Strange Ideas eh?

That's a bad joke, and you should be ashamed for it. ;)

Question: Besides the Slow Grow aspect, how did the actual format (scoring system) work for you? It's almost identitcal to the one used on Star City Games Youtube show Commander Vs. and I've been thinking of suggesting it to my playgroup as giving us some structure and would also maybe bring some friendly competition to the game (while de-incentivizing degerneracy)

The points system is solid, but not spectacular. You're right about it being pretty general, but that's the point. It is designed to not really limit players' options outside of the Asshole rule.

Overall, I think these are a terrible set of point rules, for a number of reasons. Specifically, I think these rules work to (a) "limit players' options" in deckbuilding by disproportionately favouring certain styles of plays, as well as (b) encouraging players to make decisions they would not normally make if they were just trying to play Magic.

I'll go through each rule I find problematic individually:

First player to deal combat damage: This disproportionately favours players who have inexpensive creatures; as well as is extremely luck-based. After all, if you go first, second, third, or fourth, and happen to have a hasty creature, you're going to have someone who has no blockers. The fourth player is at a huge disadvantage, as it is possible for a player

This rule also encourages decisions which would otherwise be a bad idea in a regular game. This is going to encourage players to drop early attackers/blockers, when they might otherwise be setting up their board with ramp or playing other cards.

Lethal Commander Damage: This serves to encourage a specific style of play--Voltron--and thus creates a relative disadvantage for other playstyles.

Casting Commander Multiple Times: This serves to encourage risky and otherwise silly uses of your commander for the sake of obtaining this point. Further, it disproportionately benefits commanders with low casting costs, as well as commanders in Green, where Ramp is more readily available.

Saving Another Player: This seems a bit nebulous and undefined, but I am sure it's a lot easier to detect in practice. Again, I'm not overly fond of a rule that benefits sub-optimal play.

Attacking a Player in Last Place: I presume this rule means "the player with the least health at the table?" If so, that's an extremely bad rule. Health, like anything else in Magic, is a resource. A player in Black could easily have the lowest health, but could have the strongest board/card advantage/etc. which they traded their life for. This rule gives them additional armour, and forces players to lose points in order to deal with the biggest threat at the table.

Killing multiple players at once: Contrary to your statement that the rules are :designed to not really limit players' options", it's pretty clear this rule was explicitly designed to limit one's ability to play combo or other explosive decks.

Not casting your commander: Again, this is a rule that encourages suboptimal play. Further, this rule again benefits players playing low-costed commanders. I also find it a bit amusing that Derevi, Empyrial Tactician can be played multiple times in a game, and still be penalized under a strict reading of this rule.

The one thing I like about this rule? So many other rules seek to punish combo players. It is nice that they have the option to swiftly combo off and vindictively make other players suffer as well.

No Infinite Combos: Again, this serves to limit deckbuilding.

Saying these rules are not designed to limit players' options is a falsehood--they either directly punish deckbuilding options, or relatively make other options vastly superior, making it rather silly to choose an inferior option.

I find this particularly unnecessary given the need to start with the same pool of decks, all of which are generally commensurate in power level.

cdkime: Having, you know, actually played with these rules, allow me to address with your concerns in order.

Dealing Combat Damage is, yes, a bonus for moving quickly, but in practice, it didn't really happen until turn 3 on average. I mean, on week four, I got it when I had a Scute Mob in my opening hand, but no one went out and aimed for this. It was a bonus of opportunity.

Lethal Commander Damage: Never happened. In 18 rounds, 3-4 tables each round, it never happened. Once again, it's a bonus, not a goal.

Casting Commander Multiple Times: This is a straight up Gimmick point that, from what I was told, was added because in a previous league, someone was desperate enough to pay for their Commander that many times, and was given an ad-hoc reward for their persistence which was later codified. It happened a couple times with some of the cheaper Commanders, but I never saw it at my table. Usually the game was over by the third casting.

Saving Another Player is definitely a social aspect. Are you keeping another player in the game? Have a point! And no, keeping a player in the game by not attacking their empty board with your horde of creatures didn't count. But casting Fog in response to when you as Player A is a bystander to when Player B tries to swamp Player C would count. It too is a point that was never handed out during the League.

Attacking Last Place: No, not life total. League Point Total. And it was only applied if that person was attacked first at the table. It encourages backing off from the player who is having a rough league in general. Or new players who are still learning the ropes of Commander and thus trend toward the bottom of the standings.

Killing Everyone at Once: This is a lesser version of the "Don't be an ass" rule that you had no problems with. It's meant to discourage players from waiting for one big blowout turn to show off how awesome their modified decks are. Now, it can be waived at the discretion of the table. The example cited was a player who once, seeing everyone stabilized, cast Earthquake for lethal on the entire board. That person didn't get penalized because they didn't win, they just ended the stalemate of a game.

Not Casting your Commander: Did your Commander enter the battlefield? No? Lose a point, sorry. Yes. I got hit with this a couple times over the League.

No Infinite Combos: You do know that Commander as a format defaults to Combo as the "proper" way to play the game, right? I did a whole article about this. You also know what ICs do? They stop the game as players take excessively long turns, or keep repeating turns. The player with the Saheeli deck got hit with this when he took a twenty minute turn because of all the moving parts in his deck. Because ICs are "I'm playing the Game, and You're Not" and it becomes a race to see who goes off first.

In motion, and practice, the points system is self-regulating, and can be adjusted on the fly by the consent of the table. It's not what you make it out to be.

I find some of your "never awarded" points rather surprising. I am curious, was this league mostly casual, non-spike players? I do not mean that question derisively, it just seems that there is a lot of room to abuse these rules, and purposefully design your deck so it might not win every pod, but it will still receive points as if it did.

To provide an example, my immediate thought upon reading these rules was to spend a considerable number of substitutions on Fog effects. After all, if you use three Fog effects in a single game, even if you are the pod's loser, you've still come out with the same number of points as the winner. With a little bit of effort, you can durdle around until you are in second place, netting you more points than the pod's winner. That does not seem all that healthy from a tournament stance.

With regards to combos, rules punishing combos are probably the most commonly proposed ones I see whenever someone on this site asks "how do I structure tournament points." Simply put, these rules are selfish and unfair--you're basically saying "you are not allowed to play the game the way you enjoy because I don't like the way you play. You either will play my way, or you can suffer."

If you want to make combos harder, you can implement a league-specific banlist. Things like Paradox Engine, which enable a good deal of combo decks, might be prohibited. This allows players to still build and play infinite combos if they enjoy them, while also slowing down the combo-player, giving other archetypes some options.

With regards to time, we have Rule 702 allowing shortcuts and Rule 104.3a allowing players to concede. By all means, punish players who either (a) unreasonably withhold the allowance of shortcuts after a combo has been demonstrated to work and (b) players who refuse to concede the game, despite the fact it is demonstrated the combo will end the game and no player has the ability to stop the combo.

Then you are at least punishing the players who are slowing down the game or making it last indefinitely, not the person who legitimately deserves the win (unless they're the one unreasonably withholding the shortcut).

Perhaps it is the attorney in me, but the number of times you implied "the rules were arbitrary and could change on the fly" was extremely concerning. Rules are an important part of the game, and if they change mid-game, that's going to mean players designed their decks with incomplete information, resulting in sub-optimal choices they might regret.

One could always change the league rules in the next iteration, but the rules should be sacrosanct from start to finish of any given tournament.

Which, brings me to the Asshole Rule, which I inadvertently left off on my first post. This is an arbitrary rule, that allows the tournament overseer far too much leeway in application. Without set guidelines, this provides the overseer to effectively punish whatever persons or playstyles they find distasteful, based upon personal whims.

The points are only awarded once a game. For example if you saved two people by playing Fog, even if you saved them both at the same time, you only get one point and don't get additional points for additional saves.

Reading your comments you seem to have missed the entire point of the scoring system, which is to foster a casual environment, welcome and introduce new players into the game and discourage spike/ competitive play.

carlmoores: from a pure textual reading of the rules, as written, saving another player would count multiple times per game. When reading rules, you have to look at the pure text of the rule, as well as how similar rules are written. In the present case, the rule does not say it only occurs once per game, whereas other rules in the same category specifically make a distinction as to how often the event can occur. On its face, the rules, as written in the post, clearly set forth that saving another player gives points each time the event occurs.

The primary issue I have is that these rules are, on their face “designed to . . . really limit players' options” by cutting out one of the three primary archetypes (combo, control, aggro).

You say this rule is designed to foster a casual environment or new players? Obviously that is the intent - but it is clearly not the neat way to do so, as it is far too broad a restriction.

There are plenty of janky, fun infinite combos that players might like to use in a casual setting - these rules punish casual infinite combos as much as they do cEDH combos.

Further, assuming new players are all aggro-focused, and do not want to play combo is incredibly misguided. Contrary to helping new players, these rules are saying “the playstyle you are interested in trying is not welcome here.”

Far from not understanding the purpose of the rules, I have already suggested a vastly superior method of maintaining a casual environment, without alienating an entire playstyle. This is why banlists exist - to ensure all players can play the way they want to, in a fair setting.