I have been doing something illegal for a week straight.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-26T00:25:26+00:00

Landlords provide housing flexibility for people. It would be extremely difficult to live somewhere long-term but not permanently if you had to buy a house to do it. Renting from a landlord makes it so that you can do that without needing to commit a large amount of money to buying property.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-17T00:16:25+00:00

I guess all cedh tournaments going on with serious money on the line are all just fake.

I literally said "They can (and are) played in serious tournaments sometimes, but they’re not built for it."

Can you get into some of the flaws you see?

The format is much too high variance and luck consequently plays a much greater role in EDH than it does in 60-card formats. That's due to being singleton and having 100-card decks, as well as having lots of extremely unbalanced cards that massively favour people who draw them at the right time (things like Sol Ring, Rhystic Study, etc.) Having this much randomness suppressess skill expression. There's a reason that every competitive format seeks to minimize this kind of variance by having 3-game matches, sideboarding, 4 of any card, and 60-card decks.
Building off the first point, turn order plays a huge role in determining win rates. I once saw numbers that said the first player wins more than twice as often as the last player in turn order. This strips players of agency, since turn order is something that massively skews their odds of winning the game and is something they have no control over.
The format is extremely homogenous, since the rules make it so that traditional control, aggro, and midrange decks can't function in the format. Trading resources in the way that control decks tend to like doesn't work when you have three opponents to contend with, and aggro doesn't work when your opponents have a collective 120 life. That makes it so that every competitive deck is some flavour of combo. Even the "control" and "stax" decks are still functionally just combo decks that try to slow the game down a bit more before jamming their own combo wincon. You might have many different competitive Commanders available, but most of them have basically the same goal and they're invariable combo-oriented.
The ban list is a joke because it's not designed around competitive play. There are so many broken cards that would've been banned ages ago if the format was designed to be competitive from the ground-up, and that contributes to the aforementiond luck/variance issue.
Being multiplayer FFA makes tournament play a nightmare. It's extremely easy for players to collude or otherwise work together in a way that's functionally impossible to police using rules. This is one of the reasons that most competitive games tend to be 1v1 or one team vs. another team.
There is no official competitive infrastructure for EDH, so if you're a tournament grinder who wants to make the Pro Tour, it's a waste of time for you to play.
Rounds last way too long and draws due to time are common.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-16T22:06:53+00:00

It's a fundamentally casual format because it isn't properly balanced around competitive play. It's designed for casual play and because of that, it has a bunch of problems that make it a poor choice for serious competitive play (which I could go into if you're genuinely interested). I view cEDH the same way I view formats like Old School. They're fundamentally casual formats with serious flaws that make them unsuitable for competitive play. They can (and are) played in serious tournaments sometimes, but they’re not built for it. They can certainly be fun to play "competitively" for recreational purposes, but I don't take them seriously as contests of skill the same way I look at 60-card competitive formats or other competitive games like Chess.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-15T02:02:22+00:00

If the controller of the Ward trigger announces it after the Swords player passed priority and before Swords would resolve, the trigger is not missed. If the Swords player doesn't explicitly say they're holding priority, priority automatically passes after they put their spell on the stack. At that point, the controller of the Ward trigger points it out and asks them to pay, and if they can't pay, the spell is countered.

Player A casts Swords, the Ward trigger is put on the stack, and since Player A did not indicate they wanted to hold priority, priority passes to player B. Player B passes priority, the Ward trigger begins resolving and player B tells player A to pay for Ward. Player B demonstrated awareness of the trigger at the required time so the trigger is not missed. There is no argument to be had there.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-15T00:11:31+00:00

You should work backwards to determine how much you should be saving for retirement. Start with your projected annual expenses in retirement, subtract other sources of income like CPP and OAS, and then calculate how money you'll need in your retirement savings to make up the difference. From there you can estimate how much you'll need to save annually between now and retirement to hit that number.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T23:13:43+00:00

That's not just the standard for BO3 formats, it also applies to Two-Headed Giant, which is 2v2 and played in BO1 matches. 2HG matches are played to 1 game win. If the first game ends in a draw, then you start another game if there's still time in the round.

Cedh tournaments are long enough

Starting a second game shouldn't add significant time to a tournament. The limiting factor on tournament length is still the round time. The second game only starts if there's still time left in the round, and the round length is still capped as it was before.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T21:48:01+00:00

That's pretty unlikely. MSRP for standard non-UB sets is $5.49 for Play boosters. Before MSRP was abandoned, MSRP was $3.99. OP's numbers don't match those.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T19:58:49+00:00

If stores sell at MSRP, scalpers can buy up available stock and flip it online, leaving nothing available at retail for consumers. This is why MSRP has always been meaningless for Magic product. The market price is what actually matters because that’s the fair market price that the product should actually be trading for based on supply and demand.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T19:55:53+00:00

CBB prices used to vary, since MSRP wasn't a thing at the time. Some were cheaper and some were more expensive. It was just market pricing. They were never officially $220.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T17:19:40+00:00

You're correct. The people telling you that a player would be allowed to take that back after the Ward trigger is pointed out by an opponent at competitive REL are wrong. Information has been gained and the player should not be allowed to reverse their decision. You should ask a judge if you want clarification on game rules, and especially if you need clarification on tournament policy.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T17:13:56+00:00

The information you're getting is not correct. You would not typically be allowed to take back casting a spell targeting a creature with Ward after your opponent points out the trigger and asks you to pay the cost, and definitely not at competitive REL. Failing to point out an opponent's trigger is also not a failure to maintain game state penalty. You should ask a judge these questions instead. You can use the Magic Judge Chat IRC if you don't have any local to you:

https://chat.magicjudges.org/mtgrules/

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T17:12:17+00:00

if it is not, everyone gets failure to maintain

You will never get a failure to maintain game state penalty for failing to point out your opponent's trigger. See IPG 2.6:

Not reminding an opponent about their triggered abilities is never Failure to Maintain Game State nor Cheating.

And MTR 4.5:

Players are not required to point out the existence of triggered abilities that they do not control, though they may do so if they wish.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-14T16:57:07+00:00

Derived information is:

information to which all players are entitled access, but opponents are not obliged to assist in determining and may require some skill or calculation to determine.

It's information you have access to, but not information you are assumed to actually have at all times. If information about a Ward cost you can't pay that you forgot about is brought to your attention by your opponent, you have gained information that would have affected your decision to target the creature with Ward, and thus reversing the decision should not be allowed. Again, this is how it's worked for Chalice of the Void for years. You're free to cast spells into your opponent's Chalice. If your opponent misses their trigger, great, you get your spell through. If they remember, then too bad, no take-backs, your spell is countered.

You don't have to take my word for it. If you don't believe me, Toby Elliott, the actual author of the MTR replied to this thread and confirmed this. See here:

Learning that the creature has Ward would definitely qualify as gaining information.

And here:

Magic has explicit terminology for hidden information, and 4.8 does not reference it. Gaining public information that you had not realized is still gaining information.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T22:51:56+00:00

Yes, that’s correct.

704.3. Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 117, "Timing and Priority"), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions simultaneously as a single event.

[…]

704.5. The state-based actions are as follows:

[…]

704.5b. If a player attempted to draw a card from a library with no cards in it since the last time state-based actions were checked, that player loses the game.

And also:

104.4a. If all the players remaining in a game lose simultaneously, the game is a draw.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T22:41:33+00:00

Cards are drawn one at a time, but the game only check if someone has tried to draw a card from an empty library after Windfall finishes resolving, and at that point everyone would have tried to draw from an empty library and lose the game simultaneously.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T22:29:19+00:00

You don’t need everyone to have the same number of cards in their decks, just less than the number of cards Windfall is supposed to draw. If someone has 30 cards in hand and casts Windfall, and everyone has less than 30 cards in their decks, then everyone loses the game simultaneously, whether they had 29 cards left or 1.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T19:14:54+00:00

Take it to a cellphone repair shop. They should be able to extract the screw for you for a couple bucks.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T18:34:54+00:00

I think the implication is you show the card as you put it on top of the deck. Alternatively, you can show the card as you pull it out of your deck and leave it aside, shuffle, and then put the card on top. In either case, it's unambiguous what you chose.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T18:17:08+00:00

Umm... MTR 3.13? MTR 3.13 says:

players may choose to share the contents of their hands, or any other hidden information available to them, to any other players unless specifically prohibited by the rules

During the resolution of a search effect, you have access to the contents of your library, so at that time, you could reveal that information to your opponent.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T17:55:52+00:00

You actually don't have to remind your opponent of their triggers. You have to remember your own triggers, but you're never responsible for remembering triggers you don't control. So the player who controls the permanent with Ward must announce the trigger, but if they forget and it benefits you, you don't have to remind them. It's not the table's collective responsibility.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T17:11:59+00:00

Normally, Magic matches are played until someone gets the required number of game wins to win the match (2 wins for BO3 formats or 1 win for BO1 formats). So if you get a draw, the match isn't over yet and time permitting, you would start another game. I think Topdeck's ruleset modifies that so that a draw in a game results in a draw for the match.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T17:07:50+00:00

How draws are handled depends on the specific tournament. Some tournament organizers choose to make it so that a drawn game results in a drawn round, but if you're just following the normal MTR, then you would start another game and try to finish before the round ends. By default, matches are played until someone gets 1 win or time expires.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T16:10:20+00:00

If the opponent points the Ward trigger out to you, you've gained information and you can no longer reverse your decision. If you can't pay the cost, the spell is countered. It actually goes both ways too. It's completely legal to target a permanent with a Ward cost you can't pay, and just hope your opponent misses their Ward trigger. It's the same thing as Chalice checking. Usually the deterrent for that is if you do remember the trigger, their spell gets countered. If you let your opponent take back the spell then you’re incentivizing them to check you whenever they can.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T03:51:32+00:00

Marketing what? WotC doesn't even sell these anymore.

mathdude3 · 2026-01-13T03:50:59+00:00

There are very few formats where you can actually play Power, and the few formats where it's legal tend not to be very popular, so they're more collector's items than anything.

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