May 22, 2020
domineer – verb : assert one’s will over another in an arrogant way
I have never played EDH/Commander. I’d like to, but I have no current playgroup (apologies to my son, but he’s not sufficient.)
The LGS I’ve visited for prerelease tournaments since Ravnica Allegiance hosts a Thursday night Commander event, and awhile back I contacted them about possibly attending. Sadly, they were in the middle of a Commander League (whatever that is) and I was told I would likely not be able to play standard Commander games until the league finished multiple weeks later.
That was…off-putting. So I shelved the EDH notion for quite a long time. Then in February, with my wife and son planning to visit family in Florida for a few days, I checked with the LGS about the Commander night for the Thursday I’d be on my own. No Commander league, just free play. Huzzah!
But as news of COVID-19 worsened in the days leading up to that Florida trip, my wife smartly decided to cancel the flights and not risk exposure. I spent that Thursday night with them, as I am wont to do.
Perhaps later this year I’ll look into it again, but for now I’m just a guy that reads about EDH on occasion, watches most Game Knights videos, and is tangentially aware of the current state of the format without ever having played it.
And anyone even peripherally aware of Commander is likely aware of the schism between EDH and cEDH players. Apologies to those already versed, but cEDH is a competitively-minded offshoot of EDH that has been growing in size (and voice) for a few years.
Commander started as a casual, even “goofy” format nearly 25 years ago, and eventually coalesced into what is now the most popular format of non-digital Magic (MTGO offers EDH, while Arena lacks the multi-player capabilities so crucial to the format, and instead offers only Brawl – sort of Commander-lite.)
There are official Commander rules, including the oft-debated “Rule 0” that states:
These are the official rules of Commander. Local groups are welcome to modify them as they see fit. If you’d like an exception to these rules, especially in an unfamiliar environment, please get the approval of the other players before the game begins.”
Not having played Commander, I am not touching the endless debates over the merits of Rule Zero with an oversized Chaos Orb. I lack the experience, context, or passion to engage in any such discussion.
What I do wish to highlight is that Rule Zero was intended to encourage players to talk about what they want from the game when they sit down to play it with strangers. If your deck is a low-power attempt at bear tribal, you’re going to want to make sure you aren’t sitting down with someone playing a deck capable of turn-4 kills by generating infinite mana. Eventually enough Commander players took deck building and optimization to its zenith, culminating in the cEDH format splintering off to become its own thing. And thus were spawned a million incendiary debates about power levels in Commander.
Accusations of pubstomping in Commander are not uncommon, nor are tales of angry words exchanged at LGS Commander nights over the spirit of the format or what is and isn’t “fun” to play with or against.
All of this finally, mercifully, segues into what I’m looking to discuss in my final installment (for now) of Middling Magic: pubstompers specifically and power imbalance in general.
When I queue up my wolf tribal deck (yes, that’s a real deck I’ve frequently played) in the Arena “Play” queue, my play experience has largely been given over to Arena’s matchmaking algorithm. There is no Rule Zero that allows me to announce or discuss what sort of play experience I am hoping for. I may get paired with a new player learning the intricacies of the Dimir Welcome deck, or I may get paired with a mythic-ranked player running their Yorion/Lukka Fire of Invention monstrosity. To couch this in Commander terms, I can very easily end up in an EDH vs. cEDH situation.
I use an Arena plug-in that tracks quite a bit of information about my Arena experience, including a rather enlightening amount of data about my opponents and what they played against me. What was initially surprising was the large amount of highly ranked players I was facing in the unranked queue. Seeing the number of matches I’ve had against Platinum, Diamond, and even Mythic ranked players, was shocking. What was NOT shocking was perusing what these players played against me, as my plugin tracks all the cards it sees my opponents play.
These people are NOT slumming it with jank in the “Play” queue, folks.
That Grumgully-centered Gruul deck I faced? Fellow bronze player. Overbearing Temur clover deck? Diamond 2 player. Upgraded Boros Welcome deck? Bronze 4. Brutally effective Esper control deck? Platinum 2.
These people are pubstomping. And probably quite effectively, too, based on a quick scan of my win/loss record against these highly ranked players.
What else would you call highly experience/successful players playing highly competitive decks in the unranked “Play” queue? These people can – and have – spent time climbing the ladder. Their ranks and their decks clearly prove they have the tools to play competitive games. And yet here they are, playing what I have to believe are the decks they use to grind up the ladder, pounding me into paste in the “Play” queue.
Is it just to earn the daily win rewards? You can earn those on the ladder, all while squaring off against better competition that will help you sharpen the skills needed to play competitively. Are you bored of meta decks, and looking for something different? Guess what – you too can play jank.
Oh hey, I think understand why you’re taking your tier 1 deck to the unranked queue: to beat up on weaker players/decks.
And that’s just bullying.
If a mythic-ranked player wanted a break from grinding the ladder to play a hydra proliferate deck, I’d be thrilled to square off. They’ll have the definite edge in play skill, and may very well have a better-built deck, but it’s not a David vs. Goliath scenario. But to bring a bazooka to a water balloon fight is absurd, and there’s only one way to describe it: pubstomping. And if my match history is any indication, a lot of players are doing it. Intentionally. Whether it’s innocent (“I only had a few minutes to play and wanted to get a couple wins for my daily rewards”) or malicious (“wrecking newbs is a blast”), the result is the same – a miserable play experience for one of the players.
And, as I’ve argued before, this is likely avoidable, if the Arena developers felt like addressing it.
Commander uses Rule Zero, and a relatively clear distinction between the competitive and non-competitive camps, to try and minimize poor experiences in EDH pods. Arena has nothing of the sort, meaning many players’ experiences are at the whims of a the “Play” queue’s opaque matchmaking algorithm.
I would sure love to see Arena help players looking for casual fun find it more readily and frequently.
Pointless Tangent Alert
I haven’t logged into Magic Online in years, and don’t have the client installed on my home computer. What follows may be a description of current functionality, or something that was ended years ago. I’m not going to install the client and log on just to confirm.
When queuing for a casual game in MTGO, players would start a virtual “table” by indicating they wanted a match, and there was a field they could type text into that would display as part of their match request. Players would sometimes use that field to make requests, such as “no counters” or “no blue” or “no net decks”. Prospective opponents could then manually select a table/request to take the other seat at the “table” and start a match. This matchmaking was not automated.
Invariably, angry and/or inappropriate words would be exchanged when the player taking seat 2 failed to heed (i.e. chose to ignore) the first player’s stated request. Most frequently, player 2 would choose a match with a description of “no counters” and opt to play a mono-blue control deck full of counters.
As an MTGO Adept for awhile, I got to see some of these chat exchanges when one player would report the other for abusive (and all too often offensive or homophobic) language. On occasion it appeared that a new player had legitimately failed to see the text description of the match, and was then textually abused for “breaking the match rules.” To my surprise, more often the second player would admit to ignoring the first player’s “rules”, stating some variation of the following:
- I thought that was just a suggestion
- Players don’t get to set rules on what can and can’t be played in a casual game
- I wanted to show them what real Magic looks like
What the honest response would most likely have been:
I wanted to ruin someone else’s experience because I find that entertaining
Honestly…I don’t miss being an Adept.
Casual Magicking 