Still another rekative newcomer question, sorry!
I’ve finally started finding my footing in draft a little bit, and I’ve found some cool unofficial formats that I’ve enjoyed deck building for, but this is something that’s stuck in my craw a little bit for a while and I’m curious what my options are.
My friends all play EDH, so if I want a casual game I have to play that. They have a number of decks I’ve been able to borrow, and I did buy a precon I saw at a toy show (Prosper, Tome Bound – Planar Portal), but so far, I’ve just not really found the fun, and I’m wondering what I’m missing.
The main problem is that during each of these games, I wind up mostly sitting there waiting to play the game. Not just hecause of long turn times (although when someone has a lot of triggers, that is a factor), but also due to my commander getting instantly removed, or having little in hand to play, or someone having only flyers and my not having any kind of protection or removal in hand…ever. Maybe my luck is phenomenally bad, but I mostly sit there with a near empty board after a couple board wipes or targeted removal or just…well I assume my precon must just be kind of bad because i wind up with a bunch of treasure tokens and nothing to spend them on. In short, for almost any game, my turns have been draw > land > pass, with an occasional play > removed/countered > pass. I’ve thought about trying to buy a different precon or maybe finding a budget deck list on edhrec and buying that, but I’m hesitant to spend more money on a format I haven’t really enjoyed or even gotten to actually play in so far.
So I guess I’m looking for advice. Have I just been playing the wrong decks? Is it because I’m bad at the game (Only about 2 years in, so this seems plausible)? Is it something else? What do I have to do to enjoy it?
What I’ve been enjoying is Primordial. I got the group to try it but I can tell it’s not going to replace or even really augment EDH as their social format. But I dont want to be completely locked out of the social angle with my friends, so I’m determined to find a way to have fun with commander and get into it with them.
Unfortunately I don’t think $15 - $20 is reasonable for a Commander deck. I built a couple of Pauper (i.e. only commons) Commander decks recently and even they cost more than that. (And based on your description, a Pauper Commander deck is not going to be viable in your playgroup.) I wrote up a guide to buying a Commander deck recently and my subjective opinion was that $100 is the least you can expect to spend.
You said you’re borrowing decks from friends. I have some people in my playgroups who don’t own any decks of their own and always borrow someone else’s – nothing wrong with that. But the low-budget approach that I would suggest at this stage is that you try to borrow the same deck every time, and get familiar with it.
This can be a tough question to answer (and you don’t have to answer it for me at all), but I’d be curious about in what way your friends seem upset when you say you want to concede. There could be a few different things going on there. Maybe you have more options than you realize and they want to help you learn that. Maybe they feel bad about giving you an imbalanced game experience and are going to try to fix it. Maybe they’re jerks who just want a punching bag. What I’d advise you to do would differ in each of those scenarios.
One thing to keep in mind about Commander is that if your typical game has four players, you are going to lose about 75% of the time even if you’re just as skilled as everyone else. So don’t think of Commander games as being about winning. Instead, focus on doing something cool with your cards, and enjoying the company of your friends.
There’s some incredulity that there’s nothing I can do or have no answers in hand, and then encouragement to stay in because there somehow might be a comeback when I’ve missed 4 land drops and none of my mana rocks have come out. Or similar. I think there’s a certain amount of feelsbad that commander is not catching with me, or how often in collateral damage in such a way that I don’t actuality get to play even though I’m technically in the game. Probably a little over half the games so far have resulted in that.
Just this weekend I played the Pantlaza deck and it got removed early, I played it again and started building up a board, then the next turn it and the rest of my creatures got sent back to my hand, then I had to discard half of them for hand limit, and one I finally got it back out again, someone could either take it or get an extra turn. That deck basically ceases to function without its commander, so I waited another hour and a half being completely unable to affect the game state at all. In hindsight, I should’ve scooped to deny that player the resources. After 3 consecutive turns, they didn’t even win!
But yeah it’s not about winning, it’s about sitting there bored out of my skull not being able to affect the game. At this moment I would rather play any other format because commander has been unbelievably boring in every one of the dozen plus games I’ve tried.
It sounds like your friends aren’t jerks, so that’s something. Can ask them more directly for help? If they know what you do and don’t want out of the game, maybe they they’ll be able to recommend a deck that’s more likely to deliver it. One idea, if you have the time for it, is to play some practice games open-handed, where you all talk about why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Getting the board wiped is normal in Magic and especially in Commander. Try to learn to prepare for it. If you have a couple of blockers and don’t feel like you’re in immediate danger of dying, try keeping some of your cards in hand to rebuild after it happens. (I’m not saying it’s easy to strike the right balance; I’m still not good at it.)
Honestly, Commander isn’t my favorite format, and I think you’ve correctly identified some of the problems with it. What @ptc075 said earlier about playing the social game is accurate. That’s why I like to recommend “Group Hug”-type decks. Even if you’re not necessarily winning the game, making your resources valuable to other players helps ensure that at least you’re participating in it.
We tried that early on, where I’d get stuck, show my hand and they’d go “oh…” I think part of it is that my luck might just be really bad, and the first precon I picked up on my own is apparently really quite terrible, so that didn’t help either. On board wipes, it’s not that I have much of an issue with them, it’s just that so far they seem to only come right before I’m able to do something, and it’s incredibly frustrating to have never had an opportunity to actually affect the game. Although by the sound of it, maybe that’s actually normal? The very mean part of me wants to put together 99 cards worth of board wipes, targeted removal, land destruction, stun counters, you name it and take an “If I can’t play, nobody can” approach. But that’d be very very un-fun for everyone else, so I shan’t.
Just for completeness’ sake and to hopefully give context to what the rest of the group is playing, I tried to remember what card caused the Pantlaza situation, and it appears to have been Expropriate. Stuff on that order is what I’d consider normal for the power level here. Lots of things that can destroy one’s chance of playing in a single turn.
Well, “Prison” is an established archetype, focused on strategies that make it hard for opponents to assemble a board presence. It’s true that some people won’t find it fun. But if your playgroup is competitive, it might be in line with what they expect.
Hm…we may be onto something, then…
@Evu @sambeastie yes prison is an established archtype that is only welcome at the highest power levels. I’d concede every game that appeared to have a.prison deck in it.