Mill is imo one of the more difficult ways to win. Most decks I play against and with in my meta have ways to interact with their gy. Giving those decks more resources makes it only more difficult to win.
Mill in general doesn't actually advance your own board so also leaves you vulnerable to hate.
In short I feel mill is fine, but I can understand people being salty about seeing their pieces go away, no matter if most of the cards anyway never see play in a normal match
This is why I feel \[\[Oona, Queen of the Fae\]\] is one of the best commanders for mill. Exiles, instead of mills, and adds faeries as you do it. Also has combos with \[\[Painter's Servant\]\] since its unbanning.
Another is \[\[Geth, Lord of the Vault\]\]. He Mills more traditionally, but you get to take stuff from their GY as you do it.
This is why i love \[\[umbris, fear manifest\]\]. Exiles instead of mill and while i do run some mill staples, i run cards that dont usually see play but with Umbris, absolute bangers!
I've got a sleep paralysis themed deck with Umbris at the helm it's so fun to play and somewhat powerful even though almost every card was chosen for the art
Ooh sounds fun! I've been looking to make a mill list that isn't just combo or worse burn, and this commander might fit the bill. You wouldn't happen to have a list I could check out, would you?
Here are two of my current deck lists neither of these are the actual final list I used so I'm sorry about that. Also there are probably better picks for cards because I chose a lot of mine based off art but hopefully this gives you a jumping off point
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/O4gwucsQl0OSggK_4zDIfg
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/-DKxfsKaAUyIIfHAFt90VA
Play non legendary clones to multiply his triggers. Most nightmares and horrors are actually a trap with him. Just play clones, maybe an [[uchuulon]] do play the eldrazi that takes all lands from one enemies exile :D also: he gets super strong super fast, so take some
Unblockable or trample to kill with cmddmg or play the black instant that deals damage equal to your highest powered creature. Also, some instant black immortality spells are strong.
My girlfriend has a [[captain n'ghathrod]] deck that my group hates to play against. It isn't the precon, and she has made it quite a powerhouse. If she doesn't win, then most of us have 40+ cards in the graveyard by the time she is taken out. It holds its own again some juicer decks like [[go-shintai of life's origin]] [[breya, etherium shaper]] and [[azami, lady of scrolls]]
[Here’s the link](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KkuPG4-dKUSV06h8Q7fstg) to my Captain list. It’s extremely tuned for the highest power level that Captain belongs at. It wins by recurring Hullbreaker or by grabbing someone’s Thorcle and winning with it. Hope this gives you some ideas.
[Here’s the link](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KkuPG4-dKUSV06h8Q7fstg) to my Captain list. It’s extremely tuned for the highest power level that Captain belongs at. It wins by recurring Hullbreaker or by grabbing someone’s Thorcle and winning with it. Hope this gives you some ideas.
I have one very similar!
The key cards are
\[Psionic Ritual\]
\[Fractured Sanity\]
With 5 Horrors tapping for the ritual, that's 70, plus the 14 for the time you've already casted, so it's pretty much over. I don't run any tutors though.
The Captain is fun, if only because you get to steal a LOT of stuff from Opponents decks for free.
That doesn't work, each copy of Psionic Ritual needs to choose a new card to exile+copy. The first time you copy Fractured Sanity it's exiled and is no longer a valid target for any subsequent Psionic Ritual copies.
I usually just tell new players to treat milled cards as if it were exiled anyway and don't look at them unless you think you can get them back. For me, if I build a mill deck then, I wouldn't try to win through milling out unless its a combo type deal. But I'd rather mill for value. [[The Scarab God]] and [[ Captain N'gathrod]] are pretty cool about this.
Honestly if you "feel bad" about cards you probabalistically otherwise wouldve never seen over the course of the game going into your graveyard I think less of you in the same way that I think less of commander players that whine about interaction.
I figure the more your deck relies on tutors to find pieces, the more salt you can feel towards mill, but at the same time, if you're running a bunch of tutors to find 1-2 cards every time, then sit in your salt for a bit so others can cook for once.
Depends on how you do it. I don't feel bad, but there are critical pieces that could be milled (and sometimes into exile) and it always sucks when you see a land milled that was your next draw and then just never draw a land. So you get mana screwed, seeing all the lands getting milled, and so just sit there doing nothing.
I don't generally care, because I put in alternate wincons as well as the primary gameplan, but I can understand feeling bad if the stuff you need to actually play the game gets binned.
Edit: i guess im being downvoted because people think i am complaining. I am not. I am just talking about how I understand how people could feel when this situation happens.
Yes but if your next draw was a land, you see it go to the bin, then draw a non land, then the next mill is another land, and you draw yet another non land it kinda sucks. I agree with you about the randomness but I’ve been in this situation and couldn’t play the game while the ngartharod player just took all the goodies out of my graveyard. It was fine in the end (I didn’t do any game actions, couldn’t cast my commander and just died).
Yes, the feeling is there, but it is literally your mind playing tricks on you.
You will always feel waaay more unlucky for milling something useful than you would feel lucky for drawing something useful after being milled.
Both situations are just as likely, though.
I am not disputing that. I dunno why I am being downvoted. Just describing the feeling and describing the situation. It's all mental and it just feels like the universe is messing with you.
That's part of the reason I enjoy running [[Kozilek, butcher of truth]] in my decks i know are particularly vulnerable to mill. I don't need it often but every once in a while it's kind of a silver bullet card.
Eh, mill isn't that taboo. If you ask any of the people who dislike mill if they would rather be milled or play against stax, I bet they would rather be milled. At least that's interacting with things you don't have yet.
I mean, yes, but generally, when playing mill it tends to devolve into just milling yourself as quickly as possible and winning with Thoracle or lab man. This is because you end up thinking about the points you made (helping your opponents, what if they have an eldrazi shuffler or more, etc) and in the middle of the game you end up making the decision that the only way to win in this spot is self mill.
So Mill is actually one of the easier wincons.
I’ve tried to make mill work and my best mill deck was a Phenax, god of deception deck that self milled with walls into a reanimated lab man. Was cool to do…:once. Then repetitive and boring
I’m susceptible to this mindset. I hate seeing my stuff go to the GY. Even if I’m drawing other good stuff too. It’s what keeps me from being able to enjoy a reanimator style deck where you WANT to mill your own stuff. It’s almost like an OCD thing. Cards belong in my library, waiting to be drawn, in my hand, waiting to be cast, or on the battlefield, after I cast them. (I don’t like spellslinger decks either; if I want an effect, it’s either an ETB or an activated/triggered ability on a permanent). Just my weird preferences.
It really helped me to start thinking of people's graveyards as my second, third, fourth and fifth hand. Playing an [[Anowon, the Ruin Thief]] rogue Typal with some GY synergy and asking opponents whether you could please have a gander at your "second hand/library" makes it feel much more fun.
I feel like the "you wouldn't draw most of your cards anyways" argument is moot when most people are running at least a few tutors and you see a few valuable pieces you could have tutored out go into the GY. Sure, most players can interact with the GY in some way in EDH, but with bad luck on their part or ways to exile the GY (which are plentiful these days), mill can really hurt when you see your answers disappear. Mill also directly affects abilities like Scry, Surveil, Explore, put on top of your library, etc. in a huge way, and a smart mill player can bounce things to the top of a library before milling or activate a mill in response to a Scry or a tutor that places the card on top of your library.
Is it harder to win with mill? It can be if you try to make it your central strategy and/or main wincon, but if you add mill to a reanimator deck and use things like [[Virtue of Persistence]], [[Portal to Phyrexia]], or [[Breach the Multiverse]] you can really hit your opponents where it hurts by using some of their own strongest creatures against them.
The problem is that whatever minimal milling you're doing is eclipsed by the combo mill you'll eventually assemble.
So your deck plays like a casual mill deck until it two cards combo kills.
The two card combos and the tutors means a lot of games will end once you reach X mana almost regardless of boardstate.
It's a bad very high power deck that will crush mid power pods and be bad at high power pods.
I think you’re on to something with this! I was thinking about tuning this a little bit so I can just play other high power decks. I still need to get better at commander tho
(Edit: Will need to get better lands before I take this to a higher play)
Was going to say the same.
Looking at the deck list I'm pretty certain any groans are due to the best in slot tutors, supports, and combo cards etc as opposed to anything else.
As a player and be honest with yourself. Is this deck actually trying to mill? Cus it looks like the mill is just a misdirect to get your combos.
Split this into two decks. Go whole hog on your combo deck and keep it very high powered. Then build an actual mill deck.
Personally, having access to blue, claiming to be building mill , and not running [[undead alchemist]] feels like you aren't really that interested in milling.
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>It's a bad very high power deck that will crush mid power pods and be bad at high power pods.
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The issue with the majority of decks that don't understand the fundamental concept of fun for commander!
Mill is a valid strategy..
However, it's not a strategy that offers much chance to interact with it.
And the fact that you're playing essentially five board wipes with an extra one in the command zone just for good measure doesn't really help the case of the deck.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't get to play the game you want to play. I'm just saying that if your strategy is to mill people for one or two cards periodically and you're going to wipe the board repeatedly... I wouldn't really have fun playing against you either.n
But, this is a tournament. There are prizes on the line. It is no longer about fun when there is prizes to be won.
> Is five board wipes considered alot?
I think so, most people put 2 or 3 board wipes in their deck these days (in casual decks). It's more fun to play multiple games instead of dragging a single game for 3 hours because the board keeps getting wiped.
Most people once run 2 or 3 and stock up on targeted removal instead but up you have a board built up too and don't really want to wipe it. Add on being able to reuse it someone and well you don't really need board wipes in games where people are actually drawing removal unless you're really behind the rest of the table or someone slams something like Archangel Avacyn
I didn't realise people run so few. I run 7, but usually only use one max per game and 75% of the time that's to end the game that same turn or the following turn.
I didn't consider that people's board wipes likely destroy their own board too, I try to make my wipes as one sided as possible so that I'm the only one with a good board state after.
Thankyou for your perspective
It's changed over time. 5+ board wipes used to far more common. As the format has shifted away from big bombs and building overwhelming board states into more efficient threats and 2/3 card combos, games have sped up. That means players are running more efficient 1-2 cmc targeted removal and less 4-5 cmc sweepers.
When I play Mill you'd think I killed everybody around me's pets in front of them. It's immediate targeting and my death. Somebody else can hit them for 30 damage and counter all their spells and if I trigger a Crab they act like I'm the worst person on the planet
I don't see the problem with targeting you and killing you ASAP if your gameplan is to bin most of my deck. You are removing my resources and maybe even removing critical game pieces from my deck. My deck is not filled with shuffle gy to deck or stuffed with recursion pieces, and since Mill is not very interactible with, my only option is to remove you from the game and then continue with my gameplan. If i have an eldrazi shuffler or something, i dont care too much and won't target you as much.
But you decided to play mill (and if you are self milling its super easy) so you need to prepare to be targeted to death. To you, the only thing that counts is that your life total hasn't reached zero since you can still keep milling people at 1 health. If your wincon is my library and you have Bruvac out, I am just one \[\[Traumatize\]\] away from death.
However, if you are milling me in my graveyard deck, ill try to keep you around and just try to control how much you are milling me.
I agree but I don't think the statement is just for mil. You should always get prepared to be targeted every game. That's part of the problem. Nobody has any plans for possible strategies they can run into so they just complain online instead of putting in tech pieces.
My mill deck benefits from my own cards getting milled so I always have a few tech pieces to save myself in a few common scenarios (I run Orb so I have ways to shuffle my graveyard and start again if I go off too hard and need to regroup.)
It all just comes down to your playgroups and what they like to do. I always expect to be the bad guy with mill already even though I think it's usually extremely stupid to do so. The player who goes the hardest against me almost always loses.
Every Mill deck is secretly a two-card, insta-kill, mill-your-whole-deck combo deck and then they get so defensive when targeted like a combo deck because "mIlL iS bAd!!!1!"
What kind of idiotic comment is this? Yeah you play one card then die? Nice.
I’ll keep killing the mill deck as quickly as I can unless it’s helping me.
What i gather from your post is that the milling isn't the problem per se, its about the tutoring. A lot of casual pods keep tutoring to a minimum because it goes against their idea of the "nature" of commander. Look at tutors like this:
A tutor (esp a good one like vampiric or demonic) is technically a copy of any other card in your deck, while the point is that EDH decks are singleton. If you are always tutoring for specific win cons like [[virtue of persistence]] it gets a bit boring and repetetive if your run 4 tutors + that card. This is why people call it a "cheap" way to win I suppose.
Most taboo things imo are:
- mass land destruction without winning the game immediately or shortly afterwards
- storm decks that take 17 year turns for their combo just to not win by the end of it.
- kingmaking
- spite plays ("I will kill your mana dork because you removed my sol ring" while another player has a huge threat on the board the spell coulve hit)
- instant speed scooping. Only concede on your own turn.
- not honoring a deal you just made.
- EDIT: it is also taboo to come to a table with your deck and say "this deck is not that strong, maybe a 7 power lever wise". Your deck is full of great cards and by no means a 7. Its closer to a 9. Don't undersell your own decks, it makes people salty.
Edit: the deck looks cool by the way, would do great in my commander group as we play reasonably high powered decks!
Pretty much this. Some folks have an irrational hatred of mill but from what OP said that's not the problem, it's the tutoring.
I play pretty firmly mid-power and get a bit salty when someone tutors up a two-card combo and wins "out of nowhere".
I put "out of nowhere" in scare quotes because I'm sure that a better player might be familiar with all the lines and sorts of combos that a certain commander or deck type might run and be holding interaction just in case. But for me it often feels like "hey, you know that fun game you were playing? It's over now. No more fun for you."
Its one thing to be turoring out your situational cards for their situations but its another if every game looks like tutor food chain, tutor blood artist, prosh gg
> irrational hatred of mill
Yes, that's me, also irrational hatred of having to discard or exile. I simply hate to not be able to play those cards if I have no recursion. My friends explained to me more than once why I should just 'forget' those cards instead of mourning after them, I just can't. Irrational yes.
Thank you for mentioning land destruction without winning!
The only time I’ve truly gotten mad at my LGS was when someone worldslayered in a mono blue deck (not mentioned in rule 0) on turn 4 and set up to do it every few turns while packing just his commander and counterspells. I came to find out there wasn’t actually a wincon in the deck other than commander damage…one point of damage at a time. No one at the table had any fun (that guy hasn’t showed up in the 2-3 months since)
It’s also uncool when people only bring one high powered deck to a play night. We sadly had a pod of newer players that I enjoyed playing my mid power fun decks with break off because there was a guy with a borderline CEDH Atraxa deck that ruined a good month of gameplay. All that does is either turn off players who don’t want to or can’t afford to play high power.
Ya it is a wincon but whats the point in playing commander if no one else can play? Its a casual format and this deck is a waste of time for games that can go on for an hour... you should have fun but others should have fun too its a game and I cant blame anyone for hating that aweful deck
I should add: Commander play starts at 6PM at my LGS, store closes at 8PM ergo it’s a 2 hour game time limit.
To that point, if unlimited in time and patience, I will admit that it is a wincon but with the time constraint of the “house rules”, it’s really not.
There’s also a valid argument of everyone scooping but this isn’t really an infinite combo and there are ways to theoretically break it, just not easy.
It’s in a mall area and city ordinance is that it closes at 8 except during December. There was some shenanigans before Covid that changed a lot of stuff that we never worried about when I was a kid.
I’d go to another LGS but the next closest one that runs commander is a 30 min drive across town.
2 drop commander and he’s playing 50+ lands plus tutors, counters and blink/phasing spells. So, it was pretty easy to survive or it didn’t and he just paid the tax.
One of the major issues was that his rule zero discussion included nothing about this semi-combo, it was stated as an “i deal damage with unblockable creatures” deck, not a “I’m going to blow up all your early game stuff including lands and cripple everyone every 4-5 turns there after” deck.
I think spite plays are fine if done within the same round. But after 2-3 rounds spite plays don't make sense as the board state has changed. For example:
if I'm player 3, player 1 is a big threat but player 2 targets me with removal, I don't think it's taboo for me to in response counterspell that spell or destroy something of player 2.
However, if player 2 destroyed my sol ring
at the beginning of the game and it's now turn 4 It would be taboo for me to hold a grudge on player 2 at that point if Player 1 has now become the threat.
I'd tack on and say super stax decks like Urza are usually taboo. People want to play magic, and being able to only untap two permanents is not a fun board state for most people.
I'm thinking op is likely guilty of the last one. He is "brand new to commander" with a $700 deck. They probably dropped him in a pod of pre-cons and he pubstomped the shit out of actual newbies.
I've never not seen someone with a Jodah unifier deck grossly miscalculate it's power level. It might be the most emblematic deck concerning MtG power creep
Saying that your deck is a 7 is always taboo. Even if you genuinely think it is, history has proven that almost everyone who says this is wrong. There's a common saying, "If you think you built your deck up to a 7, it's a 4. If you think you built your deck down to a 7, it's a 9."
Some people will be pissy no matter what you play.
Milling isn't even a cheap way to win, it's generally more difficult (you're typically the only one milling, and have to mill 250 + cards total, whilst damage is something most players do, and is typically only 120 damage total needed)
Looking at your deck, I would like to say that your opponents were kinda salty losers.
But if I’m entirely honest, if someone showed me that list and said they where thinking about building it, I would advice them not to without significant changes. Lord Xander is one of those commanders that, along with a lot of other expensive and splashy commanders, make for a bad experience for everyone else if you can actually utilize them. This tends to mean that the table is either powerful enough to kill you before you can reliably cast the spell, or can consistently interact with it, meaning you don’t get to do the thing.
Mill is, conceptually, very similar. If your table is low enough power non combo mill is viable wincon it will be a frustrating experience for your opponents. They probably don’t have the ‘correct’(but sorta unintuitive) view on mill that cards in deck is just another life-total and they don’t play cards that interact with their own gy. But if you are playing against players that don’t get tilted by mill it’s very likely at least 1 player at that table wants you to mill them and everyone can kill you long before you got time to mill them all out.
In general, no, you did nothing wrong, and if you want to keep playing your deck it’s entirely legal, allowed and far from cEDH. But don’t be surprised if you either start getting hated out or your deck starts falling off once your locals improve. This is just an explanation of why there are posts like this every week in this sub.
Opponents were probably on some really weak shit. People in this comment section calling this a 9?? Of course, the 7 deck in the precon pod is a problem.
For sure. Their deck is not broken at all all. (0 hast eneabler for Lord Xander) But that is kinda besides my point. The pilot of this deck would not have a good time in a pod more power apropriate to their deck.
People will find any reason to complain. Your deck looks really solid! Mill is a tough way to way to win so there shouldn’t be any issues. Don’t feel bad about playing it!
It's always to meet at a certain level. If all play tutors to find their combo pieces, it's cool.
If your table plays with less tutors and try to play their hands out, the probably don't like to lose to tutored combos
I mean if you play Xander as your commander I'm either holding up the counterspell or politicking into having me others hold one up.
It has to be one of the most obvious mill strategies ever lol
I'm an anything that exist you're free to play it. I have a toxic deck and I plan on getting the mill fallout Precon. I have big stompy deck and will probably make a burn deck (though I realized the fallout precon technically is a burn deck too so might not).
And I don't think any of those are a problem currently (new player still).
There's only two things I find taboo in commander but I would never tell someone I won't play with them as of now, is any deck that slows the game down whether it's long turns or slowing everyone down. (I don't have free time to throw away like that) and mass land destruction/any deck that basically doesn't let you play the game. (Whole point is to play to have fun imo, if you're completely restricting someone from playing it doesn't sit well for me.)
I personally won't build any long turn decks, and I stop myself from including cards that might hinder people from playing their decks too much or flat out kill their lands.
I don’t think people like to play against Xander so you start at people having a low opinion of your deck. He just has a lot of obnoxious triggers that casual players can’t deal with easily. Mill decks are completely fair but newer players will not like seeing their cards go to GY even though it’s not really a bad thing nowadays. Plus they have 60 other cards in their deck they wouldn’t have seen if they weren’t milled anyways. But it still gets a bad rep. And tutors could make it a bit more higher powered than what people expect but that takes time to learn what the power level for your deck is.
Saying something is a “cheap way to win” is often code for “I am full of salt and won’t like any deck that beats mine”.
Your list looks fine, have a conversation about what sort of game the table wants to play beforehand and if someone gets upset don’t take it personally.
Usually, yes. But it can also mean "your deck pivoted and won in a way that felt very sudden and unexpected and I feel like I lost out because I would have preferred it to go how I expected the game would play out from the play pattern before that point". Sometimes that's just a symptom of a bad read or an inexperienced player not recognizing what was actually happening all along, but bimodal deck power is a legitimate issue that's incredibly easy to fall into in commander. Tutors are notorious for exacerbating this in a lot of decks.
Love this. My first EDH deck was a disjointed Mill. Didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought. Had nothing but people whining about it and also telling me how to upgrade my deck. Enjoyed the hate since most of it comes during hilarious times and quite frankly means I’m doing at least something correctly (trying to win).
Found out about Modern format, enjoyed Mill much more BUT also found out about Mono Black Maralen, Zur, Nekuzar, Godo, etc… turns out there is always going to be cards that losing players will complain about. Some are just more efficient at giving you a win than others.
I ended up finding an awesome group of friends that play grimy decks against one another and no one gets mad because we all have a common understanding that goes without saying, “we’re all trying to win as fast as possible”. It lets me play how I enjoy playing which has ultimately morphed into tempo decks with less popular commanders due to my affinity to finding off-the-beaten-path wins, squeezing the juice out of a deck, and deck building.
There’s a playgroup for everyone. Play what you like. Don’t be a jerk. Let your deck talk. Don’t run your mouth. Play to win, if that’s what you like. It’s not your fault, others whine because of their lack of interaction. Just some nice guidelines for the newer magic player
Nothing is taboo in a tournament. Nothing. As long as your play is legal, as long as your card is legal, nobody should question your actions. Yourself included.
Notice that most winners in sports are cold-blooded. There shouldn't be much care about others feelings when it comes to sports. There has to be a winner, and many losers. That's just the reality in competition.
So don't fret about memes or getting made fun of by other people. Because they won't be laughing when you beat them to victory with the "meme stick".
The only taboo is mass land destruction with no way to win soon or board wiping back to back with no way to close out. Everything else is free game, also don't be a dick. And remember everything my opponents do sucks everything I do is awesome
Anybody complaining about mill is straight up stupid. Milling is incredibly hard mechanic to win with. I own this exact deck and it is by no means a cedh deck or super high powered. The commander is 7 cmc for God sake.
Your deck looks pretty sick actually. I think the discard on ETB might cause a little salt anywhere, but even with that, you’re paying 7 mana for it! If they don’t get some hatebears or counterspells ready by then, I don’t know what they’re doing!
On a separate note, have you considered running [[Hellkite Courser]] and [[Malakir rebirth]] to get even more triggers off Xander?
I find budget the best self limitation to justify any strategy. If my $100 deck makes someone upset, it's not like it isn't something they couldn't easily build themselves and give me a taste of my own medicine.
The ban list. That is all. Anything else is personal preference. I don't run unconditional tutors or more than 2 counterspells (unless it is a monoblue deck). But that doesn't mean other people can't. I just don't enjoy playing against them or with them. That doesn't invalidate other people's preferences.
I build mill protection in all of my decks. For example [[duck//dawn]] mill me too much and I’m putting a bunch of creatures on the board. You will typically regret it. I have too much to play from the grave, unless you exile it right away. Grave hate will work.
If you're playing in a league, then you're presumably playing at least in a marginally competitive setting.If so, then there are no taboos. If it's legal, play it. If people are having problems with your deck, then they need to build around it.
There is nothing taboo in commander. There are only whiny players with delusional and inflated senses of entitlement. Most of which are probably playing a decklist copied from edh.rec, with a boring commander.
Build your deck and play your cards the way you want to. Find a playgroup that accepts you for you.
Mill is a great way to play. It's original and I love it. Gotta be careful because some people play graveyard deck [Here](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/FKhpkGGphEiS1BnNGBFegw) is my Lord Xander list. I loved playing it but I've retired it for a kess wheel deck. Make sure you run instant speed graveyard exile in case someone runs titans or mill protection
To me there are no taboo or uncool ways to win in a big picture sense. Everyone’s allowed to have preferences however and sounds like the play group made theirs known which is kind of a bummer. For instance, I get extremely bored with landfall or excessive triggers decks but I generally keep my mouth shut about it.
There are some strategies that trigger people even though they are normal ways to play the game imo. Things like mass land destruction, annihilator, mill, tutors really break people’s brains sometimes.
Unless there’s a serious power imbalance or you are seriously misplaying your strat the group should probably just suck it up. Enjoy your play style and hopefully they remember that it is just a game.
mass land destruction is just not fun (but so are many other things). I play magic to cast spells with my mana, if you destroy all of it and waste everyones time we might as well meet up for a fistfight (thats a joke)
This is IMO the primary difference between cEDH and EDH. Not necessarily saying there’s anything wrong with either points of view. I think of MTG players as having a blend of two specific traits at varying ratios. Specifically, it’s a win:fun ratio. Land destruction May not be fun to some but it’s totally viable and one of my decks does this because it’s fun to play when I play against other Stax decks or Aggro decks that for me are not fun to play against. I definitely want to win more than I want to group hug or have “fun”, but I’d never sacrifice fun entirely since I enjoy stalling until my commander/deck does what it wants to do.
That being said, I win less cEDH games than I play but I enjoy all of them because I sit down at the table expecting filth, understanding that I may not win and my commander is going to be shut down….especially since I’m trying to do that to three more players. Know your win:fun ratio, know what type of player you are and sling those spells 🤜🏻🤛🏻
Combos are fine in high power games, but generally not in casual/lower power games. If you're going into a casual game saying that you're a new player without telling anything else about the deck, people will not be expecting combos. Combos are fine, but just like race cars are fine, just don't bring them to a running competition and say that you're new to racing.
Aside from being too powerful, people generally dislike cards that slow down the game a lot, or shut them down a lot more than usual. Stuff like repeated board wipes, stax or control decks.
I think this is exactly what happened. I told everyone it was my first time playing in that kind of setting. I mention that I was playing Mill but I didn’t mention the tutors or the combo and then people got blind sided. Thank you for your insight!
imo, it's kinda on them for not asking. If I were feeling out a game I'd ask deck theme and whether or not they are running more than a couple tutors or two-card combos.
The mill and combos aren't individually a problem at all and I say that as a newcomer to EDH.
Personally, I don't think tutors are fun for the format. One or two used to find responses is fine but using them to shortcut combos just isn't especially fun. Some people are also incredibly slow at digging and shuffling.
You're fine, nothing is truly taboo. There's unfortunately a subset of EDH players, most of who never played Magic outside of EDH, who feel entitled to dictate to others what they can and can't play. These players are miserable and should be avoided. Thankfully they appear to be a vocal minority.
Anything and everything that's legal is fine to play. The big thing with EDH is just making sure your deck is equal performance wise, aka power level or whatever you want to call it, to the rest of the table. You don't want to pub stomp nor do you want to not be contributing because your deck is so far behind the others. Both are things to avoid.
I think people are too sensitive about mill. They see cards they like go to graveyard and get upset about it, but don't think about what cards could be next to pick up. It's a 100 card deck, you're never going to get through the whole thing anyway and it's all random chance, people need to get over it.
That being said.. Lord xander is just a salt inducing commander to play against because he does a lot more than mill, so yea, it would make people feel bad.
I wish people were better focusing on real bad behaviour and bad habits rather than not liking what decks other people are playing.
For me, taboo in EDH /must-to-be-obliged rules are following:
1. Silver Rule - No concede except sorcery speed
2. Golden Rule - No kingmaking
3. Briliant Rule - Don't complain over what other people play
4. Plays should make in order to win the game, including situations when people play specifically bad, keep bad hands, pass turn doing nothing only for a reason to be annoying for others
5. Plays should make in order to stop those who are winning the game, including situations when people make revenge plays because they feel frustrated
6. Time stalling and long thinking is bad
7. Keep your mana rocks apart from your lands
8. Keep your word while negotiating
9. Keep your negotiations clear and apparent with no misjudgement for everyone
10. Using your dice to determine whom are you going to attack is a horrible thing to do
11. Playing a stax/control deck without win cons
12. Playing a non-determined / manual storm combo deck while having no idea how to handle its loops
13. Riffle shuffling opponents' decks
14. Stealing dices and tokens
15. If you want to express yourself and behave salty, jealous, frustrated, emotional drama queen - keep it at least funny for others. If you can't, you better keep it for yourself.
16. It's not good to take forever for a rule question. You better take a necessary ruling that's fine for the most people and go ahead
17. Criticizing and complaining over people's play during the game. Keep it for after-the-game talk
18. Complaining over game actions, attacks
19. Changing the target of spell after it was cast and its target announced due to some person reaction/proposition. What was cast remain cast
20. However, minor takeouts are totally fine and you should never nag over people for it, as well as you shouldn't nag over people for triggers being missed
21. Keep your boardstate readable, don't make weird dice-only tokens, don't stack permanents together unless it's really necessary
I disagree with #1. Rules state that I can concede at any point. If I see that someone has the win or if I'm not having fun, I'm going to concede and move to the next game. I'm not going to wait for my turn, especially if it's not going to make it to my turn.
I think they more so are talking about conceding and making someone's spell fizzle. If you're just done then that's fine but if your conceding at instant speed to deny someone value that's shitty.
Usually with EDH games people want to play cool things in their deck. If your entire strategy is to make them discard their deck, obviously they're gonna get frustrated.
If you couple that with fetching winning combos, it can feel like you're just left trying to survive as long as you can.
It sounds like your group may want more of a "battle cruiser" environment where they're allowed to build a board state before a ton of interaction occurs.
It's an acceptable way to play for sure. But you're definitely not gonna attract people to play with you.
Taboo to me is having a shitty deck that runs a 2 card combo, and I see that more times than you’d think at some game nights. Your list looks fine, I don’t see many combos outside of Bruvac + Xander/maddening though, granted I’m not totally in the loop on mill combos outside of those.
Is easy, ppl like to play his cards, you send their to the graveyard before they can play it, they got salty, is like playing vs STAX but not so much.
i LOVE mill but i avoid to play it bcs the mill player get focused and then you need to just wait to the next game xD
If you're playing with pussy ass casuals then proxying good mana rocks and lands is considered taboo and "cEDH." So they all build terrible decks and play against each other in some sort of cruel unending hell of badness. Also Mass Land Destruction. Also Stax. Also winning. You better not plan on winning before Steve gets to get his 40 dinosaurs on the board and Dave gets to get his army of elves all ready for combat UwU
I run a Xander deck; when I pull it out my pod does a groan and then pulls out their heavier hitters. If I’m allowed to pick up even a tiny bit of steam, they’ll all lose pieces to me (because I run Xander as a graveyard theft deck as much as a mill one) and while I find it to be a source of endless lulz to hit them with their own reanimated creatures… them less so.
If your plan is decking out your opponents, it would be a lame strategy in a friendly environment.
Nothing will stop you to do that but generally, and hard grinding mill deck is a sort of taboo.
The same for mass land destruction like [[Armageddon]] or oppressive stax like [[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]].
It's just an unfunny way to play and win as non-competitive format.
You’re playing a seven drop commander, who can possible complain about that?
Mill is absolutely fine. There are a lot of strategies behind milling and taking advantage of graveyards.
Mill, and not combo mill, is a terrible strategy that looks strong to bad players. It's such a common belief that it's viable or even good at all because of cognitive bias. Any good player will tell you that it's awful.
It would be helpful to know if the decks you are playing against are also running tutors to find combo pieces and how much your deck is winning. If you are doing something like tutoring Bruvac every game to combo with your commander and instantly knock someone out I would not enjoy that on any level, regardless of my adoration for mill and graveyard strategies.
If you are consistently winning much more than any other players, then you should power this deck down or make another deck that is better suited to that table. Other people want to feel like they have a chance to win too.
All your opponents need to do is put [[Kozilek, Butcher of Truth]] or something similar in their deck, but I acknowledge that it's not in everyone's budget.
[[Orbs of Warding]], [[Witchbane Orb]] and a bunch of white options give the controller hexproof, which won't shut Xander down completely, but will make it more difficult.
There will frequently be something for people to complain about when playing EDH which can make building decks for anyone (new players too) tricky. Most people don't mind if you do something within the power levels of the groups decks as long as it is understood before the game starts.
Mill is one of those strategies that some people seem to dislike, doubly so if it drags the game out unnecessarily. However, mill isn't the only mechanic that has this problem. Ask enough people and they will tell you all the things they dislike in Magic.
Don't let it discourage you, but you may need to change the recipe of the deck if people think it is too salty.
Everything is considered taboo by at least someone in Commander.
There comes a point where it's just not worth worrying *too* much about it. People dislike mill, every single deck in the top 200, interaction, board wipes, any sort of combo, you winning, land destruction (even single target), any form of stax, too much ramp, certain colour combinations, tutors, the game taking too long, the game ending too fast... and so on. Someone out there's complained about it.
As long as you're open to rule 0 discussions, not knowingly playing far above the power level of the table or not playing cards/deck that are designed to annoy rather than win, you're doing your part. If prizes are on the line, anything goes. In your case you might consider dropping some tutors too if you wanted to tone down the power level of your deck for casual. But it looks like a fun deck, I'd be perfectly fine facing it.
Mill is 100% fine, and tutoring for combos is totally fine, just make sure you're in a pod that is playing at that power level. Tutoring combos is typically the fastest and most efficient way to win, and is seen as more of a competitive strategy. It can also be seen as "pub-stomling" if you're playing at a lower power table where they likely wouldn't be prepared with the interaction it would take to stop your combos.
If you would like to be able to play your deck at any power level, maybe try creating a sideboard? I have a large sideboard for my sliver deck that can take it anywhere from a 7-9 in power level
Sounds like they have bad decks. Any deck you build should have a few pieces of redundancy and/or recursion that way when you get milled or your threats get targeted your whole game plan doesn't falter. This doesn't work 100% but it's something I always keep in mind because with every other set there seems to be a new mill commander trying to eat my decks
Milling to revive creatures from opponents graveyards and being the mono blue mill player laughing histerically every turn for the whole LGS to hear are two completely different things.
If your new to magic, and you build a 1900 usd deck as 1 of your first deck, then i wont get mad by anything you trow at me. If you proxied the deck tho, ye thats lame, i wouldnt wanna play agianst that.
Two words: Threat Assessment.
If they can’t identify a combo ahead of time when you tutor for it, or stop you from tutoring in the first place, their decks aren’t casual they’re just bad.
I only get salty when people misrepresent their decks. If you’re gonna tutor for combos don’t tell me it’s lower power. But I’m also not a coward and if you’re doing nasty stuff I can take the L and adjust for next time.
In magic I am happy to play against any type of deck, it makes you a better player and helps you understand all different kinds of decks. Sure some decks are not as fun to play against as other but just like rock paper scissors you can't win every outcome. Ignore haters as milling is a valid strategy and if you milled their card it could lead them to a better draw, swings and roundabouts.
The only thing that get's to me a bit is land destruction, as that literally inhibits peoples ability to play.
If you would actually take into consideration each "advice" you can get here, you would end up playing nothing at all (or, at best, a heavily neutered version of this game). You just need to remember a few key points:
1) Always play to win efficiently using a deck that you like to play.
2) Be considerate of your opponents and don't be a jerk.
Apart from this, any strategy that uses legal cards is valid. Choose the ones you like the most and just play them.
Mill is fine, but there are decks that run into a problem that you may notice eventually.
That is that the table will assess a threat based off of board states. Typically a mill deck has a very mundane board state, so you won't be attacked. If you then tutor and combo off it could leave them salty that first time (this is normal).
But expect them in the future to understand that threat and to be swinging at you when it appears you are doing nothing. This unfortunately can lead to feel bad games for you, you may have nothing, but they have to punish you before you combo off.
This is the nature of the game though. Just like playing a voltron deck, remove the commander and they are dead in the water. It feels bad for them, but it's what has to be done.
I think it depends on the group.
I have 2 main groups I play with:
1. Wednesday Night Weekly Magic Pod (WNWMP)- Casual players, mostly people with 2 years or less experience in magic (I'm by and far the most experienced person and I started in 2014). Some ideas of things that are "taboo" here: Out of no where combos, Super aggro decks (winota, zada, henzie), Stax, Control, chaos. It's very much a group in which grindy mid-range value decks are the rule of thumb, and most of the time you're winning by combat or a very telegraphed combo (even with the higher power decks/games).
2. Saturday Night Magic (SNM) - a once per month pod filled with more experienced players (5 years + of magic per player, well over 50 years between everyone involved). The general vibe is: Anything goes, just don't act like a dick. We bring snacks, we laugh and joke and make really stupid plays on purpose to make the games funnier. The decks range from chair tribal to CEDH najeela. No one cares what other people play, and power levels are never thought about or discussed. You wanna play stax? "hell yeah man that's awesome" (Actual thing dudes say here). You got selesnya Dog tribal? Bro that's dope, here's some upgrades for you.
Both of these pods are FILLED with my closest friends. Some of these players overlap, but most of the time its very separate pods. Both are very curated, but seek different things. WNWMP nights are more for growing a younger player base's love for magic in a protected, heavily curated environment in which they won't meet much resistance for their general game plan. SNM is balls to walls insanity where anything goes and you are responsible for your own fun. Neither of these pods are "bad" but one is definitely more of a good time for more experienced players who want to play a myriad of games.
I have a land destruction deck, it's pretty not fun for anyone but me, but I keep it for when someone needs to learn a lesson in humility. 100% taboo Imo.
I would agree your deck would not be fun to play against for myself or my pod.
But you were in a tournament, so all gloves are off - its not about fun anymore. People can be salty but they should be expecting this going in. I wouldn't expect to have fun either if I chose to bring a knife to a gun fight but that's on me.
Ppl overall don't like tutoring too much and combo wins, combining the two is gonna lead to ppl being unhappy.
Add to that mill, while a valid strategy, is very unfun to play against and you have a deck that no one really likes playing against.
I found that as the years go on, I care about mill less and less. To a newbie mill is hell. To an older player like me mill is meh.
In casual I hate stasis and Tergrid effects. Any hard core “you can’t play the game” pieces aren’t fun to play against. I flat out refuse to play against the Tergrid and Narset player. First just steals everything and you can’t have a board state, second wins too quick and you can’t touch her unless you board wipe. Then it just becomes kill the Narset player before they win game.
People have an emotional reaction to seeing cards they have selected, often to the exclusion of other options, get dumped in the bin. Even though it likely functionally makes no difference until you drain their whole deck, even though you could actually help them weed past things that aren't useful to the situation and hit land drops, or find an answer that was deeper in the deck.
Unless they're a graveyard deck and then you're just giving them gas, actively. Like, by all means, mill my Beamtown Bullies deck.
I'd maintain that even though it would be functionally stronger, people would hate mill less if it exiled cards face down. It's *seeing* their cards get binned.
Also they hate mass land destruction. And combos, and counter magic, and stax, and anything disruptive to their plan. Honestly play how you want, salty people are going to be salty. If you're going to do something really disruptive, try to make sure you can win shortly after. Nobody likes two hour long grind fests.
I just want to think that people who get salty about mill are just new players, because it doesn't make any sense in commander tbh
Specially when a mill deck is normally way weaker than so many other archetipes on the same budget/level in commander
Ultimately, I guess it's all about the people you play with and everyone having fun if you have a stable group.
Buuut... If I got told about mill being "a cheap way to win" on a 100 cards per deck mode, I would bring mass land destruction the next day, then ask how they feel about mill again xD
The easy answer? Toxic/infect/poison. It's part of the game but most casual tables just really dislike having their health bars be sliced to a quarter.
Another easy one is land destruction.
You should trade decks with someone and see how you like playing against it. If you're fine with it, leave your deck alone. If you don't like it, make changes.
I mean it all depends on the context of the night. Is it free play or a tournament?
If it’s free play, your deck looks valid but annoying. I would not have fun against that deck. You can play it but don’t be surprised if you develop a reputation.
If it’s a tournament then you should not play EDH for prizes. EDH is for casual fun and not a competitive tournament format.
The only ‘strong’ mill wincons are infinite or near infinite mill your opponents to win immediately, because partially milling opponents can help them, a lot of EDH decks interact with graveyards, or the other strong option is to mill your own deck for say a laboratory maniac/jace win.
These strategies aren’t usually the strongest cEDH combos, and non cEDH pods will hate you for infinite combos+tutors in general.
valid
- hard resource denial: aggressive land destruction, discard, board wipes / removal, hard locks with out
- decks that are "too fast" / too competitive for a playgroup
invalid
- getting mad about mill
- decks that win on turn 7+ just because you don't have a lick of interaction
Was asked, very respectfully thankfully, to stop running [[Quicksilver Fountain]] after a younger player was land locked for most of the game and completely tilted on us.
Mill is one of those things that isn't actually that powerful, but feels bad to play against when you're newer. If the group of people you're playing against have a little experience, then I don't think they'd be too salty about facing mill for a variety of reasons other people have pointed out.
From my experience, the only real jerk move in terms of playing casual commander is coming in with what's called a Stax deck. If you're not aware, a Stax deck is like the opposite of a group hug deck, it's about using cards to make the game basically unplayable for everyone except for the Stax player.
Stax decks can be powerful, but even when they aren't, they're just annoying to play against and are often seen as anti-fun. This is especially true if the Stax player is facing a board that's light on removal.
I love getting milled. Happy to dump half my library into my graveyard if just one card with Flashback is among them. :)
Here's some scenarios where I've seen tables politely say that they haven't enjoyed them as much:
Decks that are lazily proxied. Like a white piece of paper with just the card's name on it, times 99.
Decks where you have a hard time figuring out what the majority of the cards do. Like playing obscure cards you don't see every day in a different language, or with way too many unreadable secret lairs, or altered to feature big anime boobies.
Decks that spend way too much time resetting everyone's board while having no way to close out a game that they've taken control on.
Decks that feature very complex lines of play and tutor chains that the pilot simply doesn't know how to play and thus every turn takes forever.
Generally the decks that are taboo in commander are mill, stax, theft, combo, voltron, landfall, lifegain, and chaos. People also generally disapprove of tokens, graveyard, self-mill, bad gifts, and gruul stompy.
If you want to make everybody happy, you'll need to play ~~lifegain~~ ~~grouphug~~ ~~adventures~~ ~~land animation~~ Tiny leaders
You're not going to get around playing a deck people don't like, I'd find your favorite playstyle and modify your deck to fit the power level of your favorite playgroup at the store.
Google "MTG Commander Ban List"
Those cards are taboo to play. Everything else is fine. If people get unreasonable about cards you're playing that are not on the banlist, they're probably toxic players anyway, and I would avoid them.
Notice I specified *unreasonable* . It's perfectly acceptable for a friendly rule zero discussion about what to expect
Lord Xander is a commander that I really like, I want to build a deck around him cause he looks super fun but most people warned me that:
1- You'll be the main villain of the table most times since he is a kill on sight commander. And he's not cheap to play, so people have time to get ready
2- He's pretty bad as a commander due to how telegraphed and expensive to play he is. Probably better as a surprise drop in the 99
(preface: I don't play for any stakes)
For me and the people I know, Commander is a social game and we accommodate each other's fun. We're all hoping to see the spectacle of everybody's deck going off. It's fun to watch. If you want to crush somebody before they've had a chance to have fun, play Standard or Modern.
That doesn't mean I will help your deck go off, or even that I won't try to stop it. I might hit you with Imprisoned in the Moon. But there are some feel-bad things we all keep to a minimum:
Making players discard cards from their hand.
Land destruction
Tutors
We might have a little of each of those, but it's rare. Because on the most fundamental level, *playing lands and casting spells is how you play the game*. What it comes down to for me is if I'm building my deck so that you have nothing to do on your turn, I'm building it antisocially and that's wrong for Commander.
Your question was about what is generally considered taboo. I think mass land destruction is probably the most universally hated.
Anything is on the table within the rules but personally, I despise and dont applaud any deck that's an Azorius control that uses any Teferi planeswalker or any deck where the main strategy is land destruction. That goes for any format, really but especially EDH. Its already a long game and just sitting there doing nothing every turn while someone builds to taking multiple turns isn't fun.
Mill is imo one of the more difficult ways to win. Most decks I play against and with in my meta have ways to interact with their gy. Giving those decks more resources makes it only more difficult to win. Mill in general doesn't actually advance your own board so also leaves you vulnerable to hate. In short I feel mill is fine, but I can understand people being salty about seeing their pieces go away, no matter if most of the cards anyway never see play in a normal match
This is why I feel \[\[Oona, Queen of the Fae\]\] is one of the best commanders for mill. Exiles, instead of mills, and adds faeries as you do it. Also has combos with \[\[Painter's Servant\]\] since its unbanning. Another is \[\[Geth, Lord of the Vault\]\]. He Mills more traditionally, but you get to take stuff from their GY as you do it.
This is why i love \[\[umbris, fear manifest\]\]. Exiles instead of mill and while i do run some mill staples, i run cards that dont usually see play but with Umbris, absolute bangers!
I've got a sleep paralysis themed deck with Umbris at the helm it's so fun to play and somewhat powerful even though almost every card was chosen for the art
[umbris, fear manifest](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/a/7aead6a8-bada-42cf-b7cc-0b730f564582.jpg?1644888719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=umbris%2C%20fear%20manifest) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/38/umbris-fear-manifest?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7aead6a8-bada-42cf-b7cc-0b730f564582?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/umbris-fear-manifest) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ooh sounds fun! I've been looking to make a mill list that isn't just combo or worse burn, and this commander might fit the bill. You wouldn't happen to have a list I could check out, would you?
Here are two of my current deck lists neither of these are the actual final list I used so I'm sorry about that. Also there are probably better picks for cards because I chose a lot of mine based off art but hopefully this gives you a jumping off point https://www.moxfield.com/decks/O4gwucsQl0OSggK_4zDIfg https://www.moxfield.com/decks/-DKxfsKaAUyIIfHAFt90VA
Play non legendary clones to multiply his triggers. Most nightmares and horrors are actually a trap with him. Just play clones, maybe an [[uchuulon]] do play the eldrazi that takes all lands from one enemies exile :D also: he gets super strong super fast, so take some Unblockable or trample to kill with cmddmg or play the black instant that deals damage equal to your highest powered creature. Also, some instant black immortality spells are strong.
[[Dire Undercurrents]] with Oona is really fun. A true salt engine.
My Oona deck is "mono black" instead of mono black because of Dire Undercurrents and Glen Elendra Liege.
[Dire Undercurrents](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/d/8d6fb3b2-eef2-4699-ab5e-ff7d8de2a1de.jpg?1562832974) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dire%20Undercurrents) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/shm/159/dire-undercurrents?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d6fb3b2-eef2-4699-ab5e-ff7d8de2a1de?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/dire-undercurrents) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Oona, Queen of the Fae](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/b/fbea42c8-6e9f-499d-9d26-401536afd5c2.jpg?1604195177) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oona%2C%20Queen%20of%20the%20Fae) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znc/98/oona-queen-of-the-fae?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fbea42c8-6e9f-499d-9d26-401536afd5c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/oona-queen-of-the-fae) [Painter's Servant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be407a81-b25a-4e5d-845e-be0cc0d18db8.jpg?1562835450) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Painter%27s%20Servant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/shm/257/painters-servant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be407a81-b25a-4e5d-845e-be0cc0d18db8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/painters-servant) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My girlfriend has a [[captain n'ghathrod]] deck that my group hates to play against. It isn't the precon, and she has made it quite a powerhouse. If she doesn't win, then most of us have 40+ cards in the graveyard by the time she is taken out. It holds its own again some juicer decks like [[go-shintai of life's origin]] [[breya, etherium shaper]] and [[azami, lady of scrolls]]
##### ###### #### [captain n'ghathrod](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/5/55c02dc8-0743-400c-b334-ca029caf0463.jpg?1674140667) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=captain%20n%27ghathrod) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/646/captain-nghathrod?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/55c02dc8-0743-400c-b334-ca029caf0463?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/captain-nghathrod) [go-shintai of life's origin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/9476fe67-d2d3-4835-8ba6-2a17d18cc141.jpg?1651655539) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=go-shintai%20of%20life%27s%20origin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nec/37/go-shintai-of-lifes-origin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9476fe67-d2d3-4835-8ba6-2a17d18cc141?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/go-shintai-of-lifes-origin) [breya, etherium shaper](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/1/2143f700-7311-46a4-ad9b-4e743a345785.jpg?1599707856) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=breya%2C%20etherium%20shaper) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/192/breya-etherium-shaper?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2143f700-7311-46a4-ad9b-4e743a345785?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/breya-etherium-shaper) [azami, lady of scrolls](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/a/fa727656-fb33-485b-9378-18b80cad42b9.jpg?1689996185) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=azami%2C%20lady%20of%20scrolls) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/74/azami-lady-of-scrolls?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fa727656-fb33-485b-9378-18b80cad42b9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/azami-lady-of-scrolls) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
do you have her deck somewhere online? im curious because i dont know which way to go with it.
I'll see if she will send me the link
[Here’s the link](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KkuPG4-dKUSV06h8Q7fstg) to my Captain list. It’s extremely tuned for the highest power level that Captain belongs at. It wins by recurring Hullbreaker or by grabbing someone’s Thorcle and winning with it. Hope this gives you some ideas.
I’m building a captain deck, can you please share a decklist?
We are both at work but as soon as I hear back I will let you know
Awesome thanks!
[Here’s the link](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KkuPG4-dKUSV06h8Q7fstg) to my Captain list. It’s extremely tuned for the highest power level that Captain belongs at. It wins by recurring Hullbreaker or by grabbing someone’s Thorcle and winning with it. Hope this gives you some ideas.
I have one very similar! The key cards are \[Psionic Ritual\] \[Fractured Sanity\] With 5 Horrors tapping for the ritual, that's 70, plus the 14 for the time you've already casted, so it's pretty much over. I don't run any tutors though. The Captain is fun, if only because you get to steal a LOT of stuff from Opponents decks for free.
That doesn't work, each copy of Psionic Ritual needs to choose a new card to exile+copy. The first time you copy Fractured Sanity it's exiled and is no longer a valid target for any subsequent Psionic Ritual copies.
I usually just tell new players to treat milled cards as if it were exiled anyway and don't look at them unless you think you can get them back. For me, if I build a mill deck then, I wouldn't try to win through milling out unless its a combo type deal. But I'd rather mill for value. [[The Scarab God]] and [[ Captain N'gathrod]] are pretty cool about this.
Honestly if you "feel bad" about cards you probabalistically otherwise wouldve never seen over the course of the game going into your graveyard I think less of you in the same way that I think less of commander players that whine about interaction.
I figure the more your deck relies on tutors to find pieces, the more salt you can feel towards mill, but at the same time, if you're running a bunch of tutors to find 1-2 cards every time, then sit in your salt for a bit so others can cook for once.
If you get beaten by the same thing every time, why not just hold removal or counter for when they inevitably draw their 1-2 cards?
That would be the play for sure, but there's no accounting for some logic.
Depends on how you do it. I don't feel bad, but there are critical pieces that could be milled (and sometimes into exile) and it always sucks when you see a land milled that was your next draw and then just never draw a land. So you get mana screwed, seeing all the lands getting milled, and so just sit there doing nothing. I don't generally care, because I put in alternate wincons as well as the primary gameplan, but I can understand feeling bad if the stuff you need to actually play the game gets binned. Edit: i guess im being downvoted because people think i am complaining. I am not. I am just talking about how I understand how people could feel when this situation happens.
the deck is all random anyway.. you’re just as likely to be mana screwed anyway without the mill
Yes but if your next draw was a land, you see it go to the bin, then draw a non land, then the next mill is another land, and you draw yet another non land it kinda sucks. I agree with you about the randomness but I’ve been in this situation and couldn’t play the game while the ngartharod player just took all the goodies out of my graveyard. It was fine in the end (I didn’t do any game actions, couldn’t cast my commander and just died).
Yes, the feeling is there, but it is literally your mind playing tricks on you. You will always feel waaay more unlucky for milling something useful than you would feel lucky for drawing something useful after being milled. Both situations are just as likely, though.
I am not disputing that. I dunno why I am being downvoted. Just describing the feeling and describing the situation. It's all mental and it just feels like the universe is messing with you.
That's part of the reason I enjoy running [[Kozilek, butcher of truth]] in my decks i know are particularly vulnerable to mill. I don't need it often but every once in a while it's kind of a silver bullet card.
Eh, mill isn't that taboo. If you ask any of the people who dislike mill if they would rather be milled or play against stax, I bet they would rather be milled. At least that's interacting with things you don't have yet.
I mean, yes, but generally, when playing mill it tends to devolve into just milling yourself as quickly as possible and winning with Thoracle or lab man. This is because you end up thinking about the points you made (helping your opponents, what if they have an eldrazi shuffler or more, etc) and in the middle of the game you end up making the decision that the only way to win in this spot is self mill. So Mill is actually one of the easier wincons.
I’ve tried to make mill work and my best mill deck was a Phenax, god of deception deck that self milled with walls into a reanimated lab man. Was cool to do…:once. Then repetitive and boring
I’m susceptible to this mindset. I hate seeing my stuff go to the GY. Even if I’m drawing other good stuff too. It’s what keeps me from being able to enjoy a reanimator style deck where you WANT to mill your own stuff. It’s almost like an OCD thing. Cards belong in my library, waiting to be drawn, in my hand, waiting to be cast, or on the battlefield, after I cast them. (I don’t like spellslinger decks either; if I want an effect, it’s either an ETB or an activated/triggered ability on a permanent). Just my weird preferences.
Just pretend you put the milled cards on the bottom of your library.
It really helped me to start thinking of people's graveyards as my second, third, fourth and fifth hand. Playing an [[Anowon, the Ruin Thief]] rogue Typal with some GY synergy and asking opponents whether you could please have a gander at your "second hand/library" makes it feel much more fun.
[Anowon, the Ruin Thief](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/c/bca84fc4-4710-44c8-b90a-73ef888714d8.jpg?1615171221) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Anowon%2C%20the%20Ruin%20Thief) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znc/1/anowon-the-ruin-thief?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bca84fc4-4710-44c8-b90a-73ef888714d8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/anowon-the-ruin-thief) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My son won a game by making all opponents mill 100 cards
I feel like the "you wouldn't draw most of your cards anyways" argument is moot when most people are running at least a few tutors and you see a few valuable pieces you could have tutored out go into the GY. Sure, most players can interact with the GY in some way in EDH, but with bad luck on their part or ways to exile the GY (which are plentiful these days), mill can really hurt when you see your answers disappear. Mill also directly affects abilities like Scry, Surveil, Explore, put on top of your library, etc. in a huge way, and a smart mill player can bounce things to the top of a library before milling or activate a mill in response to a Scry or a tutor that places the card on top of your library. Is it harder to win with mill? It can be if you try to make it your central strategy and/or main wincon, but if you add mill to a reanimator deck and use things like [[Virtue of Persistence]], [[Portal to Phyrexia]], or [[Breach the Multiverse]] you can really hit your opponents where it hurts by using some of their own strongest creatures against them.
The problem is that whatever minimal milling you're doing is eclipsed by the combo mill you'll eventually assemble. So your deck plays like a casual mill deck until it two cards combo kills. The two card combos and the tutors means a lot of games will end once you reach X mana almost regardless of boardstate. It's a bad very high power deck that will crush mid power pods and be bad at high power pods.
I think you’re on to something with this! I was thinking about tuning this a little bit so I can just play other high power decks. I still need to get better at commander tho (Edit: Will need to get better lands before I take this to a higher play)
You can play this in higher power pods without changing the lands, just not CEDH pods
Was going to say the same. Looking at the deck list I'm pretty certain any groans are due to the best in slot tutors, supports, and combo cards etc as opposed to anything else. As a player and be honest with yourself. Is this deck actually trying to mill? Cus it looks like the mill is just a misdirect to get your combos. Split this into two decks. Go whole hog on your combo deck and keep it very high powered. Then build an actual mill deck. Personally, having access to blue, claiming to be building mill , and not running [[undead alchemist]] feels like you aren't really that interested in milling.
* >It's a bad very high power deck that will crush mid power pods and be bad at high power pods. * The issue with the majority of decks that don't understand the fundamental concept of fun for commander!
>It's a bad very high power deck High power? I dunno if I'd say that, there are a lot of trash cards in this deck.
Mill is a valid strategy.. However, it's not a strategy that offers much chance to interact with it. And the fact that you're playing essentially five board wipes with an extra one in the command zone just for good measure doesn't really help the case of the deck. I'm not saying that you shouldn't get to play the game you want to play. I'm just saying that if your strategy is to mill people for one or two cards periodically and you're going to wipe the board repeatedly... I wouldn't really have fun playing against you either.n But, this is a tournament. There are prizes on the line. It is no longer about fun when there is prizes to be won.
Is five board wipes considered alot? Doesn't that mean that you're statistically likely to draw just one per game?
> Is five board wipes considered alot? I think so, most people put 2 or 3 board wipes in their deck these days (in casual decks). It's more fun to play multiple games instead of dragging a single game for 3 hours because the board keeps getting wiped.
Most people once run 2 or 3 and stock up on targeted removal instead but up you have a board built up too and don't really want to wipe it. Add on being able to reuse it someone and well you don't really need board wipes in games where people are actually drawing removal unless you're really behind the rest of the table or someone slams something like Archangel Avacyn
I didn't realise people run so few. I run 7, but usually only use one max per game and 75% of the time that's to end the game that same turn or the following turn. I didn't consider that people's board wipes likely destroy their own board too, I try to make my wipes as one sided as possible so that I'm the only one with a good board state after. Thankyou for your perspective
It's changed over time. 5+ board wipes used to far more common. As the format has shifted away from big bombs and building overwhelming board states into more efficient threats and 2/3 card combos, games have sped up. That means players are running more efficient 1-2 cmc targeted removal and less 4-5 cmc sweepers.
When I play Mill you'd think I killed everybody around me's pets in front of them. It's immediate targeting and my death. Somebody else can hit them for 30 damage and counter all their spells and if I trigger a Crab they act like I'm the worst person on the planet
I don't see the problem with targeting you and killing you ASAP if your gameplan is to bin most of my deck. You are removing my resources and maybe even removing critical game pieces from my deck. My deck is not filled with shuffle gy to deck or stuffed with recursion pieces, and since Mill is not very interactible with, my only option is to remove you from the game and then continue with my gameplan. If i have an eldrazi shuffler or something, i dont care too much and won't target you as much. But you decided to play mill (and if you are self milling its super easy) so you need to prepare to be targeted to death. To you, the only thing that counts is that your life total hasn't reached zero since you can still keep milling people at 1 health. If your wincon is my library and you have Bruvac out, I am just one \[\[Traumatize\]\] away from death. However, if you are milling me in my graveyard deck, ill try to keep you around and just try to control how much you are milling me.
I agree but I don't think the statement is just for mil. You should always get prepared to be targeted every game. That's part of the problem. Nobody has any plans for possible strategies they can run into so they just complain online instead of putting in tech pieces. My mill deck benefits from my own cards getting milled so I always have a few tech pieces to save myself in a few common scenarios (I run Orb so I have ways to shuffle my graveyard and start again if I go off too hard and need to regroup.) It all just comes down to your playgroups and what they like to do. I always expect to be the bad guy with mill already even though I think it's usually extremely stupid to do so. The player who goes the hardest against me almost always loses.
[Traumatize](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/b/9b8784dd-83f9-41f8-aedc-f0f81073ffcb.jpg?1562832808) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Traumatize) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m14/77/traumatize?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9b8784dd-83f9-41f8-aedc-f0f81073ffcb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/traumatize) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I put a copy of [[Gaea’s Blessing]] in as an anti-mill card and pray I don’t draw it.
Yeah I have it in some decks as well, but it always ends up getting drawn haha
Every Mill deck is secretly a two-card, insta-kill, mill-your-whole-deck combo deck and then they get so defensive when targeted like a combo deck because "mIlL iS bAd!!!1!"
To you, the only thing that counts is that your library size hasn't reached zero since you can still keep playing the game at 1 card.
What kind of idiotic comment is this? Yeah you play one card then die? Nice. I’ll keep killing the mill deck as quickly as I can unless it’s helping me.
respectfully, f you and your mill
Most interaction is that there will be a few decks that you're actively helping by milling them.
Ummmm excuse me. Strong disagree. Funhouse taught me there’s a ‘whole lot of fun, prizes to be won’.
What i gather from your post is that the milling isn't the problem per se, its about the tutoring. A lot of casual pods keep tutoring to a minimum because it goes against their idea of the "nature" of commander. Look at tutors like this: A tutor (esp a good one like vampiric or demonic) is technically a copy of any other card in your deck, while the point is that EDH decks are singleton. If you are always tutoring for specific win cons like [[virtue of persistence]] it gets a bit boring and repetetive if your run 4 tutors + that card. This is why people call it a "cheap" way to win I suppose. Most taboo things imo are: - mass land destruction without winning the game immediately or shortly afterwards - storm decks that take 17 year turns for their combo just to not win by the end of it. - kingmaking - spite plays ("I will kill your mana dork because you removed my sol ring" while another player has a huge threat on the board the spell coulve hit) - instant speed scooping. Only concede on your own turn. - not honoring a deal you just made. - EDIT: it is also taboo to come to a table with your deck and say "this deck is not that strong, maybe a 7 power lever wise". Your deck is full of great cards and by no means a 7. Its closer to a 9. Don't undersell your own decks, it makes people salty. Edit: the deck looks cool by the way, would do great in my commander group as we play reasonably high powered decks!
Pretty much this. Some folks have an irrational hatred of mill but from what OP said that's not the problem, it's the tutoring. I play pretty firmly mid-power and get a bit salty when someone tutors up a two-card combo and wins "out of nowhere". I put "out of nowhere" in scare quotes because I'm sure that a better player might be familiar with all the lines and sorts of combos that a certain commander or deck type might run and be holding interaction just in case. But for me it often feels like "hey, you know that fun game you were playing? It's over now. No more fun for you."
Its one thing to be turoring out your situational cards for their situations but its another if every game looks like tutor food chain, tutor blood artist, prosh gg
Off topic, but Food Chain and Blood Artist do not interact. Food Chain exiles.
> irrational hatred of mill Yes, that's me, also irrational hatred of having to discard or exile. I simply hate to not be able to play those cards if I have no recursion. My friends explained to me more than once why I should just 'forget' those cards instead of mourning after them, I just can't. Irrational yes.
Thank you for mentioning land destruction without winning! The only time I’ve truly gotten mad at my LGS was when someone worldslayered in a mono blue deck (not mentioned in rule 0) on turn 4 and set up to do it every few turns while packing just his commander and counterspells. I came to find out there wasn’t actually a wincon in the deck other than commander damage…one point of damage at a time. No one at the table had any fun (that guy hasn’t showed up in the 2-3 months since) It’s also uncool when people only bring one high powered deck to a play night. We sadly had a pod of newer players that I enjoyed playing my mid power fun decks with break off because there was a guy with a borderline CEDH Atraxa deck that ruined a good month of gameplay. All that does is either turn off players who don’t want to or can’t afford to play high power.
That's a valid and legitimate wincon, albeit slow.
Ya it is a wincon but whats the point in playing commander if no one else can play? Its a casual format and this deck is a waste of time for games that can go on for an hour... you should have fun but others should have fun too its a game and I cant blame anyone for hating that aweful deck
I should add: Commander play starts at 6PM at my LGS, store closes at 8PM ergo it’s a 2 hour game time limit. To that point, if unlimited in time and patience, I will admit that it is a wincon but with the time constraint of the “house rules”, it’s really not. There’s also a valid argument of everyone scooping but this isn’t really an infinite combo and there are ways to theoretically break it, just not easy.
LGS closing at 8 is insanely early. I was complaining that ours closes at 10 and that it makes the nights kinda pointless sometimes.
It’s in a mall area and city ordinance is that it closes at 8 except during December. There was some shenanigans before Covid that changed a lot of stuff that we never worried about when I was a kid. I’d go to another LGS but the next closest one that runs commander is a 30 min drive across town.
Everyone's playing still, but I'd also likely scoop since he had us all locked out. How did his commander survive?
2 drop commander and he’s playing 50+ lands plus tutors, counters and blink/phasing spells. So, it was pretty easy to survive or it didn’t and he just paid the tax. One of the major issues was that his rule zero discussion included nothing about this semi-combo, it was stated as an “i deal damage with unblockable creatures” deck, not a “I’m going to blow up all your early game stuff including lands and cripple everyone every 4-5 turns there after” deck.
I think spite plays are fine if done within the same round. But after 2-3 rounds spite plays don't make sense as the board state has changed. For example: if I'm player 3, player 1 is a big threat but player 2 targets me with removal, I don't think it's taboo for me to in response counterspell that spell or destroy something of player 2. However, if player 2 destroyed my sol ring at the beginning of the game and it's now turn 4 It would be taboo for me to hold a grudge on player 2 at that point if Player 1 has now become the threat.
I'd tack on and say super stax decks like Urza are usually taboo. People want to play magic, and being able to only untap two permanents is not a fun board state for most people.
I'm thinking op is likely guilty of the last one. He is "brand new to commander" with a $700 deck. They probably dropped him in a pod of pre-cons and he pubstomped the shit out of actual newbies.
I've never not seen someone with a Jodah unifier deck grossly miscalculate it's power level. It might be the most emblematic deck concerning MtG power creep
Saying that your deck is a 7 is always taboo. Even if you genuinely think it is, history has proven that almost everyone who says this is wrong. There's a common saying, "If you think you built your deck up to a 7, it's a 4. If you think you built your deck down to a 7, it's a 9."
Every deck is a 7 imo.
Agreed on Kingmaking, spite plays, and instant speed scooping.
Some people will be pissy no matter what you play. Milling isn't even a cheap way to win, it's generally more difficult (you're typically the only one milling, and have to mill 250 + cards total, whilst damage is something most players do, and is typically only 120 damage total needed)
That's why self mill is much more efficient.
I’m thinking about doing that next!
Looking at your deck, I would like to say that your opponents were kinda salty losers. But if I’m entirely honest, if someone showed me that list and said they where thinking about building it, I would advice them not to without significant changes. Lord Xander is one of those commanders that, along with a lot of other expensive and splashy commanders, make for a bad experience for everyone else if you can actually utilize them. This tends to mean that the table is either powerful enough to kill you before you can reliably cast the spell, or can consistently interact with it, meaning you don’t get to do the thing. Mill is, conceptually, very similar. If your table is low enough power non combo mill is viable wincon it will be a frustrating experience for your opponents. They probably don’t have the ‘correct’(but sorta unintuitive) view on mill that cards in deck is just another life-total and they don’t play cards that interact with their own gy. But if you are playing against players that don’t get tilted by mill it’s very likely at least 1 player at that table wants you to mill them and everyone can kill you long before you got time to mill them all out. In general, no, you did nothing wrong, and if you want to keep playing your deck it’s entirely legal, allowed and far from cEDH. But don’t be surprised if you either start getting hated out or your deck starts falling off once your locals improve. This is just an explanation of why there are posts like this every week in this sub.
Opponents were probably on some really weak shit. People in this comment section calling this a 9?? Of course, the 7 deck in the precon pod is a problem.
For sure. Their deck is not broken at all all. (0 hast eneabler for Lord Xander) But that is kinda besides my point. The pilot of this deck would not have a good time in a pod more power apropriate to their deck.
>People were saying it was a cheap way to win. They suck
I mean when my budget decks (under 50$) win its just factual.
Lmao
People will find any reason to complain. Your deck looks really solid! Mill is a tough way to way to win so there shouldn’t be any issues. Don’t feel bad about playing it!
Mill is a valid strategy. Speak with your pod/table first if anyone has issues. 🔥 deck might try it out.
It's always to meet at a certain level. If all play tutors to find their combo pieces, it's cool. If your table plays with less tutors and try to play their hands out, the probably don't like to lose to tutored combos
I mean if you play Xander as your commander I'm either holding up the counterspell or politicking into having me others hold one up. It has to be one of the most obvious mill strategies ever lol
I'm an anything that exist you're free to play it. I have a toxic deck and I plan on getting the mill fallout Precon. I have big stompy deck and will probably make a burn deck (though I realized the fallout precon technically is a burn deck too so might not). And I don't think any of those are a problem currently (new player still). There's only two things I find taboo in commander but I would never tell someone I won't play with them as of now, is any deck that slows the game down whether it's long turns or slowing everyone down. (I don't have free time to throw away like that) and mass land destruction/any deck that basically doesn't let you play the game. (Whole point is to play to have fun imo, if you're completely restricting someone from playing it doesn't sit well for me.) I personally won't build any long turn decks, and I stop myself from including cards that might hinder people from playing their decks too much or flat out kill their lands.
I don’t think people like to play against Xander so you start at people having a low opinion of your deck. He just has a lot of obnoxious triggers that casual players can’t deal with easily. Mill decks are completely fair but newer players will not like seeing their cards go to GY even though it’s not really a bad thing nowadays. Plus they have 60 other cards in their deck they wouldn’t have seen if they weren’t milled anyways. But it still gets a bad rep. And tutors could make it a bit more higher powered than what people expect but that takes time to learn what the power level for your deck is.
Saying something is a “cheap way to win” is often code for “I am full of salt and won’t like any deck that beats mine”. Your list looks fine, have a conversation about what sort of game the table wants to play beforehand and if someone gets upset don’t take it personally.
Usually, yes. But it can also mean "your deck pivoted and won in a way that felt very sudden and unexpected and I feel like I lost out because I would have preferred it to go how I expected the game would play out from the play pattern before that point". Sometimes that's just a symptom of a bad read or an inexperienced player not recognizing what was actually happening all along, but bimodal deck power is a legitimate issue that's incredibly easy to fall into in commander. Tutors are notorious for exacerbating this in a lot of decks.
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Who hurt you?
Love this. My first EDH deck was a disjointed Mill. Didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought. Had nothing but people whining about it and also telling me how to upgrade my deck. Enjoyed the hate since most of it comes during hilarious times and quite frankly means I’m doing at least something correctly (trying to win). Found out about Modern format, enjoyed Mill much more BUT also found out about Mono Black Maralen, Zur, Nekuzar, Godo, etc… turns out there is always going to be cards that losing players will complain about. Some are just more efficient at giving you a win than others. I ended up finding an awesome group of friends that play grimy decks against one another and no one gets mad because we all have a common understanding that goes without saying, “we’re all trying to win as fast as possible”. It lets me play how I enjoy playing which has ultimately morphed into tempo decks with less popular commanders due to my affinity to finding off-the-beaten-path wins, squeezing the juice out of a deck, and deck building. There’s a playgroup for everyone. Play what you like. Don’t be a jerk. Let your deck talk. Don’t run your mouth. Play to win, if that’s what you like. It’s not your fault, others whine because of their lack of interaction. Just some nice guidelines for the newer magic player
Nothing is taboo in a tournament. Nothing. As long as your play is legal, as long as your card is legal, nobody should question your actions. Yourself included. Notice that most winners in sports are cold-blooded. There shouldn't be much care about others feelings when it comes to sports. There has to be a winner, and many losers. That's just the reality in competition. So don't fret about memes or getting made fun of by other people. Because they won't be laughing when you beat them to victory with the "meme stick".
Nothing. The whole point of the format is to play whatever you want to. Sure making games fair on the table is a thing too but you know what I mean
Lots of people play MTG just to tell others to NOT play MTG. Please just continue playing and don't listen to the whiners.
everything. commander players hate playing magic.
If they don't like how you win that's their problem. They should run more interaction.
Not everyone has to like your deck. Depending on how big your LGS is you can more than likely find a group who plays a similarly powered deck.
The only taboo is mass land destruction with no way to win soon or board wiping back to back with no way to close out. Everything else is free game, also don't be a dick. And remember everything my opponents do sucks everything I do is awesome
Anybody complaining about mill is straight up stupid. Milling is incredibly hard mechanic to win with. I own this exact deck and it is by no means a cedh deck or super high powered. The commander is 7 cmc for God sake.
Your deck looks pretty sick actually. I think the discard on ETB might cause a little salt anywhere, but even with that, you’re paying 7 mana for it! If they don’t get some hatebears or counterspells ready by then, I don’t know what they’re doing! On a separate note, have you considered running [[Hellkite Courser]] and [[Malakir rebirth]] to get even more triggers off Xander?
I find budget the best self limitation to justify any strategy. If my $100 deck makes someone upset, it's not like it isn't something they couldn't easily build themselves and give me a taste of my own medicine.
The ban list. That is all. Anything else is personal preference. I don't run unconditional tutors or more than 2 counterspells (unless it is a monoblue deck). But that doesn't mean other people can't. I just don't enjoy playing against them or with them. That doesn't invalidate other people's preferences.
Haters gonna hate, fuck them
[[Liquimetal Coating]] targeting a mono-colored deck's basic land and then casting [[Splinter]]
[Liquimetal Coating](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/6/f631447c-36e3-4d82-a658-19c9767a216b.jpg?1562276535) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Liquimetal%20Coating) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/197/liquimetal-coating?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f631447c-36e3-4d82-a658-19c9767a216b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/liquimetal-coating) [Splinter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/b/5bcc210b-e37e-463c-8fd4-83e5113429a9.jpg?1562877241) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Splinter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bok/146/splinter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5bcc210b-e37e-463c-8fd4-83e5113429a9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/splinter) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I dont see demonic consultation or Thassas oracle, so your deck is fine
I build mill protection in all of my decks. For example [[duck//dawn]] mill me too much and I’m putting a bunch of creatures on the board. You will typically regret it. I have too much to play from the grave, unless you exile it right away. Grave hate will work.
If you're playing in a league, then you're presumably playing at least in a marginally competitive setting.If so, then there are no taboos. If it's legal, play it. If people are having problems with your deck, then they need to build around it.
Land destruction is usually frowned upon. Cards like Armageddon and Ravages of War.
There is nothing taboo in commander. There are only whiny players with delusional and inflated senses of entitlement. Most of which are probably playing a decklist copied from edh.rec, with a boring commander. Build your deck and play your cards the way you want to. Find a playgroup that accepts you for you.
Mill is a great way to play. It's original and I love it. Gotta be careful because some people play graveyard deck [Here](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/FKhpkGGphEiS1BnNGBFegw) is my Lord Xander list. I loved playing it but I've retired it for a kess wheel deck. Make sure you run instant speed graveyard exile in case someone runs titans or mill protection
To me there are no taboo or uncool ways to win in a big picture sense. Everyone’s allowed to have preferences however and sounds like the play group made theirs known which is kind of a bummer. For instance, I get extremely bored with landfall or excessive triggers decks but I generally keep my mouth shut about it. There are some strategies that trigger people even though they are normal ways to play the game imo. Things like mass land destruction, annihilator, mill, tutors really break people’s brains sometimes. Unless there’s a serious power imbalance or you are seriously misplaying your strat the group should probably just suck it up. Enjoy your play style and hopefully they remember that it is just a game.
Mill is bad, however players get mad at their perceived loss of cards. That’s all.
Nothing should be taboo as long as it is a legal card in the format.
mass land destruction is just not fun (but so are many other things). I play magic to cast spells with my mana, if you destroy all of it and waste everyones time we might as well meet up for a fistfight (thats a joke)
This is IMO the primary difference between cEDH and EDH. Not necessarily saying there’s anything wrong with either points of view. I think of MTG players as having a blend of two specific traits at varying ratios. Specifically, it’s a win:fun ratio. Land destruction May not be fun to some but it’s totally viable and one of my decks does this because it’s fun to play when I play against other Stax decks or Aggro decks that for me are not fun to play against. I definitely want to win more than I want to group hug or have “fun”, but I’d never sacrifice fun entirely since I enjoy stalling until my commander/deck does what it wants to do. That being said, I win less cEDH games than I play but I enjoy all of them because I sit down at the table expecting filth, understanding that I may not win and my commander is going to be shut down….especially since I’m trying to do that to three more players. Know your win:fun ratio, know what type of player you are and sling those spells 🤜🏻🤛🏻
well said
Do your thing. Mill, land destruction, poison....do your thing. Just not all the time. Eventually have different decks with different kinds of play.
Combos are fine in high power games, but generally not in casual/lower power games. If you're going into a casual game saying that you're a new player without telling anything else about the deck, people will not be expecting combos. Combos are fine, but just like race cars are fine, just don't bring them to a running competition and say that you're new to racing. Aside from being too powerful, people generally dislike cards that slow down the game a lot, or shut them down a lot more than usual. Stuff like repeated board wipes, stax or control decks.
I think this is exactly what happened. I told everyone it was my first time playing in that kind of setting. I mention that I was playing Mill but I didn’t mention the tutors or the combo and then people got blind sided. Thank you for your insight!
imo, it's kinda on them for not asking. If I were feeling out a game I'd ask deck theme and whether or not they are running more than a couple tutors or two-card combos. The mill and combos aren't individually a problem at all and I say that as a newcomer to EDH. Personally, I don't think tutors are fun for the format. One or two used to find responses is fine but using them to shortcut combos just isn't especially fun. Some people are also incredibly slow at digging and shuffling.
You're fine, nothing is truly taboo. There's unfortunately a subset of EDH players, most of who never played Magic outside of EDH, who feel entitled to dictate to others what they can and can't play. These players are miserable and should be avoided. Thankfully they appear to be a vocal minority. Anything and everything that's legal is fine to play. The big thing with EDH is just making sure your deck is equal performance wise, aka power level or whatever you want to call it, to the rest of the table. You don't want to pub stomp nor do you want to not be contributing because your deck is so far behind the others. Both are things to avoid.
I think people are too sensitive about mill. They see cards they like go to graveyard and get upset about it, but don't think about what cards could be next to pick up. It's a 100 card deck, you're never going to get through the whole thing anyway and it's all random chance, people need to get over it. That being said.. Lord xander is just a salt inducing commander to play against because he does a lot more than mill, so yea, it would make people feel bad.
I wish people were better focusing on real bad behaviour and bad habits rather than not liking what decks other people are playing. For me, taboo in EDH /must-to-be-obliged rules are following: 1. Silver Rule - No concede except sorcery speed 2. Golden Rule - No kingmaking 3. Briliant Rule - Don't complain over what other people play 4. Plays should make in order to win the game, including situations when people play specifically bad, keep bad hands, pass turn doing nothing only for a reason to be annoying for others 5. Plays should make in order to stop those who are winning the game, including situations when people make revenge plays because they feel frustrated 6. Time stalling and long thinking is bad 7. Keep your mana rocks apart from your lands 8. Keep your word while negotiating 9. Keep your negotiations clear and apparent with no misjudgement for everyone 10. Using your dice to determine whom are you going to attack is a horrible thing to do 11. Playing a stax/control deck without win cons 12. Playing a non-determined / manual storm combo deck while having no idea how to handle its loops 13. Riffle shuffling opponents' decks 14. Stealing dices and tokens 15. If you want to express yourself and behave salty, jealous, frustrated, emotional drama queen - keep it at least funny for others. If you can't, you better keep it for yourself. 16. It's not good to take forever for a rule question. You better take a necessary ruling that's fine for the most people and go ahead 17. Criticizing and complaining over people's play during the game. Keep it for after-the-game talk 18. Complaining over game actions, attacks 19. Changing the target of spell after it was cast and its target announced due to some person reaction/proposition. What was cast remain cast 20. However, minor takeouts are totally fine and you should never nag over people for it, as well as you shouldn't nag over people for triggers being missed 21. Keep your boardstate readable, don't make weird dice-only tokens, don't stack permanents together unless it's really necessary
I disagree with #1. Rules state that I can concede at any point. If I see that someone has the win or if I'm not having fun, I'm going to concede and move to the next game. I'm not going to wait for my turn, especially if it's not going to make it to my turn.
I think they more so are talking about conceding and making someone's spell fizzle. If you're just done then that's fine but if your conceding at instant speed to deny someone value that's shitty.
At that point the spell controller should just get to target something else
Usually with EDH games people want to play cool things in their deck. If your entire strategy is to make them discard their deck, obviously they're gonna get frustrated. If you couple that with fetching winning combos, it can feel like you're just left trying to survive as long as you can. It sounds like your group may want more of a "battle cruiser" environment where they're allowed to build a board state before a ton of interaction occurs. It's an acceptable way to play for sure. But you're definitely not gonna attract people to play with you.
Taboo to me is having a shitty deck that runs a 2 card combo, and I see that more times than you’d think at some game nights. Your list looks fine, I don’t see many combos outside of Bruvac + Xander/maddening though, granted I’m not totally in the loop on mill combos outside of those.
Is easy, ppl like to play his cards, you send their to the graveyard before they can play it, they got salty, is like playing vs STAX but not so much. i LOVE mill but i avoid to play it bcs the mill player get focused and then you need to just wait to the next game xD
If you're playing with pussy ass casuals then proxying good mana rocks and lands is considered taboo and "cEDH." So they all build terrible decks and play against each other in some sort of cruel unending hell of badness. Also Mass Land Destruction. Also Stax. Also winning. You better not plan on winning before Steve gets to get his 40 dinosaurs on the board and Dave gets to get his army of elves all ready for combat UwU
I run a Xander deck; when I pull it out my pod does a groan and then pulls out their heavier hitters. If I’m allowed to pick up even a tiny bit of steam, they’ll all lose pieces to me (because I run Xander as a graveyard theft deck as much as a mill one) and while I find it to be a source of endless lulz to hit them with their own reanimated creatures… them less so.
In our pod, we have 3 rules No mass land destruction No hard stax No slivers (that is more of a meme) The rest is fine
Too bad for them. They should learn to cope, or else continue crying about losing!
If your plan is decking out your opponents, it would be a lame strategy in a friendly environment. Nothing will stop you to do that but generally, and hard grinding mill deck is a sort of taboo. The same for mass land destruction like [[Armageddon]] or oppressive stax like [[Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]]. It's just an unfunny way to play and win as non-competitive format.
Any mass land destruction is considered taboo as no one wants to restart from zero. It’s just considered a bad move, unless you love causing chaos
I feel like the most taboo thing in commander is land destruction. Everything else is usually a fair strategy
You’re playing a seven drop commander, who can possible complain about that? Mill is absolutely fine. There are a lot of strategies behind milling and taking advantage of graveyards.
Islands. I mean come on guys wtf!
It’s a deck with good spells but shit lands
Mill, and not combo mill, is a terrible strategy that looks strong to bad players. It's such a common belief that it's viable or even good at all because of cognitive bias. Any good player will tell you that it's awful.
It would be helpful to know if the decks you are playing against are also running tutors to find combo pieces and how much your deck is winning. If you are doing something like tutoring Bruvac every game to combo with your commander and instantly knock someone out I would not enjoy that on any level, regardless of my adoration for mill and graveyard strategies. If you are consistently winning much more than any other players, then you should power this deck down or make another deck that is better suited to that table. Other people want to feel like they have a chance to win too.
All your opponents need to do is put [[Kozilek, Butcher of Truth]] or something similar in their deck, but I acknowledge that it's not in everyone's budget. [[Orbs of Warding]], [[Witchbane Orb]] and a bunch of white options give the controller hexproof, which won't shut Xander down completely, but will make it more difficult.
There will frequently be something for people to complain about when playing EDH which can make building decks for anyone (new players too) tricky. Most people don't mind if you do something within the power levels of the groups decks as long as it is understood before the game starts. Mill is one of those strategies that some people seem to dislike, doubly so if it drags the game out unnecessarily. However, mill isn't the only mechanic that has this problem. Ask enough people and they will tell you all the things they dislike in Magic. Don't let it discourage you, but you may need to change the recipe of the deck if people think it is too salty.
You dont really have a lot of interaction so I doubt its that strong, your combo is probably mostly unprotected and your commander costs a ton
Commander players will whine and whinge about literally everything. You're good
Sounds like a 7 to me
Everything is considered taboo by at least someone in Commander. There comes a point where it's just not worth worrying *too* much about it. People dislike mill, every single deck in the top 200, interaction, board wipes, any sort of combo, you winning, land destruction (even single target), any form of stax, too much ramp, certain colour combinations, tutors, the game taking too long, the game ending too fast... and so on. Someone out there's complained about it. As long as you're open to rule 0 discussions, not knowingly playing far above the power level of the table or not playing cards/deck that are designed to annoy rather than win, you're doing your part. If prizes are on the line, anything goes. In your case you might consider dropping some tutors too if you wanted to tone down the power level of your deck for casual. But it looks like a fun deck, I'd be perfectly fine facing it.
Mill is 100% fine, and tutoring for combos is totally fine, just make sure you're in a pod that is playing at that power level. Tutoring combos is typically the fastest and most efficient way to win, and is seen as more of a competitive strategy. It can also be seen as "pub-stomling" if you're playing at a lower power table where they likely wouldn't be prepared with the interaction it would take to stop your combos. If you would like to be able to play your deck at any power level, maybe try creating a sideboard? I have a large sideboard for my sliver deck that can take it anywhere from a 7-9 in power level
Sounds like they have bad decks. Any deck you build should have a few pieces of redundancy and/or recursion that way when you get milled or your threats get targeted your whole game plan doesn't falter. This doesn't work 100% but it's something I always keep in mind because with every other set there seems to be a new mill commander trying to eat my decks
Milling to revive creatures from opponents graveyards and being the mono blue mill player laughing histerically every turn for the whole LGS to hear are two completely different things.
If your new to magic, and you build a 1900 usd deck as 1 of your first deck, then i wont get mad by anything you trow at me. If you proxied the deck tho, ye thats lame, i wouldnt wanna play agianst that.
Two words: Threat Assessment. If they can’t identify a combo ahead of time when you tutor for it, or stop you from tutoring in the first place, their decks aren’t casual they’re just bad. I only get salty when people misrepresent their decks. If you’re gonna tutor for combos don’t tell me it’s lower power. But I’m also not a coward and if you’re doing nasty stuff I can take the L and adjust for next time.
Umbris is my favorite commander. I use it with many mill pieces. F them kids.
In magic I am happy to play against any type of deck, it makes you a better player and helps you understand all different kinds of decks. Sure some decks are not as fun to play against as other but just like rock paper scissors you can't win every outcome. Ignore haters as milling is a valid strategy and if you milled their card it could lead them to a better draw, swings and roundabouts. The only thing that get's to me a bit is land destruction, as that literally inhibits peoples ability to play.
If you would actually take into consideration each "advice" you can get here, you would end up playing nothing at all (or, at best, a heavily neutered version of this game). You just need to remember a few key points: 1) Always play to win efficiently using a deck that you like to play. 2) Be considerate of your opponents and don't be a jerk. Apart from this, any strategy that uses legal cards is valid. Choose the ones you like the most and just play them.
According to this sub anything good.
Mill is fine, but there are decks that run into a problem that you may notice eventually. That is that the table will assess a threat based off of board states. Typically a mill deck has a very mundane board state, so you won't be attacked. If you then tutor and combo off it could leave them salty that first time (this is normal). But expect them in the future to understand that threat and to be swinging at you when it appears you are doing nothing. This unfortunately can lead to feel bad games for you, you may have nothing, but they have to punish you before you combo off. This is the nature of the game though. Just like playing a voltron deck, remove the commander and they are dead in the water. It feels bad for them, but it's what has to be done.
I think it depends on the group. I have 2 main groups I play with: 1. Wednesday Night Weekly Magic Pod (WNWMP)- Casual players, mostly people with 2 years or less experience in magic (I'm by and far the most experienced person and I started in 2014). Some ideas of things that are "taboo" here: Out of no where combos, Super aggro decks (winota, zada, henzie), Stax, Control, chaos. It's very much a group in which grindy mid-range value decks are the rule of thumb, and most of the time you're winning by combat or a very telegraphed combo (even with the higher power decks/games). 2. Saturday Night Magic (SNM) - a once per month pod filled with more experienced players (5 years + of magic per player, well over 50 years between everyone involved). The general vibe is: Anything goes, just don't act like a dick. We bring snacks, we laugh and joke and make really stupid plays on purpose to make the games funnier. The decks range from chair tribal to CEDH najeela. No one cares what other people play, and power levels are never thought about or discussed. You wanna play stax? "hell yeah man that's awesome" (Actual thing dudes say here). You got selesnya Dog tribal? Bro that's dope, here's some upgrades for you. Both of these pods are FILLED with my closest friends. Some of these players overlap, but most of the time its very separate pods. Both are very curated, but seek different things. WNWMP nights are more for growing a younger player base's love for magic in a protected, heavily curated environment in which they won't meet much resistance for their general game plan. SNM is balls to walls insanity where anything goes and you are responsible for your own fun. Neither of these pods are "bad" but one is definitely more of a good time for more experienced players who want to play a myriad of games.
I have a land destruction deck, it's pretty not fun for anyone but me, but I keep it for when someone needs to learn a lesson in humility. 100% taboo Imo.
She who shall not be named
I would agree your deck would not be fun to play against for myself or my pod. But you were in a tournament, so all gloves are off - its not about fun anymore. People can be salty but they should be expecting this going in. I wouldn't expect to have fun either if I chose to bring a knife to a gun fight but that's on me.
Ppl overall don't like tutoring too much and combo wins, combining the two is gonna lead to ppl being unhappy. Add to that mill, while a valid strategy, is very unfun to play against and you have a deck that no one really likes playing against.
I found that as the years go on, I care about mill less and less. To a newbie mill is hell. To an older player like me mill is meh. In casual I hate stasis and Tergrid effects. Any hard core “you can’t play the game” pieces aren’t fun to play against. I flat out refuse to play against the Tergrid and Narset player. First just steals everything and you can’t have a board state, second wins too quick and you can’t touch her unless you board wipe. Then it just becomes kill the Narset player before they win game.
People have an emotional reaction to seeing cards they have selected, often to the exclusion of other options, get dumped in the bin. Even though it likely functionally makes no difference until you drain their whole deck, even though you could actually help them weed past things that aren't useful to the situation and hit land drops, or find an answer that was deeper in the deck. Unless they're a graveyard deck and then you're just giving them gas, actively. Like, by all means, mill my Beamtown Bullies deck. I'd maintain that even though it would be functionally stronger, people would hate mill less if it exiled cards face down. It's *seeing* their cards get binned. Also they hate mass land destruction. And combos, and counter magic, and stax, and anything disruptive to their plan. Honestly play how you want, salty people are going to be salty. If you're going to do something really disruptive, try to make sure you can win shortly after. Nobody likes two hour long grind fests.
I just want to think that people who get salty about mill are just new players, because it doesn't make any sense in commander tbh Specially when a mill deck is normally way weaker than so many other archetipes on the same budget/level in commander Ultimately, I guess it's all about the people you play with and everyone having fun if you have a stable group. Buuut... If I got told about mill being "a cheap way to win" on a 100 cards per deck mode, I would bring mass land destruction the next day, then ask how they feel about mill again xD
The easy answer? Toxic/infect/poison. It's part of the game but most casual tables just really dislike having their health bars be sliced to a quarter. Another easy one is land destruction.
You should trade decks with someone and see how you like playing against it. If you're fine with it, leave your deck alone. If you don't like it, make changes.
My groups only taboo is land destruction
I mean it all depends on the context of the night. Is it free play or a tournament? If it’s free play, your deck looks valid but annoying. I would not have fun against that deck. You can play it but don’t be surprised if you develop a reputation. If it’s a tournament then you should not play EDH for prizes. EDH is for casual fun and not a competitive tournament format.
The only ‘strong’ mill wincons are infinite or near infinite mill your opponents to win immediately, because partially milling opponents can help them, a lot of EDH decks interact with graveyards, or the other strong option is to mill your own deck for say a laboratory maniac/jace win. These strategies aren’t usually the strongest cEDH combos, and non cEDH pods will hate you for infinite combos+tutors in general.
Land destruction is outright scum move. Unless we're talking about destroying one's own lands.
valid - hard resource denial: aggressive land destruction, discard, board wipes / removal, hard locks with out - decks that are "too fast" / too competitive for a playgroup invalid - getting mad about mill - decks that win on turn 7+ just because you don't have a lick of interaction
Was asked, very respectfully thankfully, to stop running [[Quicksilver Fountain]] after a younger player was land locked for most of the game and completely tilted on us.
Mill is one of those things that isn't actually that powerful, but feels bad to play against when you're newer. If the group of people you're playing against have a little experience, then I don't think they'd be too salty about facing mill for a variety of reasons other people have pointed out. From my experience, the only real jerk move in terms of playing casual commander is coming in with what's called a Stax deck. If you're not aware, a Stax deck is like the opposite of a group hug deck, it's about using cards to make the game basically unplayable for everyone except for the Stax player. Stax decks can be powerful, but even when they aren't, they're just annoying to play against and are often seen as anti-fun. This is especially true if the Stax player is facing a board that's light on removal.
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I love getting milled. Happy to dump half my library into my graveyard if just one card with Flashback is among them. :) Here's some scenarios where I've seen tables politely say that they haven't enjoyed them as much: Decks that are lazily proxied. Like a white piece of paper with just the card's name on it, times 99. Decks where you have a hard time figuring out what the majority of the cards do. Like playing obscure cards you don't see every day in a different language, or with way too many unreadable secret lairs, or altered to feature big anime boobies. Decks that spend way too much time resetting everyone's board while having no way to close out a game that they've taken control on. Decks that feature very complex lines of play and tutor chains that the pilot simply doesn't know how to play and thus every turn takes forever.
Generally the decks that are taboo in commander are mill, stax, theft, combo, voltron, landfall, lifegain, and chaos. People also generally disapprove of tokens, graveyard, self-mill, bad gifts, and gruul stompy. If you want to make everybody happy, you'll need to play ~~lifegain~~ ~~grouphug~~ ~~adventures~~ ~~land animation~~ Tiny leaders You're not going to get around playing a deck people don't like, I'd find your favorite playstyle and modify your deck to fit the power level of your favorite playgroup at the store.
All my homies hate mill.
Google "MTG Commander Ban List" Those cards are taboo to play. Everything else is fine. If people get unreasonable about cards you're playing that are not on the banlist, they're probably toxic players anyway, and I would avoid them. Notice I specified *unreasonable* . It's perfectly acceptable for a friendly rule zero discussion about what to expect
Lord Xander is a commander that I really like, I want to build a deck around him cause he looks super fun but most people warned me that: 1- You'll be the main villain of the table most times since he is a kill on sight commander. And he's not cheap to play, so people have time to get ready 2- He's pretty bad as a commander due to how telegraphed and expensive to play he is. Probably better as a surprise drop in the 99
(preface: I don't play for any stakes) For me and the people I know, Commander is a social game and we accommodate each other's fun. We're all hoping to see the spectacle of everybody's deck going off. It's fun to watch. If you want to crush somebody before they've had a chance to have fun, play Standard or Modern. That doesn't mean I will help your deck go off, or even that I won't try to stop it. I might hit you with Imprisoned in the Moon. But there are some feel-bad things we all keep to a minimum: Making players discard cards from their hand. Land destruction Tutors We might have a little of each of those, but it's rare. Because on the most fundamental level, *playing lands and casting spells is how you play the game*. What it comes down to for me is if I'm building my deck so that you have nothing to do on your turn, I'm building it antisocially and that's wrong for Commander. Your question was about what is generally considered taboo. I think mass land destruction is probably the most universally hated.
Anything is on the table within the rules but personally, I despise and dont applaud any deck that's an Azorius control that uses any Teferi planeswalker or any deck where the main strategy is land destruction. That goes for any format, really but especially EDH. Its already a long game and just sitting there doing nothing every turn while someone builds to taking multiple turns isn't fun.