The Magic Venting Thread

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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby RadioshackRaider » 25 Feb 2016, 20:15

Sadly, they refuse to play any other format. They want to play Commander and Commander only. If anyone had an Arch-enemy deck, I'd be willing to play it but in all honesty, I'd rather just try and play a normal game of Multiplayer Magic where it's the threat that's the target, not me.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby AdmiralMemo » 26 Feb 2016, 04:15

I say go for the powerful deck. Let them complain, if they're already targeting you anyway. If they complain that the deck isn't fun, counter it with the fact that they aren't fun when you play anything else. Play that favorite deck despite their objections. If they won't let you, then don't play. Perhaps you can refuse to play Magic for a while, to make it so it's not fun for them either? If it can't be fun, at least make it as unfun for everyone as it is for you so they can feel your pain.

If those two are the only people in the whole world you can play Magic with, then you're out of luck if you can't play MtGO. Sad that there are only three people in your area that play Magic, though. :-(
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby fantôme » 26 Feb 2016, 08:56

If memory serves, you're Scottish right? As far as I know, the major cities have decent-sized magic communities, are you too rural/transportless to realistically try your luck elsewhere?

I feel your pain though, my LGS's commander clique, whilst thankfully not dicks, play at a much higher power level than is my penchant. The friends that I do play commander with are dotted all over the country, and we only manage to get together once in a blue moon.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Atifexe » 26 Feb 2016, 12:52

I strongly disagree with Memo's suggestion of "don't let them have fun if you can't have fun", as I feel that only stands to reinforce the image of you as the bad guy. For that matter, the only time I've encountered someone being targeted regardless of what deck they're using is when they've consistently proven that they're too Spikey for the group and no matter what they're playing, they're capable of ruining the fun for everyone else. That said, your description of them suggests that the issue may be that they're the Spikes, and you're just getting singled out because you're the only one who normally stands a chance against them.

My suggestions are going to be pretty simple, and echo some already made.
1: Talk to them. Try to suss out why they're aiming for you before anyone else. Don't complain about it or try to dissuade them, just try to learn their reasons. Do this with every player in the group, not just the problem ones, and preferably one-on-one so that they aren't concerned about upsetting the others. Maybe you aren't the problem, but you're an easy scapegoat who gets the "I'm going to screw that one over" player to deplete their resources, therefore allowing everyone else to actually have fun.
2: Precons. Try to convince people to play using Wizards' prebuilt deck lists only, so that no one has anything designed to screw over someone specific and so that they're all theoretically on an even power level.
3: Pauper Commander. Try to convince people to alter the format slightly, and only use commons with the exception of the Commander.
4: Trade decks. Bring your favorite, supposedly too-powerful deck, and then try to convince folks to rotate decks around the table so that no one is playing the one they brought.
5: Mix in another format. Suggest that if they really want to fight you, you get to use a proxied Scheme deck alongside your favorite deck. Archenemy Commander is usually a lot of fun, in my experience, even when losing. Or, consider Two Headed Giant (for the teammate benefits) or Emperor (for the limited range of influence) to shake up how people play.
6: Take a break from playing. I understand that you want to keep playing Magic, and if everyone in the group is seeing you as the natural enemy, maybe you'd benefit from stepping back for a bit. If they play a few games without you, they may realize that building decks to hose someone specific actually isn't fun, and be more open to what you play when you come back.
7: Develop alternate "win conditions" for yourself that aren't winning the game. Aim to do something stupid, like seeing how many times you can cast Army of the Damned in a single game by finding a way to recur Runic Repetition (May I suggest Reclaim on Isochron Scepter?). If you achieve your goal, declare yourself the winner, scoop, and wait for the next game to start.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Lycodrake » 26 Feb 2016, 18:32

Went to LGS #1 - waited 'til the usual 7pm. No show for FNM. Apparently the regulars went to LGS #2. That'd be fine if the last time they had gone there hadn't been in 3-4 weeks, not counting a few for Game Day.
From what LGS #1 store-owner tells me, at least, and I trust him - he's the IRL person to encourage me to continue playing FNM. I feel bad for him. He has YuGiOh players regularly so it isn't like he or the LGS are going anywhere, but... :(

And there's a chance that the "regulars", with their tier 1 net decks, just used this LGS to qualify at Invitationals and RPTQs etc. :(
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Kapol » 04 Mar 2016, 20:55

Lost a game I feel like I should have won to Pack Rat. To show why, I lost the game while at 27 life with my opponent at 4. My opponent had been at 4 since when he played Pack Rat. :/
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby RadioshackRaider » 06 Mar 2016, 16:40

fantôme wrote:If memory serves, you're Scottish right? As far as I know, the major cities have decent-sized magic communities, are you too rural/transportless to realistically try your luck elsewhere?

I feel your pain though, my LGS's commander clique, whilst thankfully not dicks, play at a much higher power level than is my penchant. The friends that I do play commander with are dotted all over the country, and we only manage to get together once in a blue moon.


Yeah, I am a bit too far from the others. The cost of going to the only other store in my region is as much as playing in an event. It'd cost about £25/30 just for one day of magic, which isn't really affordable. My store has the smaller community too, even though it's been open longer.

Atifexe wrote:I strongly disagree with Memo's suggestion of "don't let them have fun if you can't have fun", as I feel that only stands to reinforce the image of you as the bad guy. For that matter, the only time I've encountered someone being targeted regardless of what deck they're using is when they've consistently proven that they're too Spikey for the group and no matter what they're playing, they're capable of ruining the fun for everyone else. That said, your description of them suggests that the issue may be that they're the Spikes, and you're just getting singled out because you're the only one who normally stands a chance against them.

My suggestions are going to be pretty simple, and echo some already made.
1: Talk to them. Try to suss out why they're aiming for you before anyone else. Don't complain about it or try to dissuade them, just try to learn their reasons. Do this with every player in the group, not just the problem ones, and preferably one-on-one so that they aren't concerned about upsetting the others. Maybe you aren't the problem, but you're an easy scapegoat who gets the "I'm going to screw that one over" player to deplete their resources, therefore allowing everyone else to actually have fun.
2: Precons. Try to convince people to play using Wizards' prebuilt deck lists only, so that no one has anything designed to screw over someone specific and so that they're all theoretically on an even power level.
3: Pauper Commander. Try to convince people to alter the format slightly, and only use commons with the exception of the Commander.
4: Trade decks. Bring your favorite, supposedly too-powerful deck, and then try to convince folks to rotate decks around the table so that no one is playing the one they brought.
5: Mix in another format. Suggest that if they really want to fight you, you get to use a proxied Scheme deck alongside your favorite deck. Archenemy Commander is usually a lot of fun, in my experience, even when losing. Or, consider Two Headed Giant (for the teammate benefits) or Emperor (for the limited range of influence) to shake up how people play.
6: Take a break from playing. I understand that you want to keep playing Magic, and if everyone in the group is seeing you as the natural enemy, maybe you'd benefit from stepping back for a bit. If they play a few games without you, they may realize that building decks to hose someone specific actually isn't fun, and be more open to what you play when you come back.
7: Develop alternate "win conditions" for yourself that aren't winning the game. Aim to do something stupid, like seeing how many times you can cast Army of the Damned in a single game by finding a way to recur Runic Repetition (May I suggest Reclaim on Isochron Scepter?). If you achieve your goal, declare yourself the winner, scoop, and wait for the next game to start.


Thanks for the suggestions. Currently number 4 is something I'm going to be trying, as well as just trying to find a commander that's a bit more fair than others. We've had one night of random decks so far, and it was interesting. The one person who is generally a problem for me put in just the most unfun decks though. His mono-blue counter everything deck and his Fog deck. Jokes on him though, he had to play Elves, which is least favourite type of deck to play ever. He looked like he wanted to straight up concede. Wouldn't even win the multitude of turns he had to win. I've never understood people who refuse to play any other kind of deck but the one specific archetype like Control. I get that you have fun playing it more than the others, but c'mon, it's gotta be boring playing only one type of deck out of many.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Lycodrake » 06 Mar 2016, 17:55

I enjoy playing all sorts of decks, though I'm not very good at pure Control. In Standard I've only ever played Abzan or Selesnya, but in Commander I've played Bant, White, and Blue (Precons). At prereleases I've played GW (FRF, DTK, ORI, and OGW) and BR (BFZ), and my first (and thus far only) draft I played UR (OGW-OGW-BFZ).

Uh, I guess my point is that I've aimed to a) learn how to play all colors and b) have fun with whatever deck I'm playing. Maybe both are just some things some people can't do?
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Lycodrake » 09 Apr 2016, 11:58

I had a really negative day yesterday. Tried to enjoy drafting SOI for the first time, but wound up having even more negativity by the end of it. I don’t know whether it’s because I drafted poorly, was rushed and didn’t construct the deck well, don’t know how to run blue-black very well, or what - but it just compounded the other negativity i’ve been having.

And at least 1 of the people in my draft pod was money drafting. I can't absolutely blame him, because he's a really young kid who tags along with his father...but still.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Kapol » 09 Apr 2016, 16:03

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Last edited by Kapol on 12 Apr 2017, 01:40, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Lycodrake » 10 Apr 2016, 09:27

Also, people were dropping out of the draft tourney like flies. Went until after midnight, even, and I was in bad shape at the end of it. Only had 1 fair match where I wasn't mana screwed.

:(
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Booster » 10 Apr 2016, 14:49

There is a guy who frequents the store I play at who drives me crazy. I swear this guy is salt made living. I have numerous stories about him, but I'll stick to just the one from today.

We had 19 people for sealed today, which should of course be 5 rounds. there were a lot of people asking the TO to just do 4 rounds though, since no one wanted to be there for 5. TO says sure, but only if EVERYONE agrees. It has to be unanimous since 5 is what should happen. I would have personally preferred 5, but I wasn't going to argue when almost everyone wanted 4, so I happily voted with the majority.

However, saltman insisted we do 5, because he wanted the Planeswalker points. He then went 0-2 drop after killing himself with his own Triskaidekaphobia. He actually made a judge call because he thought he could gain or lose the life before the lose the game trigger, so he shouldn't be dead even though he was at 13 at the start of his upkeep. When the judge told him no, that's not how it works, he INSISTED the judge go check the gatherer rulings.

Guy drives me crazy.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby phlip » 10 Apr 2016, 15:44

Booster wrote:He actually made a judge call because he thought he could gain or lose the life before the lose the game trigger, so he shouldn't be dead even though he was at 13 at the start of his upkeep. When the judge told him no, that's not how it works, he INSISTED the judge go check the gatherer rulings.

Judge should have come back with a dictionary, turned to the page for "then".

... maybe it's a good thing I never ended up taking my L1 test.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Booster » 10 Apr 2016, 16:49

phlip wrote:
Booster wrote:He actually made a judge call because he thought he could gain or lose the life before the lose the game trigger, so he shouldn't be dead even though he was at 13 at the start of his upkeep. When the judge told him no, that's not how it works, he INSISTED the judge go check the gatherer rulings.

Judge should have come back with a dictionary, turned to the page for "then".

... maybe it's a good thing I never ended up taking my L1 test.


I know this judge pretty well, I bet he just stood by the computer for a minute, and then just said "yeah it works the way I told you", if he checked anything it was his FB, but not gatherer.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Kapol » 11 Apr 2016, 10:41

Well, it's looking like I've been scammed out of nearly $60 worth of cards. Most of them I don't care about, but there were a couple I'd wanted to keep and trade to others.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Booster » 11 Apr 2016, 13:58

Kapol wrote:Well, it's looking like I've been scammed out of nearly $60 worth of cards. Most of them I don't care about, but there were a couple I'd wanted to keep and trade to others.


Oh no, that's awful. How did it happen?
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Kapol » 11 Apr 2016, 16:59

Booster wrote:Oh no, that's awful. How did it happen?


Did a trade through deckbox with someone with no feedback. I decided to trade at the same time, because they offered to send first and I didn't think it through. So it's my own fault for not being careful.

And, to be fair, it was less than a week ago. But since then it's been found to be a known scammer address, they marked that they shipped it but didn't give any tracking or info, and have yet to return my messages asking about the cards. So... not holding out hope. If I don't hear back from them or get the cards within a week or two of when the trade was, I'm likely just going to report them for mail fraud as Deckbox recommends.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby eostby » 15 Apr 2016, 21:39

Join me on this roller-coaster journey through a Chaos Draft.

Bring three packs of Shadows. P1P1 Archangel Avacyn, go into a fairly solid black-white deck. Play the Archangel in each of my first 6 games (two in match 1, all three in match 2, and the first game of match 3). Win all three of those matches.

As has been true of the last few Chaos Drafts my local store has run, the prize for winning it all is an Expedition, this time being Scalding Tarn. In the last round, I face the person who has won two out of the last three drafts (wasn't at the last one), and who has beaten me in the finals of at least one of his wins. The last time we played, I got horribly mana screwed both games. I figure the odds of it happening again are fairly unlikely, and I like how my deck has been running all night, so we shuffle up and play.

Game one, I drew 5 lands the entire game. They are all Plains. I have 6 black cards and an Anguished Unmaking in hand when I concede. Game two, I draw 4 Swamps and Forbidding Watchtower (land that taps for white, becomes a 1/5 for 1W), and die with 5 white cards in hand. I go from having a good chance to win the entire draft to dropping into 4th thanks to tiebreakers.

A couple people came up to me after the match and told me that I'd basically won the night anyway because I opened an Avacyn, and one of them (who is not fond of fetchlands in general) even said "I'd much rather have Avacyn, and I wouldn't trade having it for having that land anyway." To which I quietly replied "I might."

See, I'm one of a very few regulars at our store who has never opened an Expedition. So winning the Tarn meant more to me than just winning the draft. I'm building a Cube that requires a Tarn, and winning this one would have saved me on having to buy one, but I really just wanted to finally own any Expedition. And yet again, I came up one match short due to utterly shit draws at the worst possible time.

Am I happy to have an Avacyn? Yeah, mostly. Would I have been a hell of a lot happier playing an actual match of Magic and maybe winning? Absolutely. Did this night give me serious doubts that I'll ever actually win a Chaos Draft at my store? Like you wouldn't believe.

/rant
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby RadioshackRaider » 10 Jun 2016, 10:04

So It's been well over a month since I won my LGS's Game Day and there's still no word on when I'm getting my play mat and promos. Not a bit. That combined with the fact that I'm not getting any info about Eternal Masters out of the owner is starting to piss me off big time. I've decided to stop paying membership at the store because I still have to pay for a Standard event, and since those are the only events that fire any more, I'm spending twice the amount I normally would to play 2 weeks of Magic. The owner doesn't seem to realise his lax attitude towards stuff is driving customers away. He still has painting orders for minis from when he opened 3/4 years ago. But he ignores them because he's off doing stuff like singing in plays and crap. He's neglecting his business and it's starting to severely tick me off.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Kapol » 10 Jun 2016, 20:18

Honestly, I would contact Wizards. It seems like the longer it takes to get you the playmat and promos, the less likely getting them will actually be. Though I'll admit I'm not certain of where best to contact them.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Booster » 11 Jun 2016, 07:14

RadioshackRaider wrote: I've decided to stop paying membership at the store


You have to pay "membership" what the hell?
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby RadioshackRaider » 11 Jun 2016, 12:52

Booster wrote:
RadioshackRaider wrote: I've decided to stop paying membership at the store


You have to pay "membership" what the hell?


The membership is a flat £10 a month to play all I want in the store as opposed to £2 any day I'm in to play. Since I'm generally in twice a week, it's worth it, but with 2 events a month being Standard, and the fact that I rarely get to play a outside of a Standard event, it's not worth the money any more.
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby Booster » 12 Jun 2016, 16:34

RadioshackRaider wrote:
Booster wrote:
RadioshackRaider wrote: I've decided to stop paying membership at the store


You have to pay "membership" what the hell?


The membership is a flat £10 a month to play all I want in the store as opposed to £2 any day I'm in to play. Since I'm generally in twice a week, it's worth it, but with 2 events a month being Standard, and the fact that I rarely get to play a outside of a Standard event, it's not worth the money any more.


That's so weird, any store Ive ever been too only charges for the tournament entry itself, which for constructed is just to cover prizes. Ive even been to some stores that run game day as a completely free event, with the only prizes being the promos and the mat. So it you show up to just play casual games with a friend, you have to pay £2?
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby korvys » 12 Jun 2016, 21:15

Wow, yeah, that's super unusual. Most games stores I'm familiar with figure they make money by letting people play, from people buying stuff from the store while they're there, and as a consequence of people having a place to play, and therefore playing more, than therefore buying more. Or they just don't have people playing, and save money by having a smaller store.

I mean, hell, they probably make at least a few dollars from the snack/drink fridge from me each time I'm there (which is less often now).
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Re: The Magic Venting Thread

Postby RadioshackRaider » 13 Jun 2016, 14:04

As far as I'm aware this is standard fare in Scotland. The store doesn't make all that much and the pay to play is a lot of how the place manges to stay open. The owner opened purely to give the gaming community of the town a store to play in, and so generally sells his stuff a a really fair price. Like a box of Eternal Masters would cost me £180 pre-order or £200 not pre-ordered. I'd be buying one if I could afford it. He also sold me a Mirrodin Besieged box for £70 last year, so I can't complain much. Update on the Mat though. I've got it and it turns out it's been in the store for about 3 weeks. It was just given to his employee that's a complete dick to give to me, so I would have never gotten it if I hadn't complained about it. Still no news on the promos though.

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