the last few videos Ive watched from your channel have left a negative impression on me. Ive felt like theyve been click bait "hot takes" designed to drive engagement. To be fair its worked on me but its also soured my opinion on your future content and the value I place on hearing your opinions. To the point that I clicked on this video specifically to see if I had subscribed so I could unsubscribe. I made it about 3 minutes into the video where you made the point that the card is better in cedh than in casual edh. I agree with that point and I think it is a reasonable point. But because of how you started the video from the title in such a negative stance of "this card is terrible" it makes me feel tricked into engaging with your content because you are walking back the controversial and inflammatory stance you intially made into a more commonly held position. The disconect between the two is jaring and frankly insulting of my time and attention. You are not providing me with what you initially promised from the title of your video. If you started the video from the title and your opening in a more reasonable position like "Is this card good in casual commander?" I would likely have watched the whole video and had a more positive view of your content. I want to see smaller mtg creators succeed and I understand how youtube works clickbaits drive engagement its a regretable fact. The way you are proceeding currently though I believe will sacrifice long term growth for short term engagement metrics. Content creation is about building a community of people who want to continue to engage with you. Due to my previous interactions with your videos I felt anonnyed when I saw the title of this video because I felt like I knew I was about to be click baited and I feel like I was right. If you must clickbait which I don't believe you need to but understand the pressure to do so, I believe keeping the tones consistent between your title and opening is important. Otherwise you risk alienating people like me who feel tricked and disrespected by continuing to click on your videos. I hope this feedback is in some way helpful to your success.
Title and thumbnail have changed, I encourage you to finish the video and let me know what you think. I think the original is still accurate. In your precon or casual mid power deck force is just outclassed by other spells which don't cause card disadvantage. As for clickbait on the whole... Ultimately the title and thumbnail need draw or some kind of hook. It's something every creator does. I've spoken to and worked with many other youtubers about thumbnails and titles. And everyone does this. Any good title and thumbnail is click bait in some way. I guess I'll tone it down? Though other than this one, I don't think any others are really that clickbaity. Do you have an example?
In a lower powered casual deck I would agree that FoW is not needed but casual also includes high power and at PL 8-9 everyone and their mother runs Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Esper Sentinel, Trouble in Pairs and every other efficient draw engine. It doesnt matter that you have to pitch a card since you will gain so much value back. Also combos are super common in high power.
You have been putting fourth thoughtful videos like this and done so pretty well. But you only have to read a few random comments to find equally well thought out arguments to the contrary. Take these as data points that don’t prove you are wrong but at least gently nudge you to re-examine your position to see what you could be missing. Let me ask a legitimate question. If you play in a pod with a bunch of powerful commander decks (casual) and they are otherwise even in power.. even say you all play the same commander and the same deck except 3 of the decks have; chrome mox, diamond, mana vault, dark ritual, jeweled lotus, lotus petal, and say both spirit guides (so it’s a Jund pod maybe) If you are all playing Korvold and you are the one player who doesn’t run fast mana.. do you literally believe you will win more than 25% of those games?
Yes you can still get that win rate. The answer is politics and efficient removal. In casual edh many times the player who gets the turn 1 sol ring does not win. Why? Because everyone else gets scared and takes them out. I recently guest started on KJ the hero’s stream and that exactly happened. The player with the sol ring did nothing all game cause the fast start had 2 players rushing to take him out. And if you saw the stream you might’ve noticed I didn’t use much removal on the player who has the fast start. I was able to deploy value engines and get ahead that way
I guess Cedh players are better off spending their money on dual lands and McDonald's rather than fast mana since the win rate stays the same either way? Run a precon and politic your way to victory like you're a bastard in game of thrones?
@@thetrinketmage Ok, let's take a step back here. You're using an anecdotal example of one game to justify a position against an insanely powerful card. I've seen decks loaded with fast mana and it can lower their win from turn 6 to turn 3-4 easily. A lot of casual players aren't even starting the game at turn 3. They have done nothing while the turbo player ends the game on the spot. You can argue that only cEDH decks do this, but well built decks without roots in cEDH are more than capable of slipping in early wins when fast mana is involved. Hell, tribal elfball can smash face by turn 2 with fast mana involved. Imo, it's the most warping part of a deck since it creates an insane amount of inconsistency in wintimes. That's just me imo.
It's one or the best cards in my Ovika deck, since it's a "free" counterspell which generates 5 tokens I agree with your points here. Most casual groups don't even run the type of combos you need this to counter. I know it's just a small point at the end of the video, but tbh, price isn't a consideration for quite a few people (including me). A majority of my games are on Cockatrice or Tabletop Simulator where I don't have to worry about the price of cards
I strongly disagree. Any decks with card advantage attached to their commander and two or less colors should run force of will. One great deck for force is my gin gitaxis (the one that flips to saga) deck.
@@thetrinketmage I've only played one game against it, but that also involved Teferi's Puzzle Box, a Howling Mine and tutored for a Memory Jar The Box was probably the worst, the Jar didn't get played because the player lost before he got the chance
@@thetrinketmage it sounds like the example you used in your video (sheoldred) was someone keeping a hand they shouldn't have. They saw jeweled lotus in their opening hand and kept it without any sheoldred payoffs. Reminds me of the video you made a while back about mulligans. Love your content man.
@@thetrinketmage Didnt you say in the video that the best thing you can do in casual commander is draw cards? Wouldn't that mean that anything that punishes that would be the best counterplay? Even is casual commander, Sheoldred the apocalypse much be answered FAST or everyone will die. Ive seen it many times.
Reliquary tower is unironically only good in decks that would also choose to play Spellbook. My Masumaro deck plays and utilizes both, but I wouldn’t include them in any other type of deck.
@@DuckyZockt Eh, Reliquary Tower is _really_ low opportunity cost, and Spellbook just doesn't really have a niche anymore given how many ways there are to get no max hand size with additional upside, even as small as Thought Vessel and Decanter of Endless Water. I wouldn't put Reliquary Tower into _every_ deck, but any slow, grindy deck with lots of draw will appreciate it greatly, and a _lot_ of people have primarily slow, grindy decks with lots of draw in my experience.
The flaw in your logic is that free counterspells protect your gameplan from being disrupted. They ensure that you aren't caught with your shields down when an opponent tries to wrath your board, etc. This allows you to curve out without sandbagging, thereby making your deck both faster and more consistent than decks that do not run free counterspells. If anything, Pact of Negation is a better example of a counterspell that is FAR better at protecting combos, whereas Force of Will can deal with almost any situation, whether it's protecting your wincon, breaking an opponent's combo, or simply preventing them from getting their value engine online before you can close out the game. Also, the RC changed the rules of the format to encourage players to build around their commanders. With proper protection, including cards like Force of Will, Lightning Greaves, Teferi's Protection, etc, doing so is a vital aspect of why EDH is the most diverse meta of any game ever printed. Removing said options would significantly narrow the format to a handful of deck archetypes, thereby detracting from their desired goal of exploration.
I'm sure others have said it, but it is not wise to underestimate the value, even in casual, to be able to build a board and tap out to win on untap and still have interaction available to counter board wipes or removals. And Sheodred the Apocalypse is an amazing card in the 99 of EDH decks. At lower levels, it dwindles life totals and blocks small and large creatures amazingly well due to high toughness and Deathtouch. In more powerful levels of play, it opens you to use mass draws like Blue Sun's Zenith effects to kill opponents or at least finish them.
It's like any card, you have to know what you're playing it in. Shits insane in any casual deck that has a ton of cards but is short on mana because it plays into what resources you have and don't have.
Force of will sucks unless everyone is playing as fast as possible. I think at a casual level all the free countermagic is pretty bad except for the blue flare that came in mh3 and pact is alright. in casual you just end up timewalking yourself but thats i think less bad than losing 2 cards. Cuz usually casual games end up with 10+ mana easily. And then obviously fierce is just good. If ur running combos though and wanna protect ur combo then the free countermagic is necessary to be able to attempt early wins. And to stop early wins.
Force of will uses to be a great TCG, I still miss the stone deck and not having to draw lands. Game is still kicking just had a much smaller audience and print run now
With the discussion or mention of Arcane Denial, Reliquary Tower and Wayfarer's Bauble in recent videos/comments, i'm really hyped for the next vid! What i think plays a lot into cards being overplayed are questionable inclusions in precons, especially when it comes to nonbasic lands.
Force of will has mana value of 5, so its often hard to play in the same deck as ad nausium. 5 isn't a lot in most commander games, but ad nausium usually wants to dig as deep as possible. The 1 life can also be a bigger deal than people realize sometimes, especially in ad nausium decks, asana bases and other aggressively cheap cards often want to compete for your life total too. It's also just 5 mana counter spell if you can't draw/hold a blue card. I prefer pact of negation when I'm trying to win, and 1 cost counters. when trying not to lose. FoW when you have the weakest board state at the table is digging you into a deeper hole. Though, all that being said, I'm pointing out flaws in one of the strongest cards in magic. It reaches basically auto include staus for me in decks that can afford the budget and can reasonably play it for free. My playgroup plays $600 budget, so my biggest gripe with the card is it eats so much of my budget.
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. Force of Will becomes a lot less relevant/useful when you have fewer "counter this or you lose" targets per game, and your deck isn't playing a lot of cheap card draw. Force is like... fine? in slow casual games if your commander draws you a lot of cards, but I definitely think it's not at its best. Card is still cracked and up there with Mana Drain as the most powerful counterspell ever printed, but the reasons its powerful are not very prevalent in slower casual games, just like Dockside isn't really at its best when the entire table isn't running the same suite of generic artifact fast mana.
@@thetrinketmage I think people who primarily play Commander aren't as familiar with the play patterns of Force, and when/where it's good. I play a lot of Legacy, mostly Grixis control, and that deck is a FoW deck by necessity, not because it wants to be. There's matchups where I board out some or all of my Forces because they're just not good. Commander compounds the downsides of Force pretty heavily. You're gaining an upward tempo swing in exchange for going down a card, but in commander? It's more like going down 2 cards relative to half your opponents, and that tempo swing is pretty minor, since you're only getting it versus one player. Force in Commander is more like a panic button, you cast it when the outcome of a spell resolving is worse than discarding two cards. Maybe you're protecting your 5+ mana commander, maybe an opponent's going to win, those are basically the only times where it's good to do it. Side note: the density of stuff like Esper Sentinel, Mystic Remora, and Rhystic Study make the downsides of casting Force even worse in a lot of cases, and those cards do show up at a significant portion of tables.
Force of Will is not good at lower or even average power tables. It becomes significantly stronger when players consistently can win from 2 card combos and the deciding factor of a game is whether or not someone was able to counter one of those cards. In cEDH a card like Force of Will is insanely powerful. At a table where everyone is playing Precons not so much. Edit: I didn't watch the video before posting this comment. I'd like to add that this phenomenon isn't even unique to Force of Will. It applies to both Counterspells and Zero Mana Interaction of all kinds. The ability to negate spell activation and interact without holding up Mana both become exponentially more powerful when games are ended quicker and with fewer cards. At lower power level tables it's just not necessary to have Zero Mana Counterspells. For the money you spent on Force of Will you could've gotten Dovin's Veto, Counterspell and Swan Song and still had over $40 left over. In a slower, grindier game Force of Will is still good, it's a free Counterspell, that's good by default, but you won't get significantly more mileage out of it than just running Counterspell since holding up 2 mana for Counterspell is nowhere close to as big of an opportunity cost in a format where games take 10-20 turns. And Force of Will costs a *lot* more money than Counterspell.
I think i would have agreed with this video two years ago but in 2024 I swear it's impossible to run out of cards even without draw engines. From bounce lands being OP, MDFC being lands that can pitch to Force, and every Commander having some form of card advantage it almost feels like Mox and Force don't actually have a downside. That being said, I also don't think there is a problem with running Force or Mox but if you're playing casually the stronger your support cards the weaker your win condition should be
not what i heard, Force of Will was an uncommon and was seen as a terrible card in the early days. Talking like a twenty five cent card. People slowly figured out how powerful it was cause you know, you can counter ANY spell having zero mana sources on your opponents turn. While you are coming from a more "Casual" standpoint, it's important to examine how each color has/does it's card advantage to better understand why counterspells like Force of Will is so powerful. Take for example Modern Horizons 3 introduced a lineup of new "freecast" spells with the catch being that you have to sacrifice a nontoken creature of that color to freecast the spell. Blue is not normally going to achieve this requirement, and neither will white. Black, Red, and Green however have no issues having or getting a nontoken creature of their color on field. Now let's look at Modern Horizon's cycle of "freecast" spells, this is where Force of Negation, Force of Vigor, Force of Dispair, Force of Rage, and Force of Virtue were introduced. Each requiring that you exile a card to freecast the spell. White, Green, Black, not even Red can do that. This favors specifically Blue. To better understand each color, examine how each color does it's advantage. White: Permanents. Black: Mill Green: Counters Red: Exile Blue: Drawing cards.
There are a few other cards like that. Famously necropotence was given a 2/10 by channel fireball. But people quickly learned how good the card was for both force and necro
I started playing in Masques block and Force of Will cost more than Revised dual lands at the time. Also, Uzra's Saga was still in Type II (what we used to call Standard), and I must have bought 100 packs for original retail. Those were the days....
It’s a big level up moment when you start to understand mtg in terms of card advantage and tempo. Be careful though, mtg is very complicated and the old saying comes to mind, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Card advantage and tempo are not the only things that matter. Look, if what you are saying (fast mana like chrome mox and pitch spells are bad unless you are comboing off fast) then that would seem to imply you ought not play chrome mox in a cedh “win conless stax” deck. And that’s false. There is another thing to consider.. you actually have to convert tempo and cards into wins. The threats in mtg are balanced by mana cost. If I can play my threats a turn ahead of you for the entire game and my deck is built well I am at a huge advantage. Generally, having access to a card a full turn ahead of curve is worth something. Maybe a full card. Being able to play ALL my cards a turn ahead of curve is even more effective. Consider this case, for simplicity.. I have 3 small creatures out on turn 4 and because I exiled a card to chrome mox I am now able to play Orhan Frostfang a full turn early. That could draw me 3 cards on the first turn and deal damage I may not have been able to deal otherwise. This isn’t a special case just because my card example draws cards either. The object of the game is to win and drawing cards isn’t the fundamental thing it’s just a simpler example. I am pretty well versed in game theory (used to teach high brow math to poker nerds for a living) so I have spent an unreasonable amount of time wrestling w toy games. And a lot of time trying to apply them to mtg. I see where you are coming from but I think there are some missing bits. Try this; Start with the end state of the game and work backward. In the end we have to finish with actual material in play. Even just consider the amount of extra damage you’ll have done playing bigger creatures than your opponents because of ramp. Or think if you ramp a phyrexian arena out a turn early (making up for one card) and because your creatures are bigger on average maybe you are able to brick wall a lower curved deck and maybe that draws you more cards by allowing you to survive extra turns w a card draw piece online. Point is, magic is complex. Applying heuristics is a helpful short cut that can be generally useful but, like a metaphor, it can’t be taken literally and will break down at certain points. 🖖namaste And arcane denial isnt bad. Lol. It’s not usually gonna make cedh decks but it will often and I’d say usually be better than OG counterspell. I’d go to that video you made and read the comment by Navonod on NLH. It’s pretty clear I think. 🖖
I did address the ramping into stax point in this video. It's one of the reasons to play fast mana I listed. And yea, if you don't have good things to ramp into the card disadvantage is not worth it. That's the video. There is something to be said about rushing out some value card one turn early like a rhystic study but you still have to consider if it is then worth it to lose the card to maybe draw more later. When you could have just played a 2 drop into a turn 3 study. And in casual turn 3 study is still good enough so most of the time I would not play chrome mox in a casual deck
@@thetrinketmage I admit I hadn’t heard the stax part of the video when I made those statements but just consider a commander that may play those cards.. like Winota. What does it mean to “waste” a card to ramp winota out a turn early? And that would be more like simian spirit guide (which I still absolutely would play in the deck even as a “casual” deck) But getting extra triggers for winota not just one turn but also reaping the benifits of the snow ball affect of having started moving a turn early?? It’s worth it on balance and I don’t think it’s particularly close. Your own example of R Study.. that’s not worth a card to get out early? I can’t imagine that. And remember that the “cash value” of drawing those extra cards is to actually help WIN the game. So it isn’t just a case of “ok, cards that draw more cards are worth ramping but only cards that draw cards” because the card draw doesn’t do anything unless we convert it into more mana and more action cards that can help you survive and/or win.
Ultimately you need to decide this on a deck by deck basis. Is it better to get winota out one turn earlier or better to have another thing on board to trigger the commander more when it comes down. In casual commander I am partial to the latter.
In casual, Force of will is still a disgustingly powerful card. Because card advantage is so flush in casual commander The bluff of tapping out is even more powerful in casual. It's why I don't like the card in casual. I don't like 0 mana interaction unless it's very on theme. Like if you're literally playing keruga companion then sure. Or if you're playing a deck that actually wants a fog to play the free fog or something. But cards that are so dominant in cedh like force of will, smothering tithe, and rhystic, I just don't enjoy playing across the table against in casual.
I think Sheoldred is a pretty meh commander, but a great value piece in some certain decks that really value the life, such as K'rrik. Also has some pretty nifty combos with something like Peer into the Abyss or Necrodominance, both of which are great cards on their own. I'm not super high on the card (I don't play it in my competitive Ayara deck, for example), but it certainly has its homes.
The argument of "it provides card disadvantage" is simply a non sequitur. The game of magic is FAR too complex to break it down to something as simple as "a card is probably not worth playing because it causes card disadvantage." Mox Diamond is objectively one of the most powerful cards ever made in Magic -- and it requires card disadvantage. The upside it provides greatly outweighs the single card loss. The other side must be asked: "What advantage do I gain by losing these cards?"
That's the point of the video right. Why play these cards. What advantage can I gain here? I really don't think adding mox diamond to a precon is worth it. Ultimately it won't help the deck very much
There are some people disagreeing but there are two points being overlooked. #1 Force of Will is being used to showcase a phenomenon where people play powerful cards even if they aren't very good in their deck. Force of will can still be good in some casual decks, BUT nowhere near as good as cEDH. Likewise fast mana can be good but only if you ramp into value to compensate for the card disadvantage; sheoldred offers neither for example. #2 there is often confusion as to what "casual" means as some people use it to refer to low power and others to anything outside of cEDH. In low power Force of Will isn't very good, but in high power pods it can be just as good as cEDH. Two examples, someone at my LGS started playing and got the Gruul dragon starter precon and put a Lotus Petal he was given into the deck. I don't know if he still has it in there, but it was explained to him with his deck looking to ramp, often not playing on curve, and multiple high-mana spells he was better off with another generic ramp spell for repeatable mana. Likewise I built my wife a Winota deck that is decently strong but not cEDH. It runs the same Lotus Petal, but it's worth it because the deck is looking to be explosive and dump its hand to swing ASAP; it also runs other spells that grant temporary mana and 0-cost creatures. Finally, you also run into an issue of power levels. Your deck may not be very good even though you threw several expensive cards in the 99, but you are sending mixed signals. If your deck is low power, why run expensive cards that don't perform or synergize well? If you win, people may be upset that you pubstomped with your "powerful" cards. If you lose, there's a good chance you were singled out because playing such cards gave the impression you are stronger than you are; blue's power level is less about board presence and more about unknown information after all.
i play ghave. it is a dedicated combo deck. it can win going wide as well. however i on purpose haven't been playing blue combo decks till recently. i want my opponents to have multiple places of interaction and since many of my opponents are doing themselves weird and fast stuff the combo deck is not the biggest threat on the table.
I tried to keep an open mind for this one, but your entire point is that great cards don't suddenly make a garbage deck win. Not exactly groundbreaking, but also, fundamentally flawed. The same logic can be used for Rhystic Study in a terrible deck it happened into.
Study is a good point, but I also feel like it is different than Force. Study is raw card draw which almost any deck can use. Force is removal that 2 for 1s you. Not every deck will want that effect
Should you play force of will. Yes. Imo at least My commander philosophy is that it is the format to play with my broken cards that I can't play in other formats outside of legacy/vintage.
I'd easily put a free Counterspell in my Jodah the Unifier Deck that runs all colors and creatures if it means keeping a very specific mana fixing to make it work. It's also a card to swap in if your Commander is expensive, since Fierce Guardianship isn't going to do anything if your 5 mana Commander gets countered before it lands. Anyone who knows about the card already likely can decide whether or not the card is worth it before they spend $50 on a counterspell. If I'm running a card like that, I probably have Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, The One Ring, Necropotence, and/or Esper Sentinel to justify the cast cost. But yes, I'm not running a card that costs the same as an entire beginner's precon unless I need to.
Very well thought out video as always, with nuanced opinions that show deep thought. During the video, you used the phrase "good in casual" and referenced drawing lots of cards as something that is good in casual. I've always been very confused about what "good in casual" means. I say to people that the best casual deck would just be a cEDH deck. I'm suspicious that the term "casual edh" is quite possibly just commander where people play bad cards and don't do things that other players might think are mean. I guess I just don't know what "good" means in a sub-format where people all agree to not play good cards. No hate for casual edh, but discussing what cards and strategies are good just makes no sense to me. I also think drawing lots of cards IS the best strategy in casual, but only because it's the best strategy in cEDH and Magic in general. Even before The One Ring, Commander games were won and lost over Rhystic Studies and Mystic Remoras, from the most casual to the most competitive tables.
In my Meta, I am the only one, that I have seen, that plays an all in combo deck, and funny enough, Mykrul is the commander. There are also 2 combos, they are THE win con of the deck. The "main" combo is Slimefoot, the stowaway, Annointed Procession, and Ashnod's Alter. Each piece, outside of Slimefoot, makes reasonable sense for being in the deck. I want the creatures dead so I can make them an enchantment so they are more likely to be left alone from targeted removal and doubling the non-legendary creatures in my deck is really good. Why have 1 hulking raptor when I can have 2. As for the "Backup" combo, it involves Necropotence and Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator. When I have to use this combo, I focus on grinding out the game until everyone left is low and someone is gonna win within a turn or 2. I exile however many cards I need to from my deck with Necro, not having to pay life bc of Ashiok's static ability, and then use her ultimate to mill the opponent out. I can really only use this when there is one opponent left or two opponents but one is basically already dead. For Why Mykrul is the commander, I wanted a weird color combination for a combo deck and just happened to have the cards for both combos. Plus Mykrul as a weird layer of protection for Slimefoot helps if a player kills him. I can just say ok, he is an enchantment now, and keep going.
Casting cards from hand without having to pay mana from a permanent source is one of the worst things this game. I haven’t had a more worse experience than feeling safe to cast something while opponents are tapped out, just to still get your spell countered or plan foiled by a “free” spell. I admit this is mostly my own problem. A lot of players enjoy early turn winning combos. And yes, Force Of Will is an answer… But I just don’t enjoy playing early turn combo decks anyways. I’d rather my opponent just win every game until they get bored of winning on turn 3 every game with no competition.
hey trinket, this isn’t really related to the video, but i wanted to post this question on a recent video in hopes that more people would see it. do you have any advice for getting the ball rolling in terms of finding a unique and interesting idea for a deck? i’m a budget player and i’ve also banned myself from EDHREC’s top 100 for the rest of my decks. i already own two precons, so that can’t be helped, i guess. i’m trying to build my first actual deck but i’m struggling to come up with an interesting idea to build around. i tried to do something with minthara, merciless soul and i was gonna go for an artifact deck focused around servo/thopter tokens and the “arcbound” cards with modular, but it sort of just felt like a worse version of the average aristocrats build that you’d see on edhrec. i also tried to add some outlast/bolster cards and cards like aron, benalia’s ruin to make it a +1/+1 counter deck, but then i found out that modular only works with other artifact creatures.
Do your casual tables not run cards that are worth 2-for-1ing yourself to answer without having to hold up mana? I guess it depends on power level. But stuff like Rhystic Study and Craterhoof aren't unheard of and being able to tap out to develop your gameplan while still being able to answer them are a pretty big deal IMO.
terrible way to look at force. You should be running force if you expect ANY cards you play against to be stronger than "target player discards 2 cards and looses 1 life" which should be most cards in most decks. and at that point, you should be running force.
Force still does work in casual decks because its free. If you spent your first 2 or 3 turns ramping you're probably going all-in on a huge turn because it's so strong to play an 8 mana spell on turn 4. A free counterspell keeps someone from stopping that or let's you have that backup plan for someone else dropping their ramped spell too.
I use Sheoldred the Apocalypse as a removal magnet, so players will take her out in stead of my real game enders, because she looks scarier most of the time to people that don't know my deck. If they do know my deck, she's still gonna be helpful, since I do run quite a bit of draw
imo in casual alot of powerfull cards are unnesesary, for those you have high power or cedh. other cards in my mind would be farewell, the one ring, or mass reanimation spells. - you need farewell if you wanna get rid of things for good cause you fear something is coming back. - the one ring is one of those cards also its hard to remove it cause there isnt much exile artifact removal - mass reanimation spells are hard to interact with, you either need massgrave hate, silverbulets for gaveyards or counterspells and those are limited recourses in casual games. im talking about 0-5 of these in all decks combined, wich isnt even sure someone will draw! interactivity and interaction is an key element to evaluate your deck at the right powerlvl. Don't get me wrong there are also grey areas esp if your close to another powerlvl, but there are alot of people that call theyr deck casual even if you need from all magic cads in history a counterspell or other niche cardpools to hold that deck in check.
I play optimized casual. So combos are chill as long as they're flavorful or on brand to the commander and or deck theme. In other words force of will and fast mana that loses card advantage outside of green is greatly needed to not fall behind or fail to out combo the other players. Even without ad nauseum or thassa being used
Yes. If you are in blue, having access to a free counter spell and being able to tap out and still stop something while buying favor from the table is a good thing.
I was in a pod where I could’ve won by searching for a card that destroyed 1 creature on board but instead I got torment of hellfire for 8 turns on it and it didn’t do nothing to help me win that turn and I lost.
if you think it is bad, you are using it wrong, use it to protect your combo or stop someone from winning. To be fair, same goes for all spot removal in edh
@@yoyoguy1st i mean, if you force the T1 Grief then they can just reanimate it, leaving you down 3 cards instead of 2. But my comment was honestly more pointed at the fact that Rescaminator is a fast combo deck that USES Force of Will to protect its own combos
Scaminator isn't a fast combo deck. You're dying at the earliest like turn 4 or 5. Even "turbo" reanimator running dark rituals won't kill you until turn 3 on a goldfish. Fast combo is stuff like Oops All Spells, Doomsday, and various Storm variants. All of these decks have a pretty reasonable chance to turn 1 or turn 2 you, particularly Oops All Spells. Oops All Spells actively mulligans for a turn 1 win, and probably doesn't keep a hand that doesn't try to win on turn 1 or 2. Even something like Cephalid Breakfast is a faster combo deck than Rescaminator, since it goldfishes T2.
@@thetrinketmage I think you’re vastly overestimating the actual pace of legacy. Decks like Oops and Breakfast are losing to Leyline of the Void or themselves more often than Force, and Rescaminator fielding a Turn-1 Atraxa backed up by free had rips and protection spells is one of the fastest clocks that actually happens on a regular basis. Idk where commander youtubers keep getting this idea that decks like Charbelcher are secret metagame mainstays and not like, a novelty that people break out at locals for fun.
Counter magic and interaction in a multiplayer format is significantly worse than in 1v1s, though still necessary. Singleton formats exacerbate the problem. Having to chew through 120 life vs 20 exacerbates this even further. Those factors don't make the card bad, it makes the card bad for the format. That's all to say, if anything sucks here, it's the format. You could posit that I'm being pedantic. I'm not. Example 1: Colossal Dreadmaw sucks across every format, that's why it's a meme. Example 2: Parallel Lives is a fine in EDH, but doesn't see meta play in any paper format that I'm aware of. Example 3: Up the Beanstalk is a staple or is meta relevant in just about every format that can play it, including Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, and Standard, but sees zero play in EDH. And no, evaluating a card by the casual user base is not relevant when determining its strength. If it's not winning tournaments, leagues, or ranked matches, its "goodness" is anecdotal until proven otherwise (see Death's Shadow). So, the numerous tournaments that have been won over many, many years with 4x copies of Force of Will between main and side decks immediately proves you wrong. So, no, Force of Will doesn't suck. It "sucks" in EDH because EDH was designed as a causal, randomized format for people to play the draft chaff that they had accumulated when buying packs. I'm really tired of clickbait titles like this one, but you got me to click and write a comment, so that's on me. Time to unsub, I guess. Maybe Trinket makes some good points in this video, I dunno. I didn't and won't watch it because clickbait is bullshit.
I mean I guess you summarized the video. Yea the card is strong within the context of certain formats and decks. But since you already know that it’s not a video for you. A lot of players I see just play cards cause they are “strong and expensive” without thinking about it. As for the title that is addressed in the video but I guess you didn’t watch. At some point you need to realize if I title the video “force of will is good but sometimes not” it’s just doesn’t work as well. The title will never be as nuanced as an entire script for a 10 min video.
The clickbait levels are off the charts today… anywho beanstalk isn’t played in edh cause of the fact that it needs a high density of free spells to be good and for however many edh has, 60 card is always going to have 4 times as much.
I think you underestimate how good it is to be able to use all of your mana and still have interaction up. Even in casual EDH, most games are decided by only… probably 5 instances of targeted removal. The rest is simply about contesting the board and board wipes. So if you ALWAYS have one of those instances of removal, you can do whatever you want… like draw a billion cards… to fuel Force.
also, if you dont have too many instant speed stuff to do, so you dont have much leftover mana.
If you’re drawing a billion cards are you really playing casual edh 😅
@@LukeSkipworth We calling Blue Sun’s Zenith for 7 cEDH now?
@@colinbrown74 do you really need the lands you draw if you’ve got 9 mana?
Also since it’s the point of the video, swap out blue sun zenith for a better x draw spell, there’s at least 3 I can think of
I think card advantage matters, but not in the way you describe.
Casual commander is often a competition of value engines. Traditional aggro struggles to win quickly, and traditional control lacks the resources to completely shut down multiple opponents. So most decks focus on setting up and scaling up their resource base - this is why most early plays are ramp.
In these environments, games are not lost because you went -2 cards in an interaction; they’re lost because your opponents got to do bigger things than you did.
Back to force of will: the ability to protect your value engine from a wrath or a cyclonic rift or any targeted removal without ever leaving up mana is invaluable. If your commander generates card advantage, protecting it from a Swords is easily worth multiple cards, plus the 2 mana you didn’t need to spend on a normal counter spell, plus the 5-8 mana you’d need to recast it next turn.
TL;DR: People go for big value in casual EDH, so minor disadvantages like force of will are negligible compared to the advantage of whatever synergy it’s protecting.
Card advantage doesnt matter for long when you are playing blue spells... Exile a blue card for counterspell that exists when you have no mana (and doesnt even need a permanent on the board) when you can play any number of extra draw next turn and lose all the negatives of a FREE counterspell.
If your goal is to be interactive without mana at an early point in order to save the day, yes, Force of Will. But if and only if you have enough U cards to support. The proportion should be about 20-25% if you always want to free cast it once it's in hand.
I pulled a Chrome Mox in Double Masters and I gotta say, it works. Like, I only run it in decks where I want my commander out on turn one or two, but in those decks? It's awesome. Also, my wife bought me a Jeweled Lotus for X-Mas, and it has won me every game I've played it.
TLDR good cards are, in fact, really good if you know how to use them.
Today on RUclips:
EDH Deckbuilding: You're playing counterspells wrong. Play removal/protection instead.
TrinketMage: I heckin love counterspells.
To be fair, EDH Deckbuilding is one of the worst players to ever have a RUclips channel. Nothing he says should be taken seriously.
@@majinvegeta6364 I've noticed that as well whenever I see his card breakdowns. It feels like the guy has an insanely weak play group where no one is actually forced to optimize at all. Using removal or protection spells instead of counterspells screams low power to me. There's a ton of cards that end the game when they hit the table, and only counterspells stop that. EG, City of Solitude or Grand Abolisher.
Been watching a lot of your videos recently, great work on the content! However, something I'd like to call out is your choice of persuasion when it comes to explaining why you have your perspectives on these cards. There are many strong points regarding why card advantage should be evaluated highly, which is why card disadvantage should be evaluated equally as low. When you include points like "accelerating out a threat makes the removal feel worse" or "board wipes hurt more after developing permanents", these are true, albeit subjective statements regardless of the surrounding context about card disadvantage. Points like this would be good if you were trying to persuade someone emotionally by feeding into loss aversion, but I think it takes away from the analytical argument being made that quantifies why people shouldn't play FoW.
Hello, non-EDH player here. I play mostly 60 card-constructed but my favourite formats are Limited and I watch the occasionally SUAP and Game Knights EDH Gameplay vids. Just want to commend you on your content being extremely well balanced without losing your opinions, and was wondering if you would ever consider doing limited set review content.
I am always interested to hear other people's thoughts on limited formats to find different perspectives and I find your delivery and opinions to be very well thought out and easy to understand. While it might not be what you are used to or maybe you don't feel 'qualified' enough, I believe limited assessment is a skill that improves with experience and everyone will always have blind spots regardless. Will definitely tune in to your upcoming content and I hope you can consider expanding your content in this direction :)
Gonna have to disagree here. Like you said, card advantage is king in commander, which means that most people are constantly either drawing or trying to be drawing cards. And unless you're being heavily interfered, you will quite often have 5+ cards in your hand, especially in blue decks and you usually have ways to get more. At that point, losing 1 extra card doesn't actually affect you much if at all. Drawing roughly 2+ cards each turn is quite common in EDH and you quite often have cards in your hand that you know you won't be playing anytime soon.
Also, free protection from basically anything is INCREDIBLY powerful. Think about it this way, you have a commander or any other value card on the battle field or on the stack and that card will draw you 3 or more cards if it lives/resolves, at that point being able to reliably protect that card from almost anything is very valuable. Force does that while ALSO being a panic button for must answer threats/unbeatable spells.
Also, the implication that holding up 2 or more mana is "easy" is quite ridiculous. Yes, if you're on turn 8, you likely have plenty of mana to hold up, but unless you're a "draw go" deck, that will make you fall very much behind when you're effectively playing with a 2+ mana tax every turn. And mana is arguably MORE valuable than card advantage in commander.
Obviously force isn't necessary like it is in cEDH, but casual EDH ALSO has PLENTY of removal/counters/threats that you need to keep an eye out for and force is absolutely a VERY good card to include.
I do agree force is great as a panic button. The thing is in casual games how often does the must answer unbeatable card get cast? As for the 2 mana argument I think your point actually lines up with what I said. Yes holding up 2 mana interaction from turn 2 onwards is bad. But in casual commander do you need to do that? Is it not true that you have the early turns as times when you can fully tap out. I’m not expecting you to hold up UU until turn 6+ and by then with some ramp in the early turns it should not be that hard to do
@@thetrinketmage I'd say that the panic button mode is the least important part. It's there if you need it, but you don't run force because you're expecting a combo in casual EDH. You run it so you don't have to tax your mana to hold up counter spells and so that you can play and protect YOUR value engines/wincons/etc regardless of the current game state and available mana.
You don't NEED it, but it's REALLY GOOD. The downside is hardly a downside (as long as your deck has reasonable card draw etc, which shouldn't be an issue for a blue deck) and the upside is undeniably strong.
I really enjoy videos like this. Staples seem like they encourage good stuff, non-synergistic decks that end up so much more expensive than they needed to be. Digging around for the right card for this deck feels so much more rewarding than the card no one needs to read because they've all seen it a thousand times.
Having a moment with a card where everyone says "I've never seen/heard of that card" is one of the best feelings in a game.
I see that and I hear "double the release schedule."
@@yugioh1870 Dear god no 😂
@@TheCatHerder what gives i thought you wanted to have the experience of "whoa I've never seen that card before."
I think the reason you're so low on fow is that you seem to conceptualize it as removal rather than protection. Being able to develop your board on curve without fear of board wipes is super beneficial especially since the extra turn that you have your engine established will likely more than recoup the loss in card advantage.
I’m not low on FoW. I use it in some decks. It’s just not an auto include
@@thetrinketmage it was more that you seem to value it less than most people (or at least me). The example deck you talked about playing it in is also basically the opposite of where I consider fow to be best. IMO it's at its best in decks looking to tap out for big advantage pieces that if protected will more than make up the card advantage rather than in a draw go control deck that intends to hold up lots of mana. I'd argue that applies to most commander decks since at the very least most commanders are themselves going to generate more than 1 card per turn. In the way you talked about fow as well as the moxen I think the main disagreement between us the the ratio of importance between mana and card advantage with you favoring card more than me
Tormod thrasios list ? Great vid as always man keep it up!
www.moxfield.com/decks/zcN_HxwrJUCo0VVz8d0c5Q
Dissipate needs to see more play. Exile is a powerful effect not seen enough with all the recursion in the format.
This fails to acknowledge that there very much will be plenty of times where you will simply not need every card you draw. If you’re playing blue or a 2 color deck featuring blue, then you likely shouldn’t be often staring down an empty hand thanks to a plethora of draw options, there’s bound to be something you can at least somewhat safely pitch. Not to counter something early, but to hold much in the same way as you would any other Counterspell, but instead of bleeding mana every turn, it doesn’t at all affect your curve other than by being a card you’re not casting, theoretically putting you down a card.
My Sheoldred deck disagrees. You have to learn how to use her. Sandbagging is very important. And you know you’re not looking to have everyone chip away for 2 dmg/turn. Often in my pods she is a pesky early game annoyance that speeds up the game while the Dino Discover deck is becoming more and more the problem or the Eldrazi are looking to annihilate the multiverse meanwhile I’m sitting back gathering resources looking to stack multiple effects and wheels to eliminate the inevitable aftermath of other decks popping off.
I'm willing to bet you are a much better player than every other Sheoldred player I have run into! I just see people jam this in random decks without any real benefit
@@thetrinketmage I would like to think so but I know I can always improve! I built my Sheoldred deck to be mono black control. I want the game to go longer. I pack a lot of removal and protection spells to dig me to my big pieces then when I have them in hand I attempt to remove the entire table in one or two turns. Sheoldred is important and ideal to my game plan but she is not the entire focus of the deck in stark contrast to my Faldorn deck. These are my two loves in this game! Thanks for the thoughtful discussion I really enjoy your videos and take on the game.
I would love to see you play some games of commander. Your spelltable video was really cool.
I’ve got some plans for that! Give me a bit more time
@@thetrinketmage let's goo!!!
That feels like cEDH Cards are bad in casual but I had someone bring a cEDH deck to a casual pod and we had no chance at all
FoW allows you to be the hero no one expected.
It's not about combos, I hardly ever use FoW to stop a combo I just run it because Simic exists and my opponents have 12+ mana by the time I have 6 and a few creatures on board. They drawn more cards than me, have way more resources and if I just tapped out to play my 6 mana commander I don't want it to be defenseless and get removed before I can even use him.
Everything else is so incredibly powercrept at this point free counterspells only seem fair.
right but then why play force over other free spells or 1 mana disruption. You are right things are powercrept so you should play removal but if you don't lose on turn 1 why force
@@thetrinketmage
A few reasons I guess.
An unexpected counterspell is worth 10x the one that your opponent has sniffed out. There's 0 telegraph on it, it's practically unconditional and it WILL catch greedy players going for that Torment of Hailfire or Craterhoof. It just stops everything.
Would it be better for me to run FoW, FoN and the likes to pitch a card for tempo or wait extra turns to hold up mana? The answer is always keep tempo. If there's one resource blue can stockpile it's cards in hand/draw, so pitching a card is not that much a punishment to a blue deck.
This is blue's "ramp", I need free spells because my opponents have twice the mana I do and I don't have time to take off turns to play some kinda 1v1 control strategy in EDH.
cEDH says yes, your wallet says no, end of video.
All casual Commander is an aping and approximation of cEDH, so you should play it at casual tables as well. You're not a better deckbuilder if you refuse to use FoW; you're unwilling to proxy or pay. Note the difference.
I may or may not have just ordered a Thassa's, a Consultation and a Tainted Pact because they seem good for an esper artifact deck lol.
Video starts with "Force of Will is one of the most iconic counter spells of all time" -- while simultaneously showing the art that is not iconic.
yea but the templating on this one more clear. Maybe I should've gone with the old art
Surprised no mention of fierce guardianship
It’s in the video at the 6:30 mark
Yes, but try it on an emulator first before you commit to buying cards, because they're pretty hard to find, especially the starter decks.
Free counter is free
Tell it to my Nezahal draw deck, chump.
Just play Return to Nature, Negate or Go for the throat.
Have you played with the card? Playing the card kind of changes your opinion of the card. You're also making a mistake thinking cEDH is not EDH.
uhhhhh I guess go watch my cedh video for the answer to that
@@thetrinketmage I think I have and I think you're wrong about that as well.
Wait I’m confused. You think saying cEDH and edh are not the same format is wrong. Which is my argument for the cEDH vid. Is this a double negative thing I am missing?
@@thetrinketmage they are the same format.
Bro really renamed the video
Yea, happens. Other vids have had names changed and thumbnails altered. I will try to have backup titles and thumbnails so I can test things and change things as needed ultimately still new to RUclips so I am experimenting
Sheoldred is just...meh in edh
Bro, you make actually good content, you don't need to become like other channels and click bait. Even if you want to click bait, you can do it in a not purposefully misleading way. Please don't continue going this path
Heard, title and thumbnail changed. I do think FoW is still not good in a casual EDH deck and would not recommend it for most players
No. Don't do it.
With the fast mana discussion, I think you greatly underestimate how powerful dropping a significant advantage engine on an earlier turn. A storm deck getting to drop archmage emeritus earlier or a proliferate deck getting to drop inexorable tide 2 or even 3 turns ahead of curve can easily take over a game. The card you're losing for the extra mana has to be worth it in being able to get more cards earlier through the faster mana in lower power.
Dropping a 4/5 cmc value card in turn 3 in certain decks is devastating if the board doesn't answer inmediately. I agree with you here. Especially in casual tables.
I see what you are saying. But why play chrome mox over mana crypt, sol ring, lotus petal, the spirit guides, or rituals? If you just need the value engine in play early is it not better to play fast mana that doesn’t cause card disadvantage?
@@thetrinketmage I feel like it really comes down to the gameplan and rather than just card adv, it matters what youre denying the opponent, if youre hitting something insane that is a crucial piece to a combo or just something you cannot let resolve as it tends to take over the game, losing that 1 card is often worth it when you look at the long term effects of not countering. additionally having the ability to tap out in some archetypes is huge obviously. I also don't really agree with the comparison since chrome mox while good doesnt always affect the game the same way.
@@thetrinketmageI feel like in reality people aren’t playing chrome Mox over those cards, but with those cards. Sure it’s probably on the lower end of that group but that group is that group for the reason.
@@thetrinketmage Chrome Mox is a permanent, colored mana source which only eats the exact worse card in hand. It's a known play pattern for spirit guides to go into a Chrome Mox because they're only temporary mana. It gives extra turns of use for many MDFC lands. If you lean into the collect evidence or delve mechanics, Squee and Misthollow don't even put you down a card. Wish-style effects are starting to be printed so they can grab from exile as well. Even the relatively common case of needing to dump cards after a big draw spell (oops, my Rishkar's Expertise drew 9 cards and I'm out of mana).
But all that's theory, let's use some concrete commanders: Kalamax can drop T1 and eliminate a player T2 with Chrome Mox (Land-Ring-Guide-Manamorphose-Chrome Mox-MDFC with Battlerage/Twinferno + Invigorate/other pump spell with land in the remaining four) or start using copied draw spells to refresh the hand; Shanna drops T1 with Mox + Guide and starts regaining cards T2 (getting great use out of the continuous mana aspect); Urza, Prince of Kroog can dump a Sharding Sphinx to retrieve later with Karn the Great Creator, making it safe from hand disruption methods. Grist can even flip T1 with Flare-Guide-Mox-Reanimate/Unearth.
There's plenty of reasons why a mid- to high-power casual deck would want a Chrome Mox in its ramp suite.
Sheoldred is pretty good in casual imo. The argument "dies to boardwipe" is just true for every commander thats not cheating like emry though. In a punisher type deck with stuff like Kambal you can quickly evaporate your opponents life total from them just playing the game.
Dies to removal is a weak argument, but I still maintain it does not slow down your opponents nor speed you up very much. I bet you can easily find a better 4 drop
it's just such a huge leap, any 20 health format, that card is a menace, not even needing any synergy "force the opponent to draw" cards, just putting a 10 turn clock and setting the health disparity is so strong, and it's got incredible stats. In edh stats like this are puny, and the life drain is miniscule due to 40 life. An aristocrats deck is going to deal similar damage per turn but without any risk of needing to draw the opponents cards or waiting around for them to draw each turn. Because of politics, regardless of whether it is the correct play or not, people often swing at the person with the highest life total because they don't wanna anger the other two players, so while the card certainly will keep you alive and steady despite said attacks on you, it's not effectively getting you very far ahead of the other players like it does in a 1v1 format.
I'll be honest the last few videos Ive watched from your channel have left a negative impression on me. Ive felt like theyve been click bait "hot takes" designed to drive engagement.
To be fair its worked on me but its also soured my opinion on your future content and the value I place on hearing your opinions. To the point that I clicked on this video specifically to see if I had subscribed so I could unsubscribe. I made it about 3 minutes into the video where you made the point that the card is better in cedh than in casual edh. I agree with that point and I think it is a reasonable point. But because of how you started the video from the title in such a negative stance of "this card is terrible" it makes me feel tricked into engaging with your content because you are walking back the controversial and inflammatory stance you intially made into a more commonly held position. The disconect between the two is jaring and frankly insulting of my time and attention. You are not providing me with what you initially promised from the title of your video. If you started the video from the title and your opening in a more reasonable position like "Is this card good in casual commander?" I would likely have watched the whole video and had a more positive view of your content.
I want to see smaller mtg creators succeed and I understand how youtube works clickbaits drive engagement its a regretable fact. The way you are proceeding currently though I believe will sacrifice long term growth for short term engagement metrics. Content creation is about building a community of people who want to continue to engage with you. Due to my previous interactions with your videos I felt anonnyed when I saw the title of this video because I felt like I knew I was about to be click baited and I feel like I was right.
If you must clickbait which I don't believe you need to but understand the pressure to do so, I believe keeping the tones consistent between your title and opening is important. Otherwise you risk alienating people like me who feel tricked and disrespected by continuing to click on your videos.
I hope this feedback is in some way helpful to your success.
Title and thumbnail have changed, I encourage you to finish the video and let me know what you think. I think the original is still accurate. In your precon or casual mid power deck force is just outclassed by other spells which don't cause card disadvantage. As for clickbait on the whole... Ultimately the title and thumbnail need draw or some kind of hook. It's something every creator does. I've spoken to and worked with many other youtubers about thumbnails and titles. And everyone does this. Any good title and thumbnail is click bait in some way. I guess I'll tone it down? Though other than this one, I don't think any others are really that clickbaity. Do you have an example?
Valid criticism
In a lower powered casual deck I would agree that FoW is not needed but casual also includes high power and at PL 8-9 everyone and their mother runs Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Esper Sentinel, Trouble in Pairs and every other efficient draw engine. It doesnt matter that you have to pitch a card since you will gain so much value back. Also combos are super common in high power.
For sure as you scale up the power level cards like FoW get better because you do see more and more combos or must answer threats
You have been putting fourth thoughtful videos like this and done so pretty well.
But you only have to read a few random comments to find equally well thought out arguments to the contrary.
Take these as data points that don’t prove you are wrong but at least gently nudge you to re-examine your position to see what you could be missing.
Let me ask a legitimate question.
If you play in a pod with a bunch of powerful commander decks (casual) and they are otherwise even in power.. even say you all play the same commander and the same deck except 3 of the decks have; chrome mox, diamond, mana vault, dark ritual, jeweled lotus, lotus petal, and say both spirit guides (so it’s a Jund pod maybe)
If you are all playing Korvold and you are the one player who doesn’t run fast mana.. do you literally believe you will win more than 25% of those games?
Yes you can still get that win rate. The answer is politics and efficient removal. In casual edh many times the player who gets the turn 1 sol ring does not win. Why? Because everyone else gets scared and takes them out. I recently guest started on KJ the hero’s stream and that exactly happened. The player with the sol ring did nothing all game cause the fast start had 2 players rushing to take him out. And if you saw the stream you might’ve noticed I didn’t use much removal on the player who has the fast start. I was able to deploy value engines and get ahead that way
I guess Cedh players are better off spending their money on dual lands and McDonald's rather than fast mana since the win rate stays the same either way? Run a precon and politic your way to victory like you're a bastard in game of thrones?
@@thetrinketmage Ok, let's take a step back here. You're using an anecdotal example of one game to justify a position against an insanely powerful card. I've seen decks loaded with fast mana and it can lower their win from turn 6 to turn 3-4 easily. A lot of casual players aren't even starting the game at turn 3. They have done nothing while the turbo player ends the game on the spot.
You can argue that only cEDH decks do this, but well built decks without roots in cEDH are more than capable of slipping in early wins when fast mana is involved. Hell, tribal elfball can smash face by turn 2 with fast mana involved. Imo, it's the most warping part of a deck since it creates an insane amount of inconsistency in wintimes. That's just me imo.
It's one or the best cards in my Ovika deck, since it's a "free" counterspell which generates 5 tokens
I agree with your points here. Most casual groups don't even run the type of combos you need this to counter.
I know it's just a small point at the end of the video, but tbh, price isn't a consideration for quite a few people (including me). A majority of my games are on Cockatrice or Tabletop Simulator where I don't have to worry about the price of cards
I’m really glad more people are getting into the game on TTS! It’s such a cheap way to get into the game!
I strongly disagree. Any decks with card advantage attached to their commander and two or less colors should run force of will. One great deck for force is my gin gitaxis (the one that flips to saga) deck.
Flip Gitaxis does have some extra synergy there. But in the average blue deck it probably won't do anything
Lier definitely doesn't want to run it
@@thetrinketmage I guess to an extent it’s a matter of opinion, and what the pod is like.
Btw what do you think about commandeer?
@@austinchuilli3652 it seems good in lier as long as you have instant and sorcery synergies mainly if you run effects like baral or archmagus emeritus
@@angrypotato2526 why would you run counterspell when you commander makes it a dead card?
This is crazy, sheoldred the apocalypse is an avenger level threat at my tables
Really? I've seen it a few times and people make remarks but ultimately it does nothing. I have yet to see a player lose the game because of the card
@@thetrinketmage I've only played one game against it, but that also involved Teferi's Puzzle Box, a Howling Mine and tutored for a Memory Jar
The Box was probably the worst, the Jar didn't get played because the player lost before he got the chance
@@thetrinketmage it sounds like the example you used in your video (sheoldred) was someone keeping a hand they shouldn't have. They saw jeweled lotus in their opening hand and kept it without any sheoldred payoffs. Reminds me of the video you made a while back about mulligans. Love your content man.
@@thetrinketmage Didnt you say in the video that the best thing you can do in casual commander is draw cards? Wouldn't that mean that anything that punishes that would be the best counterplay? Even is casual commander, Sheoldred the apocalypse much be answered FAST or everyone will die. Ive seen it many times.
@@IQuarent sure but the punishment is not enough to stop card draw. If it was scaled for edh and drained for more I could see it being stronger
Can’t wait to see burnished heart and reliquary tower in the next video
Spoilers!
Reliquary tower is unironically only good in decks that would also choose to play Spellbook.
My Masumaro deck plays and utilizes both, but I wouldn’t include them in any other type of deck.
@@DuckyZockt Eh, Reliquary Tower is _really_ low opportunity cost, and Spellbook just doesn't really have a niche anymore given how many ways there are to get no max hand size with additional upside, even as small as Thought Vessel and Decanter of Endless Water. I wouldn't put Reliquary Tower into _every_ deck, but any slow, grindy deck with lots of draw will appreciate it greatly, and a _lot_ of people have primarily slow, grindy decks with lots of draw in my experience.
Having emergency denial is always better than being a sitting duck after needing to tap out
The only casual decks where forces and evoke elementals are legit - decks that draw a lot (also reanimation for evoke)
The flaw in your logic is that free counterspells protect your gameplan from being disrupted. They ensure that you aren't caught with your shields down when an opponent tries to wrath your board, etc. This allows you to curve out without sandbagging, thereby making your deck both faster and more consistent than decks that do not run free counterspells. If anything, Pact of Negation is a better example of a counterspell that is FAR better at protecting combos, whereas Force of Will can deal with almost any situation, whether it's protecting your wincon, breaking an opponent's combo, or simply preventing them from getting their value engine online before you can close out the game.
Also, the RC changed the rules of the format to encourage players to build around their commanders. With proper protection, including cards like Force of Will, Lightning Greaves, Teferi's Protection, etc, doing so is a vital aspect of why EDH is the most diverse meta of any game ever printed. Removing said options would significantly narrow the format to a handful of deck archetypes, thereby detracting from their desired goal of exploration.
Go home trinket mage, ur drunk
I'm sure others have said it, but it is not wise to underestimate the value, even in casual, to be able to build a board and tap out to win on untap and still have interaction available to counter board wipes or removals. And Sheodred the Apocalypse is an amazing card in the 99 of EDH decks. At lower levels, it dwindles life totals and blocks small and large creatures amazingly well due to high toughness and Deathtouch. In more powerful levels of play, it opens you to use mass draws like Blue Sun's Zenith effects to kill opponents or at least finish them.
It's like any card, you have to know what you're playing it in. Shits insane in any casual deck that has a ton of cards but is short on mana because it plays into what resources you have and don't have.
expecting a video about how free spells are horrible card design. still not disappointed just surprised.
that might be a different vid
Force of will sucks unless everyone is playing as fast as possible.
I think at a casual level all the free countermagic is pretty bad except for the blue flare that came in mh3 and pact is alright. in casual you just end up timewalking yourself but thats i think less bad than losing 2 cards. Cuz usually casual games end up with 10+ mana easily. And then obviously fierce is just good.
If ur running combos though and wanna protect ur combo then the free countermagic is necessary to be able to attempt early wins. And to stop early wins.
Force of will uses to be a great TCG, I still miss the stone deck and not having to draw lands. Game is still kicking just had a much smaller audience and print run now
With the discussion or mention of Arcane Denial, Reliquary Tower and Wayfarer's Bauble in recent videos/comments, i'm really hyped for the next vid! What i think plays a lot into cards being overplayed are questionable inclusions in precons, especially when it comes to nonbasic lands.
I’m probably going to skip denial in the next vid cause I’ve talked it to death tbh
Force of will has mana value of 5, so its often hard to play in the same deck as ad nausium. 5 isn't a lot in most commander games, but ad nausium usually wants to dig as deep as possible. The 1 life can also be a bigger deal than people realize sometimes, especially in ad nausium decks, asana bases and other aggressively cheap cards often want to compete for your life total too. It's also just 5 mana counter spell if you can't draw/hold a blue card.
I prefer pact of negation when I'm trying to win, and 1 cost counters. when trying not to lose. FoW when you have the weakest board state at the table is digging you into a deeper hole.
Though, all that being said, I'm pointing out flaws in one of the strongest cards in magic. It reaches basically auto include staus for me in decks that can afford the budget and can reasonably play it for free. My playgroup plays $600 budget, so my biggest gripe with the card is it eats so much of my budget.
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. Force of Will becomes a lot less relevant/useful when you have fewer "counter this or you lose" targets per game, and your deck isn't playing a lot of cheap card draw. Force is like... fine? in slow casual games if your commander draws you a lot of cards, but I definitely think it's not at its best. Card is still cracked and up there with Mana Drain as the most powerful counterspell ever printed, but the reasons its powerful are not very prevalent in slower casual games, just like Dockside isn't really at its best when the entire table isn't running the same suite of generic artifact fast mana.
This person gets it
@@thetrinketmage I think people who primarily play Commander aren't as familiar with the play patterns of Force, and when/where it's good.
I play a lot of Legacy, mostly Grixis control, and that deck is a FoW deck by necessity, not because it wants to be. There's matchups where I board out some or all of my Forces because they're just not good.
Commander compounds the downsides of Force pretty heavily. You're gaining an upward tempo swing in exchange for going down a card, but in commander? It's more like going down 2 cards relative to half your opponents, and that tempo swing is pretty minor, since you're only getting it versus one player.
Force in Commander is more like a panic button, you cast it when the outcome of a spell resolving is worse than discarding two cards. Maybe you're protecting your 5+ mana commander, maybe an opponent's going to win, those are basically the only times where it's good to do it.
Side note: the density of stuff like Esper Sentinel, Mystic Remora, and Rhystic Study make the downsides of casting Force even worse in a lot of cases, and those cards do show up at a significant portion of tables.
Force of Will is not good at lower or even average power tables. It becomes significantly stronger when players consistently can win from 2 card combos and the deciding factor of a game is whether or not someone was able to counter one of those cards. In cEDH a card like Force of Will is insanely powerful. At a table where everyone is playing Precons not so much.
Edit: I didn't watch the video before posting this comment. I'd like to add that this phenomenon isn't even unique to Force of Will. It applies to both Counterspells and Zero Mana Interaction of all kinds. The ability to negate spell activation and interact without holding up Mana both become exponentially more powerful when games are ended quicker and with fewer cards. At lower power level tables it's just not necessary to have Zero Mana Counterspells. For the money you spent on Force of Will you could've gotten Dovin's Veto, Counterspell and Swan Song and still had over $40 left over.
In a slower, grindier game Force of Will is still good, it's a free Counterspell, that's good by default, but you won't get significantly more mileage out of it than just running Counterspell since holding up 2 mana for Counterspell is nowhere close to as big of an opportunity cost in a format where games take 10-20 turns. And Force of Will costs a *lot* more money than Counterspell.
I think i would have agreed with this video two years ago but in 2024 I swear it's impossible to run out of cards even without draw engines.
From bounce lands being OP, MDFC being lands that can pitch to Force, and every Commander having some form of card advantage it almost feels like Mox and Force don't actually have a downside.
That being said, I also don't think there is a problem with running Force or Mox but if you're playing casually the stronger your support cards the weaker your win condition should be
not what i heard, Force of Will was an uncommon and was seen as a terrible card in the early days. Talking like a twenty five cent card. People slowly figured out how powerful it was cause you know, you can counter ANY spell having zero mana sources on your opponents turn.
While you are coming from a more "Casual" standpoint, it's important to examine how each color has/does it's card advantage to better understand why counterspells like Force of Will is so powerful. Take for example Modern Horizons 3 introduced a lineup of new "freecast" spells with the catch being that you have to sacrifice a nontoken creature of that color to freecast the spell. Blue is not normally going to achieve this requirement, and neither will white. Black, Red, and Green however have no issues having or getting a nontoken creature of their color on field. Now let's look at Modern Horizon's cycle of "freecast" spells, this is where Force of Negation, Force of Vigor, Force of Dispair, Force of Rage, and Force of Virtue were introduced. Each requiring that you exile a card to freecast the spell. White, Green, Black, not even Red can do that. This favors specifically Blue.
To better understand each color, examine how each color does it's advantage.
White: Permanents.
Black: Mill
Green: Counters
Red: Exile
Blue: Drawing cards.
There are a few other cards like that. Famously necropotence was given a 2/10 by channel fireball. But people quickly learned how good the card was for both force and necro
I started playing in Masques block and Force of Will cost more than Revised dual lands at the time. Also, Uzra's Saga was still in Type II (what we used to call Standard), and I must have bought 100 packs for original retail. Those were the days....
It’s a big level up moment when you start to understand mtg in terms of card advantage and tempo. Be careful though, mtg is very complicated and the old saying comes to mind, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
Card advantage and tempo are not the only things that matter.
Look, if what you are saying (fast mana like chrome mox and pitch spells are bad unless you are comboing off fast) then that would seem to imply you ought not play chrome mox in a cedh “win conless stax” deck. And that’s false.
There is another thing to consider.. you actually have to convert tempo and cards into wins.
The threats in mtg are balanced by mana cost. If I can play my threats a turn ahead of you for the entire game and my deck is built well I am at a huge advantage.
Generally, having access to a card a full turn ahead of curve is worth something. Maybe a full card. Being able to play ALL my cards a turn ahead of curve is even more effective.
Consider this case, for simplicity.. I have 3 small creatures out on turn 4 and because I exiled a card to chrome mox I am now able to play Orhan Frostfang a full turn early. That could draw me 3 cards on the first turn and deal damage I may not have been able to deal otherwise.
This isn’t a special case just because my card example draws cards either. The object of the game is to win and drawing cards isn’t the fundamental thing it’s just a simpler example.
I am pretty well versed in game theory (used to teach high brow math to poker nerds for a living) so I have spent an unreasonable amount of time wrestling w toy games. And a lot of time trying to apply them to mtg.
I see where you are coming from but I think there are some missing bits.
Try this;
Start with the end state of the game and work backward. In the end we have to finish with actual material in play.
Even just consider the amount of extra damage you’ll have done playing bigger creatures than your opponents because of ramp. Or think if you ramp a phyrexian arena out a turn early (making up for one card) and because your creatures are bigger on average maybe you are able to brick wall a lower curved deck and maybe that draws you more cards by allowing you to survive extra turns w a card draw piece online.
Point is, magic is complex. Applying heuristics is a helpful short cut that can be generally useful but, like a metaphor, it can’t be taken literally and will break down at certain points.
🖖namaste
And arcane denial isnt bad. Lol. It’s not usually gonna make cedh decks but it will often and I’d say usually be better than OG counterspell.
I’d go to that video you made and read the comment by Navonod on NLH.
It’s pretty clear I think.
🖖
I did address the ramping into stax point in this video. It's one of the reasons to play fast mana I listed. And yea, if you don't have good things to ramp into the card disadvantage is not worth it. That's the video. There is something to be said about rushing out some value card one turn early like a rhystic study but you still have to consider if it is then worth it to lose the card to maybe draw more later. When you could have just played a 2 drop into a turn 3 study. And in casual turn 3 study is still good enough so most of the time I would not play chrome mox in a casual deck
@@thetrinketmage
What about black lotus?
If it were legal?
@@thetrinketmage
I admit I hadn’t heard the stax part of the video when I made those statements but just consider a commander that may play those cards.. like Winota.
What does it mean to “waste” a card to ramp winota out a turn early?
And that would be more like simian spirit guide (which I still absolutely would play in the deck even as a “casual” deck)
But getting extra triggers for winota not just one turn but also reaping the benifits of the snow ball affect of having started moving a turn early?? It’s worth it on balance and I don’t think it’s particularly close.
Your own example of R Study.. that’s not worth a card to get out early? I can’t imagine that.
And remember that the “cash value” of drawing those extra cards is to actually help WIN the game. So it isn’t just a case of “ok, cards that draw more cards are worth ramping but only cards that draw cards” because the card draw doesn’t do anything unless we convert it into more mana and more action cards that can help you survive and/or win.
Ultimately you need to decide this on a deck by deck basis. Is it better to get winota out one turn earlier or better to have another thing on board to trigger the commander more when it comes down. In casual commander I am partial to the latter.
In casual, Force of will is still a disgustingly powerful card.
Because card advantage is so flush in casual commander
The bluff of tapping out is even more powerful in casual.
It's why I don't like the card in casual. I don't like 0 mana interaction unless it's very on theme. Like if you're literally playing keruga companion then sure. Or if you're playing a deck that actually wants a fog to play the free fog or something.
But cards that are so dominant in cedh like force of will, smothering tithe, and rhystic, I just don't enjoy playing across the table against in casual.
I think Sheoldred is a pretty meh commander, but a great value piece in some certain decks that really value the life, such as K'rrik. Also has some pretty nifty combos with something like Peer into the Abyss or Necrodominance, both of which are great cards on their own. I'm not super high on the card (I don't play it in my competitive Ayara deck, for example), but it certainly has its homes.
The more videos I watch from you, the more deck building becomes a puzzle. And I love solving puzzles.
I’m glad to hear that! And I agree deck building is a fun puzzle!
So... We are two!! :D
The argument of "it provides card disadvantage" is simply a non sequitur. The game of magic is FAR too complex to break it down to something as simple as "a card is probably not worth playing because it causes card disadvantage." Mox Diamond is objectively one of the most powerful cards ever made in Magic -- and it requires card disadvantage. The upside it provides greatly outweighs the single card loss. The other side must be asked: "What advantage do I gain by losing these cards?"
That's the point of the video right. Why play these cards. What advantage can I gain here? I really don't think adding mox diamond to a precon is worth it. Ultimately it won't help the deck very much
ngl flare of denial is better and cheaper but thats just my opinion
There are some people disagreeing but there are two points being overlooked. #1 Force of Will is being used to showcase a phenomenon where people play powerful cards even if they aren't very good in their deck. Force of will can still be good in some casual decks, BUT nowhere near as good as cEDH. Likewise fast mana can be good but only if you ramp into value to compensate for the card disadvantage; sheoldred offers neither for example. #2 there is often confusion as to what "casual" means as some people use it to refer to low power and others to anything outside of cEDH. In low power Force of Will isn't very good, but in high power pods it can be just as good as cEDH.
Two examples, someone at my LGS started playing and got the Gruul dragon starter precon and put a Lotus Petal he was given into the deck. I don't know if he still has it in there, but it was explained to him with his deck looking to ramp, often not playing on curve, and multiple high-mana spells he was better off with another generic ramp spell for repeatable mana.
Likewise I built my wife a Winota deck that is decently strong but not cEDH. It runs the same Lotus Petal, but it's worth it because the deck is looking to be explosive and dump its hand to swing ASAP; it also runs other spells that grant temporary mana and 0-cost creatures.
Finally, you also run into an issue of power levels. Your deck may not be very good even though you threw several expensive cards in the 99, but you are sending mixed signals. If your deck is low power, why run expensive cards that don't perform or synergize well? If you win, people may be upset that you pubstomped with your "powerful" cards. If you lose, there's a good chance you were singled out because playing such cards gave the impression you are stronger than you are; blue's power level is less about board presence and more about unknown information after all.
i play ghave. it is a dedicated combo deck. it can win going wide as well.
however i on purpose haven't been playing blue combo decks till recently. i want my opponents to have multiple places of interaction and since many of my opponents are doing themselves weird and fast stuff the combo deck is not the biggest threat on the table.
I prefer last word and overwhelming denial over force of will.
I tried to keep an open mind for this one, but your entire point is that great cards don't suddenly make a garbage deck win. Not exactly groundbreaking, but also, fundamentally flawed. The same logic can be used for Rhystic Study in a terrible deck it happened into.
Study is a good point, but I also feel like it is different than Force. Study is raw card draw which almost any deck can use. Force is removal that 2 for 1s you. Not every deck will want that effect
8:59 you cannot compare toski to sheoldred, toski is as win-more as a card can get, sheoldred adds pressure and grants time.
Great video, don’t think a lot of people in the comments understood it lol
It happens, partly my fault I should try and be more clear about my opinions
That card was the reason i started play blue 😢 i remember having one in my collection when i was a little version of me it brings me good memories
Someone please add this man to the commander advisory group.
Probably not happening anytime soon. I’d but heads with too manny members of the RC
Should you play force of will.
Yes.
Imo at least
My commander philosophy is that it is the format to play with my broken cards that I can't play in other formats outside of legacy/vintage.
If I could, I would, but I can’t so I won’t
I'd easily put a free Counterspell in my Jodah the Unifier Deck that runs all colors and creatures if it means keeping a very specific mana fixing to make it work. It's also a card to swap in if your Commander is expensive, since Fierce Guardianship isn't going to do anything if your 5 mana Commander gets countered before it lands. Anyone who knows about the card already likely can decide whether or not the card is worth it before they spend $50 on a counterspell. If I'm running a card like that, I probably have Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, The One Ring, Necropotence, and/or Esper Sentinel to justify the cast cost. But yes, I'm not running a card that costs the same as an entire beginner's precon unless I need to.
Very well thought out video as always, with nuanced opinions that show deep thought.
During the video, you used the phrase "good in casual" and referenced drawing lots of cards as something that is good in casual. I've always been very confused about what "good in casual" means. I say to people that the best casual deck would just be a cEDH deck. I'm suspicious that the term "casual edh" is quite possibly just commander where people play bad cards and don't do things that other players might think are mean.
I guess I just don't know what "good" means in a sub-format where people all agree to not play good cards. No hate for casual edh, but discussing what cards and strategies are good just makes no sense to me.
I also think drawing lots of cards IS the best strategy in casual, but only because it's the best strategy in cEDH and Magic in general. Even before The One Ring, Commander games were won and lost over Rhystic Studies and Mystic Remoras, from the most casual to the most competitive tables.
In my Meta, I am the only one, that I have seen, that plays an all in combo deck, and funny enough, Mykrul is the commander. There are also 2 combos, they are THE win con of the deck.
The "main" combo is Slimefoot, the stowaway, Annointed Procession, and Ashnod's Alter. Each piece, outside of Slimefoot, makes reasonable sense for being in the deck. I want the creatures dead so I can make them an enchantment so they are more likely to be left alone from targeted removal and doubling the non-legendary creatures in my deck is really good. Why have 1 hulking raptor when I can have 2.
As for the "Backup" combo, it involves Necropotence and Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator. When I have to use this combo, I focus on grinding out the game until everyone left is low and someone is gonna win within a turn or 2. I exile however many cards I need to from my deck with Necro, not having to pay life bc of Ashiok's static ability, and then use her ultimate to mill the opponent out. I can really only use this when there is one opponent left or two opponents but one is basically already dead.
For Why Mykrul is the commander, I wanted a weird color combination for a combo deck and just happened to have the cards for both combos. Plus Mykrul as a weird layer of protection for Slimefoot helps if a player kills him. I can just say ok, he is an enchantment now, and keep going.
Casting cards from hand without having to pay mana from a permanent source is one of the worst things this game. I haven’t had a more worse experience than feeling safe to cast something while opponents are tapped out, just to still get your spell countered or plan foiled by a “free” spell.
I admit this is mostly my own problem. A lot of players enjoy early turn winning combos. And yes, Force Of Will is an answer… But I just don’t enjoy playing early turn combo decks anyways. I’d rather my opponent just win every game until they get bored of winning on turn 3 every game with no competition.
hey trinket, this isn’t really related to the video, but i wanted to post this question on a recent video in hopes that more people would see it.
do you have any advice for getting the ball rolling in terms of finding a unique and interesting idea for a deck? i’m a budget player and i’ve also banned myself from EDHREC’s top 100 for the rest of my decks. i already own two precons, so that can’t be helped, i guess.
i’m trying to build my first actual deck but i’m struggling to come up with an interesting idea to build around. i tried to do something with minthara, merciless soul and i was gonna go for an artifact deck focused around servo/thopter tokens and the “arcbound” cards with modular, but it sort of just felt like a worse version of the average aristocrats build that you’d see on edhrec. i also tried to add some outlast/bolster cards and cards like aron, benalia’s ruin to make it a +1/+1 counter deck, but then i found out that modular only works with other artifact creatures.
Do your casual tables not run cards that are worth 2-for-1ing yourself to answer without having to hold up mana?
I guess it depends on power level. But stuff like Rhystic Study and Craterhoof aren't unheard of and being able to tap out to develop your gameplan while still being able to answer them are a pretty big deal IMO.
terrible way to look at force. You should be running force if you expect ANY cards you play against to be stronger than "target player discards 2 cards and looses 1 life" which should be most cards in most decks. and at that point, you should be running force.
Force still does work in casual decks because its free. If you spent your first 2 or 3 turns ramping you're probably going all-in on a huge turn because it's so strong to play an 8 mana spell on turn 4. A free counterspell keeps someone from stopping that or let's you have that backup plan for someone else dropping their ramped spell too.
I use Sheoldred the Apocalypse as a removal magnet, so players will take her out in stead of my real game enders, because she looks scarier most of the time to people that don't know my deck. If they do know my deck, she's still gonna be helpful, since I do run quite a bit of draw
imo in casual alot of powerfull cards are unnesesary, for those you have high power or cedh.
other cards in my mind would be farewell, the one ring, or mass reanimation spells.
- you need farewell if you wanna get rid of things for good cause you fear something is coming back.
- the one ring is one of those cards also its hard to remove it cause there isnt much exile artifact removal
- mass reanimation spells are hard to interact with, you either need massgrave hate, silverbulets for gaveyards or counterspells and those are limited recourses in casual games. im talking about 0-5 of these in all decks combined, wich isnt even sure someone will draw!
interactivity and interaction is an key element to evaluate your deck at the right powerlvl. Don't get me wrong there are also grey areas esp if your close to another powerlvl, but there are alot of people that call theyr deck casual even if you need from all magic cads in history a counterspell or other niche cardpools to hold that deck in check.
I play optimized casual. So combos are chill as long as they're flavorful or on brand to the commander and or deck theme. In other words force of will and fast mana that loses card advantage outside of green is greatly needed to not fall behind or fail to out combo the other players. Even without ad nauseum or thassa being used
No., because 0 mana interaction is silly and they shouldn't have printed it.
Yes. If you are in blue, having access to a free counter spell and being able to tap out and still stop something while buying favor from the table is a good thing.
There is a reason why Force of will and mana drain are the two best Counter spells in commander. In both CEDH and casual.
I was in a pod where I could’ve won by searching for a card that destroyed 1 creature on board but instead I got torment of hellfire for 8 turns on it and it didn’t do nothing to help me win that turn and I lost.
if you think it is bad, you are using it wrong, use it to protect your combo or stop someone from winning. To be fair, same goes for all spot removal in edh
“this is why fast combo decks don’t take over legacy” nobody tell him about rescaminator
Yeah… unfortunately a turn 1 grief cannot be force of willed
@@yoyoguy1st i mean, if you force the T1 Grief then they can just reanimate it, leaving you down 3 cards instead of 2. But my comment was honestly more pointed at the fact that Rescaminator is a fast combo deck that USES Force of Will to protect its own combos
Scaminator isn't a fast combo deck. You're dying at the earliest like turn 4 or 5. Even "turbo" reanimator running dark rituals won't kill you until turn 3 on a goldfish.
Fast combo is stuff like Oops All Spells, Doomsday, and various Storm variants. All of these decks have a pretty reasonable chance to turn 1 or turn 2 you, particularly Oops All Spells. Oops All Spells actively mulligans for a turn 1 win, and probably doesn't keep a hand that doesn't try to win on turn 1 or 2. Even something like Cephalid Breakfast is a faster combo deck than Rescaminator, since it goldfishes T2.
That deck is not a “fast combo deck” by legacy standards. I’m talking oops all spells. Those decks can be fast but not fast for legacy
@@thetrinketmage I think you’re vastly overestimating the actual pace of legacy. Decks like Oops and Breakfast are losing to Leyline of the Void or themselves more often than Force, and Rescaminator fielding a Turn-1 Atraxa backed up by free had rips and protection spells is one of the fastest clocks that actually happens on a regular basis.
Idk where commander youtubers keep getting this idea that decks like Charbelcher are secret metagame mainstays and not like, a novelty that people break out at locals for fun.
No its good actually
Feel free to judge me, but i love cryptic command.
I also love cryptic command!
the new melek has really opened my eyes on how crazy the higher mana counters can get. casting a desertion on an enemy commander for UU is so fun.
So don't be a bad deckbuilder and force of will is good
thanks dunkey
Yea this is BS
is this a 12 minute video about "dont play cedh decks in casual pods" ?_?
you play force of will for the effect, I play force of will for the flavor text, we are not the same
I actually play an all in power level 4 combo deck with momir vig
Banger
Counter magic and interaction in a multiplayer format is significantly worse than in 1v1s, though still necessary. Singleton formats exacerbate the problem. Having to chew through 120 life vs 20 exacerbates this even further. Those factors don't make the card bad, it makes the card bad for the format. That's all to say, if anything sucks here, it's the format. You could posit that I'm being pedantic. I'm not. Example 1: Colossal Dreadmaw sucks across every format, that's why it's a meme. Example 2: Parallel Lives is a fine in EDH, but doesn't see meta play in any paper format that I'm aware of. Example 3: Up the Beanstalk is a staple or is meta relevant in just about every format that can play it, including Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, and Standard, but sees zero play in EDH.
And no, evaluating a card by the casual user base is not relevant when determining its strength. If it's not winning tournaments, leagues, or ranked matches, its "goodness" is anecdotal until proven otherwise (see Death's Shadow). So, the numerous tournaments that have been won over many, many years with 4x copies of Force of Will between main and side decks immediately proves you wrong.
So, no, Force of Will doesn't suck. It "sucks" in EDH because EDH was designed as a causal, randomized format for people to play the draft chaff that they had accumulated when buying packs.
I'm really tired of clickbait titles like this one, but you got me to click and write a comment, so that's on me. Time to unsub, I guess. Maybe Trinket makes some good points in this video, I dunno. I didn't and won't watch it because clickbait is bullshit.
I mean I guess you summarized the video. Yea the card is strong within the context of certain formats and decks. But since you already know that it’s not a video for you. A lot of players I see just play cards cause they are “strong and expensive” without thinking about it. As for the title that is addressed in the video but I guess you didn’t watch. At some point you need to realize if I title the video “force of will is good but sometimes not” it’s just doesn’t work as well. The title will never be as nuanced as an entire script for a 10 min video.
The clickbait levels are off the charts today… anywho beanstalk isn’t played in edh cause of the fact that it needs a high density of free spells to be good and for however many edh has, 60 card is always going to have 4 times as much.