The 'problem' is the kind of interaction. I play a lot of MTGO, and the *****ing one hears is constant and irrational.
I play mono black, and use discard and creature kill as my interaction? 'FU I hate playing against discard'
I play burn, and use...burn as my interaction? 'No skill, I hate burn, so boring.'
I put some Blue in, and use Counters as my interaction? 'So boring, I cant even play the game, have fun.'
So I say, forget it, and pull out Storm. 'Wow, playing by yourself, so fun!'
Lesson learned? People losing complain.
Blue in the formats that can pretend to be balanced (Modern/Standard) is not over represented. I know Modern better, and White if anything needs help, the rest of the colours are fine.
I am a casual commander player and I cannot stand blue decks particularly stax and control decks. They are so annoying. I spent over 1k euro on a commander deck and still I cannot beat blue no matter what cards I play. When I asked the local community for some advice on building a control based commander deck, they refused to help me because they do not want to give any details. In Malta being an ******** and playing blue at the local community is common and that is not fair. I ain't going to a tournament to swear and swear and not having fun so I decided to stay away from tournaments and instead I only play in sealed during pre-releases because its casual and fair. I feel that the commander commitee is not doing its part by seeing what is OP in blue and keeping the format balanced.
This is BogatyrOfMurom, a MTG player based in Malta. I play Commander, Oathbreaker and Pauper. I have been playing MTG since 2013. I played in different casual tournaments in the unsantioned and won some of them. I got into sanctioned in 2017 in Pre-Release Aether Revolt. My style of play is tribal, aggro, land destruction, reanimator and burn. My favorite of them all are Slivers.
If you need any advice, you can find me on tappedout.net under the same name.
It's no secret to my friends that I refuse to use blue cards. I have a bias toward the underdog colors (all of the other colors) and want to be able to play those colors in a constructed setting with a decent chance of winning. I love Magic and enjoy rooting for underdogs. To me, it's boring to see the same predictable outcomes in sports, cards, or otherwise. It's good to see an unlikely hero, etc.
Without flaming too heavily about it, the only frustrating aspect of Magic over the years IMO has been the continual domination of blue with only brief interruptions of other decks/colors.. decks which invariably get nerfed through bans or outrun by the printing of stronger and stronger blue cards. As of August 2015, once again, blue is dominating nearly every single archetype across all formats except vintage aggro and standard aggro. That's 10/12 deck types/formats (and letting it slide that Tolarian Academy and a few blue cards often infiltrate MUD which would make it 11 out of 12). If your response is "just put blue in your deck" - you are not hearing me. That's what everyone says. I just don't want to play blue.
I invite you to take a gander at the current population of top8 decks, and add up the % of top8 decks played in vintage/legacy/modern/standard that feature blue. Usually, blue is the dominant color in all of the decks. In many cases blue is not only the top deck in a category, but also represented very heavily in the next 3 or 4 decks down in that category. Mono-blue is now the most winning modern aggro deck (huh?) despite being heavily outnumbered at tournaments by jund and burn, for example. Also, keep in mind that standard is going to change in a month with BFZ, giving blue a chance to climb back up in that format as well. http://www.mtgtop8.com/
Do you think blue is over-represented in Magic? If so, would you rather see other colors brought up or the banhammer brought down in righteous fury to achieve balance?
I agree what you said, blue is so unfun and overpowered in commander (EDH). I hate blue so much that I try my best to build a deck that can beat it.
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This is BogatyrOfMurom, a MTG player based in Malta. I play Commander, Oathbreaker and Pauper. I have been playing MTG since 2013. I played in different casual tournaments in the unsantioned and won some of them. I got into sanctioned in 2017 in Pre-Release Aether Revolt. My style of play is tribal, aggro, land destruction, reanimator and burn. My favorite of them all are Slivers.
If you need any advice, you can find me on tappedout.net under the same name.
Blue cards , especially card selection and draw make a deck more consistent.
Good players want the most consistent deck possible.
That does not mean its the best deck by default, as a high variants deck can win tournaments, its just not a good choice for a player that is aiming for consistency.
Blues real color wheel issue and for that especially in competitive cEDH is that it has a lot of cards that absolute should be banned (Flash, all the empty library you win the game cards) and its the only color that really can interact with the stack and spells ; there are just a tiny amount of cards in other colors that do so (and they see plenty of play for exactly that reason).
If you remove the big offenders for blue its fair game (especially as blue pairs well with almost any other color, as constructed decks get pretty powerful mana fixing in the form of duals and fetchlands, theres simply no reason not to dip into the best cards you can play if they are that easy to splash).
Reds land destruction and blacks discard got so bad over time, that they pretty much stopped existing except for old cards.
Blue lost most of its effective counterspells (but we still got Force of Negation), but it has plenty of card combo pieces that get out of control in older formats (and the blue multicolor cards tend to be overall more powerful, looking at almost all the blue planeswalkers with 3 mana, they are pretty much all crazy broken for what they do and cost in mana, only black has Liliana that could remotely compete with the raw power).
In a creature cycle blue is also almost all the time the color that benefits from the cycle the most.
If all colors get a 5 mana 5/5 with benefits, thats "small" for green, but strong in blue (especially if blue gets "flying" while the other colors get trample, reach, haste, vigilance or other much weaker keywords).
With fast mana in the form of artifacts, blue is once again the color that benefits the most from it.
If +1 mana means you draw 1 more card and having more mana means you play stuff AND counter their spell, thats exactly what makes blue powerful, they accelerate into the "late game" in which blue shines the most.
Without fast mana blue can get behind, and from behind counterspells and card draw wont save you.
But the longer a game goes (and casual games tend to be long by default), blues card draw is going to make the difference, and even more so having the luxury to play at instant speed.
----
Blue is at this point set in stone in old formats.
It wont go away and they keep printing cards that are competitive in powerlevel and anything cheap that keeps drawing cards is going to be powerful no matter what.
I play mono black, and use discard and creature kill as my interaction? 'FU I hate playing against discard'
I play burn, and use...burn as my interaction? 'No skill, I hate burn, so boring.'
I put some Blue in, and use Counters as my interaction? 'So boring, I cant even play the game, have fun.'
So I say, forget it, and pull out Storm. 'Wow, playing by yourself, so fun!'
Lesson learned? People losing complain.
Blue in the formats that can pretend to be balanced (Modern/Standard) is not over represented. I know Modern better, and White if anything needs help, the rest of the colours are fine.
Spirits
If you need any advice, you can find me on tappedout.net under the same name.
I agree what you said, blue is so unfun and overpowered in commander (EDH). I hate blue so much that I try my best to build a deck that can beat it.
If you need any advice, you can find me on tappedout.net under the same name.
Good players want the most consistent deck possible.
That does not mean its the best deck by default, as a high variants deck can win tournaments, its just not a good choice for a player that is aiming for consistency.
Blues real color wheel issue and for that especially in competitive cEDH is that it has a lot of cards that absolute should be banned (Flash, all the empty library you win the game cards) and its the only color that really can interact with the stack and spells ; there are just a tiny amount of cards in other colors that do so (and they see plenty of play for exactly that reason).
If you remove the big offenders for blue its fair game (especially as blue pairs well with almost any other color, as constructed decks get pretty powerful mana fixing in the form of duals and fetchlands, theres simply no reason not to dip into the best cards you can play if they are that easy to splash).
Reds land destruction and blacks discard got so bad over time, that they pretty much stopped existing except for old cards.
Blue lost most of its effective counterspells (but we still got Force of Negation), but it has plenty of card combo pieces that get out of control in older formats (and the blue multicolor cards tend to be overall more powerful, looking at almost all the blue planeswalkers with 3 mana, they are pretty much all crazy broken for what they do and cost in mana, only black has Liliana that could remotely compete with the raw power).
In a creature cycle blue is also almost all the time the color that benefits from the cycle the most.
If all colors get a 5 mana 5/5 with benefits, thats "small" for green, but strong in blue (especially if blue gets "flying" while the other colors get trample, reach, haste, vigilance or other much weaker keywords).
With fast mana in the form of artifacts, blue is once again the color that benefits the most from it.
If +1 mana means you draw 1 more card and having more mana means you play stuff AND counter their spell, thats exactly what makes blue powerful, they accelerate into the "late game" in which blue shines the most.
Without fast mana blue can get behind, and from behind counterspells and card draw wont save you.
But the longer a game goes (and casual games tend to be long by default), blues card draw is going to make the difference, and even more so having the luxury to play at instant speed.
----
Blue is at this point set in stone in old formats.
It wont go away and they keep printing cards that are competitive in powerlevel and anything cheap that keeps drawing cards is going to be powerful no matter what.
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