Recent someone of notable prestige made a post about his encounter with a certain ornery EDH player. This reminded me of my encounters with the format, and even my history of the game at large. After a long FB post, I decided I'll post it here, and hopefully make an enjoyable, if not somewhat long read. So sit tight, relax, put on some music, and lets a stroll down memory lane.
Now my history with the format is a mixed bag. Everything from pretentious hipsters to chill tournament winners, to zealous casuals who don't even know the rules of the game.
It all started back in the distant summer of 2007. It was my first time in Indianapolis, as my dad had bought a horse ranch in the outskirts of the city with dreams of becoming a prestigious rancher. There was a local shop on the southside and like many, me and my brother would go there to throw down cardboard on a Friday night/ One night, someone asked if we played "Elder Dragon Highlander", and while I hadn't played it before, I was vaguely aware of its existence.
He gladly gave us the basic lowdown of the format and its rules, and that week me and my brother each made a deck from his cards. I made a Teferi theme deck, he built Savra with lots of Golgari themed cards, big green beaters, and ways to produce/sacrifice tokens.
The next week we played a round of EDH. It was fun, this was still a few years before it became a formal format. Pods were big, lots of janky throw away cards being thrown down. I made a second deck that summer based around Rosheen Meanderer. This wasn't on a theme, but on a mechanic, trying to end the game with a massive fireball or draw the game with an Earthquake/Hurricane. Lots of Hydra's and mana doublers in the deck too, with a steady supply of Fog effects and removal.
I don't remember much from that summer, but when I got home to NY I told everyone I knew about the format and it grew in popularity, I even made some cash by renting out my 5 color legends to people (in those days no 2 generals could be in the same Pod and Reaper King was unusually popular).
However our format remained 60 card "casual", adhering to the Vintage ban list. Rorabacks was a common place to play in those days, and even in my earliest days, casual was trial by fire.
One of the first casual games I ever played that wasn't with a family member involved a dropping of power 9 and a first turn kill. Academy decks were notorious as well, which forced me kicking and screaming into good deck building. It's actually how I learned how to build Stasis as a budget conscious alternative to many more expensive decks.
Of course, at this point, this was a distance memory, and I was a decent player, even if I wasn't exactly super hardcore (I was building a car in my teen years and enjoyed other hobbies as well).
In 2012 I moved to Indiana full time, at that point EDH was an official format, called 'Commander', and I was just out of college age. I met two teens at a game store playing that other card game, and a week later they called me, asking if I could teach them how to play Commander, not Magic, but specifically Commander. I agreed, we had pizza, it was a fun time, and one of those brothers would remain my best friend for a few years after.
This honestly is where the change comes in, as EDH over the decade usurped the main game. More people getting into the game would get BTFO at a FNM and decide to just stick to EDH. Where in times past they would ask "well how can I make my deck better" it was become more and more "no, I'll just play this instead".
Standard and modern definitely trudged on, but crowds slowly dwindled, at least in my experience, some of this brought on by some utterly atrocious formats, and some by the increased popularity of EDH. Modern Horizons was the death knell of casual and brewer modern players, and covid finally killed off Standard. In fact, my last standard deck I actually played standard with was built in 2019 right around the time I sold 90% of my collection (boy did I pick a bad time to do that!)
Now I enjoy my old cards. I use to be extremely active in 93/94, and I like to pretend I still am. I occasionally will pick a commander and try to keep the rest of the deck as old as possible, usually having Homelands or Alliances be the cut off. Sometimes however, I'll continue into the larger premodern pool. I've tried a deck with almost every non-vanilla legend in this experiment. Mid-range Jacques le Vert where every creature in the deck was green. Dakkon Blackblade voltron, Merieke ri Berit control, so on so forth. I even once used Jerrard of the Closed Fist as a pauper EDH commander. I'll also use newer commanders, forcing me to utilize cards I'd otherwise never run to get the most advantage out of the commander's mechanics. A few notable ones included a Tergrid deck, Satoru Umezawa deck called "Anything can be a ninja, even a cosmic horror", and my favorite, Judith burn.
These decks are usually seen with suspicion when I sit down in a random pod, and even less so with irate anger. One very flamboyant man said in response to my comment about no card in it being newer than 97 said "Oh so all your cards are ugly as shit". I was legitimately insulted, both because of what he said, and for him not understanding the usefulness of Glacial Chasm (especially in a burn deck). Later that game I discarded his entire hand with a Mind Twist. He responded with a "do I at least get to draw a card?" I replied "this isn't baby Magic man."
Another person on Spelltable once gave me an extra turn in hopes I'd be able to beat the fourth person on the table before his turn rolled along and he won. When I failed to do so (by no means a fault of my own, he just had answers) the guy yelled "I can't believe I wasted that on you! You have a bunch of cards printed in 1978, why do you even play with cards like that?" before disconnecting from the game.
The worst in recent memories from Spelltable, came when I snuck my Mindstab Thrull into play attacking with a mechanic called Ninjitsu. He argued its ability was an attack trigger, which I repeated and even cited how all it cares about is its attacking, and it's not blocking. After 15 minutes of back and forth of circular logic, I conceded and went on with my night.
Despite all these, and more, I've also met some cool rando's in EDH. While few and far between, they were there so I can't entirely hate the format. I can say, something about the game, brings out the worst players in the game. I would deal with a thousand bitter grinders before having to deal with a "rule 0" conversation.
The most disheartening conversation I had involving EDH involved a previously unmentioned friend of mine. He was an old hold out who due to his age, can't do much physical activities anymore, but he can play Magic. Just last month I asked him to bust out some 60 card casual which he replied "I don't have many of those anymore man, all I really play is EDH now." It really put things into perspective. Like I have some 20 casual 60 card decks, and if I can't play them, why have them?
Anyway that's rehtorical, obviously. This has been my experience of the game, and the format as a whole, a rather brief one at one. I could sit here all day listing all the EDH decks I've built, especially before 2019. I'll probably continue to have a few EDH decks (which is more than I can say about Standard), but it does make me ponder of the future of the community as a whole.
