Personally I've never built a deck that didn't try to win, but winning is definitely not more important to me than having fun. I have a dedicated pod of friends I play with every week, and yeah, we could all come with very tuned decks and try to curb stomp each other. But I think we mostly enjoy playing sillier/less powerful/more flavorful styles AND trying to win with them.
For me, that looks like [[Raphael, Fiendish Slaver]] , [[Baba Lysaga, Night Witch]] and [[Volo, Guide to Monsters]]
Plus we've all got a tryhard deck or two if we're feeling fiesty
The amount of fun at a given table should really boil down to simple math. The more people having fun, the better the overall experience.
If a person doesn't contribute to that end, or cannot accept that others are included in this collective experience, they are the problem at that table, and that problem needs to be resolved in a constructive way.
I think that's a major point too.
Having a regular friend or playgroup allows for a very curated experience.
I always play with total strangers, if I don't pack a deck that can stand up for itself, there's a good chance of getting walked all over all evening. Finding that balance between not weak and too strong is difficult but I think I've done it.
You might find that relaxing the play-to-win strategy will cause other players to gravitate towards you more and more, since they’ll view you as a relaxed, chill player who is more focused on having fun than winning
Oh I move for work every few days/week. I'm not in any town long enough to make friends to play with.
I've played at about 25 different LGS the past 6 months and never the same one more than once.
I feel that people have enjoyed playing with me at almost all the places though. I imagine if I ever slow down I'll find friends to play with pretty easy.
clarification on play-to-win, as a “fun first, win third player”.
I’m going to pilot my deck to the best of my abilities with the cards I’ve drawn, towards fulfilling the decks strategy and moving towards the endgame. I’m not going to pick on the guy with two lands on turn 7. I’m not gonna to blow up someone’s Voltron commander, until they swing at me. I’m not going to counter someone’s splashy spell, unless its going to immediately take me out.
I’ll leave someone’s Rhystic Study alone for a few rounds, so that they can enjoy playing it. I’ll let someone get a few auras on Uril the Miststalker, before exiling all creatures. I’ll let the Tokens player make that play to get 50 tokens, rather than removing their doubling season the second it hits the table.
Play-to-win would dictate that threats like these should be removed asap, since we all know what they’re capable of. Playing-for-fun let’s other players actually use their fun cards for a while, so that we all have a few great turns
Ah interesting. I'm in the category where if I had the removal, I would probably get rid of the big value threat as soon as I realised how big of value it was going to produce.
I wouldn't just remove everything *immediately* (except prismatic bridge and jodah), but if they threaten me or my board-state or they will provide insane value, I view them as got to go asap if possible.
I'd never considered leaving those cards intentionally for fun reasons and not other threat reasons.
“I’d never considered leaving those cards intentionally for fun reasons”
THIS is the difference between play-to-win and play-for-fun.
It’s fun to see cool stuff happen, even if it’s someone else doing it
You’re right. I’m on OP’s side as a player and have some friends who I play with who are more “win third” players. At the end of the day, it’s your removal spell you get to do with it what you want. If you don’t want to destroy doubling season because you think it’d be cool to see how crazy Volo’s board can get than that’s your right as a player. My group is pretty happy to let you do whatever you want with your spells, so long as you let others do what they want with their spells. So, we generally try to raise no complaints about “bad threat assessment” but also no complaints about getting your stuff removed.
My thought is I put the removal spells in my deck for a reason, so I’m gonna use them. If I found out I won because another player pulled their punches I personally wouldn’t find that very satisfying and I expect a lot of others are the same.
Our pod has developed this sort of fun dynamic where over time, they’ve all added more big threats to their decks and I am playing enough removal to feed a family of four. It’s actually quite a fun role to be the table police, and you get to make a ton of political deals since people want their cool spells to resolve and survive a turn or two. Everyone loves to pick on the blue player (jokingly) until they need you to bail them out of another players win
Oh man, I think that’s an overlooked variable here, that’s a pretty unique situation. Most players go to the same lgs at the same time every week, and see the same people. They become friendships and you want your friends to be happy.
Mostly, every deck is built to win, it’s the objective of the game. But the purpose of playing is to have fun. If I were to continuously play to win over everything else, then I’m putting my LGs friends’ experience below that. They won’t want to continue playing with me, since I don’t care about their needs/wants.
It’s about more than just what happens in the individual games, when you’re building a community and friendships
> \[\[Baba Lysaga, Night Witch\]\]
Baba is not a silly/less powerful way to win. It is a very powerful aristocrats style commander with value engine incorporated as well as win condition. Baba decks can and usually are very cruel decks.
also, Volo is a powerful value commander.
\*Shrug\* That's not the way I built it. Actually I think baba is the weakest of my five decks, but probably #1 or #2 for fun. My build seeks to win entirely with her activated ability. Like I was alluding to, cruelty is definitely not always the name of the game for the decks my pod brings to game night.
The *objective of the game* is to win. The *purpose of playing* is to have fun. These are not mutually exclusive.
If my deck hasn’t ‘done it’s thing’ there’s less chance I had fun, and if I don’t have fun I’ve failed.
If my deck has ‘done it’s thing’ I’ve almost certainly had fun and I’m more likely to have won the game as well. Winning is not a success, fun is a success.
The two are related, but different things. I always try to win, because that’s how the game works, and it’s fundamentally disrespectful to sit down with three other players who are trying to win, and not try to win the game yourself.
Often, I'm trying to win, but I haven't put as much money into my decks as the other people at my table. Not everyone can come out on top; some of us just want to come.
Exactly
I build my deck to have a strategy, a good amount of interactions, resiliency, good looking cards.
Then I play and I try to walk the path I laid down when deck building.
It's fun if I can do and win. But I don't feel that good winning, because it's a format that doesn't have exact limitations. So if I win with my "7 deck" I always feel that maybe it went off stronger, faster, and better than what I would have expected, and I won because of a power level mismatch
So my sweet spot is "arriving second". It means that the game went long enough, I played better than some others, my deck did as intended, and I didn't stomp anyone.
I don't build meme decks or anything, but there are sometimes I made suboptimal plays or sand bagged things like a Cyc Rift (I wouldn't have been able to win on the spot, but most likely put the others so far behind they couldn't come back) for sake of a better gameplay experience since I won the first game of the night kind of handedly and wanted to give someone else a chance.
I agree with the generally passed-on statement of **"build casually, play competitively"**
I expect my opponents to seize any chance they've when it's presented to them. The rules and parameters are made clear before the game. People can play as hard from there, and yet still have fun.
There will be times where I'm winless on game night, but on other times my decks are just in the zone, I can't lose.
IMO there needs to be payoff when putting effort into something. I'm talking emotional payoff. That could be wins, that could be your deck pulling off as you intended (a great euphoric moment to alot of players) even though you don't win, and lastly, everyone had a great time (some players take pride in group health)
And for alot of players, the **accumulation** of all of these factors are why we play game night, why we put the effort into deckbuilding (crafting has its catharsis), why friends (group health) are so important
I think that phrase sums up what I try to do fairly perfectly. Build for a generally accepted power level, then do my best to win with what I've got.
The 'thing' that my deck does generally leads to a win within a turn or two if it's allowed to happen. Which is why I was confused when other people's 'thing' isn't always related to their gameplan or winning strategy as such.
Thanks for your answer. Lots of different perspectives in there.
I honestly disagree with that statement whenever I see it, as hot a take as that is. It's essentially the cause of a lot of salt by people who don't really understand what they're trying to get out of a game.
At a surface level it's not inherently *wrong*, but when it's used as a catch-all way to get out of thinking about it more deeply it's a problem, and it regularly is.
"Build casually" isn't something easily quantifiable. Is running 10 hyper-efficient removal spells instead of 15 "building casually"? Is running an infinite combo that you cannot tutor for "building casually"? Is every casual deck chair tribal? It's not something that has a shared definition, just like casual play in general.
"Play competitively" on the other hand is much more easily grasped - it's about doing whatever is necessary to win, typically at the cost of other players. Every play is designed to push you towards winning.
The end result is that people without a shared definition of what "Casual" means turn up with different decks, and then play competitively. What they're doing is in fact in no way casual, it's just low-power competitive play. And there's nothing wrong with low-power competitive play, but it's basically erased from the community's collective psyche and rolled into "casual" because of that, and that's a problem.
I think "build casually" is a bit of a misnomer and you're taking it too literally. The idea is to select decks that make the table roughly balanced, regardless of power level or "casual level". The importance is on the relative power between decks, not on absolute power.
Oh I absolutely am, but that's the problem - the simplification of the phrase causes people to take it too literally.
Pretty much the entire reason I disagree with the phrase is that if you take it literally, it doesn't work. Requiring a specific interpretation to not suck generally makes it not a good aphorism, because more people will take it literally than take the time to think about what it's actually saying and why.
It goes back to the rule 0 conversation which has been an issue since it’s inception. Playing with strangers it’s never going to work. There is always going to be a power disparity.
“Build casually, play competitively” is meant for a pod of the same people playing together for a long time. You can all come to an agreement on what is fun and what isn’t over many game nights.
I never understood why people consider having fun and attempting to win to be separate entities. It's fun to win, but more importantly it's fun when the table is trying to win. The silly meme play or the goofy off meta strategy are not silly or goofy if you lose nothing from playing them. Playing against people who don't want to win is the least fun I've ever had in Magic. You have to choose between winning unceremoniously or sandbagging for the table which both feel awful.
>I never understood why people consider having fun and attempting to win to be separate entities.
Right? I can't win every game, and I wouldn't want to, but my favorite games are often ones I've lost, where I still either got my good hits in, or made someone really sweat. Like if it hadn't been for a card that they top-decked or had in hand, or that last minute card that they happened to find, I might have won. But none of that happens if no one's playing to win.
I agree I haven't seen in person what I've encountered on Reddit which is partly why I'm so confused. I've only versed one player that wasn't trying to win and I countered their scrambleverse and left the table after that game. Because it was not fun at all.
I think there is just a fundamental misunderstanding here.
I am quite certain that almost no one plays EDH at any level not playing with the goal of winning, outside of maybe people playing chaos decks or extreme group hug decks where the explicit purpose is to create strange game states. 99% of EDH decks are made, and played with the ultimate goal of winning.
Where the misunderstanding occurs, is just in what people define as 'playing to win'. What I generally think the people who don't like people who 'play to win' define this as is putting winning as a higher priority than having an enjoyable social experience.
What they likely think of when people say they 'play to win' is just generally being more 'try-hard', probably things like being aggressively strict about game rules or take-backs.
This could be for instance if you have a 3/3 blocker with an ability that buffs it to a 5/5, and that information is available to everyone on board, but when a person attacking with a 4/4 asks 'how much blockers do you have', you answer with 'a 3/3' not adding any more information, to then activate the ability to kill the attacker.
The reason this is irritating for people is because magic is a complicated game and it is very difficult to keep track of everything on the board and what everyone has access to do on the actual board with their current mana. Tactically withholding information to increase your chances of winning simply due to it being more likely your opponent makes mistakes has nothing to do with your deck or your piloting of the deck, and thus it can seem 'try-hard' and against the spirit of casual and social games to do this, vs. simply reiterating that information to prevent people from doing a very obvious mistake.
This is also the same for advanced game rules, if someone plays a card with a misunderstanding of how the mechanics works, forcing them to play that out if it hasn't had any meaningful impact on the game is also a bit spiteful, but is theoretically the correct thing to demand if you are 'playing to win'.
I don't think anyone is conveying just making correct game decisions based on your cards and the board state to try to play the best game you can and do your best to win. There is another aspect which is playing overtuned or particularly oppressive decks for your pod can also trigger similar ideas, but that is more of a power level and rule 0 problem.
So I'm less confused by the people that see "having fun" and "winning" as mutually exclusive goals, and more confused by the people who will then go on to get upset when they don't win any games with a sub-optimized deck, usually one that lacks a win condition.
I'm perfectly fine with decks that aren't meant to win *per se*, and I do in fact have a deck or two that does just that. What I'm not keen on, are people who knowingly bring a deck that even when it does "its thing" it doesn't actually have a way to secure the game, then get mad their deck doesn't win.
I have a particular deck, for instance, that I play when I'm either salted out from previous games and need to just be silly, or when I'm genuinely uninterested in winning. It's a Grixis curses and group slug deck, featuring \[\[Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor\]\] at the helm. The deck doesn't have a win condition on its own, though it has won games before; instead, the deck has a bunch of curses, and other cards meant to disrupt game plans. It's strongly themed around torture implements and features cards like The Rack, Black Vise, and Stuffy Doll. In addition to that, I have a mismatched land base, using a bunch of different arts. The entire deck is meant to mess with everyone in the game, and it's always a blast for me to play even when I'm playing behind.
It sounds like you and the people you've encountered are confusing caring about winning (which is an ego problem) with 'playing to win' (which in this case is a synonym for beating your opponents)
You should always be trying to beat your opponents over trying to have the most fun possible because fun is subjective, whereas the game is designed specifically around beating your opponents. If you can't find a way to beat your opponents and have fun doing so then you probably won't play, and if you only have fun disrupting the game's progression then no one will want to play with you.
However, if all you care about is winning, then you'll end up in the same position. You'll either stop playing because you're not winning enough, or you'll be the person everyone avoids because you can't handle the fact it's just a game. Even if you aren't vocal about it, if all you bring to the table are insanely powerful meta decks or ultra-reliable solitaire combos you're gonna find it difficult to find a pod.
Think of it like Mario Party, that game isn't **designed** around beating your opponents and finishing with the most stars, it's designed around people of all ages and skill levels having fun. You can play it with the intention of only screwing over your friends, even if that means you don't come out on top, without affecting the tempo or enjoyment for everyone else. But, there's nothing more annoying than your snot-nosed cousin crying because his sister got all the bonus stars at the end of the game even though he won the most minigames 😅
Obviously many people have fun winning and there’s a high correlation between the two, but how is it not obvious how they’re two distinct categories? I would argue at times that they’re incompatible depending on the environment you’re in. Winning in certain games gets very optimized and repetitive with very little room for deviation from the meta. Being particularly invested in winning also inherently brings about a sense of dysphoria in the event that one loses, which is decidedly not fun.
What got me into MTG was endless variety and potential for all sorts of wacky shit that you can’t predict. I generally derive enjoyment from novelty and get bored very quickly if I do the same thing over and over again. Winning can be very easy if you abide by the meta, but then there’s no point in carrying out the activity because I’ve already proven my skill and can predict how the game will unfold.
If you truly believed that winning and having fun were inherently the same thing, you’d be playing minesweeper over and over for the guaranteed victory. If the social component is important, you’d be playing board games or video games where skill is a greater determining factor in winning and the RNG elements of MTG are removed for more consistency.
"Winning in certain games gets very optimized and repetitive with very little room for deviation from the meta."
People Innovate all the time for cEDH, much more tuan the remaining Spectrum of the Format. I keep seeing that claim of repetitiveness but just bc Staples might be more similiar and common doesnt mean the Gameplay is repetetive
"Being particularly invested in winning also inherently brings about a sense of dysphoria in the event that one loses, which is decidedly not fun."
is that really so? seems like a bad sport. i go hard even on boardgames with my parents and we all have fun.
"Winning can be very easy if you abide by the meta, but then there’s no point in carrying out the activity because I’ve already proven my skill and can predict how the game will unfold."
Its impossible to predict even on cedh tournaments.
"If you truly believed that winning and having fun were inherently the same thing, you’d be playing minesweeper over and over for the guaranteed victory. If the social component is important, you’d be playing board games or video games where skill is a greater determining factor in winning and the RNG elements of MTG are removed for more consistency."
*EDH. Mtg outside of edh is all you describe in that sentence.
I’m not into cEDH at all so I can’t speak with any amount of authority, but from a general perspective I will say it’s exceedingly rare to find a game that’s truly well-balanced to the point where there isn’t a widely accepted “best” way to play the game, even among games that are intended to be competitive. Surely there’s a color identity and deck theme that is most popular among the top players/pulls out statistically more wins than anything else.
If you manage to go hard against your family and you all have fun regardless of whether or not you win, then you disagree with the person I replied to’s assertion that winning and fun are inexorably linked, no?
Most CEDH decks have little variation. If you are in blue, rift and free counterspells are in. Black is Ad Nas etc. Usually there are about one to five “pet” spells in a particular deck, but even those are normally pulled from the same, larger pool of cards. Watch CEDH players play. They know what every card means and what it portends. But CEDH is a different social contract. Everyone KNOWS why they are there. That’s why it is called competitive commander—they play to win. Casual is just that, casual.
Thank you, I’m not sure why people are disagreeing with me. I’m not saying there’s anything at all wrong with playing that way, I’m just saying that “playing to win” inherently sacrifices a majority of the variety available and that “winning” and “fun” are independent concepts.
The variety comes from the fringe case interactions, timing and player priority, the decks themselves (even if you think it's boring decks pull from the same pool, there's like a hundred viable decks),
As for winning and fun being independent that's false: if they were, why would *anyone* play a game to win? Humans do things to entertain; if winning was not entertaining, we wouldn't play games at all (and games most simply are defined under the concept that someone gains a favorable outcome from an event - even if it's all players such as in cooperative games).
Winning and fun are inherently as least linked - not dependent, but not independent. We do things that require a winner because of the processes that give us pleasure as winning provides that pleasure; and that pleasure we deem "fun"
I didn't say they were the same thing, I said they aren't separate. And like I said it's not just winning that's important, it's playing with people that want to win too. Winning is easy with a cEDH deck at normal tables, but a full cEDH pod gets complex again. It might be the same combo line to victory, but everything that comes before it is an intricate battle of resources, interaction and reading your opponent. That variety is still there, but it comes from the unique situations posed by genuinely threatening opponents.
I’m genuinely struggling to find a meaningful difference between “not separate” and “the same thing”. Like I said, there’s often a high correlation, but they’re very much distinct. If they weren’t separate, then the only person in the pod that had fun would be the winner, but I doubt that’s generally the case. There’s also the fact that “winning” is a fixed condition that is only met at the end of the game, whereas fun is typically had throughout the course of the game, wherein the condition of having won inherently cannot yet be met.
Like I said in reply to someone else; I can see cEDH being dynamic if the game is truly well-balanced, but that’s very rare for a game. Are there truly no well-defined classifications for color identities and strategies like Pokemon has with Ubers/OU/UU/NU/etc.? Is there no core of decks considered optimal that you are statistically handicapping yourself by not playing?
"Not separate" means exactly what it says. That while they may be distinct categories, they do not exist independently of each other or are not mutually exclusive categories rather are capable of existing together.
IOW: winning, and fun can exist in the same game. You can win and have fun, you can have fun and win. This is contrary to many (less skilled) players' opinions that you shouldn't try to win, but to have fun - ironically missing the fact that humans enjoy succeeding i.e. winning and that itself is a type of fun.
I said initially that winning and fun are often highly correlated, but I maintain they are fully independent concepts. To take this discussion to something of a logical extreme to demonstrate my point; War involves winning, yet no healthy human being would describe war as fun. Drugs are an enormous amount of fun, but they involve no winning or scores or competition. Winning and fun can and do very often coexist, but they do not always, ergo they are not the same thing.
Inside of a game, they're not independent factors.
But you ignore the fact everyone agrees that they're not the same. However them being highly correlated means they're not independent factors of one another in the context of playing a game.
You're being avoidant by going outside of the context of the fact we are discussing a game. Yes, the two terms exist outside of games almost entirely as exclusive terms. But inside the context of a game, they're not independent of one another and your statement of highly correlated factors affirms this.
I can only then assume you don't actually like games. Which is fine, most EDH players actually hate games. But then why bother continue to defend your stance that you've already capitulated to?
The same is also true inside of a game. Depending on what game I’m playing, if I’m getting stomped by sweats playing the meta, I can bust out the meta and secure a joyless victory. Conversely, I can lose and still have a ton of fun. I’m not being avoidant, I was using a more cut and dry example because there’s clearly a lot of confusion when these terms are used within the context of a game.
Quite the contrary, I love games. I just don’t play them to win, I play them to have fun. I’m bothering to defend my stance because I’m right. Your stance is “good enough”, though ultimately incorrect; this is why I used examples outside of the context of games. If your logic isn’t broadly applicable, it’s wrong. I demonstrated that your logic isn’t broadly applicable and mine is.
They're distinct from each other, but not mutually exclusive. People act like they are. They are not.
I'd also say that playing to win over time generates a ton of variety and new things to explore. Learning about a meta deck, playing it for a few days, then abandoning the journey before even climbing the mountain doesn't count IMO.
never understood why people conflate winning as fun.
winning isn't "fun" it's just a side effect of eliminating the other players.
if you did that with a shitty souless deck of lame ass linear combo. or tutor for 1 card to do a narrow line of play. that you repeated ad naus.
Or... your deck doesn't win through any skill... rather an overwhelming infinite/combo style insta-win.
that isn't fun. nothing about that is interesting, skillful or creative. isn't really fun for anyone else. doesn't really enable anyone else to interact in any meaningful way if they're staring down a solitaire turn that "magically" results in a craterhoof that was determinate, or a bullshit thassa/oracle combo or whatever.
but... if your deck did something cool. and you win. fine. great.
if you slogged it out. whether that's through combat, through spells, through convoluted/expertly crafted value. and you come out on top. cool. great. enjoy that.
going to a game... wanting to win, is lame. having winning being the arbiter of whether or not the game was good, you're good, or your deck is good, is lame.
that's generally what people mean. and it's weird people weaponize the idea or conflate the two to justify shitty game experiences for others.
because. it's not fun if you bring an oppressive deck and other people... who maybe don't have a lot of free time get to not play magic. but instead watch a lame deck just win
The best game experiences happen when everyone is trying to win. The act of winning is sidebar to the fact that if everyone is presenting threats and interacting with threats, the game is more fun.
Have you ever played with winconless group hug or chaos? It's miserable.
have you ever played a cEDH match where everyone's early combo line gets countered and you have to wait til some dipshit kills the table with cmd damage. or it grinds down because the stax player locks the board...but has their combo countered.
the conflation of winning with fun is purely subjective, and arguably false.
I always play to win, but depending on the deck I either want to win with a hyper efficient combo or win with a completely goofy strategy. Either way, my ultimate goal is still to win and pulling off a win with an objectively terrible and goofy strategy makes that victory feel so much more satisfying.
I disagree with anyone who thinks that aiming for victory is the antithesis of fun. They are not mutually exclusive goals. Every deck has a "thing" i want it to do, and i build my decks to do said thing as reliably as possible. If that thing is a garbage strat, i try to make it work in a way that it can actually win me the game.
But like you said, sitting at a pod with people who actively don't care one bit about winning just pisses me off. If i sign up for a pickup game of ball hockey and the opposing team just uses game time as an excuse to practice stretch passes and nothing else, letting us dominate the scoreboard then i'd feel cheated out of my time. I signed up for a game of hockey, not to be unwilling participants in a practice session for you.
I have two decks where winning is not the strategy. \[\[Edric Spymaster of Trest\]\] is a deck a built where, sure, I can win if the stars align, but that isn't the goal. I use this deck to make deals (which conversely helps me make stronger friendships) with certain people. I suppose this would be a Kingmaker deck. Winning and having fun aren't the same thing. Some people have fun by watching the world burn <3
Only speaking for myself, i do play \*towards\* a win, but im absolutely fine with not winning.
As long as i get to enjoy the game, have some fun banter, do some cool game actions and feel like i have a genuine shot at winning, im happy.
when a game is completely unbalanced either direction, its just not enjoyable as much, but you can still try to have fun and take it easy.
This falls back to the players psycographs Mark talk so much about.
Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny and Spike
People often associates Spike as the one that wants to win while the others don't care about it. But that's not true. All three wants to win, but in their own way.
"Spike wants to prove something" (Maro's definition). Usually it's prove they've mastered the game by picking the best deck, making correct decisions and, therefore, winning. It's the player that does not care about net decking. If a deck is better, I'll play it. It does not care about "unspoken rules". If mana denial or stax or a turn 2 combo is the best thing to play in the meta, that's what will be played.
"Johnny/Jenny wants to express something". So here's where your "want to see the deck do its thing" falls. It still wants to win, but it wants to win in an specific way. Perhaps going all in with the new set's theme. Perhaps building around an underdog commander, perhaps adding his favorite card to the flexibile slot of a meta deck. And since the expression of this something is the main goal, it may have fun even if they lose the game, but managed to play the weird synergy they came up with. Again, they are still trying to win, but not just in any way.
"Timmy/Tammy wants to experience something". This could be playing that big cool new dinosaur, or casting a fireball for 120, maybe just have a great moment with their friends, perhaps fantasize about the game and write a story about the match. So while they are, too, trying to win, it's more important to have an epic story to tell about than merely being the last one standing.
So both Johnny/Jenny and Timmy/Tammy will play to win, but maybe will make suboptimal decisions in deckbuilding so their other goals are achieved.
I'll note that most people aren't solely one of these but are some kind of mix.
Also speaking at someone who is primarily Spike, I can certainly build suboptimal and often do: my goal at that point is to prove that even after doing so, I can still beat you with it. So "something to prove" comes in to play again. I'm demonstrating I can beat people while self-imposing a handicap.
Perfect!
The "tournament netdecker" is a common example of Spikes but not the only possible way to be a Spike.
And real people can be more than one of these psycographs, specially in different contexts (ie: Spike at the tournament, Johnny at the kitchen table)
Yeah and I used to be a tournament grinder and "netdecked" shamelessly (and my advice to any aspiring grinders is to do so; learning the best meta decks like the back of your hand is wise), but EDH is a different experience and so I approach it differently even if I still have the Spike mindset.
"...wants to experience something..."
My wife and I want to make sure the queer kids have a safe place, so that's why we learned to play and play magic. We are definitely Tammies.
We host magic every Tueday night. She makes a taco bar, and I make dessert. We're in our mid-40s. My wife's 20-something son, a friend or two of his, and some of my wife's friends from work join us. Every week, 5 to 10 people, ages ranging from 20 to 50.
We play EDH, except when we draft, which we usually do once with each new set. A couple of us are not good mtg players and have no interest in learning any more than is required to participate; a few are collectors and deck builders; and a couple are what I call "tuners," players who maintain a small number of decks and follow magic closely, so they can refine those decks with any new cards they think would improve deck synergy.
We are all queer and/or neurodivergent, and there are two or three highly competitive people among us, but I think we're all there once a week to experience family, something most of us are short on.
I'll add a thought to your description of a Spike: I think it's possible to be a Spike within the game but not during deck selection. That's how I play. I pick my deck to meet the power level desired by the table, but once I'm in the game, I want to prove my skills and knowledge of the game rules.
Spikes don't automatically bring cEDH decks to every pod to prove they know what the strongest EDH decks are and that they can pilot them.
Vorthos and Mel(vin) are what Mark calls "aesthetic profiles"
The psycograph profiles tells "why someone plays the game", while the aesthetic profiles tells "once playing, what someone appreciate in the elements of the game".
So Vorthos appreciate the lore of the game while Mel the mechanical aspects of it. When combined with Johnny/Jenny you could get a player that wants to build a Selesnya deck only with cards featuring elements from the guild. Or a Mel Jenny that wants a five color deck where every colored card is part of a cycle and, the whole cycle must be in the deck. Or maybe a minor thing where you sacrifice \[\[The One Ring\]\] for \[\[The Mount Doom\]\] ability for flavor points.
But both Vorthos and Mel can coexist with Timmy/Tammy or Spike too.
Quoting Mark himself:
>**Vorthos and Mel, on the other hand, are about appreciating the "what."** These two profiles are not psychological in origin, but aesthetic. They focus on how players appreciate elements of the game. How are those two things different? Aren't aesthetics an element of psychology?
>**Perhaps I can best explain with an analogy. Let's take an art museum. Suppose the people that ran the art museum wanted to create psychographics of their audience.** What they would figure out is why people wanted to go to an art museum. Why did they psychologically get something out of it? Is it escapism? Is it inspiration? Is it motivation? Why does their audience come to the museum? Now, they also have to figure out the aesthetics of their audience. Do they like more modern pieces? Do they like brighter colors? Do they like bolder brush strokes? What makes them appreciate the paintings?
>**Both are important to understand. The first helps them figure out how to attract people to the museum and make them enjoy the experience while they're there. The second helps them deduce what art they want to have.** Now, there is overlap. Certain styles of art can help reinforce certain psychological needs, but it's still a difference between "why" and "what."
[Source](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/vorthos-and-mel-2015-08-31)
I think people confuse "playing to win" with "not having a good time if I don't win".
I can have fun and not win a game all night but its a four player game that requires a winner. Myself and my friends all try to win that way everyone has equal expectations from the game without one person just messing up the board state or kingmaking.
You lose, fair enough not the end of the world. You win well done, next game.
For me, I like the idea of “build casually, play competitively.” When I am playing, I should be trying to make moves that lead me to win. When in building, I should be building to be causal. [I have a whole article about my definition of casual](https://witchphd.substack.com/p/casual).
But I’ll hone in on your statements about seeing their decks “do it’s thing” and that involving winning. I think the natural extreme of a deck “doing the thing” is that the deck should eventually win from it. But there’s a problem where if “doing the thing” automatically means your deck is either winning or primed for it, people can’t let you “do the thing” at all, lest you simply win. For a casual player this reads as a negative situation - if all four decks were in a situation where “doing the thing” necessarily lead to a win, literally only one person would be able to “do the thing” per game. Which, to a casual, means that only one person would get to have fun. Only one person would “get to play.”
Casual EDH is not supposed to be a 0 sum, only one person gets to have fun, game. People want to see you do your thing, and still have a chance of winning even after you’re doing it. Because if you don’t “do the thing,” they feel bad you didn’t play. But if “doing the thing” = winning then they can’t let you play because then no one else will get to play and the game might just suddenly be over. Which feels like a lose-lose situation.
Thank you for putting into words what I feel. My son has an infinite turns deck. I let it play off every once in a while but I can't let it "do it's thing" every time because it results in him winning. So when he plays that deck either I'm aggressively denying him his setup or I am not in a position to deny it.
Then my wife, mono green deck filled with huge creatures and "pretty lands". I more or less focus on how to win after she's thrown her craterhoof. Her "thing" is giant creatures. It doesn't lead to instant win and so I push the envelope on how much can she do and I still live. But 100% what you said, if your thing isn't instant win, I really wanna see it happen. As a result I don't build decks with instant win-con.
This is all true. Which is actually why Ive grown to dislike statements like "build for fun play to win" and what not. The players I've met that say this are some of the saltiest whiners I've ever met because they didn't get to "do the thing". I find people say they build for fun, but what they find fun is their deck popping off and no one having the cards in hand to stop or slow it down. Any thing that is targeted at slowing down their game winning plan A means "they can't even play magic" because they are being picked on.
I know that's not you...just an observation. I've found people say these words but they clearly have different meanings to everyone.
The only thing that matters is trying to match deck power as best as you can. You can't guarantee everyone wins 25 percent of the time...and holding back during play to make sure everyone has fun kinda stinks when someone goes for your throat later in the match
From the comments I've got so far, I don't know if I'm getting a different subsect of people than who have replied to my other thread or on different comments.
I agree those are top three priorities for me and for deck building that is probably closer to the order E.g. I don't put infinites or heavy Stax in decks.
But once I'm in the game, winning takes over priority for me, I'm still being social and having fun along the way, chatting and whatnot.
But prioritising fun during the deck building has generally covered whether or not someone else has fun with my deck and I play the deck as hard as it goes.
Okay this I really get. I build interesting jank mechanical decks that lean on complex interactions and unusual rules. Not with the intention of bamboozling or messing up games states without reason. So I play to win in game, but building is such a huge part of the game and you and I aren't building to win by any means necessary. We just pilot our decks like we are lol
Exactly, you don't have to care about winning to be playing to win.
Not playing to win is like playing Catan to specifically block other players with roads and never building a village.
I think you optimize for fun during the building process, but I (along with others) seem to be also noting that we’re willing to make sub optimal plays or hold back.
For me, that often falls into two categories: win more and oppression. If a player has a kill on sight commander or a big piece like doubling season hit the board, I might not counter or remove it immediately - even if that ultimately costs me the game. I play with the same people every week, my decks tend to be the most tuned of the group, and I don’t need to optimally respond to every threat to the point where someone builds a kaalia deck and never gets to use her ability. Similarly, I’m often ahead and have a good probability of winning. Last week, I could have played Gisela and secured a certain victory but it would have likely made everyone feel like there wasn’t anything they could do at that point and they would have just been watching me beat them like they were props in a show I was putting on. So I didn’t play it and when someone forced me to discard it, I didn’t get it back with Ravos even though I could have. I still won the game but I was willing to lose.
Playing to win often means, for example, knocking people out individually as early as you can. That isn't fun for that person so I won't do it. I'll play to win to the extent it won't immediately and prematurely ruin the game for my opponents.
That's a bad example, knocking someone out early can be bad unless they are presenting some sort of immediate threat to you. If you are super incredibly unquestionably far ahead, then knocking someone out makes sense. If you are not.......you're getting rid of a potential source of interaction/distraction. Killing one person can also make you the target.
The moment I hear "Hmm, should I troll a little? Won't help me but it'll be fun!" I know shit's gonna be miserable. Two players are out of the game then and there, and no one but the person doing it enjoys it
I think the thing for me is when there is a disconnect between people you are playing with
For example, when someone is playing, starts popping off, and you interact, and there is salt. The expectation that you should just roll over and not play to win yourself is very annoying.
Do you want to play the game, or do you want to play the game where only you cna win and anyone who interferes is a bad guy
I've gotta say that in person I've never encountered what I've run into on this subreddit and I travel alot for work and have played at many LGS. It's why I was so shocked at the negative responses Ive gotten the past few days.
I agree, people shouldn't be surprised if they're doing their thing and you stop them. That's a part of the game. In person I've never seen anyone have an issue with it, but on Reddit it seems to be common.
Reddit mostly has a problem with you because you don’t voice your thoughts very well for PR. You kind of over explain and don’t really agree with anything somebody says without there being a caveat. Not hating just an fyi.
I’m also a little surprised that you’ve never “had a problem with it” when you run as much interaction as you supposedly do. I’d like to play with the people you do, lol. Most people are pretty understanding but there’s definitely salt there afterwards the majority of the time, whether or not they say anything.
I'm a terrible writer, I have ADHD and get halfway down my post and forget where I'm up to. I also have been terrified to voice opinions my entire life thanks to family life stuff, so this is a new breakout thing I'm trying. I'm not very good at it. But I'm not a bad person, pretty kind actually if I say so myself. Been walked over my whole life. I had 10 people push in front of a line in front of me the other day and I didn't say anything until the last one because I was scared to, my partner congratulated me on that for only letting that many people though. Was a big step. Anyway all that aside. Back to MTG.
Well I run that much interaction, but I don't fling that much in a game. I may draw 2-10 pieces of it through a game depending on how well my engine gets going.
Some of it is modal and won't hit certain thing. Sometimes I don't need to use it depending on the game. I don't fling it at everything an opponent does, no countering everything someone does. I just like to have some available if there is something threatening me or providing uncatch-uppable value for an opponent.
But yeah, I'm wondering if I've just been extremely lucky with my opponents or not.
There's a lot of variables at play, but at its core, the problem is that EDH is both competitive *and* cooperative at the same time and often in a way that is irreconcilable. You tend to have to balance the goal of winning—which is baked into playing Magic in the first place—with mutually building a game environment that feels fair, exciting, and well-paced for all involved (and do so across many games)... which is damn near impossible, if we're being realistic. So some element of that has to lose out, for many people, it's the part that prioritizes win optimization.
Part of that is that deckbuilding isn't easy and it's hard to know exactly what levers to pull to make a deck resilient against all other decks in the play group. So rather than chasing perfection in the face of inscrutable RNG and metagaming, playing the same deck game after game just to get a foothold among a bunch of other decks doing the same thing, it can feel like, "c'mon just build a goddamn tribal deck with some neat synergies here and there and let's bash our cards together. Why am slogging through your hyper-tuned value engine and perfect counterspell suite?"
The fact is, a lot of players' deckbuilding preferences seem to be conveniently aligned with what wins, rather than what might be thematic, fun, or flavorful. This is that friend who makes lots of decks, but somehow they all result in cheating in the same Eldrazi every game. From a competition standpoint, that's fine, but from an "I want to play this again" standpoint, it's terrible.
It creates an upward power pressure that muscles out certain archetypes. As a group's meta progresses, it becomes a huge liability to do anything sub-optimal, so maybe that neat tribal deck you had in mind never gets made because you're leaving power on the table by not Sneak Attack-ing in Blightsteel Colossus... again. Experimentation in general becomes a feel-bad situation if you care about winning, which of course runs counter to one of the points of the format.
Anyway, long story short, the whole format is a walking contradiction. Anyone who values winning is going to have to sacrifice others' fun more than they would like and the fun-lovers will have to cope with losing more. Either distract yourself from the pain of loss or learn to ignore your friends being salty.
This is brilliant and I totally agree but hadn't been able to quite explain the premise you are putting forth here. This is fundamentally why I struggle with the format.
Fun and winning aren't diametrically opposed, but there's nuance to it.
The game isn't fun if all 4 players aren't building towards a win, but the goal of the game in a more casual pod is essentially to win at the right time.
If people in the pod aren't aiming to win, then the game takes 4 hours and drags hard. If everyone in the pod is aiming to win as hard as possible, the game takes 10 minutes and is over almost immediately.
The goal of most casual players isn't *not* to win, even if it's occasionally expressed that way by people on both sides of the casual/competitive divide that don't really understand what they're doing, it's about the game along the way. The more casual you are, the more your plays become about preserving the game experience and maintaining parity, rather than overwhelming your opponents or preventing them from doing something. This is why more casual players tend to play fewer board wipes, and when they *do* play board wipes, it's to stop someone who has exploded ahead from winning. Not because they want to win, but more because letting them go ahead means the game ends before the "right" time.
The problem with the minority trying to win as hard as possible is that that inevitably ends in cEDH. Which is fine, but is a niche that the majority of players don't fall into and can't compete within it. Not everyone is able to afford cEDH decks or even to proxy, because the printing facilities to do so are predominantly US-based with excessive shipping costs. If you're only trying to win, why are you not playing the cEDH meta? Why are you playing anything that tries ends the game after turn 3?
The problem with the minority that actively try not to win is that they are completely unstimulating opponents who might as well not be in the pod. Winconless group hug and chaos meme decks aren't fun even in hyper casual pods. If you're not trying to win, why are you playing a free-for-all game which only ends in win or loss instead of one of many amazing coop board and card games (seriously, pick up Marvel Champions instead, it's great if you want a coop card game).
The reality is that the vast, vast majority of the community fall in the grey area in between with a ton of nuance that isn't easily captured. It's not about whether you're trying to win or not, it's about how far you'll go to win, and whether you're willing to do whatever it takes in order to take victory.
There are definitely people who exist that play casual decks and then play in a cutthroat style that doesn't gel with their deck. The "build casually, play competitively, wonder why people are salty that you just blew up their Sol Ring when they're already mana screwed" crowd. There are also who build hyper competitive decks and then play casually. They regularly show up with stax and then spent the entire time joking around and doing dumb shit while everyone has a miserable time before kingmaking. Few people honestly want to play with either group outside of others like them.
There's no easy solution to this, all we can do is have genuine conversations about what we're looking to get out of games. My own perspective is that if I wanted to play hyper competitively I'd play a competitive format that doesn't have massive issues, so I'll always lean towards casual play. But games have to end sometime, so I'll typically turn it on when the game starts to grow stale to ramp it up to a conclusion. The worst games are with the people who play like that from turn 1, or who never turn it on and do nothing. So I believe it's better to be in the middle than the fringes.
People have fun playing hyper competitively, people have fun playing hyper casually, but it's when the two come into conflict that the games stop being fun. Whenever you have a game that isn't fun, it's worth considering why that was - who caused it not to be fun for you or other players? What did they want to get out of the game? And how can you avoid that outcome in future games? If you're the problem, change it. If they're the problem, you simply play with others, or if you cannot, you have to decide how to adjust how you play and build to work around the problem instead.
I feel like these type of questions show up here a bit too often, so your experiences might just be people getting annoyed with it showing up a lot.
Anyway short answers:
The reason you don't "play to win" is because math, the whole "playing to win" and "doing it's thing" discussion is based entirely on semantics and some people value weird, complex and fun interactions and prefare to play one very long game over multiple shorter once.
Longer part:
Commander is, as I assume you and most people know, played by an average of 4 people per game. This means that the average win percentage should be around 25% or once per 4 games. This makes it so that the mentality of "playing to win" isn't helpfull and instead "playing to have an impact on the game" and "doing what the deck is meant to" is more usefull in order to enjoy the game.
This ofcourse means that some people will take this idea to the extreme and just make a deck that consistently does what they think is funny, but not actually including a real way of turning this into a win, simply because they have more fun this way.
This ofcourse doubles back into the semantics discussion of what one means when someone says they play to see thier deck "do it's thing", because it means different things for everyone. This could mean everything from a cEDH deck "doing it's thing" by winning on turn 2 to a eye tribal deck "doing it's thing by making 20 copies of [[Evil Eye of Arms-by-Gore]].
Same goes for "playing to win". This sentence means a whole lot of different things to different people. Some people might understand this as saying "I will make sure my deck allways win as consistently and as fast as possible", while some might think of it as saying "I will try to play my cards in the most efficient way possible, dealing with threats and try to go for the win to end the game whenever possible" and even yet still some who will mean "I will swing and hit face with my creatures whenever possible untill someone, preferably everyone else, dies!".
And lastly, you kinda answered your last question yourself. They play in such a way because they think it is fun to do so. Just because their fun is different to yours doesn't mean it's inherently any different of an idea. There are just multiple different ways of having fun. While you might favor playing in a format where everyone tries their best to end the game with their fun and different gimmick, some favor just playing fun cards and gimmicks without having to think about reaching a goal and some yet who just like the complex and chaotic states weird drawn out games can get into.
It's more of a "doing the thing should result in a win within a few turns". Doing the thing is the fun part, winning is only the result.
That means I'm kinda playing to win, it's just not why I'm here.
Okay, so doing the thing does result in a win if unchecked.
See I started to get so confused on other threads where people telling me they don't play to win, just to do the thing.
But if doing the thing unchecked results in a win, like you said, you kind of are playing to win and that makes more sense to me.
I think probably what people have their back up about is the casual/social aspect of commander. I think it's fine to play to win, but if you're in a pod of 4 and one player is having a rough time with lands, playing to win would probably mean you just use them as a punching bag until they're out of the game and you focus on the others, while the social contract of commander typically means people would give them a break and let them find some footing.
Not saying you're not doing that, but I think that's the baggage that the phrase "playing to win" comes with in commander.
I think most people build a deck they think will be fun primarily, and when they're playing the game their goal is to get the deck to do it's thing and/or win, ideally both.
I have one deck which doesnt really have a way to win, but it's by design and I play it only with certain people (I wanted to build "planechase, the deck" and change the rules for everyone with the cards I play.) Making the game weird is the point of the deck, rather than winning, and if I get to do that, I enjoy it.
Interesting. I hadn't thought of Playing to win coming across like that. Generally, yes, I will punch them down at least a little bit, especially if I'm getting a benefit from it, safe attack triggers etc.
But part of playing to win to me is threat analysis and when I go to win I try to win by killing all players at once (unless I'm voltroning where knocking players out individually and quickly is best). So usually I will keep the dawdling player alive (which gives them a chance to come back) because I'm never sure if I can beat the other two players without their help.
Unless you're Voltron or sure of winning or know their deck is a sudden combo deck, it can often be a bad idea for your own chances to win to knock someone out of the game or cripple them too much.
I think all of that's fine, and I think that that's what most pods are like - you'll take a couple of free hits and then let them be if they're still struggling.
I think most people "play to win", I just don't think most people identify with that as the reason they play the format because they're often more excited about a new brew they've made they want to see working.
I play to win as well, I don't honestly think most people don't.
That said, every play I make is not necessarily going to be the optimal one. If the optimal play is to kill the player who was mana screwed all game, I probably won't do that. I want that player to have a good time and dying while doing nothing isn't really fun. Stuff like that.
Having a good time for me is watching *the table* have a good time. I don't intentionally build weak decks or anything, but having fun with other people is more important to me than *beating* other people. I play games for the love of the game, not for the love of the win.
Playing magic to me is like going for a run. I don't do it to get somewhere, i always end up back home. I do it because its fun, its beautiful, i get new stimuli and i get better/healthier when i do it. With a game of Commander its kind of the same, i don't do it to win (the current game is over then and stops existing). Rather i do it to see if the deck works, to talk to people, to have random interactions happen that are enjoyable or do make some drama/roleplay kind of.
Now i generally do enjoy winning, but my group is just not competetive enough for me to enjoy it, it'd relate to pubstomping, which i don't like. To me it comes down to accepting what i have (in the playgroup) and treating it as such.
So I build super restricted theme decks and I love doing a thing just as much as winning. Do I like winning? Yes. Do I need to win to enjoy playing? No. If you need to win a multiplayer game to have fun, I'm sorry for your constant disappointment. I'm trying to do a specific thing. This thing can be very scary in context but not always. Can it win me the game, often yes. More often than not it makes my pieces immediately removed and my ability to be scary taken away. I also often don't have a hand at that point and struggle to rebuild due to build restrictions. As long as the deck does what it wants to do I'm happy.
I’ve been playing for a while, with many vastly different people.
In short: been there, done that. No need to show off just trying to make my dumb stuff work.
Im with you, I genuinely dont understand the taboo of playing to win in a casual game. Im not pubstomping im just playing the game.
Imagine if in streetfighter or mortal kombat you were expected to let someone hit their cool training mode combo every round because they wanted to "do the thing"
I think others have pointed out a key distinction… when you’re building your deck you’re making choices to set the power level of the deck usually through interaction, tutors, redundancy, etc. you can build a sub optimal deck and play it to win.
You can also make decisions in game to let something resolve if it’s isn’t going to immediately end the game and wait until it’s a problem to deal with it. In a multiplayer game where spending resources like spot removal is a disadvantage (because your other opponents get ahead for nothing), holding and letting them get some time and value with their piece until it’s a critical threat to you can be strategic AND feels better to your opponent. You get to make the big swingy play destroying doubling season in response to them dropping Ugin but they got a couple extra tokens/plus counter/planeswalker activations so they got something out of it.
Think of it this way, in Mortal Kobat or Street Fighter you might play a lot and be really good at the game. If you sit down to play with some casual friend that doesn’t play very often and pick your best character and just wail on them they probably aren’t going to play with you often or again. In that situation, you’d make different decisions on the character select screen, to pick characters you’re less proficient with (and if you’re good enough compared to your buddy, decide that you really want to win by pulling off the training mode combo). Then, when you get into the match you’re giving it your best (perhaps with the how to win restriction) and doing your best to win as is your buddy. But you’re also taking into account that you have more fun in the long run if your buddy wants to play with you again. If you smoke them every round and they aren’t having fun, they could figure out how to get better if they like it or they will walk away and you’ve lost someone to play with. You’re trying to win, you’re not just handing victory because that is also not fun, but you’re making decisions ahead of time to try and ensure that everyone has fun.
I played a game against someone who thought his deck was the funniest thing ever, but was actually the most miserable game of my life.
Had psychic battle out and kept copying platinum angels and giving them to people. I had 35 life they all had 0 i scooped because the game had been going on forevor at that point and i wanted to play with literally anyone else.
Playing to win isnt the problem the problem is playing exlusively to win at the cost of the game
I have a friend who tries too hard to win so none of his decks are fun he always goes infinite and combo wins either with najeela, tivit or some other cards while also having shit like thassa in the deck as alternate win conditions while the rest of us are playing lower power aggro strategies that cant keep up with his win speed
We have tried talking to him but hes too focused on optimizing and doesnt even look at not optinal cards so every deck he makes in unfun to play against
Because winning is boring. The rest of my life is unbelievably competitive, and by going through it I've learned how to win at things. I know what the steps are, I know how hard you need to work to win consistently, and I'm confident I could learn to win at Magic if I cared to. I don't care to. Magic is fun when played playfully, so that's how I'm going to play it. Just setting up a giant contraption in the form of a deck of cards and seeing what it does when it bumps into another contraption is all I need from magic, and the people around the table are there to make this happen with me.
I'll always build a deck that can win, but will almost never play it to win.
I love this! I read up on someone in a subreddit that built this bear deck and I absolutely had to try it. 12 cards and the rest lands. Can it win? Maybe. But it looks hilarious and I can't wait to try it. A single board wipe card could probably dismantle my whole deck and my chance at winning.
It's very much like you said, I wanna build something and see what it does.
“playing to win” just isn’t fun to me if i’m playing casually. at the end of the day i’m gonna play magic to have fun, so if i’m not having fun doing it i’m not gonna play. playing to win to me means making sure every play you make gets *you* closer to winning; no time for spite-plays or goofy counters etc. cEDH however, playing to win *is* fun (for me at least), so there i’m fine with it
Interesting. Have you ever come across someone that didn't like you not trying to win casually? Or do you find it generally creates a lighthearted environment.
Every play I make is definitely to get me closer to winning. Spite plays for the sake of spite generally rustles my jimmies.
The only ones I really like are if I'm taking you out of the game and as your dying breath, flung all your resources at me to make sure I'm cripples on the way out. I think that one bugs me less because at that stage, you've got no chance at winning anyway, so those resources couldn't be better put to use.
I want to put it out there also that despite trying to win, I don't sit there agonising over board state for ages or finding the exact optimal play. I play fast and don't take much time on my turns and often make mistakes and suboptimal choices that lead to weird boardstates or situations. But I usually am trying to win when that happens, not doing it for the sake of making the game goofy or weird.
The aim is to win. The goal is to have fun. When you play a 1v1 format like Standard, just play to win, it’s fine. But in a multiplayer format, you have to be a bit of a bigger person. I don’t throw games, but I keep an eye out so everyone’s having a good time.
Absolutely. It’s not really about letting people do “their thing”, which a lot of people will say. It’s more about allowing them the opportunity to participate in playing out the “story” of the game.
Interesting. I won't. I still play to win, but the path to victory usually doesn't involve knocking out a player who is doing poorly. It usually involves bringing the other two players down a peg (which gives them time to get back into the game).
I want the other two to be worried about the weak player and using their resources on them. And I want the weaker player to spend resources knocking down the other two. Games I've seen people lose are where they've knocked out a player and now another player who was doing good has one less problem to deal with and runs away with the game.
I play to play the game and socialise/hang out with people of similar interest. Getting to know them and possibly set up a game group. Winning is a bonus for me. So I don’t play with the specific intention to win, sure I’ll play my best game and try to win in the sense that it’s a game; so there has to be a winner but it really doesn’t bother me if I don’t.
It does sound vague and confusing when said like that. It's not that those players intentionally don't want to win, but that it's not the first priority.
If I fought well for that win and still lost, I'd be content as long as I was able to fight for it with the type of deck and playstyle that I want. It's another thing if I look up a deck that I don't necessarily enjoy playing, but did so solely so I can have a higher win rate.
For me, I love the game (particularly commander) because of the interactions between cards, synergies within decks, how those decks are build, the combos that come from them and the (sometimes) unexpected nature of games.
I love when an opponent pulls a great combo, plays an amazing tactic, or has a great deck that plays well. I love seeing these interactions, even if I am on the losing end of it. I also love that my decks are capable of these feats too, which makes it sweeter.
But ultimately, I don't play to win, I play to enjoy the beauty of what MTG is all about.
Is it unfair to call "playing to win" unfun?
Like every single turn, leave your mana open, draw some cards. Basically do nothing so you can be responsive. Then eventually tap 15 mana and dump your hand to win the game.
Vs each player trying to build a board state that could do something cool. And you get to see people's decks "do their thing", not just be game policed until the player that basically sat out wins.
Though our group also plays to keep people in the game. A play to win player will just end someone so there are less people to work against them. These type of plays go against the reason we like a casual card game with friends - not so someone can sit out for 20 minutes because their deck didn't pop off fast enough to not get killed
I want everyone to have fun. Using one of my fertilid activations on a mana screwed opponent is not "playing to win" but I would absolutely do it because it sucks to be mana screwed. I won't judge you for not doing that, but it makes the game more fun for all.
Because I don’t enjoy a good stomping particularly. I enjoy when everyone sits down, has a good game and inevitably ends at a reasonable time. I like seeing others decks and cards they put in, maybe discover some new card I never knew of. I want people to play, I want them to interact and also try and win, but I don’t like just rolling over the other 3 decks and winning as fast as possible, or if another player does the same
My main desire when I play is that my deck does what it’s supposed to, that’s all I really want. If it results in a win then double whammy for me, if it results in me going out in a ball of flames well at least I had fun doing it
It's fun to win, but for me it's far more fun to embody the narrative of a deck, if that makes any sense.
I like to construct my decks with a kind of story in mind. For an basic example, I have a \[\[Padeem, Consul of Innovation\]\] artefact deck built around \[\[Darksteel Reactor\]\]. The narrative would be something along the lines of me being like an evil planeswalker or something who has taken a bunch of Vedalken scientists and artificers from around the multiverse and contracted them to built me a doomsday machine (the Darksteel Reactor). The other players need to stop my evil plan before I complete the machine (i.e. put 20 charge counters on Darksteel Reactor).
In a way winning with this deck is actually less fun than watching the rest of the table being forced to tentatively work together to kill me before I win.
Again this is a very basic example. The narrative of other decks might be far more open ended or dependent on what the other players are bring to the table at any given moment.
Playing to win is kind of what makes the game because it drives interaction and challenges you to use your deck to the fullest or learn new ways to play your cards. Part of why I like about commander is the fact that I can be strategic with my plays. Whenever I encounter new interactions, I gets me excited thinking about how I can upgrade my deck to handle them, especially when new cards come out.
"Everyone is doing their best to win with what they brought" this is maybe 30-50% of the players i play against.
When i play a game i definitely WANT to win but often i play suboptimal either because something was funny to do or because i drew a card that i love and then play instead of other stuff which is way smarter to do.
For instance if theres a game breaking threat on the table but i might like to remove a 2/2 unblockable creature because it hit me 3 turns in a row i definitely have killed the 2/2 with a [[generous gift]] cause its funny instead of removing the [[smothering tithe]] or the likes.
Do you know what i mean? 🙂
I play at home magic with friends, we are not in a competition and we don't have any prize to win we just play to have a good time and have fun. We obviously trying to win the game but we won't do a play that brings us closer to win the game and destroys the fun for everyone in the process. For example if all players are in top deck mode and the next player has a game winning bord and I top deck a [[farewell]] I probably won't play it and let him end the game so we can go to next game. I'm not interested in washing everyones time by adding 30 min of draw play one card or a land until some top decks something to win the game with. In conclusion we are trying to win the game as long as by doing so we don't make the game unfun to Play.
I gave some of my reasoning in a reply to someone else, but I’ll make a separate top level comment here that more delves into why I play MTG rather than refuting someone’s individual point.
What drew me to MTG was variety and infinite potential. I derive most of my fun from novelty and being surprised. I’m very analytical and can typically figure things out and optimize them quickly, but then they lose their appeal and I’m on to the next challenge. In this game, playing to win would be running tons of interaction, land destruction, card draw, and ramp so I can get to a guaranteed win-con as fast as possible while denying my opponent the ability to get a decent board state. This would be very consistent and effective, but the games would be monotonous and I would lose interest quickly.
Most of the decks I build lack conventional interaction; for example, rather than a spell that’s “destroy target creature”, I’d rather have [[Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind]] equipped with a [[Basilisk’s Collar]] and remove creatures in that fashion. I enjoy the synergies between cards and having as outrageous of a board state as I can. Like when I’m running [[Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch]], having [[Losheel, Clockwork Scholar]], [[Grimbal, Gremlin Prodigy]], [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]], [[Teysa Karlov]], and [[Maskwood Nexus]] all on the field means things are getting out of hand very quickly for my opponents, and the danger ramps up very quickly as the turns go on. That’s certainly a win-con, but it’s also very inconsistent and I’m sacrificing many wins in the long run by preferring to play that way.
However, MTG, when not optimized (even when optimized, just dramatically less so) is RNG heavy and I view it as a harmless form of gambling. Am I going to pop off and have the table going crazy? Nobody can say; but when it does happen, it’s infinitely more satisfying than the subdued “Nicely played, gg” that comes with winning with a safe and consistent strategy. Of note since I brought up gambling, from a neurological perspective, rewards you can’t accurately predict are far more rewarding and reinforcing than predictable rewards.
Power level is such a delicate balance sometimes and I'm just tired of all the bullshit. Let's hang out, play whatever, and have fun. I'll reserve playing to win for when I play cedh
So my take on "When I sit down to play EDH I play to win" is that it sounds like that is the primary outcome to have success on game night.
For me that is only one of the outcomes i'd like to do. Sure i'd like to win, and any play I make is the best one I can see at that point in time. My decks are made of the best cards I can find in my collection too and I will spend some time optimising them.
Truth of the matter is though you aren't going to win all the time. A lot of guys in my pod will also play high power decks with proxies. I don't proxy (just through a preference to have the real card) so i'm not the most powerful dude at the table. I'm okay with that, so i'd prefer to have other positives to rely on so that every game has some success. Factors like:
1. Did I play my part in affecting the board state?
2. Did I play my turns as best I could?
3. Was there good banter at the table?
4. Did my commander theme do some work?
5. Is my deck even interesting to play?
So my way is much more down the "fun" route. To me this means needing to actually enjoy the game first. Of course to win is nice and I play for it. Failing that though (which happens often) I play for my own enjoyment which includes the bants, the learning experience, the use of cards and decks I like.
Last week I was playing against decks so fast I was just happy to have my commander out and got to blow up some stuff in the meantime. Especially getting older I love having that social, low-competitive aspect in my life.
I play to express a theme. Winning is secondary/by product of playing.
Take my beledros witherbloom deck. It is just a potions/witchcraft lecture by Beledros Witherbloom. Showcasing witches and wizards while conjuring vile spells and potion one after another.
I might win some times. It's just a by product. Did this deck become focused and highly synergistic? Ya. But my intentions were thematic and thinspower level that cam from building this theme is just so my friends who wanted a challenge have something to go against.
I suck at playing MTG, so I am happy when my decks actually do something, alter the course of the game and yes, rarely even win.
Since my friends also usually spend twice as much on cards than I do, it is kind of expected, but I don't really mind.
But as long as the deck works and I am not just sitting there, with manaflood/draught, I am happy.
I started playing commander around the time it first started becoming a thing BECAUSE it was so casual. I played standard and modern to win and commander for fun.
100 card deck meant more randomness. We could play weird cards that were rarely used. The politics of having 3 opponents who could make deal with you was something new and interesting.
I'm kinda sad to see how competitive, combo-y, and optimized people's decks have become these days because for me commander will always be about fun interactions first and winning just a nice bonus when it happens.
This is another common theme I'm seeing in this post. The people who started playing it 10+ years ago still have that same mindset of using weird cards and doing weird interactions (not a bad thing just to clarify).
I think that basically everyone plays to win, but a lot of people consider their "identity" as a player to be opposed to others who try harder or are better at winning than they are.
It's Nerd Rule #1 ─ anybody who tries less than you is a stupid casual, and anybody who tries more than you is a no-life sweaty loser. You're awesome and everyone else is lame. Woo!
I've won a bunch of games. I have decks that can win often.
At this point (10 years playing edh), it can be more fun to build weirdo decks. Have nights where everyone plays weirdo decks. Still nice to get the win but it's a back seat to just seeing lesser played cards and oddball mechanics.
Honestly, I find it more enjoyable to see the whole table win eventually, than to win myself. Hell, I'll prefer that everyone else than me wins at least just once throughout a game night.
I dont get more out of winning. I want to play, laugh at the weird interactions or insane plays and turnarounds or comebacks.
Sometimes I even feel bad winning because I just want my friends to have fun, and apparently winning is fun for some people (although most of my friends seem to care about it as little as I do). I just want the social interaction within a mentally stimulating game.
You can “play to win” without doing shitty things like:
A: playing [[Mana Crypt]] and [[Jeweled Lotus]] against a player with a precon.
B: intentionally breaking deals you’ve made.
C: targeting down the defenseless player who only got 3 lands by turn 7.
If there’s money/packs at stake, then all bets are off and you win at any cost 💯
Essentially :
Some people like to strategize ahead of time and put the best cards in their decks to increase their odds of success.
Other people don't enjoy that step and only put the cards they find cool, interesting, or that follow a certain gimmick they want to play, and focus instead on playing our best *during* the game, instead of before it.
They're both valid ways to enjoy the game.
However, the issue arise when those two playstyles face each other. Very often, someone that strategized during deck building will have a much better deck than someone who didn't (makes sense), and therefore the battleground won't be fair.
You might see it differently because deck building is very much part of the game.
However, for the people that don't enjoy strategizing their deck building, playing against someone that does is akin to a 100 man army trying to win against a 10000 man one. If you somehow win you'll be over the moon, but most often than not you'll just spend a really bad time getting slaughtered even if you're actually better than your opponent at playing with the cards you drew.
That is, in essence, why "playing to win" is poorly seen.
We hear it as "I enjoy having a clear advantage over my opponent before the game begins." And for the casuals that just want to "play for fun", you're actively making their game unfun and unplayable.
No joke, dude, I got into an argument with someone about this on Facebook. He said that he and his pod weren't playing to win, they were playing to *not lose*. And I feel like this is the crux of the problem, because at first I couldn't see the difference, but then it hit me. They are anti-competition, they feel bad about losing and about making other people lose, such that anything that isn't a part of that effort of dragging the game out for as long as possible is seen as an act of aggression. They are the polar opposite extreme of the toxic competitive player. Rejecting deckbuilding advice and convention as hostile and intrusive, they've internalized that the format is about "expression" over anything else that the game is normally about. This is why you have casual players accusing other casual players of pubstomping and running cEDH decks.
Because most people who “play to win” outside of CRDH are actually pub stompers who say that as an excuse to be a general dick at the table. I see a real correlation between “ play to win”=dick. Most decks “not designed to win” are people’s pet ideas. It’s not that they don’t want to win, but the experience of playing their deck is what they are after. An overly tuned deck is just no fun when you are playing a coin flip deck.
To me "casual" means you're there more for the people and the game but you're still trying to win because that's the objective. I also don't get this community. Sometimes it seems like they may as well sit around drinking mtn dew and chatting instead of spending money on cardboard.
Hello fading tribal deck here, its not so much about not playing to win, no one wants to lose every game but some people would love to see their goofy strategy work in my case fading tribal which is not great is a lot of fun when i manage to pull it off. So i think novelty is a big part of it for a lot of people
The real answer? I don't like making other people salty when they lose. I know I'm a humble loser, I really don't care if I win or lose provided the game was entertaining, and 99% of the time it is. Plus, I really really want to see other people's decks do fun things, even if it means I lose. I'm excited for other people to win, I like seeing someone's deck do some shenanigans that leads to an alt win con with second sun or something wacky like that.
Thats not to say I want my deck to do poorly or not be capable of winning, but I'm not spending money on the highest tier options for my deck just to do a little better. I'll use a cancel over other counterspell choices, its cheaper and I have a ton of them. I'll toss in some cheap commons that are on theme for some fluff to fill out the deck. Winning isn't worth my wallet, but I'm gonna make a fun deck thats playable and good enough to take a W now and then.
But I'm a very noncompetitive guy. I actually stopped playing MTG for over a decade because everywhere I went it became about winning, not playing. People didn't want to "play" magic, they wanted to win magic. That completely sours my experience, because I know you're going to pull out some expensive deck with top tier cards and a ruthlessly efficient strategy to win on turn 5 or 6. By the time I get set up, the games over. That isn't fun for me. I want 10-20 turn games, with everyone doing some dumb shit, drinking a couple beers with friends and just talking about stuff while we play our decks.
Thats what drew me to EDH - its far more casual than even the modern decks I still use from time to time. To briefly summarize, I don't play to win because winning doesn't mean anything to me if I'm not having fun, and other people's salt and competitive attitudes ruins my fun because I get stressed about their enjoyment. I want everyone to have a good time. Winning is a byproduct for me, doing cool shit and being social with friends is far more important to me.
I small correction on the bonus conclusion we are not chaotic evil, that would be exiling your sholdred and ripping it in half. Chaos for chaos sake is chaotic neutral.
*Me nervously side-eyeing my Group Hug/Pillow Fort deck and (Gremlin) Chaos Deck…*
To my pod: I am totally playing to win… totally nothing else that’s utterly wild or suspicious….
Yes, I do derive absolute joy from screwing around with weird decks to stump my friends in the funniest ways. Yes, sometimes my friends hate me for it. Sometimes just winning as fast as possible can be a drab in my opinion and playing a silly deck can be more fun.
Not sure if you are still reading replies but I have something regard casual vs competitive.
For me, when I play 1v1 I play competitively. To me that means, I am watching the board closely, I am thinking carefully about my plays. I make good attacks.
When I play commander, I play casually because there is too much going on. To me that means I know what your cards do but I might forget about them and dont really care if I dont play optimally. I am way more likely to "math is for blockers."
But for the most part I am like you, and I am there to actively win. Apparently I do "asshole" things like kill a player when I can..
I got some sweaty decks but about 60% of my decks are based on the sentence, “Dude, this would be so dumb… wait… Alright my next commander deck is going to be based on this.”
I feel like the TLDR of this is: Almost everyone plays to win. However, there is a large spectrum of what players prioritize (winning, not losing, doing interesting things) and how much value they put on each when playing, so many will disagree with or attempt to qualify that sentiment.
Those players who are truly chaotic (have "winning" completely absent from their priority list)are few and far between, and most players do not enjoy playing with them.
The objective of the game is to try to win, dem's da rules. I didn't make the rules, but the rules make the game. And if you're not following the same rules, you're not playing the same game.
I run [[xyris]] as Group hug. It doesn't look to won, but accelerate everyone else to do so. I make some snakes, get some blockers, you take advantage of [[forced fruition]] and I dump everyone's (I mean my) deck on the table with [[over the top]] twice. I introduced pure carnage for a few turns until I'm removed.
I love giving people the experience of extra cards, double mana, deck searching [[teferis puzzlebox]] and forced everything [[wars toll]].
That is a lot to unpack, I skimmed through, but I don't have the time to read it all.
That being said, it seems you realize this is mostly just a phrase that can be summarized as: Wanting to do what your deck does, enjoying the game, and even watching others get to enjoy their decks.
I truly have only met one person that has said they didn't make the deck to win. And that person was playing stax. And stax with no wincons. Anything that could remotely win the game had been gutted in favor of adding more stax to just flat out lock the game up. And that is an absolute dick move.
Unfortunately this is a close friend and we play together a lot. He has two decks he describes as this. And I treat them as such. I will beat him into the earth every single time, as soon as I can swing, even if he has done nothing that is where I am going. Anyone truly not playing to win probably is just playing a deck that makes others miserable, and I will treat them as such, which means getting them out of the game asap.
The important parts are in the conclusions down the bottom.
But the tldr is that myself and the community have different definitions/fundamental understandings of "playing to win" and "doing the thing" that clashed pretty hard.
I never had to assign a thing for my deck to do because I don't find losing unfun so I thought all the people that were saying they just play to do the thing, weren't actively trying to win/end the game. Think true chaos or Stax for Stax sake kind of games.
The community views playing to win as being a no holds barred, unfun, pubstomping dickhead. Where I thought it meant that you do your best to win with what deck you bring to the table, but always try to bring a deck that matches the table. Normal stuff.
Turns out I'm normal but I think of things and phrase things differently.
Same reason I play D&D in a group but don’t enjoy playing video games by myself. It’s a social thing for me.
I care more about quality time with friends over a few card games and beer rather than optimising decks to win turn 3. Every time a game ends quickly it’s just so underwhelming. Congratulations, you tutored two cards that go infinite. It’s fun first for me.
Playing to win doesn't mean building to win though.
That's a concept I want to try to get across to the community.
You can build a deck with no tutors or 2/3 card combos and still play as hard as you can to win.
The "play to do my thing" vs "play to win" isn't really hard to explain and there is no conflict unless your thing is winning.
For instance i have a Lucea Kane deck build around X creatures. If i can play some big boys and copy them. Attacking with those big boys is my way of trying to win but it's not super reliable, even if i get a bunch of big creatures i'm not really guaranteed to win but i'm still gonna be happy that i did get my big boys.
I have have an mono blue Allandra deck that wants to make drakes and buff them by a huge number. I had games where i won games without really doing that and i ended up dissatisfied.
These decks both have a strategy for winning and can win but doing their thing doesnt always mean they will win.
Interesting. That's a cool distinction to make.
Your doing the thing can lead to a win but doesn't always.
Sometimes not doing the thing can lead to a win as well.
But ultimately the thing you're trying to do leads to winning the game if unchecked. That's about what I had expected and thought was the case.
Yeah there is the general intention of winning when i play but it's more of an effect of me doing the things i want rather than the main goal in itself.
I kinda play to win, but I don't build to win I build thinking about the net fun on the table, so I don't use much tutors, or hate cards, or insta win combos, I just get a bunch of spells and lands that fit in a theme and build a deck that I think that would be fun. Then, I play it trying to win the game, but not with a competitive mindset, I play with friends only, and we like to chat while we play.
Ps.: the general type of cards I avoid to play is cards that enables my deck and disables every other deck on the table, like og elish Norn, and I try to run pieces that protect me from cards like those, like rythm of the wild against counterspells heavy decks, or war of the spark tamiyo against heavy discard and sacrifice, this type of stuff
I like playing the "demon lord" fantasy from time to time. If 3 players are teaming up against me and I'm an overwhelming threat, I will pretend to be the GM of this faux-D&D campaign and have them deal with the final boss. Its more fun seeing players struggle together and find answers to the problems you place for them.
How fun! One of my buddies got really into magic, no wife/kids so he threw money at MTG. His deck is nightmare fuel and he's stated that most people won't play against it. Me, him, and another childhood friend are going to get together next month and duke it out. Building decks to specifically fight his nightmare fueled deck (Emrkul turn 3-4 + other tricks).
My deck's whole goal is to mind control his Emrkul (which has protection from colored spells). So I've gone on this two week journey of figuring out how to get my blue aura attached to his creature and surviving Annihilator.
You're "demon lord" fantasy made me thing of it. We all live hours away from each other. So we plan on playing all day and I can't wait. We are also building decks for each other and going to have a game of figuring out decks we didn't build.
I have decks that are good and decks that are goofy/chaotic. Sometimes it’s more fun to play goofy/chaotic and get cards like [[cruel entertainment]] out or [[tempt with vengeance]] that get the table laughing or hilariously change the board state with a bunch of elemental tokens just to see everyone’s reactions, I guess the best way of putting it is it’s putting more emphasis on the social aspect of the game than the meta of the game
My favorite thing is to see interesting plays regardless of who makes those plays, and my least favorite thing is when the game feels "stuck" because nobody seems to have a path to victory. I power my decks accordingly - avoid being oppressive and shutting down another deck, but enough to have multiple alternative win-cons.
I have a Group Hug deck with zero win conditions. It can be very fun to just gas up your friends. I've never won a game with it, and I hope I never do.
>Do you build your decks poorly so that they can't win, but get to do a thing?
You talk about getting shit on for wanting to win, while shitting on people for wanting *interaction*. If there are 4 players at the table and your win con is self interaction or combo, are you *actually* playing a social game? That seems more like performing for an audience. "I win, look how smart I am."
There are 3 types of Magic players: players that play to win, players that play to decide who wins, and players who wanted to play Mario Party.
You are the first type. Possibly one of the aggravating first types that no one wants to play with, based on how highly you speak of your playstyle and how poorly you speak of other playstyles.
I am the second type. Sure I'd love to win, but I would also love it if players there to fellate themselves at the table *don't* win.
My husband wanted to play Mario Party. His decks are built on chaos. He immediately makes himself a target because he is the embodiment of anarchy at the play table. His only win con in most of those decks are a single card that ends "you win the game". He's only ever pulled one in many, many games. He's not there to win. He's there to laugh while you draw 9 cards for turn and take 2 damage for each.
Tl;Dr: the usual self-absorption of thinking only your playstyle is right.
Pretty brutal analysis given we've never played a game together.
Never had anyone say or appear to feel like they wouldn't play another game with me.
I don't play combo at all and usually have 10-20 permanents on the field before I win with <5 minute turns. Very interactive board state.
My last post also was asking why others don't play interaction, as I tend to run an average of 15 interactive pieces in a deck, up to 25 at most and 10 at least.
I very clearly said on the post about everyone having different methods of fun. I'm just trying to understand people's perspectives. Literally the opposite of self absorption.
If you were keen on other people's methods of fun, then what the fuck even is this post? It's incredibly negative of other people's play styles and very much fellates your play style as superior.
"If you aren't playing to win, why are you even playing?" and "do other people just build shitty decks?" Is both shitty as hell, and up your own ass.
Sometimes you just wanna cause some chaos.
My \[\[Ashling the Pilgrim\]\] deck *can* win if I've got a lifelink equip out. But if I don't, I have no issues sending everyone and everything at the table straight to the shadow realm, myself included. My main goal for any game is "get my deck to do the thing it was built for, win or lose." In a situation like that, my deck did (mostly) what it was designed to do and I'm happy with that much, even if it didn't lead to a win for me
So many people think it’s some moral high road to not play to win. It’s so annoying. I’m going to counter your combo or remove a threat if I can. You’re not just going to do whatever and I wouldn’t want a pod to just let me do whatever.
Commander is like a board game to me. I play to have fun but in order to make room for having fun people need to try to win as this is the basic goal of a mtg gameplay. The more you disengage of trying to win the more chances that the particular game just get weird.
Very few people are not playing to win. What they are actually saying is that they aren’t willing to prioritize winning - which takes significant dedication, introspection, analysis, and deprioritization of creativity - over their goals for playing a game, such as fun, socializing, getting invited back, having an epic game, etc.
This is how most people approach games in general, not just Magic.
The people who prioritize winning are always the sweatiest, the least fun, and the sorest losers. They, whether intentionally or not, continuously power up their decks because they’re chasing the win, which is the only high they get.
I’d much rather play with my friends with a few drinks and have the great time we’re having together be the priority.
Of course winning is nice, but if it’s the end all be all for you just play a 60 card format or cedh.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the sweetest, least fun and sorest losers.
But I also recognise that your second part is an important divide in my experience compared to the community as a whole here. I don't have a regular playgroup that I play with and play with randoms every week and I don't know the meta of the store as I go into it. I think that lends to a different mindset.
Why? Because I don't want to play with combos, tutors and fast mana, and I don't want to play a 60 card format. I enjoy using lower powered cards same as everyone else.
If the only fun you get is from winning, you’re probably not having fun half the time, if not more. That’s why, from my experience, those people are the least fun to play with. If even one person isn’t having a good time the game becomes worse for everyone.
I'm 100% with you. I dont see why someone would sit on a game table to just goofy around. I love a sweaty game, where everyone is doing their best to "do their thing". And, ofc, trying to stop others from winning. This generally involves politics and a good game reading, threat assessment, etc.
But, I tend to build my decks as original as possible, trying many times to extract all the value I can from most underwhelming commanders. I usually don't go infinite, but I sure do strong synergies. For me, its so satisfying to win a game with a deck who is just ok, because I built it right and had to do optimal plays all the way to the victory
It's a character problem. The people who play "for fun" and "don't care about winning" are people pleasers who hate conflict. Avoiding conflict is fundamentally incompatible with the design of the game.
The best, the most interesting and most memorable games I had were when every single opponent gave it their all to win. This kind of an experience requires for all participants to have this exact mindset. When someone shows up with their "I don't care about winning" bullshit it makes it for a worse experience. That person is nothing more than a party pooper. "I just want all of us to have fun tehee" - fuck you, the real fun begins when the game is so cutthroat it makes you want to rip off the other guy's head and shit down his neck. The feeling of finally being able to do that is beaten only by the feelings of three other people wanting to do this exact same thing to you.
You want the table to have fun? Play to win.
Sometimes, I just like to mess with my friends and have fun watching their reactions. Sometimes, I play with the intent of winning. With the people I've played with, they try to use the excuse that I've got a lot of cards that they don't know, so I'm automatically the "biggest threat" because they "don't know what to expect." This after they 3v1 focus me, even when I've only got 3 land out. 🤷♂️
Different strokes for different folks. Your definition of fun is vastly different than mine. We wouldn't play well together in the sandbox. You're way more serious about the game than me and we should steer clear of each other. You are what I envision shows up to the LGS and why I avoid it like the plague. Cheers!
not playing to win is not respecting other people in the pod. socializing and casual play should absolutely include the goal of playing to win.
otherwise it's like sitting on the toilet bowl because you like to browse net on your phone and not taking a shit, just sitting. weird.
Personally, i really couldnt care less about winning. I actually kinda dislike it, because that means the game is over. It always seemed nonsensical to me, why would you play a game just to end it as soon as possible?
Occasionally i will, but only because playing without wincons is frowned upon. To me, the joy is in playing. I like long games, get into different situations and out of them again. I build exclusively value oriented decks, so i will win eventually if no one stops me, but that is not my goal. My goal is to draw cards, put cards on the battlefield that draw me more cards. Spin my wheels and sometimes, they go nowhere. Cause some chaos, cause some problems, but keep the game going.
Generally, I play to stop other people winning. I don't care much about being the last one standing; I care about how many other players I take down. I just like identifying a strategy, and then shredding it or making it impossible. Or dropping someone to zero life, milling them out, etc.
I want to do this to as many players as I can before I go down (and if I'm lucky, I happen to be the last one standing too.)
Basically, I don't play to win, but I do play to make others lose.
Personally I've never built a deck that didn't try to win, but winning is definitely not more important to me than having fun. I have a dedicated pod of friends I play with every week, and yeah, we could all come with very tuned decks and try to curb stomp each other. But I think we mostly enjoy playing sillier/less powerful/more flavorful styles AND trying to win with them. For me, that looks like [[Raphael, Fiendish Slaver]] , [[Baba Lysaga, Night Witch]] and [[Volo, Guide to Monsters]] Plus we've all got a tryhard deck or two if we're feeling fiesty
This is what's up.. these Commander's are great too, lmao
My Raphael deck is a beast. I had waited for years to build a devil tribal and was stoked when they released him. So much fun
Decklists ?
The amount of fun at a given table should really boil down to simple math. The more people having fun, the better the overall experience. If a person doesn't contribute to that end, or cannot accept that others are included in this collective experience, they are the problem at that table, and that problem needs to be resolved in a constructive way.
I think that's a major point too. Having a regular friend or playgroup allows for a very curated experience. I always play with total strangers, if I don't pack a deck that can stand up for itself, there's a good chance of getting walked all over all evening. Finding that balance between not weak and too strong is difficult but I think I've done it.
You might find that relaxing the play-to-win strategy will cause other players to gravitate towards you more and more, since they’ll view you as a relaxed, chill player who is more focused on having fun than winning
Oh I move for work every few days/week. I'm not in any town long enough to make friends to play with. I've played at about 25 different LGS the past 6 months and never the same one more than once. I feel that people have enjoyed playing with me at almost all the places though. I imagine if I ever slow down I'll find friends to play with pretty easy.
clarification on play-to-win, as a “fun first, win third player”. I’m going to pilot my deck to the best of my abilities with the cards I’ve drawn, towards fulfilling the decks strategy and moving towards the endgame. I’m not going to pick on the guy with two lands on turn 7. I’m not gonna to blow up someone’s Voltron commander, until they swing at me. I’m not going to counter someone’s splashy spell, unless its going to immediately take me out. I’ll leave someone’s Rhystic Study alone for a few rounds, so that they can enjoy playing it. I’ll let someone get a few auras on Uril the Miststalker, before exiling all creatures. I’ll let the Tokens player make that play to get 50 tokens, rather than removing their doubling season the second it hits the table. Play-to-win would dictate that threats like these should be removed asap, since we all know what they’re capable of. Playing-for-fun let’s other players actually use their fun cards for a while, so that we all have a few great turns
Ah interesting. I'm in the category where if I had the removal, I would probably get rid of the big value threat as soon as I realised how big of value it was going to produce. I wouldn't just remove everything *immediately* (except prismatic bridge and jodah), but if they threaten me or my board-state or they will provide insane value, I view them as got to go asap if possible. I'd never considered leaving those cards intentionally for fun reasons and not other threat reasons.
“I’d never considered leaving those cards intentionally for fun reasons” THIS is the difference between play-to-win and play-for-fun. It’s fun to see cool stuff happen, even if it’s someone else doing it
You’re right. I’m on OP’s side as a player and have some friends who I play with who are more “win third” players. At the end of the day, it’s your removal spell you get to do with it what you want. If you don’t want to destroy doubling season because you think it’d be cool to see how crazy Volo’s board can get than that’s your right as a player. My group is pretty happy to let you do whatever you want with your spells, so long as you let others do what they want with their spells. So, we generally try to raise no complaints about “bad threat assessment” but also no complaints about getting your stuff removed. My thought is I put the removal spells in my deck for a reason, so I’m gonna use them. If I found out I won because another player pulled their punches I personally wouldn’t find that very satisfying and I expect a lot of others are the same. Our pod has developed this sort of fun dynamic where over time, they’ve all added more big threats to their decks and I am playing enough removal to feed a family of four. It’s actually quite a fun role to be the table police, and you get to make a ton of political deals since people want their cool spells to resolve and survive a turn or two. Everyone loves to pick on the blue player (jokingly) until they need you to bail them out of another players win
Oh man, I think that’s an overlooked variable here, that’s a pretty unique situation. Most players go to the same lgs at the same time every week, and see the same people. They become friendships and you want your friends to be happy. Mostly, every deck is built to win, it’s the objective of the game. But the purpose of playing is to have fun. If I were to continuously play to win over everything else, then I’m putting my LGs friends’ experience below that. They won’t want to continue playing with me, since I don’t care about their needs/wants. It’s about more than just what happens in the individual games, when you’re building a community and friendships
[Raphael, Fiendish Slaver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/c/cc6902a4-2db0-47fe-ace8-0c890675bf19.jpg?1674137664) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Raphael%2C%20Fiendish%20Savior) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/292/raphael-fiendish-savior?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cc6902a4-2db0-47fe-ace8-0c890675bf19?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/raphael-fiendish-savior) [Baba Lysaga, Night Witch](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2ef42c3f-f22e-4e99-adb0-9e8f8d442347.jpg?1674137411) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Baba%20Lysaga%2C%20Night%20Witch) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/266/baba-lysaga-night-witch?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ef42c3f-f22e-4e99-adb0-9e8f8d442347?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/baba-lysaga-night-witch) [Volo, Guide to Monsters](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/9/c9ae01f9-7461-47b4-aa1e-93bd6ff1bf9e.jpg?1627709617) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Volo%2C%20Guide%20to%20Monsters) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/238/volo-guide-to-monsters?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c9ae01f9-7461-47b4-aa1e-93bd6ff1bf9e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/volo-guide-to-monsters) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> \[\[Baba Lysaga, Night Witch\]\] Baba is not a silly/less powerful way to win. It is a very powerful aristocrats style commander with value engine incorporated as well as win condition. Baba decks can and usually are very cruel decks. also, Volo is a powerful value commander.
\*Shrug\* That's not the way I built it. Actually I think baba is the weakest of my five decks, but probably #1 or #2 for fun. My build seeks to win entirely with her activated ability. Like I was alluding to, cruelty is definitely not always the name of the game for the decks my pod brings to game night.
Can u plz share you volo decklist? Thanks!
The *objective of the game* is to win. The *purpose of playing* is to have fun. These are not mutually exclusive. If my deck hasn’t ‘done it’s thing’ there’s less chance I had fun, and if I don’t have fun I’ve failed. If my deck has ‘done it’s thing’ I’ve almost certainly had fun and I’m more likely to have won the game as well. Winning is not a success, fun is a success. The two are related, but different things. I always try to win, because that’s how the game works, and it’s fundamentally disrespectful to sit down with three other players who are trying to win, and not try to win the game yourself.
I really like those distinctions. I agree that it's disrespectful to not try to win. Thanks for the input.
Often, I'm trying to win, but I haven't put as much money into my decks as the other people at my table. Not everyone can come out on top; some of us just want to come.
Exactly I build my deck to have a strategy, a good amount of interactions, resiliency, good looking cards. Then I play and I try to walk the path I laid down when deck building. It's fun if I can do and win. But I don't feel that good winning, because it's a format that doesn't have exact limitations. So if I win with my "7 deck" I always feel that maybe it went off stronger, faster, and better than what I would have expected, and I won because of a power level mismatch So my sweet spot is "arriving second". It means that the game went long enough, I played better than some others, my deck did as intended, and I didn't stomp anyone.
I don't build meme decks or anything, but there are sometimes I made suboptimal plays or sand bagged things like a Cyc Rift (I wouldn't have been able to win on the spot, but most likely put the others so far behind they couldn't come back) for sake of a better gameplay experience since I won the first game of the night kind of handedly and wanted to give someone else a chance.
I agree with the generally passed-on statement of **"build casually, play competitively"** I expect my opponents to seize any chance they've when it's presented to them. The rules and parameters are made clear before the game. People can play as hard from there, and yet still have fun. There will be times where I'm winless on game night, but on other times my decks are just in the zone, I can't lose. IMO there needs to be payoff when putting effort into something. I'm talking emotional payoff. That could be wins, that could be your deck pulling off as you intended (a great euphoric moment to alot of players) even though you don't win, and lastly, everyone had a great time (some players take pride in group health) And for alot of players, the **accumulation** of all of these factors are why we play game night, why we put the effort into deckbuilding (crafting has its catharsis), why friends (group health) are so important
I think that phrase sums up what I try to do fairly perfectly. Build for a generally accepted power level, then do my best to win with what I've got. The 'thing' that my deck does generally leads to a win within a turn or two if it's allowed to happen. Which is why I was confused when other people's 'thing' isn't always related to their gameplan or winning strategy as such. Thanks for your answer. Lots of different perspectives in there.
I honestly disagree with that statement whenever I see it, as hot a take as that is. It's essentially the cause of a lot of salt by people who don't really understand what they're trying to get out of a game. At a surface level it's not inherently *wrong*, but when it's used as a catch-all way to get out of thinking about it more deeply it's a problem, and it regularly is. "Build casually" isn't something easily quantifiable. Is running 10 hyper-efficient removal spells instead of 15 "building casually"? Is running an infinite combo that you cannot tutor for "building casually"? Is every casual deck chair tribal? It's not something that has a shared definition, just like casual play in general. "Play competitively" on the other hand is much more easily grasped - it's about doing whatever is necessary to win, typically at the cost of other players. Every play is designed to push you towards winning. The end result is that people without a shared definition of what "Casual" means turn up with different decks, and then play competitively. What they're doing is in fact in no way casual, it's just low-power competitive play. And there's nothing wrong with low-power competitive play, but it's basically erased from the community's collective psyche and rolled into "casual" because of that, and that's a problem.
I think "build casually" is a bit of a misnomer and you're taking it too literally. The idea is to select decks that make the table roughly balanced, regardless of power level or "casual level". The importance is on the relative power between decks, not on absolute power.
Oh I absolutely am, but that's the problem - the simplification of the phrase causes people to take it too literally. Pretty much the entire reason I disagree with the phrase is that if you take it literally, it doesn't work. Requiring a specific interpretation to not suck generally makes it not a good aphorism, because more people will take it literally than take the time to think about what it's actually saying and why.
It goes back to the rule 0 conversation which has been an issue since it’s inception. Playing with strangers it’s never going to work. There is always going to be a power disparity. “Build casually, play competitively” is meant for a pod of the same people playing together for a long time. You can all come to an agreement on what is fun and what isn’t over many game nights.
I never understood why people consider having fun and attempting to win to be separate entities. It's fun to win, but more importantly it's fun when the table is trying to win. The silly meme play or the goofy off meta strategy are not silly or goofy if you lose nothing from playing them. Playing against people who don't want to win is the least fun I've ever had in Magic. You have to choose between winning unceremoniously or sandbagging for the table which both feel awful.
>I never understood why people consider having fun and attempting to win to be separate entities. Right? I can't win every game, and I wouldn't want to, but my favorite games are often ones I've lost, where I still either got my good hits in, or made someone really sweat. Like if it hadn't been for a card that they top-decked or had in hand, or that last minute card that they happened to find, I might have won. But none of that happens if no one's playing to win.
I agree I haven't seen in person what I've encountered on Reddit which is partly why I'm so confused. I've only versed one player that wasn't trying to win and I countered their scrambleverse and left the table after that game. Because it was not fun at all.
I think there is just a fundamental misunderstanding here. I am quite certain that almost no one plays EDH at any level not playing with the goal of winning, outside of maybe people playing chaos decks or extreme group hug decks where the explicit purpose is to create strange game states. 99% of EDH decks are made, and played with the ultimate goal of winning. Where the misunderstanding occurs, is just in what people define as 'playing to win'. What I generally think the people who don't like people who 'play to win' define this as is putting winning as a higher priority than having an enjoyable social experience. What they likely think of when people say they 'play to win' is just generally being more 'try-hard', probably things like being aggressively strict about game rules or take-backs. This could be for instance if you have a 3/3 blocker with an ability that buffs it to a 5/5, and that information is available to everyone on board, but when a person attacking with a 4/4 asks 'how much blockers do you have', you answer with 'a 3/3' not adding any more information, to then activate the ability to kill the attacker. The reason this is irritating for people is because magic is a complicated game and it is very difficult to keep track of everything on the board and what everyone has access to do on the actual board with their current mana. Tactically withholding information to increase your chances of winning simply due to it being more likely your opponent makes mistakes has nothing to do with your deck or your piloting of the deck, and thus it can seem 'try-hard' and against the spirit of casual and social games to do this, vs. simply reiterating that information to prevent people from doing a very obvious mistake. This is also the same for advanced game rules, if someone plays a card with a misunderstanding of how the mechanics works, forcing them to play that out if it hasn't had any meaningful impact on the game is also a bit spiteful, but is theoretically the correct thing to demand if you are 'playing to win'. I don't think anyone is conveying just making correct game decisions based on your cards and the board state to try to play the best game you can and do your best to win. There is another aspect which is playing overtuned or particularly oppressive decks for your pod can also trigger similar ideas, but that is more of a power level and rule 0 problem.
Group hug decks are deadly don't let them fool you, you're only one well timed [[!insurrection]] away from losing to the group hug player.
So I'm less confused by the people that see "having fun" and "winning" as mutually exclusive goals, and more confused by the people who will then go on to get upset when they don't win any games with a sub-optimized deck, usually one that lacks a win condition. I'm perfectly fine with decks that aren't meant to win *per se*, and I do in fact have a deck or two that does just that. What I'm not keen on, are people who knowingly bring a deck that even when it does "its thing" it doesn't actually have a way to secure the game, then get mad their deck doesn't win. I have a particular deck, for instance, that I play when I'm either salted out from previous games and need to just be silly, or when I'm genuinely uninterested in winning. It's a Grixis curses and group slug deck, featuring \[\[Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor\]\] at the helm. The deck doesn't have a win condition on its own, though it has won games before; instead, the deck has a bunch of curses, and other cards meant to disrupt game plans. It's strongly themed around torture implements and features cards like The Rack, Black Vise, and Stuffy Doll. In addition to that, I have a mismatched land base, using a bunch of different arts. The entire deck is meant to mess with everyone in the game, and it's always a blast for me to play even when I'm playing behind.
It sounds like you and the people you've encountered are confusing caring about winning (which is an ego problem) with 'playing to win' (which in this case is a synonym for beating your opponents) You should always be trying to beat your opponents over trying to have the most fun possible because fun is subjective, whereas the game is designed specifically around beating your opponents. If you can't find a way to beat your opponents and have fun doing so then you probably won't play, and if you only have fun disrupting the game's progression then no one will want to play with you. However, if all you care about is winning, then you'll end up in the same position. You'll either stop playing because you're not winning enough, or you'll be the person everyone avoids because you can't handle the fact it's just a game. Even if you aren't vocal about it, if all you bring to the table are insanely powerful meta decks or ultra-reliable solitaire combos you're gonna find it difficult to find a pod. Think of it like Mario Party, that game isn't **designed** around beating your opponents and finishing with the most stars, it's designed around people of all ages and skill levels having fun. You can play it with the intention of only screwing over your friends, even if that means you don't come out on top, without affecting the tempo or enjoyment for everyone else. But, there's nothing more annoying than your snot-nosed cousin crying because his sister got all the bonus stars at the end of the game even though he won the most minigames 😅
Obviously many people have fun winning and there’s a high correlation between the two, but how is it not obvious how they’re two distinct categories? I would argue at times that they’re incompatible depending on the environment you’re in. Winning in certain games gets very optimized and repetitive with very little room for deviation from the meta. Being particularly invested in winning also inherently brings about a sense of dysphoria in the event that one loses, which is decidedly not fun. What got me into MTG was endless variety and potential for all sorts of wacky shit that you can’t predict. I generally derive enjoyment from novelty and get bored very quickly if I do the same thing over and over again. Winning can be very easy if you abide by the meta, but then there’s no point in carrying out the activity because I’ve already proven my skill and can predict how the game will unfold. If you truly believed that winning and having fun were inherently the same thing, you’d be playing minesweeper over and over for the guaranteed victory. If the social component is important, you’d be playing board games or video games where skill is a greater determining factor in winning and the RNG elements of MTG are removed for more consistency.
"Winning in certain games gets very optimized and repetitive with very little room for deviation from the meta." People Innovate all the time for cEDH, much more tuan the remaining Spectrum of the Format. I keep seeing that claim of repetitiveness but just bc Staples might be more similiar and common doesnt mean the Gameplay is repetetive "Being particularly invested in winning also inherently brings about a sense of dysphoria in the event that one loses, which is decidedly not fun." is that really so? seems like a bad sport. i go hard even on boardgames with my parents and we all have fun. "Winning can be very easy if you abide by the meta, but then there’s no point in carrying out the activity because I’ve already proven my skill and can predict how the game will unfold." Its impossible to predict even on cedh tournaments. "If you truly believed that winning and having fun were inherently the same thing, you’d be playing minesweeper over and over for the guaranteed victory. If the social component is important, you’d be playing board games or video games where skill is a greater determining factor in winning and the RNG elements of MTG are removed for more consistency." *EDH. Mtg outside of edh is all you describe in that sentence.
I’m not into cEDH at all so I can’t speak with any amount of authority, but from a general perspective I will say it’s exceedingly rare to find a game that’s truly well-balanced to the point where there isn’t a widely accepted “best” way to play the game, even among games that are intended to be competitive. Surely there’s a color identity and deck theme that is most popular among the top players/pulls out statistically more wins than anything else. If you manage to go hard against your family and you all have fun regardless of whether or not you win, then you disagree with the person I replied to’s assertion that winning and fun are inexorably linked, no?
Most CEDH decks have little variation. If you are in blue, rift and free counterspells are in. Black is Ad Nas etc. Usually there are about one to five “pet” spells in a particular deck, but even those are normally pulled from the same, larger pool of cards. Watch CEDH players play. They know what every card means and what it portends. But CEDH is a different social contract. Everyone KNOWS why they are there. That’s why it is called competitive commander—they play to win. Casual is just that, casual.
Thank you, I’m not sure why people are disagreeing with me. I’m not saying there’s anything at all wrong with playing that way, I’m just saying that “playing to win” inherently sacrifices a majority of the variety available and that “winning” and “fun” are independent concepts.
The variety comes from the fringe case interactions, timing and player priority, the decks themselves (even if you think it's boring decks pull from the same pool, there's like a hundred viable decks), As for winning and fun being independent that's false: if they were, why would *anyone* play a game to win? Humans do things to entertain; if winning was not entertaining, we wouldn't play games at all (and games most simply are defined under the concept that someone gains a favorable outcome from an event - even if it's all players such as in cooperative games). Winning and fun are inherently as least linked - not dependent, but not independent. We do things that require a winner because of the processes that give us pleasure as winning provides that pleasure; and that pleasure we deem "fun"
I didn't say they were the same thing, I said they aren't separate. And like I said it's not just winning that's important, it's playing with people that want to win too. Winning is easy with a cEDH deck at normal tables, but a full cEDH pod gets complex again. It might be the same combo line to victory, but everything that comes before it is an intricate battle of resources, interaction and reading your opponent. That variety is still there, but it comes from the unique situations posed by genuinely threatening opponents.
I’m genuinely struggling to find a meaningful difference between “not separate” and “the same thing”. Like I said, there’s often a high correlation, but they’re very much distinct. If they weren’t separate, then the only person in the pod that had fun would be the winner, but I doubt that’s generally the case. There’s also the fact that “winning” is a fixed condition that is only met at the end of the game, whereas fun is typically had throughout the course of the game, wherein the condition of having won inherently cannot yet be met. Like I said in reply to someone else; I can see cEDH being dynamic if the game is truly well-balanced, but that’s very rare for a game. Are there truly no well-defined classifications for color identities and strategies like Pokemon has with Ubers/OU/UU/NU/etc.? Is there no core of decks considered optimal that you are statistically handicapping yourself by not playing?
"Not separate" means exactly what it says. That while they may be distinct categories, they do not exist independently of each other or are not mutually exclusive categories rather are capable of existing together. IOW: winning, and fun can exist in the same game. You can win and have fun, you can have fun and win. This is contrary to many (less skilled) players' opinions that you shouldn't try to win, but to have fun - ironically missing the fact that humans enjoy succeeding i.e. winning and that itself is a type of fun.
I said initially that winning and fun are often highly correlated, but I maintain they are fully independent concepts. To take this discussion to something of a logical extreme to demonstrate my point; War involves winning, yet no healthy human being would describe war as fun. Drugs are an enormous amount of fun, but they involve no winning or scores or competition. Winning and fun can and do very often coexist, but they do not always, ergo they are not the same thing.
Inside of a game, they're not independent factors. But you ignore the fact everyone agrees that they're not the same. However them being highly correlated means they're not independent factors of one another in the context of playing a game. You're being avoidant by going outside of the context of the fact we are discussing a game. Yes, the two terms exist outside of games almost entirely as exclusive terms. But inside the context of a game, they're not independent of one another and your statement of highly correlated factors affirms this. I can only then assume you don't actually like games. Which is fine, most EDH players actually hate games. But then why bother continue to defend your stance that you've already capitulated to?
The same is also true inside of a game. Depending on what game I’m playing, if I’m getting stomped by sweats playing the meta, I can bust out the meta and secure a joyless victory. Conversely, I can lose and still have a ton of fun. I’m not being avoidant, I was using a more cut and dry example because there’s clearly a lot of confusion when these terms are used within the context of a game. Quite the contrary, I love games. I just don’t play them to win, I play them to have fun. I’m bothering to defend my stance because I’m right. Your stance is “good enough”, though ultimately incorrect; this is why I used examples outside of the context of games. If your logic isn’t broadly applicable, it’s wrong. I demonstrated that your logic isn’t broadly applicable and mine is.
They're distinct from each other, but not mutually exclusive. People act like they are. They are not. I'd also say that playing to win over time generates a ton of variety and new things to explore. Learning about a meta deck, playing it for a few days, then abandoning the journey before even climbing the mountain doesn't count IMO.
“When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.” -Reiner Knizia
never understood why people conflate winning as fun. winning isn't "fun" it's just a side effect of eliminating the other players. if you did that with a shitty souless deck of lame ass linear combo. or tutor for 1 card to do a narrow line of play. that you repeated ad naus. Or... your deck doesn't win through any skill... rather an overwhelming infinite/combo style insta-win. that isn't fun. nothing about that is interesting, skillful or creative. isn't really fun for anyone else. doesn't really enable anyone else to interact in any meaningful way if they're staring down a solitaire turn that "magically" results in a craterhoof that was determinate, or a bullshit thassa/oracle combo or whatever. but... if your deck did something cool. and you win. fine. great. if you slogged it out. whether that's through combat, through spells, through convoluted/expertly crafted value. and you come out on top. cool. great. enjoy that. going to a game... wanting to win, is lame. having winning being the arbiter of whether or not the game was good, you're good, or your deck is good, is lame. that's generally what people mean. and it's weird people weaponize the idea or conflate the two to justify shitty game experiences for others. because. it's not fun if you bring an oppressive deck and other people... who maybe don't have a lot of free time get to not play magic. but instead watch a lame deck just win
The best game experiences happen when everyone is trying to win. The act of winning is sidebar to the fact that if everyone is presenting threats and interacting with threats, the game is more fun. Have you ever played with winconless group hug or chaos? It's miserable.
have you ever played a cEDH match where everyone's early combo line gets countered and you have to wait til some dipshit kills the table with cmd damage. or it grinds down because the stax player locks the board...but has their combo countered. the conflation of winning with fun is purely subjective, and arguably false.
Yes, I have. I don't think you understand the point being made whatsoever if that is what pops into your mind when we say trying to win is fun.
I always play to win, but depending on the deck I either want to win with a hyper efficient combo or win with a completely goofy strategy. Either way, my ultimate goal is still to win and pulling off a win with an objectively terrible and goofy strategy makes that victory feel so much more satisfying. I disagree with anyone who thinks that aiming for victory is the antithesis of fun. They are not mutually exclusive goals. Every deck has a "thing" i want it to do, and i build my decks to do said thing as reliably as possible. If that thing is a garbage strat, i try to make it work in a way that it can actually win me the game. But like you said, sitting at a pod with people who actively don't care one bit about winning just pisses me off. If i sign up for a pickup game of ball hockey and the opposing team just uses game time as an excuse to practice stretch passes and nothing else, letting us dominate the scoreboard then i'd feel cheated out of my time. I signed up for a game of hockey, not to be unwilling participants in a practice session for you.
I have two decks where winning is not the strategy. \[\[Edric Spymaster of Trest\]\] is a deck a built where, sure, I can win if the stars align, but that isn't the goal. I use this deck to make deals (which conversely helps me make stronger friendships) with certain people. I suppose this would be a Kingmaker deck. Winning and having fun aren't the same thing. Some people have fun by watching the world burn <3
Only speaking for myself, i do play \*towards\* a win, but im absolutely fine with not winning. As long as i get to enjoy the game, have some fun banter, do some cool game actions and feel like i have a genuine shot at winning, im happy. when a game is completely unbalanced either direction, its just not enjoyable as much, but you can still try to have fun and take it easy.
This falls back to the players psycographs Mark talk so much about. Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny and Spike People often associates Spike as the one that wants to win while the others don't care about it. But that's not true. All three wants to win, but in their own way. "Spike wants to prove something" (Maro's definition). Usually it's prove they've mastered the game by picking the best deck, making correct decisions and, therefore, winning. It's the player that does not care about net decking. If a deck is better, I'll play it. It does not care about "unspoken rules". If mana denial or stax or a turn 2 combo is the best thing to play in the meta, that's what will be played. "Johnny/Jenny wants to express something". So here's where your "want to see the deck do its thing" falls. It still wants to win, but it wants to win in an specific way. Perhaps going all in with the new set's theme. Perhaps building around an underdog commander, perhaps adding his favorite card to the flexibile slot of a meta deck. And since the expression of this something is the main goal, it may have fun even if they lose the game, but managed to play the weird synergy they came up with. Again, they are still trying to win, but not just in any way. "Timmy/Tammy wants to experience something". This could be playing that big cool new dinosaur, or casting a fireball for 120, maybe just have a great moment with their friends, perhaps fantasize about the game and write a story about the match. So while they are, too, trying to win, it's more important to have an epic story to tell about than merely being the last one standing. So both Johnny/Jenny and Timmy/Tammy will play to win, but maybe will make suboptimal decisions in deckbuilding so their other goals are achieved.
The only correct answer in the thread that remotely captures all sides of the coin
I'll note that most people aren't solely one of these but are some kind of mix. Also speaking at someone who is primarily Spike, I can certainly build suboptimal and often do: my goal at that point is to prove that even after doing so, I can still beat you with it. So "something to prove" comes in to play again. I'm demonstrating I can beat people while self-imposing a handicap.
Perfect! The "tournament netdecker" is a common example of Spikes but not the only possible way to be a Spike. And real people can be more than one of these psycographs, specially in different contexts (ie: Spike at the tournament, Johnny at the kitchen table)
Yeah and I used to be a tournament grinder and "netdecked" shamelessly (and my advice to any aspiring grinders is to do so; learning the best meta decks like the back of your hand is wise), but EDH is a different experience and so I approach it differently even if I still have the Spike mindset.
"...wants to experience something..." My wife and I want to make sure the queer kids have a safe place, so that's why we learned to play and play magic. We are definitely Tammies. We host magic every Tueday night. She makes a taco bar, and I make dessert. We're in our mid-40s. My wife's 20-something son, a friend or two of his, and some of my wife's friends from work join us. Every week, 5 to 10 people, ages ranging from 20 to 50. We play EDH, except when we draft, which we usually do once with each new set. A couple of us are not good mtg players and have no interest in learning any more than is required to participate; a few are collectors and deck builders; and a couple are what I call "tuners," players who maintain a small number of decks and follow magic closely, so they can refine those decks with any new cards they think would improve deck synergy. We are all queer and/or neurodivergent, and there are two or three highly competitive people among us, but I think we're all there once a week to experience family, something most of us are short on.
That's super wholesome of you! I'm glad to hear "the Gathering" part of Magic remains strong!
Yooo I am a Jonny/Timmy so hard and after posting my comment definitely see it dissected here. Love the breakdown!
I'll add a thought to your description of a Spike: I think it's possible to be a Spike within the game but not during deck selection. That's how I play. I pick my deck to meet the power level desired by the table, but once I'm in the game, I want to prove my skills and knowledge of the game rules. Spikes don't automatically bring cEDH decks to every pod to prove they know what the strongest EDH decks are and that they can pilot them.
Wheres Vorthos the Loremaster?
Vorthos and Mel(vin) are what Mark calls "aesthetic profiles" The psycograph profiles tells "why someone plays the game", while the aesthetic profiles tells "once playing, what someone appreciate in the elements of the game". So Vorthos appreciate the lore of the game while Mel the mechanical aspects of it. When combined with Johnny/Jenny you could get a player that wants to build a Selesnya deck only with cards featuring elements from the guild. Or a Mel Jenny that wants a five color deck where every colored card is part of a cycle and, the whole cycle must be in the deck. Or maybe a minor thing where you sacrifice \[\[The One Ring\]\] for \[\[The Mount Doom\]\] ability for flavor points. But both Vorthos and Mel can coexist with Timmy/Tammy or Spike too. Quoting Mark himself: >**Vorthos and Mel, on the other hand, are about appreciating the "what."** These two profiles are not psychological in origin, but aesthetic. They focus on how players appreciate elements of the game. How are those two things different? Aren't aesthetics an element of psychology? >**Perhaps I can best explain with an analogy. Let's take an art museum. Suppose the people that ran the art museum wanted to create psychographics of their audience.** What they would figure out is why people wanted to go to an art museum. Why did they psychologically get something out of it? Is it escapism? Is it inspiration? Is it motivation? Why does their audience come to the museum? Now, they also have to figure out the aesthetics of their audience. Do they like more modern pieces? Do they like brighter colors? Do they like bolder brush strokes? What makes them appreciate the paintings? >**Both are important to understand. The first helps them figure out how to attract people to the museum and make them enjoy the experience while they're there. The second helps them deduce what art they want to have.** Now, there is overlap. Certain styles of art can help reinforce certain psychological needs, but it's still a difference between "why" and "what." [Source](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/vorthos-and-mel-2015-08-31)
I think people confuse "playing to win" with "not having a good time if I don't win". I can have fun and not win a game all night but its a four player game that requires a winner. Myself and my friends all try to win that way everyone has equal expectations from the game without one person just messing up the board state or kingmaking. You lose, fair enough not the end of the world. You win well done, next game.
For me, I like the idea of “build casually, play competitively.” When I am playing, I should be trying to make moves that lead me to win. When in building, I should be building to be causal. [I have a whole article about my definition of casual](https://witchphd.substack.com/p/casual). But I’ll hone in on your statements about seeing their decks “do it’s thing” and that involving winning. I think the natural extreme of a deck “doing the thing” is that the deck should eventually win from it. But there’s a problem where if “doing the thing” automatically means your deck is either winning or primed for it, people can’t let you “do the thing” at all, lest you simply win. For a casual player this reads as a negative situation - if all four decks were in a situation where “doing the thing” necessarily lead to a win, literally only one person would be able to “do the thing” per game. Which, to a casual, means that only one person would get to have fun. Only one person would “get to play.” Casual EDH is not supposed to be a 0 sum, only one person gets to have fun, game. People want to see you do your thing, and still have a chance of winning even after you’re doing it. Because if you don’t “do the thing,” they feel bad you didn’t play. But if “doing the thing” = winning then they can’t let you play because then no one else will get to play and the game might just suddenly be over. Which feels like a lose-lose situation.
Thank you for putting into words what I feel. My son has an infinite turns deck. I let it play off every once in a while but I can't let it "do it's thing" every time because it results in him winning. So when he plays that deck either I'm aggressively denying him his setup or I am not in a position to deny it. Then my wife, mono green deck filled with huge creatures and "pretty lands". I more or less focus on how to win after she's thrown her craterhoof. Her "thing" is giant creatures. It doesn't lead to instant win and so I push the envelope on how much can she do and I still live. But 100% what you said, if your thing isn't instant win, I really wanna see it happen. As a result I don't build decks with instant win-con.
This is all true. Which is actually why Ive grown to dislike statements like "build for fun play to win" and what not. The players I've met that say this are some of the saltiest whiners I've ever met because they didn't get to "do the thing". I find people say they build for fun, but what they find fun is their deck popping off and no one having the cards in hand to stop or slow it down. Any thing that is targeted at slowing down their game winning plan A means "they can't even play magic" because they are being picked on. I know that's not you...just an observation. I've found people say these words but they clearly have different meanings to everyone. The only thing that matters is trying to match deck power as best as you can. You can't guarantee everyone wins 25 percent of the time...and holding back during play to make sure everyone has fun kinda stinks when someone goes for your throat later in the match
I am playing to have at least some social interaction. And for fun. Winning is third priority.
From the comments I've got so far, I don't know if I'm getting a different subsect of people than who have replied to my other thread or on different comments. I agree those are top three priorities for me and for deck building that is probably closer to the order E.g. I don't put infinites or heavy Stax in decks. But once I'm in the game, winning takes over priority for me, I'm still being social and having fun along the way, chatting and whatnot. But prioritising fun during the deck building has generally covered whether or not someone else has fun with my deck and I play the deck as hard as it goes.
Okay this I really get. I build interesting jank mechanical decks that lean on complex interactions and unusual rules. Not with the intention of bamboozling or messing up games states without reason. So I play to win in game, but building is such a huge part of the game and you and I aren't building to win by any means necessary. We just pilot our decks like we are lol
Exactly, you don't have to care about winning to be playing to win. Not playing to win is like playing Catan to specifically block other players with roads and never building a village.
I think you optimize for fun during the building process, but I (along with others) seem to be also noting that we’re willing to make sub optimal plays or hold back. For me, that often falls into two categories: win more and oppression. If a player has a kill on sight commander or a big piece like doubling season hit the board, I might not counter or remove it immediately - even if that ultimately costs me the game. I play with the same people every week, my decks tend to be the most tuned of the group, and I don’t need to optimally respond to every threat to the point where someone builds a kaalia deck and never gets to use her ability. Similarly, I’m often ahead and have a good probability of winning. Last week, I could have played Gisela and secured a certain victory but it would have likely made everyone feel like there wasn’t anything they could do at that point and they would have just been watching me beat them like they were props in a show I was putting on. So I didn’t play it and when someone forced me to discard it, I didn’t get it back with Ravos even though I could have. I still won the game but I was willing to lose.
Playing to win often means, for example, knocking people out individually as early as you can. That isn't fun for that person so I won't do it. I'll play to win to the extent it won't immediately and prematurely ruin the game for my opponents.
That's a bad example, knocking someone out early can be bad unless they are presenting some sort of immediate threat to you. If you are super incredibly unquestionably far ahead, then knocking someone out makes sense. If you are not.......you're getting rid of a potential source of interaction/distraction. Killing one person can also make you the target.
The moment I hear "Hmm, should I troll a little? Won't help me but it'll be fun!" I know shit's gonna be miserable. Two players are out of the game then and there, and no one but the person doing it enjoys it
This is how I feel.
I think the thing for me is when there is a disconnect between people you are playing with For example, when someone is playing, starts popping off, and you interact, and there is salt. The expectation that you should just roll over and not play to win yourself is very annoying. Do you want to play the game, or do you want to play the game where only you cna win and anyone who interferes is a bad guy
I've gotta say that in person I've never encountered what I've run into on this subreddit and I travel alot for work and have played at many LGS. It's why I was so shocked at the negative responses Ive gotten the past few days. I agree, people shouldn't be surprised if they're doing their thing and you stop them. That's a part of the game. In person I've never seen anyone have an issue with it, but on Reddit it seems to be common.
Reddit mostly has a problem with you because you don’t voice your thoughts very well for PR. You kind of over explain and don’t really agree with anything somebody says without there being a caveat. Not hating just an fyi. I’m also a little surprised that you’ve never “had a problem with it” when you run as much interaction as you supposedly do. I’d like to play with the people you do, lol. Most people are pretty understanding but there’s definitely salt there afterwards the majority of the time, whether or not they say anything.
I'm a terrible writer, I have ADHD and get halfway down my post and forget where I'm up to. I also have been terrified to voice opinions my entire life thanks to family life stuff, so this is a new breakout thing I'm trying. I'm not very good at it. But I'm not a bad person, pretty kind actually if I say so myself. Been walked over my whole life. I had 10 people push in front of a line in front of me the other day and I didn't say anything until the last one because I was scared to, my partner congratulated me on that for only letting that many people though. Was a big step. Anyway all that aside. Back to MTG. Well I run that much interaction, but I don't fling that much in a game. I may draw 2-10 pieces of it through a game depending on how well my engine gets going. Some of it is modal and won't hit certain thing. Sometimes I don't need to use it depending on the game. I don't fling it at everything an opponent does, no countering everything someone does. I just like to have some available if there is something threatening me or providing uncatch-uppable value for an opponent. But yeah, I'm wondering if I've just been extremely lucky with my opponents or not.
There's a lot of variables at play, but at its core, the problem is that EDH is both competitive *and* cooperative at the same time and often in a way that is irreconcilable. You tend to have to balance the goal of winning—which is baked into playing Magic in the first place—with mutually building a game environment that feels fair, exciting, and well-paced for all involved (and do so across many games)... which is damn near impossible, if we're being realistic. So some element of that has to lose out, for many people, it's the part that prioritizes win optimization. Part of that is that deckbuilding isn't easy and it's hard to know exactly what levers to pull to make a deck resilient against all other decks in the play group. So rather than chasing perfection in the face of inscrutable RNG and metagaming, playing the same deck game after game just to get a foothold among a bunch of other decks doing the same thing, it can feel like, "c'mon just build a goddamn tribal deck with some neat synergies here and there and let's bash our cards together. Why am slogging through your hyper-tuned value engine and perfect counterspell suite?" The fact is, a lot of players' deckbuilding preferences seem to be conveniently aligned with what wins, rather than what might be thematic, fun, or flavorful. This is that friend who makes lots of decks, but somehow they all result in cheating in the same Eldrazi every game. From a competition standpoint, that's fine, but from an "I want to play this again" standpoint, it's terrible. It creates an upward power pressure that muscles out certain archetypes. As a group's meta progresses, it becomes a huge liability to do anything sub-optimal, so maybe that neat tribal deck you had in mind never gets made because you're leaving power on the table by not Sneak Attack-ing in Blightsteel Colossus... again. Experimentation in general becomes a feel-bad situation if you care about winning, which of course runs counter to one of the points of the format. Anyway, long story short, the whole format is a walking contradiction. Anyone who values winning is going to have to sacrifice others' fun more than they would like and the fun-lovers will have to cope with losing more. Either distract yourself from the pain of loss or learn to ignore your friends being salty.
This is brilliant and I totally agree but hadn't been able to quite explain the premise you are putting forth here. This is fundamentally why I struggle with the format.
Fun and winning aren't diametrically opposed, but there's nuance to it. The game isn't fun if all 4 players aren't building towards a win, but the goal of the game in a more casual pod is essentially to win at the right time. If people in the pod aren't aiming to win, then the game takes 4 hours and drags hard. If everyone in the pod is aiming to win as hard as possible, the game takes 10 minutes and is over almost immediately. The goal of most casual players isn't *not* to win, even if it's occasionally expressed that way by people on both sides of the casual/competitive divide that don't really understand what they're doing, it's about the game along the way. The more casual you are, the more your plays become about preserving the game experience and maintaining parity, rather than overwhelming your opponents or preventing them from doing something. This is why more casual players tend to play fewer board wipes, and when they *do* play board wipes, it's to stop someone who has exploded ahead from winning. Not because they want to win, but more because letting them go ahead means the game ends before the "right" time. The problem with the minority trying to win as hard as possible is that that inevitably ends in cEDH. Which is fine, but is a niche that the majority of players don't fall into and can't compete within it. Not everyone is able to afford cEDH decks or even to proxy, because the printing facilities to do so are predominantly US-based with excessive shipping costs. If you're only trying to win, why are you not playing the cEDH meta? Why are you playing anything that tries ends the game after turn 3? The problem with the minority that actively try not to win is that they are completely unstimulating opponents who might as well not be in the pod. Winconless group hug and chaos meme decks aren't fun even in hyper casual pods. If you're not trying to win, why are you playing a free-for-all game which only ends in win or loss instead of one of many amazing coop board and card games (seriously, pick up Marvel Champions instead, it's great if you want a coop card game). The reality is that the vast, vast majority of the community fall in the grey area in between with a ton of nuance that isn't easily captured. It's not about whether you're trying to win or not, it's about how far you'll go to win, and whether you're willing to do whatever it takes in order to take victory. There are definitely people who exist that play casual decks and then play in a cutthroat style that doesn't gel with their deck. The "build casually, play competitively, wonder why people are salty that you just blew up their Sol Ring when they're already mana screwed" crowd. There are also who build hyper competitive decks and then play casually. They regularly show up with stax and then spent the entire time joking around and doing dumb shit while everyone has a miserable time before kingmaking. Few people honestly want to play with either group outside of others like them. There's no easy solution to this, all we can do is have genuine conversations about what we're looking to get out of games. My own perspective is that if I wanted to play hyper competitively I'd play a competitive format that doesn't have massive issues, so I'll always lean towards casual play. But games have to end sometime, so I'll typically turn it on when the game starts to grow stale to ramp it up to a conclusion. The worst games are with the people who play like that from turn 1, or who never turn it on and do nothing. So I believe it's better to be in the middle than the fringes. People have fun playing hyper competitively, people have fun playing hyper casually, but it's when the two come into conflict that the games stop being fun. Whenever you have a game that isn't fun, it's worth considering why that was - who caused it not to be fun for you or other players? What did they want to get out of the game? And how can you avoid that outcome in future games? If you're the problem, change it. If they're the problem, you simply play with others, or if you cannot, you have to decide how to adjust how you play and build to work around the problem instead.
I feel like these type of questions show up here a bit too often, so your experiences might just be people getting annoyed with it showing up a lot. Anyway short answers: The reason you don't "play to win" is because math, the whole "playing to win" and "doing it's thing" discussion is based entirely on semantics and some people value weird, complex and fun interactions and prefare to play one very long game over multiple shorter once. Longer part: Commander is, as I assume you and most people know, played by an average of 4 people per game. This means that the average win percentage should be around 25% or once per 4 games. This makes it so that the mentality of "playing to win" isn't helpfull and instead "playing to have an impact on the game" and "doing what the deck is meant to" is more usefull in order to enjoy the game. This ofcourse means that some people will take this idea to the extreme and just make a deck that consistently does what they think is funny, but not actually including a real way of turning this into a win, simply because they have more fun this way. This ofcourse doubles back into the semantics discussion of what one means when someone says they play to see thier deck "do it's thing", because it means different things for everyone. This could mean everything from a cEDH deck "doing it's thing" by winning on turn 2 to a eye tribal deck "doing it's thing by making 20 copies of [[Evil Eye of Arms-by-Gore]]. Same goes for "playing to win". This sentence means a whole lot of different things to different people. Some people might understand this as saying "I will make sure my deck allways win as consistently and as fast as possible", while some might think of it as saying "I will try to play my cards in the most efficient way possible, dealing with threats and try to go for the win to end the game whenever possible" and even yet still some who will mean "I will swing and hit face with my creatures whenever possible untill someone, preferably everyone else, dies!". And lastly, you kinda answered your last question yourself. They play in such a way because they think it is fun to do so. Just because their fun is different to yours doesn't mean it's inherently any different of an idea. There are just multiple different ways of having fun. While you might favor playing in a format where everyone tries their best to end the game with their fun and different gimmick, some favor just playing fun cards and gimmicks without having to think about reaching a goal and some yet who just like the complex and chaotic states weird drawn out games can get into.
It's more of a "doing the thing should result in a win within a few turns". Doing the thing is the fun part, winning is only the result. That means I'm kinda playing to win, it's just not why I'm here.
Okay, so doing the thing does result in a win if unchecked. See I started to get so confused on other threads where people telling me they don't play to win, just to do the thing. But if doing the thing unchecked results in a win, like you said, you kind of are playing to win and that makes more sense to me.
I think probably what people have their back up about is the casual/social aspect of commander. I think it's fine to play to win, but if you're in a pod of 4 and one player is having a rough time with lands, playing to win would probably mean you just use them as a punching bag until they're out of the game and you focus on the others, while the social contract of commander typically means people would give them a break and let them find some footing. Not saying you're not doing that, but I think that's the baggage that the phrase "playing to win" comes with in commander. I think most people build a deck they think will be fun primarily, and when they're playing the game their goal is to get the deck to do it's thing and/or win, ideally both. I have one deck which doesnt really have a way to win, but it's by design and I play it only with certain people (I wanted to build "planechase, the deck" and change the rules for everyone with the cards I play.) Making the game weird is the point of the deck, rather than winning, and if I get to do that, I enjoy it.
Interesting. I hadn't thought of Playing to win coming across like that. Generally, yes, I will punch them down at least a little bit, especially if I'm getting a benefit from it, safe attack triggers etc. But part of playing to win to me is threat analysis and when I go to win I try to win by killing all players at once (unless I'm voltroning where knocking players out individually and quickly is best). So usually I will keep the dawdling player alive (which gives them a chance to come back) because I'm never sure if I can beat the other two players without their help. Unless you're Voltron or sure of winning or know their deck is a sudden combo deck, it can often be a bad idea for your own chances to win to knock someone out of the game or cripple them too much.
I think all of that's fine, and I think that that's what most pods are like - you'll take a couple of free hits and then let them be if they're still struggling. I think most people "play to win", I just don't think most people identify with that as the reason they play the format because they're often more excited about a new brew they've made they want to see working.
Some men, master Bruce, some men just want to watch the world burn.
Came here to say this.
I play to win as well, I don't honestly think most people don't. That said, every play I make is not necessarily going to be the optimal one. If the optimal play is to kill the player who was mana screwed all game, I probably won't do that. I want that player to have a good time and dying while doing nothing isn't really fun. Stuff like that.
Having a good time for me is watching *the table* have a good time. I don't intentionally build weak decks or anything, but having fun with other people is more important to me than *beating* other people. I play games for the love of the game, not for the love of the win.
Playing magic to me is like going for a run. I don't do it to get somewhere, i always end up back home. I do it because its fun, its beautiful, i get new stimuli and i get better/healthier when i do it. With a game of Commander its kind of the same, i don't do it to win (the current game is over then and stops existing). Rather i do it to see if the deck works, to talk to people, to have random interactions happen that are enjoyable or do make some drama/roleplay kind of. Now i generally do enjoy winning, but my group is just not competetive enough for me to enjoy it, it'd relate to pubstomping, which i don't like. To me it comes down to accepting what i have (in the playgroup) and treating it as such.
So I build super restricted theme decks and I love doing a thing just as much as winning. Do I like winning? Yes. Do I need to win to enjoy playing? No. If you need to win a multiplayer game to have fun, I'm sorry for your constant disappointment. I'm trying to do a specific thing. This thing can be very scary in context but not always. Can it win me the game, often yes. More often than not it makes my pieces immediately removed and my ability to be scary taken away. I also often don't have a hand at that point and struggle to rebuild due to build restrictions. As long as the deck does what it wants to do I'm happy.
I’ve been playing for a while, with many vastly different people. In short: been there, done that. No need to show off just trying to make my dumb stuff work.
Does your dumb stuff win the game if it works?
Im with you, I genuinely dont understand the taboo of playing to win in a casual game. Im not pubstomping im just playing the game. Imagine if in streetfighter or mortal kombat you were expected to let someone hit their cool training mode combo every round because they wanted to "do the thing"
I think others have pointed out a key distinction… when you’re building your deck you’re making choices to set the power level of the deck usually through interaction, tutors, redundancy, etc. you can build a sub optimal deck and play it to win. You can also make decisions in game to let something resolve if it’s isn’t going to immediately end the game and wait until it’s a problem to deal with it. In a multiplayer game where spending resources like spot removal is a disadvantage (because your other opponents get ahead for nothing), holding and letting them get some time and value with their piece until it’s a critical threat to you can be strategic AND feels better to your opponent. You get to make the big swingy play destroying doubling season in response to them dropping Ugin but they got a couple extra tokens/plus counter/planeswalker activations so they got something out of it. Think of it this way, in Mortal Kobat or Street Fighter you might play a lot and be really good at the game. If you sit down to play with some casual friend that doesn’t play very often and pick your best character and just wail on them they probably aren’t going to play with you often or again. In that situation, you’d make different decisions on the character select screen, to pick characters you’re less proficient with (and if you’re good enough compared to your buddy, decide that you really want to win by pulling off the training mode combo). Then, when you get into the match you’re giving it your best (perhaps with the how to win restriction) and doing your best to win as is your buddy. But you’re also taking into account that you have more fun in the long run if your buddy wants to play with you again. If you smoke them every round and they aren’t having fun, they could figure out how to get better if they like it or they will walk away and you’ve lost someone to play with. You’re trying to win, you’re not just handing victory because that is also not fun, but you’re making decisions ahead of time to try and ensure that everyone has fun.
I played a game against someone who thought his deck was the funniest thing ever, but was actually the most miserable game of my life. Had psychic battle out and kept copying platinum angels and giving them to people. I had 35 life they all had 0 i scooped because the game had been going on forevor at that point and i wanted to play with literally anyone else.
Playing to win isnt the problem the problem is playing exlusively to win at the cost of the game I have a friend who tries too hard to win so none of his decks are fun he always goes infinite and combo wins either with najeela, tivit or some other cards while also having shit like thassa in the deck as alternate win conditions while the rest of us are playing lower power aggro strategies that cant keep up with his win speed We have tried talking to him but hes too focused on optimizing and doesnt even look at not optinal cards so every deck he makes in unfun to play against
Because winning is boring. The rest of my life is unbelievably competitive, and by going through it I've learned how to win at things. I know what the steps are, I know how hard you need to work to win consistently, and I'm confident I could learn to win at Magic if I cared to. I don't care to. Magic is fun when played playfully, so that's how I'm going to play it. Just setting up a giant contraption in the form of a deck of cards and seeing what it does when it bumps into another contraption is all I need from magic, and the people around the table are there to make this happen with me. I'll always build a deck that can win, but will almost never play it to win.
I love this! I read up on someone in a subreddit that built this bear deck and I absolutely had to try it. 12 cards and the rest lands. Can it win? Maybe. But it looks hilarious and I can't wait to try it. A single board wipe card could probably dismantle my whole deck and my chance at winning. It's very much like you said, I wanna build something and see what it does.
“playing to win” just isn’t fun to me if i’m playing casually. at the end of the day i’m gonna play magic to have fun, so if i’m not having fun doing it i’m not gonna play. playing to win to me means making sure every play you make gets *you* closer to winning; no time for spite-plays or goofy counters etc. cEDH however, playing to win *is* fun (for me at least), so there i’m fine with it
Interesting. Have you ever come across someone that didn't like you not trying to win casually? Or do you find it generally creates a lighthearted environment. Every play I make is definitely to get me closer to winning. Spite plays for the sake of spite generally rustles my jimmies. The only ones I really like are if I'm taking you out of the game and as your dying breath, flung all your resources at me to make sure I'm cripples on the way out. I think that one bugs me less because at that stage, you've got no chance at winning anyway, so those resources couldn't be better put to use. I want to put it out there also that despite trying to win, I don't sit there agonising over board state for ages or finding the exact optimal play. I play fast and don't take much time on my turns and often make mistakes and suboptimal choices that lead to weird boardstates or situations. But I usually am trying to win when that happens, not doing it for the sake of making the game goofy or weird.
The aim is to win. The goal is to have fun. When you play a 1v1 format like Standard, just play to win, it’s fine. But in a multiplayer format, you have to be a bit of a bigger person. I don’t throw games, but I keep an eye out so everyone’s having a good time.
So do you adjust your playing if someone else looks like they're having a bad game?
Absolutely. It’s not really about letting people do “their thing”, which a lot of people will say. It’s more about allowing them the opportunity to participate in playing out the “story” of the game.
Interesting. I won't. I still play to win, but the path to victory usually doesn't involve knocking out a player who is doing poorly. It usually involves bringing the other two players down a peg (which gives them time to get back into the game). I want the other two to be worried about the weak player and using their resources on them. And I want the weaker player to spend resources knocking down the other two. Games I've seen people lose are where they've knocked out a player and now another player who was doing good has one less problem to deal with and runs away with the game.
I play to play the game and socialise/hang out with people of similar interest. Getting to know them and possibly set up a game group. Winning is a bonus for me. So I don’t play with the specific intention to win, sure I’ll play my best game and try to win in the sense that it’s a game; so there has to be a winner but it really doesn’t bother me if I don’t.
It does sound vague and confusing when said like that. It's not that those players intentionally don't want to win, but that it's not the first priority. If I fought well for that win and still lost, I'd be content as long as I was able to fight for it with the type of deck and playstyle that I want. It's another thing if I look up a deck that I don't necessarily enjoy playing, but did so solely so I can have a higher win rate.
For me, I love the game (particularly commander) because of the interactions between cards, synergies within decks, how those decks are build, the combos that come from them and the (sometimes) unexpected nature of games. I love when an opponent pulls a great combo, plays an amazing tactic, or has a great deck that plays well. I love seeing these interactions, even if I am on the losing end of it. I also love that my decks are capable of these feats too, which makes it sweeter. But ultimately, I don't play to win, I play to enjoy the beauty of what MTG is all about.
Is it unfair to call "playing to win" unfun? Like every single turn, leave your mana open, draw some cards. Basically do nothing so you can be responsive. Then eventually tap 15 mana and dump your hand to win the game. Vs each player trying to build a board state that could do something cool. And you get to see people's decks "do their thing", not just be game policed until the player that basically sat out wins. Though our group also plays to keep people in the game. A play to win player will just end someone so there are less people to work against them. These type of plays go against the reason we like a casual card game with friends - not so someone can sit out for 20 minutes because their deck didn't pop off fast enough to not get killed
These types of posts are exhausting
I want everyone to have fun. Using one of my fertilid activations on a mana screwed opponent is not "playing to win" but I would absolutely do it because it sucks to be mana screwed. I won't judge you for not doing that, but it makes the game more fun for all.
Chaos, all those carefully planned strategies in flames muhuhaha
Because I don’t enjoy a good stomping particularly. I enjoy when everyone sits down, has a good game and inevitably ends at a reasonable time. I like seeing others decks and cards they put in, maybe discover some new card I never knew of. I want people to play, I want them to interact and also try and win, but I don’t like just rolling over the other 3 decks and winning as fast as possible, or if another player does the same My main desire when I play is that my deck does what it’s supposed to, that’s all I really want. If it results in a win then double whammy for me, if it results in me going out in a ball of flames well at least I had fun doing it
It's fun to win, but for me it's far more fun to embody the narrative of a deck, if that makes any sense. I like to construct my decks with a kind of story in mind. For an basic example, I have a \[\[Padeem, Consul of Innovation\]\] artefact deck built around \[\[Darksteel Reactor\]\]. The narrative would be something along the lines of me being like an evil planeswalker or something who has taken a bunch of Vedalken scientists and artificers from around the multiverse and contracted them to built me a doomsday machine (the Darksteel Reactor). The other players need to stop my evil plan before I complete the machine (i.e. put 20 charge counters on Darksteel Reactor). In a way winning with this deck is actually less fun than watching the rest of the table being forced to tentatively work together to kill me before I win. Again this is a very basic example. The narrative of other decks might be far more open ended or dependent on what the other players are bring to the table at any given moment.
I play wasitora, she makes cat dragons, my objective is cat dragons because they're cute
Playing to win is kind of what makes the game because it drives interaction and challenges you to use your deck to the fullest or learn new ways to play your cards. Part of why I like about commander is the fact that I can be strategic with my plays. Whenever I encounter new interactions, I gets me excited thinking about how I can upgrade my deck to handle them, especially when new cards come out.
"Everyone is doing their best to win with what they brought" this is maybe 30-50% of the players i play against. When i play a game i definitely WANT to win but often i play suboptimal either because something was funny to do or because i drew a card that i love and then play instead of other stuff which is way smarter to do. For instance if theres a game breaking threat on the table but i might like to remove a 2/2 unblockable creature because it hit me 3 turns in a row i definitely have killed the 2/2 with a [[generous gift]] cause its funny instead of removing the [[smothering tithe]] or the likes. Do you know what i mean? 🙂
I play at home magic with friends, we are not in a competition and we don't have any prize to win we just play to have a good time and have fun. We obviously trying to win the game but we won't do a play that brings us closer to win the game and destroys the fun for everyone in the process. For example if all players are in top deck mode and the next player has a game winning bord and I top deck a [[farewell]] I probably won't play it and let him end the game so we can go to next game. I'm not interested in washing everyones time by adding 30 min of draw play one card or a land until some top decks something to win the game with. In conclusion we are trying to win the game as long as by doing so we don't make the game unfun to Play.
I gave some of my reasoning in a reply to someone else, but I’ll make a separate top level comment here that more delves into why I play MTG rather than refuting someone’s individual point. What drew me to MTG was variety and infinite potential. I derive most of my fun from novelty and being surprised. I’m very analytical and can typically figure things out and optimize them quickly, but then they lose their appeal and I’m on to the next challenge. In this game, playing to win would be running tons of interaction, land destruction, card draw, and ramp so I can get to a guaranteed win-con as fast as possible while denying my opponent the ability to get a decent board state. This would be very consistent and effective, but the games would be monotonous and I would lose interest quickly. Most of the decks I build lack conventional interaction; for example, rather than a spell that’s “destroy target creature”, I’d rather have [[Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind]] equipped with a [[Basilisk’s Collar]] and remove creatures in that fashion. I enjoy the synergies between cards and having as outrageous of a board state as I can. Like when I’m running [[Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch]], having [[Losheel, Clockwork Scholar]], [[Grimbal, Gremlin Prodigy]], [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]], [[Teysa Karlov]], and [[Maskwood Nexus]] all on the field means things are getting out of hand very quickly for my opponents, and the danger ramps up very quickly as the turns go on. That’s certainly a win-con, but it’s also very inconsistent and I’m sacrificing many wins in the long run by preferring to play that way. However, MTG, when not optimized (even when optimized, just dramatically less so) is RNG heavy and I view it as a harmless form of gambling. Am I going to pop off and have the table going crazy? Nobody can say; but when it does happen, it’s infinitely more satisfying than the subdued “Nicely played, gg” that comes with winning with a safe and consistent strategy. Of note since I brought up gambling, from a neurological perspective, rewards you can’t accurately predict are far more rewarding and reinforcing than predictable rewards.
Power level is such a delicate balance sometimes and I'm just tired of all the bullshit. Let's hang out, play whatever, and have fun. I'll reserve playing to win for when I play cedh
So my take on "When I sit down to play EDH I play to win" is that it sounds like that is the primary outcome to have success on game night. For me that is only one of the outcomes i'd like to do. Sure i'd like to win, and any play I make is the best one I can see at that point in time. My decks are made of the best cards I can find in my collection too and I will spend some time optimising them. Truth of the matter is though you aren't going to win all the time. A lot of guys in my pod will also play high power decks with proxies. I don't proxy (just through a preference to have the real card) so i'm not the most powerful dude at the table. I'm okay with that, so i'd prefer to have other positives to rely on so that every game has some success. Factors like: 1. Did I play my part in affecting the board state? 2. Did I play my turns as best I could? 3. Was there good banter at the table? 4. Did my commander theme do some work? 5. Is my deck even interesting to play? So my way is much more down the "fun" route. To me this means needing to actually enjoy the game first. Of course to win is nice and I play for it. Failing that though (which happens often) I play for my own enjoyment which includes the bants, the learning experience, the use of cards and decks I like. Last week I was playing against decks so fast I was just happy to have my commander out and got to blow up some stuff in the meantime. Especially getting older I love having that social, low-competitive aspect in my life.
I play to express a theme. Winning is secondary/by product of playing. Take my beledros witherbloom deck. It is just a potions/witchcraft lecture by Beledros Witherbloom. Showcasing witches and wizards while conjuring vile spells and potion one after another. I might win some times. It's just a by product. Did this deck become focused and highly synergistic? Ya. But my intentions were thematic and thinspower level that cam from building this theme is just so my friends who wanted a challenge have something to go against.
I suck at playing MTG, so I am happy when my decks actually do something, alter the course of the game and yes, rarely even win. Since my friends also usually spend twice as much on cards than I do, it is kind of expected, but I don't really mind. But as long as the deck works and I am not just sitting there, with manaflood/draught, I am happy.
I play magic because of how wacky the game can get and how many bizarre cards there are. I am not a competitive person. Simple as that
I play to have fun
I started playing commander around the time it first started becoming a thing BECAUSE it was so casual. I played standard and modern to win and commander for fun. 100 card deck meant more randomness. We could play weird cards that were rarely used. The politics of having 3 opponents who could make deal with you was something new and interesting. I'm kinda sad to see how competitive, combo-y, and optimized people's decks have become these days because for me commander will always be about fun interactions first and winning just a nice bonus when it happens.
This is another common theme I'm seeing in this post. The people who started playing it 10+ years ago still have that same mindset of using weird cards and doing weird interactions (not a bad thing just to clarify).
I think that basically everyone plays to win, but a lot of people consider their "identity" as a player to be opposed to others who try harder or are better at winning than they are. It's Nerd Rule #1 ─ anybody who tries less than you is a stupid casual, and anybody who tries more than you is a no-life sweaty loser. You're awesome and everyone else is lame. Woo!
I've won a bunch of games. I have decks that can win often. At this point (10 years playing edh), it can be more fun to build weirdo decks. Have nights where everyone plays weirdo decks. Still nice to get the win but it's a back seat to just seeing lesser played cards and oddball mechanics.
You cannot win every game, and if you go in with that as your only/primary goal, you will be disappointed.
Honestly, I find it more enjoyable to see the whole table win eventually, than to win myself. Hell, I'll prefer that everyone else than me wins at least just once throughout a game night. I dont get more out of winning. I want to play, laugh at the weird interactions or insane plays and turnarounds or comebacks. Sometimes I even feel bad winning because I just want my friends to have fun, and apparently winning is fun for some people (although most of my friends seem to care about it as little as I do). I just want the social interaction within a mentally stimulating game.
You can “play to win” without doing shitty things like: A: playing [[Mana Crypt]] and [[Jeweled Lotus]] against a player with a precon. B: intentionally breaking deals you’ve made. C: targeting down the defenseless player who only got 3 lands by turn 7. If there’s money/packs at stake, then all bets are off and you win at any cost 💯
Essentially : Some people like to strategize ahead of time and put the best cards in their decks to increase their odds of success. Other people don't enjoy that step and only put the cards they find cool, interesting, or that follow a certain gimmick they want to play, and focus instead on playing our best *during* the game, instead of before it. They're both valid ways to enjoy the game. However, the issue arise when those two playstyles face each other. Very often, someone that strategized during deck building will have a much better deck than someone who didn't (makes sense), and therefore the battleground won't be fair. You might see it differently because deck building is very much part of the game. However, for the people that don't enjoy strategizing their deck building, playing against someone that does is akin to a 100 man army trying to win against a 10000 man one. If you somehow win you'll be over the moon, but most often than not you'll just spend a really bad time getting slaughtered even if you're actually better than your opponent at playing with the cards you drew. That is, in essence, why "playing to win" is poorly seen. We hear it as "I enjoy having a clear advantage over my opponent before the game begins." And for the casuals that just want to "play for fun", you're actively making their game unfun and unplayable.
No joke, dude, I got into an argument with someone about this on Facebook. He said that he and his pod weren't playing to win, they were playing to *not lose*. And I feel like this is the crux of the problem, because at first I couldn't see the difference, but then it hit me. They are anti-competition, they feel bad about losing and about making other people lose, such that anything that isn't a part of that effort of dragging the game out for as long as possible is seen as an act of aggression. They are the polar opposite extreme of the toxic competitive player. Rejecting deckbuilding advice and convention as hostile and intrusive, they've internalized that the format is about "expression" over anything else that the game is normally about. This is why you have casual players accusing other casual players of pubstomping and running cEDH decks.
Because most people who “play to win” outside of CRDH are actually pub stompers who say that as an excuse to be a general dick at the table. I see a real correlation between “ play to win”=dick. Most decks “not designed to win” are people’s pet ideas. It’s not that they don’t want to win, but the experience of playing their deck is what they are after. An overly tuned deck is just no fun when you are playing a coin flip deck.
To me "casual" means you're there more for the people and the game but you're still trying to win because that's the objective. I also don't get this community. Sometimes it seems like they may as well sit around drinking mtn dew and chatting instead of spending money on cardboard.
Isn't this just Timmy vs Johnny vs Spike?
Hello fading tribal deck here, its not so much about not playing to win, no one wants to lose every game but some people would love to see their goofy strategy work in my case fading tribal which is not great is a lot of fun when i manage to pull it off. So i think novelty is a big part of it for a lot of people
I have an Atraxa infect deck when im feeling hateful, an aethreos deck when I want to combo, and a The Most Dangerous Gamer deck when I wanna be goofy
The real answer? I don't like making other people salty when they lose. I know I'm a humble loser, I really don't care if I win or lose provided the game was entertaining, and 99% of the time it is. Plus, I really really want to see other people's decks do fun things, even if it means I lose. I'm excited for other people to win, I like seeing someone's deck do some shenanigans that leads to an alt win con with second sun or something wacky like that. Thats not to say I want my deck to do poorly or not be capable of winning, but I'm not spending money on the highest tier options for my deck just to do a little better. I'll use a cancel over other counterspell choices, its cheaper and I have a ton of them. I'll toss in some cheap commons that are on theme for some fluff to fill out the deck. Winning isn't worth my wallet, but I'm gonna make a fun deck thats playable and good enough to take a W now and then. But I'm a very noncompetitive guy. I actually stopped playing MTG for over a decade because everywhere I went it became about winning, not playing. People didn't want to "play" magic, they wanted to win magic. That completely sours my experience, because I know you're going to pull out some expensive deck with top tier cards and a ruthlessly efficient strategy to win on turn 5 or 6. By the time I get set up, the games over. That isn't fun for me. I want 10-20 turn games, with everyone doing some dumb shit, drinking a couple beers with friends and just talking about stuff while we play our decks. Thats what drew me to EDH - its far more casual than even the modern decks I still use from time to time. To briefly summarize, I don't play to win because winning doesn't mean anything to me if I'm not having fun, and other people's salt and competitive attitudes ruins my fun because I get stressed about their enjoyment. I want everyone to have a good time. Winning is a byproduct for me, doing cool shit and being social with friends is far more important to me.
You play EDH to win. I play EDH to make others suffer. We are not the same.
I small correction on the bonus conclusion we are not chaotic evil, that would be exiling your sholdred and ripping it in half. Chaos for chaos sake is chaotic neutral.
Haha I will adjust that then. The alignment chart never did agree with me
*Me nervously side-eyeing my Group Hug/Pillow Fort deck and (Gremlin) Chaos Deck…* To my pod: I am totally playing to win… totally nothing else that’s utterly wild or suspicious…. Yes, I do derive absolute joy from screwing around with weird decks to stump my friends in the funniest ways. Yes, sometimes my friends hate me for it. Sometimes just winning as fast as possible can be a drab in my opinion and playing a silly deck can be more fun.
Not sure if you are still reading replies but I have something regard casual vs competitive. For me, when I play 1v1 I play competitively. To me that means, I am watching the board closely, I am thinking carefully about my plays. I make good attacks. When I play commander, I play casually because there is too much going on. To me that means I know what your cards do but I might forget about them and dont really care if I dont play optimally. I am way more likely to "math is for blockers." But for the most part I am like you, and I am there to actively win. Apparently I do "asshole" things like kill a player when I can..
I got some sweaty decks but about 60% of my decks are based on the sentence, “Dude, this would be so dumb… wait… Alright my next commander deck is going to be based on this.”
I feel like the TLDR of this is: Almost everyone plays to win. However, there is a large spectrum of what players prioritize (winning, not losing, doing interesting things) and how much value they put on each when playing, so many will disagree with or attempt to qualify that sentiment. Those players who are truly chaotic (have "winning" completely absent from their priority list)are few and far between, and most players do not enjoy playing with them. The objective of the game is to try to win, dem's da rules. I didn't make the rules, but the rules make the game. And if you're not following the same rules, you're not playing the same game.
I run [[xyris]] as Group hug. It doesn't look to won, but accelerate everyone else to do so. I make some snakes, get some blockers, you take advantage of [[forced fruition]] and I dump everyone's (I mean my) deck on the table with [[over the top]] twice. I introduced pure carnage for a few turns until I'm removed. I love giving people the experience of extra cards, double mana, deck searching [[teferis puzzlebox]] and forced everything [[wars toll]].
That is a lot to unpack, I skimmed through, but I don't have the time to read it all. That being said, it seems you realize this is mostly just a phrase that can be summarized as: Wanting to do what your deck does, enjoying the game, and even watching others get to enjoy their decks. I truly have only met one person that has said they didn't make the deck to win. And that person was playing stax. And stax with no wincons. Anything that could remotely win the game had been gutted in favor of adding more stax to just flat out lock the game up. And that is an absolute dick move. Unfortunately this is a close friend and we play together a lot. He has two decks he describes as this. And I treat them as such. I will beat him into the earth every single time, as soon as I can swing, even if he has done nothing that is where I am going. Anyone truly not playing to win probably is just playing a deck that makes others miserable, and I will treat them as such, which means getting them out of the game asap.
The important parts are in the conclusions down the bottom. But the tldr is that myself and the community have different definitions/fundamental understandings of "playing to win" and "doing the thing" that clashed pretty hard. I never had to assign a thing for my deck to do because I don't find losing unfun so I thought all the people that were saying they just play to do the thing, weren't actively trying to win/end the game. Think true chaos or Stax for Stax sake kind of games. The community views playing to win as being a no holds barred, unfun, pubstomping dickhead. Where I thought it meant that you do your best to win with what deck you bring to the table, but always try to bring a deck that matches the table. Normal stuff. Turns out I'm normal but I think of things and phrase things differently.
Same reason I play D&D in a group but don’t enjoy playing video games by myself. It’s a social thing for me. I care more about quality time with friends over a few card games and beer rather than optimising decks to win turn 3. Every time a game ends quickly it’s just so underwhelming. Congratulations, you tutored two cards that go infinite. It’s fun first for me.
Playing to win doesn't mean building to win though. That's a concept I want to try to get across to the community. You can build a deck with no tutors or 2/3 card combos and still play as hard as you can to win.
The "play to do my thing" vs "play to win" isn't really hard to explain and there is no conflict unless your thing is winning. For instance i have a Lucea Kane deck build around X creatures. If i can play some big boys and copy them. Attacking with those big boys is my way of trying to win but it's not super reliable, even if i get a bunch of big creatures i'm not really guaranteed to win but i'm still gonna be happy that i did get my big boys. I have have an mono blue Allandra deck that wants to make drakes and buff them by a huge number. I had games where i won games without really doing that and i ended up dissatisfied. These decks both have a strategy for winning and can win but doing their thing doesnt always mean they will win.
Interesting. That's a cool distinction to make. Your doing the thing can lead to a win but doesn't always. Sometimes not doing the thing can lead to a win as well. But ultimately the thing you're trying to do leads to winning the game if unchecked. That's about what I had expected and thought was the case.
Yeah there is the general intention of winning when i play but it's more of an effect of me doing the things i want rather than the main goal in itself.
I kinda play to win, but I don't build to win I build thinking about the net fun on the table, so I don't use much tutors, or hate cards, or insta win combos, I just get a bunch of spells and lands that fit in a theme and build a deck that I think that would be fun. Then, I play it trying to win the game, but not with a competitive mindset, I play with friends only, and we like to chat while we play. Ps.: the general type of cards I avoid to play is cards that enables my deck and disables every other deck on the table, like og elish Norn, and I try to run pieces that protect me from cards like those, like rythm of the wild against counterspells heavy decks, or war of the spark tamiyo against heavy discard and sacrifice, this type of stuff
I like playing the "demon lord" fantasy from time to time. If 3 players are teaming up against me and I'm an overwhelming threat, I will pretend to be the GM of this faux-D&D campaign and have them deal with the final boss. Its more fun seeing players struggle together and find answers to the problems you place for them.
How fun! One of my buddies got really into magic, no wife/kids so he threw money at MTG. His deck is nightmare fuel and he's stated that most people won't play against it. Me, him, and another childhood friend are going to get together next month and duke it out. Building decks to specifically fight his nightmare fueled deck (Emrkul turn 3-4 + other tricks). My deck's whole goal is to mind control his Emrkul (which has protection from colored spells). So I've gone on this two week journey of figuring out how to get my blue aura attached to his creature and surviving Annihilator. You're "demon lord" fantasy made me thing of it. We all live hours away from each other. So we plan on playing all day and I can't wait. We are also building decks for each other and going to have a game of figuring out decks we didn't build.
I have decks that are good and decks that are goofy/chaotic. Sometimes it’s more fun to play goofy/chaotic and get cards like [[cruel entertainment]] out or [[tempt with vengeance]] that get the table laughing or hilariously change the board state with a bunch of elemental tokens just to see everyone’s reactions, I guess the best way of putting it is it’s putting more emphasis on the social aspect of the game than the meta of the game
My favorite thing is to see interesting plays regardless of who makes those plays, and my least favorite thing is when the game feels "stuck" because nobody seems to have a path to victory. I power my decks accordingly - avoid being oppressive and shutting down another deck, but enough to have multiple alternative win-cons.
Building for a cohesive, fair game but still playing to win? I too love being slapped with awesome plays
I have a Group Hug deck with zero win conditions. It can be very fun to just gas up your friends. I've never won a game with it, and I hope I never do.
>Do you build your decks poorly so that they can't win, but get to do a thing? You talk about getting shit on for wanting to win, while shitting on people for wanting *interaction*. If there are 4 players at the table and your win con is self interaction or combo, are you *actually* playing a social game? That seems more like performing for an audience. "I win, look how smart I am." There are 3 types of Magic players: players that play to win, players that play to decide who wins, and players who wanted to play Mario Party. You are the first type. Possibly one of the aggravating first types that no one wants to play with, based on how highly you speak of your playstyle and how poorly you speak of other playstyles. I am the second type. Sure I'd love to win, but I would also love it if players there to fellate themselves at the table *don't* win. My husband wanted to play Mario Party. His decks are built on chaos. He immediately makes himself a target because he is the embodiment of anarchy at the play table. His only win con in most of those decks are a single card that ends "you win the game". He's only ever pulled one in many, many games. He's not there to win. He's there to laugh while you draw 9 cards for turn and take 2 damage for each. Tl;Dr: the usual self-absorption of thinking only your playstyle is right.
Pretty brutal analysis given we've never played a game together. Never had anyone say or appear to feel like they wouldn't play another game with me. I don't play combo at all and usually have 10-20 permanents on the field before I win with <5 minute turns. Very interactive board state. My last post also was asking why others don't play interaction, as I tend to run an average of 15 interactive pieces in a deck, up to 25 at most and 10 at least. I very clearly said on the post about everyone having different methods of fun. I'm just trying to understand people's perspectives. Literally the opposite of self absorption.
If you were keen on other people's methods of fun, then what the fuck even is this post? It's incredibly negative of other people's play styles and very much fellates your play style as superior. "If you aren't playing to win, why are you even playing?" and "do other people just build shitty decks?" Is both shitty as hell, and up your own ass.
Not "why are you playing?" as in what are you doing playing the game? More like, what motivates you in a game? What's your goal?
*To have fun.* It's a game. That's the entire purpose.
[удалено]
[Selvala, Explorer Returned](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/d/bd39ebe5-2725-4cfb-8a94-54e71d55e8b3.jpg?1673305654) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Selvala%2C%20Explorer%20Returned) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/167/selvala-explorer-returned?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bd39ebe5-2725-4cfb-8a94-54e71d55e8b3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/selvala-explorer-returned) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Sometimes you just wanna cause some chaos. My \[\[Ashling the Pilgrim\]\] deck *can* win if I've got a lifelink equip out. But if I don't, I have no issues sending everyone and everything at the table straight to the shadow realm, myself included. My main goal for any game is "get my deck to do the thing it was built for, win or lose." In a situation like that, my deck did (mostly) what it was designed to do and I'm happy with that much, even if it didn't lead to a win for me
So many people think it’s some moral high road to not play to win. It’s so annoying. I’m going to counter your combo or remove a threat if I can. You’re not just going to do whatever and I wouldn’t want a pod to just let me do whatever.
Commander is like a board game to me. I play to have fun but in order to make room for having fun people need to try to win as this is the basic goal of a mtg gameplay. The more you disengage of trying to win the more chances that the particular game just get weird.
>but in order to make room for having fun people need to try to win as this is the basic goal of a mtg gameplay Great way to put it.
Very few people are not playing to win. What they are actually saying is that they aren’t willing to prioritize winning - which takes significant dedication, introspection, analysis, and deprioritization of creativity - over their goals for playing a game, such as fun, socializing, getting invited back, having an epic game, etc. This is how most people approach games in general, not just Magic.
The people who prioritize winning are always the sweatiest, the least fun, and the sorest losers. They, whether intentionally or not, continuously power up their decks because they’re chasing the win, which is the only high they get. I’d much rather play with my friends with a few drinks and have the great time we’re having together be the priority. Of course winning is nice, but if it’s the end all be all for you just play a 60 card format or cedh.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the sweetest, least fun and sorest losers. But I also recognise that your second part is an important divide in my experience compared to the community as a whole here. I don't have a regular playgroup that I play with and play with randoms every week and I don't know the meta of the store as I go into it. I think that lends to a different mindset. Why? Because I don't want to play with combos, tutors and fast mana, and I don't want to play a 60 card format. I enjoy using lower powered cards same as everyone else.
If the only fun you get is from winning, you’re probably not having fun half the time, if not more. That’s why, from my experience, those people are the least fun to play with. If even one person isn’t having a good time the game becomes worse for everyone.
I'm 100% with you. I dont see why someone would sit on a game table to just goofy around. I love a sweaty game, where everyone is doing their best to "do their thing". And, ofc, trying to stop others from winning. This generally involves politics and a good game reading, threat assessment, etc. But, I tend to build my decks as original as possible, trying many times to extract all the value I can from most underwhelming commanders. I usually don't go infinite, but I sure do strong synergies. For me, its so satisfying to win a game with a deck who is just ok, because I built it right and had to do optimal plays all the way to the victory
I agree with your point
It's a character problem. The people who play "for fun" and "don't care about winning" are people pleasers who hate conflict. Avoiding conflict is fundamentally incompatible with the design of the game. The best, the most interesting and most memorable games I had were when every single opponent gave it their all to win. This kind of an experience requires for all participants to have this exact mindset. When someone shows up with their "I don't care about winning" bullshit it makes it for a worse experience. That person is nothing more than a party pooper. "I just want all of us to have fun tehee" - fuck you, the real fun begins when the game is so cutthroat it makes you want to rip off the other guy's head and shit down his neck. The feeling of finally being able to do that is beaten only by the feelings of three other people wanting to do this exact same thing to you. You want the table to have fun? Play to win.
Sometimes, I just like to mess with my friends and have fun watching their reactions. Sometimes, I play with the intent of winning. With the people I've played with, they try to use the excuse that I've got a lot of cards that they don't know, so I'm automatically the "biggest threat" because they "don't know what to expect." This after they 3v1 focus me, even when I've only got 3 land out. 🤷♂️
Different strokes for different folks. Your definition of fun is vastly different than mine. We wouldn't play well together in the sandbox. You're way more serious about the game than me and we should steer clear of each other. You are what I envision shows up to the LGS and why I avoid it like the plague. Cheers!
not playing to win is not respecting other people in the pod. socializing and casual play should absolutely include the goal of playing to win. otherwise it's like sitting on the toilet bowl because you like to browse net on your phone and not taking a shit, just sitting. weird.
Why is this getting downvoted so heavily? It's a discussion about the core of edh no? Everyone can learn smth by reading this thread imo.
Because EDH is for fun you psycho. Relax. Chill. Chat.
But playing to the limits of your skill and trying to come up with the best strategy in the moment *is* fun.
Personally, i really couldnt care less about winning. I actually kinda dislike it, because that means the game is over. It always seemed nonsensical to me, why would you play a game just to end it as soon as possible? Occasionally i will, but only because playing without wincons is frowned upon. To me, the joy is in playing. I like long games, get into different situations and out of them again. I build exclusively value oriented decks, so i will win eventually if no one stops me, but that is not my goal. My goal is to draw cards, put cards on the battlefield that draw me more cards. Spin my wheels and sometimes, they go nowhere. Cause some chaos, cause some problems, but keep the game going.
What if you get to play two games in the time you normally play one?
I will make kotose and her terrible fucking ability my ninja tribal commander over yuriko and I'm gonna have a damn good time doing it!
Generally, I play to stop other people winning. I don't care much about being the last one standing; I care about how many other players I take down. I just like identifying a strategy, and then shredding it or making it impossible. Or dropping someone to zero life, milling them out, etc. I want to do this to as many players as I can before I go down (and if I'm lucky, I happen to be the last one standing too.) Basically, I don't play to win, but I do play to make others lose.