I Don't Understand Commander

[Thomas David Baker]

OK, so there's a lot of Commander at TGC these days and my decks are in the US.
So I'm putting something together to play.
But every deck I try leads me to these problems:

1. If I put in all the best cards in my Commander's colors my deck will have almost no identity whatsoever.
2. If I pick a good general and play synergetic cards my deck will be completely known when I sit down.
3. If I play suboptimal cards everyone else will play Sol Ring and Mana Crypt and Coalition Relic and the best cards in their general's colors and I will just be sitting there with a weak deck doing not very much.

Given all that do you think I should make:

A. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, infinite sac with Blasting Station, Triskelion, Persist creatures, sweepers and comes into play dudes.
B. UR Random. Chance Encounter, Krark's Thumb, Scrambleverse, Confusion in the ranks many other stupid cards. Very very few Commander staples. Possibly hilarious, possibly annoying. Definitely bad.
C. Teneb, the Harvester based around setting up a Life from the Loam engine and maybe Astral Slide.

Or something else?

Some questions for experienced Commanderers:

i. How many answers do I need like Oblivion Ring, Putrefy, Mortify, etc. Will I just not have any fun if I don't have these things and try and stay away from the staples?
ii. How may sweepers do I need?
iii. Any advice on manabase? How many sources of a color do I need, etc.? Any rules of thumb?

[Simon Baldwin]

I think I saw someone do that on MTGO once... Vanilla commander, played only lands (and his commander) and threatends to wrath the table when anyone attacked him. Never played an actual spell...

Kieran Symington said:

Eventually, everyone ends up playing either super-powerful decks or 99 basic land.

[Ben Titmarsh]

Tom in answer to your question, you would reanimate Jin-Gitaxis.  To me, the spirit of EDH is about somewhat limiting yourself in deck building (e.g. don't build in infinite storm combo), but when it comes to playing out the games you should play to win!  Multiplayer Politics as Kieran describes is always something to consider, but in my view you shouldn't be afraid to make the "best" moves.

[Dan Barrett]

I think already this thread has shown that the format is very different things to different people, hence it is the cause of so much conflict. 

[Thomas David Baker]

I'm interested in opinions on Sheldon Menery's points for Commander.

It makes things other than killing opponents very important.  That might make spikey deck design more interesting without making the game unfun for people with "casual" decks?

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/commander/23603_Armada_League_Po...

In fact you get as many points for saving another player or for dying first than you do from killing another player.

But it seems like a lot of bookkeeping/remembering.

(When we tried to do this for our didn't-really-happen TGC EDH league everyone ignored it.)

[Dan Barrett]

I think assigning points is a terrible idea, as no one is going to agree on them, and they get in the way of actually playing the game.

And if you can't be trusted to enjoy a game with friends without a complex system of points to make sure you are doing the right sorts of things, then you're probably in trouble.

[Thomas David Baker]

OK, OK, last time.  I ran the chaos deck out there one more time.

Two ragequits out of three opponents which means the number of ragequits now averages higher than the number of games played.  (This time once in response to Confusion in the Ranks doing its thing for the first time, another with Risky Move on the stack from the player with Sun Titan in play.)

I guess it is time the deck is permanently retired.

[Philip Dickinson]

since the world is obvious eagerly awaiting my opinions on the matter:

edh players love to complain about people playing "unfun" combo decks, but also love opening turn 1 sol ring, divining top, go. the whole "its a nice casual format, anyone can build a deck!" shit really irritates me because it's totally false; you will lose horrendously if you don't have a sick deck. i don't even think the "multiplayer" angle works in its favour at all - sitting about even though you're only waiting to play a land, bash, and pass while some dude down the other end of the table is fucking around with some dumb karmic guide loop is the height of tedium.

i could prattle on for a while about why i have zero appreciation of edh but you've all probably heard the kinds of things i'd bring up before. if i still had the means to play the occasional bout of casual "fun" magic i would just build a good t4 stack or BGD-style shared deck (both probably cheaper than a good edh deck) 100% of the time over building for edh again

[Thomas David Baker]

For once Philip I agree with you.  I guess that is destined to happen if I feel negatively about a thing related to Magic :)

So the question is, what would make a good replacement for pick up games?  I have loads of ideas (build-your-own-standard league?  sealed pool from the entire history of magic?) but I'm not sure any of them fill the niche of "game to play in between draft rounds or before the draft starts".  I wonder if we did a 100 card sealed pool randomly selected from the history of Magic with new cards for winning/playing/losing/weekly (not sure which of these is best) if people would want to play that.

[Kieran Symington]

Why not try Type 4? It seems like the perfect thing for when you don't have a lot of time since you can all play from the same stack without having to draft and you don't have the EDH problem of the first 7 turns being set-ups and the rest being full of decision paralysis. Plus you can play loads of massively ovecosted but amazing effects.

[Philip Dickinson]

heh tom i'm not negative about everything! _{just almost everything}

[Dan Barrett]

Phil, the technical term for that is "durdling"

[Philip Dickinson]

why can't everyone just play vintage? objectively the best format. that is what people should use for pick-up games between rounds :)