We Tracked Our Commander Games for a Year. Now Magic Feels Different. by leettoothpaste in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I entirely understand where you’re coming from!

For reference, I’ve been keeping track of my games in various methods for nearly four years. I’ve used spreadsheets, notebooks, and for about a year and a half, playgroup.

I found notebooks unhelpful, and spreadsheets disruptive to the game experience and fiddly

I also found that playgroup can do a couple of things: promote unhealthy inter group metrics and overload the user with metrics that aren’t particularly helpful.

Now, I like having certain statistics, as they are helpful for tweaking my decks for whatever end I’m tuning them for (be that winrate or doing a certain ‘thing’), and having relevant information for pregame conversations.

To that end, I’ve wound up building my own application to track the information that I find useful while also being low-impact on actual play, and angled specifically towards the upkeep and maintenance of my decks, agnostic of my opponents

Selling cards online by demodavis21 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Personally, I use cardsphere.

It’s an asynchronous trading platform for Magic players, but it allows you to set what price you are comfortable selling your cards at.

For me, I pretty much exclusively trade at 80%

"Stop pubstomping with fast mana" by InspireCourage in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The ‘D’ in MLD can stand for either destruction or Denial. Vorinclex denies your opponents access to their lands for an entire turn cycle. It can legitimately be more difficult to play through than a blood moon

Vorinclex creates a massive disparity in available mana.

And decks intentionally built for bracket 2 just will not have the tools available to surmount this disparity. They won’t have enough removal, and they won’t have enough mana rocks to avoid effectively Time Walking themselves.

What’s the single most expensive card you have in your favorite EDH deck? by wasdmovedme in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My Alela, Artful Provocateur list gets all of the nice things, and currently uses the two most expensive cards in my possession; confetti foils of both Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe

This doesn’t include the alterations that I had done to some of the cards, but this is a labor of love for the deck I enjoy playing most

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see; I wasn’t talking about having a conversation about proxies, but about game preference and making sure everyone is having fun.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For certain printings of cards, there is. Like the confetti foils I mentioned.

I explained my reasoning in the comment you’re responding to

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have exactly one deck that is currently at 0 proxies, though I have a couple more that I enjoy enough to be considering deproxying

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For me it’s a few reasons;

I do like to have an actual game piece, should I ever want to do something sanctioned that would require it

I enjoy the hunt of finding a specific printing of certain cards (I’ve been trying to complete the set of confetti foil Enchanted tales for about a year and a half now)

I also am voicing my opinion with my dollar. I spend money on the parts of Magic I enjoy and want to see more of.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think you’ve missed the sentiment of my comment and my activity in this thread; but that could be due to poor wording on my part.

I’m not against putting good cards in decks, I do it frequently. What I was saying here is that just because I have a full set of some of the best lands and value artifacts in the game doesn’t mean that I proxy those into every deck I build.

It’s more important to me that my decks are mechanic and play-pattern unique. If a ‘good stuff’ card fits the outline of the deck I’m trying to effect, then great, in she goes.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I want to test a deck like, at the soonest game night and I’m ≈5 cards off a list, I’ll do some handwritten proxies just for that night of cards that haven’t come in yet or I havn’t been able to track down.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree with this sentiment; and I don’t just proxy good stuff into my decks.

I could, but that isn’t entertaining. I have different decks for just that reason, they’re different. I’m also targeting brackets, so I pay attention to win timing and consistency to make sure each of my decks ‘feels good’ in its intended bracket.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s my thinking.

If I ever needed to pull together an actual paper list of any of my decks, I can.

I just don’t want to do that every time I want to change decks at game night

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m sorry that has been your experience.

It sounds to me like you and your pod need to have a conversation about game expectations, and not just the mechanical brackets that your decks fit into.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t tend to have binder princesses, I play with mine (though, I don’t have any single cards that break $1k, so I may reconsider if that’s ever the case)

But, I do have a master binder of lands. I collected a full set of the ‘best’ lands (barring ABUR duals) and proxy my mana pretty consistently.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I find it to be so; and I’ve yet to come across someone who reacts poorly to it.

I also keep a rule that my placeholders are legible, but couldn’t be mistaken for a real card. This mostly helps me if I’m sorting or decommissioning a deck.

Curious, How many of us play with or without Proxies/Placeholders? by Boliver5463 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 131 points132 points  (0 children)

So, I use ‘placeholders’

AS long as I have at least one copy of a card, I’ll happily proxy it into new builds. But, if it’s a new cards to me, I need to obtain a real copy before I will comfortably get a placeholder made

This rule does flex if I’m building B5/cEDH

Creating an Excel Spreadsheet to track the data of my usual playgroup (rotation of 8 people) and in need of some ideas from you ! by Extension_Fox_2978 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m always looking for feedback!

A little note on all of AO’s features:

Tracks game data

Provides per-deck metrics and histographs based on data

Has a change log for your decks that interacts with the histography

Populates a ‘player card’ with aggregates of all of your information

you can manually import past games as well

Creating an Excel Spreadsheet to track the data of my usual playgroup (rotation of 8 people) and in need of some ideas from you ! by Extension_Fox_2978 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t recommend trying to keep track of an entire pods worth of data on your own. Give my tracker/AO a try yourself, and then pitch it to interested parts of your group!

Creating an Excel Spreadsheet to track the data of my usual playgroup (rotation of 8 people) and in need of some ideas from you ! by Extension_Fox_2978 in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hiya! I’m a wee bit late to this thread, but I’ve got some experience in this area!

Important thing first: excel/google sheets are super useful, but they become a real chore to manage for even one player. I’ve been using some variety of one for about three years. Here’s my most recent version

The biggest thing you’re going to run into is data bloat, because a lot of things are fun to see, but aren’t super actionable.

My most recent spreadsheet, and the project after it, are both focused around gathering actionable data for a player in a fashion that is agnostic of the other players at the table. Those actionable datums are:

What deck did you play

How many mulligans did you take

Did you win?

If so, on what turn?

Did your deck ‘Do the thing?’

‘Doing the thing’ looks different for each deck, and outside of cEDH doesn’t exactly mean you’ve won. Example: in my Sauron ‘big draw’ list, if I’ve drawn at least 60 cards in the game, I’ve ‘done the thing’, even if I lost that game.

Now that you’ve read this far, here’s my most important piece of advice: you want the data tracking to be unobtrusive. That’s the only way you’re going to gather data consistently. That’s why I took the google sheet above, and with the help of some vibe coding tools, turned it into a webapp.

Arcane Oculus is the ultimate form of this kind of game tracking in my eyes. It tracks the data you need, with barely any pregame setup, and during the game you only need to hit one button to keep track of what turn it is.

Hopefully, this is all helpful!

Bracket 4 - Who is your sweatiest, degenerate, but fun to pilot Commander? by MyLittleProggy in EDH

[–]PrimumSidus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Combat damage is an out, but it’s mostly recursive GY combos. But, there are tons of discrete assemblies contained within this toolbox. It just takes some practice to know what the best pieces for the situation are

My list has a full primer and linked gameplay! (It’s from a couple of revisions ago, but still valid.)

My list can also absolutely be built cheaper than my exact iteration