My EDH philosophy – 2022 Update!

Now that I’m 8 years and 250+ Decks into this project, and now that Commander has exploded in popularity, I thought maybe I should revisit my Philosophy document.  I’ve been watching Game Knights / The Command Zone, and following a lot of  Commander community “influencers” on Twitter, which has maybe given me the bug to go back and produce some sub-par content.

Rather than rewrite the entire document, I’m going to edit and annotate the original document.

Basic Principles

I’d rather enjoy a game of EDH than win it. Yep. Still true. The corollary is: if I enjoy you as a person, I don’t mind losing to you.

People that want to win as fast as possible don’t like playing (just winning) want something very different than I do from the format.  The format seems to have moved towards more efficient/optimized builds, possibly due to how much more of an online analytical presence there is.  I will maybe agree that faster games mean more games, but I’m still an older fogey and I’d rather live in a world where a deck with Enters-Tapped lands and 3 CMC mana rocks isn’t mocked and derided as “bad”.

There’s no such thing as an EDH “Tournament.” (Fun or Prizes: you can’t play for both).  I’m fine with the existence of cEDH for people that want that kind of play (and to keep them away from me), but I will never pay-to-play, and I will never play in a game where my actions could cause someone else to ‘lose’ some sort of monetary value, or where there are any “Stakes” beyond enjoyment.

A deck doesn’t have to be “optimal” to be playable.  I posted my hot take:  “There’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ deck in commander” on the wretched hive of scum and villainy, and of course, as Reddit does, I was told I was stupid and wrong. However, I stand by the claim that while some decks may be “more efficient” or “more effective at winning” that doesn’t make other decks “bad”, and that   “Better/Worse” is different from “Good/Bad.”

I am Pro:

• General Damage, yes
• 40 life, yes
• combos after turn 8-10, yes(turn 6-7, maybe if it’s a lucky game)
• interactivity, yes
• scooping when it’s no longer fun, yes, even more so
• wacky combos, yes, and big plays
• attacking with dudes creatures and more!, yes
• theme decks, very yes
• Free mulligans to get a playable* hand,  I still live by this one
• “bad” cards, I play the Bands-With-Other-Legends lands intentionally and unironically.
• Proxying for cards you own,  yes. I still proxy for expensive lands that fit a deck, or things like Doubling Season, or planeswalkers. BUT, I don’t auto-include cards to optimize.  I really like a lot of the art that proxy-makers in the community are producing.
• Alternate Win Conditions
• Hybrid Cards Being Both Colors
• Sheldon

I am Anti:

• Poison/infect, well, I don’t love it, but I might have warmed on it very slightly, or at least begun to accept it as a thing.  I will disregard threat assessment and treat you as the immediate arch-enemy though.
• Mass Land denial, yep
•  Mass Hand Denial (unless it leads to quick victory), yep, I might even take apart some decks I have that are discard based. One of my least favorite games in the last decade was one where some one hit me with original Nicol Bolas on turn 5 when I was behind a land.
• spite scooping, I’ve actually moved more towards “right-to-scoop” at any time.
• infinite turns, this bothers me less, as long as it happens later in the game.
• long turns, unless they result in a victory, though I do have a small percentage of decks that are probably guilty.
• playing with other people’s decks, I’ve only ever ‘net-decked’ once, and I mostly avoid EDHRec. [but see “on the fence about” below]
• Partial Paris / Hand Sculpting Mulligans, maybe for cEDH players, but not in a fun game.  I define ‘sculpting’ as throwing out playable cards because they aren’t the cards you want in your opener.
• Lockdown decks,  I may scoop to your stax, if I don’t think it’s going to be fun to stay in the game.
• Staples-as-necessities, yep. It’s fine to play effective cards, but you don’t have to just put Cyclonic Rift in every deck that’s blue.
• Proxying for cards you won’t own, I’ve warmed to this a bit, especially if someone is testing a card they might buy, or within a private playgroup. But in moderation: If you are dominating the game using an optimized pile of proxies of the best cards in Magic History, I may enjoy the game less.  Full disclosure, I have a proxy of “Damnation” in my Nextwave plansewalker deck, and I don’t own a Damnation.
• Trading, or having a trade binder (for myself)   in the last 8 years I have made one trade. I got rid of my Blightsteel Colossus because I hate that card, and got a foil  Little Girl (because it was a Rebecca Guay foil I didn’t yet own), a promise that the friend I traded Blightsteel to would never aim it at me, and a few other cards ( could have gotten Wren and Six, but Little Girl is a better card).
• Power Ranking/Tiering of Decks or Commanders.  much like letter grades are bad for education, trying to distill your deck to a numerical ‘value’ is dangerously reductive, and no scale is really objective.  You’ll never hear me give a score to the “power” of my decks.
• Sleeving my decks. There are just too many. Also, I hate shuffling sleeved cards. I sleeve decks that are more than 50% foil, or, very rarely, if I have cool sleeves that really fit thematically. Yes, I play naked revised duals in some decks.

I am really on the fence about:

• Playing with strangers.  With the way the format is growing (which is good?) and shifting, I’ve had many more (and maybe caused) un-fun, or not-expectation-meeting, experiences when I play with people I don’t already know. On the other hand, playing with new people is the first step towards new playgroups, and the Social Factor of the game is important.
• Pre-Constructed Decks.  On one hand, I love them, and have absolutely bought every one going back to the originals, and they’re super fun to play as their own environment.  On the other hand, there are too many of them now, and they’ve gotten too “good”.  I liked tinkering with them in the past, but now they basically already include most of the cards I would have preferred to decide to add on my own, so some of the incentive to craft is taken away.
• Secret Lair / Universes Beyond. On one hand, I loved the D&D set, and I love the creative takes in Secret Lair, and I have no problem with other IP using the Magic game engine.  However, the volume of cards released in a year is starting to overwhelm me.  Feeling like I couldn’t keep up is why I quit heroclix…
• The Footprints on my Lawn…

Other Fun Facts:

The sum total of all Sensei’s Divining Tops I’ve ever owned, played, or even activated : 0, and still 0.