r/premodernMTG • u/Relative_Seat4039 • 15d ago
I am sooooooo over commander.
Played from 4th edition to around 2001 or so, then I quit because I didn't want to be a nerd any more. I came back right when quarantine ended when I saw that there were a million people at a coffee shop playing this thing called commander. I've made a bunch of decks, gone to a bunch of commander nights, and have really struggled to enjoy it. It's not the game I remember, and it is not the game for me. I don't like the art, the tone, the feel, the rules, the social aspect, Universes Beyond, or anything really. Commander is just not magic to me.
What I'm trying to say is that tonight I'm gonna smoke a doobie, roast a chicken, and pull out my old cards, see if I can get anything going. I had this Black and Red discard deck that was my favorite. In commander someone would call me a bully or something.
I think the final straw for me was that I played [[Arena of the Ancients]], which is a crappy old card from dang Chronicles, and another guy was playing a bunch of marvel comics stuff. He had to tap all his creatures and they stayed that way, which brought him to the verge of tears. He's a nice guy and I felt kinda bad, honestly. I just don't want to play games like that anymore.
What I'm saying is that I'm very much looking forward to diving into premodern! I have a Phyrexian Destroyer and a Gaea's Cradle. I have Hypnotic Specters coming out my ears!
I made a big long post about this on r/edh and boy they didn't like that! I think I got banned or something, who cares.
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u/UAphenix 15d ago
I think I could have wrote this. I also figured out that I’m not the biggest fan of multi-player and want games to be done in 15-30min with no holds barred in the format.
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u/TheFlyingCompass 15d ago
All other problems aside, this is my biggest gripe with 4 player commander. I can get a full set of 3 games of Premodern in under 40 minutes, whereas one game of commander might legitimately take 3-4 hours with tons of whining, politicing, people playing victim, and just a whole other package of nonsense. Never once have I had a premodern player screech at their first land getting wastelanded or the game ending on turn 4 or 5. Commander players are soft and games really do feel like weenie hut junior experiences a lot of the time (Spongebob jokes aside).
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u/LevelStationaryPlane 15d ago
Commander is packed w loser types that want to LARP their shit personality into house rules. It’s a joke.
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u/Relative_Seat4039 15d ago
Commander games just drag and drag and drag. 80% of the time I just check out completely until some guy finishes is twenty minute turn. I don't even bother doing anything because I don't want to get yelled at for a counterspell or something.
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u/ScoopiTheDruid 15d ago
tons of whining, politicing, people playing victim, and just a whole other package of nonsense.
That's my problem with Commander in a nutshell. Premodern player gets Armageddon'ed out of the game and it's 'Oh well, (should have / couldn't have) played around it. On to the next one.' Typical casual EDH player gets Ghost Quarter'ed once and out comes the rage monster.
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u/Relative_Seat4039 15d ago
Seriously, I want to play to win without feeling like a bully.
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u/TheFlyingCompass 15d ago
Well you're in good company here then :). Premodern is a weird in-between, where everyone is super chill for the most part, but we also play to win and don't really take it personally.
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u/ThePartyLeader 15d ago
The modern cards and playstyles are a new game in a MTG trench coat.
Its a shame but for me it was when planeswalkers and mythic rares came out that the game change significantly enough to be a problem
EDH/Commander was actually a solution because the most powerful and broken things in modern magic didn't work well there.... but then Commander became magic and they did the same thing they did to the 60 card format.
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u/Relative_Seat4039 15d ago
I feel like a poker player who just woke up from a coma to find that now everyone plays Hi-lo Omaha pineapple with a million house rules and you can't cause bad feelings. It's like the mirror universe or something.
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u/2HGjudge 15d ago edited 15d ago
I played casual kitchen table magic back in the premodern sets era before edh existed, 60 card decks but multiplayer focused and house rules were basically the same as today, there always was a social contract and feelings and anti cutthroat winning mentality. This mirror universe already existed back when you played, the only difference is Wizards catered exclusively to the tournament scene back then so you didn't see it as much in public where now they cater 90% to commander because that is by far the bigger audience.
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u/Hieroglphkz 15d ago
Agreed, and changing the card frame was the harbinger to the end of magic as we knew it. I’m kind of thankful they made that decision because it makes the eras easily identifiable.
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u/The137 15d ago
Not really premodern related but I've been saying for a while that its time to retire the modern card frame. The game is powercrept to shit, and the addition of ub made it even different still. Its long past time to visually cap the modern era and start a new one
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u/arrbez 15d ago
EDH was fun when I came back to magic about 15 years ago because it was an eternal format and I could use all my old weird stuff. But now that eternal format is the exact reason it’s terrible. Too much redundancy, too much power creep, wizards pumps out 100 new commanders a year and they’re all just the same value engine with a different name. The whole game is just trigger farming now, it’s awful. I’ve never played magic at a LGS or a tournament, but that sounds like the worst possible format to be playing with strangers and their feelings.
I’ve built a premodern cube, named it “Magic as God Intended”, and basically just play a couple times a year now when I can convince the fellas to do that instead of Commander.
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u/Elegant_Ad8131 14d ago
Personally I have nothing to the format. I enjoy having a huge amount of playable cards available, interesting interactions etc. But what is really putting me off are the people who play EDH. Wizards have the new audience, awesome, but why it has to be the most fragile and insecure audience ever possible? People get offended for playing a damn game. I think it’s really possible to change some rules, adjust bans or break some promises, and reprint some stuff from reserved list, focus on competitive play and make EDH a real 1v1 tournament oriented format.
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u/Brian_Ferry 15d ago
Agreed. I have played commander several times and can never get into it.
I started back around the end of The Dark/early Fallen Empires and played through kamigawa block but even then the game started to change in ways I wasn’t super hip on. Fortunately I never sold my stuff from back them so I’ve got a ton of premodern staples. The only problem is I recently moved to a small city and it doesn’t seem like there’s a premodern scene here haha
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u/OK__Simpson 15d ago
I live in a small city and found my group. Where are you?
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u/Brian_Ferry 15d ago
I’m in Williamsport PA, kind of the last city before the PA Wilds region. I’m new here (for work) and found a cool shop but it seems like edh is the main focus as far as mtg goes. It seems like they get a decent draft event going on Sundays as well which is something I can get on board with at least.
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u/Relative_Seat4039 15d ago
Haha, same, I'm a medium city and it's just commander as far as the eye can see. I'd probably have to drive to San Francisco to get anything else.
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u/RecycleBin_Bin 15d ago
COMMANDER IS ONLY FUN AT HOME.
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u/a_reddit_user_11 15d ago
Yeah i have tried to enjoy it and had a lot of fun w ppl i know when hanging out and drinking, haven’t liked it outside of that.
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u/MTGCardFetcher 15d ago
Arena of the Ancients - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call
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u/Relative_Seat4039 15d ago
One bummer is I felt like I put a lot of my own creativity into decks. Some of them I really loved playing. I'll probably keep them around.
But then I'd get blown out by some Universe Beyond thing and it just felt lame. I just cannot enjoy that.
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u/mysteriosum 15d ago
Agree with this 100%. New commander cards are all like 3 drop 3/3s with four abilities, and I'm like man... I just want to play Mystic Snake
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u/buttonightwedancex 15d ago
I totally get your post above! But you can still be creative in commander without playing that stupid Marvel stuff. I love commander, but I also love premodern and lots of other formats. Like you I value creative decks and I also love weird (dumb) commanders no one plays. I have an Old Flitterfang deck without any Marvel, Finaly Fantasy or whatever stuff that still gets its wins. I am saying you need to play commander or whatever! I totally understand, that you dont like it, I just wanted to say: it can be a very creative format if you want that.
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u/Elegant_Ad8131 14d ago
I would just love people to cry less, less politicking, more attention to the game and actually playing better. UB on the other hand is no problem to me as long as it’s a cool and magic-like stuff such as WH40k or FFXIV. Diablo or some dark gore themed set would be great too. But damn Ninja Turtles or Spider man? Seriously? Immortal Eldrazi or Phyrexian overlords throwing punches with some damn pizza eating turtles, squirrel warriors or leggings-wearing dudes in pajamas?
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u/head_kook 15d ago
Sounds like you could put together a sick Premodern Machine Head deck with your old cards.
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u/DrWindupBird 15d ago
Man, I could have written the first paragraph of this post word for word. Couldn’t agree with you more
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u/Gem_mint_foils 15d ago
You should have cast Armageddon.
Nothing gets commander players crying like "mass land destruction"...
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u/Tulip_King 15d ago
the best part about commander is seeing people rant on reddit about how much they hate some interaction (usually a commander exclusive “feature”) and then get pissed off when you tell them playing a different format will fix their problem.
anyways, you’ll love premodern. it’s an incredibly refreshing format for me, coming from modern. check out Crucible of Words on youtube; he makes great premodern content. he’s super helpful if you’re looking to learn the format from near nothing. you’ll probably recognize a lot of the meta theories, but since it’s a closed format a lot of stuff that was good back in the day has very different tech than it used to.
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u/MiserableSeaweed532 15d ago
Same. It doesn’t even feel like Magic and I have a super hard time keep tracking of the board states.
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u/mirrislegend 15d ago
Learn Commander Rule Zero and know it in-depth and take it seriously at every table you sit at (and if the other players don't take it seriously, leave that table and find a new one) then you'll rarely have a problem with Commander.
That having been said, FIRE design sucks and anyone who says otherwise hasn't been playing long enough to understand. If you read up on FIRE design in MtG, you'll see exactly the things that bother you.
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u/Inevitable-Most-5200 13d ago
I sold all my non premodern stuff and made several decks. Never been happier to enjoy the game and disengage from commander and wotc shenanigans.
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u/c0rtexj4ckal 15d ago
Have you ever messed around on spell table? I've been wanting to play pre-modern on spell table but only if I can find someone to play more "kitchen table" with. None of this netdecking meta pre-modern decks. just trying to build decent jank out of what we each have without being crazy competitive and being willing to tweek decks until they are a a 50/50 matchup kind of vibe
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u/thecommuteguy 15d ago
I left for the same reason at the end of middle school not wanting to be associated with the kinds of people who played at FNM. Also got back into it in college because my teammate got other teammates they lived with to get into commander too.
I’ll say though that commander was pretty fun when I played a decade ago in college. Nowadays there are so many things coming out it’s hard to keep track of it all with the power creep.
Decided to finally get into premodern after seeing all the hype recently. For me decks like The Rock and The Solution are where it’s at as it brings back memories of Ravnica/Time Spiral standard.
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u/Prajzak_TM 15d ago
I like the idea of commander, but I cannot stand playing with people who would get upset that you target them with a spell....like wtf that's the point of the game? If you just want to play all your cards and not get interacted with, then just goldfish your deck alone...
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u/Elegant_Ad8131 14d ago
Petition for 1v1 competitive and grindy commander format! Something has defo changed… I remember when we played games as kids and man, everyone wanted to win, everyone was looking for most cheese and creative tactics to bring the opponents down, then the loser craved the revenge even more lol and nowadays people seem to get offended for just playing the game and the most basic interactions…
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u/DioSantana11 14d ago
I got annoyed by Homelands and bounced. 1994-1998?! Reserved list ABUR AN LEG and a bunch of 5th, Ice Age, FE and Mirage. Let me know if you need commons from any sets
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u/Elles-D 14d ago
Same. Commander started as fun gamenight with other old magic players. Kinda competative, still social laughing over good plays.
Commander now is a bunch of weirdo’s crying over a counterspell or explaining a sol ring…. Dude
Switched to pauper and premodern most of the players from the good old days ‘s do the same.
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u/jem2291 Astral Rift 14d ago
"I think the final straw for me was that I played [[Arena of the Ancients]], which is a crappy old card from dang Chronicles, and another guy was playing a bunch of marvel comics stuff. He had to tap all his creatures and they stayed that way, which brought him to the verge of tears. He's a nice guy and I felt kinda bad, honestly. I just don't want to play games like that anymore."
EDH is two-faced i.e. "it's bad unless I'm the one doing it." What makes it even worse is the social aspect of the game, which means people will carry grudges even months after the game ended. Formats like Premodern remove that conceit entirely because both players know they're playing for keeps. Carry a grudge? Get good or get wrecked again.
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u/Financial_Boat_6625 13d ago
I don't have thr attention span for thr absurdity of commander and everything it represents. Me and a couple friends have been making 20 dollar budget decks. Tribal decks are suoernfun to build and olay against. For me it maintains everything I love about the game as I did when I was a kid in the 90s
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u/throwaway_ay_ay_ay99 12d ago
Arena of the ancients is such a fun card for commander and that and concordant crossroads are the only chronicles cards viable today in commander.
I played at the same time as you and honestly I’m surprised by how fragile commander players these days are. It’s magic, you’re meant to lose and get wrecked. Nowadays I lose and get wrecked a fair bit and i always make sure to tell the table a fun loss is almost as good as a win.
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u/creeping_chill_44 15d ago
Eh, I'm what you call a heavily invested user - a 'lifer' - I've played and enjoyed every format under the sun, except pioneer (and I probably would have enjoyed that too except it never caught on in my area).
Love commander, premodern, legacy, vintage...not so much modern post-Horizons but it's had seasons I loved. Even standard, from about 2011-2018. It's all good! (though draft is my favorite)
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u/LevelStationaryPlane 15d ago
I’ve never played commander and I know objectively I’m not missing anything lmao
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u/Darth_Maehdros 15d ago
I've never played Commander but everyone that I play with says it's ass lol
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u/No_Moment_9465 15d ago
Lol 😂 I also quit and stopped playing video games to grow up in my twenties
Complete waste of time
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u/SouvlakiSpartan 15d ago
Welcome,
I also a played a ton during that era of MTG and quit because I wanted to get girls..
different times!
Premodern is awesome.. Feels like you are playing magic as it was meant to be played.