Lessons in Commander Etiquette

After picking back up in Magic the Gathering last fall, I've really enjoyed the Commander format. Unlike some of the other constructed formats, Commander is a casual singleton format so you only need one copy of a given card (instead of 4) and most people are interested in big plays and fun for everyone with less emphasis on outright winning.

This atmosphere is heavily dependent on who you are playing with and in the ~7 games of Commander I've played so far, I've had 4 good games. The 3 not so good games were warped by one player who completely dominated the game at the expense of every other player.  I know which player I want to be, but sometimes it is hard to tell which actions fall in each camp.

Yesterday, I got to play two games, one good, one bad, and I actually won the second game. That is the first time I have ever won a game of Commander that wasn't with one of my family members.  I played Marath, Will of the Wild as my commander and my deck exploded with lots token generation and machine gunning from Marath.  I played against Zedru with lots of thieving and not-so-nice giving; Zenagos, God of Revels with big monsters; and Marchesa, whose counter filled goodness could never be removed from the board. My first game of the night had shown me how quickly Marchesa can build the damage, so when someone played a spell that forced all that lethality to point at me, I took the opportunity to remove Marchesa in the only fashion I could see that would be effective and I tucked her into her players deck.

The problem is that this really crippled the other person's deck and mostly removed them from the game. Not much fun for them.  After the game I realized that I had had a different way of getting Marchesa off the board without ruining the game for that one player, a major component of the strategy of the deck that I had completely forgotten about.  I also realized that majorly problematic spells should be saved for special situations. Some lessons I learned from last night's game:

• Don't use "fun crushing" mechanics like commander tucking, universal permanent bouncing, etc. when you are in a dominant position unless you can win that turn, and within five minutes, by doing so. No one like a sore winner any more than a sore loser.
• Even when you are behind, reserve "fun crushing" mechanics for those players whose violate the casual nature of the game, not simply for those players who are winning.
• Preemptive strikes carry lots of bad political credit and should be kept to a minimum. Wait until the big bad is pointed at you before you make your move, or turn your intervention into a political maneuver that at least one other player will benefit from, and make sure that they know it.
• People don't like theft of their commanders. People don't like tucking their commanders. Use both sparingly.

Last nights second game had a lot of good going. I think the Marchesa player will forgive me and I tried to be kind once I had eliminated the obvious threat. I was the new guy, however, and I hope that my actions didn't come across as the "fun at everyone else's expense" kind of player that I don't like playing with.