You know, I feel this. Being in a game where my Mono-black deck is doing the job of a control deck is painful, having to be the one who stops the person whose getting -way- ahead while the other two decks just kinda sit there and don't interact with the board is incredibly frustrating.
Man, you bringing up Teferi's Protection made me remember how bitter someone got when I explained to them that it didn't keep them safe from my Mystic Redaction and Psychic Corrosion, because it didn't change their life total, damage them, enchant them, block them, target them, or affect any of their permanents. As much as Teferi's Protection is often treated as "you and your stuff phases out until next turn", indiscriminate, untargeted mill is always an option
I had to do the same using a big X value Mind Grind Your library isn't a permanent, it's not safe. Not unless you've got a Rule 0 to run Animate Library XD
It also can't stop commander damage from being accrued. Yes their life total can't change, but since the damage isn't being prevented, you can still deal the Teferi's Protection player lethal commander damage.
@@DTMGunny Protection from everything prevents damage, so no commander damage is accrued, unless there's an effect that states damage can't be prevented.
I think i may have made this comment before, but I would just like to praise your videos for a sec. You consistently make topics approachable, yet deep, push against common assumptions, and communicate so much in such a simple style. While Rhystic Studies might be my favorite mtg UA-camr for the quality of his production, you are my favorite for the simple originality of your products.
I think there's a flaw in your logic regarding cards that add additional mana costs to spells. I don't think it's as clear cut as "these punish players who are ahead", b/c they also punish players who are behind, possibly even more so than players who are ahead. To put another way: +1 mana cost is not much for a player with 6 available mana, but certainly is for a player with 3.
I can see what you mean, but this implies that "players who are ahead" are as such based on their mana production alone, which isn't necessarily true. The player with 6 open mana has likely been spending a turn focused on ramping up to that point, while the player with 3 was spending their mana developing a more oppressive board state. Neither player in this circumstance is ahead of the other, they have just been focused on different goals.
It is certainly conditional, but I would say that generally a player with more mana is either A) Going to play the biggest spell they can or B) Double or even triple spell, while the players behind will more likely be playing their cheap build-up spells, so in those cases it would indeed tax the player ahead more. Definitely not always the case but I think that is the logic.
It would say the inverse is true, where like... even if you ignore the scenario where the person with more mana could have bigger things to do at the time under the restriction; and instead focus on board states where one player is at the advantage with what is committed to the board, they can instead focus towards holding back and kicking the ladder out from underneath them. This IS how the stax player often wins, locking people out of playing the game effectively while they get to progress the game state for themselves. Through this ability to accrue advantage, as well as usually running methods to mitigate stax effects on themselves, they end up usually being the one in the control seat, and because stax often ends up being so compact, this means they can often also be packing other control tools meant to fully destroy that ladder below you while they run away with the game. And as shown with the harshest stax pieces, when used in tandem, they can often prevent people from stopping the stax deck from doing stax. That is where it feels the twiddle metaphor somewhat falls apart, because sometimes the twiddle is 'ending the prison lock on all players', and that's getting stopped. When we look at what is used to bypass stax we realize that most of it is what already goes into CEDH deckbuilding, which itself has a huge problem in one major element: most of it is EXPENSIVE, and hard to put into your deck for resilience. This is why we have to be careful with what and how much stax we put in our decks, as the answers to well built midline stax are often things you will never be able to see at a table of 6&7s.
Landfall Stax decks are therefore the ultimate nightmare. I run Thalia and Gitrog as the commander of an abzan elf deck just to threaten trouble. I curve it so Simic decks cannot keep up, but if I see someone seriously lagging, I'll keep T&G on the wayside.
"Nothing compares to the real thing" is quite vague. What do you mean by that? Regarding what subject? Which videos? I've found a lot of mtg videos that were quite applicable to the "real thing" aka analysis of the game of magic is applicable to the game of magic.
I think a big part of why "hard" stax is shunned upon is not just player agency, but also playtime. Nobody wants to sit through a Winter orb game, even if their deck was decently equipped to deal with it. Same goes for a turn 10 Armageddon. I reckon almost everybody would rather scoop, give the stax player the win and go to another game, instead of slugging it out for the next 45mins. This is even more important in low power formats and for people, that only have limited time to play.
I disagree. People would hate on so many other types of cards if playtime was a significant factor. If anything the amount of people who play various boardwipes as well as the formats high starting life total speak to the opposite motivation.
@@Yangblaze11 I think you're gonna have to elaborate on what you mean by "Do nothing" midrange is second only to tempo in difficulty. It goes: ??? Tempo Midrange Control Aggro Combo
@@arvidsteel6557 They do though. See the dislike for chaos spells, planeswalker decks, and excessive numbers of symmetric boardwipes being played in a game.
I have no issue with stax in instances like you describe at 6:40, namely “the stax player will win in a few turns.” Players inexperienced with ending games, though, are given the ability to draw this state of “no action/fidgeting” for far longer than an urdragon player would take to smack everyone down. In the case of lantern control, the route to “winning in a few turns” is done by the opponent scooping. This is made more complicated in 4 player formats, where victories of that kind hinge on THREE players agreeing to scoop. That said, this analysis hinges strongly on the fact that I like my edh games to not drag on. Ie I prefer more games to one or two dragged out ones
Watching your videos has made my decks so much better over the course of time. Adding cards with more versatility and removal/interaction has made my decks more fun to play since I rarely get to do "nothing" in a game. The same can be said for what you described as stax cards.
Commander is supposed to be a format were everyone’s favorite strategy has the room to work, and that worked when it was a niche format with not necessarily every type of player, but now that commander is the primary format it has to face the fact that some people’s favorite strategy is stopping people from playing the game.
The problem is everyone has a different definition of what playing the game looks like. To me I’m playing the game when I have a meaningful benefit to derive from paying attention to what’s going on. If I could write F6 on a piece of paper, walk away, and come back 10 minutes later and not miss anything and there still be no one clearly about to win that’s where I draw the line. I know that’s very different from where most people draw the line though.
@@sin6138 sure that’s one of the most egregious examples, but there are all sorts of reasons some even outside the game if players don’t know how to play their own deck and take an eternity to make decisions holding priority for many minutes on other players turns only to not use it and still taking ages to do their own turn. And everything in between those 2 extremes that both result in nothing of substance occurring.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof usually not. I find solitaire deck players tend to play out their turns lightning fast and never hold up the game for ages on other players turns. If we’re just playing lots of mostly solitaire gameplay with most interaction being just attacks and blocks then at least we’ll get this over with pretty quickly and we can get on to the next game. Short and but only slightly sweet is much better than long and bitter.
Actually i was scrolling through the salt list just a few hours ago, and wondering "why on earth is teferis protection on here" (Score: 2.02). So thank you, you managed to answer my question with remarkable speed! A lot of your examples of pseudo-stax that isnt socially excluded seem to be pretty hated: The one ring (2.70) is the 8th most salty card legal in the format. Blood moon (2.20) is on the list as well. And of course so is cyclonic rift (2.40). Farewell (2.20) too.
Things people are salty about don't necessarily mean that they're actually bad for the format. Notoriously people generally hate having their spells countered or their game plan stifled through interaction at all really, and those things will naturally gravitate towards higher salt. But they're healthy for the game because they force players to adapt and respond to the other aspects of the game. This gets into the Timmy Johnny spike stuff for sure as well, much of the stuff with high salt scores really bothers the spikes on top of the things that normally bother Timmy..
Razia's Purification is "everyone chooses 3 permanents and sacrifices the rest", if you're looking for more effects that attack manabases but are limited in scope.
It's *not* exactly a *good* card, but I do run it in my Boros Angels deck, just because it's on theme and because my creatures are usually better than those of my opponents.
Cataclysm as well. 2WW, everyone chooses one creature, one land, one artifact, and one enchantment, then sacrifices the rest. Both that and Purification are quite nuts with a Mayhem Devil
I like to denote the difference between Stax and Control as "You can try to do that but i will stop you" and "No, you are not allowed to do that". And i find stopping people engaging, while i find denying people the ability to play to be boring. But thats just me. Also, to be clear: Obviously Leyline of the void is a stax piece. what else would it be?
@@vileluca Countering my spells? Stax. Removing my permanents? Stax. Blocking my creatures? Believe it or not, stax. Lowering my life total? Stax. (Life is a resource, and you’re denying me that resource)
@@BOOMDIGGER do you consider an abundance of counterspells and removal spells to be stax? Because that is generally what i play. Just a pile of interaction and cards that generate value off the interaction.
I’ve been playing 20+ years now and have seen a large paradigm shift in commander, and here is why (I think): wotc around 2008ish had a philosophy change in resource denial. It used to be a core part of the game, but since then was not. This means unless you played before then, or legacy, you aren’t used to playing against resource denial. The VAST majority of players are either new to magic, came from standard, or maybe modern. This means most players never played with resource denial as a strategy, despite for half the game’s history it being there. So tldr is players just aren’t used to it being the norm, despite it being the norm “back in the day”, so a format like edh where it is both new and old at the same time, this design change can clash.
Going back through files for early sets in the game is so funny, because they had such an appetite for both color hosers and land destruction. I think, even then, they turned that knob a little far, but the game is so much less vibrant without that element in it. Stench of Evil is a hilarious card, but the kind of thing that indicates that they hadn't yet reckoned with the game state that was going to induce. "I know I just blew up all your plains, but you can pay 2 per plains to mitigate some of that damage." Like? Thanks lmao, how about go next.
The premise of this video flirts with the slippery slope of "blocking my attacker reduces my ability to damage your lifetotal, therefore blocking is stax".
Caleb Gannon has some of the best versions of these "muddying a definition until it makes zero sense but if you squint hard enough it works" "A Mind Twist for 4 is Ancestral Recall" "If my opponent Strip Mines me when I have 3 lands in hand, I ramped a land" "Ponder is color fixing" "Mother of Runes is a repeatable counter spell" These are just jokes, but this video did almost get to this level on a certain points.
@@traycarrot Mind Twist for X=3 does actually put you at the same card advantage math-wise. Card advantage isn't cards in your hand. It's cards you have access to compared to the other players. If you reduce their available cards, you are increasing your card advantage. This is the way competitive players think and it's how they do crazy shit, like saying "Worldly Tutor is Disentomb if you fetch Eternal Witness" and that's how they find such wild lines to their win conditions. It's all about the utility the card actually brings to the game.
@@traycarrotOne can argue that for most of these the fundamental analysis regarding these is completely sound. All of them disregard the notion of tempo, granted, but all of them distill the sans-tempo discussion behind what the correct angle of attack is regarding the manner of deploying game pieces, and, largely, most decks are built with this in mind. Sacrifice tempo to gain long term advantage.
the big problem with mass land destruction is that recovering from it is almost exclusively a green thing, with almost all of the "you may play additional lands" cards being green, outside of a few "everyone may play additional lands" artifacts, removing creatures is recoverable more quickly by just playing more creatures but the "one land per turn" limit means that land destruction is a lot slower to recover from, and being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad
This is really a myth. If anything green does not utilize mana rocks whereas other colors do, so other colors have 3 mana after MLD where green has 0. Also this greatly ignores the fact that even IF green can somehow ramp back to 5 mana while everyone else is at 3, well that is a lot better than green being at 10 mana while everyone else is at 5. But most of the time green has used their ramp cards early, exactly to ramp, these cards do not magically return to their hand. White has a multitude of tools to defend itself from MLD by making permanents indestructible, red has many treasures and rituals which spring it back up faster than green , and blue (in theory) should just draw more than green, thereby hitting land drops easier. It also greatly ignores that if MLD was widely played maybe most players would stop spamming every single land they have in hand, green vomitting every land from their hand into the battlefield would be greatly punished by another player holding back a land or two.
@@Steeks Green doesn't play manarocks specifically because they have the ability to play land ramp instead, which is the better option in a format where land destruction is frowned upon. You're making it sound like there are no manarocks green could use. There are plenty. It's just that getting lands out instead is almost always the better option since they are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.
27:55 I would have said exactly the opposite. Players who are ahead likely have extra mana to spend on taxes, while players who are barely scraping by (especially ones that missed a land drop or two) really get shut down by these effects
Mass land-wipes in particular are in sort of a strange place. The players they're best against (land heavy decks) are also the players most likely to actually recover from the land-wipe due to the quantity of lands in their decks and the amount of land ramp they run, while everyone else, including yourself, might just get stuck on no lands. As far as I know, they've yet to print a targeted mass land destruction card (like a River's Rebuke but for lands), even though theoretically that would be the best answer to greedy land ramp decks.
Land destruction needs to "catch up" to the rest of the game's mechanics. Resource accumulation is reaching a fever pitch in EDH, and the land destruction options we have NOW are not on par with the general power level of the game. "Destroy all lands" and "Destroy target land" isn't good enough anymore, it has to be "Destroy Target Land, " because otherwise all you're doing is just the same 1 for 1 resource trading. In order for these cards to be viable they'd have to have new versions printed, and SPECIFICALLY Edh players would need to "get over" their aversion to this particular strategy.
Honestly this is why I hope Wizards unbans Balance now that they're in control of the format. Sheldon originally banned the card in the early days of the format because he just hated the card. But with land ramp decks being able to rule the table, getting an efficient answer that doesn't destroy ALL the lands, but instead just brings everyone down to parity is a good answer to this. I think too many players have built the card up as a boogeyman in their minds...and I say this as I have Magus of the Balance in my Lurrus deck. I popped the magus off once and people suddenly after it resolving said "oh that's it?" and only really got annoyed when I started recasting the magus from my graveyard and ensuring no land ramp or greedy draw decks were able to get an advantage. Yes the land decks can rebuild, but that could be the same argument to how wrath effects don't really impact token decks as much since they can more easily repopulate their boards than decks running more traditional creatures
Something I dislike about mass land destruction is that it's really hard to break the parity in deck-building. I think many decks running "Destroy all creatures" effects probably shouldn't be when they're creature-focused decks; those wipes are dead cards when at parity or ahead, and they're arguably still terribly costly to cast when behind but not super far. A piece of targeted removal would be a better card when ahead or even, and could even be good when behind. Board wipes should really just be in the hands of creature-light decks planning to win in other ways. Either that, or go for less efficient but less 'even' wipes. In Garruk's Wake is way more mana but it's going to annihilate the table. The issue I have with mass land destruction is that everyone plays lands. Some play more, some play less, but everyone needs them - and the kind of decks that you might MOST want to strip lands from have more ways to play them, tutor them to hand or battlefield, or recur them. Landfall decks looooove flipping a fetchland out of the graveyard every turn for double landfall triggers and playing extra lands.
This is why I play decree of anihilation in my Obecka enchantment deck. If all of our lands, artifacts, creatures, and graveyards are gone and I still have my enchantments I’m probably going to win.
One of the big issues with stax is that it's often played not to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing. Armageddon is an insanely powerful card if you use it to lock the board down - that was the old combo with Kaalia. Shutdown cards can be good to armlock opponents, if you're able to win with that leverage point. Blood Moon in a genuine mono-red hyper-aggro deck gives you enough leverage for that uncommon strategy to really compete, if you happen to draw it. Ruination also becomes a coup de grâce if you actually use it as a finisher.
The thing is that some decks could have a proper wincon in those slots, like something to get extra attack steps, as in response to the Armageddon someone might remove the most powerfull creatures and the game goes to top decking trying to find lands.
Stax being "not played to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing" is objectively false in almost every list I have come across. This theoretical universe where someone "plays four plains and casts Armageddon" simply does not exist - even the worst deckbuilders still have some vague synergy in there deck. And your explanation of why they "don't win the game but instead sit there and do nothing" is literally describing how they win: by setting up asymmetry and locks. It is your own fault if you are fully locked out of a game but instead waste everyone's time dramatically sighing, going "oh no I guess the game continues because I didn't draw a land," while simultaneously being on a few turns clock for the player to finish. Does everyone just sit there and wait for the thoracle consultation player to individually flip 6 cards at a time, or if nobody has interaction and the game is literally over, do they scoop? Perhaps think before you type, and consider the fact that, if a Liesa deck has three mana rocks and their commander on board and maybe one or two other pieces, if you don't want to lose, you should probably try running interaction before they cast their wipe. They won't cast it if it is bad to :)
@@xeoknight845 There is literally a player in one of my EDH groups who has Armageddon in a deck with no feasible wincons. Everything in that deck is stax and control pieces with no endgame. His explicitly stated goal in playing it was to make everyone think "I don't want to waste my time topdecking for lands so I'll just forfeit". And last time I was around to see it played, it didn't work because one of his opponents had enough mana rocks sitting out to continue playing and eventually burn him down. Perhaps think before you type, and consider that the worst deckbuilders are worse than you think.
@@bartoffer The problem with an Armageddon with a plan to win off of it is it’s an Armageddon without a plan to win with it, because every piece of removal has your name on it. “Aha, I have Avacyn! My permanents are indestructible!” “Swords.” “Fuck!”
I personally switched from having a soft spot for stax to absolutely loving control. It allows me to keep my strength in hand instead of on board and it gives my opponent the illusion that they are allowed to play too. In reality, they're only allowed to play things that don't affect my win.
@@ricorero77depending on your creature composition crackdown could be good. Also archon of emeria(?) that lets you cast one spell per turn on a flier. The stax you play is very dependent on the deck you build, because you need to be able to break parity. Also meek stone possibly
As far as diversifying your decks to answer different problems: I can only have so many answers in a deck while still moving my own game plan forward. You just gotta accept that some matchups will be bad, and build for the kind of game you want to play.
Also, for land destruction: sure you can say just play heroic intervention and the like, and always hold up Mana, but the likelihood of all 3 opponents being able to save their board is very low. On spell table, sure, you can just go find a new game, but IRL, now 2 players get knocked out way early and have to sit around and wait. If you hit me with Armageddon online, I'll answer it or find another game lol. In person, I'd be a bit upset.
Stax annoys me because every game I've been in with someone playing a Stax deck, the pieces just locked the players that were behind while doing absolutely nothing to the player who was getting far ahead and trying to combo off. It was usually the strongest deck in the pod to begin with, and Stax prevented us from even attempting to solve the problem in any way by locking our decks and doing nothing to the Combo player somehow.
I have had the exact opposite experience: stax decks have made weaker decks worse yes, but the most salty person is always the one trying to combo off but can't do so because of rule of law or such
@@leonvalenzuela4096 Of course, everyone's going to have different experiences. My most recent encounter with someone playing stax was the player tutoring to shut off GY against my deck(Coram) in the first few turns, then deploying pieces to hate out instants/sorceries and such against a spellslinger deck... Then the artifact deck combo'd off, and none of us had the ability to play any answers.
@@DoctorGreenbeard and? had that deck not stop them those other deck would have popped off, that's not the stax decks fault, that's how mtg works in the modern age; if your deck had been the only one not stopped you would be fine with it. maybe the correct response is to also play some targeted pieces that hurt stax decks if you don't like it, but everyone only complaining about the stax deck, not the combo deck is my biggest problem with the discourse, maybe your deck should have ways around the stax? or maybe you could also play hate cards
@@DoctorGreenbeard Yeah, it's a pretty humbling experience when your Blood Moon or Ruination fucks over the bounce land and tapland mana base while leaving the deck that fetched four basics off of Kodama's Reach and Cultivate intact...
I think most people in the comments don't understand the concept of "having a good time with some friends" and are confused why people would rather have a lot of stuff happen then sitting for 3 hours playing one card per turn just to get wiped and do it for another 3.
@@SrenHolm-k3o Except that thinking has ruined so many fucking games, and it's annoying. The amount of times I see someone king-make because "hurr durr I wanted to play my cards rather than just pass my turn" is insane. Stop trying to actively ruin the format because your ADHD self can't sit for longer than 2 minutes without touching your fidget spinner deck and build a better deck that isn't snowball or do nothing.
I'm pretty sure like half or MTG players are on the spectrum with no social skills at all and only see it as a game to be won. It's why I only play with my friends rather than at an LGS.
This is just disingenuous to say. Everyone understands this, but that's not where any friction lies. If you are playing with a group of friends, then you all will collectively determine things like this, and wider discussion is irrelevant. So the entire discussion is about situations that are not "a group of friends with the same ideas of how to play together." The point is that in these situations, treating stax as some kind of bugbear is arbitrary, and should be regarded in the same vein as random folks saying stuff like "no board wipes" or "no counterspells." It's not that any of these ways are invalid ways to play if everyone is on board, but it's just as much of an imposition to malign them as it is to play them vs folks who don't like them, and there's a lot of room between these extremes. I also think it's very valid to say that the majority of people who get really upset about these sorts of things from other players also seem uninterested in assessing if there are ways they could adjust their deckbuilding philosophy to account for them (and therefore make the experience better for them by doing something under their own control), and are only interested in getting everyone else to cater to their whim on the matter. Again, this doesn't apply if someone has found a group to play with who all agree to the same restrictions, but when someone instead tries to force their own mindset onto the way others play. It's never a bad thing to *ask* if people are willing to adjust for your preferences. It's almost always a bad thing to *insist* that they do so.
13:25 I think of the distinction as "control is looking to answer a threat and to remove it entirely, while stax looks to wither render is useless or prevent it from happening in the first place"
To be honest Id rather have to wait to cast my commander until i removed a stax piece then it being counterspelled 3 times because who has commander cmc+6 lying around?
0:24:38 : I feel a big difference here is the game restriction that lets you only play one land each turn cycle. After a mass land wipe the game might take longer to get going again, delaying the conclusion potentially more than with other wipes. This excludes situations with Heroic Intervention effects accompanying the mass land wipe, which probably ends the game there and then because no one will likely be in the mood to fight this uphill battle. If just your dorks and rocks are hit you at least have your lands left to be able to play new dorks/rocks that ramp you back in. The later the game the more of these types of cards you would be able to play in one single turn, the faster you get your game back going.
I myself play Brago (it is a super budget deck build from my small collection) and I must say that the commander can get out of hand pretty easily. Therefore I would not mind my opponent playing Torpor Orb, because that is the simplest and best way to shut down the bullshit Brago is doing
I feel like one of the issues is that stax stuff can feel arbitrary in its restrictions. When the zombie player pops off and gets a ton of 1/1s you can't beat, you've just been outplayed. Even if you lose, you can still try whatever you have in your toolbox. When the stax players casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects" as an enchantment, suddenly your toolbox just stops working *at all*.
He made this point and it didn't make sense. "You're 90% to lose whether the Ur-Dragon player had loads of creatures or the Stax player cast Ravages of War" is an absolutely ridiculous take. Losing in Legacy against a Delver and against Oops All Spells is not the same even if the win percentage is the exact same. One I can take meaningful game actions, the other I get force-checked on T0.
if the stax player casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects", that's a deckbuilding problem maybe brago shouldn't play with a deck that has nothing but etb effects, or at minimum run moonsnare prototype and otawara to get a torpor orb off the field
@@traycarrot That's the point. Both cases meant that most of your actions can't matter, but one FELT different. How it feels to play against mattering was the point.
While my playgroup banned MLD, I suggested to unban Wave of Vitriol and From the Ashes, so that it turns to a Basic Lands issue and deckbuilding problem now. This is coming from a Lands player that wins via Maze's End.
@NoahMoorman kicked cyc rift, extra turns. It wins pretty regularly even through being focused down. With the caveat that noone runs much land destruction in my meta.
Another key difference between 60 cards formats and Commander is the no sideboard and high variance, so drawing answers to non common strategies is harder and you don't want to lose space on cards that will be death draws on most scenarios.
All I can say when someone cries about stacks is that rhystic studies is just sphere of resistance if you keep paying the one (which is what you are supposed to do in 95% of cases).
Wow that explain so well why I love Stax in EDH!!! I feel that the social fear of Stax is the equivalent of playing rock paper scissor without rock. I totally get playgroup that are all playing those value machine midrange deck, but the result of those type of meta environment that I have encounter is a meta where deck are just trying to be the biggest scissor. Stax and Agro/Turbo are in my mind thing that add depth to the game dynamic of a EDH game environment, so it will lead to more complex game that are a good thing for experience player, but will be for sure a "fun wall" for newcomer unequip/unprepare for those kind of tools in a deck.
The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; “just run more answers”, which devolves into every deck becoming extremely similar shells of the most efficient interaction and coverage they can muster with like 1/3 of the deck actually geared towards being what they wanted. That’s for CEDH, or a receptive pod, where people are fully in for that experience. It’s not YuGiOh, every deck shouldn’t be the same staples with a twist. It’s EDH, flavour/thematics are inherently limiting and building stax in a format where people are not prepared for it because that’s not the point of the format is a failure to read the room.
@@deifiedtitan Why do reactions to stax need to be efficient? If I play a game piece for 3 mana that shuts you down you can spend 3 or more mana to deal with it and be fine, and if everyones playing more removal then its not like everyone needs to run a third of their deck as removal, that's only needed if the other players are slacking. If my 6 stax enchantments in my deck outnumber the amount of enchantment removal the other 3 players have in total that's not a me problem.
@@auberry8613 "The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; 'just run more answers'" -Them "if everyones playing more removal" You, like clockwork. It's just a bad argument. Always has been a bad argument. People are running removal. There's 100 cards and none of the spells can be duplicates. 2 entire colors of the pie are basically fucked if a stax enchantment player sticks a couple pieces and they're not dipped into the other 3 colors that can handle it. Idk why most stax players can't just admit they enjoy inflicting an unpleasant play experience on others. I love stax in 1v1. I generally avoid it in EDH because my goal is everyone has fun, not just me.
@@kylegonewildSometimes some strategies will be hard to interact with in certain colors, that's just how the game is designed. Also, they were making the point that there are 3 opponents in EDH, not just 1, so if there isn't enough removal among 3 other players to deal with a strategy then the issue should be that, not the strategy itself.
IMO the issue with stax is just that the most iconic stax pieces, the most powerful ones and thus the most run, are old designs overtuned to be so splashy and impactful for so cheap that the entire game is immediately defined by its presence if players aren't positioned to immediately deal with it. An early Winter Orb going unanswered due to no one at the table drawing into cheap artifact removal on the first few turns is positioned to turn a game into a real slog in a way that few other unanswered early drops can. Honestly, even though I'm not really wishing for any more bans after everything, I do feel like stax would be in a much more socially acceptable place (and the game better for it) if we just forgot about a bunch of those early stax options and had to use the much more interactive and interesting modern stax instead.
"Much more engaging" modern 'stax' pieces are all one sided effects and frankly I do not enjoy that nor do I find it engaging in the slightest. Half the fun of piloting stax is that you're not only establishing this grip on the game, you're also breaking parity to win. Having my pieces just affect my opponents from the card text alone is just...boring.
@@MoyVahn I agree. What makes stax effects fun is the deck design challenge that it invites you into. If you see a card that say "all attacking and blocking creatures are sacrificed at the end of the turn", you can immediately think of a myriad of ways to abuse that. Cards that bounce to your hand, cards that sacrificed themselves anyway, effects that prevent sacrificing, cards that resummon themselves from the GY etc. It's inherently evocative. I also think there is a good point about older designs feeling more unfair and uninteractive. Winter Orb is interesting mechanically but too strong at what it does. An updated version that costs more to activate or lets you untap 2 or 3 lands instead would feel better to play against. It's as much about your opponent trying to work around your stax with their toolbox to break that parity as it is you.
@@MoyVahn Yeah I like some of the modern stax cards in theory, but realising that they are entirely one sided so I don't even need to modify my deck is boring and uninteresting. I find stax pieces as a deck building challenge to be interesting.
We should ban good and efficient ramp too while your at it so it isnt lopsided due to shitty resource denial. But hey, ramping into a gazzilion lands and overrunning your opponent with land strategies is OK, but interaction is too evil.
I recently slotted Fall of the Thran into my Megatron, Tyrant deck to punish the two guys at the table who seem addicted to getting 12 lands on the table in the first 4 turns. It brings parity to the table, I can get most of the mana to cast it from Megatron slapping around the ramp player who doesn't have an effective blocker, and gives everyone back some lands over some turns. Of course, Megatron himself is still slapping people around and generating mana in the meantime. And since I get the first returned lands I'll be the first one with 3 colored pips available, which is pretty sweet.
Fall of Thran was exactly what I was thinking of when he brought up less punishing land wipes! "You get your 4 favorite lands back" is enough to bring back less greedy cmc decks while punishing people who go all in on ramp. I still feel like the general edh player isn't fully ready for that conversation yet.
Bringing the table to parity is exactly why I've been arguing for years that they need to unban Balance Sheldon banned it decades ago because he just hated the card. I hope Wizards, now that they control the banned list, realizes the card has no business being on there when other effects that are far saliter are not, and when the effect itself still exists on two other legal cards.
@@anthonydelfino6171 The only problem with balance IMO is that 2 mana is just too cheap for it. If someone only has 1 or 0 creatures, it's one of the best, cheapest boardwipes available, and it's still pretty good even when everyone has atleast 2 or 3 creatures.
Most players who don't like any type of stax have only played commander. Play or watch the other formats like standard, legacy and modern. Those will teach you so much more about the game. Play stax, land destruction, lock your opponents out, play op strategies, and break the game as fast as possible and you'll feel better. You'll spend less time thinking about how unfair the game is and more time about building effective strategies. As always rule 0, but don't be afraid to live a little, printers are cheap.
I told myself I'd save my argument until the end to make sure I got all the points on the issue. Which is good because the conclusion that was reached was the same I had. By the way the video was really well done and well reasoned I'm not denying that. Using the beginning to defend Stax, then going into admitting that the future of commander leaves hard symmetrical Stax behind, is to me saying that we're right about Stax being un-fun. In defense of board wipes hitting artifact and creature ramp, those come at a cost of spending your own resources and turn, with an effect that doesn't hit everyone equally. A board wipe may not stop a combo player or graveyard deck. Versus hard Stax effects that effect everyone equally, so that the player that is ahead can get more ahead. I gotta admit though, Urza's sylex type effects and rule of law type effects actually seem pretty cool. The other issue with hard Stax is that the person playing Stax needs to have a game plan. A pile of value synergy creatures can still swing in for damage. A pile of prison cards usually just means that no one is progressing the board and games get dragged out. You need two culture shifts: one to get people to stomach Stax cards, and for Stax players to have a game plan that's worth 3 players getting to do less on their turns.
Bro, your bias is showing. Stax doesn't hit everyone equally like you stated. Null rod doesn't the same to the guy without many artifact. Armageddon doesn't effect the guy with cheap spells or dorks. We get it. You think stax is un-fun, but your statements are contradictory.
I wholly agree with your point about Teferi's pritection but there is technically one other kind of counterplay If someone has a card that makes it so that damge cannot be prevented, then, even if your life total can't change, you can still take Commander damage and lose that way thats obviouslt quite and edge case though
I find the difference has almost nothing to do with a technical delineation, and everything to do with the human element. People like making their cards "do the thing", and especially in mid-level or casual games, they often care a lot more about that than they do about actually winning. If you make it 90% likely you'll win, but still let me touch all my cards and do my thing with em, I'll probably have fun losing. But if you make it 90% likely you'll win because I just, can't even try to do my thing unless I can answer yours first? I'm gonna be miserable just waiting to lose. Simply put, other than at really high-power competitive table, the statistical equivalency between 'being really ahead' and 'locking out other players' is irrelevant, because the win isn't the only point of the game. The game actions are, themselves, a reward of play, and preventing players from engaging in them is why stax and control receives so much vitriol. They represent a disconnect in player preference ('I wanna see cool cards' vs 'I want to accrue advantage'). I don't mean to paint Stax and Control players as WAAC, but I do think the players who prepare for them the least get so tilted because they'd really rather get out-valued than repeatedly stymied in their attempts to get their engine going. It's more fun to run the race and lose, than to stall on the starting line.
Yeah, hard agree on this. I'm part of the "I want to see cool cards" group, and it just gets crushed by some people. Early into when I started playing in real life, I was interested in every card in the game. Even though I made my commander decks, I couldn't remember every card in it, so I'd often be surprised by my own decks. One day, I drew a card I forgot was in the deck, and it had a super fun effect. I said "Oh, cool" out loud. In response to moving to my main phase, I got Silenced. The opponent's reasoning was "You gave away that you have something good in your hand, why would I let you do that"
perfectly articulated. it feels like a lot of stax and heavy control players want and expect commander to play like and carry the same social expectations as 1v1 competitive formats, that everyone is here to win and that they're going to do absolutely everything possible to do so and that end-goal is the only relevant variable.
@@themoops4006 Neglecting the social aspect and politics of the game is part of why they don't understand. If you make a 'good' play that statistically advances you but turns the whole table against you, you may in fact have done something counterproductive. An accurate assessment of the game state in EDH must necessarily include player feel and inclination to/against disrupting your board. Hence why group-hug can be a functional strategy here but completely pointless in 1v1.
@@trebacca9 completely agree, the fundamental structure both socially and in terms of actual gameplay and play patterns of a free-for-all multiplayer game is simply not the same as a 1v1 duel. those political and social variables just don't exist in a 1v1 and completely change how you have to approach what you play and when/how you play it. its not just 'make most optimal plays, win game' there's more to it than that.
@themoops4006 commander players are the only group of card game players I've ever seen who complain about people trying to win a game where the only goal is to win the game This isn't just you this is something I see all over I just don't understand it
endurance is one of my favorite pieces of interaction. It isn’t just graveyard hate, it is one of a very few number of non blue responses to Thassa’s Oracle. I like that as a free spell, the effect is fairly narrow instead of generically powerful like “counter target spell”
Every color has multiple ways to deal with Thoracle. White has Angel's Grace and anti-etb effects as well as several counterspelld. Black has Withering Boon and forced card draw. Red has Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Tibalt's Trickery. Every color can run any of the multiple lands that force draw.
I agree with your larger point about stax having a role in EDH (similar to the role of removal). Below I explain why I think MLD should still be avoided and then I close out by talking about the broader stax being different from MLD and about incomplete board wipes. There is a difference between mass destruction of a fundamental resource (mana and cards) and mass destruction of the product of a fundamental resource (ex: non land permanents from spells you cast). If you still have your fundamental resources, you can rebuild even if you were not prepared for the mass destruction. A deck that is not prepared for a board wipe can still draw a card and cast cards from their hand. A deck that is not prepared for MLD/mass mana destruction cannot continue to cast spells until they draw several more lands. You also asked about Mana dorks, mana rocks, and land enchantments. Each of these is a more vulnerable card type but comes with an upside compared to Rampant Growth effects. (Sidenote I compare rampant growth to talismans and nature's lore to the medallions because I recognize nature's lore is an outlier that is stronger than most mana rocks). For the extra risk (and theoretically shorter duration) these other ramp options cost less/provide more mana (Birds of Paradise/Worn Power Stone) or provide mana immediately (mana rocks and land enchantments). You then asked "would people still run vandalblast if it excluded mana rocks?". You think many fewer people would run it. However when playing a board wipe I am not aiming to destroy mana. If you gave me an Austere Command that ignored mana, I would immediately run it even if it still cost 6 mana and I think it would replace Austere Command if the new one cost only 5. So flip the question, if your board wipes only affected mana and could not touch my threats, would you play them? I doubt it outside of a subset of stax decks. However I also don't like to conflate Stax and MLD (which would be a subset of stax). Stax in general is fine in EDH because Stax threat of "puttering around until they (or another player) find and play removal" is milder than MLD's threat of "need to draw several (5+) lands before they can continue playing the game". The distinction grows even larger when we consider what you later call soft stax. As for incomplete board wipes, I prefer the Austere command over the Catacylsmic Gearhulk because Gearhulk allows the threatening player to choose to keep their threat (thus making it ineffective at removing that threat). However you make a good pitch for Gearhulk. (Incomplete MLD for EDH should probably still leave everyone with 5+ lands since EDH is where we get to have decks with high mana curves.)
I play light stax in several decks. I’ve also played mass land destruction and against Winter/Static Orb. I have found these experiences to be wildly different, the former positive, the latter negative. A good stax and control lock that is assembled piecemeal, as I fend off my opponents’ attempts at foiling me, is very satisfying. It electrifies the game in a tug where the actions and consequences are looming and tangible. Wiping all lands (or popping down Winter Orb+Unwinding Clock), even if I end up winning relatively swiftly, has felt as underwhelming as any shitty two card combo.
30:24 AMEN. I keep preaching this and still get push-back, even in CEDH, but it's absolutely necessary to persuade players to stop building glass-cannon "solitaire" decks.
While I might watch Maldhound most as my MtG creator of choice, there’s a reason I have on notifications for the both of you. You’re an absolutely awesome wealth of knowledge, and I’m super thankful to have found you.
This is your best video and I’m not just saying that because I consulted on it lol. Home run. and I still 100% get infinite schadenfreude from a brago player pinned under a torpor orb.
Nah Teferi's protection is outrageous, and a terribly designed card. Complete invulnerabilty for 3-4 turns is stupid. Having all your permanents phase out as well is game winning on its own. Any game in which I've seen it, it has won the game.
Another difference between control and stax is that usually stax effects affect everything whereas control is more pinpoint with throwing answers. So against control you still get to use your fidget toy even if it doesn't do anything meaningful. Heck a control deck might allow you to do big plays as long as they don't affect them and people are suprisingly willing to take "I won't counter this but you'll let me win" deals (usually not phrased exactly like that but kinda boils down to it).
Your description of a community for which Board Wipes are almost non-existent is pretty much my playgroup. I do occasionally pull out my Estrid, the Masked deck, which runs like 7 or 8 wipes and it always gets a pretty strong reaction. I only ever run it with a serious discussion first about the fact that it won't be fun, but it will be a challenge to play against. I, personally, really love playing in a meta that allows everyone to just run away with their niche in the game. It's a blast. Anyone out of the group could come in and just destroy us all with a little interaction, but, we have so much fun, we don't care if the outside world is playing "better" decks.
Rule of law effects I find problematic because they kingmake a little too often where one person at the table just coincidentally won’t be effected by them much and so playing them hands a win to one player. This is probably just a my LGS thing though.
I mean, ideally, the Rule of Law player has ways to break parity on the effect while simultaneously benefiting from the game being slowed down. I run Archon of Emeria and High Noon in my Taii Wakeen group slug deck because I play a ton at instant-speed (I always want to represent Wakeen’s ability), and the deck also wants the game to extend because my group slug cards do more damage if there are more turns.
Excellent analysis (as usual)! I found that ending summation particularly insightful. One thing I would add is that part of why something like Teferi's Protection is much less objectionable to most Commander players than some hard stax piece like Amaggedon is that TP allows for more hope. In this case because it only lasts a single turn cycle at most (without recursion, which is a different matter). Certainly, buying just one turn with TP is often more than enough to close out a game, but it isn't necessarily guarenteed that the TP player is going to close it out. We can imagine a scenario where all your (living) opponents have TP'd this turn cycle and you're just stuck there spinning in place - and that feels bad - but you've got the relief that (provided you get another turn at all) your next turn isn't going to be like that. Whereas something like Armaggedon or Winter Orb not only denies that relief by promising that next turn will feel just as bad (or only marginally better) but actively inhibits your ability to accumulate or use resources to shut it off (now this isn't true for all stax pieces but it is particularly poignant in the cases of mass land removal/mana denial), further denying the hope that you or another player will be able to turn off their machine. It's not about one objectively being weaker or stronger - it's that one allows for more *hope*. And more generally this is a part of why many players would rather be stuck against a hopelessly ahead Elder Dragon player than a fully online stax machine that has softlocked you. Yes it's likely that the Elder Dragon player has counterplay for any attempt to clear their board (and even if you did they still have a full hand) but there is still the dream that you might topdeck Wrath of God. Sure, they'd also need to be unlucky in their draws and not have any protection in hand (or perhaps another player might chip in a counterspell of their own to ensure your Wrath goes through), and then more effort will need to be made by the whole table to level the card advantage. But still, the outs clearly exist, even if they're wildly unlikely in reality. Whereas your deck might not even have any ways of simply or efficiently levelling part of the playing field in a topdeck, even in your the most optimistic projections. Rationally your outs might be just as unlikely, but a stax-created softlock provides less outs to play for, even in theory. It doesn't matter if you draw that Farewell, because you're not going to be able to cast it because you're not going to untap any lands next turn. By making the fact that you're fucked more explicit, it kills your hope. And regardless of their objective chances to win, players don't like feeling hopeless. P.S: This also helps with further justifying why softer stax pieces and targeted land removal are cool and based.
A big problem with Stax is that people often only look how it effects them. Like how in the video it is stated that rule cards are good to pushing people that are ahead but I can promise you the guy that is doing the worst will still hate and arch enemy me for it just because he wasnt able to cast two spells in a turn, even if it stopped the winning player from flooding the board and winning. Same with Sylax... how dare I destroy one land at the weakest player, he needed that!
I legit just searched for stax content to listen to while I write stax primers, and find one of my favorite creators has uploaded this within 12 hours. Perfect perfect timing.
This video is actually gold. Analysis based in fact and not emotions is hard to come by. I think stax is a necessary evil. Without them, why wouldn't you just jam egregious value or combos. I despise landfall decks, so without stax and land hate, they would just get to drown everyone in value without anyone able to do anything meaningful about it.
I feel like this video runs on the premise that anything that is mass resource denial is stax, and I don’t agree. What makes a card a stax piece is specifically, at least imo, the aspect of repeatability/continuity of the effect, while still denying resources. But yes I agree running interaction is good, and that interaction can probably deal with most stax pieces.
26:34 I’d like to suggest “Natural Balance”, “Razia’s Purification”, and “Balancing Act” as more cards like Urza’s Sylex and Keldon Firebombers. They’re not the exact same, but they’re similar in practice.
I discovered your channel with your discard deck video and I feel like I'm taking a college course on EDH, like I should be taking notes. This is all great stuff! Thanks for the informative and entertaining watch!
My favorite rule card is Silent Arbiter, and it's basically a win con all of its own in any deck I include it in, so it's entirely deserved every time it's targeted.
I had a game a couple weeks ago where my buddy killed my bounce land with a decimate, and I was left thinking: “Wow that bounce land is actually really greedy when you know there is land destruction ”
Okay, I get what you're saying and I don't think there are any serious technical flaws in your argumentation: you make solid points and argue them well. It's true that we're inconsistent about what stax means, about which stax we allow and don't, and about how (probably all) interaction is effectively some form of proactive or reactive stax. My issue is mostly that this framing misses the real, underlying 'human' things we usually care about when it comes to stax. You'll have noticed that the stax pieces we object to the most have very 'blanket' effects: they affect a lót of the game for how much they cost (made worse by, as you noted, them originally being designed for 1v1) without further cost to their controller; these make the game difficult to play for 75% of the table. Even worse are probably the 'hosers' that shut down particular play patterns (like draw or graveyard decks) which lock out particular players from 'doing their thing' while everyone else is relatively unaffected. I don't think most people mind these effects to some degree, but rather care about 'how much' they affect the game. This is amplified by the fact that these stax effects often drag games out, which means you're sitting around frustrated for a long time, doing little to nothing while you wait for the stax players to finally turn the equlibrium to their favor. Goad is fine, Bojuka is fine, discard is fine, even land destruction is fine: the problem with the cards that generate these effects is not that they're stax; it's with how they're designed to be very oppressive and absolute in ways that are very difficult to come back from if they do catch you it. In that way they're very similar to the many 'I win if I get to untap this' board states that frequently hit before turn 7; you just 'feel' blown out in an unsatisfying way, but at least with the killer combo you got a chance to interact and the game will be over very soon. In my opinion the strongest part of your video is the end: we need stax cards with better designs. Monologue Tax > Smotherting Tithe for example, but there are so many stax effects that would be absolutely fine if they just had clauses like "the first time a player does X in a turn," or "x happens unless the player pays {1}", as well as limiters like "each opponent discards X, but never their last" or "destroy lands, but leave each player with at least 3" and so on. That way these effects can exist and disrupt players, they get to feel smart and rewarded for having interaction against these effects, but don't just sit there for an hour waiting to finally top-deck into the removal they need to start playing the game again. Thanks for the video! PS: also yes Teferi's Protection sucks.
Great video, there is a saying in CEDH, that you overlooked slightly. "Stax is counterspell for non-blue decks". Due to the fast nature of CEDH, Stax are essential if you are not playing a blue deck. I think casual players think of "interaction" as just counterspells or instant speed removal, but Stax is interaction for colors that are weak on these axis.
@2:23 I believe that if there was an indestructible land cycle with all the basic land's subtypes the armageddon wouldn't feel so bad as people would include those in their decks in case of land destruction. The artifact lands that has the indestructiblity ability can't be fetched as easily unless you play blue centric deck with fabricate or something similar. So, according to scryfall there are 12 cards that grant indestructible to permanents (including lands) and 6 cards that grant indestructible to lands specifically. Searching for "creature indestructible" nets you with almost 300 different options. So in a way the argument is nice. If in that reality there was only 20 obscure spells in the game that granted indestructible to creatures but were in very specific two or three colors or the card was something like Eldrazi Monument or Plaza of Heroes. People in that universe would see and understand that they should add Plaza of Heroes just in care someone plays a Wrath of God and wipes their creature but even then it's like 1/100th game if someone were to play it. But even in that universe if you were to search "destroy creature" or in this case cards that included words "destroy land". You would find around 300 different options to do so. Which is like 1 protection for 100 different land destructive effects. So in a way land destruction feels bad as there's not enough good options to pre-emptively protect and all you can do is react with curved and not so clear cut answers. Like, Negate is fine but what then when you had counter Acid Rain, Wasteland, Boseiju and many more. How much counter magic you are willing to spare in your hand until you just say: "I just can't."
I used to never play battlecruiser decks. Perhaps ironically you convinced me to build one with only 4 drops and up deck. The thing is that while it is one of my favorite decks it’s also easily the least consistent in terms of power level. On good draws I’ve won what was basically a game of archenemy against mid power decks and yet on a more medium draw I’ve been curbstomped by some precons because I was too slow to rebuild after the third board wipe. I think I finally get how people who like graveyard based decks feel because I feel like I’m playing unfair or cheating somehow if no one has any answers for my comically greedy jank yet too many answers makes my deck feel weak. Ultimately despite these problems it’s still one of my favorite decks. Although sometimes I feel quite guilty that a third of the game was spent by me flipping through my deck wondering why all 15 of the cards I could cascade into are in the bottom half of my deck.
The problem with accepting Armageddon into common EDH playpatterns is that the only color that can actually reasonably prepare against it is green (and no, holding up mana constantly to play a counterspell or teferi's protection isn't really preparation). Green is the only color that gets to play good recursion effects for lands, can rely on their creatures for mana, and can use ramp to recover after an Armageddon faster. Every other color only gets to rely on artifacts and artifacts get blown up ALLTHETIME (or get stolen, or get shut off). You end up nerfing every other color except for green.
Not really. Literally everyone plays mana rocks in EDH unless they have very deliberately chosen not too, which typically only occurs in green anti-artifact strategies. Yes, they get blown up all the time, but if people are blowing them up then they aren't casting Armageddon.
@schroecat1 the issue is that well people usually play like a third to about half the amount of mana rocks they do lands so there's not an insignificant chance that Armageddon just mana screws everyone. Which is fine if it wins the game if annoying. The problem comes when it doesn't
Lot of different discourse in the comments, but this video actually touches on a lot of the things I've been discussing recently with my buddy in our playgroup I'm always deck crafting with. Adding soft stax, targeted hate to address certain strategies, more impactful control pieces, targeted land destruction like Demolition Field to address things like Cabal Coffers and other powerful lands. I think all decks should consider running some of these pieces that are appropriate for their colors. Decks that are built entirely to just do the thing they want to do will lose out more frequently to decks that have answers to a variety of strategies while keeping their own core strategy strong. Soft locking the board while you get value from your permanents, resetting the landfall player back to a manageable level by forcing them to sac a lot of their lands and permanents, punishing spellslinger, storm, and low CMC decks for casting a bunch of spells or sac decks with slug cards, stuff like Scavenger Grounds to address white recursion or graveyard decks. You can play these pieces without fully leaning into the stuff like Armageddon, Winter Orb, etc. etc. because imo they feel genuinely bad to play against, especially when the player playing those cards has no meaningful follow up to using them. I have the same opinion about just board wiping the table into oblivion but then having no meaningful game actions to take afterward, since that is just prolonging the game and praying for top decks at that point.
Agree with this. I don't mind the Armageddon, but that player should win soon after. Rather than just drag out the game for another 45mins. If I lose, I'd rather lose quickly and suffer slowly.
as someone drawn to the stax/land destruction vibe, i love your take and suggestions. ill be trying to introduce more pods to this aspect of the game in more confidence. cheers!
I have been putting together a Yuma, Proud Protector list - it is a very difficult theme, but I think he is probably one of the better options if you are planning on going that route. You have access to really great protection effects to stop people from blowing up stuff in response to your Armageddon, and the commander synergizes really well with the playstyle. Unfortunately the power level is capped at lower mid even with all the best cards in the colors included simply because of the fact that you have to run 13 or more terrible deserts
I got into EDH coming from Yugioh and the commonly accepted EDH phiolosophy was mind-blowing to me, still is to this day. The first EDH deck I wanted to build was a land destruction deck, because I was unfamiliar with the concept of mana and I thought surely denying my opponents the core resource of the game is a viable strategy and an interesting way to learn more about the game for me. I found out I'm not allowed to destroy lands because it's not "fun". Alright, I guess I'll try slowing the game down for my opponents with the help of Blood Moon and see how people play in a slower environment. I found out I'm not allowed to play stax cards because they're not "fun". Ok... I mean I'm a Yugioh player, I can just "play Yugioh" and go balls to the wall combo and win on turn 7 (which is very slow as you know). I found out I'm not allowed to play combo because it's not "fun". Then what even is "fun"? Over time I noticed a lot of people are doing nothing but ramping in the early game and then casting 10 mana spells that win the game. Am I just supposed to allow whoever gets to 10 mana first to win? How is that fun? Winning off of 1 card that cannot be interacted with (because guess what, countering it is also not fun) is the furthest thing away from fun to me. There is no way for me to punish these players, especially if there are 3 of them at the table. Even today, I struggle with this. I don't want to play against the same decks every game, I know the Simic deck will win if we don't interact with it, but I think my playgroups are too... casual? They don't seem to care, they have really bad threat assessment and play barely any interaction. This takes away a huge amount of fun from EDH for me. Should I just start playing Simic and win every time because I think I'm a better player than them and force them to realize? I don't really want to do that, I want to play bad cards and try to make them work. I want to play games where I have to think about every action. I want to be forced to deckbuild having to play around mld, stax pieces, tax pieces, counter spells etc. I want to play games without all these unspoken rules, because they are the most interesting and they help you get better at everything. Is this just my Yugioh brain? Am I too "tryhard" for a casual EDH game? Has anyone been in the same situation?
Ive been playing MTG since m14 and i know EXACTLY what you mean. People want to play solitaire piles that race towards some game winning combo or critical mass of resources/power. If you dare to disrupt or throw something at them they werent prepared for, Suddenly youre everything wrong with the game and you need to leave the table.
@@racp777the Questing Beasts stops the damage prevention so the infect goes through and they lose. Damage prevention shut off + infect/commander damage kill through a Teferi’s Protection.
Nuts. The one and only time I've gotten a rakdos charm kill was when I was getting swung at with a lethal 20 damage and the opponent had 3 creatures and 3 life.
Mass Land Destruction is the pineapple on pizza equivalent in Magic. There’s objectively nothing wrong with it, but everybody will look at you differently after you do it.
@@viviblue7277 I've had people get pissed about single land destruction too. Like dude, you played an Urborg and I'm positive your deck contains Coffers, what am I supposed to do? Just wait until you've had a turn with 10 free mana out of nowhere?
It’s more like you’re throwing a dinner party and it’s all vegetarian food but you’re the only vegetarian there and you never said you were one in the first place. Everyone else will politely (or not so) eat it and wish they had “normal” food. The expectation of how the game would go is absolutely upended by mld, so it is more about subversion of expectation than anything else.
I have officially survived midterms. Just how well I survived is yet to be determined, but I realized something in my post exams clarity. EDH is dead. Not just because the RC is disbanded, or the way cards were banned, or anything WotC has done. EDH is dead because of the players. It was my favorite format, and not by a little, for almost 10 years. I was drawn to it as a brewer's paradise. A metagame so hopelessly complex that more cards, strategies, and archetypes are viable than ever before. It was a vast blank canvas to explore seemingly endless possibilities. In spite of the criticisms, WotC has actually done tremendous work over the last 5 years in expanding the number of options to 60 card strategies that did not previously scale to multi-player formats such as burn, energy, and werewolves. I can not stress this enough, even though they have done terrible things to DnD, Modern, pricing, Brawl, etc. And made some mistakes in design, 99% of everything they have done specifically for commander has only improved the format. They are not the problem here. The RC's recent update to the ban list was bad for a number of reasons that I have gone into at length over the past few weeks, but ultimately it is most problematic because it lends legitimacy to a much larger, more pervasive trend within the community. It tells players that there is only one correct way to enjoy the game. If we're being honest, the death of EDH has been a long time coming. Somewhere along the way, the discourse surrounding the format shifted from sharing this cool new idea I just figured out, discovered, or invented to telling people how they're supposed to have fun. The concept of the "social format" has been appropriated to bully players out of using any cards, decks, or strategies that beat your own. The idea of having a deck that you work on over time and grows with you as a player has been vilified. The social expectation that cEDH was its own thing has shifted to everyone is playing a "7" to we need to play unaltered precons to precons are "too good" now. What was once the most diverse and interesting meta ever created has been reduced down to only two acceptable archetypes. Everything needs to be either some version of the Ur-Dragon or Oops All Chairs. People forget that there are 3 sections to the RC's rules philosophy. One is the social format, but the others are creativity and stability. Both of which have been completely upended by both these bans and the vicious, cruel nature of the community. I'm not surprised that the RC is receiving death threats. I have been receiving death threats for years because I advocate for a broader, more inclusive, and accepting environment where players should feel welcome to play many different styles and for as many different reasons as they can possibly imagine. In the end, WotC didn't kill EDH. The RC didn't either. The community killed EDH, and frankly, I think that we'll be better off without it. It wasn't worth keeping after what it had become. Goodbye and good riddance.
the only time I have EVER seen armageddon or any other MLD played is when the one casting it has a way to save their lands from being destroyed or otherwise have a crap ton of mana rocks. Basically making it an "I WIN NOW" card
Thank you. I‘m sick of reading the fairy tale that we blow up lands for fun. How should I beat you down with my Razzia when yor refill you habd every turn? If I can‘t limit your cards, I have to linit your mana. It‘s objectively the rational choice. But today, too many people are oversensitive rather than reflect and spending hours to inprove their decks, as I did after years of frustration. But of course, it‘s easier to whine, instead of taking responsibility.
@@Zandral36 Its also a card that only works with any given playgroup once. When people know your running MLD you become archenemy regardless of board state. Commander is a political game and if the other 3 players at the table don't care for what your deck does then they are fully within there rights to gang up on you.
How about a stax-license. If you can actually play your deck turns quickly instead of dawdling, durdling, and generally wasting everyone's time then cool - license approved. It's one thing to be slowed down by a stack piece in a vacuum, it's another thing entirely in a commander format where it takes 20 minutes to go around the table.
When I play stax with my stax okay friends, we're usually done or playing a normal looking game within 5 minutes. Turns can be really fast if people are just top decking for lands.
I've seen way too much dawdling, durling, and wasting everyone's time to sequence playing two green creatures, I think it's just a player issue in general.
Not gonna lie, most people I play with run 3-4 board wipes and extra card draw, so it really doesn't feel that bad. However, at more casual tables, I can see how frustrating they can be.
Cleansing, from The Dark, is a really fun, situational, MLD spell. Late game its an absolute game changer. It often ends up being WWW: each player loses 10-15 life, but when players are on less than 20 life it becomes VERY interesting.
Disclaimer: there is -technically- counterplay to Teferi's Protection. Some cards (Questing Beast most notably) have rules text that say "damage can't be prevented". T-Prot still prevents the player's life total from changing, but this creates a small opening for Infect and Commander Damage to apply.
To me, stacks is somebody telling me they don’t want me to play the game. And at that point, my game plan changes from “I’m trying to win” to “I will do everything possible to make sure you lose”.
what does "playing the game" mean to you? This game is Magic: The Gathering. There is no guarantee in Magic that you can resolve a particular spell, because cards exist that prevent spells from resolving. There's no guarantee in Magic that your lands enter untapped, because cards exist that tap them down. Just because your creature's ETB didn't happen does not mean you are not longer playing Magic. You're still playing, *these cards are part of the game you have sat down to play*. Ultimately from my perspective as a control player, you have a warped understanding of what "playing the game" means that boils down to "let me win" if you look at it closely enough. Edit: to be clear, "let me play the game" typically means "let me take any game action I want without interruption" which will result in your victory unless you intentionally sandbag. That's why when you say "let me play the game" I hear "let me win"
@@timothye.2902 I really don't understand why you needed to give such a long-winded reply. "Play the game" means "let me play my cards". I expect to be countered by a player with available blue mana. That's fine. What I don't expect or like is when somebody plays a card that flat out says I don't get to do something. It really is that simple I don't need to win. I just want a good, interactive game. Cards and effects that promote an un-interactive game are inherently and objectively not fun. When somebody has Hokori, Dust Drinker in play, that isn't fun. When somebody is playing a token deck and slaps down Opposition or Glare of Subdual, giving them complete control over whether I get to do something isn't fun. When somebody like you, a "control player" buys back their capsize reliably every turn, ensuring that nobody but you is going to get to do anything meaningful for a good portion of the game, that isn't fun. It honestly sounds like you're projecting some level of your own insecurities about your own personal play style onto me. Find somebody else to care, random internet nobody.
@@TeamSprocket "Guys don't gang up on me because I have an oppressive and insufferable deck that kills your fun and wastes all of your time, that's immature!"
Biggest difference: land destruction actually hurts blue. The whole reason I play land destruction is to prevent being constantly counterspelled. Blue is not as bad in multi-player, but in 1v1 counterspells can completely prevent an opponent from playing at all. If that's fair, so is Land Tax + Armageddon.
...I'm so confused who isn't playing sweepers, and who is calling sweepers stax?? Stax is *repeated* resource denial. People hate mass land destruction because it causes game states that drag on a fight rather than allow for rebuilding and then potentially win off of that. People hate repeated creature sweeping because it does something similar, but at least everyone's level on rebuilding. You have created a new definition for stax that I've never heard before. Teferi players can still be milled. And stax itself begs the question: how are you winning?
I mean that's already an inconsistent argument right? If stax is repeated resource denial then by that logic mld isn't stax because it's an one off effect. The point snail was making was that there's some vagueness to the definition, lantern control was a competitive 60 card deck and despite being called control us edh players would call it stax. Graveyard hate and sweepers aren't really considering stax despite being on resource denial. We have sweepers like farewell and cyclonic rift that basically remove everything BUT lands but aren't seen as bad despite being able to slow the game just as hard. The video is exploring why that is and questioning if it's a good thing or not.
@@ryandavidson3610 ok but the point of the video is that it's all resource denial and that reasons people have for disliking stax can be applied to removal, sweepers, or uninteractive defensive cards like teferi's protection or the one ring. It's weird because stax is stigmatized by it's most powerful, degenerate cards. Imagine if we all collectively said ramp is bad or not fun and got annoyed whenever we see ramp anywhere because we all thought of ramp to be degenerate fast mana like grim monolith, mana crypt, vault, moxen, ect that warps the game around themselves and creates bad gameplay experiences at casual tables.
@@justking2114 then I would call the argument misinformed at best. Said other forms of removal/interaction still largely allow people to play the game. Continuous detrimental effects aka stax pieces and mld both reduce one’s ability to play the game far greater than anything else in the video and it frankly isn’t very close.
@@ryandavidson3610 Snail also addresses that. What does "play the game" mean? Because there's a lot of cases with those non stax cards that still checkmates you. If I know I'm going to win the next turn and play teferi's protection, you can still shuffle your cards around, draw a little, tap and untap some stuff, but nothing you do from then on will have a meaningful impact on the game. At that point, what's the difference between not being able to play your cards in a stax lock, and your cards no longer affecting the outcome of a game? Protection from everything basically means I can't play the game against you. If there isn't a difference, why is stax stigmatized but stuff like teferi's protection isn't? That is what he's trying to say.
I really enjoy the thoughtful commentary and fleshing out seldom pondered and under addressed aspects of commander and zeitgeist. I also really like how this indirectly touched on an aspect of Commander that is also sledom talked about despite how glaring it is once addressed. That being what i call the "azorification" of 4 player commander. The reality that with the ciritical mass of protection spells and exile boardwipes that now exist, playing decks that stay within only only red, green, and black are at a distinct disadvantage from the start if not playing stax or combo. Alone they are incapable of properly protecting themselves from some of the formats most powerful and commonly played tools. The best example of these tools being Farewell. With jund colors possessing few to no meaningful answers to it. And no, Tibalt's Trickery alone does not mean solely jund pie decks can hnadle Farewell, Thoracle, and to a lesser extent Cyclonic rift. Just seeing those colors in the Format now compared to 5+ years ago is sad. Even in moderate power pods without having blue or white games feel like a uphill battle filled with cards that just can single handedly end your ability to win the game without you having any way to stop it.
I firmly believe that simic wouldn't get the ire it does if people actually employed land destruction as part of their interaction package. The format is speeding up and it will continue to speed up as cards become more and more efficient at accomplishing goals. I think that casual EDH would benefit a great deal in terms of deckbuilding mindset if they built more like cEDH players. No you don't have to have tutors and fast mana to blaze out win attempts on turn 2-3, but you *should* be building decks with your mulligan in mind, how much your deck can reasonably do so, and how much mana your deck needs to push out a win condition, as well as the types of interaction points that your deck has so you can protect said win conditions. Lots of people who play casual commander just allow themselves infinite mulligans, which really hinders deckbuilding skill, and also hurts the deck's actual performance. They don't take ramp spells that allow them to recover from land hate. They don't take draw engines that draw them into their lands so they don't miss drops. If you don't build your deck in a way that can present a card advantage engine that can pull you out of a mulligan to 5, then you have a bad deck and you need more card advantage and early ramp.
In my pod, we have one player who sometimes plays stax, but it really only affects one of the other players. The affected player is definitely the highest power player there, and is typically the archenemy just by virtue of all of their decks being better than everyone else's. So when Mr.Stax shows up and makes their turn 4 Etali, Primal Conqueror into a turn 7-8 play, while everyone else is basically doing what they would already be doing whether Mr.Stax was there or not, it makes the game a lot more fun IMO since the other two players get to have answers to both Etali and Mr.Stax by that time.
The downside is no one wants to play with you after. If you slow down the game to a crawl with Stax to the point where we could have play 3 games in the time it takes to take one then everyone is gonna groan when you sit down with that deck.
The one thing I’ve learned about playing edh lately, is that players complain way too damn much about everything. It’s either you’re going way too damn fast (Fast mana) or you’re slowing the game down (Stax) make up your minds! Y’all can’t have an in between.
I think a lot of complaints, especially about interaction (removal, stax, protection, whatever you want to call it) boil down to saying "why won't you just let me win?"
@@timothye.2902 That is very true! The point is to try and win and wiggle your way through. I highly doubt the point was to “allow” your opponents to win, so easily.
It comes down to two major concepts: tempo control and the risk vs reward of removal. Each deck has a particular speed that it likes to operate at. You can interact with tempo in two ways: by playing cards like generate resources to accelerate your tempo or by playing cards that decelerate your opponents tempo by removing resources. The green player’s Cultivate and the white player’s Smothering Tithe are both attempts to set the tempo of play. Removal then is your way of adjusting your opponents attempts to shift tempo. When it comes to removal, stax pieces are often just higher risk, higher reward removal spells. While a single counterspell can stop one spell, Rule of Law can stop an entire storm turn or it can do nothing if the opponent only planned on playing a big haymaker like Torment of Hailfire. Its applicability depends on your ability to gauge which types of actions your opponent will play and adjust accordingly.
Comparing some Commander games to fidget toy parallel play was the comparison I didn't know I needed.
yeah that is the vibe
I have a storm deck i literally use as a fidget toy at home lol
I used to call it sand castles but yeah fidget toy sounds better
I can't really argue considering I spent a whole game last night activating a Perception Bobblehead on everyone's turn
You know, I feel this. Being in a game where my Mono-black deck is doing the job of a control deck is painful, having to be the one who stops the person whose getting -way- ahead while the other two decks just kinda sit there and don't interact with the board is incredibly frustrating.
Man, you bringing up Teferi's Protection made me remember how bitter someone got when I explained to them that it didn't keep them safe from my Mystic Redaction and Psychic Corrosion, because it didn't change their life total, damage them, enchant them, block them, target them, or affect any of their permanents. As much as Teferi's Protection is often treated as "you and your stuff phases out until next turn", indiscriminate, untargeted mill is always an option
I had to do the same using a big X value Mind Grind
Your library isn't a permanent, it's not safe. Not unless you've got a Rule 0 to run Animate Library XD
It also can't stop commander damage from being accrued. Yes their life total can't change, but since the damage isn't being prevented, you can still deal the Teferi's Protection player lethal commander damage.
@@DTMGunny Protection from everything prevents damage, so no commander damage is accrued, unless there's an effect that states damage can't be prevented.
@Bluten ah, you're right. My bad
@@Bluten Glacial Chasm, Teferi's Protection et al is why I run Questing Beast.
Destroy all lands. They can’t be regenerated.
Wrath of Farmers
Bury all lands.
@@MK-13337 damn that's deep
@@Evoleo Six feet deep, even
Got zombie lands, call that Unearth
I think i may have made this comment before, but I would just like to praise your videos for a sec. You consistently make topics approachable, yet deep, push against common assumptions, and communicate so much in such a simple style. While Rhystic Studies might be my favorite mtg UA-camr for the quality of his production, you are my favorite for the simple originality of your products.
I think there's a flaw in your logic regarding cards that add additional mana costs to spells. I don't think it's as clear cut as "these punish players who are ahead", b/c they also punish players who are behind, possibly even more so than players who are ahead.
To put another way: +1 mana cost is not much for a player with 6 available mana, but certainly is for a player with 3.
I can see what you mean, but this implies that "players who are ahead" are as such based on their mana production alone, which isn't necessarily true. The player with 6 open mana has likely been spending a turn focused on ramping up to that point, while the player with 3 was spending their mana developing a more oppressive board state. Neither player in this circumstance is ahead of the other, they have just been focused on different goals.
It is certainly conditional, but I would say that generally a player with more mana is either A) Going to play the biggest spell they can or B) Double or even triple spell, while the players behind will more likely be playing their cheap build-up spells, so in those cases it would indeed tax the player ahead more. Definitely not always the case but I think that is the logic.
It would say the inverse is true, where like... even if you ignore the scenario where the person with more mana could have bigger things to do at the time under the restriction; and instead focus on board states where one player is at the advantage with what is committed to the board, they can instead focus towards holding back and kicking the ladder out from underneath them. This IS how the stax player often wins, locking people out of playing the game effectively while they get to progress the game state for themselves. Through this ability to accrue advantage, as well as usually running methods to mitigate stax effects on themselves, they end up usually being the one in the control seat, and because stax often ends up being so compact, this means they can often also be packing other control tools meant to fully destroy that ladder below you while they run away with the game. And as shown with the harshest stax pieces, when used in tandem, they can often prevent people from stopping the stax deck from doing stax.
That is where it feels the twiddle metaphor somewhat falls apart, because sometimes the twiddle is 'ending the prison lock on all players', and that's getting stopped. When we look at what is used to bypass stax we realize that most of it is what already goes into CEDH deckbuilding, which itself has a huge problem in one major element: most of it is EXPENSIVE, and hard to put into your deck for resilience. This is why we have to be careful with what and how much stax we put in our decks, as the answers to well built midline stax are often things you will never be able to see at a table of 6&7s.
Landfall Stax decks are therefore the ultimate nightmare. I run Thalia and Gitrog as the commander of an abzan elf deck just to threaten trouble. I curve it so Simic decks cannot keep up, but if I see someone seriously lagging, I'll keep T&G on the wayside.
In conclusion, Green doesn't get punished if you don't MLD
I have found a dozen off-brand channels that give thoughtful analysis on mtg...but nothing compares to the real thing.
Does this channel only resonate with Spikes?
Nope
"Nothing compares to the real thing" is quite vague. What do you mean by that? Regarding what subject? Which videos?
I've found a lot of mtg videos that were quite applicable to the "real thing" aka analysis of the game of magic is applicable to the game of magic.
@@BlondeSancho-qb9hzRegarding this channel I assume
@@BlondeSancho-qb9hzall UA-cam comments must be written in Oracle text syntax
I think a big part of why "hard" stax is shunned upon is not just player agency, but also playtime. Nobody wants to sit through a Winter orb game, even if their deck was decently equipped to deal with it. Same goes for a turn 10 Armageddon. I reckon almost everybody would rather scoop, give the stax player the win and go to another game, instead of slugging it out for the next 45mins. This is even more important in low power formats and for people, that only have limited time to play.
Midrange do nothing decks do the same thing no?
@Yangblaze11 no, because there are 3 other players at the table that can do things.
I disagree. People would hate on so many other types of cards if playtime was a significant factor. If anything the amount of people who play various boardwipes as well as the formats high starting life total speak to the opposite motivation.
@@Yangblaze11 I think you're gonna have to elaborate on what you mean by "Do nothing" midrange is second only to tempo in difficulty.
It goes:
???
Tempo
Midrange
Control
Aggro
Combo
@@arvidsteel6557 They do though. See the dislike for chaos spells, planeswalker decks, and excessive numbers of symmetric boardwipes being played in a game.
I have no issue with stax in instances like you describe at 6:40, namely “the stax player will win in a few turns.” Players inexperienced with ending games, though, are given the ability to draw this state of “no action/fidgeting” for far longer than an urdragon player would take to smack everyone down. In the case of lantern control, the route to “winning in a few turns” is done by the opponent scooping. This is made more complicated in 4 player formats, where victories of that kind hinge on THREE players agreeing to scoop. That said, this analysis hinges strongly on the fact that I like my edh games to not drag on. Ie I prefer more games to one or two dragged out ones
Watching your videos has made my decks so much better over the course of time. Adding cards with more versatility and removal/interaction has made my decks more fun to play since I rarely get to do "nothing" in a game. The same can be said for what you described as stax cards.
Commander is supposed to be a format were everyone’s favorite strategy has the room to work, and that worked when it was a niche format with not necessarily every type of player, but now that commander is the primary format it has to face the fact that some people’s favorite strategy is stopping people from playing the game.
The problem is everyone has a different definition of what playing the game looks like. To me I’m playing the game when I have a meaningful benefit to derive from paying attention to what’s going on.
If I could write F6 on a piece of paper, walk away, and come back 10 minutes later and not miss anything and there still be no one clearly about to win that’s where I draw the line.
I know that’s very different from where most people draw the line though.
@@viviblue7277 You see why I detest solitair decks?
@@viviblue7277 So non-deterministic combo? The thing that Stax is the best at shutting down?
@@sin6138 sure that’s one of the most egregious examples, but there are all sorts of reasons some even outside the game if players don’t know how to play their own deck and take an eternity to make decisions holding priority for many minutes on other players turns only to not use it and still taking ages to do their own turn. And everything in between those 2 extremes that both result in nothing of substance occurring.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof usually not. I find solitaire deck players tend to play out their turns lightning fast and never hold up the game for ages on other players turns. If we’re just playing lots of mostly solitaire gameplay with most interaction being just attacks and blocks then at least we’ll get this over with pretty quickly and we can get on to the next game. Short and but only slightly sweet is much better than long and bitter.
Actually i was scrolling through the salt list just a few hours ago, and wondering "why on earth is teferis protection on here" (Score: 2.02). So thank you, you managed to answer my question with remarkable speed!
A lot of your examples of pseudo-stax that isnt socially excluded seem to be pretty hated: The one ring (2.70) is the 8th most salty card legal in the format. Blood moon (2.20) is on the list as well. And of course so is cyclonic rift (2.40). Farewell (2.20) too.
Take the salt score with a grain of salt. Its mostly influenced by monetary cost and then to a lesser extent power level.
Things people are salty about don't necessarily mean that they're actually bad for the format. Notoriously people generally hate having their spells countered or their game plan stifled through interaction at all really, and those things will naturally gravitate towards higher salt. But they're healthy for the game because they force players to adapt and respond to the other aspects of the game. This gets into the Timmy Johnny spike stuff for sure as well, much of the stuff with high salt scores really bothers the spikes on top of the things that normally bother Timmy..
Razia's Purification is "everyone chooses 3 permanents and sacrifices the rest", if you're looking for more effects that attack manabases but are limited in scope.
while I think the effect is WAY over costed... Magus of the Balance is a strong method too
It's *not* exactly a *good* card, but I do run it in my Boros Angels deck, just because it's on theme and because my creatures are usually better than those of my opponents.
Urzas sylex is another, although it is also overcosted. “Exile urzas sylex. Each player chooses six lands they control. Destroy all other permanents.”
Also fall of the thran. On the turn it enters it destroys all lands but on the next 2 turns everyone gets 2 back.
Cataclysm as well. 2WW, everyone chooses one creature, one land, one artifact, and one enchantment, then sacrifices the rest. Both that and Purification are quite nuts with a Mayhem Devil
I like to denote the difference between Stax and Control as "You can try to do that but i will stop you" and "No, you are not allowed to do that". And i find stopping people engaging, while i find denying people the ability to play to be boring. But thats just me.
Also, to be clear: Obviously Leyline of the void is a stax piece. what else would it be?
You're a blue player, playing stax, hidding behind "control"
@@BOOMDIGGER Stax isn't "anything I can possibly do to stop my opponent from doing something". Doom Blade isn't Stax. Gtfoh
@@BOOMDIGGER bait or mental defficiency, call it
@@vileluca
Countering my spells? Stax.
Removing my permanents? Stax.
Blocking my creatures? Believe it or not, stax.
Lowering my life total? Stax. (Life is a resource, and you’re denying me that resource)
@@BOOMDIGGER do you consider an abundance of counterspells and removal spells to be stax? Because that is generally what i play. Just a pile of interaction and cards that generate value off the interaction.
I’ve been playing 20+ years now and have seen a large paradigm shift in commander, and here is why (I think): wotc around 2008ish had a philosophy change in resource denial. It used to be a core part of the game, but since then was not. This means unless you played before then, or legacy, you aren’t used to playing against resource denial. The VAST majority of players are either new to magic, came from standard, or maybe modern. This means most players never played with resource denial as a strategy, despite for half the game’s history it being there. So tldr is players just aren’t used to it being the norm, despite it being the norm “back in the day”, so a format like edh where it is both new and old at the same time, this design change can clash.
Going back through files for early sets in the game is so funny, because they had such an appetite for both color hosers and land destruction. I think, even then, they turned that knob a little far, but the game is so much less vibrant without that element in it.
Stench of Evil is a hilarious card, but the kind of thing that indicates that they hadn't yet reckoned with the game state that was going to induce. "I know I just blew up all your plains, but you can pay 2 per plains to mitigate some of that damage." Like? Thanks lmao, how about go next.
The premise of this video flirts with the slippery slope of "blocking my attacker reduces my ability to damage your lifetotal, therefore blocking is stax".
Caleb Gannon has some of the best versions of these "muddying a definition until it makes zero sense but if you squint hard enough it works"
"A Mind Twist for 4 is Ancestral Recall"
"If my opponent Strip Mines me when I have 3 lands in hand, I ramped a land"
"Ponder is color fixing"
"Mother of Runes is a repeatable counter spell"
These are just jokes, but this video did almost get to this level on a certain points.
I had to deal with an unironical "Repercussion is a tier 3 stax piece"...
@@traycarrot Mind Twist for X=3 does actually put you at the same card advantage math-wise. Card advantage isn't cards in your hand. It's cards you have access to compared to the other players. If you reduce their available cards, you are increasing your card advantage. This is the way competitive players think and it's how they do crazy shit, like saying "Worldly Tutor is Disentomb if you fetch Eternal Witness" and that's how they find such wild lines to their win conditions. It's all about the utility the card actually brings to the game.
@@traycarrotOne can argue that for most of these the fundamental analysis regarding these is completely sound.
All of them disregard the notion of tempo, granted, but all of them distill the sans-tempo discussion behind what the correct angle of attack is regarding the manner of deploying game pieces, and, largely, most decks are built with this in mind.
Sacrifice tempo to gain long term advantage.
@@Dracomandriuthus Yep, they all are true if you squint hard enough and muddy the traditional definitions of words. That's the point.
the big problem with mass land destruction is that recovering from it is almost exclusively a green thing, with almost all of the "you may play additional lands" cards being green, outside of a few "everyone may play additional lands" artifacts, removing creatures is recoverable more quickly by just playing more creatures but the "one land per turn" limit means that land destruction is a lot slower to recover from, and being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad
This is really a myth. If anything green does not utilize mana rocks whereas other colors do, so other colors have 3 mana after MLD where green has 0.
Also this greatly ignores the fact that even IF green can somehow ramp back to 5 mana while everyone else is at 3, well that is a lot better than green being at 10 mana while everyone else is at 5. But most of the time green has used their ramp cards early, exactly to ramp, these cards do not magically return to their hand.
White has a multitude of tools to defend itself from MLD by making permanents indestructible, red has many treasures and rituals which spring it back up faster than green , and blue (in theory) should just draw more than green, thereby hitting land drops easier.
It also greatly ignores that if MLD was widely played maybe most players would stop spamming every single land they have in hand, green vomitting every land from their hand into the battlefield would be greatly punished by another player holding back a land or two.
I'd note that White has a ton of 'land catchup' cards, which are quite popular.
@@Steeks Green doesn't play manarocks specifically because they have the ability to play land ramp instead, which is the better option in a format where land destruction is frowned upon. You're making it sound like there are no manarocks green could use. There are plenty. It's just that getting lands out instead is almost always the better option since they are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.
"being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad"
hot take: good
people should feel bad more often
@@arc-sd8sk if people wanted to feel bad they can just go play standard. Commander is meant to be fun, not a slog.
27:55 I would have said exactly the opposite. Players who are ahead likely have extra mana to spend on taxes, while players who are barely scraping by (especially ones that missed a land drop or two) really get shut down by these effects
he proved how fucked Stax pieces lol
"I saved us, guys! Now the person that just ramped four times needs to spend an extra mana on their bombs!"
Mass land-wipes in particular are in sort of a strange place. The players they're best against (land heavy decks) are also the players most likely to actually recover from the land-wipe due to the quantity of lands in their decks and the amount of land ramp they run, while everyone else, including yourself, might just get stuck on no lands. As far as I know, they've yet to print a targeted mass land destruction card (like a River's Rebuke but for lands), even though theoretically that would be the best answer to greedy land ramp decks.
Land destruction needs to "catch up" to the rest of the game's mechanics. Resource accumulation is reaching a fever pitch in EDH, and the land destruction options we have NOW are not on par with the general power level of the game.
"Destroy all lands" and "Destroy target land" isn't good enough anymore, it has to be "Destroy Target Land, " because otherwise all you're doing is just the same 1 for 1 resource trading.
In order for these cards to be viable they'd have to have new versions printed, and SPECIFICALLY Edh players would need to "get over" their aversion to this particular strategy.
Sunder
Honestly this is why I hope Wizards unbans Balance now that they're in control of the format.
Sheldon originally banned the card in the early days of the format because he just hated the card. But with land ramp decks being able to rule the table, getting an efficient answer that doesn't destroy ALL the lands, but instead just brings everyone down to parity is a good answer to this.
I think too many players have built the card up as a boogeyman in their minds...and I say this as I have Magus of the Balance in my Lurrus deck. I popped the magus off once and people suddenly after it resolving said "oh that's it?" and only really got annoyed when I started recasting the magus from my graveyard and ensuring no land ramp or greedy draw decks were able to get an advantage.
Yes the land decks can rebuild, but that could be the same argument to how wrath effects don't really impact token decks as much since they can more easily repopulate their boards than decks running more traditional creatures
Something I dislike about mass land destruction is that it's really hard to break the parity in deck-building.
I think many decks running "Destroy all creatures" effects probably shouldn't be when they're creature-focused decks; those wipes are dead cards when at parity or ahead, and they're arguably still terribly costly to cast when behind but not super far. A piece of targeted removal would be a better card when ahead or even, and could even be good when behind. Board wipes should really just be in the hands of creature-light decks planning to win in other ways. Either that, or go for less efficient but less 'even' wipes. In Garruk's Wake is way more mana but it's going to annihilate the table.
The issue I have with mass land destruction is that everyone plays lands. Some play more, some play less, but everyone needs them - and the kind of decks that you might MOST want to strip lands from have more ways to play them, tutor them to hand or battlefield, or recur them. Landfall decks looooove flipping a fetchland out of the graveyard every turn for double landfall triggers and playing extra lands.
This is why I play decree of anihilation in my Obecka enchantment deck. If all of our lands, artifacts, creatures, and graveyards are gone and I still have my enchantments I’m probably going to win.
This was really well done. Always like your stuff & takes. It’s obvious you’ve put a bunch of effort to make it super digestible & visually pleasant.
One of the big issues with stax is that it's often played not to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing. Armageddon is an insanely powerful card if you use it to lock the board down - that was the old combo with Kaalia. Shutdown cards can be good to armlock opponents, if you're able to win with that leverage point.
Blood Moon in a genuine mono-red hyper-aggro deck gives you enough leverage for that uncommon strategy to really compete, if you happen to draw it. Ruination also becomes a coup de grâce if you actually use it as a finisher.
My playgroup has a rule...if you have the space in a red deck you play ruination...it's a house
The thing is that some decks could have a proper wincon in those slots, like something to get extra attack steps, as in response to the Armageddon someone might remove the most powerfull creatures and the game goes to top decking trying to find lands.
Stax being "not played to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing" is objectively false in almost every list I have come across. This theoretical universe where someone "plays four plains and casts Armageddon" simply does not exist - even the worst deckbuilders still have some vague synergy in there deck. And your explanation of why they "don't win the game but instead sit there and do nothing" is literally describing how they win: by setting up asymmetry and locks. It is your own fault if you are fully locked out of a game but instead waste everyone's time dramatically sighing, going "oh no I guess the game continues because I didn't draw a land," while simultaneously being on a few turns clock for the player to finish. Does everyone just sit there and wait for the thoracle consultation player to individually flip 6 cards at a time, or if nobody has interaction and the game is literally over, do they scoop? Perhaps think before you type, and consider the fact that, if a Liesa deck has three mana rocks and their commander on board and maybe one or two other pieces, if you don't want to lose, you should probably try running interaction before they cast their wipe. They won't cast it if it is bad to :)
@@xeoknight845 There is literally a player in one of my EDH groups who has Armageddon in a deck with no feasible wincons. Everything in that deck is stax and control pieces with no endgame. His explicitly stated goal in playing it was to make everyone think "I don't want to waste my time topdecking for lands so I'll just forfeit". And last time I was around to see it played, it didn't work because one of his opponents had enough mana rocks sitting out to continue playing and eventually burn him down.
Perhaps think before you type, and consider that the worst deckbuilders are worse than you think.
@@bartoffer The problem with an Armageddon with a plan to win off of it is it’s an Armageddon without a plan to win with it, because every piece of removal has your name on it.
“Aha, I have Avacyn! My permanents are indestructible!” “Swords.” “Fuck!”
I personally switched from having a soft spot for stax to absolutely loving control. It allows me to keep my strength in hand instead of on board and it gives my opponent the illusion that they are allowed to play too. In reality, they're only allowed to play things that don't affect my win.
This is why I've come to love burn. No one knows what's in your hand so it keeps them unsure.
I think soft stax is great for casual edh. I have been running more in my aggressive decks, and would suggest other people do the same!
care to share what you are running, I play aggressive monowhite
Thalia Gitrog stax is a good suggestion.
@@ricorero77depending on your creature composition crackdown could be good. Also archon of emeria(?) that lets you cast one spell per turn on a flier. The stax you play is very dependent on the deck you build, because you need to be able to break parity. Also meek stone possibly
One of my favorite decks was my Ghired stax list...just stax up and play ghired and make rhinos to beat everyone to death
@@ricorero77meekstone is rlly nice if you have small creatures.
BRB adding fidget toys to my stax box so I can hand them out and help the rest of the pod not be bothered by armageddon loops.
As far as diversifying your decks to answer different problems: I can only have so many answers in a deck while still moving my own game plan forward. You just gotta accept that some matchups will be bad, and build for the kind of game you want to play.
Also, for land destruction: sure you can say just play heroic intervention and the like, and always hold up Mana, but the likelihood of all 3 opponents being able to save their board is very low. On spell table, sure, you can just go find a new game, but IRL, now 2 players get knocked out way early and have to sit around and wait. If you hit me with Armageddon online, I'll answer it or find another game lol. In person, I'd be a bit upset.
Stax annoys me because every game I've been in with someone playing a Stax deck, the pieces just locked the players that were behind while doing absolutely nothing to the player who was getting far ahead and trying to combo off. It was usually the strongest deck in the pod to begin with, and Stax prevented us from even attempting to solve the problem in any way by locking our decks and doing nothing to the Combo player somehow.
I have had the exact opposite experience: stax decks have made weaker decks worse yes, but the most salty person is always the one trying to combo off but can't do so because of rule of law or such
@@leonvalenzuela4096 Of course, everyone's going to have different experiences. My most recent encounter with someone playing stax was the player tutoring to shut off GY against my deck(Coram) in the first few turns, then deploying pieces to hate out instants/sorceries and such against a spellslinger deck... Then the artifact deck combo'd off, and none of us had the ability to play any answers.
@@DoctorGreenbeard and? had that deck not stop them those other deck would have popped off, that's not the stax decks fault, that's how mtg works in the modern age; if your deck had been the only one not stopped you would be fine with it. maybe the correct response is to also play some targeted pieces that hurt stax decks if you don't like it, but everyone only complaining about the stax deck, not the combo deck is my biggest problem with the discourse, maybe your deck should have ways around the stax? or maybe you could also play hate cards
@@DoctorGreenbeard Yeah, it's a pretty humbling experience when your Blood Moon or Ruination fucks over the bounce land and tapland mana base while leaving the deck that fetched four basics off of Kodama's Reach and Cultivate intact...
I think most people in the comments don't understand the concept of "having a good time with some friends" and are confused why people would rather have a lot of stuff happen then sitting for 3 hours playing one card per turn just to get wiped and do it for another 3.
What we don't understand is why having a lot of stuff happen is more of a good time than having a strategic game with difficult choices.
@@martinskullerud2195 Cause when magic people want to be able to play their magic cards. Pretty simple.
@@SrenHolm-k3o Except that thinking has ruined so many fucking games, and it's annoying. The amount of times I see someone king-make because "hurr durr I wanted to play my cards rather than just pass my turn" is insane. Stop trying to actively ruin the format because your ADHD self can't sit for longer than 2 minutes without touching your fidget spinner deck and build a better deck that isn't snowball or do nothing.
I'm pretty sure like half or MTG players are on the spectrum with no social skills at all and only see it as a game to be won. It's why I only play with my friends rather than at an LGS.
This is just disingenuous to say. Everyone understands this, but that's not where any friction lies. If you are playing with a group of friends, then you all will collectively determine things like this, and wider discussion is irrelevant.
So the entire discussion is about situations that are not "a group of friends with the same ideas of how to play together." The point is that in these situations, treating stax as some kind of bugbear is arbitrary, and should be regarded in the same vein as random folks saying stuff like "no board wipes" or "no counterspells." It's not that any of these ways are invalid ways to play if everyone is on board, but it's just as much of an imposition to malign them as it is to play them vs folks who don't like them, and there's a lot of room between these extremes.
I also think it's very valid to say that the majority of people who get really upset about these sorts of things from other players also seem uninterested in assessing if there are ways they could adjust their deckbuilding philosophy to account for them (and therefore make the experience better for them by doing something under their own control), and are only interested in getting everyone else to cater to their whim on the matter. Again, this doesn't apply if someone has found a group to play with who all agree to the same restrictions, but when someone instead tries to force their own mindset onto the way others play.
It's never a bad thing to *ask* if people are willing to adjust for your preferences. It's almost always a bad thing to *insist* that they do so.
13:25 I think of the distinction as "control is looking to answer a threat and to remove it entirely, while stax looks to wither render is useless or prevent it from happening in the first place"
To be honest Id rather have to wait to cast my commander until i removed a stax piece then it being counterspelled 3 times because who has commander cmc+6 lying around?
0:24:38 : I feel a big difference here is the game restriction that lets you only play one land each turn cycle. After a mass land wipe the game might take longer to get going again, delaying the conclusion potentially more than with other wipes. This excludes situations with Heroic Intervention effects accompanying the mass land wipe, which probably ends the game there and then because no one will likely be in the mood to fight this uphill battle.
If just your dorks and rocks are hit you at least have your lands left to be able to play new dorks/rocks that ramp you back in. The later the game the more of these types of cards you would be able to play in one single turn, the faster you get your game back going.
I myself play Brago (it is a super budget deck build from my small collection) and I must say that the commander can get out of hand pretty easily. Therefore I would not mind my opponent playing Torpor Orb, because that is the simplest and best way to shut down the bullshit Brago is doing
I feel like one of the issues is that stax stuff can feel arbitrary in its restrictions.
When the zombie player pops off and gets a ton of 1/1s you can't beat, you've just been outplayed. Even if you lose, you can still try whatever you have in your toolbox.
When the stax players casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects" as an enchantment, suddenly your toolbox just stops working *at all*.
and that's what players don't like about it. losing because you couldn't play isn't the same as playing and still losing.
@@themoops4006 I think this is it exactly. Losing because you didn't play well just isn't the same as losing because you couldn't play at all.
He made this point and it didn't make sense. "You're 90% to lose whether the Ur-Dragon player had loads of creatures or the Stax player cast Ravages of War" is an absolutely ridiculous take. Losing in Legacy against a Delver and against Oops All Spells is not the same even if the win percentage is the exact same. One I can take meaningful game actions, the other I get force-checked on T0.
if the stax player casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects", that's a deckbuilding problem
maybe brago shouldn't play with a deck that has nothing but etb effects, or at minimum run moonsnare prototype and otawara to get a torpor orb off the field
@@traycarrot That's the point. Both cases meant that most of your actions can't matter, but one FELT different. How it feels to play against mattering was the point.
While my playgroup banned MLD, I suggested to unban Wave of Vitriol and From the Ashes, so that it turns to a Basic Lands issue and deckbuilding problem now. This is coming from a Lands player that wins via Maze's End.
Someone in my playgroup metagamed my gates mazes end deck and added Confounding Conundrum. What a dick move😂
I explained to the gate player that I simply kill him now. The issue is that so does everyone else. So he is retiring his maze end deck now.
@@NoahMoorman mine is sultai with plenty of counters and sweepers. They try.
@@davestier6247 Everyone is a big talker until no one plays the game until you are dead. All counter spells all aggro and damage only goes one way.
@NoahMoorman kicked cyc rift, extra turns. It wins pretty regularly even through being focused down. With the caveat that noone runs much land destruction in my meta.
Another key difference between 60 cards formats and Commander is the no sideboard and high variance, so drawing answers to non common strategies is harder and you don't want to lose space on cards that will be death draws on most scenarios.
All I can say when someone cries about stacks is that rhystic studies is just sphere of resistance if you keep paying the one (which is what you are supposed to do in 95% of cases).
Wow that explain so well why I love Stax in EDH!!! I feel that the social fear of Stax is the equivalent of playing rock paper scissor without rock.
I totally get playgroup that are all playing those value machine midrange deck, but the result of those type of meta environment that I have encounter is a meta where deck are just trying to be the biggest scissor.
Stax and Agro/Turbo are in my mind thing that add depth to the game dynamic of a EDH game environment, so it will lead to more complex game that are a good thing for experience player, but will be for sure a "fun wall" for newcomer unequip/unprepare for those kind of tools in a deck.
The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; “just run more answers”, which devolves into every deck becoming extremely similar shells of the most efficient interaction and coverage they can muster with like 1/3 of the deck actually geared towards being what they wanted. That’s for CEDH, or a receptive pod, where people are fully in for that experience.
It’s not YuGiOh, every deck shouldn’t be the same staples with a twist. It’s EDH, flavour/thematics are inherently limiting and building stax in a format where people are not prepared for it because that’s not the point of the format is a failure to read the room.
@@deifiedtitan Why do reactions to stax need to be efficient? If I play a game piece for 3 mana that shuts you down you can spend 3 or more mana to deal with it and be fine, and if everyones playing more removal then its not like everyone needs to run a third of their deck as removal, that's only needed if the other players are slacking. If my 6 stax enchantments in my deck outnumber the amount of enchantment removal the other 3 players have in total that's not a me problem.
If i can only untap 2-3 lands per turn. The interaction HAS to be cheep or it womt actually get to be played because of mana cost. @@auberry8613
@@auberry8613 "The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; 'just run more answers'" -Them
"if everyones playing more removal" You, like clockwork. It's just a bad argument. Always has been a bad argument. People are running removal. There's 100 cards and none of the spells can be duplicates. 2 entire colors of the pie are basically fucked if a stax enchantment player sticks a couple pieces and they're not dipped into the other 3 colors that can handle it. Idk why most stax players can't just admit they enjoy inflicting an unpleasant play experience on others. I love stax in 1v1. I generally avoid it in EDH because my goal is everyone has fun, not just me.
@@kylegonewildSometimes some strategies will be hard to interact with in certain colors, that's just how the game is designed. Also, they were making the point that there are 3 opponents in EDH, not just 1, so if there isn't enough removal among 3 other players to deal with a strategy then the issue should be that, not the strategy itself.
IMO the issue with stax is just that the most iconic stax pieces, the most powerful ones and thus the most run, are old designs overtuned to be so splashy and impactful for so cheap that the entire game is immediately defined by its presence if players aren't positioned to immediately deal with it. An early Winter Orb going unanswered due to no one at the table drawing into cheap artifact removal on the first few turns is positioned to turn a game into a real slog in a way that few other unanswered early drops can.
Honestly, even though I'm not really wishing for any more bans after everything, I do feel like stax would be in a much more socially acceptable place (and the game better for it) if we just forgot about a bunch of those early stax options and had to use the much more interactive and interesting modern stax instead.
Monologue Tax is súch a better design than Smothering Tithe...
"Much more engaging" modern 'stax' pieces are all one sided effects and frankly I do not enjoy that nor do I find it engaging in the slightest. Half the fun of piloting stax is that you're not only establishing this grip on the game, you're also breaking parity to win. Having my pieces just affect my opponents from the card text alone is just...boring.
@@MoyVahn I agree. What makes stax effects fun is the deck design challenge that it invites you into. If you see a card that say "all attacking and blocking creatures are sacrificed at the end of the turn", you can immediately think of a myriad of ways to abuse that. Cards that bounce to your hand, cards that sacrificed themselves anyway, effects that prevent sacrificing, cards that resummon themselves from the GY etc. It's inherently evocative.
I also think there is a good point about older designs feeling more unfair and uninteractive. Winter Orb is interesting mechanically but too strong at what it does. An updated version that costs more to activate or lets you untap 2 or 3 lands instead would feel better to play against. It's as much about your opponent trying to work around your stax with their toolbox to break that parity as it is you.
@@MoyVahn Yeah I like some of the modern stax cards in theory, but realising that they are entirely one sided so I don't even need to modify my deck is boring and uninteresting. I find stax pieces as a deck building challenge to be interesting.
We should ban good and efficient ramp too while your at it so it isnt lopsided due to shitty resource denial.
But hey, ramping into a gazzilion lands and overrunning your opponent with land strategies is OK, but interaction is too evil.
I recently slotted Fall of the Thran into my Megatron, Tyrant deck to punish the two guys at the table who seem addicted to getting 12 lands on the table in the first 4 turns. It brings parity to the table, I can get most of the mana to cast it from Megatron slapping around the ramp player who doesn't have an effective blocker, and gives everyone back some lands over some turns. Of course, Megatron himself is still slapping people around and generating mana in the meantime. And since I get the first returned lands I'll be the first one with 3 colored pips available, which is pretty sweet.
I like this
Fall of Thran was exactly what I was thinking of when he brought up less punishing land wipes! "You get your 4 favorite lands back" is enough to bring back less greedy cmc decks while punishing people who go all in on ramp. I still feel like the general edh player isn't fully ready for that conversation yet.
Bringing the table to parity is exactly why I've been arguing for years that they need to unban Balance
Sheldon banned it decades ago because he just hated the card. I hope Wizards, now that they control the banned list, realizes the card has no business being on there when other effects that are far saliter are not, and when the effect itself still exists on two other legal cards.
It was my thought and i might have to go find my copy to try in a deck.
@@anthonydelfino6171 The only problem with balance IMO is that 2 mana is just too cheap for it. If someone only has 1 or 0 creatures, it's one of the best, cheapest boardwipes available, and it's still pretty good even when everyone has atleast 2 or 3 creatures.
Most players who don't like any type of stax have only played commander. Play or watch the other formats like standard, legacy and modern. Those will teach you so much more about the game. Play stax, land destruction, lock your opponents out, play op strategies, and break the game as fast as possible and you'll feel better. You'll spend less time thinking about how unfair the game is and more time about building effective strategies. As always rule 0, but don't be afraid to live a little, printers are cheap.
Tap shops, play trinisphere❤
Just play vintage peeps
But, by all thise hypnotization. Is all interactable play a stax play then? I thought STAX was a static resource denial. But I guess I was wrong.
I told myself I'd save my argument until the end to make sure I got all the points on the issue. Which is good because the conclusion that was reached was the same I had.
By the way the video was really well done and well reasoned I'm not denying that.
Using the beginning to defend Stax, then going into admitting that the future of commander leaves hard symmetrical Stax behind, is to me saying that we're right about Stax being un-fun.
In defense of board wipes hitting artifact and creature ramp, those come at a cost of spending your own resources and turn, with an effect that doesn't hit everyone equally. A board wipe may not stop a combo player or graveyard deck. Versus hard Stax effects that effect everyone equally, so that the player that is ahead can get more ahead.
I gotta admit though, Urza's sylex type effects and rule of law type effects actually seem pretty cool.
The other issue with hard Stax is that the person playing Stax needs to have a game plan. A pile of value synergy creatures can still swing in for damage. A pile of prison cards usually just means that no one is progressing the board and games get dragged out. You need two culture shifts: one to get people to stomach Stax cards, and for Stax players to have a game plan that's worth 3 players getting to do less on their turns.
Bro, your bias is showing. Stax doesn't hit everyone equally like you stated. Null rod doesn't the same to the guy without many artifact. Armageddon doesn't effect the guy with cheap spells or dorks.
We get it. You think stax is un-fun, but your statements are contradictory.
Ah, the old stax primer. The “Unholy Bible of Magic”. Always glad to see that get mentioned!
I wholly agree with your point about Teferi's pritection but there is technically one other kind of counterplay
If someone has a card that makes it so that damge cannot be prevented, then, even if your life total can't change, you can still take Commander damage and lose that way
thats obviouslt quite and edge case though
I've decked out people who have Teferi'd before. They're not as invulnerable as they think.
Or, just attack them next turn. Teferi's Protection is only once as it exiles itself.
Or just have all your mana open to blow them up on their turn, cause my agency begins next turn and not when I destroy 3 stax artifacts
I find the difference has almost nothing to do with a technical delineation, and everything to do with the human element. People like making their cards "do the thing", and especially in mid-level or casual games, they often care a lot more about that than they do about actually winning. If you make it 90% likely you'll win, but still let me touch all my cards and do my thing with em, I'll probably have fun losing. But if you make it 90% likely you'll win because I just, can't even try to do my thing unless I can answer yours first? I'm gonna be miserable just waiting to lose.
Simply put, other than at really high-power competitive table, the statistical equivalency between 'being really ahead' and 'locking out other players' is irrelevant, because the win isn't the only point of the game. The game actions are, themselves, a reward of play, and preventing players from engaging in them is why stax and control receives so much vitriol. They represent a disconnect in player preference ('I wanna see cool cards' vs 'I want to accrue advantage'). I don't mean to paint Stax and Control players as WAAC, but I do think the players who prepare for them the least get so tilted because they'd really rather get out-valued than repeatedly stymied in their attempts to get their engine going. It's more fun to run the race and lose, than to stall on the starting line.
Yeah, hard agree on this. I'm part of the "I want to see cool cards" group, and it just gets crushed by some people. Early into when I started playing in real life, I was interested in every card in the game. Even though I made my commander decks, I couldn't remember every card in it, so I'd often be surprised by my own decks. One day, I drew a card I forgot was in the deck, and it had a super fun effect. I said "Oh, cool" out loud. In response to moving to my main phase, I got Silenced. The opponent's reasoning was "You gave away that you have something good in your hand, why would I let you do that"
perfectly articulated. it feels like a lot of stax and heavy control players want and expect commander to play like and carry the same social expectations as 1v1 competitive formats, that everyone is here to win and that they're going to do absolutely everything possible to do so and that end-goal is the only relevant variable.
@@themoops4006 Neglecting the social aspect and politics of the game is part of why they don't understand. If you make a 'good' play that statistically advances you but turns the whole table against you, you may in fact have done something counterproductive.
An accurate assessment of the game state in EDH must necessarily include player feel and inclination to/against disrupting your board. Hence why group-hug can be a functional strategy here but completely pointless in 1v1.
@@trebacca9 completely agree, the fundamental structure both socially and in terms of actual gameplay and play patterns of a free-for-all multiplayer game is simply not the same as a 1v1 duel. those political and social variables just don't exist in a 1v1 and completely change how you have to approach what you play and when/how you play it. its not just 'make most optimal plays, win game' there's more to it than that.
@themoops4006 commander players are the only group of card game players I've ever seen who complain about people trying to win a game where the only goal is to win the game
This isn't just you this is something I see all over
I just don't understand it
endurance is one of my favorite pieces of interaction. It isn’t just graveyard hate, it is one of a very few number of non blue responses to Thassa’s Oracle. I like that as a free spell, the effect is fairly narrow instead of generically powerful like “counter target spell”
Every color has multiple ways to deal with Thoracle. White has Angel's Grace and anti-etb effects as well as several counterspelld. Black has Withering Boon and forced card draw. Red has Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Tibalt's Trickery. Every color can run any of the multiple lands that force draw.
It also has saved my life in my muldrotha deck more times than I can count. Such a good card
I agree with your larger point about stax having a role in EDH (similar to the role of removal). Below I explain why I think MLD should still be avoided and then I close out by talking about the broader stax being different from MLD and about incomplete board wipes.
There is a difference between mass destruction of a fundamental resource (mana and cards) and mass destruction of the product of a fundamental resource (ex: non land permanents from spells you cast). If you still have your fundamental resources, you can rebuild even if you were not prepared for the mass destruction. A deck that is not prepared for a board wipe can still draw a card and cast cards from their hand. A deck that is not prepared for MLD/mass mana destruction cannot continue to cast spells until they draw several more lands.
You also asked about Mana dorks, mana rocks, and land enchantments. Each of these is a more vulnerable card type but comes with an upside compared to Rampant Growth effects. (Sidenote I compare rampant growth to talismans and nature's lore to the medallions because I recognize nature's lore is an outlier that is stronger than most mana rocks). For the extra risk (and theoretically shorter duration) these other ramp options cost less/provide more mana (Birds of Paradise/Worn Power Stone) or provide mana immediately (mana rocks and land enchantments). You then asked "would people still run vandalblast if it excluded mana rocks?". You think many fewer people would run it. However when playing a board wipe I am not aiming to destroy mana. If you gave me an Austere Command that ignored mana, I would immediately run it even if it still cost 6 mana and I think it would replace Austere Command if the new one cost only 5. So flip the question, if your board wipes only affected mana and could not touch my threats, would you play them? I doubt it outside of a subset of stax decks.
However I also don't like to conflate Stax and MLD (which would be a subset of stax). Stax in general is fine in EDH because Stax threat of "puttering around until they (or another player) find and play removal" is milder than MLD's threat of "need to draw several (5+) lands before they can continue playing the game". The distinction grows even larger when we consider what you later call soft stax.
As for incomplete board wipes, I prefer the Austere command over the Catacylsmic Gearhulk because Gearhulk allows the threatening player to choose to keep their threat (thus making it ineffective at removing that threat). However you make a good pitch for Gearhulk. (Incomplete MLD for EDH should probably still leave everyone with 5+ lands since EDH is where we get to have decks with high mana curves.)
I play light stax in several decks. I’ve also played mass land destruction and against Winter/Static Orb. I have found these experiences to be wildly different, the former positive, the latter negative. A good stax and control lock that is assembled piecemeal, as I fend off my opponents’ attempts at foiling me, is very satisfying. It electrifies the game in a tug where the actions and consequences are looming and tangible. Wiping all lands (or popping down Winter Orb+Unwinding Clock), even if I end up winning relatively swiftly, has felt as underwhelming as any shitty two card combo.
30:24 AMEN. I keep preaching this and still get push-back, even in CEDH, but it's absolutely necessary to persuade players to stop building glass-cannon "solitaire" decks.
While I might watch Maldhound most as my MtG creator of choice, there’s a reason I have on notifications for the both of you. You’re an absolutely awesome wealth of knowledge, and I’m super thankful to have found you.
Instructions unclear, added jokulhaups to my deck.
This is your best video and I’m not just saying that because I consulted on it lol. Home run.
and I still 100% get infinite schadenfreude from a brago player pinned under a torpor orb.
Nah Teferi's protection is outrageous, and a terribly designed card.
Complete invulnerabilty for 3-4 turns is stupid. Having all your permanents phase out as well is game winning on its own.
Any game in which I've seen it, it has won the game.
Truth spoken through insightful analysis. This channel is absolute gold. Never stop doing what you do, Snail.
14:35 "How can this grizzly bear be rendered manifest" 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Another difference between control and stax is that usually stax effects affect everything whereas control is more pinpoint with throwing answers. So against control you still get to use your fidget toy even if it doesn't do anything meaningful. Heck a control deck might allow you to do big plays as long as they don't affect them and people are suprisingly willing to take "I won't counter this but you'll let me win" deals (usually not phrased exactly like that but kinda boils down to it).
Your description of a community for which Board Wipes are almost non-existent is pretty much my playgroup. I do occasionally pull out my Estrid, the Masked deck, which runs like 7 or 8 wipes and it always gets a pretty strong reaction. I only ever run it with a serious discussion first about the fact that it won't be fun, but it will be a challenge to play against. I, personally, really love playing in a meta that allows everyone to just run away with their niche in the game. It's a blast. Anyone out of the group could come in and just destroy us all with a little interaction, but, we have so much fun, we don't care if the outside world is playing "better" decks.
Rule of law effects I find problematic because they kingmake a little too often where one person at the table just coincidentally won’t be effected by them much and so playing them hands a win to one player. This is probably just a my LGS thing though.
I mean, ideally, the Rule of Law player has ways to break parity on the effect while simultaneously benefiting from the game being slowed down. I run Archon of Emeria and High Noon in my Taii Wakeen group slug deck because I play a ton at instant-speed (I always want to represent Wakeen’s ability), and the deck also wants the game to extend because my group slug cards do more damage if there are more turns.
Excellent analysis (as usual)! I found that ending summation particularly insightful. One thing I would add is that part of why something like Teferi's Protection is much less objectionable to most Commander players than some hard stax piece like Amaggedon is that TP allows for more hope. In this case because it only lasts a single turn cycle at most (without recursion, which is a different matter). Certainly, buying just one turn with TP is often more than enough to close out a game, but it isn't necessarily guarenteed that the TP player is going to close it out. We can imagine a scenario where all your (living) opponents have TP'd this turn cycle and you're just stuck there spinning in place - and that feels bad - but you've got the relief that (provided you get another turn at all) your next turn isn't going to be like that. Whereas something like Armaggedon or Winter Orb not only denies that relief by promising that next turn will feel just as bad (or only marginally better) but actively inhibits your ability to accumulate or use resources to shut it off (now this isn't true for all stax pieces but it is particularly poignant in the cases of mass land removal/mana denial), further denying the hope that you or another player will be able to turn off their machine.
It's not about one objectively being weaker or stronger - it's that one allows for more *hope*.
And more generally this is a part of why many players would rather be stuck against a hopelessly ahead Elder Dragon player than a fully online stax machine that has softlocked you. Yes it's likely that the Elder Dragon player has counterplay for any attempt to clear their board (and even if you did they still have a full hand) but there is still the dream that you might topdeck Wrath of God. Sure, they'd also need to be unlucky in their draws and not have any protection in hand (or perhaps another player might chip in a counterspell of their own to ensure your Wrath goes through), and then more effort will need to be made by the whole table to level the card advantage. But still, the outs clearly exist, even if they're wildly unlikely in reality. Whereas your deck might not even have any ways of simply or efficiently levelling part of the playing field in a topdeck, even in your the most optimistic projections. Rationally your outs might be just as unlikely, but a stax-created softlock provides less outs to play for, even in theory. It doesn't matter if you draw that Farewell, because you're not going to be able to cast it because you're not going to untap any lands next turn. By making the fact that you're fucked more explicit, it kills your hope.
And regardless of their objective chances to win, players don't like feeling hopeless.
P.S: This also helps with further justifying why softer stax pieces and targeted land removal are cool and based.
A big problem with Stax is that people often only look how it effects them. Like how in the video it is stated that rule cards are good to pushing people that are ahead but I can promise you the guy that is doing the worst will still hate and arch enemy me for it just because he wasnt able to cast two spells in a turn, even if it stopped the winning player from flooding the board and winning. Same with Sylax... how dare I destroy one land at the weakest player, he needed that!
I legit just searched for stax content to listen to while I write stax primers, and find one of my favorite creators has uploaded this within 12 hours. Perfect perfect timing.
I love boardwipes
5+ in most of my decks
its so nice to be table police for the greedy mono green (+splash other colors) durdle decks
This video is actually gold. Analysis based in fact and not emotions is hard to come by.
I think stax is a necessary evil. Without them, why wouldn't you just jam egregious value or combos. I despise landfall decks, so without stax and land hate, they would just get to drown everyone in value without anyone able to do anything meaningful about it.
I feel like this video runs on the premise that anything that is mass resource denial is stax, and I don’t agree. What makes a card a stax piece is specifically, at least imo, the aspect of repeatability/continuity of the effect, while still denying resources. But yes I agree running interaction is good, and that interaction can probably deal with most stax pieces.
Playing a card, doing an action, is more fun than not playing that card and doing an action. I wonder why.
26:34 I’d like to suggest “Natural Balance”, “Razia’s Purification”, and “Balancing Act” as more cards like Urza’s Sylex and Keldon Firebombers. They’re not the exact same, but they’re similar in practice.
Limited Resources too, but it's banned in commander
I discovered your channel with your discard deck video and I feel like I'm taking a college course on EDH, like I should be taking notes.
This is all great stuff! Thanks for the informative and entertaining watch!
My favorite rule card is Silent Arbiter, and it's basically a win con all of its own in any deck I include it in, so it's entirely deserved every time it's targeted.
I had a game a couple weeks ago where my buddy killed my bounce land with a decimate, and I was left thinking: “Wow that bounce land is actually really greedy when you know there is land destruction ”
8:36
For the record, Teferi’s protection is useless against un-targeted mill.
Some of us just don't complain about player protection effects cuz we've built our decks to shred people who think they're safe, on that turn
Okay, I get what you're saying and I don't think there are any serious technical flaws in your argumentation: you make solid points and argue them well. It's true that we're inconsistent about what stax means, about which stax we allow and don't, and about how (probably all) interaction is effectively some form of proactive or reactive stax.
My issue is mostly that this framing misses the real, underlying 'human' things we usually care about when it comes to stax. You'll have noticed that the stax pieces we object to the most have very 'blanket' effects: they affect a lót of the game for how much they cost (made worse by, as you noted, them originally being designed for 1v1) without further cost to their controller; these make the game difficult to play for 75% of the table. Even worse are probably the 'hosers' that shut down particular play patterns (like draw or graveyard decks) which lock out particular players from 'doing their thing' while everyone else is relatively unaffected. I don't think most people mind these effects to some degree, but rather care about 'how much' they affect the game. This is amplified by the fact that these stax effects often drag games out, which means you're sitting around frustrated for a long time, doing little to nothing while you wait for the stax players to finally turn the equlibrium to their favor.
Goad is fine, Bojuka is fine, discard is fine, even land destruction is fine: the problem with the cards that generate these effects is not that they're stax; it's with how they're designed to be very oppressive and absolute in ways that are very difficult to come back from if they do catch you it. In that way they're very similar to the many 'I win if I get to untap this' board states that frequently hit before turn 7; you just 'feel' blown out in an unsatisfying way, but at least with the killer combo you got a chance to interact and the game will be over very soon.
In my opinion the strongest part of your video is the end: we need stax cards with better designs. Monologue Tax > Smotherting Tithe for example, but there are so many stax effects that would be absolutely fine if they just had clauses like "the first time a player does X in a turn," or "x happens unless the player pays {1}", as well as limiters like "each opponent discards X, but never their last" or "destroy lands, but leave each player with at least 3" and so on. That way these effects can exist and disrupt players, they get to feel smart and rewarded for having interaction against these effects, but don't just sit there for an hour waiting to finally top-deck into the removal they need to start playing the game again.
Thanks for the video!
PS: also yes Teferi's Protection sucks.
Great video, there is a saying in CEDH, that you overlooked slightly. "Stax is counterspell for non-blue decks". Due to the fast nature of CEDH, Stax are essential if you are not playing a blue deck.
I think casual players think of "interaction" as just counterspells or instant speed removal, but Stax is interaction for colors that are weak on these axis.
@2:23 I believe that if there was an indestructible land cycle with all the basic land's subtypes the armageddon wouldn't feel so bad as people would include those in their decks in case of land destruction. The artifact lands that has the indestructiblity ability can't be fetched as easily unless you play blue centric deck with fabricate or something similar. So, according to scryfall there are 12 cards that grant indestructible to permanents (including lands) and 6 cards that grant indestructible to lands specifically. Searching for "creature indestructible" nets you with almost 300 different options.
So in a way the argument is nice. If in that reality there was only 20 obscure spells in the game that granted indestructible to creatures but were in very specific two or three colors or the card was something like Eldrazi Monument or Plaza of Heroes. People in that universe would see and understand that they should add Plaza of Heroes just in care someone plays a Wrath of God and wipes their creature but even then it's like 1/100th game if someone were to play it. But even in that universe if you were to search "destroy creature" or in this case cards that included words "destroy land". You would find around 300 different options to do so. Which is like 1 protection for 100 different land destructive effects.
So in a way land destruction feels bad as there's not enough good options to pre-emptively protect and all you can do is react with curved and not so clear cut answers. Like, Negate is fine but what then when you had counter Acid Rain, Wasteland, Boseiju and many more. How much counter magic you are willing to spare in your hand until you just say: "I just can't."
I used to never play battlecruiser decks. Perhaps ironically you convinced me to build one with only 4 drops and up deck. The thing is that while it is one of my favorite decks it’s also easily the least consistent in terms of power level. On good draws I’ve won what was basically a game of archenemy against mid power decks and yet on a more medium draw I’ve been curbstomped by some precons because I was too slow to rebuild after the third board wipe. I think I finally get how people who like graveyard based decks feel because I feel like I’m playing unfair or cheating somehow if no one has any answers for my comically greedy jank yet too many answers makes my deck feel weak.
Ultimately despite these problems it’s still one of my favorite decks. Although sometimes I feel quite guilty that a third of the game was spent by me flipping through my deck wondering why all 15 of the cards I could cascade into are in the bottom half of my deck.
The problem with accepting Armageddon into common EDH playpatterns is that the only color that can actually reasonably prepare against it is green (and no, holding up mana constantly to play a counterspell or teferi's protection isn't really preparation). Green is the only color that gets to play good recursion effects for lands, can rely on their creatures for mana, and can use ramp to recover after an Armageddon faster. Every other color only gets to rely on artifacts and artifacts get blown up ALLTHETIME (or get stolen, or get shut off).
You end up nerfing every other color except for green.
well it does benefit artifact focused decks too. but if ya don't draw them then well ya sad
Not really. Literally everyone plays mana rocks in EDH unless they have very deliberately chosen not too, which typically only occurs in green anti-artifact strategies. Yes, they get blown up all the time, but if people are blowing them up then they aren't casting Armageddon.
@schroecat1 the issue is that well people usually play like a third to about half the amount of mana rocks they do lands so there's not an insignificant chance that Armageddon just mana screws everyone. Which is fine if it wins the game if annoying. The problem comes when it doesn't
Lot of different discourse in the comments, but this video actually touches on a lot of the things I've been discussing recently with my buddy in our playgroup I'm always deck crafting with. Adding soft stax, targeted hate to address certain strategies, more impactful control pieces, targeted land destruction like Demolition Field to address things like Cabal Coffers and other powerful lands. I think all decks should consider running some of these pieces that are appropriate for their colors. Decks that are built entirely to just do the thing they want to do will lose out more frequently to decks that have answers to a variety of strategies while keeping their own core strategy strong.
Soft locking the board while you get value from your permanents, resetting the landfall player back to a manageable level by forcing them to sac a lot of their lands and permanents, punishing spellslinger, storm, and low CMC decks for casting a bunch of spells or sac decks with slug cards, stuff like Scavenger Grounds to address white recursion or graveyard decks. You can play these pieces without fully leaning into the stuff like Armageddon, Winter Orb, etc. etc. because imo they feel genuinely bad to play against, especially when the player playing those cards has no meaningful follow up to using them. I have the same opinion about just board wiping the table into oblivion but then having no meaningful game actions to take afterward, since that is just prolonging the game and praying for top decks at that point.
Agree with this. I don't mind the Armageddon, but that player should win soon after. Rather than just drag out the game for another 45mins. If I lose, I'd rather lose quickly and suffer slowly.
as someone drawn to the stax/land destruction vibe, i love your take and suggestions.
ill be trying to introduce more pods to this aspect of the game in more confidence. cheers!
I have been putting together a Yuma, Proud Protector list - it is a very difficult theme, but I think he is probably one of the better options if you are planning on going that route. You have access to really great protection effects to stop people from blowing up stuff in response to your Armageddon, and the commander synergizes really well with the playstyle. Unfortunately the power level is capped at lower mid even with all the best cards in the colors included simply because of the fact that you have to run 13 or more terrible deserts
I got into EDH coming from Yugioh and the commonly accepted EDH phiolosophy was mind-blowing to me, still is to this day.
The first EDH deck I wanted to build was a land destruction deck, because I was unfamiliar with the concept of mana and I thought surely denying my opponents the core resource of the game is a viable strategy and an interesting way to learn more about the game for me. I found out I'm not allowed to destroy lands because it's not "fun".
Alright, I guess I'll try slowing the game down for my opponents with the help of Blood Moon and see how people play in a slower environment. I found out I'm not allowed to play stax cards because they're not "fun".
Ok... I mean I'm a Yugioh player, I can just "play Yugioh" and go balls to the wall combo and win on turn 7 (which is very slow as you know). I found out I'm not allowed to play combo because it's not "fun".
Then what even is "fun"? Over time I noticed a lot of people are doing nothing but ramping in the early game and then casting 10 mana spells that win the game. Am I just supposed to allow whoever gets to 10 mana first to win? How is that fun? Winning off of 1 card that cannot be interacted with (because guess what, countering it is also not fun) is the furthest thing away from fun to me. There is no way for me to punish these players, especially if there are 3 of them at the table.
Even today, I struggle with this. I don't want to play against the same decks every game, I know the Simic deck will win if we don't interact with it, but I think my playgroups are too... casual? They don't seem to care, they have really bad threat assessment and play barely any interaction. This takes away a huge amount of fun from EDH for me.
Should I just start playing Simic and win every time because I think I'm a better player than them and force them to realize?
I don't really want to do that, I want to play bad cards and try to make them work. I want to play games where I have to think about every action. I want to be forced to deckbuild having to play around mld, stax pieces, tax pieces, counter spells etc. I want to play games without all these unspoken rules, because they are the most interesting and they help you get better at everything.
Is this just my Yugioh brain? Am I too "tryhard" for a casual EDH game? Has anyone been in the same situation?
Ive been playing MTG since m14 and i know EXACTLY what you mean. People want to play solitaire piles that race towards some game winning combo or critical mass of resources/power. If you dare to disrupt or throw something at them they werent prepared for, Suddenly youre everything wrong with the game and you need to leave the table.
These people trying to tell you what to play are scrubs, don't listen to them. If you can't change them, find another play group.
Hey now, Teferi's Protection doesn't mean they can't be interacted with at all. You could hit them with a 10/10 Infect Questing Beast.
Although the TP player gets protection from everything for the turn cycle...
@@racp777the Questing Beasts stops the damage prevention so the infect goes through and they lose. Damage prevention shut off + infect/commander damage kill through a Teferi’s Protection.
@@ms.sysbit5511 Ahh, that works..
*Laughs maniacally in Yu-gi-oh*
29:59 just got my first rakdos charm kill recently. It was a glorious 24 damage straight to the dome, and i popped off so hard ngl
Nuts. The one and only time I've gotten a rakdos charm kill was when I was getting swung at with a lethal 20 damage and the opponent had 3 creatures and 3 life.
Hell yeah
Soft stax is an amazing solution. This video makes me want to make a deck majorly incorporating it. Great video.
Mass Land Destruction is the pineapple on pizza equivalent in Magic. There’s objectively nothing wrong with it, but everybody will look at you differently after you do it.
That’s a great analogy! I’ve been trying to find an analogy for targeted land destruction but can’t find a good one.
@@viviblue7277 I've had people get pissed about single land destruction too. Like dude, you played an Urborg and I'm positive your deck contains Coffers, what am I supposed to do? Just wait until you've had a turn with 10 free mana out of nowhere?
It’s more like you’re throwing a dinner party and it’s all vegetarian food but you’re the only vegetarian there and you never said you were one in the first place. Everyone else will politely (or not so) eat it and wish they had “normal” food. The expectation of how the game would go is absolutely upended by mld, so it is more about subversion of expectation than anything else.
Hey, it goes great with the salty ham!
Don't knock it til you try it.
I have officially survived midterms. Just how well I survived is yet to be determined, but I realized something in my post exams clarity. EDH is dead. Not just because the RC is disbanded, or the way cards were banned, or anything WotC has done. EDH is dead because of the players.
It was my favorite format, and not by a little, for almost 10 years. I was drawn to it as a brewer's paradise. A metagame so hopelessly complex that more cards, strategies, and archetypes are viable than ever before. It was a vast blank canvas to explore seemingly endless possibilities. In spite of the criticisms, WotC has actually done tremendous work over the last 5 years in expanding the number of options to 60 card strategies that did not previously scale to multi-player formats such as burn, energy, and werewolves. I can not stress this enough, even though they have done terrible things to DnD, Modern, pricing, Brawl, etc. And made some mistakes in design, 99% of everything they have done specifically for commander has only improved the format. They are not the problem here.
The RC's recent update to the ban list was bad for a number of reasons that I have gone into at length over the past few weeks, but ultimately it is most problematic because it lends legitimacy to a much larger, more pervasive trend within the community. It tells players that there is only one correct way to enjoy the game.
If we're being honest, the death of EDH has been a long time coming. Somewhere along the way, the discourse surrounding the format shifted from sharing this cool new idea I just figured out, discovered, or invented to telling people how they're supposed to have fun. The concept of the "social format" has been appropriated to bully players out of using any cards, decks, or strategies that beat your own. The idea of having a deck that you work on over time and grows with you as a player has been vilified. The social expectation that cEDH was its own thing has shifted to everyone is playing a "7" to we need to play unaltered precons to precons are "too good" now. What was once the most diverse and interesting meta ever created has been reduced down to only two acceptable archetypes. Everything needs to be either some version of the Ur-Dragon or Oops All Chairs.
People forget that there are 3 sections to the RC's rules philosophy. One is the social format, but the others are creativity and stability. Both of which have been completely upended by both these bans and the vicious, cruel nature of the community. I'm not surprised that the RC is receiving death threats. I have been receiving death threats for years because I advocate for a broader, more inclusive, and accepting environment where players should feel welcome to play many different styles and for as many different reasons as they can possibly imagine.
In the end, WotC didn't kill EDH. The RC didn't either. The community killed EDH, and frankly, I think that we'll be better off without it. It wasn't worth keeping after what it had become. Goodbye and good riddance.
A video about "Stax is not that bad, really, believe me" could only be 33 minutes long 😂
That's meta 😂
Friendly reminder, you can conceded the game at any time.
the only time I have EVER seen armageddon or any other MLD played is when the one casting it has a way to save their lands from being destroyed or otherwise have a crap ton of mana rocks. Basically making it an "I WIN NOW" card
Thank you. I‘m sick of reading the fairy tale that we blow up lands for fun. How should I beat you down with my Razzia when yor refill you habd every turn? If I can‘t limit your cards, I have to linit your mana. It‘s objectively the rational choice. But today, too many people are oversensitive rather than reflect and spending hours to inprove their decks, as I did after years of frustration. But of course, it‘s easier to whine, instead of taking responsibility.
@@Zandral36 Its also a card that only works with any given playgroup once. When people know your running MLD you become archenemy regardless of board state. Commander is a political game and if the other 3 players at the table don't care for what your deck does then they are fully within there rights to gang up on you.
How about a stax-license. If you can actually play your deck turns quickly instead of dawdling, durdling, and generally wasting everyone's time then cool - license approved.
It's one thing to be slowed down by a stack piece in a vacuum, it's another thing entirely in a commander format where it takes 20 minutes to go around the table.
maybe people shouldnt be taking 5 minutes to pass turn when they've been locked out of making meaningful board actions
When I play stax with my stax okay friends, we're usually done or playing a normal looking game within 5 minutes. Turns can be really fast if people are just top decking for lands.
I've seen way too much dawdling, durling, and wasting everyone's time to sequence playing two green creatures, I think it's just a player issue in general.
@@TeamSprocket agree, edh is a horrible horrible way to learn how to play magic. Always tell people when they start they need to play some standard.
I hate all turbo ramp decks. I agree that the feeling of being so far behind is just as bad as being stacked out!
Not gonna lie, most people I play with run 3-4 board wipes and extra card draw, so it really doesn't feel that bad. However, at more casual tables, I can see how frustrating they can be.
Cleansing, from The Dark, is a really fun, situational, MLD spell. Late game its an absolute game changer. It often ends up being WWW: each player loses 10-15 life, but when players are on less than 20 life it becomes VERY interesting.
nothing like spending work time on a snail video
Disclaimer: there is -technically- counterplay to Teferi's Protection. Some cards (Questing Beast most notably) have rules text that say "damage can't be prevented". T-Prot still prevents the player's life total from changing, but this creates a small opening for Infect and Commander Damage to apply.
To me, stacks is somebody telling me they don’t want me to play the game. And at that point, my game plan changes from “I’m trying to win” to “I will do everything possible to make sure you lose”.
To me, that sounds rather immature.
@@TeamSprocket Cool. Don't care.
what does "playing the game" mean to you? This game is Magic: The Gathering. There is no guarantee in Magic that you can resolve a particular spell, because cards exist that prevent spells from resolving. There's no guarantee in Magic that your lands enter untapped, because cards exist that tap them down. Just because your creature's ETB didn't happen does not mean you are not longer playing Magic. You're still playing, *these cards are part of the game you have sat down to play*.
Ultimately from my perspective as a control player, you have a warped understanding of what "playing the game" means that boils down to "let me win" if you look at it closely enough. Edit: to be clear, "let me play the game" typically means "let me take any game action I want without interruption" which will result in your victory unless you intentionally sandbag. That's why when you say "let me play the game" I hear "let me win"
@@timothye.2902 I really don't understand why you needed to give such a long-winded reply. "Play the game" means "let me play my cards". I expect to be countered by a player with available blue mana. That's fine. What I don't expect or like is when somebody plays a card that flat out says I don't get to do something. It really is that simple
I don't need to win. I just want a good, interactive game. Cards and effects that promote an un-interactive game are inherently and objectively not fun. When somebody has Hokori, Dust Drinker in play, that isn't fun. When somebody is playing a token deck and slaps down Opposition or Glare of Subdual, giving them complete control over whether I get to do something isn't fun. When somebody like you, a "control player" buys back their capsize reliably every turn, ensuring that nobody but you is going to get to do anything meaningful for a good portion of the game, that isn't fun.
It honestly sounds like you're projecting some level of your own insecurities about your own personal play style onto me. Find somebody else to care, random internet nobody.
@@TeamSprocket "Guys don't gang up on me because I have an oppressive and insufferable deck that kills your fun and wastes all of your time, that's immature!"
Biggest difference: land destruction actually hurts blue.
The whole reason I play land destruction is to prevent being constantly counterspelled.
Blue is not as bad in multi-player, but in 1v1 counterspells can completely prevent an opponent from playing at all.
If that's fair, so is Land Tax + Armageddon.
...I'm so confused who isn't playing sweepers, and who is calling sweepers stax??
Stax is *repeated* resource denial. People hate mass land destruction because it causes game states that drag on a fight rather than allow for rebuilding and then potentially win off of that. People hate repeated creature sweeping because it does something similar, but at least everyone's level on rebuilding.
You have created a new definition for stax that I've never heard before.
Teferi players can still be milled.
And stax itself begs the question: how are you winning?
I mean that's already an inconsistent argument right? If stax is repeated resource denial then by that logic mld isn't stax because it's an one off effect.
The point snail was making was that there's some vagueness to the definition, lantern control was a competitive 60 card deck and despite being called control us edh players would call it stax. Graveyard hate and sweepers aren't really considering stax despite being on resource denial. We have sweepers like farewell and cyclonic rift that basically remove everything BUT lands but aren't seen as bad despite being able to slow the game just as hard. The video is exploring why that is and questioning if it's a good thing or not.
@@justking2114 but MLD isn’t stax, it’s just mld, and just because it isn’t stax doesn’t mean it’s not allowed to be disliked for different reasons.
@@ryandavidson3610 ok but the point of the video is that it's all resource denial and that reasons people have for disliking stax can be applied to removal, sweepers, or uninteractive defensive cards like teferi's protection or the one ring.
It's weird because stax is stigmatized by it's most powerful, degenerate cards. Imagine if we all collectively said ramp is bad or not fun and got annoyed whenever we see ramp anywhere because we all thought of ramp to be degenerate fast mana like grim monolith, mana crypt, vault, moxen, ect that warps the game around themselves and creates bad gameplay experiences at casual tables.
@@justking2114 then I would call the argument misinformed at best. Said other forms of removal/interaction still largely allow people to play the game. Continuous detrimental effects aka stax pieces and mld both reduce one’s ability to play the game far greater than anything else in the video and it frankly isn’t very close.
@@ryandavidson3610 Snail also addresses that. What does "play the game" mean? Because there's a lot of cases with those non stax cards that still checkmates you. If I know I'm going to win the next turn and play teferi's protection, you can still shuffle your cards around, draw a little, tap and untap some stuff, but nothing you do from then on will have a meaningful impact on the game. At that point, what's the difference between not being able to play your cards in a stax lock, and your cards no longer affecting the outcome of a game? Protection from everything basically means I can't play the game against you. If there isn't a difference, why is stax stigmatized but stuff like teferi's protection isn't? That is what he's trying to say.
I really enjoy the thoughtful commentary and fleshing out seldom pondered and under addressed aspects of commander and zeitgeist.
I also really like how this indirectly touched on an aspect of Commander that is also sledom talked about despite how glaring it is once addressed. That being what i call the "azorification" of 4 player commander. The reality that with the ciritical mass of protection spells and exile boardwipes that now exist, playing decks that stay within only only red, green, and black are at a distinct disadvantage from the start if not playing stax or combo. Alone they are incapable of properly protecting themselves from some of the formats most powerful and commonly played tools. The best example of these tools being Farewell.
With jund colors possessing few to no meaningful answers to it. And no, Tibalt's Trickery alone does not mean solely jund pie decks can hnadle Farewell, Thoracle, and to a lesser extent Cyclonic rift. Just seeing those colors in the Format now compared to 5+ years ago is sad. Even in moderate power pods without having blue or white games feel like a uphill battle filled with cards that just can single handedly end your ability to win the game without you having any way to stop it.
I firmly believe that simic wouldn't get the ire it does if people actually employed land destruction as part of their interaction package. The format is speeding up and it will continue to speed up as cards become more and more efficient at accomplishing goals.
I think that casual EDH would benefit a great deal in terms of deckbuilding mindset if they built more like cEDH players. No you don't have to have tutors and fast mana to blaze out win attempts on turn 2-3, but you *should* be building decks with your mulligan in mind, how much your deck can reasonably do so, and how much mana your deck needs to push out a win condition, as well as the types of interaction points that your deck has so you can protect said win conditions.
Lots of people who play casual commander just allow themselves infinite mulligans, which really hinders deckbuilding skill, and also hurts the deck's actual performance. They don't take ramp spells that allow them to recover from land hate. They don't take draw engines that draw them into their lands so they don't miss drops. If you don't build your deck in a way that can present a card advantage engine that can pull you out of a mulligan to 5, then you have a bad deck and you need more card advantage and early ramp.
In my pod, we have one player who sometimes plays stax, but it really only affects one of the other players. The affected player is definitely the highest power player there, and is typically the archenemy just by virtue of all of their decks being better than everyone else's. So when Mr.Stax shows up and makes their turn 4 Etali, Primal Conqueror into a turn 7-8 play, while everyone else is basically doing what they would already be doing whether Mr.Stax was there or not, it makes the game a lot more fun IMO since the other two players get to have answers to both Etali and Mr.Stax by that time.
The downside is no one wants to play with you after. If you slow down the game to a crawl with Stax to the point where we could have play 3 games in the time it takes to take one then everyone is gonna groan when you sit down with that deck.
Your holistic view of the Game and its Players is extremely refreshing.
The one thing I’ve learned about playing edh lately, is that players complain way too damn much about everything. It’s either you’re going way too damn fast (Fast mana) or you’re slowing the game down (Stax) make up your minds! Y’all can’t have an in between.
Yes, you remember the early 2000s? People would have laughed so hard about the oversensitive Sissies that we have to face today 🤮
I think a lot of complaints, especially about interaction (removal, stax, protection, whatever you want to call it) boil down to saying "why won't you just let me win?"
@@timothye.2902 That is very true! The point is to try and win and wiggle your way through. I highly doubt the point was to “allow” your opponents to win, so easily.
It comes down to two major concepts: tempo control and the risk vs reward of removal.
Each deck has a particular speed that it likes to operate at. You can interact with tempo in two ways: by playing cards like generate resources to accelerate your tempo or by playing cards that decelerate your opponents tempo by removing resources. The green player’s Cultivate and the white player’s Smothering Tithe are both attempts to set the tempo of play. Removal then is your way of adjusting your opponents attempts to shift tempo.
When it comes to removal, stax pieces are often just higher risk, higher reward removal spells. While a single counterspell can stop one spell, Rule of Law can stop an entire storm turn or it can do nothing if the opponent only planned on playing a big haymaker like Torment of Hailfire. Its applicability depends on your ability to gauge which types of actions your opponent will play and adjust accordingly.