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15-dollars-and-a-dream · 5 years

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Rhystic Tutor: Politics

In the last episode of “Isaac rambles incoherently for paragraphs” I said I would talk about Aristocrats next. I’m still working procrastinating on that, but in the mean time I wanted to cover an interesting topic brought up by one of our readers @gaias-bones who said;

"I had an EDH question about the politics of a 4-person pod. Basically, it makes me really anxious trying to sort out who to attack and target in a 4-person game, and I typically end up turtle-ing and never interacting. Do you know any good articles on the politics of EDH or something? It’s driven me away from the format for a bit. Well, that and I only have a precon deck and no money to really improve it or build a new one, but hopefully that’s temporary”

Threat assessment in multiplayer is a really interesting topic and something I see a lot of players struggle with. Who to attack, how to use removal, when to try to pull into the lead, these are all questions that are super hard to approach when you’re approaching any multiplayer format.

Before I get too far into this I just want to outline a really basic principal. In a four player game any time you are trading cards if you don’t at least 3-for-1 your opponents you’re spending your cards and turn to provide card advantage for another player. If I Swords to Plowshares an opponents creature, I’m down a card, that player is down a card, and everyone else stays neutral.

Also fair warning; I mostly play against blind metas. In environments where every player knows every card in every deck things become a lot more complicated.

Let’s talk Strategy! I have identified in my own personal play 3 primary strategies I engage in depending on the hand and the goal of the deck. The first is the by far the most political. Playing Sol Ring on turn 1 is often a mistake. The player who takes the most obvious initial lead is very likely to become the focus of the early game. Instead, maintaining the second most threatening board state lets you ride off of that focus cementing yourself in a powerful position for the mid game. Players in worse positions will be forced to spend their cards to stay alive, while you can very passively allow this exchange at no cost to your own resources. This is one of the many reasons I am extremely fond of Glissa, the Traitor. Being super gross to attack into lets you stay ignored for the early game.

If the game continues to progress in that manor it is very likely one or more players will die soon. Either the player who took the early lead aggressively dumps their hand and destroys the slowest player, or the player who took the early lead aggressively does nothing and gets killed by the other players. If the early lead stays alive you can set up for longer but will also likely have to begin spending interaction and attempting to wrestle the for the lead by the end of the game. This is where playing mass removal really pays off, ensuring you’re trading fewer resources as often as possible.

If the player who took the early lead aggressively does nothing and gets killed by the other players. You are now the player in the lead and the focus of all remaining players, but it is also likely that you will have the most resources at this point. The two underdogs will not likely turn against each other while a bigger threat remains. If this happens you will have to start spending resources to cripple one player and kill the other.

If however, you’ve been unable to maintain the second strongest position up till this point, the roles are reversed and you need to sacrifice the weakest player to cripple the new lead. This is where playing targeted removal really pays off.

Ideally at this point, whether you’ve succeeded in coasting or exploited players leaving the game, you’ve waited long enough and built up a big enough pile of options that you can do what your deck is looking to do and pull out a win.

I think this kind of strategy requires the most knowledge about what decks can kill you when, and likely rewards chunkier midrangey decks like lands, graveyard stuff, or hoof over archetypes like combo.

The second strategy is a lot more straight forward. Win. Depending on your hand and deck, sometimes you know you can win before anyone can stop you. In the image below you can see this strategy summed up pretty succinctly. Two of my opponents have done nothing. One gambled for fast mana and while they can untap with 8 mana they have no threats in play 3 cards in hand, and Mana Vault wont be untapping after they use it once.

I kept an extremly aggressive one land hand that i knew could dump 2 sol rings, a mana vault, and a Thassa on T1 and Coalition Relic into my commander Keranos on 2. If I played with the pacing of my normal shotgun coasting I would likely be able to use this fast mana later for a very explosive turn pulling ahead at a crucial moment and cementing my victory. Instead I went for the T1 Thassa and T2 Keranos because I felt my lead was significantly stronger than my mono red opponents T2 Etali, if they draw a red source.

If you have a feel for your meta and know what you’re doing is strong enough that you likely win through removal then it is absolutely worth going for it. Combo decks often have to just go off before things are perfectly aligned or they get aggro’d out of the game. In these situations sometimes you want to aggressively trade 1 for 1 removal into anything early that even remotely matters. Staying in the lead if you know the game will be over before your hand is empty is way more important than conserving resources.

In a similar vein, if you’re playing hardcore aggro, like Voltron or Boros, you can’t afford to bide your time. You’re on a tight clock to kill everyone before they can win. If you’re not dropping a hoof and killing everyone in a couple turns, you’re going to need to get working on that 120 damage (or 63 commander damage). I believe these strategies benefit extremely well from anything that can slow the game down. Mass land destruction on an advantageous board or Smokestack with a token producer keep the game in the early game for longer, which is when your deck is the strongest. Additionally, for aggro decks. Spreading damage is incorrect. A lot of newer players like to avoid making enemies early and attack in different directions. It is much better to remove one player than to make all 3 angry.

The third strategy is to intentionally stay the underdog. This doesn’t really work with the commander’s you’d want it to, you can’t play anything remotely threatening. Commanders like Breya, Atraxa, and Meren are way too scary to ever ignore. But Hapatra, Grimgrin or Karametra, who on the surface do not immediately scream “I am going to use this to kill you” often can sneak under the radar. If you are trying to maintain second place and find yourself unable to then suddenly you’re forced to struggle back to where you were. But if from the start the bottom is where you want to be then nothing can go wrong, other than getting killed.

I am going to use my Karametra deck here for specific examples, as that is a deck I built with this strategy in mind. Kareametra’s ability to get lands lets you develop your board really efficiently and consistently. You get to play a lot of defensive cards like Shalia and OG Sigarda that also happen to be beefy fliers that crack back really hard. This both contributes to taking down the lead, and discourages you as the target. Additionally, because of Karametras ramp, there are going to be very few lands in your deck. This makes all your draws live, and keeps you developing your board even after drawing lands becomes unlikely. Letting you just continually ramp.

When the second goes to kill the lead and jump into that position, you get to resolve Tooth and Nail and still have a bunch of untapped lands. Which likely puts you in the lead instead. In that deck specifically I liked to T&N for either Avacyn and Elesh Norn or Craterhoof and Avenger of Zendikar. Obviously not every deck can cast Tooth and Nail, but that same role can be filled with an Ugin, or a Ruric Thar, or a Blowfly Infestation.

Politics, you can never forget everyone at the table is your enemy. Making deals is fine but you should never agree to an alliance. In an alliance one player is in a much better position than the other. While its possible to try to use the lead to secure your place in second, if you’re also letting them start saving resources making it harder to overtake them in the end game. Inversely, if you are in the underdog position players will be compelled by nature of the game to make game play decisions that also benefit you. If the player in second tries to strong arm you, all you have to do is cripple them enough the lead takes the window to kill them instead of you, at which point you have your own window to act.

That said, if you’re able to strong arm someone into spending their resources to cement your position due to your own board position, that is both extremely useful and super rude to another human. Personally I’d rather avoid this line of play due to my own ideals, but it is strategically correct regardless.

Threat assessment is harder. How do you know which player is in the lead, or if you can win fast enough to go for it, or how a deck is going to try to kill you. This mostly comes from two places. The first is thinking about how you’re planning to win and what is getting in the way. If you WANT the eldrazi man to slam because you’re safe from it, then the eldrazi man is not the biggest threat. If you want to combo off and open mana girl has open mana, then open mana girl is the biggest threat. If you’re trying to sit back and combo off and voltron nonbinary friend is in your face the problem can be solved sometimes as easily as letting another player take the lead.

In the end, the biggest boon to better battle brains is more experience. If you don’t know which deck is the scariest it’s likely because you don’t have the context to compare. The best thing you can do is lose. Over and over again, seeing how each time till eventually when you sit down at a table you know exactly what each person is planning to do to you and on what timetable.

Regarding other resources to read into this more, I don’t really follow any commander content. I’d often prefer to just jam more games. However! I have seen a few episodes of The Command Zone that friends have linked me. These 2 specifically stood out to me as super interesting even outside the scope of edh/commander. Additionally, I do follow LRR’s North 100 podcast about Canadian Highlander. Most of the card evaluation changes drastically in Canlander, but I have found many useful little nuggets of know-how for both Commander and Cube in their many episodes!

The Command Zone #141: Machiavellian Machinations

The Command Zone #190: Lessons from The Great War

North 100

Hopefully this episode of “Isaac rambles incoherently for paragraphs” provided some of the info you were looking for Gaias <3

Tune in next time for actually Aristocrats I promise!

Stay chill, stay hydrated, stay scheming -IZ

#mtg #magic the gathering #edh #commander #RhysticTutor #RT #IZ #politics

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