Winning or Having Fun: What’s Important to You
- Robert Baker
- Jul 18
- 6 min read
Picture this.
It’s Saturday night.
It’s the first time you’ve been able to play Magic in a month. You’ve been working, you’ve been busy with errands, your last free day was abruptly ended by an emergency with the family. Your coworkers and your friends have done nothing but talk about the new Final Fantasy Set.
The very little free time you’ve had has been spent home brewing an awesome little Town/landfall themed Choco, Seeker of Paradise deck. It’s cozy, it’s got chocobo support and you’re extremely excited to get on the board and put lands on the battlefield so you can make make birds. You got some removal, some control and some enchantments to let you drop more lands. You’re excited to finally use that birds of paradise you’ve been dying to throw into a deck because it’s a B I R D. You threw in some Moogle cards because you thought the art was cute and wanted to fill out the rest of the deck.
You’re in a pod consisting of local acquaintances and a random guy who frequents the shop a lot. He insists his deck is a power level 3 outta 10 (he hasn’t played Magic in a while so he has no idea what tiers are)
It’s turn four and you start tapping lands and your arcane signet to pay for Choco to cast it from the command zone.
“In response I cast Mana Drain. Any responses?”
The random player who is after you in turn order smugly looks around. Everyone is tapped out so he assumes the answer to his question is no.
You sigh in resignation and pass turn.
He proceeds to use the four mana he obtained from the mana drain to play the rest of his stax pieces, combo off his Urza, Lord High Artificer and win the game.
You think to yourself, you essentially played four lands , an arcane signet to pass go, get your commander countered and lose the game. You still have time to play another commander game but the blue player already left to go gloat about his sick win and the other two players aren’t feeling motivated enough to go find a fourth.
Wasn’t that fun? Did you answer no?
Now you may be thinking I’m admonishing the random Urza player who sat down at the table, misrepresented his deck and comboed off.
When I started thinking of an article to write , I kind of was but then, the title I came up with would be a bit of a misnomer.
Winning = fun in nearly any and every competitive endeavor. Losing = not fun in the same turn.
Was it losing that made you not have fun?
Or was it getting your commander countered that made the game not fun?
OR was it not seeing your deck that you spent days and days crafting that made you not have fun?
Obviously, in a vacuum, the answers to all three of these questions is a resounding yes.
But I would surmise that losing wasn’t actually all that relevant to you in the heat of the moment.
What if your deck had actually worked and you got to see all the little meticulous touches and nuanced cards you threw in work together and actually bring to life the vision you had spent the past month crafting in your head? Would you still be as upset you lost. Would you actually be happy? I mean come on, you didn’t say “I want this deck to beat the entire table turn 3 and absolutely destroy my entire pods fun!”
You just wanted to be build a neat landfall chocobo bird deck. It’s the first time you got to play it, did you really expect to win the first time you do in a random pod?
This is why tempering your expectations before any commander games are absolutely vital to your enjoyment of said game. You can’t deny that the Urza player had fun, he got to see his deck go off. He spent time crafting his perfect vision as well so who are you to say he shouldn’t get to have fun?
Now this next bit may reek of “Isn’t it fun to do the right thing?” And to that I say…. You’re right.
Truthfully representing your deck to people you don’t know or are unfamiliar with is also equally as important. The blue player knew what he had. He knows it’s technically a CEDH level deck that he just took most of the zero cost artifacts out of that wins in any pod that doesn’t know they need to just hold counterspells and not play their lands until they’re able to get the cost of your commander up and use land destruction to hamper the decks speed as much as possible.
I genuinely can’t imagine a world where up stomping continues to be fun after a while and can’t imagine a world where people would want to continue playing any kind of games with you, especially with a casual format like EDH.
Maybe that’s naive.
If you’re still thinking that losing is the worst possible part of the above interaction, I need to hit you with a hard truth:
Is your deck built to win?
Or
Is your deck just built to work?
I’m not going to go into a full spiel of what constitutes a deck that wins or a deck that simply works but I’ll at least briefly explain my thoughts.
Did you actually make sure you synergize with Chocos abilities to dredge up a bunch of lands and throw in scute swarm?
Or did you just literally fill the deck with every bird you could find, a farseek and a utopia sprawl and call it a day? Did you really need to throw in cute Moogle cards?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the above by the way but you need to do some self reflection on why the deck may not win as consistently as you would like.
To mirror what I said above: What is important to you?
Is it winning?
Is it watching your deck actually go off and start working?
Is it not having your commander get countered the first time you try and play it?
Think on these things next time. Talk about it with your friends at the table. Talk about it with the Urza player you know. Maybe your whole pod is all Urza players and the whole conversation about fun is irrelevant as long as you’re winning.
Which is also fine. There’s something about crafting an unbeatable deck and watching it fire that can’t be replicated.
I’ll leave you with this little story.
You’re the Urza player.
You just got done stomping a bunch of people just trying to relax on Saturday night and unwind. You have no idea who they are, they’re barely ever at the shop, who cares, am I right?
Your eyes wander around, excitedly scanning the tables to find your usual play group so you can brag.
You finally find them and smile as they wave you over.
But as you’re walking to join them:
You see him.
Your heart freezes in your chest, your breath catches and you begin to sweat.
You feebly reach out in an attempt to get your friends to shoo him off but to no avail.
His imposing giant form towers over the rest as he eases himself into the other empty chair at your friends table.
People around turn and whisper.
The weaker ones scatter.
The more experienced players shake their heads and smile.
The rest gather around and murmur amongst themselves.
You swallow the lump that’s lodged itself in your throat as you begrudgingly continue walking forward.
Your hands are clammy as your grip tightens, fingers growing red from the pressure.
As you meekly slide into the empty chair next to him, you can’t help but brush against his shoulder. He looks down at your deck and smirks.
You see his commander…commanders?!?
You had planned an entire weekend of pub stomping so you left the CEDH pieces at home.
But now the ogre’s heard of your transgressions.
And he’s here to have HIS fun.
(I’m not sure if this story still works. Pretend Protean Hulk was never banned or something I guess??? It might not even be commander relevant, who knows it was just based on a random comment someone made to me about Commander in the distance past)
Let's negate the entirety of the article and the nuanced answer I was trying to go for with a poll.
What's More Important To YOU?
Winning
Having Fun
Both
Playing Slivers
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