What's Wrong with Magic the Gathering in This Day & Age II

This will be a two-parter. The first part will be focused on what's wrong with Magic outside of Commander/EDH, while the second will be what's wrong in Commander/EDH.

I'll get straight to the point. The other eternal constructed formats draw people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and superiority complexes like moths to flame. It is the same recipe of delusional affirmation & validation that pay-to-win mobile games offer.

More to the point, people who have more money than you (Or are more reckless with their money) and didn't get the validation they needed from their parents growing up, are going to get that validation by pub-stomping you with cards worth more than your whole deck.

These people genuinely believe that stomping other people in a trading card game is affirmation and validation of their superiority over others. This isn't just a game to them. This is them pouring their whole ego into something for a narcissistic payoff.

If I thought these people were a tiny minority in the Magic community, I wouldn't be writing this. There is definitely an unhealthy amount of them. A lot of these people are incapable of introspection and have no internal dialogue. So they aren't even really aware that they are like this.

Just think about all of the people you know that play Magic who, any time they aren't winning, are joyless, miserable, and salty. It's a LOT of people, right? Those are the people I am speaking of. There are FAR too many of them and they ruin Magic: the Gathering for the rest of us.

Here's a reality check for them: Competitive Magic is a game of luck. I'm not saying that the people who show up to a competitive event with 80 contenders isn't a gathering (Pun intended) of Magic's best local players. In fact, I am saying precisely the opposite. I'm actually saying that Magic has a skill ceiling and at least 60 of those 80 players have hit it. The rest comes to luck. The real point here is that the guy who placed first oftentimes assumes that that makes him the best player there, while the stark reality is that 60 of them had just as good odds of winning. That player is wrong.

...and don't even get me started with the fact that deck builders, tinkerers, & brewers don't EVER get the credit they deserve when THEIR DECK is the one that won that event.

I no longer touch formats outside of commander for these reasons, because there are so many of these people.

Part 2: Commander/EDH

Again, straight to the point: Most Commander players are soft pansies who can't handle unfair situations.

I love playing commander with my friends. I HATE playing commander with just about everybody else.

Look, I get it. My Douse shut down your commander, Gishath. Rather than accept that your loss was due to lack of enchantment removal, you want to go into a monologue about how stax pieces are unfair & should be rule-zeroed out and how you would have won otherwise.

Look, I've had to stare down at a Linvala while playing Thrasios and holding no answers more than once. Do I feel salty? Sure. But I exit those games just hoping I have the answers I need next time and hoping that the next game is more enjoyable. What NEVER enters my mind is that Linvala is somehow too oppressive and that we should rule-zero ban it. I have been on the receiving end of a Beamtown Bullies handing me Leveler several times. I am salty every single time, but I get over it.

You show up to these peoples' pods, only to be told that Geoff doesn't like poison or infect, so you can't play Atraxa. Cameron doesn't like mill, so you can't play Bruvac. Todd once got reduced to tears by Reaper King, so you can't play that. Billy doesn't like fast-combos, so you can't play Thrasios, K'rrik, Beamtown Bullies, Kinnan, either Ezuri, or Shadowborn Apostles. None of them like MLD, so you can't play Jhoira. Tergrid and Meren are "Just no.". You go to cast Approach of the Second Sun and they go "We don't do that here". You play Roil Elemental in your landfall deck and they say "We rule-zeroed that that triggers only once per turn". You play Chulane but they all concede because "you're durdling too much".

You get the point. It's like Magic fascism.

So let's raise a toast for those rare casual playgroups where we still play to win, the salt is momentary and we get over it, and we never "rule-zero" jack shit. Ya'll are where the fun is really at.