I'm playing my Kemba deck, which compared to some of my other decks is incredibly underpowered. My friend Nick is playing his Niv-Mizzet deck and he's sitting to my left. The other player, Dan, is playing my friend's Olivia deck. I get a turn 1 Sol ring and drop a Greaves. Nick is mana-screwed, but he still manages to play some things. Eventually, Olivia begins stealing some of my creatures and I fail to draw into mass removal. Finally, I draw into a Trailblazer's Boots, check to see if the Olivia guy is tapped out, which he is. I play a little creature, throw the Greaves on him, equip the boots to Sun Titan, throw Inquisitor's Flail on him, the re-equip the Greaves. I proceed to hit the Olivia guy for 12, recur a fetch land, and hope to shuffle into something good.

I pass the turn and Nick begins to scan the field. He then destroys my Greaves, leaving the Titan open for the Olivia player to steal. I look at Nick and say, "are you serious right now? He's going to steal the Titan and kill me, then kill you." He said, "I can't take care of you right now, but I think I can handle him..." I look at the board, laugh and scoop. I say, "have fun taking care of him." He couldn't and gets beat down with a huge army of creatures.

My question to him was, "what is the difference between me having one creature and him having five?"

They began to say, "it's just a game, someone has to lose." I said, "I am not mad because I lost, I am mad because you handed the guy a golden ticket to win. I'll remember that for next time."

He invited me to come play some EDH tonight. I am taking my douchiest decks.
That'll teach him!

I'm constantly besieged by the other players in my group as I play my strategy wide-open. Everyone knows what I'm doing and what each of my decks has in store for them - usually not that much. While other "spike" players and pseudo-competitive players sit back and redirect all the hate my way.

I can litteraly sit in a game with Lady Evangela, and DO nothing but play lands, remove the occasional dick card (vorinclex) or combo piece from the game, but otherwise be perfectly content to have a nice, long, entertaining game. But because I play Black/White/Blue, everyone and their mother thinks I'm trying to combo out or super-lock the board.


I'm the bad player for not just saying "ok, fine" and making it a combo deck. Just so I have a chance of surviving past turn 7.

My bro is the perfect example of a bad player. If he wins he gloats about it for hours on end if not days. If he loses its a rage quit where the world hates on him and whatever else. He'll direct all his resources at you claiming your the biggest threat (fair enough). But in the following game he will direct all his attention at the same guy, even if he has the weakest board position. Claiming "he's open", when the guy on the other side of the table is now clearly the biggest threat.

He draws games out longer than necessary. If he has the biggest board position and your sitting there waiting for the inevitable end. he goes into topdeck mode and waits to draw an even more gruelling defeat. If your sitting there facing 400+ indestructible 7/7 elves the last thing you want is for the guy controlling them to wait for an overwhelming stampede. then as he draws it he laughs manically about it. However if the players scoop before such an event we are the sore losers and he gets the hump and starts moaning that we all suck.

No it won't, it'll give him a free opportunity to justify what he did. "See, Boggsman? I had to take you out! I mean, I might've lost to Olivia that time, but we can't let you get off the ground when you play dumb business like that."

I did one better. I played against him with one of my most underpowered decks, one I recently built: Thromak. We were entering turn 4, and my deck was running a bit slow. I ramped a little bit and had a few small creatures out. The five-color player drops a Wild Evocation. I comes to my turn and drops out my Vicious Shadows. My playgroup isn't familiar with the power of that card and to have it out that early was pretty awesome. It gets back around to me and my Gruul Ragebeast drops from the Wild Evocation. I kill a random creature a hit someone for 8, the number of cards in his hand. Everyone begins to freak out about the Vicious Shadows but everyone's removal was wasted on stupid things early game. Again, it comes around to me and the Evocation drops Verdant Force. I hardcast Gratuitous Violence and Trailblazer's Boots, equip the Ragebeast and swing into someone for 12. I pass the turn, put out a saproling, which deals 2 damage now from the Violence being out. Lucky enough for me, one of my opponents had an array of small creatures out for me to ping. I begin killing his creatures on everyone's upkeep, and dishing out some damage with the Shadows.

It gets around to me, I kill a player with a Shadows trigger, kill another with the Ragebeast, then I cast Thromak, consume my field, and kill the third player with the Shadows.

Everyone looks at the guy who played Wild Evocation like it was all his fault, taking the blame off my deck

I have a new, issue with players who can't win a game without blowing up all the lands (usually involving some sort of combination of Living Plane/Avacyn/Boros Charm/etc... and a Wrath.)

If you're so awful at this format that you build entire decks around a strategy (Avacyn) and then need to blow up all the other players lands because they are answering your Avacyn (clones, path to exile, etc..) you're just a bad player. Get a new strategy. Same thing with players who build any deck that can't win after blowing up lands and sit there with 1-2 creatures trying to kill the other 2-3 players before they get land again.

This rage stems from a game this evening were I was so far entrenched into a 4-player game (vs. Ulamog, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Avacyn) with my Lady Fog, and by entrenched I mean that over the course of the last 10-15 turns I had carefully sculpted a very powerful land-centric board presence backed up by Sun Titan, Phantasmal Image (Sun Titan) Voyager's Staff and a variety of sac-to-activate artifacts and lands. And just about every Maze under the sun. And by some dumb, fricken luck I managed to flash in a Necrotic Sliver and blow up Living Plane in response to a Damnation (Scion player) only for Avacyn to flash Route up my ass and blow it all up anyway (with Avacyn in play.) Now arguably, that's a pretty good play for Avacyn. But the Scion player is one Living Plane caster, had no real win condition other then the black Praetor (spoiler - it dies in a turn or two.) And with 80% of my lands now in the graveyard, a Sol Ring and Darksteel Ingot and a few artifacts to my name. I wonder why I spent the last two some hours carefully playing that game?

Blow up all the lands? fail to win? Why bother to even do that? Avacyn's stuff is indestructible and your body language and choice of words pretty much assured me that your intention was to "kingmake" that player.


I'm finding it increasingly difficult to enjoy EDH as I encounter more players unwilling to change how they play in order to find new ways to win; or build decks. I see the same easy-mode buttons over and over again. And over and over again I'm the player that is just trying to smash the easy-mode button to pieces (over and over again.)
Omniscience, Eldrazi, Erueka, Avacyn, Vorinclex, Time Stretch, etc...

I've fought my way through a 1v3, with having just about everything possibly bad in Magic being thrown at me and my deck and I've managed to win out through sheer skill and identifying the real threats. But someone cheats in Omniscience turn 5; or Vorinclex or drops Avacyn and Cataclysm?

Rage inducing. And deep down inside, you know that the rest of their decks are going to do the same damn things.


It almost makes me want to be an awful player - like tossing Desolation Angel into Kaalia, dropping multiple extra counterspells into every blue deck I own. Adding Lattice/Forge/Disk to all my decks because, why not? Doesn't everyone else I play with try to easy-button a win?






/rage.

The players:
4-player FFA with Wort, the Raidmother, Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf (new guy), and Teysa, Orzhov Scion (me).

The table:
The Akroma player had gotten an early Luminarch Ascension out and levelled it up before anyone else could develop much of a board. No one have any fliers and his growing army of angels take huge chunks out of everyone's life totals. Seeing that he can take any one of us out on his next turn, I play a sweeper and sack what creatures I have to Spawning Pit.

The misplay:
Nath goes next, reveals the Naturalize he just drew, and casts it... on my Spawning Pit.

I suppose the six or so counters on it looked scary, but seriously? You're more afraid of a limited number of 2/2's than an unlimited number of flying 4/4's?

@ joz.

Im not completely against land destruction in fact I see it as a legitimate way to win in almost the same way that players lock the board (tef/KP and the like). That said I have one LD combo in a gruul deck of mine, frenzied tilling and radiate. What pisses me off is when someone goes and obliterate's the field and has no crucible or the like to capitalise on it. As you said spending 2+ hours playing a game that's just for all intents been reset in the land department, that's he pain in the ass for me.

Three bad games over the weekend, all involving my planeswalkers deck. (It's not the only deck I've got, but always seems to be a douche-magnet despite being easily the most social of my decks.)

1) Isperia tutors up Hex Parasite with Trinket Mage on turn 2. Since I'm playing a planeswalker deck (which is why he's tutored it out), I obviously need to do something about this, so I kill it when he plays it. He decides I've made him a target and he needs to "teach me not to mess with him", so he counters EVERY SINGLE SPELL I PLAY FOR THE REST OF THE GAME, giving me a smug, condescending look every time. Meanwhile, the other deck at the table assembles a combo with Tooth and Nail cast off Mirari's Wake. I try to destroy Mirari's Wake with Vraska, but of course Isperia, Supreme Douche counters it and hands the game to the combo deck. Then gives me a lecture afterwards about how "it's not all about winning" -- this from the same guy who always goes on about how he always needs to have the option to win and whose definition of social play is "I won't do anything antisocial if you don't play any threats or do anything that could conceivably stop me from winning".

2) Me with that guy, who gives me a half-hearted apology for the previous night so I decide to give him another chance. The other player is playing Trostani aggro. The Isperia player does nothing all game except counte ror spot-remove every single thing I try to play except for Jace, Architect of Thought, which he can't do anything about. He Gitaxian Probes me, showing that I have two other four-cost planeswalkers in hand. So Trostani attacks me exclusively, completely ignoring Isperia, and plays Ratchet Bomb (who the fuck plays Ratchet Bomb in Trostani decks?), ticking it up to four counters but never actually blowing it even when I play the other two walkers to try to provoke him into doing so. He continues to attack me exclusively. I try to Clockspinning the bomb up to five counters, and Isperia counters it. When I try to play my general (not even big enough to block one trampling Advent of the Wurm token at this point), Isperia plays Renounce the Guilds, with my general being the only permanent affected. I just scoop at this point, since I've been the target of all 11 removal spells and every attack by turn 8 having produced absolutely no threat of any relevance thanks to all the removal and counters), and Isperia gets killed in short order by the Trostani player who suddenly starts playing rationally after this and kills Isperia in very short order. Isperia once again acts all smug, so I just walk out and go home, resisting the temptation to punch him in the face.

3) A five player game with me and FOUR counterspell decks. Ith answers.dec, Grim-grin "casual" which was mostly theft effects and counterspells, Nin "chaos" which is trying to be zany but with the number of counterspells and the incompetence of the pilot is a griefer deck in practice and Sliver Overlord combo. In one turn cycle: Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (the combo player's, not mine) is allowed to resolve. Said Nicol Bolas proceeds to start blowing up Ith's mana base. Nin casts Possibility Storm (which I'm wary of because one game earlier that night ended with him casting it when an opponent had Teferi in play). Grim-grin storms into Trade Secrets, targets Sliver Overlord and takes the minimum four cards while Sliver Overlord draws his entire deck. I storm into Karn Liberated, announce my intent to get rid of Nicol Bolas, and Ith basically empties his entire hand trying to storm into a counterspell and eventually does. Grim-grin then manages to get rid of Possibility Storm, hits me with Wit's End and I decide to call it a day then, because I don't want to play with people stupid enough to lock someone with essentially no board presence out of the game rather than using Wit's End on the guy who has, you know, DRAWN HIS ENTIRE DECK.

I'm now adopting a policy of refusing to play EDH against anyone running a two-colour UW deck, because I've met a LOT of EDH players and not found a single dual-UW player who wasn't a complete griefing douche. Not playing just to win is one thing and IMO admirable to some extent. But playing kingmaker to the point of actively and knowingly committing suicide is another thing entirely, and I have better things to do with my leisure time than spend it with people who are either literally negatively competent at this game or are trying to piss me off at any cost.

Wow, that's a pretty annoying series of games but leads me to 2 questions: 1.) why are you being picked on? It seems to be more than just you killing a Hex Parasite tbh. and 2.) How is Isperia playing Hex Parasite in a UW deck when it have black phyrexian mana in the text box?

I'm just sitting here wondering about why someone is still playing Trade Secrets...

EDIT: Also, these games sound pretty terrible.

Not only that, but using Trade Secrets incorrectly....

One side can't keep drawing if the other stops. Well, if Sliver Overlord kept drawing two, then I suppose they would have decked the other guy. Grim-grin should have lost from not having any cards left to draw.

Also, as pointed out, Isperia can't use Hex Parasite.

Magic: The Douchegathering

The player casting Trade Secrets draws "up to four cards" each iteration (so the caster can stop drawing at any point), meaning they played it correctly, idiotically, and illegally. Just all around dumb.

Up to four. Ok.