Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas?
This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"
I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email amithebolas@gmail.com! You might see your story in the column. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast?
THIS PODCAST!
I'm Mike Carrozza, aka Mark Carbonza, and hey, look - they made a Limp Bizkit card!
WHAT!
This week, a meme deck explodes.
(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and a bit of zip and zazz!)
HEY, MARK!
Hi y'all,
I love what y'all do and was hoping to get some insight on something that happened recently between myself and a former friend.
Prelude
In about the past year, I (32F) picked up Commander, as my husband and his friends have started really getting into it. I have been playing MTG for over a decade. When I was the most active, I was competing in tournaments pretty regularly in Standard. Am I the best player? Absolutely not. Regardless, I love building decks that range anywhere from goofball meme decks to full-on cEDH decks.
Friend X (30ishM) is relatively new to
Magic. He started playing around three years ago. He was brought into the addiction by my lovely husband because addiction is better with friends. There were some hiccups here and there, but for the most part everyone was winning and losing with a fairly good attitude. A meme deck I built is the Alex Jones deck, also lovingly known as the Gay Frogs deck which has
Grolnok, the Omnivore at the helm. Well, the Gay Frogs have officially ripped our friend group apart, and I haven't seen an in-person game since. You thought it was going to be the cEDH deck didn't you?
The day before The Event
I built this Gay Frog atrocity that I had been theorycrafting for a while. My friends knew this deck was in the works, and I was super stoked about it. I finally had it sleeved and ready to play. The first game was against two friends, one running the Gonti precon and one running my personal
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice deck. My gay froggies did okay, but ultimately had an infected nuclear bomb dropped on them after
almost taking down the precon. I was expecting this outcome, so when the next day came and Friend X joined the table, I was pretty comfortable still calling this monster a meme deck. Oh boy, did it prove me very wrong, and it proceeded to hurt some feelings.
When Friend X was picking through his decks to play, I actually encouraged him to choose a fun joke deck, because who doesn't love goofball "wtf just happened" games? Thankfully, he chose one he dubbed more powerful. The gay frogs popped off. Turn five, I was swimming in mana and half my library exiled with croak counters. The table understandably scooped because it was just too much. X was very, very mad.
X started accusing me of lying about its power level, ripping into me, saying that I tried to get him to run a joke deck so I could pubstomp. I was in a bit of shock so it took me a second to realize he was genuinely upset. I apologized profusely because I truly didn't expect it to go full turbo ramp frogs, but he didn't seem to settle until friend P (32M) explained that it was only the second time that deck had been played. All the sudden, it was like a switch flipped and he understood and actually told me to keep it intact and play it a few more times before changing it. I was already looking at things to change to calm it down to a reasonable deck to enjoy against friends. I have a few placeholder proxies in it because I'm still on the hunt for the last few cards, so to hit the 100, I threw in some stuff that was neutral game that I had nice proxies of just laying around (this will be important later).
The Event
The next day, we were over at X's house to play some games and help introduce his friend to the wonderful world of shiny cardboard. Knowing this was a new player, I was more focused on teaching and being patient vs. trying to win. I was leaning heavily on my "all commons green" deck because that thing couldn't win against a deck made only of lands.
Everything was going well until I encouraged the new player to play out his final combat phase that was the game-winning move. This offended Friend X because he had scooped saying "he just won" and was ready to move on. Normally, I'm down to get to the next game ASAP, but the new player was visibly disappointed and was still trying to math out how he actually won, so by keeping my board state intact for the new player to see how he would swing, it was a personal attack on X. He went outside for a bit then came back and everything seemed okay.
A few games later, the Gay Frogs come up. I'm already on edge because of the previous night. New player is super interested in the deck because it's a self-mill deck and he was intrigued. X encouraged me to play it again to test it out and to show it to the new player. I was excited to run it because I built it and only played it twice, but I was reluctant because of X's initial reaction. Peer pressure prevailed, BUT I had my friend, P, pilot it instead of myself. Bless his sweet soul.
It absolutely nuked the game by turn seven. He managed to drop a
Leveler into
Laboratory Maniac, with a
Frilled Mystic on standby. All we could do was watch in amazement and little bit of horror. X had already left the room before P had even finished explaining the cascade of chaos that went unblocked. He returned shortly after we declared P victorious and after I had tucked the Gay Frogs back into my bag to be exorcised, then burnt at the stake at a later time. He asked if P won and new player said, "Yeah, it was wild!"
X went off.
He explained that he was frustrated and that he just wanted to play casual games and teach his friend how to play, that he just wanted to be able to sling cards and hang out. I apologized again and gently reminded him that he encouraged me to play the deck to see if it was consistent and I even had someone else pilot it. We had also already played several games before. Overall, he had the most wins of the day out of all of us at the table, but that was apparently beside the point. He claimed that my only focus was winning and that his other pod doesn't "abuse the meta" like we do, so he doesn't like playing with us (my husband, P, and myself). This was a record scratch moment for me.
Remember when I said I had proxies in the Frogs as placeholders until I could get the cards I wanted into it? Well, on P's game not a single one of those (
Mana Crypt,
Lotus Petal,
Shadowspear,
Thassa's Oracle, etc...) had touched the board. What I didn't know is P had paid attention to my woes as I Charlie Day'ed my way through the night before on Discord after everything, trying to figure out if I messed up horribly. P knew what cards I had thrown in to just get the deck to 100, and avoided using a single one of my proxied cards despite drawing them or exiling them with croaks. When he pointed out that he specifically avoided those cards to run it as if they weren't in there, X almost exploded.
Conclusion
New Player went home, we started packing up, X disappeared for a bit to cool off then we all reconvened for our goodbyes. I was still thrown off and not feeling great being accused of trying to intentionally mess with my friends, but I apologized again and told X that I wouldn't bring the Froggies out again. I explained that they may be more tuned than expected, but that I appreciate him encouraging me to keep testing them. Internally, this didn't sit right with me for a few reasons, but I figured it was best to shut up and apologize. He made sure to let me know that he doesn't appreciate me underselling my decks and that we just play too competitively for his taste. He apologized but made it clear that I was all but unwelcome at his table for now.
P and my husband did their best to assure me that I wasn't in the wrong and that he had been going after New Player or anyone getting mana stuck the whole day so he was just upset he lost. My husband reminded me that he is a newer player, too, and is still getting hung up on some things like board interaction and taking things like countering spells personally. P also mentioned that X is very proud of the fact that he built 30+ decks, in every color combo (which is a feat, and I'm super proud of X), but quantity isn't quality, and he may have been a bit irked that, in his eyes, his most powerful deck got absolutely decimated by a deck I built as a joke piloted by someone else. My Husband graciously reminded me that something both X and I have never really seen eye-to-eye on is perceived powerful cards vs. synergy. His decks, all stacked with every tutor, every sword artifact, every card that is considered an EDH staple, often gets circles ran around them by our fun decks all because we focus heavily on every card being a meaningful inclusion. All of these factors have helped me feel a bit better.
The main event has gone and passed, and the froggies have all but been retired after being played three times. It's been a few weeks since all of that happened, but I've caught wind that he has been telling anyone who will listen that I should be avoided at all cost and that I will lie and deflect and undersell just so I can pubstomp with an over powered meta deck. I am not to be trusted or played with in his eyes. This hurts a lot and it has me wondering: Am I the Bolas for play testing my meme deck that was not nearly as meme as I thought, and am I the Bolas for building decks that use meta cards and are too strong for kitchen table play?
Thank you for listening, even if you didn't manage to read my 100pg book, this helped a lot getting out.
Thank you again!
Bingus
Bonus story:
X is a former friend now because hubby posted pictures of a
Jeweled Lotus we got specifically for our cEDH decks in our shared Discord. X made a comment about how it was an "expensive card for kitchen table
Magic". I responded with the fact that is for a cEDH tournament deck. We were just excited because it's a cool card and we wanted to share with our friends. This didn't satisfy him so he went on to say that I'm purposefully building a fighter jet to bring to a soap box derby. He's since deleted the entire
MTG channel and has full on iced out anyone associated with me. I'm definitely never playing
Magic with him again.
RIBBIT, BINGUS!
Hello, Bingus! Thank you so much for writing in. As I say every week, without folks writing in, there is no column, so if you, the reader, have a story you'd like to share or a Reddit post I should check out, send it over to amithebolas@gmail.com and I'll get to it here or maybe even the podcast!
Where do I even start?
Bingus sent me their list to get an idea of what power level we're talking about. The meme deck is a fun project, but having seen it, it's pretty much a Frog kindred list with synergies. It was basically all the available Frogs in the colors at the time and then the staples you outlined that P masterfully ignored. I have no idea how it stretches into meme deck by list alone. Was there an Alex Jones Gay Frog card-by-card breakdown that made it more thematic than synergistic? Alex Jones and "turning the frogs gay" would need to be explained to me in the deck construction, because from what I can tell, it's just a solid kindred list. I have no idea how it can be particularly oppressive, but it was better than you expected because you have a knack for making it work.
That said, because you've been at it a while and have a synergy-first brewing style, I totally believe you when you say it went off way more than you expected. That's the thing with these decks: sometimes they sink like a stone, and other times they're dynamite! When a player shows up with a goofy, new, but synergistic deck when they happen to be skilled brewers who know the game well, I will assume that they're possibly going to go off, but also I would trust them to represent their deck's power alright. I wouldn't focus you, but I wouldn't count you out, either!
If you told me you had less than five games with a deck under your belt, you could say it's a two out of ten or a nine and I wouldn't believe you. Unless the list is truly atrocious, you haven't got the data to make the claim. I understand X's frustration with your deck evaluation, but also, for god's sake buddy, you know this is game three. Maybe freaking chill a damn minute.
Topic one:- if you're testing a new deck in a playgroup that is silly in spirit, that doesn't mean it can't be powerful. That said, if you're in your early games with the deck, you don't fully have a scope to represent it. No tutors, no "problematic" cards, and stuff like Thassa's Oracle, while game-winning, are not meant to stay in the deck. A silly deck does not mean it can't be a powerful deck, as evidenced in this story. Maintaining that it's just a fun meme deck is very much downplaying its power. The intention was silliness and I guess that was captured in the excitement you had for brewing it, but it can still be strong. But how do you know it's strong? You play more games with it, you goldfish it. It's still early on so the claims of "you just wanted to pubstumb" are pretty silly in their own right.
Reading your account of games with X, your husband and P took care to do things like not playing the Mana Crypt because you'd wondered if that had any effect on the first game with X; I think that's great and also shows an awareness of a potential underlying pattern with X. It was noted, on some level, that X butts heads with you or doesn't treat you right. Locking you out of a shared friend group Discord server is a choice.
The comment about how he has completed the color combination challenge and built a deck for each one in the span of three years stuck with me. The fact that your husband pointed out that he had been attacking the mana-screwed and would take removal or targeting personally as well as the fact that he hasn't been playing long... it's very entitled. He's still relatively new to the game, but went hard, yet expects every game to swing in his favor. I think what is clear is that maybe combo or a solid engine is just not something he wants to go up against.
But why? That's the kind of Magic that lots of people love to play. I understand that maybe it's a bunch of pieces that need to be interacted with at key moments, and maybe he doesn't run much spot removal. To throw a hissy fit at losing to a deck that did its thing when still in testing phases is absurd. To get upset when your "best" deck loses to another deck doing the very thing it was designed to do is also pretty wild. It's a game of conflict, a game of competition. It's complicated Rock, Paper, Scissors. Your deck will have weaknesses and so will his. Another advantage comes from the pilot. You and P clearly play well, given the stories. That comes with time and experience, and it feels like he's putting the time in, but with throwing hissy fits and storming off and asking you not to play a deck like this... there's no growth, no introspection.
Is it fair to not like playing against certain decks? Absolutely. But he asked you to try it out again. Also, asking someone not to play a deck usually comes from more oppressive strategies. If a case can be made by the table to no longer play against a deck, then a playgroup has a discussion. There wasn't much discussion from X. Even the way he reacted to the Jeweled Lotus was just sad. From what you've presented, it feels like you're dealing with a small person. The type of kid that would invite you over and would make you watch him play a single-player game and then gets upset when you have a turn. Count your blessings about not having to play with such a type again.
Also, hey, commenters: I get that we're only getting one-sided accounts here. That's the nature of a column like this. I don't have a way to get the other side. I use the submissions as ways to springboard into a grander topic. There's an inherent bias to these posts and submissions, but I have also been pretty direct and harsh with other posts.
I think the behavior, as it has been presented, sucks. This is tantrum stuff. Children grow out of this usually. The email was much longer and detailed more of the story. The portrait of X in the email was one of a person I'd grow tired of in the first moments of us meeting. He is an archetype to be clocked. He is someone who doesn't change. He is someone I'm sure you recognize and also have avoided or disconnected from in your life.
I say good riddance.
Not the Bolas.
