My store charges the commander players to rent a table, the same amount as people who come in to play one of the board games they have on the shelf. We also have a healthy draft scene which also keeps the store alive!
@@runcmd1419 My FLGS used to charge $5 for the evening of a Commander game, about 4 hours of play. They stopped doing this for reasons I don't understand, and it's now fully free play events.
I’d charges commander players $8. If they want to enter, I’d rather have people who come in and actually buy product over people who bring proxie decks and not spend money.
Mtg has evolved over the years since I worked in an lgs, but where I worked we couldn't rely on the games to be the hook that made players come to the shop. We had food/snack options, we had an Xbox and a GameCube with a couch that gave people a couch multiplayer experience, weekly events in different formats and games. We built a shop that was gamer bait and we were rewarded for giving players a casual hang out spot with everything you needed for a hours long gaming binge. You gotta give people an experience and atmosphere to encourage people to become regulars. Find what your players want and provide it, you will never go out of business.
This, I always looked at the LGS model as flawed in that your business is almost entirely reliant on a particular product that you don't make. I always felt that the way to do it was to open a coffee shop or something to encourage long visits. Just have cards there as part of the business. Have food for guests to buy that way you monetize their experience even if they don't come in to buy cards.
@@christopherfeerin7526 it's the same with vhs stores back then. Those made their money mostly from the snacks and drinks people bought together with the VHS.
I think most 1v1 players play online because it’s just too expensive in paper. Why would you ever want to spend £600 on a deck that’s just gonna get rotated or MH4ed or banned out from under you? If you build a Commander deck that can’t happen unless you choose to run a new, obviously broken on release Commander like Golos or Nadu.
you don't netdeck that's how. netdecking made everything more expensive. optimum play isn't optimal if that makes sense. Alternatively the more everyone netdecks the higher the cost and the less fun. cardboard rectangles are a terrible investment by the way, unless the investment is in fun and good times.
@@NoahRobertson-w4b that genie is never going back in the bottle, it’s not 1997 and “netdecking” has been a thing for decades. Players either don’t want to play those “net-decks”, at which point they generally choose to play a social format like Commander; or they do at which point they play online where they can actually get games in. “Optimal play isn’t optimal” is quite literally the ethos of Commander, that’s _why_ that format is the most popular by far. That’s why the game keeps growing, explicitly because Commander isn’t sweaty in the way all 1v1 formats necessarily are.
@@Azeria r/whoosh. It's the most popular, because it's the only thing new players are seeing. See, the thing about being "sweaty" is that it's a choice. you can shame the affinity player out of playing affinity in a casual environment. also no format has ever been fully 1v2 that's also a mistake you commaner apologists make. THG, empires, and playing the table have always been a thing.
@@NoahRobertson-w4bFirstly, there’s four os in /r/woooosh. Secondly, no. Everything you’ve said is wrong actually. Arena exists and yet new players choose Commander. Commander videos get pushed because they have far better engagement. Wizards makes Commander products because they sell better. Commander is more popular because it’s more popular, and it’s more popular because it’s more fun. If you want social interaction, if you want a social contract telling others what they can or cannot play, that’s literally the role Commander fills. What you’re saying in this thread is ‘I want 1v1 to be more like Commander’ while shitting on Commander. In a competitive, constructed format, which Standard and Modern and Legacy and Pauper and Pioneer are, you cannot and will never convince those players to run worse decks and frankly you shouldn’t really want to anyway. That’s not what they’re for. You can dislike Commander being a 100 card singleton format or whatever, but if you want a casual experience, which it sounds like you do, because you want to peer pressure people into not playing “netdecks” play a casual format, even if it isn’t EDH. The bit about 1v2? idk what you’re in about there, sorry.
@@Azeria A) how long have you been playing. B) Who are you to be telling me what I've experienced. I have played all these formats and more. all 60 card, some with singleton decks some with noble some as un set legal. Commander is derivative and warping. it ends up making everyone think it's the only way to multiplayer, the only way to kitchen sink play. Untrue. I very much want to play again, I can't. There is no longer a place or a desire for players like me. to address other things, commander products sell well because they're the only ones with effort put into them. hard to get someone into normal play without a flagship precon. 1v1 is not a format, it's an option, and a very common one. 100 card singleton decks were thing before they were co-opted, no one played them because they're an ass to shuffle.and if you want to talk about peer pressure mention how you can't even get a game in if you don't play commander. how many won't even acknowledge you after the first time you say you don't like playing commander. I don't hate commander for being 100 card, I hate it for destroying everything I knew.
My LGS offers 3 dollar store credit for showing up to the commander events. Genius move that makes the player actually want to come and spend at the store instead of staying home and playing with friends.
@@MENTOSDUDE77 it killed standard for sure(wizards forcing an overwhelming amount of sets and product lines down players throats.) I really hope that Foundations revives In Person Standard because its always been my favorite format. That being said Standards the kost expensive with rotation so ever since Covid-19 people just got used to Arena since its all anyone had for 1.5-2yrs. Magic Online has always been a thing so I dont blame it on Arena, but between Covid, cost of playing IRL vs Online, travel and time for events in person is what caused the change. I'll never forget my first LGS back during M10-M12 because every friday it was like hanging out with another family. Everyone hanging out and playing while having snacks and drinks we could buy was amazing. If a store doesn't have a good vibe(or rude players who arent put in check) it can kill that stores player base FAST.
It isn't arena, it is the sets and the bad design and cash grab mechanics that are driving people away. WotC sales are way down and that includes arena.
I find commander to be more fun due to greater player interaction, and I have a greater choice of cards to build my decks, but mostly I play commander because I don't want to spend money buying multiples of cards that will just rotate out.
@@bradcallahan3546 Bro standard is thriving right now with at least 8 meta decks and probably +10 viable rogue decks. I'm currently playing an online league organized by someone of my city's community and the top 8 is conformed by 7 different decks
@@TheGoodColonel Modern right now has the same issue, just even worse. The so called "big three" in pioneer (rakdos, control, phoenix) are about 30% of the metagame together, where boros energy is also about 30% of the metagame. I honestly don't know why people hate pioneer so much for literally no real reason.
My store it’s free to play. But they have a pizza fridge. A huge drink cabinet and snack lounge. It’s a small shop but the money is made off snacks and drinks they said.
My old LGS just faked their WPN stuff, but even with that, there just weren't enough players to keep it afloat. Schisms happened within the local playgroups for varying reasons (a few dudes with bad hygiene stinking up the store, people being rude and salty), folks wouldn't stay if others were there, and other playgroups just flat out refused to patronize the store because they didn't like the owner. I miss having cards available locally, but if you just sit on the sideline and let your customers stink up your store and start drama with people, you've brought it on yourself. Pricing is another issue. When an LGS thinks they can price a $35 Commander deck at $65 or $130, people are gonna start voting with their wallets.
Online stores like TCGPLAYER,SCG etc...killed the in store sale business. If a LGS is selling a precon for +1/3rd cost it's because they known it's dried up online.
I work at a local LGS and the way we keep our doors open is by having competitive prices and diversifying products. We have barely 5% markup on boosters and boxes but we do sell sleeves, deck boxes, playmats, as well as other tabletop games, dice and of course snacks and singles. We also run events constantly. Some that are only one and done and others that run every month or every week.
I live in Washington and have found a couple of stores that have FNM constructed events. It was mostly modern, but i did find one that did modern, legacy, and pioneer all at the same time, which was awesome to experience
Kitchen table magic was always the largest format…. Not sure how this is surprising to anyone. You made the most played format the most popular; ofc it’s the most played format at an LGS now.
I think people should try a fun experiment. Go to an LGS you don't normally go to, pull out some deck boxes and sit down somewhere by yourself and just chill. See if someone comes up to you and asks if you want to play a game. I would put money on the outcome of that scenario being the person coming up to you either asks you if you want to play commander or just pulls out a commander deck and assumes you're playing commander. I made a post to organize a Pauper event and someone DM'd me about it saying he was building some pauper "random uncommon legendary guy" deck and I had to tell him it's not commander. From my experiences, a large portion of the magic community doesn't even know other formats exist.
@@DannyOE4 that's because the majority of the "playerbase" is Commander people and no offense but Commander isn't even Magic the Gathering. Hot take I know.
It is and it isnt. Card games, much like TTRPGs, and even like sports, evolve. And the players as much as the creators will drive that evolution for a variety of reasons. This is the natural evolution of any game with game pieces you buy and game rules you had to release into the wild. Once those things are out in the wild, people will houserule/alter/or invent alternate ways to play. Its what we do, its human nature. Be it for fun, for safety (tying into the sport there), for added challenge, for simply entertainment and variety, or simply to theory craft for the sake of "would this work?" Commander was born of that natural evolution. To say it isnt Magic the Gathering is fair, but then neither is pauper, pioneer, modern, legacy or even standard. Vintage is as close as you get cause all the rest of that formating is just to cut card pool and force sales. Or lets go another way. Draft, of any kind, isnt Magic the Gathering. Its not the original ruleset or how the game was initially designed. The reality is there are sanctioned events for Commander now. The fact is that format has been recognized as official. It is what it is. Now you may not think that format fits the spirit of what the game is meant to be and thats fine. However it is in fact a way to play the game@@Aaron-l3l6g
I think part of the problem is that some commander players are interested in 60 card constructed, but why would they build an expensive deck if the events are dwindling? In a way, once the numbers get low, if you can't do anything they'll just get lower. I don't think shunning commander players is the right move though. A lot of stores that I've seen get through this do so by inviting people to a store discord and advertising events there, and making people feel welcome in the store and community so that they'll try new formats and games because they like the people.
Then go play commander at home with friends. These LGS’s NEED people to buy product. If commander players aren’t spending money every time they walk into a store, they are hurting them.
@@Aaron-l3l6g That's because WotC doesn't give a crap about 60 card formats and caters everything to commander. If they built a good 60 card format with a sensible card pool/banlist with precons that isn't going to cost an arm and a leg to buy a meta deck then they would have a winning format on their hands.
The more I hear about other people's LGS the more proud I am of my own. We just have a weekly rotation between Commander/Pioneer/Modern with Standard Showdown/Draft on Saturday. They also give away the prize pack at random for Commander which I'm surprised more LGSs don't do.
Personally, I don't want to play anything other than commander. I want a chill, relaxed experience where we do play to win, but just coming and socializing is the main goal. I mostly collect cards, and then commander is a way that I can play some of the cards I have collected. The competitive aspect of other formats does not appeal to me at all. I used to play Hearthstone when it first released, so I do have a taste of how constructed formats operate (albeit through the lens of another game). Also, in terms of F2F Games, I have had to leave without playing a handful of times because I had to drive there and Toronto's parking laws meant I couldn't park prior to 6pm (when the commander event starts) and the store is already full around that time. I will say that I actually do like researching the hell out of the rules, so I am frequently more knowledgeable on interactions than constructed players
MTG evolves over time. I grew up playing Legacy at my LGS because nobody wanted to invest in a standard deck that would rotate out. Legacy was the format where almost any card or deck was legal. Then the staples became insanely expensive and Legacy became similar to Vintage for price of entry. To most players a commander deck offers a cheaper and non-rotating investment.
I don't care for commander. I've mostly just play on arena these days. If I go to the store it's unlikely I'd find a game. If it's unlikely I'd find a game why would I spend $300 on a deck?
There needs to be more constructed products. The only thing to come out each release is Commander. Getting rid of the theme decks was a really bad move and pushed people like me out of buying product with each release.
Like the old precons. not the best (sometimes garbo but you can't hit homers every time) but an instant out of the box playable deck. and upgrade able too. Three of my best are modified precons. and they're scary as hell.
@@astrowerm before pio it was a semi large standard crowd (for the size of the store) then it was a good pio crowd till covid, now after covid there hasn’t been 1 fnm event
I personally stopped playing modern upon the release of mh3, and have been playing commander since. This is simply because the 2 modern decks that I had essentially became irrelevant overnight and I just wasn’t in the market for spending hundreds of dollars to update them. The freedom and variety of power level in commander is what makes it a way better format for the average player to commit to
My LGS closed up entirely because the owner did exactly this. Everyone made it abundantly clear that we no longer wanted to play Standard/Modern, but were willing to pay for things like Commander tournaments or the like to keep the store afloat, and a fair amount of people bought packs and singles. Owner ended up just outright banning Commander play from the store, so we began to use a cafe in the area and using discord to organize games, until we eventually just all moved to playing our Commander games online. The owner is still pissed at the Commander players for refusing to switch to another format despite us being absolutely clear that one of the reasons for it is because we wanted to be able to apply rule 0 to our games and also because we put price caps on our Commander decks as a store playerbase(Your entire deck had to be 100$ or less, so if you wanted those high cost cards you were putting a fair amount of your budget into them). That and he refused to allow people to run proxies in his store so...
$100 budget but also need proxies? I understand accessibility but - and please understand I'm saying this not to be mean, just curious - at that point how much were ya'll spending in his store anyway?
Barely any at all. These people whine about stores, but a lot of these are just taking up table space without contributing to the store. @@steveheist6426
@@steveheist6426 Between food, drinks, packs, and singles? Probably most of us would spend 25-30$ a week, which was usually more then the non-MTG TCG players that they also catered to. From what I heard from friends who played in the Pokemon and YGO groups in that LGS, those usually spent way less, around 10-15$ a week, so of the TCGs, MTG was pulling in the most still. Should note btw that MTG night was only two nights a week, something that the owner had come up with long before I started going there to give other games an equal shot. But he had a very unrealistic expectation that anyone playing MTG should be basically paying enough to foot the bill for other nights of the week they weren't there as well, because one of the two nights that MTG fell on was Friday, so should OBVIOUSLY be making him as much as the Saturday night crowd... which was Warhammer. Which, fair's fair to them, they did make the store more money per player, but they had less total players.
@@steveheist6426 maybe is cheap ard but a vety old one, and they didn't say they dont spend money, no lgs survive with only selling cards, they can spend on sleeves, mats, deck box, ''rent'' time at table, snacks......
yup. my LGS almost exclusively has commander, sometimes people play modern on wednesdays if enough people want to but its only ever commander and the occasional standard event. i wish i could play modern or pioneer (or pauper wouldnt that be the dream) but ive lost all interest in going there cuz people dont have interest in 60 card constructed.
@@Zavult i did. The reprint policy is infinitely better than Magic and more importantly I can actually play in paper. Is it an inferior game? Absolutely but being able to find games goes a LONG way.
I don’t even recognize this poster’s experience. *EVERY* LGS I’ve entered in FL has WPN EDH FNM. All but one of the 6 largest LGSs nearest me have extensive stocks of Singles/Boosters/EDH Precons being bought (Because they’re all figuring out how to avoid having to offer Singles at more-than-market at this point.) From everything I’ve seen, EDH players are really getting better about supporting their LGSs. Whether that’s buying all their snacks/drinks from the gas-station-style soda rack machines you see in stores now, or just spending a little more on site to help keep their play-space alive. If an LGS owner deep into MtG as part of their business model is refusing to cater to EDH players who now make up the majority of MtG players? That doesn’t seem fiscally prudent from my PoV. It makes me sad that 60-card Constructed players keep blaming Commander for the woes of their formats, when it’s WotC’s/Hasbro’s decision to abandon those formats, plus WotC’s greed making 60-card formats less financially attractive to new players that’s to blame. Stop blaming the consequence of decisions made by Wizards of the Hasbro. Blame the ones whose decisions brought us to this pass. *You* can ignore how expensive serious engagement with most 60-card constructed formats has become, but you can’t ignore the effect that prospective expense has on others. The TLDR? If EDH vanished from the minds of all men, woman, and non-binary folk tomorrow, you *would not see an appreciable uptick in 60-card format engagement #’s * . Too expensive remains too expensive, whether or not a less-expensive alternative exists. Make WotC know your displeasure. With your wallets, because that’s the *only* thing they care about.
I feel like I’m one of the few comments here who don’t mind commander my old lgs had commander nights where you pay a fee. And sold snacks and drinks to make money from people who stayed for hours
In the Netherlands its all what you sad. You cant bring your own food and drinks. You have to pay €6,50 you get a free promo and a pack. And then there are 3 randomly chosen packs for 3 ppl
I’m a constructed format only player, so Modern and Legacy. That said, there’s 2 stores in the area that hold Modern events weekly and they only fire during hours I’m working so I’m shit out of luck there short of finding a new career lmao. The only other format that gets players here is Commander and there seems to be an event or at least a pod to play 3-4 days a week. As a primarily modern player, it’s tough to see. I personally can’t stand the format but I understand its importance. Magic is in a weird spot and the enfranchised players are getting screwed all around. Modern players and Commander players. They need to do something big and announce a new tournament series or a restructuring of competitive formats to keep players together and give them a reason to buy and play more. We grew up with the PT series/World Championship, GP’s and SCG events, no shortage of event coverage, gameplay, advertising, prestige. Now? Whatever it is we got with the new Mythic Championship and Magic Fests just ain’t it. I used to make time to follow and compete in the PTQ/RPTQ system. I’d love to do that and spend my dollars but stores in my area tend to stick solely to Sealed/Standard/Pioneer for that stuff now. Just a let down overall. Magic always seems to be having a rough time but I remember when that wasn’t the case and I miss it.
Couldn’t have said it better myself 🫡 I even would like to see a modern/ two headed giant rise again But the main reason why I can’t get into commander is your either their playing decks you can’t win for 3 hours and you don’t realize it At least losing in modern only takes like 3 turns lol
I think it depends on when the LGS was founded, at the LGS near my house where I play the format is mostly pioneer and EDH because many members started playing there since the pioneer format, while the LGS near my parents' house is more towards standard and EDH because they have only been open for 2 or 3 years what I noticed is that if LGS only relies on MTG I don't think LGS will survive, they need income in other fields to survive
I'm not a business owner but I'm baffled why the owner hasn't catered to the audience they have. EDH League, Themed EDH tournaments, budget of $20 or less only. Halloween is coming up, do a horror themed tournament, Innistrad and Duskmourn only or something. EDH draft or a cube, something. I get betting annoyed by WOTC pushing cards designed for EDH in other sets. But don't take it out on the players dude, it's your business. Edit: Precon only tournaments
I had purchased Commander decks over the years, and tore them apart for cards but didnt officially convert to the format until 2018 when i bought all the planeswalker decks except for lord windgrace and started learning how to play Now commander is the only thing i play, Ive built a deck of every color and color combination, ive built Planeswalker commanders, partners, played around with companion decks, and i do NOT play competitive, because i enjoy the chill fun environment commander creates I also refused to pay to play magic aside from pre release, I'm not a competitive person, i am not going to buy into an event of any kind, standard, modern, or commander I like commander because it is something i can just pull stuff from my collection and build something dumb to play with my friends for free Do i spend money at my LGS? ABSOLUTELY! I buy singles, packs, dice, TTRPG rule books, but i am not going to subsidize the prizes for a couple of tryhards who paid to put together top decks FNM is dying, in my eyes, because the formats are expensive, and just unfun Commander is honestly the only reason i havent sold my collection
I don't live in the US, at my LGS the game with the most tournaments is Yu-Gi-Oh (on Wednesday and Saturday) with at most 1 magic event on Saturday. Other games like Lorcana, Pokemon Flesh and Blood, Star Wars Unlimited, etc are also represented, and you can rent tables to play board games. For commander, it's 8€ for the afternoon (2PM-6PM), where you usually play 2 games, you get a drink, a pack and a promo pack, there's 12 places available and usually 10 people are there
I live in Chile (lived in the US for a few years too) and FNM in my city is cEDH in one store, and Dragon Ball on another.... both stores have a commander day (Thue/Wed) with a "budget commander league" ($160usd) that is like a mini cEDH, very competitive and focused on winning faster than the other players. One of those stores has Modern on Saturdays but there is hardly more than 8 players for that. Pre release events pull more than 20 players in each store the same days, that is a lot of people around here... and that's it. Hope this helps to see how MTG is working on other places besides the US
Wizards screwed up getting rid of player points for attending and winning events. Proper prize support can fix non-commander FNM pretty easily. Free space is an outdated concept with online shopping
Commander definitely (ironically) feels much easier and more welcoming to get into for MTG irl. I've been watching MTG on UA-cam for years, and playing Arena a lot these past few months, and have just now barely shown up to my LGS to play a few in person commander games with a precon I bought (my first physical card game purchase ever). I can't imagine sitting down in front of just one other guy as he focuses all his attention on me and my misplays and fumbling around. Commander kind of eleviates that (at least for me) because there's 3 other players, everyone is just talking and having a good time, and I feel much more comfortable learning the physical cards around that environment.
Moved from a big city to a small town. Went from multiple LGS with all sorts of formats to a single store in a whole county. We are lucky to get 8 ppl for draft on Friday. And no 60 constructed days. Only commander. Makes me sad.
Oregon player here. I played constructed and limited during my early years of playing magic. My friends got me back into magic during the pandemic. Things like there interest, game knights, and even Arena, got me back into magic. I love playing standard, tbh the meta is one of the most interesting time in standard I’ve seen during my entire mtg career, BUT, I’m playing on Arena when I get the itch. Commander is wonderful because it gets me to play for fun, competitive, and I get to play with the collection I’ve built over the past 10 years of my life. My LGS throws standard and modern events in the store, but, they hardly ever run. Seeing this story play out over many different regions is interesting, and maybe just a new era for MTG.
Although some of us are commander players, we participate in tournaments that our LGS does, be it standard, modern or Pauper using the house decks. 8 players is already fine with our LGS. Now we are starting to play Draft Cube using players very own Cube (Yes we leave our cube draft box in our LGS) We only use Card Kingdom if the LGS doesn’t have the cards we’re searching for. If it’s in the shop, we buy it even if it’s less than a dollar. We buy Packs if we want to do a Pack War (Highest value card in a pack wins all the packs)
My LGS has constant support for Magic, Pokemon, and Lorcana. The issue my LGS has is the markups on product, and sometimes the markup is so bad it is significantly cheaper for me to buy stuff online. If I can, for example, get a Starter Collection, Booster Box, AND Beginner Box from Coolstuff for the same price as JUST a booster box from my LGS, I'm gonna go with the cheaper option.
Proxy the card or play a non ring deck. I played rcqs and together with my brother we have 6 modern deck and not one has the one ring in it. We hate the card. There are enough good decks out there
@@C42ST3N modern isnt a proxy friendly format though. And non ring decks just arent as good. Theres a reason it sees play in more than 50% of the decks out there
@@halvsketchy9293 storm, ub frogtide, belcher are all good decks without the ring and won turnements. In our store proxies are allowed for fnm but not in scc. 50% also means that one half is not playing the ring. So there are options which are still strong.
@halvsketchy9293 Dimir Frog & Domain zoo are 2 higher tier decks right now, not running the ring & putting up decent numbers. The only decks that are playing the ring are enegry variants (boros, jeskai, mardu) tron & eldrazi
I’m pretty sure the moment our store tries to charge us to play commander none of us will play there. I have not bought a single magic product in years all I play is commander with about 10-12 people.
@@sambrown9475 I used to enjoy drafts when packs had simple/vanilla cards. I feel like packs full of cards with paragraphs would hurt my brain. Power creep to sell cards is destroying the game.
@rainbowcrash6990 it feels like now a days you can only win a draft off of some busted rare you pull from your first pack and pray people pass you your colors. To be fair, I've only drafted a few times over the years( I am 25)
@@sambrown9475 I would recommend trying some arena drafts to get more comfortable. As for opening bombs, it's worse in some sets than others. I think it was kinda bad in Outlaws, but it's better now in the current set (Duskmourn)
Great video but their are some good points you missed. "In my opinion standard players tend to purchase more product than commander players" This might be true in a individual one to one card basis but the area where commander players are going to outspend others is on product like sleeves, foils, high price cards especially commanders, and even things like life counters. I run a local edh group with like 4 big lgs in my area and you'd be amazed how you can monetize commander. One prime example is one a month we host a commander precon only tournament. To incentivize players purchasing from the lgs we have a rule if you buy your precon to play in store you can purchase one mtg card from the stores inventory to place in that precon. This drives both precon sales, individual sales, and brings new players and old players all in together on an even footing with precons. Another lgs runs commander leagues where they charge 5$ table fee but all that money goes into a pool at the end and 90% of it is returned to the top 16 in store credit. This brings in players by the droves! In short I think edh isn't the enemy people make it out to be but rather just a shift in meg's trajectory.
The LGS I play at does a flat $5 fee for their day pass. With that you get to play unlimited games of Magic in whatever format you can get people to play with you. One guy is even working on his own format and keeps getting people to help him play test it a bit. You also get unlimited fountain drinks and popcorn. He’s also got a little fridge where you can buy various energy drinks and whatnot if you’d like. You can play some video games in a little lounge area where there is a PS4 and an Xbox with some games. And they even sell some games from various consoles and have a few consoles themselves on sale. This LGS also does some tabletop stuff like D&D, Battletech, and of course Warhammer. But Magic still outweighs the customer base by far. Overall the community there is really good. We don’t really have much of an issue with people being too sweaty or competitive or anything like that. And as far as I know, everyone gets along with everyone. The big thing that kinda gets me however is the price for sealed product isn’t displayed at all. And anytime I’ve asked the price of something it’s always WAY over where I could get said product elsewhere. I asked about pre ordering a Duskmourn booster box and the owner told me that it was $180 to pre order one where I could get it elsewhere for $130. I’ve seen this same sort of issue with the pre con decks they sale. It’s always a substantial mark up. I’ve even asked how they determine their pricing (because I want to know what to expect to pay for something since they don’t show prices on anything) but was quickly told that it was “NDA”. So unfortunately as good as the environment of the store is it’s hard for me to justify buying stuff at the store because I know that the pricing is WAY high. I don’t mind a little bit of markup for the convenience of getting the product right then and there, as well as supporting the store itself. But I’m not going to gouge myself $50 for a booster box.
The LGS I go to the most does limited on Fridays. Has been that way since Scar of Mirrodin and gets really good turn outs. I'm honestly not against what they do in many parts of Europe which is table fees. Essentially to sit and play non-sanctioned magic for the night has $2 or $3 per person. I'd rather pay a few bucks to play for the night if it keeps my local LGS in buisness.
I think a big part of the problem is not converting customers into money. If i want/need a card for commander and I cant buy the card from my LGS, I need to buy from some online seller and they get my buisness instead and thats a mistake of the store not the player. If they dont keep their Sealed product at a price competitive with online sellers (unless box prices go up then they wont miss that) then they're not going to move product. As a counter point, I understand that owning all of those singles and sealled product add huge overhead costs and risk on the shops but if they're not capitalizing on people by selling locallythen they're missing out on business. I can order boxes from my LGS through TCG player for less than I can from them in person yet they dont have to pay seller fees or shipping when I buy in person. I have a modern deck and they didn't have the MH3 cards I needed (boros energy) for rcq season, and again they miss out. I feel like the poster might have a simular situation where they just havent kept up with changes in buying habits of players and activly buylisting both in person and online so they can sell and turnover cards for a profit.
Online sellers do no have the fixed overhead costs of an LGS. Where exactly is the hydro and rent money supposed to come from if they are only making $10 on a box?
Literally one store in my relatively large city runs a Standard event. Every other Friday. Four people showed up, including me. Every other store plays Commander Pods. It's a bummer for me, because I have like one Commander deck, and no one likes seeing it at a table because it's basically a Monoblack Stax deck with a slow win-con. So it's lose-lose for me. I have all these Modern and Legacy/Vintage staples from back when I was a PTQ Weekend Warrior, and I'd like to play them, but people get salty when you hit the table things like Chains of Mephistopheles and Pox. It's a weird feeling.
From my over 20 years of Mtg experience as a comp player and also Judge/TO EDH-players are always the loudest when they want to be catered to but are also the least likely to contribute in any meaningful way like participating in any form of event that isn't just participation-priced while wanting to not spent any money while having several thousand bucks of EDH decks just layin around
@@TheVeeOhla the thing i dispise about EDH is that people play it to just durdle their time away. Yes I could play 1 5 hour game in which nothing happens or I could play 20 more interactive 1v1 games in actual Constructed
The problem with one of the LGS in my town is that they have no inventory, but wont buy any cards under 3$, so if you want to build a deck you... can't. Everyone buys singles from the other one,which results in everyone playing at the same place. They are just driving away the MTG players over time.
23:10 Yes, there are some rule’s interactions that we commander players need to learn. But I feel like this example specifically has a source I feel like a lot of mtg players with YUGIOH backgrounds think this because that’s gotta chains resolve in that game. So players might be thinking the stack and chains work the same way
the way my LGS handle this is that every day of the week is for one format, onde day for standart, one day for commander, onde day for pioneer and so on
My LGS has a small entry fee for everyone on commander night. As the games progress, 3 in total, the person with the most points garnered from their wins that night get three free booster (from recent sets), second place two, third place one. This will alter depending on how many players show up snd what the taken in amount is. They know that players bumped out of their game early are going to be hanging around reading the comics, looking at cards, or buying singles. They also offer sodas and chocolate bars or chips. The amount they charge to play per person is less than the price of a booster, but they know that small fee and the appeal of "free packs" to go along with bragging rights will generate them far more sales than it costs. This has kept their store liquid during tighter times, and at a time when comic sales, game sales, and other things are at all time lows. Sounds like your LGS owner just lacks creativity, motivation, an open mind, or all three. He needs to hire a marketing guy or someone with ambition (such as yourself, someone with enough drive to make and maintain a channel) to give him some ideas or work with him for a couple of months to incentivize him.
I started buying the newer play boxes from my local card shop, even though it cost more to buy from them then buying online. I don't mind doing this cause they have always given me good deals on trading in cards or purchasing singles from them. They don't screw me over and I support them with my huge purchases every month or two.
How often do we get a precon for modern or standard? How often do we get a commander precon? Something like every set? I wonder who wotc caters to most. Commander players don’t buy multiple copies of a card. They buy one for their deck. Most commander players I know don’t even collect cards. Why would someone want to buy four of the same card that may cost $50-$100 a pop and have it rotate out of a format when you can build a commander deck for $200-$400 and keep playing it for years?
The real problem is that people play with their friends. They're meeting at a house within their friend group and playing there. The only people that the game store gets are people who don't have a friend group, were kicked out of theirs for being a jerk, new players who are just getting into magic and haven't found a friend group yet, etc. When you are running tournaments (draft, constructed, or whatever) you are getting the competitive crowd which actually wants to play people they don't know, and is willing to spend more money on the game. But with commander the game store is basically the "bottom of the barrel". The other problem that game stores run into is that it is just not a place that people want to be. Magic is also an older game with a larger percentage of older players (especially for casual) who would rather meet in a bar or a somewhere where alcohol is available.
Probably better to have a bar and charge a cover or have a drink minimum in the gaming area. But IMO, game stores should probably have some sort of fee to use their tables to play. If you have a lot of people coming in or events, charge $10 for a few hours. If you don't have events or people playing in your store because they are all playing at home, then you shouldn't be paying rent for space you don't need.
@@jasons5916 In my area, the older gamers drink. A lot. They come up with magic drinking games like taking a shot every time you lose or loser having to buy drinks for the rest of the table. So the bars don't really charge beyond this unless you want private space.
I'm glad my lgs has started doing more formats, though instead of cramming all of them for fnm they've been spread out throughout the week, like vintage cube/legacy constructed on tuesdays, thursday modern, friday commander and usually saturdays are either draft or standard
My LGS is mainly a boardgame store and does cardgames like MTG, Pokémon and Lorcana as a sidebusiness. It's currently expanding into a boardgame café as well. I would still love to play there with a table fee and have said as much too the owner on multiple occasions. It just doesn't seem neccesary so far.
The biggest deal is that Commander players that start will "very likely" never play any other format, they are stuck. Why ? Well they might get a Commander PreCon, but these cards are not standard legal and they need a lot more cards for a modern deck, so the barrier of entry is massive. Draft was perfect to get people to play, as they need nothing. And you can easily split the tables between new players and experienced players if you have enough, and also people learn relatively quickly if they play against good players and get help from them, the new players much faster become better players ; while a lot of Commander players will just casually play, barely understand the rules if at all and get very BAD habits in the casual rounds, they simply get anti-competitive. PreRelease events are often full and booked out, getting people to draft is the absolute best way to make people more competitive and get them to get some cards, which makes the transition to standard easier ; and when they got more competitive they might also play modern and become enfranchised. ---- If Commander gets stuck in the PreCon casual people an LGS quickly has the problem that the store is "full" but these people spend no money. And when someone makes them proxy all cards, that spirals out of control so they spend even less and completely become an eternal Commander casual. ---- The fact that WotC made draft increasingly expensive is a big part of the problem. In the past it was very cheap, now its basically double the cost and price support is worse as well (no actual FNM promos, promo packs are worse than regular price support, as you cant use these packs to draft either for whatever stupid reason).
If somehow another format becomes really popular, people will probably switch to that, but that's only really happened once when most people switched from 60 card constructed to Commander. If WotC messes up Commander, I'll probably switch to Legacy and/or build a Vintage Cube, but that's not going to help LGSs either. I would also play Canlander, but still, not many people playing that.
LGS manager here. We're not wpn premium and very diversified. Wotc doesn't see your sales if not under premium. They get your event data which is important for promo and product allocation. Drafts are just a way to sell packs. Our fnm have entirely become commander we just flip buy in into 100% store credit. Selling packs is a considerably worse margin than selling singles for us. Ive done everything I can locally to push non commander events. I've cultivated a decent pauper community and drafts fire once a month for us personally. Another LGS has good modern showings but due to our owner refusing to ban a bad egg we really struggle with constructed turn outs. There's a lot of consideration with LGS. Most probably couldn't survive without mtg, we are very diversified but it's without question our largest product
I'm going to try to give my thoughts as a former MTG player, i will try very hard to not mention anything regarding Standard being a rotating format and look at this from the Store's perspective where WotC's mistakes constitutes as something beyond LGS control Step 1 : EDH events with the price being the packs at the store, if the packs currently are Modern Horizons or Commander Masters? (iirc there was a set for commander cards) you can bump the price for events like 3$ to 5$. This will not be the biggest money source, but this will help Step 2 : Pad up the week with other format events like Modern, Legacy, etc as a side event, if the LGS is full of commander player that's one thing but try to incentivize other non-rotating format (if none, then other CG events) Step 3 : get other CG, if you rely on MTG it's not gonna be a good time especially when you are basically praying for WotC to not eff things up
Very interesting ideas! I’ve never considered me playing commander I’m basically using up my lgs real estate… I will be sure to make more purchases of packs while I’m there to help them out and help me out too! I love cracking packs
We need a Collector Edition Booster for commander staples. I notice a lot of commander players love shiny variants. I’d buy a 1-2$ variant to a commonly used cheap card, I already am buying the more expensive variants. I know there are some nice variants for cheap staples, but I wish there were more, and I reckon they’d sell well. There’s also a work around a few shops have found where the people obsessed with opening packs they don’t bat an eye at their cash deals, because they know they don’t buy singles. Less money ends up in their hand, but some of those people some nights just want to make poor financial decisions, and open another box ideally. You can’t stop them, so why not partake in cards being there and now… and watch them make another mistake… after mistake… buying another box…
MY LGS is a WPN store and we have seen a huge decline in turnouts because of the lack of standard, modern, and legacy support. With Wizards pumping out product for other formats makes it so that your player base is divided from Draft, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Commander. Before everything was standard legal and you were excited to play the new cards that you waited months for, not so much now with how many standard legal sets there are. I do believe WotC has killed their biggest draw to Magic which was Standard and like ThatMIllGuy said Arena is just better if you want to play and have a collection.
Draft is a lot more accessible than you might think. It's the one format my 9 year old is really into because there's a limited (hah) card pool and limited strategies so he doesn't have to learn about mutate or horsemanship and just focuses on manifest dread and rooms, for example. There's no (usually) crazy combos are deep metagame to worry about and everyone gets to play with the same cards, so the playing field is always a lot more even. It's the default FNM at our store and there's usually a handful of 8-12 year olds and their parents along with the other players
Just advertise different formats to jumpstart sales Pauper Big deck Pilot (i made this one up where you pick a tournament winners exact list. This will need proxies probably)
I'm very lucky to have frequented two fantastic LGS' in my life, A Hidden Fortress in Simi Valley CA, was a smaller store when I went, but recently expanded having greater room, but also had a focus on comics too. My current LGS Gamers' Asylum in Ogden UT, has basically everything, D&D, Video Games (New and Used) Table Top games, Board Games, TCG's and Comics,
Commander is the worst thing to happen to magic. You can really only run cedh commander events, which most commander players don’t play. On top of that wizards is destroying other constructed formats by adding commander to every set. Not only that but the power creep comes too fast. For example Ragavan, printed 2 years ago, went from people complaining it’s too strong to barely playable in modern. When’s the last time you seen Wrenn and Six? Wizards have made non rotating formats rotate just as much as standard. So the only way to play with the expensive cards that’s not longer playable in regular constructed formats, you have to play commander. I don’t usually play commander, but I built 4 decks so I would have something to do with my ragavans. I now play Nadu in legacy for the same reason. Most people don’t have the time or money to invest in all the different formats that rotate every 2 years and for those people commander is their best bet. Which takes me back to the beginning, you can’t really hold events for commander unless it’s cedh.
Edh is not the worst thing. its fun and allows one to make a deck and not worry about having it rotate out. The problem was wizards focusing on it over standard and so on while also releasing a torrent of product and not letting sets and such breath.
@@aclevername7613 edh pulled a lot of players from constructed formats. Wizards need to sell packs, if no one is playing constructed they have to target what people are playing. Also there aren’t very many things you can do with edh for a store to make money compared to constructed and limited.
My LGS does a ton of different games throughout the week, friday is draft night, and Saturday is commander day. And they do special commander nights twice a year where they give out gift cards and prizes for just coming. I normally just come for draft but it is rarely ever feeling dead
The LGS I used to work for would consistently only have 6 players for Standard FNM for the last year. In the earlier days of the store being open, if we had 40 players for Standard FNM, that was considered a slow Friday. Which is wild. They used to have, on average, 50 players for FNM every week. Now it can barely fire. Commander is killing Magic in a way, in my opinion.
It’s more apt to say Magic is becoming Commander because it’s the more favoured format, with competitive formats becoming less of a focus. The majority of Magic players were “kitchen table with my friends” format only and wouldn’t sniff a tournament. Why highly invested competitive players think it’s a surprise that they’re in the minority is beyond me, since they always have been.
My commander night is Saturday and its a clash event, $15 entry fee and players win packs in the commander tournament, guys often also buy tons of backs and other things. My lgs is very healthy when it comes to how it interacts with commander, i often also buy my sleeves and deck boxes exclusively from them
Pokemon player here. My LGS' Pokemon night is also on Friday alongside FNM. There is rarely anyone showing up to play in pre releases or constructed formats. There is rarely a commander staple that stays in our showcase and precons are ALWAYS the first thing that sells out. Even on the FNM nights, it always ends up turning into a commander night. In this year alone, we've had the Magic showcase completely bought out 3 different times. All whenever we've had a collector/ ex CEDH player come to offload their cards for whatever reason. I like to dabble in commander personally because it's non-rotating. Pokemon is cheap enough to where i can build multiple standard decks and play them for a long time. Modern/Standard magic seems like something that I'd be spending a lot of money on for something I don't get to use for a long time, that's just how I see it as a Pokemon player.
My LGS only has a single “commander day” which is Sundays, but they have free play of any format, so long as you have the players to play it. Most days have 1-2 constructed events, but they’ve also began to run a lot more different TCGs alongside magic (OP, Pokémon and YGO seem to be the other big ones) and they seem to do really well.
The main thing I've seen LGS' do wrong, It's just straight up not catering to what commander players spend money on. My current LGS almost exclusively has cards from the last three sets in their display, and when they're gone, they're gone. They don't seem doing making any efforts to keep commander staples in stock. And while I can't speak for everyone, at previous LGS' I would always make a point to buy whatever cards from the deck that i'm currently building from the LGS, before getting the rest on TCGplayer, even if they only had foils which I generally dislike, I will happily pay more to support my local store. Beyond that, a good selection of snacks is always appreciated, and I think most of us agree that it's perfectly reasonable that those snacks and drinks cost more not just for the convenience, but because it is supporting our LGS. Though I will say on the constructive criticism side of that, It would be beneficial if more stores offered somewhat more health conscious snacks. Beef jerky, maybe some fruit if they're feeling adventurous, really anything that is a step above chips and candy.
24:20 Yeah this is something i had to learn when i started to play since i came from yugioh where that games version of the stack stops all interaction when the stack resolves
My favorite LGS died to Commander players too. They took over too much space, chased away competitive play and wouldn't even enter casual tournaments with participation prizes when the manager tried to get them to play FNM. Sure they consumed a lot of snacks and accessories, but you can't keep your WPN off snacks, and no WPN means no sealed product allocation. I stopped playing paper Magic during the pandemic and now that I went back to the biggest Bushiroad LGS to play Shadowverse, I've heard a lot of horror stories about how they had to kick out Commnader players when I tell people I come from Magic.
my lgs does "Commander 500", it is a homebrew format that has it own banlist and a $500 cap. deck cannot cost a penny more than that. Since it started it only took 3 weeks to get casual players to participate since decks are not high end and there's more creativity and matches last 7-10 turns which people have fun with it. just a $6 and there's always 10-16 players playing every Friday. There's a new winner every week since there's new decks every now and then and new strategies.
In our city in Poland my LGS has lot o events hosting mtg, lorcana, board games, star wars etc. Friday is reserved for mtg and we switch 2 most popular formats: edh and pauper. So only pauper players are very consistent to play 2 times monthly. Modern, Standard, Legacy is also present but there are max 6 people playing. Pauper is cheap and has a very diverse meta
My most recent LGS only does Commander for M:tG on Fridays (and Warhammer, Lorcana, etc, on other days). There is no demand for draft. There is demand for premium product (MH and some Collector boxes), and Commander precons. So we play Commander on Fridays, and that's just our jam.
It's amazing that we were not having this conversation about commander at least 6 years ago, tbh. This was not an overnight issue or a new one. Standard has been dead for a long, long time.
my lgs was quite small. roughly 16 players would come in for fnm draft each week. was some of the most fun gaming experiences ive had, I miss my old lgs
I think draft can be fun as a newer player but only if you are also against other players who are on your level. Your first deck will be crappy and held together with hopes and dreams (mine was) but sometimes you get lucky and you manage to win one game out of 4 by turning a hill giant sideways and that victory feels so sweet. I agree from a financial angle drafting constantly gets real expensive real fast but buying a competitive deck costs several hundred dollars. I think there is probably a middle ground here that could be fun, where if you trust your players not to cheat (which would be very crappy of them.) You hold a Season of games (say 13 weeks) where they start buying a sealed Draft (Not draft the other one where you open a set of packs and can only use your own cards) and then they get 1 pack to add to their sealed pool every week after that. They spend the bulk of the money upfront but then each week they attend they expand their collection a little more. By the end of it they will have opened 18 packs and will probably have an interesting array of cards to start working towards a standard deck. If they want to do that, but even if they dont running three of these seasons a year could be really fun. $180 sounds like a lot but its $60 upfront and then $10 every week after that which is manageable expense wise.
My LGS has table fees which you can offset with monthly membership. 10 dollars for a month or 20 dollars to get a 10% discount on product. Otherwise table fee is 5 dollars per person.
The stores I visit in GTA I always just give the store $10 for drinks/snacks. I rarely ever use up that $10 and the rest I just tell the owner I don't care about the "change" use it towards the play space.
My LGS has a membership program with different tiers the top members pay $100 a year and get 25% off singles a couple free drafts a year usually a hoodie or backpack and a discount on some sealed product. This is great because it encourages me and others in that tier to shop there first. Their margins are roughly 45% on singles as cash trade in 70-75 on store credit. Even if the top members are really abusing the system the store is still moving singles. Other stores could try something similar to help encourage people to shop there and people usually play where they shop.
As a general rule for myself, and I recommend this to my playgroups and everyone who reads this: if your LGS provides snacks, at 👏 least 👏 buy 👏 snacks 👏 while 👏 you 👏 play👏 Commander. Your LGS will appreciate it, you won't feel ripped off by a table fee if you have a bad time, and you literally get something out of the experience. It's not much but it's better than nothing and you will feel good about it.
Speaking from the perspective of Montreal, also what’s good fellow Canadian 👋🏼 So basically the amount of magic the gathering lgs are dwindling, but the few that do still carry it make most of their money from it so they have a solid rotation of Cedh, casual EDH, modern standard pauper and draft. Then like 1/Month they run a vintage/legacy event. But only like 2/17 stores are still like this. Pokémon and YGO are making a comeback, Cardfight Vanguard (my personally favourite has just moved to lgs where the majority of actual pro community lives) One piece and Lorcana are also gaining popularity quick.
My LGS had a really hard time holding any events catered towards standard for a long time. Bloomburrow was the first time they were able to get consistent attendance for standard events, and they are doing a ton of drafts now. Funnily enough, there has been such a massive influx of players recently that going to the building just to sit down and play is no longer free. You pay 10 usd for unlimited access to the building for the night, and you get a 10 dollar coupon to spend in the store. The reason being is that most people weren't in there as customers, they were in there just to use it as a place to play and it got to a point where they had no room for DnD games or hosted events.
My local lgs has a charges a small table fee for FNM and we all play Commander that night. They also have a hard time keeping packs in stock on a regular basis.
My LGS the commander events cannot be played unless the player buys a magic product. I approve of this even tho I have most of the cards I need. They pay employees, utilies and many other bills to provide a place to play. The least I can do is spend a few bucks to enjoy that playing space.
Whenever I go to a LGS, I have to “pay my part” where I’ll buy packs, sleeves, or snacks. Not enforced but it’s how I feel okay to be there for so long. My favorite LGS has an entire kitchen that’s actually really good so I’ll get dinner there too We had a new LGS come in and the standard events they throw or sealed are not as big. They end up asking commander players if they want to play it and even offer decks to use so maybe 3 people total played standard? I asked my friends why they don’t play it and they said that since it’s a rotating cards list and they worry about meta red decks just not making it fun
This is my situation. Luckily I found an underground scene on discord in my area. The players have moved into a dedicated play space. We order all our product online now, getting bulk discount from stores with group buys, and contribute to paying rent. This allows us to control who we want in the club. Its BYOB and we don't have to deal with stinky neckbeards and social degens. It's actually better than I could have hoped for playing in the store.
Absolutely this. 60-card-format bros are insufferable and no wonder they're sitting there scratching their heads wondering why nobody wants to play with them, when they're the ones going up to commander players and being that guy screaming QUIT HAVING FUN unironically.
Local LGS did FNM Commander. Tried it out. They have their own banlist on top of the official ban list to prevent games from ending too soon. Sat down at 645, game was over 715. Playing Myr Tribal and got turn 5 infinite combo killed. Problem with commander is everyone has a different perspective on what kind of game should be played. It isn't Modern/Standard where we both have the same understanding we're trying to win ASAP.
![[MABRIK]: Dungeons Master's Guide (2024) - Top 10 Changes](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4IJBC8I5A5g/mqdefault.jpg)
Some kind of table fee that goes to store credit is entirely reasonable to me. Not buying at your local and expecting it to stay open is crazy.
My store just has a troll toll where you need to spend a minimum $5 and it works well.
My store charges the commander players to rent a table, the same amount as people who come in to play one of the board games they have on the shelf. We also have a healthy draft scene which also keeps the store alive!
@@runcmd1419 My FLGS used to charge $5 for the evening of a Commander game, about 4 hours of play. They stopped doing this for reasons I don't understand, and it's now fully free play events.
I’d charges commander players $8. If they want to enter, I’d rather have people who come in and actually buy product over people who bring proxie decks and not spend money.
@MrMarvelMike just because people have proxies it doesn't mean they don't buy product
Mtg has evolved over the years since I worked in an lgs, but where I worked we couldn't rely on the games to be the hook that made players come to the shop. We had food/snack options, we had an Xbox and a GameCube with a couch that gave people a couch multiplayer experience, weekly events in different formats and games. We built a shop that was gamer bait and we were rewarded for giving players a casual hang out spot with everything you needed for a hours long gaming binge. You gotta give people an experience and atmosphere to encourage people to become regulars. Find what your players want and provide it, you will never go out of business.
This, I always looked at the LGS model as flawed in that your business is almost entirely reliant on a particular product that you don't make.
I always felt that the way to do it was to open a coffee shop or something to encourage long visits. Just have cards there as part of the business.
Have food for guests to buy that way you monetize their experience even if they don't come in to buy cards.
@@christopherfeerin7526 it's the same with vhs stores back then. Those made their money mostly from the snacks and drinks people bought together with the VHS.
I think most 1v1 players play online because it’s just too expensive in paper. Why would you ever want to spend £600 on a deck that’s just gonna get rotated or MH4ed or banned out from under you? If you build a Commander deck that can’t happen unless you choose to run a new, obviously broken on release Commander like Golos or Nadu.
you don't netdeck that's how. netdecking made everything more expensive. optimum play isn't optimal if that makes sense. Alternatively the more everyone netdecks the higher the cost and the less fun. cardboard rectangles are a terrible investment by the way, unless the investment is in fun and good times.
@@NoahRobertson-w4b that genie is never going back in the bottle, it’s not 1997 and “netdecking” has been a thing for decades. Players either don’t want to play those “net-decks”, at which point they generally choose to play a social format like Commander; or they do at which point they play online where they can actually get games in. “Optimal play isn’t optimal” is quite literally the ethos of Commander, that’s _why_ that format is the most popular by far. That’s why the game keeps growing, explicitly because Commander isn’t sweaty in the way all 1v1 formats necessarily are.
@@Azeria r/whoosh. It's the most popular, because it's the only thing new players are seeing. See, the thing about being "sweaty" is that it's a choice. you can shame the affinity player out of playing affinity in a casual environment. also no format has ever been fully 1v2 that's also a mistake you commaner apologists make. THG, empires, and playing the table have always been a thing.
@@NoahRobertson-w4bFirstly, there’s four os in /r/woooosh. Secondly, no. Everything you’ve said is wrong actually. Arena exists and yet new players choose Commander. Commander videos get pushed because they have far better engagement. Wizards makes Commander products because they sell better. Commander is more popular because it’s more popular, and it’s more popular because it’s more fun. If you want social interaction, if you want a social contract telling others what they can or cannot play, that’s literally the role Commander fills.
What you’re saying in this thread is ‘I want 1v1 to be more like Commander’ while shitting on Commander. In a competitive, constructed format, which Standard and Modern and Legacy and Pauper and Pioneer are, you cannot and will never convince those players to run worse decks and frankly you shouldn’t really want to anyway. That’s not what they’re for.
You can dislike Commander being a 100 card singleton format or whatever, but if you want a casual experience, which it sounds like you do, because you want to peer pressure people into not playing “netdecks” play a casual format, even if it isn’t EDH.
The bit about 1v2? idk what you’re in about there, sorry.
@@Azeria A) how long have you been playing. B) Who are you to be telling me what I've experienced. I have played all these formats and more. all 60 card, some with singleton decks some with noble some as un set legal. Commander is derivative and warping. it ends up making everyone think it's the only way to multiplayer, the only way to kitchen sink play. Untrue. I very much want to play again, I can't. There is no longer a place or a desire for players like me.
to address other things, commander products sell well because they're the only ones with effort put into them. hard to get someone into normal play without a flagship precon. 1v1 is not a format, it's an option, and a very common one. 100 card singleton decks were thing before they were co-opted, no one played them because they're an ass to shuffle.and if you want to talk about peer pressure mention how you can't even get a game in if you don't play commander. how many won't even acknowledge you after the first time you say you don't like playing commander. I don't hate commander for being 100 card, I hate it for destroying everything I knew.
My LGS offers 3 dollar store credit for showing up to the commander events. Genius move that makes the player actually want to come and spend at the store instead of staying home and playing with friends.
imagine playing commander
@@netherlim Imagine being tribal about formats as if we don't both want magic to do better than it has been
as an LGS owner I can definitely say arena killed the game store experience
@@MENTOSDUDE77 it killed standard for sure(wizards forcing an overwhelming amount of sets and product lines down players throats.) I really hope that Foundations revives In Person Standard because its always been my favorite format. That being said Standards the kost expensive with rotation so ever since Covid-19 people just got used to Arena since its all anyone had for 1.5-2yrs. Magic Online has always been a thing so I dont blame it on Arena, but between Covid, cost of playing IRL vs Online, travel and time for events in person is what caused the change. I'll never forget my first LGS back during M10-M12 because every friday it was like hanging out with another family. Everyone hanging out and playing while having snacks and drinks we could buy was amazing. If a store doesn't have a good vibe(or rude players who arent put in check) it can kill that stores player base FAST.
It isn't arena, it is the sets and the bad design and cash grab mechanics that are driving people away. WotC sales are way down and that includes arena.
The price of cardboard is too high. People don't have money to buy overlypriced glorified pieces of paper.
I'm getting into Pauper EDH. It's hard to say no to a $26 deck.
@@MrCenturion13 Same I've been having a blast 😁
Tell that to everyone who has 1000s of dollars worth of cardboard. Its more prevalent than not.
I find commander to be more fun due to greater player interaction, and I have a greater choice of cards to build my decks, but mostly I play commander because I don't want to spend money buying multiples of cards that will just rotate out.
Sounds like WotC should create or support constructed 1v1 singleton formats
What are Vintage and Legacy?
@@hlaw2830overpriced “play blue or lose” garbage?
@@arvinsim they did, once. It was called Brawl. Even made brawl decks but all of them is bought for commander
Greater player interaction in commnader? I palyed 8 single-target removal in my deck and players hated me for being a "try-hard".
Never played commander. I understand the struggles with standard and modern, mostly cost related, but pioneer should be more popular than it is.
Standard is the absolute worst format and always has been
Pioneer suffers from being a boring 3 deck format in the best case scenario due to too many outlier cards that power some archetype by too much.
Pioneer is just boring modern 😂
@@bradcallahan3546 Bro standard is thriving right now with at least 8 meta decks and probably +10 viable rogue decks. I'm currently playing an online league organized by someone of my city's community and the top 8 is conformed by 7 different decks
@@TheGoodColonel Modern right now has the same issue, just even worse. The so called "big three" in pioneer (rakdos, control, phoenix) are about 30% of the metagame together, where boros energy is also about 30% of the metagame. I honestly don't know why people hate pioneer so much for literally no real reason.
My store it’s free to play. But they have a pizza fridge. A huge drink cabinet and snack lounge. It’s a small shop but the money is made off snacks and drinks they said.
My old LGS just faked their WPN stuff, but even with that, there just weren't enough players to keep it afloat. Schisms happened within the local playgroups for varying reasons (a few dudes with bad hygiene stinking up the store, people being rude and salty), folks wouldn't stay if others were there, and other playgroups just flat out refused to patronize the store because they didn't like the owner. I miss having cards available locally, but if you just sit on the sideline and let your customers stink up your store and start drama with people, you've brought it on yourself.
Pricing is another issue. When an LGS thinks they can price a $35 Commander deck at $65 or $130, people are gonna start voting with their wallets.
Online stores like TCGPLAYER,SCG etc...killed the in store sale business. If a LGS is selling a precon for +1/3rd cost it's because they known it's dried up online.
…..Scalpers are just going to buy up the entire inventory and sell it back to you at $65
Yes! Come, my radicalized friends, come to to the anticapitalist left and join us in our fight against the bourgeoisie!
I work at a local LGS and the way we keep our doors open is by having competitive prices and diversifying products.
We have barely 5% markup on boosters and boxes but we do sell sleeves, deck boxes, playmats, as well as other tabletop games, dice and of course snacks and singles.
We also run events constantly. Some that are only one and done and others that run every month or every week.
my lgs has three dollar cans of soda and twenty dollar dragon shields. I just buy a pack at 30% markup every once in a while and call it good.
I live in Washington and have found a couple of stores that have FNM constructed events. It was mostly modern, but i did find one that did modern, legacy, and pioneer all at the same time, which was awesome to experience
Kitchen table magic was always the largest format…. Not sure how this is surprising to anyone. You made the most played format the most popular; ofc it’s the most played format at an LGS now.
I think people should try a fun experiment. Go to an LGS you don't normally go to, pull out some deck boxes and sit down somewhere by yourself and just chill. See if someone comes up to you and asks if you want to play a game. I would put money on the outcome of that scenario being the person coming up to you either asks you if you want to play commander or just pulls out a commander deck and assumes you're playing commander. I made a post to organize a Pauper event and someone DM'd me about it saying he was building some pauper "random uncommon legendary guy" deck and I had to tell him it's not commander. From my experiences, a large portion of the magic community doesn't even know other formats exist.
@@DannyOE4 that's because the majority of the "playerbase" is Commander people and no offense but Commander isn't even Magic the Gathering. Hot take I know.
Did it. build guantlets for vintage, old school, modern and pauper. NOBODY wanted to even try it. Just went and formed pods with precons.
Part of the mixup might be that "pauper commander" exists. Where you play commander on an extreme budget, and so are your opponents
It is and it isnt. Card games, much like TTRPGs, and even like sports, evolve. And the players as much as the creators will drive that evolution for a variety of reasons. This is the natural evolution of any game with game pieces you buy and game rules you had to release into the wild. Once those things are out in the wild, people will houserule/alter/or invent alternate ways to play. Its what we do, its human nature. Be it for fun, for safety (tying into the sport there), for added challenge, for simply entertainment and variety, or simply to theory craft for the sake of "would this work?"
Commander was born of that natural evolution. To say it isnt Magic the Gathering is fair, but then neither is pauper, pioneer, modern, legacy or even standard. Vintage is as close as you get cause all the rest of that formating is just to cut card pool and force sales. Or lets go another way. Draft, of any kind, isnt Magic the Gathering. Its not the original ruleset or how the game was initially designed. The reality is there are sanctioned events for Commander now. The fact is that format has been recognized as official. It is what it is. Now you may not think that format fits the spirit of what the game is meant to be and thats fine. However it is in fact a way to play the game@@Aaron-l3l6g
I think part of the problem is that some commander players are interested in 60 card constructed, but why would they build an expensive deck if the events are dwindling? In a way, once the numbers get low, if you can't do anything they'll just get lower. I don't think shunning commander players is the right move though. A lot of stores that I've seen get through this do so by inviting people to a store discord and advertising events there, and making people feel welcome in the store and community so that they'll try new formats and games because they like the people.
@@YoRHa_1D and why is 60 card anything dwindling? *Cough cough* it's Commander.
Then go play commander at home with friends. These LGS’s NEED people to buy product. If commander players aren’t spending money every time they walk into a store, they are hurting them.
@@Aaron-l3l6g That's because WotC doesn't give a crap about 60 card formats and caters everything to commander. If they built a good 60 card format with a sensible card pool/banlist with precons that isn't going to cost an arm and a leg to buy a meta deck then they would have a winning format on their hands.
The more I hear about other people's LGS the more proud I am of my own. We just have a weekly rotation between Commander/Pioneer/Modern with Standard Showdown/Draft on Saturday. They also give away the prize pack at random for Commander which I'm surprised more LGSs don't do.
Personally, I don't want to play anything other than commander. I want a chill, relaxed experience where we do play to win, but just coming and socializing is the main goal. I mostly collect cards, and then commander is a way that I can play some of the cards I have collected. The competitive aspect of other formats does not appeal to me at all. I used to play Hearthstone when it first released, so I do have a taste of how constructed formats operate (albeit through the lens of another game).
Also, in terms of F2F Games, I have had to leave without playing a handful of times because I had to drive there and Toronto's parking laws meant I couldn't park prior to 6pm (when the commander event starts) and the store is already full around that time.
I will say that I actually do like researching the hell out of the rules, so I am frequently more knowledgeable on interactions than constructed players
I hate how competitive 60 card games are.
MTG evolves over time. I grew up playing Legacy at my LGS because nobody wanted to invest in a standard deck that would rotate out. Legacy was the format where almost any card or deck was legal. Then the staples became insanely expensive and Legacy became similar to Vintage for price of entry. To most players a commander deck offers a cheaper and non-rotating investment.
I don't care for commander. I've mostly just play on arena these days. If I go to the store it's unlikely I'd find a game. If it's unlikely I'd find a game why would I spend $300 on a deck?
@@josephcourtright8071 Unlikely to find a game of what?
@@85inexact Anything. Unless there is a scheduled event, you are not finding a game.
@@josephcourtright8071 Oh. That IS dire, that sounds like an LGS that is struggling.
There needs to be more constructed products. The only thing to come out each release is Commander. Getting rid of the theme decks was a really bad move and pushed people like me out of buying product with each release.
Like the old precons. not the best (sometimes garbo but you can't hit homers every time) but an instant out of the box playable deck. and upgrade able too. Three of my best are modified precons. and they're scary as hell.
@@NoahRobertson-w4bChallenger decks existed and my guess why they don’t anymore is they sell terribly
Challenger Decks used to fill that spot. Sadly they don't make new ones anymore 😢
I am so blessed that my lgs always has fully filled pioneer, modern, and surprisingly pauper events (we don’t like standard). Constructed on top!
My lgs hasn’t had a fnm in atleast 2 years
My lgs has drafted cube almost every fnm other than prerelease and drafts since they opened just before covid
@@astrowerm before pio it was a semi large standard crowd (for the size of the store) then it was a good pio crowd till covid, now after covid there hasn’t been 1 fnm event
Same here. All formats except for modern are in great places. Just sad. Really tired of everything being geared towards commander
So what your saying is that Commander killed Magic.
@@Aaron-l3l6g I think wizards focus moving off eternal formats and forcing commander down people’s throats is what truly killed it
I personally stopped playing modern upon the release of mh3, and have been playing commander since. This is simply because the 2 modern decks that I had essentially became irrelevant overnight and I just wasn’t in the market for spending hundreds of dollars to update them. The freedom and variety of power level in commander is what makes it a way better format for the average player to commit to
Well when Modern basically became a rotating format can you blame people for wanting a more stable format?
Vintage? Legacy? Are you new?
@@hlaw2830 yeah sure dude, just spend like a $1000 or more on a legacy/vintage deck in this economy lmao.
@@hlaw2830Terrible, asinine response. You can buy a commander precon off the shelf, getting into legacy/vintage is a completely different ball game
@@zawarudo3214 my legacy deck is less than $500 and is comparable. I bought little by little. So i don't know what you're talking about.
@@Aaron-l3l6gGood for you!
Commander precons are $40.
My LGS closed up entirely because the owner did exactly this. Everyone made it abundantly clear that we no longer wanted to play Standard/Modern, but were willing to pay for things like Commander tournaments or the like to keep the store afloat, and a fair amount of people bought packs and singles. Owner ended up just outright banning Commander play from the store, so we began to use a cafe in the area and using discord to organize games, until we eventually just all moved to playing our Commander games online. The owner is still pissed at the Commander players for refusing to switch to another format despite us being absolutely clear that one of the reasons for it is because we wanted to be able to apply rule 0 to our games and also because we put price caps on our Commander decks as a store playerbase(Your entire deck had to be 100$ or less, so if you wanted those high cost cards you were putting a fair amount of your budget into them). That and he refused to allow people to run proxies in his store so...
$100 budget but also need proxies? I understand accessibility but - and please understand I'm saying this not to be mean, just curious - at that point how much were ya'll spending in his store anyway?
Barely any at all. These people whine about stores, but a lot of these are just taking up table space without contributing to the store. @@steveheist6426
@@steveheist6426 Between food, drinks, packs, and singles? Probably most of us would spend 25-30$ a week, which was usually more then the non-MTG TCG players that they also catered to. From what I heard from friends who played in the Pokemon and YGO groups in that LGS, those usually spent way less, around 10-15$ a week, so of the TCGs, MTG was pulling in the most still. Should note btw that MTG night was only two nights a week, something that the owner had come up with long before I started going there to give other games an equal shot. But he had a very unrealistic expectation that anyone playing MTG should be basically paying enough to foot the bill for other nights of the week they weren't there as well, because one of the two nights that MTG fell on was Friday, so should OBVIOUSLY be making him as much as the Saturday night crowd... which was Warhammer. Which, fair's fair to them, they did make the store more money per player, but they had less total players.
@@steveheist6426 maybe is cheap ard but a vety old one, and they didn't say they dont spend money, no lgs survive with only selling cards, they can spend on sleeves, mats, deck box, ''rent'' time at table, snacks......
yup. my LGS almost exclusively has commander, sometimes people play modern on wednesdays if enough people want to but its only ever commander and the occasional standard event.
i wish i could play modern or pioneer (or pauper wouldnt that be the dream) but ive lost all interest in going there cuz people dont have interest in 60 card constructed.
Same here. I switched to Yu-Gi-Oh.
@@Aaron-l3l6g With how power crept most 60 card formats are nowadays you might as well just go play yugioh.
@@Zavult i did. The reprint policy is infinitely better than Magic and more importantly I can actually play in paper. Is it an inferior game? Absolutely but being able to find games goes a LONG way.
@@Aaron-l3l6gif you have an easier time shooting tourneys in Yugioh than Magic, that means Magic is the inferior game.
Have you tried playing some commander ?😅
I don’t even recognize this poster’s experience.
*EVERY* LGS I’ve entered in FL has WPN EDH FNM.
All but one of the 6 largest LGSs nearest me have extensive stocks of Singles/Boosters/EDH Precons being bought (Because they’re all figuring out how to avoid having to offer Singles at more-than-market at this point.)
From everything I’ve seen, EDH players are really getting better about supporting their LGSs. Whether that’s buying all their snacks/drinks from the gas-station-style soda rack machines you see in stores now, or just spending a little more on site to help keep their play-space alive.
If an LGS owner deep into MtG as part of their business model is refusing to cater to EDH players who now make up the majority of MtG players?
That doesn’t seem fiscally prudent from my PoV.
It makes me sad that 60-card Constructed players keep blaming Commander for the woes of their formats, when it’s WotC’s/Hasbro’s decision to abandon those formats, plus WotC’s greed making 60-card formats less financially attractive to new players that’s to blame.
Stop blaming the consequence of decisions made by Wizards of the Hasbro. Blame the ones whose decisions brought us to this pass.
*You* can ignore how expensive serious engagement with most 60-card constructed formats has become, but you can’t ignore the effect that prospective expense has on others.
The TLDR? If EDH vanished from the minds of all men, woman, and non-binary folk tomorrow, you *would not see an appreciable uptick in 60-card format engagement #’s * .
Too expensive remains too expensive, whether or not a less-expensive alternative exists.
Make WotC know your displeasure. With your wallets, because that’s the *only* thing they care about.
Please never use acronyms again
The problem with 60 card formats are the toxic player base.
I feel like I’m one of the few comments here who don’t mind commander my old lgs had commander nights where you pay a fee. And sold snacks and drinks to make money from people who stayed for hours
Same, i know some stores that run paid commander nights.
In the Netherlands its all what you sad. You cant bring your own food and drinks. You have to pay €6,50 you get a free promo and a pack. And then there are 3 randomly chosen packs for 3 ppl
I’m a constructed format only player, so Modern and Legacy.
That said, there’s 2 stores in the area that hold Modern events weekly and they only fire during hours I’m working so I’m shit out of luck there short of finding a new career lmao.
The only other format that gets players here is Commander and there seems to be an event or at least a pod to play 3-4 days a week. As a primarily modern player, it’s tough to see. I personally can’t stand the format but I understand its importance.
Magic is in a weird spot and the enfranchised players are getting screwed all around. Modern players and Commander players. They need to do something big and announce a new tournament series or a restructuring of competitive formats to keep players together and give them a reason to buy and play more.
We grew up with the PT series/World Championship, GP’s and SCG events, no shortage of event coverage, gameplay, advertising, prestige. Now? Whatever it is we got with the new Mythic Championship and Magic Fests just ain’t it. I used to make time to follow and compete in the PTQ/RPTQ system. I’d love to do that and spend my dollars but stores in my area tend to stick solely to Sealed/Standard/Pioneer for that stuff now.
Just a let down overall. Magic always seems to be having a rough time but I remember when that wasn’t the case and I miss it.
Couldn’t have said it better myself 🫡
I even would like to see a modern/ two headed giant rise again
But the main reason why I can’t get into commander is your either their playing decks you can’t win for 3 hours and you don’t realize it
At least losing in modern only takes like 3 turns lol
I think it depends on when the LGS was founded, at the LGS near my house where I play the format is mostly pioneer and EDH because many members started playing there since the pioneer format, while the LGS near my parents' house is more towards standard and EDH because they have only been open for 2 or 3 years
what I noticed is that if LGS only relies on MTG I don't think LGS will survive, they need income in other fields to survive
I'm not a business owner but I'm baffled why the owner hasn't catered to the audience they have. EDH League, Themed EDH tournaments, budget of $20 or less only. Halloween is coming up, do a horror themed tournament, Innistrad and Duskmourn only or something. EDH draft or a cube, something. I get betting annoyed by WOTC pushing cards designed for EDH in other sets. But don't take it out on the players dude, it's your business.
Edit: Precon only tournaments
I had purchased Commander decks over the years, and tore them apart for cards but didnt officially convert to the format until 2018 when i bought all the planeswalker decks except for lord windgrace and started learning how to play
Now commander is the only thing i play, Ive built a deck of every color and color combination, ive built Planeswalker commanders, partners, played around with companion decks, and i do NOT play competitive, because i enjoy the chill fun environment commander creates
I also refused to pay to play magic aside from pre release, I'm not a competitive person, i am not going to buy into an event of any kind, standard, modern, or commander
I like commander because it is something i can just pull stuff from my collection and build something dumb to play with my friends for free
Do i spend money at my LGS? ABSOLUTELY! I buy singles, packs, dice, TTRPG rule books, but i am not going to subsidize the prizes for a couple of tryhards who paid to put together top decks
FNM is dying, in my eyes, because the formats are expensive, and just unfun
Commander is honestly the only reason i havent sold my collection
@@bubbado8333 good for you.
I don't live in the US, at my LGS the game with the most tournaments is Yu-Gi-Oh (on Wednesday and Saturday) with at most 1 magic event on Saturday. Other games like Lorcana, Pokemon Flesh and Blood, Star Wars Unlimited, etc are also represented, and you can rent tables to play board games.
For commander, it's 8€ for the afternoon (2PM-6PM), where you usually play 2 games, you get a drink, a pack and a promo pack, there's 12 places available and usually 10 people are there
I live in Chile (lived in the US for a few years too) and FNM in my city is cEDH in one store, and Dragon Ball on another.... both stores have a commander day (Thue/Wed) with a "budget commander league" ($160usd) that is like a mini cEDH, very competitive and focused on winning faster than the other players. One of those stores has Modern on Saturdays but there is hardly more than 8 players for that. Pre release events pull more than 20 players in each store the same days, that is a lot of people around here... and that's it. Hope this helps to see how MTG is working on other places besides the US
Thank you for your perspective!
Pauper is decently popular as well, not uncommon to see 10-12 participants in an event in Chile, very welcoming community there
Wizards screwed up getting rid of player points for attending and winning events. Proper prize support can fix non-commander FNM pretty easily.
Free space is an outdated concept with online shopping
Commander definitely (ironically) feels much easier and more welcoming to get into for MTG irl. I've been watching MTG on UA-cam for years, and playing Arena a lot these past few months, and have just now barely shown up to my LGS to play a few in person commander games with a precon I bought (my first physical card game purchase ever). I can't imagine sitting down in front of just one other guy as he focuses all his attention on me and my misplays and fumbling around. Commander kind of eleviates that (at least for me) because there's 3 other players, everyone is just talking and having a good time, and I feel much more comfortable learning the physical cards around that environment.
Moved from a big city to a small town. Went from multiple LGS with all sorts of formats to a single store in a whole county. We are lucky to get 8 ppl for draft on Friday. And no 60 constructed days. Only commander. Makes me sad.
I'm surprised Pauper or Pioneer hasn't popped off in paper as much as they should be.
@@cherry9787WotC needs to reprint lotus petal for pauper to really kick off
@@colinhobbs7265 I thought lotus petal was banned anyway lmfao
Pioneer sucked for to long.
@@cherry9787I try to promote both. Pauper seems to be getting some interest so we will see 😅
Oregon player here. I played constructed and limited during my early years of playing magic. My friends got me back into magic during the pandemic. Things like there interest, game knights, and even Arena, got me back into magic. I love playing standard, tbh the meta is one of the most interesting time in standard I’ve seen during my entire mtg career, BUT, I’m playing on Arena when I get the itch. Commander is wonderful because it gets me to play for fun, competitive, and I get to play with the collection I’ve built over the past 10 years of my life. My LGS throws standard and modern events in the store, but, they hardly ever run. Seeing this story play out over many different regions is interesting, and maybe just a new era for MTG.
Although some of us are commander players, we participate in tournaments that our LGS does, be it standard, modern or Pauper using the house decks. 8 players is already fine with our LGS.
Now we are starting to play Draft Cube using players very own Cube (Yes we leave our cube draft box in our LGS)
We only use Card Kingdom if the LGS doesn’t have the cards we’re searching for. If it’s in the shop, we buy it even if it’s less than a dollar.
We buy Packs if we want to do a Pack War (Highest value card in a pack wins all the packs)
My LGS has constant support for Magic, Pokemon, and Lorcana.
The issue my LGS has is the markups on product, and sometimes the markup is so bad it is significantly cheaper for me to buy stuff online.
If I can, for example, get a Starter Collection, Booster Box, AND Beginner Box from Coolstuff for the same price as JUST a booster box from my LGS, I'm gonna go with the cheaper option.
Dont wanna pay 400€ on a playset of the one ring that i fully expect to be banned and wasted so maybe i try modern one day post ban
Proxy the card or play a non ring deck. I played rcqs and together with my brother we have 6 modern deck and not one has the one ring in it. We hate the card. There are enough good decks out there
@@C42ST3N modern isnt a proxy friendly format though. And non ring decks just arent as good. Theres a reason it sees play in more than 50% of the decks out there
@@halvsketchy9293 storm, ub frogtide, belcher are all good decks without the ring and won turnements. In our store proxies are allowed for fnm but not in scc. 50% also means that one half is not playing the ring. So there are options which are still strong.
@halvsketchy9293 Dimir Frog & Domain zoo are 2 higher tier decks right now, not running the ring & putting up decent numbers. The only decks that are playing the ring are enegry variants (boros, jeskai, mardu) tron & eldrazi
I’m pretty sure the moment our store tries to charge us to play commander none of us will play there. I have not bought a single magic product in years all I play is commander with about 10-12 people.
Draft has always been a fun concept to me, but actually taking part in one is rough
@@sambrown9475 I used to enjoy drafts when packs had simple/vanilla cards.
I feel like packs full of cards with paragraphs would hurt my brain.
Power creep to sell cards is destroying the game.
@rainbowcrash6990 it feels like now a days you can only win a draft off of some busted rare you pull from your first pack and pray people pass you your colors. To be fair, I've only drafted a few times over the years( I am 25)
@@sambrown9475 I would recommend trying some arena drafts to get more comfortable.
As for opening bombs, it's worse in some sets than others. I think it was kinda bad in Outlaws, but it's better now in the current set (Duskmourn)
And for some reason WotC considers Draft a good format for new/poorer players
Im gratefull that i can play modern every week . But commander predating everything is a thing
Great video but their are some good points you missed.
"In my opinion standard players tend to purchase more product than commander players"
This might be true in a individual one to one card basis but the area where commander players are going to outspend others is on product like sleeves, foils, high price cards especially commanders, and even things like life counters.
I run a local edh group with like 4 big lgs in my area and you'd be amazed how you can monetize commander.
One prime example is one a month we host a commander precon only tournament. To incentivize players purchasing from the lgs we have a rule if you buy your precon to play in store you can purchase one mtg card from the stores inventory to place in that precon.
This drives both precon sales, individual sales, and brings new players and old players all in together on an even footing with precons.
Another lgs runs commander leagues where they charge 5$ table fee but all that money goes into a pool at the end and 90% of it is returned to the top 16 in store credit. This brings in players by the droves!
In short I think edh isn't the enemy people make it out to be but rather just a shift in meg's trajectory.
The LGS I play at does a flat $5 fee for their day pass.
With that you get to play unlimited games of Magic in whatever format you can get people to play with you. One guy is even working on his own format and keeps getting people to help him play test it a bit.
You also get unlimited fountain drinks and popcorn. He’s also got a little fridge where you can buy various energy drinks and whatnot if you’d like. You can play some video games in a little lounge area where there is a PS4 and an Xbox with some games. And they even sell some games from various consoles and have a few consoles themselves on sale.
This LGS also does some tabletop stuff like D&D, Battletech, and of course Warhammer. But Magic still outweighs the customer base by far.
Overall the community there is really good. We don’t really have much of an issue with people being too sweaty or competitive or anything like that. And as far as I know, everyone gets along with everyone.
The big thing that kinda gets me however is the price for sealed product isn’t displayed at all. And anytime I’ve asked the price of something it’s always WAY over where I could get said product elsewhere.
I asked about pre ordering a Duskmourn booster box and the owner told me that it was $180 to pre order one where I could get it elsewhere for $130. I’ve seen this same sort of issue with the pre con decks they sale. It’s always a substantial mark up. I’ve even asked how they determine their pricing (because I want to know what to expect to pay for something since they don’t show prices on anything) but was quickly told that it was “NDA”.
So unfortunately as good as the environment of the store is it’s hard for me to justify buying stuff at the store because I know that the pricing is WAY high. I don’t mind a little bit of markup for the convenience of getting the product right then and there, as well as supporting the store itself. But I’m not going to gouge myself $50 for a booster box.
If the owner doesn't know to make money in a business, he is not entrepreneur, he is just a hobbyist.
The LGS I go to the most does limited on Fridays. Has been that way since Scar of Mirrodin and gets really good turn outs.
I'm honestly not against what they do in many parts of Europe which is table fees. Essentially to sit and play non-sanctioned magic for the night has $2 or $3 per person.
I'd rather pay a few bucks to play for the night if it keeps my local LGS in buisness.
I think a big part of the problem is not converting customers into money. If i want/need a card for commander and I cant buy the card from my LGS, I need to buy from some online seller and they get my buisness instead and thats a mistake of the store not the player. If they dont keep their Sealed product at a price competitive with online sellers (unless box prices go up then they wont miss that) then they're not going to move product. As a counter point, I understand that owning all of those singles and sealled product add huge overhead costs and risk on the shops but if they're not capitalizing on people by selling locallythen they're missing out on business. I can order boxes from my LGS through TCG player for less than I can from them in person yet they dont have to pay seller fees or shipping when I buy in person. I have a modern deck and they didn't have the MH3 cards I needed (boros energy) for rcq season, and again they miss out. I feel like the poster might have a simular situation where they just havent kept up with changes in buying habits of players and activly buylisting both in person and online so they can sell and turnover cards for a profit.
@@xxthevampirate u also forget profit on selling those cards aren’t really high that’s why stores want standard and draft to be back in fashion
Online sellers do no have the fixed overhead costs of an LGS. Where exactly is the hydro and rent money supposed to come from if they are only making $10 on a box?
Literally one store in my relatively large city runs a Standard event. Every other Friday. Four people showed up, including me. Every other store plays Commander Pods.
It's a bummer for me, because I have like one Commander deck, and no one likes seeing it at a table because it's basically a Monoblack Stax deck with a slow win-con. So it's lose-lose for me.
I have all these Modern and Legacy/Vintage staples from back when I was a PTQ Weekend Warrior, and I'd like to play them, but people get salty when you hit the table things like Chains of Mephistopheles and Pox.
It's a weird feeling.
As someone who sometimes runs my LGS I noticed the casual commander players don't want to spend money and are extremely loud
From my over 20 years of Mtg experience as a comp player and also Judge/TO EDH-players are always the loudest when they want to be catered to but are also the least likely to contribute in any meaningful way like participating in any form of event that isn't just participation-priced while wanting to not spent any money while having several thousand bucks of EDH decks just layin around
@@zirilan3398 they also don't want to play edh with me because "my decks are cedh"
@@TheVeeOhla the thing i dispise about EDH is that people play it to just durdle their time away. Yes I could play 1 5 hour game in which nothing happens or I could play 20 more interactive 1v1 games in actual Constructed
I play commander because I can't afford modern.
@@justsomeguy-yd3yw I play PreModern because don't want to afford Modern
The problem with one of the LGS in my town is that they have no inventory, but wont buy any cards under 3$, so if you want to build a deck you... can't. Everyone buys singles from the other one,which results in everyone playing at the same place. They are just driving away the MTG players over time.
23:10 Yes, there are some rule’s interactions that we commander players need to learn. But I feel like this example specifically has a source I feel like a lot of mtg players with YUGIOH backgrounds think this because that’s gotta chains resolve in that game. So players might be thinking the stack and chains work the same way
the way my LGS handle this is that every day of the week is for one format, onde day for standart, one day for commander, onde day for pioneer and so on
My LGS has a small entry fee for everyone on commander night. As the games progress, 3 in total, the person with the most points garnered from their wins that night get three free booster (from recent sets), second place two, third place one. This will alter depending on how many players show up snd what the taken in amount is. They know that players bumped out of their game early are going to be hanging around reading the comics, looking at cards, or buying singles. They also offer sodas and chocolate bars or chips. The amount they charge to play per person is less than the price of a booster, but they know that small fee and the appeal of "free packs" to go along with bragging rights will generate them far more sales than it costs. This has kept their store liquid during tighter times, and at a time when comic sales, game sales, and other things are at all time lows. Sounds like your LGS owner just lacks creativity, motivation, an open mind, or all three. He needs to hire a marketing guy or someone with ambition (such as yourself, someone with enough drive to make and maintain a channel) to give him some ideas or work with him for a couple of months to incentivize him.
The idea of 8-20 being small is fucking with me
I started buying the newer play boxes from my local card shop, even though it cost more to buy from them then buying online. I don't mind doing this cause they have always given me good deals on trading in cards or purchasing singles from them. They don't screw me over and I support them with my huge purchases every month or two.
How often do we get a precon for modern or standard? How often do we get a commander precon? Something like every set? I wonder who wotc caters to most. Commander players don’t buy multiple copies of a card. They buy one for their deck. Most commander players I know don’t even collect cards. Why would someone want to buy four of the same card that may cost $50-$100 a pop and have it rotate out of a format when you can build a commander deck for $200-$400 and keep playing it for years?
The real problem is that people play with their friends. They're meeting at a house within their friend group and playing there. The only people that the game store gets are people who don't have a friend group, were kicked out of theirs for being a jerk, new players who are just getting into magic and haven't found a friend group yet, etc. When you are running tournaments (draft, constructed, or whatever) you are getting the competitive crowd which actually wants to play people they don't know, and is willing to spend more money on the game. But with commander the game store is basically the "bottom of the barrel". The other problem that game stores run into is that it is just not a place that people want to be. Magic is also an older game with a larger percentage of older players (especially for casual) who would rather meet in a bar or a somewhere where alcohol is available.
Probably better to have a bar and charge a cover or have a drink minimum in the gaming area. But IMO, game stores should probably have some sort of fee to use their tables to play. If you have a lot of people coming in or events, charge $10 for a few hours. If you don't have events or people playing in your store because they are all playing at home, then you shouldn't be paying rent for space you don't need.
@@jasons5916 In my area, the older gamers drink. A lot. They come up with magic drinking games like taking a shot every time you lose or loser having to buy drinks for the rest of the table. So the bars don't really charge beyond this unless you want private space.
I'm glad my lgs has started doing more formats, though instead of cramming all of them for fnm they've been spread out throughout the week, like vintage cube/legacy constructed on tuesdays, thursday modern, friday commander and usually saturdays are either draft or standard
My LGS is mainly a boardgame store and does cardgames like MTG, Pokémon and Lorcana as a sidebusiness.
It's currently expanding into a boardgame café as well. I would still love to play there with a table fee and have said as much too the owner on multiple occasions. It just doesn't seem neccesary so far.
The biggest deal is that Commander players that start will "very likely" never play any other format, they are stuck.
Why ? Well they might get a Commander PreCon, but these cards are not standard legal and they need a lot more cards for a modern deck, so the barrier of entry is massive.
Draft was perfect to get people to play, as they need nothing. And you can easily split the tables between new players and experienced players if you have enough, and also people learn relatively quickly if they play against good players and get help from them, the new players much faster become better players ; while a lot of Commander players will just casually play, barely understand the rules if at all and get very BAD habits in the casual rounds, they simply get anti-competitive.
PreRelease events are often full and booked out, getting people to draft is the absolute best way to make people more competitive and get them to get some cards, which makes the transition to standard easier ; and when they got more competitive they might also play modern and become enfranchised.
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If Commander gets stuck in the PreCon casual people an LGS quickly has the problem that the store is "full" but these people spend no money.
And when someone makes them proxy all cards, that spirals out of control so they spend even less and completely become an eternal Commander casual.
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The fact that WotC made draft increasingly expensive is a big part of the problem. In the past it was very cheap, now its basically double the cost and price support is worse as well (no actual FNM promos, promo packs are worse than regular price support, as you cant use these packs to draft either for whatever stupid reason).
If somehow another format becomes really popular, people will probably switch to that, but that's only really happened once when most people switched from 60 card constructed to Commander. If WotC messes up Commander, I'll probably switch to Legacy and/or build a Vintage Cube, but that's not going to help LGSs either. I would also play Canlander, but still, not many people playing that.
LGS manager here. We're not wpn premium and very diversified. Wotc doesn't see your sales if not under premium. They get your event data which is important for promo and product allocation.
Drafts are just a way to sell packs. Our fnm have entirely become commander we just flip buy in into 100% store credit. Selling packs is a considerably worse margin than selling singles for us.
Ive done everything I can locally to push non commander events. I've cultivated a decent pauper community and drafts fire once a month for us personally. Another LGS has good modern showings but due to our owner refusing to ban a bad egg we really struggle with constructed turn outs.
There's a lot of consideration with LGS. Most probably couldn't survive without mtg, we are very diversified but it's without question our largest product
I'm going to try to give my thoughts as a former MTG player, i will try very hard to not mention anything regarding Standard being a rotating format and look at this from the Store's perspective where WotC's mistakes constitutes as something beyond LGS control
Step 1 : EDH events with the price being the packs at the store, if the packs currently are Modern Horizons or Commander Masters? (iirc there was a set for commander cards) you can bump the price for events like 3$ to 5$. This will not be the biggest money source, but this will help
Step 2 : Pad up the week with other format events like Modern, Legacy, etc as a side event, if the LGS is full of commander player that's one thing but try to incentivize other non-rotating format (if none, then other CG events)
Step 3 : get other CG, if you rely on MTG it's not gonna be a good time especially when you are basically praying for WotC to not eff things up
Lgs are also responsible they have to foster the environment. Give actual prizes for winning, then when the players come you can back it off some.
Very interesting ideas! I’ve never considered me playing commander I’m basically using up my lgs real estate… I will be sure to make more purchases of packs while I’m there to help them out and help me out too! I love cracking packs
We need a Collector Edition Booster for commander staples. I notice a lot of commander players love shiny variants. I’d buy a 1-2$ variant to a commonly used cheap card, I already am buying the more expensive variants. I know there are some nice variants for cheap staples, but I wish there were more, and I reckon they’d sell well.
There’s also a work around a few shops have found where the people obsessed with opening packs they don’t bat an eye at their cash deals, because they know they don’t buy singles. Less money ends up in their hand, but some of those people some nights just want to make poor financial decisions, and open another box ideally. You can’t stop them, so why not partake in cards being there and now… and watch them make another mistake… after mistake… buying another box…
MY LGS is a WPN store and we have seen a huge decline in turnouts because of the lack of standard, modern, and legacy support. With Wizards pumping out product for other formats makes it so that your player base is divided from Draft, Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Commander. Before everything was standard legal and you were excited to play the new cards that you waited months for, not so much now with how many standard legal sets there are. I do believe WotC has killed their biggest draw to Magic which was Standard and like ThatMIllGuy said Arena is just better if you want to play and have a collection.
Draft is a lot more accessible than you might think. It's the one format my 9 year old is really into because there's a limited (hah) card pool and limited strategies so he doesn't have to learn about mutate or horsemanship and just focuses on manifest dread and rooms, for example. There's no (usually) crazy combos are deep metagame to worry about and everyone gets to play with the same cards, so the playing field is always a lot more even. It's the default FNM at our store and there's usually a handful of 8-12 year olds and their parents along with the other players
Just advertise different formats to jumpstart sales
Pauper
Big deck
Pilot (i made this one up where you pick a tournament winners exact list. This will need proxies probably)
Finding that post was cathartic but people also dont blame most content creators enough for encouraging this
I'm very lucky to have frequented two fantastic LGS' in my life, A Hidden Fortress in Simi Valley CA, was a smaller store when I went, but recently expanded having greater room, but also had a focus on comics too.
My current LGS Gamers' Asylum in Ogden UT, has basically everything, D&D, Video Games (New and Used) Table Top games, Board Games, TCG's and Comics,
Commander is the worst thing to happen to magic. You can really only run cedh commander events, which most commander players don’t play. On top of that wizards is destroying other constructed formats by adding commander to every set. Not only that but the power creep comes too fast. For example Ragavan, printed 2 years ago, went from people complaining it’s too strong to barely playable in modern. When’s the last time you seen Wrenn and Six? Wizards have made non rotating formats rotate just as much as standard. So the only way to play with the expensive cards that’s not longer playable in regular constructed formats, you have to play commander. I don’t usually play commander, but I built 4 decks so I would have something to do with my ragavans. I now play Nadu in legacy for the same reason. Most people don’t have the time or money to invest in all the different formats that rotate every 2 years and for those people commander is their best bet. Which takes me back to the beginning, you can’t really hold events for commander unless it’s cedh.
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TLDR
Edh is not the worst thing. its fun and allows one to make a deck and not worry about having it rotate out. The problem was wizards focusing on it over standard and so on while also releasing a torrent of product and not letting sets and such breath.
@@aclevername7613 edh pulled a lot of players from constructed formats. Wizards need to sell packs, if no one is playing constructed they have to target what people are playing. Also there aren’t very many things you can do with edh for a store to make money compared to constructed and limited.
My LGS does a ton of different games throughout the week, friday is draft night, and Saturday is commander day. And they do special commander nights twice a year where they give out gift cards and prizes for just coming. I normally just come for draft but it is rarely ever feeling dead
The LGS I used to work for would consistently only have 6 players for Standard FNM for the last year. In the earlier days of the store being open, if we had 40 players for Standard FNM, that was considered a slow Friday. Which is wild. They used to have, on average, 50 players for FNM every week. Now it can barely fire. Commander is killing Magic in a way, in my opinion.
It’s more apt to say Magic is becoming Commander because it’s the more favoured format, with competitive formats becoming less of a focus.
The majority of Magic players were “kitchen table with my friends” format only and wouldn’t sniff a tournament. Why highly invested competitive players think it’s a surprise that they’re in the minority is beyond me, since they always have been.
My commander night is Saturday and its a clash event, $15 entry fee and players win packs in the commander tournament, guys often also buy tons of backs and other things. My lgs is very healthy when it comes to how it interacts with commander, i often also buy my sleeves and deck boxes exclusively from them
Pokemon player here. My LGS' Pokemon night is also on Friday alongside FNM. There is rarely anyone showing up to play in pre releases or constructed formats. There is rarely a commander staple that stays in our showcase and precons are ALWAYS the first thing that sells out. Even on the FNM nights, it always ends up turning into a commander night. In this year alone, we've had the Magic showcase completely bought out 3 different times. All whenever we've had a collector/ ex CEDH player come to offload their cards for whatever reason. I like to dabble in commander personally because it's non-rotating. Pokemon is cheap enough to where i can build multiple standard decks and play them for a long time. Modern/Standard magic seems like something that I'd be spending a lot of money on for something I don't get to use for a long time, that's just how I see it as a Pokemon player.
My LGS only has a single “commander day” which is Sundays, but they have free play of any format, so long as you have the players to play it. Most days have 1-2 constructed events, but they’ve also began to run a lot more different TCGs alongside magic (OP, Pokémon and YGO seem to be the other big ones) and they seem to do really well.
The main thing I've seen LGS' do wrong, It's just straight up not catering to what commander players spend money on.
My current LGS almost exclusively has cards from the last three sets in their display, and when they're gone, they're gone.
They don't seem doing making any efforts to keep commander staples in stock.
And while I can't speak for everyone, at previous LGS' I would always make a point to buy whatever cards from the deck that i'm currently building from the LGS, before getting the rest on TCGplayer, even if they only had foils which I generally dislike, I will happily pay more to support my local store.
Beyond that, a good selection of snacks is always appreciated, and I think most of us agree that it's perfectly reasonable that those snacks and drinks cost more not just for the convenience, but because it is supporting our LGS.
Though I will say on the constructive criticism side of that, It would be beneficial if more stores offered somewhat more health conscious snacks.
Beef jerky, maybe some fruit if they're feeling adventurous, really anything that is a step above chips and candy.
24:20 Yeah this is something i had to learn when i started to play since i came from yugioh where that games version of the stack stops all interaction when the stack resolves
@@kyuuchi1276 tbh yugiohs version makes more sense. lol if you can react to things already buried in the stack seems janky.
My favorite LGS died to Commander players too. They took over too much space, chased away competitive play and wouldn't even enter casual tournaments with participation prizes when the manager tried to get them to play FNM.
Sure they consumed a lot of snacks and accessories, but you can't keep your WPN off snacks, and no WPN means no sealed product allocation.
I stopped playing paper Magic during the pandemic and now that I went back to the biggest Bushiroad LGS to play Shadowverse, I've heard a lot of horror stories about how they had to kick out Commnader players when I tell people I come from Magic.
my lgs does "Commander 500", it is a homebrew format that has it own banlist and a $500 cap. deck cannot cost a penny more than that. Since it started it only took 3 weeks to get casual players to participate since decks are not high end and there's more creativity and matches last 7-10 turns which people have fun with it. just a $6 and there's always 10-16 players playing every Friday. There's a new winner every week since there's new decks every now and then and new strategies.
In our city in Poland my LGS has lot o events hosting mtg, lorcana, board games, star wars etc. Friday is reserved for mtg and we switch 2 most popular formats: edh and pauper. So only pauper players are very consistent to play 2 times monthly. Modern, Standard, Legacy is also present but there are max 6 people playing. Pauper is cheap and has a very diverse meta
My most recent LGS only does Commander for M:tG on Fridays (and Warhammer, Lorcana, etc, on other days). There is no demand for draft. There is demand for premium product (MH and some Collector boxes), and Commander precons. So we play Commander on Fridays, and that's just our jam.
It's amazing that we were not having this conversation about commander at least 6 years ago, tbh. This was not an overnight issue or a new one.
Standard has been dead for a long, long time.
my lgs was quite small. roughly 16 players would come in for fnm draft each week. was some of the most fun gaming experiences ive had, I miss my old lgs
I think draft can be fun as a newer player but only if you are also against other players who are on your level. Your first deck will be crappy and held together with hopes and dreams (mine was) but sometimes you get lucky and you manage to win one game out of 4 by turning a hill giant sideways and that victory feels so sweet.
I agree from a financial angle drafting constantly gets real expensive real fast but buying a competitive deck costs several hundred dollars. I think there is probably a middle ground here that could be fun, where if you trust your players not to cheat (which would be very crappy of them.) You hold a Season of games (say 13 weeks) where they start buying a sealed Draft (Not draft the other one where you open a set of packs and can only use your own cards) and then they get 1 pack to add to their sealed pool every week after that. They spend the bulk of the money upfront but then each week they attend they expand their collection a little more.
By the end of it they will have opened 18 packs and will probably have an interesting array of cards to start working towards a standard deck. If they want to do that, but even if they dont running three of these seasons a year could be really fun. $180 sounds like a lot but its $60 upfront and then $10 every week after that which is manageable expense wise.
My LGS has table fees which you can offset with monthly membership. 10 dollars for a month or 20 dollars to get a 10% discount on product. Otherwise table fee is 5 dollars per person.
The stores I visit in GTA I always just give the store $10 for drinks/snacks. I rarely ever use up that $10 and the rest I just tell the owner I don't care about the "change" use it towards the play space.
My LGS has a membership program with different tiers the top members pay $100 a year and get 25% off singles a couple free drafts a year usually a hoodie or backpack and a discount on some sealed product. This is great because it encourages me and others in that tier to shop there first. Their margins are roughly 45% on singles as cash trade in 70-75 on store credit. Even if the top members are really abusing the system the store is still moving singles. Other stores could try something similar to help encourage people to shop there and people usually play where they shop.
As a general rule for myself, and I recommend this to my playgroups and everyone who reads this: if your LGS provides snacks, at 👏 least 👏 buy 👏 snacks 👏 while 👏 you 👏 play👏 Commander.
Your LGS will appreciate it, you won't feel ripped off by a table fee if you have a bad time, and you literally get something out of the experience.
It's not much but it's better than nothing and you will feel good about it.
Speaking from the perspective of Montreal, also what’s good fellow Canadian 👋🏼
So basically the amount of magic the gathering lgs are dwindling, but the few that do still carry it make most of their money from it so they have a solid rotation of Cedh, casual EDH, modern standard pauper and draft.
Then like 1/Month they run a vintage/legacy event. But only like 2/17 stores are still like this.
Pokémon and YGO are making a comeback, Cardfight Vanguard (my personally favourite has just moved to lgs where the majority of actual pro community lives) One piece and Lorcana are also gaining popularity quick.
My LGS had a really hard time holding any events catered towards standard for a long time. Bloomburrow was the first time they were able to get consistent attendance for standard events, and they are doing a ton of drafts now.
Funnily enough, there has been such a massive influx of players recently that going to the building just to sit down and play is no longer free. You pay 10 usd for unlimited access to the building for the night, and you get a 10 dollar coupon to spend in the store. The reason being is that most people weren't in there as customers, they were in there just to use it as a place to play and it got to a point where they had no room for DnD games or hosted events.
My local lgs has a charges a small table fee for FNM and we all play Commander that night. They also have a hard time keeping packs in stock on a regular basis.
My LGS the commander events cannot be played unless the player buys a magic product. I approve of this even tho I have most of the cards I need. They pay employees, utilies and many other bills to provide a place to play. The least I can do is spend a few bucks to enjoy that playing space.
0:18 that’s normal my lgs is commander Friday night
@@Dark-Pikachu1 same
Whenever I go to a LGS, I have to “pay my part” where I’ll buy packs, sleeves, or snacks. Not enforced but it’s how I feel okay to be there for so long. My favorite LGS has an entire kitchen that’s actually really good so I’ll get dinner there too
We had a new LGS come in and the standard events they throw or sealed are not as big. They end up asking commander players if they want to play it and even offer decks to use so maybe 3 people total played standard? I asked my friends why they don’t play it and they said that since it’s a rotating cards list and they worry about meta red decks just not making it fun
This is my situation. Luckily I found an underground scene on discord in my area. The players have moved into a dedicated play space. We order all our product online now, getting bulk discount from stores with group buys, and contribute to paying rent. This allows us to control who we want in the club. Its BYOB and we don't have to deal with stinky neckbeards and social degens. It's actually better than I could have hoped for playing in the store.
This kinda reeks of people being salty that their preferred format isn't as popular as the ones they don't like.
Absolutely this. 60-card-format bros are insufferable and no wonder they're sitting there scratching their heads wondering why nobody wants to play with them, when they're the ones going up to commander players and being that guy screaming QUIT HAVING FUN unironically.
Local LGS did FNM Commander. Tried it out. They have their own banlist on top of the official ban list to prevent games from ending too soon. Sat down at 645, game was over 715. Playing Myr Tribal and got turn 5 infinite combo killed.
Problem with commander is everyone has a different perspective on what kind of game should be played. It isn't Modern/Standard where we both have the same understanding we're trying to win ASAP.