Having Fun the Hard Way

A filthy casual’s look into his local meta

I’ve been a commander player for almost my entire magic playing life, probably as a way to lash out at the highly tuned lists of sixty card formats. Not being super competitive in the sense that I likely won’t ever play in a Pro Tour lends itself nicely to a Commander state of mind. Decks can be powerful and tuned, sure, but having a hundred card deck often ensures a varied line of play from game to game, you might not ever even see a specific card after multiple games with the same deck. The idea of winding down after a long day at work with some friends playing commander is a great way to relax, and a lot of people see it as a “beer and pizza format.” When I moved from Texas to Oklahoma, I left behind a wonderful playgroup that played everything from Prossh/food chain combo lists to Norin shenanigans, and I’m no stranger to weird brews myself, which leads me to my first point:





The problem with defining “fun”

Fun is a highly subjective idea, and many people derive fun from different play styles. I have fun building decks around commanders you don’t normally see, but I know players that love jamming infinite tutorable combos into every deck they shuffle up. There are many opinions about what exactly constitutes a good EDH deck because it’s as subjective as the idea of defining what is fun. Sheldon Menery of commander rules committee fame often speaks to the “spirit of the format” and warns that the use of specific cards go against what commander actually stands for. Jason Alt gets shat on with shocking regularity mostly due to his seventy-five percent rule (There are also other reasons he gets shat on, but I won’t go into those here.), who’s a deck building thesis that extols forgoing conventionally powerful cards for things that may be considered more casual. You know, to have fun.

The only thing that can be reasonably agreed upon is that people have fun when the deck they build does what it was built to do, weather it’s to drop Wort the Raid Mother and conspire out instants or Necropotence-ing out an infinite mana combo turn five then Casting Tendrils of Corruption to kill everyone in one turn. Telling someone that their deck is too powerful is trying to define fun, and nobody likes getting told to drop kick their baby down the stairs because it’s summoning dark powers from the Aether. So why am I writing about a very well beaten dead horse?

IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME

Like I stated earlier, I recently moved to a new state, and left my former play group behind. We had a great group of guys and gals, a system for month long seasons, and a great store that provided for a gaming experience unlike any other that I’ve seen. Also, a shoutout to Hannah Wines, the Judge and magic events coordinator at Dragon’s Lair in San Antonio. She coordinated all the normal formats and kept records for our league, really my hat goes off to her for her hard work. Our group was VERY good at self policing power level. We never guilted anyone for playing decks with a high power level, but we had a points system that heavily penalized a player for going nuts on power level. At the heart of this was the culture of the players in the group, which recognized that high power decks were fun, but they didn’t lend themselves to a conductive, interesting or fun gameplay experience.



It was only natural, then, for me to seek out an LGS for which to continue my paper wizardry. There are two stores in my local area, and I started attending commander night regularly at the shop nearest to my house. The power level of the decks in both stores far exceeded the average power level of my decks, and it quickly became apparent that no game ever got past turn six. This was definitely a culture shock to me, and when I was told that store number two was more casual, I went there. The problem is that, because of the two stores having commander events on different days, the bulk of the player base of both stores consist of the same group of players.





It has gotten to the point where I actively feel bad when I leave the store. I’ve spent all day working with a 30 minute drive to and from work. I’ve been stoked to play commander all day. I pull into my local game store, pay the five dollars, get my deck shat on in six turns and get my pitty pack. When the thing you’ve looked forward to as your reward for getting through the day stops being fun, it leads to dissatisfaction for the players, which is not something that anybody wants. Game stores want their customers happy, that’s why they hold these events! And to have that happen not once but twice a week can be disconcerting to say the least.





At this point, if you’ve read this far into my article, then you are probably thinking, “Well, just build a stronger deck, that will fix the problem.” The problem with that line of thinking is that it starts to wade in the waters of telling people how to have fun. Just because a bakery only has chocolate cake, and I prefer vanilla, doesn’t mean I should change my preferences to be chocolate, but that I’ll have to find a way to make the thing I want work.

JUST GET BETTER

I’ve spoken to some of the people at both shops about the issue, and many people have offered their takes on why they keep playing in these leagues where the meta is dominated by combo commander decks. They are all valid reasons, but I’m going to go through them and see which hold water and which sink into the Rapids:It makes me a better player- There really is something to be said about this, because you generally become a better player by playing those who are better than you at Magic. The rub is that playing a deck that has the same line of play and winning ninety percent of your games doesn’t make you good at Magic, it makes you good at memorizing a line of play. It’s a good skill to have, but winning in this way doesn’t make you a better player, and loosing to this type of player doesn’t make you a better player.Build better decks- This one really rubs me the wrong way, because for many including myself, I’m on a limited Magic budget. I mostly build with what I have, nor could I afford a lot of the cards that people use to tear me assholes so numerous that I won’t know from whence shit came or went. It also goes back to the fun aspect, I don’t see that as a particularly fun or interesting way to build decks, and it’s wrong for me to tell people to power down their decks so I’m damned either way I suppose.We’ll play a “casual” game afterwards.- Not only is this the worst excuse of the lot, it’s conditioning a lot of players to just accept that they are not going to win their game. Period. I’ll play a game at your level after the game where you could actually win packs. As much as I like my friends, I would rather buy a pack for myself then give one to someone else.So…what are we supposed to do about all this then?

UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN-

Since telling people that their child is ugly is frowned upon, and trying to change the meta from the inside is near impossible since their deck only looses to them keeping a shaky starting seven, then we need to find ways to let people know that we may need to dial the power down a notch. Here are my suggestions:Have a league model that discourages early tutorable wins/infinite combos. I’m all for people playing magic however they want, and sometimes a game has gone twenty turns and we’re all begging for a bullet just to end the game. Combos are healthy for commander but if I can’t even make it past turn 5 then I feel like I wasted time and money playing at your store, end of dissuasion. In my previous commander league, you got points for winning and killing other players, but the number of points you lost from other players voting you down for the turn four win often meant that you barely evened out in the standings, and was thusly discouraged.Vote with your wallet.- Card shops need to make money. If you don’t pay into leagues that encourage overly powerful decks to keep doing their thing, then the store will be forced to re evaluate how they want to keep people coming back.Offer solutions.- complaining without a solution just makes you look like a whiner, and nobody likes whiners. I’ve given my league outline to one of the event coordinators at my new lgs, and even brought a discussion along with it about the problems I saw. Even though my suggestions weren’t used, I at least came up with a way to support my claims and offer an alternative.Dual commander?- ever wanted to win on turn 4? Of course, we all do at some point. There is a hyper-competitive version of commander that actively encourages this behavior, and dual commander is a lot less of a headache to run as pod commander. Keeping a “safe space” for those that wish to play hyper competitive decks is important because you don’t want to loose players from your meta because they are feeling ignored. Give them an outlet for their enjoyment of high power decks!Encourage a culture that rewards people for playing fun decks- Look, I get it. Every store is different. If you’re LGS encourages people to shove their decks down each other’s throats, then that’s how it is, but game store owners generally will listen if you bring your concerns to them in a reasonable manner. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

The conclusion?

Have fun playing magic. Try to not let others get you down, and when you loose to people like this, try to loose as gracefully as you can. Learn as much as you can and try to do better, but the biggest take away is to try to find people who want the same thing out of magic. Not just to win, but to have fun I found that in my San Antonio playgroup, and still play with them online, and I hope you can find a playgroup like that too. Because in commander, sometimes you CAN loose and still have a blast.

-kody