After reviewing the contents of the thread, I wanted to pose a couple questions to Carthage (OP).
1. How many decks are you running?
2. Do you have a tried and true regular play group?
3. Of all the decks you have, how much variance do you see across the colors you're using with regard to card choice?
I run between 6 and 12 decks at any given time, but overall I've probably made more than 30 commander decks.
Not really, I've had a store group that is not fixed, and groups of friends that eventually stop meeting up over the years. Right now I have a sort of stable group but they have one deck each and the power level is very out of balance.
For the first few years of edh, pretty substantial. Lately? Almost no variance. Broken cards are stronger than general synergy, so the list rarely changes.
I have a prime speaker zegana combo deck that runs very little interaction and just combos out. It runs a lot of the so called staples.
At certain tables people cant keep up with it. Its a combo monster. Even without counterspells they just seem to leave it unchecked and it dominates.
But you know what stops it? The tiniest bit of disruption.
Last week it went 2-1, the first two games were full of people not running anything to slow it down at all. Nothing. Not one card got removed from the table, not one spell cast stopped. Zero interaction from my opponents and i exploited that. The last game though? The last game had a guy playing queen marchesa akido-style. He had an answer for everything. I had to actually think. It was the best game ive had in months. It used a bunch of cards you wouldnt see in your typical staples build.
The point of my anecdote is no one forces you to play staples, and creativity coupled with smart plays can beat a honed deck.
People try so hard to jam all these things into their decks because theyre good or the internet tells them to. They forget that something as simple as deflecting palm, or red elemental blast, can ruin an entire deck's gameplan, and steal victory.
The only one forcing you to play things you feel are staples, or upfront powerful cards, is you.
Nothing you described makes me think you were actually playing against honed decks.
So... from what I'm gathering... you want every piece of interaction, card filtering, card advantage, and mana advantage to be so grossly inefficient and/or niche that which one you use (or whether you even use them) doesn't make a meaningful impact on your win/loss record. Am I finally getting this right?
Don't use stupid hyperbole. We don't need sol ring or mana crypt or mana vault in this format. We don't need one mana tutors. We don't need cards like mystic remora or necropotence drawing cards at rates that have clearly been dubbed obscene.
Cutting these cards can suddenly open up room for synergy to actually compete, but no synergy will ever outclass a sol ring level card.
No, it wouldn't. Getting rid of those card will just have other cards who do the exact same things take their place.
Really, the only effect I could see happening is killing the diversity of the game. A lot of people like the fact that EDH can be super casual, super competitive or something in between. That they can build decks that are meant for certain levels of play and have the card pools to do that.
Honestly, man, not come off as hostile, but it really just sounds like you want everyone to play at a certain level because you think it's fun. You want everyone to conform to your definition of a good time under the guise that it will make the game better. Not too mention, your stance basically treats it like everyone plays at the cEDH level when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Not too mention that the measures you talk about would kill deck development. I pretty sure there are people out there who love upgrading their decks over time. Slowly but steadily phasing old cards and replacing them with better ones. The thrill of getting to play a deck that gets better and more efficient with time, tweaking and, yes, straight upgrades.
The diversity of the game is already dead. That's the whole point of this topic. It's not interesting for me to make a deck anymore because of how many slots are already taken by broken standalone cards that outclass everything and will forever outclass everything. When do you think we're going to see a better set of mana rocks at 0 and 1 mana? That's mana crypt, sol ring, mox diamond, mana vault, chrome mox. If you aren't running green, you are running these before you know what your general is, and in at least 99% of cases you are correct to do so because you'll win more. How is that diversity?
I can make a blue or green or black deck without even knowing the general anymore, and aside from a couple exceptions it will be pretty close to the optimal build. There is no diversity left to maintain in an eternal format that let's you run all the old mistakes.
What cards do what sol ring does?
What cards do what the one mana tutors do?
You can't just replace demonic tutor with diabolic tutor. You can't just replace necropotence with read the bones. You can't just replace sol ring with worn powerstone. These cards are substantially worse and promote possible alternatives. You will never cut demonic tutor because it's broken as hell, you can certainly cut diabolic tutor in favor of other cards. THAT is diversity. That is what makes deck construction interesting to me. I can weigh the pros and cons of two spells with no clear winner because they have actual risks associated with running them.
I talk about cedh level because that's where every single playgroup I've played with ends up going. Everyone hates losing, upgrades a few more cards, a few more cards, suddenly 3 months later everyone is playing the most competitive version of their deck that they can afford. I'm tired of looking for new playgroups. I'm tired of trying to convince people to play weaker cards. I want to make interesting decks then test them out a few times then go back to making more interesting decks, but edh no longer provides that. I have no canvas left to work with.
So... from what I'm gathering... you want every piece of interaction, card filtering, card advantage, and mana advantage to be so grossly inefficient and/or niche that which one you use (or whether you even use them) doesn't make a meaningful impact on your win/loss record. Am I finally getting this right?
Don't use stupid hyperbole. We don't need sol ring or mana crypt or mana vault in this format. We don't need one mana tutors. We don't need cards like mystic remora or necropotence drawing cards at rates that have clearly been dubbed obscene.
Cutting these cards can suddenly open up room for synergy to actually compete, but no synergy will ever outclass a sol ring level card.
If your strategy doesn't include ramping up in mana, drawing a bunch of cards and using the broken tutors to fetch up the mistakes in magic's history, chances are you are going to lose to the decks that do.
They do to a certain extend and always be what I want to know is where you would draw the line to what that extent should be and what that would accomplish.
And Rosy also raised a point I'd like to add to and that is if you remove the "Autoincludes" other cards will just take their spot leaving you exactly where you started.
There are cards that are way, way to good at what they do that overcentralize the game.
Every blue deck I make has the same ramp package, the same draw package, the same tutor package.
If these cards weren't so standalone broken, I would have to start looking for different versions of the effects and other synergies instead of just mindlessly throwing in the busted cards. Like if my choice is diabolic tutor or another threat, suddenly I have options. Deck building becomes interesting again.
That is over a hundred cards I just listed and that is likely the tip of the iceberg. While some of them aren’t competitive right now, you need to nuke almost everything to get rid of the auto-picks. Even if all of the top rate tutors in black were banned, for example, it would still be better to run Diabolic Tutor rather than running yet another token creator in your Endrik deck.
Paying four extra mana for a spell is a huge cost. This statement is not true. Decks are not trying to find room for 4 mana tutors despite, as you claim here, being better than including another redundant spell. It's too slow. This generally would require spending one turn searching for the spell and one turn casting the spell you searched for. That is not strong.
Beyond that, the request doesn’t make sense when you get down to it. When I’m crafting Toshiro Umezawa, he wants me to use kill spells. If any of those kill spells are decent, however, I will feel pressured to use them in my Endrek deck to interact and follow the template. If there are enough awesome token makers for Endrek that it’s worth not using that kill spell, however, then Toshiro is pressured to use those token spells. I don’t know what sort of artificial silos you want between commanders but that is fundamentally not how this game works.
Different decks should want different cards. You want token synergy cards with endrek because you run other token synergy cards. You want kill spell cards in toshiro to synergize with your general. Those synergies should be more rewarding than just running standalone good cards that don't relate to your strategy, otherwise every deck just runs the same cards, which is what is happening to edh now. I can build a deck of any color really
I guess that I should ask what type of cards you actually want. It seems that you oppose generic good cards and cards that are so great for the archetype that they are obvious. When building an Orzhov Enchantment Deck, you would be against Land Tax and necropotence (which are generically powerful) along with cards like Enlightened Tutor (which is an auto-include for enchantment decks). That just seems to leave us with middle-ground cards like Extinguish Hope or Three Dreams. If you banned tutor/necro/tax, however, we would be having this exact same conversation about how cards like Extinguish Hopes, by being the best available tier of enchantment support, forces you to include it and robs you of your deck slots.
Cards like enlightened tutor aren't just auto include for enchantment decks. They are auto include for all decks that run white. Vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, mystical tutor, there are lots of em.
There is a point where spending extra mana for spells becomes a real choice in tutors, and I'd prefer they were like that. Keeps the variance higher and makes lines of play more diverse game to game.
A card like three dreams is a good example of a card that will almost certainly never be an auto include, but would likely be used by an aura based strategy. Most decks run very few auras to begin with and don't want it, and most decks aren't going want to pay 5 mana to find 3 of them, but there are generals that want auras and would probably be happy to pay 5 mana for 3 of them.
Part of this is a general desire to slow the game down. EDH mana, draw power, and tutors are completely out of control to the point of making alternate strategies irrelevant.
I would like for the removal of the cards so staple they outclass synergy, not necessarily the removal but other categories.
You have your broken fast mana that I put in a deck before I even know what general it will be, and goodstuffs cards that are so stupid in their effects that any attempt to synergize with my general cannot hope to outperform what these cards do on their own.
Having a template to apply to any deckbuilding means you have some sense of direction when making a new deck.
And interaction with other players is the far more interesting part of the multiplayer experience over solitairing your own cards.
The deckbuilding is(was) the interesting part of the game. If that's just a template now there is nothing left in this game for me to enjoy.
A template that is great for beginners to grasp better. Not every deck is going to follow this formula. For example a Tainted Pact deck that wants to draw their whole deck but the deck design itself means no dupes. There is a lot of actual nuance that goes into this. Some might run only 1 mass removal spell, a couple counterspells, but are primarily a combo deck such as a Laboratory Maniac deck. Some might be more creature centric and have little need of instants or sorceries like a Primal Surge deck.
The combo decks run more interaction because combo kills take fewer card slots, and tend to be the most boring decks for me to build and play. You just take all the extra slots and run the slightly less good interaction/draw/tutor/ramp
The niche decks also tend to be very limited in what cards you can include. The restrictions tend to be so severe that card inclusions are too obvious instead of actual decisions. Decks like titania, protector of argoth are not at all interesting to me because it feels like the deck is already made for me.
I just spent a couple hours building a brudiclad edh deck. Blue red, token theme.
Let's start with an assumption that we'll have something around 40 lands.
Alright so now we need our mana rocks, gotta accelerate to keep up with the rest of the table after all.
14 slots gone, filled with 2 mana accelerants, broken fast mana, some of the more recent edh specific ramp like dockside extortionist
Also need to draw cards, lots of cards preferably, ramp into card draw being one of the biggest edh tactics.
another 10 slots gone to card draw.
Now for interaction spells
Maybe 6 counterspells, 6 single target removal spells, 6 mass removal spells, 18 slots gone
Add in some cantrips and tutor spells...
4 tutors + 4 cantrips, another 8 slots gone
so we have 1 + 40 + 14 + 10 + 18 + 8 = 91 card slots gone before we've even gotten to the interesting part of the deck.
And all of these cards are staple powerhouses that outclass most synergy.
Maybe we cut 5 land, now we have...14 card slots to play with.
Any cut here is cutting an extremely high quality draw spell, interaction spell, ramp spell, tutor, or essential ramp.
Where is the fun in deciding what to include anymore? You have no slots to work with.
I honestly believe it is mostly people just repeating it without having ever tried it or needing to try it, because that's what the edh rules emphasize. Every time I have tried it with different groups it doesn't work.
Would you care to elaborate what do you mean by "it doesn't work"? Have you tried to identify why it doesn't work in your case? It clearly works for a lot of other people so there must be a reason why it does not in your case. Finding root cause is the first step in solving problems.
"You sound like you just don't want to lose"
"I can't spend money on cards right now"
"I only have the one deck"
"I want to win"
"I prefer games with stronger cards"
"Combo is just part of the game"
I have heard the social contract spiel a million times, it has never worked [for me]. This game is too expensive for people to do different decks.
There that should be the reason you heard about the social contract a million times it works for people, its just unfortunate that it doesn't work for you.
Yes there is power creep in Magic and they push standard sets to sell packs, and yes they have commander in mind when designing cards (its their cash cow afterall) but besides the Commander product they do rarely if any design cards where the only application is commander. And like other people said you dont have to play them if you don't want if you wanna search for other synergies go ahead.
I honestly believe it is mostly people just repeating it without having ever tried it or needing to try it, because that's what the edh rules emphasize. Every time I have tried it with different groups it doesn't work.
Lol, if people don’t want to play low-powered then that’s their prerogatives, but what a bad excuse. You can’t afford $30 to buy a precon to play low-powered, because you spent thousands on cEDH...right...
Yes actually, people don't want to spend money on weak cards. That's a thing. Why would you believe this isn't a thing?
I run between 6 and 12 decks at any given time, but overall I've probably made more than 30 commander decks.
Not really, I've had a store group that is not fixed, and groups of friends that eventually stop meeting up over the years. Right now I have a sort of stable group but they have one deck each and the power level is very out of balance.
For the first few years of edh, pretty substantial. Lately? Almost no variance. Broken cards are stronger than general synergy, so the list rarely changes.
The forums has an ignore function if you care, I have had onering on it for years.
Nothing you described makes me think you were actually playing against honed decks.
The diversity of the game is already dead. That's the whole point of this topic. It's not interesting for me to make a deck anymore because of how many slots are already taken by broken standalone cards that outclass everything and will forever outclass everything. When do you think we're going to see a better set of mana rocks at 0 and 1 mana? That's mana crypt, sol ring, mox diamond, mana vault, chrome mox. If you aren't running green, you are running these before you know what your general is, and in at least 99% of cases you are correct to do so because you'll win more. How is that diversity?
I can make a blue or green or black deck without even knowing the general anymore, and aside from a couple exceptions it will be pretty close to the optimal build. There is no diversity left to maintain in an eternal format that let's you run all the old mistakes.
What cards do what sol ring does?
What cards do what the one mana tutors do?
You can't just replace demonic tutor with diabolic tutor. You can't just replace necropotence with read the bones. You can't just replace sol ring with worn powerstone. These cards are substantially worse and promote possible alternatives. You will never cut demonic tutor because it's broken as hell, you can certainly cut diabolic tutor in favor of other cards. THAT is diversity. That is what makes deck construction interesting to me. I can weigh the pros and cons of two spells with no clear winner because they have actual risks associated with running them.
I talk about cedh level because that's where every single playgroup I've played with ends up going. Everyone hates losing, upgrades a few more cards, a few more cards, suddenly 3 months later everyone is playing the most competitive version of their deck that they can afford. I'm tired of looking for new playgroups. I'm tired of trying to convince people to play weaker cards. I want to make interesting decks then test them out a few times then go back to making more interesting decks, but edh no longer provides that. I have no canvas left to work with.
Don't use stupid hyperbole. We don't need sol ring or mana crypt or mana vault in this format. We don't need one mana tutors. We don't need cards like mystic remora or necropotence drawing cards at rates that have clearly been dubbed obscene.
Cutting these cards can suddenly open up room for synergy to actually compete, but no synergy will ever outclass a sol ring level card.
If your strategy doesn't include ramping up in mana, drawing a bunch of cards and using the broken tutors to fetch up the mistakes in magic's history, chances are you are going to lose to the decks that do.
There are cards that are way, way to good at what they do that overcentralize the game.
Every blue deck I make has the same ramp package, the same draw package, the same tutor package.
If these cards weren't so standalone broken, I would have to start looking for different versions of the effects and other synergies instead of just mindlessly throwing in the busted cards. Like if my choice is diabolic tutor or another threat, suddenly I have options. Deck building becomes interesting again.
Paying four extra mana for a spell is a huge cost. This statement is not true. Decks are not trying to find room for 4 mana tutors despite, as you claim here, being better than including another redundant spell. It's too slow. This generally would require spending one turn searching for the spell and one turn casting the spell you searched for. That is not strong.
Different decks should want different cards. You want token synergy cards with endrek because you run other token synergy cards. You want kill spell cards in toshiro to synergize with your general. Those synergies should be more rewarding than just running standalone good cards that don't relate to your strategy, otherwise every deck just runs the same cards, which is what is happening to edh now. I can build a deck of any color really
Cards like enlightened tutor aren't just auto include for enchantment decks. They are auto include for all decks that run white. Vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, mystical tutor, there are lots of em.
There is a point where spending extra mana for spells becomes a real choice in tutors, and I'd prefer they were like that. Keeps the variance higher and makes lines of play more diverse game to game.
A card like three dreams is a good example of a card that will almost certainly never be an auto include, but would likely be used by an aura based strategy. Most decks run very few auras to begin with and don't want it, and most decks aren't going want to pay 5 mana to find 3 of them, but there are generals that want auras and would probably be happy to pay 5 mana for 3 of them.
Part of this is a general desire to slow the game down. EDH mana, draw power, and tutors are completely out of control to the point of making alternate strategies irrelevant.
You have your broken fast mana that I put in a deck before I even know what general it will be, and goodstuffs cards that are so stupid in their effects that any attempt to synergize with my general cannot hope to outperform what these cards do on their own.
Give me back my deck slots.
The combo decks run more interaction because combo kills take fewer card slots, and tend to be the most boring decks for me to build and play. You just take all the extra slots and run the slightly less good interaction/draw/tutor/ramp
The niche decks also tend to be very limited in what cards you can include. The restrictions tend to be so severe that card inclusions are too obvious instead of actual decisions. Decks like titania, protector of argoth are not at all interesting to me because it feels like the deck is already made for me.
wild ricochet
aethersnatch
commandeer
desertion
perplexing chimera
kaervek the merciless
mana drain
spell swindle
plasm capture
overwhelming intellect
refuse // cooperate
sudden substitution
mischievous quanar
dualcaster mage
fury storm
insidious will
reiterate
twincast
The deckbuilding is(was) the interesting part of the game. If that's just a template now there is nothing left in this game for me to enjoy.
Let's start with an assumption that we'll have something around 40 lands.
Alright so now we need our mana rocks, gotta accelerate to keep up with the rest of the table after all.
14 slots gone, filled with 2 mana accelerants, broken fast mana, some of the more recent edh specific ramp like dockside extortionist
Also need to draw cards, lots of cards preferably, ramp into card draw being one of the biggest edh tactics.
another 10 slots gone to card draw.
Now for interaction spells
Maybe 6 counterspells, 6 single target removal spells, 6 mass removal spells, 18 slots gone
Add in some cantrips and tutor spells...
4 tutors + 4 cantrips, another 8 slots gone
so we have 1 + 40 + 14 + 10 + 18 + 8 = 91 card slots gone before we've even gotten to the interesting part of the deck.
And all of these cards are staple powerhouses that outclass most synergy.
Maybe we cut 5 land, now we have...14 card slots to play with.
Any cut here is cutting an extremely high quality draw spell, interaction spell, ramp spell, tutor, or essential ramp.
Where is the fun in deciding what to include anymore? You have no slots to work with.
"You sound like you just don't want to lose"
"I can't spend money on cards right now"
"I only have the one deck"
"I want to win"
"I prefer games with stronger cards"
"Combo is just part of the game"
and so on
I honestly believe it is mostly people just repeating it without having ever tried it or needing to try it, because that's what the edh rules emphasize. Every time I have tried it with different groups it doesn't work.
Yes actually, people don't want to spend money on weak cards. That's a thing. Why would you believe this isn't a thing?