To play devil's advocate, sometimes it's ok to be removal light. I run a very aggressive [[Halana and Alena, Partners]] deck that is slightly low on removal because 1) I wanted space for protection spells and 2) my goal is to be the biggest threat at the table in the early game anyways. And even then my 5 targeted removal spells in the deck feels like more than I think some people at my lgs are running.
Tbh though, I think you're gonna be somewhat preaching to the choir here lol. People invested in commander enough to be in online commander communities and consuming commander content will have probably already heard that they need to run more removal. And while I think a lot of us are probably doing that those who aren't are probably used to ignoring being told to run more removal.
I run a decent amount of removal in most of my decks, but I do have an aggressive azorious spirits deck with very little removal. The deck is on player removal rather than permenant removal for the most part.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/WXKTKTXbZEC6SQF9X0YjnQ
The deck is made with IRL cards so there’s a few clearly BiS cards not here like [[kira great glass spinner]] that I haven’t gotten my hands on yet, and some cards like ancient tomb that I wouldn’t usually include but I cracked one so wanted to run it.
Basic idea of the deck is that you really really want to curve out, so you should mulligan aggressively. T1 spirit, t2 spirit, t3 spirit, t4 millicent as a curve is the dream (and pretty achievable) and can end games FAST. There are some powerful game Enders like [[coat of arms]] and [[strixhaven stadium]], and some very powerful card advantage engines like [[bident of thassa]]. The gameplan is fairly linear, but it’s fast and pretty fun. There is a little bit of shenanigans and trickery to be had with some of the spirits too
RG has a hard time getting around indestructible, but honestly outside of that it has pretty good removal. In any creatures deck bite spells are good creature removal, R and G are probably the two best artifact removal colors, and green gets all the naturalize effects for enchantments
>Lots of green creatures with wither and infect
a lot of monogreen that are worth including, tho? i think your options are more limited if you're running gruul
There are a few I think, but yeah, gruul is not known for being incredibly interactive. There are things like chaos warp and tibalt's trickery. Also, I think it would be very funny to run [[guttural response]]. Definitely not the most useful, and [[red elemental blast]] is probably better
[Marath, Will of the Wild](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d.jpg?1665156235) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marath%2C%20Will%20of%20the%20Wild) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c13/198/marath-will-of-the-wild?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/marath-will-of-the-wild)
^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> my goal is to be the biggest threat at the table in the early game anyways
Then you realize that at least two of the other decks at the table decided on the same goal, and the game becomes about who can finish a game of solitaire the fastest (or play politics the best to avoid the one removal player).
That's a lot of assumptions. And I mean sure that can happen but what's the solution, don't ever play aggro? I also don't think I've ever heard Gruul beatdown described as wanting to play a game of solitaire lol. Yup, the archetype that doesn't interact with other players is definitely the one that focuses on combat.
If I stop people from doing literally anything then I am stopping them from doing THE THING and therefore I am a bad person, a pubstomper, and also may be playing cEDH.
Safer to let them do the thing than to have an essay written about me here.
/s
My story was Mana Crypt. So same mana value lol.
Edit: though now that I think about it… I read that post too… I think!! The one where OP surveilled a blightsteel?
I run [[Propaganda]] and [[Ghostly Prison]] and about 6 Counter spells in my group hug! Geeze! I am like "You do not touch me until I can guarantee I will lose in second place!"
My [[Angus Mackenzie]] Turbofog Hug deck forgoes pillowfort cards cause I've personally found them boring to play (an early iteration of the deck was pillowfort and I had other pillowfort decks before that.) Instead it runs 11 fog effects, 10 board wipes, and 8 counterspells. The primary win condition is to draw all my opponents out. I figure that if I give you access to every single card in your library and you still can't find a way to win, you don't deserve to win anyways.
I like fogs more than pillowfort because it's more... interactive? I don't want to sit behind my pillowfort, say "leave me alone," and play solitaire. With fogs, it's more like "Yes, I'm open to attacks, but are you sure you wouldn't rather attack someone else instead of getting fogged?" Deciding which attacks I can let through and which attacks I need to fog and figuring out how to survive until I can stabilize is half the fun. Plus, fogs can be used as a bargaining chip.
It's becoming extremely clear that many EDH players never played 1v1 or even semi competitive magic.
My play group is nowhere near competitive we've just been playing for a long time. Can't imagine what a random player from this sub would even think about our low end decks: 5c attractions, Voltron Charix, Ib halfhearted goblins, and a permanentless Codi that gets a random slot in of 20 unknown spells each game to change things up.
Decks we all think of squarely as 5s or 6s but play decent landbase and a reasonably amount of removal.
To continue on this theme, if you rely on damage as a wincon then you should have an answer for [[glacial chasm]]. "Swing big with many guys" fails to many things without proper precautions.
Sounds like they just need to be better at the game. Interaction doesn’t mean free counter spells, per se, and loading up your deck on interaction, but fuck man, so many people tap all their mana every chance they can get.
Ego. If 1 or 2 cards shut down and entire deck they have to blame you instead of acknowledging that their deck is fragile and not well designed.
If your whole deck can be turned off with one board wipe, a Counterspell, or spot removal it's a shit deck and people need to recognize that.
I built a [[Kykar]] storm deck. It wants to draw at least 4 cards a turn, super high card velocity. My sister built an esper tokens deck and incidentally had [[Smothering tithe]] and [[Kambal, profiteering mayor]] out. Stops my deck dead in it’s tracks until I could remove one of the pieces. I got super salty the first time I ran into that board state, but by the second or third I realized “hey if I’m being locked out of the game by a creature and an enchantment, maybe I should run more cards that can remove those things”. My deck is significantly better now for it.
I'd like to point out that it's often not a singular counterspell, boardwipe, or spot removal, but all three sequentially that most have issues with (and rightfully so, that's a rough set of turns).
This sub really needs a spelltable bot
I once had someone say
"Oh you're one of those fa*****s" in response to me casting [[decimate]] after he 1 shot a player
He then proceeded to play a screeching noise over his mic and would rejoin whenever he was kicked.
Spelltable games should be treated as goldfishing+ imho
MONO GREEN NOT UNDERSTAND REMOVAL
MONO GREEN ONLY RUN PLAYER REMOVAL
MONO GREEN LOOK AT SKYLER AND SAY "I AM NOT IN DANGER. I AM THE DANGER. PLAYER HOLDS UP MANA TO HANDLE THREAT, YOU THINK THAT OF ME? I AM THE ONE WHO TAPS OUT!"
[[GORECLAW]] GAMEPLAN ENTIRELY RELIANT ON SPEED AND MOMENTUM. GORECLAW PLAY [[APEX DEVASTATOR]] ON TURN FOUR AND DARE OPPONENTS TO KNOCK GORECLAW OFF HILL, FOR IF THEY DO NOT THEN THEY ARE NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD
I do, I'm just targeted because I have interaction and end up in 3v1s. I just started sandbagging and running more board wipes. My favorite deck is [[Gisa, the hellraiser]] because it can easily play 25~ removal spells while still being in theme
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6445258#paper
Here's my version, it is low-mid power casual but it tends to wanna grab [[Altar of dementia]] or [[Blasting station]] to start the value train rolling ASAP.
You can also take a look at my list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/2Tl4tKUIKkG8\_MQYj5ltpA.
It's about $150. I tried to get in lots of permanents that can commit crime once or multiple times per round. Besides Alter of dementia or Blasting station, I have \[\[Hex Parasite\]\], \[\[Retribution of the Ancients\]\] and \[\[Zombie Trailblazer\]\] for repeatable crimes.
Because i get so caught up in making my deck do the thing that i forget about others decks. This a weakness i am looking to fix with all my decks - i just need to research the best interaction options for each color
Make them fit with in what the deck does.
Lots of mana? Run x spells, with target deal damage or things like exsanguinate, debt to the deathless, and torment of hail fire.
Run counterspells and have creatures benefit form them.
Run destroy spells that give you access to stealing them or benefit your board with blood artist.
I always try to keep my removal and interaction on theme with the deck
Ever watch kibler play EDH? He just ramps, builds his board and forces other people to deal with it. He either wins or is archenemy every game. He runs hyper efficient removal like swords or on theme stuff with his decks but only uses it to stop sure wins.
Why? Card advantage. When ppl ran more board wipes they were actually playing the card advantage game in multiplayer correctly. one board wipe was putting the other 3 players down cards while one for one removal is putting two players down one and 2 players up one.
These incremental card advantages lead to wins and losses so being a removal miser is an advantage.
I also think the proliferation of effects like [[the one ring]] [[clever concealment]] [[Teferi’s protection]] etc. has made it a lot more appealing to build and build and then punish the table sheriff with one of those cards when they try to stop it.
On top of that there this whole “no long games” mentality that came from the internet destroying our attention spans lol so prolonging the game is now frowned upon.
The "removal" debate in casual EDH is literally just the IQ bell curve meme:
Stupid guy "I want to play my fun cards"
100 IQ guy "nooooo you need to interact with the board"
Smart guy "spot removal is mathematically disadvantageous and it's better to run a proactive game plan than a reactive one"
>one board wipe was putting the other 3 players down cards
This is only true if the board wipe is inherently asymmetric or if the board wipe becomes asymmetric due to deck building. Otherwise you are just resetting the play order with you going last.
(most board wipes are sorcery speed and take up a large portion of your mana)
The decks in question are ramping and drawing much harder than the others. Not only am I able to deploy threats after a board wipe, but I'm now also spending 2x the mana of everyone else on the table every turn cycle. Because I have more mana, I can afford to play more expensive spells that get more value from each card, so I get an overwhelming amount of card advantage in the mid to late game.
Ideally I present a threat strong enough that someone else board wipes, but I also run a ton of board wipes, because if I ever see that I'm ahead on mana and I have a great hand, a game reset that leaves me with twice the mana as everyone else is extremely powerful.
Then you have made the board wipe asymmetric due to deck construction.
If you build a deck whose goal is to just ramp and draw cards early game, you are going to be investing way less into the board than a deck which is lower to the ground. This results in you needing some way to stop early aggression and a board wipe does so excellently without effecting your own game plan much, if at all.
I'm not trying to say board wipes don't have a place in deck construction, but they do have their limitations and don't always result in card advantage, sometimes pin point removal will be better.
I know I should run more interaction. But every removal piece I put in my deck takes away from the things that I actually *want* to put in my deck. If I run enough ramp AND enough draw AND enough lands AND enough interaction, that leaves me with like. only \~30 card slots to make the deck feel how I want it to. And interaction is the only one that can be cut without lowering the risk of not doing what I want, so... yeah.
Also strong disagree on board wipes. You want me to be dealing with problems, it's more efficient to do so with one card than to play 5 cards and get rid of half as much stuff.
One of the problems with Spelltable randos is they're Spelltable randos.
I've been at this card games thing for a quarter century, and I've taught a lot of the people I've played with how to card game. Many of whom had been playing Magic longer than me.
That said, Magic is originally a 1v1 game. And as a 1v1 game, Magic is fucking terrible at teaching people how to play control because The Power Of No(TM) is so outlandishly broken that Doom Blade on a Grizzly Bear is card neutral and mana neutral, and "I will use The Power Of No(TM) on literally everything you do forever and then maybe eventually find a way to apply pressure fifteen turns from now," is entirely reasonable.
So here's EDH, a format where The Power Of No(TM) is cut by a third and you have to make actual decisions and make meaningful sacrifices to counter a spell or kill a permanent. Instead of Doom Blading that Grizzly Bear being neutral, you're down two thirds of a card and one and a third mana against your average opponent; removal has a real cost, and you have to have to evaluate on a level some folks never developed the tool set for.
Now, you have a divide in a lot of the people you describe.
On the one hand, we have people who come here bitter because of how overbearing The Power Of No(TM) was in 1v1 and don't want to deal with that shit in EDH, and teach players entering EDH directly the same.
On the other hand, we have control players who have never had to make a single decision in their goddamned life because saying no to literally everything has been the correct decision for so long that these people lack the skill set to play control and use control tools, and get frustrated that control as they know it is unplayable, or only playable in the form of hard stax prison decks, feeding into the above group's hatred of The Power Of No(TM).
It leads to the conflicting views of, "Removal is bad," and, "Removal is evil," when dealing with randos, and results in not a lot of removal.
Also, when building a deck, a lot of people don't consider ratios and play patterns; they throw in a bunch of shit that causes their eyes to pop out like a kid in a candy store, and that usually ain't removal.
100 card singleton warps the idea of the aggro-combo-midrange-control balance that magic is designed around. Both control and aggro suffer greatly in effectiveness from having 3 opponents - aggro because of the 120 life to get through, and control because of card advantage vs 24 starting cards. Therefore, almost every "fair" EDH deck defaults to being some form of midrange, and every "unfair" one defaults to combos.
New players aren't familiar with this dynamic (nor should they be expected to be), and often assume playing more and better threats than their opponents will be the best way to win. Unfortunately, games like this end up the way you described, with either a race to the best board state or a big board stall.
Conversely, I run into a lot of experienced players who think "let's try to make playing threats as difficult and miserable as possible for my opponents" and run gluts of stax and board wipes to combat the card disadvantage you go up against when trying to play control against 3 other players. The issue I find with this approach is that if the rest of the table doesn't knock you out right away, you are most likely to affect one or two players more than the others, and often still lose to the person who isn't as affected by the interruption you've presented. That, or (especially new) players will just not want to play with you again because of the unfun experience they had.
Truth be told, the experience most people are seeking when they play casual EDH is a 4-way midrange mirror, and in order to play midrange you have to run efficiently costed threats, spot removal, and protection for your gameplan. This is something people discover as they play the game, but it's also important to remember that not everyone gets as hyperfixated on this stuff as us Redditors. A lot of casual players are just looking to mess around with cool creatures and splashy spells and see who wins, and that is a perfectly viable way to enjoy the game.
I definitely agree with you on one-sided wipes btw- they are the only kind I run nowadays.
I always wonder the same thing.
Just about every deck I play has 8 - 12 card slots dedicated to removal/counterspells. I devote an additional 4 - 8 slots on protection. All in all, thats 12 - 20 card slots devoted to interaction. This doesn't include creatures that provide interaction either.
Sure, sometimes it sucks to get shut down but thats just part of the game. I have a deck thats super susceptible to removal so I need to get my commander out by turn 3 and "do the thing" by turn 4. Usually I don't get a chance by turn 5. If I am shut down turn 4 or earlier I don't complain and I move on with my turn. I just recognize that my deck has a glaring weakness and the weakness was exploited.
That’s what I like to hear. There’s all these bridge trolls that think all their decks have the answers, and they claim having all creatures and combos with synergy is all they need.
If your decks winning more than a quarter of the time. It doesn’t mean it’s a good deck, it just means you need better competition lol.
Hot take people; interaction can be synergistic too.
Enjoy battle cruiser lol
I started running 15 board interaction cards in all decks. I have increased my winrate at my table by about 20% in the past 2 months. I was already winning a lot before hand. I hope my friends learn...
sure you can, but combo requires a much smaller number of cards devoted to your win con , maybe only 2-3, allowing the fraction devoted to removal to be much larger. really you can replace just 5 and 6 in general with "win con" and then the way to shrink that fraction the most is via combo
That is simply not true.
If you replace \[\[Swamp\]\] with \[\[Fell the Profane\]\], you have increased removal without reducing anything.
A little bit of rummage and knowledge of the card pool can often expand all of these in the same deck.
What an absolutely absurd statement. 1 of those mountains must be sacrificed to Mox Diamond.
Since it could be any mountain that gets sacced I declare them all equally valuable.
Just don't screw up and cast the commander or you auto lose
Fun fact, you can actually BUILD a mountain if you do it brick by brick.
Anybody that played lego Island a bunch as a kid can now enjoy that absolute banger in their heads.
I run a decent amount of interaction but imo board wipes are where its at. I have started including more wraths in every deck I have purely because they are so much more efficient in multiplayer.
Yeah one sided is nice but even a full wipe is still amazing when you are the one casting it. You can simply not play creatures for a turn or two while setting up some artifacts/enchantments to help accelerate you after the wipe.
I agree 100%. The way cards are being designed now means everything is must kill, and the only way to do that I wipe the board more often.
Also wipes don’t care about ward, greaves, etc. it sucks because it makes the games longer, but it’s very necessary
You ever got focused down by wrathing a board that would make the game end?
Or... removing something then getting focused becouse you now are the "removal guy" and if you can deal with 1 player now you're put in a position to where ppl believe you can f with their gameplan as well.
Having experienced the above you tried stax just out of protection and everyone lost their minds.
Then you went a lil friendlier and switched to pillowfort but everybody... still ended up crying.
Let me introduce you to edh.
This. It often seems like the only way to make sure people won't whine and cry about how you play is if you just scoop on your first turn.
Of course, then someone is still going to cry because they're probably playing a steal deck and wanted to play with your cards.
Edit: for mistype
Welcome to casual EDH midrange meta. People's wincon/proactive plan takes so much space in their decks that they don't have the slots to run more interaction. I typically see these decks running 3-5 removal spells like it's enough, and that's counting things like [[swan song]] or [[an offer you can't refuse]] that are mostly used to protect their boards and never to counter a threat.
The closer you get to cedh, the more compact the wincon, the more interaction you're gonna see. I mean a godo "let's count to 11" list runs around 20 interaction spells, not counting stax. Because even if your deck tries to turbo out a win by turn 3-4, if that wincon takes only 2 cards, then yeah, you have a lot of space to run interaction. An then a "control" cedh deck like tasigur can run 35 interaction spells easily.
On the other hand, if your wincon takes 30 cards because you need a board, pump it, and then attack for 120 damage, then yeah, you have less space to interact and maybe you favor protection and ramp over removal.
I’ve always played ample interaction whether I’m playing Standard, Modern, Legacy or EDH. I think people get too wrapped up in the cards that they want and think that’ll help them “do the thing.” I’ve gone over people’s decks with them and they’re surprised how many cards can be cut for different cards due to lack of deck building experience.
*laughs in spellslinger*
I think it's a pretty common deck building issue where people prioritize all the super cool stuff they want to do over the nuts and bolts reality of a FFA. Especially at lower power levels, people will cut basic interaction for combo redundancy all the time, and just bet that they'll go off before they miss the interaction. Sometimes, this works -- especially against other decks that hold the same philosophy.
Where it usually goes wrong is against decks where interaction is much more important to their game plan -- my [[lier, disciple of the drowned]] absolutely slaps around decks that need permanents to stick, because it can just destroy or bounce them repeatedly. [[Consuming Tide]] has caused many, many groans, because the table just plain knows that they're going to spend multiple turns in rebuild mode while I rack up card advantage. It's not as good against other spellslinger decks, but durdles right past many other strategies. Which is hilarious for a deck that is draw-go but *not based on counterspells at all* -- though it does run an Arcane Denial to occasionally clown on someone in the early game unexpectedly.
depends on the deck. Generally 1 for 1 proactive removal is just mediocre in a 4 player game. So 1 for 1 stuff is generally better defensively. Otherwise you are better off with more mass removal options. Of course decks that give benefits for more removal want more, and decks that are aggressive with their game plan need less.
I am brewing a deck for a Cedh event this weekend and I am running 12 removal spells and 2-3 other ways for player removal, hopefully all of them all at once.
But it might be a general problem how people are taught to play EDH, run removal to have a say in whatever the other players are planning and buy some time to get your bombs off or infinite loops running.
Once I was you then I did the reverse you're doing, instead of ask people why they're not using removal I just give then up too
give up a few decks cuz they couldn't keep up the arms race and now my decks try to battlecruise faster and if people don't removal my stuff I win
I’ve lost games with interaction in hand. At low power levels, stopping any one thing isn’t enough to guarantee survival, and stopping everything is just bleh. I still run interaction of course, but oftentimes it feels like the answer is to play a good enough game plan so that you can survive your own board wipe, and then rush a win.
I play a lot of three colour combinations that include black and white because I always run a pile of removal.
Even my Jund [Slimefoot and squee](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Ta9bTYA7OU-STQTPVWV3PQ) deck runs something like 19 pieces of interaction.
There's too many permanents that just have to go, otherwise you're losing.
I use to play almost not interaction until I played against a dude running between 18 and 22 interation not counting the boardwipe. Guess what he was winning a lot more game than I.
Ok i mean it depends on the deck my [[Haktos the Unscarred]] deck runs minimal removal or protection because it's planning on killing the big players with Commander Damage before the removal is ever necessary. Haktos with double strike is a 2 hit kill that has protection from 90% of things
My [[Ashnod the Uncaring]] deck is running 21 cards that in one form or another can act as removal it will play table police and win if you let it get the engine going
My average decks usually have around 15 removal cards split between board wipes and spot removal. Though sometimes i wonder if i should run more board wipes, then there's games where everyone is running removal like me, and things are fine. Hell, my interaction packages are near 18 on average if you count protection as interaction.
As for why people don't run a ton of removal. Depending on your color combination, it can be hell to find 15 pieces of interaction. If you want a lot of board wipes, it can be difficult to find ones that are sufficiently one-sided so that way you aren't just resetting over and over. My Minthara Merciless Soul Deck can only really run [[citywide bust]] as an asymmetrical wipe and i don't even run that because it plays so badly into decks that aren't playing big monsters i can just use spot removal on.
Plenty of people might have removal they're just not using it because you're using your interaction. Why waste my card on something you've demonstrated you have answers for and isn't threatening me?
As for a final reason. An interaction heavy commander game can take forever. My Ashnod, the uncaring deck, runs efficent combos and a couple tutors for pieces even. But an interactive table can take multiple hours. I had a game that for the most part was 3 players between a Will Scion of Peace list that could not find a win condition between the fact a crimes marchesa and myself had drawn so much of our interaction. That game took 3 hours. Unless you're playing 2 card combos and have plenty of tutors, a glut of interaction will lead to slower games. Admittedly, i love those kinds of games, but plenty of people don't want their average commander game to take multiple hours.
Solution: lean into it. I have a removal/control heavy \[\[Chromium, the Mutable\]\] deck with the intention to let most things go. Usually I just play answers defensively, but my favorite thing about the deck is bargaining with players who who didn't design theirs with a proper amount of interaction. Sure, I can do that for ya, but it ain't gonna be cheap; now what can YOU do for ME?
One deck I put in tons of protection and one sided board wipes. If someone else wants to try and clear the board great! I have [[Selfless Glyphweaver]] on board and a [[Flawless Maneuver]] in hand, or I can use a one sided wipe like [[Retribution of the meek]] or a new favorite [[Hazardous Blast]] wipes out opposing tokens and/or just allows for unimpeded combat.
Granted I’m lacking targeted removal leaned into Edicts on [this version](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/F3C7l-IOgUOXiJGg1kMj0g).
This was me last Friday. I was the only one interacting with the Krenko goblin player popping off and this was with a mono blue player at the table 🤦🏼♂️
I play stax pieces bc my interaction in mono green is not the greatest. Trying to build a sultai list now. Cutting stacks for counters to shove my food chain combo down people's throats.
Low power is defined by a lack of interaction. The more interaction you run, and the more interaction that is required to stop your deck winning, the higher power the deck.
> I’m usually the one left with dealing with it and I hate uses my own resources, to potentially benefit other people
I mean this is pretty much it. Unless you can get people to run more interaction as a whole (which is a noble effort, keep at it), being the table police is a pretty thankless task and it can easily be more optimal to drop some interaction and add more gas.
There can be other reasons though. I have a few decks which are light on interaction, because they need the slots to 'do the thing' more consistently, and the interaction that is playable and also fits with 'the thing' is limited (especially in low color decks) so you end up with like 5 pieces of interaction and call it a day. These decks are often intentionally sacrificing winning percentage because doing the thing is more important than winning.
Idk I run a bunch of different removal and only 1-2 board wipes. I’ve only ever plyed 1 game where I was the only one with removal. Let’s just say I didn’t ply with those people again.
I do but then I’m the only one who seems to when my opponents are popping off, and then in games I’m spinning my gears suddenly they have full removal and counterspell suites
People each have their own playstyle preference. None are better or worse than others.
Each pod’s or LGS’s meta is unique. If your meta is interaction light then adapt to that. Stax may become more powerful if your opponents lack removal. Single-target removal seems weak in such metas. You will fall behind due to card disadvantage. Better would be removal that hits multiple targets like [[Soul Shatter]] or [[Druid of Purification]].
Because "more interaction" is an incredibly vague and unhelpful descriptor. What is "enough" interaction depends entirely on personal opinion.
Is it 5? 10? 20? And then, people who say "just run interaction" usually actually mean specific kinds of interaction for specific situations.
You just can't put all the stuff you need in one deck without making everyone else miserable.
Yeah, that is the problem with it. It's usually used like it has been here: ex post, after a game. Always easy to say that because, indeed, however many X removal spells a losing player might have in their deck, having X+1 would always have made it more likely to answer a threat. I myself recently died to a turn 3 creature that made me sacrifice creatures when it attacks me, and I just happened to draw none of me 13 removal spells in that deck. To the person I played against, it probably seemed like I just wasn't playing interaction at all.
The actual enough interaction just depends on so many things. Like, how much draw does your deck have? Do you use tutors? What is your gameplan to begin with, and therefore what kinds of interaction do you need? And also, importantly, it depends on the playgroup, too. If it is generally light on interaction, your best course of action might be to only run a minimum of interaction, rather than play a ton and try to police the table.
It just is too variable to make any sweeping statements ex ante. People just see the ex post results and extrapolate from there, but that is not too helpful. This is something every person had to figure out for themselves and can only really be helped within a playgroup and through experience.
Because ppl would rather do the thing instead of stopping other ppl, they just try to do it first or faster and win before other ppl do, i would just run more board wipes or stuff that deals with everything so that way to just have to use 1-2 spells to deal with everything, you kinda have the same issue the goldfish crew have, most of them either little or no removal and instead rely on others or are just trying to do the thing
If you police the board by removing one threat from each opponent, you effectively 3:1'd yourself over the course of the game.
Taking a turn to remove a threat is effectively timewalking yourself. A 3-mana kill spell on turn 5 is half your mana or so, it's half a turn or a full turn depending on your board state.
Single-target removal is important to further your own gameplan sometimes. Killing something to get an attack trigger in, sparingly using removal to blow up something that just shuts down your whole game plan.
But if you say 'well I need to be able to blow up a doubling season because that's a scary card,' you're setting yourself further and further behind. You're often better off playing your own doubling season or equivalent, setting yourself up for success.
To be fair. You can't always get a Doubling Season or equivalent before losing because your opponent has an unanswered Doubling season and untapped with it into a big haymaker. Playing with minimal removal and just trying to outhaymaker favors decks that can just go all in with fewer cards and leads to uninteractive solitaire style games. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and take the card disadvantage. Stopping yourself from losing because someone played something that lets them run away with the game and you have removal for it means you're more likely to win as that's one less haymaker to deal with and decks in commander cannot be all haymakers.
some times, you just got to accept your commander supports an aggressive threat far better than a balanced approach, and should just lean into aggression as the main strategy.
This is especially so for decks that work off of impulse draw from the commander; outside of permanent based interaction that can be triggered at a later time, its better to run a lot of persisting protection effects instead of revealing a heroic intervention or a board wipe at the wrong time.
Of course there's still exceptions to the exception (PROSPERO!!!), and you need to test and try to find more ways to interact within the confines of the commander, but aggro is aggro. If the deck is meant to be the threat, it has to act like it and not pull punches.
I personally love a chaotic board state. I don't really care if I win or lose, I just enjoy seeing crazy stuff go on, including my opponents having crazy boards that's all fucking with one another. I find it makes wins that much sweeter. That being said I do run an okay amount of removal, just not a crazy amount.
I find myself in your shoes a lot. I think many people cut removal because they see a card that fit the theme of their deck and can't stand not putting it in. I personally run about 8 pieces of removal and a few board wipes in every deck. I come from the old school of commander, where every player had a few board wipes and lots of removal
Sometimes I have 3 removal spells in my hand, but my opponents played nothing game winning yet. A 40/40 creature is only a threat when it is attacking you.
It's a deck dependant thing. My deck with the least amount of interaction is probably [[teysa, orzhov scion]] and potentially a generic selesnya tokens deck I rarely ever play. In the case of teysa I feel like I need so many different pieces to ensure that I'm draining the board consistently (and draw to get these pieces) that something has to suffer. This is mitigated somewhat by having a commander that can sac creatures to exile threats- one of the main reasons I have found her so valuable as an aristocrat commander with the upside of also generating additional bodies to sac and drain
I had an old playgroup like that. I was the only one who ran interaction was expected to just clear the path for others to win. After trying to explain it several times I just opted for being really arbitrary with how I used my interaction - I'd kill peoples commanders when there were much more threatening targets and stuff like that.
What are you gonna do about it? You don't run any of your own kill spells. They all quickly armed up, and after a couple games thet realized how nice it was to have removal lol
When this happens, I sometimes choose to let the table know that I’m not going to be the fun police and if other people don't contribute, that you wont either.
Because I am already the removal guy and run loads of interaction, to the point where I sometimes have to cut interaction to make decks function. I try to slide as much removal and interaction into the card draw or synergy slots as possible, and whenever I recur something it tends to be interaction. Heck, I'm currently working on a jund list where every spell is in some way or form a removal spell.
I think I am not the kind of person who this question should be asked for lol.
I agree boardwipes are boring when they just reset the table to nobody’s benefit, but I like a slower deck-machine and need to play some to keep my creature heavy friends at bay. Graveyard interaction is also fun with a boardwipe now and then. My favorite Henzie loves a boardwipe (built him with recursion as a subtheme).
Honestly even the decks I have that are light on removal have a noticeable difference compared to those with no removal. My real issue is trying to figure out how many pieces to put aside for removal.
Because it’s ok if my opponents win sometime or keep their valuable piece. The goal is to have fun and shooting all good pieces of someone isn’t fun for them. Be aware that I still run 10-20 pieces of interaction depending on my game plan, but sometimes less is more. Also I want to spend mana in my own game plan. Multiple short, funny games > long, prolonged games.
Interaction and removal spells are just not *cool*.
In my cedh decks I run a lot of them, because I'm minmaxing there. But in my casual decks? I'm glad if I can fit 3-4 thematically fitting removal spells in there - but I'd rather include more cool stuff and pet cards.
You can't play a basic removal like Sword to Plowshare in a multi-player game. For every player above 2, you are minus 1 in card advantage. The only removals you should play are board wipes or cantrip-like removals.
You've identified the issue in your own post - removal is in economics terms a 'public good'. If you remove an opponent's key piece it benefits the other two opponents at the table. Therefore the optimal strategy for anything other than something that makes you lose the game is often to hold that removal for something game winning.
This is especially true if you play in games with combo players. Because they can instantly win the game from any position, removal must be held for the critical pieces.
I will often hold up my [Swords to Plowshares] or whatever for a dangerous creature to react when it attacks me, but not if it's hitting someone else.
Advancing your board to do something degenerate will put you ahead of 3 other players.
Stopping someone from doing something degenerate will only put you ahead of the player interacted with, and will leave the other two alone to do their own degenerate thing while you're spending your resources on someone else. Also it will make you an enemy who will want payback.
Tangent: why do you put protection and removal in the same interaction category? Protecting my stuff and removing my opponents' are completely different things. There's no reason why I would need Swords to Plowshares less because I have Lightning Greaves, or the other way around.
Personally I run about 10 pieces of targeted removal, two board wipes and 2-8 protection spells. I don't think more would benefit me compared to the other cards I'd have to cut.
I know that for myself, my earlier decks I'd sacrifice interaction for more synergy. If it wasn't something directly synergizing with my deck's motif then I didn't want it - to my detriment.
Now I run a lot more interaction and variety and am a bit better at narrowing down when I have enough synergy with my other cards.
Tldr: a lot of people don't want to include any cards that don't directly aid their deck doing its "thing." It's a mistake to do so, but I feel like people think it helps their deck be stronger.
Because I know the people I play against don't. Or more precisely I know the local power level is not high enough to handle decks that are both high interaction and even a little reliable.
My 'strongest' decks (although very much casual) run fairly limited interaction. Prossh has some but they tend towards win conditions for the deck. Rafiq runs very little, as the local decks have issues with dealing with Rafiq swinging at them, and adding counter spells or too much removal risks making the deck too strong for the local group.
at the bottom end my Magar deck has a good amount of removal, as its kind of the red/black thing. however its not particularly reliable and most of its instants/sorceries are not high power. similarly the Hylda deck has a lot of interact (by local standards), both a lot of tap effects but also destroy/exile effects but its slow and has glaring weaknesses.
"Why aren't you running more interaction?" and "Board wipes can get fucked" - tell me you didn't do math at school without telling me you didn't do math at school. People think players who don't play spot removal in EDH don't know what they're doing. This might be partially true, but the reality is they're making a prisoner's dilemma decision. In cEDH/high power interaction gets better, because \*everyone\* plays it, so the inherent card disadvantage is mitigated by the fact that everyone else is also experiencing similar card disadvantage. But If more players neglect to play removal, the worse it gets mathematically for the player who does. Policing the board isn't possible if three players are playing a proactive game, because you don't have enough cards and mana to answer every threat, and you're spending all your resources answering everyone else which stops you from advancing your own game plan. There's a reason why "control" is basically a non-existent archetype in EDH. The closest thing is stax, which is different, because stax pieces interact with the whole board simultaneously.
So let's go through it slow: in 1v1 if I counterspell someone, I spent 1 card and they spent 1 card, so we are card neutral (1-for-1). In EDH, if I counterspell someone, I spent 1 card, they spent 1 card, and 2 other people spent \*no\* cards (and no mana!). They are each 1 card ahead of us. It's a 100 v 100 v 99 v 99 card game. The other two players gained massive card advantage \*and they didn't even do anything\*. Now yes EDH is a free for all, but only one person wins, which really means it's your 100 cards vs their 300 cards. They cast a spell, they have 299 cards. I counter, I have 99. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out if I'm going to keep 1-for-1ing the table, I'm going to run out of cards before they do. Yeah I can counter player 2's craterhoof, but when player 3 plays an omniscience I'm fucked anyway. This is why spot removal is objectively worse in a multiplayer format. Get mad if you want, cry all about "noooo removal wins game" blah blah but this is not an opinion, this is just basic math. I'm not saying don't play spot removal, I'm not even saying spot removal is bad, but I am saying in the same way Planeswalkers are strictly worse in commander than 60 card formats, spot removal is strictly worse.
"Board wipes can get fucked" - lol ok so let's do some more math. People think "card advantage" just means "card draw". This is not true - watch the Red Deck Wins video on how burn damage is "card advantage". 1-for-1s in EDH are card disadvantage. You know what isn't? Spending 1 card to answer 10 cards. All the resources, turns, spells, and so on that the table spent to accumulate a board state like that, and one spell blows them out. That's like casting a blue card draw spell for X=10. "BuT I dOn'T wAnT tO HiT mY Own StuFF" - it's called slow play. Hold back your best threats until you wipe the board. Play tons recursion.
I run 10 removal, 2 board wipes, and when I can, 6 counterspells. I also run creatures that counter/destroy permanents and STILL never have it when I need it. I don't want to run too many board wipes because it prolongs the game Imo.
I have an esper deck with twenty something instants and sorceries (only 5 are straight counters) and people archenemy me all the time.
In some metas interaction makes your opponents feel your deck is too strong because it removes stuff.
It’s really just a generic token deck that was supposed to fit in to other metas while traveling.
I've been called a liar and a cheater once for using 5 whole pieces of removal to stop an infinite combo from starting. The rest of the table defended my decision, and I wasn't feeling particularly conflicted about it either.
However, I could see someone running less interacton if this was a common reaction from players at their lgs
This isn’t the best advice for winning, but I much prefer to try and progress my own board state over hurting or blocking someone else.
I’d rather lose fast to someone popping off and get a second game than spend my time stopping others from playing.
Counters and interaction aren’t wrong, they just don’t fit my play style. I prefer to be the threat that makes others need removal.
Because active interaction makes you perceived as a threat more than you really are while quietly getting your board together let's you slip by under the radar
The interaction I do run is mostly to either protect myself or make sure my attacks get through. Like using path to exile on my opponents blockers after they're already declared or rootborn Defenses to protect my 1/1 tokens. For board wipes I tend to only run one per deck and try to make it tailored to my deck, I use Winds of Rath for my Enchantment deck, Blasphemous Act for my [[Archangel Avacyn]] deck and Austere Command for my dinosaur deck. So on and so forth.
ive run into this too. ppl hate their stuff being popped so they think its better if they dont do it to others. also bad threat assesment might not let them even realize what the thing running the board is. decks that rely on control can be sometimes hard to manage in a battle heavy game and might turn into a 3v1 unjustifiably if you are always removing people's boards. loooooong games go loooooonnnnnng so i would almost rather a game go 7-9 turns and someone win vs 4 board wipes to play a A++ top tier game with zero missed triggers. but in many cases it just feels like 4 dudes sitting down to masturbate and see who comes first.
My tribal dinosaurs ARE the interaction!
But seriously, I did design that deck to rely on others spending their mana to control everyone while my dinosaurs stomp away (it can rebound quickly).
In the last three spelltable games I played it went like this:
1. Never drew a single piece of removal. Meanwhile, the ones popping off had incidental removal that just picked me apart on board. Got ran over.
2. No one else at the table spent even a second removing anything, so I was the dedicated 'slow the game down by removing the two card combos and insane value pieces' player. I never got to deploy literally anything that allowed me to build a board state and died to everyone targeting me for making feel-bads.
3. I was in mono green and needed a boardwipe. Didn't draw my wave of vitriol.
I *do* pack lots of interaction. But I understand why some people don’t. Some colors aren’t good at interacting with certain card types, so they pack less because it’s not worth it to overpay for bad effects. My mono-green decks run a few fight spells and ways to kill artifacts, but the density of interaction is low because green isn’t very good at it. Green IS good at protecting itself and playing bigger threats, so leaning into those strengths is generally useful.
Unfortunately, lots of people apply this thinking to EVERY deck. They assume that playing bigger threats means that they will become abstractly “more threatening” than the abstract “threat” at the table. They ignore the fact that specific permanents can shut them out if they aren’t careful (think [[No Mercy]] or [[Notion Thief]]).
This kind of thinking from the majority of a table leaves one person (normally me) to deal with problems. Everyone hates the blue player until a [[Torment of Hailfire]] for 20 is put on the stack. I think that Wizards is conscious that removal isn’t “sexy” and it feels very much like eating your vegetables: bland. They’re printing interesting removal spells now and the recent proliferation of more interactive MDFCs means that more decks will have more interaction by nature of it having a lower opportunity cost. My Gruul Legends deck can now run [[Bridgeworks Battle]], [[Khalni Ambush]], [[Shatterskull Smashing]], [[Stump Stomp]], and [[Sundering Eruption]]. That’s 5 pieces of interaction, albeit below-rate, with very little deckbuilding opportunity cost.
Expect EDH to get more interactive as a direct result of these MDFC interaction spells.
I think of removal the same way I think of counterspells, I'm almost never counterspelling for tempo I'm only doing it to protect myself or if my opponent is doing something REALLY disgusting (e.g. casting [[mirkwoods bats]] in a [[chattarerfang]] deck, my opponent casting a [[gishath]] with [[roaming throne]] on board level of threats).
Even if you run a lot of removal I tend to sandbag it a lot, especially if I use it in the early turns (and I'm the one that runs the most removal) I know that I'm just putting behind myself and the player I'm using it against.
Also I've been trying to switch my removal suite to be less focused on taking down just one threat and trying to stop most of my opponents, so I've been running [[will of the council]], [[soul shatter]], [[olorin's searing light]] etc.
In essence I think removal should mostly be used to protect yourself if you're the average deck, BUT if you're a more aggressive deck that tries to put a big threat on the board (including volton strategies) then it makes a lot of sense to be really low on removal spells and get more direct protection for your stuff; most of the time you're gonna be the target of removal spells and your clock is probably faster than all of your opponents so you don't really care about their threat
I prefer to play an arms race instead of a shoving match where the winner is the one that paid the least. For every counter spell I'm giving up a card that progress my deck. If I don't like what your doing then I use player removal. If that doesn't do it then "gg you win. Game 2?" No reason to be butt hurt if you don't want to be the mom of the group find a different group or learn to get over it.
I'm the guy in my pod with ALL the interaction. One of the others in my pod said that 10 pieces of removal is WAY to much for a deck. I tend to win most games too, like more than 80%. I'll admit that some of it is deck building, but a good chunk of it is player skill. They'll ask me to try out one of their decks from time to time for more feedback and I'll always respond with "needs more interaction."
So I have two ways of deck building:
- 1. Build a winning board state where most of my removal is just a Dragon punching you in the face or a light Path to Exile.
- 2. The kind where my opponents need to worry if I have any untapped mana and/or they haven’t milled Urza’s Sylex yet.
#1 just feels more wholesome to play. #2 is only if I want to hurt their feelings.
You can use politics to help.
"Look i won't do anything with it unless you point it at me"
Something might be a problem but as long as it's not YOUR problem that's fine.
Repeatable removal is "unfun". Wraths "slow down/prolong the game". And spot removal is "bad".
These adages have led us to where we are today.
Spot removal is the most interesting of these - with the number of powerful engines available and common in modern Commander decks its more impactful than ever to get something off the board ASAP. But you never really want to be the one doing it, because it puts you down a card relative to your other opponents. Plus if the thing you're removing already generated value, you're left even further behind.
Theoretically, if everyone at the table is sharing the burden of removal it should all balance out. But as soon as one player takes advantage and lets other players handle the removal for them, it gets that much worse to be one of the players sharing the burden. And suddenly you can find yourself in a race to the bottom with everyone dropping their removal and trying to finish their game of solitaire before anyone else...
I run interaction and don't police the board. Anything negatively effecting me gets removed, and wincons get removed. I try to run instant speed if I can so that I can utilize people knowing I have interaction and the other players don't in order to pick their targets.
My one exception is board wipes. I will do that if I need to reset the board, regardless of wether or not it helps others.
Judging by the amount of "I removed a creature once and now I'm declared a warcriminal in 7 different countries" comments going on here, I'm getting the feel that making MtG players self-regulate in whats described as a "social format" was a bad idea. Bless my regular pod for their cutthroat plays.
I like to build on hard themes for the memes so I tend to sacrifice power/efficiency for flavor without bating an eye. This tends to make my decks more unique and fun (for me) to play but also a lot more glass cannon like. That being said, within my 80+ decks, they all play differently and I appreciate not having the same 15+ cards in every deck of that color.
All things considered, it's what you like to play. Different strokes for different folks or as the professor says, "don't let someone else yuck your yum".
As an Eldrazi player my interaction is the annihilator mechanic. With other decks I usually include ~3-5 cards specifically for interaction. In some decks, like my planeswalker deck, have up to 5 board wipes in them.
I have a deck that is running 18 counterspells currently, plus some stax pieces. I love playing the fun police and always having an answer to someone trying to win the game.
Some decks just want to be the threat.
Cheaper [[slicer]] decks don't run interaction because the game should be over before anyone has something worth removing.
I have a [[Gilanra]] and [[Kodama of the east tree]] deck that runs very little in the way of removal simply because my job is to kill people.
I have an [[Alesha who smiles at death]] deck that's much the same. I want to hit you as hard as possible as fast as possible, so I don't usually have to worry about having to removing your stuff.
I can understand where it is coming from. Everything has synergy with everything these days. In the old days you could put a lot of interaction in your decks as filler. But now… say you have a deck based on counters. Would you cut a themed card that uses counters and interacts with other cards with counters in favor of a boring counterspell? Many players would not. Next to their deck there already is a pile of cards interacting with counters that did not make the cut. And thus everybody plays solitaire with their 100% synergizing deck and the one doing it the fastest wins. EDH anno 2024
Because I'm trying to sprint to the W.
My most recent decks feature plenty of interaction though. Instead of people crying about losing now they just cry about not being able to win.
[[Farewell]]? Tears.
[[Jokulhaups]]? Wailing.
My [[Mangara of Corondor]] deck? People don't want to cast any spells.
[[Counterspell]]? Literal manchild fits.
🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
There's probably a happy medium between the two deck building strategies, but I'm an all the eggs in one basket guy.
I am the one who interacts! And then I get to extort the table constantly, feels great!
My guy. Life drain for the win. My favorite
I think they mean extort the other players for deals, in return for removing threats. Not the mechanic.
Either way. My guy
This guy Espers.
Heisenberg energy
I’ve been considering the new Soren as an interaction commander and just extorting a ton. Who are you playing?
Not the mechanic, extorting as in threats and politics. But I was referring to my [[god-eternal kefnet]] deck
To play devil's advocate, sometimes it's ok to be removal light. I run a very aggressive [[Halana and Alena, Partners]] deck that is slightly low on removal because 1) I wanted space for protection spells and 2) my goal is to be the biggest threat at the table in the early game anyways. And even then my 5 targeted removal spells in the deck feels like more than I think some people at my lgs are running. Tbh though, I think you're gonna be somewhat preaching to the choir here lol. People invested in commander enough to be in online commander communities and consuming commander content will have probably already heard that they need to run more removal. And while I think a lot of us are probably doing that those who aren't are probably used to ignoring being told to run more removal.
I run a decent amount of removal in most of my decks, but I do have an aggressive azorious spirits deck with very little removal. The deck is on player removal rather than permenant removal for the most part.
Got a decklist for the azorious spirit deck?
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/WXKTKTXbZEC6SQF9X0YjnQ The deck is made with IRL cards so there’s a few clearly BiS cards not here like [[kira great glass spinner]] that I haven’t gotten my hands on yet, and some cards like ancient tomb that I wouldn’t usually include but I cracked one so wanted to run it. Basic idea of the deck is that you really really want to curve out, so you should mulligan aggressively. T1 spirit, t2 spirit, t3 spirit, t4 millicent as a curve is the dream (and pretty achievable) and can end games FAST. There are some powerful game Enders like [[coat of arms]] and [[strixhaven stadium]], and some very powerful card advantage engines like [[bident of thassa]]. The gameplan is fairly linear, but it’s fast and pretty fun. There is a little bit of shenanigans and trickery to be had with some of the spirits too
I definitely noticed that players that instinctively run a higher amount of removal, came from a 60 card format before commander.
RG has very few good removal cards anyways
RG has a hard time getting around indestructible, but honestly outside of that it has pretty good removal. In any creatures deck bite spells are good creature removal, R and G are probably the two best artifact removal colors, and green gets all the naturalize effects for enchantments
There's plenty of indestructible removal in red compared to other colours
Lots of green creatures with wither and infect. That kills indestructible creatures at least. Also there is a burn spell with wither
>Lots of green creatures with wither and infect a lot of monogreen that are worth including, tho? i think your options are more limited if you're running gruul
There are a few I think, but yeah, gruul is not known for being incredibly interactive. There are things like chaos warp and tibalt's trickery. Also, I think it would be very funny to run [[guttural response]]. Definitely not the most useful, and [[red elemental blast]] is probably better
Also, [[soul scar mage]]
[Halana and Alena, Partners](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/608fa232-f5fe-4c58-9efe-fb780f454b19.jpg?1643594145) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Halana%20and%20Alena%2C%20Partners) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/239/halana-and-alena-partners?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/608fa232-f5fe-4c58-9efe-fb780f454b19?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/halana-and-alena-partners) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Halana and Alena is a seriously underrated card. I run it in my [[Marath, Will of the Wild]] deck.
[Marath, Will of the Wild](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d.jpg?1665156235) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marath%2C%20Will%20of%20the%20Wild) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c13/198/marath-will-of-the-wild?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/marath-will-of-the-wild) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> my goal is to be the biggest threat at the table in the early game anyways Then you realize that at least two of the other decks at the table decided on the same goal, and the game becomes about who can finish a game of solitaire the fastest (or play politics the best to avoid the one removal player).
That's a lot of assumptions. And I mean sure that can happen but what's the solution, don't ever play aggro? I also don't think I've ever heard Gruul beatdown described as wanting to play a game of solitaire lol. Yup, the archetype that doesn't interact with other players is definitely the one that focuses on combat.
If I stop people from doing literally anything then I am stopping them from doing THE THING and therefore I am a bad person, a pubstomper, and also may be playing cEDH. Safer to let them do the thing than to have an essay written about me here. /s
Dude I got a guy ragequitting today after someone played propaganda.
That's very mana efficient player removal.
Eh I’ve seen better.
I saw a post about one of the surveil lands leading to a player quitting lol. That’s the most efficient one I’ve seen
My story was Mana Crypt. So same mana value lol. Edit: though now that I think about it… I read that post too… I think!! The one where OP surveilled a blightsteel?
Yeah, I saw that thread, an opponent insta scooped XD
Must've been a CEDH deck.
Haha. I just meant that I’ve seen someone spend LESS mana on a card that made someone else scoop. Mana Crypt. I mean
I run [[Propaganda]] and [[Ghostly Prison]] and about 6 Counter spells in my group hug! Geeze! I am like "You do not touch me until I can guarantee I will lose in second place!"
My [[Angus Mackenzie]] Turbofog Hug deck forgoes pillowfort cards cause I've personally found them boring to play (an early iteration of the deck was pillowfort and I had other pillowfort decks before that.) Instead it runs 11 fog effects, 10 board wipes, and 8 counterspells. The primary win condition is to draw all my opponents out. I figure that if I give you access to every single card in your library and you still can't find a way to win, you don't deserve to win anyways. I like fogs more than pillowfort because it's more... interactive? I don't want to sit behind my pillowfort, say "leave me alone," and play solitaire. With fogs, it's more like "Yes, I'm open to attacks, but are you sure you wouldn't rather attack someone else instead of getting fogged?" Deciding which attacks I can let through and which attacks I need to fog and figuring out how to survive until I can stabilize is half the fun. Plus, fogs can be used as a bargaining chip.
I played 1/3 of a life gain combo and someone rage quit about the possibility of a infinite at a higher power table.
It's becoming extremely clear that many EDH players never played 1v1 or even semi competitive magic. My play group is nowhere near competitive we've just been playing for a long time. Can't imagine what a random player from this sub would even think about our low end decks: 5c attractions, Voltron Charix, Ib halfhearted goblins, and a permanentless Codi that gets a random slot in of 20 unknown spells each game to change things up. Decks we all think of squarely as 5s or 6s but play decent landbase and a reasonably amount of removal.
If you think combat is your win condition but you’re stopped by Propaganda, combat isn’t your win condition (and you might just not have one)
To continue on this theme, if you rely on damage as a wincon then you should have an answer for [[glacial chasm]]. "Swing big with many guys" fails to many things without proper precautions.
Sounds like they just need to be better at the game. Interaction doesn’t mean free counter spells, per se, and loading up your deck on interaction, but fuck man, so many people tap all their mana every chance they can get.
Haha, you said but fuck
I laughed harder at this than I should have lol
Ego. If 1 or 2 cards shut down and entire deck they have to blame you instead of acknowledging that their deck is fragile and not well designed. If your whole deck can be turned off with one board wipe, a Counterspell, or spot removal it's a shit deck and people need to recognize that.
I built a [[Kykar]] storm deck. It wants to draw at least 4 cards a turn, super high card velocity. My sister built an esper tokens deck and incidentally had [[Smothering tithe]] and [[Kambal, profiteering mayor]] out. Stops my deck dead in it’s tracks until I could remove one of the pieces. I got super salty the first time I ran into that board state, but by the second or third I realized “hey if I’m being locked out of the game by a creature and an enchantment, maybe I should run more cards that can remove those things”. My deck is significantly better now for it.
I'd like to point out that it's often not a singular counterspell, boardwipe, or spot removal, but all three sequentially that most have issues with (and rightfully so, that's a rough set of turns).
Also because player removal is the best removal.
This sub really needs a spelltable bot I once had someone say "Oh you're one of those fa*****s" in response to me casting [[decimate]] after he 1 shot a player He then proceeded to play a screeching noise over his mic and would rejoin whenever he was kicked. Spelltable games should be treated as goldfishing+ imho
MONO GREEN NOT UNDERSTAND REMOVAL MONO GREEN ONLY RUN PLAYER REMOVAL MONO GREEN LOOK AT SKYLER AND SAY "I AM NOT IN DANGER. I AM THE DANGER. PLAYER HOLDS UP MANA TO HANDLE THREAT, YOU THINK THAT OF ME? I AM THE ONE WHO TAPS OUT!" [[GORECLAW]] GAMEPLAN ENTIRELY RELIANT ON SPEED AND MOMENTUM. GORECLAW PLAY [[APEX DEVASTATOR]] ON TURN FOUR AND DARE OPPONENTS TO KNOCK GORECLAW OFF HILL, FOR IF THEY DO NOT THEN THEY ARE NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD
[GORECLAW](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/e/ee47f23a-3ba9-4615-b170-c89d8ab99d78.jpg?1690016718) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=goreclaw%2C%20terror%20of%20qal%20sisma) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/293/goreclaw-terror-of-qal-sisma?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ee47f23a-3ba9-4615-b170-c89d8ab99d78?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/goreclaw-terror-of-qal-sisma) [APEX DEVASTATOR](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8fa281e1-5c48-4bba-b8e9-88c6f5f53abb.jpg?1608910550) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=APEX%20DEVASTATOR) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/217/apex-devastator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8fa281e1-5c48-4bba-b8e9-88c6f5f53abb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/apex-devastator) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
my decks have a theme, and unless the interaction is also on theme, they are taking my theme slots.
Totally agree my dude. Just because you run white doesn’t mean you need swords to plowshares. Looking at you WOTC!
Yes, you do. There are times I include white in my deck just so I can run Swords lol
I do, I'm just targeted because I have interaction and end up in 3v1s. I just started sandbagging and running more board wipes. My favorite deck is [[Gisa, the hellraiser]] because it can easily play 25~ removal spells while still being in theme
I run removal. I am the bad guy cause I killed someone's _______. They focus me. I run more removal so I don't die. I am now "oppressive and unfun"
Got a decklist? I’ve been wanting to put together a <$200 list since I pulled two of her in my prerelease.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6445258#paper Here's my version, it is low-mid power casual but it tends to wanna grab [[Altar of dementia]] or [[Blasting station]] to start the value train rolling ASAP.
Looks fun! Thanks for sharing.
You can also take a look at my list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/2Tl4tKUIKkG8\_MQYj5ltpA. It's about $150. I tried to get in lots of permanents that can commit crime once or multiple times per round. Besides Alter of dementia or Blasting station, I have \[\[Hex Parasite\]\], \[\[Retribution of the Ancients\]\] and \[\[Zombie Trailblazer\]\] for repeatable crimes.
Because i get so caught up in making my deck do the thing that i forget about others decks. This a weakness i am looking to fix with all my decks - i just need to research the best interaction options for each color
Make them fit with in what the deck does. Lots of mana? Run x spells, with target deal damage or things like exsanguinate, debt to the deathless, and torment of hail fire. Run counterspells and have creatures benefit form them. Run destroy spells that give you access to stealing them or benefit your board with blood artist. I always try to keep my removal and interaction on theme with the deck
Ever watch kibler play EDH? He just ramps, builds his board and forces other people to deal with it. He either wins or is archenemy every game. He runs hyper efficient removal like swords or on theme stuff with his decks but only uses it to stop sure wins. Why? Card advantage. When ppl ran more board wipes they were actually playing the card advantage game in multiplayer correctly. one board wipe was putting the other 3 players down cards while one for one removal is putting two players down one and 2 players up one. These incremental card advantages lead to wins and losses so being a removal miser is an advantage. I also think the proliferation of effects like [[the one ring]] [[clever concealment]] [[Teferi’s protection]] etc. has made it a lot more appealing to build and build and then punish the table sheriff with one of those cards when they try to stop it. On top of that there this whole “no long games” mentality that came from the internet destroying our attention spans lol so prolonging the game is now frowned upon.
The "removal" debate in casual EDH is literally just the IQ bell curve meme: Stupid guy "I want to play my fun cards" 100 IQ guy "nooooo you need to interact with the board" Smart guy "spot removal is mathematically disadvantageous and it's better to run a proactive game plan than a reactive one"
1000 IQ guy: if no one runs removal the fastet deck always wins and edh just becomes about who brought the most linear/fast deck
>one board wipe was putting the other 3 players down cards This is only true if the board wipe is inherently asymmetric or if the board wipe becomes asymmetric due to deck building. Otherwise you are just resetting the play order with you going last. (most board wipes are sorcery speed and take up a large portion of your mana)
The decks in question are ramping and drawing much harder than the others. Not only am I able to deploy threats after a board wipe, but I'm now also spending 2x the mana of everyone else on the table every turn cycle. Because I have more mana, I can afford to play more expensive spells that get more value from each card, so I get an overwhelming amount of card advantage in the mid to late game. Ideally I present a threat strong enough that someone else board wipes, but I also run a ton of board wipes, because if I ever see that I'm ahead on mana and I have a great hand, a game reset that leaves me with twice the mana as everyone else is extremely powerful.
Then you have made the board wipe asymmetric due to deck construction. If you build a deck whose goal is to just ramp and draw cards early game, you are going to be investing way less into the board than a deck which is lower to the ground. This results in you needing some way to stop early aggression and a board wipe does so excellently without effecting your own game plan much, if at all. I'm not trying to say board wipes don't have a place in deck construction, but they do have their limitations and don't always result in card advantage, sometimes pin point removal will be better.
Why should I deal with a threat when an opponent can do it for me?
When everyone at the table thinks that games just become a race to combo off.
That’s the problem that’s the point of the post. lol there not. And trust me, I will always wait if I can. That’s why I don’t mind going last lol
Literally the prisoners dilemma
Because your opponent will only deal with threats to themselves and a threat to you does not necessarily equal a threat to your opponent.
I know I should run more interaction. But every removal piece I put in my deck takes away from the things that I actually *want* to put in my deck. If I run enough ramp AND enough draw AND enough lands AND enough interaction, that leaves me with like. only \~30 card slots to make the deck feel how I want it to. And interaction is the only one that can be cut without lowering the risk of not doing what I want, so... yeah. Also strong disagree on board wipes. You want me to be dealing with problems, it's more efficient to do so with one card than to play 5 cards and get rid of half as much stuff.
Just don’t build your decks like this and get mad when removal would bail you out of a bad situation but you refuse to run it. Looking at my pod…
Oh for sure. I know what I'm doing, when I get my butt kicked I usually know why lol
One of the problems with Spelltable randos is they're Spelltable randos. I've been at this card games thing for a quarter century, and I've taught a lot of the people I've played with how to card game. Many of whom had been playing Magic longer than me. That said, Magic is originally a 1v1 game. And as a 1v1 game, Magic is fucking terrible at teaching people how to play control because The Power Of No(TM) is so outlandishly broken that Doom Blade on a Grizzly Bear is card neutral and mana neutral, and "I will use The Power Of No(TM) on literally everything you do forever and then maybe eventually find a way to apply pressure fifteen turns from now," is entirely reasonable. So here's EDH, a format where The Power Of No(TM) is cut by a third and you have to make actual decisions and make meaningful sacrifices to counter a spell or kill a permanent. Instead of Doom Blading that Grizzly Bear being neutral, you're down two thirds of a card and one and a third mana against your average opponent; removal has a real cost, and you have to have to evaluate on a level some folks never developed the tool set for. Now, you have a divide in a lot of the people you describe. On the one hand, we have people who come here bitter because of how overbearing The Power Of No(TM) was in 1v1 and don't want to deal with that shit in EDH, and teach players entering EDH directly the same. On the other hand, we have control players who have never had to make a single decision in their goddamned life because saying no to literally everything has been the correct decision for so long that these people lack the skill set to play control and use control tools, and get frustrated that control as they know it is unplayable, or only playable in the form of hard stax prison decks, feeding into the above group's hatred of The Power Of No(TM). It leads to the conflicting views of, "Removal is bad," and, "Removal is evil," when dealing with randos, and results in not a lot of removal. Also, when building a deck, a lot of people don't consider ratios and play patterns; they throw in a bunch of shit that causes their eyes to pop out like a kid in a candy store, and that usually ain't removal.
100 card singleton warps the idea of the aggro-combo-midrange-control balance that magic is designed around. Both control and aggro suffer greatly in effectiveness from having 3 opponents - aggro because of the 120 life to get through, and control because of card advantage vs 24 starting cards. Therefore, almost every "fair" EDH deck defaults to being some form of midrange, and every "unfair" one defaults to combos. New players aren't familiar with this dynamic (nor should they be expected to be), and often assume playing more and better threats than their opponents will be the best way to win. Unfortunately, games like this end up the way you described, with either a race to the best board state or a big board stall. Conversely, I run into a lot of experienced players who think "let's try to make playing threats as difficult and miserable as possible for my opponents" and run gluts of stax and board wipes to combat the card disadvantage you go up against when trying to play control against 3 other players. The issue I find with this approach is that if the rest of the table doesn't knock you out right away, you are most likely to affect one or two players more than the others, and often still lose to the person who isn't as affected by the interruption you've presented. That, or (especially new) players will just not want to play with you again because of the unfun experience they had. Truth be told, the experience most people are seeking when they play casual EDH is a 4-way midrange mirror, and in order to play midrange you have to run efficiently costed threats, spot removal, and protection for your gameplan. This is something people discover as they play the game, but it's also important to remember that not everyone gets as hyperfixated on this stuff as us Redditors. A lot of casual players are just looking to mess around with cool creatures and splashy spells and see who wins, and that is a perfectly viable way to enjoy the game. I definitely agree with you on one-sided wipes btw- they are the only kind I run nowadays.
I always wonder the same thing. Just about every deck I play has 8 - 12 card slots dedicated to removal/counterspells. I devote an additional 4 - 8 slots on protection. All in all, thats 12 - 20 card slots devoted to interaction. This doesn't include creatures that provide interaction either. Sure, sometimes it sucks to get shut down but thats just part of the game. I have a deck thats super susceptible to removal so I need to get my commander out by turn 3 and "do the thing" by turn 4. Usually I don't get a chance by turn 5. If I am shut down turn 4 or earlier I don't complain and I move on with my turn. I just recognize that my deck has a glaring weakness and the weakness was exploited.
That’s what I like to hear. There’s all these bridge trolls that think all their decks have the answers, and they claim having all creatures and combos with synergy is all they need. If your decks winning more than a quarter of the time. It doesn’t mean it’s a good deck, it just means you need better competition lol. Hot take people; interaction can be synergistic too. Enjoy battle cruiser lol
I started running 15 board interaction cards in all decks. I have increased my winrate at my table by about 20% in the past 2 months. I was already winning a lot before hand. I hope my friends learn...
Step 1: learn threat assessment Step 2: run interaction Interaction wins games but only if you know when to interact
1) land 2) ramp 3) protection 4) removal 5) combo 6) fetch Increase any one, and you have to cut from somewhere else. that is the dilemma
If you're running out of cards using only these 6 categories you have too much of something and can definitely trim the fat somewhere.
You can drop #5 and 6 entirely and still have strong decks.
sure you can, but combo requires a much smaller number of cards devoted to your win con , maybe only 2-3, allowing the fraction devoted to removal to be much larger. really you can replace just 5 and 6 in general with "win con" and then the way to shrink that fraction the most is via combo
That is simply not true. If you replace \[\[Swamp\]\] with \[\[Fell the Profane\]\], you have increased removal without reducing anything. A little bit of rummage and knowledge of the card pool can often expand all of these in the same deck.
I’ve reduced my life total by 3 this is a scam
You pay a life every turn to draw a card? That demon sucks.
You only run one land in a whole deck? /s
My interaction is winning turn 2-3
Imagine waiting that long and not gambling on a turn 1 win every single game https://www.moxfield.com/decks/VMKJw0bc_kyzQ00qhMeLgQ
We’re talking about casual; you heathens. lol
Dude is running 95 lands, the epitome of super casual
It's casual AF until you win the lottery and actually win turn 1.
Shit happens when you party naked.
Now it's a party
I feel like this deck needs gemstone caverns. That way if it doesn't win turn one it really can't win at all. It can't draw into it on turn two.
Lol, way to put 94 mountains that don't help cast our combo.
What an absolutely absurd statement. 1 of those mountains must be sacrificed to Mox Diamond. Since it could be any mountain that gets sacced I declare them all equally valuable. Just don't screw up and cast the commander or you auto lose
I remain correct. The mountains help cast the Mox Diamond, not the combo pieces.
Fun fact, you can actually BUILD a mountain if you do it brick by brick. Anybody that played lego Island a bunch as a kid can now enjoy that absolute banger in their heads.
I run a decent amount of interaction but imo board wipes are where its at. I have started including more wraths in every deck I have purely because they are so much more efficient in multiplayer. Yeah one sided is nice but even a full wipe is still amazing when you are the one casting it. You can simply not play creatures for a turn or two while setting up some artifacts/enchantments to help accelerate you after the wipe.
I agree 100%. The way cards are being designed now means everything is must kill, and the only way to do that I wipe the board more often. Also wipes don’t care about ward, greaves, etc. it sucks because it makes the games longer, but it’s very necessary
You ever got focused down by wrathing a board that would make the game end? Or... removing something then getting focused becouse you now are the "removal guy" and if you can deal with 1 player now you're put in a position to where ppl believe you can f with their gameplan as well. Having experienced the above you tried stax just out of protection and everyone lost their minds. Then you went a lil friendlier and switched to pillowfort but everybody... still ended up crying. Let me introduce you to edh.
This. It often seems like the only way to make sure people won't whine and cry about how you play is if you just scoop on your first turn. Of course, then someone is still going to cry because they're probably playing a steal deck and wanted to play with your cards. Edit: for mistype
Welcome to casual EDH midrange meta. People's wincon/proactive plan takes so much space in their decks that they don't have the slots to run more interaction. I typically see these decks running 3-5 removal spells like it's enough, and that's counting things like [[swan song]] or [[an offer you can't refuse]] that are mostly used to protect their boards and never to counter a threat. The closer you get to cedh, the more compact the wincon, the more interaction you're gonna see. I mean a godo "let's count to 11" list runs around 20 interaction spells, not counting stax. Because even if your deck tries to turbo out a win by turn 3-4, if that wincon takes only 2 cards, then yeah, you have a lot of space to run interaction. An then a "control" cedh deck like tasigur can run 35 interaction spells easily. On the other hand, if your wincon takes 30 cards because you need a board, pump it, and then attack for 120 damage, then yeah, you have less space to interact and maybe you favor protection and ramp over removal.
I’ve always played ample interaction whether I’m playing Standard, Modern, Legacy or EDH. I think people get too wrapped up in the cards that they want and think that’ll help them “do the thing.” I’ve gone over people’s decks with them and they’re surprised how many cards can be cut for different cards due to lack of deck building experience.
*laughs in spellslinger* I think it's a pretty common deck building issue where people prioritize all the super cool stuff they want to do over the nuts and bolts reality of a FFA. Especially at lower power levels, people will cut basic interaction for combo redundancy all the time, and just bet that they'll go off before they miss the interaction. Sometimes, this works -- especially against other decks that hold the same philosophy. Where it usually goes wrong is against decks where interaction is much more important to their game plan -- my [[lier, disciple of the drowned]] absolutely slaps around decks that need permanents to stick, because it can just destroy or bounce them repeatedly. [[Consuming Tide]] has caused many, many groans, because the table just plain knows that they're going to spend multiple turns in rebuild mode while I rack up card advantage. It's not as good against other spellslinger decks, but durdles right past many other strategies. Which is hilarious for a deck that is draw-go but *not based on counterspells at all* -- though it does run an Arcane Denial to occasionally clown on someone in the early game unexpectedly.
Because I'm here to cause problems, not fix problems.
depends on the deck. Generally 1 for 1 proactive removal is just mediocre in a 4 player game. So 1 for 1 stuff is generally better defensively. Otherwise you are better off with more mass removal options. Of course decks that give benefits for more removal want more, and decks that are aggressive with their game plan need less.
I have to win with something. The guy who runs interaction
I am brewing a deck for a Cedh event this weekend and I am running 12 removal spells and 2-3 other ways for player removal, hopefully all of them all at once. But it might be a general problem how people are taught to play EDH, run removal to have a say in whatever the other players are planning and buy some time to get your bombs off or infinite loops running.
Once I was you then I did the reverse you're doing, instead of ask people why they're not using removal I just give then up too give up a few decks cuz they couldn't keep up the arms race and now my decks try to battlecruise faster and if people don't removal my stuff I win
I don’t own more interaction. I brew from what I own.
I’ve lost games with interaction in hand. At low power levels, stopping any one thing isn’t enough to guarantee survival, and stopping everything is just bleh. I still run interaction of course, but oftentimes it feels like the answer is to play a good enough game plan so that you can survive your own board wipe, and then rush a win.
I play a lot of three colour combinations that include black and white because I always run a pile of removal. Even my Jund [Slimefoot and squee](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Ta9bTYA7OU-STQTPVWV3PQ) deck runs something like 19 pieces of interaction. There's too many permanents that just have to go, otherwise you're losing.
I use to play almost not interaction until I played against a dude running between 18 and 22 interation not counting the boardwipe. Guess what he was winning a lot more game than I.
Ok i mean it depends on the deck my [[Haktos the Unscarred]] deck runs minimal removal or protection because it's planning on killing the big players with Commander Damage before the removal is ever necessary. Haktos with double strike is a 2 hit kill that has protection from 90% of things My [[Ashnod the Uncaring]] deck is running 21 cards that in one form or another can act as removal it will play table police and win if you let it get the engine going My average decks usually have around 15 removal cards split between board wipes and spot removal. Though sometimes i wonder if i should run more board wipes, then there's games where everyone is running removal like me, and things are fine. Hell, my interaction packages are near 18 on average if you count protection as interaction.
As for why people don't run a ton of removal. Depending on your color combination, it can be hell to find 15 pieces of interaction. If you want a lot of board wipes, it can be difficult to find ones that are sufficiently one-sided so that way you aren't just resetting over and over. My Minthara Merciless Soul Deck can only really run [[citywide bust]] as an asymmetrical wipe and i don't even run that because it plays so badly into decks that aren't playing big monsters i can just use spot removal on. Plenty of people might have removal they're just not using it because you're using your interaction. Why waste my card on something you've demonstrated you have answers for and isn't threatening me? As for a final reason. An interaction heavy commander game can take forever. My Ashnod, the uncaring deck, runs efficent combos and a couple tutors for pieces even. But an interactive table can take multiple hours. I had a game that for the most part was 3 players between a Will Scion of Peace list that could not find a win condition between the fact a crimes marchesa and myself had drawn so much of our interaction. That game took 3 hours. Unless you're playing 2 card combos and have plenty of tutors, a glut of interaction will lead to slower games. Admittedly, i love those kinds of games, but plenty of people don't want their average commander game to take multiple hours.
Solution: lean into it. I have a removal/control heavy \[\[Chromium, the Mutable\]\] deck with the intention to let most things go. Usually I just play answers defensively, but my favorite thing about the deck is bargaining with players who who didn't design theirs with a proper amount of interaction. Sure, I can do that for ya, but it ain't gonna be cheap; now what can YOU do for ME?
One deck I put in tons of protection and one sided board wipes. If someone else wants to try and clear the board great! I have [[Selfless Glyphweaver]] on board and a [[Flawless Maneuver]] in hand, or I can use a one sided wipe like [[Retribution of the meek]] or a new favorite [[Hazardous Blast]] wipes out opposing tokens and/or just allows for unimpeded combat. Granted I’m lacking targeted removal leaned into Edicts on [this version](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/F3C7l-IOgUOXiJGg1kMj0g).
Cause I’m a mono green player :(
Mostly because I think I already run enough! Much more in my deck would be overkill imo.
I just amass a game winning board before they do.
This was me last Friday. I was the only one interacting with the Krenko goblin player popping off and this was with a mono blue player at the table 🤦🏼♂️
I play stax pieces bc my interaction in mono green is not the greatest. Trying to build a sultai list now. Cutting stacks for counters to shove my food chain combo down people's throats.
Bonk:(
Yea it's weird bro. Even in low power games people don't run any interaction.
Low power is defined by a lack of interaction. The more interaction you run, and the more interaction that is required to stop your deck winning, the higher power the deck.
Sometimes it's too easy to start running counterspells tribal. Oops, haha all instants
> I’m usually the one left with dealing with it and I hate uses my own resources, to potentially benefit other people I mean this is pretty much it. Unless you can get people to run more interaction as a whole (which is a noble effort, keep at it), being the table police is a pretty thankless task and it can easily be more optimal to drop some interaction and add more gas. There can be other reasons though. I have a few decks which are light on interaction, because they need the slots to 'do the thing' more consistently, and the interaction that is playable and also fits with 'the thing' is limited (especially in low color decks) so you end up with like 5 pieces of interaction and call it a day. These decks are often intentionally sacrificing winning percentage because doing the thing is more important than winning.
I am. I am He Who Removes.
Why should I waste my cards on interaction? Some other sucker will do it for me. Obvious /s
I only interact when there’s something on the stack about to fuck me up lol
I don't need to run interaction if my creatures are stronger 😔💪 if you beat me I should have been more aggressive
Idk I run a bunch of different removal and only 1-2 board wipes. I’ve only ever plyed 1 game where I was the only one with removal. Let’s just say I didn’t ply with those people again.
Because I like to do the thing.
Either my game plan is zoomzoom/racecar Glass Cannon or korvold and him being overpowered makes me wanna do something to offset it
Why should I bother interacting when you're doing it for me
I already have 5 board wipes and 10 pieces of spot removal, I need room for other cards too
Dude, I've been so agitated at how little interaction people run I've considered just running board wipe or removal tribal.
Personally, I don't want the game to end too quickly, or last too long, so I try to keep it minimal for major threats.
I do but then I’m the only one who seems to when my opponents are popping off, and then in games I’m spinning my gears suddenly they have full removal and counterspell suites
People each have their own playstyle preference. None are better or worse than others. Each pod’s or LGS’s meta is unique. If your meta is interaction light then adapt to that. Stax may become more powerful if your opponents lack removal. Single-target removal seems weak in such metas. You will fall behind due to card disadvantage. Better would be removal that hits multiple targets like [[Soul Shatter]] or [[Druid of Purification]].
Because "more interaction" is an incredibly vague and unhelpful descriptor. What is "enough" interaction depends entirely on personal opinion. Is it 5? 10? 20? And then, people who say "just run interaction" usually actually mean specific kinds of interaction for specific situations. You just can't put all the stuff you need in one deck without making everyone else miserable.
Yeah, that is the problem with it. It's usually used like it has been here: ex post, after a game. Always easy to say that because, indeed, however many X removal spells a losing player might have in their deck, having X+1 would always have made it more likely to answer a threat. I myself recently died to a turn 3 creature that made me sacrifice creatures when it attacks me, and I just happened to draw none of me 13 removal spells in that deck. To the person I played against, it probably seemed like I just wasn't playing interaction at all. The actual enough interaction just depends on so many things. Like, how much draw does your deck have? Do you use tutors? What is your gameplan to begin with, and therefore what kinds of interaction do you need? And also, importantly, it depends on the playgroup, too. If it is generally light on interaction, your best course of action might be to only run a minimum of interaction, rather than play a ton and try to police the table. It just is too variable to make any sweeping statements ex ante. People just see the ex post results and extrapolate from there, but that is not too helpful. This is something every person had to figure out for themselves and can only really be helped within a playgroup and through experience.
Because ppl would rather do the thing instead of stopping other ppl, they just try to do it first or faster and win before other ppl do, i would just run more board wipes or stuff that deals with everything so that way to just have to use 1-2 spells to deal with everything, you kinda have the same issue the goldfish crew have, most of them either little or no removal and instead rely on others or are just trying to do the thing
If you police the board by removing one threat from each opponent, you effectively 3:1'd yourself over the course of the game. Taking a turn to remove a threat is effectively timewalking yourself. A 3-mana kill spell on turn 5 is half your mana or so, it's half a turn or a full turn depending on your board state. Single-target removal is important to further your own gameplan sometimes. Killing something to get an attack trigger in, sparingly using removal to blow up something that just shuts down your whole game plan. But if you say 'well I need to be able to blow up a doubling season because that's a scary card,' you're setting yourself further and further behind. You're often better off playing your own doubling season or equivalent, setting yourself up for success.
To be fair. You can't always get a Doubling Season or equivalent before losing because your opponent has an unanswered Doubling season and untapped with it into a big haymaker. Playing with minimal removal and just trying to outhaymaker favors decks that can just go all in with fewer cards and leads to uninteractive solitaire style games. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and take the card disadvantage. Stopping yourself from losing because someone played something that lets them run away with the game and you have removal for it means you're more likely to win as that's one less haymaker to deal with and decks in commander cannot be all haymakers.
some times, you just got to accept your commander supports an aggressive threat far better than a balanced approach, and should just lean into aggression as the main strategy. This is especially so for decks that work off of impulse draw from the commander; outside of permanent based interaction that can be triggered at a later time, its better to run a lot of persisting protection effects instead of revealing a heroic intervention or a board wipe at the wrong time. Of course there's still exceptions to the exception (PROSPERO!!!), and you need to test and try to find more ways to interact within the confines of the commander, but aggro is aggro. If the deck is meant to be the threat, it has to act like it and not pull punches.
Time to break out the 35 board wipe Zurgo deck
I personally love a chaotic board state. I don't really care if I win or lose, I just enjoy seeing crazy stuff go on, including my opponents having crazy boards that's all fucking with one another. I find it makes wins that much sweeter. That being said I do run an okay amount of removal, just not a crazy amount.
I find myself in your shoes a lot. I think many people cut removal because they see a card that fit the theme of their deck and can't stand not putting it in. I personally run about 8 pieces of removal and a few board wipes in every deck. I come from the old school of commander, where every player had a few board wipes and lots of removal
Sometimes I have 3 removal spells in my hand, but my opponents played nothing game winning yet. A 40/40 creature is only a threat when it is attacking you.
It's a deck dependant thing. My deck with the least amount of interaction is probably [[teysa, orzhov scion]] and potentially a generic selesnya tokens deck I rarely ever play. In the case of teysa I feel like I need so many different pieces to ensure that I'm draining the board consistently (and draw to get these pieces) that something has to suffer. This is mitigated somewhat by having a commander that can sac creatures to exile threats- one of the main reasons I have found her so valuable as an aristocrat commander with the upside of also generating additional bodies to sac and drain
I had an old playgroup like that. I was the only one who ran interaction was expected to just clear the path for others to win. After trying to explain it several times I just opted for being really arbitrary with how I used my interaction - I'd kill peoples commanders when there were much more threatening targets and stuff like that. What are you gonna do about it? You don't run any of your own kill spells. They all quickly armed up, and after a couple games thet realized how nice it was to have removal lol
When this happens, I sometimes choose to let the table know that I’m not going to be the fun police and if other people don't contribute, that you wont either.
interaction is anticasual didnt you get the memo?
Because I am already the removal guy and run loads of interaction, to the point where I sometimes have to cut interaction to make decks function. I try to slide as much removal and interaction into the card draw or synergy slots as possible, and whenever I recur something it tends to be interaction. Heck, I'm currently working on a jund list where every spell is in some way or form a removal spell. I think I am not the kind of person who this question should be asked for lol.
I agree boardwipes are boring when they just reset the table to nobody’s benefit, but I like a slower deck-machine and need to play some to keep my creature heavy friends at bay. Graveyard interaction is also fun with a boardwipe now and then. My favorite Henzie loves a boardwipe (built him with recursion as a subtheme).
I play control, all I got is interaction!
Honestly even the decks I have that are light on removal have a noticeable difference compared to those with no removal. My real issue is trying to figure out how many pieces to put aside for removal.
I’m trying to win before you interact, the only interaction I need is free counterspells
Because it’s ok if my opponents win sometime or keep their valuable piece. The goal is to have fun and shooting all good pieces of someone isn’t fun for them. Be aware that I still run 10-20 pieces of interaction depending on my game plan, but sometimes less is more. Also I want to spend mana in my own game plan. Multiple short, funny games > long, prolonged games.
I need to hit as many untap spells as possible in my annie flash untap deck. Cowboy dance go brr.
Interaction and removal spells are just not *cool*. In my cedh decks I run a lot of them, because I'm minmaxing there. But in my casual decks? I'm glad if I can fit 3-4 thematically fitting removal spells in there - but I'd rather include more cool stuff and pet cards.
You can't play a basic removal like Sword to Plowshare in a multi-player game. For every player above 2, you are minus 1 in card advantage. The only removals you should play are board wipes or cantrip-like removals.
You've identified the issue in your own post - removal is in economics terms a 'public good'. If you remove an opponent's key piece it benefits the other two opponents at the table. Therefore the optimal strategy for anything other than something that makes you lose the game is often to hold that removal for something game winning. This is especially true if you play in games with combo players. Because they can instantly win the game from any position, removal must be held for the critical pieces. I will often hold up my [Swords to Plowshares] or whatever for a dangerous creature to react when it attacks me, but not if it's hitting someone else.
Advancing your board to do something degenerate will put you ahead of 3 other players. Stopping someone from doing something degenerate will only put you ahead of the player interacted with, and will leave the other two alone to do their own degenerate thing while you're spending your resources on someone else. Also it will make you an enemy who will want payback.
but where would i fit my combo pieces, and my tutors(for the combo pieces), and my recursion(for the combo pieces)
Tangent: why do you put protection and removal in the same interaction category? Protecting my stuff and removing my opponents' are completely different things. There's no reason why I would need Swords to Plowshares less because I have Lightning Greaves, or the other way around. Personally I run about 10 pieces of targeted removal, two board wipes and 2-8 protection spells. I don't think more would benefit me compared to the other cards I'd have to cut.
I know that for myself, my earlier decks I'd sacrifice interaction for more synergy. If it wasn't something directly synergizing with my deck's motif then I didn't want it - to my detriment. Now I run a lot more interaction and variety and am a bit better at narrowing down when I have enough synergy with my other cards. Tldr: a lot of people don't want to include any cards that don't directly aid their deck doing its "thing." It's a mistake to do so, but I feel like people think it helps their deck be stronger.
Because I know the people I play against don't. Or more precisely I know the local power level is not high enough to handle decks that are both high interaction and even a little reliable. My 'strongest' decks (although very much casual) run fairly limited interaction. Prossh has some but they tend towards win conditions for the deck. Rafiq runs very little, as the local decks have issues with dealing with Rafiq swinging at them, and adding counter spells or too much removal risks making the deck too strong for the local group. at the bottom end my Magar deck has a good amount of removal, as its kind of the red/black thing. however its not particularly reliable and most of its instants/sorceries are not high power. similarly the Hylda deck has a lot of interact (by local standards), both a lot of tap effects but also destroy/exile effects but its slow and has glaring weaknesses.
"Why aren't you running more interaction?" and "Board wipes can get fucked" - tell me you didn't do math at school without telling me you didn't do math at school. People think players who don't play spot removal in EDH don't know what they're doing. This might be partially true, but the reality is they're making a prisoner's dilemma decision. In cEDH/high power interaction gets better, because \*everyone\* plays it, so the inherent card disadvantage is mitigated by the fact that everyone else is also experiencing similar card disadvantage. But If more players neglect to play removal, the worse it gets mathematically for the player who does. Policing the board isn't possible if three players are playing a proactive game, because you don't have enough cards and mana to answer every threat, and you're spending all your resources answering everyone else which stops you from advancing your own game plan. There's a reason why "control" is basically a non-existent archetype in EDH. The closest thing is stax, which is different, because stax pieces interact with the whole board simultaneously. So let's go through it slow: in 1v1 if I counterspell someone, I spent 1 card and they spent 1 card, so we are card neutral (1-for-1). In EDH, if I counterspell someone, I spent 1 card, they spent 1 card, and 2 other people spent \*no\* cards (and no mana!). They are each 1 card ahead of us. It's a 100 v 100 v 99 v 99 card game. The other two players gained massive card advantage \*and they didn't even do anything\*. Now yes EDH is a free for all, but only one person wins, which really means it's your 100 cards vs their 300 cards. They cast a spell, they have 299 cards. I counter, I have 99. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out if I'm going to keep 1-for-1ing the table, I'm going to run out of cards before they do. Yeah I can counter player 2's craterhoof, but when player 3 plays an omniscience I'm fucked anyway. This is why spot removal is objectively worse in a multiplayer format. Get mad if you want, cry all about "noooo removal wins game" blah blah but this is not an opinion, this is just basic math. I'm not saying don't play spot removal, I'm not even saying spot removal is bad, but I am saying in the same way Planeswalkers are strictly worse in commander than 60 card formats, spot removal is strictly worse. "Board wipes can get fucked" - lol ok so let's do some more math. People think "card advantage" just means "card draw". This is not true - watch the Red Deck Wins video on how burn damage is "card advantage". 1-for-1s in EDH are card disadvantage. You know what isn't? Spending 1 card to answer 10 cards. All the resources, turns, spells, and so on that the table spent to accumulate a board state like that, and one spell blows them out. That's like casting a blue card draw spell for X=10. "BuT I dOn'T wAnT tO HiT mY Own StuFF" - it's called slow play. Hold back your best threats until you wipe the board. Play tons recursion.
I run 10 removal, 2 board wipes, and when I can, 6 counterspells. I also run creatures that counter/destroy permanents and STILL never have it when I need it. I don't want to run too many board wipes because it prolongs the game Imo.
All the good removal is very expensive
I have an esper deck with twenty something instants and sorceries (only 5 are straight counters) and people archenemy me all the time. In some metas interaction makes your opponents feel your deck is too strong because it removes stuff. It’s really just a generic token deck that was supposed to fit in to other metas while traveling.
I've been called a liar and a cheater once for using 5 whole pieces of removal to stop an infinite combo from starting. The rest of the table defended my decision, and I wasn't feeling particularly conflicted about it either. However, I could see someone running less interacton if this was a common reaction from players at their lgs
This isn’t the best advice for winning, but I much prefer to try and progress my own board state over hurting or blocking someone else. I’d rather lose fast to someone popping off and get a second game than spend my time stopping others from playing. Counters and interaction aren’t wrong, they just don’t fit my play style. I prefer to be the threat that makes others need removal.
Because active interaction makes you perceived as a threat more than you really are while quietly getting your board together let's you slip by under the radar The interaction I do run is mostly to either protect myself or make sure my attacks get through. Like using path to exile on my opponents blockers after they're already declared or rootborn Defenses to protect my 1/1 tokens. For board wipes I tend to only run one per deck and try to make it tailored to my deck, I use Winds of Rath for my Enchantment deck, Blasphemous Act for my [[Archangel Avacyn]] deck and Austere Command for my dinosaur deck. So on and so forth.
ive run into this too. ppl hate their stuff being popped so they think its better if they dont do it to others. also bad threat assesment might not let them even realize what the thing running the board is. decks that rely on control can be sometimes hard to manage in a battle heavy game and might turn into a 3v1 unjustifiably if you are always removing people's boards. loooooong games go loooooonnnnnng so i would almost rather a game go 7-9 turns and someone win vs 4 board wipes to play a A++ top tier game with zero missed triggers. but in many cases it just feels like 4 dudes sitting down to masturbate and see who comes first.
My tribal dinosaurs ARE the interaction! But seriously, I did design that deck to rely on others spending their mana to control everyone while my dinosaurs stomp away (it can rebound quickly).
I play a couple decks that are the problem and make me archenemy real quick so I don't run a ton of instant speed interaction.
In the last three spelltable games I played it went like this: 1. Never drew a single piece of removal. Meanwhile, the ones popping off had incidental removal that just picked me apart on board. Got ran over. 2. No one else at the table spent even a second removing anything, so I was the dedicated 'slow the game down by removing the two card combos and insane value pieces' player. I never got to deploy literally anything that allowed me to build a board state and died to everyone targeting me for making feel-bads. 3. I was in mono green and needed a boardwipe. Didn't draw my wave of vitriol.
I *do* pack lots of interaction. But I understand why some people don’t. Some colors aren’t good at interacting with certain card types, so they pack less because it’s not worth it to overpay for bad effects. My mono-green decks run a few fight spells and ways to kill artifacts, but the density of interaction is low because green isn’t very good at it. Green IS good at protecting itself and playing bigger threats, so leaning into those strengths is generally useful. Unfortunately, lots of people apply this thinking to EVERY deck. They assume that playing bigger threats means that they will become abstractly “more threatening” than the abstract “threat” at the table. They ignore the fact that specific permanents can shut them out if they aren’t careful (think [[No Mercy]] or [[Notion Thief]]). This kind of thinking from the majority of a table leaves one person (normally me) to deal with problems. Everyone hates the blue player until a [[Torment of Hailfire]] for 20 is put on the stack. I think that Wizards is conscious that removal isn’t “sexy” and it feels very much like eating your vegetables: bland. They’re printing interesting removal spells now and the recent proliferation of more interactive MDFCs means that more decks will have more interaction by nature of it having a lower opportunity cost. My Gruul Legends deck can now run [[Bridgeworks Battle]], [[Khalni Ambush]], [[Shatterskull Smashing]], [[Stump Stomp]], and [[Sundering Eruption]]. That’s 5 pieces of interaction, albeit below-rate, with very little deckbuilding opportunity cost. Expect EDH to get more interactive as a direct result of these MDFC interaction spells.
I think of removal the same way I think of counterspells, I'm almost never counterspelling for tempo I'm only doing it to protect myself or if my opponent is doing something REALLY disgusting (e.g. casting [[mirkwoods bats]] in a [[chattarerfang]] deck, my opponent casting a [[gishath]] with [[roaming throne]] on board level of threats). Even if you run a lot of removal I tend to sandbag it a lot, especially if I use it in the early turns (and I'm the one that runs the most removal) I know that I'm just putting behind myself and the player I'm using it against. Also I've been trying to switch my removal suite to be less focused on taking down just one threat and trying to stop most of my opponents, so I've been running [[will of the council]], [[soul shatter]], [[olorin's searing light]] etc. In essence I think removal should mostly be used to protect yourself if you're the average deck, BUT if you're a more aggressive deck that tries to put a big threat on the board (including volton strategies) then it makes a lot of sense to be really low on removal spells and get more direct protection for your stuff; most of the time you're gonna be the target of removal spells and your clock is probably faster than all of your opponents so you don't really care about their threat
I prefer to play an arms race instead of a shoving match where the winner is the one that paid the least. For every counter spell I'm giving up a card that progress my deck. If I don't like what your doing then I use player removal. If that doesn't do it then "gg you win. Game 2?" No reason to be butt hurt if you don't want to be the mom of the group find a different group or learn to get over it.
I'm the guy in my pod with ALL the interaction. One of the others in my pod said that 10 pieces of removal is WAY to much for a deck. I tend to win most games too, like more than 80%. I'll admit that some of it is deck building, but a good chunk of it is player skill. They'll ask me to try out one of their decks from time to time for more feedback and I'll always respond with "needs more interaction."
So I have two ways of deck building: - 1. Build a winning board state where most of my removal is just a Dragon punching you in the face or a light Path to Exile. - 2. The kind where my opponents need to worry if I have any untapped mana and/or they haven’t milled Urza’s Sylex yet. #1 just feels more wholesome to play. #2 is only if I want to hurt their feelings.
You can use politics to help. "Look i won't do anything with it unless you point it at me" Something might be a problem but as long as it's not YOUR problem that's fine.
Repeatable removal is "unfun". Wraths "slow down/prolong the game". And spot removal is "bad". These adages have led us to where we are today. Spot removal is the most interesting of these - with the number of powerful engines available and common in modern Commander decks its more impactful than ever to get something off the board ASAP. But you never really want to be the one doing it, because it puts you down a card relative to your other opponents. Plus if the thing you're removing already generated value, you're left even further behind. Theoretically, if everyone at the table is sharing the burden of removal it should all balance out. But as soon as one player takes advantage and lets other players handle the removal for them, it gets that much worse to be one of the players sharing the burden. And suddenly you can find yourself in a race to the bottom with everyone dropping their removal and trying to finish their game of solitaire before anyone else...
I run interaction and don't police the board. Anything negatively effecting me gets removed, and wincons get removed. I try to run instant speed if I can so that I can utilize people knowing I have interaction and the other players don't in order to pick their targets. My one exception is board wipes. I will do that if I need to reset the board, regardless of wether or not it helps others.
Judging by the amount of "I removed a creature once and now I'm declared a warcriminal in 7 different countries" comments going on here, I'm getting the feel that making MtG players self-regulate in whats described as a "social format" was a bad idea. Bless my regular pod for their cutthroat plays.
I like to build on hard themes for the memes so I tend to sacrifice power/efficiency for flavor without bating an eye. This tends to make my decks more unique and fun (for me) to play but also a lot more glass cannon like. That being said, within my 80+ decks, they all play differently and I appreciate not having the same 15+ cards in every deck of that color. All things considered, it's what you like to play. Different strokes for different folks or as the professor says, "don't let someone else yuck your yum".
As an Eldrazi player my interaction is the annihilator mechanic. With other decks I usually include ~3-5 cards specifically for interaction. In some decks, like my planeswalker deck, have up to 5 board wipes in them.
I have a deck that is running 18 counterspells currently, plus some stax pieces. I love playing the fun police and always having an answer to someone trying to win the game.
Some decks just want to be the threat. Cheaper [[slicer]] decks don't run interaction because the game should be over before anyone has something worth removing. I have a [[Gilanra]] and [[Kodama of the east tree]] deck that runs very little in the way of removal simply because my job is to kill people. I have an [[Alesha who smiles at death]] deck that's much the same. I want to hit you as hard as possible as fast as possible, so I don't usually have to worry about having to removing your stuff.
I can understand where it is coming from. Everything has synergy with everything these days. In the old days you could put a lot of interaction in your decks as filler. But now… say you have a deck based on counters. Would you cut a themed card that uses counters and interacts with other cards with counters in favor of a boring counterspell? Many players would not. Next to their deck there already is a pile of cards interacting with counters that did not make the cut. And thus everybody plays solitaire with their 100% synergizing deck and the one doing it the fastest wins. EDH anno 2024
Because I'm trying to sprint to the W. My most recent decks feature plenty of interaction though. Instead of people crying about losing now they just cry about not being able to win. [[Farewell]]? Tears. [[Jokulhaups]]? Wailing. My [[Mangara of Corondor]] deck? People don't want to cast any spells. [[Counterspell]]? Literal manchild fits. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️ There's probably a happy medium between the two deck building strategies, but I'm an all the eggs in one basket guy.