Another way to reduce the amount of time you're taking (as pointed out by @ethanglaeser9239) is to plan your next turn after your current turn ends. Plans can quickly change by the time it's your next turn, but things like counting how much mana you have, which spells you're looking to cast and their mana costs, and basic sequencing can do a ton to speed up your gameplay.
Answer what you can when you can play within what you have as you get it. It will help you the most overall in the game to plan ahead for yourself and politics helps too.
I think a big part of the issue can also be when people are not planning out their turns ahead of time. Don't get to your turn, and then start considering your options. Try to make those observations and considerations during other turns, and only save the final calculations for your own turn.
Yeah, as soon as my turn ends I'm already planning for my next turn, while leveraging my interaction pieces with what my opponents play on their turns. Things don't always go as planned, but I always go into a turn with at least an idea in mind.
What if the person is playing cantrips and they have to react to what's being drawn in real time during turn, not preparing for this solitaire allowing it is how this happens. Then Richard says, swords and path are mid
Because if you want short turns you can get infinite extra turns on paper by just playing big ramp spells, what about green and or landfall almost always outpacing things
@@obloccfanfiction Hopefully I am responding to what you mean; your grammar is not very effective. Let's say for example that a player is going to Scry 3 and draw 2 extra cards at the beginning of their next turn. This will result in them seeing a potential 6 additional cards of information when combined with their standard draw. While this does make planning for that turn ahead of time more complicated, there is still a lot they can do. Generally speaking, they should know their decklist, and they should be able to know what cards they are looking for. If they need lands, removal spells, or combo pieces, it won't take them a long time to recognize whether or not the cards they are looking at are part of those categories. If they go into their turn unprepared, they may delay the game with their Scry 3 as they consider whether or not they want those cards. Then they will delay the game further when they draw and decide what they need to do with their cards. If they are prepared, they can have in mind what cards they want, making their Scry 3 relatively quick. If they already have a gameplan in mind for the turn, they will be able to adapt it to the cards they draw, instead of building the plan as they go.
At some board game nights, I have a token I pass around the table. Person finishes their turn and tosses the token in front of the next player to get their attention.
@@devinkerr5474 I have a rubber chicken that I use as a token like that. If people start taking forever on their turns or don't pay attention that it is their turn, I threaten to bring out the chicken and it usually helps for the rest of the night :)
yes, but also - as EDH player you gotta get comfortable watching other people pop off 75% of the time. Actually not only comfortable - you gotta be able to appreciate it. Otherwise why would anyone appreciate you when you do your thing.
Except my turn took 1 minute, not 20 and then we find out "oh the game ended I guess". Absolutely that is a playstyle some people and pods enjoy, but that's probably not the average person showing up to game night at the LGS.
I had the idea of "Simic Storm" recently and discovered the commander, Jadzi. I built a deck list, making a working, spell slinger, storm deck. Then I goldfished it on the website, and the storm turn took over half an hour. I knew then and there that i'll never get this deck in paper.
If and when you have problems finding your finisher or win-con I'd suggest turning to resources like edhrec. When you look up your commander and find highly synergistic cards, you're bound to find something that can end the game. In the process you'll probably also get to understand better what your deck is trying to do, because frankly (no offence meant), having trouble to find finishers indicates that either your deck is unfocused or you don't know enough cards (possibilities). Looking up synergies should be able to tackle them both. Hope that helps
I think the category of finishers is closely related to payoffs. You are often harnessing the power of multiplication in some way. Imagine playing a 4/4 every turn. After 5 turns you will have 20 power; not bad but in commander it will usually not be enough. What if on the 4th turn you instead play a card that gives all your creatures plus 3/3? That will add 9 power that turn instead of 4. And then next turn you play a card that doubles all their power, adding 21 power to your side for a total of 42 compared to 20. Now that can end games. There are many examples of synergy like this where the power scales much faster than just playing another big threat. This can be in all kinds of archetypes: voltron, tokens, burn, mill, enchantress, artifacts, etc.
So, a thing I feel sometimes happens that causes this is a lack of instant speed interaction from the opponents' side. Games where everyone plays sorcery speed haymakers with little time of resolution except for one storm player kind of invite this time equity issue to happen This is why I encourage people to run more instant speed interaction. Not just because it lets you win games more, but also because it allows for more archetypes to be played at the table without saltiness plaguing it
Melek was one of my first few commander decks too. I went slow land ramp + untap spells to generate mana, and then went draw + rituals to get out Eye of the Storm, Omniscience, or Dream Halls, finishing with Enter the Infinite + Mind Over Matter + Blue Sun's Zenith. Was quite happy when Lab Man was printed and really cleaned up the win condition. This is the deck I was playing where I learned the max stack size on MTGO is 75 spells 😅
I had the same problem with a Brago Blink deck. I was just trying to stay alive while my opponents were building bigger boards than me so I ended up board wiping and counterspelling to make the game go on for too long. I wasn’t intentionally making the game go on longer, I wasn’t futilely dragging the game on, i was certain I could win. It’s just that the others had the same mindset and was trying to do it through damage. One player I knew ended up getting upset at me for not letting the game be shorter by saying I should just have just given up by letting my opponent’s army of creatures kill me. He wanted me to just roll over and die while the rest of the table just finish the game.
Board whipping and stalling out the game hoping for a win to pop up can be extremely hard to deal with especially if the person does it more than ones, like if you can not win after you Board whipped twice, just stop. There is a difference in board whipping and closing out the game right after, and board whipping and making the game go on for another hour. There is a balance you have to consider and if you are going the villain you can not play till I win mode you got to do it with pride and except that you one will be happy playing against you.
I love commander, at the highlight I had 16 fully fleshed out decksbut have been straying from it more and more. It doesn’t feel like it used to. Commander doesn’t feel like magic. I grew up playing kitchen table 60 card with whatever cards we had from the boosters and decks we bought (RtR era). And commander at first was reminiscent of this but now it just feels like the Board Game of magic. I introduced my buddies, who had only ever played commander, to cube and pauper and they love the vintage cube I’ve built. And it feels more like magic the way it was intended and honestly more fun. There’s no social contract, no extra rules other than build a 40 card deck and kill each other. We still hang out, crack jokes, and have a good time, but it’s way more engaging than commander
Well put! In fact, this is the same feeling I get while playing board games. Some people might take too long to take action, causing the other players to space out... The more fluid the experience is, the more players will enjoy it!
Comes down to these: 1.) disrespect of others time and not caring; its a 4 player casual game not a fps. 2.) players with a 1v1 mindset playing too high power for the pod, or a spin your wheels.deck 3.) players not knowing their decks/ how to run them if complicated, or they are not paying attention to boardstate.
I'm struggling with the problem where I'm using cards much less cost then my pod (cards like Mana Crypt Atraxa and any expensive card you can think of) but I know how their decks work and play the game based upon them and end up with a combo or two and it still upsets them. Even though same people took a 20 minute turn or two the game before or the one before that. My combos saved them time at least. But I just have to get some other decks to keep people less upset I guess or get a different precon even
@@ChevyRedneckGFX if anyone is taking a 20 min turn, then that alone is an issue even without power discrepancy, just due to taking all that time away. Unless someone has actual mental disorder, you should be able to play a land and take your turn within seconds up to a few minutes. If not then its either punting/lack of deck knowledge, a nadu style deck no one likes, or not paying attention on your phone and being socially disrespectful
Other people's long turns fascinate me because I'm really happy for them that their deck is synergising and doing what they want it to do. It's what i like about magic
I play a LOT of durdle decks. The only advice I would add to your list is the following. I find that the collective patience of my opponents (I love that you called them spectators) with meaningful game actions is a lot more than with just moving the pieces around, and time spent thinking through your options is the worst. I think Rachel Weeks mentioned taking scry effects out of her decks to speed them up, and I think it’s a great suggestion. I don’t think I’ll ever run Sensei’s divining top for the same reason. I like cascade better than tutoring because I don’t have to make extra decisions. I prefer anthems over counters because they’re faster to physically execute on the board. Great video Tomer!
i used to really struggle with this problem for my decks. It felt like every deck i built would take a ton of actions to win and i enjoyed going through the motions, but it didn't feel good. I thought that the problem was that my decks were just too powerful but when i intentionally built a very low power Satsuki, the living lore deck it opened my eyes. The deck was very weak but took a trillion actions and had a trillion triggers to resolve every turn, but it never led anywhere, I'd spend 5 minutes doing things every turn and end up with a couple more 1/1s than i started with. The deck had no real win con (because a good one didn't exist, craterhoof was the only real option and the deck rarely got past 5 lands) so it sucked to play with and against, never winning but taking all the time. I put the deck aside after just a couple games and my deckbuilding philosophy has completely changed since then. What's helped me the most is building around a healthy gameplan with fun play patterns for the table rather than just looking at a cool commander and thinking about making it work in a vacuum. For example i was thinking about building a straightforward lower power combat damage deck and was going to build The Meep. While building the deck I spent a lot of time thinking about how it would play out and realized it would probably lead to games where the deck does nothing for 5+ turns while building it's board, and then would cast one expensive black creature and kill 1-3 players in one attack, out of nowhere. This would be fine at a higher powerlevel pod, but i wanted a lower power deck, and at lower levels that play pattern would be unfun, so I scrapped the whole thing. This is what I think everyone needs to think about when building a new deck. What are the play patterns? How much will you be doing? How will they make people feel? Is that what you want to make them feel? hope this helps
Thanks for making this video! I really like the name time equity. I have a Ghen, Arcanum Weaver Sagas deck that I try to practice with to be able to quickly resolve saga triggers. My play group struggles with time equity especially with new decks. One player just built a bello deck that tried to go off chaining enchantments with mana engines and garruks uprising effects and had two back to back twenty minute turns the first time he played it. On LGS I play at semi-solves this problem by having 60 minute round timers during their Saturday commander days. They randomize pods for everyone at the end of each round when everyone is synced up. There’s still a bit of time equity problems if someone takes up more of those 60 minutes than they should, but generally people self select faster decks that can finish the game before the round ends which somewhat helps the problem. It does mean that I choose not to play decks like my sagas deck while there because it tries to grind and probably takes around 90 mins to finish most games, even without a lot of time equity imbalance so it’s just not feasible in that situation which is a downside.
Honestly the solitaire nature of commander and the negative actions by WotC basically killing MtG into being all about commander is what's making me sell out a large portion of my collection. I'm just not having fun most games, even most I win. Because they usually result into 1 person just going off and doing 1000 actions rather than cool and interesting game patterns. The only deck I actually enjoy playing is my Raiyuu deck which is voltron and my Gix deck nicknames Little Black Men 😂 cause while they're also strong, they don't demand much time and actions to be so.
I also have that problem, it's a struggle. It doesn't help that these decks can be hard to pilot, as seeing the correct line takes some thinking and a lot of practice. You often can't just plan your next turn on other people's turns as you often rely what cards you will draw/cascade into/mill/etc and honestly I think figuring out these puzzles is peak MTG.
I personally am cool with people taking longer if theyre new to piloting a deck. That can even be fun for the table to figure out how the deck works or help somebody manage it or whatever. Its INSANELY boring and frustrating to have somebody just durdling about with a deck they know how to use though wasting tons of time for the whole group but never really winning...its why I have 1 infinite combo option in all my decks. Just to END GAMES lol
"honestly I think figuring out these puzzles is peak MTG" Glad you're having fun...the other 3 people are shooting eachother looks and rolling their eyes at you.
Glad you made this video! Yeah my issue when building decks used to be about engine building and so I was so focused on synergy it would end up with super long turns regardless of the overall archetype. So now I try for much more straight-forward strategies (like having a spellslinger deck that smashes face instead of guttersnipe effects) and just generally trying to think of what game actions are interesting and fun to play against rather than what's fun for me to play.
Great video! I built your Myra deck (with some manabase upgrades). It's awesome. I collected every non-acorn attraction. Solitairing helped a ton with execution. Fortunately, Elemental Eruption from Outlaws At Thunder Junction is a great payoff! At least it makes everyone at the board sit up when they expected an Empty The Warrens. Nanogene Conversion gets around the "non-legendary" restriction of Sakashima's Will while still being in the right colors so you can turn all your unassuming servos into Talrand, Skysummoner until end of turn. I wanted to build Zinnia and after enough goldfish games finally gave in and bought a Moonshaker Calvary. Its primary win condition is still Voltron Zinnia, but sometimes attacking with a bunch of 24/24 flyers will just make the table happier.
There are two rules to follow in long turn strategies. Have a consistent win. Play fast and communicative. Explain your loop or your plan and your opponents can often concede. Like when you mind's desire for like, 22, people know the game is over. Lately, I have been playing a lot of "big turn" decks, as Turnabout becomes more and more my favorite card. But I play fast My whole turn is usually under two minutes and Then the game is over. At least for me and the feedback I've gotten, that strategy works well.
Blink has classically been bad for this, but lately the Dr Who suspend decks have been bad too as you have new players trying to track all the triggers.
The most complicated precon ever printed being the one to try to get people to start the game. I have it. I love doing all the things. I still haven't figured out how to actually win.
Lol there are a ton of good older suspend cards that make that deck pop off. I upgraded it and it has won 8/10 games this past year when I've played it. @@ecoKady
adding finishes is so important, i have a golgari meren deck that clears the board very often but was just not doing anything else and was miserable to play against, a few big 10/10 beaters helped close that bad play experience loop right out. i also used to hate combo and still prefer not to build decks around it but adding at least 1 infinite or near infinite, even a longer plan instant win set up like revel in riches or lilianas contract, really helps you get a path to winning going if the games bogging out.
When Codie came out I designed a deck for it. It wins on turn 4 practically every time but the win takes like an hour to do. I have never played it against other people.
Another facet of time equity is when someone plays a deck that has to do something on everyone's turn. I really love the concept of breaking a "once per turn" restriction by doing something, not only on each of your turns, but each of your opponents turns as well, but in practice it can sometimes feel like you're taking half the turns when at every end step or upkeep you have multiple game actions.
I've had the same problem with Tom Bombadil, lots of fun works the exact way I want but the rest just wait with no clue what sagas even do. As an avid CEDH watcher, I believe my playgroup do not run enough interaction. It may not be as fun to play interaction as another big payoff, but I also believe that magic the gathering is a game that should be played with instant speed in mind. I'm not saying run broken interaction, but some kill spell and counterspell should be a big standard.
I think the key is to keep your opponents engaged while you are storming off. This is really easy when you are in an interactive game where someone might have an answer, but in a social pod where everyone is having a good time talking you can keep them engaged in conversation. Just be nice is all there is too it
A buddy of mine once told me about a time he played against a superfriends deck. The guy's turn took so long that my buddy was able to go across the street to a bar, order a beer, come back, and the turn STILL wasn't over yet 😂
This seems to have come out at the perfect time, I just experienced this problem last night when I took a 15 minute turn chaining peregrine drake clones with Volo, and I was thinking about breaking it apart.
Very good topic to bring up. I run a 40+ deck battlechest for me and my kitchen table friends. All decks are built to play more or less well against each other no matter which they choose to play, but while they're balanced power-wise, I've gone to noticing the time equity certainly isn't balanced.
If your turn takes up to 5 minutes thats cool. If it takes up to 10 it should be because we needed some rules clarifications and order of operations stuff (and/or youre new to piloting the deck). If its more than 10 minutes I need a pretty good reason to never play against that deck again... Honestly its just good manners to not make decks that are unweildy, overly complicated, long winded, etc etc. I intentionally took cards out of my decks because I was personally not crystal clear on some interactions or thought theyd add time to my turns for marginal gains.
If my turn takes 10 minutes, it means I've cast 30+ spells and either won the game or have a boardstate that wins the game on my next turn. I don't know how people manage to take so long.
I had a Gitrog deck focused on comboing discarding lands and I ended up chainging completely the deck and then I made it a voltron deck givin Gitrog Trample and First Strike equipment. It is a weak deck (specially by today's power level) but I like it better than just having the table watch me play a solitaire.
I did this unintentionally by playing a dice rolling Izzet deck with Wyll. It is a deck that tries to win building advantage through a lot of dice rolling effects, since the outcome is random for a lot of the cards it ia almost impossible to plan ahead what to do in my next turn. Wand of wonder and Wizard spellbook stealing opponents spells with randomness also make my brain hurt but I love them🙃
I had the same problem with Chulane. My play group always says , don't take the deck apart just find a wincon faster. We can always shuffle up and play another game. I did however take Chulane apart as well obvious reasons haha
One of my favourite decks of all time was you budget build for Selvala, Explorer Returned. I adored that deck and refined it, but I realised over time that I was taking up a large amount of the "action economy" of the game. I still have it but I far prefer to play Titania. She's not as a good but she makes the game more fun.
Unrelated to the topic but related to Weirds: the art of Fluxcharger is fantastic. It's such a shame that it's not a great card. At least we still have good old Gelectrode, the card that made me fall in love with Magic ;)
While time equity sounds like a reasonable concept to discuss, it goes beyond one player monopolizing a table's playtime. In some cases it's the complexity of the deck and the interactions it brings to the game, yes. But in many games it comes down to people just not being efficient decision makers, or worse, the politics of a game drawing out the clock. If my turn takes 5 minutes while I'm trying to cast a spell because 3 opponents are deciding whether it should be allowed to hit the board or whatever, that's a dynamic of commander and not me playing with cards that turn the game into solitaire. Furthermore, conversations like this are the reason WotC puts everything on a creature now, so your solitaire pieces close out games faster or can be interacted with easier.
I remember brewing up my maelstrom wanderer deck and finally got to play it only to realize all my turns late game took forever to finish. I’ve gotten better at piloting a cascade deck but it still takes a while due to randomness
Dungeon/dedicated initiative decks are another archetype that creates huge time equity issues. I love my Rube Goldberg Sefris deck but play it only occasionally and only if the rest of the table is cool with the possibility of me taking long turns and perhaps winning or perhaps not. I don’t play it at all at Magic fests and such.
I did something similar! First I made a krak/shakashima deck. Now I really like Veyran, Voice of Duality Since its small storms and swinging for lethal!
That's a very true issue. We had several sessions where just one player played 90% of the time and that sucks as hell. We started commander without combos and wanted to play "fair" magic. Tomer talked about 10 minute turns. The worst case scenario in my group was about 50 minutes, and 20 minutes seems common for a few players. There was a 20 minute chain in my endstep from another mono blue player and I totally forgot that it's my endstep. Then it was HIS turn. That sucks so hardcore. I stopped playing when I know people are playing this commander that game night because I don't want to waste my time. People became partly angry because I told them to please speed up their plays. Combo wins or something like that is heaven! I prefer losing in a 10 minute turn than waiting 50 minutes and being not sure if I lose or not. Don't get me wrong there are and always will be long turns and that is ok. But Decks that will do this every game need to be taken apart asap. The whole group will just suffer and have no fun at all
It's okay for every deck to have a longer turn from time to time. Board states can get clunky to manoeuvre, combat can get fairly difficult, decision making can get clogged up and that's ok but having a long storm turns as part of the regular gameplan monopolizes playing time and that's not okay IMO cause it disrespects the share the other players have in that game. I took apart my Ivy mutate/copy deck 'cause I needed to much time for all the housekeeping to represent my board correctly after all the mutate/copy shenanigans. That's time no one at the table is playing magic.
Totally agree. It depends on what the time is going into and why. My Vannifar simic deck has A LOT of counters stuff but its easy to do that math so i just zip through it and make it easy for the table (pass or swing, your turn)
I just played my Elsha spell slinger the other day and everything seemed balanced as I went to my turn 6. A single trigger of Sunbirds Invocation found me Veyron and then all of a sudden ten spells (and some good Sunbirds hits) later my opponents went from 40ish life to losing the game
Every high sinergy deck will suffer from this and I think this is an issue that speaks louder on behalf of the WoTC design team than the player base. They wanted the meta to work like this, every card now so so much stuff and there is so much interaction with tokens and counters that you end up with so many high synergistic interactions without even realizing. And worst of all, this design philosophy is hard to deal with because high synergy is what makes a deck thematic, fun and strong. I own all four 40k precons, because I'm a massive fan, and I did some upgrades to bring them to a higher level and now they perform really well but all of them can have turns that take AGES to resolve, so much so that by the end my brain hurts. And it's not like I went out of my way to do so, I did what the decks wanted me to...but cascading into more cascades and having other 3 triggers on the stack followed by new triggers is crazy to follow. Same with my Tyranids deck and +1/+1 being distributed, increased, then doubled and lastly copied! You get the idea...WoTC is to blame for this and not the community.
100%, there are sooo many cards designed for commander in the last 3 years that basically say "When you do X, Y happens, (second paragraph), when Y happens you may Z" - so even value decks based around precon cards, by turn 5 or 6 have dozens of triggers to resolve. "put a +1/+1 counter on all my guys, draw a card, I do this so now I do this, ok attacks, attack triggers, I do this this and this. Second main, I do this so now I draw, do this, ok I guess I can still do this". Wizards design is just causing so many game actions to take place, and in a 4 player game it just takes too much time. A game designed to be a quick thing played inbetween other games at a gaming convention, now takes close to 2 hours to play.
I've been adding more Haste to decks. I always feel bad doing an explosive turn in my creature based decks because then I can't attack with all these new creatures, and then there is always a board wipe the happens. Negating all that time I spent on my turn.
I remember playing in a ten-player game back in the day. One player had a Time Walk they would regrow a couple times a turn. I will always remember the groans from the other players every time they regrew the dang Time Walk. LOL
I have a couple of decks that take long turns. The caveat to that is, they also take 3-4 turns of setup. So I don't mind if I take a 5 sec turn ( land - card-pass) then spend one or 2 turns using up the saved time to do thing thing.
i think part of the game is long turns, often for me i’m testing a new deck and realizing things i could do that i didn’t even notice when building the deck, i don’t spend too much time just sitting and thinking but often i just have a lot of game actions. it isn’t fun for me to run a deck who’s general plan is tap out every turn for one big spell, hope it makes an impact, pass turn, that gets old after the first game, i prefer having many options and things to do and sometimes that takes a while, it seems like more of a playgroup issue if some people want short simple games and others want long complicated turns and interesting interactions
I agree with the extreme cases we've all experienced where the equity is unequal. But odds are some games will just be those games, and the players will draw the cards at chance that'll allow them to elongate their turns. The same deck could have a nongame the next game. There's a line where I fear this format can lean towards players also wanting to lose how they want to lose.
Play my Jhoira deck absurdly fast to try and address this. Generally most cards players won't want to respond to, but I have to anticipate which ones they might to give an opportunity. When you dump 20 junk artifacts in a turn you don't want to draw it out.
as someone who loves heavy time equity decks, I always ask the group if I can get one game in just to scratch the itch. The only way the table accepts if I acknowledge that I'll be archenemy for pretty much the whole game.
This is why I dissembled a Hidetsugu and Kairi deck. If the commander lands and they allow untap if will probably go infinite turns killing opponents with small damage on each turn. Play decks you want to face with.....dont complain if an opponent takes ages to resolve turn and then next game play a storm deck
Saying this before I’ve watched the video so unsure if this is mentioned but I don’t think this issue can really be solved because land hate is not acceptable, early killing and aggro I feel is generally not acceptable so games easily go to later turns with tons of mana and then it feels like a lot of decks can just do a lot
Aggro turns a 4 player game into a 1v1, and none of the 4 players get to have fun because of your selfishness. It's not acceptable because the premise of the format is that it's a multiplayer game, and you did everything in your power to ensure to prevent one player from starting the game, while simultaneously making it impossible for you to ever win either.
Aesi is my first commander and made so much investment into it but my turns being taking forever with the land search and eventually I ended up playing it less and less.
I love Izzet spellslinger. I have a Niv deck on Arena and an Eruth deck in paper. I can’t decide if I should switch it up because Eruth either doesn’t do anything. Or it pops off and I take really long turns and usually win the game. Not sure who I’d switch to though.
I have a shorikai artifact deck and when I first played it my turns were 10 minutes or more but now that I’ve played it so much and know all the lines I never take a turn over 5 minutes
1. 100% players need to know what their decks can do and not take too much time in deciding what to do or how to do it. Goldfishing is probably the best way. I’ve seen blink decks that know EXACTLY how to stack their triggers, how many and what permanents are untapping, how many cards they’re drawing, etc and are therefore very fast. It’s possible, just don’t be a scrub. Get good. (Enough to not bore the table.) 2. Players confuse taking too long and taking game actions on everyone else’s turn. Example my Kalamax deck. I draw a card, tap Kalamax and PASS the turn, every turn. Then on each person’s endstep I play one instant and copy it with Kalamax’s trigger. But players then get mad that I’m “taking up everyone else’s time” when I know It’s just the way draw-go decks work. 3. Personally I think everyone should have a timer on their turn and (aside from combat) not exceed 5 minutes. There’s an average of 4 players and 10 turns. Excluding the first three turns (bc unless it’s cEDH nothing’s going on for that long. That’s 4x7x 5. That 140 minutes. Two hours should be the CAP at which a game takes. And it’d help solve time equity.
My biggest beef with decks that take a lot of actions is when those actions don't meaningfully advance the game state at all. It's one thing if you have a big flashy finish, and then you win. It's significantly worse if you spend 10 minutes playing your turn and then pass, with no real impact on the game state. I played against a Jhoira eggs deck that was probably the biggest offender for this: play a 0-cost artifact, draw a 0-cost artifact, repeat 20 times, whoops didn't hit the win condition pass the turn. They did this every turn. It was excruciating.
As someone who runs a Prosper turbo exile deck, I do have to say that if none of your three opponents let you get that far, it's not your fault. With that said, if you can't win, don't put your opponents through the misery.
As someone who occasionally plays a Superfriends deck, I've learned it's the deck that forces me to pay closest attention to the game because one skill all Superfriends players should practice is planning your moves ahead. Admittedly, that's a skill that could accelerate all games of EDH but with the number of loyalty abilities you're toying with, it's a skill that can help you take less time performing your actions.
I've been playing a Gut, True Soul Zealot // Haunted One aristocrat Goblins deck, that I specifically built for casual tables because my usual decks are too storm-y. Turns out I accidentally built a deck that takes way, way longer to play out turns than my usual combo decks...
From my experience, aggro players take longer turns than control players. Debate with themselves for 3 minutes about whether to full swing or leave 1 blocker back. Debate for another 4 on where the attacks go. Miserable.
Sometimes I’ll find myself in a situation where I know I can win, but know it’ll take a while (like having Time Stretch and Eternal Witness in my hand, plus a bunch of resources that pretty much guarantee that I win), so I’ll just warn the table that I’ve won and ask if they’d like to scoop. Often, though, they’ll ask me to play it out… then they’ll complain when it takes too long…
@@Cybertech134 I pulled it in a Dominaria Remastered pack, I thought it would be cool, now my turn has taken 20 minutes and I don’t know for sure if I’ll even win 😭
I can definitively say ALL of my decks are durdley and can have 10-min turns because of synergies, but I goldfish a ton and try to simplify my turn explanations so people see I'm doing a ton of stuff for an average payoff.
I play a sefris deck that sometimes will pop off too much and even i get annoyed keeping everyones board clear and taking long turns. However, its my favorite commander and its a $15 budget deck! I do bring it with me and if there is a game i go off too long, im sure to swap to something more simple and give people a chance to do their thing. I also probably over apologize when my turn js taking too long
I think the biggest thing is to know your own deck, know all the lines, and be able to explain it clearly. Also, you need to ask yourself how you will win a game when playing that type of deck. If somehow you have a non-deterministic three-step loop to draw your entire deck, probably it is not a good idea to have Thoracle as a wincon.
I played against a blink deck the other week, they also played top in their deck... Needless to say, it was not a fun time when you did anything and they took 5 minutes deciding the top
As to "Durdle" decks, i got so tired of playing against one of my play groups' Durdle decks i built a "Draw go" Turbo fog deck and played them with it. Looooong story short, they durdled their wolves/draw/search more wolves deck and attack. Then i would fog with a Fairy Taunting doing them a point damage. Repeat. It was epic. Mwahahahaaa!
I have an extra turns deck that I rarely play because I noticed it just turns into solitare. It's a shame, because I love the archetype, but don't want to make other people sit through it.
I treat magic like fighting games. When someone combos off on me I think “damn that’s pretty cool” not “ah fuck I lost” When someone pops off that’s not time for me to get on my phone, that’s time for me to watch intently while I get my ass beat. I love this shit
I dunno about this. Sure long turns lock you out of participating in the game for a long time, but I can appreciate a work of art unfolding. It’s cool to see a Rube Goldberg machine working it’s magic, so watching an izzet player go off is pretty fun
The real trick is to make your opponents' turns last longer, by doing most of your shenanigans on their turns (I like my Kalamax, Feather, and Kenrith decks who all do exactly that).
Another way to reduce the amount of time you're taking (as pointed out by
@ethanglaeser9239) is to plan your next turn after your current turn ends. Plans can quickly change by the time it's your next turn, but things like counting how much mana you have, which spells you're looking to cast and their mana costs, and basic sequencing can do a ton to speed up your gameplay.
Answer what you can when you can play within what you have as you get it. It will help you the most overall in the game to plan ahead for yourself and politics helps too.
I think a big part of the issue can also be when people are not planning out their turns ahead of time. Don't get to your turn, and then start considering your options. Try to make those observations and considerations during other turns, and only save the final calculations for your own turn.
Yea I realised that a lot of slow player struggle with that.
Yeah, as soon as my turn ends I'm already planning for my next turn, while leveraging my interaction pieces with what my opponents play on their turns. Things don't always go as planned, but I always go into a turn with at least an idea in mind.
What if the person is playing cantrips and they have to react to what's being drawn in real time during turn, not preparing for this solitaire allowing it is how this happens. Then Richard says, swords and path are mid
Because if you want short turns you can get infinite extra turns on paper by just playing big ramp spells, what about green and or landfall almost always outpacing things
@@obloccfanfiction Hopefully I am responding to what you mean; your grammar is not very effective.
Let's say for example that a player is going to Scry 3 and draw 2 extra cards at the beginning of their next turn. This will result in them seeing a potential 6 additional cards of information when combined with their standard draw. While this does make planning for that turn ahead of time more complicated, there is still a lot they can do. Generally speaking, they should know their decklist, and they should be able to know what cards they are looking for. If they need lands, removal spells, or combo pieces, it won't take them a long time to recognize whether or not the cards they are looking at are part of those categories.
If they go into their turn unprepared, they may delay the game with their Scry 3 as they consider whether or not they want those cards. Then they will delay the game further when they draw and decide what they need to do with their cards.
If they are prepared, they can have in mind what cards they want, making their Scry 3 relatively quick. If they already have a gameplan in mind for the turn, they will be able to adapt it to the cards they draw, instead of building the plan as they go.
That classic moment where nothing is happening and Player A asks “whose turn is it?” and everyone else unanimously says “It’s your turn!” 😂
If you have to ask, it’s probably your turn.
At some board game nights, I have a token I pass around the table. Person finishes their turn and tosses the token in front of the next player to get their attention.
@@devinkerr5474 I have a rubber chicken that I use as a token like that. If people start taking forever on their turns or don't pay attention that it is their turn, I threaten to bring out the chicken and it usually helps for the rest of the night :)
Or the corollary, when you finish a dozen game actions then remind your opponent it’s their turn and they respond “it sure doesn’t feel like it!”
yes, but also - as EDH player you gotta get comfortable watching other people pop off 75% of the time. Actually not only comfortable - you gotta be able to appreciate it. Otherwise why would anyone appreciate you when you do your thing.
Except my turn took 1 minute, not 20 and then we find out "oh the game ended I guess". Absolutely that is a playstyle some people and pods enjoy, but that's probably not the average person showing up to game night at the LGS.
In those situations, I actively start trying to help my opponents win just to have something to do.
@@spooderous what did you do during that 1 turn? Some turns just take longer to get stuff done. It's part of the game.
@@The_medicine_frog Taking longer =/= taking too long. There's a very big difference.
There's popping off and there's checking Twitter and texts while occasionally asking if you're dead yet.
I had the idea of "Simic Storm" recently and discovered the commander, Jadzi. I built a deck list, making a working, spell slinger, storm deck. Then I goldfished it on the website, and the storm turn took over half an hour. I knew then and there that i'll never get this deck in paper.
I’ve been really enjoying these solo Tomer videos! Thanks for the awesome content
Tomer's Scryfall video was a gamechanger for me. great content.
Tomer should break off and do his own content! He’s got a gentle way about him, but he’s very smart and level in his takes!
Love it!
I would like a video on Finishers broken down by archetypes. I always have trouble finding finishers for my deck.
If and when you have problems finding your finisher or win-con I'd suggest turning to resources like edhrec. When you look up your commander and find highly synergistic cards, you're bound to find something that can end the game. In the process you'll probably also get to understand better what your deck is trying to do, because frankly (no offence meant), having trouble to find finishers indicates that either your deck is unfocused or you don't know enough cards (possibilities). Looking up synergies should be able to tackle them both. Hope that helps
I think the category of finishers is closely related to payoffs. You are often harnessing the power of multiplication in some way.
Imagine playing a 4/4 every turn. After 5 turns you will have 20 power; not bad but in commander it will usually not be enough. What if on the 4th turn you instead play a card that gives all your creatures plus 3/3? That will add 9 power that turn instead of 4. And then next turn you play a card that doubles all their power, adding 21 power to your side for a total of 42 compared to 20. Now that can end games.
There are many examples of synergy like this where the power scales much faster than just playing another big threat. This can be in all kinds of archetypes: voltron, tokens, burn, mill, enchantress, artifacts, etc.
So, a thing I feel sometimes happens that causes this is a lack of instant speed interaction from the opponents' side. Games where everyone plays sorcery speed haymakers with little time of resolution except for one storm player kind of invite this time equity issue to happen
This is why I encourage people to run more instant speed interaction. Not just because it lets you win games more, but also because it allows for more archetypes to be played at the table without saltiness plaguing it
Melek was one of my first few commander decks too. I went slow land ramp + untap spells to generate mana, and then went draw + rituals to get out Eye of the Storm, Omniscience, or Dream Halls, finishing with Enter the Infinite + Mind Over Matter + Blue Sun's Zenith. Was quite happy when Lab Man was printed and really cleaned up the win condition. This is the deck I was playing where I learned the max stack size on MTGO is 75 spells 😅
I had the same problem with a Brago Blink deck. I was just trying to stay alive while my opponents were building bigger boards than me so I ended up board wiping and counterspelling to make the game go on for too long. I wasn’t intentionally making the game go on longer, I wasn’t futilely dragging the game on, i was certain I could win. It’s just that the others had the same mindset and was trying to do it through damage. One player I knew ended up getting upset at me for not letting the game be shorter by saying I should just have just given up by letting my opponent’s army of creatures kill me. He wanted me to just roll over and die while the rest of the table just finish the game.
Stand your ground! Teach them the power of white/blue.
Board whipping and stalling out the game hoping for a win to pop up can be extremely hard to deal with especially if the person does it more than ones, like if you can not win after you Board whipped twice, just stop. There is a difference in board whipping and closing out the game right after, and board whipping and making the game go on for another hour. There is a balance you have to consider and if you are going the villain you can not play till I win mode you got to do it with pride and except that you one will be happy playing against you.
These videos are so great. Asking important questions for the health of commander, good narrative flow, actionable insights...thanks Tomer!
I love commander, at the highlight I had 16 fully fleshed out decksbut have been straying from it more and more. It doesn’t feel like it used to. Commander doesn’t feel like magic.
I grew up playing kitchen table 60 card with whatever cards we had from the boosters and decks we bought (RtR era). And commander at first was reminiscent of this but now it just feels like the Board Game of magic.
I introduced my buddies, who had only ever played commander, to cube and pauper and they love the vintage cube I’ve built. And it feels more like magic the way it was intended and honestly more fun. There’s no social contract, no extra rules other than build a 40 card deck and kill each other. We still hang out, crack jokes, and have a good time, but it’s way more engaging than commander
To quote one of the greats, "there is a finite amount of fun to be had in a game of magic... And I intend to have it all" XD
More like to quote one of the biggest retards of all time. That quote is absolute nonsense.
Well put! In fact, this is the same feeling I get while playing board games.
Some people might take too long to take action, causing the other players to space out...
The more fluid the experience is, the more players will enjoy it!
Josh Lee Kwai needs to watch this!
Comes down to these:
1.) disrespect of others time and not caring; its a 4 player casual game not a fps.
2.) players with a 1v1 mindset playing too high power for the pod, or a spin your wheels.deck
3.) players not knowing their decks/ how to run them if complicated, or they are not paying attention to boardstate.
I'm struggling with the problem where I'm using cards much less cost then my pod (cards like Mana Crypt Atraxa and any expensive card you can think of) but I know how their decks work and play the game based upon them and end up with a combo or two and it still upsets them. Even though same people took a 20 minute turn or two the game before or the one before that. My combos saved them time at least. But I just have to get some other decks to keep people less upset I guess or get a different precon even
@@ChevyRedneckGFX if anyone is taking a 20 min turn, then that alone is an issue even without power discrepancy, just due to taking all that time away.
Unless someone has actual mental disorder, you should be able to play a land and take your turn within seconds up to a few minutes.
If not then its either punting/lack of deck knowledge, a nadu style deck no one likes, or not paying attention on your phone and being socially disrespectful
I like the mtgo chess clock in commander. If I notice I'm 5-10 minutes behind everyone else, it's a sign to really speed things up.
I wrote an entire app just to track the Prowess triggers for my Bria deck because doing that maths every turn would’ve taken me far, far too long.
Other people's long turns fascinate me because I'm really happy for them that their deck is synergising and doing what they want it to do. It's what i like about magic
I play a LOT of durdle decks. The only advice I would add to your list is the following. I find that the collective patience of my opponents (I love that you called them spectators) with meaningful game actions is a lot more than with just moving the pieces around, and time spent thinking through your options is the worst. I think Rachel Weeks mentioned taking scry effects out of her decks to speed them up, and I think it’s a great suggestion. I don’t think I’ll ever run Sensei’s divining top for the same reason. I like cascade better than tutoring because I don’t have to make extra decisions. I prefer anthems over counters because they’re faster to physically execute on the board. Great video Tomer!
Thanks Tomer! I enjoy this type of video for sure. Great to hear the observations compiled into something digestable with great solutions
i used to really struggle with this problem for my decks. It felt like every deck i built would take a ton of actions to win and i enjoyed going through the motions, but it didn't feel good. I thought that the problem was that my decks were just too powerful but when i intentionally built a very low power Satsuki, the living lore deck it opened my eyes. The deck was very weak but took a trillion actions and had a trillion triggers to resolve every turn, but it never led anywhere, I'd spend 5 minutes doing things every turn and end up with a couple more 1/1s than i started with. The deck had no real win con (because a good one didn't exist, craterhoof was the only real option and the deck rarely got past 5 lands) so it sucked to play with and against, never winning but taking all the time. I put the deck aside after just a couple games and my deckbuilding philosophy has completely changed since then.
What's helped me the most is building around a healthy gameplan with fun play patterns for the table rather than just looking at a cool commander and thinking about making it work in a vacuum. For example i was thinking about building a straightforward lower power combat damage deck and was going to build The Meep. While building the deck I spent a lot of time thinking about how it would play out and realized it would probably lead to games where the deck does nothing for 5+ turns while building it's board, and then would cast one expensive black creature and kill 1-3 players in one attack, out of nowhere. This would be fine at a higher powerlevel pod, but i wanted a lower power deck, and at lower levels that play pattern would be unfun, so I scrapped the whole thing.
This is what I think everyone needs to think about when building a new deck. What are the play patterns? How much will you be doing? How will they make people feel? Is that what you want to make them feel? hope this helps
Thanks for making this video! I really like the name time equity. I have a Ghen, Arcanum Weaver Sagas deck that I try to practice with to be able to quickly resolve saga triggers. My play group struggles with time equity especially with new decks. One player just built a bello deck that tried to go off chaining enchantments with mana engines and garruks uprising effects and had two back to back twenty minute turns the first time he played it.
On LGS I play at semi-solves this problem by having 60 minute round timers during their Saturday commander days. They randomize pods for everyone at the end of each round when everyone is synced up. There’s still a bit of time equity problems if someone takes up more of those 60 minutes than they should, but generally people self select faster decks that can finish the game before the round ends which somewhat helps the problem. It does mean that I choose not to play decks like my sagas deck while there because it tries to grind and probably takes around 90 mins to finish most games, even without a lot of time equity imbalance so it’s just not feasible in that situation which is a downside.
Honestly the solitaire nature of commander and the negative actions by WotC basically killing MtG into being all about commander is what's making me sell out a large portion of my collection.
I'm just not having fun most games, even most I win. Because they usually result into 1 person just going off and doing 1000 actions rather than cool and interesting game patterns.
The only deck I actually enjoy playing is my Raiyuu deck which is voltron and my Gix deck nicknames Little Black Men 😂 cause while they're also strong, they don't demand much time and actions to be so.
What you're saying is that your playgroup hasn't been talking about your games and how to have more fun.
@@dontmisunderstand6041
I don't have a playgroup. I just go to various LGSs that are about an hour or less within me.
I also have that problem, it's a struggle. It doesn't help that these decks can be hard to pilot, as seeing the correct line takes some thinking and a lot of practice. You often can't just plan your next turn on other people's turns as you often rely what cards you will draw/cascade into/mill/etc and honestly I think figuring out these puzzles is peak MTG.
I personally am cool with people taking longer if theyre new to piloting a deck. That can even be fun for the table to figure out how the deck works or help somebody manage it or whatever.
Its INSANELY boring and frustrating to have somebody just durdling about with a deck they know how to use though wasting tons of time for the whole group but never really winning...its why I have 1 infinite combo option in all my decks. Just to END GAMES lol
"honestly I think figuring out these puzzles is peak MTG"
Glad you're having fun...the other 3 people are shooting eachother looks and rolling their eyes at you.
Glad you made this video! Yeah my issue when building decks used to be about engine building and so I was so focused on synergy it would end up with super long turns regardless of the overall archetype. So now I try for much more straight-forward strategies (like having a spellslinger deck that smashes face instead of guttersnipe effects) and just generally trying to think of what game actions are interesting and fun to play against rather than what's fun for me to play.
Great video! I built your Myra deck (with some manabase upgrades). It's awesome. I collected every non-acorn attraction. Solitairing helped a ton with execution.
Fortunately, Elemental Eruption from Outlaws At Thunder Junction is a great payoff! At least it makes everyone at the board sit up when they expected an Empty The Warrens. Nanogene Conversion gets around the "non-legendary" restriction of Sakashima's Will while still being in the right colors so you can turn all your unassuming servos into Talrand, Skysummoner until end of turn.
I wanted to build Zinnia and after enough goldfish games finally gave in and bought a Moonshaker Calvary. Its primary win condition is still Voltron Zinnia, but sometimes attacking with a bunch of 24/24 flyers will just make the table happier.
There are two rules to follow in long turn strategies.
Have a consistent win.
Play fast and communicative.
Explain your loop or your plan and your opponents can often concede.
Like when you mind's desire for like, 22, people know the game is over.
Lately, I have been playing a lot of "big turn" decks, as Turnabout becomes more and more my favorite card.
But I play fast
My whole turn is usually under two minutes and Then the game is over.
At least for me and the feedback I've gotten, that strategy works well.
Blink has classically been bad for this, but lately the Dr Who suspend decks have been bad too as you have new players trying to track all the triggers.
The most complicated precon ever printed being the one to try to get people to start the game.
I have it. I love doing all the things. I still haven't figured out how to actually win.
Lol there are a ton of good older suspend cards that make that deck pop off. I upgraded it and it has won 8/10 games this past year when I've played it. @@ecoKady
adding finishes is so important, i have a golgari meren deck that clears the board very often but was just not doing anything else and was miserable to play against, a few big 10/10 beaters helped close that bad play experience loop right out. i also used to hate combo and still prefer not to build decks around it but adding at least 1 infinite or near infinite, even a longer plan instant win set up like revel in riches or lilianas contract, really helps you get a path to winning going if the games bogging out.
When Codie came out I designed a deck for it. It wins on turn 4 practically every time but the win takes like an hour to do.
I have never played it against other people.
Another facet of time equity is when someone plays a deck that has to do something on everyone's turn. I really love the concept of breaking a "once per turn" restriction by doing something, not only on each of your turns, but each of your opponents turns as well, but in practice it can sometimes feel like you're taking half the turns when at every end step or upkeep you have multiple game actions.
I've had the same problem with Tom Bombadil, lots of fun works the exact way I want but the rest just wait with no clue what sagas even do. As an avid CEDH watcher, I believe my playgroup do not run enough interaction. It may not be as fun to play interaction as another big payoff, but I also believe that magic the gathering is a game that should be played with instant speed in mind. I'm not saying run broken interaction, but some kill spell and counterspell should be a big standard.
I never have these 15 minute turns because I never draw lands.
I think the key is to keep your opponents engaged while you are storming off. This is really easy when you are in an interactive game where someone might have an answer, but in a social pod where everyone is having a good time talking you can keep them engaged in conversation. Just be nice is all there is too it
A buddy of mine once told me about a time he played against a superfriends deck. The guy's turn took so long that my buddy was able to go across the street to a bar, order a beer, come back, and the turn STILL wasn't over yet 😂
This seems to have come out at the perfect time, I just experienced this problem last night when I took a 15 minute turn chaining peregrine drake clones with Volo, and I was thinking about breaking it apart.
One thing that I think helps is not looking for the "optimal play" it is so much faster to just go with whatever sounds good enough.
Very good topic to bring up. I run a 40+ deck battlechest for me and my kitchen table friends. All decks are built to play more or less well against each other no matter which they choose to play, but while they're balanced power-wise, I've gone to noticing the time equity certainly isn't balanced.
If your turn takes up to 5 minutes thats cool. If it takes up to 10 it should be because we needed some rules clarifications and order of operations stuff (and/or youre new to piloting the deck). If its more than 10 minutes I need a pretty good reason to never play against that deck again...
Honestly its just good manners to not make decks that are unweildy, overly complicated, long winded, etc etc. I intentionally took cards out of my decks because I was personally not crystal clear on some interactions or thought theyd add time to my turns for marginal gains.
If my turn takes 10 minutes, it means I've cast 30+ spells and either won the game or have a boardstate that wins the game on my next turn. I don't know how people manage to take so long.
Tomer & Seth each deserve their own channel honestly - with the amount of videos they put out independently!
Hey nice video! Are there any Bloomburrow precon upgrade videos in the works?
I had a Gitrog deck focused on comboing discarding lands and I ended up chainging completely the deck and then I made it a voltron deck givin Gitrog Trample and First Strike equipment. It is a weak deck (specially by today's power level) but I like it better than just having the table watch me play a solitaire.
I did this unintentionally by playing a dice rolling Izzet deck with Wyll. It is a deck that tries to win building advantage through a lot of dice rolling effects, since the outcome is random for a lot of the cards it ia almost impossible to plan ahead what to do in my next turn. Wand of wonder and Wizard spellbook stealing opponents spells with randomness also make my brain hurt but I love them🙃
Great video! Need a list for that Melek deck you talked about near the end👀
I had the same problem with Chulane. My play group always says , don't take the deck apart just find a wincon faster. We can always shuffle up and play another game.
I did however take Chulane apart as well obvious reasons haha
One of my favourite decks of all time was you budget build for Selvala, Explorer Returned. I adored that deck and refined it, but I realised over time that I was taking up a large amount of the "action economy" of the game. I still have it but I far prefer to play Titania. She's not as a good but she makes the game more fun.
Unrelated to the topic but related to Weirds: the art of Fluxcharger is fantastic. It's such a shame that it's not a great card. At least we still have good old Gelectrode, the card that made me fall in love with Magic ;)
While time equity sounds like a reasonable concept to discuss, it goes beyond one player monopolizing a table's playtime. In some cases it's the complexity of the deck and the interactions it brings to the game, yes. But in many games it comes down to people just not being efficient decision makers, or worse, the politics of a game drawing out the clock. If my turn takes 5 minutes while I'm trying to cast a spell because 3 opponents are deciding whether it should be allowed to hit the board or whatever, that's a dynamic of commander and not me playing with cards that turn the game into solitaire. Furthermore, conversations like this are the reason WotC puts everything on a creature now, so your solitaire pieces close out games faster or can be interacted with easier.
I remember brewing up my maelstrom wanderer deck and finally got to play it only to realize all my turns late game took forever to finish. I’ve gotten better at piloting a cascade deck but it still takes a while due to randomness
Dungeon/dedicated initiative decks are another archetype that creates huge time equity issues. I love my Rube Goldberg Sefris deck but play it only occasionally and only if the rest of the table is cool with the possibility of me taking long turns and perhaps winning or perhaps not. I don’t play it at all at Magic fests and such.
I did something similar! First I made a krak/shakashima deck. Now I really like Veyran, Voice of Duality Since its small storms and swinging for lethal!
That's a very true issue. We had several sessions where just one player played 90% of the time and that sucks as hell. We started commander without combos and wanted to play "fair" magic. Tomer talked about 10 minute turns. The worst case scenario in my group was about 50 minutes, and 20 minutes seems common for a few players. There was a 20 minute chain in my endstep from another mono blue player and I totally forgot that it's my endstep. Then it was HIS turn. That sucks so hardcore.
I stopped playing when I know people are playing this commander that game night because I don't want to waste my time. People became partly angry because I told them to please speed up their plays.
Combo wins or something like that is heaven! I prefer losing in a 10 minute turn than waiting 50 minutes and being not sure if I lose or not.
Don't get me wrong there are and always will be long turns and that is ok. But Decks that will do this every game need to be taken apart asap. The whole group will just suffer and have no fun at all
It's okay for every deck to have a longer turn from time to time. Board states can get clunky to manoeuvre, combat can get fairly difficult, decision making can get clogged up and that's ok but having a long storm turns as part of the regular gameplan monopolizes playing time and that's not okay IMO cause it disrespects the share the other players have in that game. I took apart my Ivy mutate/copy deck 'cause I needed to much time for all the housekeeping to represent my board correctly after all the mutate/copy shenanigans. That's time no one at the table is playing magic.
Totally agree. It depends on what the time is going into and why. My Vannifar simic deck has A LOT of counters stuff but its easy to do that math so i just zip through it and make it easy for the table (pass or swing, your turn)
I just played my Elsha spell slinger the other day and everything seemed balanced as I went to my turn 6.
A single trigger of Sunbirds Invocation found me Veyron and then all of a sudden ten spells (and some good Sunbirds hits) later my opponents went from 40ish life to losing the game
Thanks for adressing that real problem ! I had to take apart many decks because they were solitaire.dck...
Riwan
SUGGESTION-
Make a video on the fastest archetype of decks, what color pies, commander examples, ect
But still non cedh, I don’t mean power, I mean just on curve, quick turns
Every high sinergy deck will suffer from this and I think this is an issue that speaks louder on behalf of the WoTC design team than the player base. They wanted the meta to work like this, every card now so so much stuff and there is so much interaction with tokens and counters that you end up with so many high synergistic interactions without even realizing. And worst of all, this design philosophy is hard to deal with because high synergy is what makes a deck thematic, fun and strong. I own all four 40k precons, because I'm a massive fan, and I did some upgrades to bring them to a higher level and now they perform really well but all of them can have turns that take AGES to resolve, so much so that by the end my brain hurts. And it's not like I went out of my way to do so, I did what the decks wanted me to...but cascading into more cascades and having other 3 triggers on the stack followed by new triggers is crazy to follow. Same with my Tyranids deck and +1/+1 being distributed, increased, then doubled and lastly copied! You get the idea...WoTC is to blame for this and not the community.
100%, there are sooo many cards designed for commander in the last 3 years that basically say "When you do X, Y happens, (second paragraph), when Y happens you may Z" - so even value decks based around precon cards, by turn 5 or 6 have dozens of triggers to resolve. "put a +1/+1 counter on all my guys, draw a card, I do this so now I do this, ok attacks, attack triggers, I do this this and this. Second main, I do this so now I draw, do this, ok I guess I can still do this". Wizards design is just causing so many game actions to take place, and in a 4 player game it just takes too much time. A game designed to be a quick thing played inbetween other games at a gaming convention, now takes close to 2 hours to play.
I've been adding more Haste to decks. I always feel bad doing an explosive turn in my creature based decks because then I can't attack with all these new creatures, and then there is always a board wipe the happens. Negating all that time I spent on my turn.
I remember playing in a ten-player game back in the day.
One player had a Time Walk they would regrow a couple times a turn.
I will always remember the groans from the other players every time they regrew the dang Time Walk. LOL
I have a couple of decks that take long turns. The caveat to that is, they also take 3-4 turns of setup. So I don't mind if I take a 5 sec turn ( land - card-pass) then spend one or 2 turns using up the saved time to do thing thing.
i think part of the game is long turns, often for me i’m testing a new deck and realizing things i could do that i didn’t even notice when building the deck, i don’t spend too much time just sitting and thinking but often i just have a lot of game actions. it isn’t fun for me to run a deck who’s general plan is tap out every turn for one big spell, hope it makes an impact, pass turn, that gets old after the first game, i prefer having many options and things to do and sometimes that takes a while, it seems like more of a playgroup issue if some people want short simple games and others want long complicated turns and interesting interactions
I agree with the extreme cases we've all experienced where the equity is unequal. But odds are some games will just be those games, and the players will draw the cards at chance that'll allow them to elongate their turns. The same deck could have a nongame the next game. There's a line where I fear this format can lean towards players also wanting to lose how they want to lose.
6:10 the way Tomer pronounces Yorion. 🤣🤣
Play my Jhoira deck absurdly fast to try and address this. Generally most cards players won't want to respond to, but I have to anticipate which ones they might to give an opportunity. When you dump 20 junk artifacts in a turn you don't want to draw it out.
as someone who loves heavy time equity decks, I always ask the group if I can get one game in just to scratch the itch. The only way the table accepts if I acknowledge that I'll be archenemy for pretty much the whole game.
Do you have your new Melek list anywhere? :0
Tomer nice video! Could you possibly upload the list for your new Melek deck? Would love to see, cheers!
Nevermind, you did an article, awesome!
This is why I dissembled a Hidetsugu and Kairi deck. If the commander lands and they allow untap if will probably go infinite turns killing opponents with small damage on each turn.
Play decks you want to face with.....dont complain if an opponent takes ages to resolve turn and then next game play a storm deck
Saying this before I’ve watched the video so unsure if this is mentioned but I don’t think this issue can really be solved because land hate is not acceptable, early killing and aggro I feel is generally not acceptable so games easily go to later turns with tons of mana and then it feels like a lot of decks can just do a lot
Aggro turns a 4 player game into a 1v1, and none of the 4 players get to have fun because of your selfishness. It's not acceptable because the premise of the format is that it's a multiplayer game, and you did everything in your power to ensure to prevent one player from starting the game, while simultaneously making it impossible for you to ever win either.
Really enjoying your videos Tomer. Will the Control player in you make an appearance soon?
These videos are really interesting and thought provoking. I'm really enjoying them
Honestly Superfriends being slow is 100% a skill issue or an issue with opponents never snooping. But mostly a skill issue...
Aesi is my first commander and made so much investment into it but my turns being taking forever with the land search and eventually I ended up playing it less and less.
I love Izzet spellslinger. I have a Niv deck on Arena and an Eruth deck in paper. I can’t decide if I should switch it up because Eruth either doesn’t do anything. Or it pops off and I take really long turns and usually win the game. Not sure who I’d switch to though.
I have a shorikai artifact deck and when I first played it my turns were 10 minutes or more but now that I’ve played it so much and know all the lines I never take a turn over 5 minutes
1. 100% players need to know what their decks can do and not take too much time in deciding what to do or how to do it. Goldfishing is probably the best way. I’ve seen blink decks that know EXACTLY how to stack their triggers, how many and what permanents are untapping, how many cards they’re drawing, etc and are therefore very fast. It’s possible, just don’t be a scrub. Get good. (Enough to not bore the table.)
2. Players confuse taking too long and taking game actions on everyone else’s turn. Example my Kalamax deck. I draw a card, tap Kalamax and PASS the turn, every turn. Then on each person’s endstep I play one instant and copy it with Kalamax’s trigger. But players then get mad that I’m “taking up everyone else’s time” when I know It’s just the way draw-go decks work.
3. Personally I think everyone should have a timer on their turn and (aside from combat) not exceed 5 minutes. There’s an average of 4 players and 10 turns. Excluding the first three turns (bc unless it’s cEDH nothing’s going on for that long. That’s 4x7x 5. That 140 minutes. Two hours should be the CAP at which a game takes. And it’d help solve time equity.
My biggest beef with decks that take a lot of actions is when those actions don't meaningfully advance the game state at all. It's one thing if you have a big flashy finish, and then you win. It's significantly worse if you spend 10 minutes playing your turn and then pass, with no real impact on the game state. I played against a Jhoira eggs deck that was probably the biggest offender for this: play a 0-cost artifact, draw a 0-cost artifact, repeat 20 times, whoops didn't hit the win condition pass the turn. They did this every turn. It was excruciating.
As someone who runs a Prosper turbo exile deck, I do have to say that if none of your three opponents let you get that far, it's not your fault. With that said, if you can't win, don't put your opponents through the misery.
I have a Shirei deck that does this. i just concentrate on playing fast and well. I'm well practiced from playing Lantern Control in Modern.
As someone who occasionally plays a Superfriends deck, I've learned it's the deck that forces me to pay closest attention to the game because one skill all Superfriends players should practice is planning your moves ahead. Admittedly, that's a skill that could accelerate all games of EDH but with the number of loyalty abilities you're toying with, it's a skill that can help you take less time performing your actions.
If you haven't planned out the next 2-3 turns, you're being disrespectful to everyone else at the table by participating in the game.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I agree. But I see a lot of people looking at their hands like it's the first time they're seeing the cards. 🤣
I've been playing a Gut, True Soul Zealot // Haunted One aristocrat Goblins deck, that I specifically built for casual tables because my usual decks are too storm-y. Turns out I accidentally built a deck that takes way, way longer to play out turns than my usual combo decks...
Yea, my girlfriend loves to play flicker or golgari GY decks.... she takes probably way more than 50% of the entire time 😅
Aggro player here. What are these long turns you speak of?
From my experience, aggro players take longer turns than control players. Debate with themselves for 3 minutes about whether to full swing or leave 1 blocker back. Debate for another 4 on where the attacks go. Miserable.
Sometimes I’ll find myself in a situation where I know I can win, but know it’ll take a while (like having Time Stretch and Eternal Witness in my hand, plus a bunch of resources that pretty much guarantee that I win), so I’ll just warn the table that I’ve won and ask if they’d like to scoop. Often, though, they’ll ask me to play it out… then they’ll complain when it takes too long…
Well, duh. You're playing Time Stretch. Simply by playing that card, you've declared that you have no respect for the time of others.
@@Cybertech134 I pulled it in a Dominaria Remastered pack, I thought it would be cool, now my turn has taken 20 minutes and I don’t know for sure if I’ll even win 😭
@@Cybertech134 time to put time stretch in every blue deck I can.
I can definitively say ALL of my decks are durdley and can have 10-min turns because of synergies, but I goldfish a ton and try to simplify my turn explanations so people see I'm doing a ton of stuff for an average payoff.
This is why I said I hated the Timey Wimey deck. Both players I know that play it/iterate off of it take way way too long every single turn.
I play a sefris deck that sometimes will pop off too much and even i get annoyed keeping everyones board clear and taking long turns. However, its my favorite commander and its a $15 budget deck! I do bring it with me and if there is a game i go off too long, im sure to swap to something more simple and give people a chance to do their thing. I also probably over apologize when my turn js taking too long
I think the biggest thing is to know your own deck, know all the lines, and be able to explain it clearly. Also, you need to ask yourself how you will win a game when playing that type of deck. If somehow you have a non-deterministic three-step loop to draw your entire deck, probably it is not a good idea to have Thoracle as a wincon.
This is great, gold fishing to respect other people’s time is such a great call
I played against a blink deck the other week, they also played top in their deck... Needless to say, it was not a fun time when you did anything and they took 5 minutes deciding the top
As to "Durdle" decks, i got so tired of playing against one of my play groups' Durdle decks i built a "Draw go" Turbo fog deck and played them with it.
Looooong story short, they durdled their wolves/draw/search more wolves deck and attack. Then i would fog with a Fairy Taunting doing them a point damage.
Repeat.
It was epic. Mwahahahaaa!
I have an extra turns deck that I rarely play because I noticed it just turns into solitare. It's a shame, because I love the archetype, but don't want to make other people sit through it.
I treat magic like fighting games. When someone combos off on me I think “damn that’s pretty cool” not “ah fuck I lost”
When someone pops off that’s not time for me to get on my phone, that’s time for me to watch intently while I get my ass beat. I love this shit
I gotta say I love these videos, thank you!!
Tomer, I played against a chaos player. You are so right, I will never do it again
I dunno about this. Sure long turns lock you out of participating in the game for a long time, but I can appreciate a work of art unfolding. It’s cool to see a Rube Goldberg machine working it’s magic, so watching an izzet player go off is pretty fun
The real trick is to make your opponents' turns last longer, by doing most of your shenanigans on their turns (I like my Kalamax, Feather, and Kenrith decks who all do exactly that).
okay this is actually super helpful thanks
i love that someone else loves izzet