Remembering Sheldon Menery and His Rule Zero Philosophy for Building Community

Hello, everyone, Welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today's podcast is inspired by a sad event, but it's chanced to celebrate a great life and someone who had an incredible impact on a game that many of us love, magically Gathering. We're talking, of course, for those who are in the

Magic the Gathering world. No, Sheldon Meani. Sheldon Meani was a huge part of creating the Commander format and putting out ideas such as rules zero and other things that really encourage something that went along with a lot of Commander nearly the idea of playing a game where the idea the focus isn't necessarily on who wins, but as much as how does everybody at the table have a good

time. We're al still having some friendly competition involved. And that's the kind of thing that I love talking about on this podcast in terms of just like, let's talk about what that culture is like and how to sustain it and challenges to it and other versions of things like that, all in honor of Sheldon, who just did so much to really put forward these ideas. I was just such a great friend to so many of us, and I have

two really exciting guests. First, as returning guest Will Freeland. Will, I don't think we've had you on to talk about magic before, but I know you've talked about comics on here and a lot of other topics. We'll just quickly introduce yourself. Yeah, so Will Freeland, Silver Dreamer pretty much everywhere on the Internet. I've been here before talking about primarily Marvel stuff. Talked a little bit about Star Wars, and my online presence kind of revolves

around Marvel and Lego and building bricks stuff and hobbies. But I also play

a lot of magic gathering. I've made who knows how many Commander decks, and I always love as soon as I find that Commander deck that I really like, going and buying an altar of it and supporting some artists somewhere I go to as a guy in Spain to just it's just so much fun building a Commander deck that is almost nothing like anything else I've seen from other people that make the same commander and I think that's one of the best parts about

this format in general. Definitely. Yeah, Will and I we met, I believe for the first time in person at a Commander event to Command Fast Vegas. I'm almost really happy that for the first time I have on a guest, Nile Joan Rivers. Many of you who are in the Magic content creator space probably already know Nile, but for everyone else, please introduce yourself. Yeah, thank you. I am Nil, Nile Joan Rivers on Twitch,

Twitter, TikTok, wherever you can find me. I make Magic the gathering content of all varieties, really, but the main things I try to focus on our making queer centric content. I'm in the middle of series that I call Commander Versus where we do a two edit giant Commander game that'll be like one queer group against another queer group. So we've done like Twins, First Dolls, Bears, First Buys, Days, First Gays, stuff like that, just like silly little names, but it's an it's a fun way

to bring that part of the community to the forefront. And then I also try to focus on new player friendly content. I try really hard to lower the barrier to entrgue for Magic as much as I can, because it's a very intimidating game for new people to pick up, and I try to make

that easier for them. Definitely, I love that, and I love especially what you talked about there because one of things certainly that I've experienced we'll talk about this more down the road in this episode, is that while Magic itself is slowly but is becoming a lot more queer, welcoming, and friendly to all sorts of folks, the Commander spaces that I've been in have been overwhelmingly where I found that the most not exclusively by any means, and there's a

lot of work to be done, but it is a great connection. I think we'll definitely be talking about And let me actually just start with because we aren't. This isn't gonna be specially about Sheldon Meny, but about kind of the ideas he put forward and things like that, and I want to focus mostly on the ideas. But first you're starting with Sheldon. Now, I don't know how much you had interacted with him or knew about his content,

but kind of what did you know about Sheldon? Yeah, so I never got the opportunity to interact with him directly, but I feel like his influence is very very easy to identify and feel throughout the entire community, especially the Commander side of the community, and it's been it's been really cool to get to see all of the all of the posts from all of my friends who did get to interact with him about what those interactions were like and how genuine

and evolved of a guy he was. Yeah, it seems it seems like his impact was only positive. Yeah. One thing I was really struck by was how many people posted things like I completely disagreed with Sheldon on everything he

thought about how magic should be played. Most of my online interactions with him were arguing back and forth, and I felt like we became good friends through that, which is given the nature of most online discourse and how you know, the fact that he was able to generally disagree with people in very friendly ways and things like that is just really a great statement to him. Will what about yourself? I guess this speaks more to his legacy than anything else.

But so I've never interacted with them, interacted with him. But when I hear the name Sheldon, I think of magic before I think of Big Bang theory, and I feel like I feel like that's a statement in and

it of itself that is a victory for geeks. But when yeah, when the news came out that he asked my Twitter if ease I mentioned before we started recording that like half the people I follow on Twitter are magic people, and that's like the closest to me creating that being expressing my magic fandom as

I currently am. But my feed was just full of anecdotes and stories about one time interactions with Sheldon in person, or seeing him at an event, or a small conversation that they had in passing, or even especially the next day, people rallying about in Sheldon's name, let's go to our local lgs and promote magic and teaching more people how to play magic and how to get into Commander and all this, and just again to the same point that now

made like Sheldon's impact is so much bigger than I thought it was, and it's it seems to be primarily positive, and that's the dream. You can only hope to be that positive in so many people's lives. I will just say a quick interruption for those of you who mostly listen to this podcast because you want to know about the fcs of robots and vigilanteism and superheroes, I promise we will explain some of these terms that we're talking about. You don't

have to know commander or magic the gathering. We will explain all that means in just a few moments, I promise, and now they'll let me. As kind of a way of starting that, maybe talk to us a little about your journey, because I know you did not start in magic as a commander player. Yeah, not even a little bit. So I first started

playing magic in two thousand and seven. Around then, when the Lore one sat was out, I was given a preconstructed deck of mur Folk, which for the non magic listeners are mr people, you know, Mermaid's Mermaid, that kind of thing. And I just immediately fell in love. I mean, I grew up. It's like a Pokemon kid, a Uvo kid. It was like the natural pipeline I was. I was built for it.

I was the Targets demo for sure. But fell in love immediately and played off and on just kind of like with friends casually throughout middle school, high school after all that. Didn't seriously get into it until the last year and a half or so where I started to get really into the competitive scene in

magic, which actually started with a group called the VML. Which the VML is a magic league that takes place online that is specifically for people of marginalized gender, so women, non binary people, Transmit stuff like that, and I participated in their leagues and I did pretty well in them, and that just like got me more and more into the competitive scene. And since then, I've been doing a lot of rcqs, which are regional Championship qualifiers and

other tournaments like that. And while doing all that, I'm also like making magic content on Twitch and all that stuff, and eventually that leads me into the Commander area. And my experience so far with Commander players has been very positive. I've made a lot of really good friends in that space. I've made I think some of my best content in the Commander's space and really just

like kind of found a home for myself there. Yeah, that's wonderful, but it's a very It's definitely an interesting perspective coming into the Commander's scene from the competitive scene because it's the same game, it's the same cards for the

most part, but totally different worlds, very very very different worlds. Yeah, and that's a lot we're going to talk about today, And I'm so glad you are here because I think that one of the things that happens with Commander and I promise I'm about to give the explanation for it after this comment, and he replies, but I think one of the things that happens in Commander is that because a lot of the Commander world is not where the focus

is not primarily on competition, you know, there can be some defensiveness and some you know, a kind of like Jets and Sharks thing happen where it's sort of like, oh, where the good players and they're the competitive ones, and the competitive ones say the same thing. And I really love that

you're coming from. You know that you love both, because I think that is a needed perspective, because even myself, I could sometimes be a little bit uh, you know, I try to gently tease my more competitive friends, but it can probably not seem as gentle sometimes. And let me explain that. But let me tell my own story about how I came into it that I'll hope will give a good explanation for it. I played Magic Nile, I think, possibly before you were born, certainly before a lot of

my audience was born. I played in the very early days of Magic Alpha Beta in the late night in the early nineties in high school, kept playing through college. Most people stopped playing around that time. The mid late nineties, people weren't really into it, stole off my cards. Someone gave me three hundred dollars for a piece of cardboard just because it said mocks Emerald on it. I thought that was like clost money in the world. I will never look at the price of it again. But I got into it.

It was a lot of fun and I was I was decent at it. I was not great. I went to one or two tournaments, didn't really love that. And it's, like I said, kind of fell out of it in mid college. Then when I got back in some years later, I got divorced. I started looking for new community, and I started playing magic again and wound up getting into judging as well. And I really liked judging and I really like and I found that I kind of liked judging more

because honestly, I just didn't have that. I didn't have it in before the competition. I loved playing I loved limited it especially, but like spending a whole bunch of money on a deck wasn't my thing. Doing all the research, like I want to really honor again. The amount of work competitive players put in is amazing, and like I don't want to play the Olympics. I just wanted to play in my backyard, and so I was happy

mostly being a judge and playing some events for free. And then at a gathering of queer folks in Medicine, I mentioned that I used to play Magic, and some people said, well, do you want to play Commander with

us? And I said, what's that? And the way they basically explained it to me was, it's a different kind of format, it's multiplayer, it's different kind of deck building rules and the idea of it as they saw it, And I think this is a big part of how Sheldon saw it, was that it was meant for people who wanted to enjoy this game more as a social activity than as specifically about winning, you know, and that it could be because they just wanted a way to hang out with their friends.

It could be kind of his will was saying, although it don't let me put words in your mouth. You know a place too. There was a mechanic in a set three years ago that looked really cool, but it just wasn't good enough to function in standard or limited, and Commanders a way to build you a ridiculous deck that just does something really fun because you don't need to build the most efficient deck possible and so yeah, so it was this kind of world of let's play the game and figure out how to have

fun with it. Now. Of course, the problem can be if one person's idea of fun is let's spend ten dollars on a deck and just let everyone go to town, and another person's idea is let's all spend a thousand dollars on a deck and hopefully someone has won by turn three and then we start over again. That's really going to get complicated and people are not going to often work. And what I think show then me and he did.

I don't know if he invented this idea or if he just kind of really helped to push it forward, because there's certainly a big advocate for it. Was the idea of the rule zero conversation. And this is the idea that like, before you sit down and play a game of magic with new people,

you have a rule zero conversation, which is the less decide. It's not officially in the rules, but like at this table, we're going to ban this kind of card, or we're gonna say we're changing this particular rule to make it a little easier for people to function or we're gonna do other things that I, as a judge and person who gets paid to host official magic events, cannot mention on air, but you might be able to figure

it out. Although that's not inherent to Commander, but that's something else entirely. But yeah, and so that was kind of always my understanding of it and of what Sheldon really gave it to. It is this idea of magic can be very competitive, and that can be awesome. And it might be that the social environment you really enjoy is hyper competitive and that's awesome too, but that the focus is on how do we make a fun experience for everyone

involved? Totally. Yeah, I ran into, I guess, like a couple of issues that I had to solve when I first started getting into the Commander world from the competitive world. The first being having to adjust to the different expectations of the table because, like you sit down to play a one v one best of three at an RCQ against your opponent, you are both trying to crush each other, you know, like that is the game. If you don't hit a land drop on turn three, I am going to

choke you out the rest of the game. I don't care if you get to play another card, you know, like, I, that's the game, and that's what we're both expecting. That's like our equal expectation. They're not going to get to the end and be like how dare you? Like you didn't even let me like play any of my cards, you know, like it's going to be like, yeah, I just didn't hit any lands and you capitalized on my disadvantage. Now, the other thing was I came

into Commander. My one Commander duck was made of my mirth Wolk cards from when I first started playing. So I had a blue white deck, so I had counter spells, I had board wipes, I have cards that exile your stuff. I had cards to bounce your stuff, and then I could also make a giant board of fish. I had to learn other people's expectations of you know, when is it appropriate to wipe a board, When is it appropriate to counter something? When is it inappropriate to do these things?

Because again from the comp world, that doesn't matter. The appropriate time to do those things is when it wins you the game and that's it. But in like a more casual format like Commander tends to be, it was hard for me to figure out, like wait, what do you mean? Like it upsets you that I countered your commander, Like isn't that that? Isn't that good? Like doesn't that like ruin your plans? Isn't that great?

Like it isn't that all we're here to do? But I what finally made it click for me is I started thinking about it through the lens of content creation. Actually, because when I play Commander on stream, when I have people on before the stream, I always tell them like, hey, our first objective is be entertaining. Our second objective is play magic. You know, like I don't care if any of you are like good or bad or whatever. I don't care what your decks are, like make it fun,

don't make it like not fun to watch. So doing that made it easy, like it clicks for me where I could be like, okay, is it more fun for me? Like is it more fun for the table if I counter your spell? Or is it more fun for the table if I let your spell go through even though I can counter it, even if it's worse for me? And you know, this is like this is very casual expectations. This is a very like we're playing a board game together, not

we're trying to win together. Sometimes. I think commander games, the expectation is more competitive, and I think that can be really fun. But you know, setting and meeting that expectation, I think it's critical because if if any one person is not on the same wavelength as the rest of the table, it becomes a very awkward time, very fast. Yeah. But as long as you all agree, like this is the kind of vibe we're going for, you know, do whatever you gotta do. Absolutely, I'm shutting

up. We'll let you comp in. Oh okay, So no, I to play off of the like the casual let things happen mindset, Like I feel so because I I've dipped my right pinky toe into competitive DH versus where my decks typically sit are like high level, I guess is what's called where it's it's strong and powerful, but it's not competitive because I don't run all of the five hundred dollars cards that are better versions of what I run.

But so in the casual DH community, you can build a deck just for fun and really just play around with a mechanic or or or a creature type that you don't typically see in the competitive space and just go with it.

And just like flood the entire battlefield with random tokens just because you had this ten mona spell that you normally wouldn't be able to cast ever, but you survived until turn eleven, and you're like, you know what, it's time, I'm going to create one hundred and fourteen flying one one peg aside.

Why not? And it's it's so much fun because like I have a deck that just keeps on cycling my cards, Like I go, it's one hundred card deck, but I draw like one hundred and fifty times on average because I just keep on put looping my cards to the bottom of my deck and just draw and draw and draw it from Argin the something something I forget it's

title, but his name's Argin and he's awesome and he's Sphinx. But like, drawing cards doesn't win me the game, you know, like just conceptually, but like when you play something that's a little more chaotic and you have no idea if you're going to win, that's just so much more fun to me than playing the lockout spells and the instant Just get rid of my deck and then drop down a fastist oracles for the for the immediate win type stuff,

and it's just that's where you like really let your creative juices flow when you're playing casual and you're just like, well, let's just see how this

goes. Yeah, I'm very much of that mindset. Some of my if I would describe some of the best games of magic I've ever played, some of them are games I've won, but some of them were games I've lost, where but I got to do this really amazing thing that knocked out two of the players but didn't quite get there, and so the third was able to destroy me in like half a turn because I was, you know, had completely spent all my resources. And I think it ties back to what

Nil was saying, because I love what you said there. But it has to be about the shared expectations, because there's no reason for me to go down and sit down with a couple of competitive players and be like, no,

no, my version of magic is better that it isn't. It's just what Will and I love and what Milesins like you sometimes love, and to me, that should really be the goal there of not trying to decide which one's better, but just how do we create that space for the people who want one kind of magic to find each other and and o there's others because I did go a little bit of the same thing and that I wanted a

casual thing where everyone just got to do their thing. But to me, the fun way to play is I will counter all of your things, fully expecting that eventually you'll get something through and you probably will win. It turns out that not everyone finds that it's fun as I do. But like I have a good friend who's a STACKX player. Stax Is is that kind of lockout kind of game, and she and I have had some great games with

other maniacs. We can convince that this is fun where she's trying to lock everyone out and I'm trying to figure out how to counter or everything she's doing, and the other two players are just like, what in the world is going on? But because we can, you know, it's there are people who find things fun that I don't think find fun, and that's it can go both ways, and that's perfectly fine. Well, and I'm a big believer, and you can power up or down just like your piloting of a

duck. Yeah, yeah, a table's expectations because like I think a lot of times people have this misconception that they're like I have this that I can only play in like really casual pods, and this deck that I can only play in really competitive pods. But for me, I'll play any deck in any pod. And if we you know, like I've got like my Calia deck, which is pretty mean. If she comes out, you know, like on turn four she's swinging, I'm bringing out like Avison's and all sorts

of like big scary creatures. You know, it's got a lot of like brutal stuff in the deck. But if we sit down and we're like we're gonna do this casual, I'm just gonna play different, Like I'm gonna play more casually, you know, like if I have Platinum Angel, maybe I'm just not gonna put her on the board. For those non Magic listeners, Platinum Angel is a creature with highly oppressive text that says your opponents cannot win the game and you cannot lose the game. So until they can deal with

Platinum Angel, no one's winning except for you. So you know, like if we're not in a competitive you know, I'm not going to put down Platinum Angel and give it hex proof. You know, like I'm not I'm just not going to do that. Whereas also on the flip side, I've been in pods before where people are like, here's the deck I'm playing, and I'll be like, I'm just gonna play this precon and they're like, oh, if you're playing a precon, I should power down my deck and

I'm like, no, you play what you want. I'll play my precon. It'll be fine. And then you know, like I win the game or whatever, and it's like it's just like you can play at a competitive level with your lower power decks, and you can play at a lower power

level with your more competitive decks. You know what I mean, absolutely well, and especially I love that, especially because for one thing, like I love the example you used a while ago about if you sit down next your opponent and they stumble on lands, which is basically like assembling your resources at the start of the game so that you can do more things, You're just

gonna cut them off and take over the game. In Commander, a lot of times, if one person of the four is really kind of struggling, like no one in general, like no one's gonna just like knock them out of the game early because that just considered like, no, give them a chance. I did play in a group where someone was they started building their decks to always go slow because they figured they could take advantage, and so some of us had come on, man, you gotta like not try that.

But the other side of it, I think this kind of goes into what you're saying is that like building the deck is an important skill, playing the deck is an important skill, but any multiplayer game also adds a whole other skill, which is politics and bluffing, and which I primarily as a poker player. It's why I really love DH because I'm really good at convincing people that know this person over there you need to be afraid of them,

don't look at the really good cards I just dropped. I'm only doing it to help you against them. And politics is like, but some EEDH groups will be like no politics. And that's also totally fine, because some people think I'm a memiac for enjoying that kind of stuff, and that's again totally fine, but it's it is nice that it like, there are definitely games where I have felt like I have the worst deck and I'm not as good at you as playing the game. But if I identify early who's the biggest

threat, I can make sure they get knocked out before I do. And that's just, you know, it just it just adds another skill set that can be really fun. Yeah, I love politicking and commander. I think it's I think it's one of the most fun aspects of the game and probably one of the biggest reasons to play it. I had a game recently where there was one player that was just dominating and it was very much like he's

probably gonna win. And then there was another player who she was kind of struggling, but she had sort of amassed a little bit of a board and it was about to be her turn, and I was like, all right, listen, if you don't attack me this turn, I'm gonna cast scheming Symmetry next turn, which is a card that says me and target opponent both find a card, put it on top of our deck. But I can

choose anyone at the table who also gets that benefit. And I was like, if you don't attack me, I will target you with scheming Symmetry. You can get any cards you want, you can stabilize whatever. But then I was like, if you do attack me. I'm gonna target this guy who's probably definitely gonna win, and we're just all gonna lose. Like I will blow this table up if you don't take this deal. Yeah, she's like the deal. So it was great, and it's also it's one of

the reasons why I think one of the best ways to play Commander. And again, for those warrant into Magic, I promise we're going to branch this into a larger conversation about community in just a few moments. But I think all of this can tie into community building pretty clearly. But I would just say one other kind of addition to that is the it's fun to just sit down with like some random people and play Commander. But I'm honest, I'll

be honest, I very rarely do that. Mostly I like to play with the same group of people because, ay, we all get to know each other and we all get to kind of know our things, and we can say, like, you know, in the group chat, hey I have kind of a more powerful deck. Can people bring more powerful decks this time? Or hey, do you mind if we have like this thing that we

often don't have, So that can be great. But also if I sit down with three random people and play Commander and I offer someone a deal and I stab them in the back. Okay, but if you do that in a group of friends, that person's going to remember and a it might be

harder for you to do deals next time. But also, like I've seen times if someone did that a couple of times, and someone just sat down and said, I want everyone to know the goal of my game is to defeat them like anything else is fine, because they just have to have me in the back so many times. And like it, just like any community, you know, you gotta the fact that, like every interaction that happens in the game is also just going to play into the larger relationships your building.

I just love. I will sometimes say the like Telltale Games text out loud when someone targets me, and I'll be like, Nile will remember this so good? Yeah, yeah, and entertaining, I'm sure. Yeah. I have a thing about planes walkers. Sorry, well no, just anytime someone's plays a planes walker, I'm known for trying to immediately remove that planes walker plans walker has gun should use. After my time in Magic and so

I'm I still refuse to accept that they're in my Magic. Hastag my magic, but its zone brings out of planes walker it needs it needs to leave. I did not abide by planes walkers. I mean when I came back to Magic, I didn't understand plans Walkers. But it's been like ten or

fifteen years, Brom. I know, Michael Keaton was really good as Batman, but there have been other Batman's. Well, so let's kind of broaden this out a bit because to me, all the things we're saying, especially kind of let's kind of runs out of it because to me, all the things that we've been saying, especially for both of you, about like you know, setting social expectations, and like, am I right in thinking that that's kind of just a mirror of what happens in any community or like how

we build communities and friendships and friend groups in the like, Yeah, I think definitely. I Mean this happens all the time when making friends or having friend groups. You know, like if you're if you're not all on the same page about like the expectations of your friend group, it's not gonna work. You know, Like if you if you have a friend group where like some of them are like, hey, we're gonna hang out once a week,

twice a week, whatever. This is like what we're committing to, and some of you can't make that happen, Like it's it gets uncomfortable because some of these people have these expectations that you're going to be committing all this time that you just like don't have or don't want to spend. Whereas you know, some friends you have, maybe the expectation is set that like, hey, we're going to see each other like twice a year, but those

two times are going to be really solid. Yeah, you know, I think it's very common for someone to be like, this is my best friend who I've known since I was five. We talk once a year, but it's like a big catch up session, you know. And as long as everyone's on the same page about that and everyone is cool with the relationship taking that form, that's fine. But if people don't have matching expectations, then like those relationships just aren't going to work. Yeah. Absolutely, I guess.

I will say playing magic, the gathering with both strangers and my friends, has helped me developed my communication skills about expectations specifically. It's also it's also taught me the importance of grammar and the difference between you know, like may or not man and you know, stuff like this. So like, you know, magic, the gathering just in general is ingrained in my blood for the you know, the adult that I've seen myself become. But yeah,

communication setting expectations, Uh, you can't. It's hard to have a universal good time without that. Yeah, totally one of my favorite examples I've seen this where someone clearly had like learned the language from magic, because, as I said, there was you know this rule zero conversation. It's that

likes, it's the specific let's set our expectations. I was with a group of friends who often play eedh and there was a birthday party for one of them that did involve a lot of friends who were from outside that particular group. And within that group it was the kind of folks who just if you said anything that couldn't any way be taken as a sexual innuendo, they were going to say it. And and so one of them just said, hey, it's great meaning you like, you know, can we just have a

rule zero conversation about the conversation and sexual innuendo? Like half of the people are like, what do you mean? For the rest of us were like, that's actually brilliant, because what do you mean it was? He just like, hey, what is you know, this is something that some of us enjoying conversation but could make other people uncomfortable. Let's figure it out. And like the people who aren't used to that were like, that's really weird

but really kind of awesome. Sure, yeah, let's figure it out. We figured out like, yeah, it wasn't some of them were a littless comfortable, so we adjusted it as needed, and it was just it was just such a great example of using this kind of you know, tech to to say, yeah, we're in a new group, let's just let's talk and figure this out. Yeah. And I think like all relationships, and for the record, I feel like the word relationship applies to a lot more

than a lot of people think. Like, I think every connection between two humans is a relationship. I think you and I have a working relationship. And I think even if you look at like our discord messages together, we had like a rule zero conversation about this recording right now, where you know, yeah, we set expectations about like when we're going to do it, how long we're going to be doing it for what we're going to discuss, you know, is it going to be filmed or just recorded? Am I

expected to record? You know, like all these things, we got on the same page about what it's going to be, and now we can do it and it's a smooth and easy time because we're both on the same page about it. Yeah. I love that. I've never thought of in those terms, But you're so right. And part of why I think it becomes

so important is, especially when you're trying to an Adia. As an example of this, find people who share a common interest because, like I think, another version of this I've seen is within the Star Wars community, because there's an awful lot of people who like talking about Star Wars online, and

some of them come from it from very different perspectives. And I quickly realized, like, I don't want to talk to people who are going to constantly make me defend liking Ray or you know, thinking that maybe women have a place in the Star Wars or queer people have a place in Star Wars, and so little kind of sub communities have formed themselves, and that's more of

a clear like good and bad. Yeah exactly, yeah, exactly. But I think it could also be true of like I've definitely gone to gatherings of you know, polyamorous people or like music lovers or disabled people or non binary folks, which I am, and you know, found like like I remember when going to a polyamorous group in New York. Always I had like every

polyamoris community had been a part of until then was very geeky. And I made a science fiction reference in this particular group in New York and no one got it. It was like the cool kids from high school. I discovered

polyamory and like they were nice people, they were great. It wasn't really my community, but we kind of had to have a little bit of like you know, I think in a lot of these spaces, if you're able to have more that rule zero conversation of like, yeah, this is the level of you know, discourse we're expecting, and this is the kind of

you know respect. We want to have a lot of formal meetings. You know, if you have a meeting that says like please don't interrupt, step up, step back, you know, we want everyone to try and speak, but leave room for others to speak, use eye statement, stuff like that. All that is a rule zero conversation. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up polyamory because I think no one is doing rule zero better than the

poly community. If you ever, if you've ever been involved, if you've ever either been in a polyamorous relationship or gotten awf of someone in one, there's like, immediately just like this litigious conversation of like, here's how we do it, here's our rules, here's our boundaries, you know, like this is what I do, this is what I expect, and like anyone who's in a successful, healthy polyamorous relationship is like no stranger to this conversation

and has to be having it with any potential partner encounter whatever. I completely agree with you in terms of the theory of polyamory. I also need to say, my sweet summer child, if that has been your experience in polyamory, I am so well. Okay, I want to be very clear that I said any successful health Okay, I've seen the bad side of polyamory,

don't you worry. But no, I'm not having those conversations. Yeah, No, it's really true, and it's I think it's it's you know, workplaces, like if you know, going into a workplace, I think I've been watching The Office recently and just continually reminding myself, like, these are people who I mean. Part of the problem with the rule zero conversation is it assumes some level of everyone's on the same power level, and when you have power dynamics, it can be really hard. But yeah, I end

up sorry about the good rule zero to make it about me. I tend to have to kind of navigate a rule zero type situation when talking about like Marvel stuff, because over the last decade and a half more people know about who Iron Man is and who Captain America is or they saw, you know, the the X Men movies, and then there they come to me and ask and try to have a conversation about X y Z Marvel property, but their only frame of references from the movies when they don't know where I'm coming

from and we have a difference of opinion on how something went down because we came from two different, two very different experiences, and it has led to I get, for lack of a better phrase, awkward conversations because we didn't have this rule zero, Like where are you coming from with this? What's

your frame of reference? How can I you know? Taylor my response to whatever question you're about to ask me, how do you feel about thor being a woman, and like random stuff like that, because I don't know where you're coming at me from. And so if there was this socially established rule zero for just the way that everyone interacts with everyone, we would be such

a happier community. Yeah, I totally get that. I've definitely started, because I think when you're talking about Marvel is very similar to when Star Wars

and other online communities like that, and I've started. If a new person messages me, I'm always really thrilled by it, but I'm often going to check like a little bit of their you know, Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and to be like, Okay, do I see some stuff in there that indicates to me that we are not starting or ending with the same frame of reference that I might just be like, yeah, that's an awesome opinion, thanks for sharing it, instead of like, let's let's engage here,

because yeah, I've definitely been I've definitely been kind of suckered in there a little bit. And it's just you know, sometimes and sometimes it's like again, things where it's like, you know, I'm not going to say like homophobia or queerophobia or you know, sexism, racist learning that are like equally

valid positions. They're definitely not. But I do think there are also some things where it's like, you know, I respect someone who's just like I think that everything that you know, like I hate the original movies of Star Wars and it's just not my thing. I'm like, Okay, that's really legitimate. We are not going to have a productive conversation, so I'm just gonna kind of pind move on, you know. So I think one of

the things that is also really interesting about how this all play out. This is kind of pulling it back a little bit too magic itself, but I

think it can. It really is illustrative of all of this is that you've both kind of pointed out that, you know, while Commander may have been a really set up as this happy little land if no one wants to win and which wants to have fun, and that's mythology to be sure, Like it's always you know, there's always been some level competition, but now there is becoming more and more of Wait, but what if we do really want

to win? What if it is the way we want to have fun and it has merged the point where actually CEH competitive EH is Elder Dragon Highlander, it's another name for the Commander format. There's a whole set of politics there

that I can't discuss from other two months till my NDA runs out. But putting on aside, like, I'd love to hear your both thoughts on that because I think a lot of people within the I think there's been a lot of tension between Commander and c EEDH, and a lot of it has resolved around this kind of rule zero stuff, and I think I kind of see

a lot of fault on both sides. I don't really I'm not here to adjudicate that necessarily, but just talk about, like what has that been like in terms of seeing this more competitive side of Commander of all, I think, first of all, everyone who plays magic needs to just like chill out a little bit about everyone else who plays magic. Hell. Yes, I just we're all playing the same game. We're all on the same team. You're not You're not mad at me, You're you know, I don't know

who you're mad at. But it's not it's not the Commander players, it's not the comp players, it's not the CDH players. It's not their fault that whatever cards you didn't like cat printed. So I think everyone needs to chill out a little bit, first of all. Second of all, I think that the benefit to competitive formats like CDH or Modern Pioneer or whatever is it circumvent the rule zero conversation a little you know, like a there's like

a there's a pre agreed upon social contract entering into these things. Touched on a little bit earlier. But you know, you sit down on one of these games and you are expecting everyone to do everything in their power to beat you. They are not going to do anything to make sure you have a fun time. It's not about that. It is about trying to beat you. And for me, and I think for most competitive players, that is

the source of the fun. You know, knowing that, like you are going to do everything in your power to beat me means that if I beat you, then like there's nothing you could have done to stop me, right, Like you did everything you could think to do to stop me from winning, and I still want That's amazing, That's an amazing feeling. That's why

I do it. It's fun. It's just it's just fun. I think I think that it makes it makes total sense that CDH would form out of DH, because you know, it can get even when you're having these rule zero conversations, it can get a little tricky, especially if we're talking about like how strong your deck, which I think is sort of a useless conversation to have every period, especially if you're using like a one to ten thing, you know, because you know, there's like the meme of like every

decks to seven or whatever. But because of the meme, it makes it even more impossible to say, because what if your deck is a seven, you can't say it, So now you either have to say it's a six or an eight. It's just like it's impossible. It's useless metric, it's impossible. And like I said earlier, you can power up or power down your own skills. So you know, maybe I say I've got a deck that's a five, and you say I've got a deck that's a nine,

and then we play together anyway. But maybe I'm just like better at magic than you, you know, and maybe I'm just like playing differently than you're playing, and it feels like I didn't bring a five and you didn't bring a nine, and so like were we dishonest or were we just piloting different you know, like it's it's complete, like it's rule zero is not an easy conversation to have because not everyone's speaking the same language all the time.

So if you want, if you like Commander and you also like all the stuff that comes with the competitive side of magic, and like, of course you're gonna want to marry those two things, well, I think I think competitive anything is just the natural outcome of multiple people playing multiple games over and over and over again. I mean, like, you know, you have

your pet deck. As soon as it loses, you start looking into how to make it better, and then just eventually enough people go through that iteration enough times and you're going to have this community that just has like the most

tuned and tweaked versions of their deck. But I will say that going for me personally, going from my playgroup and how we have like made ourselves get stronger and have better decks and learn how to play and I learn how to read the board to my experience there and then go to a con and then sit down with randoms and they're like, hey, you don't want to play, Like sure, absolutely, let's do a pickup game. So rule zero, what you know? What are you? What are you working with?

I'm like, I've got goblins, I don't what do you. I don't know what else to tell you other than I'm going to run a mono red deck. It really likes tokens and it tries to do mean things with it. I don't know where that sits in terms of power level for me. I don't know where that sits in terms of power level from your perspective. But I've been told that this is high power. So here you go. And but like, I don't I could never even begin to tell you what

that means. Yeah, I think it's so true, and I'm gonna make a weird analogy here, but I think it makes sense because you're talking for about monogamy and polyamory. I think you're right that polyamory requires a rule zero conversation in part because, like you said, with competitive magic, like most competitive games, there's an assumed rule zero. I think the cultural assumption of

monogamy is the assumed rule zero. And you know what, I would say, they're in that case, there was not exactly the same because I think part of the thing is that And again here. I don't think polyamory is better. I just think that the way monogamy is taught and understood is problematic in that it's the same thing most people say, like, don't get too close to someone else, So okay, well what the hell does that mean?

You know, And someone thinks that texting someone of the gender you're attracted to late at night is cheating, and someone else says that, like doing these kind of karaoke with them is cheating, and someone else thinks, like, no, all that's fine, just don't kiss them, or someone else thinks kissing is fine, just don't like the Instagram is not okay, right, and like and even with magic, I would say, like, I

have been in places where some amount of trash talking is completely legitimate and expected, and other places where that would get you thrown out of the store or at least given a strict warning and maybe thrown an out of the store. So all that you used to say to say that and then specific to magic,

I agree with you that, yeah. That So one of the things that can make rual zero so much better is when you get more specific, you know, so like in my play groups, it was never really officially said until we all kind of realize that, yeah, we're doing this, let's just agree on this. The general rule is you don't use tutors for wind cons. You know what I mean by that is like tutors are a

kind of card that goes and finds another card. And so because the idea of being that one thing that we like is as you were saying, will the chaos and that you don't you have a hundred card deck. Each one is different. You don't know what you're going to get, and so every time a person plays a deck, they're always tutoring for the same card to win the game the same way. That's just not what we play find fun. Others it's, you know, you don't like the fast manner cards,

the cards that allow you to build up resources really fast like others. It's more, you know, you know whatever it is, it's the it's how do you have that come station? That gets a lot more specific because you're right, which is power level. We can be saying the same words but means totally different things. Yeah, definitely, I think it's I think it's

really tricky. I think I think, honestly, what people need to try and be better at is kind of managing this on the fly a little bit in games because I think for me, a lot of a lot of how this goes is very improvisational, you know. It's very kind of like what you said earlier, like if someone's stuck on two lands, I'm gonna like

treat them with kid gloves until they get set up. I'm not gonna even if, like you know, if I was in like a tournament, playing like a competitive format, I'm just gonna bully that person till they're dead, you know, Like I'm just gonna be like, oh, you've exposed a weakness. I'm gonna take advantage of it. That's the game. But this

is like a casual format that's made for fun. Something I'll say a lot Inmander games, especially on stream, is I'll start my turn and I'll look at a person who I know I can kill that turn, and I'll say, hey, do you not want to be playing anymore? Do you not want to be in this game any longer? Which is kind of like a very life It's kind of a very intimidating thing to ask somebody, but it's it's a very gracious question, you know, to be like, hey,

do you want to keep playing or are you good? Because like I could take you out. I could, I could take you out right now. And you know, sometimes people are like, yeah, go ahead, take me out. And sometimes they're like please one more turn, I beg and I'm like, all right, I'll just you know, whittle down this other person, no big deal. And maybe they take their turn and they go off and they win. But that's cool because like, yeah, we're all

just we're all just goofing off. I think it's yeah, yeah, I helped you get there. But I think it's also important to be very clear and honest throughout the game before and during about like what your deck is doing and like what is threatening about it. Like when I play my Collie at Zack. Before the game, I'll be like, I'm gonna get Collie out the first turn I'm available to do. So if you don't have an answer for her, that's bad news for you. Like you need to have an

answer for her. She might be able to swing the turn she comes out, you know, like you need to be prepared for that. And then like they know before they even draw their hand, like I need some mulligan until I have like at least one removable spell. I need to answer Collia

or I'm dead. And if they don't do it like I did my best I like, I'll play her and be like, all right, she's here, Like I'm not gonna tell you what's in my hand, but you can bet there's an angel or devil or whatever in here, you know, like it's gonna get scary if you can't do anything about it. Or when I play my Merfylkzak, I'll be like, hey, I played this guy. It's gonna next turn. Let me go get this thing. I could potentially take infinite turns, just so you know, you know, like just be

because there's so much to keep track of. There's like a million cards to know. It's it's unfair to your opponents to be like you should know. Justin a game I had the other night, someone was choosing where to put a single point of damage and I was like, hey, I know the board state is really crazy right now, just so you know this one one creature is the one you want to kill. And they're like, okay,

thank you, and I'm like, yeah, you're welcome. I love that, And I know that it ties in really well to something you were talking about the very beginning, which is how do we make this game more friendly to new players? Because in many ways, e DH is the game that a lot of new players are finding, in part because it is a social thing. It is, Hey, I'm having friends over the house to play this game Tuesday night. Do you want to come and join? I can

teach you the game. But also, like to people who know the rules, that seems absolutely, you know, bonkers, because it is so much more complicated rules wise, and I know that can be a real feel bad is if you're invited to and you're constantly a situation like, oh, I didn't know that when you did that it would lead to this and so and so I think helping players like that is so great and and so that leads me to a question of like, how do you That's a great example,

but beyond that, what else do you do to kind of help make EH more friendly to new players? Because I think it can be super intimidating when it's all these cards people don't know, people don't want to ask to read every single card, but there's so much things on the board. How do

you how do you build that community? And that's to both of you, So I'm not personally an MTG content creator, so I can only speak from like the experiences that I've been part of, but I want to I want to add my uh star of approval for the like open communication like I've been I've had the opportunity to be on a couple of different creators twitches, twitch channels, playing with absolutely brand new people and being open about my deck and

them being open about their deck of like, hey, since you guys didn't counter this, or if you don't counter this, these this is the cascade

of things that's going to happen, and I'm going to win. Just I've never had that experience in person, like at a at an event or anything, and so like, I feel like the format of all of us being not in front of each other and staring down each other's boards has ended up creating a situation where hell, hey, look, communication is important and so we're more open about this kind of stuff from my experience when I'm when I've

been playing with like with my neighbor's he plays and he has a very different power level. Cool I just perpetuated, but he plays very differently than me and my friends do. Like, for whatever reason, he and his friends don't even track Commander damage because for X y Z reason. I don't entirely know why, but because it's annoying to do, I guess, And so that's my friend of reference. And so I know that they haven't seen a handful of cards or texts that I will be bringing to the table. And

so when I first play a card, I'll play it up. I'll play it facing them, so I can just easily show them and just be like, hey, I'm going to play Goblin Engineer, I guess, and so like I'll scoot it over and let them read it, and like, I'm not going to play the three cards that this main phase one that I want to play until everyone understands each card that I am going to play, and so likes it just slows down the pace from what you, as the deck

owner might be used to, but from a community and bringing new people and teaching new things perspective, letting people read the cards and not expecting everyone to know every single damn card because there's only a few thousand. It's just makes things easier for and I feel like makes for a better experience with the whole pod, the whole table. Yeah, So I've I've brought a ton of people into magic. I'm very familiar with teachings someone how to play magic.

I think I'm pretty good at teaching people how to play magic. For starters, I would say I would never teach someone magic with Commander. That's never what I would what I would do. I think Commander is the game that like you learn magic and then you can like play Commander. But the way that, the way I always start when I'm teaching people in person is you

know, I'll get a couple of pretty simple decks. We'll do like a one v one, but we'll both play with our hands exposed, so we'll fail their hands exposed, and I'll like walk them through their turn, their phases, what they can do. We'll talk about options because they'll be like, oh, I could play this creature or this creature, and I'll be like, which one do you think you should play? Why do you think

one's better than the other? Right now, get them to start like thinking like a magic player, and we'll do that one or two times, and then play a game with our hands closed and do that and then you know, just wait till they get the hang of it. But it's so hard with Commander because there's four board states, there's potentially like four hundred unique cards

at the table in your deck. There's definitely like upwards of you know, ninety nine unique cards or a hundred unique cards that you could have just on your own. That's so much like that's so much to draw hand, and there'll be seven different cards you've never seen and they're like, all right, take your turn, Like what do you mean I have to read like a

novel before I can even like understand what's going on here. So I think just like guiding players through it as best as you can, being very clear about like what you have and what's scary. And I mean, if someone's new enough, you kind of need to just like I don't want to say like baby them, but like you need to treat them like the player who's stuck on two lands at least a little bit, you know, because you all need to be cognizant of the fact that they aren't like it's going to

take more for them. Like everything they're doing is harder for them because they're learning everything as you're laying it down and you're just like, all right, I played this is this trigger Like all this stuff that's like automatic for all of us have been playing it for a long time, but just like extremely overwhelming for a new player. And I think it's also important to let them know when they can turn their brain off a little bit. You know,

you're like, hey, this person's like doing this like combo thing. Don't even worry about it, like you you're tapped out. Just let it happen. We're just gonna see what shakes out at the end of it. Who cares, you know, like you do not need to be tracking this, And then like the relief that washes over their face and they're like, oh, thank god. I was so confused, and I was like, yeah,

don't worry, it's it's weird. Yeah. I used to teach magic at a story I helped run or I manage their events, and I'm in the same way. I would never teach someone DH, but I certainly know others who do. And in my friend group, as someone who sometimes brings someone who like like, yeah, I haven't teaching the Mediah. This is gonna be their first game with other people, and yeah, we'll do very

much that same kind of a thing. And I think part of that is and that's kind of been a big part of this whole conversation is there's a very big difference between sitting down with strangers versus playing with a group of friends, you know. And to me, I mean, the best way to do that is like get people over on a Tuesday night. I love to

cook for people. But also like, if you just go to your lgs pretty regularly, you know, you're mostly going to see the same people and you're going to develop friendships or at least, as you were saying, Nile like relationships or some kind and and levels of trust and understanding the expectation of each other. And I think, you know, as a total of a total newbie who no one knows it comes in and asks to learn Commander. Yeah, I'm probably not going to shoot them out of the game. I'm

gonna try and direct them in some other way. And when it is that new person, like really hope it's with a group of friends, because yeah, I think all the things you're saying, like there's an attitude of yeah, Okay, this won't be the most fun Commander game I play. But if we do this, this new person gets to be part of our you know, group, and they're a friend of mine. I want them to hang out with me on Tuesday nights. So of course let's do this.

Yeah, if I if I have my pick of like if I have to teach someone magic via Commander, the way I want to do it is there's five people at the table, and I am just like playing with the new person, you know, like, yeah, I am sitting over their shoulder, I'm their yami yugi. I am like there their guardian who's just like I'm gonna like, you're gonna be making all the decisions. I'm just gonna like point out what's possible. We're going to talk through options together. I'm

gonna make sure you're not gonna get bullied at the table. I'm going to make sure that you stay okay. Uh yeah, I think that's that's I think the best way if like you have to bring a new person into Commander Rand much self, Rand Muchself. So I want to bring up one last question and then in our member only section, we're gonna talk a little bit more about community building and things like that. And uh noill, I know the stuff that now let's talk and you know the stuff that now let's talked

about about specifically doing queer content. I want to ask her about that, and so that'll be in the member only section. The last thing I want to ask is and this comes off of a point you made now, but also Will I think that's what we're elevant to you. Let me give it

a bit of background here. Some of the terms that are used in magic are spike and what are the other psychographics that I'm Timmy, Yeah, Timmy, And the idea of them is that magic did the study of like trying to understand all the different reasons why people play magic, and that spikes where the people who now you were talking about like who the primary joy that get out of magic is winning, and that Timmy is more kind of I think

what I'm probably getting get wrong because there's Timmy and there's a third Johnny as a third one, and one of them is that I really want to express themselves with their deck, and a third one is like kind of stuff you were talking about, Will if you want to do something like wild and crazy with your deck that you haven't gotten to see. And I got into magic

around the time that that discourse was really strong. It's kind of faded over time, but one of the things that people told me a lot about Commander is it's a place to get away from the spikes. And I admit that I'm saying this in a little bit of a kind of like self lap laughing at myself way, because I think it's a little unfair. But I think there was a strong attitude of yeah, we don't. We don't want that

kind of competitive idea at our table. This is something that no spike is ever gonna have fun at because they're gonna lose seventy five percent at the time probably or else. We didn't talk about their deck level or their play stile and Nile is making eyebrown movements that I wish we were on video for. I have this feeling, Nile that if you'd come into my playgroup, you'll

like lose the first couple of times and then just dominate. We'll all feel like we got hustles, but it'll be fantastic, okay, like quick aside. One thing I've learned playing poker is because there again, like the way I played poker with my friends and the way I played poker at a casino

is very different. But I intentionally try to be very entertaining at a casino because I want people to feel like they're getting they're getting their moneys with because they're probably going to give their money to me, but I want them to feel entertained anyway. My point is, I think, and I think so for a lot of people, there was this kind of like this is our place away from the spikes because we're frustrated that so much of magic is all

about the spikes. And this was many years ago, like today, I think if you go to a magic event, especially the magic cons but anything, there's a lot of Commander out there, and there's commander decks and all this stuff. But commander used to feel like the redheaded stepchild. And I'd say that as a redhead who has a stepmader, And I think that was part of why a lot of us kind of got our hackles up when we first started, when when c Eedh first started coming in, and I think

there's problems on both sides. I think a lot of people were were upset about it. And I've definitely come to a much befferent place and now hearing a story like yours of someone who can really have that competitive mindset but also enjoy other things, it helps a lot. And so I want to hear you from you, but also from you will, like how do you shift that mindset? Because or maybe a way to start is when you're in that mindset of I want to win, and that's what's going to give me joy.

I imagine losing isn't the most fun thing in the world. And so how do you how do you deal with losing when you're in that competitive mindset? But also then how do you change the mindset so that you can find a different kind of fun. Well, so for me, and I have been referred to before as a Spiko path to give you a concept of like, Okay, how I approach how I approach this stuff. To me, losing does not bothering me, especially especially losing in competitive situations. It doesn't.

It doesn't really bug me. It doesn't get me down. If anything, it drives me to want to play more. It's like my whole my whole thing is just like if you beat me, I'm just gonna think about, like what could I have done better? You know, Like I'm always my competition is always against myself, you know, Like my competition is always what could I have done differently or better? And sometimes the answer is not

a whole lot. Sometimes the answer is, well, maybe if I had taken this line, who knows where I would have ended up that game, And that just that excites me, that like keeps me invested in it. You know. I think if you really get down about losing, then the competitive scene just like isn't for you, Like you just you're not gonna You're not gonna have a good time because you'd forged in Fire through losing in that

scene. It also super doesn't bother me in Commander because there's three other people there. You know, it's chaos. Even if I'm like playing my heart out, I still like I'm I'm at the mercy of three people, you know, Like you now, I don't think I'm losing seventy five percent of my games, which is why I was good. But I get it, I get it, but yeah, I the hard thing for me when I was first getting into Commander was getting like getting into the mindset that not everyone

is a crazy little spichopath like me. You know, like not everyone, like some people are affected by losing, and that's okay, Like it's not it's not bad if you feel bad about losing, but you know, just like getting your decent person about it. Sure, yeah, yeah, as long as you're not like salting off at the table. But it's okay to

be invested in what you're doing. Like sure, but you know, having to get into the mindset of like, oh, you know, like these people aren't extracting fun out of like getting all of their spells answered, you know, like they don't they don't like it that I haven't answered all their threats. That's just like not that's like learning how to approach it in a way that was most entertaining for everyone at the table was tricky. It was

tricky to turn off, like the competitive part. But once I was able to, like, it's a very it's it's a very fun like board game experience I feel playing Commander, Like it's just it's a fun way to see like what weird stuff people brought, what weird bruise people came up with. It's fun to get to like be the threat and like do a little bit of spiky stuff and you know, pop off a little bit and have like three people try to stop you. Even when they succeed, you're like that

was fun, Like I got to be the heel. I got to I got to be the thing everyone wanted to kill. It was a fun time. Yeah, I guess the I don't mind if if I lose a good game, Like if everyone's doing their thing and I went in hard and I lost, that's gonna sit with me mentally, and I'm going to go through all the different other paths I could have run to try to change the outcome

of that game. As far as feeling that the negative side of competitive nature, what bugs me is playing with people that that I don't want to say something just mean, but like we read the board differently. If you have someone who doesn't have much and you see a Collia on the board and from their personal experience, they're like, oh, goblins are the devil. We gotta get rid of that. Like, I'm clearly not the threat. You

don't need to cancel my my couple of goblin tokens. If we're sitting here dealing with a colleague that's about to get rid of her some summoning sickness like that bugs me. But if it's with strangers, I can't say anything. When if we're playing online on somebody's switch, usually there's way more communication and

talking through everybody's decisions and that doesn't typically happen. It's really at the cons whereas someone's just like, well, I don't like what you're doing, and just will, from my perspective, make a terrible decision that just leads to someone else just running over the board because now no one is equipped to deal with it from and the competitive side of me comes out internally. I don't take it out on anyone, but just like that was a terrible decision,

and that's really that that bugs me to my core. And so from the from not competitive dh perspective, but just the competitive nature in myself, that's kind of where it comes out. But that same nature is what makes me want to be a better player. It's what makes me want to learn how to pilot my deck differently. It's what makes me overall become, in my opinion, a better Magic player. And so I'm okay, I'll take I'll

take that negative with the more positive. And I think I feel like in Commander, you get more opportunities to explore that side of I get more opportunities to explore that competitive side of me because every game is so different that like the situation the board is going to be so different every single time someone's going to have a better draw, someone's going to play either deck better or differently. Someone's going to switch the deck that they want to play in game too,

and that's fine. And then where it's going to be a completely different situation. And because no two games are the same until you run a deck that's all fetches in one wind con then you can you learn to be mentally adaptive, which then makes it so your deck is super adaptive, so you can be a yugi yami for yourself and like a Caribo actually has a place in your deck for some reason because it's going to take down a slide for

this guy Jock or whatever. Like just it's it's so much fun. And the only way I feel that's going to happen is if you kind of if you embrace the natural competitive side in in yourself, but you keep it in control so you're not lashing out of people in flipping tables. You're using that to drive yourself to be a better magic player. Yeah, I think you're so right. Well, they're like you know in some ways, And a lot of this podcast is my kind of apology to Spikes and my apology to

see eight you're great people. Sometimes you're just not the people I want to play magic with it, where sometimes you can be because you can be a spike and a Timmy. I mean, I'm I'm certainly a spike and a Timmy when it comes to poker, you know, And so I get that a lot more now. But I think that's it's also just okay to be

like you know. But because I think a part of what I'm getting out of this is that a lot of things that we were thinking of back then when we talk about like we don't want spikes at our table, was we don't want sore losers at our table, and that a spike doesn't mean that by any means. It often though, can go together, but also you can have other people, like a Timmy can be very salty if they don't

get to do the thing their neck wants to do. But like, I don't think I ever realized I was doing this until we were really thinking about it. But I remember now when I was playing at a store, quite often I would generally not like I would invite good friends of mine because already

knew them and trusted how they're gonna act. But I was playing magic against someone, you know, how I knew they wanted to play ADH, I probably would invite them to my home games until i'd seen them lose a couple of games and i'd seen how they responded and if they were able to lose and be like, oh, good game. You know the person I played like, she had this great, great deck and I just I learned, you know, I couldn't beat it, So I gotta put these cards in

my deck so I can beat her next time. Like, yeah, that sounds like gonna be a great you know, if the person's like, oh my god, it's so unfair. I can't believe they printed that card and they played this card. It was unfair or they they they must have cheated or something like that. Yeah, I don't watch up my ADH table totally. Yeah. Well, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you all.

Either you have any kind of last things you want to say about the community stuff we're building or Rule zero or Sheldon or any kind of like last wrapping all this up. Yeah, So the last things I guess I'll say about this is I think Commander is a very fun format. I think it is as fun as the people you're playing with and with any relationship. It's all about finding the people who mesh with you and the people that you get along with, the play well with, and as long as you do that,

you're gonna have a great time. Yeah. Yeah, to play off of that, I love magic and I've just just weird tangent, just like how track and field in high school is the only like co ed sport, and so you just it brings the most random groups of people together for the

same purpose. Magic has been that for me in my adult life. I've met more diverse people from all kinds of different walks of life and different hobbies and circle and like friends groups, playing magic, just sitting down at a pod and just getting to know the people across from me and next to me than any other thing hobby I've ever done. Marvel people you come across generally the same type of person. Star Wars people you come across, very strongly

opinionated people, a lot like I'm not very strongly opinionated person. How dare you think that you're come exactly right? But then you come you sit down at a magic table and you have one person who is completely decked out in cosplay. You have another one in like nursing scrubs. You have someone in their pj's, and you have someone wearing like a three piece suit, and we're all sitting down having a fun, casual game together. And that is

so cool. And I highly encourage anyone who is even relatively interested in checking out Commander and or Magic to at least at least look into it and see if something about that that world brings you in. Yeah, I thinks such a great way to put I think it's it is for me, it has been the basis of a lot of my friendships. Has been where a lot of my friends were founded or grew. Since it back getting a podcasting,

that's changed in a lot of other ways too. But as you're gonna want to end with, just like honoring again Sheldon, and I think he became kind of the public face. And I want to say that, like, there's a lot of other people on the rules committee, and I know a lot of other great minds went into all the stuff with rule zero, But just that it is, it is such a great concept. It's not a

perfect concept. As you both, I think it had a great thing to say about will you will you know you point out all these things about like you can have a rule zero conversation, but if using different language, even if it's the same words, it's not going to go anywhere. Like a lot of times, I think rule zero is about establishing a community that plays together again and again not just strangers, but you can do it with strangers

too. And also, now, as you said, even after rule zero, when you find that you're not all on the same page, you can adjust and that's important too. But I just like, I think it is such a great idea for any kind of community, like any kind of gathering. You know, hey, we're going on a hike. Okay, does that mean that we're gonna hike for like two hours and then drink a bunch of beers or does it mean that we're like gonna go for eight hours?

You know, what's what's the idea here? You know, we're going to the rainfair. I can deal with an hour, like two hours of that's so whis can people five hours that have the rules zero conversation? It's just such a great concept. So, and we're gonna kind of build off of what Will was just saying. They are about community and stuff, and who work at NIL is doing in our members only section, but for people who aren't members and want to just learn more about the two of you, Nils

starting with you. Where else can people find your content? Yes, I'm on Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. You can find me on all those at Nile Jones Rivers. I post a lot of different kind of magic stuff. I post comp stuff, I post DH stuff. I'm all over the place. I play it all, I love it all. It's all. It's all really really really queer. And for those who are magic people, you will be at Magic on Vegas. I'm correct, I'll be a Magic on Vegas. I'll also be a Commander's Sealed this weekend. I fly

out in the morning. For anyone, I mean, this will be I'm sure you know it'll be long gone since Latimus comes out. But yeah, I'll be at Commander Sealed, I'll be a Vegas and I will be at dream Ac Atlanta in December. Awesome, awesome, tod and will Where can people get hyped up about comics, especially in a time when a lot of us are not watching comic book movies and TV shows but want to go back to the original source. Where can they go? Yeah? So I have

a podcast as well, it's called Type's my superpower. Me and my best buddy, Steve, who actually taught me magic back in ninety four. Have we talk about Marvel comics. He's reading all every single Mutant comic that's come out. I'm reading all of the current comics that are coming out, and we just talked. We talked about it together and it's a lot of fun.

Outside of that, I'm on Twitch, Twitter, Instagram to talk other places probably, Oh, I have silver Dreamer dot com so as Silver Dreamer Silver with a why if you are interested in anime, Marvel, Lego, Random Bees, and especially Marvel, come and find me. Let's be friends. Well, and this is actually given me a great new idea because Will and Steve have both been frequent guests on both of my podcasts, and I've had so much fun. They're nice enough talk about Rules zero to let me

talk with them about comics, even though I don't read comics. I just my brain doesn't work that way. But we should have an episode about what would a rule zero conversation look like for the X Men, for the Avengers, for the Fantastic Four, Like, what you know all these different comic groups, what should their rule zero conversation be because Steve I knows, also wanted to be on this and he couldn't, so that that's an episode you've

just volunteered for. Congratulations, Okay, well and everybody else, they said, members are gonna having more content a second, but everyone else if you want to, If it's your first time listening to this, you can find more about my podcasts at the Ethical Panda dot com. That's where you can find all the ways to give us feedback. I'm on Twitter, I'm on TikTok. I will eventually be on some non Twitter thing. As I said, I will jump off the ship when everyone agrees what is the ship we're

all jumping off to. I just I have a blue Sky account, I have a Vine account or whatever it's called. I just can't monitor all of them, but definitely do check all those out. It's a great way to give us feedback. It's a great way to share the show with others. And in the show notes you also find all the links to that, as was all the links to my two awesome creators who are with me today.

You'll also find ways to become a member of this podcast from the five dollars a month you get ad free content, you get bonus content, and you get to support this podcast. And one of the things that I'm doing right now is that during the strike, twenty five percent of all the money that

I get in from that I'm donating to the Strike Fund. This is a great fund that's working to help all the people who are affected by the Hollywood strike, both the writers and the actors themselves, but also you know, the caterers, the hairstylists, the people who you know, the security people, all the folks who are also out of a job because they're not working on the sets where these people are on strike. So it's a great time

to become a member. And the last thing I'll promote, and granted you only to hear this about two days in advance, but hopefully it will work. If you're going to Magic on Vegas and you're getting there Thursday, you're looking for something to do Thursday night. On Thursday night, I'm running a charity function called Charity the Gathering Vegas. If you go to our website Charity the Gathering dot com, you'll find out all the information, or you can

find us on Twitter at under Charity the Gathering. UH. It's an event to benefit trans Lifeline, and we're doing this. This is a third event we're doing. We're gonna do a number of these events going forward, all to benefit queer and related causes because something's really important to me and really important to so much of the magic community is trans causes and queer causes. And

we have commander pods. We're gonna have limited pods. We're going to have a number of creators are going to be there doing like, hey, jump into this pod with this person, or jump into a commander draft with this person. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. If you're free on Thursday night, go to charity the Gathering dot com dot org, check all the information out and it'll be right there. Hopefully you can join us Thursday night, so on behalf of myself will nil. Thank you all so much

for listening. We have spoken. What are you