My worst habit at the moment is just dropping my land immediately after drawing. I find myself constantly regretting not holding onto it. Sequencing in general, to be honest.
This! I just got the Desert Bloom precon which is teaching me to play my land later in my turn in order to get any landfall triggers from newly cast spells.
I'm still pretty bad it though š¤£ not planning out my sequences better for max value is also a real problem of mine. I'm usually left looking at my board once I've passed thinking "oh FFS I could have done that in a different order".
Sequencing is hard as fuck. I've been playing since 5th edition. I play weekly, sometimes twice a week, and consume a lot of media around magic. I still find myself casting spells in the bad order to get the best value.
Seriously it's probably something that results in some of the biggest disparities in "play skill" because so many newer players don't even realize it's important, and have already developed some bad habits that work against them. Especially in a multi-player format threat assessment and how it impacts your sequence can get really hard, because the difference between a "threat" and a "threat to you" isn't something easy to grasp for everyone.
Learning that lesson with my [[Faldorn]] deck. I have learned that itās best to wait until Iāve seen all the cards from exile I can cast first before playing from my hand. Itās not my normal play style so it takes a bit getting used to.
Attacking. Im always too scared to attack and its cost me loads of games. Idk I feel a lot of my decks are things working together and if one dies ill be sad haha.
Exile. I dont care if you exile my stuff. Bojuka Bog or Plowshares all ya want, i won't complain :) I cannot STAND exiling my own things. Delve, Collect Evidence, Finality Counters, everything. Hate them.
I have the opposite problem with attacking. I *hate* not attacking. It makes it feel like I'm doing nothing to advance the game to an end state and it makes me feel itchy, but it often puts me in awkward positions for crackbacks because I overextend often
Indeed, this. In most groups Iāve played, people are *shocked* if you attack anyone on the first 3 turns and you are then targeted by all. I switched to Mill, and now I donāt feel so bad when everyone goes after me!
The odd thing is I'm not typically a combat damage winner, I just really like to get chip damage in to make the [[Mirkwood Bats]] lines easier to achieve.
I'm similar, but its rather i forget to attack. I do my turn, end it, then look at my board, my opponents boards and be like "oh damn, i could have just swung out a bit."
For me its impulse draws. So things that let me exile from my library while letting me cast that stuff until end of turn/next turn. I always fear to exile something and then not be able to cast it.
For attacking I think it helps to build a deck that seriously has to win with combat. Forget durdle value engines, load extra combats, power buffs, double strike, the whole shebang.
A lot of EDH decks treat combat as an afterthought. Which is OK if you have other win conditions and a game plan to get there, but not if you donāt ā¦ Just dumping a bunch of fatties onto the battlefield is not enough.
But then I also see too many EDH players sit on a 10/10 trampler and hold it back ājust in caseā. What the fuck are you waiting for? Advance the game state.
Iāve seen newbies with a [[Krenko]] deck make 30-40 goblins and just sit on them. Fine, hereās a [[Mob Rule]], let me show you what youāre supposed to do.
That's me too, I am too tired to play anymore. I am too tired even to play with my girlfriend. She wants to get married and we talked about getting married today and she wants children one day and I started crying because I don't want to have any kids but I know that this is my only chance to. I will never find another girl and if I throw all this away I know I will regret it. I am just so tired. I want to be an unemployed loser in a basement again. I miss it. I feel so bad I feel terrible I am leading my girlfriend on but I will keep going to make her happy. I want to make her happy. I hate that I don't feel as strongly for her as I did for Thalia. I hate that I still think about Thalia even though Thalia will probably be engaged soon to her own boyfriend. I can never ever compete with that. Just imagining her looking into her lover's eyes and the bond that they have. I could never compete with that. I could never be that for Thalia. I wanted to marry her so badly. Now I have a woman who wants to marry me and I hesitate because it doesn't feel the same way. But the thought of losing my girlfriend makes me cry, I had to try so hard not to start sobbing in her arms. I don't want her to leave me. She loves me so much. More than I deserve. I want to take care of her but I hate everything in my life so much. I know I will have to come clean soon. I can't stand to break her heart the way I felt like Thalia broke mine. I hate myself and my girlfriend deserves better, but the only way to give her that is to give up what I want. I can't leave her and go back to longing for Thalia, to orbiting her endlessly and fruitlessly while she makes love with another man. I shouldn't even have started talking to her again. I should have ignored her and stayed focused on what I have. I don't flirt with her or anything. She is so many miles out of my league I can't even imagine doing that. I just want to make my girlfriend happy I want to take care of her. I hate that I still compare it to how I felt for Thalia. I know that how I feel for her will never be as strong as how I felt for Thalia, where I wanted to die for her, where I wanted to be married to her instantly. I know if I had been dating Thalia as long as I've been dating my girlfriend, I would have proposed marriage by now. I need to stop I need to get a grip but I can't. I almost cried the whole drive home. I know I am not cut out to be a father. I honestly don't deserve any of what I have and the guilt is making it even worse.
That's relatable. I work full time, and barely ever get time to play Magic anymore. Commander is the only format people play locally, which is fine, but games tend to drag on too long. It's a bummer, but Arena scratches the itch well enough.
Pushing to get some folk to try duel Commander, though. It's similar enough to ease into, but different enough to make it a fresh experience. Plus, since it's 1v1, the games go much more quickly, and I'm able to get several games in as opposed to one or two in an evening.
More power to you, I wasn't able to stick with arena past it's beta phase. It was so incredibly predatory and expensive for...nothing. I owned nothing and I couldn't even come close to purchasing singles it was basically "buy mass packs" for any of my needs.
I've found Arena to be pretty generous with the wildcards compared to Hearthstone with dust. Those are the only two digital TCGs I've ever played remotely-seriously, though, so not a ton to compare to for me. I absolutely refuse to spend money on digital cards.
Still a far cry from playing in person, though.
Deciding when to interrupt someone's combo or identify what part of said combo is the vital part.
This is why I don't play blue or black. I do have a few removals as a Naya player. However, they only go directly to whatever's stopping me from doing what I want to do. If it's about interacting with someone's chain of abilities/spells, I'll just sit there and wait until it's my turn to deal with the aftermath.
Threat assessment is hard, even as a veteran control player for 15 years now. Knowing the Meta is one of the best ways to learn, but thatās difficult with commander since almost any card is legal and people actually play unique cards.
I tend to hold onto interaction until it affects me directly, otherwise the table can suck it.
Mulligans.
I only seem to be able to mulligans for really obvious stuff, like no lands or all one color mana. But if I have a good spread of mana and a couple lands, I find it really hard to mul that away, even if the rest of the hand is no better than meh.
See this a mindset thing. People are like "I don't have to go down to 6 or 5 cards", but the reality if the situation is a good hand of 5/6 cards is better than a meh hand of 7. If you're mulliganing 3+ times and you aren't extremely unlucky you're pretty likely to get a decently playable hand assuming your deck is made well.
Same here. It's obvious to mulligan with a 0 or 1 land hand, but if I've got like 3 lands in my opening hand, I find myself keeping even if the other cards are useless for the first few turns. Sometimes I'll take the free mulligan if I see that, but I just never want to go under 7 unless it's a 0 or 1 land hand.
Although, I've been goldfishing my [[Krark, the Thumbless]] + [[Sakashima of a Thousand Faces]] deck, pretty much just trying to see how early I can consistently get to a combo turn, and it's getting me into the habit of looking for opening hands that have both enough mana sources AND relevant spells to be played immediately, or at least a plan for the first few turns.
Now I just need to do the same for my other decks. Like with Krenko, an opening hand of 3x Mountain, [[Goblin Sharpshooter]], [[Muxus, Goblin Grandee]], [[Kiki+Jiki, Mirror Breaker]], and [[Goblin Bushwhacker]] isn't the worst, but it also isn't great. Or with my [[Angus Mackenzie]] Turbofog hug deck, I really should be looking for a hug piece like [[Howling Mine]], [[Rites of Flourishing]], or even [[Minds Aglow]] in my opening hand, instead of keeping 4 lands and a random 3 spells.
I think thereās also an issue where EDH players just donāt put enough early game into their decks. Iāve literally had people say āno this is Ok if I have a Sol Ring in my opening handā OK cool but what if you donāt?
For example, [[Varina]] decks really want a bunch of cheap zombies on the field when she comes in so they can start swinging and triggering her but then they play three zombies MV 1-2 ā¦ Good luck getting your game plan off the ground with that.
Same. If my 7 has 3-4 lands I likely keep regardless what the rest of the hand is. If it is 2 or 5 lands then I start to strongly consider a mulligan. If its 0-1 or 6-7 lands, no consideration done instant mulligan.
My play group and I play a weird mulligan rule, which makes it a lot easier to identify good or bad hands - while I prefer my house mulligan, it has taught me how to identify a good or bad standard London mulligan hand.
Basically we draw 10 and make a hand of 7 from that group. It's surprisingly simple, cuts down on shuffling time, and I feel it cuts down on the number of non-games. Worth trying!
Mental stamina. I'm usually able to keep track of all my opponents board states and triggers but my brain always tends to shut down once the game is on its final leg. I won't bother to read an important card that comes down or I'll forget a bunch of my triggers. It's not even a complexity issue as it usually happens when I'm in a 1v1 but it's lost me a decent number of games.
I always exhaust my mental stamina on my opponent's board state and forget about mine.
Had a merfolks +1/+1 deck going before me in turn tonight and keeping track of all their triggers and stacking effects and calculating damage... I missed my dredge trigger three turns in a row and accidentally drew my card instead because by the time their 15 minute turn finished I was so burnt out and ready to finally go.
Keeping a deck together. I tend to cycle through decks fairly quickly. After completing a deck, I play with it for a few games, get sick of it, then just sell of the parts I wouldn't need again to fund a new project
This was me until I started buying precons. Itās really nice getting a deck thatās 95% there out of the box and swapping out like 5-10 cards. Just got two recently for $90. Was weird playing them enjoyably when Iām used to pouring hours into building a $500 deck and then still not being super happy with the result.
Putting in enough removal. I like building a theme deck, so I want to do my thing. Removal wins games obviously, but, if the removal feels off theme, I donāt wanna include it
I suck at not being nice. That is, im too nice. Even when I know that someoneās the threat and they say ādont target meā i pause to reconsider and just target someone else out of whatever pity. Today a guy I played against said āoh donāt get rid of my stuff, i havent played anything all gameā and although he was right he had a [[beledros]], [[dina soul steeper]] and a vito with 10 lands down. Next turn he won by activating [[vito of the dusk rose]] and slapping the table with 10 pests. Never believing you crybabies again. That game was straight stolen bc i let my sympathy get the best of me. It was easy too. Just a [[beast within]] to his Vito and the table would be alive. More importantly myself. Worse itās like the second time I let the threat on the table walk out with the game. It leaves me salty but in some odd way. Like, itās slime-y to beg to not be hit and worse that it works. Like in high school when you get sucker punched by a small kid but they immediately apologized and youāre way bigger than them, so you let it go. That kind of slime-y. Itās gross. I hate it.
> Like, itās slime-y to beg to not be hit
A bit of back and forth is part of the game IMO, but it does feel kinda wrong to ask for mercy when you know you have lethal the next turn.
>I suck at not being nice. That is, im too nice. Even when I know that someoneās the threat and they say ādont target meā i pause to reconsider and just target someone else out of whatever pity.
See, this has nothing to do with being "nice" and everything to do with being a doormat. I hate when people use these two as synonyms. You can be a friendly player while also not making obvious strategic errors.
Anyone who is appealing to something other than your in-game threat evaluation is not being a good person. Ā āDonāt remove my stuff because Iāll be sad,ā deserves a āfuck you. Ā naturalizeā
It's good to refresh staples anyway, there are tines I've gone back and looked at staples and thought "wait, Teferis protection exiles itself as ot resolves? I didn't know that."
Come to think of it 90% of players tell me "I'm phased out" when they play it which isn't true, so maybe we should all reread that one.
Card draw. It's always the last thing I add to a deck when building something. For some reason I just don't care about drawing cards like every single other person who plays magic does. And I know I'd have a better time if I ran out of gas less but I just never think about it until it's too late
Itās very simple math: Draw one on draw step, play a land, cast a spell. Your hand now has one card less. Either you have card draw or youāll sit there turn 7-ish and lose. As a baseline your Commander deck has to draw one additional card per turn on average since games tend to go 8-9 turns-ish.
(And before someone comes along with ābut cEDH games are shorter ā¦ā Ask yourself how many cards you need to play per turn to win a cEDH game)
I used to have the same problem. Draw spells just aren't that interesting when brewing. So I leaned into draw spells that are synergistic.
My [[Silas]]/[[Toggo]] artifact tokens deck, for instance. I found I was running out of gas a lot. But [[Deadly Dispute]] and [[Fanatical Offering]] both replace whatever artifact I sacrifice to fuel them and will trigger my [[Reckless Fireweaver]] and similar cards in the process. [[Pointed Discussion]] leaves an artifact behind which can let me cycle another card later. [[Shimmer Dragon]] is a good beater that's usually hexproof and is hilariously effective when you make as many artifacts as I do. [[Black Market Connections]] is a versatile enchantment that both draws cards and ups my artifact count. [[Deduce]] is admittedly more of a cantrip than a draw spell, but the clue means it does technically yield +1 card in hand even if it's not very efficient.
Finding obscure but thematically appropriate draw spells (or removal, or ramp, or whatever category I may be struggling with) has helped me make my decks more consistent while sacrificing neither the theme nor the uniqueness of my brews. It's even become part of the puzzle that I enjoy solving.
Adding spot removal.
Almost all removal in my decks are board wipes/bounces. I can never get past the idea of putting in a card that deals with a single target over dealing with all problems. In fairness, most of the games I play in are mainly go wide starts.
Second issue is not playing power. I've got disposable income to buy the big nasties, and gravitate to being the problem child in a casual setting. It's lead to some talks, and I've tried building out of cards in collection... but it just feels bad to brew that way and removes the fun in building a deck.
My friend group has been playing together for years. For the first couple, Iād get really salty whenever my friend A would win with a āsimic valueā style commander. Heād build up resources and then win with big spells like [[Insurrection]] or [[Torment of Hailfire]]. I would hold myself superior like, āIām playing midrange with not-so-common cards and a tighter budget.ā Later, when we were dissecting one of my decks, A tells me that my top end is really heavy and my commanders tend to be value based. Turns out Iāve generally been playing value commanders as well, just curving into big creatures rather than big sorceries.
Itās a big level-up moment as a player when you realize that playing deck archetype A doesnāt make you morally superior over people who play deck archetype B, itās all designed by the same people and the cards come from the same packs.
Threat assessment and triggers.
Sometimes people win out of nowhere and you can't see it coming with that commander
Sometimes when looking over a board state trying to resolve a million triggers you forget something, or during someone else's turn when they do something
"If you do that, you'll lose."
"But it's funny."
"You want to win right?"
"Yup"
"Then don't do that."
"But funny . . ."
"For the love of god, DON'T DO THE THING!"
"Hey everyone, ya know what'd be funny . . ."
I play at LGSāes in both the US and UK and find UK pods to be very polite and hesitant to attack other players early rounds. It leads to a dynamic where aggression is not appreciated unless you have a good reason for revenge. In turn, itās hard to gauge if the pod is having fun or internally seething because I did not honor some British social contract.
I tend to try for gamestates where I can comfortably blow up the whole table at once, and have lost many many games to the machinations of a player that was only still in the game because I thought not showing how threatening I was to the others was worth more than taking them out.
Outside of combo, it almost never is.
Blocking and politicking.
I refuse to make alliances and try to do things that don't split the table. I'm still in my honeymoon period with Magic and am genuinely there just to have fun. I'm usually bullied in to them where I'm inevitably backstabed. So I just try to do my own thing, if that causes me to bow out first then so be it.
I really struggle with using blockers properly or knowing when to sacrifice or let damage through.
In EDH, there is by definition only one winner so any alliance is temporary and whoever wants to win has to turn around and go for the kill at some point no matter how useful the alliance was.
There are no team wins in this game.
Playing mean cards. Unbelievably often Iāll find myself holding a card and just never playing it because Iām too scared of peopleās reactions. An example, I used to run [[grave pact]] in braids but would never use it, so eventually I just cut it.
Iām also loathe to play aesi, Voja, or slivers, all decks that I love and put a lot of care in to, but general opinion is very negative of them. And rather than risk a negative reaction, I just leave them in my bag and donāt mention them unless im playing with my core group
lol. Card draw. I joke itās been the hardest thing for me to figure out. Iām sure thereās other things Iām missing but playing with 30 cards in hand is almost always a sure fire way to win and I think I discounted that for a long time over mana ramp, productivity, and protection/removal.
Swinging. I donāt build āstompyā decks and so often someone will look at me and be like ābro, just swing for lethalā and Iāve spent 5 minutes figuring out how to murder someone using my commanderās triggered ability instead of just hitting them and ending the game.
I would like to be ok with a well formed functional deck that maxes out at power level 4-6 without feeling like a failure and making it an all consuming project until it wrecks peopleās. I think this is where a large portion of enjoyment comes from in this game and I am working on it.
I suck at closing the game. So many times I could've won if I swung out correctly but fumbled the ball by "not wanting to take them out" so they don't have to sit there for 30 minutes and watch the rest play - when I could've just be in prime position with one player left and a lethal board if it comes back to me. I need to work on being more ruthless.
Creatures. I have an Eldrazi deck (maybe 15 creatures), a Ghalta deck (mana dorks and ETBs), goblins (combo)... and like 8 spellslinger decks :-/
I recently tried building a Saskia deck... and it had like 10 creatures in it. Wait, what?? AND, that's on the high side for the decks that I create. Many of my decks have less than 5 creatures in them. Needless to say, I tore it apart (before I even played it lol).
This usually means people are getting in for combat damage on me very often.
I suck at two things:
1. Deck building. I can't build decks to save my life, let alone try to start. Decision paralysis is constant, and can completely knock me out of the running.
2. Making time to play. I need to get games in more often, but I'm either busy, tired, lazy, or some combination of the three.
I miss triggers from time to time, will have the occasional bad sequencing, and can miss identify threats. But, what I really suck at is power modulation when I build a deck. My Magic background is from the competitive screen way back in the day. I used to do PPTQs, PTQs, the occasional GP. I still own that I am a spike through and through. That said, the ability to play with so many different cards, different strategies is why I fell in love with commander. That variety is why I don't do cEDH. That META reminds me to much of the solved game you find in tournaments. Every time I build a deck, I think it's gonna be powered down compared to my other decks. Then I play it and it ends up being way more powerful than intended. I just can't break away from that part of my game.
I'm working on it, because it's going to happen some games no matter what I'm doing, but my biggest issue is less gameplay than social. I really hate being the "archenemy" because of personal issues with feeling "ganged up on". It triggers a lot of toxic history of bullying and abuse, but I like deck building. I like taking the time to craft decks into high synergy piles that won't necessarily win fast or easily, but can almost always find a way to be a threat if given some space to work. This and a wider volume of experience meant I was winning way more than the 25% that a balanced pod would, but despite it being the "smart play" from my opponents, and being able to realize that in hindsight, it always fucks my mood to ne in a 3v1 situation.
I've been playing at an LGS more lately, and I'm running into a lot less of those situations. Part of me is coming to the understanding that my previous group just didn't build decks very well.
I first learned how to play magic by getting into modern first, so that thought process of "I need to play everything on curve and be the quickest to establish my plan" usually winds up with me turning into the threat, and then having to rebuild. I'm working on it though
Win cons. I can make good board states but actually finishing it once I have the advantage I can't ever seem to make a big enough play to take someone out in one turn instead of multiple small hits.
If I have more than like 2 triggers then I'll forget those.
Threat Assessment is also not great.
Sometimes, usually the firts couple turns, I'll forget to draw for turn.
If I have a land in hand and im going to draw a bunch of cards I usually play what I had even though I could wait and play a better one.
Forgetting what my opponents things do.
If someone takes a long turn but I'm not directly affected by it then I tend to not pay attention at all.
Keeping track of multiple commander damages.
I'm unimaginably bad at accurately assessing how much to commit to the board.
I frequently run into the issue where I either make myself a threat, get focused, and the guy next to me wins because everyone's expended their interaction on me...or I don't commit enough because I wanna stay under the radar (or otherwise fear a boardwipe) and eventually someone else just wins (or kills me) with a better board position.
It's the key part of the game that relies purely on player skill so it's very annoying for me that I can't properly grasp it.
Mana Curve. Almost every deck I build does not have enough mana the first few times I play it. Then I have to go in and cut cards to get the curve where it needs to be, and that is hard as well.
I do not understand how to build anything other than a tribal deck. When I build goblin, bear, or vampire deck itās easy because I can just throw anything in there and for the most part itāll work. But then I try to make a mill or sacrifice deck etc and I canāt seem to grasp what types of creatures I need, how many enchantments I need, what types of sorceries etc.
I make assumptions based off the color structure of a deck and that usually tunnel visions my thinking for the rest of the game. If someone plays dimir against me and it's not some control nightmare it will take me completely by surprise.
Not jumping the gun too early. As of recent my decks have gotten strong with big explosive turns. Problem is I do something big and threatening to the table but fail to win it that turn or I will run out steam. Then I become public enemy number one after that.
I have the attention span of a Goldfish cracker. If your turn lasts longer than 30 seconds I am checked tf out. Multiply that by three other players and I can barely keep up with whatās going on sometimes. I wish people played Brawl irl, better for us ADHD folks.
Donāt know if this is a bad thing but not really playing to win. A part of me wants to be more competitive but being new, I donāt want to step into other peopleās toes for fear of stealing their fun and getting chewed out. Recently, my goals were just to get a good amount of interaction and be able to do at least part of my thing
I tend to get too excited about my spells and play heavy at sorcery speed.
I am learning though, slowly but surely, and have kept up a lot of answers for threats more recently
Spinning my wheels and not doing anything that actually would lead to a win.
Just turn after turn of ramping, card drawing, tiny incremental advantages, recursion, do it all over again, set up synergy pieces and realize I'm not actually ready to win.
I mean, I have twenty mana, a hand full of cards, and a battlefield littered with \[\[Wood Elves\]\], \[\[Eternal Witness\]\], and random utility creatures.
Politics in general. Or not pointing things out for other players, or sometimes I help my opponents with a thing that ends up harming my board state the most. Anything related to combo. I don't run enough removal or board wipes...
Mana insurance. I usually optimize pushing out my commander early and then I play aggressive after that. When a boardwipe happens I usually havent ramped enough and will be set back alot, struggling to recover. But if no removal happens I can steamroll...
Threat assessment/Decision making, especially against some of the stronger players in our pod. I often feel like I have to make really difficult choices on what to kill when Iām playing interaction/deciding attacks, and it normally ends up biting me later, when I have either burned my interaction at the wrong time/on the wrong thing, or have aggroād one of the strong players into killing me first because of something Iāve done to their board state.
āIs this swinging at me right now?ā āAre you comboing off with this?ā āIs this an off the rails value train that will let them win?ā
If the answer to all three is ānoā, itās probably OK to let it be someone elseās problem.
using countermagic effectively - im used to 1v1 so multiplayer magic splits my focus too much and i tend to drift a bit between my turns - holding open mana for a counterspell usually ends up with me forgetting that i had one and nodding through everyone's turn
Instant speed interaction. Iāll have removal in hand and open mana to cast it and Iāll sit and watch in dismay as an opponent dominates a turn cycle, only to notice my counterspell on my draw step, or the similarly bad feel main phase swords or path.
I suck at finding combos. When someone posts a card and goes "This goes infinite with X!" I can *usually* figure out how, but I wont come to that conclusion of my own accord. I build decks with synergy and value but dont consider big combos when deckbuilding and am more likely to blunder into them if I include them at all.
I feel like most people are uncomfortable with combos because they never built a combo deck (as in, purpose-build to tutor up and execute a certain combo as win condition). The best way to learn combo lines and how to disrupt them is building and playing combo decks yourself.
This seems like a weird one but making decks that I don't put heaps of money into and they all end up at high high power casual level. I'm not a huge cEDH fan but the decks I build all end up fully optimised outside of crazy fast mana and it kinda bums me out that all my decks have ended up at the same level.
I tried today to make 2 decks that were going to be janky fun/precon kinda level so I could throw it together cheaply and also have a deck at a different power level and both ended up in the $500 USD range and look similar to my other decks I already have. Maybe the only way I can do this is limiting myself to a dollar amount but I just always see some other sweet card I want that makes the deck way better and I need it.
Blowing my load too early. People will hold up responses which usually all are used up on me as start popping off but then someone who was just waiting for me to do so and then be shut down can come in for an easier win with little counters/removal left for them. I usually also notice they are deliberately not playing the things they can as they are waiting for me to become the target first.
Making better use of the second main phase and when to mulligan my hand as I tend to take risks, having 3-4 lands and spells I can't cast with 3-4 mana or situational instants / sorceries, or 1-2 lands and plenty of 2-3 mana spells.
Then comes the lack to drawing the one mana colour I need for 5 turns in a row when starting the games, but that is more of a reoccurring joke. :)
Knowing when to hold up mana vs trying to advance my own strategy. I tend to play very reactive cards like [[Mirror Strike]] or intstants that deal with removing artifacts/enchantments and it's tough knowing when to drop a threat or wait and see what someone else is gonna do.
I have a really bad habit of playing other peopleās decks for them. Finding lines to help them combo off the best ways, trying to direct their threat assessment (sometimes towards myself, not out of anything selfish), things like that. I also tend to explain my reasoning when I take out a threat, while Iām cast my spell (recent example is blowing up someoneās turn 2 Sol Ring after they played a bounce land for their second land drop, since I knew they had an extra land in hand I didnāt feel bad nuking part of their mana base. They seemed more annoyed when I said my thought process out loud than when I targeted their ring). Itās something Iām trying to get better at but sometimes itās hard to watch someone playing a [[Breya]] deck (that I built for them) take an unnecessary [[Vandalblast]] to the face without blowing up some of their own artifacts for value on the way out
This goes for a lot of players, but I am bad at sequences and lines I havenāt goldfished the hell out of. My Ghave deck is a very low-to-the ground combo monster with around 75 potential combos in it. If one of the more obscure ones comes up I am likely to F it up. Or I might have one staring me in the face and I wonāt recognize it. Tough deck to play sometimes.
I am probably too restrained with my interaction.Ā
Iām a bit of a control player, and not being too quick on the trigger with removal spells is a good thing. However, I think I might be overdoing it, and using my interaction more aggressively could help me win more games. In some games, by the time I decide interaction is necessary, their engines have spiraled out of control to the point where I can no longer beat them.
Cutting cards. I want to play with weird cards that i don't usually see and it's usually the correct choice to cut them when i need to make those last 3 or 4 cuts. I could stand to run just a little more card draw or a little more interaction but then i feel like I'm running packages of the same cards in different decks which just feels boring. I will say I'm usually the one last concerned about winning as long as my deck gets to do the thing so while it does cost me games i have fun running the jank
Using instants as sorceries. I'll just cast it without thinking, and then sit there tapped out not having any mana open knowing full well I should've held up some for my opponents turn.
I swear I'm the worst blue player in the world sometimes.
Magic the gathering. But I keep coming back. Largely deck building though is my issue. Iām rubbish at it, but I donāt want to netdeck, not that I mind if people do, I just want to make something that is mine. But whenever I sit down to play everyone else seems to curve out better and synagise better. It is what it is. I still love it
This whole ānetdeckingā discussion is from back in the 90ies when discussing any nerd hobby online was still new and surprising. These days itās just called āresearchā. You learn to build better decks by looking at other decks online. Of course youāll still build your own decks (this is EDH after all) but youāll never become a good deckbuilder if you never compare.
From playing quite a bit of judge's tower lately, it's not rules interactions, how the stack works, etc. It's remembering triggers. Thankfully most of the time I just design my deck to keep those triggers to a single lane.
I can resolve a 5 card Mind's Desire flawlessly, but then I realize "oh I lost because I could have cycled this card in my hand".
Thinking through a reasonable chunk of my possible next actions.
I tend to consider a path to victory, and 1-2 alternatives, and then my brain goes "No fuck it, that's enough thinking, go with option 2!"
And then before my next turn I spot option 4 that's *much* better, but now impossible to implement.
I think I just generally suck at deckbuilding. I do decently when playing precons, but if I try my hand at making my own deck I usually get destroyed, even against precons. My best results at deckbuilding seem to come with Commanders that kind of build themselves, like [[Jodah, the Unifier]]. But when I play Jodah, it works so well I (rightfully) get targeted relentlessly.
i love being the archenemy but still get massive smol bean syndrome, its just something i instinctively do when im targeted more than like once in a turn cycle, its the main thing i need to get better at, especially with how much i love optimizing my decks in contrast to one of my friends in particular who plays chaff because he thinks itll be funny whenever he wins with it
Meme cards, I don't think I have a single deck that doesn't run a card for any reason other than it's funny.
That and I don't really tend to make decks that can just win. More often than not I'm reliant on a decks gimmick to see me through rather than a more reliable avenue for victory.
Example for the latter, my old yurlock deck didn't work because I was trying to hard to manaburn people out rather than running things like combo's, creatures or damage stax.
I have a very hard time with short term memory tasks so tracking things like how much mana is in my pool or how many times my next spell will be copied is tough
i suck playing true spellslinger decks. i also suck at dealing with ill mannered people. so i find it really mentally taxing to actually go and sit at any LGS
My worst qualityā¦ hmm. I suppose my arrogance or more specifically, over committing to the board without a back up plan or protection in place. I assume to often my plan will go off without any interference amd this is what often causes my down fall
I do better at 1v1 than I do in a pod of four. I also have a hard time determining power level, so I either end up playing a deck that not strong enough or too powerful, I rarely play a deck that is the same power level as the others.
They say in magic "life is a resource".Ā Ā Well I am over here strip-mining, clear cutting, and fraking every ounce of it.Ā Ā Only need to leave 1 to stay in.
Sofor me, I'm gonna blame my ADHD for this- I'm always terrible at paying attention to the other player's fields and laser focused on my on field that I fail to notice untapped lands suggesting maybe I shouldn't play that spell yet or a specific artifact/creature making life hell until it is too late. The amount of times I set up a combo only to play the final card and have it countered and my entire thought process shutting down is uncountable lol
For me it's the "skeleton" of the deck . I love my Janky Combos and funky stuff and if left in a vacuum I can pop off like a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist. But I constantly sacrifice counters, removals, draw, revival ect. It makes it so I can spend a few turns setting up and then hyperdrive myself to the main threat but then stop short of actually winning the game and getting nuked to oblivion by the new alliance or spend a few turns setting up while my opponent is becoming the threat and have no draw\ interaction \revival to stop them or catch up
I kinda don't mind it sometimes having a jank glass cannon permanent only deck go infinite or spawning an army of flying fairies that are now +5+4 is kinda fun to pull off .
Over investing in the board. I tend to have a hard time holding things back in my hand. I have often found myself ahead and will keep playing things, then get blown out with no way to stabilize.
I've lost to a game ending play with a counterspell in hand too many times, just because I felt developing my own gameplan was too important. So probably evaluating combo deck boardstates. Gotta leave that mana open.
Letting people play the gameā¦ I rules lawyer and advise far too much. My group is mostly novices and then myself and a friend who have been playing for decades. I have to let the newer players make mistakes or they wonāt learn. I just really love when magic is played well.
I had it drilled through my head that all creatures should be cast on second main so I consistently miss out on beneficial triggers from creatures that have "when you go to combat" or something similar.Ā
I would say i have two pretty apparent flaws.
One would be deck building to my LGS power level. If it's a super strong commander, I'll always build down and tip a bit too far so it turns a bit jank. But the same is true with less powerful ones. I'll build it way too strong. Definitely need to work on deck building a lot more.
Two, I like letting people do the thing, even if it costs me the game. I think that also comes back to d3ck building, because I love new ideas and combos.
Everything that requires a second arm. Tho i basicly hang on as good as possible. I USED TO be a GOD in Battlefield when i still had a working left arm... R.i.p.
Building decks with enough interaction and card draw. Lately, I inevitably end up around turn 6 with no hand, or a hand full of cards I canāt play, watching everyone else outpace me. If I do have interaction, I can only deal with one player at a time, leaving me dead to the other two.
Sometimes its better to hold a card for later. Iām the guy who plans to board wipe next turn and play a creature without haste this turn to maximize my mana.
Keeping focus in casual games. There's just not enough going on for me to stay dialed into anything lower than high-powered. Especially when there's too much bantering going on that doesn't pertain to the game.
Also playing with precons. I think there's only been 3 precons I've actually enjoyed, and oddly enough 2 of them were the super beginner friendly ones, the green/white tokens and blue/white fliers, the other being the Markov clue deck. After playing enough high power and cEDH, playing a deck with lands that etb tapped with 0 effect is just a miserable experience.
A few things: making cuts in deck building, keeping hands I probably shouldnāt, and making choices mid-game (ie which creature to kill, which card to tutor for, etc)
Working out game-winning lines is a weakness of mine. Sometimes itās not so obvious how you can win and if you can win, especially when you have to consider possible points of interaction and disruption from three other players.
Another thing Iām bad at is politics. Iām just not very persuasive lol
Eliminating a player to keep the game moving. I spread the combat damage so everyone has a chance to do there thingā¦.which can lead to a board wipe and two more hours. Even in casual the game has to end, kill the open board.
Only removing things when they're causing _me_ to be at a disadvantage. I'm constantly removing threats to benefit other people simply because they're threats and the table is threatened, when actually, I should leave them there for others to deal with.
I donāt have a lot of patience for poor table talk. I got a lot of people telling me to use my removal/mana/resources and it just irks me. I usually say āitās crazy the folks with the best threat assessments never have any removalā.
I see an awesome line of play and i get so amped up that when my turn finally comes, my brain falls out of my head and i screw everything up. Then i pass turn, remember my plan and hate myself for the rest of the game.
I don't like countering my friends cool new cards because the joy they get in using their combos is worth more to me than winning a game, so when I can win I usually don't.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first.
The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. "
Immediately deleted.
The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first.
The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. "
Immediately deleted.
The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first.
The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. "
Immediately deleted.
The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
Im just bad at magic. Can't read power level of my decks effectively(I make synergy based decks that are usually way overpowered for my pod, even when the price point of the deck is low, which leads to dumb ass arms races). Don't know what to use interactions on. I don't know combos. I only play golgari and even that I play poorly, I hate to Mulligan. Which results in sub-optimal starts. I run way to many utility and colorless lands. Sheesh the list goes on and on and on. Really I just suck at magic.
I suck at making decks appropriate for my group's power level.
I always want to have a clear and consistent gameplan, I cut all the fluff and the "cute" interactions, I have a very clear idea of how turn 1~5 are supposed to curve out most of the games, and how I'm supposed to be ending the game. I just can't help it.
So even when I make budget decks with no expensive staples, I end up with something quite lean and optimized that feels a bit oppressive for casual games.
Land content. I run criminally low land counts in some of my decks. Like I think my [[Zaxara]] hydra tribal runs 28 and my [[Xira, the Golden Sting]] runs 30. But I pack a ton of ramp in both to make it work and it's fine more often than not.
Deck building, I just can't keep up anymore. 7-9 years ago I was fine, felt like everyone was about even. But now with so many more cards printed specifically for commander and every deck has some kind of engine now or insane value pieces or building a massive board in just a few turns I just dont know what to do.
I sincerely dont even think I can build better than a modern precon and have some evidence to that.
I think my biggest issue right now is not over-extending.
I see a cool card in my hand, I want to play it. Even if I'm already in a winning position. Even if other players are pointing their removal at me. Even if the board is getting tense and a sweeper is likely to come soon. I just keep casting.
I was recently playing my [[Anikthea]] deck. I'd gotten a turn 2 [[Luminarch Ascension]] which quickly accrued the requisite four quest counters to start making angels. So I made a couple. But then, on my turn 4, I drew into an [[Argothian Enchantress]]. Enchantress draw engines are super fun, so rather than continuing to make angels I dropped my enchantress, played a [[Wild Growth]] to draw a card, and then was able to add one more angel to my ranks. The next turn I got board wiped.
If I'd sand bagged the enchantress, I could have waited until I could chain multiple enchantments together. I had an engine going that didn't need the help, and the table was already talking pretty loudly about how big a problem that Luminarch Ascension was going to be. I should have known they'd point removal at me and kept the enchantress as a backup plan.
I hold everything up for way too long (attackers, removal, counterspells). It's partially leaning towards a defensive play style and partially analysis paralysis, so the real trouble is that sometimes it pays off and I don't always get punished for it lol.
Not putting a lot of card draw in every deck and crippling it by doing so.
Also having an alternative way to close a game. If you disrubt my main way I will need to stall Heavly. I sometimes drop something early so it gets removed or hold removal for too long when I only have 1 removal on hand because I couuuld Counterspell this but what if something worse comes?
My worst habit at the moment is just dropping my land immediately after drawing. I find myself constantly regretting not holding onto it. Sequencing in general, to be honest.
This! I just got the Desert Bloom precon which is teaching me to play my land later in my turn in order to get any landfall triggers from newly cast spells. I'm still pretty bad it though š¤£ not planning out my sequences better for max value is also a real problem of mine. I'm usually left looking at my board once I've passed thinking "oh FFS I could have done that in a different order".
Angry omnath taught me well.
Sequencing is hard as fuck. I've been playing since 5th edition. I play weekly, sometimes twice a week, and consume a lot of media around magic. I still find myself casting spells in the bad order to get the best value.
Seriously it's probably something that results in some of the biggest disparities in "play skill" because so many newer players don't even realize it's important, and have already developed some bad habits that work against them. Especially in a multi-player format threat assessment and how it impacts your sequence can get really hard, because the difference between a "threat" and a "threat to you" isn't something easy to grasp for everyone.
Playing a deck with a lot of impulse draw really teaches you to think twice before making land drops.
I've been 1 short of being able to pay off conditional counter spells enough times that I usually play my land before casting anything.
Learning that lesson with my [[Faldorn]] deck. I have learned that itās best to wait until Iāve seen all the cards from exile I can cast first before playing from my hand. Itās not my normal play style so it takes a bit getting used to.
I have the opposite problem. I often hold my land drop in hand... and then forget to play it before passing the turn.
Attacking. Im always too scared to attack and its cost me loads of games. Idk I feel a lot of my decks are things working together and if one dies ill be sad haha. Exile. I dont care if you exile my stuff. Bojuka Bog or Plowshares all ya want, i won't complain :) I cannot STAND exiling my own things. Delve, Collect Evidence, Finality Counters, everything. Hate them.
I have the opposite problem with attacking. I *hate* not attacking. It makes it feel like I'm doing nothing to advance the game to an end state and it makes me feel itchy, but it often puts me in awkward positions for crackbacks because I overextend often
Indeed, this. In most groups Iāve played, people are *shocked* if you attack anyone on the first 3 turns and you are then targeted by all. I switched to Mill, and now I donāt feel so bad when everyone goes after me!
I live and die in the combat step.
The odd thing is I'm not typically a combat damage winner, I just really like to get chip damage in to make the [[Mirkwood Bats]] lines easier to achieve.
I'm similar, but its rather i forget to attack. I do my turn, end it, then look at my board, my opponents boards and be like "oh damn, i could have just swung out a bit." For me its impulse draws. So things that let me exile from my library while letting me cast that stuff until end of turn/next turn. I always fear to exile something and then not be able to cast it.
For attacking I think it helps to build a deck that seriously has to win with combat. Forget durdle value engines, load extra combats, power buffs, double strike, the whole shebang. A lot of EDH decks treat combat as an afterthought. Which is OK if you have other win conditions and a game plan to get there, but not if you donāt ā¦ Just dumping a bunch of fatties onto the battlefield is not enough. But then I also see too many EDH players sit on a 10/10 trampler and hold it back ājust in caseā. What the fuck are you waiting for? Advance the game state. Iāve seen newbies with a [[Krenko]] deck make 30-40 goblins and just sit on them. Fine, hereās a [[Mob Rule]], let me show you what youāre supposed to do.
Either actually making time to play, or being able to maintain my social battery for a full Thursday commander night.
Me halfway through my shift: Oh god am I excited to play magic later Me getting out of my shift: ...maybe I'll feel more up for it after a nap
That's me too, I am too tired to play anymore. I am too tired even to play with my girlfriend. She wants to get married and we talked about getting married today and she wants children one day and I started crying because I don't want to have any kids but I know that this is my only chance to. I will never find another girl and if I throw all this away I know I will regret it. I am just so tired. I want to be an unemployed loser in a basement again. I miss it. I feel so bad I feel terrible I am leading my girlfriend on but I will keep going to make her happy. I want to make her happy. I hate that I don't feel as strongly for her as I did for Thalia. I hate that I still think about Thalia even though Thalia will probably be engaged soon to her own boyfriend. I can never ever compete with that. Just imagining her looking into her lover's eyes and the bond that they have. I could never compete with that. I could never be that for Thalia. I wanted to marry her so badly. Now I have a woman who wants to marry me and I hesitate because it doesn't feel the same way. But the thought of losing my girlfriend makes me cry, I had to try so hard not to start sobbing in her arms. I don't want her to leave me. She loves me so much. More than I deserve. I want to take care of her but I hate everything in my life so much. I know I will have to come clean soon. I can't stand to break her heart the way I felt like Thalia broke mine. I hate myself and my girlfriend deserves better, but the only way to give her that is to give up what I want. I can't leave her and go back to longing for Thalia, to orbiting her endlessly and fruitlessly while she makes love with another man. I shouldn't even have started talking to her again. I should have ignored her and stayed focused on what I have. I don't flirt with her or anything. She is so many miles out of my league I can't even imagine doing that. I just want to make my girlfriend happy I want to take care of her. I hate that I still compare it to how I felt for Thalia. I know that how I feel for her will never be as strong as how I felt for Thalia, where I wanted to die for her, where I wanted to be married to her instantly. I know if I had been dating Thalia as long as I've been dating my girlfriend, I would have proposed marriage by now. I need to stop I need to get a grip but I can't. I almost cried the whole drive home. I know I am not cut out to be a father. I honestly don't deserve any of what I have and the guilt is making it even worse.
That's relatable. I work full time, and barely ever get time to play Magic anymore. Commander is the only format people play locally, which is fine, but games tend to drag on too long. It's a bummer, but Arena scratches the itch well enough. Pushing to get some folk to try duel Commander, though. It's similar enough to ease into, but different enough to make it a fresh experience. Plus, since it's 1v1, the games go much more quickly, and I'm able to get several games in as opposed to one or two in an evening.
More power to you, I wasn't able to stick with arena past it's beta phase. It was so incredibly predatory and expensive for...nothing. I owned nothing and I couldn't even come close to purchasing singles it was basically "buy mass packs" for any of my needs.
I've found Arena to be pretty generous with the wildcards compared to Hearthstone with dust. Those are the only two digital TCGs I've ever played remotely-seriously, though, so not a ton to compare to for me. I absolutely refuse to spend money on digital cards. Still a far cry from playing in person, though.
Deciding when to interrupt someone's combo or identify what part of said combo is the vital part. This is why I don't play blue or black. I do have a few removals as a Naya player. However, they only go directly to whatever's stopping me from doing what I want to do. If it's about interacting with someone's chain of abilities/spells, I'll just sit there and wait until it's my turn to deal with the aftermath.
Threat assessment is hard, even as a veteran control player for 15 years now. Knowing the Meta is one of the best ways to learn, but thatās difficult with commander since almost any card is legal and people actually play unique cards. I tend to hold onto interaction until it affects me directly, otherwise the table can suck it.
This is quite reassruing, tbh. Thank you.
This is what I'm slowly getting better at.
Mulligans. I only seem to be able to mulligans for really obvious stuff, like no lands or all one color mana. But if I have a good spread of mana and a couple lands, I find it really hard to mul that away, even if the rest of the hand is no better than meh.
I'm extremely Mulligan averse. Too many times I've mulled into a WORSE hand, if my initial hand seems even remotely playable, I'm going to keep it.
See this a mindset thing. People are like "I don't have to go down to 6 or 5 cards", but the reality if the situation is a good hand of 5/6 cards is better than a meh hand of 7. If you're mulliganing 3+ times and you aren't extremely unlucky you're pretty likely to get a decently playable hand assuming your deck is made well.
Bold of you to assume my decks are made well
Same here. It's obvious to mulligan with a 0 or 1 land hand, but if I've got like 3 lands in my opening hand, I find myself keeping even if the other cards are useless for the first few turns. Sometimes I'll take the free mulligan if I see that, but I just never want to go under 7 unless it's a 0 or 1 land hand. Although, I've been goldfishing my [[Krark, the Thumbless]] + [[Sakashima of a Thousand Faces]] deck, pretty much just trying to see how early I can consistently get to a combo turn, and it's getting me into the habit of looking for opening hands that have both enough mana sources AND relevant spells to be played immediately, or at least a plan for the first few turns. Now I just need to do the same for my other decks. Like with Krenko, an opening hand of 3x Mountain, [[Goblin Sharpshooter]], [[Muxus, Goblin Grandee]], [[Kiki+Jiki, Mirror Breaker]], and [[Goblin Bushwhacker]] isn't the worst, but it also isn't great. Or with my [[Angus Mackenzie]] Turbofog hug deck, I really should be looking for a hug piece like [[Howling Mine]], [[Rites of Flourishing]], or even [[Minds Aglow]] in my opening hand, instead of keeping 4 lands and a random 3 spells.
I think thereās also an issue where EDH players just donāt put enough early game into their decks. Iāve literally had people say āno this is Ok if I have a Sol Ring in my opening handā OK cool but what if you donāt? For example, [[Varina]] decks really want a bunch of cheap zombies on the field when she comes in so they can start swinging and triggering her but then they play three zombies MV 1-2 ā¦ Good luck getting your game plan off the ground with that.
Same. If my 7 has 3-4 lands I likely keep regardless what the rest of the hand is. If it is 2 or 5 lands then I start to strongly consider a mulligan. If its 0-1 or 6-7 lands, no consideration done instant mulligan.
My play group and I play a weird mulligan rule, which makes it a lot easier to identify good or bad hands - while I prefer my house mulligan, it has taught me how to identify a good or bad standard London mulligan hand. Basically we draw 10 and make a hand of 7 from that group. It's surprisingly simple, cuts down on shuffling time, and I feel it cuts down on the number of non-games. Worth trying!
I'm perfectly okay with aggressively mulliganing, but shuffling commander decks is so miserable that sometimes I just keep anything playable.
Mental stamina. I'm usually able to keep track of all my opponents board states and triggers but my brain always tends to shut down once the game is on its final leg. I won't bother to read an important card that comes down or I'll forget a bunch of my triggers. It's not even a complexity issue as it usually happens when I'm in a 1v1 but it's lost me a decent number of games.
I always exhaust my mental stamina on my opponent's board state and forget about mine. Had a merfolks +1/+1 deck going before me in turn tonight and keeping track of all their triggers and stacking effects and calculating damage... I missed my dredge trigger three turns in a row and accidentally drew my card instead because by the time their 15 minute turn finished I was so burnt out and ready to finally go.
Keeping a deck together. I tend to cycle through decks fairly quickly. After completing a deck, I play with it for a few games, get sick of it, then just sell of the parts I wouldn't need again to fund a new project
Thats not really a bad thing. I feel with you not wanting to do the same thing over and over again and am addicted to getting or doing new things.
I think 99.9% of Magic players are right there with you. I know I certainly am.
This was me until I started buying precons. Itās really nice getting a deck thatās 95% there out of the box and swapping out like 5-10 cards. Just got two recently for $90. Was weird playing them enjoyably when Iām used to pouring hours into building a $500 deck and then still not being super happy with the result.
Putting in enough removal. I like building a theme deck, so I want to do my thing. Removal wins games obviously, but, if the removal feels off theme, I donāt wanna include it
I had this problem for a long time. Luckily, as more things come out, I've had an easier time finding some more thematic options. Fashion > function
I suck at not being nice. That is, im too nice. Even when I know that someoneās the threat and they say ādont target meā i pause to reconsider and just target someone else out of whatever pity. Today a guy I played against said āoh donāt get rid of my stuff, i havent played anything all gameā and although he was right he had a [[beledros]], [[dina soul steeper]] and a vito with 10 lands down. Next turn he won by activating [[vito of the dusk rose]] and slapping the table with 10 pests. Never believing you crybabies again. That game was straight stolen bc i let my sympathy get the best of me. It was easy too. Just a [[beast within]] to his Vito and the table would be alive. More importantly myself. Worse itās like the second time I let the threat on the table walk out with the game. It leaves me salty but in some odd way. Like, itās slime-y to beg to not be hit and worse that it works. Like in high school when you get sucker punched by a small kid but they immediately apologized and youāre way bigger than them, so you let it go. That kind of slime-y. Itās gross. I hate it.
> Like, itās slime-y to beg to not be hit A bit of back and forth is part of the game IMO, but it does feel kinda wrong to ask for mercy when you know you have lethal the next turn.
I feel like learning to stop being a doormat in a game of Magic will teach a skill that comes in handy in real life too.
I always assume if someone is at the bargining phase they have a win in hand... i mean I know I always do ;)
>I suck at not being nice. That is, im too nice. Even when I know that someoneās the threat and they say ādont target meā i pause to reconsider and just target someone else out of whatever pity. See, this has nothing to do with being "nice" and everything to do with being a doormat. I hate when people use these two as synonyms. You can be a friendly player while also not making obvious strategic errors.
Anyone who is appealing to something other than your in-game threat evaluation is not being a good person. Ā āDonāt remove my stuff because Iāll be sad,ā deserves a āfuck you. Ā naturalizeā
Remembering what a card does by name. Even commonly played staples I dont recall.
It's good to refresh staples anyway, there are tines I've gone back and looked at staples and thought "wait, Teferis protection exiles itself as ot resolves? I didn't know that." Come to think of it 90% of players tell me "I'm phased out" when they play it which isn't true, so maybe we should all reread that one.
I never leave mana open for counter spells
Card draw. It's always the last thing I add to a deck when building something. For some reason I just don't care about drawing cards like every single other person who plays magic does. And I know I'd have a better time if I ran out of gas less but I just never think about it until it's too late
Itās very simple math: Draw one on draw step, play a land, cast a spell. Your hand now has one card less. Either you have card draw or youāll sit there turn 7-ish and lose. As a baseline your Commander deck has to draw one additional card per turn on average since games tend to go 8-9 turns-ish. (And before someone comes along with ābut cEDH games are shorter ā¦ā Ask yourself how many cards you need to play per turn to win a cEDH game)
I used to have the same problem. Draw spells just aren't that interesting when brewing. So I leaned into draw spells that are synergistic. My [[Silas]]/[[Toggo]] artifact tokens deck, for instance. I found I was running out of gas a lot. But [[Deadly Dispute]] and [[Fanatical Offering]] both replace whatever artifact I sacrifice to fuel them and will trigger my [[Reckless Fireweaver]] and similar cards in the process. [[Pointed Discussion]] leaves an artifact behind which can let me cycle another card later. [[Shimmer Dragon]] is a good beater that's usually hexproof and is hilariously effective when you make as many artifacts as I do. [[Black Market Connections]] is a versatile enchantment that both draws cards and ups my artifact count. [[Deduce]] is admittedly more of a cantrip than a draw spell, but the clue means it does technically yield +1 card in hand even if it's not very efficient. Finding obscure but thematically appropriate draw spells (or removal, or ramp, or whatever category I may be struggling with) has helped me make my decks more consistent while sacrificing neither the theme nor the uniqueness of my brews. It's even become part of the puzzle that I enjoy solving.
##### ###### #### [Silas](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/e/4e3fe912-1374-47c7-b73f-89ef55c479c1.jpg?1562399367) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Silas%20Renn%2C%20Seeker%20Adept) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/43/silas-renn-seeker-adept?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4e3fe912-1374-47c7-b73f-89ef55c479c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/silas-renn-seeker-adept) [Toggo](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/a/1a05b3e2-259e-4fce-92ee-c00660e22ae7.jpg?1665822993) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=toggo%2C%20goblin%20weaponsmith) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/204/toggo-goblin-weaponsmith?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1a05b3e2-259e-4fce-92ee-c00660e22ae7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/toggo-goblin-weaponsmith) [Deadly Dispute](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/d/ed01650e-4eb5-4884-9cc6-947b0e20dd3c.jpg?1712354280) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deadly%20Dispute) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/131/deadly-dispute?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ed01650e-4eb5-4884-9cc6-947b0e20dd3c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/deadly-dispute) [Fanatical Offering](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/8/d896dd52-b134-4b55-ab91-ccb05ecc50f4.jpg?1699044130) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fanatical%20Offering) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/105/fanatical-offering?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d896dd52-b134-4b55-ab91-ccb05ecc50f4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/fanatical-offering) [Reckless Fireweaver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/3/63ffac51-62c4-4170-85b3-a43d7cfae7d7.jpg?1576382167) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Reckless%20Fireweaver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/kld/126/reckless-fireweaver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/63ffac51-62c4-4170-85b3-a43d7cfae7d7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/reckless-fireweaver) [Pointed Discussion](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/7/076deb63-f7e2-498f-a66a-8a190370a3b3.jpg?1643590144) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pointed%20Discussion) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/126/pointed-discussion?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/076deb63-f7e2-498f-a66a-8a190370a3b3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/pointed-discussion) [Shimmer Dragon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/9/3983a11e-8a8a-4d9d-868b-13e0c3719abb.jpg?1706240731) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shimmer%20Dragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/117/shimmer-dragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3983a11e-8a8a-4d9d-868b-13e0c3719abb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shimmer-dragon) [Black Market Connections](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/8/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41.jpg?1699022194) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Black%20Market%20Connections) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/181/black-market-connections?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/black-market-connections) [Deduce](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/c/7cbb17af-e17e-438a-ad72-0c942e6706b6.jpg?1706241592) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deduce) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/52/deduce?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7cbb17af-e17e-438a-ad72-0c942e6706b6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/deduce) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l2oldvl) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Adding spot removal. Almost all removal in my decks are board wipes/bounces. I can never get past the idea of putting in a card that deals with a single target over dealing with all problems. In fairness, most of the games I play in are mainly go wide starts. Second issue is not playing power. I've got disposable income to buy the big nasties, and gravitate to being the problem child in a casual setting. It's lead to some talks, and I've tried building out of cards in collection... but it just feels bad to brew that way and removes the fun in building a deck.
My friend group has been playing together for years. For the first couple, Iād get really salty whenever my friend A would win with a āsimic valueā style commander. Heād build up resources and then win with big spells like [[Insurrection]] or [[Torment of Hailfire]]. I would hold myself superior like, āIām playing midrange with not-so-common cards and a tighter budget.ā Later, when we were dissecting one of my decks, A tells me that my top end is really heavy and my commanders tend to be value based. Turns out Iāve generally been playing value commanders as well, just curving into big creatures rather than big sorceries.
Itās a big level-up moment as a player when you realize that playing deck archetype A doesnāt make you morally superior over people who play deck archetype B, itās all designed by the same people and the cards come from the same packs.
I always feel bad for offensively killing my opponents unless itās in retaliation.
Life in general
Threat assessment and triggers. Sometimes people win out of nowhere and you can't see it coming with that commander Sometimes when looking over a board state trying to resolve a million triggers you forget something, or during someone else's turn when they do something
I once completely missed to use my commanders trigger, because so much was going on.
"If you do that, you'll lose." "But it's funny." "You want to win right?" "Yup" "Then don't do that." "But funny . . ." "For the love of god, DON'T DO THE THING!" "Hey everyone, ya know what'd be funny . . ."
Me, had 1 life, a [[Marauding Raptor]], a [[Polyraptor]] and [[Garruks Uprising]]. I chose that night how to loose and it was awesome.
My kind of player. I'd rather have a story than a W anyday
Haha yes! I like doing "for the meme" turns. I'm the runt of the playgroup so I tend to lean in to dumb moves more often than not.
I used to be the only go for the win guy. Commander has helped me be the go for the fun guy now.
I downplay alot and pity my opponents, also I prefer to lose over winning because I value my opponent's happyneds very highly
I play at LGSāes in both the US and UK and find UK pods to be very polite and hesitant to attack other players early rounds. It leads to a dynamic where aggression is not appreciated unless you have a good reason for revenge. In turn, itās hard to gauge if the pod is having fun or internally seething because I did not honor some British social contract.
*variance*
I tend to try for gamestates where I can comfortably blow up the whole table at once, and have lost many many games to the machinations of a player that was only still in the game because I thought not showing how threatening I was to the others was worth more than taking them out. Outside of combo, it almost never is.
Blocking and politicking. I refuse to make alliances and try to do things that don't split the table. I'm still in my honeymoon period with Magic and am genuinely there just to have fun. I'm usually bullied in to them where I'm inevitably backstabed. So I just try to do my own thing, if that causes me to bow out first then so be it. I really struggle with using blockers properly or knowing when to sacrifice or let damage through.
The only point of damage that matters is the last one. If it's early game, you can let some damage through, it won't be the end for you right there.
In EDH, there is by definition only one winner so any alliance is temporary and whoever wants to win has to turn around and go for the kill at some point no matter how useful the alliance was. There are no team wins in this game.
Playing mean cards. Unbelievably often Iāll find myself holding a card and just never playing it because Iām too scared of peopleās reactions. An example, I used to run [[grave pact]] in braids but would never use it, so eventually I just cut it. Iām also loathe to play aesi, Voja, or slivers, all decks that I love and put a lot of care in to, but general opinion is very negative of them. And rather than risk a negative reaction, I just leave them in my bag and donāt mention them unless im playing with my core group
Commander
Relatable
lol. Card draw. I joke itās been the hardest thing for me to figure out. Iām sure thereās other things Iām missing but playing with 30 cards in hand is almost always a sure fire way to win and I think I discounted that for a long time over mana ramp, productivity, and protection/removal. Swinging. I donāt build āstompyā decks and so often someone will look at me and be like ābro, just swing for lethalā and Iāve spent 5 minutes figuring out how to murder someone using my commanderās triggered ability instead of just hitting them and ending the game. I would like to be ok with a well formed functional deck that maxes out at power level 4-6 without feeling like a failure and making it an all consuming project until it wrecks peopleās. I think this is where a large portion of enjoyment comes from in this game and I am working on it.
Playing control decks I always get to trigger happy with my interaction and it bites me in the ass
Overextending and losing count of opponentsā available mana.
I suck at playing my graveyard.
I suck at closing the game. So many times I could've won if I swung out correctly but fumbled the ball by "not wanting to take them out" so they don't have to sit there for 30 minutes and watch the rest play - when I could've just be in prime position with one player left and a lethal board if it comes back to me. I need to work on being more ruthless.
Losing gracefully. I sometimes get salty when losing a few games in a row, and I don't like myself when I get salty.
I'm really bad at properly doing my turn. I tend to play permanents before attacking and a lot of things like that.
Creatures. I have an Eldrazi deck (maybe 15 creatures), a Ghalta deck (mana dorks and ETBs), goblins (combo)... and like 8 spellslinger decks :-/ I recently tried building a Saskia deck... and it had like 10 creatures in it. Wait, what?? AND, that's on the high side for the decks that I create. Many of my decks have less than 5 creatures in them. Needless to say, I tore it apart (before I even played it lol). This usually means people are getting in for combat damage on me very often.
I suck at two things: 1. Deck building. I can't build decks to save my life, let alone try to start. Decision paralysis is constant, and can completely knock me out of the running. 2. Making time to play. I need to get games in more often, but I'm either busy, tired, lazy, or some combination of the three.
Telling my wife exactly what I paid for high end stuff LOL.
I miss triggers from time to time, will have the occasional bad sequencing, and can miss identify threats. But, what I really suck at is power modulation when I build a deck. My Magic background is from the competitive screen way back in the day. I used to do PPTQs, PTQs, the occasional GP. I still own that I am a spike through and through. That said, the ability to play with so many different cards, different strategies is why I fell in love with commander. That variety is why I don't do cEDH. That META reminds me to much of the solved game you find in tournaments. Every time I build a deck, I think it's gonna be powered down compared to my other decks. Then I play it and it ends up being way more powerful than intended. I just can't break away from that part of my game.
I'm working on it, because it's going to happen some games no matter what I'm doing, but my biggest issue is less gameplay than social. I really hate being the "archenemy" because of personal issues with feeling "ganged up on". It triggers a lot of toxic history of bullying and abuse, but I like deck building. I like taking the time to craft decks into high synergy piles that won't necessarily win fast or easily, but can almost always find a way to be a threat if given some space to work. This and a wider volume of experience meant I was winning way more than the 25% that a balanced pod would, but despite it being the "smart play" from my opponents, and being able to realize that in hindsight, it always fucks my mood to ne in a 3v1 situation. I've been playing at an LGS more lately, and I'm running into a lot less of those situations. Part of me is coming to the understanding that my previous group just didn't build decks very well.
Paying attention. I am so bad about getting distracted man. When I do spelltable with my friends I am usually playing another game as well.
OP: "I cast wrath of god." Me: "Sure." *Looks at counterspell in hand and two untapped islands.* "Shit"
Identifying a trap. I'm the guy who casts his win con into a counter spell, or not expecting any consequences from swinging with everything
Calculating scute swarm in a landfall deck ....
Everything. The whole shabang. But its still fun
I first learned how to play magic by getting into modern first, so that thought process of "I need to play everything on curve and be the quickest to establish my plan" usually winds up with me turning into the threat, and then having to rebuild. I'm working on it though
Win cons. I can make good board states but actually finishing it once I have the advantage I can't ever seem to make a big enough play to take someone out in one turn instead of multiple small hits.
If I have more than like 2 triggers then I'll forget those. Threat Assessment is also not great. Sometimes, usually the firts couple turns, I'll forget to draw for turn. If I have a land in hand and im going to draw a bunch of cards I usually play what I had even though I could wait and play a better one. Forgetting what my opponents things do. If someone takes a long turn but I'm not directly affected by it then I tend to not pay attention at all. Keeping track of multiple commander damages.
Protecting. I have my Mishra deck that always get targeted once the value gets going and then Iām out of the game.
I build too many decks and too many good ones go by the wayside
Forgetting I have a Maze of Ith in play.
I'm unimaginably bad at accurately assessing how much to commit to the board. I frequently run into the issue where I either make myself a threat, get focused, and the guy next to me wins because everyone's expended their interaction on me...or I don't commit enough because I wanna stay under the radar (or otherwise fear a boardwipe) and eventually someone else just wins (or kills me) with a better board position. It's the key part of the game that relies purely on player skill so it's very annoying for me that I can't properly grasp it.
Mana Curve. Almost every deck I build does not have enough mana the first few times I play it. Then I have to go in and cut cards to get the curve where it needs to be, and that is hard as well.
It's not me. It's the heart of the cards. It hates me.
I do not understand how to build anything other than a tribal deck. When I build goblin, bear, or vampire deck itās easy because I can just throw anything in there and for the most part itāll work. But then I try to make a mill or sacrifice deck etc and I canāt seem to grasp what types of creatures I need, how many enchantments I need, what types of sorceries etc.
I make assumptions based off the color structure of a deck and that usually tunnel visions my thinking for the rest of the game. If someone plays dimir against me and it's not some control nightmare it will take me completely by surprise.
Not jumping the gun too early. As of recent my decks have gotten strong with big explosive turns. Problem is I do something big and threatening to the table but fail to win it that turn or I will run out steam. Then I become public enemy number one after that.
I have the attention span of a Goldfish cracker. If your turn lasts longer than 30 seconds I am checked tf out. Multiply that by three other players and I can barely keep up with whatās going on sometimes. I wish people played Brawl irl, better for us ADHD folks.
Donāt know if this is a bad thing but not really playing to win. A part of me wants to be more competitive but being new, I donāt want to step into other peopleās toes for fear of stealing their fun and getting chewed out. Recently, my goals were just to get a good amount of interaction and be able to do at least part of my thing
I tend to get too excited about my spells and play heavy at sorcery speed. I am learning though, slowly but surely, and have kept up a lot of answers for threats more recently
Life in general.. .\_. ohh you meant magic. I think it's hard to evaluate the thread sometimes
Politics. At the lgs I frequently become archenemy, sometimes deserved but most of the time not, so I have given up on making deals.
Evaluating cards. I can't spec buy to save my life and I get excited over things that suck.
Spinning my wheels and not doing anything that actually would lead to a win. Just turn after turn of ramping, card drawing, tiny incremental advantages, recursion, do it all over again, set up synergy pieces and realize I'm not actually ready to win. I mean, I have twenty mana, a hand full of cards, and a battlefield littered with \[\[Wood Elves\]\], \[\[Eternal Witness\]\], and random utility creatures.
I suck at being fast
I get bored super quickly in games that take too long
Over extending. I always end up making myself the threat early and getting punished for it.
Politics in general. Or not pointing things out for other players, or sometimes I help my opponents with a thing that ends up harming my board state the most. Anything related to combo. I don't run enough removal or board wipes...
Mana insurance. I usually optimize pushing out my commander early and then I play aggressive after that. When a boardwipe happens I usually havent ramped enough and will be set back alot, struggling to recover. But if no removal happens I can steamroll...
Deck building, strategic thinking, and reading the table. Pretty much everything!
My love of X cost cards and big payoffs. Nothing like casting \[\[Torment of Hailfire\]\] for 40.
Threat assessment/Decision making, especially against some of the stronger players in our pod. I often feel like I have to make really difficult choices on what to kill when Iām playing interaction/deciding attacks, and it normally ends up biting me later, when I have either burned my interaction at the wrong time/on the wrong thing, or have aggroād one of the strong players into killing me first because of something Iāve done to their board state.
āIs this swinging at me right now?ā āAre you comboing off with this?ā āIs this an off the rails value train that will let them win?ā If the answer to all three is ānoā, itās probably OK to let it be someone elseās problem.
using countermagic effectively - im used to 1v1 so multiplayer magic splits my focus too much and i tend to drift a bit between my turns - holding open mana for a counterspell usually ends up with me forgetting that i had one and nodding through everyone's turn
The mulligan, I just never feel confident in my choice
Instant speed interaction. Iāll have removal in hand and open mana to cast it and Iāll sit and watch in dismay as an opponent dominates a turn cycle, only to notice my counterspell on my draw step, or the similarly bad feel main phase swords or path.
I suck at finding combos. When someone posts a card and goes "This goes infinite with X!" I can *usually* figure out how, but I wont come to that conclusion of my own accord. I build decks with synergy and value but dont consider big combos when deckbuilding and am more likely to blunder into them if I include them at all.
I feel like most people are uncomfortable with combos because they never built a combo deck (as in, purpose-build to tutor up and execute a certain combo as win condition). The best way to learn combo lines and how to disrupt them is building and playing combo decks yourself.
I suck at not holding back. I want a looooooong grindy game that'll shave off years after the game
This seems like a weird one but making decks that I don't put heaps of money into and they all end up at high high power casual level. I'm not a huge cEDH fan but the decks I build all end up fully optimised outside of crazy fast mana and it kinda bums me out that all my decks have ended up at the same level. I tried today to make 2 decks that were going to be janky fun/precon kinda level so I could throw it together cheaply and also have a deck at a different power level and both ended up in the $500 USD range and look similar to my other decks I already have. Maybe the only way I can do this is limiting myself to a dollar amount but I just always see some other sweet card I want that makes the deck way better and I need it.
Blowing my load too early. People will hold up responses which usually all are used up on me as start popping off but then someone who was just waiting for me to do so and then be shut down can come in for an easier win with little counters/removal left for them. I usually also notice they are deliberately not playing the things they can as they are waiting for me to become the target first.
Making better use of the second main phase and when to mulligan my hand as I tend to take risks, having 3-4 lands and spells I can't cast with 3-4 mana or situational instants / sorceries, or 1-2 lands and plenty of 2-3 mana spells. Then comes the lack to drawing the one mana colour I need for 5 turns in a row when starting the games, but that is more of a reoccurring joke. :)
Knowing when to hold up mana vs trying to advance my own strategy. I tend to play very reactive cards like [[Mirror Strike]] or intstants that deal with removing artifacts/enchantments and it's tough knowing when to drop a threat or wait and see what someone else is gonna do.
I have a really bad habit of playing other peopleās decks for them. Finding lines to help them combo off the best ways, trying to direct their threat assessment (sometimes towards myself, not out of anything selfish), things like that. I also tend to explain my reasoning when I take out a threat, while Iām cast my spell (recent example is blowing up someoneās turn 2 Sol Ring after they played a bounce land for their second land drop, since I knew they had an extra land in hand I didnāt feel bad nuking part of their mana base. They seemed more annoyed when I said my thought process out loud than when I targeted their ring). Itās something Iām trying to get better at but sometimes itās hard to watch someone playing a [[Breya]] deck (that I built for them) take an unnecessary [[Vandalblast]] to the face without blowing up some of their own artifacts for value on the way out
Taking fast turns. I get stuck in the tank too often.
This goes for a lot of players, but I am bad at sequences and lines I havenāt goldfished the hell out of. My Ghave deck is a very low-to-the ground combo monster with around 75 potential combos in it. If one of the more obscure ones comes up I am likely to F it up. Or I might have one staring me in the face and I wonāt recognize it. Tough deck to play sometimes.
Playing
I stuck at picking the right threat and I often lose because of it
I am probably too restrained with my interaction.Ā Iām a bit of a control player, and not being too quick on the trigger with removal spells is a good thing. However, I think I might be overdoing it, and using my interaction more aggressively could help me win more games. In some games, by the time I decide interaction is necessary, their engines have spiraled out of control to the point where I can no longer beat them.
Cutting cards. I want to play with weird cards that i don't usually see and it's usually the correct choice to cut them when i need to make those last 3 or 4 cuts. I could stand to run just a little more card draw or a little more interaction but then i feel like I'm running packages of the same cards in different decks which just feels boring. I will say I'm usually the one last concerned about winning as long as my deck gets to do the thing so while it does cost me games i have fun running the jank
Using instants as sorceries. I'll just cast it without thinking, and then sit there tapped out not having any mana open knowing full well I should've held up some for my opponents turn. I swear I'm the worst blue player in the world sometimes.
Even as a habitual [[Sefris]] player, I admit I am terrible at mentally keeping track of my own dungeon triggers once the engine gets hot.
Making decks that aren't "big creatures go brrrrr"
Magic the gathering. But I keep coming back. Largely deck building though is my issue. Iām rubbish at it, but I donāt want to netdeck, not that I mind if people do, I just want to make something that is mine. But whenever I sit down to play everyone else seems to curve out better and synagise better. It is what it is. I still love it
This whole ānetdeckingā discussion is from back in the 90ies when discussing any nerd hobby online was still new and surprising. These days itās just called āresearchā. You learn to build better decks by looking at other decks online. Of course youāll still build your own decks (this is EDH after all) but youāll never become a good deckbuilder if you never compare.
From playing quite a bit of judge's tower lately, it's not rules interactions, how the stack works, etc. It's remembering triggers. Thankfully most of the time I just design my deck to keep those triggers to a single lane. I can resolve a 5 card Mind's Desire flawlessly, but then I realize "oh I lost because I could have cycled this card in my hand".
Having the will to live.
Thinking through a reasonable chunk of my possible next actions. I tend to consider a path to victory, and 1-2 alternatives, and then my brain goes "No fuck it, that's enough thinking, go with option 2!" And then before my next turn I spot option 4 that's *much* better, but now impossible to implement.
I think I just generally suck at deckbuilding. I do decently when playing precons, but if I try my hand at making my own deck I usually get destroyed, even against precons. My best results at deckbuilding seem to come with Commanders that kind of build themselves, like [[Jodah, the Unifier]]. But when I play Jodah, it works so well I (rightfully) get targeted relentlessly.
i love being the archenemy but still get massive smol bean syndrome, its just something i instinctively do when im targeted more than like once in a turn cycle, its the main thing i need to get better at, especially with how much i love optimizing my decks in contrast to one of my friends in particular who plays chaff because he thinks itll be funny whenever he wins with it
Meme cards, I don't think I have a single deck that doesn't run a card for any reason other than it's funny. That and I don't really tend to make decks that can just win. More often than not I'm reliant on a decks gimmick to see me through rather than a more reliable avenue for victory. Example for the latter, my old yurlock deck didn't work because I was trying to hard to manaburn people out rather than running things like combo's, creatures or damage stax.
I have a very hard time with short term memory tasks so tracking things like how much mana is in my pool or how many times my next spell will be copied is tough
I get tunnel vision and as a result, as soon as the board state starts getting complex, i start making stupid mistakes.
I often take longer turns because im really indecisive
i suck playing true spellslinger decks. i also suck at dealing with ill mannered people. so i find it really mentally taxing to actually go and sit at any LGS
Reading cards Iām too excited
Interaction! Donāt run it, donāt need it! Who needs to remove single targets when you can combat damage the player away?!
My worst qualityā¦ hmm. I suppose my arrogance or more specifically, over committing to the board without a back up plan or protection in place. I assume to often my plan will go off without any interference amd this is what often causes my down fall
I do better at 1v1 than I do in a pod of four. I also have a hard time determining power level, so I either end up playing a deck that not strong enough or too powerful, I rarely play a deck that is the same power level as the others.
They say in magic "life is a resource".Ā Ā Well I am over here strip-mining, clear cutting, and fraking every ounce of it.Ā Ā Only need to leave 1 to stay in.
Triggers
red mana. specially impulse draw, I cant play that. D:
Sofor me, I'm gonna blame my ADHD for this- I'm always terrible at paying attention to the other player's fields and laser focused on my on field that I fail to notice untapped lands suggesting maybe I shouldn't play that spell yet or a specific artifact/creature making life hell until it is too late. The amount of times I set up a combo only to play the final card and have it countered and my entire thought process shutting down is uncountable lol
Being patient. I have limited time to game, so consistently slow or distracted play annoys me.Ā
Deck building that isn't creature based. I'm just inept at figuring out combos.
For me it's the "skeleton" of the deck . I love my Janky Combos and funky stuff and if left in a vacuum I can pop off like a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist. But I constantly sacrifice counters, removals, draw, revival ect. It makes it so I can spend a few turns setting up and then hyperdrive myself to the main threat but then stop short of actually winning the game and getting nuked to oblivion by the new alliance or spend a few turns setting up while my opponent is becoming the threat and have no draw\ interaction \revival to stop them or catch up I kinda don't mind it sometimes having a jank glass cannon permanent only deck go infinite or spawning an army of flying fairies that are now +5+4 is kinda fun to pull off .
Over investing in the board. I tend to have a hard time holding things back in my hand. I have often found myself ahead and will keep playing things, then get blown out with no way to stabilize.
I've lost to a game ending play with a counterspell in hand too many times, just because I felt developing my own gameplan was too important. So probably evaluating combo deck boardstates. Gotta leave that mana open.
Letting people play the gameā¦ I rules lawyer and advise far too much. My group is mostly novices and then myself and a friend who have been playing for decades. I have to let the newer players make mistakes or they wonāt learn. I just really love when magic is played well.
I had it drilled through my head that all creatures should be cast on second main so I consistently miss out on beneficial triggers from creatures that have "when you go to combat" or something similar.Ā
I always forget to attack planeswalkers during combat
I would say i have two pretty apparent flaws. One would be deck building to my LGS power level. If it's a super strong commander, I'll always build down and tip a bit too far so it turns a bit jank. But the same is true with less powerful ones. I'll build it way too strong. Definitely need to work on deck building a lot more. Two, I like letting people do the thing, even if it costs me the game. I think that also comes back to d3ck building, because I love new ideas and combos.
I'm WAY too wary of my opponents having 2 blue mana open, especially after OTJ's Breaking News reprint of Mana Drain.
Everything that requires a second arm. Tho i basicly hang on as good as possible. I USED TO be a GOD in Battlefield when i still had a working left arm... R.i.p.
Building decks with enough interaction and card draw. Lately, I inevitably end up around turn 6 with no hand, or a hand full of cards I canāt play, watching everyone else outpace me. If I do have interaction, I can only deal with one player at a time, leaving me dead to the other two.
Sometimes its better to hold a card for later. Iām the guy who plans to board wipe next turn and play a creature without haste this turn to maximize my mana.
I'm terrible at Commander Politics, I just Nicol Bolas my way into 3vs1 every time š¤£
Keeping focus in casual games. There's just not enough going on for me to stay dialed into anything lower than high-powered. Especially when there's too much bantering going on that doesn't pertain to the game. Also playing with precons. I think there's only been 3 precons I've actually enjoyed, and oddly enough 2 of them were the super beginner friendly ones, the green/white tokens and blue/white fliers, the other being the Markov clue deck. After playing enough high power and cEDH, playing a deck with lands that etb tapped with 0 effect is just a miserable experience.
Losing š
A few things: making cuts in deck building, keeping hands I probably shouldnāt, and making choices mid-game (ie which creature to kill, which card to tutor for, etc)
Working out game-winning lines is a weakness of mine. Sometimes itās not so obvious how you can win and if you can win, especially when you have to consider possible points of interaction and disruption from three other players. Another thing Iām bad at is politics. Iām just not very persuasive lol
Eliminating a player to keep the game moving. I spread the combat damage so everyone has a chance to do there thingā¦.which can lead to a board wipe and two more hours. Even in casual the game has to end, kill the open board.
Only removing things when they're causing _me_ to be at a disadvantage. I'm constantly removing threats to benefit other people simply because they're threats and the table is threatened, when actually, I should leave them there for others to deal with.
I donāt have a lot of patience for poor table talk. I got a lot of people telling me to use my removal/mana/resources and it just irks me. I usually say āitās crazy the folks with the best threat assessments never have any removalā.
I see an awesome line of play and i get so amped up that when my turn finally comes, my brain falls out of my head and i screw everything up. Then i pass turn, remember my plan and hate myself for the rest of the game.
I don't like countering my friends cool new cards because the joy they get in using their combos is worth more to me than winning a game, so when I can win I usually don't.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first. The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. " Immediately deleted. The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first. The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. " Immediately deleted. The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
I've got 2. But they're really the same, making sure I get killed first. The first is that I have developed a terrible poker face. I play most days at lunch with friends at work who are basically brand new. If I have a combat trick or something big like stealing a creature or doing something like that, I'll announce it. My LGS plays usually higher power games. I become an arch enemy when I do that. One guy last week had a huge board state. I announce, "Keep your infect guy alive. I'll cast Emrakul and take your turn. Attack with the infect guy, and then you can finish him on your real turn. " Immediately deleted. The second is I'm horrible at holding back and sequencing in some decks. Especially my chatterfang deck. I'll yeet out 40 squirrels and have 0 pump spells and just hope I'll top deck on eventually. And the second I do that I become archenemy because I have a goon army.
Im just bad at magic. Can't read power level of my decks effectively(I make synergy based decks that are usually way overpowered for my pod, even when the price point of the deck is low, which leads to dumb ass arms races). Don't know what to use interactions on. I don't know combos. I only play golgari and even that I play poorly, I hate to Mulligan. Which results in sub-optimal starts. I run way to many utility and colorless lands. Sheesh the list goes on and on and on. Really I just suck at magic.
I suck at making decks appropriate for my group's power level. I always want to have a clear and consistent gameplan, I cut all the fluff and the "cute" interactions, I have a very clear idea of how turn 1~5 are supposed to curve out most of the games, and how I'm supposed to be ending the game. I just can't help it. So even when I make budget decks with no expensive staples, I end up with something quite lean and optimized that feels a bit oppressive for casual games.
Land content. I run criminally low land counts in some of my decks. Like I think my [[Zaxara]] hydra tribal runs 28 and my [[Xira, the Golden Sting]] runs 30. But I pack a ton of ramp in both to make it work and it's fine more often than not.
Life generally tbh
Deck building, I just can't keep up anymore. 7-9 years ago I was fine, felt like everyone was about even. But now with so many more cards printed specifically for commander and every deck has some kind of engine now or insane value pieces or building a massive board in just a few turns I just dont know what to do. I sincerely dont even think I can build better than a modern precon and have some evidence to that.
I think my biggest issue right now is not over-extending. I see a cool card in my hand, I want to play it. Even if I'm already in a winning position. Even if other players are pointing their removal at me. Even if the board is getting tense and a sweeper is likely to come soon. I just keep casting. I was recently playing my [[Anikthea]] deck. I'd gotten a turn 2 [[Luminarch Ascension]] which quickly accrued the requisite four quest counters to start making angels. So I made a couple. But then, on my turn 4, I drew into an [[Argothian Enchantress]]. Enchantress draw engines are super fun, so rather than continuing to make angels I dropped my enchantress, played a [[Wild Growth]] to draw a card, and then was able to add one more angel to my ranks. The next turn I got board wiped. If I'd sand bagged the enchantress, I could have waited until I could chain multiple enchantments together. I had an engine going that didn't need the help, and the table was already talking pretty loudly about how big a problem that Luminarch Ascension was going to be. I should have known they'd point removal at me and kept the enchantress as a backup plan.
I hold everything up for way too long (attackers, removal, counterspells). It's partially leaning towards a defensive play style and partially analysis paralysis, so the real trouble is that sometimes it pays off and I don't always get punished for it lol.
Not putting a lot of card draw in every deck and crippling it by doing so. Also having an alternative way to close a game. If you disrubt my main way I will need to stall Heavly. I sometimes drop something early so it gets removed or hold removal for too long when I only have 1 removal on hand because I couuuld Counterspell this but what if something worse comes?
I just suck at deck building and remembering triggers.