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I was talking to a guy on mtgzone who doesnât like EDH.
I used to have the same problem. It used to feel like it was full of invisible and unwritten rules that all contradicted each other. Getting bullied if cards are too strong or too weak.
Casual EDH, that is: as you point out, competitive EDH doesnât have the same problem.
What I finally realized was that I shouldnât approach it as a game. I should approach EDH deckbuilding like a crossword maker approaches making a crossword:
To try to create something that is a challenge but beatable.
Itâs easy to create an unsolvable crossword. Just a bunch of white noise in a grid. But thatâs just no fun to anyone. A good crossbow maker wants the crossword solver to have fun and to enjoy the puzzle, to tease them a bit but keep it realistic and grounded.
Now, a game of EDH isnât a puzzle, but itâs an experience.
I started out making my first EDH deck super weak (itâs built around Tolarian Serpent) and have gradually been adding powerful cards or interactive cards or cards where I just like the art or the experience or the memory of when I first opened the card. I have a foil Rethink even though there are a lot better stack interaction cards, but it was just the first foil I ever opened so playing it makes me happy. The deck is still weaker than many of precons are out of the box so I still have a ways to go with it but that can be a gradual process of tweaking and modding.
When building a casual EDH deck, the point isnât to win. Itâs just not.
Thatâs what I was getting wrong, too. I was like âhow can I build a deck that can win when you keep springing these arbitrary rules on me like no land destruction and no stax? Youâll just have an endless list of things that youâll think is âtoo goodâ; if I find other things that arenât on your ban list youâll just add it to the banlist. And you bully me if my deck is too weak. And the games themselves are kingmakery bullshit where you hurt the leader just for leading.â
Thatâs where I was. So I get it.
Have you ever heard of a boardgame called Zendo? Itâs pretty great. Or, better yet, 20 Questions.
In 20 Questions, one player comes up with a secret thing like âBrad Pittâ or âA pencil leadâ or âMy momâs shoesizeâ or âThe feeling of regret when missing out on bowling nightâ or ârunning with scissorsâ. And then the other people ask yes & no questions until they can figure it out. The goal of the people guessing is to find out the secret thing. For them, thatâs âwinningâ in some sense of the word. But for the secret-keeper, they arenât trying to come up with the universeâs hardest word. That just wouldnât work. Itâs easy for them to come up with something that the other people donât even know exists! The secret-keeperâs job isnât to win, itâs to come up with an enjoyable, challenging, but possible secret for them to guess.
Same goes for building an EDH deck. Youâre trying to create an enjoyable challenge for your friends while also participating with your own fun in the challenges theyâve brought to the table.
Yeah, yeah, EDH as a format has its fair share of fundamental brokennesses that inevitably there are always going to be a high risk of bad experiences, but if youâre still in âthe point of the game is to winâ mode, youâve yet to learn the 101 foundational thing which is that EDH is using the Magic cards for something else. You might think that thing is a waste of good Magic cards, thatâs fine, but itâs another thing to do with them beyond trying to win.
You have a good basic point: The reason game designers put victory conditions into games in the first place is to guide play. Faffing around with cardboard with pictures and weird spell names on them is a pretty weird human activity in the first place. The thing that guides and structures that weird activity, normally, is that both players are striving for that W.
Casual EDH doesnât have victory as a goal (in the deckbuilding stage). Weâll have to reach for other forms of guidance and structure there. Such as what would be entertaining and fun for ourselves and for the group.