miracleHat

I am a big fan of #7.

Point #5 is basically asking for #6 to be used against you, especially in a casual setting when your opponent's aren't worried about any of their new allies instantly winning the game.

I guess people just have to find a balance between being a threat and being THE threat.

Hmmm... I have a minor nitpick with #5. If you're not under any real pressure and you're not able to reliably establish a winning position, there's nothing wrong with playing conservatively and amassing the resources required to make plays. Failing to adequately assess your position can lead people to overextend. Not to mention that having the best possible board state will often draw lots of hate from other players.

Otherwise I enjoyed reading this despite it all being known to me beforehand. Thanks mate.

Great article. I would like to politely disagree with statement #9. If you ramp too hard, for example:

Turn 1: Land, Exploration, Land, Sol Ring

Turn 2: Land, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Land, Land, Land, Kodama's Reach

Turn 3: Hydra Omnivore

You're gonna get killed doing this. I find that if you ramp too hard, the other players will team and kill you. I'm aware that this exact scenario isn't possible because it involves 11 cards, but still. Ramping too hard will get you killed almost immediately. Unless you're playing a color that doesn't ramp (cough cough blue cough cough), then you're gonna be the target.

I'm a huge fan of the incremental damage, in particular where the source doesn't care who are, what you have, and what your deck wants to do. I'd rather have a deck that took its time and made it darn near impossible to keep stuff on the board, than have an amazing competitive general. I personally have found that small incremental stuff is something most people don't mind dealing with early on, and makes your early inroads on their life totals something they are willing to put up with, because it doesn't affect their game plan too badly. Barring that, I'd rather screw with their game plans completely, preventing all capacity for them to make their plans work out as they want. Whether that be my commander deck that forces everybody to discard, prevents lifegain, and then penalizes people for not having answers, the deck that casts Warp World four times in one turn, or the deck that somehow never runs out of creatures to sac to force everyone else to sac what few creatures they have left, there's always a sideways strategy that people will not always see coming.

@Drakon562:
turn 1 Forest Boreal Druid
turn 2 Forest Azusa, Lost but Seeking Forest (2x)
turn 3 Forest (2x) Tooth and Nail -> xenagod + Blightsteel Colossus

Is that hard and fast enough ramp enough for you? It does require you to go sending and somebody casting Words of Wisdom...

Thanks for all of the other comments! Did I not mention that some of these points are contradictory?

This is rarely a problem in my meta; several of our blue-players (myself included) leave enough mana open for a counterspell, and play to protect the entire table long enough to make early-game allies. The first to swing hard is likely to find themselves flopping in the wind, so no one swings hard unless they think they can win outright. That's just my group, though.

That said, I value reading the table above all other skills in EDH. In many cases it's more important to read the table and play your deck correctly than it is to have brought a badass deck (which will tempt you to swing prematurely and promptly get your head chopped off.)

The way I survive the first three turns is to read the commanders and make an educated guess on what kinds of decks I'm playing against. Knowing your opponent's personally helps a lot, too; you learn how they think when deckbuilding. From here, I make a gameplan. Who is likely to aggro early? Who's commander is rock, who is paper, and who is scissors?

Then the real trick; pick the player who is most likely to swing at me early and play specifically to convince that one player to not swing early at me. Usually, that's enough to prevent anyone from swinging at me. Not always, though.

Well, I have to agree completely with #2...

In my playgroup, since there are usually 10 people playing commander, we split the table into two, then after the first game, we have a winner's table and a loser's table.

I pilot my grouphug deck, which currently has no wincons of its own, but since I'm being the fun player letting everyone else play, and getting a big laugh out of how absurd the game plays out (seriously, drop a T2 Tempting Wurm, game goes late on turn 3, it's amazing how much fun we can have when I use my grouphug deck), I'm always the last one to leave the game.

When I get to the winner's table, I just switch to my mean Zada, Hedron Grinder or Daxos of Meletis voltron and wreck face before they realize I'm not being the nice guy anymore.

My edh just board wipes so I'm usually sitting there waiting on people to do things

Perhaps you've noticed, but for some reason the Bloodfire Kavu, links to Bloodfire Colossus instead.

GobboE

I was so cunfused that he mentioned an eight mana card in "Play early creatures"... Thanks for clearing that out.

You are welcome...but I can't get the link right either :)

I like the "incremental card advantage play". That's really fun and powerful. And the best thing is: doesn't draw hate from the other players. Usually, they don't realize what is happening. That's how my Roon deck plays in the early game. I keep playing Coiling Oracle, than I play Wood Elves, than Solemn Simulacrum, than Wall of Omens + Evolutionary Leap... in turn 8, people realize that all of them have 7~8 lands in play, 3~4 cards in hand and 2 creatures each, and I have 12 lands in play, 7~8 cards in hand and 6 silly creatures. In that point I start to play powerful cards, but because of the advantage I kept going on, they have a hard time holding me back.

7 is really bad advice.

constantly rebooting the game so you can catch up to everyone else is a good way to not have a playgroup, since people do not want to wait it out until you run out of board wipes because you are clearly behind.

Wrath should be used strategically, either to setup a big play or as part of a real strategy similar to mass land destruction.

I don't mind having my creatures destroyed, i mind having them destroyed so that someone can durdle a bit more and still not win, stretching a 2 hour game into a 4 hour game.

this used to happen nearly every game in my playgroup until Jolrael, Empress of Beasts became a recurring thing, changing wrath spells into a one way armageddon.

for my decks i tend to run enough durable creatures (Indestructible) now that someone playing a wrath tends to benefit me a bit more than others, while staying below the Jolrael, empress of beasts radar.

I'd change #7 to:

Pick a 2nd+ tier general. Most players will focus on the more clearly aggressive/effective threats at the table and see you as less of a threat. This causes a natural balance in the game since unless you are breaking Wheaton's law, you probably are not going all Aggro on the Stonebrow, Krosan Hero player.

There are a few conflicting messages. For example, #2 is impossible while #7 is being followed (nobody likes people that repeatedly destroy all of their stuff). Same for #6 and #5, and to a lesser extent #5 and #4.

ae0n5105: Surviving early game and dragging out a long game are 2 different things.

Dude. If board wipes are the only thing slowing down your games...EDH games are just long slogs anyway.

1empyrean: To make sure you have an early game wrath (say by turn 4) you are going to want some redundancy in the form of other wrath effects or tutors to dig the wrath you need. because of this you are probably going to hit a few in the late game as well. yes surviving early game is different than slowing down late game, but if you happen to draw a turn 9 wrath and have no board presence then guess what? you use the wrath and durdle a bit more.

Whenever you say durdle I automatically imagine these players at your table lightly touching their penises under the table after they clear the table of creatures.

Am I the only one?

Anyway. I never care how long games go on, as long as someone isn't locking down a game with stasis or grindy stuff like storm cauldron then I just enjoy the moment.

Don't worry theemptyquiver, you aren't the only one.

Oh, and OI, miracleHat! Don't contradict yourself (!!), but I did enjoy reading this...

I enjoyed reading this and all of them. I am pretty much brand new to EDH. I have been playing for maybe a month and have about. 6-7 games under my belt, so this has helped me greatly. Granted some of it is common sense. My biggest problem is I can not find a deck I want to focus on. Stuck between Nekusar, ezuri (The Claw), and Karador

I definitley agree on "being a fun player". I'll always remember the time I was in a group of seven and I ramped up to a turn four Sire Of Insanity. I was not very popular after that...

Top deck fun.

ConnorMo, I'll always remember the time that I Increasing Vengeanced a Whims of the Fates with Bearer of the Heavens on the battlefield, around turn eight, or some such. End result? Everything on the board was sacrificed, game restarted. I then killed myself to someone else's trigger later casting Time Reversal, resetting the decks for them, and bidding adieu. The one guy at the table was just staring at me going, "WTF is his deck even doing?" Oddly, I was popular after that game.

I once made a universal pillowfort deck in esper the commander doesn't matter because I never used it. It was made with a very aggressive meta in mind I played it in a less aggro meta and the game went on for 4 hours. So be careful of pillowfort it can piss people off and make you the target of all the hate.

@ae0n5105 gotta disagree with you there. If you don't have the biggest threats and can't play them, you should always wipe. Your playgroup don't like wipes? Tell em to fuck off.

I will always remember the time where I vanilla-cast the Deceiver Exarch + Splinter Twin combo on Turn 4. After one opponent saw me reveal the Exarch a turn earlier he said and I quote, "You don't have the Splinter Twin." Let's just say there are never enough boardwipes at my playtable.

I enjoyed the read; it reminded me of when my playgroup was far more casual and one could play politics a bit more (because there were more to play).

Now, however, with both a Nekusar and Purphoros deck in our midst, everyone's life totals are in danger very early on, my deck combos out between turns 7-11 quite consistently, one deck draws its whole library out with Glimpse of Nature and we have either a Daretti Stax deck or a Yisan, the Wanderer Bard that combos out on T4. I have to say that very little of this is really applicable in that type of play group excepting the ramp hard concepts and leaving mana open (particularly if you're on blue). Ramp allows you to combo out before the rest of the group, and holding mana up does cause more tentative play, no matter the group.

Don't play a sliver deck. No one likes my sliver deck unless I lend it to someone.