Magic the Gathering

Casual

Our Social Contracts

By Ben Mcdole ⋅ November 9, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

As peo­ple we live our lives through social con­tracts, most of them being unstated. There are a great many unspo­ken cour­te­sies we afford one another. It can be as sim­ple as hold­ing a door for some­one or not talk­ing to strangers in the bath­room. While every now and then it can be amus­ing to offer a hand­shake at the uri­nal, in gen­eral it can be con­sid­ered poor form to do so (par­tic­u­larly while offer­ing to let them call you “the admi­ral.”) That being said, Magic also has var­i­ous social con­tracts and I think it’s about time they were put on paper, espe­cially those per­tain­ing to EDH. Please note that while I’m offer­ing my opin­ion and items that seems to work for our play­group, this is not defin­i­tive. If your group dis­agrees and every­one is hap­pier with your way then that’s awe­some! We want peo­ple play­ing magic and hav­ing fun and if your way is what’s doing it then don’t change a thing.

There are two impor­tant things I want to focus on, the rules for the for­mat and the unwrit­ten rules for fun of the for­mat. Both are crit­i­cal for fun, but only one is clearly stated and I want to change that today.

Elder Dragon High­lander has a sug­gested banned list. While a few of these cards are obvi­ous (Fast­bond), some seem fair depend­ing on who you talk to (Library of Alexan­dria). Each card on the list has been banned for a spe­cific rea­son appar­ent to the rules com­mit­tee. While I can­not and will not spec­u­late on the rea­sons behind each ban­ning, I can bet that the rea­son for a few of the cards will be the fact that they sti­fle fun.

Fun is sort of a rel­a­tive term. Spikes have fun win­ning, Timmy has fun cast­ing gigan­tic splashy cards, and Johnny has fun explor­ing inter­ac­tions. That isn’t to say that Timmy and Johnny don’t enjoy win­ning, because cer­tainly no one likes to be everyone’s punch­ing bag all the time. It’s just that Timmy and Johnny can take not win­ning if when they do sip from the sweet chal­ice of vic­tory they get to chug. Timmy and Johnny want to win in a way that makes their oppo­nents say “Wow!”

The ques­tion that needs to be asked is, how can be bal­ance the want­ing to win of the Spikes with the splash of their slightly less com­pet­i­tive coun­ter­parts? There have been a few pro­posed solu­tions, and I’d like to take a look at them now.

The offi­cial EDH pages have sug­gested the idea of side­boards, with every­one lay­ing out their gen­eral ahead of time and being given a chance to side­board before each game. The prob­lem with that idea is that it doesn’t really get to the root of the prob­lem. If play­ers aren’t hav­ing fun then forc­ing them to change their decks is prob­a­bly just going to breed more ill feelings.

The method I pre­fer for mak­ing EDH, and espe­cially tour­na­ment EDH, a lit­tle more fun is that of the merit based sys­tem. Armada Games uses such a sys­tem to great suc­cess. Each week items are ran­domly added and removed to pre­vent play­ers from “meta-gaming” to the list. Play­ers still get points for win­ning a pod and for elim­i­nat­ing other play­ers, but might lose over­all if a Timmy or Johnny player can pull off their epic combo. Such a sys­tem rewards cre­ativ­ity while also reward­ing over­all deck effectiveness.

Non-tournament EDH is a lit­tle bit trick­ier. Part of the prob­lem comes in when we look at some of the lan­guage in the offi­cial EDH forums. The offi­cial EDH forums use the list as a sug­ges­tion for cards to be avoided when build­ing a deck. Many play­ers tend to use this list as merely a sug­ges­tion, pre­fer­ring to build their decks the way they choose. This can cause some unhap­pi­ness when encoun­ter­ing a group for the first time. My sug­ges­tion is to cre­ate a banned/restricted list your store can agree on and post it clearly. Post it on web­sites, on the walls and any­where you pro­mote your league. New play­ers can see this list and mod­ify their decks accordingly.

Another prob­lem that can hap­pen in non-tournament EDH is a breach of the social con­tract. Our local group is a fairly casual bunch. We play big splashy decks that tend to have a good time. Prog­en­i­tus cas­cades into big fun stuff. Todd “Jazzhands/Woody” Palmer plays Rith, the Awak­ener and tons of tokens. Shel­don lit­er­ally plays a dif­fer­ent deck each week. It’s not uncom­mon to see Warp World get­ting thrown around the table. We have a fairly well known social con­tract. It’s not that combo is banned, we just don’t find combo very fun. How then do we deal with play­ers who choose combo?

Shel­don Men­ery recently wrote an arti­cle about his list of 25 most un-fun cards for EDH. Unsur­pris­ingly, many of them were combo enablers. Combo doesn’t make you an auto­matic leper at our group, but the game usu­ally ends. After a few games of hav­ing some­one combo out we usu­ally just con­cede the game to them and “play for sec­ond.” Elder Dragon High­lander as a for­mat is eas­ily bro­ken. Hav­ing access to a large num­ber of tutors and a large amount of time allows ample time for com­bos to go off. The only thing keep­ing com­bos in check is really the social con­tract of mak­ing sure every­one has fun.

Addi­tion­ally, I have heard from a few friends that their local store is stick­ing dog­mat­i­cally to the EDH site. I’m here to let you know that it’s ok to devi­ate! Cre­ate house rules! Make your own banned/restricted list! Do what­ever will make the game fun for every­one. The offi­cial EDH mul­li­gan is the mod­i­fied Paris mul­li­gan (or the Brit­ney mul­li­gan). One of the cre­ators of the for­mat plays at our local store and we use the Gis mul­li­gan. Fur­ther­more, we play using Plane­chase, some­thing else not on the offi­cial EDH site.

The most impor­tant thing about EDH should be hav­ing fun and cre­at­ing a great social atmos­phere. Every­thing should work toward that goal and every­one needs to be on the same page. If play­ers don’t under­stand the implicit social con­tract then make it implicit! Some­times the best way to get your point across is to poke some­one with it. I hope that my arti­cle helps some stores loosen up and inspires some other stores to try the awe­some chaos that is EDH. If you need help set­ting up a league or have any ques­tions in gen­eral make sure to con­tact me and I’ll be glad to help you.

And now to the last piece of busi­ness, the arti­cle con­test. I have received over 70 entries and find­ing a sin­gle win­ner was under­stand­ably dif­fi­cult. With­out fur­ther ado, I have selected a quote by Kyle Erick­son. Kyle sent me a few sug­ges­tions and my favorite is “100 rea­sons to play magic.” I feel like that really cap­tures every­thing I believe EDH should be. Before I dis­cov­ered EDH I was get­ting burned out on com­pet­i­tive magic. Stan­dard was becom­ing stale and there were no other for­mats being played in my area. Then I dis­cov­ered EDH and every­thing changed. EDH reminded me that Magic could be wacky and fun and didn’t need to be played with solely the win in mind.

Until next time, this is Ben McDole giv­ing you 100 rea­sons to play Magic!

My name is Benjamin McDole and I’m a level 2 judge from Tampa, Florida. When I’m not teaching math at a local college or spending time with my wife I’m usually playing EDH at Armada Games or running some events. My long term goal is to make sure everyone enjoys Magic and especially EDH as much as I do. I’m a member of a few organizations, Team Lives in the Red Zone and the American Association for the Advancement of Pie (I’m the only member!)

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