Here There Be Dragons – EDHiquette: Strategic Concessions

EDHiquette: Strategic Concessions

Sean Catanese

A couple of months ago, my usual EDH playgroup came across a sticky situation. I had built and tuned my Rafiq of the Many to a solid, streamlined weapon of Magic destruction. We begin our story in a five-player game against Vinnie, Gabe, Sean, and Phil. A slow start means that Sean is out early, and shortly thereafter, Rafiq starts taking names. Loxodon Warhammer in one hand, Umezawa’s Jitte in the other, an Armadillo Cloak on his backside, and a shiny pair of Lightning Greaves to boot (pun intended). Privileged Position and True Believer in play render even Wing Shards useless. So, for those keeping track, Rafiq turned sideways is a 9/6 trampling, double lifelinked, shrouded double striker. All his toys have troll-shroud and his controller has shroud too. As I build my one-man-with-many-tools arsenal, the table begins to notice, and by the time Rafiq is able to make his first giant foray into the red zone, I am hovering at just 13 life.

Vinnie doesn’t play creatures in his deck. Though his deck technically has Kaervek the Merciless in charge, its primary objective is creating global chaos and frustration through the likes of Confusion in the Ranks, Winter Orb, Traveling Plague, and Last Laugh. Kaervek isn’t in play at the moment, and Rafiq’s untouchability means that Vinnie’s life total (in the high 20s) should be irrelevant. First strike is 9 damage and the two Jitte counters make regular combat damage 13, for a grand total of 22, cracking the “21 combat damage from a single general,” knocking Vinnie out and putting me back at a comfortable 35 life.

That doesn’t happen. Seeing the writing on the wall, Vinnie concedes when I assign first strike damage. I gain no life. I get no Jitte counters. I am screwed. Luckily, neither Gabe nor Phil have creatures to turn sideways at me, and spend their turns making dudes with the intention of blocking Rafiq’s impending swings in their directions.

Gabe is the next big threat. His Zur deck makes regular appearances each week at this table and is thoroughly tuned. Diplomatic Immunity first, then Empyrial Armor, Necropotence, and Solitary Confinement to seal the deal. He’s taken out Sean already, but my Austere Command took out his general and enchantments the turn before I started laying down Rafiq and his toys. He’s at just 20 life now, but a pair of Pegasus tokens from his Sacred Mesa and a freshly played Ertai, the Corrupted can block just enough of Rafiq’s damage to leave him standing. He blocks with all three of his creatures, but I topdecked my Bant Charm this turn, and use it to send Ertai to the bottom of his library before assigning damage. Gabe can’t survive Rafiq’s swing anymore, so he takes….no, wait, he also concedes before damage. Again, no Jitte counters, no lifelink. I remain at 13.

Phil, the other man still standing, is relatively new to EDH. He’s a pretty decent Standard and Limited player, frequenting the top four of most FNMs he’s played. I’ve loaned him my Kresh, the Bloodbraided deck to whet his appetite for less organized play. He’s what Wizards would call a “re-acquisition,” having played back before 6th Edition’s rules overhaul, but off the cardboard crack up until around Time Spiral. He’s had to ask for translations of the Japanese Terminate and Chinese Phyrexian Arena, but has held his own pretty well. Frustrated at missing out on my lifelink but confident in the game’s impending outcome, I hand the turn over to him after Gabe’s concession.

This game ends exactly one turn earlier than I want it to. Between a Sol Ring, Signet, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Cabal Coffers, and five other lands, Phil has the resources to pour 16 mana into his pool, a troubling share of which is black. Phil’s smile is an early warning, but I need to see the Death Cloud in his hand to believe it. He flops the finisher on the table and I go from expectant winner to last loser.

This brings me to a question of etiquette…or, rather, EDHiquette. In EDH, are strategic concessions ok? If so, under what conditions?

Strategic concessions are uncommon occurrences in competitive sanctioned Magic. At the last PTQ I judged, I had the opportunity to witness just two strategic concessions. In the first case, an Elf-ball player went off by hitting Brainfreeze with a storm count of about two dozen. Because his opponent’s deck was in a public zone, the Elf-ball player asked to have a look. With no outs and his opponent about to review his tech, the decked player promptly scooped and shuffled up for a new game. The second strategic concession happened just the same way, the only difference being that the player wielding the Brain freeze was running it in the TEPS mirror.

However, a strategic concession in a tournament setting is really a completely different action than a strategic concession in a multiplayer game. In a tournament setting, the game ends when one player concedes. In EDH, the point of a strategic concession is that the game continues, but on the conceding player’s terms. When Gabe and Vinnie conceded, the action was intended to put me at a disadvantage for having forced them from the game. I don’t think Gabe and Vinnie were unsportsmanlike in their concessions, but there is a distinct difference between playing the spoiler by playing the game and doing it by conceding.

To illustrate what I mean here, let’s modify our original situation a little bit. Vinnie is at a negative life total and has Platinum Angel in play. I swing at Gabe with Rafiq, tricked out in his toys. Vinnie knows that I’ll use the four counters from the Jitte to kill his Angel (and him) if Rafiq gets through to Gabe, but the only useful card left in his hand is Starstorm. Assuming Gabe doesn’t concede, Vinnie’s Angel is going to die, either to Starstorm or the Jitte. Vinnie can play the spoiler by playing Starstorm, which will take him out of the game, but will also kill my Rafiq. This feels fundamentally different from Gabe waiting for me to swing at him and then just conceding.

In this situation, Vinnie is effectively deciding to lose just as he would in a concession, but he’s doing it in a way that involves him actively using cards and playing the game. Gabe’s mid-combat concession is actively not playing the game.

If we consider just the rules of the game, though, there’s no real difference. A player can pick up and leave whenever he or she sees fit, without regard for timing, priority, or any other rule. Control-changing effects end, other players’ permanents under the conceding player’s control that aren’t subject to control-changing effects evaporate into RFG-land, the conceding player gets all his stuff back, Oblivion Rings behave a little oddly*, and the game goes on exactly as it would if the player had been hit for lethal by a Giant Ambush Beetle. So where do we draw the line?

When I first posed this question to a forum, some players proposed their own house rules governing strategic concessions. Thoughts ranged from the deceptively simple, “A player may only concede when the active player could play a sorcery” to complex points-per-player-killed structures. After considering the complexities that are introduced by even the most straightforward of house rules, I’ve decided that the best way to approach strategic concessions isn’t by such rule. Players have also defended strategic concessions to me by arguing that they add an element of complexity to a gamestate. If I’m already staring down lethal damage, it might actually be fun to concede mid-combat and release another defending player’s giant fatty from my Pacifism.

The rules of Elder Dragon Highlander are already a significant modification from how most Magic is played. Unless the goal is to set up a variant-within-a-variant system like Emperor EDH or Two-Headed-Giant EDH, house rules get confusing and can ultimately feel like they’re overcompensating for corner cases that turned out badly for the player who owns the house.

Instead, this is an opportunity to test a little social engineering by introducing a norm. Let me explain with another example. A few weeks after the initial game where the lifegain-off-Rafiq was hosed by strategic concessions, Phil, Sean, and I were the last three players standing in what had been a six-player game. This time, I’ve loaned Rafiq to Phil while I run with Mayael the Anima as my general. Phil sends Rafiq in for a lethal hit on Sean. We allow plenty of good-natured outside assistance around the EDH table, and another player brings up the possibility of Sean conceding. In this case, Sean is in the position of kingmaker. If he concedes, I’m beating through for the win on my next turn. If not, the 8-life boost from the four new Jitte counters (yes, again with the Jitte), is probably enough to withstand my Godsire and Kodama of the North Tree and eventually pull through. I’d discussed the issue of strategic concessions with Sean earlier though, and he’d come down on the same side as me, a gut instinct that playing the game out is the right thing to do. Sean sticks to his guns, “No, that’s just how the damage is being dealt. There’s nothing I can do to prevent it. It happens and I lose.” He takes the face-bashing, state-based effects see him at zero or less life, and he’s done.

This wasn’t because of any house rule we set up, but just because of the discussion of whether it felt “right” to use a concession strategically. Rather than coming up with a rule that says someone can’t concede for strategic reasons, this was the introduction of a norm that said “If you’re gonna lose, do it while you’re playing the game.” Now, this hasn’t taken off with everyone we play EDH with by any stretch. Though Gabe has been on the short end of games where other players have dropped out prematurely, I’m fairly certain that he’d still concede mid-combat if it would keep his attacker from reaping a benefit. The same goes for Vinnie, but the concept has made some progress among the players that enjoy EDH between FNM rounds locally. In each case, though, it’s a group of players deciding among themselves what feels right in the spirit of the game, and that’s the essence of Elder Dragon Highlander: an environment where grassroots flourish, netdecking is nigh impossible, and, above all, Magic is still a game.

Until next time, this is Sean Catanese telling you to go call down some thunder.

*A quick note on the O-Ring interaction in multiplayer: If my Oblivion Ring is removing Riki’s Seedborn Muse from the game [sounds unpossible, but let’s play along. -Riki], he won’t get it back when Phil kills me. To return the Muse to play, the second triggered ability of Oblivion Ring has to go on the stack and resolve. Once I’m dead, the Oblivion Ring leaves play, but its trigger won’t go on the stack because I’m not in the game anymore, and the Muse sits around waiting for a Living Wish to get it back in the game. This might sound straightforward enough, but it’s one of the common mistakes I see around our local FNM between rounds.