Bathsheba by Jean-Leon Gerome (1899). Arch-fiend of Ifnir (promo art) by Slawomir Maniak.
For many years I was an avid Minecraft player. I made hundreds of "let's play" videos. At one point I was a moderator on a major (at the time) fan server for The Shaft podcast. I also participated in online discussions on the Minecraft reddit page. This past week I've been noticing activity in the /r/EDH reddit community that reminded me an awful lot of some things I used to see back when I was playing Minecraft back in the day.
Bridges, Bridges Everywhere
It wasn't always bridges but it was always something.
In the /r/minecraft subreddit we would be having discussions about various topics of relevance to Minecraft players and some new fad would hit. Someone would start posting pictures of bridges, towers, walls, or something else. You'd see one or two and the next thing you knew the community would be nothing but excited players posting pictures of their creations looking for approval, validation and sometimes even constructive criticism.
Of course, you all know what happens next. In any community with tens of thousands of members, you're going to inevitably get people who see all these posts of bridges and react negatively.
"If I see one more bridge post I'm going to leave this community!"
"I remember when we used to have conversations and not just post stupid pictures of bridges!"
You get the idea.
These posts would attract cranky people with nothing positive to contribute who suffer from the delusion that their constant complaining would do anything at all to stop the latest fad. Not only were they complete and utter curmudgeons, they were unable to bring themselves to just quietly scroll past the endless bridge pictures or simply leave the community. They always had to piss and moan about how the latest fad was ruining their experience of the group. Their vision of what the subreddit was for was always right and they always wanted everyone else who didn't share it to go form a new subreddit to post in so they wouldn't have to look at "off-topic" posts.
Naturally, that begs the inevitable question...
What do my Commanders say about me?
Any community that gets well into the thousands of members is going to have a very wide range of players participating in it. You're going to have experienced, mature members who are respectful, do their own research, and want to contribute to discussions in a positive way. You're also going to have younger or just less mature, less experienced members who sometimes act like children, or possibly even are children. You'll have mentors and you'll have trolls.
The best 1% and the worst 1% of a community of tens of thousands of people will be pretty amazing, and pretty detestable human beings.
This past month we got to see a variation of "do you like my bridge?" in an EDH Facebook community in the form of players posting pictures of their commanders and asking "what do my commanders say about me?"
It should come as no surprise that this little fad didn't amuse everyone.
We saw our fair share of genuine responses and discussions, but also a lot of sarcasm and the occasional "oh my god you people are ruining this community I am leaving and it's all your fault!" It was Minecraft bridges all over again.
Don't Feed the Trolls
This might seem obvious to some, but everyone's idea of who is being a troll is different.
To the excited players posting their commanders and looking for feedback on what kind of person they are for playing Leovold the Banned, Narset Turns and Food Chain Prossh (you're a terrible person, by the way) the trolls are the people complaining about how these posts are ruining the community.
To the whiny complainers who can't bring themselves to just scroll down and ignore posts they don't like, the trolls are the people who are needlessly filling up "their" page with the EDH equivalent of endless pictures of bridges.
The fact that both of these groups can act like trolls is something that escapes most people. You're on one side or you're on the other side and the community members who are not on your side are the trolls, right?
The real problem is that people on both sides can't resist feeding trolls. By that I mean interacting with them in any way at all. Trolls want attention. If they don't get attention they generally move on to the next person to bother to see if they can "get into it with" or "get a rise out of" someone.
A Commander player posts a silly "meme" post and someone else can't help but post a nasty, mean response. The more trolls who respond negatively, the more likely it is that people will react to all these angry cranks getting upset about the meme. Their reaction will probably be to post more meme posts because for some people it's funny to watch trolls get all worked up over what they feel is nothing.
It goes something like this.
Hour 1: Post goes up. "What does my commander say about me?"
Hour 2: 20 more meme posts go up. Trolls get angry.
Hour 3: Trolls complain about meme posts in their own posts, often directed at group Admins.
Hour 4: 200 more meme posts go up because it's funny to feed the trolls and watch them go nuts.
Basically, the worst thing to do if you don't like a post is to react to it really strongly and post lots of negative comments. If you go overboard you're really just inviting more of the posts you hate. Just keep scrolling. If you're truly enlightened - be happy that other people are excited to be a part of the community you are a member of, even if they are occasionally a little annoying with their stupid "meme" posts.
A Healthy Community
Fun and harmless trends like the Minecraft "bridges" posts and the EDH "What does my commander say..." posts only really happen when you have a growing community full of excited players who want to share their excitement about the game and how they are playing it.
Too many of these posts can seem annoying but they are a sign of a growing and healthy online community.
You may not like your page to fill up with junk every day, but the more players are out there excited by playing EDH, the greater the chance you'll have players in your area you can play with. If nobody knows or cares about a format, you're going to have a harder time picking up new players and forming up leagues. Wizards of the Coast is putting a lot of energy into supporting Commander as a format and every single year we as players get lots of new cards designed to make our format more exciting and fun.
With all that support and all that energy comes the occasional month of endless and tiresome (to you) memes.
What Do My Commanders Say About Me?
I'll spare you the Facebook post and just tell you what I think my commander say about me. You may have other ideas from reading my articles, seeing my comments on Facebook and Reddit, or even knowing me in person. Maybe you'll agree with my self-assessment or maybe you'll think it's wildly off base or overly kind.
If you hate these memes, feel free to skip to the end. Navel-gazing isn't for everyone.
I like to win. I may not be obsessed with winning, as I don't run any truly Tier 1 commanders but I definitely like to have a shot at winning games. I'm clearly willing to play voltron, infect and tokens and probably don't shy away from playing combo if combo is what is needed to get the job done. I may not be the player you should try to eliminate first in every game, but you shouldn't get too comfortable if I'm still in the game because I probably play good cards and have some idea of how to use them.
I buy pre-constructed Commander decks. Of course, most Commander players buy precons, but I'm clearly not buying only the top precon from each release. I buy what I like and will break off cards like Nazahn and Ramos to build additional decks if they spark my interest. I'm probably more interested in combat oriented games than combo oriented games, but can play and sometimes even win games with both styles.
Here's where things get interesting. I have a sense of humor and I'm willing to play sub-optimal or possibly even bad decks if they have a focus that I find fun or amusing in some way. There's a lot of red here. I'm probably attracted to the simplicity of red but also appreciate how dangerous a red deck can be in the right circumstances. I've likely dropped my share of Mana Geysers (I have) and probably own more than one copy of Purphoros (I own 2 and came close to buying another a few months ago).
Now we're getting a little out of control. I clearly like to build decks. Otherwise there's no reason anyone would have this many. I play multiple times a week and rotate through my decks because I'm also the kind of person who likes variety. I almost never order the same pizza toppings twice in a row. I just crave new experiences and love the problem solving involved in brewing up new decklists.
So clearly I love EDH. I also love deckbuilding and both build and play a really wide range of decks. Notable absences in the above list are a stax and a group hug commander and any real variety of voltron decks. If I'm going to try to kill you with one creature, it might as well be Narset. She gets the job done pretty well. There's no Atraxa, Oloro, Meren, Breya or other popular commanders, so clearly I don't want to just run what everyone else is running. If you look at the top commanders of all time on edhRec.com the first one that's in my collection is Narset, sitting at lucky number 13 in the rankings. Ezuri is at position 18, so at this time I wrote this article I only ran 2 out of the top 20 commanders on that list.
You may not care what I run as my commander. People post these memes because they want other people to tell them about themselves. They want affirmation, encouragement, and maybe even a funny comment or two. What they often get is a mix of that and of mean, sarcastic, biting comments from trolls because the internet is a strange place where people are mean to strangers just for fun. That's why I decided to post my list here. Your comments are wonderful but I don't want to annoy anyone with yet another meme post and I do hate reading comments from trolls.
Final Thoughts
Whether you know it or not, we're incredibly lucky to be playing Commander at a point in time where the format is growing and is actively and enthusiastically supported by Wizards of the Coast. I'm able to listen to a half dozen podcasts that produce content for players of the format and participate in multiple online communities that are devoted to discussions about Commander.
With that much excitement you're going to see fads and memes. I think you'd be wise to be grateful for all the good things happening in the Commander community that have led to the kind of energy that results in a few days of endless "What does my Commander say about me" posts. Wisdom is not one of the qualities you usually associate with Internet trolls. I'm well aware that an upsurge of excitement and the emergence of online "fads" in the Commander community is always going result in the ugliest and nastiest members of the group crawling out from under their rocks to tell us we're stupid and that we're ruining "their" online Commander groups. Fortunately, these groups are no more theirs than they are mine or yours.
Have fun. Post pictures of your bridges if you really want to. Block the trolls and report them to admins - that's why there are admins in online communities. Use them. Thank them. Be good to them because they have to deal with trolls way more than anyone else.
Other News
As I write this, I'm gearing up for our second annual "chaos draft". Over the past few months I've been picking up boosters and this afternoon I've got some friends coming over to do a draft. We've got somewhere around 40 unique boosters to crack, and we'll be brewing up bad 40 card decks to play with over the course of the afternoon. I'm going to take notes and probably tell you how it went next week. It's the kind of draft that I think appeals to Commander players more than any other type, as we have an appreciation for cards of all vintages. I certainly hope to open a few things that can slot into one or two of my twenty-three decks. It should be fun, and it's always jarring to be passed a pile of cards that aren't in the same frame style.
I've put my deck for our December EDH League together and will share it in a post later this month. It's only Christmas themed in that it is Gruul (red-green). I don't expect it to win many games next month but it's already won one in casual play so that's something.
Our EDH League votes on rules changes every month and the one notable vote from yesterday was that we will be playing with un-set cards on our last day of the year (12/23). I normally play the same deck all month long, but I may have to take advantage of this and brew up something goofy for our un-set day.
As always - thank you for reading and I'll see you next week!