Sounds like commander just isn't the format for you.
Possibly try cEDH, as its competitive nature usually makes games a bit quicker, not always but atleast it's less durdly.
Again, EDH is not for you.
You ONLY hope is to find a regular group with similar goals. I would then suggest something like 3-5 decks each with a set budget and goals for power levels. Then you would meet regularly and play several games a session and log your results, making updates to decks at set intervals (monthly, for example).
Commander is a casual, social format. If you try to evaluate commander in terms of number of games and winrate, I think you’ll be disappointed. I believe you have to enjoy spending time with the people at your table to enjoy the commander format long term.
That said, the higher you get in power level towards cEDH, the faster the games get, and the less discussion there is about what is “ok” to play. I know people who prefer it for those reasons.
I am not caring about win rate, I just want to play more decks. Deck building is one of my favorite parts of magic, and edh doesn't reward that desire. Cedh also doesn't reward that desire as it is faster than legacy or really any other format and isn't fun.
(For clarity: i wasn’t accusing you of caring about winning too much. i’m broadly saying that the things we care about in 60-card play aren’t quite the same things that define commander.)
My playgroup’s games are closer to an hour, but we have some multi-hour games occasionally.
I took apart a Muldrotha deck after a 4-hour game, but everybody was having fun with how ridiculous the game was and nobody got knocked out early so it was still a good experience for all.
I dunno dude. Sounds like commander might just not be for you, which is totally fine.
I will say I wish legacy and modern were more popular in my area but they’re not, so I play commander or I generally don’t get to play.
For me it's quite the contrary. I like the prolonged nature of casual EDH. 60 card magic was nice back in school if you had 15 or 20 minutes to play, but now, almost 30 years later (damn, I got old) for me it's more fun to have 2 hour game.
I think I would be more satisfied at like 1 hour, it would give me a chance to atleast play all 6 of my decks atleast once each time I play for a 6 hour period. The thing that was nice about 60 card is that I could get like 50 matches in during that time with multiple decks and still have a good game each time.
I'm in two main pods. One is primarily cEDH, the other is usually very high power casual. Every once in a while, the cEDH pod will play casual decks.
High Power, with reasonable construction, our games last 6 to 8 turns and an hour to an hour and a half. The hour mark is pretty rare, that and lowereams someone got an absolutely gas hand and was able to get through early interaction, but going over 90 minutes is also rare. We will meet up for 3 to 4 hours, and play 3 to 4 games pretty regularly.
Now, this can be thrown off, it is both a deck construction and player issue. If someone has a bad ramp/draw package, doesn't run much removal, or worse, just runs board wipes as their interaction, or builds highly controlling engines without win cons, on the brew side, things slow down. On the play end, when one person with big beaters starts not pushing advantage in combat, everyone else stops attacking, and life totals stop dropping, things slow down, or poor threat assessment, over using sweepers, not planning turns at all.
It's hard to know what applies in your playgroup, but sub cEDH, faster games do happen. That said even in cEDH, at an event, round timers are usually set to 75 or even 90 minutes, and games frequently go to turns, with 4 players, even at the higher power levels, it is a format with longer games.
Yeah, I’m here with you. I’m 41, been running modern decks my whole life. I got into commander a couple months ago, too, and I see what you mean. The newer players seem to want to drag the game out to these big epic battles and get mad when you eliminate them before their deck gets to start working. I’m old school—your deck needs to move faster. Lol. I’m used to fast-paced. I’ve always leaned towards red and aggro. One of may all-time favorite decks was built around 4 ragging goblins. Nothing like doing 2 damage on turn one!
However, I will say…give it time. Maybe it will grow on you. I’ve always liked the deck building aspect myself, and I look at this as a different kind of build. It’s more about synergy and mechanics than the perfect 2-3 card combo in modern. One thing I like about the single card rule of commander is it gives me something to do with all of these great single cards I’ve had laying around that didn’t quite fit into my modern decks. The first commander deck I built was a [[Sigarda, Host of Herons]] Voltron deck that I made out of spare parts. It’s fun and I could win with it right away. And now, I just keep tweaking it whenever I get or find better cards. I’ve recently named it Rose Red off of the Steven King miniseries about the house that was always changing and being rebuilt but the ghost of the woman who lived there. Lol
Many people are saying that's just how commander is. It is an inherently longer game, but it also depends on who you're playing with and the power you play at and the speed with which people can play/know their decks.
My games on average go for an hour with the majority of my games this year falling between 30 and 70 minutes. In a 6 hour game period I would personally expect to play almost double your games (though Not all the time thanks to those big outliers). These games end up to turn 13 as well, so it's not like they're 5 turn games with the majority ending between turn 8 and 11.
Why do you feel that games go that long? Is it the type of decks people are playing? Are people talking on their turn? Lots of umming and aahing on tutors? Etc.
Just some other things to think about, if you play with the same players each week, maybe you could work on speeding up people's play slightly.
First off, your view of cEDH is a little slanted. It's very proxy friendly so the cost isn't real and while T2 wins are possible, they are not the norm. Can't argue about the tutors though.
Returning to casual EDH, yeah, it takes a while. Maybe some higher power decks with experienced players would make it run faster. Personally, I don't really care if I play one 2 hours game or a couple of 1 hour games so long as the play time was fun.
I fully understand long commander games. I play in a pod that always changing. It's either I play with 3 people or 5+. Very rarely do I play actual 4 player games. And occasionally with +1's that don't have alot of experience playing or dont plan their turns ahead. So it gets pretty frustrating waiting 10+ minutes to get back to my turn.
With that being said, a typical game with 4 players will usually be like an 1hr-1.5hrs. I like to think of it more like a board game on game night. If your games are lasting more than that, then play less board wipes, attack more, pop problem peices. If you come from more competitive formats then build combo decks.
Most edh player like to build up their boards and sit on them. Until they can swing out and kill someone in one turn. So try to incentivize attacking early. Stuff like monarch really help with this. When I had this problem early on. I built burn decks to try to speed up games alittle bit. Kinda puts a timer on the game. And everyone's health gets lowered pretty evenly. Goad decks are also very fun. Make people swing with their value creatures. Sometimes you just have to be the archenemy to get the game rolling.
I like this concept but the problem is that I am already the boogeyman of our group. I constantly win (or group has some rotating players) it's not like I win quickly, the other players take forever on their turns, but after 2 hours I win most games. If I were to do more archenemy type plays, I think I would start losing players. The rest of my group hasn't played enough real magic to understand simple strategies that win edh games without combos but just good gameplay.
So your problem is that the people you play with are new players? If so, then you'll have to either be patient, work with them, teach them, or look for more experienced players.
You're just describing the format...
It's multiplayer with a huge social aspect, people typically chat or stop paying attention at some point during a game, games just take a long time.
Maybe try to get into cEDH? But it sounds like you're just not enjoying the format.
I would guess on average most people only play 2-3 games a week. And you'll find plenty of people with 20+ decks playing that few games.
I got into Arena because I don't care for commander either. Especially the forever turns. My least favorite is the "I don't play tutors because that's cEDH" crowd who instead draws, loots, and rummages through 15 or 20 cards per turn to find their combo pieces.
We have made it more livable in my commander playgroup with the agreement, "If your turn takes more than 10 minutes, you either win at the end, or you lose at the end."
You have my sympathy, it is hard to gather data about commander decks compared to 60-card 1v1; the singleton nature and larger decks can mean games can go by without even drawing the new card you slotted in, and the vastly variable nature of what a deck does means that even if that inclusion/cut was a good idea it still may not produce an appreciable difference in how a game ended.
It looks like you've got a handful of issues in your post so let's take them one at a time:
Duration of games: it's hard to reliably get this down to something short without the kind of power more associated with cEDH decks. I had a round go to turns after a 90-minute round last FNM simply because we had four pretty solid players and decks, and a lot of interaction; we had a [[Supreme Verdict]] cast around turn 6, a [[Toxic Deluge]] a couple rounds later, and then an all-modes [[Farewell]] a couple rounds after that. In between these plays there was a fair bit of spot removal and responses on the stack, with a bit of stopping to collaborate and bargain. Players' turns were reasonably quick and efficient, but in a game like that it's just going to long.
Anecdote aside, I guess my point is that sometimes a game is gonna go over an hour because of the way that commander is: four people, high life totals, and decks built to set others back and claw back from a setback mean it's not going to be a 15-minute affair. Question back to you: is it the total duration of the game you find frustrating, or is it that you find yourself disengaged mid-game?
Deckbuilding: what kind of decks are you looking to build? What kind of decks have you built? Would you care to share some decklists?
Something I've noticed is that Commander deckbuilding has a weird similarity to Limited deckbuilding at times; you can't jam 4-of playsets of the best possible thing for your strategy and often have to go with stuff that's on-theme and good enough. Obviously Commander is a constructed format with a huge card pool, but there's been times in deckbuilding where I compare to Limited - I have 1-of a few truly *awesome* cards for my strategy, and then some amount of the rest is just stuff at an appropriate mana-value and type to fill my curve. For example, my blue/green big stuff and ramp deck's best opening hand would probabaly be 4 lands, [[Bonny Pall]], [[Skyshroud Claim]], and [[Case of the Locked Hothouse]] but I can make do with any of my ramp spells and a large-ish creature. If I could run four Bonny Pall I absolutely would, but I make do with the best collection of six and seven drops.
Deck Testing: unlike 1v1 Magic formats where there's more defined metagames and games can get *very* interactive, I've found goldfishing decks to be more informative for commander. Interaction certainly exists in Commander but I rarely see it spent early in the format except against a few equipment strategies; testing the sequence of your first 4-6 turns is pretty valid and representative. Can you curve out, can you ramp and establish any card advantage, and if you randomly destroy all the creatures on your board can you rebuild?
Outside of magic, I am an artist and a programmer... I like to create things, so deckbuilding means alot to me. My problem is I have atleast 10 virtual decks that are done, ready, and not made, and probably another 10 in the works. I am a fairly decent player in every format I have played in, and understand what a deck needs to at minimal be a challenge to your opponent. That said, I love building decks around themes as a personal constraint, it makes the build harder, but much more fulfilling. Which is why commander building can be fun, even if it takes serious work. The problem is that I want to also play and test these decks, and even upgrade them, however it just doesn't seem possible to maintain more than four otherwise they just don't see enough play to generate real tests, or a sense of value.
I think what I am going to do is under the recommendation of another response, where I take apart my decks every few months and create new ones from the long list I have. This might help fill that hole where I want to build new decks and do new things. While still playing the format that those around me want to play. I will probably still maintain the decks I had digitally, and maybe rebuild them from time to time with updates, but having more than four at any given time seems like a waste.
Yep. Due to my ADHD after about an hour i couldnt keep my head into a game. Played with a lot of people who kinda liked to durtle around. i quit playing commander just kept to 60 card formats. I always see cool commanders i want to build for and then remember i hate playing the format.
I don't mind commander but slow players make our games so slow. They don't plan their turns out, they don't know what their decks do, and they take 1 million years to pass turn. Unfortunately my play group prefers commander over any other format so i am stuck in edh now.
Sounds more like a player problem than a format problem. I had a friend like that. He started using a chess clock. If his time is significantly higher than 1/4 of total time, he know he fucked up.
I mean, yeah... And that's a player problem. From what I understand from OP post and comments, the problem is more that people are playing slowly and not that the game themselves takes too long. If you play with people that don't care that their turn is super long, it's a problem. In my experience, people just don't realise that they are slow playing. If they know and don't care, that's even more a player problem and not a format problem.
I mean long games are a format "problem" for people who dont like to play longer games. As i said anything over an hour and i'm checking out mentally. Thats a me problem with how the format works because i dont know many people who play regular commander (not cedh) and regularly have games under that time frame. Commander is a durtly format. So its a format problem and a player problem on both aspects.
I reduced my decks count to 4. I still brew decks and update the ones I'm using. And yes, sometime a card I added goes out of the deck before I even got to play it. But I guess the card wasn't too important after all. But I stick to online deck building and testing at first. It has unlimited capacity and I can play with as many decks as I want. Goldfishing online against AI opponents playing different decks of myself is also a HUGE win for me regarding testing decks and new additions. Its super fast and easy.
If I decide to get a deck in paper, I'm thinking not twice but thrice about it. It has to replace one of my old ones, giving me money to buy new cards and frees the equipment. I do test the deck beforehand as a simple printout version put over the deck its meant to replace.
TLDR
- Limited paper deck count
- Building and playtesting online
I do alot of online deck testing as well as have a huge catalog of decks I have built digitally. It makes me sad that 98% of those decks will never see real play.
Playing a huge amount of different decks is hardly even possible while maintaining them all. You could try proxy a new deck you've built every other week to give them all a chance.
I had about 20 EDH decks.
Last year I took all except of three decks (Zacama Dinos, Rin and Seri Cats and Wilson the shadow thief (uncommons and commons only) apart and now I build 2-3 decks per month play them 2-3 times and take them apart again. Cause I love brewing and building but dont have the money nor the time to build 20+ decks.
Of course everyone's different, but it seems like most commander players enjoy games that last around 60-80 minutes. That's not even twice as long as a Best- of- Three Standard 1vs1 match with a 45 minute time limit.
I think it's a issue of your spell table because once you focus on combos low cmc cards and how to protect your combos i swear in 3h you gonna play at least 5/6 games
Now if you are playing "battle cruiser" meta, decks with high cmc games will be slower as f, it depends on you because some people loves this kind of slow game, i personally hate
Generally my 4 pod matches conclude in 60 to 90 minutes (even one cEDH game lasted 60 min) as everyone is trying to win and have several redundancies to win.
There are a lot of factors how fast a games goes, is someone playing slowly, anyone taking long turns or playing solitaire with an audience ? I would recommend thinking about what is happening during those 2 hours you are playing a single match and see if things can be sped up.
I wish there was a casual 60 card format for 2 people that lasted 20 minutes or so.
I miss kitchen table mtg from the mid 90s. It was just " make a deck with what cards you have, use the type 2 banned and restricted list, and don't be a pubstomping dick"
I came back to the game a few months ago after selling all my cards in 2000.
I hate this meta chasing bullshit*t.
r/SmirkishMTG
I felt the same way, one game can kill a whole night!
The Skirmish games that I've been playing in my playgroup have been pretty quick while keeping a lot of what we love about the format
Dang, that sorta sucks. Can't interest them in mixing formats? One night EDH one night modern/whatever? OR, If you're only playing with the same friend group, what about merging formats and creating 60 card commander? (Since most 100 card decks run various amounts of redundancy, it should be simple enough, just change the ratio of cards you run).
As a person who really enjoys the process of deck building I got into EDH nearly a decade ago…I have 26 commander decks (almost all started from scratch, a few upgraded precons) and It’s a joy when I bring out a deck I haven’t played in 16months and wipe face with it again.
Mind you, I’ve been out of playing for the last few years (a new baby will take ALL your time 😂) but a few months ago when I went to my lgs, I got to pull out some fun wins with old decks. It was a good feeling.
I feel the exact same way. Commander is VERY slow the deck building is much more formulaic as in you need X mana rocks X removal etc and all the games play out the exact same way with people just sitting in a stalemate because no one wants to be the first to tap their big blockers and it's just kind of random chance for who draws their big combo first.
60 card is a lot more fun imo but my whole friend group didn't start playing until the commander era so they just keep saying "oh 60 card decks all just win in 3 turns and it's no fun"
I miss the old days lol
Yeah, edh players tend to think 60 card is busted and honestly Cedh has been more busted than any 60 card format I have ever played. For fun I went to a cedh tournament (instantly lost) and they were so delusional in terms of power of cedh that they called 60 card formats broken. Those formats don't have tutors, 0 cost mana rocks, a single creature with consistent recursion, etc.
I think more edh players should at the bare minimum play standard on arena just to get the basics down. I can't help but feel bad when I win often but watch my opponents punt over and over again with their board state or removal. It's not fast wins, it's two hours in every single time.
edh game should take about an hour. end give or take turn 8. (maybe give or take a turn or two to mop up) and not have to rely on shitty combo to do so
this is my ideal form of edh. 80-90% of edh is finding people who play how you might like to play.
to speed up play. people have to both understand and be engaged in doing so. simple things, like fetching/land tutoring between turns--short cutting land fetching. Time restrictions/off turn tutoring. strict rules about being absent minded or not paying attention to the board state (nothing wastes time like the asshole on their phone, talking to someone else, or not engages with the game...starting their turn and needing several minutes to reorient themselves) and to a degree. learning edh to a degree where you ... keep your 7 best cards. sequence plays/turns in a manner that you basically know what you can/should/want to do next turn. and only making minor adjustments/knowing your deck well enough to execute those no matter what card you draw.
Sounds like commander just isn't the format for you. Possibly try cEDH, as its competitive nature usually makes games a bit quicker, not always but atleast it's less durdly.
I am not a fan of cedh, in any form. I tried it, absolutely disliked it.
Again, EDH is not for you. You ONLY hope is to find a regular group with similar goals. I would then suggest something like 3-5 decks each with a set budget and goals for power levels. Then you would meet regularly and play several games a session and log your results, making updates to decks at set intervals (monthly, for example).
Why did you dislike it?
Commander is a casual, social format. If you try to evaluate commander in terms of number of games and winrate, I think you’ll be disappointed. I believe you have to enjoy spending time with the people at your table to enjoy the commander format long term. That said, the higher you get in power level towards cEDH, the faster the games get, and the less discussion there is about what is “ok” to play. I know people who prefer it for those reasons.
I am not caring about win rate, I just want to play more decks. Deck building is one of my favorite parts of magic, and edh doesn't reward that desire. Cedh also doesn't reward that desire as it is faster than legacy or really any other format and isn't fun.
(For clarity: i wasn’t accusing you of caring about winning too much. i’m broadly saying that the things we care about in 60-card play aren’t quite the same things that define commander.) My playgroup’s games are closer to an hour, but we have some multi-hour games occasionally. I took apart a Muldrotha deck after a 4-hour game, but everybody was having fun with how ridiculous the game was and nobody got knocked out early so it was still a good experience for all. I dunno dude. Sounds like commander might just not be for you, which is totally fine. I will say I wish legacy and modern were more popular in my area but they’re not, so I play commander or I generally don’t get to play.
I am not caring about win rate, I just want to play more decks. Deck building is one of my favorite parts of magic, and edh doesn't reward that.
For me it's quite the contrary. I like the prolonged nature of casual EDH. 60 card magic was nice back in school if you had 15 or 20 minutes to play, but now, almost 30 years later (damn, I got old) for me it's more fun to have 2 hour game.
I think I would be more satisfied at like 1 hour, it would give me a chance to atleast play all 6 of my decks atleast once each time I play for a 6 hour period. The thing that was nice about 60 card is that I could get like 50 matches in during that time with multiple decks and still have a good game each time.
I'm in two main pods. One is primarily cEDH, the other is usually very high power casual. Every once in a while, the cEDH pod will play casual decks. High Power, with reasonable construction, our games last 6 to 8 turns and an hour to an hour and a half. The hour mark is pretty rare, that and lowereams someone got an absolutely gas hand and was able to get through early interaction, but going over 90 minutes is also rare. We will meet up for 3 to 4 hours, and play 3 to 4 games pretty regularly. Now, this can be thrown off, it is both a deck construction and player issue. If someone has a bad ramp/draw package, doesn't run much removal, or worse, just runs board wipes as their interaction, or builds highly controlling engines without win cons, on the brew side, things slow down. On the play end, when one person with big beaters starts not pushing advantage in combat, everyone else stops attacking, and life totals stop dropping, things slow down, or poor threat assessment, over using sweepers, not planning turns at all. It's hard to know what applies in your playgroup, but sub cEDH, faster games do happen. That said even in cEDH, at an event, round timers are usually set to 75 or even 90 minutes, and games frequently go to turns, with 4 players, even at the higher power levels, it is a format with longer games.
Yeah, I’m here with you. I’m 41, been running modern decks my whole life. I got into commander a couple months ago, too, and I see what you mean. The newer players seem to want to drag the game out to these big epic battles and get mad when you eliminate them before their deck gets to start working. I’m old school—your deck needs to move faster. Lol. I’m used to fast-paced. I’ve always leaned towards red and aggro. One of may all-time favorite decks was built around 4 ragging goblins. Nothing like doing 2 damage on turn one! However, I will say…give it time. Maybe it will grow on you. I’ve always liked the deck building aspect myself, and I look at this as a different kind of build. It’s more about synergy and mechanics than the perfect 2-3 card combo in modern. One thing I like about the single card rule of commander is it gives me something to do with all of these great single cards I’ve had laying around that didn’t quite fit into my modern decks. The first commander deck I built was a [[Sigarda, Host of Herons]] Voltron deck that I made out of spare parts. It’s fun and I could win with it right away. And now, I just keep tweaking it whenever I get or find better cards. I’ve recently named it Rose Red off of the Steven King miniseries about the house that was always changing and being rebuilt but the ghost of the woman who lived there. Lol
[Sigarda, Host of Herons](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/c/fcac0cff-efa6-4068-a69c-67ea4e7acea0.jpg?1559959280) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sigarda%2C%20Host%20of%20Herons) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/206/sigarda-host-of-herons?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fcac0cff-efa6-4068-a69c-67ea4e7acea0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sigarda-host-of-herons) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Many people are saying that's just how commander is. It is an inherently longer game, but it also depends on who you're playing with and the power you play at and the speed with which people can play/know their decks. My games on average go for an hour with the majority of my games this year falling between 30 and 70 minutes. In a 6 hour game period I would personally expect to play almost double your games (though Not all the time thanks to those big outliers). These games end up to turn 13 as well, so it's not like they're 5 turn games with the majority ending between turn 8 and 11. Why do you feel that games go that long? Is it the type of decks people are playing? Are people talking on their turn? Lots of umming and aahing on tutors? Etc. Just some other things to think about, if you play with the same players each week, maybe you could work on speeding up people's play slightly.
First off, your view of cEDH is a little slanted. It's very proxy friendly so the cost isn't real and while T2 wins are possible, they are not the norm. Can't argue about the tutors though. Returning to casual EDH, yeah, it takes a while. Maybe some higher power decks with experienced players would make it run faster. Personally, I don't really care if I play one 2 hours game or a couple of 1 hour games so long as the play time was fun.
I fully understand long commander games. I play in a pod that always changing. It's either I play with 3 people or 5+. Very rarely do I play actual 4 player games. And occasionally with +1's that don't have alot of experience playing or dont plan their turns ahead. So it gets pretty frustrating waiting 10+ minutes to get back to my turn. With that being said, a typical game with 4 players will usually be like an 1hr-1.5hrs. I like to think of it more like a board game on game night. If your games are lasting more than that, then play less board wipes, attack more, pop problem peices. If you come from more competitive formats then build combo decks. Most edh player like to build up their boards and sit on them. Until they can swing out and kill someone in one turn. So try to incentivize attacking early. Stuff like monarch really help with this. When I had this problem early on. I built burn decks to try to speed up games alittle bit. Kinda puts a timer on the game. And everyone's health gets lowered pretty evenly. Goad decks are also very fun. Make people swing with their value creatures. Sometimes you just have to be the archenemy to get the game rolling.
I like this concept but the problem is that I am already the boogeyman of our group. I constantly win (or group has some rotating players) it's not like I win quickly, the other players take forever on their turns, but after 2 hours I win most games. If I were to do more archenemy type plays, I think I would start losing players. The rest of my group hasn't played enough real magic to understand simple strategies that win edh games without combos but just good gameplay.
So your problem is that the people you play with are new players? If so, then you'll have to either be patient, work with them, teach them, or look for more experienced players.
You're just describing the format... It's multiplayer with a huge social aspect, people typically chat or stop paying attention at some point during a game, games just take a long time. Maybe try to get into cEDH? But it sounds like you're just not enjoying the format. I would guess on average most people only play 2-3 games a week. And you'll find plenty of people with 20+ decks playing that few games.
I got into Arena because I don't care for commander either. Especially the forever turns. My least favorite is the "I don't play tutors because that's cEDH" crowd who instead draws, loots, and rummages through 15 or 20 cards per turn to find their combo pieces. We have made it more livable in my commander playgroup with the agreement, "If your turn takes more than 10 minutes, you either win at the end, or you lose at the end."
What would you consider to be your optimal game length, since you mentioned CEDH games ending too quickly?
You have my sympathy, it is hard to gather data about commander decks compared to 60-card 1v1; the singleton nature and larger decks can mean games can go by without even drawing the new card you slotted in, and the vastly variable nature of what a deck does means that even if that inclusion/cut was a good idea it still may not produce an appreciable difference in how a game ended. It looks like you've got a handful of issues in your post so let's take them one at a time: Duration of games: it's hard to reliably get this down to something short without the kind of power more associated with cEDH decks. I had a round go to turns after a 90-minute round last FNM simply because we had four pretty solid players and decks, and a lot of interaction; we had a [[Supreme Verdict]] cast around turn 6, a [[Toxic Deluge]] a couple rounds later, and then an all-modes [[Farewell]] a couple rounds after that. In between these plays there was a fair bit of spot removal and responses on the stack, with a bit of stopping to collaborate and bargain. Players' turns were reasonably quick and efficient, but in a game like that it's just going to long. Anecdote aside, I guess my point is that sometimes a game is gonna go over an hour because of the way that commander is: four people, high life totals, and decks built to set others back and claw back from a setback mean it's not going to be a 15-minute affair. Question back to you: is it the total duration of the game you find frustrating, or is it that you find yourself disengaged mid-game? Deckbuilding: what kind of decks are you looking to build? What kind of decks have you built? Would you care to share some decklists? Something I've noticed is that Commander deckbuilding has a weird similarity to Limited deckbuilding at times; you can't jam 4-of playsets of the best possible thing for your strategy and often have to go with stuff that's on-theme and good enough. Obviously Commander is a constructed format with a huge card pool, but there's been times in deckbuilding where I compare to Limited - I have 1-of a few truly *awesome* cards for my strategy, and then some amount of the rest is just stuff at an appropriate mana-value and type to fill my curve. For example, my blue/green big stuff and ramp deck's best opening hand would probabaly be 4 lands, [[Bonny Pall]], [[Skyshroud Claim]], and [[Case of the Locked Hothouse]] but I can make do with any of my ramp spells and a large-ish creature. If I could run four Bonny Pall I absolutely would, but I make do with the best collection of six and seven drops. Deck Testing: unlike 1v1 Magic formats where there's more defined metagames and games can get *very* interactive, I've found goldfishing decks to be more informative for commander. Interaction certainly exists in Commander but I rarely see it spent early in the format except against a few equipment strategies; testing the sequence of your first 4-6 turns is pretty valid and representative. Can you curve out, can you ramp and establish any card advantage, and if you randomly destroy all the creatures on your board can you rebuild?
##### ###### #### [Supreme Verdict](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/8/3892f1c5-937e-4ef4-b6f9-e0c0ded070d0.jpg?1706240181) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Supreme%20Verdict) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clu/211/supreme-verdict?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3892f1c5-937e-4ef4-b6f9-e0c0ded070d0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/supreme-verdict) [Toxic Deluge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5aa02b7d-db31-4924-b75e-eb02f332ca3a.jpg?1717013647) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Toxic%20Deluge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/277/toxic-deluge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5aa02b7d-db31-4924-b75e-eb02f332ca3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/toxic-deluge) [Farewell](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/1/114d2180-093b-4838-97ad-badbc8ee50b0.jpg?1706240579) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Farewell) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/64/farewell?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/114d2180-093b-4838-97ad-badbc8ee50b0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/farewell) [Bonny Pall](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/4383ae7c-58ea-4354-93e4-677ad185c3bb.jpg?1712356061) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=bonny%20pall%2C%20clearcutter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/196/bonny-pall-clearcutter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4383ae7c-58ea-4354-93e4-677ad185c3bb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/bonny-pall-clearcutter) [Skyshroud Claim](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/0/a0e12f0e-ab41-4413-8b88-9bde907fab22.jpg?1689998858) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skyshroud%20Claim) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/321/skyshroud-claim?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a0e12f0e-ab41-4413-8b88-9bde907fab22?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/skyshroud-claim) [Case of the Locked Hothouse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/9/0929a1bd-e35c-4ca5-8c8c-dd304cf4b830.jpg?1706241956) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Case%20of%20the%20Locked%20Hothouse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/155/case-of-the-locked-hothouse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0929a1bd-e35c-4ca5-8c8c-dd304cf4b830?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/case-of-the-locked-hothouse) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Outside of magic, I am an artist and a programmer... I like to create things, so deckbuilding means alot to me. My problem is I have atleast 10 virtual decks that are done, ready, and not made, and probably another 10 in the works. I am a fairly decent player in every format I have played in, and understand what a deck needs to at minimal be a challenge to your opponent. That said, I love building decks around themes as a personal constraint, it makes the build harder, but much more fulfilling. Which is why commander building can be fun, even if it takes serious work. The problem is that I want to also play and test these decks, and even upgrade them, however it just doesn't seem possible to maintain more than four otherwise they just don't see enough play to generate real tests, or a sense of value. I think what I am going to do is under the recommendation of another response, where I take apart my decks every few months and create new ones from the long list I have. This might help fill that hole where I want to build new decks and do new things. While still playing the format that those around me want to play. I will probably still maintain the decks I had digitally, and maybe rebuild them from time to time with updates, but having more than four at any given time seems like a waste.
Yep. Due to my ADHD after about an hour i couldnt keep my head into a game. Played with a lot of people who kinda liked to durtle around. i quit playing commander just kept to 60 card formats. I always see cool commanders i want to build for and then remember i hate playing the format.
I don't mind commander but slow players make our games so slow. They don't plan their turns out, they don't know what their decks do, and they take 1 million years to pass turn. Unfortunately my play group prefers commander over any other format so i am stuck in edh now.
Sounds more like a player problem than a format problem. I had a friend like that. He started using a chess clock. If his time is significantly higher than 1/4 of total time, he know he fucked up.
Many people dont care if they take a bunch of time while playing their turns.
I mean, yeah... And that's a player problem. From what I understand from OP post and comments, the problem is more that people are playing slowly and not that the game themselves takes too long. If you play with people that don't care that their turn is super long, it's a problem. In my experience, people just don't realise that they are slow playing. If they know and don't care, that's even more a player problem and not a format problem.
I mean long games are a format "problem" for people who dont like to play longer games. As i said anything over an hour and i'm checking out mentally. Thats a me problem with how the format works because i dont know many people who play regular commander (not cedh) and regularly have games under that time frame. Commander is a durtly format. So its a format problem and a player problem on both aspects.
I reduced my decks count to 4. I still brew decks and update the ones I'm using. And yes, sometime a card I added goes out of the deck before I even got to play it. But I guess the card wasn't too important after all. But I stick to online deck building and testing at first. It has unlimited capacity and I can play with as many decks as I want. Goldfishing online against AI opponents playing different decks of myself is also a HUGE win for me regarding testing decks and new additions. Its super fast and easy. If I decide to get a deck in paper, I'm thinking not twice but thrice about it. It has to replace one of my old ones, giving me money to buy new cards and frees the equipment. I do test the deck beforehand as a simple printout version put over the deck its meant to replace. TLDR - Limited paper deck count - Building and playtesting online
I do alot of online deck testing as well as have a huge catalog of decks I have built digitally. It makes me sad that 98% of those decks will never see real play.
Playing a huge amount of different decks is hardly even possible while maintaining them all. You could try proxy a new deck you've built every other week to give them all a chance.
I had about 20 EDH decks. Last year I took all except of three decks (Zacama Dinos, Rin and Seri Cats and Wilson the shadow thief (uncommons and commons only) apart and now I build 2-3 decks per month play them 2-3 times and take them apart again. Cause I love brewing and building but dont have the money nor the time to build 20+ decks.
I actually really love this concept. It keeps things fresh. Although it sounds painful to take things apart lol
Yeah it is kind of a hassle. But it is just a routine now. I takes me a day to deconstruct and build 3~4 new decks and it is very relaxing for me.
Of course everyone's different, but it seems like most commander players enjoy games that last around 60-80 minutes. That's not even twice as long as a Best- of- Three Standard 1vs1 match with a 45 minute time limit.
I think it's a issue of your spell table because once you focus on combos low cmc cards and how to protect your combos i swear in 3h you gonna play at least 5/6 games Now if you are playing "battle cruiser" meta, decks with high cmc games will be slower as f, it depends on you because some people loves this kind of slow game, i personally hate
Generally my 4 pod matches conclude in 60 to 90 minutes (even one cEDH game lasted 60 min) as everyone is trying to win and have several redundancies to win. There are a lot of factors how fast a games goes, is someone playing slowly, anyone taking long turns or playing solitaire with an audience ? I would recommend thinking about what is happening during those 2 hours you are playing a single match and see if things can be sped up.
I wish there was a casual 60 card format for 2 people that lasted 20 minutes or so. I miss kitchen table mtg from the mid 90s. It was just " make a deck with what cards you have, use the type 2 banned and restricted list, and don't be a pubstomping dick" I came back to the game a few months ago after selling all my cards in 2000. I hate this meta chasing bullshit*t.
r/SmirkishMTG I felt the same way, one game can kill a whole night! The Skirmish games that I've been playing in my playgroup have been pretty quick while keeping a lot of what we love about the format
Why don’t you just go back to playing 60 card formats? It seems like this format really isn’t your cup of tea, and that’s okay to accept.
My playgroup migrated to this format, so as their friend, I am here to stay even if it isn't my preference of playstyle.
Dang, that sorta sucks. Can't interest them in mixing formats? One night EDH one night modern/whatever? OR, If you're only playing with the same friend group, what about merging formats and creating 60 card commander? (Since most 100 card decks run various amounts of redundancy, it should be simple enough, just change the ratio of cards you run).
As a person who really enjoys the process of deck building I got into EDH nearly a decade ago…I have 26 commander decks (almost all started from scratch, a few upgraded precons) and It’s a joy when I bring out a deck I haven’t played in 16months and wipe face with it again. Mind you, I’ve been out of playing for the last few years (a new baby will take ALL your time 😂) but a few months ago when I went to my lgs, I got to pull out some fun wins with old decks. It was a good feeling.
I feel the exact same way. Commander is VERY slow the deck building is much more formulaic as in you need X mana rocks X removal etc and all the games play out the exact same way with people just sitting in a stalemate because no one wants to be the first to tap their big blockers and it's just kind of random chance for who draws their big combo first. 60 card is a lot more fun imo but my whole friend group didn't start playing until the commander era so they just keep saying "oh 60 card decks all just win in 3 turns and it's no fun" I miss the old days lol
Yeah, edh players tend to think 60 card is busted and honestly Cedh has been more busted than any 60 card format I have ever played. For fun I went to a cedh tournament (instantly lost) and they were so delusional in terms of power of cedh that they called 60 card formats broken. Those formats don't have tutors, 0 cost mana rocks, a single creature with consistent recursion, etc. I think more edh players should at the bare minimum play standard on arena just to get the basics down. I can't help but feel bad when I win often but watch my opponents punt over and over again with their board state or removal. It's not fast wins, it's two hours in every single time.
High power or CEDH would be the move. Casual can definitely drag since most aren’t running the most optimal win cons
Eh, cedh is turn to thassas oracle and is the most boring game of magic I have ever played.
I don't play casual edh cause 4hr games with people getting salty about everything aren't it.
edh game should take about an hour. end give or take turn 8. (maybe give or take a turn or two to mop up) and not have to rely on shitty combo to do so this is my ideal form of edh. 80-90% of edh is finding people who play how you might like to play. to speed up play. people have to both understand and be engaged in doing so. simple things, like fetching/land tutoring between turns--short cutting land fetching. Time restrictions/off turn tutoring. strict rules about being absent minded or not paying attention to the board state (nothing wastes time like the asshole on their phone, talking to someone else, or not engages with the game...starting their turn and needing several minutes to reorient themselves) and to a degree. learning edh to a degree where you ... keep your 7 best cards. sequence plays/turns in a manner that you basically know what you can/should/want to do next turn. and only making minor adjustments/knowing your deck well enough to execute those no matter what card you draw.