Bad Guys. You know it, they know it. We all love it.
Nightmare on Elm Street without Freddy scraping his claws through your abdomen? Bor-ing!
Friday the 13th without Jason silently coming on and on, again and again, implacable, unbeatable? Probably Freaky Friday tbh.Speaking of "freaky", Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher? That's some scary biscuits right there!
A Pro-Tour without Mike Long? You know it's just not the same as back in the day. People LOVED Mike, or rather, people loved hating Mike. If you followed Mark Rosewater's writing over on MTG.com daily a couple of years back, you may remember this pieces that justified his vote for Mike Long on the Hall of Fame ballot. Here's what he said about his vote for one of the most hated professional players in the history of the game (emphasis mine):
[M]y job was to make the Pro Tour interesting and exciting. I had to make all of you care about it. And in the history of the Pro Tour three players blew everyone else out of the water. Interest in them dwarfs all the other players combined. Those players were Jon Finkel, Kai Budde and Mike Long.... How did Mike fare at star building? He's the best I ever had. If I put him in a feature match or on camera, people showed up. In large numbers.
The best example I can give of this was the PT Los Angeles won by Trevor Blackwell. Mike got into the Top Eight after a controversy with Darwin Kastle in the last round of the Swiss. Now, normally the quarterfinals are low turnout as the event starts at 9:00 am, but in Los Angeles, the room was packed. It was, at the time, the best attendance we'd ever had for a quarterfinal match. Mike wins and advances to the semi finals. Even more people turn up out of the woodwork to watch. In the semi finals, Mike loses. The finals was the lowest turnout we'd ever had. Everyone came to see Mike lose. Once he did, they left..... I quickly learned the golden rule – “show Mike”. Everyone always loves to go on and on about how they hated him yet no one could resist watching him. You'd think people would shun him to make the point that they don't like what he was doing. Yet the opposite was true. Mike made people emotionally invest in the Pro Tour.
"Mike made people emotionally invest in the Pro Tour." That's a pretty big deal to get the average non-PT player to be anyway interested in the pro-tour outside of their friend's participation or the tech they were going to net-deck off the event. For a company like WotC, garnering interest in their flagship events among non-participants is crucial as this interest triggers a renewed interest in the game at local level, renewed competitiveness, an interest in top tier decks and strategy. Mike was one of those who caught everyone's interest.
| Fap. Fap. Fap. |
A week or so ago, I posted the following in the Cool Plays thread over on the Official EDH boards:
Just wanted to post a quick congrats to my playgroup last night. We had 3x 4-man games in which we had 12 instances of Eldrazi legends in play (counting each casting as a new copy), most of them Emrakul and not one ever entered an attack step. There was a major amount of scrambling but nothing was annihilated in the entire game.
There's nothing like sitting back after all that and saying "Ok, we can do this! Those guys (and gal) aren't so bad!"
Sounds absolutely horrid. Spending a whole night scrambling to not get blown out by the same 2-3 cards over and over doesn't fit my model of fun. I'm glad your group enjoyed it at least, but this kind of shenanigans is why I don't think the Eldrazi (primarily Emmy) belong in the format.
Really "absolutely horrid"? A run of 3x 4-man games, featuring 2 developing players, constantly and effectively dealing with EDH's Public Enemy #1 again and again is "absolutely horrid"? Sure, I get the concept that it must be a pain always having to deal with these Eldrazi again and again but to go so far as to put a downer on congratulating someone for getting the job done right again and again in the face of these colourless behemoths speaks of some pretty deep-seated hatred for Emrakul and Friends.
You know when a new set comes out and everyone jumps up and down about the new "must-have" rare or mythic to the point that pre-sales post the card up at around $50-$60? And then it either lives up to the hype or flops abysmally and is always graded against the initial hype generated about it, whether fair or not.
| Not Emrakul. |
We all know how difficult it is to reach a full consensus in a playgroup as to what constitutes "fun". Everyone has a different read. Some think Emrakul is just flat out unfun. Others are fine with Emrakul in a vacuum but have an issue with her in any sort of combo. Some even gasp! have nothing against her at all!
My view is this:
If you're paying 15 mana, you want to be getting an effect more than simple combat damage. Emrakul provides this. Other effects that cost 15 mana, like say Death Cloud for 12, can be much worse if they don't win the game right there as they can cause it to drag on indefinitely.
If you plan on playing fair, i.e.: only hardcast Emrakul after turn 10 with normal mana generation and you win off the back of casting her, well your opponents should have done something about your potential earlier and only have themselves to blame.
If you have an Emrakul in your deck and you'll see it once in a while and play it while accepting that you are likely to have it stolen from you at some point and are ok with that, then you're probably doing it right.
| Don't try this at home, kids! |
If you're planning on accellerating out a hard-cast Emrakul as your #1 plan, you're getting very close to crossing that mythical boundary a lot of EDH players out there have set. Linear, ultra-consistant decks intent on putting a grinding hurt on the entire table every single game are just not "fun". As EDH is about the "fun", you should probably revise this strategy.
If you're planning on constantly cheating Emrakul into play in any other way than getting her with Bribery off an opponent, you are firmly in the camp of not "fun" and should definitely revise your strategy. Quickly.
If you are planning to play, bounce and re-play Emrakul constantly in order to benefit from her "Take an extra turn" ability enough to kill everyone, just go home. Now.
Why should we be calling for a ban for a creature that embodies "The Line" in EDH? Emrakul is the perfect card to test where everyone stands on the "fun" issue in your playgroup. Just playing an Emrakul should be the first step in finding what everyone feels about her and cards of her power level. Stealing her from another player's deck will give you not only a good read on Emrakul but also on Bribery and most especially the take of the Emrakul owner as he watches his own Emrakul kill him. We had a situation where a steal effect garnered someone a bounce ability from Stormscape Battlemage. The Emrakul in his deck was pretty much ignored by the rest of the table until he found a way to combo off to infinite turns. What was most interesting was that the Emrakul player had no intention of going infinite and stated this but was told not to steal the ability to go infinite in future; his own deck didn't contain cards to allow him to go infinite on his own. That's a fair approach, don't you think?
| "Get it? Bunnies, lettersz, -X/-X? Me neither." |
Emrakul is also the stiffest test a lot of tables can face and setting yourself up to beat her multiple times is an excellent excercise in group metagaming and an excellent tool for up-and-coming players to find solutions and ways to find them. She's the boogey man (woman), but one that you can come to grips with if you are prepared.
For me, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is not an annoyance in EDH but essential for the development of your local EDH Group. She can't just be tarred with the "DB" brush without getting some props for what positive things she engenders in your group.
The World needs bad guys and EDH needs Emrakul.
Great post. Very insightful. For the record I'm not in favor of Banning Emrakul, at least not yet. So far, it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction, and once Emrakul isn't the hot new tech, we'll see if she keeps getting as much play.
ReplyDeleteAs for your anecdote about the games where your group had to repeatedly deal with Emrakul, I too think that sounds like a horribly unfun evening. The first few times you deal with Emmy, it's a feeling of triumph. But I can tell you from experience that that feeling DOES NOT last. It gets old. Fast.
I can tell you honestly that I have yet to lose a single game to Emrakul, but I'm already sick of seeing it played. And playing it. Why? It's ubiquitous. EDH was designed to be a format with variety and unexpectedness. Emrakul popping out 12 times in one night is a far cry from the definition of variety.
You might be riding high on the thrill of victory, having overcome one of the most insanely potent creatures yet printed, but soon enough, having to deal with her time and time again, or even worse - failing to deal with her - will turn from triumph to tedium and the games will get predictable.
Someone WILL cast Emrakul. Then there are two outcomes - you will deal with her. Or you will lose. That kind of predictability and inevitability will turn even the most random format into a boring mess.
However, I think Emmy will sort herself out. In most groups, I think everyone will pretty much get bored with her, and she might linger in some decks, but will eventually only crop up randomly, every now and then. Problem solved.
I once ran Tinker and DSC in a 250-card singleton deck, just for those random turn 3 Colossus games. As you'd expect that happened very infrequently, but as rare as it actually cropped up, it still managed to get boring enough that I took Tinker out, and left DSC in only to be T&N'd or Hard-cast. After hardcasting it a few times, I eventually took the DSC out too.
The point is, cards like Emrakul DEMAND to be the center of attention and the focus of your strategy. C'mon, you don't have a 15/15 flyer in your deck as a Plan C, do you? But once the average player has used her enough times, either that player will get bored with her, or his opponents will get bored and stop playing with him. Thus, he'll have little recourse but to remove her, or at least relegate her to a back seat role in his strategy.
So, no, I don't see Emrakul as ban-worthy at this point. She definitely makes the format less fun, but only by her ubiquitous-ness. A year from now, I don't think she'll be so popular. If she is, then I might rethink my position. After all, some people aren't capable of moderating themselves, which is why even a Casual format like EDH has to have a banned list in the first place.
This philosophy is all well and good, but it's nothing you couldn't argue for half of the cards already on the ban list. Replace "Emrakul" with "Kokusho" and you've just made a pretty good case for unbanning Koko Puffs.
ReplyDelete@Troacctid: Fair point. One bad guy is as good as another and all that.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't argue this about a lot of the non-permanent spells though as responses to those are generally only "Counterspell or it's too late". As to the remaining creatures, they are banned for accellerating you past the mid-game rather too quickly and not because they themselves end the game.
@DarkThaumaturge: Yep, we're pretty high on it right now but I suspect you're right and it will grow old fast. I'm probably happier about the lessons learned tbf. I just hope that they don't get forgotten like the one on graveyard hate did.
@ Troacctid - Yes, that is a valid point, but you chose a poor example.
ReplyDeleteKokusho was banned because it can easily kill entire tables in one turn, and is "scalable" to get better and more powerful the more opponents you have. Emrakul gets at least slightly worse in multiplayer than in 1v1, which is the reason it's less degenerate in EDH than Kokusho. With Emrakul, it's MUCH harder to kill 3 opponents in a single turn.
Still, I take your point, and I would simply argue that those cards on the existing banned list are there because people kept on abusing them long after they should have gotten boring. Which could be Emmy's fate, I just think it's too soon to tell.
Hi Zim,
ReplyDeleteMy whole argument with Emrakul and pretty much any other card people always want banned is that the RC should stay hands-off and let local players make their own decisions. I never want EDH to become a sanctioned format and I don't think we need to bring it any closer to one. As a fundamentally social format, people playing it need to accept the responsibility of regulating their local metagames to produce the kind of games they want. This is a social activity, not one controlled by a distant hooded council producing judgment from on high. Even the 'official' ban list holds zero clout. After all, it's only 'recommended'.
If your local group doesn't like something, then ditch it. Yes, when you travel or play with strangers you might see others using it, but that's cool. It's like an exchange program, and it gets people talking about why they like it and why they ban it. As long as those discussions are between reasonable people who aren't socially retarded, they are interesting and rewarding in my experience. They bring player bases and entire groups closer together, instead of further apart. It's good for the format as a whole and even better at letting you get to know new people.
That said, locally we've banned it. My argument with Emrakul (I personally consider it bad for our environment) is that when you need to put as many qualifiers on it for being 'fair' as you listed, then it's probably more trouble than it's worth. Ultimately, our criteria is based on player votes. Cards that produce less interactive games or quickly hose somebody off the table (forcing them to sit idle for another hour or whatevs) are generally voted into the local ban list. It's not consistent (we don't ban Time Stretch) but it doesn't have to be. We're not trying to produce a balanced format. We're just trying to have fun playing Magic.
Overall, I kind of cringe when people say things like "learn to deal with it" instead of just accepting people don't want to play with it. This isn't a competitive format and if you're looking for a way to test MtG skill, then EDH is barking up the wrong tree (that's on fire... in hell). Playing EDH with a bigger group, there's going to be differing viewpoints, but there has to be give and take. Instead of jumping on forums and complaining about cards to distant strangers, people should talk to the guy sitting beside them first. It only makes sense to me.
Fantastic article overall. Very good contribution to the ongoing discussion on this card.