The Competitive-Casual Commander Player

Many of you should be familiar with Sheldon Menery. Sheldon is the face of the Commander rules committee - essentially the format's Mark Rosewater, in the sense that he speaks for the committee and takes the flak for the committee regardless of what he has or hasn't contributed to their decisions. Though I've been at several events with him, I still haven't had the pleasure of meeting him and taking him on in a game of our favorite format, and I think in the future I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that's an experience I can have.

That said, Sheldon and I are on nearly polar opposites regarding how a game of Commander should be run.

Sheldon is very much focused on the "fun" of the group. He encourages allowing players to play their spells, resolve their creatures, and not mess with others in a way which would preclude them from playing their decks the way that they want to. Now, in the abstract, this seems rather reasonable. However, though I have nothing against Sheldon himself, I think the idea doesn't actually conserve fun for all players.

The hidden goal of
Menery-style Commander games.

Let's start by looking at the basics of Magic - two players sit down to play a game, the goal of which is to determine a winner. This essentially entails one or more of the following:

• Playing your cards until you win.
• Playing cards that prevent your opponent from winning, buying you time to win.
• Playing cards that prevent your opponent's cards from preventing you from winning.

However, in the Menery-style of Commander, the second option is essentially taken away. Players are discouraged from preventing their opponents from playing their cards, which the players are (usually) playing because they help them win the game. With that option gone, our third option is also cut out, because you have no longer have anything to protect against. In the abstract, we are left with 2-5 players playing solitaire games until one of them attacks enough to kill someone, as instant combo-kills are also discouraged, especially fast ones that prevent other players from taking turns. Of course, attacking leaves you open, so with nobody preventing each other from casting spells, it's easy to get a mucked up board and let the game stall out for a long time (which seems to be encouraged - if players are discouraged from ending the game quickly, the game defaults to "long and grinding" every time), and it may as well just be a draw because winning fast is just too penalized.

Of course, this is all a bit exaggerated. Sheldon himself in his most recent StarCityGames article mentions that cards that destroy or punish nonbasic lands are necessary protection, so clearly interaction isn't completely discouraged. I'm sure there are a good number of other interaction cards he encourages using or plays himself - such as Draining Whelk, which he mentioned in another anecdote from his recent article. Specifically, he had  Twincasted an entwined Tooth and Nail, and opted not to put onto the battlefield a Draining Whelk with the audience being relatively split on whether or not to do it. The Draining Whelk, of course, would have countered the Tooth and Nail he had "stolen" and become massive, and prevented his opponent from getting some potentially game winning cards. Why would he not do that? There are many two card combos that would have taken control of the game for that player - Mephidross Vampire and Triskelion, Kiki-Jiki and Pestermite, Realm Razer and Avenger of Zendikar (a personal favorite), etc. However, this is where the distinction in playstyles becomes very apparent - my guess is that Sheldon had assumed the player wasn't going to search for a backbreaking combo. Sheldon sits down and assumes everyone else plays like he does, which is perfectly fine if that's truly how your playgroup is. But that's not how every playgroup is!

Dream wrecking since 1994.

I belong to a playgroup of what I would call Competitive-Casual Commander players. In this playgroup, entwined Tooth and Nails are cast in an attempt to outright win the game. Mimeoplasms are always 10+ power Skithiryxes. Time Stretch is a card you prepare for, not complain about. Sure, playing your deck is fun, and I think everyone should build decks that are fun to play. However, the thought behind Menery-style Commander games is that if you play cards that stop other people from playing their deck, you are reducing the overall fun. But aren't you stopping someone from playing their deck in either case? Unless everyone builds decks exactly the same - which boils ultimately to the aforementioned lack of interaction - someone is getting cut off from playing the deck how they want. Sheldon recommends a points system that punishes powerful combos and plays that stop other players. In a Competitive-Casual playgroup, this should never be necessary. These playgroups play more like a normal Magic format - if your deck is weak, then it's weak. Your options are to fix it, or play against different opponents. It's not a heartless Survival of the Fittest metagame, though - we all have decks that are weaker, but there is a built in balance of power in multiplayer formats. The weaker decks get interacted with less, giving them more time to build up power. If you sit down in our playgroup with Tor Wauki, and the other players have Teneb the Harvester, The Mimeoplasm, and Jhoira of the Ghitu, guess who gets targeted first? Hint: It's not you.

Yes, games can end quickly and brutally. Yes, creatures don't last long on the board. Sometimes you get hit with a Sundering Titan and it hurts. Sometimes you are playing Sedris, the Traitor King and someone started with a Leyline of the Void. But you don't whine and complain - you answer it! And if you can't, you might lose this game and then fix the deck so you can! It's Magic. That's how it works. That's how you do it in Standard, Extended, Modern, Overextended, Pauper, Legacy, Vintage, and Limited, and that's how we do it here.

What benefit is there to forcing players to adapt to a metagame rather than pandering to bad plays? When you Twincast a Tooth and Nail, you get the Draining Whelk almost every time. The plays are huge and game winning, and the stories are just as good as any other Commander game. But often the games take less time - so you can shuffle up and play again. I'd rather play four games of Magic in 4 hours than one. We play Competitive-Casual - our games are competitive, and we are trying to win at all times. But we're still having fun doing it. To our playgroup, it is fun to try to make the most powerful plays. I know not all groups are like this, and everyone still has their own preferences - I personally dislike Bitter Ordeal wins with Sharuum and would try to do crazier things if I had the deck. But we don't complain when someone combo kills, because winning and losing are both part of the Magic. We love to win, and losing sometimes makes the wins feel that much better. We still Embrace the Chaos, but we also Embrace the Game.

I hope this has provided some insight into how playgroups like mine operate. Please use the comments below with any questions or criticism. The worst that could happen is that I would have more material to use for a future post!

Until next time,
Day 2 Dan