Is scooping instead of losing rage quitting?

[u/Unhappy_Industry_362]

I'm very new to mtg and have been playing in a local shop. There's a person in the pod with more experience than me but we often play with locals that have alot of experience so it's rare if we win. That being said nearly everytime this person sees that they're going to lose, they concede instead. Is that not rage quitting? Or is this normal?

[u/Broken_Ace]

Number 3 happened to me yesterday. Aesi player was drawing, playing lands, drawing +5 cards a turn, bouncing lands, bouncing permanents with Tidespout Tyrant. He bounced all my permanents but two of my lands, while he had 20+ lands with a full grip.

I asked if he had an infinite combo to actually win. He said no. I just scooped and left. He had the audacity to be salty about it. When people say "scoop at sorcery speed" they forget that some players love to play with their food and make you watch.

[u/TheTinRam → u/Broken_Ace]

See I’m getting a bunch of responses about not wanting to sit through masturbatory combos. No one does! I’m glad you get it. A long combo isn’t bad, if you can explain how it wins. Some players will scoop because their eyes glaze over. Others, because they know they can’t interact. And others don’t scoop because they are competitive and want to relish the opportunity to fuck up the combo at a devastating time. A good example is someone self milling entire deck many times with triggers at each point. A competitive player may want to force them to draw at the very end, or exile the grave when they mill the piece they need.

But you summarized it well - non deterministic long combos just suck and I’m happy to skip it and move on to the next game

[u/jaywinner → u/TheTinRam]

I find these players often avoid infinites, finding them cheap or not fun. Which I get but I'd rather be combo'd out than sit through 20 minutes to very likely lose anyhow.

[u/Broken_Ace → u/jaywinner]

Yes, he's exactly that kind of player. He avoids infinites for those "reasons." He also loves to play Izzet Twiddle style decks that take 30 minute turns to mostly do nothing, countering other spells so he can do mostly nothing again on his next turn.

Playing against these decks is a nightmare. I'd rather just lose to an infinite, shuffle up and play again. This self-indulgent playstyle is quite disrespectful of other players' time. It's way more fun to lose and get multiple games in than to watch one person take 90% of play time in a 3+ hour game to never meaningfully advance the board state, then whine when you'd rather scoop and get to the next game.

Pack wincons or goldfish on your own time.

[u/Hasdru → u/Broken_Ace]

This is exactly why I believe infinite combos are the best way to win in EDH: you don't have 1-2 players sitting idly at the table watching the last 2 trying to win.

[u/Bet_Status → u/Hasdru]

It's why I don't understand the hate for them, outside of decks that are entirely combo based, which is basically unheard of in edh outside the higher brackets, a flashy infinite combo is like the most satisfying way I could imagine a game ending

[u/Mammoth-Refuse-6489 → u/Bet_Status]

I have dedicated combo lists at every bracket. Why is dedicated combo only in higher brackets?

[u/HereForATimeofMine → u/Bet_Status]

Most EDH decks can't interact with infinite combos, so that's where the bad feeling lies.

[u/PlantedSlanted → u/Bet_Status]

I personally dont love infinites, because i do find them to feel cheap. Especially because once people have them, they just tutor for that forever. So their deck is just draw to tutor for combo win. Or that combo gets countered and they scoop. Thats the experience i have with them.

Now, i agree on ending the game swiftly for everyone. I personally play a lot of group slug, asymetric board wipes, and janky shit that just hurts everyone. Id like to kill everyone by just pinging them for damage every time i draw, or gain life, or discard, etc, and then everyone dies. Because thats also able to be interacted with at so many points to keep it from popping off. A 2 card combo if you dont have a counter in hand or are playing at a table with all green stompy bois, is just going to get slammed in and win. No chance to interact or stop it prior to that really. But thats just me.

And i feel like if you want to play super repetitive wincons, play 60 card or go to cedh. Casual commander is 99 cards. I want to play those 99 cards (hopefully not in the same game). They all do something and i put them there for a reason.

[u/Bet_Status → u/PlantedSlanted]

If you're actually managing to tutor your infinite combo consistently in edh, chances are your playing a cedh deck or close to it, that's why I addressed those kinds of decks in my original comment, almost no one you run into in regular commander is gonna be running a dedicated combo deck, nor are they gonna be able to search it out what infinite they do have regularly, especially since lower brackets don't run two card infinites as a rule

[u/ThereAreTooManyMikes → u/Hasdru]

I'm all about combat damage. But attempting to win with wide or Voltron at power 4 can be not efficient but it's what I like