Five Politicking Lessons for cEDH

Like every other competitive format, cEDH is a game where players sit down and try to win using every resource at their disposal. Unlike other competitive formats, however, this doesn't just mean things like information and cards in hand, because multiplayer formats give access to an additional resource: political capital.

Alliances, deals, treachery; none of this needs to be considered in one-v-one Magic. So, how can savvy cEDH players navigate the political game? Let's take a look.

Be Affable

When I got my start in cEDH, I was a dedicated stax player. This meant that, at least in world of kitchen-table realm of cEDH games, I had to get used to players being salty because of the cards which I had in play. Nobody likes it when they can't play the game, so a successful stax player will naturally become a disliked player.

So, why do I use this to introduce affability? Because being the source of prolonged ire is already a cause for your opponents to want you out of the game, regardless of your threat level, so being anything other than a pleasurable person to play with will only compound that.

Flipping the stax case on its head, this reveals that being a pleasant person to play with diminishes the degree to which your opponents will want you out of the game. Sure, "be nice" may not seem like the most surprising advice in a multiplayer game, or even life in general, but internalizing this can be surprisingly difficult, especially in tournament Magic.

Players sit down together, each seeking nothing but victory, and in that environment stress can quickly turn into negative social experiences. By being an open, kind, interactive player, the level of stress in the pod falls, allowing for players to think more clearly and play with less emotional bias. 

Look for Alignment

While competing in tournaments across United States this fall, a frequent disclaimer I heard judges echo was that "your opponents do not have your best interests at heart."

This was meant to establish that judges can't rule on social issues, like lying or deals, but I believe this saying is overly broad for one key reason: sometimes, you and your opponents' interests become identical through necessity. That is, they align, and in that alignment there is opportunity. 

An excellent example of alignment is threat-induced cooperation. Imagine something like this: Player A is going for the win. Player B attempts to stop them, Player A rebuts the initial counter, and Player C comes back in to save the day.

Simple, yes, but in that simplicity an important lesson is revealed: as you play cEDH, it will eventually be in your best interest to work with your opponent. Stopping a win attempt is the most stark display of this, as the alternative isn't just missed value but rather an entire game loss, but it isn't the only one.

It may be banned, but who doesn't like drawing cards?

Going back to my history as a stax player, there were absolutely times when two players banded together to remove two of my lock pieces back to back. One card stopped one player, another stopped the other, but by cooperating the two could effectively deal with my resource buildup in one fell swoop, something neither player was individually capable of.

By properly assessing how I was threatening not just themselves, but each other, those two players aligned and effectively leapfrogged over the impasse I had created. 

Alignment is most compelling in cases of shared threat assessment, so by being mindful of both your vulnerabilities and those of your opponents, collaborative action becomes all the more possible.

Share Information

Something that frequently catches new cEDH players off-guard is that there is no rule against revealing hidden information. If I want, I can sit down, start playing a game, and at any point reveal my entire hand as well as any face-down cards which I know. Now, is this the most savvy play? Often not. Can it win games? Absolutely.

Your opponents owe you absolutely no allegiance in a game of Magic. While persistent skepticism and distrust (more on that later) serve as mental blocks that can prevent players from successfully engaging in collaborative action, a la alignment identification, it is perfectly reasonable to play purely based on known information.

If you wish to make a deal with an opponent - as I encourage you to do so - then it would serve you well to become comfortable with sharing otherwise hidden information.

Here's an example: a cautious player who I know has a single counterspell (perhaps because of an earlier Gitaxian Probe) is aligned with me in that we both are down in resources compared to the other two players in the pod. I have a hand of three cards, one of which is a Rhystic Study which I put on the stack.

I look to the player with the counterspell, pass him my hand, and urge him not to counter it so that way I can dig for interaction, revealing to him that I have no other interaction, tutors, or threats beyond Rhystic Study. In doing so, I've worked to diffuse tension, promote collaboration, and hopefully resolve my obviously threatening spell. 

Let Your Opponents Play

Next up, one of the hardest lessons to learn: sometimes you just need to let your opponents play the game. 

Absolute resource advantage is near impossible in cEDH, outside of a player's winning turn, simply because of the number of players at the table. For every card you have, odds are your opponents have at least three times as many. Same goes for mana, as well as players opposed to your victory.

In a sheer numbers game, you cannot keep parity with your opponents. As such, cEDH isn't a game about answering every threat, it's a game about picking and choosing.

One tournament game that comes to mind when I think about letting my opponents play came down to an opposing Thrasios, Triton Hero backed up by a Training Grounds facing off against my own Orcish Bowmasters.

I was presented with two options: use the Orcish Bowmasters triggers to repeatably kill the Thrasios, Triton Hero, ignoring the life total of the RogSi player to my left, or let the Thrasios live.

Ultimately, I let the Thrasios live, as each point of damage towards RogSi represented around a card less that they could draw off of an Ad Nauseam. Had I focused on Thrasios, that would have been a lot of wasted damage, as they could easily either recast the commander or simply played around it. I couldn't control the Thrasios, but I could mitigate the Ad Nauseam. 

Incremental advantage is absolutely a threat to consider in cEDH games, especially when three opponents start stacking engines all around you and the game spirals into a midrange hell, but try not to get too bogged down in the small threats. Take a breath, clear your mind, and think about what needs to go - not what you want to go.

Consider the Liars

Finally, the part of cEDH I don't like thinking about: liars. So, before we get into it, a quick disclaimer: I'm going to explain when lying is most optimal, not in the hopes that you lie in your games, but rather so you can be on guard for when it is most likely to come up from your opponents. Don't lie in cEDH.

Alright, with that out of the way, let's talk about when people lie. Given the negative stigma around lying in cEDH, it doesn't make competitive sense to obviously lie in the early turns of the game.

The more time in a match after a person is found out to have lied, the more opportunity exists for that person to be punished by the pod, either by being excluded from the pod, or by a particularly offended player making spite plays in the liar's direction.

As such, the primary time when visible lies will occur is when the result is a near-immediate victory for the liar. As such, the closer a player is to winning, the more likely it is for that player to lie. This isn't to say that winners will lie, but rather that liars will reveal their colors closer to the endgame.

The other opportunity for players to lie, indifferent to the point in the game, is when the lie is easily hidden, such as when they are putting a tutor on the stack in the face of known countermagic. As such, if you have an inclination towards stopping such actions but are open to letting them through, request information.

There have been plenty of times when I have countered a tutor which a player was proposing to cast but wouldn't commit to revealing what they were tutoring for or which cards were in their hand. 

I've been fortunate enough to only encounter a handful of liars over the course of my tournament cEDH career, and all of them have fallen into one of those two categories. So, if something feels iffy and the conditions match the above, keep an eye out, ask questions, and play cautiously, especially if prizes are on the line. 

Wrap Up

As much as many players as like for it to be true, cEDH games aren't just decided by who casts the right spells or builds the best deck. Rather, politics often plays a huge role in determining the winners and the losers. Competitive Commander is two games at once: one between players and one between decks, and failing to navigate one can often be the death knell for your match.