Hey, I'm Kyle, thanks for joining me and Andy for the Legendary Creature Podcast. So if you're listening with your kids or your conservative grandma, maybe don't. Because we swear. Also, when you're done listening, I've been working on a little side project and would really love your support there as well. It's another podcast and it's called you know what's Cool? It should be anywhere. You get your current podcast and the link will be in the show notes as well.
We wanted to talk about the culture of our church. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I think we did an episode it was years ago about, something adjacent to this. It was like a meta charter or something. Yeah, yeah. I was kind of glancing at that the other day. I didn't give it a solid listen, but we did. We have too many episodes now. It's kind of hard to keep track in the mind, what all we've talked about. So there might be some overlap discussion wise, but I think stuff that's been on our mind.
I didn't go back and listen to it, but I think the summary was we wanted to lay out kind of the house rules, a little bit of what we use to play with our friends. Yeah. And deck building things that we use to. But I wanted to revisit it because of, you know, some recent, changes in the commander environment that seem to affect people. Yeah. But I didn't really feel it at all. Like, I don't I don't think we felt it at all. Yeah. Truthfully, and rather than just saying something is is.
Lame as well. You know, we just didn't use those cards. I'm trying to connect the dots between the culture and the. Why we don't use those cards. Yeah, because I think there is something deeper than just. Well, I don't have those in my collection or, you know, I happened to jettison a few of those, like, a while back. Yeah, it's deeper than that, right? I think it is. I think it goes deeper. So I put a document together. We have we both have it.
Essentially what's on it is we're going to go through what our goals are when we're playing with our friends. Yeah. You know, our church specifically is what we call it. And then evaluate how those cards just that's just why they didn't fit. Yeah, because of what we're about, not because of something. Just easy to say. Like they were powerful or expensive. Sure. Or or fast or or something like that. We're just saying if our goals are are this or this, then they kind of make sense.
Why we didn't really feel it when. Yeah, when certain cards were banned and yeah, yeah, it wasn't a big deal to us. That's our aim. That's the episode. Yeah, I like that. I like that as a directive. Let's just talk about what our goals are. First, when we're playing with each other. Right. Can you myself, my brother Brad. Right. Just are the people that we've brought into the game. Yeah. Our people. I think first we just want to foster enjoyable games together. Absolutely.
Because why engage in it if it's not enjoyable? I think. Yeah. Like, I, I was truthfully, like, I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like, you know, commander, is this weird thing where I actually think of it as, I think a better way to think of it is it's a co-op game that an individual happens to win. Interesting. And in that, like, I think we as a group are trying to just have an an experience that is enjoyable for everybody, right?
Like if somebody walks away having not had a good time playing like that is not the experience we are looking to cultivate. Yeah. And so there is some co-op nature to it in that the chaos of commander contributes to interesting experiences together with an outcome of somebody wins. Yeah. Yeah. Like that where you're cooperatively playing. But yeah, somebody has has to win. Yeah, that's really hard. It is hard. It's hard. It's a hard prospect.
But yeah, I just don't I don't want to play a game that makes me miserable. Yeah. There's there's games. How do I how do I say this? There are difficult video games that that's the draw. Yeah. It's like souls, like games come to mind from soft games come to mind. But the the dopamine from those games comes from the conquering of its difficulty. So recently, like Brad for example, he beat Elden Ring. And it's DLC without leveling up. That's crazy.
Yeah. Like to put things out there because I don't, I don't think you've, I haven't played it but so, so in, in Elden Ring just to make it like just wrap your head around it. You level up obviously by getting kills and by defeating bosses. And just like almost everything that you do just kind of goes towards this currency that you can spend to increase your guys stats. Yeah, yeah. And some of those stats, if you place points into them runes, is what they are. You increase your health.
So as the game becomes more difficult and is beat, as the enemies become more damaging, you're not really just going to be taken out in one hit, right? Even even though they're there, that threat is always there. But it's less likely so. And then it allows you to equip different gear. I won't say the word better because the game isn't really set up that way. Better and or easier or more synergistic weapons and armor as you go along. Yeah. So because your guys just he set up for it, right?
They have certain requirements like so for example like strength might be a big two handed weapon that you need enough strength to even just use it properly. Yeah. But at level one where everything is set to just ten, you know, your your health. Yeah. You're just basically yeah it's you're just baseline. Yeah. So the game gets really hard to play the further and further and you go if you don't put any points to level. But for somebody like Brad this is a this is the to me that's miserable.
Like what I love about that game is is the is the build potential. Like trying different builds out and you just can't do that if you don't have the sure stat points. Right. And I think with a lot of games there, at least for me, there's satisfaction when the game starts to become easy because of your leveling up. Like, yeah, I have some satisfaction from that. It's why you haven't played Elden Ring. It doesn't do that. Oh well, eventually it does.
You can Overleveled sure you can do like a cheesy type build it all kind of kind of like not trivialize but soften the difficulty. Yeah. But Brad, he he wanted to do this challenge. Like he wanted to challenge himself to beat it. So he doesn't level up. He does everything he can to to beat all of the bosses and beat the base game. And then the and then the the DLC comes out and the DLC is, in a lot of ways just tougher. Dude, it's just set up to just be harder. Yeah. And he does it again.
He beats he beats that whole segment Brad man. Yeah. So like the final boss of that DLC, I think he said he was do I mean he spent like I think two weeks just fighting, dying fighting, dying fighting, dying because he couldn't make a mistake. Right. Any mistake would just send it back to the to dude. And that kind of like muscle memory, like the emerges from an exercise like that.
Yeah. My my point is, is that if he didn't get a dopamine hit from doing such a thing either, like to brag or to just say he did it or whatever, sure. I don't know if he'd really engage in it. Yeah, there was a game that we had when I was a kid. It was called Super Goals and Ghosts. It was on the Super Nintendo. It just was a horribly difficult game. It was just horribly difficult. Like unforgiving. It it's it's really up there on the on difficulty or Battletoads.
Battletoads is really hard. Yeah. And I just I myself didn't derive enjoyment from them. Yeah. So I didn't play them. I get that like if I'm having a particularly difficult time with like some kind of quest on a game that I've just failed repeatedly, I have to set it down and then come back to it later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So difficulties an interesting thing
because if the game is trivially easy, that's not fun either. No. And that's the other part to this, I think that you and I are trying to be aware of is we don't want to make things too easy on a given player or a given strategy. Yeah. So we're trying to do the best we can to patch our playgroup. Yeah. Balance patch whatever our playgroup, the best we can. And then yeah, making it fun enough for everybody. Because everyone what's fun to me is different. Fun to you. And it's not fun at all.
It's fun to Tiff is really not fun to me. The way Brad wins a game, a commander. I don't find that super enjoyable either, but I have to, you know, since it's a cooperative game. Yeah, I have to cooperate. In his experience. Yeah. And I think that's true. Right. Like, it's like you tolerate some level of Brad doing some some of the things that Brad enjoys. Yeah. And likewise like you guys tolerate me and I tolerate you with some things that we might find offputting.
Right. Like like the big. Okay. Like. Yeah. Grand over the top ending. Brad really enjoys and it gets obnoxious sometimes for some of us. But it's an experience Brad wants and we're all there for it, right? Like, sometimes you're a little more controlling. Hell yeah. Yeah. But like, you're not always that way. And that's kind of like the cooperative. Like, yeah, this is the task is to play against Andy with this thing that he enjoys, you know.
Yeah. So anything else we want to say about this element? Are we ready to go? Yeah I think I'm ready to push into so even further. I think the reason why is people want we want people to come back and play. We we've pushed people out of our play group because they didn't have fun for In One Direction or. Yeah, like either they made it not fun for others or they weren't having a good time like one or the other man. They've they've done. But we've pushed them out for sure. Yeah. Yeah that sucks.
But it's true. And we try to learn our lessons from that. Either we out budgeted them or they just whatever they wanted to do, we just weren't into. And yeah, we were too vocal about it. And yeah, it feels it sucks because you need people to play. Life is going to get in in into people's asses and you're not going to be able to play as much because just adult life, unsexy adult life gets in the way. So I want to try to at least make it so they don't feel like it's. Such a. Not how do I say this?
I want my friends to make the sacrifice of time and probably a relationship equity for some of our married dudes. Yeah, to come and play because that's what's required. I don't I don't want to engage in a game that's only ten minutes long. It's just it's it's a kind of a bigger ordeal. You have to you have to come over and play like play, and you got to put some coin in for sure to play also.
Yeah. Yeah. So I want to they got to have they have to have a draw more than just mine in yours personality. Absolutely. And yeah that's, that's the other piece is like so we want to make it fun. So people keep coming back. And so I keep wanting to play. Yeah. You keep wanting to play. Yeah. How do we do it. It's a damn good question because I don't know that we're always great at it, but we try.
Yeah. Admittedly we're not like I think we were consistent about some things and inconsistent about other things. So I put them down. What I thought and I don't know if you I wanted to add to this. Yeah. But I put down the things that I, that I think contribute to our play groups health, our cultures health. Yeah. Respecting the following, respecting people's time and agency is, is a big one. And what I mean by that is.
The time they spend making the deck respecting it, the time they spend playing the game, respecting it and their ability to do so, the agency, like I can legally rob them of both. Yeah. In the game. Yeah. There is cardboard that's lets me just step on both of those things. Absolutely. I can violate Kyle's time and I can violate his agency. Totally. Yeah. I probably should try to not to do that if I just find it's not great for people. Yeah. Your ability, you know, and your Dex ability.
So respecting Kyle's ability to play, and really, this the ability of Kyle's deck, if if it's known, if it's new, I don't know. Sure. You don't know. Meaning, like. Kyle is an experienced player. It's not really a thought of mine anymore, right? I don't really think this is too much for Kyle, but we have some people that are trying to get into the commander again, where their abilities are not up to speed compared to mine in yours. Right.
They don't sit here and talk about it on the podcast or make YouTube videos. And I would say even for us, it's been an evolution, right? Like when we first started podcasting, I was pretty anti combo decks, you know, like but I, I've built my fair share of them at this point and I grasp what combo means more than I used to. Yeah. Like when we started this podcast you know like yeah, it evolves in and how you want to do it. Like how you want a combo. Yeah.
But your ability is different than, let's say, or, you know, somebody who's just come back to our game is is Zack. Yeah. Jack's ability is it's just not at the same level so he can sit down, knows how to play magic. But yeah, his read of it's different. Dex ability. I could counter pick some of your stuff. Dude. Totally. I could do that.
I could pick a commander or a deck out that just either moves at a pace that yours just isn't set up to do, right, or there's just something about the construction or commander or whatever where they just completely misaligned. It's a it's a mismatch. Yeah, it's a total mismatch. Yeah, I could do that. Especially if I know your decks, which I do because we have this was this thing together and we play. Yeah the same decks for a while.
So you know like a, like a really heavy aggro deck against your Arabist deck. It would be probably a pretty bad match for me if I'm just completely pointed your way. Yeah. And my aim is to set out to knock this deck out. I could do that. You could? It's not even a smart play for me, but it steps on your decks ability alone. Yeah, there's tons of examples of this particular thing that I'm sure we can get into. Yeah, we'll get into it. We'll get to it.
I think the next thing that we want to just be mindful of or respectful of is just the investment. Yeah, maybe some bring some of that part of the time back here too. But they it's for us. You know if you proxy you know dear viewer listener we this this doesn't probably really matter for you but for us it if somebody puts it they put it with some people. I got to put some money in you know. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the decks are pricey. And then the opposite is true too.
If this is supposed to be like a budget experience for you because this is all you had the appetite to spend, I probably shouldn't be blasting something out that's going to go over its head in in budget. Yeah, because I think you and I are subscribers to Budget and Power are kind of go hand in hand a little bit. Yeah. I would say in large part I mean, there's obviously some other variables, but yeah, if you want that trend of power to go up, usually that involves coin.
Popular expensive cards don't tend to be for their art. Yeah. You know, they tend to not be just for if they are they're exceptionally rare prints. Otherwise, like the Walking Dead Rick card probably would never have gotten to 50 bucks. The true story that art, that character? I don't think so. Fresh hotness right? Yeah, you get me. But respecting your investment. Yeah. Is is, I think, something that matters. Like I'm, I'm interested to chat about that further as well.
Yeah. I think there's a nuance there. Yeah. I think the last two is respecting the format and the game. The format is becoming an abstraction for whoever is listening to it, to format, to somebody who is really into the speedier, more competitive version of the format. It has a different character or a different spirit to somebody who they want to do. They're weird. Everybody's looking left deck or whatever their idea of the for those are very different in their conceptions of the format.
Yeah. Like I think Airbus and Boeing have different ideas about what an airplane should should be. But there's a huge Venn diagram where they're sitting in the middle of these things absolutely have to happen because a wing only works one way. And the Jets, one of them isn't working on altering the laws of physics exactly like. But where it comes to commander like the rules are only you got to have 99 cards in your deck. You have a commander off to the side, color, identity, whatever.
But like once you get to the bottom of the list of those requirements, the bottom just falls out. Yeah. And there's a huge difference between someone said airplane and someone else's. Yeah, it's almost like a tribal, janky type of stuff. Yeah. People get into. Yeah, true. But the format is something I think that we have to be respectful about. And I think for me, we'll get into it, but it's more like I think we kind of preamble that it's it's just a multi-player thing.
There's no stakes. There's not a right. Can we just have a respect for that I guess, yeah. At the end of the game you're going to go eat pizza with your friends, right? Like right. I think I said this before, but like, there's more at stake of me eating the last piece of veggie pizza. It's true to Kyle than what actually happened 10s ago, right? In the game. But you weren't freaking the fuck out when I took that last piece of veggie pizza. You were like, oh, I'm kind of hungry.
I guess I'll have to get something later, right? Versus, I don't know, I farewelled your board. Oh, I farewelled your board. Yeah. And the last one just being respecting the game which which I think is a kind of a check to everything that we've talked about. I think all of this stuff, if you want to start messing with it. Yeah, it kind of gets in the way. You hear about these, these crazy ban lists from different shops.
I think it's called, like, there's one that, like, that circulates on the internet. You see this list of banned cards and it. Sure. I think it's this. It's like they don't respect the game anymore, that there is going to be unpleasant things that happen. Yes. And sorry. That's just how it goes there. Like you said, there is a winner and that means there's losers. So yeah, it's just the nature of having a game. We have to be mindful for it or mindful of it.
Right? Yeah. Do you think that sets us up? I do, I like that roadmap in terms of things of just like overall like there's a sense of things to respect in order to create a culture of enjoyment with this game, with this format. And I like those things that you outlined that we'll get into individually. Yeah. We'll also back this up with just things that we've experienced. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's not just sound like we just have philosophical mumbo mumbo jumbo.
Yeah. And things change. People's attitudes change. But I think this is something that it's experiential. Yeah. Most of it. And as will be seen there's some things we're not good at all right. So yeah. You ready. Yeah. Let's get into okay. Time and agency. Yeah. In our church, the first one I put down was we kind of just discouraged time and agency violating gameplay. Okay, so what does that mean?
Like, because I think we've talked about it a lot on the podcast, but what does it mean to, like, violate the first? The first thing I threw out here was, excessive counter magic slash removal that does not synergize with a game winning direction. Okay, so I think that provision is in there because I, I am a believer that removal and and just really the control archetype has its place in the game. It totally does. Man. I'm kind of a I'm definitely not.
It's not me trying to like, curate an experience for myself because I tend to towards that. Yeah, you tend to want it. But, it's there for a reason because if it didn't exist, all we would be trying to do is just boost up and boost over each other. That's it? Yeah. So I kind of like to think about a game of commander, like Mario Kart a little bit. I think I've used this analogy before in the podcast. Okay, you really are all moving at the same speed in Mario Kart.
There's things you can do, like take corners better or do anything at the last second. Sure. Use your break. You know, like there's things, but, like, really if if nothing, if no variables were put in, all the characters move at the same speed they like, Bowser moves at the same speed as Mario. Yeah, and it's only really this, the race that warps that fact.
So if you think about commander Game of Commander, if the rules don't change, we're allowed to play one land to turn draw card out or upkeep, you know, cast, cast, whatever we have available. And everything would just kind of move at that cadence. Right. And the cards introduce changes to that cadence, you know, like like something as simple as if I reckon arena. It's like, well, hey, you're not you're now ahead of everybody in the, in the.
Yeah, the go kart race because I'm starting my turn losing a life and picking up an extra card. Yeah. You ran into the star and kind of some star power. Yeah, some of that. But there's a, there's another piece of it which is removal. If all you can do is. Oh, I got to go faster than Andy. Well, then your only option is necro potent or something, or Sylvan Library or something like that's your only option.
So I just think that it overcaffeinated if a play group or format or overheats it or whatever you want to call it, where removal is just too frowned on, or just as people bitch about it or it's just part of the game. Sure, I really like that analogy of like at a baseline in this game, everybody does move at the same pace, but as you play the cards, that changes. It changes how you're handling the track of the game and if you don't have something that can be the banana peel.
Yeah. To those things. Yeah. Like it gets a little too wacky, right? Like by the time we're at the bottom, we're just ludicrous. Speed warp, warp 11 through this race. It's just we can't even look at this. It's just glitching. It's like our skin is peeling off. This is are going into the wind, right? It's I think the way this is characterized with other like content people is it's like two ships passing in the night. Like they just. Yeah, whoever gets there first is the thing.
And I'm just not down with that. I think removal has its place. I think control has its place. And and to add to that, like there are so many variables that change that speed, right. Like your commander could just accelerate you in a way that go, fuck yeah, I can, you know, like that you I maybe can't keep up with that. And so for me to just I think this is just like a big lesson
for people to kind of like caliber rate when they're building their decks. That I sometimes find myself brewing a list thinking I'm going to be the problem. Yeah, with that list. And when I sit down and play with that list, I'm like, I'm not actually the problem. I probably need to shakes. I need more control because somebody else. There's been too many games where somebody else is out in front of me, right? Like I thought this was going to be the issue deck, but it's not.
There's different philosophies. Some people are all about the like, I just lean in and I yeah, to send it, I commit, I lock in, that's what I do. Great. That's cool. If that's your thing, there's other people that want like a Swiss Army knife type deck. Yeah, I think we did an episode where it's like, I don't think that's always the great thing to do. Depending on what you're what you're after. Yeah. All I'm trying to say is that for the environment, you know.
The control and removal needs to be there. Yeah. It just it just I think it has to be there. It makes sense. But to what end. Yeah. That's the thing I guess this this sections for. Yeah. Because the deck is just loaded with removal and control because you think it's funny or it you're I don't know right. Like Cameron from Ferris Bueller I don't know who you are. You just can't let things play out a little bit. Right. And you're not. And do it.
And engaging in control plays where you know you are denying someone permanence, denying someone permission, removing permanence, whatever, getting in their way. Yeah. And it doesn't for what your game plan. That's that's where I think we're just not okay with it at our table. Yeah. Yeah. If you benefit and it's furthering your game plan then that's something different. It's to me it's a control deck. Like we're we're taking damage and we're losing stuff.
And I think I think holding on that a little bit like, yeah. You know because just watch it. Like think about the times you've observed the people you're sitting at the table with when you've unnecessarily used counter magic or control spells. And like watch the what was the adjustment in their attitude. They probably started to get a little sour. Oh yeah. Right. You counter. Right brother. And it's, it's whatever he's got. Yeah.
And like I mean a conversation that's going on at our table all the time is like why are you managing me. Yeah. So and so is actually the problem. Yeah. And because the, the line between, you know, like respecting people's time and agency is, I think kind of razor thin, you know, where it's like, yeah that is an important move potentially based off the information you have. But right now I might perceive it as unnecessary when you could have been doing that to Brad. Yeah. Right.
Like it's so razor thin and people's like, I think our group seems to do well when we see that the outcome ended up being right. Right. Like oh yeah. You actually should have controlled me. I was about to get about to get there and, and you know clearly Brad took a few more turns before you actually got there. But you're right. It's razor thin I think has his place. Let's get let's give two examples. Yeah. Like of two extremes I think to make it okay. Hopefully a little clearer.
I have a really bad example of where control I just I just don't get it. Like what are you doing. Right. And then I have one where I'm like okay, it makes sense. Yeah I and it's there. It's working for the person. Do you remember Brad's or tied the corrupted? Yeah. That deck was, it was a treat. Yeah. Or tie the corrupted just to, like, remind people what this guy was about. He was the esper commander to a white, a blue and a black for a wizard legend.
Legendary wizard. Right. Three, four. You could pay blue and tap. Sacrifice a creature or an enchantment. Encounter a spell. Counter target spell. Yeah. It's a really weird thing to to have in your command zone. I found, I think initially what Brad liked about it was he could sacrifice recursive enchantments or recursive creatures, all, reassembling skeleton to protect whatever he's trying to set up at any time. Yes.
So if I think if you set it out to to put some convoluted Esper style value combo board state and you have this just kind of out there to counter whatever anybody's going to do, then sure. But what it, it mutating into was whoever was right before, before him. And in the turn cycle there just wasn't going to get through. Yeah. Like it it just wasn't going to get through. He'd permission in it away. Yeah. Because he's waited. He sat. He has something that he can get back on. His turn.
So why waste it? Why waste it if he has recently skeleton or tie out, why is he? Why would he waste it? Right? He held up all this mana and held up all this waste to do it. And he would like get a lot of tokens ways to untap him. Yeah, it was, it was kind of annoying. And in the end it was a control into a combo finish. Went back when we had tutors available to us. Yeah. So it's not like it didn't win, but it was a long time usually to get to it. Yeah man it could be any, anything else.
Like it could be anything else to my mind it just wasn't going anywhere. So what ended up happening was we just focused his ass out. Yeah. And I feel like that commander could have been something where it's like. It could be like an oh, shit button. Like, oh, that's really going to fuck with me. I'm only countering those types of things. But it was not that. It's it's not even an efficient one. Yeah.
Five mana to get out. Yeah. You have to wait a whole cycle before you can start using blue and short of haste, blue tap and then second enchantment or a creature. Yeah. It's so inefficient to stop one fucking spell from the table. Right. Do you remember, like, the game we were playing where he died to a a commander eventually? I think it was Nath. Actually, Gil. Leif. Another kind of control deck. Yeah. Tiff just kept attacking him because she was right before him in the cycle,
and he just wouldn't block. He's a 3 or 4. It would just. It was a bad trade, right? Or not even a trade. It was a bad block. Yeah. And he she eventually killed him I think she boosted at the last second. But he took so many combat steps from Nath. Yeah. I mean he literally had taken like six combats from Nath. Like it wasn't like a short path. Yeah. That she had taken. I don't remember what he was using to sack. It could have been something that couldn't block or something like a blood gaster.
I don't remember, but we just thought it was funny that, like, you're you're so afraid of losing your board state that you're just throwing your life away and and that commander did. And then in last second, she got something where Nath jumped up like he he thought he had more time than he did. Yeah, he actually lost to her doing that. Yeah. And I don't know if that was the last game he played with it, but it just. Control is not my brother's strong suit, I don't think.
Sure because he goes overboard with it. It's either it's either going to it's going to be as hard as any kind of like aggro a combo he makes. Yeah. So I think this is just a really bad example of a control deck, do I? Yeah, I agree because that one was like despite the fact he did have a combo have combo win cons that existed in the deck, it was always a long time of him just getting in the way, and we just got sick of it before he finally did.
Just do it. Yeah. Can you think of any other bad ones, in terms of like, just control? Do you remember Cody's run with Talleyrand? Yeah, I was going to say that's that's one that does stand out to me. Is Cody's run with Talleyrand a little bit? It just. I don't remember the volume of counter spells, that he was really high, but it was high. It was a weird era in the meta. I was playing mrx, and Mrx was pretty tough to beat without, somebody just to counter what I was up to.
I think a lot of the time this is this is years ago, but Cody made a a mono blue towel round cut. You know, Counterspell deck is really what it was. And it was he was, I think, winning with combat from the Drakes that emerged from. Yeah that but it didn't it couldn't keep up like the, the 1 to 1 nature of using a counterspell to answer anything. Yeah. And the two people who weren't counter coming out on top of that interaction, it caught up with him every game, even with your your Drake.
So often the Drake was used to block and keep his life total intact, not put himself back on the front foot and take the initiative. I think the opposite isn't great for Talleyrand was just cantrip deck. I think you're just waiting for a board wipe or something like that to take you out, especially if you're like, I don't have any counter magic. I think the the blend of the two is the the right tower and deck. That's just my opinion, though.
Yeah. But he, he didn't win, like, ever with that thing. No. Ever. No. It was very rare. Yeah. It's it wasn't as bad as a tie situation, but no, it just wasn't good, man. It just wasn't good. I think another one that fits into this category in terms of like agency with this is one of my early runs with, the Ken Roth twins. Yes. One of the abilities hit a couple versions of that. One of the one of the abilities on Will.
Kenneth allows you to target two creatures and turn them into, I think, zero threes. But the big thing is they have no ability. Yeah. And so I could functionally neuter two. And it was until my next turn. God I hated that. So it would go around. That ability is so good. It's it's so good. But it's so annoying right. Because, does it bring his loyalty up when you do that? Yeah. Let me look him up just so I can make sure. I think it does. I think, yes, it is so, so it's for blue.
Blue for planeswalker will. And it comes in with four counters, the plus two abilities until your next turn up to two target creatures each have base power and toughness. Your three and lose all abilities. So really, I could make it so the two people's commanders were useless. Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty good. And it's really good. But man, did Andy get depressed during those games because that was in an era when you and I were kind of at each other quite a bit. That's true.
And so I almost always your commanders were neutered. If I got as soon as I got Willow out, like, you just didn't get to use your commander. Yeah. And it was kind of indeterminate. I wasn't like, I put Wil out and I'm like, I'm about to win. It was just. I'm going to neuter your commander, which is integral to your deck. Yeah. For the foreseeable future. The deck was rough because if if I was playing a deck that people found threatening, they were just like, okay, to let you just do it.
And now I don't have a lot of the time, a creature that can put pressure on, pull loyalty off. Yeah. Fucking will. Yeah. And the rest of your deck was equipped to deal with it. Yeah. It was. It's not like you were only relying on that loyalty and money, but, but once people decided to go on your on your planeswalker, you got, like, irritated. I did, because you were too. Oh, yeah. But. Oh, yeah, but rightfully so, because I think that is a scenario where will.
Yeah, it was in service of I really did want Will's emblem which which says it. You know when you go on the infinite which is you remove eight counters and it says you get an emblem with whenever you cast an in or source, you spell copy it and you can choose new copies. Yeah. Like that's pretty potent. And then the real dream was with Rowan where it said if you activated an ability, she had her emblem that if you activated ability, you double it so you could get two of these emblems.
That's what I really wanted. But the journey there was littered with just people who just couldn't neutered commanders and just not having fun. You just couldn't lose control of these two. No. Too much mana. No. If we finally disown them, you're just.
Yeah, it was a big investment on my part and it really just didn't make for fun gameplay because I basically was telling you guys, you can't play your game the way you want to for the foreseeable future, and I'm just going to do me and that control, I guess. Only vaguely advanced your strategy. Yeah, only vaguely went up, that's all. Yeah, exactly. It's like a afraid yeah I don't. Yeah, yeah. It was a weird. Yeah. That's a good example.
Okay, a good example I think of, of a control deck that at least I'm okay with it. Yeah, yeah. Brad fucking hates this deck. He hates it. Chris is Carmen sky marcher? Yeah. Three white and a black for a two to legendary creature. Vampire soldier flying. Whenever a player sacrifices a permanent put a plus one plus one counter on Carmen. Cool sky martyr, and you gain one life. And then whenever Carmen attacks, return up to one target.
Permanent card with mana value less than or equal to Carmen's power. From the graveyard to the battlefield. That's a pretty. Those are pretty dope abilities I so you you flesh bag. That would just be like the low lowest case scenario, right? You cast a flesh bag, she picks up for counters, you gain for life, and then if she attacks your flesh bag again, you just pull it right back. It's pretty heavy. I like this, though, because she picks up the counters.
Yes, the vector is she's growing in power. The threat of a Voltron kill is is getting nearer and nearer the the the more of this is. Plus she's collecting other bodies along the way, too, right? It's she. She does. She benefits from the action of control. Yeah. Her tie. Sack outfit, I guess loosely like that. It it didn't do what I, I can't I just can't connect the dots there. We're here. I'm like, oh, cool. It's just she's now plus four
off that one flesh back. Yeah. You've gained four life and now she's coming back at me. And as soon as she attacks, it goes off again. So if there's more creatures to feed into her, she actually goes up even more. Yeah, you could get her. I'm close. Close to, like. Yeah, I'm close to if not at the clock with that. Like, that's that's control with a with the direction to me which I really like that. Yeah. And what I really like about her is that she manages treasures really well.
That's true. People just eating treasures. And I mean, she's like, yeah, she's growing and growing like like Chris doesn't even say anything. He just takes like ten games. It looks like you you should know she's out. Yeah. Like, if you're going to be using. I declared my commanders out. There's been games where, you know, Tiff or Brad or even like Eddie's has been. How the fuck did she get this pig? And he's like, all of the treasures you've been using. Not getting new information.
We tend to tell people like, oh, I draw a card or something, like, I gain a life. I put a counter on her, but he just starts ticking her up because unit, you should know, dude, she's been out for a while. Yeah. So I, I really like this is, Okay, well, you're controlling for sure in the form of edicts or, like, I think she. I think he even uses, like, the seal of. It's like the white. Oh, yeah. Like the Scylla. Primordial. And Ursula. Like the white one. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah, but stuff like that where you can just sack it, or he, like, evokes things like vocal work to remove something. That one's green, but whatever. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's a good example of control with it. Yeah. There's a direction from it. What do you think? By my smasher and Glenn Reddick. That's control for sure. That deck is. Yes, but because you have something in the zone that is lowering life totals with your first spell, each time, I think. Yeah, it's pretty loose.
I think it's pretty cool cuz it's at random. If, if, if winning was the objective, it's one of those ones. That's borderline right. Because because I think everybody has a sense that you need to be dealt with. But that's a complicated proposition because you have control in the deck. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say I there's that. Right. Like, I shoot a spell that controls things. Something like, I don't know, win graces judgment or whatever it is I smash for five. We all do the I do the removal.
We do the removal. And someone's life total went down by five. That that's that's a direction. Yeah. But I think the other thing I'm really driving for, which is everywhere it's in everyone's mind is Skull Storm. Like, if I manage the board and you guys actually kill my commander's off Clan or Smasher, and then I recast them, that skull storm is just getting bigger and bigger. Yeah. And the less you have on board, the harder it's going to hit. Yeah. Probably take take you out if I can.
If I can land it. Yeah. I mean like, I think I think for me and this may be a metric to kind of be aware of when it comes to this is like do people land in this space? Because when, whenever I am in a game against your smasher and calandra deck, I don't if I feel just like, utterly controlled. Yeah. I anticipate that you're about to win. Okay. When I'm doing that. Right. Which which is how? By how we've. Yeah. Which is how it's supposed to be done.
Like, I don't think I've ever found myself playing against that deck where, you know, because there is a moment sometimes in games where you're utterly wiped out and you don't feel like you can resolve anything, right? Like so we used to have this experience against Savage sometimes. Right. Or, against Sherry charades. Lord, where where you would get to a point with a game against Sherry where you don't have any creatures left.
Yeah, but you don't feel like you can resolve them fast enough to keep any of them against him. Yeah. And you or you don't have any cards in hand, and you don't feel like you could draw them fast enough to stray, to still keep. Can't ever. Who could draw faster than Sherry can force you to discard. Right. And so it it always kind of but quite regularly you just kind of felt like you needed to sit around for 3 or 4 turns for the game to end, being able to do nothing.
Nothing. And I've never had that experience to my knowledge or to my recollection against Smasher where like I can't everything's gone and I don't feel like I can resolve. Right. Yeah. Like I think that to me is an important thing. I don't really hand I don't do hand attack. Yeah. I'm not attacking your hand. Yeah. Your permanents are definitely not safe. Sure, but I'm not really getting into your hand.
I don't think too much outside of, and and it's not reliant on activity opportunities because you need casts for smasher. Right. So it's not like, you know, because one of the big things with control is like repeated activated abilities, right? True. Yeah. And and if you can see some naked activated ability that's repeatable, that's oftentimes where you're like, okay, I just don't feel like I can play anymore because it's a lock that's out. I'm locked out. Yeah, right.
Like Smasher doesn't give me that feeling right? Think of anything else. Do you think that covers us? Yeah, I think those are some interesting examples to illustrate. Excessive counter magic slash removal when you don't really have a game plan for why you're doing it. Yeah. It's it's a hard one. You could tell me, like, well, it's control into a combo finish and I'd say, all right, sure. And then we just have to say, okay, well, then the plate. I guess we should say this also.
We're not saying it. You can't. You just get ready for the playgroup just to push back. Right in the form of aggro or a concerted effort to knock you the fuck out. Like 30 deck got unplayable for him because yeah, we're just not okay with it. We never asked him to take it apart. We never said you can't do that due to floating your command zone like we figured it out. But and I think just kind of knows not to try that again. Yeah, I think that's what you're getting at is the culture of it. Right.
Like we culturally solved those decks like faux pas was frowned upon. Yeah. You're not playing dirty because we will kill you. Yeah. I'm not playing Will and and Ken wrath because I will die. You got, like, just shunned off the beat farm, right? Mana denial. Let's just get this one out of the way. Like, sooner rather than later. I just want to replace the word opponent with friend here for just just just this conversation. Okay?
So denying mana is to deny your friends the ability to use the cards they've selected for their strategy, the cards they paid for right? They just can't play the game. Yeah, yeah. You need mana to do most everything. If you're. If you're not spending, I don't know, like free spell after free spell after free spell. Like you need to be able to play lands.
I don't know if I told you the story like a long time ago, there was this girl that me and, Harris worked with, and me and him were playing magic at our desks in our pod together, and she wanted to learn how to play. So he sat her down, gave her her, gave her her his deck, and was walking her through the place, you know, and I'm playing along so it's strong deck. He knew what the fuck what he was doing.
Yeah. He's just kind of puppeteering her, I guess it's, you know, it's all we had on hand, right? And she was being annoying, so, like, shut up, play the deck. But he's like, all right, now you want to play land? Why? Like she looked up at why? Why do I want to do that? Why would I play land? Well, it's the resource. And he's is what he said. It's it's the resource you need to play the game. That's what he said. This is we're playing two modern decks.
I think he had modern like it was like mono white, modern aggro or something. And I was playing, rack dos. It was like my it was my shitty aristocrats. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dirty aristocrats. It was. It's like a modified version of that. Yeah. But she like, was was there advantage for not playing land and he's like, not that I can think of right now. Just play the land. Like she was really hung up on this, you know?
And so as the game progressed, he kind of showed her like, see now you're able to do more in a turn where before you can only do one thing a turn. Now you're able to do two thing a turn because you've managed to drop a land every turn. Yeah. So the game is speeding up. It's, it's it's a, it's heading towards its finish line with or without us. Right. Because we have mana. Right. The only other like pressure valve on this is that we run out of cards.
And whoever does that first loses when they attempt to draw. Yeah. Like the game wants to finish itself. Yeah. By accelerating things, you get it. Like and the way it's doing that is mahna mahna is required to play the cards that you paid for. Yeah. You know with you like running 30 lands in your command deck or not you still need the least. You still need you still know at least the, you know, 30% of your deck is paying homage to the fact that you need, man,
that that resources required. Yeah. So we'll just have we're talking about stacks. Mana denial. I don't think we have a lot of stories about this. We learned pretty quick that it was a time waster for everybody to engage in it. My, I think the first time anyone stepped on this was me. It was V. I would play something like, I don't know, Mia Weintraub, and then I would have a bunch of evasive low to the ground flying men hit you and untap all my lands and have a regular turn.
Right. Create a mess. This is what stacks is, right? You create a mess for everyone at the table, and you find a way to either get completely out of it, or just enough out of it, where you're able to eke out a little bit advantage. I have a lot of respect for the strategy, I really do. It's it's kind of it's kind of neat. It is actually like an elegant dance to make it work. Right. A good stack stack is is a really I like the word elegant. It can be.
It just is only good for the person playing it, in my experience. Yeah, because like the the moment with, that first incursion with with stacks. Yeah. With the heavy which said, whenever one of your creatures dealt combat damage, you could tap or untap something. So, like, you would have something that would allow us to untap one land per turn. So, like, we would save, right? So we're like, I've been saving my untap since I've got four lands
up, and you would use a turn to just tap them all down. Yes. And it was just like even even when you're spending 3 or 4 turns saving your untap, it could just be taken away. You're right like that. And it was just like, oh, like even this one card that I was going to, I had to wait three turns to play. No, exactly. You don't exactly. Or you introduce something like tendril mists into it. Where? Okay, well, if you want to keep your creatures, you need to pay one at your upkeep level, right?
Like, I've created a situation where your options are either limited or nonexistent because of the deck I've played, the locks are starting to, like, lock up everything, right? It just takes a long time to get through. And that's coming from two players who enjoy long games. You and I do. Yeah, that's true. If you kind of think about the stuff we were talking about with a lot of this episode, will be kind of cluing you into they like kind of live longer games, kind of do enjoy them.
Yeah. But not this type of not this route. It's it's just yeah, only one person is playing the game. You know, we we've said this before like don't invite people over to play games with you to watch you jerk off like do that alone. It really kind of. Is that right? Where it's just like, get a modo account and do that. There. Okay. Sign up, sign up for, sign up for Magic Online. Do that there and then I don't know Brazzers is free. Everybody. I you heard it right. Brazzers is free.
Do that do that. Do those two things by yourself. It is our thing. Your braggart deck. That was so that's a little a little different than Dharavi. I think it was more of a convulsion to how Baraga was going. And your solution was to use it. Yeah, but I have to admit, I did buy some of the harder stacks cards than even you had used. Yeah, right. Like, I was like, I'm going to go full lock on you guys. Sure you're not on tapping anything? Yeah.
And I'm just going to use Bronco's ability to blink all my mana rocks and you're just completely out. So I'm totally available to mana, and. And you guys have zero. It's smart. You manage your. You manage your mana curve. Well. You only need maybe 3 to 4 mana to accomplish anything in a given turn. And these mana rocks get flickered. And they and the stasis. Yeah. And you're, you're locked in. You're really not.
And you're just operating on your, you're able to play magic and you're just not letting us play. Yeah. Which is you know, that's why you gold fish on your deck building side of your choice. That's not what you get your friends together for right. So mana denial isn't something that's explicitly we've never said don't put them in your deck, but just get ready for people just not to want to play against this deck.
Dude. Yeah, if if it's happening every weekend, I think eventually people will just. It never got to that point. I took Dharavi apart in that way. You pulled back on? Yeah, I just took a part because there was nowhere else to go. There was no real sick. Well, and we just got ahead of it. Even still, Baraga, I think, was it really met its natural end, like, we would just aggro the fuck out of you, remove any. It was almost like A1V1 arch enemy game.
Like the minute you resolve something destroyed. Yeah, we wouldn't wait. We wouldn't? Yeah. Politic. It was just Kyle versus the world. Yeah. Because there's there's no you know what's coming. Like there's no point. Right. Yeah. I won't play this game which I think that's a side note. That's a good indicator that your deck maybe needs to have a revision or go if every time you sit down with it, everybody dog piles you. Yeah, yeah. That's a, that's a pretty resolve like a worn power stone.
And I'd be panicking. But he we need to get it. Yeah. Because if I can link that that's mana. Exactly like that has to go. Yeah. We're going to get locked down. Our best option is to keep him locked with us. Yes. Then collectively, I think we can pull it off. And you just got tired of doing it? Yeah. It's so mana denial. We do do some things in our group in this thing that I think straddles this a little bit like, okay, there's tell me there's a occasional use of cards like Damping sphere.
Fuck yeah dude. So fuck yeah. So like damping sphere, it's two mana for an artifact. It says if a land is tapped for, two or more mana produces a waste instead of any other type of, an amount. Yeah. And then each spell a player cast costs one more to cast for each other. Spell that player casts his turn. So it just kind of slows the role of the of the player who's casting the most. Yeah, of the player that's casting the most. Or they they found a way to produce double mana.
Yeah. Also that so fuck them those arts. But those are two things where it's like, okay, but you're playing in excess. I'm not taking the game away from you, but like, you're not going to storm off. Yeah. You're not going to, you know, untap your lands with your double mana producer and give me, you know, give yourself 18 mana this turn. Like that's not happening. Like we will use cards like that. I don't know that it's been used very often, but like we have done occasionally.
Like a curse of exhaustion. Yeah. And our play group, which here, which limits a player to their home where you're only allowed one spell it. Yeah. One turn or one spell a turn. So effects there is a little bit of this that I think we dabble in. But I think our group tries to be judicious about who needs to be, who needs that banana peels thrown in front of their. Oh yeah car.
You know, like I their cart I use them damping sphere is in my Troyan list because I'm likely only really to resolve one box. You got big stompy guys. Yeah. If you're if you're playing, just go to the highest mana value deck. Yeah. You want to just get it. Get up there. Damping is great because you're likely you're not. You're not going to resolve two five mana spells a turn. You're going to do 116 and one seven and sometimes an eight.
And you just pass it and it really holds back people who are very mana rock dependent. They're really leaning on like it basically just sets the mana rocks to okay, yeah. Like you just need to mana for the next turn. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it, it manages, aristocrats really well too. Yeah. Because they, they the weaving of creating treasure and creating little draws spawn like they have to use it just to stay neutral. Yes.
And the more they do, they fall behind because the damping sphere is getting higher and higher. Yeah. The cost is I. I'm okay with it, I love it. Yes, I think those are some good examples of like they do to have some kind of place in the culture of our group. Right. Like but they get to under tap their lands. Yeah. They get a whole fucking spell. Yeah. And if they have an excess amount of mana already, by some other way,
they'll play around it. Yeah. It just kind of rains in the right decks for me. Yeah. Deafening silence. If it's a really creature dense deck with white, you get one non creature spell a turn. Just make sure it's a good one. Right. Don't waste your time pondering in front of me. Don't do it. Yeah. So do you see what you can do? You think some people may consider the mana denial, but, like, I think they're in that range where it maintains respect in our group still.
Yeah. And what's what's interesting about these spells and what I've heard is that opponents will leave them out because they think it's raining in the other, too. So like Chris has told me a bunch of times, and that damp that that dampening sphere is really and then he like, you'll watch him like look over at Brad, you know, and Brad's like, yeah, dude. Yeah. Like he's like just he's just twitching it to get destroyed so he can just, like, pop off.
Yeah. Dude, the damping sphere fucking sucks, right? And yeah, it's like. Yeah, and, like, just give the turtle you're kind of like, I could use an ibuprofen, but you're looking over at that person. I'm like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't do drugs. Like you don't need any more. The eight ball looks really good. Yeah, dude. It'll just. Brad will drain that shit right away. But he's more than happy to wait for Chris to use his chaos or. Or whatever.
Yeah, I think that actually happened where he kept passing and making a comment about it, and and eventually he warps something else of mine, and Brad's like, why not the damping sphere? And he's like, I don't know, I think I'm, I'm oh, you know, I didn't like it at first, but I'm okay. I'm all right. I he's just he wanted to. Yeah, yeah. Scout a bunch of crazy spells and it's in turn. And this whole thing, this thing just kept getting, you know, the governing is turned.
Dude. It was like he just couldn't get through it. Yeah. Or, the deafening silence. I think I had that down playing, going, and it just, it was just enough where I think it's going to get removed, but everybody thinks it's holding off the other person. Right? It's bad for me, but it's also bad for Kyle. It's also bad for Tiff. So I guess I'll just I'll just write it out. Right. It is always kind of funny to be like that happens the worst problem for them than it is for me.
So let them do. It's going to do that with winner orb. Dude, I don't think everyone's like, we're just gonna get rid of it, right? Let's just get it. Yeah. Let's just talk about the opposite direction of this, which, yeah, I don't I don't love to bring this into it, but I think it matters sometimes, which is excessive speed. Okay. It's probably is more equal to the budget. Of things. Sure. Right.
So some decks just move at a pace that, that trivializes anything the other decks can do at the table. Yeah. To stop them or just even having to have the experience of their own deck, sort of like getting mana screwed or something like. Right. It doesn't happen a lot around here, but I think the the stories that I've got, like the two examples, just to kind of drive home what I'm trying to get at was Brad's winnowed a list that winnowed a deck, it just was really fast.
It was really, really, really fast. We could not suffer it to to have any setup. Yes, whatsoever. My favorite, when no Noto deck story was, I had Knight of Souls betrayal out and I was running it a lot because we had a lot of tokens just running wild in our meta. Tiff was playing a lender. Still is. Chris had a bunch of token decks. You had a bunch of token decks, and it it was really effective and glisser the the traitor. Yeah, cuz I didn't want you guys sacking tokens.
You know, this is before they kind of were giving the everyone stacks and non tokens for token creature. Yeah. So I just was like I'm gonna make them really difficult to hold on to. Yeah. But I got this thing out on turn four so. Right. And I was earlier in the turn cycle says before Brad could get one. Oh down or something. Yeah. And he just got stuck. Popped all of his create three goblins. Yeah. Create two devils or whatever.
He use it from the sorceries to make non-humans just almost all of them were one ones. Yeah, two spirits or two human whatever. He couldn't even have this enchantment out, right? No. And we went all the way around the table and I was having a really great game. I was kind of a bad, bad matchup for me because it's a heavy control deck, and he is just going to aggro the fuck out of me the minute he can. And he was begging everyone. He wasn't fighting interaction for it.
He was begging everyone like, get rid of it and Andy's out of this fucking game because his hand is just getting more and more sculpted. Yeah, he is just getting the best of the best, and I just don't have a way to like, get damage on him yet. You know, I haven't been able to find my, like, combo piece, you know, just to get damage in on. Yeah. I was trying to mine slave or lock him when I talk about, like, robbing people agency. But that's what I was trying to do, you know?
And finally, I think it was Chris. He's like, I'll get rid of it. Oh, he destroyed the enchantment. We got to Brad's turn. I got knocked the fuck out, like. And then he got just in one turn. He's just like turn. He went from 0 to 90 and it was like, yeah, it was. He just completely bricked me out of the game. Yeah. Got to one more turn of him. He took the other two with him. Yeah. Right after that. It was a complete thankless job. He took me out and then took the other two out.
She's just really potent, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. I think she just kind of falls into the, like, is a zombie lady of scrolls dimension where she's really strong for for I just. I don't know how you don't build her cracked, right? Even on a budget. Right? Cracked like it's a it's not crazy like, in that fits in with the most competitive decks, but, like, it's just a little too good. Yeah. You're right. What is she, four mana for A44 legendary creature? Human warrior.
Whenever a non-human creature you control attack, look at the top six cards of your library. You clutch. You may put a human card, from among them into the battlefield. Tapped and attacking. It gains indestructible and until end of turn. But the rest at the, at the bottom of your library in a random order. Yeah, it's totally wild. Just totally wild. You just rip. It's for every one of them. If three goblins, you're looking at six than six than six. And just human, human, human. It's just crazy.
Yeah, it just moved at a speed that this. The rest of the meta wasn't capable of. Right? Reining in on. Right. We eventually started camping it pretty hard. Like it turned into, like, Braga, but in reverse. Do you see one goblin? You're like, it's got a die. Yeah. Like that. That means some human that's going to just fucking dump out. Exactly. It just everybody was just camping his ass. So yeah, we didn't say get rid of Winona.
It was like we all just decided we're not going to suffer Ohno to game, ever. Yeah, yeah, the whole game became deal with, y'know, the game. Yeah. Like so there's I think there's that response. And then I think there's other decks that we've had that have kind of hit this speed threshold that, yeah, people just kind of get bummed when they're like, oh, you have a winning board state. And I have resolved like a ramp spell and a support creature. And maybe my commander.
Yeah. Like, yeah, if other people are at that point of the game, but you've got a winning board state, like, yeah, it just kind of gets awkward. Yeah. It was there was a it was fast. Yeah. And we didn't have I think a collective clutch of three decks that could be like, all right, let's all just kind of move at this speed, because sometimes you could just select, let's all play a fast paced game if you've got the decks for it. Right. Like that is an option. Yeah. Or just to get rid of it.
It was just a weird fit. Do you have any other ones that you can think of that were like just they died of the construction of what was in the deck. Just move. I don't have for everybody. I don't have a specific example that I want to bring up. But I do think there's this is one area that I think is really hard to be hit the ideal with. Right. Because I don't think it's an uncommon experience to brew a deck, sit down and play it, and it actually plays faster than you thought it was going to.
I think that does happen, right? Like a true I think you're somewhat deck did that right. Like back in the day where Sam what was wild. Yeah like I don't I don't I think you knew it was going to be fast. I just don't think you realized how fast once until you sat down and played it. And I think that's an easy thing to have happen. Yeah. And it can just sort of be a little bit weird. And then I think the other thing is, just like picking your up sometimes can be, you know, ameliorate this issue.
Yeah. That was a that was a pretty extreme example. That's just a really fast aggro deck. Do you remember my tour mod and D'Argo deck? Oh yeah. Yeah. This one is like I think it was on two axes too, I think. Yeah. It wasn't, it wouldn't move as fast as we know to in that somebody's life total just coming down very quickly. Right.
It just got really hard to hold on to anything because you have, like, this floating sack outlet in the zone and, and an a guy who could just, like, kind of make a zombie to feed back into this sack outlet loop. So really like the way I made the deck was I just need to find a way to produce red mana, and I could just take the game over with D'Argo getting infinitely sacking itself and seeing this backlog of sacrifice creatures and or treasures.
You know, this is like before, like the the treasure revolution right before we found that's true. That's true on a ship full of fucking gold. Here comes Tau. There comes D'Argo for that. Yeah. No kidding. Like, the design team just found one eyed Willie in his, like, treasure trove in the last couple of years. But it it really just took over quick because it was a infinite in the zone.
And that's I think the reason one of the things I would contend is that even if it didn't, the fact that you had like, because D'Argo is a 76, right? A 76 in the zone that you can get out pretty quickly and easily. Yeah. He's a trample to because he has trample. Yeah. So your thing was I and I think rightfully you were like, because I'm combo king. There's going to be pressure on me.
So I can't like I think sometimes we do in our group with, with Voltron is people will kind of spread it around so everybody gets to participate. There's not somebody pushed out early and you're sitting around. But you wouldn't do that with dark. No. You would latch on to somebody because you're like, I'm combo ING. So two players is better than three, to deal with. And so there was almost always somebody that was out of the game. Yeah. Early.
Who's got islands while you were getting ready to find your combo? Yeah. It was, pretty crazy deck for the meta at the time. I didn't keep it very long, even though I was really proud of what I built. It's just. Yeah, it's cool that it it's it's the infinite from the zone. It's like that's that's a speed thing. It's a speed. It adds to your speed quotient. Yeah. You only need to find two components. And you always have access to one of them or three components.
And you always have access to one. Yeah. So it kind of violated something I don't like doing for myself, which is it's just a combo piece right away. I'll use Command my commanders as combo pieces here and there, sure. But I don't know, like the level of convolution I'm okay with like how many steps and commander. And that was like two 1 to 1 they. Yeah. Because like I've, I've got to sha but it's like I need 4 or 5 cards to combo with hand to sha or usually. Yeah three and to Sha.
Usually there's some that are three plus to Sha, but most of them are four plus two sha. Yeah, that was the other pieces. Like all I needed to do was find a way to produce read thermal pod direction alter. Yeah. Something that leaves a treasure behind. Now you know there's a new sack outlet. The goblin. I mean, I was like, but whatever. Like there's it was just fucking pirate. It was really lubricated. It went off. Yeah. All right. Great packs in the middle now.
And it's just like it would just tear people up or vicious shadows. I would have enough. Managed to both somehow. Because he's only one red and. Yeah, okay. Everyone's just taking life like crazy. It was it was a cool list, but it just moved way too quick. I think. And so I got pressured like crazy. What I got back was Cameron was like, I have no choice but to act, to just assume you have that combo piece in your opening. It. So I'm going to treat it like you do.
Yeah. And I come after you, remove anything I can, will keep you off from it. And just the culture pushing back on what I'm doing. Yeah. The other thing that was hard with that one is that the SAC outlet was stapled to a commander who can leverage it in the zone, right. Like because usually when we did it last did. Yeah. Usually one way to disrupt those types of, combos is to deal with the SAC outlet. But you can't in that case. So it was fast and kind of opaque. It was it was crazy.
If you fucked me on that turn, though, his tax was like, oh yeah, just just in this. And that was my excuse the whole time. But everyone's like, bro, the only person that could do that is probably a blue player, right? Depending on the situation, you already killed him a lot of the time. So and that's it's just another thankless, shitty position to be in, is I'm only here to provide the counterspell for when and he's about to dick out.
Is Dargo right? Yeah. Like you it was I don't know, it just didn't it just didn't fit. So I didn't keep it very long. Yeah. Do those feel like good excessive speed stories? Yeah, I like those. I'm all about having a fast deck, but, yeah, you know, hopefully it's it's not to the point where the whole game space is warping around you. We have fast decks that are in our meta. Yeah. Currently, I think people know how to play if they're at the table like, Chris Ruby. Yeah, it that's a fast one.
It'll get on you pretty fast, but it's not like I don't know, man. He has to kind of gauge on who he's gonna try to throw these big creatures. He kind of needs to find haste a little bit. It doesn't become this just self-perpetuating deluge of, like, humans or cargoes. It doesn't. It doesn't become that. It's just like, hey, here's some big stuff. My deathly per deck has, like, bursty starts. It's just kind of in the it's kind of in the commander. Right?
Like if they come down that turn, they have double strike. So it's like a hurry. They have haste like, but but I think the difference with those is that you could you could find yourself as an opponent to those decks looking around the table and you're like, oh shit, I'm at 20 life and it's turn five and everybody else is in the 30. Still, like that happened kind of quick, but like, you're still in the game, right? Like, yeah, I think that's the difference.
And if the other things are happening the way they should, like hopefully there's some elements of control here because that's something that we're kind of okay with. Yeah. Like if somebody's playing it's like if I'm playing Smasher it's probably a good matchup against Ruby. Like he's got to solve my my 99. Yeah. He can't just do his thing. And this is banger after banger. Like you're not going to it's not going to work out for him right. Yeah yeah yeah. If we move on to the next yeah.
Let's sting. Respecting the abilities of our different church members and their decks and their decks. Yeah, I've got decks. I think I'm able. Right. I have a I've played a lot of commander, but I've got decks that are just not able. They're not able to deal with or do things or accomplish a lot. Yeah. In a game. Yeah. That's my my own fault sometimes. Like it shouldn't be your problem if I'm playing Gornal. Drac, you know what I mean? Sure.
But I do think he just pumps out salamanders for my opponents. I do think the group can be cognizant of like, hey, is there a particular kind of game someone is interested in having? Yeah, right. Like I have some lower power decks that I, I just like playing them right there. Just kind of like your will girl. Your girl will deck. It's. Yeah, it's it's just not a great it it can do some damage but is so lacking in resilience it cannot recover.
Yeah. Like but I just, you know it's kind of I want to play it sometimes. Yeah. You know I'm okay to see it. I don't need you to play some hard ass deck every time. Right. But what I, what I shouldn't be doing is your opponent is picking something that I know is just going to step right on it, right? Because we all sit down and we don't do the whole, like, reveal. Commander. Yeah, this one's hard to do. We're really inconsistent with this one. Candidly. We really are it.
Let's talk about decks first and we'll talk about players because we're getting there. Right. There's just different decks that they're just ability is is all over the place. Like Brad has a core demon kindred list. Yeah. It's a really late game late stage list. He's really looking to kind of like, get the demons out, turn over, turn. Hopefully get Black Hawk Down. We usually kind of get rid of that right away, and then everything goes to the graveyard.
And then he does some big mass reanimation. That's that seems to be. Yeah. The pattern of the deck. Yeah. You know, I could really get underneath that deck with a lot of mine. They just either wouldn't have time to see that journey or the crucial things that he's looking to do. My deck just blocks. Right. Like, to give an example, I don't know if I just sat down with Narbonne, right. Like Narbonne to things like crazy.
Like they're never going to go to his graveyard, they're just going to be back and hand over and over and over again. And I'm not even really winning, dude. I'm just. I'm just here and I'm just fucking with them. Yeah, but, like, it's very likely that he is. Targets are the ones I want to bounce. I'll bounce my own wizard and you're. And you're fucking demon. Okay, Brad. Yeah. Over and over and over again. Yeah.
That sounds just pause as I get more and more of those triggers, I'll come to the Roman throne, aiming withered. I know we're going to bounce a bunch of times and he just can't realize it never gets to play. Yeah, like he's kind of expecting them to get destroyed because that's like the the classic way to clear someone's board. Right. Not that's back in hand and back in hand. Eventually he can overtake me.
I need to come up with some kind of way to win or deal with you, to like you and Tiff or whatever, but yeah, I don't know. I'm just throwing out, like off the cuff. Yeah, I shouldn't be taking stuff to specifically get under the ability of of something. You're I think we are good about not trying to be like, oh, I'm directly fucking you. Yeah, we are pretty good. I think we do sometimes stumble into that, you know. So like, for example, you recently built out your Fir Crag list, right? Oh yeah.
And we and we had a game where I was playing to Keisha that gives all my creatures tap abilities. So you couldn't goad me. And Brad was playing his, go into the castle. Oh fucking deck Livio. And I think it's Calandra or is it back to Kodama I don't know, I think it might be Kodama again, but he's doing Livio where he's just he's just exiling things away. Right. So you couldn't goad two players basically. And I think we just kind of at first because bro is playing Hazel.
Oh that's right, he's playing Hazel. And it's just like audible temple these tokens and or was it. And it just it's accidentally happened that way. Yeah. Yeah I think we'll be more cognizant of that in the future. But like it was not a good game for you because you could go to anybody. Right. Like yeah. Which is yeah. Yeah. That was hard. It's not your guys's problem. You wanted to play to Kasia. Brad wanted to play Livio and and Chris wanted to play. I think it was Hazel or Balan.
One of the two is both at the same time. And I want to play for cry. They're all new except for Takeda. They're all newish, which is what happens a lot. We just have something we want to play. We just. I want to play this I haven't seen in a while. I made changes to it or it's brand new. So I'm sitting down trying to play this new list and I should have gone. I need to switch and my arrogance list, and everybody's not going to get into each other's stuff. Yeah, this is a really bad game for me.
And then I did it again because I don't know. But like, That's that can happen. Like. Yes, but but no one picked those decks in fear of for their crag. They weren't like, oh my God, I can't. What can I do to not be good at. No one's doing that. But I think, I think because of that experience, I think we will all be more cognizant now of the ability right? Like we none of us want to.
I view that as a counter pick for me now where it's just like, yeah, if I get out to show where I can just tap out of the way of every fucking go, yeah, you're going to anyway. Yeah. Like, yeah like that. Does it just hinder your vigilance. Is all the ends of right tap on your turn. And they got to attack. Right. Which, you know, maybe that's okay. I guess. But but they're usually like little dudes. They're not they're not going to come back from a right.
Right. Exactly. So, you know, I don't know, I, I think those sometimes we're not great at recognizing the ability that we're playing around. But I think we do try to pick up on it. There's also the power level. Yes. There's some decks that we have that are there. They're older and they're they've got a significant capital investment in them. You say like they've matured.
They've they've they've vested and they just do really well, you know, in a lot of situations, they're either the strategy that they're using is kind of opaque and a little bit difficult to get your arms around or. Yeah, their budgets really up there. So they're they'd move faster than, than is appropriate. So some of mine I got to be careful when I play them and it's not it's not again it's a it's a balance thing.
Right. Like I'm not I'm not trying to look out for just my friends that I'm playing against. I am, but also I don't really want to be the focus of three competent players. Yeah, no I don't I don't have a deck that I don't I don't carry any decks currently that can handle the combined anger and focus of of the people I play with. Yeah, I don't currently. So I want a balanced game where I want Kyle to go, God man, it's Nessa Hall and that's really strong.
But also Zephyrus is over here and but also what pick pick a deck of brats like yeah that is a better game. And then all three thinking that that's that's the perfect game. It's the balance that I'm trying to achieve. You know it's like what what are these? I guess I'll just have to see how it goes. And the game just plays itself by its own right. The threat assessment has to matter. They're all equal. Equal in threat. You all have to figure out who's the actual person.
Yeah. And this turn in this turn and there and there's a bunch of different versions I think of these setups that can happen. You know, like we had a five player night, not too long ago, and you went to go grab. I think it was a sleeper deck. You're like, should I play an aggro deck? Yeah, yeah, you're like, maybe I shouldn't with, probably another good idea. Andy and I, and I was like, well, I'm going to play an aggro deck, all right. And and I think that made it more palatable for both of us.
We're just like, yeah, these aren't in five player games. These are terrible decks to try and win with. But if there's a couple of us trying to do this, that's actually probably a better setup. A for the pace of the game. Yeah. And be for our shared experiences. We just had a lot of people wanted to play that weekend and I just couldn't. Yeah, it couldn't get us to megachurch. Yeah. We had a two part of a I had like fives like the ceiling for me.
But I think that was a good sense of like, let's balance our ability a little bit with the two of us are both going to play an aggro deck, and I think that fits well in this context with what we're doing here. Yeah, it's a we're trying to balance the game. We're trying to patch it a little bit. Yeah. So yeah, we try to be mindful of the ability of a deck. Sometimes we're really good about that. Some players are not great about that. Brad kind of just wants to do what he's going to do.
He has a deck that he's been waiting to play. He's not very interested in seeing it go one way or the other. That's blown up in his face. I think more than, you know, like, dude, it just doesn't match up like it's a bad match up. Yeah, right. Like it's happened. So, or he's completely victimized everybody because it was like, Holy shit, these, these other three
players ability. Yeah. Not everyone is as invested as us or, I don't know, someone who's sat this far into this podcast episode, right into this game. You know, they're just not. And I think their ability to play it often or their ability to dial in on people's advice or opinion or strategy or, you know, they're not sitting down and pulling up Commander's Herald and reading about whatever or channel fireballs articles or. Yeah, you know, they're just not doing that. Right.
They just to them, they might it might just be something they do occasionally on a weekend. And we have a couple players that are like that. They're competent enough. They get a lot of help from us in the game. Maybe something we probably should talk about too, but their ability is just not at the same level.
Yeah, and some decks are really straightforward that anybody who just has a loose understanding of magic The Gathering or a commander game, they should be able to go, well, that's that's not good, right? Yeah. I think the thing for me is I'll play something. And if it's recognized as a problem right away by by the people at this skill altitude, then I then I think, okay, this is the right game for this. Yeah. If I play something and only you get it
right. Yeah. And you have to explain if he finds this in this or if he keeps doing this in this space, that's going to be, a problem. Yeah, that's not a good situation. If I'm sitting there explaining it to everybody. Yeah. Like it puts you in a weird position of having to like puppeteer is what we call it, right? Your puppeteering or your shot calling. And they're not really like, I don't know how they take it.
I don't love being told stuff like that when I play like other board games with other people. So I'm sure you're like, I want to be able to kind of have the the ability to figure this out, right? Like if you sat me down with your cousins or whatever and you were going to play killer bunnies, you probably have to tell me like, hey, Andy, this is bad. Okay? You know, if it wasn't right, I bet there are combos in that game. Yeah, they're it's not readily obvious that this is a problem. Yeah, right.
So it it's not really it's you probably need to stay away from stuff like that when you're playing people that are, you know, like so I kind of stay off things that like are really edict heavy. They just, it doesn't feel good to have your shit just torn out from under you. Every 10s spawn wipes. That's part of the game, baby.
But like, if I'm just repeatedly editing people from their big juicy, cool commander that they love so much because, like, that's how they're that's how they're attached to this game at that. Yeah. At this point, like, so our newest guy that's just kind of coming back to the game is Zach. And he's kind of in that phase where he wants to rip with the game, especially the Lord of the rings stuff. Right. Like he's really hard on it. Yeah.
Like I get a text message from him almost every week about when are we going to do our Lord of the rings themed decks? He understands that, like the game exists outside of the rings. Yeah, he understands that. Like only using the cards from the Lord of the rings set would really rein it in, and it might not be competitive against other decks. So he's he's somewhere on the journey of understanding. Yeah, he gets that right.
But but where he's at he wants to do that still that that to him is a good use of his time and money where more you it's like I don't know man will play like once or twice dude. Yeah. It'll be kind of a little bit of a gimmicky deck. Exactly. But it'll you know we really going to sit down and play these like every night. Zach's here I don't know. Yeah I do I want to do that.
So we're all kind of resistant to this idea a little bit like, you know, like I'm not like I have an idea for it, but I'm not, like, I'm not jumping at building it, I guess. Yeah, I love the esthetic. I love the idea of it because you brood one, right? Yeah. Like busting out Sodom on whatever. And just like, it's all there and I can see him on for the night, but yeah, he he I know something he doesn't. And that's probably true for just a lot of what goes on with this game.
I know that there's only so long I can get down with doing this before I'm bored of it. And I want to go back to the stuff that's. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So he's he's newer. I shouldn't be bringing in stuff that's that's a little complicated and hard to understand. It's it's true. Right. Like I played last time we were together. I use nor in the way. I shouldn't have done that. Oh, sure. It's tight to somebody who doesn't understand this game. They couldn't look at, nor in the weary.
Yeah, he looked at it. It's like, oh, that's funny. Weird. Yeah. You know, he probably thought I was like, doing some. I was trying to make some statement about, like, look how great of a deck builder I am that I can win with Norman. It's like, dude, Norman is a is a pretty potent commander. Yeah, right. Like, there's plenty of cards in the game that capitalize on just what Norman does. Well, he doesn't know about those. He doesn't think Per Frost.
Oh, yeah. There's no part. Doesn't know anything like that. I there's something I could do that could happen with this. Yeah. He doesn't think oh I got, I got into instigator and peripheral. Yeah. And damage Tripler. Yeah. He's not connecting all of that. Yeah. He'll have to learn I have we have to start doing those things in front of him. But sure, it's just a little off. So he ended up just kind of like letting me do whatever for too long.
And then you and Brad were like, I think I had a turn where you guys were going to take 12 damage at the end of every turn for him return. Right. And you said you had to go, okay, pause. Everybody. I literally did like I got it because Zach's like, oh wow, oh wow wow. When I was like, literally nobody can take game actions unless it's to deal with this. With this, we will be dead before we get back to Andy's turn. Does everyone understand that? And Brad's like, I got it, you know?
Yeah. It's like okay. But that he just was like, oh wow. Yeah. It's not that he's, you know, he just sees it's not a he just he didn't even conceive of that. Yeah. It requires some experience to I think put things together at the pace this game demands. You do in order to play with entrenched players. Right. An example of this. This is this was probably one of my, like, I am the biggest asshole moments I've ever had playing this game. Okay, we had it. We had mega-church.
And this was several years ago. But I remember Tiff and Ed us being at the table with me. Okay. I don't remember who our fourth was. Yeah, but it wasn't you. It wasn't. Brad came to maybe cam too. Okay, we have two. Cameron's in our playgroup. Yeah. Cameron, for some reason, we had one of them, cam and the cam that we met. Second cam to. Sorry. I love cam too. He's a good guy. He is a good guy. I just want to call him cam. Three just because.
Well, because he's just better than whoever cam two would be wearing. No. Made another Cameron down the cam to anyway. Like this was back when I had my mill back. Right. Okay. And the last version of I of it I did because I just wanted to mill with. But that was my original thing. Yeah, but then it was just like it was too slow. So I built combo. Yeah, into the damn. And none of them recognized what was going on.
I was having a bad game, legitimately, and it got down to me and Eddie's were the last. How long was the truth or alarm out? Like it wasn't even it wasn't an intruder alarm game. But what it was is I got the I got some version of the I think the blood crank combo set up. And I wasn't tutoring, but those were in the deck, and I just kind of. I had had the blood chief out. It had gotten charged, and then I just top decked the mind crank.
Right? Yeah. And so he had killed the other two people thinking he could deal with me because I hadn't been able to make anybody mill that much. So nobody was losing life to my blood chief Ascension. And then that's how it is for you, though, like. Yeah. And then I just put it out and like, I he was literally like this close to ending me as opposed to one of the other two. But he chose to in those other two. And I just like put that card out and I'm like, tap, tap, you lose.
And he had no recognition of what was happening, had no notion that that might exist where he needed to go. Yeah, right. That's experiential or studied. And the blood crank combo, you didn't even. That's just something that you say the people just know, right? Entrenched players now entrenched players. No. Yeah. But I probably should not have played that deck in that circumstance because the players I was playing with, they didn't know, they didn't understand whether or not I was close to combo.
They'll get this blood. Chief Ascension comes out. Someone asks you if they've never played the deck, what are they going to ask you? Yeah, they're going to ask, is this deck because it's a milled deck and they see a blood chief. And then you say, yes, okay. They're they know. They know you play blood Chief Ascension you or you get a blood crane or I don't have the blood crane combo. It's just here to lower life totals right? All right. Like that's experience talking. Those guys didn't know.
Yeah, they didn't know. And even if it had been some other combo that I was starting to build, they wouldn't have. Yeah. There's no way they told there's no way that table of players would have understood anything I was doing. Yeah. I should not have played that deck. Absolutely, absolutely. Like that was a, that was a I that actually was my last game with Phoenix because I felt so bad that you just were like, snake. I just, I just totally snaked that win from him. Like he.
And you want him to play more? Yes, exactly. I get to play more if Edison's into it. And I could see the look in his eyes, I could see like, okay, yeah, he really was. He was just like, he lost something that he had no business losing. You could see that, like going through his mind. Yeah. And we'll have to get to that later that. But yeah. Good. That's a great example I think of just like yeah man, I don't know. This was a little above the Stuart's head.
Like he should have been focusing me not these other. Yeah. Yeah. In the end it was. Yeah. So it's either we were I don't know I work to try to help people understand the game better. Yeah. It can get a little patronizing I think after a while I don't know where they've clicked off. Like, I think Chris is finally getting there with us. Yeah, I think so. He's just he's busy guy now. He's finally like getting just kind of locked into the game and he does stuff.
I'm like, oh shit, I didn't think could do that. Yeah, and I'm very happy. I think this last like year or so, he's gone off on his own and he isn't really just kind of doing what I've been advising him to do. And it's better for you guys to write like, yeah, Brad says all the time.
He's just like, yeah, when you bring new people in, it's two Andy, Dex versus me and whoever else because they're just following what Andy is recommending, because I spend a lot of time with people trying to get them up, which is something you're really good at, is helping people get integrated. Yeah. I mean, thanks for that. I want, I want to I want to play more. Thank you. Yeah. People to play more. Yeah. When Cameron produces extra offspring, I'm like, damn it, I need more people to play.
Because like I said at the beginning of this thing, it's like we you need people to play and you need a culture that I really believe that you need a culture that people are going to want to come and hang out and and be like, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, the game hopefully does its job. But like, man, the game also lets other players get in the way of that. Totally has has is evident in the news I guess. Right. This whole thing. Yeah. So I don't know, we could do better.
We've, we've had inconsistencies. My my story that I was also going to say was tiff snap that the guilt leaf deck. Right. It's just not super obvious how bad discard is. I guess we're okay with it. I actually really like discard as a strategy. I think it's fine, but yeah, it's just still not, you know, as that hand starts like approaching down to 1 or 2 cards, it is kind of on the axis of mana denial. Yeah, we know it gets to be top of it and not allow for it too much.
Yeah. And to like, rein it in and really go after, especially when there's like a weird draw thing going on where there's like a card inequity going on. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a guest grimoire paired with the discard strategy. Or even if I have a draw source and TIFF's doing the discard and you three are falling behind me. Yeah, like, dude, you're creating a bad situation. Yeah. You're creating. So she used to do that where she likes.
Now that the guilt leave because Tiff likes to do honestly shitty strategy. She likes. She likes this type of stuff. But like, she was creating situations where whoever could get out from under her discard by a little bit where we're taking games. Yeah. So it kind of fell near that like dirty example of like, what is the point of this? Like, yeah, throttle back on the discard or destroy or let us destroy something. That's so I would win games because you guys couldn't solve the discard.
And I was just eking out a little bit of. Yeah, or somebody playing out of their yard or something like this is not working. And she eventually goes, I just need another elf deck. And then last row was gift wrapped for everybody on Earth, including her. Everybody playing commander got gift wrap for now. Got off deck. Every group is a familiar with. Yeah. And that's just a completely different beast now. But it's this. It's. Yeah, yeah.
The token decks are really obvious for newer players because like, just look how much of the volume of cards on the tables is speaking something. Yeah. There seem to be a lot of elves over there that's got to not be good, right? Wow. Or anything more we should say on this one. I feel like that was pretty well covered. I but I do think that that is, that's that's another one that's just kind of really nuanced and challenging, like trying to find that way of respecting people's abilities.
But I don't know that it's something we consciously think about that often. I think we need to do a better job of it. Yeah. We have our moments where I'm proud of us, but then other times I'm like, fuck, we probably could have done that better. Yeah, yeah, I could have done that better or whatever. Respecting the investment. Yeah. I don't like the word investment for this game less. I'm liking it less and less lately. Yeah. Which which back to the origin of maybe thinking about this.
Some people were thinking about their investments space, so we'll continue to use it. But, we don't proxy. Let's just get this out of the way with with our friend group or our church or people or meta. We did for a minute, and it got really nauseating really fast. I think it were. You got to control yourself more than ever when you proxy. It became a really slippery slope. Very fast to be very fast. I, I think it led to one person exiting our play group. Correct.
Yeah. They just left because they they just wasn't checking out. Yeah, I understand the game is expensive. It is needlessly expensive. It is a really good, indicator. You know, if you play magic, you can't complain about the economy. Sorry. Like, if you're playing like this, it's it's wild. It's true. It's wild. How? Just stupidly expensive it's is for. No reason. For really no reason. It's artificially expensive. So. Yeah, I, I'm there.
If you have a way to manage yourself while printing cards, then you have unlocked something that we could never figure out. What happened was, is yeah, we had players who wanted to play at a higher speed but didn't have the capital to do it. And me and you, just mainly me and you were really entrenched already, so we'd already wired a lot of equity in the game. And I don't care. I'm not trying to protect something of of. Yeah, I'm not trying to keep you off of the rock that I got on.
Yeah. Exactly. Right. So we're like, okay, fine, do your thing. But it just got out of control, like really fast. You and I don't own a Gaia's cradle. No. Yet one was printed into our meta. Yeah. You and I don't do off colored fetches because we want to save them for the decks they belong. And I'm not that optim. Optimal, optimal. And even as much as I've invested in this game, I don't have that many fetches. Me neither. I've only got a few. Yeah, I've got the clutch that I have. And then they.
And they limit how many decks are in my roster. Candidly, like I go, I don't have the I don't have the equipment for a new list. Yeah. Like the money kind of just starts getting in its own way. I'm not just like all over it, but suddenly we're seeing off colored fetches in this person's list and Simic decks. I'm seeing, you know, the go fetch, and I'm just like, okay, so it just got really out of control. And when they have good games, it was really hard for the rest of us to go.
How is you're not winning? Because you're good at the game. You're winning because like, we just didn't think that we were going to be running into Mana Crypt and and just stuff that was just really they were expensive. Yeah. He was just like really like thousands and thousands of dollars were out there. Yeah. That were, that were. Yeah. Purchased from some Chinese printer for a couple bucks. Yeah. So the proxies they had were really, really well done.
I could not tell the difference. So I appreciate that too. I'm not really like super in love with somebody notebook paper I just don't love that. It's just I don't know. But like we are kind of esthetic people. Yeah. But but also it's like I need to be able to read the board and the game is already making it difficult for me to do that already with the modern board or getting bashed into pieces, and I don't know, we'll get whatever. But like I just need to be able to read the game pieces.
Sorry. All right. Sorry. You know, that's just how things are in life. If I go into the bank with an IOU written on piece of paper like this, isn't this isn't anything. Yeah. This is a currency to be legible for us to understand where it is. Especially when you're talking about the most complicated tabletop game ever. I think somebody had published an article last week about this. Like magic is the most complicated you thing you could do with a tabletop surface?
Sort of, I don't know, working out how to build a rocket for brain surgery on a piece of like, you're like, sort of getting into somebody's brain, I guess. Right? It's up there, dude. It's fucked. And now you're making it more complicated with your shitty proxy. You on a table that are complicated? Yeah. So. And heart surgery. Anyway, the person went out of their way to get, like, Chinese fake cards. Like that's what happened.
It sounded like the story was they called this phone number, and somebody would answer and they would, like, order their cards. But now I'm getting Imperial Seal vampiric tutors back before they had any reprints. Yeah, it was wild. It went from zero to like 90 03530 to like, it just blew up. And I'm like, okay, so either I need to start doing this or yeah, well, it happened. Like I think what happened is like has happened with some of the other things we described.
We did the only thing that you can do when you're in game, which is focus that that person. Yeah, you're already in a group. Everything that I've listed, we've listed off through this like podcast. You're already in a group that cares deeply about how the game should shake out. Yeah. Okay. So like with all of that out there, there it is. Right. That's our attitude about proxy. So everyone's situation is different. Some people have self-regulation.
We clearly didn't with the people we were playing with. And we just never revisited it. And we have just people that we play with. It's not my I'm not the one who said this, but like Cameron's like it's the the price of the card is the greatest regulation on its power. It will regulate the group. If people really, really, really, really want to spend on a card, then they will. And that's that. But they can't just be doing it all over the place, you know?
So this is going to get really complicated. I think this, this section. Yeah. I just wanted to throw that out there because the money in this game, they're really hard to separate, you know. And people have different opinions about it. Like really I think people have very strong opinions about it. Clearly. So here we are. But I want to respect Kyle spending money on this game to engage in a hobby with me as his friend. So what I shouldn't be doing is either out budgeting him. Right.
Your situation changes. I should don't like stuff happens. I shouldn't be out budgeting him and outpacing him just so I can come out on top most of the time, if not all the time. Yeah, I really just should be more mindful of how much your your appetite to spend is, and I don't think we did a good job with that. Back when this person came in. Yeah, we've learned our lesson and we've we we've created enough decks that exist on different like we've been talking about.
They exist on different shelves. Yeah. To be played off right. I also shouldn't and this is something that I think comes up from people on the other side of this. Shame you for spending money on something, right? Right. Well, that's like $50 worth of creatures right there. And there's only two of them, Like I've said shit like that out loud, and I should have. It's like, dude, if you like your deck and you wanted to, you should treat yourself then.
Yeah, it's a treat. Yeah. Okay. It's your money. I'm not. I'm not your mom, but. Yeah, $50 counterspell or whatever. Oh, like I just. I've said this. I've done it. Brad's done. Yeah, we all have. Yeah, because we know, I know, but I really shouldn't shame you for spending money on this thing. If I need to say anything about the amount you're spending, it would be from the space of, hey, man, you're really outpacing everybody with your spend lately or something. I've never had to do that.
Yeah, but, like, if it happened, you're buying cards at power altitudes that the rest of us don't have the appetite to or the ability to. And as such, I need to focus you out almost every game. So if you're getting frustrated with how I'm treating you in the game, it's because of this. Yeah, it's because I keep seeing the same thing from every day. Seem crazy. Cards, right? So that's what I mean about the respecting the investment from the money perspective. Do you have anything to add to that?
Yeah, I, I like that you call out the idea of just like we shouldn't be shaming people for buying cards, you know, like, super guilty. I've done it. Yeah, absolutely. I have. And I think something that's interesting, curious in our group is we don't have none of us are really collectors. But like I do have some friends that are like they're they do get into the collection. Oh, cards in this game camp too is yeah. He likes to get the cycle.
Yeah. You know, he likes to cycle to complete the cycles. I think most of us aren't that big into that. But there's some of us and like, you know, and I've got a buddy like he, he's gotten some alpha basic lands, you know, like he's he's just. Yeah, he's got those things like framed and hung up on his wall like. Yeah. Like it's something that he wanted to do, you know. Yeah. And you are. You and I are not into that. We we're not like those, like collector soul rings and got in that jeep.
Right, right. We were just like, let's turn this into a deck, baby. Exactly. Yeah. Like, I do have some level of nostalgia for cards that I have, but it's not because they're collectibles. It's because I've played them, you know, and like, some of them might be reserve list cards, but like, I do like that. I don't notion, though, of like if you wanted to treat yourself to something, fucking treat yourself to something in this game.
Yeah. You know, something that we probably should be more openly like, vocal about. Like, hey, man, don't don't gatekeeping people for, yeah, money or whatever. Yeah. It's happened. It's mainly like I've done it. You know, I definitely have said it, but, the other side is the time investment. It's it's hard to just get your ass kicked, but sometimes somebody earned it, man. They did it. They they spent a lot of time putting. The deck together.
Thought testing. Yeah. Thinking about the meta, thinking about how it's going to balance. Sometimes it's a strong like. And they or they spent years putting this thing together like some of your Erebus is an old bird man. It's like it's like the turkey of this freaking. It really is meta, right? I shouldn't be shitting on that. I should just kind of say, yeah, man, like, you earned this win for sure. And I was. And by doing that, I respect your time and your money and your and your effort and.
Yeah. And your effort. Like, some aren't like that, right? It's just like we're not like a net deck group. I don't I don't look at something and go, yeah, I've seen this exactly somewhere on somebody's YouTube or something. I'm sure we don't really do that. A lot of our stuff is unique in its construction. Yeah, it's hard though, because often how you have to win a game of commander is abuse something. But that's that's just the game that we're in now, right? Yeah. Right.
Yeah. And I and I to this point about the time thing, there's so many different axes with it in terms of respecting it. Right. Like I, I mean, you, you talk about regularly on this podcast like everybody's excited to when we sit down and play, there's a lot of time that's been spent thinking about of the game, about the game preceding it all week.
And so, you know, like the amount of time that that person spent thinking about the brew that they put together and the way that they've been thinking about playing that deck and how it how it might go. And, you know, like there's a lot of mental time that has been spent in preparation to be here around the table together and, you know, and so just like kicking somebody in the balls because that's available to you with how this game goes. Yeah. Like that's just for our losing or something.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, like like so there's a specific thing that happens in our group that I, I don't think everybody plays this way, you know, like when somebody is about to go out of the game, it's a really easy moment to be vindictive. Like, like if you're somebody sending death your way, it's really easy to just unload all of your, like, kill that, kill that, kill that type triggers and spells that you might have available to you. Yeah. Just kind of be a dick on the way out.
Right. And I think our group is pretty good about like, well, I'm just going to leave all of your research resources in play because I want this game, because I want this game to end so I can play another one. But there is I never understood the whole like, remove stuff in as a swan song. It's like if we're set up to play between, you know, 5:00 in the afternoon till midnight. Yeah. And we're on game two, and I'm. I'm beating you, I'm about to win.
And you remove all my stuff as some kind of that would allow you to whatever potentially be less commander tonight because the two people who are still your opponents like. Don't you want this game to end sooner? Yeah. Yeah, it can happen to we've had people accelerate it and rob the other two because they're like, I'm gonna die. So I'm just going to that sucks. Like, don't do that. Like, really, you should just minimally impact the game. Yeah. Not going to win it. That's what you should do.
Which I think that is a weird thing with your friends. Yeah, it is a weird little nuance thing, but I think that's representative of a culture that we have in our group of like, hey, you know, like you don't need to have your vindictive swansong. Like, yeah, as you're getting pushed out of the game, other people have thought about this, like, let them kind of have their experience. Clearly, as this game goes, your experience is done. Let other people have their experience with it.
And I don't think everybody needs to play that way. I'm not saying that that's a prescription that everybody needs to follow, but I think it is emblematic of our attitude of like, we love it when people get to kind of have their like experience with their deck. And just because I'm about to lose doesn't mean that I need to take your experience away from you, right? I did everything I could to stop you, right? I just didn't pull it off. Right.
And, you know, I don't go quietly, but I don't I don't go out like a baby either. It's like, yeah, fuck, dude. It's. You got it, man. Yeah, I tried and that's that, and I, I hope I don't get, I don't, I hope I don't have to just sit here for another. Yeah. I don't wanna wait 30 minutes for the next one. Yeah. Or whatever. Like if that's happens then that's happened to me. Yeah. Yeah it does. Right. Like I beat in each row after getting you got aced by race.
I was the boss was giving me some trouble. Shove me out with a, a Rick Smith these. And I'm like, well, I'm gonna go play Sekiro. That game on went on forever. Dude. It was like, I managed to beat this boss. I was struggling with it while that was going on. Yeah. It's happened. Yeah. I've got to like pass heat 13 and Hades. While Brad was working on his spin down counter without a man ever. Yeah, like that's happened to. Yeah. Do you think that illustrates that element? Okay. Right.
The whole just like respecting the investment respect people's. Yeah time right. Like the. Yeah. The little bit it kind of goes back to the first one I met. More like the time they spent getting into the game and the investment of time. Yeah. Which I would say as emotional investment in the game like yeah, we are all emotionally invested in this game. As much as we want to consider ourselves reasonable creatures, we're emotionally invested.
This last one or these last two kind of pull us away from the group, I think a little bit. Okay. To try to pull just a temper, everything that you talked about because. Yeah, just respecting the format. It's multiplayer format. Got in trouble with my views about this, but yeah, like, I just it's a multiplayer format. Sure. There's no prizes, there's no stakes. Yeah, right. We in this. So it's regardless of the pace you're playing. Like you still just still just the game. It's still just a game.
They're they're all so not real. Yeah. So, I have to like because we're so invested in. Because we care so much and because I want to execute my strategy that I've been jerking off about in my mind all week. Like I lose sight of this. I have we had the last weekend. Like it just happens. It's just a not it's not it's not it's not a measurement of my intelligence. It's not a it's not a thing about your virility or how sigma you fucking are.
If you can win a game, a commander or two like it often it just shook out that way. Things just. It's so hard to keep track of the variables in a game. A commander from the beginning to the end. So much has changed. It's pitching around like crazy, I can't I you could log it. You can, you can record it. Some people watch whole gameplay videos and they're like, man, that that deck was crazy. It's like, but they didn't even do anything half the game. It just worked out that way.
There are games where, yeah, we're all marching to one decks tempo. It's happened like there are ones where everyone battled and clawed until the end and and they all just didn't get to the finish line. That last person just reached across all bloody and got it. Yeah, those are our favorite types of games for me in you. But yeah, a lot of people, I don't know if they want to win by a landslide or not at all.
So I think it just needs to be kept in mind that it's a multiplayer format with no stakes. When you're sitting in your friend with your friends in a basement somewhere, there are places that you can go where there are stakes. Sure. Okay, so that advice I'm this whole not advice, but this whole but this is doesn't apply to our culture where we play. Sure. Like I was saying earlier, like you have there's more at stake at dinner for Kyle than there is at that table. Really?
Yeah. And yeah, other than ego and the thing and we with everything that we've said, we're trying our best to keep everything nice and nice for you. Yeah. And I if it doesn't work out, it just wasn't supposed to work out. It's just the cards. And I think there's some elements to this that I think we've tried to get better about in the, in, in our group in terms of like recognizing that some games just shook out really weird.
Some of them are just, yeah, like, oh, I did do something that game to try and win that game. Or sometimes it's just like, I don't know how I was the fucking one. The one like that was kind of crazy. I think we do a lot better at acknowledging that that it is. It's just a format and that's what we signed up for. That's what we like about it is it's yeah, crazy. The you the reality is not aligning with your expectations.
Yeah. That's all. Yeah. And I don't want it to the it's not like other things that you might engage in. Yeah. Like if we're just take a 1 to 1 from video games. In video games ish. Right. Like if you're fighting a boss, like we'll go back to Elden Ring. They have a moveset. There's a likelihood that they favor certain things in certain phases. They have. Yeah, they have conditions that they just they have their pattern. And if you learn the pattern, you'll win.
Brad beat Elden Ring without leveling up because he knows the pattern. He cannot be hit. He cannot be hit. He unlocked a cheat code in his head, which is like, you know, every move of every boss down to down to the tell. And you will never get hit. Which is why that's what he did. It took him hours and days and months to do it, but he did that. So yeah, it doesn't matter what the bosses are doing in those games because he will not be hit ever. Because he doesn't make a mistake.
That's what was required for him to beat it without leveling up. Yeah, commander is just variable, written like even your own deck can turn on you. That's like playing Elden Ring and it's just randomizing the button inputs. Dodge is now block or whatever. Shit. I meant to dodge weapons just from your own deck. Like you can. You can hopefully avoid bad variance by having good deck construction, sure, but even your own deck can stab you in the back. Yeah, luck is still part of the game.
Part of the game. And now you take this and times it by four. Yeah. And then and then multiply that by the number of colors and then times that by to the power of whatever people are designing, whatever they like, treasure for the last two years. Or there's this commander that they made for brawl trying to get us to care about that. And it's broken, like there's just so much it's it's not has nothing to do with you learning the game.
It's just it's just the. So the format, you should expect less from it. And I think you'll be a little happier. Really hard to do. I struggle with it. But it's also the elegance of this game's design. Right? Like you're not supposed to have anything. And Magic The Gathering that is akin to that experience you just described. For Brad, there are always supposed to be vulnerabilities to what you do in this game. You are always will get taken apart to be vulnerable to something.
If that can happen at the tournament, play like modern tournaments where it's like there is a version of this guy cannot lose because he has this deck, right, will get taken apart, so steps will be taken to make that not happen. Right? You commander, you have three people watching you and they go, this is a little slippery. Why is this Tulane doing this? Let's all not let that happen. Let them be here. Right?
And there's not enough fierce guardian ships in the game to stop me from start getting on you. And I might not win the game, but you certainly didn't either. Right. So I guess my point here is like, just respect the format that it's multiplayer. Yeah. And that's just it's supposed to be fun, even at competitive play. Competitive doesn't mean misery. I don't think like, yeah, just you're it's supposed to be fun. I, I hope, you want to add anything to that? No, I like that.
I think that's a good, good. Some of that, the last one, I think, is also just to pull us way back to for from all of what we've been saying, which is respect the game. Yes. Bad things happen in magic. There's cards that are designed to do this Winter War because illegal card. I don't love it, but it's their status as illegal card. Yeah. To some people, farewell is a is a legal card that gives them problems. The it's a source of consternation. Yeah. It's sort of like the game.
It's you know, it's not supposed to be easy. Like it would be. It'd be kind of lame. It'd be for babies. Yeah, it would be for babies if it wasn't. If it was easy. Yeah. And if you're playing against people and it's always easy, then you're. You. I don't know if you like that. Cool. But, like, I just wouldn't enjoy that if I'm just winning all the time, right? So it's kind of a slippery slope to mess with house rules a little bit like to do.
Yeah. And this coming from folks who have some house rules we do. Right. So and we'll, we can get into them and say and check them against everything that we've been after this whole episode. Right. But it's a slippery slope if people can just come up and complain enough to get something to change. Yeah, it sets a bad precedent, I think.
Yeah. You know, like when somebody can freak the fuck out, throw enough stuff on to a football field, to someone to for someone to overturn a play, like all of this stuff. Like if it gets really slippery. Yeah. Quick. Yeah. You know, and this is a format that you should control because it is casual. The rules committee, the rest in peace rules committee, they said like, you know, have a trusted group if you can and have those discussions a pre-game discussion.
Yeah. House rules I guess is a pre-game procedure should not be discussed. It's just locked in. It's happening. This is just how we do it. Whatever. Yeah. And it works for me and Kyle and the people we play with. But it doesn't work for everybody. And and people can go crazy with it. They don't trust the game or they don't trust their own ability. They're they're they're knee jerk reaction is to talk about banning Erebus. Yeah. Like our favorite story. Like we need to talk about banning. Right.
I trust my opponents to figure out what's going on. And yeah, if you listen to what we've been saying, a lot of the time, the solution was pressure them off the board and get rid of them. Because of the deck they're playing. Get killed, get bored. Farrago off the table. Yeah. We could. NASCAR needs to go lateral, guys. You know, like we've been talking about all of these. It's been hyperbolic, like about our rules.
Like, well, no more stacks allowed in our group, and we just kind of understand, like, you can probably use those cards, but, like, get ready to, you know, to. Yeah, there's a few like, come on man. Like, yeah, it's I don't know, but we're not, we're not trying to set up rules for, for our play group to fix anything. It's really just with what we've all gone through on this episode, it's now hopefully you understand more about some of ours, right?
So like one of the ones that we're kind of infamous for is we just don't allow you to use a sole ring out of your opening hand. Yeah. And think about everything that we said. Right. Like your deck will now be out. Like it'll out speed everybody, if they didn't pull theirs, it just becomes all about. We all have to fall into this orbit. Yeah. Yeah, right. A new player might not really get how strong solo ring is.
I think it's taken me too long to figure out how sorry, how good it is, because it's so proliferate throughout the print it with everything. Every commander product. So it's just ever present ever. It's not obvious how. It's not super dense. It is. Yeah. But like it's taken me honestly too long to figure out how game warping that card is. Yeah. You know, and yeah, so that being said, like when I think about people's ability, can they really wrap their head around the fact that I'm at turn
four on turn two? Right? You know, like that the game is regulated around how much mana you have, like that whole story with that girl back in that pod. Yeah. Like, that's why suffering just isn't a thing in any other format. So there's things like so we just we just like, yeah, we want to have a game where everyone can kind of rise at the space that they're supposed to, and no one out steps anybody else artificially. If you draw so ring on your first draw, it's your lucky day. Play it.
But like really just don't keep it in your opening hand and we won't either. Yeah that's that's what's happening. Yeah. The rest of us are at the same place. The other thing is, is that like, yeah, we just we don't tutor in our meta. We just don't tutor in a meta because it doesn't respect people's ability very well to know what to tutor for. A lot of the time. Yeah. Somebody might who's new to the game be like, I'm going to tutor for the combo.
I looked up on the internet and a board wipe is what needs to happen. Or they just don't have the money to pay for the tutors that are good. There's a reason why diabolic tutors like a 30 cent card and it's four mana and demonic tutor. Is this an effort? It's just, It's such it. Ooh ooh ooh. It's a staple. It'll never, ever come down in price. Like they would have to print it into oblivion to get it to come down. It's it's very good. And it's a difference of two.
You can quantify the mana pips to dollar value on that card. That's crazy right. Because you can accomplish something on the same turn you tutor for that thing where you can rarely do that unless you've got Soul Ring and some other equipment with the diabolic tutor, you know. Yeah. And it just we want variance. That's our big reason. It's like, yeah, we just like variance. I'm tired of seeing the same cards every week. So we all just kind of said, hey, let's just take them out.
But the real the real reason we stopped tutoring, not real reason, but one of the big reasons was Chris didn't have him in his budget. We had absorbed so many tutors from AP and when he left the game and just over time, the like and you had where somebody gifts, gives you a booster that has a demonic tutor in his pocket. Yeah. Like, you know, you've done this long enough. You had that experience moment. Yeah. Chris, did. He didn't. Then he just he wanted to make more decks. Yeah. His hitch.
I like that every time he got money to spend on the game, he was like, hey, man, I made a new deck. And I'd be like, hey, Chris, you really need to buy this one fucking piece of cardboard. Not a hundred others. Okay? How does that even make sense? That. But that's what I was trying to tell him. Yeah, which I need you to buy this one piece of cardboard instead of another deck. Instead of another whole bag. Like a whole bag of them. Yeah.
And it got to the point where, like, maybe we should think about trying not to use them and see how that goes. And then the other thing that was happening was, yeah, we just didn't seem damn cards over and over and over and over every night. Dude, somebody was going to grab this for this and that for that. And it was. And to the point of the speed of things, it has slowed down the turn expected turn to see a victory in our group as well.
I think speed has increased a bit was people have acclimated. But like I think we're back to the same speed. It's just we get there in a different way. But yeah, but I do think initially there was a slowdown of just like, yeah, you can't piece together your win or you can't piece together the perfect control moment. Cause you know you have tutors. Yeah. So you know it's, it's had its own effect on our meta. But then it's had discussion too.
When you think about it, it's like okay well everything that they've said like it kind of makes sense that they just don't really tutor. Yeah. You know because of just the time, the money, the all of that stuff. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah. I think those are their only, or the other thing. We don't really build each other's commanders. That's another thing that we don't know. Sure. You know, if I have. Near-miss it. Perun, there is no threat of you seeing anybody else playing in his opinion,
tonight or ever. Right. I'm the only one with it. It just kind of makes it so. It's really more for the opponent. Like how many games do you really want to see, right? Like you want a different experience from your opponents. And, and it kind of leaves us to just say, this is your thing. It gives us it gives us a sense of ownership of of what we're doing. Yeah. So we have like our roster that we keep published for everyone to see and you have to kind of claim your commander on it.
If you don't play the commander, it immediately becomes available. It's not like it's yours forever. You don't have like some weird legacy thing going on, so it makes people really kind of think twice about picking one up or retiring one, because then it becomes available for somebody else. So like Kyle had a merfolk deck for a while. Yeah. But went to Kasia came out. He's like, I really like that more. And I was like chomping at the bit to try to revive again.
Yeah. You had an idea because I wanted to play Winter orb and just stacks of everybody again. So yeah, like the minute it became available, I was like, I can build it. I'm going to do it. Yeah. You know, Queen Marquesa actually was with Brad first. Oh, that's right, I forgot about so bad. I was like, they've been seeing all these, like, keto lists online. I want to try my hand at it. I forgot about that. All right. And he's he just was I don't know what he was doing.
Was it equipment? I don't remember what he was doing with that thing. Definitely not what you've been doing. No, no, but he ended up letting her go. And I picked her up. And at the time, that was his commander, Marcus. It was one of his. Yeah. We just don't step on each other's.
Yeah, there was a minute we were like, is there enough good commanders to do this way back in the day that you're right, there was 13 or something when we started to get to where we had a higher volume of decks, it was a little bit like, I don't know if there's enough legendary creatures that are good now. There's too many. I bet a lot of people find that unfathomable. I know that we ever thought that I know, but now there's too many. There's too many you could have. I'm playing Miriam.
That's a good dragon. Yeah, well, I've got my other dragon that's also a dragon. So we've got them. You're good to play in reverse. That's pretty good to I like it. That's pretty good too. I'm playing Sakon. Okay. That's good. You could do a Sylveon. Dragons probably have, like, terror of the peaks in them or something, but they're not all Miriam. Right? Or Dragon or whatever. Like they're all different. Like that's what we're we want variants. Which scale. Okay. Well that makes sense.
Why they don't like tutors and they don't want opening Han Solo rings or it's like soaring talisman. Yeah, whatever. Like it just this is what we're about to your point about respecting the game though, like with these house rules, things like we have dabbled with some other House rules that didn't work out. That didn't work out. Yeah. Or some that we've let go, like we for quite a while had this kind of highly specific role of no cyclonic rift in any decks that had also had green.
Yeah. So we were like Cimic is just super powerful. So no cyclonic rift in those smoky type decks. But it was, I think, a convulsion to Borros was really weak, red and white. This was before it got a lot of tools. Yeah. It could not hang against these decks that just like would sit back, ramp, ramp, ramp, psycho Rift and and we were tutoring like crazy too. We were. So that was an outcome everyone those guys were looking for. You'd have the Cimic player soul type layer. Timber player.
Almost like conjuring that up over and over and over. And I'd be like all right I'm going to Mystical Tutor into it was crazy dude. It was like every, every game. It's some point we were hitting it, but I think we kind of landed on a space of like, that's an unnecessary adjustment to the game. Yeah. Any more for us. So we didn't keep we don't need that rule. Like yeah. And then those other colors caught up like, yeah, I'm all I do is just like, okay, where's the psych on?
Okay. So yeah, like Psycho Rift. Where the fuck is it? We're going to die. In fact, it is crazy. How is it that happens a little more frequently now where it's like, this would be a really good time for a cyclonic, right? No kidding. I'm, like, begging for it sometimes. Now somebody put it all back in, like I would absolutely have. My whole board bounced if there's gets bad. No kidding. But that's just us messing with it, trying to make things work. Yeah. Like at the time. Yeah. Or.
Yeah. I don't know that that was probably our cookies one. Yeah. It was a little quirky. I was like seven years ago or something. Yeah, it was a while ago. But the game's evolved so much. This is before just because Wheeler dockside or any of these like. Yeah, red things threads pretty okay. And white. They'll be fine. Fine. Now be level set pretty well I think they're okay. Yeah. So anything else we cover? Can I, can I add just one more like ad lib type thing.
Yeah. In terms of respecting do I. I think that's the I've been thinking about this just in life. But I think it is applicable to building a good playgroup culture, which is like respecting your role as an individual. Interesting. And so by that I mean, like I look at the people in our play group and you know, what we provide and what we bring to the group of friends who sit down at the table and play this game is different. I am a believer that we all have like different social talents.
Some things can be worked on and some things are just kind of like sort of our temperament. Andy is really good at getting a group of people together to play, right. Like he has to do that, or a bunch of us are just not going to play or not play nearly as much. Like it. I think it's a thankless job for you sometimes, but like, Andy has that role. He's really good at getting this group of people together and he kind of he he needs to do it. But there's other of us.
When he reaches out and asks us if we're if we're game, our job is to more often than not show up and come play. Right. Like I think that builds that culture of us knowing we can get together and rely on have putting a game together and play and have fun with each other. And like, I just, I don't know. That's something that's been on my mind is that social dynamic of, you know, like I think someone like Chris, you know, he's a really happy go lucky, like, easygoing guy.
Yeah. And it's important that we have his persona at the table. Oh yeah. No kidding. Because it, you know, sometimes some of us give a little fiery fuck. Yeah. And having Chris there is this really good reminder that, like, it is just a fucking game. That's true too. And like, I think it's so important that Chris is part of the group, you know, and that he doesn't try to be anybody but Chris. That's true. Like we have to have that guy here, right? That's true.
And like I so I think just recognizing who you are, respecting the role of who you are in your play group, I do genuinely think it helps build the culture of, of a really good collective. I think that's awesome. Like, if I think about you, you're a you're a good pressure regulator for things, you know, like you're not all the way on Chris's side of things where Chris, you shouldn't be laughing. This isn't funny. Right, I really dude, he just like, oh yeah. Oh, it's like, this isn't funny at all.
Where you were just like, guys, we probably should stop taking game actions right fucking now and talk about this, right? You know, like, yeah, you're a good pressure valve. Like, you need enough p.s.i to get the shampoo out of your hair, right? You do? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, California, but I kind of need to get this shit. I gotta get that new showerhead from Utah, like. Yeah, yeah, but you don't need to be blown out of there
like a Kramer in the elephant nozzle or whatever the hell that was. So it's a good thing you need somebody who's, like, a good moderator for the nuclear reactor. That can be a playgroup. Yeah, but then you need somebody who's a good target to chase. And that's. That's definitely my brother. Yeah, he definitely gives us a challenge. Yes. How the fuck are we going to get around this? Like he's he's a good player. I think he's the best player at our table. Yeah. No question.
And that's an important no to have somebody like that there. Like I do think I don't want incompetence. I'm not trying to foster that. Yeah. It's it's just some things don't get in the way of even getting in the way of competence. How can anyone be competent if you're doing some of these things that we've talked about? Yeah, I think it's not that it's. But then yeah it's a lot. It's a, it's a, it's a nuanced fine line to walk that we've been trying to do. And we don't have it perfected.
And we're trying and I don't think we'll ever get there. But yeah, I like TIFF's role too. Or she's just, she's here to, to help the game out like she. Yeah. She's not a super invested player at all. But she's like, I know my deck and what it's supposed to do. And that's how I. Yeah, that's how I play. As I understand my decks like front to back. Yeah. She has a really good general understanding of how everybody else likes to operate. And yeah, she's actually really good with newer players.
Like when we bring newer people around to try to like, get them into stuff or get them into commander or like they've moved from some other format. She's really good with them. Yeah, she's awesome with them. And that matters because if we get someone bought in, I get I get more than just a game from these people. Yeah, dude. Like, I got a text message while we were talking from Brad that just says Edgar Coffin. That's all it says he wants to talk about magic, right?
Why else is he hitting me with that? Right? He wants to talk about that or is off. Yeah. Because it's it's October. It's about Brad's time to start thinking about some kind of vampire deck. You know, like fucking love. It's that's every year. It's it's it's good. It's it's it's good for me to have something like that in my life. Yeah. You know where I'm not, like, just getting off work and and just trying to forget about it for a couple hours and go back to work.
Like I have something I can work on with my friends. You know, it's like our quest that we're on together. Yeah. And he's not going to want to continue to do that if I've if I've created a gameplay environment or haven't just taken the reins a little bit and thinking about all the personalities and everything that that matters for a game, a game, they're not strangers. The people I play with, like, I don't I know all of them, right? I didn't Chris, I love Chris.
My only regret is I didn't meet him sooner in my life. Yeah. You know. Yeah, I've known you for a long time. Like approaching 20 years. Yeah, it's it's a long time. Like, I should know what your tolerance is for certain things, you know? Yeah. Like, I, I don't recommend games and media to you. That just ain't for Kyle. Yeah. Yeah, right. You're great. Why? Why am I recommending or creating a gameplay experience or gameplay environment? That ain't for Kyle.
Yeah, which I think I do that I think is an an that's an important role that like I think you play and I think we all have a different role that like is important to respect and own. Yeah. In order to cultivate a really good play group. That's cool. Yeah. If you play with strangers though, fuck them. I'm just kidding. That's not a I don't know, that's a I just I have like the worst advice for stuff like that.
Like Dustin used to say, he's like every guy you meet is a douchebag until he until he, proves otherwise. Otherwise, that's that's where that's. I think some people do view the world that way, but honestly, dude, everybody I've played outside of our group, like we would do the convention or I play on our discord. It's the opposite. Yeah, it's like they're good. We're actually some of the worst, actually. Like, you know, this is my friend.
Whatever every game I've had on with people from our discord has been an awesome experience. Like, they're way better people. Yeah. And but I think they even they have like, moments where they're like, goddamn, it happens. Like, that's the card game. They're just trying to know your environment. Like, you know, the social, your social role. Yeah. Like you were saying, what's next? I don't know, Kyle. I honestly don't know. Well, I have another LCP recon episode that I wanted to do.
I do have an episode that I haven't been teasing that because I think it's a little more. When I started to try to do the work on it, it's a little more intensive than I thought it was going to. Oh, really? Okay, so we'll see. You've been teasing about it, but I haven't. I had reluctant to do. It's all been there. Okay. Well, how far off are you from, like figuring it out. We'll see. There. So I mean, we I think we dropped this idea. I was like, oh, that might be an episode idea.
When we were in the middle of talking about the idea of a functional, removed set of cards like, oh, that's something that I kind of want to pursue a little bit interesting. I'm not entirely sure the texture of that episode. Yeah. So I've got I've got two that I can make happen. So, yeah, another pre con episode. I've been getting a few questions about that because I kind of made it sound like I was going to do it soon and I'm doing something else. Sure. I just wasn't ready.
I want to make sure it's a good episode. I really want to make it something that I'm proud of when we do it. And then another one where I just want to talk about, like, I've been kind of like throwing this term out. Genetically engineered or genetically modified. Oh, sure. Cards and commanders. Yeah, maybe not the commanders. I think that's pretty obvious, but I want to do an episode about that. I went to our Patreon or Twitter or Tech Twitter people and got a massive list.
I need to, like, trim it back and kind of get it closer to what I'm. Yeah, to fit my, you know, argument, my rhetoric about about it. Okay, that's another episode I've gotten to play cool. And then yeah, that's I don't think we have reviews. Yeah, I think that's the thing to me is I'm like, there's not something on the immediate horizon that we need to review. So they spoil some stuff this week.
And when I looked at it like I just had a I don't know, I just like, can't I just woke up in bed that's like a bottle of Robitussin in my hand. Like I just like, blasted some robo. And then I, like, pulled my phone open again. And then it disappeared. And I woke up again with like, another bottle of Robitussin in my hand. So, I don't know, blue.