A community-derived system for an EDH League
The Townsville Commander League (TCL) has finished for 2016. Mark Norton has written a comprehensive post on the highs and lows of that competition. The level of thoughtfulness in this event is staggering - aspects of the design, rules, and implementation have been discussed with a high level of granularity. Last year was the first to feature a working group for four people and a quick revisiting of the TCL2016 Facebook group demonstrates the sheer volume of time and effort put into this. There are hundreds of comments across dozens of smaller areas. One thing that is oft-maligned and I feel requires a greater level of explanation is the TCL Points list.For those that are not aware, the TCL list contains approximately 80 cards. Each is allocated 1 to 4 points. To play a deck in the TCL, your deck cannot contain more than seven (7) points. Cards are voted on by the community, not by a person or committee.
This post aims to address the common and not-so-common arguments for retaining or abolishing this list in the 2017 TCL. Before that, I need to address some historical aspects (several of which Mark covered in this post) in a bit more depth. Mark's post is far more digestible and upbeat than I can manage here (there is also an historic TCL gallery).
The emphasis of this post is to examine each of the previous TCL incarnations from a design and a rules perspective. This post is about the TCL2013. Others are about TCL2014 and TCL2015.
TCL2013 – A Two-headed Giant EDH League
The inaugural TCL was based on a very simple premise: Commander 2HG. This sounds pretty straightforward - combining EDH with a multiplayer rules set.
The difficulties started to bubble up as the TCL2013 went on. These can be roughly separated into two areas rules problems and expectation problems,
You can't rule them all
The 2HG format was announced and sanctioned with the release of Saviors of Kamigawa (June 2005) but the real push by WotC to tournament organisers was for the Ravnica: City of Guilds pre-release in October 2005. I was fortunate to play in the Auckland pre-release and Team Walker (No Relation) went unbeaten than day. My enthusiasm for playing this mode has not wavered since then, although the opportunities to do so have been limited to fewer than one sanctioned event per year.
One thing that I found back in 2005 that limits the mainstream appeal of the 2HG rules set are the "hacks" required to make the thing work. Some of the less intuitive changes have been
One example that arose in TCL2013 was Vengeful Pharaoh. In 2HG, you attack and block as a team. Also, you have a shared life total. Thus, it might be reasonable to expect the text "Whenever combat damage is dealt to you ..." from the Pharaoh to apply when you are attacked. However, 2HG does not work that way: the attacking team choose the defending player to deal damage to.
Why is this? It is designed to prevent other, arguably worse side-effects from occurring. For example, if you damaged both players, Sword of Feast and Famine would trigger twice and other unforeseen effects would create an even less robust system than before.
This example gets even worse when playing under Competitive REL: the default mode is to damage the player on the right-hand side of their team. Fortunately, 2HG (and multiplayer in general) was removed from the Tournament Rules in 2015.
The effect of this rules-wise is that each fundamental change made in the 2HG rules set "hacks" the game in some way. Most players are not aware of these hacks, and the additional rules knowledge made for awfully asymmetric decks and matches in TCL2013. Teams not playing Time Walk effects had arguably a gross disadvantage over those that did not (effects granting additional turns affect BOTH players in 2HG).
Another problem that TCL2013 faced has been mitigated somewhat by WotC accepting Commander as a sanctioned format: back in 2013, both the rules document and the WotC website directed players to mtgcommander.net for deck construction rules. However, at the time, Erayo, Soratami Ascendant was listed as "banned in all sanctioned constructed formats (Standard, Extended, Vintage, Legacy)" on the WotC website. One team (yes, we all know who it was) read this as not applying to the TCL2013 (as Commander was not capable of being sanctioned) and played Erayo. The League Director was then put in an awkward situation of having to make a "live" call on overtly banning this and determining how to resolve matches played by that team to that point.
This is analogous, of course, to judges (real-world ones, not MTG ones!) needing to create law where Parliament has missed something in legislating. Ideally, this would not happen (although it always will - we do not live in an ideal world), and it is desirable to reflect on rule failings like this and try to improve drafting quality next time.
Also, running events like this is not an easy thing to do. It is made much harder when decisions such as this arise. It highlights the need for clear and comprehensive rules as well as good systems of governance.
Problems with norms in TCL2013
EDH is unusual as a sanctioned MTG format in that is was designed by non-WotC groups and adopted ex post facto (after the fact). The original source for rules has a lovely (albeit cryptic) "philosophy" section which reads: "Commander is designed to promote social games of magic. It is played in a variety of ways, depending on player preference, but a common vision ties together the global community to help them enjoy a different kind of magic. That vision is predicated on a social contract: a gentleman's agreement which goes beyond these rules to includes a degree of interactivity between players. Players should aim to interact both during the game and before it begins, discussing with other players what they expect/want from the game."
This is actually quite nice. It makes me feel better just reading it. That is, of course until the lawyer-programmer-philosophymajor-mtgjudge parts of my brain start interpreting and, more alarming, extrapolating this.
I'll start first with player psychological profiles. You see, gaming is a big thing these days, with revenues exceeding that of movies from about 2002 onwards. Money flowing from this has gone back into game R&D - including on academic research into gaming patterns and behaviour. Hasbro themselves expressed this in more recent versions of Dungeons and Dragons where they explain the multiplicity of reasons that people play games, WotC have expanded the basic profiles they laid down in the 1990s (Timmy/Spike/Johnny) into 20+ (including combinations and cross-overs). Thoughtful profiling leads to games targeting the needs of particular players.
Returning to the "social contract" expressed by the mtgcommander.net rules committee (MTGCC): this is a take on the philosophical instrument of the same name. Unfortunately, there is something of a category error that pervades the literature on this. I'll start with Sheldon Menery's eloquent explanation of this. Sheldon outlines social contract theory in the general sense with the works of Hobbes and Rousseau. He notes that "... civilized people through their own power establish civil societies gaining further rights in exchange for subjecting themselves to the group’s authority." Now, it may seem like I am splitting hairs here, but there is a subtle ambiguity in this sentence. You see, Hobbes et al express their theories as submission to the sovereign, that is, the recognised authority over that group, not the authority of the group itself.
The next sentence leads the reader, and many subsequent commentators, to follow the latter: "The contract a group chooses or develops isn’t the only way for that group to behave - clearly it could choose many different ways - but it’s the one they’ve come to like the best." What Sheldon means is that groups have "norms": in social theory these are expected patterns of action, behaviour and/or belief. Again, it looks like I am being pedantic, but these two paragraphs have been quoted extensively by pundits over the last six or seven years:
"In EDH we already have the foundations of a contract with deck construction rules and a banned list. That said not all of the ‘rules’ need to be formalized. There’s no law that says you can’t butt up in line at the movie theater or that you’re required to be courteous when addressing people but we generally agree in polite society to take our turn and to say please and thank you."
and:
"[EDH is] a shared vision of rights and responsibilities between like-minded individuals on what is an enjoyable way to spend their leisure time ... Social contracts are rarely about right and wrong despite what some might try to make you believe but about the points which are important to the society a path to walk towards the end that we desire namely the benefit of all. In fact there’s no legitimacy to elements of the contract that don’t forward the end goals. 'Don’t play counterspells' isn’t a valid contractual obligation. 'Don’t play counterspells just to annoy people' probably is."
Now, Sheldon is stretching the analogy here: as someone who has taught contract law and social contract theory to undergraduates, I can say unequivocally that trying to equate the two is counter-productive and ultimately pointless. What is happening here is that Sheldon, probably deliberately, is trying to simplify his framework by use of analogy. However, the fact remains that the framework has a series of implicit and explicit norms and rules.
For example, the section "Elements of the EDH Social Contract", notwithstanding Sheldon's disclaimer, is predicated on groups of players both rejecting formal rules and playing multiplayer. Interestingly, Sheldon does not explicitly state this as being free-for-all multiplayer but the examples and his subsequent writing makes this clear.
So, ironically, when Sheldon concludes with "[t]he social contract I suggest here is the social contract I had in mind from the earliest days of the format’s development. By nature the “rules” of a social contract are less hard and fast than laws or formalized rules sets but they also grant a broader scope of freedoms - and more importantly a framework for maximizing everyone’s enjoyment." he is inadvertently alluding to the formal, Hobbesian notion of social contracts. That is, he is making explicit certain modes of behaviour and conduct (FFA multiplayer and ad hoc "don't be a jerk" norms) and precluding certain other types (such as deferring group conduct to the TR and IPG). Even the phrase "jerk" is problematic: this is grounded in American English. In regional Australia where we reside, the phrases "c*nt", "f*ckt*rd", and "d*ckh**d" are used in the vernacular with such frequency that most participants at our local FNMs and Prereleases would be disqualified before round 1 even started. It should be self-evident that there are strong cultural differences between Americans and Australians, and to try and side-step this by arguing that "EDH culture is context-independent" proves my point that EDH norms (and MTG more broadly) are fundamentally American.
The EDH ban list aligns with this: it is designed by Sheldon's extended playgroup and managed by a committee. Notwithstanding the imperative that "each playgroup can and should have their own house rules", certain modes were implicit. However, to run with the "social contract" analogy some more: the adoption of the format by WotC (as a sanctioned FNM format only) in 2014 essentially changed the "sovereign" from mtgcommander.net to Gatherer and the CR (and also arguably the TR and the IPG, although CompREL EDH to my knowledge cannot be sanctioned). The mulligan rule changes in 2015 followed the same pattern: Sheldon announced the change, but FNM followed the Rules of Magic the Gathering (i.e. the CompRules).
The point I am making here is that EDH is presented as a "clean slate" and that each "playgroup" should create its own variations from the rules. This ignores several implicit features which, in creating a "framework for maximizing everyone’s enjoyment" (a concept fraught with problems that Sheldon is no doubt aware), cannot achieve this.
Reflections
My thoughts on this have of course been developed with the benefit of 3+ years of hindsight. It was pretty obvious on reflection that some players would follow Sheldon's imperatives, whereas others would compete as if they were playing a 2HG tournament (with significantly more beer). It goes without saying that teams playing to win, did so.
From memory, the entry fee was $30 per team and there were 11 teams. Several teams had never played EDH before, and some teams had not played 2HG. Some at the time suggested that the existence of a prize (which was simply the sum of entry fees) automatically precluded this from following mtgcommander.net rules, protocols and/or guidelines. Again, I think that this slightly misses the point made above: following the framework was very unlikely to "maximi[se] everyone’s enjoyment" anyway. I think that the eclectic mix of participants in the first organised League has forever been etched into the fabric of the community and left an indelible mark on its constitution.
Some teams looked at the novelty of the build environment as the primary source of enjoyment, others got great value from the unusual board states and challenging play decisions. The aspect of play involving (for want of a better word) self-gratification (possibly "self-expression" is more apt), such as playing hordes of large creatures or winning with Tooth and Nail or Insurrection was still present.
Creating a League for such an eclectic mix of players and play-styles can ironically be done by drawing on social contract theory, but not as expressed by the mtgcommander.net committee. Social contracts in the Hobbesian sense involve the ceding of personal sovereignty to an authority in return for protection. Now, one important consideration here (which is more true in Hobbes' time than today) is that citizens are not free to pick-and-choose which nation they cede personal sovereignty to. In this sense, running a League draws more from actual contract law - free-willed, rational persons making an informed decision to be legally bound in order to make both parties better off. In this sense, the utilitarian outcome envisaged by Sheldon is performed through mutual consent to be bound by rules.
That leads to the inexorable conclusion: to achieve the best long-term result (presumably some iteration of maximising aggregate enjoyment of participants), there must be be prospective and explicit rules, not retrospective and implicit norms. Tournament Officials should not penalise players from playing obnoxious cards and/or strategies ex post facto (after the fact). There is an argument (for a later post) that guidelines for interpersonal aspects should be enshrined in documents as well, although that is not my point here. This need to carefully map out the rules was the basis for a radical shift in designing the TCL2014.
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