What makes a card or archetype "toxic"?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Oct. 30, 2024, 6:24 p.m. by TypicalTimmy
Genuine question.
I feel as though something being labeled as "toxic" may be more subjective than objective. An opponent may consider a mill deck toxic, but would happily play it themselves. Someone may consider a certain style of control as toxic, yet enjoy combo decks that take 10 minutes to do absolutely nothing because they didn't find their pieces.
So I'm curious as to what the community actually considers to be "toxic"?
I think that a toxic deck is anything that generally makes their deck unable to do anything their deck likes to do. So a Maha, Its Feathers Night or a Toxrill, the Corrosive deck might be toxic to a creature reliant stompy deck, but not to a spellslinger deck. Even my Beamtown Bullies deck thinks every deck that plays Leyline of the void is toxic. However, I believe that there are some cards that are generally toxic to all decks, such as grand arbiter Augustin 4, or Nekusar, the Mindrazer.
October 30, 2024 7:19 p.m.
legendofa Tibalt's Trickery is a card that most fits your description, even being banned in multiple formats for being unfun to play against. Either you got emrakul out turn two or you got counterspelled and lost. In my opinion, four horseman is a pretty cool deck.
October 30, 2024 7:23 p.m.
Most of these toxic things I think can be fun challenge to play against sometimes, but you have to check with your table about it. I personally have a GAAIV deck to go up against combo decks, but I check make sure people are okay with it, and I make sure to have a way to win the game quickly and not just stall it out. The other example I like to use is a friend runs Decree of Silence & Solemnity combo. It created a fun deck building challenge for me to figure out what could I run to stop that, and then I added the channel lands and Void Rend in my main deck I play against that friend. Some of these games have been more memorable to me, so I try to remain open to playing against them.
Long story short, be open about playing something potentially toxic, and keep an open mind/use it as a learning when playing against it.
October 30, 2024 10:45 p.m.
In commander, stealing opponents' commanders often creates toxicity, especially if they lack ways to get it back. Removing a commander is like creating an open wound... but removing it by stealing it, so they can't cast it again, that's dumping a bucket of salt into their wound, especially if their deck really needs their commander to function well.
Other than that, as was already said above, toxic cards/decks/strategies can all be dumped into the "not fun" category. But I would add that every playgroup is different, with vastly different thresholds for salt-inducing game play. My pod is generally fine with crazy stax decks, combos, land destruction, whatever... there might be a few moans, especially the later it gets, but no one really gets bent out of shape (aside from one guy, and he only shows up half the time anyway).
But I think (almost) everyone in my pod realizes that being a good magic player requires not getting bent out of shape from playing the game against annoying cards/strategies... you gotta be flexible enough to handle different wincons and strategies, no matter how annoying they might be.
But the game unquestionably has its fair share of complainers, and honestly, they'll find anything to complain about. They're almost as toxic for magic as the toxic cards they complain about.
October 31, 2024 5:17 a.m.
In my eyes every TCG has a "fundamental spirit of the game/way its intended to be played" I would label a toxic deck as a deck design or strategy that invalidates this.
In magic typically victory is achieved by reducing your opponents life to zero and attacking with creatures and supplanting this idea with various offensive and defensive spells.
I think decks that have the soul purpose of not letting your opponents play the game are toxic... like cheating out Blood Moon or Day's Undoing + Narset, Parter of Veils ...I also think solitaire all in combo decks that dont care about the opponent and just try to combo off and win asap are toxic.
October 31, 2024 11:25 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #8
EDHREC has the salt score, because people become salty when they play against the cards.
I think the nomer Toxic does stem from the modern discussion about toxic people and toxic relationships.
In science, a toxic substance is biologically harmful. Nowadays it's become acceptable to call something toxic if it's mentally harmful as well. But the word is losing it's meaning quickly, in the modern vocabulary, toxic just means that you don't like it. So a toxic card or archetype is a piece of MTG that most people dislike to play against.
October 31, 2024 12:52 p.m.
Icbrgr I like what you said but am curious about when you say cheating out Blood Moon. Do you consider casting a Blood Moon turn 3 toxic too, or even turn 2 if you played a dork turn 1? I am mainly curious because I find that Blood Moon is one of the more reasonable stax pieces to play. The reason being is the lower power level decks usually aren't as affected as they run more basics, and higher power decks have more non basics, so Blood Moon scales based on power level
October 31, 2024 2:51 p.m.
Gemstone Caverns/Simian Spirit Guide/Desperate Ritual/Chancellor of the Tangle/Mox Opal there have been a lot of free win via Blood Moon decks over the years in various ban lists and formats and mulligan rules to pull off putting out the moon on turn 1.
Truthfully even fairly casting Blood Moon on turn 3 and the opponent just not having an answer or able to play afterwards just feels bad in general when I go to my local game store and it's just a non game I feel bad playing moon.... but its certainly a necessary evil to police the game in the same way Chalice of the Void does.
October 31, 2024 3:18 p.m. Edited.
I'm pretty okay with almost anything in 60 card because the games are pretty fast and you can grab another deck and switch it up to play with most anything. In commander though, where games go a long time, and people often only have one deck, it can feel a lot different.
Honestly, I like to play a lot of removal and interaction, and I almost never feel like I'm doing nothing, and that helps keep me from feeling that things are toxic in game. There are things in newer card design that I really don't like, with power levels and how newer cards interact on the board, how commanders come with they're own defensive abilities, that kind of stuff, but when I'm playing it's like I always have a choice in what to deal with. Not saying I win a lot, but it's at least fun.
I guess for me what makes a card toxic is dodging interaction and also having a top tier effect. Stuff like The One Ring or Voja having ward, where it was already a good card and they gave it an extra spoonful of protection on top. It feels pushed in the worst way to me, because the thing with powerful cards in commander has always been, well I can swords it or something, but your best 10 cards all dodge removal, it feels less like a game and more like watching a deck simulator.
October 31, 2024 5:09 p.m.
Depends on strategy, so it ends up being subjective. I purposefully make a large amount of "midrange" - "midgame" decks that are pretty adaptable & I like playing a slug/death by 1,000 cuts style (cards making a gameclock). As such, the whole "what's your wincon?" question has that unconventional answer of: "almost 50% of my deck is a wincon" - but this is due to life & resource drain. So, one of my boogeyman is combo-centric pieces. Where I build a lot for some back-&-forth fencing, those "oops all combos" decks do the opposite. It drives me nuts when we have >3 people in a hotly contested game that is moving along well & then some zero-panache combo just drops down seemingly from someone playing a different game & I wonder why I wasted my time.
So, where other people see combos as fair game, from my point of view, with my prevailing strategy, I will typically view them as toxic. They are significantly less "toxic" to me if each combo piece stands well on its' own 2 legs within the deck without another piece (so if the combo pieces have amazing deck synergy on their own).
November 1, 2024 12:01 p.m.
Players show up at the table after a long week to cut loose with their decks. Toxic is decks that shut down other decks before they can do what they want to do. People enjoy toxic decks because in most games the toxic deck gets to do what it wants to do which is why its enjoyable to the pilot and not if that same player happens to be the opponent.
November 1, 2024 12:13 p.m.
That also raises an interesting point as well: the meta at-large can influence the idea of "toxicity". So, if the prevailing deck strategy of the time is "control wins" - as it was for quite a time. Well, therefore, a majority of anyone sitting across from you are playing the hard control route, then you are constantly strategically "swimming against the tide" with trying to play a damage-clock game someone is eventually going to Approach or pillow-win or something even if your deck stacks up well against that playstyle, it usually won't stack up well against 3 other decks trying to accomplish the same thing for themselves.
However, if you have someone else playing a similar strategy at your table, suddenly the strategy balance shifts so that you will not be the odd-man out standing in 75% of your opponent's way... This meta diversity balance to me, shifts how toxic a given card will be. I've played games where somehow everyone was just playing midrange pain & basically a player put "tithe" & "rhystic" out, but because we were playing pain-grind that player was out 2 cards with no benefit forever (usually it should have been a somewhat "toxic" opening hand, but the unusual meta composition had nullified the toxicity)
Fortunately, the game has branched out quite a bit these days in regards to viable archetypes, so I see less 2x Oloro, 1x Narset games than I used to.
November 1, 2024 12:18 p.m.
I like to build some fairly toxic Commander decks, though I try to warn people if a deck dips too deeply into any of the elements I've noticed that cause toxicity. In Commander most people consider decks that take away player agency to be toxic, so that includes;
-excessive permanent removal (clearing each opponent's board repeatedly, or Obliterate/Jokulhaups)
-things that limit what you can do (like Rule of Law or Collector Ouphe)
-excessively pushed Commanders in Casual (stuff where they throw Ward on for no reason, most of these are also the payoff and enabler in one card)
-Chaos effects that turn the game on it's head (Thieves' Auction and Grip of Chaos for example)
-stuff that prevents untapping (Static Orb
and Winter Orb)
-stealing everything strategies (flickering Agent of Treachery infinitely, Insurrection late game)
-excessive discard (multiple Necrogen Mists and Bottomless Pit effects)
-'win on the spot' effects that don't have an upkeep trigger (there is a few of these on the banlist, like Biorhythm and Coalition Victory)
-counter everything strategies (Dovescape)
-overly efficient tutoring (Zur the Enchanter *f-etch* fetching out Necropotence, and people are weirdly salty about Vampiric Tutor)
-faster elimination strategies that encourage you to target a specific opponent (think anything Infect, and lower to the ground Voltron decks)
-I think the last one I can think of is optional tax effects that encourage people to screw their pod and play into the Rhystic Study, if the tax is just a tax, like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben people tend not to mind as much, it's the ability to king make if you're dumb.
In 1v1 I don't think it really matters, unless you only have 1 deck to play kitchen table with just changing decks should generate enough novelty to avoid the build up of bad feelings, and if you're playing competitively it's your call if you want to play nightmarish stuff like Nadu, or something traditionally 'fun' like Aggro... only if everyone plays decks that aren't fun, more people will quit, so it's a 'tragedy of the commons' scenario too if you have a fairly small meta each player needs 'fun to play against' decks, even for 1v1.
November 1, 2024 3:10 p.m.
Does Oubliette fall under the same category as commander theft?
November 1, 2024 8:30 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #17
I once had a friend tell me “you really like to play with all your cards,” after Nekusar wheeled a few times.
I think giving people access to all their cards in a 100 card deck is doing the table a service. It’s not my fault they’re taking damage…and don’t have ways to get their cards back…
That being said, I do appreciate that many players don’t like to be disrupted, and use the phrase “toxic,” to mean “you’re not having the same kind of fun as me,” but rule 0 is a thing.
Talk to your play group, and don’t play with whiners.
legendofa says... #2
I would say a toxic deck promotes a broadly unenjoyable or unsatisfying experience. "Not fun" is key.
The classic example is a Stax, prison, or other hard control deck with no win condition. It prevents the game from advancing, but also prevents the game from ending. Everyone's just trapped in stasis, not able to do anything meaningful or worthwhile. I don't usually hear people talking about aggro or combo as "toxic" unless it's especially overpowered, boring, or frustrating, and those usually get bans one way or another (Nadu, Four Horsemen, Mirrodin-era Ravager).
Toxicity is definitely subjective on a personal level. I have fun using and (occasionally) facing discard decks, and I like to think I'm reasonably skilled with them. There are people who want every discard effect to be banned everywhere. But on a community level, toxic decks take away from the fun of the competition, rather than add to it. Basically, if you leave a match thinking "I never want to do that again", it's subjectively toxic. If everyone has that thought at the end of a match, it's an objectively toxic deck.
This is different from toxic people, of course. Toxic people can use nontoxic decks and still make everyone miserable, and nontoxic people can use toxic decks and still be invited back.
October 30, 2024 6:52 p.m.