The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562). Lord of the Accursed by Grzegorz Rutkowski.
For a while now I've been aware of a system by which some players keep binders of valuable cards and put placeholders for those cards in their EDH decks. When they draw a placeholder, they grab the real card out of the binder and play it instead of the placeholder card. I've never seen it in person, but the topic was covered in depth in a recent episode of the excellent EDH podcast "Commanderin". They interviewed Vincent Truong, who is apparently the starter of this trend. I'm including a link to the episode below for reference.
While I listened to Vincent get heaped with praise for his pioneering of this clever practice, I found myself getting more and more annoyed. Commander is a fun game and in general I don't get that annoyed by stuff.
I lose plenty of games, even to grossly overpowered decks, and I do my best to take it in stride. Destroy our table in 10 minutes with your Prossh in round one of our EDH league and we'll just play some pickup games until the other tables are done. No harm. No foul.
I may rib you a big about your overpowered deck, but it's meant in good humor and if it becomes a problem for me, I'll adjust my own decks until I can cope with yours. I try really hard not to get mad, but listening to Vincent, I was really getting annoyed. So what was going on? Why was I getting cranky listening to the podcast host talk to Vincent about his binder method? He isn't using it against me, nor is he using it in the league I run. Why was it bothering me so much? Your Kitchen Table What you do in your casual games really doesn't matter to me. You can play with no banlist, or with a 500 card banlist. You can still call it Commander, though I'm not sure I'd agree with you. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I think. Have your binder system. Fill your deck with Pokemon cards, scribble the names of all the Power Nine onto them and play those if it makes you happy. I really don't care. What I do care about is when folks are promoting play methods that some players might bring into the league I run with the misunderstanding that it's OK and everyone does it. Your Pikachu will not be allowed to represent a Tabernacle of Pendrell Vale, thank you very much, and if you have a problem with that, sorry not sorry. You need to get a clue and play with real cards. Still, I find myself wondering what it was about Vincent's interview that bugged me so much. I found his placeholder binder method quite repellent. MTGO
It's worth noting that this system may be a natural result of players playing online.
I don't play MTGO. I have a Mac Laptop, and don't care enough to get a PC so that I can play online. I also really love the social side of the game and while I could imagine getting into Magic The Gathering Online, I've also heard enough stories of salt and bugs that I'm hesitant to give it a serious try.
When you add in the fact that I am not a fan of paying money for things I won't actually own, it's unlikely I'll ever try it. I don't "buy" On Demand movies from my cable provider. I'll pick up a DVD or Blu-Ray but I'm not going to pay money for something that will go away if I change cable providers. If I "buy" MTGO cards and MTGO goes away, they're obviously not going to send me actual copies of the cards. I think the development of the "placeholder binder" system is a natural offshoot of MTGO. It's a logical next step.
Online I only need to own one copy of a card because I only need to own one of each card when building my EDH decks. The online app does the work of putting the card into whatever deck I'm currently playing. Obviously, that's not literally what is happening, but the reality is that you're building a library of cards and creating decks to play using that library. Wizards chose to shortcut the deck assembly process by just letting you create decks without treating the cards as if they were actual objects. You don't have a card to put in a deck, you essentially have the right to use a card in any deck you want to play. It makes complete sense and is probably essential to being able to complete against other online TCG games. Sloth I don't play MTGO. I play for real, with real cards and real decks - sometimes weak decks and sometimes strong decks.
Most MTGO players play "in paper" as well, and supplement their play with MTGO. As a result, they are probably better players than I, with a clearer understanding of phases and the stack. I've been led to believe MTGO helps with that - possibly a lot. Some players don't like to play with proxies of cards they don't own. It creates the potential for insane power creep, where everyone has all the best cards ever. Again - at your kitchen table you should do what makes you happy. I like to play with real cards. I have some good cards. I've got a Maze of Ith. It generally goes into whatever deck I'm playing for League that month. I've got other good cards as well. They are in a variety of decks and I try to put them in the decks that make the most sense. My Damnation is in Zurgo Helmsmasher. My Doubling Season is currently in Ghave. These cards are so good, they could easily belong to multiple decks. If I'm playing a game and I really care about bringing my best build to the table for that game, I do this super amazing thing. I take the time to swap around cards putting my really good cards in that deck so that if I am lucky enough to draw them, I get to play them.
It doesn't take that long, isn't that much effort, and I never, ever have an opponent looking at me with furrowed brows wondering what the hell I'm doing with these crappy, scribbled-on placeholders and this weird binder that apparently isn't for trades. It doesn't take that long. It's really the least you can do to actually play real cards when you are playing with other players who are going to the effort to play real cards against you. Sloth. Laziness. Not putting in the effort. I think the first thing I dislike about the placeholder binder system is that it shows that you don't care enough about the game or about your opponents to actually play with real cards. Neither one is apparently worth 10 or 15 minutes of your time (probably less) for you to swap your cards around. Do what you like at your kitchen table, but I just don't like the idea of this attitude seeping into EDH leagues and becoming the norm in the Commander community.
That isn't the only thing though. I can deal with lazy players, but there's something beyond just not putting in the effort to sleeve up a real deck. I might not care if you proxied a Flamecast Wheel and used a binder system for that. You'd clearly be using a binder system, but it wouldn't bother me because Flamecast Wheel is a TERRIBLE card. It'd be weird, but I probably wouldn't be as annoyed. Avarice I win games. Sometimes I win a lot, but like most Commander players I also lose plenty of games. If I cared enough about winning, I would make damn sure to play my best cards as often as possible. Here's the thing - I know other players also really like winning.
If I play as competitively as I possibly can, I'm basically saying that I don't give a damn about having a community where everyone will hopefully have a chance at occasionally winning. I want to always win, and I will do everything I can to have the best deck I can possibly play in every single game I sit down at. That's a strong statement, isn't it? Some of my readers might think that's the most reasonable approach in the world to a competitive game. Some of you might, like me, find that attitude pretty hard to read. When you engage in using a "placeholder binder" you are making damn sure you can always play the most competitive deck possible given the cards you personally own without even bothering to swap cards around so you're playing a real deck. Maybe your personal collection of cards isn't that impressive and you're not really trying to dominate play - you're just trying to keep up with an already competitive meta.
Maybe you are a sociopath and you want to reduce every table to tears and drive all new players away before they have a chance to figure out if EDH is a game they'll enjoy.
I don't know you and I don't know Vincent, but I generally feel like players who care so damn much about having their best cards in EVERY SINGLE ONE of their decks are probably on the spikier side of the spectrum. I like to win, but I dislike the attitude that your goal should be to win as many games as possible. It's a "social format" at its heart and the raw greed that comes from a player wanting to dominate his meta and win well beyond half the games in a multiplayer format is something I find a little offensive. Why So Salty? Maybe it's the combination of two "deadly sins" that is setting me off, but for some reason the idea that you are both so slothful that you can't take 10 minutes to set up your deck AND that you are so avaricious that you can't bring yourself to play a non-optimized deck was enough to get me to write my feelings down as this week's blog post. I'm sure Vincent Truong is a great guy, and maybe I've grossly misrepresented his "placeholder binder" system in my understanding of it, but when listening to him on Commanderin' I wanted to ask him questions... "How much time would it really take to swap a few cards into the deck you're playing?" "Why do you need to win so much that you can't bring yourself to play a suboptimal deck?" "Why not have a range of decks with a greater variety of cards in them?" He isn't sitting here with me, and he may not read this, so I'll ask you - how would you answer those questions?
Do you care enough about the game and your opponents to play real cards?
Do you find this practice the most normal and natural thing you've ever heard of, and it doesn't bother you one bit?
There's no right or wrong answer, above and beyond what works for you and your playgroup. Just because it bothers me doesn't mean I've got a leg to stand on in my argument, but I find these things interesting to think about and discuss. Final Thoughts I do believe that every playgroup should develop their own approach to the game. For me, that means playing real cards in your deck. It also means not adopting tons of "house rules" and adhering to the banlist, whether or not I agree with the decisions the RC has made. It's how I roll, and I would feel like I was being disrespectful to my opponents and to the game if were to diverge too far from those rules in an environment where everyone else was adhering to the basic tenets of the game.
As a side note, this month includes no fancy images. It's a rant. I didn't want to dress it up, I couldn't think of anything worth including, and this week finds me a little short on time. I apologize for that, and I expect future posts will likely return to the more dressed-up format you have gotten used to if you are a regular reader.
Thanks for reading!