"You're doing it wrong."

Welcome back to the EDH in Ottawa blog. In my many forays across the untamed wilds of the Internet commenting and reading about EDH, the most striking divide so far has been the split between casual and competitive players. The first side has an almost zealous attachment to "The Spirit of EDH", but what exactly is this spirit? Let's examine things a bit further on that topic.

The Spirit of EDH

One of the most frustrating items being brought forth whenever competitive players discuss their EDH metas is that the other side constantly brings up the nebulous "Spirit of EDH" as if that were the guideline. A perusal of the front page of mtgcommander.net, however, shows us deck construction rules and, under Philosophy, the following statement (emphasis mine in the post):

"1. Commander is designed to promote social games of Magic.

"It is played in a variety of ways, depending on player preference, but a global vision ties together the global community to help them enjoy a different kind of magic. This vision is predicated on a social contract: a gentleman's agreement which goes beyond these rules to include a degree of interactivity between players.
Players should aim to interact both during the game and before it begins, discussing with other players what they expect/want from the game.

"House rules or "fair play" exceptions are always encouraged if they create more fun within the community."

Right. So the gist is that each group needs to decide what works for them and to try to make the game have some back and forth. This has been the case in nearly all games I've played in Ottawa since I have started the format. Even the competitive players (and they are many) rarely just vomit out a combo win before turn three to four. You have a chance to deal with their threat or combo as it comes down. Of course, there are always corner cases like Ad Nauseam and Shane Shuster's Memnarch deck, but even those can be somewhat disrupted.

Now, for a variety of reasons the Ottawa EDH is fairly competitive. Whether it's people migrating from Legacy or Vintage that want to use all their brokens and dual lands, or just others (such as myself) that fine-tune their decks each week to shore up matchups or just to close gaps, for whatever reason Ottawa has a thriving EDH tournament scene, with events in multiple stores drawing anywhere from 8-32 people. On top of that, we all have a variety of more casual decks to field if newer players enter our groups. These players are never pushed aside and help (including cards but also deckbuilding advice) is always provided to anyone that asks.

Now, the thorny issue that arises is this: how can one pinpoint a Spirit of EDH when players, groups and even card pools wildly diverge? The starting point is, of course, the banned list. That gives us a pretty good idea of what the Rules Committee (RC) doesn't want played. Super fast mana like the moxen, expensive cards like Library of Alexandria and other problem cards like Protean Hulk, Recurring Nightmare, Griselbrand and Yawgmoth's Bargain are all evident in their ability to warp games quickly and repetitively, ending the game more abruptly than a group might like. Of course, the same can be said for Tooth & Nail and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, among other issues. So what's wrong and right when it comes to the format? Let's find out...

"Doing it wrong never felt so good."

If we apply a somewhat reductionist approach to EDH, it's a game. A game has a winner or loser, and some games allow for draws as well, Magic being one such game. If you're going to win you'll want to do it efficiently. If you're going to do it efficiently you'll need a commander that suits your needs. I personally just love smashing face with a side order of griefing, so Krenko, Thrun, Thalia, Turbo-fog Edric and Mogis are what I'm bringing to the table. I could make my Thalia deck Soldier or Human themed, but that would make it less of a threat. So in come staples like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Top and so on. Eventually the deck hits a nice curve when you're winning on turn four to six pretty consistently. Consistency is good as it stems from good deck-building and rewards you with wins. Wins mean store credit and respect from your peers. The former means better decks and the latter means people ask you questions about the format. And no, Fungusaur shouldn't be in your Ghave deck. Ever.

So what's "wrong" with any of this? Well, here's where our schools of thought diverge. The RC wants us to be playing "battlecruiser magic", where we throw large bombs out at later stages of the game. A portion of us here in Ottawa want to be playing drone magic or stealth bomber magic, where a target is acquired and analyzed then the proper tools are used to mercilessly obliterate said target, before moving to the next target.
Here's the bottom line: by playing with suboptimal cards and throttling your deck's ability, you're hurting yourself.
A big part of Magic is improving as a player. I'm not gonna point fingers or name names or be that guy but I know a dude that showed up to a Magic tournament at Carleton with a deck full of bats, rats, terrors and a Lord of the Pit. Dude got told by Ms. Serra Angelou and her friend Winter Orbius. Yeah, bad times. Thankfully he had friends and became a bad Commander player instead of a bad Extended and Standard player.

The long and short of it? For a game to grow it needs competition and it needs opponents. No one says you can't have your funky Tetsuo Umezawa deck but it's good to have a higher level deck that can compete and take on the best your metagame has to offer. Don't hold back because of some abstract or arbitrary moral or gaming code. Your opponent wants to win, you want to win. So win.

Unless you're Dan Lanthier. Stop being a steamroller for once? Just once? Geez.

In closing, here's some Issac Hayes. Just substitute "loving you" with "my EDH" and you'll get the idea.

If Loving You is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right

EDH this week:

Gamebreakers 780 Baseline Road, 613-228-9554. 1 v 1 Thursday, 19 June $5 entry, 6:00 p.m. Start time.

Wizard's Tower 3350 Fallowfield Road, 613-843-0705 1 v 1 Saturday, 21 June $5 entry, 4:00 p.m. start time.

Carta Magica 1179 St. Laurent Blvd. 613-746-9099 2HG Saturday, 21 June $5 entry, 7:30 start time.

Comic Book Shoppe 228 Bank Street 613-594-3042 1 v 1 Sunday, 22 June $5 entry, Noon sharp start time.

Year II Invitational and Conspiracy thoughts.

Ever since Gilles Labelle and Vincent Laplante graciously handed over the reins of Sunday events to Ryan Carnegie and Stéphane Bisson, people have been clamoring to know whether there would be such an event at the end of the year. While Ryan has been fairly cagey on the topic (as a veteran Grixis player should and would be), the general impression has been that it’s being looked at, that there’s going to be something that might happen and that...they need to work stuff out first.

From this player’s point of view, a Year II Invitational needs to happen for several reasons. First, it creates a buzz around the community and pushes players to excel over an extended period. Second, it’s just a damned cool event overall and it’s nice to be surrounded by your peers and to see what absurd piles of 100-card magic they can put together. Last of all, it helps grow the game of Commander. If you know there’s going to be a higher strata of performance to reach, you’ll want to be there. If you want to be there, you’ll make an effort to show up. If you’ll make an effort to show up, you’ll improve. It’s just gravy for everyone you play EDH with on a regular basis if you play well, since you’ll bring up the level of your peers throughout the area.

There was a lot of worry early on that people might be excluded and that people had no idea about the event, but those concerns would be allayed fairly early on. People more or less know an event is being tossed around, so there should not be any worry about missed opportunities. The categories are all fairly decent too: top Gauntlet performer, players of the month, best sportsmanship and then we get down to the more debateable categories. Do you reward someone that plays a different deck every week or do you prefer someone that dedicates themselves to one cause? Personally, as someone that likes to pimp out one or two decks, I’ll show up for Gauntlet with either Mogis, God of Slaughter or Thrun, the Last Troll. Either deck can just savagely facehug an opponent and hey, who doesn’t like gigantic, uncounterable, hexproof beaters? Oh yeah, blue. Oh well, as stated so eloquently in Some Like It Hot: “Nobody’s perfect!”

So where am I going with this? How about a player’s choice vote for one of the spots? Have everyone submit a vote for a player they feel exemplifies the kind of player they enjoy playing against or that brings it on the most consistent basis, or that they just think of when Commander comes up. Have them send a vote to Ryan toward the end of the year and votes get tabulated, a player gets chosen by their fellow gamers, magic! (Pun intended, of course.) I realize there are disadvantages to this method: more frequent CBS attendees will likely be getting more votes; gregarious or popular players can sway the process as well. Still, it would be a nice way to reward that steady attendee, or that guy/gal you just like playing with or whose decks you just detest.

How about it Ryan and company?

 Conspiracy and Chronicles done right.

So everyone is abuzz about the funky new draft-focused set coming out in a few days. Cards that focus on the cards you’re drafting, when you draft them, how you draft them. Confusing but very fun stuff.

Interestingly, the magic gurus have also taken the opportunity to release a bunch of staples that will please Commander and Legacy players and that might lower the prices somehow on somesuch cards (Hello, foil Brainstorms!) as well. We all know the Reserved List and why it happened. Chronicles threw a massive wrench into the collectibles aspect of the game.  Popular cards and hard-to-find gems like Nicol Bolas or City of Brass were now flooding the market and prices were dropping like stones. So Wizards made sure our old cards could keep their values by insuring that the dual lands, moxen and a whole load of older cards would never see reprint status, or at least not as functionally identical reprints. So Time Walk never gets reprinted, but Time Warp variants are fine. Except that there are still a ton of good old cards that aren’t covered by the Reserved List. Cards from Saga block for example. Or from Onslaught block. Or from...well, any set that might have some heavily played rares or even lower rarity cards you might want or need. I know I'm excited at the possibility of opening a Stifle, a Pernicious Deed or a foil Altar of Dementia!

So where does Wizards go from here? Well, they can have stuff come back with Modern Masters (on a limited print run) or they can come out with new box sets like the From the Vault series, or they can make a new Conspiracy-styled set. Hey, they have to reprint those fetchlands eventually, don’t they?