Games that made you question your loyalty to Magic

[Aetherium Slinky]

There's a thread for your favourite games so I figured I'll put up a thread of the times you didn't feel so good afterwards.

My own royal blunder today. I was playing against my friend's Tatyova, Benthic Druid and we were quite far into the game. He had 15 lands and nothing else on the table. Two or three cards in hand. He is at 43 life.

I was playing my trusty old Merieke Ri Berit deck which had cleaned the board fairly recently. My hand isn't really that important. I'm at 18 life.

I get hit by a Sylvan Awakening - didn't really think he'd have anything that could hit me from scratch so I was feeling confident before I lost the game to a bunch of lands. Where's the blunder? Right after losing the game I realised there was something interesting on my board - an infinite combo leading to an instant win. And it's a combo I know of, had documented and was supposed to recognise.

Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers + Sensei's Divining Top lets me untap the Alchemist via his own ability, effectively leading to infinite untaps for artifacts and creatures. The Top draws me all my cards when you use its ability in response to its ability and then it places itself on top of the deck. My deck would have been just the Top and casting Thassa's Oracle would have found more than enough devotion for me to win.

Needless to say it was an awful blunder, last game of the night and totally a feelsbad moment. A royal mistake.

What's your least favourite game or moment and how did it come about?

[Morganator 2.0]

So there is a thread for the worst misplays already.

https://deckstats.net/forum/index.php/topic,45243.0.html

But if we're talking about just feel bad moments... I have a confession. I'm about destroy whatever reputation I've made for myself.

A couple months back, me and a friend went to a tournament that was being hosted by a huge company from out of town. The main event was Modern, but they had draft, standard, and competitive commander as side events. The commander one got my attention (of course). A chance to see cEDH decks from outside my meta got me excited. I always love a new challenge. Pods were 4 players, $5 entry, and a $25 payout in store credit if you won the game. It's a good payout, but these are cEDH decks, so winning is tough.

First pod, me and my friend were together. I pulled Edric, Spymaster of Trest out. Two people we had just met got to go first. Using Prossh and Muldrotha. "Land. Pass." "Land. Pass." My friend and I look at each other. Oh no. Second turns: "Land. Pass." "Land. Pass." OH NO!

These aren't cEDH decks.

It was an easy victory for me. I felt bad because I don't like winning without a challenge. So for the next game I powered down to Krenko, Mob Boss. I didn't get a good look at how strong their decks were, so I figured that Krenko was a nice intermediate, and I would power-down again if necessary.

In the second game, I got hard-core targeted. Krenko got removed 4 times. It made me kinda bitter for two reasons. First: there were obviously better targets. It was intentionally bad threat assessment just to spite me for the last game. Second: this wouldn't be happening if I had just played Edric. That deck can defend itself.

After I lost I went for a walk around. The other commander player also weren't playing cEDH level. Kind of a disappointment. I then checked out the cards that the tournament hosts were selling. In the display case, off to the side, was a moderate play Gaea's Cradle. The combination of seeing this card at an almost reasonable price and the bitterness from the last game cause the neutral evil part of my brain to awaken.

"If I can win the rest of my games tonight, I could buy this Gaea's Cradle".

And that's exactly what I did.

Edric for the rest of the night. The games weren't even close. On turn 3 I was setting up for the win while they were casting Cultivate. I started to feel bad about pub-stomping these people, but at that point I was too far gone. I continued with my plan.

I walked away from that event with a Gaea's Cradle and a ton of guilt. I'm not doing something like that again unless it's actually competitive commander.

[Slyvester12]

I moved to Japan about a year and a half ago, and I've had some trouble playing multiplayer commander since (Japanese players don't want to play against English cards, even though I can translate, and I don't really want to proxy / make a Japanese edh deck). So, a few months ago, a friend met someone visiting for a few weeks who wanted to play some edh. My friend isn't great, and usually uses one of my decks or a precon, but hey, it's still a lot of fun.

So, we sit down, and I find out this guy doesn't have a deck. He bought a ton of the alt art planeswalkers from the Japanese WAR release and a Niv-Mizzet Reborn, so, he slapped together a rainbow monstrosity of a superfriends deck with all the cheap 2-color value and stax cards he could find for Niv.

All of this would have been fine, but my friend had been talking up how scary all of my decks are (again, maybe not the best player), and they basically focused me every game. I didn't want to play my Momir Vig cedh deck or use something like Scion's molten skittles combo against two jank decks, but they hit me with enough removal to basically ruin anything I could get going. I got hit with a full Casualties of War at least once every game, which usually crippled whatever board state I had.

So, finally, I give my friend my Ezuri deck (my second best behind Momir) and hoped he would finally pull out a win, because mr. Superfriends had been grinding out concessions all night. I played my Omnath landfall deck, hoping to kill off his walkers with combat damage.

This guy got land screwed, but fogged us with a white creature that prevents attacks (forget the name). Omnath is meant to be weaker, so it doesn't run much removal, aaaand my friend doesn't know how to pilot Ezuri well enough to properly assemble the engine. Long story short, we stare at each other for two hours amassing boards, while superfriends gets up to 3 lands. Finally, my friend ults Nissa Revane (something I'd never actually seen despite playing her for 10+ years), puts every elf in the deck in play, and I just look at the other guy and say "look, I know for a fact my deck can't beat that. Are you gonna make us wait until he draws Terastodon?" and the guy just scoops.

I never played with him again, but good lord do I now kill walkers out of spite every time they show up.

[WizardSpartan]

"If I can win the rest of my games tonight, I could buy this Gaea's Cradle".

And that's exactly what I did.

Edric for the rest of the night. The games weren't even close. On turn 3 I was setting up for the win while they were casting Cultivate. I started to feel bad about pub-stomping these people, but at that point I was too far gone. I continued with my plan.

I walked away from that event with a Gaea's Cradle and a ton of guilt. I'm not doing something like that again unless it's actually competitive commander.

Lolll, I wouldn't even feel guilt for that. I'd do a great many things for a Gaea's Cradle , and getting to pubstomp players with bad threat assessment and spiteful tendencies (basically summarizes my playgroup) is just the icing on the cake.

Edit: I'm joking btw, I'm not that cold hearted. I wouldn't do that until after I tried to explain and play a few games with them. If they continued to target me for no reason except spite, then yeah. Whip out Mr. cEDH.

[Red_Wyrm]

Edit: I'm joking btw, I'm not that cold hearted. I wouldn't do that until after I tried to explain and play a few games with them. If they continued to target me for no reason except spite, then yeah. Whip out Mr. cEDH.

I didn't think Morganator was that cold hearted either.


My greatest feel bad is this upcoming conversation about how I unintentionally cheated with Bolas's Citadel.

[WWolfe]

My worst feel bad moment is probably crushing two players that were brand new to the game. I didn't realize they were new to the game, they were introduced to me as being "new to the area". They were talking a ton about Yugi-Oh and Hearthstone so I just went with the assumption they knew MTG. So I'm playing my Animar bounce deck, they were playing Oona & Alesha while my friend was playing his Brago deck. Having played the Brago deck before, I knew I was on a clock as it was going to be a race and based on the commanders of the other two, I assumed they could be serious factors in the game as well. On turn 4 I draw into an infinite bounce combo with Animar, Walking Ballista, and Ancestral Statue. I go ahead and do the combo to win the game. Right afterwards one of the new guys says "well that was an anti-climatic ending to my first game ever".

[robort]

It wasn't a question to loyalty but at the recently passed pre-release I did something that could be considered loyalty to the game. LOL while it wasn't intentional it makes for an interesting story but anyway. My first match was against this regular player who does nothing but the draft on FNM and I haven't been to one of those in months. So we sit down, and I take my clicker and put my starting life total to 40. I go to him ooops I am so used to commander now as I set it to 20. We highroll to see who goes first and I win to select me going first. I draw a card and he goes what are you doing? Once again I am "crap I am so used to commander" and instead of putting the card I drew back I put a land in hand back on top. I then realize this foolishness and trying to fix it by replace it with the card I actually drew. Yep he goes "now what you doing". I explained and he said it is fine but only because he knows me. Thank goodness because if I was any other player things could have really turned sideways all because of the "crap this isn't commander". Funny thing was my 2nd opponent I sat down with and I did it again by setting my life total to 40. Nothing else happened from there on in thank goodness.

[TolueneCat]

Two games come to mind.

Game one, we’re at the kitchen table and wrapping game one when another guy drops in. Sure, cool, his commander is Neheb, the Eternal. Cool, that’s fine, I decide to keep rolling with my 25$ Talrand. his turn one rolls in and we see the Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith drop. The rest of the game was fairly inconsequential, I had some sway over the table as “the mono blue deck”, but what ground my gears was the enormous rift between the power level of thetable and the guy. It was clear a lot of money was in this deck, which I don’t really look down on, but everyone else was 50-200$ neighborhood. I’m mostly to blame, for not asking around for power level, or grabbing a better deck, but everyone was around the same level as each other bar me and him. Now I always ask around for power level before starting play. Lesson learned. But I really doubted if I wanted to play commander again if that was going to be the environment.

Other game was a lot simpler. One of my favorite cards in the game is Opalescence for the awesome art and game-winning effect. I draw into it and need blockers real bad so I play it down. Only, I had Enchanted Evening on my board too. So all enchantments are creatures with power/toughness equal to their cmc. And all permanents are enchantments. So, everyone’s lands are enchantments, therefore becoming 0/0 creatures, and die, oops, and I felt really bad for causing mass land destruction in a chill game. Then we just beat the stuffing out of each other with the rest of our permanents. But I really felt bad. Nobody got mad, but I felt pretty guilty over a card game and didn’t want to play for a bit.

[WWolfe]

Feel bad moment today...

After a few mulligans, I finally got a three land hand and kept it. Problem was three turns later I hadn't drawn any lands (playing a four mana commander and I was badly falling behind in the game), so I had to Intuition just to pick three lands so that my opponent would have to give me one of them.

[Xaarvaxus]

Feel bad moment today...

After a few mulligans, I finally got a three land hand and kept it. Problem was three turns later I hadn't drawn any lands (playing a four mana commander and I was badly falling behind in the game), so I had to Intuition just to pick three lands so that my opponent would have to give me one of them.

I wouldn't feel bad about that one, WWolfe, every tutor in my deck capable of the feat might as well read "Search your deck for target land to save your ass from your greedy keep 7."

[Morganator 2.0]

I once saw someone cast Gamble, and then discard a forest. Everyone at the table freaked out and thought that he must be about to combo off, and we all started playing cautiously. Turns out, he had gambled for the forest and lost.

[WWolfe]

Feel bad moment today...

After a few mulligans, I finally got a three land hand and kept it. Problem was three turns later I hadn't drawn any lands (playing a four mana commander and I was badly falling behind in the game), so I had to Intuition just to pick three lands so that my opponent would have to give me one of them.

I wouldn't feel bad about that one, WWolfe, every tutor in my deck capable of the feat might as well read "Search your deck for target land to save your ass from your greedy keep 7."

It wasn't even a greedy keep. It was just really bad luck not drawing into a 4th land by turn 4 (initially) and damn sure by not drawing one by turn 6.

[WWolfe]

So the other day, on turn 13 or 14, this kid casts Cyclonic Rift overloaded...and then has to go. He even made the comment that he'd seen his mom pull up five minutes beforehand. 

[Xaarvaxus]

Feel bad moment today...

After a few mulligans, I finally got a three land hand and kept it. Problem was three turns later I hadn't drawn any lands (playing a four mana commander and I was badly falling behind in the game), so I had to Intuition just to pick three lands so that my opponent would have to give me one of them.

I wouldn't feel bad about that one, WWolfe, every tutor in my deck capable of the feat might as well read "Search your deck for target land to save your ass from your greedy keep 7."

It wasn't even a greedy keep. It was just really bad luck not drawing into a 4th land by turn 4 (initially) and damn sure by not drawing one by turn 6.

Sorry, wasn't completely clear before.  I meant my keeps tend to be greedy but you shouldn't feel that bad about tutoring for land because sometimes you just get screwed.  The Law of Averages still has some extreme outliers.

[WWolfe]

Gotcha man. Sometimes decks run perfect with mana, sometimes you get flooded, and sometimes you get screwed.