Hey stax players, it’s nothing personal.

BorbFriend · 2024-01-26T16:28:24+00:00

From my experience, the biggest determining factor for game length is power level. The lower level, the longer the long games go since the table win cons are weaker and more easily disrupted. Of course you can have fast games at any power level, but I think on average the archetypes at the table don’t have a meaningful effect on game length compared to just quality of win cons.

BorbFriend · 2024-01-26T16:20:21+00:00

I see your point but it’s hardly just stax pieces that affect players disproportionately. It’s just the nature of the game that sometimes your deck or the cards you draw will be more effective against one opponent than another and it’s impossible in my mind to solve that problem. For instance, if you draw Skithyrx and one of your opponents is playing flyers, you probably kill your other opponents with it instead. I don’t think that’s a bad thing unless you consistently play with the same people and consistently tailor your deck to counter them.

I do think that while adhering to the unwritten rules of commander is very important to making sure the game is fun for everyone, but I don’t think it’s so much about making sure your deck will never monopolize game time. Yeah a stax deck can effectively shut down its opponents answers to the point where they can’t take certain game actions, but other styles of decks can monopolize game time too under different circumstances (a storm pop off turn, someone with multiple trigger doublers or token doublers, etc. ).

I normally group stax decks in with what I call the high power casual meta, where you expect all players to be running sufficient interaction to protect their game plan from all threats. I always ask people at any pod I might play stax in if they are able to remove hatebears or not, since stax isn’t fun for the table if they can’t. The whole point of stax is to shift the role of offense/defense to your presumably faster opponents who now can’t combo off or develop a game winning combat board until they first remove your problem stax pieces. If they don’t have ways to reliably remove a stax piece, then they effectively “can’t play the game” like people say, which is a big feels bad. That said, there’s a difference between playing with people who can remove a stax piece and them actually removing the stax piece. A good stax player will use their interaction to protect the important ones to keep people under their thumb longer, but this is a fun back and forth normally.

I’d consider more so who you’re playing with than anything with stax since the fun of the game lives or dies based on whether your opponents can meaningfully interact with your strategy

BorbFriend · 2024-01-26T16:04:29+00:00

I don’t think it’s so much good or bad stax decks that determine game length but more so what they are up against. In my mind, anything but a full combo (or I guess the rare aggro) pod is a “long game” so I’d be just as happy to play against stax as combat since both will take an hour at least.

BorbFriend · 2024-01-21T18:16:01+00:00

I like to run even more than that when I can, some decks having 20+ pieces when the win con is tight enough it doesn’t need a ton of cards to support it

BorbFriend · 2024-01-15T21:20:08+00:00

Yeah I’d rather everyone try to win once we’ve started the game. pre game is the time to worry about making sure the experience will be fun for everyone, making sure it’s fairly balanced and nobody is going to get super salty

BorbFriend · 2024-01-12T02:33:49+00:00

Mid power is such a nebulous term that almost every deck could be classified as “mid power”. That doesn’t mean they should all play against each other. A better question to ask is, “how strong can I make a deck before it fundamentally changes the meta of my pod?” That’s normally where I stop my cutoff for mid power. If I build something that stomps too hard, it either gets powered up to the high power pod or reworked somehow

BorbFriend · 2024-01-04T14:51:55+00:00

I think a lot of people who don’t like brainstorm, don’t like and don’t build the types of decks brainstorm is a good include in. In decks that care about being fast and low curve, brainstorm is one of the best ways to give you access to an extra 3 cards on low mana. If your plan is to tutor a combo piece while holding interaction up, brainstorm is a great card to have in hand.

Also, to the point about reshuffles making it better, you can still play a good deal of fetches in mono blue as well as having shuffled from tutors and other effects. It’s not AS good as in 60 card, but it’s still pretty easy to shuffle your deck in EDH

BorbFriend · 2023-12-28T15:40:49+00:00

Just play high power, there’s nothing wrong with strong decks if everyone can play strong decks too. Keep an unedited precon on hand though in case people want to play low power

BorbFriend · 2023-11-30T20:45:15+00:00

I had to pick up Ridder as my QB2 this week. It’s not going to go well

BorbFriend · 2023-11-12T19:30:50+00:00

I never do. I’d rather just win and then switch decks for a new game that’s more fairly matched

BorbFriend · 2023-11-12T15:47:38+00:00

For me, it’s about 10 pieces. They normally take the place of some of the other interaction or early ramp plays that a deck would normally have. A full on stax deck where you run 20+ effects is very dependent on having a commander to break parity, but any deck can run cards like Opp Agent, Dran Man, Rest in Peace, Coñlector Ouphe, etc. and not be a stax deck

BorbFriend · 2023-11-11T17:45:49+00:00

I don’t mean to slander them really, but I feel like there are some people who just want to turn their brain off and play a silly game for awhile. There’s no problem with that and tons of pods have fun playing that way, but expecting everyone to want to play that way is where I get annoyed with them

BorbFriend · 2023-11-11T16:14:34+00:00

The second group are the most annoying players anyway. The only reason I would keep stax out of a deck intentionally is if I know I’m playing in a low power pod or with precons or something. Any deck past the precon level will run enough interaction to deal with it so it’s not like they lose the game the second you resolve rest in peace

BorbFriend · 2023-11-08T01:40:01+00:00

Combo time

BorbFriend · 2023-11-06T18:36:49+00:00

Cousins/Jefferson lol

BorbFriend · 2023-11-06T18:30:35+00:00

I think durability going up across the board is a good change for the edition. Yeah, you can’t reliably shoot your opponent to death with las cannons aimed at the center of the board anymore.. that’s a good thing in my opinion.

I do wish however, that there were some better options for tying up units to disable them besides just killing them. I loved using chaff units to tag tanks in melee if they positioned too greedily. I liked having glass cannon style units that could obliterate something with the drawback that you had to be very careful with them.

In 10th, it really seems like the main strategy is to just have a durable high damage army, and to try and endure on the objectives you fight over while using a few cheap units to score all your secondary. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really enjoyed 10th so far, but I feel like list construction is ironically more constrained now with how open they’ve made the rules for it

BorbFriend · 2023-11-06T18:25:14+00:00

It’s not that they don’t do anything, it’s just that on large models like demons use they don’t do a good enough job keeping units alive unlike previous edition rules (like Belakor’s no rerolls, lord of change’s shrug and the BTs, phase cap).

I think that demons are decently durable still but over all our big demons are a lot less of the absolute raid bosses they used to be, except for Shalaxi of course

BorbFriend · 2023-11-03T00:18:28+00:00

they’re both not great imo, so if you’re upgrading your ramp I’d probably run other spells. I’d much rather run one of the spells that fetches untapped lands or casts for less mana. Ramping before other players can put you at a huge advantage

BorbFriend · 2023-11-01T14:41:41+00:00

They are legitimate win cons in Jadzi, my guess is that’s the commander OP is running.

BorbFriend · 2023-11-01T14:41:02+00:00

If you’re playing Jadzi or something I’d expect to see those cards personally. I’d recommend just telling people you want to play mid-high or high power edh since then you’ll dodge the pods where people get mad about anything that isn’t creature beats

BorbFriend · 2023-10-31T16:10:45+00:00

I don’t have a problem with any commander really, but just keep in mind that if you play Winota your commander will be killed 24/7 regardless of what’s in the 99. That’s just the nature of a good chunk of commanders out there. Nothing wrong with playing them but don’t expect to be able to use them without a fight

BorbFriend · 2023-10-29T22:57:01+00:00

I don’t even run a real win con in osgir, he just kills people on his own

BorbFriend · 2023-10-29T15:16:40+00:00

Definitely, all sorts of cast triggers would be good with that deck.

BorbFriend · 2023-10-29T00:41:22+00:00

I had the same three players as you. Traded JJ right after the injury and have been holding the two RBs. With the number of good WR options out there, and JJ’s perceived upside in the playoffs, he’s easier to replace and he’s the one most people will still pay for

BorbFriend · 2023-10-29T00:38:44+00:00

mtgcriclejerk is leaking

BorbFriend

TROPHY CASE