Do people actually like commander?
Do people actually like commander?
Like it's the most annoying format every where 2 year olds always complain about your deck and don't actually want you to win but just shuffle cards around for no reason and if you ever win they all just complain that you are playing a good deck (which is the entire point of the game), because all the annoying salty people don't let others play what they want there is no interaction and the boards just fill up with 90 creatures and stupid 5 card combos that shouldn't be playable and it's a huge mess where no one even understands what's going on, like how is this the most popular mtg format
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First, I'd like to say you sound like a very uncomfortable person and I'd probably not want to play any games with you, regardless of the format.
Still your point stands and I'm growing increasingly frustrated with commander just like you. I think commander is bad for the game for multiple reasons:
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It creates bad incentives for WotC. When everyone is playing commander, which is essentially legacy but without any tournament backing to enforce cards are genuine, wizards has to make sure to create incentives to buy new products instead of sticking to yesteryears cards. This leads to the constant powercreep which has ruined yugioh gameplay among others. Modern players complain about this, where every modern horizons set warped the format. You can read jokes that the former top tier splinter twin deck would be a good tier 3 contender should they unban it now in times of ragavan and bowmasters. I imagine this will get much, much worse for commander as long as it stays the premier format. Standard circumvented this problem.
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Commander is horrible for new players. Since every deck play around 80-90 different cards, picked from a random janky pool of 30 years of game design, new players have to wrap their minds around 300+ cards just to play the game. To play the game good is another thing entirely. Every time we have new players in the store, the owner recommends they buy a precon and get going on commander friday. When these players sit down they have no idea what is happening, they don't understand who is ahead. Suddenly they are dead after the urza player sucessfully convinced them the other precon is the problem five minutes ago.
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Four player free for all is boring. After the first few turns the turn length goes wayy up and suddenly you look at a ten to fifteen minute break between each of your turns. This gets worse as the boards get filled with value engine permanents, where any game action will put approximately fifteen triggers on the stack. Naturally, the two blue players want to consider their option for each of those triggers and stare at their hands and the board for minutes at a time. I have on multiple occasions started a second 1v1 game with either bored players on other tables or the guy next to me in the same game. Unfortunately most chess clock aren't designed for more than two players.
I mostly agree with you but have some thoughts.
- I think is true but that it's WOTC's fault. EDH was the purest when it was a fanmade format that celebrated a way of playing that wasn't baked into off-the-shelf products. It was a way to see an existing card pool differently. But now EDH is no longer just a different way to play Magic but due to the printing of Command-exclusive cards has diverged and essentially become its own game. There are cards that are legal in EDH that were never legal in Regular Magic first. It's a soulless commoditization of essentially house rules.
Hard agree on 2). I don't think I have ever met anyone who has both the social and gaming acumen to have fun with their first game being EDH. IF you're social enough that you're fine being there until the game is over then you probably aren't also a gaming savant who can pick it up for the first time and also have a chance. I think all EDH players ought to maintain healthy expectations by playing 60 card formats alongside 100 card ones but for new players it's a requirement.
For 3) it's undeniable that the board can become a complete mess that takes a minute to resolve whenever anything happens...However I think the solution is to be more engaged with what's going on rather than checking out of the game. When someone else is muddling through their triggers on a storm turn I think it's legitimately more fun to help them track triggers, mana, etc and to try to anticipate exactly what cards or kinds of cards are coming up. I enjoy seeing others puzzle things out so maybe that's what makes watching people play enjoyable for me.
Re: chess clocks. My table has a player who is known for their long turns lost in thought over the best way to drop two mana rocks and pass the turn. I ended up finding and Android app called "Board Game Clock" by SECUSO on F-Droid that supports chess clocks for any arbitrary number of players. I never got to use it because the threat of using it was enough to speed things up a bit.
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