A Village Revel by Jan Steen (1673). Polulkranos by Karl Kopinski.
These posts have been getting longer and longer, and this week I found myself running out of steam a little more than usual.
It's not that I couldn't think of anything EDH-related to write about, but the topic I had started wasn't inspiring me the way some of my recent topics have. Then I saw a post on Facebook by someone who has worked tirelessly for the EDH community. He had been dealing with a few too many internet trolls and while he certainly hadn't reached the breaking point, he wanted to remind us all of why we play this game - because we love it.
So without further ado, I decided that as a small way of thanking him for all the work he has done for EDH players I would share a list of 10 things I love about EDH.
The Singleton Format
I am a player who doesn't play any 60 card formats. I do buy boosters, and occasionally a box or fatpack. I draft, though I don't enjoy limited that much. I've opened enough boosters that I've got my fair share of stories about great pulls. I opened a Masterpiece Crucible of Worlds once. I opened a foil Show & Tell, about which I'll be sharing a story in weeks to come.
Every time I open a booster and find a great card, it's uplifting. It feels great.
EDH, as you know, is a singleton format, so you can only play one of any card outside of basic lands.
I never, ever open a booster pack, see a $20 card and think "Wow. If I want to play this in my Modern deck, I'll need to scrounge up $60 bucks to complete my playset."
If I were playing Standard or Modern, I could afford to pay that kind of money to fill out a playset, but that's not the point. I really love never having any negativity seep into my thoughts when I open up a pack and find a fantastic card. It may seem like a silly thing to feel so strongly about, but I LOVE the singleton format for that reason.
I also love the variety of cards you wind up putting into your deck and the research you have to go to in order to build up a decent deck. Singleton encourages us to do extra work to find janky, weird cards from the old sets. In turn, this results in more interesting decks.
If Standard or Modern were a singleton format, I might seriously consider dipping my toes into it. That's never going to happen, but if it did, I'm not even kidding. Singleton would probably be far more viable in Modern than Standard, but I'd give either one a shot.
Casual Play
When you play competitively, you are playing for prizes. You are paying in at the beginning and you are hoping to win something more than just the game at the end. When I say that I love casual play, I specifically mean that there is nothing on the line. You don't have to pay in, and if you win you get nothing more than a good story and a feeling of pride and accomplishment from having won.
Every Magic format can be played casually. Casual play isn't unique to EDH but in my experience, at the LGS I call home, EDH is a the one format where you can play in a weekly league where there is no fee and no prize structure. Sure, you can show up with friends and play anything you like but in terms of store-sponsored gatherings this is it.
I LOVE casual play for many reasons.
If someone brings a ridiculously overpowered deck and gives you a beating to end all beatings, all you're out is your pride and your time. When you're also out $5 or $10, I've found that it's much, much easier to get salty about a loss.
If the only thing that's in the balance is my time, my enjoyment and my pride, I feel freer to play mid-range decks. I love to play a variety of decks but if there's money on the line I'm going to be much less willing to throw it away by playing a mid-range build against decks that might (or might not) be ridiculously strong.
Variance
I LOVE variance. I also hate variance at times, but that's all part of playing in a 100 card format.
So why is variance on my list? It's complicated, but let me try to explain. Skip past the italicized text if you REALLY aren't into sports. Seriously. It's OK.
I grew up in Boston. I'm a Red Sox fan, and was 6 years old when the Cincinnati Reds beat the Sox in the '75 world series. It was utterly heartbreaking, but I wasn't quite old enough to be following the team. In '78 I was old enough to experience what it was like to watch Bucky "Bleeping" Dent's home run. In '86 I was a Senior in High School, and was at the right age to truly learn the anguish of being a Red Sox fan, when Bill Buckner had our hopes and dreams for a World Championship dribble between his legs and up the first base line into shallow right field. It should go without saying that I was aghast at Grady Little when he left Pedro on the mount in 2003, but all that heartache isn't variance.
Variance is seeing the Sox come back from 3 games down against the New York Yankees in 2004.
Variance is watching the Patriots win yet another super bowl after losing our QB for the first quarter of the season, losing a first round draft pick, being unjustly (IMHO) accused of cheating, and then being down by over 3 touchdowns going into the second half of the Super Bowl.
If you aren't into sports and all that is lost on you, or if you're not from Boston and a mere mention of the Patriots is one too many, let me put it in plainer terms. I won't even go on about the roulette wheel that is New England weather - let's talk Magic.
Variance is having a run of bad Narset triggers, and then finally having that game where everything goes right, and each of your triggers gives you great cards that are wonderfully backbreaking and eventually win you the game.
Variance is minimizing the number of tutors you run because excitement isn't playing a deck that always does the same thing, or nearly always wins. Excitement is not knowing how your deck will perform, even if it is a good deck, and having those runs of bad luck followed up by a run of good luck.
What does that have to do with EDH specifically?
With 100 cards and the singleton format restriction, it's fairly easy to wind up with decks that have runs of "bad luck" and "good luck". Maybe that's also true in other formats, but EDH has always felt slightly more prone to this than any other constructed format in Magic.
I don't love to lose, but I never want winning to come so easily that it loses all excitement and becomes expected.
That, in a nutshell, is why I love variance.
Variety
Some formats in Magic get "solved". This means that players figure out what the most powerful decks are given the available pool of cards, and because of those decks' success, they become heavily played and dominate the format's landscape. This is most prevalent in Standard, but every format has its' dominant decks.
EDH players build decks to win.
They also build decks because they found a weird commander that they want to build around.
They build decks to troll other players.
They build decks to try to get a specific combo to work.
They build decks to express themselves.
They build decks because they have a pile of cards and a legendary and figure they might as well build an EDH deck out of them.
They also buy, use and tweak pre-constructed decks.
Maybe all of this is true about other formats, but the unique nature of having a commander always available and the lure of building decks around your commander's abilities seems to result in a greater variety of decks than in any other format. As an example, I don't know of another format where you could realistically sit down at a table against a group hug deck, a voltron deck, a stax deck and a pre-con, have never played against any of the first 3 commanders, and not have any idea who is probably going to win in the end.
I've played a lot of EDH over the past three years and I couldn't begin to list all the decks I've played against.
I LOVE that kind of variety - it makes each game fresh and interesting and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Shenanigans
There's nothing I love more than EDH games that have lots of twists and turns on the way to the eventual end where someone comes out on top. Not knowing what is going to happen next is fun and exciting and can result in some truly memorable games.
Those twists and turns are often the results of shenanigans.
My favorite kind of shenanigan is the combat trick.
Swinging in with some pesky little creature and turning an otherwise inconsequential exchange into a win is just too much fun. I LOVE the suspense of first wondering if I'll get my attacker through, and then wondering if my combat trick will succeed. Getting a reputation for playing decks that have tricks up their proverbial sleeves does mean that folks get wary of letting you swing on them.
That doesn't make it any less fun.
I run cards like Tainted Strike in decks that include black both to try to turn my attack into a win AND because I long someday to cast it on an attack between two of my opponents.
To steal a kill from what would otherwise have been just a big hit using Tainted Strike is something I haven't yet pulled off, but someday I will. It might not make my opponents real happy, but to my possibly twisted mind, it would be slightly hilarious.
Of course, combat tricks aren't just offensive.
A well-timed fog or Deflecting Palm can turn the tide of a game just as well.
I lost a game playing my Narset deck at a table with another Narset deck that cost about three times what my deck cost. I was blowing up and he was pretty much stuck with no boardstate.
I already had lethal unblockable commander damage on anyone I wanted.
I got greedy.
I dropped Dictate of the Twin Gods and swing on him, and he used Deflecting Palm to kill me.
It was beautiful. It was hilarious.
I shook his hand and had only myself to blame.
I LOVE shenanigans, even (though slightly less so) when they are used against me.
While they exist in every format, I think combat tricks have a special place in our format. Maybe it's the length of the games. Maybe it's the variety of decks or the fact that we play lots of multiplayer games, but combat tricks always seem to spice up games and can turn good matches into great ones.
Breaking the Color Wheel
In Standard the card pool is fairly limited. In Modern it's greater, but you still don't have every set ever released at your disposal for building your deck. In Commander the sky is the limit. You can assemble your deck with cards from Aether Revolt, Shards of Alara and even Homelands if you're pretty sure nobody is running Apocalypse Chime.
What that means is that for the truly intrepid deckbuilder, the normal restrictions of the color wheel no longer apply.
Well, it's not that they don't apply, but that you can get around them with enough research and planning.
Are you playing a deck with no green or white?
Would you like to fog?
Run Darkness.
Are you not playing blue?
Would you like to counter a spell anyways?
In white you can run Lapse of Certainty.
In black you can run Withering Boon.
In red you can run Red Elemental blast and by adding green, Guttural Response is now an option.
Sure, all of these are bad and restrictive compared to the wealth of options for counterspells blue brings to the table. That doesn't mean they aren't going to be useful someday in the right circumstances.
I fondly remember getting into a young player's head once.
I was playing mono-red Purphoros, and earlier in the game, I had asked a player to wait while he asked for responses to a spell to consider whether or not I wanted to counter it. In red. Mono-red. I didn't counter the spell, but I did have Burnout in my hand. For the rest of the game this kid told me he was "tilted" and couldn't get his head around this old dude playing mono-red who was ready to counter the next big spell he wanted to cast.
My favorite experiences in EDH might be the few times I've been able to win counterspell battles with blue players. You get some big threat out, they counter it. You use burnout on their counter. Someone else counters your burnout. You fork that counter. Someone counters your Fork. You then Reiterate that counterspell. Even if you wind up losing the battle, the entire table gets into the moment and everyone is whooping and hollering over the back and forth of the exchange.
Trust me that it's a great feeling, and when I occasionally win a counterspell battle... well, there's no breaking of the color wheel I LOVE more than that.
Camaraderie
That feeling of everyone whooping and hollering over an exciting back-and-forth in an EDH game?
You don't get that much in one-on-one games.
I don't think you get that much in games where there's money in the balance either.
In casual multiplayer games you get shifting alliances and a constantly changing political landscape. You get broken promises and payback. You get grudges and friendship seeping into players' decision-making.
Take all that chaos and turmoil and with enough time it turns into something else.
It turns into camaraderie.
The abuse you took last weekend will turn into payback on some future day. If things aren't eternally one-sided and over time everyone gets a few wins in, you wind up with something far greater than just wins and losses.
Magical Christmasland
If you've played much EDH at all, you should be familiar with Magical Christmasland. It's that place where all your dreams come true, all the plans you made for your deck work, all the broken combinations of cards you build find their way onto the battlefield at once, and victory becomes nearly inevitable.
No format is quite as good as EDH at creating truly ridiculous battlefields.
With 40 life, you have more time to build a ridiculous board.
With more than one opponent, there are more possible answers to every threat, and a greater chance that things will draw out long enough for the train to roll into Stupidtown.
Part of making dumb things happen is having the foresight to build your decks with the potential to truly blow up.
You can't trigger Mayael on everyone else's turn using Seedborne Muse without putting both into the deck and having the temerity to play them even when may not have ways to protect them. Maybe half of the time you'll run into a counterspell and of the times you don't, someone will usually have removal. You don't count on the times that your plan won't work - you play your combo anyways for those rare times when it will work and you will be able to do some truly broken stuff.
Truly great deckbuilders and EDH players will find ways to protect their plans and will find their way to Magical Christmasland more often, but it's a place we all want to go.
If you don't build your decks with some kind of plan to develop a ridiculous board or combo, I highly recommend you start doing so.
You may not "get there" often, but if you keep at it, you will and it will feel fantastic.
The Deep Well
Magic is a complex game.
Playing with cards from every Magic set ever released, in a casual format in which self-expression is sometimes as important as competitiveness, it can feel like there is no end to the variety of cards you might see in a given game.
With this in mind, seeing a card played, remembering what it does, and then keeping its presence on the board in mind every time you make a decision on what you are going to do on your turn or in your combat, is no easy feat.
A single commander might lead to a certain optimal build for a deck, but for better or worse, EDH doesn't really work like that. If you play enough games of commander with enough different players, you will see a variety of interpretations of any given deck. I've seen Narset voltron, Narset tokens and Narset chaos, and I've even joked about building Narset Group Hug. Just being familiar with a legendary creature doesn't necessarily mean you know what someone's deck is going to be like to play against.
In terms of deck types, you have voltron, stax, combo, mill, chaos, wheel, group hug, group slug, tokens, landfall, tribal, and surely other types of decks that I haven't seen, haven't played against and maybe nobody has even thought up yet. With 100 cards and nearly every card ever made available to us, the possibilities are limitless.
There is an awful lot to learn about Magic and about EDH. The more you think you know, the more it seems there is to learn and as every new set of cards gets released you get to try to figure out how those cards will fit into the context of the entire history of Magic The Gathering in order to see how you can use them in your decks.
If that isn't enough, it should go without saying that EDH is a "social format".
What that means is that we're not playing against a single opponent. We have a table full of personalities to attempt to get along with, intimidate, manipulate, or in rare cases try to not get driven crazy by, all while playing your game of Commander. Sometimes the struggle is to not react to somebody who just always seems to get under your skin. Sometimes the challenge is to play fairly with someone you will have to share a ride home with, walking the line between targeting them enough to play effectively and not targeting them so much that they are pissed off at you for the rest of the weekend. Some players are also more prone to saltiness than others, and some have long memories and hold grudges.
One of my favorite plays in EDH is not even a card you play or an attack you make - it is the the Jedi mind trick.
There have been moments in EDH games where I have been able to take a player who was mulling over a decision and push them into doing what I want them to do. Let's say that they have a counterspell in hand and are considering using it to stop another player from playing a spell. I have a bomb I want to drop, so I want to get that counter out of their hand really badly. The trick is to say, in as calm, collected and convincing a manner as possible, that they really should counter "that spell". It's the only sensible thing to do and we'll all be in real trouble if they don't do it. You basically do a variation of Obi-Wan's "These are not the droids you're looking for..." to make it seem like the only rational course of action is the one you secretly want them to take for your own advantage. In truth, I don't care a bit about that other spell - I just care about the counterspell they're holding up. Maybe they would have cast it anyways, and maybe it was the right decision for them given what they know about the current boardstate, but being able to convincingly push them over that edge and get that countespell out of their hand is a super sweet feeling.
What's my point with all this "Jedi mind trick" business?
When you think you know everything about Magic, you have to stop and realize that in EDH you also need to learn how to deal with people. You don't have to manipulate them, but I think you should learn how to foster a healthy playgroup and play in such a way that everyone looks forward to playing with you. Playing the cards and playing the players are very different things.
Learning to play the table is in many ways just as hard as learning to play the cards.
Of course, if you are good with the cardboard and you are good with people, you have to remember that you also have to deal with yourself. You will have hopes and dreams, expectations and fears. Your experience of the game may be calm and collected or a roller coaster of emotions. Your own personality is something you will have learn how to deal with as it's the one thing you will bring to every table and every game. There is no escaping yourself.
I've been playing for a few years now. I think I'm pretty smart and fairly good with people. I struggle with being optimistic after a run of bad losses, and sometimes feel bad for my opponents if I have too overwhelming a win. I have my own demons and my own weaknesses and I do my best to be the kind of player that other players would like to play against. That doesn't mean I always succeed at that.
So when I say I LOVE the fact that EDH is a deep well, I mean to say that it is the deepest of wells that Magic possibly has to offer. We are playing with the most players, the most cards, the greatest variety of decks, and when we think we're good at dealing with the cardboard we also have to learn how to get along with the people and how to be the best player we can possibly be.
If you love a good challenge, EDH is that in spades, all day long and twice (if you're lucky) on Sundays.
Stories
I started this blog in no small part because I like to tell stories.
I love telling some less experienced player about some crazy thing I was able to do with the commander they just built a deck around.
I love telling friends about the crazy stuff I was able to do the previous weekend.
I love trying to inspire other players to have long, fun, crazy, rollercoaster games with as many twists and turns as a Russian noval, and an ending so amazing nobody could have predicted it.
I love my story of winning with Hellkite Chargera and Bear Umbra after spending an entire game with practically no board, no hope, no fun, and the gloomiest look on my face.
I love my story of losing a game to a group hug deck that had never won because he was able to put my life up to 21 and return my own Transcendence - just used to kill another opponent - back to my board, killing me instantly.
I love that you all have stories of your own, and you probably love to share them with your friends as much as I love to share mine with my friends.
Final Thoughts
I was going to wax poetic about the role our Facebook and Reddit admins play as the most important line of defense against internet trolls.
I hate trolls.
The thing is, they aren't worth even the words I just wrote about them.
Not everyone has the fortitude and the patience to put up with what is involved in running a social media group.
It's more work than most of us realize, and far more work than most of us would be willing to put in, even for a something we love like EDH.
This article is dedicated to Andrew Webber, Diego Jimenez, Josue Ibarra, the moderators of /r/EDH and everyone who works to bring EDH players together both online and in real life.
Communities matter, and you help us make our communities stronger and healthier every single day, and for that I thank you.
So what do YOU love about EDH? Tell us in comments on the Reddit or Facebook threads for this post!
Facebook (I'm not sure how to link to the post directly, but it's in these groups...)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/magicthegatheringcommander/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/MTG.EDH.COMMANDER/