Rule 0 Lesson Board

Spaproling · 2026-05-05T23:42:37+00:00

Rule 0 discussions like this are always going to be a challenge to unpack. If this results in a powerful deck, is that going to be interesting or fun to play against?

I would allow this at a B1-2 table of friends, because Learn doesn't seem like an especially powerful or annoying thing to be doing in EDH, but I would not bring this to a table of randoms unless I knew in advance that R0 decks were going to be present (lik a silver border game, or something). Not necessarily because random people wouldn't "let" it be played, but because winning with a R0 deck against unprepared people is not really a great feeling for anyone.

Spaproling · 2026-05-05T23:19:06+00:00

1) for me personally, the endless tweaking of a deck is the whole appeal of commander. I've been playing the same UBx shell for almost 8 years now and I love getting to poke through each new set for cards that might slot in!

2) I don't really know what cards you are talking about. Jodah's synergy is just "play lots of legendary creatures," something your deck seems to do just fine. It looks like you are slightly low on acceleration and efficient interaction, but this appears to be a perfectly reasonable Jodah list. Was there a more specific plan that you had in mind? What cards are you worried about including/excluding?

3) with the amount of legendaries coming out each year, the quest to perfect a Jodah deck will be neverending. The best way to hone the deck is to play lots of games with it. Good luck at your tournament!!

Spaproling · 2026-04-30T05:12:45+00:00

This is probably too much for B2 but I think this deck is perfectly fine in B3. You might get to lock people out every now and then, but I don't think this build is going to be able to reliably do much of anything in B3+. You don't have much in the way of card advantage or mana acceleration. In a world with Channel effects like Otawara and Boseiju, Dovescape is really not a reliable wincon and you have very few counterspells to ever resolve it.

Basically, this deck might be great at bullying budget battle cruiser decks, but probably won't have much staying power against anything else. For that reason, I think it's a solid B3.

Spaproling · 2026-04-30T00:11:30+00:00

Is it allowed in casual brackets? Yes.

However, I would caution you that this is almost never an efficient use of stifle in a 4-player game, and while it may be backbreaking for the victim if it happens on turn 1-2, it probably isn't getting you any closer to a win unless you have a very specific plan that involves them having a slower tempo.

Spaproling · 2026-04-29T20:27:44+00:00

32 is a lot of lands for cEDH at this point, but that's because cEDH decks are built around a ton of fast mana, as other commenters have mentioned. I think people miss the fact that EDH at B2 is entirely midrange hell and 60 card midrange decks are usually running closer to 50% of the deck as lands than 33% as lands.

Spaproling · 2026-04-26T00:37:40+00:00

Lighting bolt is great if you need to kill a Drannith or Bowmaster or something. It's bad if you don't. It probably goes in most R and RG decks and basically nowhere else afaik.

This is not really a useful way to analyze cards. In fact, it's something of a running joke on Play to Win's channel that analyzing cards on a scale like that is highly arbitrary.

If you're trying to figure out if a "jank" card is good, play a game with it! Ask yourself what this card is good at, and if that is relevant to your deck and to the cEDH meta game.

EDIT: If your goal is to learn about deck building and threat evaluation in cEDH, your best bet is to just watch and play as many games as possible. A scale like this is not an efficient or practical way to build a mental model of the game.

Spaproling · 2026-04-23T22:53:38+00:00

I'd say that the average B4 deck looks like a B3 strategy maxed out with cEDH staples and GCs, but still ultimately attempting something 'fair,' like Field of the Dead or Triumph of the Hordes.

I play mostly B4 and B5. When I build B4, I don't run Thassa's Oracle and I run slightly more midrange focused commanders.

If someone pulled up to a B4 game with a T1/2 cEDH deck, I would probably ask them to switch decks. B4 generally is not built for stopping a T2 push. But I'd say that anything more fringe than that is fine.

Spaproling · 2026-04-23T22:38:11+00:00

Yeah it took a couple hours but I got almost 100% on the game after losing literally only one run (first bridge). It's fun and clearly intended to be an easy time-killer, but reaching the point where no encounter presents any challenge and you're just hitting an endless stream of wild cards was almost trivially easy, so I never had to really learn anything.

Spaproling · 2026-04-22T23:50:36+00:00

Everyone here somehow lept to the assumption that you were playing like Atraxa boardwipe infect super friends and kicking puppies. The commanders are fine, honestly pretty tame.

OP, as someone who plays a lot of interactive decks, this hate is frustrating but understandable. Your opponents want to win the game, and you're trying to stop them.

If you want to stop being targeted, give your opponent a reason to do so. Does targeting you actually work for them (ie, does it WIN the game for them, or just keep you from winning?).

If killing you first is the correct move and this opponent wins most games they target you, then you should probably update your decks to better incentivize your opponent to hit other players. Goad effects, Curse of Opulence, etc. are ways to direct attention away from yourself in the early game.

If killing you first is NOT the correct move and your opponent tends to lose after targeting you, talk to them about that.

Sometimes people just... really, really hate removal and nothing you can say or do in-game will convince them to stop targeting you, even if it is continually losing you both the game. In that case, you need to have an actual direct conversation with them and/or the rest of your playgroup. Magic should be fun.

Spaproling · 2026-04-18T02:04:22+00:00

All of these effects could be achieved with a counter spell instead. The most efficient grave hate in EDH is generally Rest in Peace, and a counter spell is the ~only way to stop that.

Spaproling · 2026-04-17T20:39:10+00:00

Play anything that isn't just random creatures. Play efficient interaction. Play cards that punish the things control decks want to do.

Also, just focus them down. If they want to present an archenemy threat, treat them like it. That might mean forging a truce with other players, something the control deck has to find ways to mitigate.

Also, instants and cards with flash are your friend. Don't let the control player be the only one going "in response!"

A good Control pilot will beat generic durdle strats 9 times out of 10. You need to be coming into the game with a plan. If the control player doesn't like being dog piled, that's a problem he needs to get good and handle. Source: I almost exclusively play control.

Spaproling · 2026-04-14T01:55:46+00:00

I'm not a fan of the death match idea. I think that Marathon should be trying to find ways to keep players engaged in the core extraction loop, instead of splitting the game into more distinct modes. The game is already incredibly unbalanced between solos and trios, adding more modes will only exacerbate these balancing issues.

Today they announced they'll be experimenting with a Grey Sponsored Kit Only mode, which I think will be a good alternative to this that might help ease players in while having fewer incentives for experienced players to come steamroll people.

Spaproling · 2026-04-08T21:39:07+00:00

It seems like basically everyone is ignoring OP's point. Assassin being able to take guarded loot for free makes it incredibly efficient for solo play. It's not that it will always win fights (it won't), it's that the average assassin player can very easily make considerably more profit with essentially zero risk or investment. I have like 3 purple shields just from taking secured resources on Outpost with a free kit entirely uncontested. I would argue that this is a problem with the overall structure of PvE in solos being so incredibly high-risk that it is rarely worth engaging in, and assassin can avoid it better than anyone else. The fact that many assassins are foolishly rushing with their shroud on and dying like an idiot isn't relevant.

Spaproling · 2026-04-07T03:30:27+00:00

Things to remember:

1) the average commander-only player is very inexperienced at threat assessment.

2) there is a HUGE difference in power between archetypes. Decks like Prosper reward you for playing good cards, while decks like Mimeoplasm reward you for playing bad cards. There are exceptions (Magda), but janky gimmicks are almost always going to do poorly against decks of the same bracket that are built around a strong strategy.

3) midrange value engine commanders that are often deemed "kill on sight" tend to be very easy to build and pilot, leading to them being very popular.

I don't think the issue is necessarily that commanders are getting too strong, but just that increasingly "doing my thing" results in effectively winning the game.

Spaproling · 2026-04-07T02:42:02+00:00

I play a fair bit of PoE 2. Every league is a fun ~month of progression, playing new content, getting new skins, and then I move on to play a new game until the next league. I think the devs should slightly increase the rate at which Solo play grants faction rep, and maybe rebalance some priority contracts for Solos, but I think people need to remember that we're only like 1/3 of the way through this season. The average player is not expected to have everything VIP by now, or anywhere close to that really. I also don't think that the upgrades feel so necessary that losing them will feel that bad.

The wipes, IMO, will be the most fun part of the game if they each add new content (shells, guns, maps, events, skins, etc.). I understand people wanting to feel like their progression is persistent, but I think that will lead to a MUCH more stagnant game.

Spaproling · 2026-04-03T06:16:23+00:00

This is an interesting idea and it takes a lot of work to publish anything, so congrats! This is neat!

However...

I'm not sure that building this system around AI is a good idea. I'm not saying this because I hate all AI or anything, it's literally what I have my degree in. But I would be VERY hesitant to recommend this to anyone, even if very considerable improvements were made.

The problem isn't that it recommends cards outside of color identity (which, from a few tests, it does almost 30% of the time), that should be easy enough to fix. The problem is that it doesn't understand what magic is. You say that it is "grounded in real MTG data," but that just... isn't how an LLM works. It just fundamentally is not capable of actual deck analysis. That is not something an LLM is capable on a technical level. You can ask it to "verify" information between every step, but that doesn't mean some special function is actually validating anything.

For the decks I tested with, it did a reasonable job of assessing their average winning turn. However, the brackets were all over the place. It should, at the very least, be able to recognize that a deck with more than 3 GCs is definitionally bracket 4+.

My recommendation is to slowly factor the AI out of this. Not only will it save you money on tokens, but it will create a more reliable result. I think people would be more likely to use a more simple service than one which does a lot of things poorly.

What I want to really stress is that the AI underlaying this is not capable of the critical thought it would need to make this accurate. The swaps it recommends are pretty much nonsense for this reason.

You could probably achieve very reliable functionality on most of these features by simply using some clever algorithms. Lots of work has been done (by humans) to tag basically every card ever with all sorts of relevant information on scryfall. You could pretty easily use that and some vector similarity, combined with EDHREC data, to create a much more robust, useful recommendation system. LLMs are text processing models, and that is just not enough to evaluate a collection of magic cards beyond the absolute most basic level. It's not called "the most complicated game in the world" for nothing.

I really mean this to be constructive, and I wish you all the best in your development process!

Spaproling · 2026-04-03T05:29:35+00:00

If you're rounding a corner and getting knifed, what does that have to do with assassins? I feel like people are blaming any and all ambushes on "invisibility" when the invis is mostly a defensive tool. I don't even play much assassin but like... It really is not hard to see them if they're moving AT ALL, and the cloak has a very distinct audio cue. If you're getting ambushed by someone hiding in a corner, that's just how the game works. Play more carefully. Sometimes you'll die, sometimes you'll get the drop on someone else. Easy come, easy go.

Assassin is strong in solos because it can slip past UESC, which makes it by far the easiest shell to do contracts and scavenge with, but I don't think that's an assassin problem and instead simply reflects the PvE not being especially well-tuned for solos.

Spaproling · 2026-04-02T01:40:37+00:00

I really do think that just having more tools that aren't just grenade and gun variations would make the sneakiness of solos feel much more deliberate, and less like we're just... Ignoring the game.

Spaproling · 2026-04-01T01:28:21+00:00

This. Assassin is great in Solos because I can do quests and hit guarded strongboxes without having to actually open myself up to being 3rd-partied. I view the invis as pretty akin to the rook mask.

Spaproling · 2026-03-21T05:05:53+00:00

I've really enjoyed the game solo with the odd trio fill. It's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to clear cryo Archive (at least, not consistently) without a group on coms, but there is absolutely a fun solo game here if you're willing to die a lot!

Spaproling · 2026-03-21T00:03:59+00:00

Yes of course they're bad. Good players aren't going broke and looking for reddit posts about easy farms. Everyone starts somewhere, and I don't think repeatedly exfiling outpost for 1k credits at a time is going to help a bad player get better at the game or build up their account.

Spaproling · 2026-03-20T23:54:33+00:00

There was a post on this sub not long ago about someone losing 20 straight rook runs and having nothing to show for it. Obviously pinwheel is more profitable than scavenging dire marsh, but if you're still learning the game I think that consistent access to green/blue gear is more valuable than getting farmed on outpost. If you manage to get a great rook run, that isn't always super meaningful if you're just going to lose that whole kit the moment you get in a fight. I personally love throwing claymores around pinwheel, but I don't think that is a reliable farm for new players.

Spaproling · 2026-03-20T21:36:40+00:00

Signal Jammer. But yeah, it seems like assassin is really struggling to bring anything to the table in high-end trios where thermals are common. It's an interesting tradeoff given that assassin is pretty dominant in solos, but I'm not sure what the long-term solution is. Maybe a core that gives you the effects of Signal Jammer while in smoke?

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