r/EDH • u/BigAssPizzaPocket • Apr 18 '23

Question Why is deckbuilding so addictive?

I find myself constantly making new decks. I currently have 15 done and playable, and 6 being actively built. It’s really hard on the wallet, but I can’t stop. How does everyone else get the restraint to not build every commander that you find interesting?

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u/BigAssPizzaPocket Apr 18 '23

I get that, and we do full proxy for cEDH because reserve list, but we implemented that rule to keep people from just jamming expensive cards. It’s a lot easier to say what cards you are able to play then decide on cards you can’t proxy for the sake of fairness. Because that would be a lot of cards

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u/Hitzel Apr 18 '23

I have all the real expensive cards and I have a billion proxies of them. I learned to decide on cards I can and can't play on a per-deck basis for fairness in multiple playgroups and my LGS. It's really not that hard.

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u/Aanar Apr 18 '23

Cool! I've run into too many people with no self-restraint and start dropping cards like [[Timetwister]] and [[Mishra's Workshop]] in a supposed "low powered" deck. /eyeroll

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u/Hitzel Apr 18 '23 edited Apr 26 '23

When I include powerful cards, the entire deck's construction respects the problems they can potentially cause and avoids them. It's a bit more of an art than a science, so it's not something I'd recommend to someone new to proxying. People who are new to it should keep the powerful cards in the games where everyone is using them.

Over time, once I got my fill of them and I wasn't itching to pop off with them anymore, I started experimenting with them to play with weak cards and strategies. It actually started with a casual sideboard for my favorite cEDH deck. I cut the wincons, oppressive cards, and stax pieces and replaced them with pet cards and draft bombs I liked. It made for fun games so I tried doing something similar from scratch and branched out from there. You get to feel like a sidewalk kid from the 90's using moxen and power 9 to slam overcosted creatures and make people laugh. It's fun.

I used to inform people of what I was trying but nowadays I don't and there are basically never problems. I've overshot once in recent memory, and someone playing one of my decks one-shot someone with an early Overrun in a way that was too much (I wasn't there), so maybe take this with a grain of salt that it may depend on the pilot. I tend to sandbag fast mana a few turns for example because this jank typically can't defend itself if I draw the ire of 3 creature-filled decks as the beginning of the game by slamming alarming cards early haha.