'Manders Be Gettin' Tuh-ucked!

I've been in a rather grumpy mood lately towards various playgroup manifestos, and I have three words for them.

Stop The Nonsense.

One of these is banning "Tuck" effects- basically, everything from Bant Charm to Terminus that can put a creature (most likely, a Commander) or creatures back safely into their owner's library.

Unless you're looking for restrictive challenges and you're banning more than just the 9 or 10 cards of this kind, I'm of the opinion you shouldn't be playing EDH.

I'm not trying to be mean, just blunt. There are 20,000+ cards that are EDH legal, and if you're not trying to create decks that can play around or maneuver through these challenges, then go play something like Legacy, Modern, or T2, where the power of these effects are diluted drastically, and the metagame is all about the top decks.

Tuck effects are about the best defense against generals, especially the hokey, "Ashling and approximately 99 Mountains" deck and Voltron builds with Skullbriar, the Walking Grave.

If you're playing a General centric deck, Tuck cards aren't difficult to defend against (*cough*Lightning Greaves*cough*) and if you're not, they are some of the best ways to ruin your opponent's Commander shenanigans.

The big argument for banning these effects is that they're not congruent with what some people define as the "Spirit of EDH" because they could transform your deck into a 100-card singleton deck by sullying the uniqueness of having a recurrable creature and leader.

Honestly though, that's not the way I see it.

Sure, a resource is taken away from the player- a resource that separates EDH from the rest of Magic as we know it.

However, the thing that I like about Tuck effects is that they not only test a deck's resolve, but they also test the player's skill and resolve- the latter of which contributes, in my opinion, to becoming both a better deckbuilder and player, and also leads to better games in the long run.

It's really easy to upset people when their Uril, the Miststalker gets Hindered or Rhys the Redeemed and his loyal army of copied tokens are sent to the bottom via Hallowed Burial.

I understand. If you've been playing EDH for more than a day, and you're in a good healthy playgroup, you should know to expect these moments.

Tuck effects are part of a larger pool of cards that I consider capable of creating "Stress Plays," which are cards that press you psychologically.

In my mind, the cards that are most likely to produce the most stress on a game are the typically taboo Land Destruction cards and Counterspells.

These cards notorious for creating whining and complaining and moaning and bitching and yelling and scooping at the table, and therefore contributing to a game's super-duper-low score on the Fun-O-Meter.

Normally, most games can roll pretty well with a Counterspell here and there. However, as the counters stack in up in the bin, Stress Plays become imminent.

Tuck Effects have one big difference when compared to counterspells. Their value per card is significantly greater than that of your typical blue counter-magic.

In EDH, getting one spell countered can make a big deal. Still, the counter game has to be played continuously and consistently in order to actually control and win the game, cause most good decks have cards that can do the same thing as a card that gets countered, or even perform better.

The interaction that takes place between a counter and the target spell is still a 1-for-1 trade, even if the person countering the spell is paying less to do it. The caster who's countering passed up their opportunity to play a creature or sorcery speed thing to thwart your plans, so there's more to the caster's opportunity cost.

Doing this once might be the key to victory, or it might not. It'll depend on skill and timing and knowledge of what's in your deck.

Still, one Counterspell isn't going to put your opponent in a Stress Play, even if it's the Overwhelming Stampede that's supposed to win you the game. There's still an Overrun in your deck, right?

This is why Tuck Effects are good, and possibly of more quality than Counters in the best of circumstances. Whereas Counters require multiple investments and consistent disruption on ensuing turns with untapped mana left open, Tuck Effects are aggressively costed and require only one turn to bring the pain.

With Tuck Cards, you get more than you pay for. The best Tuck Effects range from a converted mana cost of 1 to 5, so you can play other spells in the sweetspots between turns 5 and 8 without giving up too much ground. Conversely, counters, while the good ones average between 2 and 5, often have to sacrifice playing a creature in order to stay untapped. This period of time is pretty critical because it can reveal whether or not your opponent has counterspells.

As a result, Tuck Effects even have a slight edge here in terms of surprise. For starters, there are less of them. So even if you put a few in your deck, you still may not draw them.

This is different than the control game, because counter-magic is almost always a theme, and so the good blue deck will always have 13+ good counterspells, some of which, like Hinder and Spell Crumple, double as Tuck Effects.

The best of these, in my opinion, are the red and white ones. They have the most surprise, and can be less obvious.

This is because if one untapped white is left open, your opponent might be thinking, "Path or Swords, no big loss." In red, they're probably just thinking you didn't have a dude or a big sorcery, not surprise CHAOS WARP!

So when you cast these cards, it's mostly a pretty big game. On a Commander, this can be devastating.

The best part is that the stress induced in these moments create a perfect storm of disruption on the board and in the mind, one which most EDH players aren't really used to.

As a result, a good player casting a Tuck Effect has the capacity to attain a lot of information, especially if the player hasn't faced this opponent and this particular deck.

Layman's terms- you know what's in their hand, possibly in their deck.

This is the Poker aspect of Magic. Their tells are exposed, whether or not they want them to be, and as a result, you basically can find out how important that Commander or that permanent or nonland permanent is to their current boardstate, thereby ascertaining clues to what's in your opponent's deck and hand.

So why am I for having exceptionally powerful value-driven cards?

The answer is simple. Wizards printed them.

Sure, we can talk about the fact that banlists exist.

I'm not naive to this. I've played with and against many of the current banlist cards.
I understand them more than most. I've read the explanations for said bannings, and to that extent, I agree with most of what Sheldon Mennery and his team have done.

The EDH Rules Committee is trying to inhibit fun gameplay for all- especially the newer players in the format who may not have access to Recurring Nightmare and Gifts Ungiven.

They also want to remove the so-called "cheap" routes to victory, like Biorhythm, Sway of the Stars, and the newly-banned Worldfire.

That said, I'm not going to scoop if one of these cards gets played. I'm not going to scoop if all my lands get blown up, and so I'm sure as hell not going to scoop when someone tucks my Commander.

There's always a right time to scoop. In the past, I've scooped in some pretty silly situations.

However, if you find yourself in a game where there are cards that you don't feel comfortable playing against, the last thing you should be doing is forfeiting.

I encourage you to try and get through the game, even if you know you can't win because someone's playing a banned card, or a card you specifically don't like.

In life, we don't always get to direct and choose what kinds of things we get and don't get.

So don't scoop.

I used to be pretty bad at this. One of my least favorite cards to play against is Bribery. I thought I hated Control Magic until I saw that my opponent could just pick whatever dude he or she wanted and drop it into play under their control.

Grandpa Growth used to play it all the time, mostly because by scooping, I'd changed the text to, "You win the game" for three and two U.

One night, I was playing GG with a Treva EDH, and had an Avenger of Zendikar and token horde ready to go to pound town. So GG did what he needed to win. He Twincasted a Bribery.

Rather than scooping, I said okay, and handed him my deck.

Turns out the deck was Bribery-proof.

GG opted to not even use the second Bribe because there were no real threats left in the deck.

And, the following turn, I cast a Beguiler of Wills and slammed a Lightning Greaves on it so I could get back the Drogskol Reaver GG took.

You could call it fortunate, I guess, that I had answers when GG was tapped out.

But I found out quick that my deck had a resiliency to overcome one of my least favorite cards. It was one of my better victories.

Which brings me back to my point.

Banning Tuck Effects, or anything for that matter, shouldn't be because you don't like playing against the card.

It should be because the card changes the game to be significantly less fun, less original, and extremely unfair.

You may fall flat on your face, or may find an answer in your deck you didn't realize. Either way, staying in the game challenges you and your deck to be better-  the best part is, you've got nothing to lose, especially if you think you can't win.

But if you don't try, you just end up thinking about Schrodinger and his cat.

Don't think about the cat, and don't play what if.

Untap and play along. Stop The Nonsense.

-UL