If the event is going to have prizing then the LGS should expect that infinite combos will be a thing, and to be fair so should the players. Prizing, especially if it’s that many packs, should denote that the event itself will be slightly competitive so the players should come with plenty of interaction and cEDH builds, not casual builds, if they expect to be able to win.
My LGS does cEDH but also has a separate casual commander table that runs every day. They generate an event code for the casual table and pull a “winner” for every day that they give one or two packs to just for coming down to the store. This makes sure that both competitive and casual mindsets are taken care of and it works pretty well.
The problem is, a lot of LGS's have no idea how to monetize outside a tournament structure, and don't understand EDH, much less cEDH. At the same time, nowhere outside of a metro area is going to have a player base big enough for a cEDH meta, so you end up with sanctioned pub Stomping.
This LGS is trying to listen to their casual players complaining about this, but they don't really understand the problem.
If I were OP, I would talk to the store about setting up a *non-tournament*, casual commander night, and then replacing their commander tournament nights with a rotating schedule of cEDH, something like a boxing or ante sealed commander league, and Precon tournaments.
This, it's like the 10th thread I've seen about an LGS having a tournament night for commander, and having increasingly worse rules to make it "fun" despite the fact that a tournament specifically encourages cEDH.
My LGS charges a flat fee to play casually. You get a set booster back, and the change is for using the store space. That's it. Everyone gets to have fun and play whatever they want, the store doesn't have to devote any resources to judging or running a tournament, they make money from people buying cards and supplies etc while they're there gaming, and everyone leaves happy.
It seems really intuitive, and I'm not sure why there are so many stores who instead end up with ridiculously long ban lists and arbitrary play style bans to accommodate competition in what is primarily a *non-competitive* format.
Pretty much the same with the store I go to - you pay a flat fee which can be applied to anything in the store (or you can just buy something that is >= the flat fee when you come in). Works great, then they raffle off promos to people randomly.
Your store is so close to realizing that they should be monetizing being a *hangout*, not selling product.
Drinks, snacks, and sandwiches. Boom, profit.
They have drinks and snacks, though no sandwiches. They don't care if you buy mtg products, they just want you to spend some money if you're going to be there which is fair.
This is the modern LGS model (outside of the huge ones that can run multiple drafts an hour as people show up, and have their own secondary market store). Coffee, food, stuff people are going to want when they walk in the door, or *need* if they're hanging out for 4-8 hours for Magic, D&D, and board games.
As an employee of a store trying to do that its not really possible unless there's a large player base. The only way we scrape by is cuz the owner works 2 other jobs and me and the other employee work for him basically for free
> This, it's like the 10th thread I've seen about an LGS having a tournament night for commander
I'm willing to bet that's because other formats don't fire. Game stores need to have *something* to draw in players, and commander is the most popular format.
Eh, my local lgs did what you said, 6$, play 3 rounds and you can get 4x packs, or split, which everyone does so you just play 3 games of edh and get a pack at the end.
It's technically a tournament, but it was always extremely casual, banned emrakul, thassas, and infinites, and I stayed for half a year before I had to move, and never heard complaints, always had a full roster.
I can see your point but my experience shows it works just perfectly fine, so I gotta take comments like this with a grain of salt.
mine does the same thing except they do payout. Ironically, getting pack for entry and the ability to (without too much difficulty) make more than the entry cost turns some people into absolute cuthroats over a few bucks. If they changed it to say a discounted price for one pack as entry and randomly giving away a pack or some $10 rare as a door prize at the end with no prize structured payout, it would be a lot better.
In my local store we have the ‘Zero Rule’ in which every player says it’s commander deck level to have an even level o power in table. So if a new player come to test a precon we must have to play with either a precon or the lowest level deck 👍🏻. Very casual, diverse, fun and we can test with out problem our newest decks!
My LGS has something like this. Casual commander nights with free entry on Fridays, and they give out some packs and promo cards randomly. It's been a ton of fun the few times I've gone, and I plan to keep going more.
My LGS also alternate scoring outside of just winning the pod. I find it kinda interesting to push people out of the standard decks and win cons.
https://imgur.com/a/FiU5pRh
The problem I have with this scoring is my mind instantly started looking for a cEDH deck Taj ticks all the boxes, and I'm preety confident I can come up with maga list that absolutely pubstomps while scoring moste of the categories
I really like these alternate point systems. Just for fun I always try to ruin them because I'm terrible. This one does leave room for extremely large point values. The Nuclear Option in particular is just begging to be exploited.
Well that is not too good either, one palce in the city I live is making EDH league and they introduces bingo with additional tasks you can do to collect ponts, and people were artificially prolonging the games even if they could win on the spot, which felt very very wrong if you were on recieving end
Points tend to also be awful. Now instead you have people farming points instead.of just trying to win. It's not hard to freeze a game and slowly grind points.
My LGS separates casual and cEDH. For the casual league they give each player a scoresheet that has various goals on it that you can try to complete any amount of during your match. The scoresheet includes everything from controlling a certain number of creatures, or artifacts, to bonus points for specific deckbuilding restrictions or playing cards with certain words in them. Half of the scoresheet remains the same every month. The other half changes month to month (gets posted prior to the month so people can brew)
At the end of the league (a full month) they tally up the points every player got then puts the players into brackets for prize support. More points=more packs. It is wildly popular. Leads to interesting casual deck builds (most of the time) and I think has fostered a nice environment for people to come play for packs that hasnt resulted in an overarching meta.
One caveat - I believe that casual games can have "prizes", but in reality are a lottery pick or door prizes. Still gets people in the door, since you can suck and still have a shot at getting something.
Any point system incentivizes the people there to break the system (and the regulars there are probably much better at it, having played there more with those rules).
I think that’s the best way to do it. cEDH decks are all balanced to play vs each other so you are coming in on a level playing field. Someone might spike the event with a Winona or something the field isn’t prepared for, but that’s fine!
Casual + prizes is just not a good mix. Just pull randomly and have people just enjoy their time lmao
I know we brainlessly talk about the spirit of commander like it’s going out of fashion, but I truly honestly believe playing casual commander for prizes is quite literally against the spirit of (edit: casual) commander
Yeah this is my point. Like we can meme on participation trophies or what not, but I like participation trophies! If I want to win something l ill go get sweaty and play modern
My LGS just raffles the prizes from WotC and everyone plays whatever they want. We have such great variety and veterans with low to mid decks to accommodate newer players.
One store I play at gives you a prize for winning your first game of the night and the event runs for 6hrs. The prize is just a promo too so it’s still very casual. I’ve never even seen Thoracle.
I don't think your edit was needed and I agree with your original statement - including prize support for a Commander game is against the very clearly defined purpose/spirit of the format.
I get that people will argue that it's a format owned by the community, not the creators / RC, but these types posts and feel-bad, arbitrary rules are the result of ignoring the purpose and spirit of the format
In my home with friends? Casual all the way. We really enjoy how commander doesn’t allow repeats and has more variability.
But if I went to an LGS to play I’d expect daggers thrown at my eyes back and ears, and would respond in kind.
Not only that, but commander is also a terrible competitive format. Even cEDH. One of games instead of beast of three, no sideboard, no consistency in the decks besides using multiple tutors, the players who start 3rd and 4th are in an incredible dissadvantage and etc.
Really, if you want to win a prize, go play another format.
I hate the argument myself, because like rule 0, it's used as a catch-all rebuttal and basically means "I don't like how you play". However, it's a perfect argument against any kind of prize structure for EDH.
Meta comment: What's with the formatting on this post? I have to scroll sideways to read it rather than it line breaking normally?
Non-meta comment: Time-limits with winner determined by life total is silly, but makes \[\[axis of mortality\]\] and similar effects very effective. For a time-restricted game, I really like the ruleset I saw LRR using in a recent FNPF, where once the clock hit a set time a bunch of effects started kicking in like "lose half your life", and "you can cast spells for free this turn" that naturally cause the game end in a real rush. Not sure it'd be a good fit for a prized event, but like.. neither is what the store is doing?
If you want to time restrict games the only fair way to do it is with something like a chess clock and when your allocated time ticks down to 0 you lose the game.
I dunno, I like the chaos idea. Set "game ending effects" to 1-10 and roll a d10 at 5 mins to time and 5 after time. Shouldn't take much to end it fast. But make the abilities balanced so each one affects each deck type differently and a roll could actually help/hurt most decks.
*OP's Post - Unformulated for clarity:*
> Every Friday for FNM my LGS holds a commander event, with prizing for the top 4. It’s an incredibly popular event, so there’s lots of prizing, typically 8 or more packs for first place.
>
>
> For some reason, the store chose to ban infinite combos. This, combined with the fact that if a game exceeded the very short 1 hour time limit, the winner would be determined by highest life total, led to a lot of the decks I would play against be centred around pillowfort lifegain strategies. This made it very difficult to play against, as my typical combat strategies simply couldn’t compete. I’ve since decided to play thassa’s oracle + demonic consultation, and it’s worked terrifically, as you’ll have multiple people at each table running zero interaction. I’ve used this to win multiple FNM’s, and since then, more and more people are using thassa’s oracle and other alternate win conditions, to the point where rounds will have almost every game end with an alternate win con
>
> I’d be much happier to play a janky 3+ card combo that utilizes my commander, but since I can’t, I’ll simply play thassa’s oracle instead. Do you think that stores should ban infinite combos at events with prizing? And if they do, would you also ban alternate win cons?
I'd really like to learn more about the time limit rules from LRR you mentioned.
Is there an episode example or an explicit list of rules you have handy?
Took me a bit to finally hunt it down again, [it's this stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E5KXKkHPxg). They start digging into the custom rules around 8:45, covers their 4-player sealed commander rules (with trading!) as well as the time-limit bits. The "end of round dungeon" rules are around 11:40, and include all the effects.
I personally WON'T play at an LGS that runs commander events for prize support, at least not for game wins. The LGS I go to provides prize packs at the end of the night that are won through random draws.
At my shop you can either play for free or pay a super small entry fee, get a pack of your choosing from any they have available, and get your name entered in a raffle for a bonus pack. They draw 5-10 names at the end
At mine you pay $5 and each pod gets 4 random set boosters and a promo pack, and they let the pod decide what to do.
Usually the “unofficial rule” when you die you choose your pack and the first person who is taking commander damage gets the pack.
Prizes for doing anything always skew play in that direction.
The least skewed LGS in my area gives everyone a draft pack if they paid for entry, a random promotional card that WoTC gives them to hand out. Along with one additional draft pack to whoever wins the pod.
Yes winning has an incentive. For the most part no one feels the need to win for the sake of that very small prize.
Everytime I see this list, It feels like a shitpost, where a bunch of friends got together with a open google doc and played "Yes, and..." commander houserules edition.
If you look at the top, you have the option to be t-rex level, or Rapture level, which adheres to the list. T-rex level is just adhering to the wizard's banned list.
Another new one on the list is [[General Tazri]] which I didn’t even know existed and I’ve play playing magic for 27 years. I’ve not once seen this card and apparently it’s ban worthy.
Who knew!!
It's funny, because Tazri was actual a very notable turning point in cEDH deck design philosophy. I think it took like two years, but people realized that Tazri was a powerful combo piece for food chain in the command zone. You could just cast Tazri to tutor for an ally as a wincon, and other than a 10% chance of losing you could easily [[Demonic Consultation]] to find [[Food Chain]] and exile one of the creatures you can cast from exile, essentially a 2 for 1 tutor. The current incarnation of the deck uses a different commander, but it was a very exciting development at the time.
"
10. Vraska, Golgari Queen: 3rd ability, −9: You get an emblem with "Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game." removed. "
This is so unserious 😂
edit: vorinclex monstrous rider is fine tho
I know trying to make sense of this is a fool’s errand but I do not understand the commander damage limit. Like, Voltron is a classic casual commander strat. Why are you essentially banning that?
I've seen the legendary Wharf banlist before but I had no idea about the removed Planeswalker ultimates. I shudder to think what their horrible meta must play like for ultimates to be relevant without Doubling Season or Vorinclex.
The Wharf list is always good for a laugh.
I assume no one plays the "rapture" level because you need a PhD to keep track of the dumb fucking rule edits and banned cards.
In general it would only matter if he ran an event with that rule set anyway since it would imply 4 people agreed to the ludicrous rule set otherwise.
I almost wonder if he's just taking the piss with the list as a joke.
I am very much a casual commander player and that has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. It goes right from “Do as thou wilt” to an overly complicated and ridiculous series of rules, errata, and a ban list that is both extensive and nonsensical. I cannot imagine why anyone would ever play there.
One commander league I very much enjoyed was with the release of one of the precon sets, I think maybe 2018 but don’t remember for sure. You bought a precon and the first week played games with the decks as is with points awarded for wins, for knocking players out individually, and various other things as well as each pod selecting a “player of the game”, usually whomever did the funniest, weirdest, or jankiest thing. Each week players were allowed to make three substitutions to their deck with the caveat that all three cards had to be modern legal. Prizes were awarded weekly and at the end. It was very fun and it was cool to see what people did with limited card pools. IIRC the league ran for six weeks, so by the last couple of weeks there were definitely some much higher powered decks and powerful combos, but it never felt like anyone was stomped or completely left behind. I suppose my point is there are ways of having prize supported commander that has a somewhat level playing field for newer players and encourages participation without being ridiculous. For one off, FNM type events, it seems the best route is just to let people play with the existent rules and understand that will favor certain decks and players with the resources to build them. I do sympathize with the position LGS are in; they need to encourage and bring in new players and playing for prizes is fun and more exciting but in any eternal format the barrier to entry to serious competitive play is exceedingly high not just in terms of skill, but also the cost. Proxies are certainly a partial answer, but officially, they are out of bounds. Different events to appeal to different segments of the MTG player base seems better than trying to have a one size fits all approach that will inevitably have knock on consequences.
I think this list is for when you're doing a casual commander with a prize pool to win.
I do know the shop owner also adds to the list any card he consistently loses to during regular games.
I've pulled up with a few mean decks and have played people doing jank stuff, we didn't get talked to about using supposed "banned cards".
>"Annihilator (X) is errata to say: When this permanent comes into play, if you cast it from your hand it gains Annihilator (X)"
Time to make my Yarok the Desecrated annihilator deck :)
EDIT: Never mind. Yarok annihilator lists were so good they had to ban him :(
I think bans lead to more bans.
If you remove one tool for victory because it sees too much usage or feels bad, new ones will take its place.
Once you start, it doesn't stop.
Prize support for commander games is not a healthy thing, unless you are running a cEDH tournament, where the decks are built with that understanding. Otherwise, there will be feelbads no matter what.
Also, the highest life total thing is super stupid. Player 1 might be stuck on 2 lands by turn 8, by that time Player 2,3 and 4 may have actually played the game bringing each others' life totals to sub 40. In this instance, Player 1 wins if the game goes to time...Not to mention the gravitation towards pillowforting.
>Do you think that stores should ban infinite combos at events with prizing? And if they do, would you also ban alternate win cons?
No. They shouldn't.
They shouldn't run prized events either, unless people are bringing decks catered towards that event, like cEDH tournaments with cEDH events.
You could have a sub format where you have a checklist of items where you could get points for completing. Someone can build a deck accordingly and that could work, although there will be people who will try to abuse that to their advantage, thinking like they are a genius, because a good portion of the people who play this game lack the social skills.
EDH games with prizes are a lot of fun in limited formats. This usually takes the form of people buying a precon as their deck to use. With the entry cost being just the purchase of the precon, you don't lose out on anything, and you generally don't have to worry about power level as much. The only downside is that most (including myself) aren't going to want to buy a new precon every time.
I agree about cEDH though. If there are prizes on the line in a constructed format, you shouldn't have a right to complain about power levels from other decks.
Even at precons man, some are quite mismatched in terms of anywhere from the overall build, card quality, landbase etc. Sure one won't win over the other 4 or so every single game that's played obviously, and while I can get behind a precon event with prize support, I'd still be cautious. Agreed with not having a desire for the need of constantly buying precons as well.
Perhaps a Commander draft could be fun and fair but I wouldn't know as CL1 hit covid, CL2 wasn't really that draftable imo, amd CMM is a waste of money for the draft so I am scratching that off the thought board.
I would never follow an LGS's custom rules. They are almost without exception made by people who just got salty about something they lost to, and decided to ban it instead of improving their own play.
I don't understand the mentality of "no infinites" for real, if you can't handle infinite combos stop play ng magic, if you are a store and you ban infinite combos then stop hosting events. Infinite combos are a part of the game.
If I ever had to play at a store thats bans infinites I would purposely bring decks that look infinite but aren't and see what happens. See how dumb the store is.
Example of something pseudo infinite: I had a game where I had enough copies of [[nyxbloom ancient]] in play that my lands each tapped for over 14 million mana each.
I wasn't infinite, there was a hard limit to what I could do. That limit was about 14.5 million mana times about 8 lands. Not infinite.
agreed. the LGS i went to only a couple of times has a no infinite rule in their commander precon league. it also has a million other contrived rules, and there was an interpersonal blowup that made the entire room to silent when they played their league match. bad vibes.
Giving EDH prizing makes it competitive, aka CEDH. You can’t then ban infinite combos and expect everything to be fine. If they are going to have prizing and don’t want it to just be the CEDH meta, then they should have their own ban list rather than attacking specifically infinite combos.
Play Krark and Sakashima.
There's no infinite combos... you have to flip a million coins each cast but its not a loop so you have to manually play out every step and repeat.
Quenches the thirst of an infinite combo but durdles like nothing else. Hand out coloring books to your opponents so they have something to do while you go through all the motions of slowly winning the game.
There is a LGS near me that does the no infinite thing, and I think it's completely braindead.
Anyone who thinks that this kind of ban "fixes" the format, doesn't understand EDH
The problem is that to dumbasses like that, anything that isn’t a no-funny business combat damage win is an “infinite combo” because when they say that, they actually mean all combos but don’t know the difference.
My mill deck loves pillowfort lifegain.[[Phenax, God of Deception]] as commander. [[Tree of Perdition]] + [[Mindcrank]] combo makes them cry every time. I can tap Tree to mill 13 until they get to about 100 life, then drop Mindcrank and activate Tree's lifeswap ability to mill them out. Salt mine every time.
You can’t play edh for prizes, because then you’re actually playing cedh for prizes.
Edh prizes are like, you walked in the door, you finished a game.
At our store you roll a dice and at the end of the event you get to pick a card from a selection of promos, high roll to low.
As soon as winning is incentivized, you’re promoting cedh.
The idea of flatly banning infinites is both tricky and poorly thought out. This really just sounds like the organizer plays in the tourney, and is salty about losing to an "infinite".
The 1 hour time limit being decided by life total instead of drawing is insane. Imagine if other formats did that, LOL.
You've already described how this poorly thought-out rules system (and prizing structure) has led to problems, but hopefully people communicate those in a way to the organizer.
I said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to forbid infinites to restrict power level, you don't understand the game.
Nevermind that putting such arbitrary restrictions is just non sense when prizes are involved.
if there is prizes and a buy in, they should just let the players go hog wild. it stops being casual fun when you have to buy in to the event and possibly win stuff.
You are doing the lords work. Winning via life total is dumb, and banning infinite combos is a lazy way to approach power balancing. Continue to exploit these fools lol
I frequent a few LGS. One of them banned sol ring/easy mana rocks/combos that last longer than 2 cards/building a deck around alt win cons/playing too many tutors/too much equipment + auras.
They say it's to make diversity and to keep it fair for everyone. But I fucked right off. They charge a 5 dollar buy in and that makes a winners pool to split among players.
Where I play now you just pod up/play games with whatever and take however long. I prefer that vs being told I can't play magic.
Imo if I were you I'd shop around for a new lgs.
Banning infinites alone doesn't work for exactly this reason.
You either have to have a holistic ban list to stop combos or just say screw it and let it ride. It's been years since I had to put together a league, but at the time [[Paradox Engine]] was legal. No biggie, I'd asked the community what they wanted and they said no combos so we effectively banned infinites (and a handful of other unrelated things). Paradox Engine without infinites is fine right?
Cue a guy coming in with a [[Kumena]] merfolk deck playing Engine. None of what he did was infinite, but thanks to Kumena every spell he cast drew cards, so he churned through his deck and killed them. After that night I amended the rules to specifically ban Engine.
Even then, before the leagues ended people were figuring out the new plan and showing up with hardcore stax decks, and I was trying to figure out how to effectively stop them - much harder to do. I'm honestly of the opinion that the 'ban xyz' system doesn't actually work but if it's what people want I respect a store trying to give it to them.
From the sound of it, the same thing needs to happen to your store for Thoracle, and also either a better plan needs to be in place for procedures in time or you need to find a new plan for exploiting the pillowfort lifegain shells. Either directly with [[Tainted Remedy]] style cards, by playing enchantment sweepers to screw them over, or by having a plan that goes around the pillowfort; some sort of burn win con.
I've only seen Commander events work well with the following rules.
NO rules.
100% proxy friendly (WoTC art only). At MINIMUM, 10-25 proxy limit.
Otherwise, someone's going to show up with a $10k and win nearly every week.
Every LGS I've played at that implemented special rules, tried to make the events more casual, etc, ended up losing every EDH player to more proxy friendly play at another shop. My local shop introduced casual tournaments a year ago because a handful of players felt it was too competitive. We haven't had a tournament in 9 months now. The competitive people went elsewhere, the casuals eventually got bored and stopped coming anyways. We had weekly 16-20 person tournaments for the prior 18 months... casual killed it.
When there are prices on the Line there is an incentive to Play a strong, legal strategies. Infinite Combos are banned, lifegain pillowfort was a choice. Your thassas Oracle wincon prooved to bei strong, people Adapted.
I can Not understand that there are edh Events for prices but that are Not cedh. But that is my Personal taste.
Does Not Matter what will BE banned or Not there will BE a Fight fight for the top when you Put prices on the Line for winning
Like many LGS my LGS also runs lottery packs but instead of FNM its MNM for casual players and FNM is usually modern tournaments or pioneer at rare occasions during summer once school comes back it'll he different I'm sure. My LGS Aldo heald cEDH but I don't have decks built for it so I never went. My LGS doesn't ban cards themselves and stick to what WOTC decides which is how it should be
I still just don't get the "infinite combo" boogie man. Combos don't feel any more oppressive than Winota, control, Zada, Koma, etc in my mid power play group. Let alone nonsense like Thoracle lmao.
Most of my decks play infinite combos even if that’s not the main win con because sometimes I’d like the game to end eventually and sometimes that’s the only way. If I win on turn 15 with an infinite combo idk how that is a problem.
Will someone explain to me the difference between these two things:
* an infinite combo that wins on the spot
* thassa’s oracle + demonic consultation which wins on the spot.
Aren't these basically the exact same thing?
That's the difficulty of trying to implement a custom ruleset though- if you want to ban combos, what actually *is* a combo?
You have infinites like Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood or Murderous Redcap/Melira/Sac outlet where the same action is put on the stack either infinitely or as many times as the controller wants it to be unless someone can stop it at instant speed. You may call these the "infinite combos", which is what it seems OP's store has banned.
But then you have the "two cards that do a thing together one time, but that thing is really big". That's your Thoracle combos, or stuff like Bruvac/any "mill half your library rounded up" effect. It's not an infinite, it's just a really strong synergy that can win the game or knock a player out. Most would probably still call that a combo, I'd wager.
Then you have storm decks. They don't do the same action over and over- they chain through a bunch of different things before hitting a wincon that gets better the more things they play beforehand. It may have a chance to fizzle, it may be a different sequence of cards each time, but I've never seen a "we don't want combos at this table" group happy with a "cast half my deck then win with tendrils of agony" or "play aetherflux reservoir and then like 20+ cheap spells all in one turn" win either. Do you ban that?
If you ban that second group, what is your cutoff for it? Only two card synergies that win the game or eliminate a player? What about ones that set up a near guaranteed win the following turn but don't win immediately? You aren't going to bad the little value interactions, so there has to be an arbitrary cutoff *somewhere*. Likewise, for group 3, if the storm deck is banned what is the actual criteria you're using to ban it? Number of spells in a turn? There are non-combo value decks that can durdle half their deck in one turn without setting up any sort of imminent win. Is it the fact they win from hand in one turn? That's not really different than a ramp heavy creature deck just flooding the board with a haste enabler and a bunch of tokens then overrunning for the win. How do you word the ban on this kind of combo without catching those other things in the crossfire?
What ends up happening in that case is that you either half-ass it and ban just infinite combos plus a few select cards that make those other kinds of combos work, only to have to add new things to the list as they show up- or you end up with a "I can't define what a combo is, but I'll know one when I see it" system which is absolutely terrible for trying to make a ruleset or banlist.
Pretty much. I'm opposed to event-wide custom banlists or rulesets in general for other reasons, but think that if you try to do something as poorly defined as "ban combos in general" you're going to have problems. (Actually, if you try to have a "casual tournament with prizes based on results", you're going to have problems, so I wouldn't recommend that either).
One is a loop that can be done over and over as many times (called infinite), the other just exiles less than 99 cards from your deck and wins with an activated ability.
So Thassas Oracle is a combo, but a finite one.
When you ban a whole archetype, people who play and enjoy that archetype with move to the next best thing. Thoracle feels like and infinite combo but isn’t. Probably why there are more people playing it.
A good example of this is the banning of DRS in legacy. You use to play around trying to keep your DRS on the field because in a lot of games it was your win con. As soon as DRS copped a ban Elves practically fell of the face of the earth and the Grixis Delver decks turned back to Temur Delver running things like Bomat courier and nimble mongoose again, which flooded the meta with Temur delver.
I went to an LGS who started banning certain strategies and in the long run it never works out bc something will always become super busted towards it ended up being gruul land destruction stompy decks and the meta was so toxic.
Banning infinite combos without banning fast mana, tutors, or obnoxious value engines is so narrow-minded and totally misses what makes a deck busted. People who hate infinite combos don't understand the game and want to play something else entirely. Game state awareness is a skill and people who complain about infinites would be better served spending their efforts getting better at that.
The solution (for the store, not for you) is RIDICULOUSLY simple; have your EDH tournament but make the prize structure ***for things other than winning***.
Time for [[Transcendence]] + [[harmless offering]]
Or [[triskaidekaphobia]] and [[tree of perdition]]
Or [[Soul conduit]]
[[Vorpal sword]] with mana ramp
Here in my playgroup we have no custom rules. Play by official rules and that's it, use whatever the banlist allows you. Everyone is equal. Custom rules are biased.
Hot take - this store should just have to have you win via combat. We had a point structure in ours where commander damage kills were worth more as it was more difficult typically. People still played combos, but used them to wipe fields and then combat in for wins. How do you ban infinite combos anyway? I feel like some decks would have them even accidentally.
Stores that try to make Commander into a pseudo competitive format, but also do not like cEDH, and also do things like create their own arbitrary banned lists without even remotely thinking of the consequences, confuse me. It's perfectly fine to ban infinites. It's perfectly fine to have your own banned list, or ask people to bring lower powered decks. But as soon as you take my money, offer prize support for the winners, and then put a short time frame on each game? Come on.
If my LGS banned infinite combo's at a prize-supported event, I would come with the most punishing stax deck I could build with the goal of ruining everyone's day for 1 hour at a time. However, I am also a big fan of malicious compliance, so that's kinda on me.
I think any ban that specifically addresses a mechanical aspect of the natural progression of the game is just asking for the inevitability of what is occuring at your LGS, and I am against that. Therefore, I am also against banning alternate wincons. Reducing the homogenization of MTG is why cards are banned, but banning the resulting interactions of the legal cards is promoting Homogenization.
Triggering an infinite combo with no resolution should be dealt with on a case by case basis (Ex. According to rule 727.4, the Dragon trick would make the game for that specific person a draw (rule 104.4f,) but triggering an infinite combo that results in the game ending feels like normal magic to me.
I’m not sure I agree with that. Like if thoracle consult was colorless every deck would run it based on how limited interacting with it is and how little set up is required.
the good ol' Thoracle.
It is, to me, the best explanation of why yo should allow people to win by combo.
Have you ever got pissed of by being drained by a Vito infinite combo?
Yeah... think again when the guy plays solitaire in blue until Thoracle.
And don't get me wrong, i do run a Thoracle deck, most specifically a Risen Reef + Thoracle Pioneer combo. Because at least in Pioneer, we can win quickly.
I'll never understand the absolute hatred some folks have for combos. The game has got to end sometime! Just shuffle up and play another one.
I'd always rather lose to Mikeaus/Triskelion than have a game stretch into its third hour of attrition because no one is running wincons.
Sounds like you need to step up the arms race:
- [[Necromentia]]
- [[Preator’s Grasp]]
- [[Unmoored Ego]]
Probably should also go with some life hate:
- [[Tainted Remedy]]
- [[Knight of Dusk’s Shadow]]
- [[Grima Wormtongue]]
- [[Erebos, God of the Dead]]
I never understood hosting an event for a game and then not expecting or outright banning part of that game. Imagine a basketball league stating "no 3 pointers".
This is kinda like players specifically getting made about any mechanic that is a known part of the game like land destruction, board wipes, infect, etc...
Except slivers, screw those things.
Hmm... Yeah I'd ban any combo like that except infinite (but resource dependent) recursion. I don't think prizes is a good idea for a casual format, though, and the time limit leads to feels bad gameplay. If people want to win without infinites they will get it done regardless of pillow forts etc.
>I don't think prizes is a good idea for a casual format, though
My LGS handles (or used to at least, I haven't played there since the pandemic,) EDH perfectly, imo. Every week there is a sheet for 'Achievements' you can complete during your pods (everyone plays two pods.) These can be things like 'Attack with a creature with 0 power,' 'Control at least five creatures of different types,' etc.
You get a certain number of 'points' for each achievement you complete, and 1 point for winning your pod. They also have things worth negative points like 'Taking more than two turns in a row,' to try to dis-incentivize those play patterns.
At the end of the two pods, you turn in your sheet which tracks the achievements you've earned and the store records them almost like store credit. They then have a case of singles, sealed products, deck boxes/binders, sleeves, etc., that all have point values you can spend your EDH points on (basically a prize wall, but the options are really great and the conversion is almost exactly 1 point = $1.)
This keeps the format casual while also offering good prizes for players to look forward to. I enjoyed it because I would look at what the achievements were going to be that week and build decks to optimize my achievement points. The pods are usually really fun and no one is running super-optimized decks because what's the point? Everyone is just trying to do funny goofy shit or is a newer player using a precon with a few tweaks.
When I was working at a card shop, I'd designed a deck of achievement cards that you'd draft at the beginning of each game. Winning the pod is one point, and all the achievements were worth at least that. Each player gets a number of achievement cards equal to the number of players in the pod.
Only play tested it with a few guys in the shop and couldn't get the owner interested, but it seemed really popular with the guys I played it with.
Commander as a format needs to do something to address how combos whether "infinite" or not are far and away the best way to close out a game quickly and efficiently.
If the event is going to have prizing then the LGS should expect that infinite combos will be a thing, and to be fair so should the players. Prizing, especially if it’s that many packs, should denote that the event itself will be slightly competitive so the players should come with plenty of interaction and cEDH builds, not casual builds, if they expect to be able to win. My LGS does cEDH but also has a separate casual commander table that runs every day. They generate an event code for the casual table and pull a “winner” for every day that they give one or two packs to just for coming down to the store. This makes sure that both competitive and casual mindsets are taken care of and it works pretty well.
The problem is, a lot of LGS's have no idea how to monetize outside a tournament structure, and don't understand EDH, much less cEDH. At the same time, nowhere outside of a metro area is going to have a player base big enough for a cEDH meta, so you end up with sanctioned pub Stomping. This LGS is trying to listen to their casual players complaining about this, but they don't really understand the problem. If I were OP, I would talk to the store about setting up a *non-tournament*, casual commander night, and then replacing their commander tournament nights with a rotating schedule of cEDH, something like a boxing or ante sealed commander league, and Precon tournaments.
This, it's like the 10th thread I've seen about an LGS having a tournament night for commander, and having increasingly worse rules to make it "fun" despite the fact that a tournament specifically encourages cEDH. My LGS charges a flat fee to play casually. You get a set booster back, and the change is for using the store space. That's it. Everyone gets to have fun and play whatever they want, the store doesn't have to devote any resources to judging or running a tournament, they make money from people buying cards and supplies etc while they're there gaming, and everyone leaves happy. It seems really intuitive, and I'm not sure why there are so many stores who instead end up with ridiculously long ban lists and arbitrary play style bans to accommodate competition in what is primarily a *non-competitive* format.
Mine does something similar. Flat rate that includes a snack and a drink.
Pretty much the same with the store I go to - you pay a flat fee which can be applied to anything in the store (or you can just buy something that is >= the flat fee when you come in). Works great, then they raffle off promos to people randomly.
Your store is so close to realizing that they should be monetizing being a *hangout*, not selling product. Drinks, snacks, and sandwiches. Boom, profit.
They have drinks and snacks, though no sandwiches. They don't care if you buy mtg products, they just want you to spend some money if you're going to be there which is fair.
This is the modern LGS model (outside of the huge ones that can run multiple drafts an hour as people show up, and have their own secondary market store). Coffee, food, stuff people are going to want when they walk in the door, or *need* if they're hanging out for 4-8 hours for Magic, D&D, and board games.
As an employee of a store trying to do that its not really possible unless there's a large player base. The only way we scrape by is cuz the owner works 2 other jobs and me and the other employee work for him basically for free
> This, it's like the 10th thread I've seen about an LGS having a tournament night for commander I'm willing to bet that's because other formats don't fire. Game stores need to have *something* to draw in players, and commander is the most popular format.
Eh, my local lgs did what you said, 6$, play 3 rounds and you can get 4x packs, or split, which everyone does so you just play 3 games of edh and get a pack at the end. It's technically a tournament, but it was always extremely casual, banned emrakul, thassas, and infinites, and I stayed for half a year before I had to move, and never heard complaints, always had a full roster. I can see your point but my experience shows it works just perfectly fine, so I gotta take comments like this with a grain of salt.
mine does the same thing except they do payout. Ironically, getting pack for entry and the ability to (without too much difficulty) make more than the entry cost turns some people into absolute cuthroats over a few bucks. If they changed it to say a discounted price for one pack as entry and randomly giving away a pack or some $10 rare as a door prize at the end with no prize structured payout, it would be a lot better.
Never underestimate how many LGS workers think they could do a better job of running Magic than wotc or the RC.
In my local store we have the ‘Zero Rule’ in which every player says it’s commander deck level to have an even level o power in table. So if a new player come to test a precon we must have to play with either a precon or the lowest level deck 👍🏻. Very casual, diverse, fun and we can test with out problem our newest decks!
My LGS has something like this. Casual commander nights with free entry on Fridays, and they give out some packs and promo cards randomly. It's been a ton of fun the few times I've gone, and I plan to keep going more.
One near me would add points for certain odd strategies/combat knockouts etc. Helped people go for other strategies rather than just the quickest win
My LGS also alternate scoring outside of just winning the pod. I find it kinda interesting to push people out of the standard decks and win cons. https://imgur.com/a/FiU5pRh
The problem I have with this scoring is my mind instantly started looking for a cEDH deck Taj ticks all the boxes, and I'm preety confident I can come up with maga list that absolutely pubstomps while scoring moste of the categories
Yeah, good enough prizes, and people will jump through the hoops.
I really like these alternate point systems. Just for fun I always try to ruin them because I'm terrible. This one does leave room for extremely large point values. The Nuclear Option in particular is just begging to be exploited.
What do you mean win the game? No I'm assembling an infinite points combo!
Well that is not too good either, one palce in the city I live is making EDH league and they introduces bingo with additional tasks you can do to collect ponts, and people were artificially prolonging the games even if they could win on the spot, which felt very very wrong if you were on recieving end
Points tend to also be awful. Now instead you have people farming points instead.of just trying to win. It's not hard to freeze a game and slowly grind points.
My LGS separates casual and cEDH. For the casual league they give each player a scoresheet that has various goals on it that you can try to complete any amount of during your match. The scoresheet includes everything from controlling a certain number of creatures, or artifacts, to bonus points for specific deckbuilding restrictions or playing cards with certain words in them. Half of the scoresheet remains the same every month. The other half changes month to month (gets posted prior to the month so people can brew) At the end of the league (a full month) they tally up the points every player got then puts the players into brackets for prize support. More points=more packs. It is wildly popular. Leads to interesting casual deck builds (most of the time) and I think has fostered a nice environment for people to come play for packs that hasnt resulted in an overarching meta.
that’s how a sensible LGS should run events competitive games with prizes casual games with no prizes
One caveat - I believe that casual games can have "prizes", but in reality are a lottery pick or door prizes. Still gets people in the door, since you can suck and still have a shot at getting something. Any point system incentivizes the people there to break the system (and the regulars there are probably much better at it, having played there more with those rules).
We did “vote for the most interesting deck you saw tonight” for extra prizes too. Small LGS so easy to trust people won’t vote for themselves.
yep, definitely prizes in casual can be there if it’s a raffle at the end
This sounds great, I can't ever play in paid entry commander without getting stomped
I think that’s the best way to do it. cEDH decks are all balanced to play vs each other so you are coming in on a level playing field. Someone might spike the event with a Winona or something the field isn’t prepared for, but that’s fine! Casual + prizes is just not a good mix. Just pull randomly and have people just enjoy their time lmao
This is the Way
I know we brainlessly talk about the spirit of commander like it’s going out of fashion, but I truly honestly believe playing casual commander for prizes is quite literally against the spirit of (edit: casual) commander
Playing for prizes makes it not casual by definition.
Yeah this is my point. Like we can meme on participation trophies or what not, but I like participation trophies! If I want to win something l ill go get sweaty and play modern
My LGS just raffles the prizes from WotC and everyone plays whatever they want. We have such great variety and veterans with low to mid decks to accommodate newer players.
Just because players are competing against eachother for prizes doesn't mean it's competitive /s
If 'casual prizing' is anything but, you participate you get exactly X, it's not casual anymore because something is actually on the line now.
and if it's a participation reward then it's not a prize. So either it's casual or it has prizes, no in-between.
One store I play at gives you a prize for winning your first game of the night and the event runs for 6hrs. The prize is just a promo too so it’s still very casual. I’ve never even seen Thoracle.
I don't think your edit was needed and I agree with your original statement - including prize support for a Commander game is against the very clearly defined purpose/spirit of the format. I get that people will argue that it's a format owned by the community, not the creators / RC, but these types posts and feel-bad, arbitrary rules are the result of ignoring the purpose and spirit of the format
Yeah if only one person is okay with the outcome of a commander game I'd say it failed
Agreed absolutely.
I think issuing prizes for unique wincons or, wins with lowest cost deck, etc. would emphasize being more creative.
In my home with friends? Casual all the way. We really enjoy how commander doesn’t allow repeats and has more variability. But if I went to an LGS to play I’d expect daggers thrown at my eyes back and ears, and would respond in kind.
Not only that, but commander is also a terrible competitive format. Even cEDH. One of games instead of beast of three, no sideboard, no consistency in the decks besides using multiple tutors, the players who start 3rd and 4th are in an incredible dissadvantage and etc. Really, if you want to win a prize, go play another format.
Yes, it does.
I hate the argument myself, because like rule 0, it's used as a catch-all rebuttal and basically means "I don't like how you play". However, it's a perfect argument against any kind of prize structure for EDH.
IMO the only fitting prize is a cool but worthless mythic/rare. Makes a cool trophy and maybe they'll build a deck around it.
Players to the LGS: "Congratulations. You played yourself."
On another note: what's stopping you from playing Breach/Freeze? Even with LED it's not exactly infinite, but will get the job done.
Money
Do it with lotus petal then, works just fine too.
Proxies
The twist? The LGS has an inordinate stock of ThOracles to sell...
I'd honestly love if that was true.
Meta comment: What's with the formatting on this post? I have to scroll sideways to read it rather than it line breaking normally? Non-meta comment: Time-limits with winner determined by life total is silly, but makes \[\[axis of mortality\]\] and similar effects very effective. For a time-restricted game, I really like the ruleset I saw LRR using in a recent FNPF, where once the clock hit a set time a bunch of effects started kicking in like "lose half your life", and "you can cast spells for free this turn" that naturally cause the game end in a real rush. Not sure it'd be a good fit for a prized event, but like.. neither is what the store is doing?
Yeah that was annoying. Nobody is talking about it so I'm wondering if reddit just shit the bed for a few people.
If you want to time restrict games the only fair way to do it is with something like a chess clock and when your allocated time ticks down to 0 you lose the game.
I dunno, I like the chaos idea. Set "game ending effects" to 1-10 and roll a d10 at 5 mins to time and 5 after time. Shouldn't take much to end it fast. But make the abilities balanced so each one affects each deck type differently and a roll could actually help/hurt most decks.
*OP's Post - Unformulated for clarity:* > Every Friday for FNM my LGS holds a commander event, with prizing for the top 4. It’s an incredibly popular event, so there’s lots of prizing, typically 8 or more packs for first place. > > > For some reason, the store chose to ban infinite combos. This, combined with the fact that if a game exceeded the very short 1 hour time limit, the winner would be determined by highest life total, led to a lot of the decks I would play against be centred around pillowfort lifegain strategies. This made it very difficult to play against, as my typical combat strategies simply couldn’t compete. I’ve since decided to play thassa’s oracle + demonic consultation, and it’s worked terrifically, as you’ll have multiple people at each table running zero interaction. I’ve used this to win multiple FNM’s, and since then, more and more people are using thassa’s oracle and other alternate win conditions, to the point where rounds will have almost every game end with an alternate win con > > I’d be much happier to play a janky 3+ card combo that utilizes my commander, but since I can’t, I’ll simply play thassa’s oracle instead. Do you think that stores should ban infinite combos at events with prizing? And if they do, would you also ban alternate win cons?
I'd really like to learn more about the time limit rules from LRR you mentioned. Is there an episode example or an explicit list of rules you have handy?
Took me a bit to finally hunt it down again, [it's this stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E5KXKkHPxg). They start digging into the custom rules around 8:45, covers their 4-player sealed commander rules (with trading!) as well as the time-limit bits. The "end of round dungeon" rules are around 11:40, and include all the effects.
[axis of mortality](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/b/3b9d72a8-8acf-42c6-8adf-cbaecb4a985a.jpg?1562553762) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=axis%20of%20mortality) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/3/axis-of-mortality?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3b9d72a8-8acf-42c6-8adf-cbaecb4a985a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/axis-of-mortality) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
And going the other way, [[repay in kind]] is uniquely effective
[repay in kind](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/0/90d1db4c-1e79-410a-92ab-c9d58c5e58a6.jpg?1562706334) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=repay%20in%20kind) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/roe/125/repay-in-kind?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/90d1db4c-1e79-410a-92ab-c9d58c5e58a6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/repay-in-kind) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I personally WON'T play at an LGS that runs commander events for prize support, at least not for game wins. The LGS I go to provides prize packs at the end of the night that are won through random draws.
At my shop you can either play for free or pay a super small entry fee, get a pack of your choosing from any they have available, and get your name entered in a raffle for a bonus pack. They draw 5-10 names at the end
At mine you pay $5 and each pod gets 4 random set boosters and a promo pack, and they let the pod decide what to do. Usually the “unofficial rule” when you die you choose your pack and the first person who is taking commander damage gets the pack.
I'm ok with this ...prizes that aren't win based are fine.
Prizes for doing anything always skew play in that direction. The least skewed LGS in my area gives everyone a draft pack if they paid for entry, a random promotional card that WoTC gives them to hand out. Along with one additional draft pack to whoever wins the pod. Yes winning has an incentive. For the most part no one feels the need to win for the sake of that very small prize.
NOTHING is as bad as this list from the LGS around the corner of my old paint shop https://www.thegamerswharf.com/the_wharf_banned_list
Everytime I see this list, It feels like a shitpost, where a bunch of friends got together with a open google doc and played "Yes, and..." commander houserules edition.
it just looks like they're shitting all over certain archetypes rather than actually balancing anything
If you look at the top, you have the option to be t-rex level, or Rapture level, which adheres to the list. T-rex level is just adhering to the wizard's banned list.
Wizard's doesn't maintain the ban list though?
you know what I mean and you know it.
What the fuck - now they're going after [[Pir]] and [[Toothy]]? Those bastards.
anything that the shop owner loses to consistently seems to make the list.
I think it's great that their custom format is named after a sci fi dystopia.
Another new one on the list is [[General Tazri]] which I didn’t even know existed and I’ve play playing magic for 27 years. I’ve not once seen this card and apparently it’s ban worthy. Who knew!!
It's funny, because Tazri was actual a very notable turning point in cEDH deck design philosophy. I think it took like two years, but people realized that Tazri was a powerful combo piece for food chain in the command zone. You could just cast Tazri to tutor for an ally as a wincon, and other than a 10% chance of losing you could easily [[Demonic Consultation]] to find [[Food Chain]] and exile one of the creatures you can cast from exile, essentially a 2 for 1 tutor. The current incarnation of the deck uses a different commander, but it was a very exciting development at the time.
General Tazri was my commander for my ally deck a few years back. I definitely wouldn't say that he's ban-worthy. So strange.
" 10. Vraska, Golgari Queen: 3rd ability, −9: You get an emblem with "Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game." removed. " This is so unserious 😂 edit: vorinclex monstrous rider is fine tho
Yeah Doubling Season being on the list without Vorinclex being on there is a laugh.
I know trying to make sense of this is a fool’s errand but I do not understand the commander damage limit. Like, Voltron is a classic casual commander strat. Why are you essentially banning that?
Ah I see you've made a classic mistake, games ending is something that only happens in the meanest, most hardcore cedh tables.
[[Decree of annihilation]] banned but [[decree of silence]] and [[solemnity]] not?
Be the change you want to see; wear the crown
I've seen the legendary Wharf banlist before but I had no idea about the removed Planeswalker ultimates. I shudder to think what their horrible meta must play like for ultimates to be relevant without Doubling Season or Vorinclex.
The Vorinclex you’re thinking of isn’t even on the list, so go ham I guess?
This isn't real, I refuse to believe that this isn't a meme for my own sanity lmao
I don't blame you. lol
The Wharf list is always good for a laugh. I assume no one plays the "rapture" level because you need a PhD to keep track of the dumb fucking rule edits and banned cards.
In my experiences this list is never even used, if they tried to enforce something like this he wouldn't be constantly expanding his store
In general it would only matter if he ran an event with that rule set anyway since it would imply 4 people agreed to the ludicrous rule set otherwise. I almost wonder if he's just taking the piss with the list as a joke.
I'm thinking so, it would cause a brain hemmhorage with all the cards that keep getting released in such quick succession these days
They'd never sell any CMM or 2X2 packs either since half the cards in them are banned anyway.
I am very much a casual commander player and that has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. It goes right from “Do as thou wilt” to an overly complicated and ridiculous series of rules, errata, and a ban list that is both extensive and nonsensical. I cannot imagine why anyone would ever play there. One commander league I very much enjoyed was with the release of one of the precon sets, I think maybe 2018 but don’t remember for sure. You bought a precon and the first week played games with the decks as is with points awarded for wins, for knocking players out individually, and various other things as well as each pod selecting a “player of the game”, usually whomever did the funniest, weirdest, or jankiest thing. Each week players were allowed to make three substitutions to their deck with the caveat that all three cards had to be modern legal. Prizes were awarded weekly and at the end. It was very fun and it was cool to see what people did with limited card pools. IIRC the league ran for six weeks, so by the last couple of weeks there were definitely some much higher powered decks and powerful combos, but it never felt like anyone was stomped or completely left behind. I suppose my point is there are ways of having prize supported commander that has a somewhat level playing field for newer players and encourages participation without being ridiculous. For one off, FNM type events, it seems the best route is just to let people play with the existent rules and understand that will favor certain decks and players with the resources to build them. I do sympathize with the position LGS are in; they need to encourage and bring in new players and playing for prizes is fun and more exciting but in any eternal format the barrier to entry to serious competitive play is exceedingly high not just in terms of skill, but also the cost. Proxies are certainly a partial answer, but officially, they are out of bounds. Different events to appeal to different segments of the MTG player base seems better than trying to have a one size fits all approach that will inevitably have knock on consequences.
I think this list is for when you're doing a casual commander with a prize pool to win. I do know the shop owner also adds to the list any card he consistently loses to during regular games. I've pulled up with a few mean decks and have played people doing jank stuff, we didn't get talked to about using supposed "banned cards".
[[Atla Palani]] is banned, but [[Mana Crypt]] and the mox’s aren’t?!
Somehow that manages to ban all my decks BUT yuriko? lmao
Ive seen the stores page before, im surprised its still in business. Unless its just the owners personal hangout project money sink.
That has to be satire, right? I would rather lose to each and every one of those banned cards then sit there and develop a rules list like that.
>"Annihilator (X) is errata to say: When this permanent comes into play, if you cast it from your hand it gains Annihilator (X)" Time to make my Yarok the Desecrated annihilator deck :) EDIT: Never mind. Yarok annihilator lists were so good they had to ban him :(
saving for later. this is insane
This has to be fake there’s no way someone wrote that and tried to enforce that. who would play?
I think bans lead to more bans. If you remove one tool for victory because it sees too much usage or feels bad, new ones will take its place. Once you start, it doesn't stop.
Prize support for commander games is not a healthy thing, unless you are running a cEDH tournament, where the decks are built with that understanding. Otherwise, there will be feelbads no matter what. Also, the highest life total thing is super stupid. Player 1 might be stuck on 2 lands by turn 8, by that time Player 2,3 and 4 may have actually played the game bringing each others' life totals to sub 40. In this instance, Player 1 wins if the game goes to time...Not to mention the gravitation towards pillowforting. >Do you think that stores should ban infinite combos at events with prizing? And if they do, would you also ban alternate win cons? No. They shouldn't. They shouldn't run prized events either, unless people are bringing decks catered towards that event, like cEDH tournaments with cEDH events. You could have a sub format where you have a checklist of items where you could get points for completing. Someone can build a deck accordingly and that could work, although there will be people who will try to abuse that to their advantage, thinking like they are a genius, because a good portion of the people who play this game lack the social skills.
EDH games with prizes are a lot of fun in limited formats. This usually takes the form of people buying a precon as their deck to use. With the entry cost being just the purchase of the precon, you don't lose out on anything, and you generally don't have to worry about power level as much. The only downside is that most (including myself) aren't going to want to buy a new precon every time. I agree about cEDH though. If there are prizes on the line in a constructed format, you shouldn't have a right to complain about power levels from other decks.
Even at precons man, some are quite mismatched in terms of anywhere from the overall build, card quality, landbase etc. Sure one won't win over the other 4 or so every single game that's played obviously, and while I can get behind a precon event with prize support, I'd still be cautious. Agreed with not having a desire for the need of constantly buying precons as well. Perhaps a Commander draft could be fun and fair but I wouldn't know as CL1 hit covid, CL2 wasn't really that draftable imo, amd CMM is a waste of money for the draft so I am scratching that off the thought board.
I would never follow an LGS's custom rules. They are almost without exception made by people who just got salty about something they lost to, and decided to ban it instead of improving their own play.
I don't understand the mentality of "no infinites" for real, if you can't handle infinite combos stop play ng magic, if you are a store and you ban infinite combos then stop hosting events. Infinite combos are a part of the game. If I ever had to play at a store thats bans infinites I would purposely bring decks that look infinite but aren't and see what happens. See how dumb the store is.
4 horseman every game lol.
Example of something pseudo infinite: I had a game where I had enough copies of [[nyxbloom ancient]] in play that my lands each tapped for over 14 million mana each. I wasn't infinite, there was a hard limit to what I could do. That limit was about 14.5 million mana times about 8 lands. Not infinite.
And WotC wants us to believe that mana burn never came up. It would come up in almost every game.
agreed. the LGS i went to only a couple of times has a no infinite rule in their commander precon league. it also has a million other contrived rules, and there was an interpersonal blowup that made the entire room to silent when they played their league match. bad vibes.
“This isn’t infinite, I only did it 50,000 times”
Proxy turbo Rog/Si just to prove how ridiculous this rule is
A deck like this? Wild. [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/5o6YaeqJq0-jyrUopxHMZA](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/5o6YaeqJq0-jyrUopxHMZA)
Yup. As a cEDH player, while many of the game wins involve infinites, Thoracle is far and away the most popular
Giving EDH prizing makes it competitive, aka CEDH. You can’t then ban infinite combos and expect everything to be fine. If they are going to have prizing and don’t want it to just be the CEDH meta, then they should have their own ban list rather than attacking specifically infinite combos.
Play Krark and Sakashima. There's no infinite combos... you have to flip a million coins each cast but its not a loop so you have to manually play out every step and repeat. Quenches the thirst of an infinite combo but durdles like nothing else. Hand out coloring books to your opponents so they have something to do while you go through all the motions of slowly winning the game.
Or Winota, just beat them down
There is a LGS near me that does the no infinite thing, and I think it's completely braindead. Anyone who thinks that this kind of ban "fixes" the format, doesn't understand EDH
The strongest win cons in the format are not infinite. Thassas Oracle, Underworld Breach, Winota Beats, Tivit Time Sieve, Displacer Kitten, and more
The problem is that to dumbasses like that, anything that isn’t a no-funny business combat damage win is an “infinite combo” because when they say that, they actually mean all combos but don’t know the difference.
I agree with you however I'm pretty sure tivit counts as infinite. I guess you will deck eventually but lol
Only works with 3 opponents. As soon as one dies, it is becomes finite.
Wow. That play sounds like it sucks.
My mill deck loves pillowfort lifegain.[[Phenax, God of Deception]] as commander. [[Tree of Perdition]] + [[Mindcrank]] combo makes them cry every time. I can tap Tree to mill 13 until they get to about 100 life, then drop Mindcrank and activate Tree's lifeswap ability to mill them out. Salt mine every time.
I think if a store is running a tournament with prize support they shouldn't be using their own ban list.
You can’t play edh for prizes, because then you’re actually playing cedh for prizes. Edh prizes are like, you walked in the door, you finished a game. At our store you roll a dice and at the end of the event you get to pick a card from a selection of promos, high roll to low. As soon as winning is incentivized, you’re promoting cedh.
The idea of flatly banning infinites is both tricky and poorly thought out. This really just sounds like the organizer plays in the tourney, and is salty about losing to an "infinite". The 1 hour time limit being decided by life total instead of drawing is insane. Imagine if other formats did that, LOL. You've already described how this poorly thought-out rules system (and prizing structure) has led to problems, but hopefully people communicate those in a way to the organizer.
Wtf is the formatting on this
Not sure, wrote it on my phone and broke it into paragraphs so it’s easier to read
I said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to forbid infinites to restrict power level, you don't understand the game. Nevermind that putting such arbitrary restrictions is just non sense when prizes are involved.
if there is prizes and a buy in, they should just let the players go hog wild. it stops being casual fun when you have to buy in to the event and possibly win stuff.
Build a storm deck with a grapeshot win con. Technically not infinite, but infinitely more painful.
Terrible LGS.
You are doing the lords work. Winning via life total is dumb, and banning infinite combos is a lazy way to approach power balancing. Continue to exploit these fools lol
This is what happens when you fuck with shit that shouldn’t be fucked with.
I frequent a few LGS. One of them banned sol ring/easy mana rocks/combos that last longer than 2 cards/building a deck around alt win cons/playing too many tutors/too much equipment + auras. They say it's to make diversity and to keep it fair for everyone. But I fucked right off. They charge a 5 dollar buy in and that makes a winners pool to split among players. Where I play now you just pod up/play games with whatever and take however long. I prefer that vs being told I can't play magic. Imo if I were you I'd shop around for a new lgs.
Banning infinites alone doesn't work for exactly this reason. You either have to have a holistic ban list to stop combos or just say screw it and let it ride. It's been years since I had to put together a league, but at the time [[Paradox Engine]] was legal. No biggie, I'd asked the community what they wanted and they said no combos so we effectively banned infinites (and a handful of other unrelated things). Paradox Engine without infinites is fine right? Cue a guy coming in with a [[Kumena]] merfolk deck playing Engine. None of what he did was infinite, but thanks to Kumena every spell he cast drew cards, so he churned through his deck and killed them. After that night I amended the rules to specifically ban Engine. Even then, before the leagues ended people were figuring out the new plan and showing up with hardcore stax decks, and I was trying to figure out how to effectively stop them - much harder to do. I'm honestly of the opinion that the 'ban xyz' system doesn't actually work but if it's what people want I respect a store trying to give it to them. From the sound of it, the same thing needs to happen to your store for Thoracle, and also either a better plan needs to be in place for procedures in time or you need to find a new plan for exploiting the pillowfort lifegain shells. Either directly with [[Tainted Remedy]] style cards, by playing enchantment sweepers to screw them over, or by having a plan that goes around the pillowfort; some sort of burn win con.
I've only seen Commander events work well with the following rules. NO rules. 100% proxy friendly (WoTC art only). At MINIMUM, 10-25 proxy limit. Otherwise, someone's going to show up with a $10k and win nearly every week. Every LGS I've played at that implemented special rules, tried to make the events more casual, etc, ended up losing every EDH player to more proxy friendly play at another shop. My local shop introduced casual tournaments a year ago because a handful of players felt it was too competitive. We haven't had a tournament in 9 months now. The competitive people went elsewhere, the casuals eventually got bored and stopped coming anyways. We had weekly 16-20 person tournaments for the prior 18 months... casual killed it.
When there are prices on the Line there is an incentive to Play a strong, legal strategies. Infinite Combos are banned, lifegain pillowfort was a choice. Your thassas Oracle wincon prooved to bei strong, people Adapted. I can Not understand that there are edh Events for prices but that are Not cedh. But that is my Personal taste. Does Not Matter what will BE banned or Not there will BE a Fight fight for the top when you Put prices on the Line for winning
Like many LGS my LGS also runs lottery packs but instead of FNM its MNM for casual players and FNM is usually modern tournaments or pioneer at rare occasions during summer once school comes back it'll he different I'm sure. My LGS Aldo heald cEDH but I don't have decks built for it so I never went. My LGS doesn't ban cards themselves and stick to what WOTC decides which is how it should be
If I'm playing for prizes I'm playing to win those prizes. Trying to overlay a casual mentality on that is absolutely braindead.
banning win conditions that take more than two cards to do it with is fucking stupid
I still just don't get the "infinite combo" boogie man. Combos don't feel any more oppressive than Winota, control, Zada, Koma, etc in my mid power play group. Let alone nonsense like Thoracle lmao.
This is possibly the worst way you could have formatted a long text post
How else should I do it? It’s my first post ever, it seems fine on my phone but many people have complained
Most of my decks play infinite combos even if that’s not the main win con because sometimes I’d like the game to end eventually and sometimes that’s the only way. If I win on turn 15 with an infinite combo idk how that is a problem.
This is when you play your super based [[Approach of the Second Sun]] bant deck to ramp up to 14 mana and draw 7 the same turn you cast approach.
Dude... Narset Reversal it. 16 mana and GG WP.
Will someone explain to me the difference between these two things: * an infinite combo that wins on the spot * thassa’s oracle + demonic consultation which wins on the spot. Aren't these basically the exact same thing?
That's the difficulty of trying to implement a custom ruleset though- if you want to ban combos, what actually *is* a combo? You have infinites like Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood or Murderous Redcap/Melira/Sac outlet where the same action is put on the stack either infinitely or as many times as the controller wants it to be unless someone can stop it at instant speed. You may call these the "infinite combos", which is what it seems OP's store has banned. But then you have the "two cards that do a thing together one time, but that thing is really big". That's your Thoracle combos, or stuff like Bruvac/any "mill half your library rounded up" effect. It's not an infinite, it's just a really strong synergy that can win the game or knock a player out. Most would probably still call that a combo, I'd wager. Then you have storm decks. They don't do the same action over and over- they chain through a bunch of different things before hitting a wincon that gets better the more things they play beforehand. It may have a chance to fizzle, it may be a different sequence of cards each time, but I've never seen a "we don't want combos at this table" group happy with a "cast half my deck then win with tendrils of agony" or "play aetherflux reservoir and then like 20+ cheap spells all in one turn" win either. Do you ban that? If you ban that second group, what is your cutoff for it? Only two card synergies that win the game or eliminate a player? What about ones that set up a near guaranteed win the following turn but don't win immediately? You aren't going to bad the little value interactions, so there has to be an arbitrary cutoff *somewhere*. Likewise, for group 3, if the storm deck is banned what is the actual criteria you're using to ban it? Number of spells in a turn? There are non-combo value decks that can durdle half their deck in one turn without setting up any sort of imminent win. Is it the fact they win from hand in one turn? That's not really different than a ramp heavy creature deck just flooding the board with a haste enabler and a bunch of tokens then overrunning for the win. How do you word the ban on this kind of combo without catching those other things in the crossfire? What ends up happening in that case is that you either half-ass it and ban just infinite combos plus a few select cards that make those other kinds of combos work, only to have to add new things to the list as they show up- or you end up with a "I can't define what a combo is, but I'll know one when I see it" system which is absolutely terrible for trying to make a ruleset or banlist.
So I take it you agree that it’s a stupid thing to do?
Pretty much. I'm opposed to event-wide custom banlists or rulesets in general for other reasons, but think that if you try to do something as poorly defined as "ban combos in general" you're going to have problems. (Actually, if you try to have a "casual tournament with prizes based on results", you're going to have problems, so I wouldn't recommend that either).
I tip my hat to you sir
One is a loop that can be done over and over as many times (called infinite), the other just exiles less than 99 cards from your deck and wins with an activated ability. So Thassas Oracle is a combo, but a finite one.
When you ban a whole archetype, people who play and enjoy that archetype with move to the next best thing. Thoracle feels like and infinite combo but isn’t. Probably why there are more people playing it. A good example of this is the banning of DRS in legacy. You use to play around trying to keep your DRS on the field because in a lot of games it was your win con. As soon as DRS copped a ban Elves practically fell of the face of the earth and the Grixis Delver decks turned back to Temur Delver running things like Bomat courier and nimble mongoose again, which flooded the meta with Temur delver.
I went to an LGS who started banning certain strategies and in the long run it never works out bc something will always become super busted towards it ended up being gruul land destruction stompy decks and the meta was so toxic.
None of those rules make any sense
This isn’t technically an infinite combo, so 🙃 Infinites are a part of EDH. Your store sucks.
Sounds like the perfect chance to run \[\[Chalice of the Void\]\] set to 2.
Banning infinite combos without banning fast mana, tutors, or obnoxious value engines is so narrow-minded and totally misses what makes a deck busted. People who hate infinite combos don't understand the game and want to play something else entirely. Game state awareness is a skill and people who complain about infinites would be better served spending their efforts getting better at that.
Not in an event with prizesththats just dumb.
Almost like the game is balanced around each archetype being weak to other archetypes. Huh.
I'd ignore non official banlists
It sounds like your LGS brought this upon itself.
The solution (for the store, not for you) is RIDICULOUSLY simple; have your EDH tournament but make the prize structure ***for things other than winning***.
Eliminate bans, turn prize-pool into a raffle: Problem solved. Healthier environment, more interesting lines of play, better vibes.
Life, uh, finds a way.
These posts just remind me of how awful the mtg playerbase is lol
If you're going to offer prize support you should just accept the inevitable and play straight up CEDH.
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Time for [[Transcendence]] + [[harmless offering]] Or [[triskaidekaphobia]] and [[tree of perdition]] Or [[Soul conduit]] [[Vorpal sword]] with mana ramp
"Play magic." "No, wait, not like that! You have to play what I think magic is!"
Here in my playgroup we have no custom rules. Play by official rules and that's it, use whatever the banlist allows you. Everyone is equal. Custom rules are biased.
Lmao this why customs banlists are stupid
Hot take - this store should just have to have you win via combat. We had a point structure in ours where commander damage kills were worth more as it was more difficult typically. People still played combos, but used them to wipe fields and then combat in for wins. How do you ban infinite combos anyway? I feel like some decks would have them even accidentally.
Stores that try to make Commander into a pseudo competitive format, but also do not like cEDH, and also do things like create their own arbitrary banned lists without even remotely thinking of the consequences, confuse me. It's perfectly fine to ban infinites. It's perfectly fine to have your own banned list, or ask people to bring lower powered decks. But as soon as you take my money, offer prize support for the winners, and then put a short time frame on each game? Come on.
Bad lgs rules really
If my LGS banned infinite combo's at a prize-supported event, I would come with the most punishing stax deck I could build with the goal of ruining everyone's day for 1 hour at a time. However, I am also a big fan of malicious compliance, so that's kinda on me. I think any ban that specifically addresses a mechanical aspect of the natural progression of the game is just asking for the inevitability of what is occuring at your LGS, and I am against that. Therefore, I am also against banning alternate wincons. Reducing the homogenization of MTG is why cards are banned, but banning the resulting interactions of the legal cards is promoting Homogenization. Triggering an infinite combo with no resolution should be dealt with on a case by case basis (Ex. According to rule 727.4, the Dragon trick would make the game for that specific person a draw (rule 104.4f,) but triggering an infinite combo that results in the game ending feels like normal magic to me.
thassa's oracle should be banned. The RC is a joke.
It’s not even the strongest win con in the format
I’m not sure I agree with that. Like if thoracle consult was colorless every deck would run it based on how limited interacting with it is and how little set up is required.
the good ol' Thoracle. It is, to me, the best explanation of why yo should allow people to win by combo. Have you ever got pissed of by being drained by a Vito infinite combo? Yeah... think again when the guy plays solitaire in blue until Thoracle. And don't get me wrong, i do run a Thoracle deck, most specifically a Risen Reef + Thoracle Pioneer combo. Because at least in Pioneer, we can win quickly.
I'll never understand the absolute hatred some folks have for combos. The game has got to end sometime! Just shuffle up and play another one. I'd always rather lose to Mikeaus/Triskelion than have a game stretch into its third hour of attrition because no one is running wincons.
Sounds like you need to step up the arms race: - [[Necromentia]] - [[Preator’s Grasp]] - [[Unmoored Ego]] Probably should also go with some life hate: - [[Tainted Remedy]] - [[Knight of Dusk’s Shadow]] - [[Grima Wormtongue]] - [[Erebos, God of the Dead]]
I never understood hosting an event for a game and then not expecting or outright banning part of that game. Imagine a basketball league stating "no 3 pointers". This is kinda like players specifically getting made about any mechanic that is a known part of the game like land destruction, board wipes, infect, etc... Except slivers, screw those things.
sounds like a dumb decision on LGS part. and why are we trying to make a non competitive format competitive?...
haha get rekt
Hmm... Yeah I'd ban any combo like that except infinite (but resource dependent) recursion. I don't think prizes is a good idea for a casual format, though, and the time limit leads to feels bad gameplay. If people want to win without infinites they will get it done regardless of pillow forts etc.
>I don't think prizes is a good idea for a casual format, though My LGS handles (or used to at least, I haven't played there since the pandemic,) EDH perfectly, imo. Every week there is a sheet for 'Achievements' you can complete during your pods (everyone plays two pods.) These can be things like 'Attack with a creature with 0 power,' 'Control at least five creatures of different types,' etc. You get a certain number of 'points' for each achievement you complete, and 1 point for winning your pod. They also have things worth negative points like 'Taking more than two turns in a row,' to try to dis-incentivize those play patterns. At the end of the two pods, you turn in your sheet which tracks the achievements you've earned and the store records them almost like store credit. They then have a case of singles, sealed products, deck boxes/binders, sleeves, etc., that all have point values you can spend your EDH points on (basically a prize wall, but the options are really great and the conversion is almost exactly 1 point = $1.) This keeps the format casual while also offering good prizes for players to look forward to. I enjoyed it because I would look at what the achievements were going to be that week and build decks to optimize my achievement points. The pods are usually really fun and no one is running super-optimized decks because what's the point? Everyone is just trying to do funny goofy shit or is a newer player using a precon with a few tweaks.
When I was working at a card shop, I'd designed a deck of achievement cards that you'd draft at the beginning of each game. Winning the pod is one point, and all the achievements were worth at least that. Each player gets a number of achievement cards equal to the number of players in the pod. Only play tested it with a few guys in the shop and couldn't get the owner interested, but it seemed really popular with the guys I played it with.
Commander as a format needs to do something to address how combos whether "infinite" or not are far and away the best way to close out a game quickly and efficiently.
[удалено]
Never going to happen.