Is Stax Good, Actually? | Commander Clash Podcast #39

hey everyone and welcome back to the commander clash podcast where the commander clash crew discusses commander related topics and today we are going to be talking about stacks in commander stacks is always a controversial issue in commander some people hate it some people are neutral about it some people love it so we want to talk about the role of stacks and commander and the perception of of stacks and you know what its role is and whether or not we should be running more of it or less of it and the nuance behind that joining me as always for this discussion is site owner richard how's it going richard hey tomer how's it going going well going well uh next up we got seth probably better known as saffron olive how's it going seth i'm doing well how are you domer doing well doing well and crim also known as the asian avenger how's it going new crim oh it's going all right a little under the weather but pretty good well we're gonna we're gonna perk you right up with one of your favorite topics uh which is stacksmouth it's not a bad one it's not a bad one all right uh and before we jump into the discussion on hand two things we can do to support the channel one is you can go over to the mtg goldfish merch store and to your goldfishmerch.com you can purchase all the beautiful play mats staple to richard's wall you can purchase deck boxes deck sleeves uh t-shirts and so much more over at empty goldfishmerch.com and the other way you can support this podcast is you can like and subscribe at whatever platform you're listening to this to so if you're on youtube you can like and subscribe there if you're on spotify apple wherever you're listening to like and subscribe it helps the podcast grow and continue to do more episodes all right now let's jump into the topic at hand stacks and the first thing we have to do uh just to start talking about uh stacks is we have to define it so very loose definition here uh the the definition that we're gonna be sticking to is basically any card or any strategy uh that is focused on resource denial stopping your opponents from you know accessing as much resources as they want to uh you can stack them in terms of card draw limiting the amount of cards they can draw you can stack them in terms of how much mana they can produce on a single turn either by blowing up some of their lanes and artifacts or limiting them in some other sort of way what colors they can access to um you can actually limit their access to certain cards like the the card in your command zone for example there's a lot of different ways of of staxing but basically it all boils down to resource denial you're slowing down your opponent from accessing the resources that they want to have access to so with that out of the way now we got to talk about uh saxon commander a lot of people don't like stacks in commander why do you think that is people like to goldfish in solitaire problem solved like right there like they they love popping off and they and they don't want anything to disrupt that people want to play magic when you sit down to play a game of commander your idea is to actually like play a game of magic not to sit there why your cards don't do what you wanted them to do and your opponent like just keeps you from doing anything so i i think that's why it's just like it makes like complete sense to me that people dislike it especially in commander where the ethos of the format is it's supposed to be this like casual anything goes you know play whatever you like kind of thing uh so i think it doubly makes sense that commander players would especially not like stacks i agree with seth i think people just want to play magic and they don't want to be slowed down whatever that means right so like you may still be able to play your game of magic like if there was a permanent thalia on the board where you just delayed everything you just wasted everyone's time slightly right so people like can still play their stuff but it's slower and they don't like that they want to in and out do what they came to do and then go home so yeah i think most people just dislike stacks and then there's also just the the terrible feel bad of you doing literally nothing you know that that is possibly the worst thing that could happen to you you sit down for a game of commander and you do nothing and you watch people have fun for two hours and you cannot leave because you're not technically dead yeah right you can't go grab food or anything you got to sit there and watch and pretend to be happy about it right so yeah i think people are justified in not being happy about stacks when they get stacked right and there is a question of maybe you shouldn't let yourself get stacked which i'm sure we'll talk about shortly so i have a question uh for folks it seems like at least in the community a lot of people dislike stacks and i think i think the the things you touch upon is is right like people want to see their deck do their thing they want to play magic when they sit down to play a game of magic and that entails you know casting their spells and doing what the deck wants to be doing um but i don't see that much hate in terms of say spot removal or or even a board wipe like a wrath of god effect um people are much more salty of of a stax piece whereas they seem to be less salty about straight up just like you know killing your commander blowing up your your army and stuff like that why do you think there's a distinction there or what is the distinction there i mean we've we've talked about this in 60 card formats for a long time that i think it's mostly a psychological thing like because you're 100 right players if they play their creature and you do blade it most players are fine with that on the other hand if they play their creature and you counter it or if you cast a thought seize and take the creature out of their hand and they never get a chance to cast it people get way more saltier about that and i think it's because if you cast your creature even if it gets wrath even if it gets destroyed you feel like you're still executing your game plan you're kind of like oh it's a bummer that it didn't really work out but i'm doing my thing i'll get him next time when if you don't even get the opportunity to like have your creature hit the battlefield or even attempt to cast it because you're getting stacked or discarded or countered that feels a lot worse to a lot of people i think that's my that's my theory that's the counter spell theory right like people hate counter spells even though it's just removal i don't know that's just the way it is and you have to plan around it like people just dislike the card not existing for a split second on the battlefield it's just human psychology i don't know what to say about it it doesn't make any sense right yeah i don't i don't think i should yeah okay yeah i'll just i'll just i'll just not say anything on this it's fine all right one question do you guys actually feel that difference between counter spell and doom blade is it a seasoned player versus a new player thing or do you still feel bad that they rip the counter spell on your non-etb creature versus they do blade it i know krim's immune to this because he is the one casting the counter spell yeah i'm curious if you guys actually get tilted or affected by this in any way in general no although if it does happen it's when all of my stuff's getting counter like if i cast a creature and you counter it slash kill it no difference doesn't make any difference but if i'm playing against mono blue curious obsession and you literally just counter everything i play it does start to build up and maybe i would feel the same way but i don't because if i play against control and i just like doom blade all my creatures and wrath my board it doesn't impact me the same way so there are i guess situations where i even find myself falling into that like faulty line of thinking but it's got to be a pretty extreme match up where i'm getting a lot of my stuff countered for me to start to feel that way i guess for me uh sometimes i i do think it feels like if every single spell i'm getting countered uh that it can get a little bit tilting i don't know as as a proper player back in the day i used to thrive in like mono blue control match-ups where literally it was a counter war and that's like why why you play the game like three hour three hour counter awards but like i don't know what you're in commander sometimes i mean also now that i'm much older it's been a decade uh my patience for like just not being able to do anything when i sit at the table um is higher and i guess i guess with removal i guess there's more avenues for you to still get around removal and get some effect out of your cards like if you play a creature and it gets doom bladed well if i had an etb creature then i still got that trigger uh if if the removal spell was sourced through speed and i still got to have it on board maybe i got to attack because it had haste and i also probably have like protection spells maybe i have like a way to protect against a removal spell whereas i don't have as many ways of protecting against the counter magic so like there could be some things that could be make it more salty that more unfair but like i think it's mostly psychological like i i don't think there's a noticeable difference between having a creature that is casted enters the battlefield has no effect on the board state whatsoever and it gets removed before it gets any value whereas you just counter it because the effect is the same it's just whether it's stopped on the stack or whether it's stopped on the battlefield so isn't it better then because you keep the card in your hand and it doesn't die as opposed to being counted or doom bladed wouldn't you rather be stacked that keeps the creature off the board but in your hand like why does that feel bad then i'm gonna i'm gonna clear my throat here i'm gonna go on do you have anything oh i've got a lot to add to this conversation um okay so i'm gonna be very honest with you so like i think that it is all psychological right just recently uh not too long ago multiple uh people in the community who some pretty decent-sized following have had some issues with board wipes right and they they posted some stuff about it and and they're like wow board wipes you know yeah yeah and then i was like okay sure maybe this person doesn't like board wipes i don't like ramp i get it okay cool i go into the comment section and that's where i see it pop off i was like yeah you know this is the worst thing ever i was playing this game and somebody just blew up my board saying i'm like dude really like like how are you upset about that like you're going off like why are you upset about this board wipes and counter spells and all these things need to happen because sometimes there's just things like example if i doom blade authorical doesn't do anything right like like if i doom blade like i don't know something that a bane of progress doesn't do anything right so i there are things where you just need to interact with them on the stack so basically when you go into game of magic you should expect that your stuff you do stuff you get interacted with you should get interacted with i know that people go into games wanting it to like be like i'm gonna go off and do my thing and you're gonna do your thing but i think that a game is a lot like a like a puzzle right as i had mentioned before and that doesn't mean it's cdh there's a difference here right like like cdh is like if i were like yeah i wanted the puzzle but i want the puzzle to be like elden ring or something like that right but but like the thing here is in account you could still have puzzles in a casual level game and i think that the problem is that a lot of people just don't want their stuff blown up and just want to go off that if i'm being completely honest they just want to go off and and and that's the problem and i and i think that uh as i'm reading the comments and i lurk on the internet and i read the youtube comments more like i'm known as you know the the i wouldn't say i think i think some people i've read some comments they're like krim's not a fun first guy and trust me i'm a fun first guy like i'm a fun first guy but but i think that there is a fine line between fun and just like letting people just win right like if i want to just let people win i just you know i wouldn't play the game right i don't know i i i that's a different a difference in like ideology and philosophies within the gameplay though and i i know that but like i just think that magic is better when you can interact and and like i know people are upset when like people get interacted with on the stack uh more than they are with doom blades but i think they're essentially the same thing there's just things that need to die and things that shouldn't hit the board right so i don't know i look at it the same way they they're the same thing i mean i agree with crim to some extent like uh wraths are definitely necessary like commander be much worse if rasten exists counterspells are necessary there'd be combos that would be super unbeatable if they didn't exist so i think that like in moderation all of those things are positive but i think they can also like tip over when you sit down and you play against a deck that's just like okay i'm in a opposition agent you so you can't tutor i'm gonna use counters on everything you cast i'm gonna play nevener all in wrath ten times and just like no one's you're not gonna make any progress towards a game of magic like i think that that actively feels bad so i think there's it's got to be like a moderation type thing for me like there's very few cards in commander even stacks pieces that i would consider like fully off limits like just never play them i think that your deck probably should have some number of ways to hate on what your opponent's doing stop what your opponent's doing but when you go super far and your deck is like a shadow mage infiltrator is your win con and everything else is just like staxing and countering and killing i don't even especially enjoy playing against that style of deck and i'm like less casual than some random new commander players so i can see why like somebody was just picking up the format with a precon or something would really not enjoy that that kind of matchup i i don't even like i also think like the idea of like feels bad right like i don't know feels bad is like that's kind of i think that feels bad are like kind of why we have this gray area right because they're like like the idea like when you sit down you play the game i i think that uh removal and like even if they go heavy on like one end of counterspell and removal right uh like that's that's fine like their their weaknesses lie in the fact that they're all one for once right and they're all one for ones and in a multiplayer game you will lose the game if you want for one so like i think they're they're like that's where it balances itself out so i guess i don't see the issue if like someone does load up on counter spells like it like think about it like like when you all play with me like i get over like overwhelmed easily because i won for one right and then and like one for ones isn't great in a four-person game so i don't know i i don't think that stacks is just like to tie it all back like i don't even think stacks is really that bad because they rely on these pieces that stay on the board but if you interact with those exact same pieces they also just fold they can't do anything i mean i don't think it's up for debate right i think stacks most people dislike it for the same reason like most people dislike a counter spell versus dublin like i think that's like an actual fact but i think krim's point is like should it be a feels bad and should we optimize for it right is a game of commander a cooperative game or a player versus player game like when i play league of legends i'm not optimizing for my opponent's fun i'm smashing them into the ground and enjoying every moment of it i'm not caring like oh let me let this guy get a kill because otherwise he feels like he's not playing league of legends right like i'm not i think you can't break that at all right but in commander we should we have the slot like should i be like oh i need the rest of the pod to pop off and i will pop off harder or should i grind them all into the ground and dance on their corpse right because 1v1 magic is like that right you know like people very happily stacks you into the ground 1v1 i mean you shouldn't play that combo deck sucks to be you right i outplayed you right but when you do that in commander i think it's frowned upon right like so is that correct like is commander somehow a four-player co-op game or is it actually pvp right it sounds it doesn't sound like like the way people want commander to go is that it's pvp they want it to be like playing ascension right they want it to be like a deck building game and you do your thing and then you just play like at that point then you just need like commanders should just have some kind of river or some kind of npc aspect that's pve right like like arch enemy yeah yeah where it's like yeah there's like a bullet isn't there like that yeah yeah there's an arch right there it is and you're like yeah exactly so like when i think of like playing games like if there's ever another person it doesn't matter how many if it's a multiplayer it's like i think optimizing for the least amount of feel bads it like it's fine if you like want to like if you want to talk power level that's a different thing right like power level is the same as you know like okay well i understand i'm in i'm in bronze rank so why am i going to go play with a bunch of like you know legends right like so like like i get that so but but like yeah like i just think that optimizing and worrying about feel bads is kind of weird it's it's the constants why we're in this flux right like we're in this weird area i i mean i'll go ahead domert well like i just i feel like it really depends on the mentality like what you want to sign up for in terms of the gameplay experience because i do feel like casual commander is very much not so much or at least for me it's not so much uh winning as as so much you're just trying to get an experience out of it and that's like very vague but i'm trying to give it more concrete substance by saying like uh i think a lot of people at casual tables they just they brought a deck that they're excited for they probably don't have a lot of time or a lot of opportunities to play it like we do like we play weekly i play i play twice a week even i do stream and commander clash so i i don't really care if i don't have a non-game every once in a while but i think people who have like you know they have one day a week or maybe one day every other week that they get a chance to try out their new commuter they just build it they're super psyched for it and they just want to see the deck like do its own thing and if a stack if there's like a bunch of stacks uh at the table and they're not allowed to like even test out their cards then it might feel unfulfilling uh to sit down and play with it and i i totally get like i i get that idea in in uh casual games at cdh i don't think anybody has gotten salty about sex ever when i've sat down and played with them because like you're in a competitive mindset so like even for me like if you like winter orb and you dranith magistrate like i'm expecting these things and i view it as a puzzle like krim usually does in 1v1 absolutely like i bring on the stacks like i want to see the best decks i want to see my deck being up against the best decks that's the whole point but i i casual mindset there's like a flip that kind of switches sometimes for me where i just want to see like what my cool deck of what i want my deck to do um and if i don't realize that's the problem right yeah like like the fact that there's this divide like okay well you can't have a casual deck that like you know is full on like that is interactive essentially people have that misconception where it's like well if you want to solve a puzzle go play cdh right like it's like well i don't think that's entirely true because there's like bad stock stacks like you played descent into madness like i don't think that's cbh it's hilariously bad but but like yeah i think a lot of our decks have interaction though like if you look at our commander clash stacks like there's some rats and there's some removal well it's just like we're not like you know actively usually trying to stack each other playing like full-blown control for me like for me it's more the co-op thing honestly like that's how i view commander and it's very separate from how i view the rest of magic like i'm the biggest blood mean supporter in the world i nothing i love more in his 60 card four methods taxing someone i live for that stuff but when it comes to commander i just like i i can't get behind it bloodman's like my favorite card and i just won't play it in commander because i do want it to be this collaborative experience where everyone like has a good time that's my number one overall goal is like i'm gonna get together with my buddies we're gonna hang out for a couple hours you know we're just gonna have like a good like social experience more so than winning or stopping someone necessarily from winning so that's kind of how i view it the other thing i want to mention that i think is different is in 1v1 formats if someone goes you know turn one uh mocks into soul land into blood moon and i'm like er trina is fear and i'm just like i can't do anything this i just scoop like the game's over but you can't really do that in a four player game like it doesn't it doesn't it's not accepted it's not how commander works it's not like you can just like stacks me and i'm like okay like i'm just i'm done with this i'm gonna go into the next game in my league or whatever so i think that that's another reason that stacks feels like especially bad because you don't have that easy out of just being like okay i'm gonna scoop on turn two since you you got me you got me this time let's go on to the next one even if you concede like there's still three other people at the table it's not like you can jump into your next game now you have to wait until they finish so like even that like that even also stigmatizes leaving too because why are you even leaving if you can't even join a second game like right as well stick it out and give the other people more of an opportunity to get around the stacks pieces yeah i mean i i think commander is co-op and i don't know how this idea got in my head right but like if someone is man is screwed the correct really spike answer is probably just finish them off when they got nothing going on right but you don't right you leave them alone maybe you secret rendezvous them to get them back in the game and they might kill you later on right but there's some empathy there where you're like let me boost this guy up and that's like co-op right whereas the correct answer might be let me take one combat phase to finish him off to get him out of here and end his misery and go on right so there is that's correct element our mullet came from though i don't think he's correct to kill the player that's down though right you want to make an ally out of that person the weakest one yeah right like i mean why not right but i think a lot of times you could just all swing in for lethal and remove them and then you don't worry about the threat of them coming back later which right and while you guys deploy all your stuff i come back later and then win right like there is a risk to that right but then you feel bad because he hasn't cast any cards and he's playing like some nine man a 10 10 but you know 20 turns later that 9 minute 10 10 is probably going to kill you right so you leave them around so i don't know like and i'm the most stacky i love stacks like in 1v1 formats and i love armageddon but in commander for some reason i find these unacceptable right and for lattice luck you moms yeah i mean i play once in a while i still like them right but i i recognize i only play in r groups as well right and and this this has something to do with try harding like if i have a stack stack and i'm going to fnm and i'm playing casually i will not break it out against any player right i'll only play it against people i know who are there to win like if it's a casual person i won't like stacks them out i won't play my control deck against them right i'll play some dirtily deck right i'll hold my punches and maybe that's what commander is like we're not tryharding otherwise we'd be playing cdh so maybe we shouldn't be bringing the stacks i i don't know right there's just that mentality i don't know where it came from i kind of want to the only the only proponent for for stacks in those sometimes like if everybody's just trying to pop off and trying to have their fun what if having fun just means winning the game like what if what if like if your deck is doing the thing if your deck pops off it just immediately wins let's say like you're a storm deck for example you don't necessarily have to be a cdh storm deck let's say you're just like playing is music so this magnus which came out in a precon or whatever and you upgraded it a little bit and you have all these instant sorceries that are very hard to interact with and you have counter magic to protect your your commander and you just sling a bunch of instant sorceries together and whenever you get to pop off you win the game if you're outside of blue it's very hard to interact with the instances of sorceries and it might be difficult to kill the one creature that they're trying their hardest to protect is it would it be good then to add some stacks elements just to prolong the game a little bit longer so that you know there they still can pop off if they can but like you know if they just pop off and they just win isn't that kind of like a reverse tax you know it's like you shuffle up you try to play the game somebody pops off immediately wins and you're like okay well i didn't get to cast any spells because we didn't get to prolong the game and long enough for me to cast them so we'll shuffle up we'll do it again oh i didn't get to cast any spells this game too because the guy popped off and won immediately so maybe stacks can kind of be useful as a way to slow it down so people can cast their spells you know weird so so i think uh yeah but i think it depends on the kind of stacks that's there's a huge range when it comes to stax cards from really miserable like look at the the saltiest cards on eda track when you see like stasis and winter orbs and static orbs and these like no one's doing anything cards and then there's a lot of cards that i think i would still consider them stacks pieces that aren't that brutal but still do a good job of doing what you were just saying tomorrow like for example against the storm deck something like arkhan of amiri or thalia is really effective i think those are like very legitimate cards that people should probably be playing more of or like if i'm playing my panorama contact and you have a hush bringer that shuts down etb triggers like i'm i'm perfectly fine with that so there's some level of stacks or yeah if you even consider those stacks pieces but some of the interaction that i'm fine with like even opposition agent i know we meme on it a lot but opposite engine agent is a card that i'm perfectly fine with people playing because it hates on something so i think for me it's the stacks pieces that keep people from doing anything that i especially find problematic like no one's doing anything if you're hating on the graveyard or you're hating on etb triggers or you're hating on casting multiple spells in a turn for me all of that is fair game and i think even like you were saying healthy for the format at least in some matchups like because it wouldn't be fun if everyone was just storming off on turn three every game like that's just as miserable as no one doing anything because you're like you're doing nothing in a different way but it's the end result is actually very similar so would you consider rest in peace a stacks piece i mean i don't believe this right where is the line where i don't know where the line is when i think of stacks like the first thing that comes into my head is like trinispheres and chalice of the voids and stasises and blood moons things that are like you can't cast valves you don't have mana is rip a stacks piece maybe but i would argue that rip is fair game like i i as far as commander like i don't know am i off base there am i too spiky if i'm jamming a rip against a random table because someone might be a reanimator deck i think leyline and rip or lately sorry space uh our our is like in ley line of the void is more of a stacks piece too right like so i would say those are stacks pieces well it doesn't it doesn't just shut down your graveyard but it also shuts down sacrifice pricing down so any death triggers if you're if you're like uh any any deck that cares about death trigger sacrifice triggers well sacrifice still works death triggers is not so like you saw him if your song dies well it's not dying it's getting exiled so you don't get to draw that card i believe if i'm understanding the word correct correctly yeah it it does not the replacement effect goes into effect and it does not die so he gets to stop you from playing the game right so it effectively stops a deck that relies on dying like let's say not glen elendra but uh the the black white van like a blood artist accuracy sure whatever any of those so like those cards are stacks pieces then right so i think rip gets a pass because basically graveyard decks are so powerful and broken that when you play this hate against them people are okay with it but when you play like an anti-spell card right like a thalia and it's affecting rampant growth you get really pissed right you're like you know i'm just rampant growthing right and i actually seth i think if you started with the rule of law emblem one one spell per turn or a thalia every spell costs one more at the beginning of every commander game like most players would just quit like i think that innocuous stacks is actually still very um annoying right and part of it is like if you play a 1v1 game your deck is like 50 answers 60 answers right if you're a combo deck you have combo pieces and then the rest of your deck is made around protecting your combo if you take a casual commander deck you have what five pieces of removal right maybe 10 if you're lucky that can hit whatever hate piece is on you like your odds of getting it are not good and especially if the taxing thing is taxing your way of getting the answer like you know if you're trying to tutor up the answer opposition agent and you have like one answer in your deck you're screwed it's over for you right like you're doing nothing so i think like the way casual decks are built um you know is a problem right like cdh decks don't have this problem right they also are packing like way more answers and protection to get through these you know stacks pieces whereas casual decks are not and then what you'll end up is with all your casual decks being serious next right because it's all removable interaction and then like two finishers and that's how you have to play the game to get rid of stacks so i i would die if rule of law started on the battlefield every game like you cannot say that's a fun format i i don't know about casual decks not running that much removal though i feel like at least from my experiences i would consider like the streams pretty casual maybe like mid power um and even the pre-cons like when i do i do a pre-con upgrade whenever a new pre-con comes out and i will count up the amount of removal spells target removal spells and board wipes and my checklist is usually i want to feel like artifact removal how many artifact removal spells do you have to get rid of a steering bridge yeah you only have like maybe three things that can hit an engineering bridge three out of 99 cards you need to get to to play your game right well you also get to draw cards so you get to see more like uh it is harder to get but then there's an ocean thief or then there's a position ages so then you can't actually do that i mean yeah i think the part of the problem is do we expect people to optimize to beat these cards i think that's like the yes or no question for me we could like optimize if someone's playing trinispheres and stasis's you can build all of your commander decks in a way that you're going to be able to deal with those things just like you do in modern or whatever like dex can build to beat whatever hate cards are good against their archetype but is that what we want the format to be about do we want people to be like okay i'm gonna have to dedicate 20 slots on my deck to deal with the blood moon person i'm gonna have to dedicate 20 slots to my deck because someone might play this against me like does that make the format more enjoyable for people and i think the answer for most people excluding cdh because i think that's part of like how cdh works but for casual players i think the answer is no for most people like sure you could make commander that way but i think that makes the format less fun rather than more fun i mean i consistently do that though right because if i know that my archetype your deck is only answers though right right and you see but like it has ways to win right but like in all honesty or like all my decks like example like if i know that i have something that i cannot beat right like if my if like it like rogues do require you to have a graveyard but if someone has a rip my rogues do nothing right so you should have planned for that because if that is the one thing your deck is weak to i don't think you should be upset and salty that someone just plays it right like i think you should plan for it like example like if i if my super friends deck loses to an immortal son right like i should plan for that right like i'm not saying that you need to hate out everything but like what is the absolute worst thing that you need to plan for right and that's what i had for an armageddon coming down on turn four i mean i do i never drive more than three lanes so what are you gonna do like like set me back like you can right you can sand bag lands you can hold those i do that i do that you know you have the counter spell so i never go constantly miss you you have the you know whatever to get rid of a snaring bridge you're holding lands in case someone armageddons and like you you essentially stacks yourself like i don't know like you you have somebody answers that you can't play the game anymore because you got to be ready for every one of these what like like playing with vince right like so i always expect a random ld spell right so i'm like okay well i'm gonna hold some lands just in case and you've seen this on clash i'm gonna hold some because i think vince has got one it could also just be like if you're in a meta where you know let's say you're a green ramp deck you're a green ramp deck and you decided your your ram package is all going to be a land ramp and you you're in a meta that you know opposition agents rampant and i don't know some other land hate is rampant you could just diversify your ramp package where you could be like okay instead of running 13 land ramp cards i'll run seven land ramp cards and i'll run uh six mana rocks because you know green still has access to those things and um that way you're kind of like you're kind of hedging your bets where you know if you do get ld'd or if you get artifact removal like if you get vandal blasted okay you don't lose all your mana sources your extra mana sources and if you get uh opposition agent you're not you're not shut out of all your ramp spells you're only should i have half of each of these situations right but is that how you want to play commander or you want to be like i want to cast plans sit here and think of the 8 000 possibilities of everyone locking you out of the game forever well and i think it's reflected in the gameplay as well like uh if you've ever played like a 60 card format there's times when you draw your sideboard counter spell and you know that you can't let a certain thing resolve so instead of like running out your whatever planeswalker running out your creature like okay i gotta pass i would love to like add these things to my battlefield but there's a chance they're going to have you know this combo piece that beats me this stacks piece that beats me so i'm going to do nothing this turn and i'm going to pass and i'm going to leave up this counter and that's part of the fun but i don't think i would enjoy that in commander and commander i don't want to sit there on turn three and be like i'm gonna pass my turn because someone might drop a blood moon and if they do i only got three basics and i'm out of this game i want to run out my mana rock i want to run out my wood elves i want to like draw a couple of cards like so i think that even with how you play the game it becomes less fun for most players once you have those cards being like played in a lot of games because those are the choices you got to make and those choices are great when you're playing cdh those choices are great when you're playing modern or legacy but i don't think that's what people want commander to be about that's not what i want commander to be about i want to run out my yankee cards and like have things happen and not have to you know leave up my mana every turn because someone might play this thing that ruins the whole game i mean i that's fair i i like yeah like see like for me i just run it out anyways i just like okay we don't play true stacks in our group right like we have like the random opposition agent but like you know no one's winter orbiting on a regular basis right i do it like once a season maybe just get you guys even then i don't think it's prudent to do it anymore i'm like no one has fun it was a good joke once right yeah and then that was it right like we don't want to be funny like it was it was funny it is funny but also we're seasoned players making content right our misery is entertainment for other people right but what if we were just literal friends trying to have fun would be you know like would we really be saxing each other i'm not sure right i mean the light stacks that cut like think of it like when i when i think of the light stack stuff like winter orb that doesn't hate anyone that just hates everybody for no reason right so like when one like example like if i play an opposition agent there's very obviously a reason why i play it right or why an ocean theme but like winter wharf is just like even i have my limits right because like winter warm is just that doesn't stop anything right like that i mean it stops everything from ever happening but uh yeah like i don't know i i i do so what yeah there's degrees of stacks that i think are are definitely needed um i think they're needed right so like though i think rip leyline and the void are like stacks pieces i think they're okay like play them i highly encourage them i highly encourage the opposition agents i like eat like the jockle hops like richard when you jockle hops this and your gun super friends like great that's great blow us out of the game with that right like like i i thought that was hilarious so i don't know planeswalker and it was like yeah like that's a win right yeah you had planeswalkers on the battlefield and nobody had any permits you win like right people can scoop like it's done like it's over i'm a-okay with all of that but the ones really when i think of the only cards that i dislike are stasis winter orbit like static orb and like i guess expropriate otherwise everything else like if you look at the salt list whatever do all of that like i don't really care why do you dislike those over the other ones sorry guys um so like well it's appropriate i just hate extra turns uh and and like when i'm like this is just to get like this is just a win-con whatever sure you win the game but like uh static or winter or the orbs right the stasis the orbs those are just like i don't know those aren't flashy like you didn't get get us you know like you didn't like peripherals put in a bearer of the heavens right like i thought that would even be funnier right like but like stasis winter those cards are just like okay cool so nothing happens that's it yes i don't know like i i don't think those are that great like those it doesn't hate any it doesn't stop one specific plan right like i think armageddon makes sense because like that is how i think of what i think of when like okay white let's say white weenie they're far behind they can't keep up with the ramp they can't keep up with the stack interaction like blue does you know all of that sure so how does i think that a good way for white we need to then pull ahead is like play a bunch of deploy a bunch of dorks gate whatever right and then blow up the lands okay fine whatever it's cool with me what about just like keeper of the court and you catch up with all the basic planes ramping because you're the good is that if you really think that that is going to catch you up then sure i i i will tell you now that i personally do not think that catches you up at all but but yes sure what do you what do you think about the difference between stax pieces like there's there's a lot of option like for example there's crawl space that says no more than two creatures can attack each combat and then there's ensnaring bridge which is essentially just no creatures can attack ever if you're playing it right like is there any uh i don't know do you see a difference between these two cards like is there an acceptable kind of stacks that doesn't hate too hard and people be okay with or is just anything in this realm off-limits in a game of commander oh a a slight sip of haterade and a keg stand of haterade are almost like like like kind of varying degrees but like example when you mention those two cards i think they're both fine i think like crawlspace actually sucks but but as someone who's tried it it sucks um and then and then ensnaring bridge just i think artifacts in general are too are very easy to remove so i i think they're both bad and like stopping delaying combat i don't know i don't even think it's that bad that's not full stacks to me oh like peacekeeper maybe constantly reoccurring him like sure whatever like like i get that but like i don't know i i think that it's fine i think varying degrees of hate is fine i i think how hard they are to remove is the most important thing which i think opposite opposition agent is a fairly fine card it's powerful but like any removal removes it and like tomorrow said you're probably running 10 removal 12 removal 15 removal depending what your deck looks like like incidentally like wrath spot removal fighting cards combat you know you can try to ambush opposition agent in combat right whereas if someone throws down a crawl space and you're a token deck or something and you know like how many artifact removal spells do you have in your deck you have a handful and you need to actually go grab it so you know and the harder it is to interact like you can do this it'd be like the worst stacks piece like imagine winter orb as an emblem and you're like great right like you cannot interact with it right so creatures are easiest because they can be removed multiple ways and then artifacts and enchantments like if you're a model black and there's an enchantment stacks piece like well i hope you thought seized it or something like you're done right like you got it i feel it's the other way what every creatures live longer now and enchantments and artifacts are more likely to die you could protect them but like enchantments and artifacts get removed left and right now like i assume like if i keep a mana rock for a turn cycle i've already come out way far ahead like just a simple manor rock because everything gets blown up now right so i actually crawl space and things like that are so much easier to kill well that kind of segues into uh a question i had for the group is is are these stacks pieces even good like i personally uh a lot of these cards unless they completely shut down my opponents from doing anything i will almost always avoid them like draenoth magistrate we had we had debate on how how salty is draenoth magistrate and we were very much divided me and crim i believe were on the team not salty healthy for the format seth and richard said it's very salty it goes against like the spirit of the format if i if i got that correct all right um so i personally will never run janet's magistrate in my decks outside of cdh i think it's very good in cdh and i think as i've been told it's very good less removal i think well i mean but the the idea is like if you have like a turn one wind deck and your tech needs the commander on the valve and now you have to find that that removal spell and like if there's a draft magistrate there's also going to be like the sphere of resistances and everything to slow you even further um but the idea for mid power is like if if i'm in a midpower deck the only deck that i actually would run draft magistrate in in these days and i took it out of all the other decks i put it in bel borka because i can possibly storm lock you out of the game with it and so i find like that's that's a really appealing win condition in the deck but i had it like my selenium deck and my uh brina deck and i just took them out because what i found was yes it's very effective it shut it stops my opponents from playing their commander and their deck is based on their commander whoa that so isn't that a lot but all it does is it recruits no value for me outside of that and then the entire table just bands together and either kills me or kills the draenei magistrate and then kills me because i cast the trans magistrate so i feel like the amount of hate that i got for it was not worth the amount of impact that i got at mid power tables and i feel like that's probably the same way for a lot of stax cards well yeah so like drawn with magistrate i think like is a an okay card i i don't think it's good in like enough to just like jam in like any deck that has white mana i found it best like much like tomer i found it best in my human's deck that's it like in my human's commander deck because well first off it's a human and i can keep it alive and on top of that it's it delays in the game enough to where you can actually be aggressive in the format so like because my my humans deck is just aggro that's all it is it's full aggro and and i mean it has some light stacks pieces but yeah like but the stacks pieces are what allows you to be aggressive early so um like i i don't know i mean like some a lot of stacks pieces are very narrow right like they're like like that's great drawneth magistrate that doesn't stop this wrath of god from my hand so like i'm just going to wrath of god yeah i'm like oh that's i'm kind of in trouble i think it depends on on the stacks piece like uh you can't really just you know play through a armageddon or a blood moon or things like that there's things that just have that big impact like immediately that kind of just like i don't know uh there's not really an easy way to get out of them so i think there are really strong stax pieces and i think stacks pieces are even stronger than maybe we realize because so many people shy away from playing them like i think something like stony silence it would be very easy to be like i'm gonna ramp without artifacts and i'm just going to play stony silences and that's going to generate a ridiculous amount of value against a random table at a commander game is it going to get you killed maybe but if you're going to go that route then you can you know build your deck to defend yourself so i think they're very strong and some of their strength is unrealized just because they aren't socially acceptable in commander and like we've we've kind of just kept them shadow banned them out of the format for the most part but i think if you wanted them to be strong you could make them very strong i think sony silence would be great i mean heck yeah like you think so you didn't oh really like to me that just like what it's like it could be good but you don't get to put on your shoes right so that means there's no nonsense there and like three one right so either it doesn't affect anyone or only affects one person in which you went down a card to anger one person without you know going further in your game plan right or it angers everyone and 3v1 you're gonna die so in in 1v1 stax works because you're staxing the only person that can hit you and you have an advantage on them right and you're gonna win because you have the advantage on them and their stacks now 3v1 it's three times the mana three times the card three times the combats so if you stacks the table you need to stack some good like they need to be out of the game period otherwise they have more resources they'll kill you right but i don't so you got to finish the stacks if you started you can't slap down nathalia and call it a day people will get mad and remove it right you need to like rule of law triple thalia trinisphere and then you know finish the game right like you can't do exactly that though i just follow you because she's a human right and it's great it delays don't you just get killed first people get upset like i mean not nothing like i mean well actually who cares tall no like like legitimately i i don't mind if i lose right like it's like it's fine like i sat down to play a game and i i did right like i did i executed my game plan right and and i guess i'm fine with that so like you have a really good mentality if it was good yeah like power level wise do you think do you think if there was no if there's no controversy around running these sax pieces do you think adding these tax creases would increase your win percentage dramatically or like which ones would and which ones wouldn't that's that's what i'm trying to get at i'm i think like adding like adding like a thalia and an opposition notion thieves those do add to your win percentages they add whatever you're winning but also anything that adds anything to your win percentage also adds into the aggro column right so so like that that's that's why i think i'm okay with it because like okay sure i'm moving i guess some win percentages but it also adds the aggro column so it's more like i'm not upset about it like it's people like oh let's kill crim right like he's he played dolly get him okay i deserve it i have thalia i'm kind of like richard said it depends on if you're willing to build around them like if stacks were acceptable i think we'd see a lot more actual stacks decks and i think those would be really really powerful uh we would just jamming a random stacks piece into a generic deck greatly improve your win percentage i think maybe some of them i think especially like mass land destruction effects like could definitely greatly improve your win percentage they're not sitting out on the battlefield people aren't necessarily gonna see them coming and then all of a sudden you just wait till the opportune moment and it should increase your win percentage i would think so i think it really depends on the stacks piece and the in the deck that you're playing and how far you're willing to go as far as trying to stacks out the table to answer the question though i do think stacks is good stacks or stacks pieces pieces and whatnot a sex deck i've actually played through a stack stack against it and and like it's very it's oddly enough it slows the game down and then essentially you just wait and then you like don't tap out you don't do anything unless you absolutely have to like they blow up the lands and then you just blow up all their stuff and then then then you play the game they lose the game after you blow up the stuff they legitimately lose the game after you blow up their stuff though i mean i think the only good stack species are ones that further your game plan so that would be notion thief opposition agent they're giving you stuff right you're not just advertising the table you're getting resources whereas if i just threw down a stony silence for value like that's like a death mark right that's you just pissed everyone off and you've accomplished nothing right so and they're not that crippled right like they still have mana they still have creatures they can still beat you down so that i think i think the best thing was tomer with his car and lattice lock he was like you guys have creatures i can carve lettuce lock everyone but then you just all attack me and like kill me so i can't do the lattice lock because it's not finishing the job right you really need to wrath then carn lattice lock and then you're good right otherwise you just annoy everyone and you die i also agree with richard on the ones that like get either immediate value like i think opposition age is one of the better ones where like you flash it in so you immediately deny somebody like a card you know like they're either going to be cracking a land and you just got them down lane they wasted a vampiric tutor and then you get that value yourself too and that's really big and then yeah sure you're going to get aggro but i think it was worth it or you you put such a strong stacks piece that they just can't you just they can't retaliate like you you please walker and then joker hops them it's like well all right you're upset what are you gonna do about it oh nothing i'm gonna tick up ultimate and when um one of my favorite and this is a little shout out to a little a little card that i think is overlooked but i love it from budget brews uh you sharn implacable earth uh this is one of my favorite saks pieces and this battlefield you can get some photographer basic forest and basic planes and you put it into your hand so you got a little bit of card advantage and then players can't pay life or sacrifice non-land permits to cast spells or activate abilities it really messes with um black decks uh that focus on sacrificing and paying life but also anybody who's running like the fetchlands that have to require you to pay one life it actually shuts all that stuff down too um i've i've loved it and it's also a big 404 beefy boar um so you get some value out of it immediately it shuts down a lot of stuff and you have a good bore on the battlefield i've always had a really good experience with this and i i would consider this a sax piece because it does stop your opponents you know from cracking fetches and doing stuff doing regular things and magic but i found that the response to this card isn't like super negative and um even if it gets removed or whatever you still got two lands out of it so hooray for your sharon implacable earth just shout out yeah that that card is sweet i had that as my commander for i think one season it was really fun of course you have the fur covenanter also also shut down treasures were yeah worth mentioning with backside being everywhere yeah yeah this car why are you guys going with this i don't get it but why can't shut down your lads with like a balance or an armageddon or something but i can shut down all your treasures and it's cool like i don't i don't get it like what's the difference because i agree that you can shut down my life you can shut down my lands while i don't like the you should just play more removal argument i am pretty accepting of stacks pieces on creatures because honestly someone should be able to kill a creature like really in this case like between all the wrasse and removal they aren't likely to stick along for uh stick around for very long so i think that's why you sharn doesn't bother me as much as some of the other pieces and it's kind of like that with other creature-based stacks pieces as well i i think of creature-based stacks pieces is like the lightest form of stacks and someone's going to be able to remove them eventually right right all right i guess i got a card for you because like okay because there's rd coming through here six man of four four when it enters the battlefield phase out all lands until it leaves the battlefield this is that exists we have realm raiser yeah that actually has a character i played this thing that at least the battlefield would turn all eggs all the cards to the battlefield untapped under those control you you you built a magic card which you congratulations that's that's an extreme example though because you're taking away the resources necessary to deal with it so in that case i would probably still be a little bit salty but i don't know can i play this like clash what do we conclude it's also really good in landfall decks if you blink it because they all enter the battlefield again and you get all those landfall triggers yeah it's really fun it's a fun cartridge you could actually play that as a tech to save yourself against an armageddon and you can flash it in i would be way more okay with that than armageddon honestly like it's hard i i would be way way more accepting you're getting up by realm raiser i don't watch like the first time and then afterwards you're like get out of here right like it's funny but then that's only once it's because like i i think that armageddon just like not every color interacts on the stack like blue does right so like like rome razer every every color does interact with a creature it doesn't interact oh but not everything interacts on the stack so i could see why you wouldn't be excited to see armageddon but you're okay with rome razer i think also notion thief is a little bit more salty because it's flashed so like you know you you cast a spell you try to draw a bunch of cards and then somebody flashes on the nostril thief it's like yes it is a creature you can kill it but guess what i already got my value out of it did you scrub uh yeah well that's why you just play mdfcs and have spike field hazard ready at all times hazard ah but really do you wanna ah do you wanna have to think that way in command or do you wanna have to think okay do i need to leave up two mana so i have a counter in case they i don't know i don't know thought in the back of your mind though like like to to have that thought in the back of your mind i think is is fine and you should have that right because like i'm i don't know again right like this is the way we play prefer to play the game but like i think on average i would rather just not have to worry about like my opponents worrying about what i'm okay with or whatever like i want to know power levels and that's about it right like as i've mentioned before are you a starter deck are you cdh that's my power gauge right anything in between let's play i agree with i agree with krim like he can throw basically anything at me and i have the right mentality for it but i know a lot of people don't and also also there's another is that not furthered by us like and like content creators like constantly talking about like oh it's totally not cool to like do that right like there are people that say that and then and then people adopt that philosophy right have you played with humans crim like can you really sit down with the table of strangers and be like yo thalia into thalia the trinisphere and watch everyone sitting there like you know maybe they're nice right they won't cuss you out and flip the table but you can see they're not having a good time right and you're like welcome to game night guys well honestly i i've been i've gotten thrashed like i think at vegas like the i think it got thrashed like legitimately and i was like word that's cool like somebody sat down with the silvalla deck i'm like well it's not cdh and then they just kind of went off right i'm like well all right i think it's also there's one criteria that i don't think is discussed enough other than power level and that's game length this is something that i've actually as someone who's doing recordings like i do commander quickies or i used to do commander cookies one thing that that has really rustled my jimmies especially because i'm an old man now um is that sometimes i just don't feel like locking into a three-hour game like i think it was like like i like bringing it back to like competitive or like league of legends even an analog for the league of legends like if you're sitting now for a league of legends game like sure you're you're good for any sort of play style in theory but what if i told you instead of a i don't know how long league of legends is but let's say let's say league of legends takes an hour what if the met has shifted and the meta now is three hour games three hour turtle fest and that was it well you'd be like well i don't want to play this anymore yes i'm in for i'm win for play to win play to like do crush my enemies and everything but i just i have an hour and i get grouchy and hungry after an hour and a half and after two hours i'm not having a fun time anymore it doesn't even matter what the board sit is i'm just not having fun so like if stack stacks might have that issue too if you go too hard on stacks you slow the game in down too much then you're basically you're basically increasing the likelihood of a three-hour game and people might not like that for that reason as opposed to just like other reasons like me i don't like three hour games anymore i'm tired as somebody who sat down and played the game that killed magic artifact um and uh like as someone who did that i i could tell you one thing that sarcasm for those that don't know artifact did not do that um and artifact games were very very long they were actually about like two and a half to three hours sometimes wow like that right all games like league of legends actively optimizes to shorten game length right and not too short right so maybe standard has the opposite issue where games are too short you snowball out of control but you also don't want them to drag on with very little progress they they add incentives for people to progress the game and to close out the game and they have an optimal time they want people to play for and i think tomorrow's right like an hour or something is about right you don't want to be like it's 4 p.m this commander game might take one to six hours i can't do dinner right you want to be like i will be in and out in an hour so we can play and then we can go eat and we can all have a jolly good time right so vape stacks is like the shaharizad problem right it's not that good but that right who like that makes sense to me that's the only thing that makes sense to me so far like when when people like complain about stacks right it's like okay well i get that you don't want to play a slow game i'm not gonna just randomly be like hey like i think of it a lot like hey my friends are here do we want to play monopoly or risk no because we gotta go somewhere in about two hours right twilight imperium time boys all right cool we got a movie in 30 minutes let's crack open twilight imperium and get started no no like i get that time expectation of your time and what not that's fine like if you don't want to play like a long game that's cool uh then i'm gonna play a faster deck for because of that reason if it were a power level thing if it were like a stax thing like do i have a problem with snacks no not at all do you have a problem with the power level no not at all uh the problem i would have with it is if i have something to do yeah in like three hours something you like play magic i gotta go play more magic in about three okay and i have to be like a a legit thing like if you're telling me like i gotta leave you know wife's picking me up or or whatever i gotta pick up the kids in two hours sure all right uh let's let's just let's chance let's not chance it uh because i know my stacks games are gonna go longer right so i'm gonna play a faster deck that makes sense all that all i will say is we've learned on commander clash um not that easy to control game length like yeah sometimes without stacks no matter what you're doing with stacks without stacks like games can just go long or short so i don't know can you even optimize for that and maybe this is way too far off topic but can you even have that conversation because can you predict how long a game is going to go when you're sitting down at a table with people no but you definitely you definitely don't help it by playing stacks like that like i would agree with playing stacks right it's if i'm playing control but there's another one that like i i basically i don't allow it on quickies anymore but another really popular archetype is the blink archetype like urian brago you're right uh you're urine whatever i don't know i don't play [Music] have you been talking to whatever you've been talking about i said i think that from a second video you're ryan blink um what's the other one the zoryus god pharah there was so so i had i had the orion it's epihara like it's a pokemon i don't get it yeah so i i had a quickie with a urine blink and it lasted guess what three hours and then i had a afar game again guess what three hours and it was literally just like trying to shut down the blinking but the blink is very recursive and all it does is accrues incremental value very slow it doesn't kill you quickly it's gonna kill you with two twos eventually eventually uh but it just keeps doing the thing you know it keeps doing the loop it keeps recurring this thing you blew up in the graveyard by blinking blah blah blah and it does it over and over again and you can you can remove it you can remove little pieces and you will but like it's just it's just that's what the the engine does so like there's there are certain archetypes that you kind of like after you play against it a couple times you kind of realize yeah we're in for a long game if if this is if these are the type of decks that we're going to be into and i think i i would love that in with like i think that's an important criteria to discuss like how long do you want this game to go and that's that's irrespective of a power level you can play a bad blink deck and it will still be longer you play by a bad control deck and it will still be longer bad stacks and that's not a power level thing it's just uh how much time do you have right now how much time do you want this game to go on for i i have a question which i know the answer to okay so what about optional stacks you're like oh stacks is so egregious well what if you get stacked unless xyz happens ristic study s for sentinel you are taxed unless you let that player draw a card and the answer is that the tax is so like soul crushing that you would rather throw the game and give the person like all the cards rather than pay any amount of tax right like is it doesn't this proof that everyone hates tax that they will throw the game they will let someone cast a three mana draw 30 because they do not want to be taxed a single mana a single turn they will just throw the game away that's how egregious taxing is no second can you answer this why are you all looking at it can you hear me please i'm gonna just go out right now i feel like someone could do this um i think those cards are fine and they i cast my spells into them and then the other person wins we've seen this many times on commander clash we're gonna mill him out that's my answer by the way we should fill you in seth that the other day we played fair magic mostly and and phil did not get a single card for the longest time see that's that's what happens when i miss the week of commander clash people actually pay the pay the one way richard richard let him draw a couple richard eventually did but it was like i put myself back two turns i put i put myself back on turn two at a full turn cycle and then i put myself back another full turn cycle later on i delayed my commander by two times terrible and complained about it because i didn't have stacks out of the game right like it was not a feel good you were doing it to send a message right honestly it was one of my favorite games i felt like i felt like i was in the right mindset because it wasn't even it wasn't even phil i don't want to go too too derailed but i felt i was being stacked more by the thrax player because my deck was a voltron deck and it had protect it had it had hex proof on it and it didn't really have a lot of like uh like ulterior creatures to uh protect itself so i i had hexproof and i had a big voltron wind conditioner and thraxim under guess what every single time he attacks he makes you sacrifice a creature so with maxum under just being on the table anytime you cast him haste immediately sacrifice your your commander uh don't pass go don't collect you know twenty dollars or whatever just don't don't get too hasty and also he had a shadow spear on the battlefield which removed the hex proof and indestructible for my voltron commander so i had to play around that that mentality where i had a commander that's all about you know loading up of indestructible it has hex roof innately it's all about killing you with your commander and i had i was up against a player who said i can make you sacrifice your commander at any given time i can remove your hex proof i can remove your you're indestructible if you have it have fun and i was in the mentality of like this is a puzzle where we're like i i don't think i was getting salty in that game i don't think so no you saw the puzzle it was so i didn't feel salty uh and like i was just like all right i'm gonna bide my time i'm gonna wait until i have the right opportunity that i can one shot because i know my commander can one shot so all i need to do is find my haste neighbor find enough critical mass find that evasion and eventually i will win the game off that and i was playing to my outs entire time and i felt really good like i felt like i played i played pretty well and i felt really satisfied but like a lot of people i know i i've been in a bad head space sometimes where i was in a situation where like i was like i don't get to play magic i'm not having fun and i didn't i didn't enjoy it at all and i think that's that's valid too but like it depends on your head's head space i don't know where i was going with that we were talking about it again now i'm confused because i know if you died without doing anything if someone decided to swing at you you would not be happy about that game i i know what happened was you managed to play around it and you managed to clutch it out and it like worked out well but it was there was a real possibility that everyone just into you and you spent the first four turns doing nothing and die i've also got some wins in the season as well so like i didn't feel like ugh you know like i'm locked out of this game i'm locked out of every game there was one season where i felt like i was just locked out of every game and i was just i just was it was lame it felt i didn't i i was a grouch the entire season i i i think and this happens right like it's not justified right it's just every single game yeah it feels bad but if it happens once in a while like i don't care because you know like i don't feel like i need to pop off every game the only solution to that is no stacks right ah just maybe this time this time you maneuvered around it and it felt good but what about the other nine out of ten where you don't maneuver around your channel what about what about this exactly once in a while like you can have like instead of every game it's not either all or nothing maybe you can have uh some sax games like one every four games has a sax player in it and what if today i bring the stacks deck and then tomorrow it's seth's turn to bring the stack stack it's just constantly here right sure but i don't know i mean to richard's original question about paying for stacks it really depends on the cost right like there's there's some of those effects right essentially well like like i don't view is especially even a stacks piece like as for me best personal is perfectly fine but then there's cards that are like smothering ties we've seen panga ping too is a lot harder than pink one and then there's extreme ones like hum of the radiox this weird old mirrodin card it's a it's a four mana green enchantment that says each artifact spell costs one more to play for each artifact its controller controls so essentially if you have a few artifacts like you gotta pee the five you gotta pay the six to cast each spell so i think it really just depends on what the what the rate is on those cards and you throw the game as a result right like you know like if you were forced to pay like if s per sentinel was like a forced pay or aristic study was a forced pay you would consider it a stax piece but what you're doing is you're like this isn't a stax piece and you're just letting the other person get the greatest magic card in existence right draw ten for three mana right was was this podcast actually like an intervention to try to get me to play the one was it was this wasn't it does it work that's how bad all your people are all concerned citizens all right we just want to help this is where i stop off and leave yeah feel attacked i think i think all of that's fine i i do i don't i don't even think that like s percentile like optional stacks those cards those are great those are fine i hate them i hate they're so insidious to me because i feel like they they prolong the game way more than you they should because every single time you're casting a spell into it you have to think about all right do i have the manifest to pay for this what is my the rest of the sequencing of this turn going to be like uh what are what are my opponents going to be doing are my opponents going to ignore because if my opponents are ignoring it then i'm going to be the only one left behind and then it adds all this extra layers of complexity to the game when it should just be like as per sentinel should just say uh pay one mana draw three cards you know just just say that just say that it's more honest and and we can just continue with the game we don't have to or waste all this time about it and risk studies just say just say i win the game just say i win the game that's not how that card works right it says it says like draw 10. statistically like on our on our average it says draw 10. on our average that's because cassette right there seth is our average it never just says draw cards it also says and your opponents have to pay x mana and they're behind x amount of turns like this like when we did for the most part of like the last clash when the table agrees look at that it was harmony it was beautiful phil drew nothing but but behind i was behind the game because i did that you know like it's not like it's not nothing a deck that's playing that okay if i saw s percentile in a human's deck i'd probably be a little more worried but if i see a s percent on like an aristic study and like a dirtily deck that means we have time yeah i'd rather i mean lose or six steady i don't even know where i deal with that i just i'd rather just scoop i'd rather just scoop you i mean you press the three button around your time problem is you just decide before the game you're not paying for any of the ones on any card you just say and then you don't got to think about it at all you wanted commander to be co-op right here's co-op we all pay the one or no i'm the co-op player because i'm handing out cards to other players i'm collaborating by giving them cards all right what about a harsher stack so this one your opponent draws the one what if you don't pay the one you discard or if you don't pay the one you take five one every time except i might i might pay the one i might would you count this as a stacks piece or not is it okay should we be you're technically not locked out you could do whatever like don't we have an elder dragon like if you cast a card from your graveyard or something you take 10 or if you search your library yeah like those kind of cards but there's also painful quandary uh if you cast a spell you have to lose five life or discard a card payable quantity you can yeah cut through the tax if you really wanted but the cost is very steep and obvious to you right and gets you killed really fast what kills you faster the painful quandary or seth just still popping off we're gonna mill him out cram we're gonna mill him out never really i've never i've never really thought of him as a stax pieces before honestly you play the vlog all the time but i don't think of them as taxes it's just drunk it's just draw a card when someone casts a spell so i've never i honestly my mind is blown i've never even realized that people think of them in the in this way that it's an actual legitimate option that you could pay could pay for them like italia or something um so i'm very very confused at the moment i've learned so much today um i think painful kandra and stuff like that's fine like i don't know are those even stacks pieces i don't think so totally it's tax fees no i think they're they're stuck either gonna kill you or make you lose your entire hand eventually i don't know it's a win con that's not a stags piece dude it disrupts you but continues to disrupt you for the rest of the game until it's removed right it's not like a one time or you just paid the five life so how can you make asper sentinel in a way that wasn't worded that way because i do think there's some legitimacy to the idea of like it takes too long like people got to think about it it takes too long like how do you make cards like that with youtube cards call it a date no trigger cast trigger draw three cards and then we'll move on with our life risk study on average is cast trigger draw ten so just say that just say you risk society when you cast this from your hand draw ten cards the game can continue it's like i think oh man i don't know is risk study that good i feel like it always never draws me a card dude no one paid everyone but then it's a what then it's a one-sided sphere of resistance which is also very good imagine a sphere of resistance just said three mana it spells your opponent's control costs one more but yours are fine you just keep trucking the lawn you keep doing your thin but everybody else has to pay one extra for every single spell that has good that's still a good part i think good good yeah yeah good good i mean i'll get killed everything i play gets me killed i know i just hate those i can't even i can't even have a reasonable debate about these cards because i hate them so much well esper's fine-ish the ristic study i will i i can't even have a logical debate i just like brought them out and they're both froth of the mouth i hate it so much they're both fine all right well um [Music] okay here's a question for you all we talked about stacks what we like and we don't like and which ones we would play what about what type of sex guys would we like to see in the future if any is there any like sort of design space that we like we would like to see some sax guards like do they sit like serving a purpose that maybe you want to see fulfilled in commander and if so how more of them attach to creatures and or planeswalkers because one planeswalkers yes the planeswalker guy would say that but planeswalkers are kind of easy to interact with right you can attack them creatures you can kind of just remove them simple as that don't ever attach them to something like a land or something like that please god i think glacial chasm or whatever is like a little problematic but but yeah return in the strip mine i i wouldn't mind some more narrow like targeted hate cards like i do think there are problems that could be solved i know one card that sticks out to me is like confounding conundrum which is designed to hate on people having multiple lands enter the battlefield in the same turn i don't think that was clipping them yeah it wasn't tuned exactly in a way to work but i wouldn't mind to see more stax cards that narrowly narrowly hate on specific things not things that are gonna take people all the way out of the game but we know that like green ramp is really powerful in commander and it pushes a lot of people into playing green so cards that somehow like slow down that archetype or that play pattern in specific i think that could be beneficial but i also don't want to see like armagedd i don't think armageddon's a solution just being like hey no one gets play magic like that's not how you how you solve that problem but i feel like there's got to be something in between armageddon and confounding conundrum to like make green a little bit more fair compared to the rest of the the tables with ramping just with with like legitimate instead of only bouncing a land back you bounce like four what about what about this my r d hat is going on this would be a creature and it would say if elaine enters the battlefield it's a if it's the second lane to enter the battlefield this turn on the controller's side it instead enters the battlefield on your control so you can play a land each turn but if you want to play a second land on the same turn aka like a rampant growth effect then it will go over on your side so you could still play around it still play your land each turn or you can ramp in growth but you cannot do both at the same time or else i'm going to get that land instead and it's on a creature it doesn't have protection or anything would it have anything else yes no well maybe no okay yes it would whatever whatever it is not salty something something like that proposition agent oh my god there it is dude there it is being green it no no no no no it'd be smart would be so bad for the floor it would be great for the format because here's okay so i understand the point about narrow answer you don't want to like grind the game to a halt but when you put narrow cards in you king make right say there are two green players at the table and then a demeanor player demere players popping off but like mana crypts and signets and then you slap down this anti-ramp card and the green players twiddle their thumbs and demure players sling slotting uh slingshotting ahead of everyone so yeah but like narrow hands but there's also vandal blast and stuff like the mirror player if somebody has a lot of artifacts like it's already so acceptable and even expected that you're going to wipe out all their mana rocks at some point so you're going to shove them super far behind if you can resolve a vandal blast or a bane of progress but we don't have that for like lands like that's there's no band four main ramp cells all across the board right like you're right right there is an unfair advantage for green ramping today but you know you could blood moon and then the mono white player is laughing his way to the bank and the 5c players are out of the game right like you you king make and make it you know what's that ban card where two players play the game and no one else plays great secrets yeah you do something like this seth and rustic study when you have like a quote-unquote narrow but the narrow is like all lands right at least with graveyard it's narrow but not everyone's a graveyard deck but everyone needs to cast spells and ramp and have lands right so i i don't know i think it'd be more king makey is there a way you could do it right and ramp like maybe if that design isn't right is there any way like is there something that could slow down something like that like green ramp or other some narrow slice if something gets too too powerful because we do that in constructed formats like if some mechanic or play style gets too good then wizards can print a hate card to like slow it down or just won't that work in commander because of how the format is it has to be like a fires of invention like a well it was like an envelope what's the azorious hate card where if you cast a spell you must have that number of lands uh lavinia yeah something like an amount of mana per turn if it's like turn four the maximum madness fell you could cost is so that you know if you ramp value man or rock your way in you would be equally locked out but you also have to get some extra value out of it or else you wouldn't want to play it like nope like falling is legal but people don't play thalia like i mean throw etb draw a card on on it or something and it'll be fine it's easy enough yeah i liked homer's club so i thought that was great of course you you would you would take destroy there's got to be something that combats boil right and choke so why not [Laughter] it's the problem with playing choke like this like it's why carpet of flowers is somehow acceptable but choke is not right yeah like it's the same thing right you are like a case of deck and you get some like crazy advantage but somehow carpet is fine but choke is like you're a big meaty face right like yeah i think you're putting me behind instead of putting yourself ahead yeah that's like the mentality is like it really is yeah it's a psychology thing that we talked about in the beginning like it just you still feel like you're doing your thing even though someone else is doing their thing way way better and you're kind of like oh i wish i was them like maybe next game i will be them but when you're the person who doesn't get to untap your lands you don't that could be you don't get that feeling well i guess that's why like white moved away from balance and armageddon and they moved to catch up ramp which yeah i think i think it does have a value but they have to push it a little bit more like i really like archaeomaster's mouth for example i i like the idea of archaeomax map i like the idea of like okay if you're behind on lands uh you get this really powerful effect if you're not behind on lanes though you still get something our ko mansour's map puts two planes into your hand so you get something at the very least and if you're behind boom you get to ramp super hard and i like that uh card is so bad late more of the green problem i think this is banned i think so people always say there's two things that people bring as the answer for stacks right like why stacks is good because you stop combos and this is usually in the context of fair players right like they probably don't have counter spells and they're like what do i do i'm not playing blue how do i stop your combo so the answer is stacks and then ramp right here you are ramping away you have like 30 mana and turn five i have like four mana because i play the land each turn how do i stop you and i think it's very hard to stop i think you just gotta ban out the ramp right like stop making more ramps so adding white ramp doesn't help because now green and white are overpowered everyone else is falling behind and you need to add that rich i knew i liked green because people like that like that's the thing people get excited does it even matter at this point like we have such a critical mass of ramp like even if they never one land you can keep rampant girls but none of this like five man or ramp five or four man or ramp two like none of this super advantageous thing right or you just print tomer's card and you keep it in circulation you make more of them i actually like my design i'm guys i also like your design mark rose water himself i love that card please make that happen commander legends 420 i don't know whichever one just get it in there i think philosophically though i like people catching up more than i like stopping people in commander if that makes sense like if there was a way to have people also ramp so he could keep pace with the green deck maybe that would be more fun overall for people playing commander than being like oh we're gonna hate on that and make you do less of what you want to do because you abuse it i play white all the time and i have the most lands on the battlefield with all my catch-up ramp because i abuse the heck out of it such that it is not catch-up anymore right like there are ways to maneuver around them like if it was like truly catch up maybe but magic players are crafty they can cheat their symmetrical effects into non-symmetrical effects they can cheat their catch up into you know catapult ahead right like winter orb is symmetrical the great no right because you find a way around it and it's no longer symmetrical and you destroy the table right so do we just not want any more stacks pieces then is that the is that no we are we won't be crim accepting chris we know you want more groups more i like my idea i don't know yeah someone has to speak up other than me but what do you think tober hates narset he hates the just the other day when we did the troll episode he's like half a day away a bad day away from being a chaos player right you you might want to check out the uh the viewers submitted wheat cream that's all i'm going to say great i might have i might have called out your name to witness me for a moment i fulfilled your legacy um i i i think some stacks is kind of okay but like it really depends on how the general public is going to uh receive it i don't think any amount of podcasts or content creators or anything is going to convince people being like actually these effects that you don't like are fun i don't like you can have any sort of rational debate you can you can map it out if there was a like a statistical way you can show that these these effects are actually good and healthy for the format you can give the best reasoning ever if people don't like something they don't like something and it's just a feels-based thing so like i would say i would say prince stacks effects that people mostly enjoy or at least tolerate and don't print staxxy effects that people actively dislike like i think that's basically all you can hope for i like stacks i do i like stacks effects i like i like the puzzle aspect as krim says especially if i'm in the right mentality for it but at the end of the day this is a game for people have fun and if people don't have fun with these effects i won't play them against them and hopefully there are stax effects that wizards can come up with they will you know address the disparity between lane ramp and artifact ramp and stuff like that in a way that people aren't that upset about and i think there is a way to do it i hope they keep trying at it but um uh it's difficult it's definitely difficult because you're just dealing with people's feelings and how do who do you appeal to and uh how do you appeal to them is going to be a tricky title or up to to walk woo all right well uh we got to the one hour 30 mark which is kind of like perfect uh we covered most of the topics that we wanted to cover is there anything we want to say before we end this discussion all right we nailed it uh like and subscribe if you like this podcast uh support the channel by going to goldfishmerch.com and buying our beautiful beautiful playmats able to richard's ball and until next time friends see ya

Channel: MTGGoldfish Commander

Views: 67,358

Keywords: Magic the Gathering, MTG, EDH, Commander

Id: 8RH1SF9yXW0

Length: 90min 2sec (5402 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022