I wanted to talk about the draftsgravaganza today (short recap: awesome!) but a more pertinent issue was raised in yesterday’s post. It'a not even an April Fools joke! Too bad. When Fugie wrote that we were running out of generals I was a little confused. It was his rationale for restricting everyone to one reserved general. Taken literally Fugie can’t possibly mean what he says. After all, he has a knowledge of the cards far greater than mine, and even I know that we have only grabbed a very few, albeit excellent, generals out of the pool. So what did Fugie mean when he said we were running out? Despite the fact that it was boring as hell, I decided to try to refute Fugie’s literal statement to get at what he may have really meant. I decided to catalog the color combinations of all possible generals. Using Star City’s Spoiler Generator I went through all the possible legendary creatures. I counted manually because there was no filter that would do exactly what I wanted, namely leaving out reprints and the Un-set legends. The data is current as of Morningtide. Here is what I found.
Colorless 3
W 56
U 50
B 55
R 47
G 48
WU 13
WB 3
WR 3
WG 13
UB 13
UR 3
UG 2
BR 13
BG 5
RG 11
WUB 8
WUR 1
WUG 6
WBR 1
WBG 2
WRG 5
UBR 8
UBG 1
URG 1
BRG 6
WUBRG 8
Total 385
See Fugie? We have 385 (probably give or take a few- remember I counted manually) generals to pick from! We’re not running out at all! Heh. Now the obvious is out of the way. Let’s dig in to the real data. For simplicity, let’s exclude all the mono-colored generals as too narrow (despite the fact that we know there are some competitive one-color generals). That chops out about 256, by my count. Still 129 to choose from. Now let’s look at the two-color generals. We have wide variance among the samples. Four combinations have 13 generals to choose from, plenty. But there are also 3 two-color combinations that contain only 3 generals, and another, UG, which contains only 2. Under the old agreement, those four color combinations could conceivably be “locked out” if too many people chose to play one of them.
Now to the real gravy, the three color generals. Many of us play three color generals, since with enough fixing three colors is still quite doable and it allows us a wider range of spells to further whatever strategy we want to push. Sometimes the general is incidental to the actual deck strategy and we just need the color combination. Seems like the actual general is less important than the colors… hmmm. Let’s take a look at the data. Again we have wide variance, this time with a top end of 8 creatures for a few of the three-color combinations. On the low end we have an astounding 4 of the three-color combinations that have a mere 1 general to pick from. If I want to play WUR (and it should be no surprise that I do, since my general is Numot) then I have only one choice.
There are no four-color combinations available.
After looking at this data I propose that Fugie really meant we are running out of three-color combinations.
Let me back up his assertion. After playing lots of EDH matches I decided that the strongest color combination is WBG… but I couldn’t play that color combination because there were two possible generals and both had been claimed previously. (I could have taken one of the 8 five-color generals and only played WBG, but personally that seemed wrong.) So that’s a downside to our old agreement. Under the new proposed agreement people could still be locked out of combinations, since the one guy who reserves Oros as his one general still screws everyone else out of WBR. Still, there would be more ability to switch into different colors. When I wanted to make another 3-color deck, I wanted to include BG because my Numot deck couldn’t use those colors at all. So that reduced my options to WBG, UBG, and BRG. Like I said above, WBG was off the table. No problem, I thought. I’ll just go with UBG… wait, who took Vorosh already? Okay, so I’m down to BRG (which luckily has plenty of options). I decided to go with Sek’Kuar Deathkeeper.
Above we can see the big downside of the old agreement, but here is where we run into a potential downside of the new one. I have spent quite a bit of time making a successful deck built around Numot. In the past few days I have been really excited about building Sek’Kuar, but I can’t possibly give up Numot for the chance that Sek’Kuar will be better. I feel forced to reserve Numot. And what’s the big deal if I can’t reserve SekKuar? Well, I really like the idea of using him as a general, but I also know several other players who told me they had considered building a Sek’Kuar deck too. Now I have to face the prospect of working hard to succeed with a second general and having my work copied by someone else. I don’t know if anyone in the playgroup would do that, but they could, if I didn’t reserve Sek’Kuar. Whether or not it would be good manners to copy another player’s deck is irrelevant. That is what will have to end up happening if we want to play in the same color combinations with the same general, or we could have stuck to the old rules anyway. Maybe I’m being sensitive, but I just like the idea of knowing that the time I took to build a deck is going to pay off for me. I mean, what other format could a guy expect to NOT be copied for having a great build? It’s one more reason why EDH is so awesome; your deck really is YOURS, at least within the confines of your playgroup.
I know what Fugie is trying to do with this new proposed agreement, and I am not saying that I even disagree, at least not wholeheartedly, but I do think that there is a downside to limiting the “reserved” list to one general a person. Is that downside worth opening up color combinations to other people? Tell me what you think. I think it deserves discussion.
6 comments:
Ultimitly it seems to me the decisions comes down to a couple of things.
1. "Playgroup" needs to be defined. Is playgroup going to be defined strictly as The Fugitive Wizards? Or as Game Universe?
2. How strictly do people want to adhere to the spirit of the format?
Without finding the email addresses of the founders of the format in Alaska. To the best of my knowledge the original idea behind the format is that your deck is your "army". With your chosen Legend acting as your General. Following this path of logic leads me to lean towards everyone only being able to claim one main general. And allowing people to play other Generals as they chose. Similar to hiring a Mercenary.
While I was typing that, I also had another thought. What about a bidding system similar to Auction of the People at the Magic Invitational? People can lock out one secondary General, but only by agreeing to start with either less cards in hand or less life or some similar handicap?
3. How serious do people want to pursue holding open EDH tournaments? If people are serious about this idea it only seems fair to claim one main General. As there is only one of any given General allowed in any one game.
Three also leads me to propose people being allowed any number of Generals that they want. But again having one main General. While allowing other people to play said General as a secondary General (or any General for that matter). But only allowed to play said General if the person that has it locked in as there main is not playing that General in the current game?
This is some pretty serious discussion for a format that seems mostly casual to me. I think everyone has a pretty good idea who has what "main" general. If you are thinking about building a new or additional EDH deck, shoot out an e-mail or bring it up at the next draft. I myself want to have two EDH decks: Niv and Sisay. I also want to be able to change that down the road. I like building new decks. I like having a purely fun and creative deck and a deck that packs some serious power in terms of game mechanics. I was looking at a pile of cards and saw a Sygg (the legendary merfolk dude). I might start building that deck soon. My point is, EDH is a multiplayer casual format and this talk along with some behavior lately during game play leads me away from this format. Those are my brief two cents…
We lost something in this discussion. I RECOMMENDED the change, I wasn't making a unilateral decree, and I feel discussion assumed it came off like that.
My problem may be I am a part of several groups of EDH players and I am the one trying to manage the lists.
I recommend this change. No claiming of generals. Build whatever you want, and generals are immune to the legend rule.
I think we are going the wrong way with this.
As far as alternative decks, it's a risk we all take when we try to inovate. There is always the posibility of it not working out or worse, of some one copying an idea and beating us to the payday.
I think we should stick with one general per person period. Trying to come up for rules for second or alternative generals is pointless. The fact is not all color combinations are equally represented in the pool nor are they of equal power levels. Maybe we should reserve color combinations withe stipulation that each person playing that color combination must posses a general that fits those colors exactly.
As far as making generals completely immune to the legend rule, that's a bad idea. Only making generals immune to the legend rule leads us down the slipery slope of why not all legends.
Allowing two actual copies of the card (no clone effects) to exist in play at the same time seems fair, with a third copy trigering the "legend" rule. However, making the legend rule stil apply if a general is cloned should still work (blue needs outs to generals too).
Great comments.
Swizz is completely right when he says it's a casual format. I vote for adopting Fugie's suggestion that we have one reserved general, because on balance I think the pros of innovation outweigh the cons of stagnation, and we then have at least one deck that's "ours." It's a good compromise. All the other setails we can hammer out. The important part is to be enjoying the process, be that deck building, playing or flavor. I wouldn't want the fun of the format gone because we got too competitive or got lost in debating the details.
Arrghh. I agree with TS. A single general that is "yours" is good. Build as many decks as you want. Also, I should apologize to Swizz-dizzle because I have a feeling that even if his comment wasn't directed at me, my behavior during gameplay has been less than exemplary. I am working on finding my happy place. Also, I should find a Voltaic Key.
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