Magic The Gathering

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Played with my playgroup this weekend. They have banned me from using Worldslayer(which is fine) after doing Boros Charm + Worldslayer. Cloud is super fun to just add some obscure/absurb equipment and go brrrrrr. I even got to use Tatsumasa which felt cool to see in play and make the token.
Nothing feels better than beating your group so hard they all agree to ban the combo you used
 
Me waiting for a few cards so I can finish my Terra deck with infinite combo.

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What happened?
The short version would be an introduction of a new variant (PDH), the format basically splitting the group in half, and a bunch of people thinking the world revolves around them to an almost comical degree.

We've been playing regularly for 4 years almost every week. We had quite a large group of people interested in playing on the regular who rotated in and out and most of the time we had no problem getting 4 to start a pod.

A while ago a guy who recently started playing with us suggested PDH as a variant. PDH stands for Pauper EDH, which is a format where the commander has to be an uncommon creature (doesn't have to be a legendary) and 99 of common cards (well, cards that were printed as common at any point in time). That person also suggested an another limitation, which was to build decks from either the cards we already have or have traded between ourselves (so no buying cards from TCG Player or anything similar). I was right on board because this was an interesting challenge as well as an opportunity to actually engage in the "trading" part of trading card games. The highlight for me was giving away a copy of each duplicate common I had (over 200 cards) to a friend who was starting out the journey and see him actually use these cards in the games. I had a lot of fun... but not everyone enjoyed it.

One guy absolutely HATED the format. That guy loves big flashy plays. You can't really do big flashy plays without all the rares and mythics. At the same time he kinda didn't want to miss the play sessions, so he was showing up but his heart wasn't really in the game. He likened the format to "trying to kill each other with plastic knives". I can sort of understand him because regular EDH is still fun and I also had a new deck I was eager to test out.

Yet - instead of clearly communicating that he would like to play regular EDH - he decided to do something completely autistic: he netdecked a cPDH deck (competitive Pauper EDH). This is an equivalent of bringing a cEDH deck to a regular EDH table. In order to do that not only he broke the "taboo" of not buying cards, he went so tryhard that he even proxied the snow lands that were required to enable some sort of an infinite combo. I have no idea why he did this and what he hoped to achieve because this is completely out of character for him.

Needless to say, this really pissed off the guy who proposed to play PDH. They had an argument and the end result was that the PDH guy declared that he only plays PDH from now on and the tryhard guy declaring that he plays EDH only. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but extremes like these often convince fence sitters to jump down. So soon after it wasn't two guys, it was four guys who disagreed about what format should be played and refused to play both. But hey, there's a lot of us, this still doesn't prevent us from starting a pod right?

Enter the FLAKES. We had two other guys who started regularly flaking out on almost every game. The first guy had a bunch of health issues. The second guy seems to constantly have something going on at either work or in a family. All of these are valid reasons for cancelling and no one gave them shit for it... except every single one of these fuckers would also use these excuses when they were simply too lazy to show up. One dude cancelled six weeks in a row. Each of them would cancel not even the night before but at the very same day we were supposed to play.

On top of that there was a new brand of fuckery in which some people were declaring that they would come play but only if we're missing the 4th to start a pod. This lead to an issue in which we would have five people willing to play, one would say "I see you have four players so I am checking out, have fun" and then one of the flakes would say they're not coming either. Now if you want to play you need to go through the humiliation ritual of begging the first guy who left to come back. I did that a bunch of times then stopped because it felt like raising children except in this case the child is 30+ years old. Utterly ridiculous.

Needless to say, scheduling was a nightmare in this setup. We got 4 people to play this week? Nope, flakeout #1 can't make it today. Okay, next week, 4 people? Nah, one wants PDH and the other one wants EDH so we don't get to play at all. Next week, 5 people? Both flakeouts declare they won't make it. Mind you, this is all after finding the supposedly perfect day that works for everyone, so it's not like we can push this to a next day or something.

This went on for a while until people started losing their shit (myself included) because there's only so many times you can schedule a game only to find out it's cancelled three hours before it's supposed to happen. We actually had one more new friend join at that time and he bailed immediately after seeing what we had become. All of this made one other dude reconsider his love for the game and he had since stopped playing completely. The aftermath of this is that we hadn't had a game in months, half of the people we played with left our group chat due to constant arguments and whenever someone asks to play I am pretty much the only guy who still gives a shit. Even though I care I simply do not have it in me currently to mend multiple issues between multiple people, I have enough on my plate without this kind of drama.

You might also think that the PDH guy was based for limiting us only to the cards in our collection and trades between friends. Well, at one point he revealed that he has a friend that buys several boxes of each release, has been doing this for years and that this friend has an absurd amount of cards he doesn't use. So he had access to every common under the sun, which makes it no different from buying cards but still gave us shit whenever someone suggested something as simple as lifting this rule for commanders only. This in turn encouraged other people to break the rules as well. He also got super mad about me recurring Spore Frog from the graveyard since it was too "tryhard" for him LOL
 
When will people realize this card is fucking broken.
Looking at the TCG prices, I think they do.

Me waiting for a few cards so I can finish my Terra deck with infinite combo.

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How does Terra combo with folly? Folly says: "Choose target nontoken creature you control that doesn’t have the same name as a token you control. " So once you create 1 Terra token, it sounds like you can't create any more because you already have a token with that name.

At least that's how it seems to me. Like they are trying to fix the kiki-jiki loop. Which magic rule did I miss that's allowing this?
 
It had also gotten reprinted recently. That always drives down price a bit.
True but I don't think I have ever seen it above 50, like it should in the very least be as expensive as Doubling Season.


Edit : Been doing Cecil in 1 game standard and...he feels good..I have yet to get Monsterous Rage on him but I lose more to my mana base (cause I don't got Rakdos lands) than I do the other decks.
 
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Limited Notes:

The Jumbo Cactuar is actually not too bad as a finisher for ramp, feels like less of a meme than I expected. It's not hard to get trample onto it, especially in green red (which adds fling, and options for haste,) so it often either demands hard removal or wins.

I overlooked the fact that you can upkeep Vincent's Limit Break for cheap to loop a saga back around on its last turn, it's pretty good! Had a cool sealed pool where I was able to pull that gag with Leviathan a couple of times for the sweet, sweet double full bounce.

Weapons weapons weapons, having like 1/3-1/2 of your creatures be weapons seems to be the way to go, many many of them are at a minimum playable. Some, like the bard's bow, deceptively good and impactful for the way it reads. I think this format seems to reward people who can do good combat math pretty heavily, so having lots of weapons to shuffle around mid-to-late leans into that.

The shitloads of extra tokens floating around make bounce a non-marginally better pick than usual.

Power level still seems low, outside of the massive blowout mythics and stuff, which I think is great for sealed and draft. So far seems like very few things you can't beat with a solid Fair deck, with just solid vanilla test creatures, some removal, some draw, and a finisher or two, combined with good technical play. Notable exceptions are Niebelheim Aflame and Knights of the Round, which are mostly flat out "resolve this and win."
 
How does Terra combo with folly? Folly says: "Choose target nontoken creature you control that doesn’t have the same name as a token you control. " So once you create 1 Terra token, it sounds like you can't create any more because you already have a token with that name.

At least that's how it seems to me. Like they are trying to fix the kiki-jiki loop. Which magic rule did I miss that's allowing this?
If you create a non-legendary copy of Terra's esper form with Folly (or anything else) then Terra's esper form's 1st 2nd 3rd chapter abilities can target Terra's non-legendary self and so on so forth. Because if you pick 4 lore counters you get all of the chapter triggers this nets you an infinite amount of WUBRG mana, (hastey) enchantments copies, and as many hasty 6/6 flying Terras as you want. Also sacrifice triggers, etbs, ltbs, deaths.

 
If you create a non-legendary copy of Terra's esper form with Folly (or anything else) then Terra's esper form's 1st 2nd 3rd chapter abilities can target Terra's non-legendary self and so on so forth. Because if you pick 4 lore counters you get all of the chapter triggers this nets you an infinite amount of WUBRG mana, (hastey) enchantments copies, and as many hasty 6/6 flying Terras as you want. Also sacrifice triggers, etbs, ltbs, deaths.

Oooooo! Terra is making copies of herself once you get a nonlegendary version. Gotcha.
 
Hello fellow retards, I am here to announce that I went 3-1 in my pre (and only lost to the eventual 1st place because my deck refused to give me lands last round), lots of good cards were opened, and my wife who accompanied me even managed to prize, it was a great afternoon of magic playing. I cannot wait for draft, this limited environment seems cool as fuck.
 
GW feels like the trap limited pairing, because it's split three-ways: it cares about going wide, cares about sagas, and has rares that care about legends. If you get enough support in any individual one it's good, but it's a little all over the place. Crystal's Chosen feels like a necessity for the go-wide strat, at which point splashing Cid becomes something you really want to do.

UW flyers feels like it's better than UW artifacts, frankly, because people go all-in on magiteck infantry but black and red both have cards that dunk on it. Meanwhile, green doesn't have ten-zillion reach creatures as it has in many formats past.

Vanille feels like the mythic uncommon. Card's absolutely ridiculous, to the point where you'd almost splash green just to play it. You can get up to some goofy synergies in this format - drafted a Y'shtola first-pick just to see, and wound up picking up a Sin later in the draft. 7 wins, of which Yshtola was responsible for a good 3 of them by blinking the flan, the dino, or Ignis alone. Tons of tiny little synergies in this set - though Arena needs to get better with stops. If you want to crew a vehicle with a saga that's about to expire, you have to put an upkeep stop in place.
 
The long version

That's so sad, on so many levels. All of them are at fault I agree, there are no winners when you behave like this, unless you got tired of MTG and wanted a scapegoat to leave the group or something.

Did no one of the normal ones say they still want to play? EDH is still decent with three players, my group rarely manages a 4p match and 3p is good enough.

Playing with randoms is usually a pain in the ass, especially because people aren't fully honest: friend and I got demolished by a random with a "Bracket 2" Azusa when we were using a precon and a slightly upgraded precon. Azusa player forgot to mention that he could have Eldrazi Titans in play by turn 5. Other random said "everyone who plays against my deck has fun", then commented on the value of my upgraded precon ($200ish) saying that it wasn't a low value deck, then proceeded to outvalue my deck by turn 3 (and basically win by turn 6), and the last random was running a low-value monoR with 28 lands that won by basically infinite combo that resulted in 50 damage to the face to each opponent by noncombat damage (sacrificing tokens I think?).

Hopefully at least a couple guys from your group message you again soon to play, even if it means less frequent matches compared to what you used to have
 
Playing with randoms is usually a pain in the ass, especially because people aren't fully honest: friend and I got demolished by a random with a "Bracket 2" Azusa when we were using a precon and a slightly upgraded precon. Azusa player forgot to mention that he could have Eldrazi Titans in play by turn 5. Other random said "everyone who plays against my deck has fun", then commented on the value of my upgraded precon ($200ish) saying that it wasn't a low value deck, then proceeded to outvalue my deck by turn 3 (and basically win by turn 6), and the last random was running a low-value monoR with 28 lands that won by basically infinite combo that resulted in 50 damage to the face to each opponent by noncombat damage (sacrificing tokens I think?).
Randos can be hit or miss for us. Though they are usually not too unbearable.

Last one I played against, I would be cash money has light autism. Brought a Blackagorn human tribal deck then asked, "what do you think of my human tribal?" It took a lot of restraint for me not to laugh at him. It was just literally a deck with every best human in the 4 colors with a light splashing of the triple token god and the damage swing Gisela. What am I supposed to say? "Good job for recognizing 'good cards' with 'human' on them?"

More than once I want to snark off when someone asks "what do you think of my deck?" Well you don't get any prizes for deckbuilding the obvious. My buddy's "vanilla matters" deck with some janky cards from across magic's history - now that's creative (even if annoying).
 
Alright, having fucked around with the Kuja list... he's aight. I'm still not amazed but he's really not as bad as I thought he was.
 
Alright, having fucked around with the Kuja list... he's aight. I'm still not amazed but he's really not as bad as I thought he was.
There is a version of Ob Nixilous who isnt a planeswalker who probably goes on that deck.

And there is a Knight from eldraine that impulse draws when you deal non combat damage isnt there?
 
If you are thinking of Syr Carah, the Bold then no because it's specifically instant/sorcery/or herself so the tokens pinging wouldn't do anything.
Virtue of Courage would work though.
Okay I knew it was some sort of damage that she could trigger.

So I don't normally play Aggro and after actually playing with Monstrous Rage.

It is a fucking MESSED UP CARD.

This is one way to mitigate the legend rule...
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