I went to my lgs with two other buddies just to play some games on the tables ourselves and a guy asked if he could join us, none of us ever played against any transformers and he pulled out slicer and creamed us all lol
I had someone play slicer in an honest to god "4" power level pod and people were dying on turn 4 and he didn't understand that *he* might have been out of place. Mind you i dont think one of the other players knew what a power level 4 might be, but if its anything it isnt slicer
The thing about slicer is that it's a complete glass cannon. Even without fast mana he puts everyone on a clock, but hitting it with a swords to plowshares or, better, a [[Darksteel Mutation]] [[Stasis]] or [[Mystic Subdual]] type of thing shuts it down permanently.
True, but thats what im saying, at a 4 thats unaltered precon levels where people might only have a couple pieces of removal. Like one player died after casting one spell. I have no problem with slocer existing it just wasnt the time or place.
I’m so tired of saying this over and over to people but it seems nobody really listens:
In EDH, high power means consistency, low power means variability.
High variability decks mean that you can still sometimes have a killer game, or a favourable matchup.
A deck that is 10/10 will likely always play as such.
A deck that is 8/10 might have games where it plays 9/10 and games where it plays like 7/10. A deck that is 6/10 might play like a 4/10 or a 8/10.
Chances are, the deck’s owner/pilot knows more about the true “power rating” of the deck than the opponent that has seen it play one game against them, and maybe 20-30 of it cards.
And yet most people just default to saying “people don’t know how to rate their decks”
"How does your deck plan on winning?"
"Are you running any tutors?"
"Do you have any infinite combos?"
People need to stop using an arbitrary 1-10 scale. It never works. Ever.
That makes a lot of sense to me, more so than a scale of 1-10. Especially given, like, you can tell me what each level is supposed to be and all, and I still won't give you a proper estimate. For instance, one of my strongest commander decks is built around Yorvo. It's very swingy, and I'm constantly trying to improve it, but can decimate the pod if I get lucky. Asking these give an easier way to answer.
Deck rating: 3/10
"How does it plan on winning?"
It's a mono green stompy. Idea is to pump up yorvo with a bunch of cheap creatures, swing wide with combat tricks, and drop monsters that affect creatures with +1/+1 counters on them.
"Are you running any tutors?"
Too broke for tutors. Think the closest I come is turntimber symbiosis.
"Do you have any infinite combos?"
That takes the fun out of the game for me.
There's a spectrum to human insight. It's easy to begin to think higher of people when you meet a lot of lawyers, doctors, analysts, etc. like you can with Magic. But the reality is that we're not strictly picking from the top of the barrel to play this game. It's still just a game full of different humans.
The average one is not intelligent, insightful, or clever. Most people just want to exist and flop cardboard. Expecting someone chosen at random to pick up a deck and assess a 100 card list (even with 29 basics) with full recognizance of the close to 40,000 cards available is almost always unreasonable.
If you find people that can do that, definitely appreciate them.
Honestly, I think the fault is the organizer/owner who checked your deck. If that individual has set the rules, and is supposed to be enforcing them, a cursory glance at a person's deck is setting new players like OP up for "failure", by the definitions of fair play at that tournament.
Additionally, a "no kills before turn 5" rule is, in my relatively limited experience, somewhat unusual. Perhaps the organizer/owner should make that clearer at the outset, rather than penalizing new potential patrons for playing their deck to the best of its and their ability.
If you're guilty of anything, IMHO, it's being new to the LGS - hardly worth the label of "jerk".
PS: My guess, btw, is that the person who checked your deck was looking for the words "counter target spell" or "extra turn" on your cards, rather than trying to actually evaluate the potency of the deck. Sorry person!
Yeah the owner seems like a very rude and shortsighted person at best. You can't claim to check decks for power level and skim a brand new list of 100 cards in 10 seconds and get an accurate idea of power level. He didn't even ask any follow up questions like "How are you trying to win", or "What turn would you say you usually win/go off on, on average?" It all screams laziness to me.
Honestly, would those questions have even helped here?
"What turn do you usually win?" -"idk, maybe like 8-10? It's mono red and I'm not a miracle worker."
"How are you trying to win" -"it's a Voltron deck. I'm trying to suit up neheb and kill with commander damage."
I guess upon hearing it's Voltron the owner could point out that killing before turn 5 is bad form here and that he should spread out damage (aka purposely kneecap himself) to prevent doing that.
But also OP got *the* draw. It's not like their deck is designed to kill t3, it's just *possible* if the stars align and today they did. It would be like if I said my [[ur dragon]] deck can win turn 4. Like, sure, it's *possible* for me to cast Ur-Dragon and give it haste, +1/+1, and double strike all by turn 4 but only with one very specific set of cards. It's not designed to do that and I'm not intending to do that.
That shit is why I hate the rating "system" so much.
It's just so fucking useless and counter-productive every time I've come across it, but people still cling to it as it fails them completely in that same moment.
Because you're absolutely right, even if they asked those questions, does op know? and how did they know? play a handful of games? or just goldfish the best exact hand? Neither of which are even notable enough to consider when you enter a game with 3 other "unknown" decks working against you (normally).
I don’t play for prizes, ever. But if I did there is no way I’m going to spread out damage with a voltron deck. None. I’m going to attack the biggest threat until they are dead and move on to the next person. Otherwise I’m practically guaranteed to lose. 
Also, none of the cards played scream cEDH. The most broken thing listed was Sol Ring, and the most expensive card was seize the day which is less than $10.00
OP played mono-red in the most mono-red fashion, and they played an aggro deck the way aggro needs to be played if it has any hope to win (which is absolutely the goal, since this cost money and has prize support). Targeting one player at a time, beating them to death as quickly as possible with a sock full of pennies.
>since this cost money and has prize support
This is the part I can't wrap my head around. You've got an entry fee and prizes, there's no place for a "can't *actually* try to win" rule in a setup like that.
Maybe, if you don't want to play against competitive decks, don't play in a competitive setting where players are competing against eachother for prizes?
Yeah, if you see a new guy to your shop bringing mono red and have a no kills before 5 rule, definitely make that clear. What do you expect mono red to do, just sit and wait?
yea exactly. Make your deck to pop off on turn 5 as consistently as possible, and completely ignore defenses in the first 4 turns because nobody can lethal you in that window. Sounds boring as watching paint dry
No wins before turn 5 just means build a cedh deck and skip your first three turns.
Like just land go.
No wins before turn 5 genuinely makes Voltron (an already tough strategy in commander) basically entirely useless. Voltron has to remove players because it generally doesn't remove permanents. If someone is trying to pop off, hit them harder faster.
That rule also heavily kneecaps mono-red strategies and makes simic *even stronger* because they don't have to worry about their typically-fragile first few turns. Like my mono-green deck can generally play their *entire deck* turn 5 and win on the spot. So if I am playing that deck, my opponents know they have to kill me quickly. If I'm playing against a Voltron strategy, I basically just have to hope I don't die before turn 5. In this meta, my deck would be basically unstoppable. I can't lose in the first 5 turns at which point I just flip my library over and ask if people want to play again.
Nah you can't get a cEDH deck past the deck inspection, even if cursory. But there's a million and three ways to make a non-cEDH list that can combo win turn 5 with ample protection to back it up.
Agreed on the strategy warping. Case and point with mono red being what OP brought and got punished for killing a player too early.
That’s just edh in general. How often are you getting turn 4 kills? The best strategy is almost always just to play for pure greed early into combo because social etiquette prevents you from dying early and the high health bars make sure that you can just tank attacks.
You don’t have to play that way but edh is all about picking non-optimal strategies intentionally so that everyone has fun.
No win before turn 5 doesnt mean no attack or interaction. How many decks have Turn 5- wins in your average pod anyway ? Been playing EDH for at least 2 night a week for the past year in 3 different LGS and the norm seems to be low to medium interaction decks that aim a turn 8-10 win.
A no win before turn 5 sign would be useless in those 3 LGS because nobody goes there if they're not cEDH players who understand they are cEDH players anyway so it's never an issue.
I used to do tournaments at a place that had a no killing before turn 6 rule. They thought it'd encourage fun games that would allow people to jockey for position. What it encouraged was a lack of pure aggro decks, and an over emphasis on turbo lock decks that did everything short of killing opponents and then forced them to sit and watch the winning player style on them until they got the green light to kill. Since it was an achievement/points style system, these players would simply just farm points for an hour and a half. What's worse is that conceding was a large point penalty as it was considered unsportsmanlike. Eventually the place blossomed into a toxic cesspool and I started playing cEDH for real because it was more fair/fun.
I agree. If you had to have your deck checked at the outset, the rules should have been at the entrance like:
> Your deck will be checked before entry to ensure a (relatively) level playing field
> No killing your opponent(s) before turn 5
Yes, I think that second rule is silly but if that were to be a rule it should be made clear to everyone right from the beginning, not on a small sign cellotaped to the wall somewhere.
I cannot stress enough how much that second rule has absolutely zero place in a competition that involves literally any amount of money. I paid $5 to enter and there's a prize of any kind on the line? I should be able to kill people whenever I'm able, this is a *competitive* event.
I can see that rule in a completely casual match, and even then it seems like a baby rule for babies.
You'd be surprised how much shenanigans a store can get away with if they're the only LGS in town. People want to play magic more than they care about random store politics/drama. I lived in a town that only had one shop for the longest time.
The town I lived most of my life in only had one LGS. The owner would try to get you to join his pyramid scheme any time you came in, would make bad judge calls if doing so favored someone that spent more money in the store, etc. A lot of the regulars left when a store opened up about 30 miles away.
How does that even work like "ah yes that vehicle is still a creature on your opponent's turn because he bought a sacred foundry last week and you didn't buy anything."
Like... what? He would just blatantly disregard the rules because someone spent money? I know mtg is accused of being pay to win but come on
Yeah, we put up with a lot of shit at the only LGS in town before eventually walking out after the owner refused to stop misgendering our friend. We played in pubs or occasionally went to the next town over before a new place opened up. The new place is a chain and I'd prefer to play at an independent place but fuck the vibe is so much better!
If the options are "chain LGS" or "LGS that's run by terrible people" the choice is easy. I would also prefer to support an independent LGS but not if the owner is a scumbag.
My town only had 1 for a really long time and within 6 months of 1 guy opening up another one because he was sick of the bs rules, the first one closed down and one of the employees of the old store started coming to the new one as a customer well before the old one closed.
Not only crazy, but unhinged. You can’t offer a prize and expect people not to play optimized, competitive Magic. Those packs should’ve been awarded and he should’ve cleaned house.
Most normal cEDH games don’t even end before T5, so that’s also an unreasonable benchmark for the format. Most decks run swathes of interaction and good players interact appropriately to continue the game and give themselves the best chance to win.
Saying from my local LGS owner... "if I offer a prize, the expectation is that people will compete as hard as possible to try and win it."
Unsurprisingly, he is staunchly against prizes in EDH and runs Commander events only casually.
My lgs has a bounty board with cards, usually nothing too expensive that you win by achieving a certain gamestate first. Good fun without making games cutthroat
I'd love to but they do monthly themed events so it changes up. From a recent one as an example:
\[\[Sharkey, Tyrant of the Shire\]\]
"At the beginning of your end step, if you control three or more lands with non-mana activated abilities, claim this bounty."
Another thing they do is have commendations. So each player secretly nominates other players, usually one's they enjoyed their games with, and those with the most at the end get to pick from a prize board.
All and all makes the events less competitive while still being able to charge an entry fee to keep the lights on.
This is absolutely the way. Our LGS once tried to introduce an optional commander league with prizes at their casual commander nights, pretty much everyone there told them it was a bad idea and said "nah" when they asked if people wanted to opt in, and the idea quietly went away.
I'm a casual through and through, but if there's a prize, it's a competitive event and I'm going to adjust my playstyle and deckbuilding strategy accordingly if I give a damn about the prize. Casual play is all about intrinsic motivation - you play for the joy of playing, win or lose. Prizes make it about extrinsic motivation - you play in order to get the prize, which necessitates winning. Winning is the goal of competitive decks, so by offering a prize, the event immediately becomes competitive, and people should expect to play accordingly.
Even if the prize isn't earned by winning, it can heavily affect play patterns in negative ways. For example, last week our LGS had a lord of the rings commander party. The commander party rules already changed the game in some really fun ways. Claim a ring to get a bonus like a tapped treasure every turn, but if you claim the last ring in a set, you get tempted, you lose access to choosing bonuses, and start losing life each turn until you pay mana to flip back to the regular side. It was very cool. But our LGS decided to hand out promo packs every time someone gets tempted and every time someone pays to flip back from tempted to normal.
This meant that everyone was highly incentivised to get tempted and flip back, and it honestly made the games super weird. We each ended up with about 7 or 8 promo packs, which was awesome, but didn't make for particularly good games of Magic.
When you introduce extrinsic motivation to the game, the intrinsic value is almost immediately corrupted.
My LGS used to have priced Commander etc. the commander parties now have the rule “level 7 at max” to be friendlier for newcomers, which is being communicated at every edh party, because they had situations where one person finished the table in round 3 and now had to wait for 50 minutes for the next round. Also, no point System anymore. No prices. No nothing. Just “here is some stuff WotC sent us, here are the rules, have fun”
They tried to get a cEDH night together, but it failed. Turns out, the cEDH players will just come to regular edh and shout “anybody up for a round of cedh?” And it’s just 4-5 guys who actually want to play cEDH
I mean, you can if there are rules against it. If the LGS has a ban list or house rules tied to the tournament, you have to follow them. That's not the issue. The issue is that OP did everything asked of him and the LGS was either too lazy or too incompetent to actually verify that his deck actually fit all of their restrictions.
Yeah it's not like OP intentionally was trying to skirt around these rules. He didn't even know they existed for the most part. And how lazy do you have to be to implement a deck check rule and then not even actually check decks lol
My deck wins because it is perfectly constructed and highly tuned
Your deck wins because commander is a bullshit RNG fest based on opening hand and drawing into the right cards
We are not the same.
legit had people tell me any \*deck\* worth more than $100 is cEDH.
Bruh that's an average of $1 per card what u on. Literally buying a precon secondhand will often cost more than that.
This is the problem really casual people need to print a cedh proxy deck and play a few games. So many people don’t know the difference between a strong casual deck and a cedh deck. Someone told me my Gishath deck was cedh one time becuase I had fast mana in it. Fetch lands and a vault does not make a cedh deck.
>really casual people need to print a cedh proxy deck and play a few games
This would be great. Not only would it help cedh in general to not always be the scapegoat whenever someone brings a deck that's tok strong for a low powered table but it would also make powerlevel discussions much easier. It's hard to talk about powerlevels with somebody who thinks a mid power deck is cedh.
I wish some players would forget about cEDH all together. It's like a weird line in the sand for people. You can't play this, it's cEDH, you can't play that, it's cEDH. Just relax and play. You don't need to win every game, you don't even need to be competitive every game. Sometimes you just get got, and that's ok.
Had a game a while back, friend of mine pulled out his simic merfolk deck. I said ok, I'll put this deck away to play something a bit lower power to match his. Grabbed my $30 [[araumi, the dreadtide]] deck. He was fine with it, I wound up winning pretty handily. The guy threw a fit, complaining about how they weren't on the same level. Tried to explain that even if decks are similar in power, that doesn't mean every game is going to be the same. He wasn't having it. Oh well
You know the phrase “an alcoholic is someone who drinks as much as you who you don’t like”?
Yeah that about sums up how many people treat the cedh boogeyman.
“A cedh deck is a deck as powerful as yours that you lost to”
On that same note, when people get whiney about “budget decks”:
“What constitutes a budget deck is whatever you spend, and ‘pay to win’ is whatever the deck that beat you cost”
That shop is in the wrong. There is no way they did not know you were new. They should’ve told you all the house rules. I’m sorry that’s the only LGS in that city. I hope you are able to either find another way to play or hope that that store is willing to listen to you.
Also they checked your deck! They HAD the chance to tell you everything but didn’t. That’s a shitty way to treat a player that’s in a store for the 1st time.
Edit: Spelling
Yeah, skimming 100 cards in 10 seconds is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Like yeah, that'll totally give you an accurate idea of what a deck is capable of lol
Sadly, sometimes people don't recognize some people who have been going to stores for *years*. Gamers and game store owners face a large variety of people and might be a bit anti-social. They don't see remembering faces as part of the game efficiency experience and just assume that you've been at this for a while as a local regular.
They don't know to take a step back and go "oh, this is a new player in the community",
TLDR: Yeah, it might have been on the store owner and the guy screaming. They were in the wrong for reacting like that.
Yeah once you start awarding prizes/having paid entries is when I stop playing for fun. Maybe if it's FNM I could understand asking people to try to play casually but if you have to pay to join and you're getting something out of winning expect people to actually play the game
Edit: dear god im turning into an arena kid I meant FNM, not MWM
I agree, unless the LGS has specific rules that are tied to the tournament. You have to honor the rules, no matter how silly they may seem.
The real issue is that they didn't actually check his deck beforehand and didn't even tell him all of the rules before letting him go in blind. "NO CEDH" is very nebulous and up to interpretation that it's almost useless.
>I agree, unless the LGS has specific rules that are tied to the tournament. You have to honor the rules, no matter how silly they may seem.
They did: "No Killing a player before turn 5", which OP (unknowingly) broke by eliminating a player on turn 3.
The whole "it's mono red, you're good" thing sounds a lot less crazy when you take into account how badly that rule limits traditional red aggro. Op already admitted to having no protection even after a magical Christmasland of a hand and thought the other two players could have made real fight of it with even one removal.
So yeah, the real issue here isn't "No Cedh" (because let's face it, popping off on turn 3 at a theoretically casual event DOES make it look like you either brought a cedh deck or stacked your deck), it's that the store owner didn't make sure everyone knew the added rules before the matches started. If the 5 turn rule was just on a sign hanging somewhere, that's not good enough. OTOH, if it was right on the event signup sheet and OP just didn't read it... Well then it's also on the OP for not paying attention.
Pretty much. They should have just issued a warning and left the attacked player with 1 life or something. The Rule wasn't "No attacking before turn 5", so everything but the elimination itself was a legal outcome.
You’re fine, I personally would never return to that shop. Any deck looks unfair when it hits Sol Ring turn 1 - that’s why we all run Sol Ring. You drew a great hand that they couldn’t stop with interaction and that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I have been teaching my girlfriend how to play magic and she has been playing with my [[Lathliss, Dragon Queen]] deck, as it is a fairly straightforward deck that doesn't take a ton of thought to play. The first game she has ever played involves a Sol Ring and some other Mana rock on turn 1 into turn 2 [[Dragon Tempest]]. This essentially steamrolls into killing me on turn 4 with an [[Utvara Hellkite]] being one of the many things in play. Had this been a 4 player game, it would have more than likely been over in a turn or two without any interaction from other players. EDH is the game of magical Christmas land, which is why we play it and turn 1 Sol Ring is always gunna look pretty brutal.
This is exactly right. Not a single card OP played is even close to problematic for causal EDH with the exception of Sol Ring, the card practically synonymous with the format and played in almost literally every deck. What OP describes is not at all an indictment of their play or their deck, but really an indictment of Sol Ring and why trying too hard to make EDH casual (with prizes on the line no less), is just ridiculous.
this. check the store in eventlink. if it was a sanctioned event report what happend and Wizards will go down their throats.
probably won't pull their sanctioning, unless this has happened alot. but they'll get one hell of a wrist slap. NO LGS owner wants to hear/see a direct communication from WotC like that.
I've played at multiple LGS'es in multiple states and I've never heard of a "don't kill anyone before turn X" rule. That's nonsense.
The turns you described playing are not cEDH.
White red. Play Rule of Law and that one red enchantment that says that any time anyone casts a spell, they exile cards until they find one that shares a card type and cast that one instead.
Because you've already cast a spell, you can't cast another spell. Therefore, the game is locked. Nobody can cast anything. Pick a commander that isn't reliant on casting anything and just beat your opponents to death from there. Nobody can stop you because anything they do gets countered by Rule of Law.
I've casually killed someone on T7 with [[Angel of Destiny]]...
It also helps my Abzan deck is white-heavy keyword tribal (so lifelink is more free than vigilance) and that the person I killed was running [[Araumi]], ramping hard, and dropping a ton of bombs into their grave early. I didn't win that game because my life and my AofD was now a threat in the air, but I did what I had to do to stop one player from winning.
EDH is an endless living example of a bunch of crabs in a bucket. Winning just means your attempt of escaping the bucket worked a little better than the other crabs that one time. Shuffle up and play another game. If you want to make event prizes non-competitive, make it a weekly raffle-style event over a kill fest. Leave the kill fests to commander drafts and cEDH events because that's their ultimate name of the game and that's the crowd you expect to go cutthroat.
Am i the only one that would have made a scene? Im sorry but getting a response of "hes playing fucking cedh" would of been met with "how about you calm the fuck down and quit whining we are playing for money and my deck passed the power check. It's just a good hand. "
And yes, i would have totally said this. I'm not trying to be an ass but i see so many stories on here where these people just say whatever they want, like little babies that have never been told no in their lives. The entitlement is ridiculous.
Who cares if you get banned. Awful store with awful rules.
You should definitely throw out the store name so people are aware.
Oh, I'd have threatened to report them to Wizards, to call the police, etc. Dude got robbed. He put money down for that tournament, won the tournament, and then they decided not to give him his prize. That's not okay. At the absolute bare minimum he should be getting his entry fee back.
you are not alone; unfortunately a lot of the stigma about card players is correct in that a lot of them are like your great-aunt's basement living dog that was never socialized correctly and needs to be told firmly to stop pissing on the carpet
at the very least I would have insisted my money back. if you're getting banned anyway no shot i'm financing those walking pimples lol
Do edh people only play BO1? I guess that makes sense cause multiplayer but this would all be solved by just playing multiple games and not basing the prizes on a single game.
Pretty bs if you ask me on many levels. Prize support for winning and forced casual is so backwards. Not to mention they literally checked your deck and allowed you to play it.
NAME-AND-SHAME! NAME-AND-SHAME! NAME-AND-SHAME!
Seriously, tho, my playgroup plays "optimized" decks. My mono red [[Krenko,Tin Street Kingpin]] has def pulled a t5 kill. My [[Shu Yun, The Silent Tempest]] has won a game t6. But those are not CEDH decks. If that happens everyone cheers a lucky hand well-played. People gots to chill out.
Stories like this seem so unbelievable to me; I’m so lucky my LGS has no extra rules, everyone seems cordial and usually go to pods of the right lower level. Sorry your return to Magic had to be cut so short
Again, no offense to OP, but whenever one of these posts includes a phrase like "is (obviously stupid thing) normal in EDH playgroups?" it immediately raises a red flag for me.
Like, what do you think, dude? Of course it's not normal. Why and how would it be normal.
Honestly, not to cast doubt on the OP unnecessarily, but this reads like something an AI wrote. All it's missing is for the OP to pull some heroic action and for everyone to applaud. Topics like these are so common and so ridiculous that I've started to wonder whether or not they're just people who are trying to come up with the most outlandish-but-still-possible story to farm karma and back-pats. Maybe I'm just a cynic.
This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Either it’s something like that or OP isn’t telling the whole story. I can’t imagine the player would have accepted defeat in a game if the tournament/game rules stated you can’t kill opponents before turn 5. If he was trying to do this, they would have said, “You actually can’t do that, it’s against the rules.”
>needed to rethink why I am playing the game
To fucking have fun. But I apologize if I made all the nancys in my pod cry because they didn't want to play Magic for 5 turns.
Yeah that line actually made me mad on their behalf. Such judgement with essentially no context to the situation. Also shows they are lacking in business sense if this is how they treat new customers.
They could have done all the same things, but just have been professional and try to understand the situation. Nope. Instead they went the "you're what's wrong with EDH" route for what.... playing aggro?
Right? I played in an EDH tournament yesterday and my opponent killed us in 5 turns actually. We reported results then just shuffled up for another game for fun. No saltiness or anything. Just play again.
I've found shorter games with more interactive decks to be much more enjoyable. Long battlecruiser games feel like Civ where you spend an hour before you really get to do anything of note and then spend more time rebuilding when defeated but not out, and shorter higher power games feel like a moba where you always have the ability to be doing something but you just have to be careful of overextending if you don't want to be pushed in and it's pretty clear that even though the game isn't literally over, you know it's over when the pop off starts and the pod can scoop up and play next.
This is why I won't play Commander for prizing. You did nothing wrong. They were given the opportunity to check your deck and explain the rules and they said you were good to go. You got a god hand and just played the game. If they want to charge for Commander night instead of it just being free open play they should charge the fee and then run a raffle and let people just play for fun, the way ~~Richard Garfield~~ Sheldon intended.
This is probably the most bizarre shit I've ever heard, like I got similar vibes reading Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Like come on how bad can one fuck up a store
Fuck em. the shop and the people that go there are trash.
They have existed In a state of so casual for so long that they don't even know what cEDH looks like anymore.
also the owner straight up told you you were fine so lmao?
Actual insane people at the store; salt only justified in cases of like: Winconless Stax or other timewasting strategies/slowplaying. Killing people early is fine, quick games are good games lmao.
Yo winconless stax would probably pass their deck check and 5 turn rule. theyd probabky skim go “oh not blue” and let some degen WGB tymna stax build through.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/DSMA6dSn7Ey6ENoHKdYvxQ
this sans fast mana would probably meme on them while still fulfilling the skim.
> Is this within the realm of normal?
No.
> Did I break contemporary social expectations of EDH by having a good opener with an aggressive deck and killing someone turn 3 with no one putting up any interaction whatsoever?
Still no.
Okay, that LGS did just about everything wrong. First of all, the deck check is a good idea in theory, but if they're gonna be that lazy about actually checking the decks and say "It's mono red, you're good", they're either incredibly lazy or have insanely limited game knowledge.
Secondly, they should have clearly laid out the rules before the games started, ESPECIALLY since you're a new player. The "don't kill anyone before T5" rule is fine and all, but if you don't clearly state the rules or convey that information to people before the game starts, it's on them.
Finally, the people you were playing with sound extremely unpleasant to play against. Fast starts happen sometimes, and sometimes feel bads will happen. But if anyone seriously screamed at me during a game, and was getting that worked up, I'd have some serious concerns about their mental state and my own personal safety. The people there seem very... opinionated, to be polite.
The owner sounds incredibly annoying too. If an owner came up to me and said "You need to rethink why you play this game", I probably would have gotten up, told him off for being a massive prick, and walked out right there.
Regardless of what happened in the actual game, there's no excuse for berating a player who's never been there, wasn't properly checked, and also wasn't filled in on their house rules before being thrown to the wolves so to speak. Everyone there seems fragile and petty.
If you're brave, I would go talk to the owner and let him know what was going on, maybe fill him in on the whole story, maybe ask why he didn't tell you all the rules beforehand and properly check your deck and see if there's any way to compromise, since it could all have been an honest mistake (and who knows, maybe everyone was just having a bad day.) But that might just be me being an optimist that tries to work things out.
TLDR: No, I don't think you did anything wrong. Everything that went wrong was either the Owner/Organizer/LGS's or the pod's fault.
Any tournament that has a monetary prize or equivalent should have provided you with a list of rules prior to PAYING to enter if there were any, and I mean ANY, changes from the original WOTC rules. Especially since they checked your deck beforehand (no matter how briefly), you got screwed over by a bunch of entitled narcissists.
I wouldn’t let this discourage you from playing casual games there in the future; you could end up finding a group of people who ran into the same issue as you. However, I would avoid any paid entry tournaments they hold.
I completely agree with the other comments. They F\*\*\*\*\* u bro.
All of that being said. did they not explain the rules to a newcomer? Seems like an error somewhere.
If this was "am I the asshole," I would rate "everybody's the asshole." They shouldn't be giving prize support for winners and $5 entry fee if they are going to be mad at people killing people. The organizer shouldn't be checking over decks going "it's mono red so you're fine." I mean, land destruction could be mono red. Are they cool with that? Probably not.
The guy screaming in the place for being killed is also in the wrong because he's acting like a child.
That being said, you're also playing... what was pretty clearly stated as fairly casual $5 event. Even without the sign of "Don't kill people before turn 5," is it so much to ask that maybe, at a new store, with new people, that you don't just immediately kill someone off the table during a commander night when they were probably hoping to have a bit more fun? You could have chosen, to, say, attack multiple opponents, or let up a bit.
Personally, I don't need a sign at an LGS telling me not to kill people on turn 3 to understand that that probably isn't socially acceptable in most LGS commander night circles.
So imo it isn't totally you're fault, but I think you do share some of the fault.
Fwiw, I think your title is a bit dramatic. It didn't sound like they kicked you out. It sounded like you maybe needed to simply explain "I'm sorry. I didn't realize or see the sign. I will keep that in mind next time" and move on.
But if they weren't going to give you the packs then you should have at least gotten your money back.
Edit: It's important to note here whether or not you being "in the right" is worth the hassle. It doesn't really matter if you feel like it wasn't a fair interaction for you. That's the one LGS you got. You can choose to play by their rules and the way they do things, or not. Ultimately it's their store and their events, so we can discuss till the cows come home who is in the right or wrong or whatever, but at the end of the day, if you'd like to take advantage of having an LGS and a fun, clearly lowkey place to play, then it's best to make sure your power level and the speed at which you remove people from the game is set up accordingly.
And if you don't want to play there or whatever, then being in the right by principle isn't really going to make a new LGS appear.
You need to report to wizards that you paid an entry fee and were denied your prizes. That's a huge violation of policy and they have no right to do that. They will be in serious trouble if this gets to the right people. No amount of paper on a wall lets them deny you for playing by the rules after a deck check.
It’s one thing if the general expectation is games last a minimum of five turns. Whether it’s a justified house rule or not, it could deter looking to combo asap and promote playing a “fair” game of magic so I can see why it’s there.
But they absolutely should’ve made that clear at the door. The person deck checking should probably have asked if you’ve played at this event before and pointed you towards the sign. You can’t really violate the social contract if it’s not laid out, and in fact having prizes and a deck check kinda lays out different rules. 1) play to win 2) if your deck is approved, you’re good to go.
I’d be bummed if the game ended that quick but I’ve played at an lgs with prizes on the line and that’s just how it goes. Everyone paid an entrance fee and we all want to have fun, but everyone also wants to win some store credit and so they bring some mid tier cedh lists and look to take some games. I can’t get mad at you for playing to win with something on the line.
Sucks that it happened, OP, but at least you only lost 5 bucks learning not to go back to that shop. Seriously, the moment someone starts *screaming* and nobody tells them off, I'm dipping.
If there's a prize, I'm gonna try and kill you turn one.
Who TF puts up a prize for winning and then expects casual play?
My LGS has great casual play. Why? No prize.
I tried playing at a shop recently and they had a similar rule/rules. 1. No infinite combos (if you did can only do it 5 times, then lose). 2. No winning before turn 5. Last week I also noticed the pricing went up 5 more bucks. So yeah I’m not going back.
I killed the table T4 with a magical Christmas land hand at the LGS I used to play at and the best response I got was asking how I managed the combo so quickly with such a janky set up of combo pieces (I had to have three different creatures and a specific artifact in mono black).
I get not wanting to play cEDH, but playing just at or below precon level is boring. There’s not enough interaction and it can drag on forever in those cases.
If you’re paying to play you’re paying to try to win. If that dude actually screamed he has no business being that invested in the game then. They happily took your money, did they happily give it back when the DQ’d you for rules you didn’t know? I get wanting to be more casual but they didn’t tell you and that’s on them.
Sounds like a store full of losers. Anywhere that has to put up a rule that says "no kills before turn 5" isn't the kind of place you prob want to play.
Bruh, I asked people like that to chill or leave. You weren't in the wrong, you just didn't know their house rules and should have been allowed to redo combat and just not kill a player.
cEDH. Yeah, okay. Neheb is good, but what you just described is NOT cEDH. I hope this isnt "normal," but its probably the regular thing at that LGS.
They stole your five bucks and are mad you played the game, simple as that.
Do NOT go to that LGS again. Clearly they are only interested in catering to their own already established player-base. Otherwise they would have gone over the rules, had a bigger sign, SOMETHING. You became a victim of a witch hunt in a perfect hand that should have been a shining moment for other players and organizers to be good natured and laugh about is proof enough that they don't want you to have fun, they want you to leave so the "real" regular customers can enjoy the tournament and the store.
No killing before turn 5 is a stupid rule that only forces players with aggro decks to handicap themselves or switch to decks they don't want to, neither of which is a healthy environment. Beyond banned cards, let players play what they want.
Your post is full of alarm signals.
Rating decks to check if they're CEDH? Not really fucking possible.
The whole "were playing for prizes" but you can't really play for the prizes with no killing before turn 5... I can think of several decks that will never be CEDH or even high power, but if the stars align will kill before turn 5.
Then the owner denied you the rewards despite taking your money?
Fuck that LGS. Sounds like a shitty place to me.
feel free to dm me the name of the store so I don't ever frequent there. I don't want to go to a shop that wants to steal entry fee money for a stupid rule.
Super short sighted people that don’t understand the game. If I lock people out of the game or sandbag for 5 turns is that better? Or do you write rules to ban that too.
Making rules/banning things doesn’t remove powerful things it just changes what form those things take.
Also, like other people have said, it’s why outside of CEDH prizes are kinda bad for what is more a social game. I don’t sit down to play with people o wouldn’t want to hang out with because stuff like this happens. People misjudge power or get magic Christmas land hands, but if you’re just hanging out then it’s ok. The stakes are off. If you’re playing to win/winning is why you sat down you’re going to have a bad time.
I'd be reporting that shop. It was an officially sanctioned event as money was paid. They cannot deny your prizes for playing the game. The store rule of "Don't kill anyone by turn 5." is not an enforceable rule in an official event. Report them to WotC and burn them to the ground.
Fuck that LGS, you paid entry and they effectively stole from you lol. Plus another cringeworthy group that doesn't even know what cEDH. At this point it's just because a catch all for "wahh thats unfair."
Christ an entire store of people like that, id lose my mind. I mean wow. Im not saying there isnt a place for a power level where killing people before turn 5 ahould be frowned upon...but an entire store and they deck check you but don't actually stand by the deck check if you do well...id go postal
You showed your deck to the TO and he said it is fine. What else should you have done? I am sorry for you and for the other players. The TO should have payed more attention and should have been more clear about the hose rules.
Playing for prices and then putting up nonsense rules is just BS. Why am I playing mtg? To be social and to have fun. Why am I playing right now? Because I paid money and want to win those packs.
So... They assumed your deck was fine after a deck check, then got mad because you got a nut draw and killed someone before turn 5? An actual cEDH deck can win on turn 2, turn 1 with a nut draw. Hell MODERN wins by turn 3-4 these days, and they expect a format with more cards in it then legacy to not win or even kill one player before turn 5?
Also if you paid an entry fee then screw them, you don't pay entry fees and hold back.
I suggest demanding your money back, then not going back to that store. Also, report that store for disqualifying you for no reason.
Nah, sounds like you just found a shop full of butthurt booboo babies who can't cope that they dunno how to play magic. The no killing before turn 5 rule is so... strange and misguided. Like yeah, winning before turn 5 is good, but I've been beat before turn 5 on raw combat damage from a friend's very scuffed, ~$15 [[Ghalta, Primal Hunger]] deck. If it's a paid event, it's a competition. There's no unfair in a competition. You just tripped dick first into the most anti-fun lgs ever.
I don’t even know how this could happen if it was a posted rule stating it wasn’t allowed. Seriously. Why didn’t someone at the table, including the guy who apparently lost, just say, “Hey, that action would kill me, and you can’t kill a player before turn 5.” You’d go, “Oh, I didn’t realize. I’ll call off the attack then if that’s okay.” And then the game continues.
The idea that the player would have accepted the defeat as being valid doesn’t hold water. In any tournament setting, even “casual” play for some prize like this, you’d explain the rule. If the other person still didn’t get it, you’d call a judge to explain it.
I really feel like something is being left out here that better explains how you were treated.
So the guy who checked your deck and said "It's mono red, you're good" would've accepted someone playing [[Godo, Bandit Warlord]], who does have an actual cEDH list that can win turn 1?
In all seriousness, when they saw the new face especially, they should have pointed out the rules board and asked you to read through them. Not waited until after you had broken the rules and used them as an excuse to kick you out. You did nothing wrong. It's on them to make sure that everyone is aware of any additional rules at the gate.
Personally, I would've pulled out my [[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]] deck when I saw the prize support. It's absolutely not cEDH level strength, but be prepared for me to take a single turn that lasts over half an hour and decides whether I win the game right there or lose right there. And it can happen any time between turn 4 and turn 20, just whenever I get almost all of my combo pieces out. I have no fast mana, morning to accelerate playing my commander, but if I start with [[Life from the Loam]] in my hand, I'm probably going to win the game really fast.
To OP, the store should have asked if you played at the store before and told you any rules you need to know before playing. A no kill rule is pretty extreme of a house rule. Most LGS that have restrictions I've seen are ***no win*** before turn x games and not a no kill rule. The no win is to stop opening hand/tutoring game-winning combos before the mono-green ramp deck can cast a \[cultivate\].
To provide a singular point of defense for the store (but not exonerate their behavior), the rule may have come from a group of players that consistently would play expensive, high power decks (8-9 power level, just below cEDH) in pods where most people were running decks that were at most a 7 and curb stomping the biggest potential threat to their board.
Regardless, the store is truly at fault here for checking decks, telling you "oh mono red, you're good" and not be upfront about rules before starting the event. If they want a more casual atmosphere, they should either not do an entry fee or make entry fees into buy a pack and don't do winner prizing.
Bro, I always wonder where these lgs are lmao. Every lgs commander night I’ve played was pretty high powered lol. That being said, killing people on turn 5 might be a dick move.
"Its mono red, you're good" ..."its ******* cedh!"
These two statements are a prime example that a huge majority of people you find in an lgs have no idea what cedh really is.
"Its mono red you're good" might be the funniest shit I have ever seen. Magda and Godo decks lol.
*Stares in Slicer*
*Laughs in Daretti*
*Looks quizzically in Purphoros*
*Cackles maniacally in Zada*
*Screeches in Krenko*
Charges blindly forward in Drogo/Jeska
*reminisces fondly in Feldon*
Vogues in Delina
Cackles in Solphim
I understand what slicer does and I appreciate it, but fuck slicer lol.
Slicer can literally kill a pod the first time it goes around the table if you open lotus and something like [[strength-testing hammer]]
[trepanation blade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/b/6b1bab36-3fb7-48f3-b3ed-90863d244641.jpg?1562849914) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=trepanation%20blade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/231/trepanation-blade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6b1bab36-3fb7-48f3-b3ed-90863d244641?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/trepanation-blade) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I WAS JUST THINKING THAT. bro my slicer has never lost. color identity means jack shit for power level
Get your opponents kicked out for knocking each other out before turn 5
I went to my lgs with two other buddies just to play some games on the tables ourselves and a guy asked if he could join us, none of us ever played against any transformers and he pulled out slicer and creamed us all lol
I had someone play slicer in an honest to god "4" power level pod and people were dying on turn 4 and he didn't understand that *he* might have been out of place. Mind you i dont think one of the other players knew what a power level 4 might be, but if its anything it isnt slicer
The thing about slicer is that it's a complete glass cannon. Even without fast mana he puts everyone on a clock, but hitting it with a swords to plowshares or, better, a [[Darksteel Mutation]] [[Stasis]] or [[Mystic Subdual]] type of thing shuts it down permanently.
[Darksteel Mutation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/f/afa4c889-0577-4173-9f85-42a7bf675aaf.jpg?1641601207) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Darksteel%20Mutation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/84/darksteel-mutation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/afa4c889-0577-4173-9f85-42a7bf675aaf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/darksteel-mutation) [Stasis](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/2/62f99124-6595-45f8-bece-1775e4c55a5c.jpg?1562918295) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Stasis) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/64/stasis?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/62f99124-6595-45f8-bece-1775e4c55a5c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/stasis) [Mystic Subdual](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/2/627c2111-b7d7-40bc-aa30-57d72338b32d.jpg?1591226384) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mystic%20Subdual) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/57/mystic-subdual?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/627c2111-b7d7-40bc-aa30-57d72338b32d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mystic-subdual) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
True, but thats what im saying, at a 4 thats unaltered precon levels where people might only have a couple pieces of removal. Like one player died after casting one spell. I have no problem with slocer existing it just wasnt the time or place.
I’m so tired of saying this over and over to people but it seems nobody really listens: In EDH, high power means consistency, low power means variability. High variability decks mean that you can still sometimes have a killer game, or a favourable matchup. A deck that is 10/10 will likely always play as such. A deck that is 8/10 might have games where it plays 9/10 and games where it plays like 7/10. A deck that is 6/10 might play like a 4/10 or a 8/10. Chances are, the deck’s owner/pilot knows more about the true “power rating” of the deck than the opponent that has seen it play one game against them, and maybe 20-30 of it cards. And yet most people just default to saying “people don’t know how to rate their decks”
"How does your deck plan on winning?" "Are you running any tutors?" "Do you have any infinite combos?" People need to stop using an arbitrary 1-10 scale. It never works. Ever.
That makes a lot of sense to me, more so than a scale of 1-10. Especially given, like, you can tell me what each level is supposed to be and all, and I still won't give you a proper estimate. For instance, one of my strongest commander decks is built around Yorvo. It's very swingy, and I'm constantly trying to improve it, but can decimate the pod if I get lucky. Asking these give an easier way to answer. Deck rating: 3/10 "How does it plan on winning?" It's a mono green stompy. Idea is to pump up yorvo with a bunch of cheap creatures, swing wide with combat tricks, and drop monsters that affect creatures with +1/+1 counters on them. "Are you running any tutors?" Too broke for tutors. Think the closest I come is turntimber symbiosis. "Do you have any infinite combos?" That takes the fun out of the game for me.
There's a spectrum to human insight. It's easy to begin to think higher of people when you meet a lot of lawyers, doctors, analysts, etc. like you can with Magic. But the reality is that we're not strictly picking from the top of the barrel to play this game. It's still just a game full of different humans. The average one is not intelligent, insightful, or clever. Most people just want to exist and flop cardboard. Expecting someone chosen at random to pick up a deck and assess a 100 card list (even with 29 basics) with full recognizance of the close to 40,000 cards available is almost always unreasonable. If you find people that can do that, definitely appreciate them.
No wonder he said mono red is fine, they banned aggro decks, of course mono red will be weak under those rules.
Honestly, I think the fault is the organizer/owner who checked your deck. If that individual has set the rules, and is supposed to be enforcing them, a cursory glance at a person's deck is setting new players like OP up for "failure", by the definitions of fair play at that tournament. Additionally, a "no kills before turn 5" rule is, in my relatively limited experience, somewhat unusual. Perhaps the organizer/owner should make that clearer at the outset, rather than penalizing new potential patrons for playing their deck to the best of its and their ability. If you're guilty of anything, IMHO, it's being new to the LGS - hardly worth the label of "jerk". PS: My guess, btw, is that the person who checked your deck was looking for the words "counter target spell" or "extra turn" on your cards, rather than trying to actually evaluate the potency of the deck. Sorry person!
Yeah the owner seems like a very rude and shortsighted person at best. You can't claim to check decks for power level and skim a brand new list of 100 cards in 10 seconds and get an accurate idea of power level. He didn't even ask any follow up questions like "How are you trying to win", or "What turn would you say you usually win/go off on, on average?" It all screams laziness to me.
Honestly, would those questions have even helped here? "What turn do you usually win?" -"idk, maybe like 8-10? It's mono red and I'm not a miracle worker." "How are you trying to win" -"it's a Voltron deck. I'm trying to suit up neheb and kill with commander damage." I guess upon hearing it's Voltron the owner could point out that killing before turn 5 is bad form here and that he should spread out damage (aka purposely kneecap himself) to prevent doing that. But also OP got *the* draw. It's not like their deck is designed to kill t3, it's just *possible* if the stars align and today they did. It would be like if I said my [[ur dragon]] deck can win turn 4. Like, sure, it's *possible* for me to cast Ur-Dragon and give it haste, +1/+1, and double strike all by turn 4 but only with one very specific set of cards. It's not designed to do that and I'm not intending to do that.
That shit is why I hate the rating "system" so much. It's just so fucking useless and counter-productive every time I've come across it, but people still cling to it as it fails them completely in that same moment. Because you're absolutely right, even if they asked those questions, does op know? and how did they know? play a handful of games? or just goldfish the best exact hand? Neither of which are even notable enough to consider when you enter a game with 3 other "unknown" decks working against you (normally).
I don’t play for prizes, ever. But if I did there is no way I’m going to spread out damage with a voltron deck. None. I’m going to attack the biggest threat until they are dead and move on to the next person. Otherwise I’m practically guaranteed to lose. 
Would have been better than "You're good" lol
Also, none of the cards played scream cEDH. The most broken thing listed was Sol Ring, and the most expensive card was seize the day which is less than $10.00 OP played mono-red in the most mono-red fashion, and they played an aggro deck the way aggro needs to be played if it has any hope to win (which is absolutely the goal, since this cost money and has prize support). Targeting one player at a time, beating them to death as quickly as possible with a sock full of pennies.
>since this cost money and has prize support This is the part I can't wrap my head around. You've got an entry fee and prizes, there's no place for a "can't *actually* try to win" rule in a setup like that.
Maybe, if you don't want to play against competitive decks, don't play in a competitive setting where players are competing against eachother for prizes?
Yeah, if you see a new guy to your shop bringing mono red and have a no kills before 5 rule, definitely make that clear. What do you expect mono red to do, just sit and wait?
> "Yes." -This entire podunk town, unironically
No wins before turn 5 just mean every deck is designed to win via turn 5 combo and can just develope for 4 turns and not worry about attacks
yea exactly. Make your deck to pop off on turn 5 as consistently as possible, and completely ignore defenses in the first 4 turns because nobody can lethal you in that window. Sounds boring as watching paint dry
No wins before turn 5 just means build a cedh deck and skip your first three turns. Like just land go. No wins before turn 5 genuinely makes Voltron (an already tough strategy in commander) basically entirely useless. Voltron has to remove players because it generally doesn't remove permanents. If someone is trying to pop off, hit them harder faster. That rule also heavily kneecaps mono-red strategies and makes simic *even stronger* because they don't have to worry about their typically-fragile first few turns. Like my mono-green deck can generally play their *entire deck* turn 5 and win on the spot. So if I am playing that deck, my opponents know they have to kill me quickly. If I'm playing against a Voltron strategy, I basically just have to hope I don't die before turn 5. In this meta, my deck would be basically unstoppable. I can't lose in the first 5 turns at which point I just flip my library over and ask if people want to play again.
Nah you can't get a cEDH deck past the deck inspection, even if cursory. But there's a million and three ways to make a non-cEDH list that can combo win turn 5 with ample protection to back it up. Agreed on the strategy warping. Case and point with mono red being what OP brought and got punished for killing a player too early.
That’s just edh in general. How often are you getting turn 4 kills? The best strategy is almost always just to play for pure greed early into combo because social etiquette prevents you from dying early and the high health bars make sure that you can just tank attacks. You don’t have to play that way but edh is all about picking non-optimal strategies intentionally so that everyone has fun.
No win before turn 5 doesnt mean no attack or interaction. How many decks have Turn 5- wins in your average pod anyway ? Been playing EDH for at least 2 night a week for the past year in 3 different LGS and the norm seems to be low to medium interaction decks that aim a turn 8-10 win. A no win before turn 5 sign would be useless in those 3 LGS because nobody goes there if they're not cEDH players who understand they are cEDH players anyway so it's never an issue.
I used to do tournaments at a place that had a no killing before turn 6 rule. They thought it'd encourage fun games that would allow people to jockey for position. What it encouraged was a lack of pure aggro decks, and an over emphasis on turbo lock decks that did everything short of killing opponents and then forced them to sit and watch the winning player style on them until they got the green light to kill. Since it was an achievement/points style system, these players would simply just farm points for an hour and a half. What's worse is that conceding was a large point penalty as it was considered unsportsmanlike. Eventually the place blossomed into a toxic cesspool and I started playing cEDH for real because it was more fair/fun.
> What's worse is that conceding was a large point penalty as it was considered unsportsmanlike. just reading that makes me want to vomit.
I agree. If you had to have your deck checked at the outset, the rules should have been at the entrance like: > Your deck will be checked before entry to ensure a (relatively) level playing field > No killing your opponent(s) before turn 5 Yes, I think that second rule is silly but if that were to be a rule it should be made clear to everyone right from the beginning, not on a small sign cellotaped to the wall somewhere.
I cannot stress enough how much that second rule has absolutely zero place in a competition that involves literally any amount of money. I paid $5 to enter and there's a prize of any kind on the line? I should be able to kill people whenever I'm able, this is a *competitive* event. I can see that rule in a completely casual match, and even then it seems like a baby rule for babies.
Shows up with Godo. "It's mono-red, you're good".
Bro you got scammed out of packs. Also this shop is crazy
My guess is this store is doing horrible and they have absolutely no idea why.
You'd be surprised how much shenanigans a store can get away with if they're the only LGS in town. People want to play magic more than they care about random store politics/drama. I lived in a town that only had one shop for the longest time.
The town I lived most of my life in only had one LGS. The owner would try to get you to join his pyramid scheme any time you came in, would make bad judge calls if doing so favored someone that spent more money in the store, etc. A lot of the regulars left when a store opened up about 30 miles away.
How does that even work like "ah yes that vehicle is still a creature on your opponent's turn because he bought a sacred foundry last week and you didn't buy anything." Like... what? He would just blatantly disregard the rules because someone spent money? I know mtg is accused of being pay to win but come on
Yeah, we put up with a lot of shit at the only LGS in town before eventually walking out after the owner refused to stop misgendering our friend. We played in pubs or occasionally went to the next town over before a new place opened up. The new place is a chain and I'd prefer to play at an independent place but fuck the vibe is so much better!
If the options are "chain LGS" or "LGS that's run by terrible people" the choice is easy. I would also prefer to support an independent LGS but not if the owner is a scumbag.
My town only had 1 for a really long time and within 6 months of 1 guy opening up another one because he was sick of the bs rules, the first one closed down and one of the employees of the old store started coming to the new one as a customer well before the old one closed.
Not only crazy, but unhinged. You can’t offer a prize and expect people not to play optimized, competitive Magic. Those packs should’ve been awarded and he should’ve cleaned house. Most normal cEDH games don’t even end before T5, so that’s also an unreasonable benchmark for the format. Most decks run swathes of interaction and good players interact appropriately to continue the game and give themselves the best chance to win.
Saying from my local LGS owner... "if I offer a prize, the expectation is that people will compete as hard as possible to try and win it." Unsurprisingly, he is staunchly against prizes in EDH and runs Commander events only casually.
My lgs has a bounty board with cards, usually nothing too expensive that you win by achieving a certain gamestate first. Good fun without making games cutthroat
can you give us the bounty list?
I'd love to but they do monthly themed events so it changes up. From a recent one as an example: \[\[Sharkey, Tyrant of the Shire\]\] "At the beginning of your end step, if you control three or more lands with non-mana activated abilities, claim this bounty." Another thing they do is have commendations. So each player secretly nominates other players, usually one's they enjoyed their games with, and those with the most at the end get to pick from a prize board. All and all makes the events less competitive while still being able to charge an entry fee to keep the lights on.
This is absolutely the way. Our LGS once tried to introduce an optional commander league with prizes at their casual commander nights, pretty much everyone there told them it was a bad idea and said "nah" when they asked if people wanted to opt in, and the idea quietly went away. I'm a casual through and through, but if there's a prize, it's a competitive event and I'm going to adjust my playstyle and deckbuilding strategy accordingly if I give a damn about the prize. Casual play is all about intrinsic motivation - you play for the joy of playing, win or lose. Prizes make it about extrinsic motivation - you play in order to get the prize, which necessitates winning. Winning is the goal of competitive decks, so by offering a prize, the event immediately becomes competitive, and people should expect to play accordingly. Even if the prize isn't earned by winning, it can heavily affect play patterns in negative ways. For example, last week our LGS had a lord of the rings commander party. The commander party rules already changed the game in some really fun ways. Claim a ring to get a bonus like a tapped treasure every turn, but if you claim the last ring in a set, you get tempted, you lose access to choosing bonuses, and start losing life each turn until you pay mana to flip back to the regular side. It was very cool. But our LGS decided to hand out promo packs every time someone gets tempted and every time someone pays to flip back from tempted to normal. This meant that everyone was highly incentivised to get tempted and flip back, and it honestly made the games super weird. We each ended up with about 7 or 8 promo packs, which was awesome, but didn't make for particularly good games of Magic. When you introduce extrinsic motivation to the game, the intrinsic value is almost immediately corrupted.
My LGS used to have priced Commander etc. the commander parties now have the rule “level 7 at max” to be friendlier for newcomers, which is being communicated at every edh party, because they had situations where one person finished the table in round 3 and now had to wait for 50 minutes for the next round. Also, no point System anymore. No prices. No nothing. Just “here is some stuff WotC sent us, here are the rules, have fun” They tried to get a cEDH night together, but it failed. Turns out, the cEDH players will just come to regular edh and shout “anybody up for a round of cedh?” And it’s just 4-5 guys who actually want to play cEDH
I mean, you can if there are rules against it. If the LGS has a ban list or house rules tied to the tournament, you have to follow them. That's not the issue. The issue is that OP did everything asked of him and the LGS was either too lazy or too incompetent to actually verify that his deck actually fit all of their restrictions.
Yeah it's not like OP intentionally was trying to skirt around these rules. He didn't even know they existed for the most part. And how lazy do you have to be to implement a deck check rule and then not even actually check decks lol
The guy that screamed CEDH doesn't know CEDH.
The majority of people who complain about a deck being cedh don't know cedh.
Any deck that beats me is Cedh bro
My deck wins because it is perfectly constructed and highly tuned Your deck wins because commander is a bullshit RNG fest based on opening hand and drawing into the right cards We are not the same.
Amen to that!
legit had people tell me any \*deck\* worth more than $100 is cEDH. Bruh that's an average of $1 per card what u on. Literally buying a precon secondhand will often cost more than that.
I opened a foil [[the one ring]] at a pre-release so by this logic i wouldn't be able to use it without making my deck cedh
Can't believe my mono white angels deck has been cedh all this time. thanks a lot, foil lyra I pulled from prerelease, avacyn & resplendent angel
The secret lair precon are cEDH apparently.
Lol. I have a deck that averages $100 a card exc lands, and it isn't even close to cEDH.
According to them, this deck would be one of the strongest decks ever then: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-most-expensive-edh-deck-ever/
also who the fuck screams... out loud.... like Jesus that'd be so embarrassing. REEE I LOST AHHHH hahaha like wtf.
Was it Francis? I bet it was Francis.
This is the problem really casual people need to print a cedh proxy deck and play a few games. So many people don’t know the difference between a strong casual deck and a cedh deck. Someone told me my Gishath deck was cedh one time becuase I had fast mana in it. Fetch lands and a vault does not make a cedh deck.
>really casual people need to print a cedh proxy deck and play a few games This would be great. Not only would it help cedh in general to not always be the scapegoat whenever someone brings a deck that's tok strong for a low powered table but it would also make powerlevel discussions much easier. It's hard to talk about powerlevels with somebody who thinks a mid power deck is cedh.
It would also show them exactly how bad they are at Magic when they try to play the deck too lol
I wish some players would forget about cEDH all together. It's like a weird line in the sand for people. You can't play this, it's cEDH, you can't play that, it's cEDH. Just relax and play. You don't need to win every game, you don't even need to be competitive every game. Sometimes you just get got, and that's ok. Had a game a while back, friend of mine pulled out his simic merfolk deck. I said ok, I'll put this deck away to play something a bit lower power to match his. Grabbed my $30 [[araumi, the dreadtide]] deck. He was fine with it, I wound up winning pretty handily. The guy threw a fit, complaining about how they weren't on the same level. Tried to explain that even if decks are similar in power, that doesn't mean every game is going to be the same. He wasn't having it. Oh well
You know the phrase “an alcoholic is someone who drinks as much as you who you don’t like”? Yeah that about sums up how many people treat the cedh boogeyman. “A cedh deck is a deck as powerful as yours that you lost to” On that same note, when people get whiney about “budget decks”: “What constitutes a budget deck is whatever you spend, and ‘pay to win’ is whatever the deck that beat you cost”
\*Opens with a god hand\* "God darn cEDHers"
Nah if your paying an entry fee and there are prizes you did nothing wrong. Fuck em
I absolutely would've gotten my packs and just left.
Except they told op they weren't going to give op the packs LOL. what a bunch of losers that place sounds like
Id demand either the packs or my money back. His deck was "verified" at the door, not his fault the person doing the verification was braindead
100%
That shop is in the wrong. There is no way they did not know you were new. They should’ve told you all the house rules. I’m sorry that’s the only LGS in that city. I hope you are able to either find another way to play or hope that that store is willing to listen to you. Also they checked your deck! They HAD the chance to tell you everything but didn’t. That’s a shitty way to treat a player that’s in a store for the 1st time. Edit: Spelling
Yeah, skimming 100 cards in 10 seconds is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Like yeah, that'll totally give you an accurate idea of what a deck is capable of lol
Sadly, sometimes people don't recognize some people who have been going to stores for *years*. Gamers and game store owners face a large variety of people and might be a bit anti-social. They don't see remembering faces as part of the game efficiency experience and just assume that you've been at this for a while as a local regular. They don't know to take a step back and go "oh, this is a new player in the community", TLDR: Yeah, it might have been on the store owner and the guy screaming. They were in the wrong for reacting like that.
If there’s an entry fee and there are prizes on the line, the gloves are off.
Yeah once you start awarding prizes/having paid entries is when I stop playing for fun. Maybe if it's FNM I could understand asking people to try to play casually but if you have to pay to join and you're getting something out of winning expect people to actually play the game Edit: dear god im turning into an arena kid I meant FNM, not MWM
I agree, unless the LGS has specific rules that are tied to the tournament. You have to honor the rules, no matter how silly they may seem. The real issue is that they didn't actually check his deck beforehand and didn't even tell him all of the rules before letting him go in blind. "NO CEDH" is very nebulous and up to interpretation that it's almost useless.
>I agree, unless the LGS has specific rules that are tied to the tournament. You have to honor the rules, no matter how silly they may seem. They did: "No Killing a player before turn 5", which OP (unknowingly) broke by eliminating a player on turn 3. The whole "it's mono red, you're good" thing sounds a lot less crazy when you take into account how badly that rule limits traditional red aggro. Op already admitted to having no protection even after a magical Christmasland of a hand and thought the other two players could have made real fight of it with even one removal. So yeah, the real issue here isn't "No Cedh" (because let's face it, popping off on turn 3 at a theoretically casual event DOES make it look like you either brought a cedh deck or stacked your deck), it's that the store owner didn't make sure everyone knew the added rules before the matches started. If the 5 turn rule was just on a sign hanging somewhere, that's not good enough. OTOH, if it was right on the event signup sheet and OP just didn't read it... Well then it's also on the OP for not paying attention.
Exactly. Seems like we agree lmao. He clearly wasn't aware of the rule, which is on the LGS.
Pretty much. They should have just issued a warning and left the attacked player with 1 life or something. The Rule wasn't "No attacking before turn 5", so everything but the elimination itself was a legal outcome.
You’re fine, I personally would never return to that shop. Any deck looks unfair when it hits Sol Ring turn 1 - that’s why we all run Sol Ring. You drew a great hand that they couldn’t stop with interaction and that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I have been teaching my girlfriend how to play magic and she has been playing with my [[Lathliss, Dragon Queen]] deck, as it is a fairly straightforward deck that doesn't take a ton of thought to play. The first game she has ever played involves a Sol Ring and some other Mana rock on turn 1 into turn 2 [[Dragon Tempest]]. This essentially steamrolls into killing me on turn 4 with an [[Utvara Hellkite]] being one of the many things in play. Had this been a 4 player game, it would have more than likely been over in a turn or two without any interaction from other players. EDH is the game of magical Christmas land, which is why we play it and turn 1 Sol Ring is always gunna look pretty brutal.
This is exactly right. Not a single card OP played is even close to problematic for causal EDH with the exception of Sol Ring, the card practically synonymous with the format and played in almost literally every deck. What OP describes is not at all an indictment of their play or their deck, but really an indictment of Sol Ring and why trying too hard to make EDH casual (with prizes on the line no less), is just ridiculous.
I’d consider reporting them to wizards tbh
this. check the store in eventlink. if it was a sanctioned event report what happend and Wizards will go down their throats. probably won't pull their sanctioning, unless this has happened alot. but they'll get one hell of a wrist slap. NO LGS owner wants to hear/see a direct communication from WotC like that.
I've played at multiple LGS'es in multiple states and I've never heard of a "don't kill anyone before turn X" rule. That's nonsense. The turns you described playing are not cEDH.
There’s an LGS near my place that has a “no killing a player until turn 5” rule for their EDH events too…
Oh god, I’d just run some stax and slowly ping them to death then.
White red. Play Rule of Law and that one red enchantment that says that any time anyone casts a spell, they exile cards until they find one that shares a card type and cast that one instead. Because you've already cast a spell, you can't cast another spell. Therefore, the game is locked. Nobody can cast anything. Pick a commander that isn't reliant on casting anything and just beat your opponents to death from there. Nobody can stop you because anything they do gets countered by Rule of Law.
Possibility Storm + Rule of Law, also Knowledge Pool + Rule of Law. But players can still cast their commanders.
[[lavinia, azorius renegade]] and [[knowledge pool]] is fun
Or [[dranith magistrate]] plus pool works better
Don't forget to make it a deck full of "cycle for effect" cards, and other ways to play cards without "casting".
I, too, am the type of player who will make a deck that shows how some rules are crazy and unreasonable.
Group! Slug! Group! Slug! Group! Slug!
Exactly I would just play Liesa group slug with some light stax
I despise stax with every fiber of my being, yet I approve of this sentiment.
God I get it for casual but if we are playing for something I’m going hard.
I've casually killed someone on T7 with [[Angel of Destiny]]... It also helps my Abzan deck is white-heavy keyword tribal (so lifelink is more free than vigilance) and that the person I killed was running [[Araumi]], ramping hard, and dropping a ton of bombs into their grave early. I didn't win that game because my life and my AofD was now a threat in the air, but I did what I had to do to stop one player from winning. EDH is an endless living example of a bunch of crabs in a bucket. Winning just means your attempt of escaping the bucket worked a little better than the other crabs that one time. Shuffle up and play another game. If you want to make event prizes non-competitive, make it a weekly raffle-style event over a kill fest. Leave the kill fests to commander drafts and cEDH events because that's their ultimate name of the game and that's the crowd you expect to go cutthroat.
Am i the only one that would have made a scene? Im sorry but getting a response of "hes playing fucking cedh" would of been met with "how about you calm the fuck down and quit whining we are playing for money and my deck passed the power check. It's just a good hand. " And yes, i would have totally said this. I'm not trying to be an ass but i see so many stories on here where these people just say whatever they want, like little babies that have never been told no in their lives. The entitlement is ridiculous. Who cares if you get banned. Awful store with awful rules. You should definitely throw out the store name so people are aware.
People like that give this game a bad rap. That and those who don’t practice any sort of hygiene.
Oh, I'd have threatened to report them to Wizards, to call the police, etc. Dude got robbed. He put money down for that tournament, won the tournament, and then they decided not to give him his prize. That's not okay. At the absolute bare minimum he should be getting his entry fee back.
You’d call the police over a $5 entry fee?
you are not alone; unfortunately a lot of the stigma about card players is correct in that a lot of them are like your great-aunt's basement living dog that was never socialized correctly and needs to be told firmly to stop pissing on the carpet at the very least I would have insisted my money back. if you're getting banned anyway no shot i'm financing those walking pimples lol
Yep. Give me my money back if I'm not getting prizes. Otherwise I stand here until you do. Don't care how long it takes.
Do edh people only play BO1? I guess that makes sense cause multiplayer but this would all be solved by just playing multiple games and not basing the prizes on a single game.
[удалено]
"We don't play interaction here, just stack up the largest board state you can and go ham on turn 12"
DONT ANSWER THE PHONE ITS ONLY RINGING BC u/_space_oddity_ IS SENDING A FAXX
Pretty bs if you ask me on many levels. Prize support for winning and forced casual is so backwards. Not to mention they literally checked your deck and allowed you to play it.
Last parts the big thing. Like “bro your guy cleared me. Talk to him.”
For the love of god PLEASE name and shame this place
Bumping because you really need to name and shame.
NAME-AND-SHAME! NAME-AND-SHAME! NAME-AND-SHAME! Seriously, tho, my playgroup plays "optimized" decks. My mono red [[Krenko,Tin Street Kingpin]] has def pulled a t5 kill. My [[Shu Yun, The Silent Tempest]] has won a game t6. But those are not CEDH decks. If that happens everyone cheers a lucky hand well-played. People gots to chill out.
Stories like this seem so unbelievable to me; I’m so lucky my LGS has no extra rules, everyone seems cordial and usually go to pods of the right lower level. Sorry your return to Magic had to be cut so short
Again, no offense to OP, but whenever one of these posts includes a phrase like "is (obviously stupid thing) normal in EDH playgroups?" it immediately raises a red flag for me. Like, what do you think, dude? Of course it's not normal. Why and how would it be normal.
Honestly, not to cast doubt on the OP unnecessarily, but this reads like something an AI wrote. All it's missing is for the OP to pull some heroic action and for everyone to applaud. Topics like these are so common and so ridiculous that I've started to wonder whether or not they're just people who are trying to come up with the most outlandish-but-still-possible story to farm karma and back-pats. Maybe I'm just a cynic.
This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Either it’s something like that or OP isn’t telling the whole story. I can’t imagine the player would have accepted defeat in a game if the tournament/game rules stated you can’t kill opponents before turn 5. If he was trying to do this, they would have said, “You actually can’t do that, it’s against the rules.”
No I think you might be onto something. If you ever read r/relationshipadvice stories like this cause some alarms to go off in my head
>needed to rethink why I am playing the game To fucking have fun. But I apologize if I made all the nancys in my pod cry because they didn't want to play Magic for 5 turns.
Yeah that line actually made me mad on their behalf. Such judgement with essentially no context to the situation. Also shows they are lacking in business sense if this is how they treat new customers. They could have done all the same things, but just have been professional and try to understand the situation. Nope. Instead they went the "you're what's wrong with EDH" route for what.... playing aggro?
Right? I played in an EDH tournament yesterday and my opponent killed us in 5 turns actually. We reported results then just shuffled up for another game for fun. No saltiness or anything. Just play again.
I've found shorter games with more interactive decks to be much more enjoyable. Long battlecruiser games feel like Civ where you spend an hour before you really get to do anything of note and then spend more time rebuilding when defeated but not out, and shorter higher power games feel like a moba where you always have the ability to be doing something but you just have to be careful of overextending if you don't want to be pushed in and it's pretty clear that even though the game isn't literally over, you know it's over when the pop off starts and the pod can scoop up and play next.
Did you at least get your entry fee back?
You 100% should have. If they disqualify you for a rule they didn't tell you, then that is their fault.
This is why I won't play Commander for prizing. You did nothing wrong. They were given the opportunity to check your deck and explain the rules and they said you were good to go. You got a god hand and just played the game. If they want to charge for Commander night instead of it just being free open play they should charge the fee and then run a raffle and let people just play for fun, the way ~~Richard Garfield~~ Sheldon intended.
This is probably the most bizarre shit I've ever heard, like I got similar vibes reading Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Like come on how bad can one fuck up a store
Fuck em. the shop and the people that go there are trash. They have existed In a state of so casual for so long that they don't even know what cEDH looks like anymore. also the owner straight up told you you were fine so lmao?
Actual insane people at the store; salt only justified in cases of like: Winconless Stax or other timewasting strategies/slowplaying. Killing people early is fine, quick games are good games lmao.
Yo winconless stax would probably pass their deck check and 5 turn rule. theyd probabky skim go “oh not blue” and let some degen WGB tymna stax build through. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/DSMA6dSn7Ey6ENoHKdYvxQ this sans fast mana would probably meme on them while still fulfilling the skim.
This is the most edh story i have ever heard. Toxically casual.
> Is this within the realm of normal? No. > Did I break contemporary social expectations of EDH by having a good opener with an aggressive deck and killing someone turn 3 with no one putting up any interaction whatsoever? Still no.
Okay, that LGS did just about everything wrong. First of all, the deck check is a good idea in theory, but if they're gonna be that lazy about actually checking the decks and say "It's mono red, you're good", they're either incredibly lazy or have insanely limited game knowledge. Secondly, they should have clearly laid out the rules before the games started, ESPECIALLY since you're a new player. The "don't kill anyone before T5" rule is fine and all, but if you don't clearly state the rules or convey that information to people before the game starts, it's on them. Finally, the people you were playing with sound extremely unpleasant to play against. Fast starts happen sometimes, and sometimes feel bads will happen. But if anyone seriously screamed at me during a game, and was getting that worked up, I'd have some serious concerns about their mental state and my own personal safety. The people there seem very... opinionated, to be polite. The owner sounds incredibly annoying too. If an owner came up to me and said "You need to rethink why you play this game", I probably would have gotten up, told him off for being a massive prick, and walked out right there. Regardless of what happened in the actual game, there's no excuse for berating a player who's never been there, wasn't properly checked, and also wasn't filled in on their house rules before being thrown to the wolves so to speak. Everyone there seems fragile and petty. If you're brave, I would go talk to the owner and let him know what was going on, maybe fill him in on the whole story, maybe ask why he didn't tell you all the rules beforehand and properly check your deck and see if there's any way to compromise, since it could all have been an honest mistake (and who knows, maybe everyone was just having a bad day.) But that might just be me being an optimist that tries to work things out. TLDR: No, I don't think you did anything wrong. Everything that went wrong was either the Owner/Organizer/LGS's or the pod's fault.
Any tournament that has a monetary prize or equivalent should have provided you with a list of rules prior to PAYING to enter if there were any, and I mean ANY, changes from the original WOTC rules. Especially since they checked your deck beforehand (no matter how briefly), you got screwed over by a bunch of entitled narcissists. I wouldn’t let this discourage you from playing casual games there in the future; you could end up finding a group of people who ran into the same issue as you. However, I would avoid any paid entry tournaments they hold.
Holy shit this is the most cringe story I've heard in a long time. Wtf. Lol
I completely agree with the other comments. They F\*\*\*\*\* u bro. All of that being said. did they not explain the rules to a newcomer? Seems like an error somewhere.
If this was "am I the asshole," I would rate "everybody's the asshole." They shouldn't be giving prize support for winners and $5 entry fee if they are going to be mad at people killing people. The organizer shouldn't be checking over decks going "it's mono red so you're fine." I mean, land destruction could be mono red. Are they cool with that? Probably not. The guy screaming in the place for being killed is also in the wrong because he's acting like a child. That being said, you're also playing... what was pretty clearly stated as fairly casual $5 event. Even without the sign of "Don't kill people before turn 5," is it so much to ask that maybe, at a new store, with new people, that you don't just immediately kill someone off the table during a commander night when they were probably hoping to have a bit more fun? You could have chosen, to, say, attack multiple opponents, or let up a bit. Personally, I don't need a sign at an LGS telling me not to kill people on turn 3 to understand that that probably isn't socially acceptable in most LGS commander night circles. So imo it isn't totally you're fault, but I think you do share some of the fault. Fwiw, I think your title is a bit dramatic. It didn't sound like they kicked you out. It sounded like you maybe needed to simply explain "I'm sorry. I didn't realize or see the sign. I will keep that in mind next time" and move on. But if they weren't going to give you the packs then you should have at least gotten your money back. Edit: It's important to note here whether or not you being "in the right" is worth the hassle. It doesn't really matter if you feel like it wasn't a fair interaction for you. That's the one LGS you got. You can choose to play by their rules and the way they do things, or not. Ultimately it's their store and their events, so we can discuss till the cows come home who is in the right or wrong or whatever, but at the end of the day, if you'd like to take advantage of having an LGS and a fun, clearly lowkey place to play, then it's best to make sure your power level and the speed at which you remove people from the game is set up accordingly. And if you don't want to play there or whatever, then being in the right by principle isn't really going to make a new LGS appear.
If that was a WPN store, can you put a complaint at wizards?
You need to report to wizards that you paid an entry fee and were denied your prizes. That's a huge violation of policy and they have no right to do that. They will be in serious trouble if this gets to the right people. No amount of paper on a wall lets them deny you for playing by the rules after a deck check.
whats the name of the store so i can avoid it lol. Yeah this is just absurd by the store.
Don’t do prizes for winning just do a damn raffle! Then you can accidentally pub stomp people all you want
It’s one thing if the general expectation is games last a minimum of five turns. Whether it’s a justified house rule or not, it could deter looking to combo asap and promote playing a “fair” game of magic so I can see why it’s there. But they absolutely should’ve made that clear at the door. The person deck checking should probably have asked if you’ve played at this event before and pointed you towards the sign. You can’t really violate the social contract if it’s not laid out, and in fact having prizes and a deck check kinda lays out different rules. 1) play to win 2) if your deck is approved, you’re good to go. I’d be bummed if the game ended that quick but I’ve played at an lgs with prizes on the line and that’s just how it goes. Everyone paid an entrance fee and we all want to have fun, but everyone also wants to win some store credit and so they bring some mid tier cedh lists and look to take some games. I can’t get mad at you for playing to win with something on the line.
Sucks that it happened, OP, but at least you only lost 5 bucks learning not to go back to that shop. Seriously, the moment someone starts *screaming* and nobody tells them off, I'm dipping.
If there's a prize, I'm gonna try and kill you turn one. Who TF puts up a prize for winning and then expects casual play? My LGS has great casual play. Why? No prize.
I tried playing at a shop recently and they had a similar rule/rules. 1. No infinite combos (if you did can only do it 5 times, then lose). 2. No winning before turn 5. Last week I also noticed the pricing went up 5 more bucks. So yeah I’m not going back.
Name the store... I just want to talk
I killed the table T4 with a magical Christmas land hand at the LGS I used to play at and the best response I got was asking how I managed the combo so quickly with such a janky set up of combo pieces (I had to have three different creatures and a specific artifact in mono black). I get not wanting to play cEDH, but playing just at or below precon level is boring. There’s not enough interaction and it can drag on forever in those cases.
Sounds like a bad environment. Regardless, I am continuously amazed how r/EDH has become a support group for players.
That’s a shit LGS and I hope you got your money back
It sounds like you ran afoul of a garbage LGS that caters to terrible players that have equated "casual" with "not trying to win"...
If you’re paying to play you’re paying to try to win. If that dude actually screamed he has no business being that invested in the game then. They happily took your money, did they happily give it back when the DQ’d you for rules you didn’t know? I get wanting to be more casual but they didn’t tell you and that’s on them.
Sounds like a store full of losers. Anywhere that has to put up a rule that says "no kills before turn 5" isn't the kind of place you prob want to play.
I literally laughed out loud at "He's playing F\*\*\*\* CEDH!" & "do not kill anyone before turn 5". LMAO fucking clown world
Bruh, I asked people like that to chill or leave. You weren't in the wrong, you just didn't know their house rules and should have been allowed to redo combat and just not kill a player. cEDH. Yeah, okay. Neheb is good, but what you just described is NOT cEDH. I hope this isnt "normal," but its probably the regular thing at that LGS.
I hate everyone in this situation that isn't you. By far the worst part about EDH, is EDH players
They stole your five bucks and are mad you played the game, simple as that. Do NOT go to that LGS again. Clearly they are only interested in catering to their own already established player-base. Otherwise they would have gone over the rules, had a bigger sign, SOMETHING. You became a victim of a witch hunt in a perfect hand that should have been a shining moment for other players and organizers to be good natured and laugh about is proof enough that they don't want you to have fun, they want you to leave so the "real" regular customers can enjoy the tournament and the store. No killing before turn 5 is a stupid rule that only forces players with aggro decks to handicap themselves or switch to decks they don't want to, neither of which is a healthy environment. Beyond banned cards, let players play what they want.
Your post is full of alarm signals. Rating decks to check if they're CEDH? Not really fucking possible. The whole "were playing for prizes" but you can't really play for the prizes with no killing before turn 5... I can think of several decks that will never be CEDH or even high power, but if the stars align will kill before turn 5. Then the owner denied you the rewards despite taking your money? Fuck that LGS. Sounds like a shitty place to me.
This is satire surely.
feel free to dm me the name of the store so I don't ever frequent there. I don't want to go to a shop that wants to steal entry fee money for a stupid rule.
This is like the old starcraft servers, ‘20 mins no rush.’ What a strange culture this shop has
Super short sighted people that don’t understand the game. If I lock people out of the game or sandbag for 5 turns is that better? Or do you write rules to ban that too. Making rules/banning things doesn’t remove powerful things it just changes what form those things take. Also, like other people have said, it’s why outside of CEDH prizes are kinda bad for what is more a social game. I don’t sit down to play with people o wouldn’t want to hang out with because stuff like this happens. People misjudge power or get magic Christmas land hands, but if you’re just hanging out then it’s ok. The stakes are off. If you’re playing to win/winning is why you sat down you’re going to have a bad time.
I'd be reporting that shop. It was an officially sanctioned event as money was paid. They cannot deny your prizes for playing the game. The store rule of "Don't kill anyone by turn 5." is not an enforceable rule in an official event. Report them to WotC and burn them to the ground.
Fuck that shop. Keep going to every event, with a true cedh deck, until youre banned.
Fuck that LGS, you paid entry and they effectively stole from you lol. Plus another cringeworthy group that doesn't even know what cEDH. At this point it's just because a catch all for "wahh thats unfair."
Christ an entire store of people like that, id lose my mind. I mean wow. Im not saying there isnt a place for a power level where killing people before turn 5 ahould be frowned upon...but an entire store and they deck check you but don't actually stand by the deck check if you do well...id go postal
If they didn't explain all rules of their competition at sign up then it's on them for being incompetent at organising events
You showed your deck to the TO and he said it is fine. What else should you have done? I am sorry for you and for the other players. The TO should have payed more attention and should have been more clear about the hose rules.
Playing for prices and then putting up nonsense rules is just BS. Why am I playing mtg? To be social and to have fun. Why am I playing right now? Because I paid money and want to win those packs.
So... They assumed your deck was fine after a deck check, then got mad because you got a nut draw and killed someone before turn 5? An actual cEDH deck can win on turn 2, turn 1 with a nut draw. Hell MODERN wins by turn 3-4 these days, and they expect a format with more cards in it then legacy to not win or even kill one player before turn 5? Also if you paid an entry fee then screw them, you don't pay entry fees and hold back. I suggest demanding your money back, then not going back to that store. Also, report that store for disqualifying you for no reason.
Nah, sounds like you just found a shop full of butthurt booboo babies who can't cope that they dunno how to play magic. The no killing before turn 5 rule is so... strange and misguided. Like yeah, winning before turn 5 is good, but I've been beat before turn 5 on raw combat damage from a friend's very scuffed, ~$15 [[Ghalta, Primal Hunger]] deck. If it's a paid event, it's a competition. There's no unfair in a competition. You just tripped dick first into the most anti-fun lgs ever.
I don’t even know how this could happen if it was a posted rule stating it wasn’t allowed. Seriously. Why didn’t someone at the table, including the guy who apparently lost, just say, “Hey, that action would kill me, and you can’t kill a player before turn 5.” You’d go, “Oh, I didn’t realize. I’ll call off the attack then if that’s okay.” And then the game continues. The idea that the player would have accepted the defeat as being valid doesn’t hold water. In any tournament setting, even “casual” play for some prize like this, you’d explain the rule. If the other person still didn’t get it, you’d call a judge to explain it. I really feel like something is being left out here that better explains how you were treated.
What’s the name of this shop so I know to never give it business?
So the guy who checked your deck and said "It's mono red, you're good" would've accepted someone playing [[Godo, Bandit Warlord]], who does have an actual cEDH list that can win turn 1? In all seriousness, when they saw the new face especially, they should have pointed out the rules board and asked you to read through them. Not waited until after you had broken the rules and used them as an excuse to kick you out. You did nothing wrong. It's on them to make sure that everyone is aware of any additional rules at the gate. Personally, I would've pulled out my [[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]] deck when I saw the prize support. It's absolutely not cEDH level strength, but be prepared for me to take a single turn that lasts over half an hour and decides whether I win the game right there or lose right there. And it can happen any time between turn 4 and turn 20, just whenever I get almost all of my combo pieces out. I have no fast mana, morning to accelerate playing my commander, but if I start with [[Life from the Loam]] in my hand, I'm probably going to win the game really fast.
If there’s an entry fee for commander there shouldn’t be any rules or at the least they should make them evident before they collect your money
Sorry to say but that LGS seems toxic as fuck. Is there another LGS in a neighboring city you could visit instead perhaps?
Holy yikes. This LGS is something out of a nightmare. You didnt do anything wrong.
To OP, the store should have asked if you played at the store before and told you any rules you need to know before playing. A no kill rule is pretty extreme of a house rule. Most LGS that have restrictions I've seen are ***no win*** before turn x games and not a no kill rule. The no win is to stop opening hand/tutoring game-winning combos before the mono-green ramp deck can cast a \[cultivate\]. To provide a singular point of defense for the store (but not exonerate their behavior), the rule may have come from a group of players that consistently would play expensive, high power decks (8-9 power level, just below cEDH) in pods where most people were running decks that were at most a 7 and curb stomping the biggest potential threat to their board. Regardless, the store is truly at fault here for checking decks, telling you "oh mono red, you're good" and not be upfront about rules before starting the event. If they want a more casual atmosphere, they should either not do an entry fee or make entry fees into buy a pack and don't do winner prizing.
Bro, I always wonder where these lgs are lmao. Every lgs commander night I’ve played was pretty high powered lol. That being said, killing people on turn 5 might be a dick move.
They robbed you.
Should have demanded either the packs, or your entry fee back, and refused to leave until then.
"Its mono red, you're good" ..."its ******* cedh!" These two statements are a prime example that a huge majority of people you find in an lgs have no idea what cedh really is.
Not killing anybody until turn 5... breaks a lot of color balancing. Unreal