Haters Gonna Hate [EDH]

[Oversoul]

Don't worry there won't be another one of these threads every week. Hopefully as time goes on I'll be revisiting some of the decks I've already played in the West Coast Commander League. I built this one with eyes on potentially acquiring certain achievement points...

-Attack all of your opponents in one turn.
-Cause all players to lose life by the end of the game.
-Be the first player to deal damage to an opponent.
-Finish the game never having chosen to block with a creature.
-Your commander is exactly two colors, have it in play and control three other nontoken multicolored permanents at the same time.
-Eliminate an opponent with a different opponent's commander.
-Eliminate two opponents with combat damage on two separate turns.

Commander:
1x Olivia Voldaren

1x Acidic Soil
1x Anger
1x Animate Dead
1x Avaricious Dragon
1x Avatar of Woe
1x Badlands
1x Bladewing the Risen
1x Blasphemous Act
1x Blood Crypt
1x Blood Scrivener
1x Bloodshot Cyclops
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Burnt Offering
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Chandra's Ignition
1x Chaos Warp
1x Command Tower
1x Crypt Rats
1x Dark Ritual
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Exsanguinate
1x Faithless Looting
1x Fire Covenant
1x Footlight Fiend
1x Grafted Skullcap
1x Hatred
1x Humble Defector
1x Infernal Tutor
1x Insurrection
1x Judith, the Scourge Diva
1x Keldon Twilight
1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
1x Kolaghan's Command
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Luxury Suite
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Massacre Wurm
1x Maze of Ith
1x Mob Rule
1x Mogg Maniac
1x Mogis, God of Slaughter
1x Molten Primordial
12x Mountain
1x Murderous Redcap
1x Necromancy
1x Night's Whisper
1x No Mercy
1x Phyrexian Delver
1x Rakdos Signet
1x Rakdos, Lord of Riots
1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
1x Reanimate
1x Repercussion
1x Rolling Earthquake
1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Simulacrum
1x Sire Of Insanity
1x Skull Rend
1x Sol Ring
1x Spiteflame Witch
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
1x Stitch Together
1x Strip Mine
1x Stromkirk Captain
14x Swamp
1x Talisman of Indulgence
1x Terminate
1x The Flame of Keld
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Victimize
1x Wasteland
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Whisper, Blood Liturgist

This really isn't my usual style, but I figured I'd try something different.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, this has been the most disappointing of my recent experiments. And it's the only one so far that I'm comfortable saying I won't really be revisiting. Kind of. Here's a recap of what I've played in the West Coast Commander League...

Gitrog County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisal: played at the beginning of the league in March, effectively in unrecorded games only. It's currently my only cEDH deck and I'll be keeping it around, but it's too fast for the league.
The Notorious E.R.B.: Mildly disappointing owing in part to the sheer density of combo decks in my multiplayer pods. But I really like the deck and intend to bring it back to the league when the time is right.
Epic: Successful when used in the league and in casual games outside the league. I still have it together. Revisions will be needed at some point to shore up quirky weaknesses. Due to rules changes regarding hard lockdown in the league, this deck is probably no longer feasible for that structure.
By Your Powers Combined, I am Captain Jhoira: Wonky. This list only looked the way it did because of short notice. The original deck won't be reappearing ever, but I might build a new Jhoira deck to either emphasize infinite combos or to cut the infinite combos and play a different role. The infinite combo aspect is a bit of a conundrum for me in this league.
If You Wanna Fight, That's Fine With Me: Again, some of my mild disappointment is due to how many of my opponents were running infinite combos and how I obviously couldn't stop them all. I will be revisiting Savra as a control deck at some point in this league eventually, but probably not with the "fight" theme, so this deck is dead. But it's a lesson for future decks that might be similar to it.
Haters Gonna Hate: Didn't really work and I mostly sat around frustrated with all the good cards I was seeing in my hand that I never got to use because of too many unfavorable circumstances. Lost to infinite combos twice and got my key spells countered in the last game, although it was a very good game.

Rakdos has to be the most miserable color combination for me to try to work with in EDH. I don't see myself trying to play a black/red commander that isn't also blue or green for a long time.

I griped about the infinite combo thing and I think I come across as pretty whiney, but there's a specific reason for that. The point structure is set up with the thesis of providing a fun, casual environment while also incentivizing good deckbuilding. So there are points for being the last player remaining (winning the game) and for killing opponents, but points can also be accrued for certain interactions (saving an opponent who is about to die, being the first one to deal damage to an opponent, being the first player eliminated, killing the player who got the most points in the previous week, playing a cool deck that convinces opponents to award "cool points" after the game is over, or for fulfilling thematic weekly/monthly rotating goals). Players are also punished with negative points for taking more than one extra turn in a row, for killing a player before the player's sixth turn, for playing more than one mana-producing artifact on the first turn, and for causing other players' unmodified basic lands to leave the battlefield.

By far, the most common complaint, across the board, was that games were ending in infinite combos. People would just play decks that tended to go infinite on turn six or seven or eight, and they'd not be penalized because everyone had gotten to play for six or more turns. In response to this, new rules were added. Regardless of turns, if a player wins the game or presents an infinite combo that could end the game and more than fifty minutes are left on the clock for the round, that player collects points for being the last one standing, collects all of the kill points, and exits the game. The other players can keep playing and can't collect points for saving an opponent (they all were already eliminated by the combo player anyway) or for being the last one standing (that was the combo player), but can earn other points. This was termed "hasty exterminatus" and additionally, another provision was added for prison decks that lock opponents out of the game. If one's opponents all agree that they're locked down for two turns and can't break the prison, they may "boot" the prison player under the same "hasty exterminatus" setup, as though the game had been won by an infinite combo. The prison player collects a point, but it's a special "boot point" and if a player gets three of those in the game calendar month, the player gets a big penalty to points and is also suspended from the league for at least a week (and possibly more, but this hasn't happened yet anyway because of how harsh the penalty is).

Prior to the rules changes, I was the only player I observed to lock a game down (using Enduring Ideal to deploy a series of enchantments that most opponents can't deal with once enough of them are on the battlefield) and I wasn't aware of any complaints regarding lockdown (although there could easily have been some I didn't get to see or hear about). While I've been pretty outspoken about my enthusiasm for combo decks in general, I enjoy a variety of decks and I also have a fondness for decks based around mana denial. So I deliberately held back on infinite combos out of respect for the um, spirit of the format or whatever. And I kind of resigned myself to not doing much mana denial either because of the rule about killing basic lands. But then the rules changed to basically reward infinite combos (so long as they're not infinite turns and they're not executed before each opponent has gotten to at least six turns). And mana denial, which was already difficult with the penalty for removing opponents' basic lands, got another disincentive. I expressed my consternation that after the complaints were directed at infinite combos, the response was to penalize mana denial. The answer from my friend was that the changes were based on communication with a much larger, more established east coast playgroup, and that those people had found over years of gameplay that with combo slowed down, prison decks become a severe problem (and the blow is not as easy to soften with a simple "everyone else just keep playing for points" provision). And that does seem reasonable enough.

The reason I'm torn is that it seems like some of the strongest players are avoiding infinite combo decks for this league and trying to build gimmicky decks to pick up points, which is the example I'm trying to follow. But there are also some other players, very experienced ones, who are just playing their best decks and winning with infinite combos. Often the rest of the table tries to stop them, but that just means they win with less than fifty minutes left on the clock and there's no hasty exterminatus. Or sometimes, as has happened to me, two different players at the same table are going for infinite combos, so I can manage to stop one, but the second one goes off and wins. Last month, the highest-scoring players were the ones who build gimmicky decks to optimize point gains and who also got lucky enough to dodge most of the infinite combo kills. This month, the ratio is a bit different and it looks like the highest-scoring players will all be people who just showed up with the same infinite combos over and over. They certainly outscore me. I've lost to the same infinite combo guy four times already, and three of those were with the same exact deck. So I'm kind of inclined to just beat these guys at their own game, build better combo decks than they can and just stomp all over them. But the pods are random and I'm worried that if I bring my most cut-throat combo decks to fit this special rules structure, I'll be matched up against a bunch of newbies and super casual decks and I'll be the jerk ruining games for them.

 

[Mooseman]

Could you build an infinite loop hate deck of some type. Damping Matrix, Harsh Mentor, Cursed Totem, Stifle, etc...... The EDH format would make it difficult to have a consistent hate deck, but it might be fun. I love playing anti-infinite loop decks.

 

[Oversoul]

Yes, and I'm strongly considering this. I think the unfortunate problem in my particular case isn't that EDH makes hate decks inconsistent, but that the special penalty rules, some of them anyway, bolster certain types of decks that aren't as vulnerable to those hate cards. The decks I've been seeing win a lot are playing medium-speed combos instead of the fastest ones because it's heavily penalized to kill people before they've had six turns. And like I said, mana interference and lockdown are also punished under this point system. So, for example, the deck I've lost to three times now has been this one Maelstrom Wanderer deck. It isn't all that fast. My Gitrog deck could outrace it easily. But it's not going to run into such a predator because of the point penalty. So the Maelstrom Wanderer deck is free to build up with ramp spells, card-drawing, and presenting threats. It has Cascade spells that cascade into more Cascade spells. It keeps grinding out more value as turns go on and then once Maelstrom Wanderer is online it can threaten to just beat people to death with big creatures. So he'll target the players that block/kill his commander, recast it and get more Cascade triggers. In the end, he'll set up Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Deceiver Exarch or whatever, but it's all pretty robust and sometimes an infinite combo will get shut down only for him to assemble a new combo or get back the same cards and try again. Simply slapping down a proactive obstacle to thwart his plans of going infinite isn't enough to stop him in his tracks, because once the deck gets going, he gains access to lots of cards and can probably find a way to get around an obstacle.

That's just one example. I also ran into Animar, Soul of the Elements + Ancestral Statue this last time around, and that's an annoyingly tough one to stop, especially if you're in the wrong colors. Most of the infinite combos that have been showing up in this league aren't the fastest and deadliest, but just powerful combos made with good, workhorse cards in decks that can play from multiple angles. They're generally exploiting a commander ability so that they have something they can get reliably (Ghave, Maelstrom Wanderer, Animar, Muldrotha, Meren, Jhoira, Mizzix, Atraxa...) and they protect their combos in various ways. Ideally, the way to hate out such things is to sabotage them from ever building up a critical mass of card advantage in the first place. I can do that and just might, but it's a lot more difficult when I'm also barred from accomplishing this by setting up a lockdown engine or by destroying lands.

I did get to employ some of this when I used the "If You Wanna Fight That's Fine With Me" deck. A Mizzix player and a Nekusar player were both trying to go off and kill everyone, but disruptive cards used by my deck and by the Gaddock Teeg player slowed them down.