Come at me Bro! A rant against 1v1 EDH

It drives me nuts to see people playing 1v1 EDH and running EDH tournaments. To me the format is only interesting because it is casual and multiplayer. If you reduce it to its other characteristics - command zone, colour identity, singletons, etc it just becomes another iteration of constructed formats like standard, modern, and legacy. The room for creativity evaporates and a huge number of cards go from being amusing to unplayable. I’ll play 1v1 sometimes to test out a deck idea (seeing it as a small step up from goldfishing) but my decks are all fundamentally multiplayer and most preform horribly in an actual 1v1 game.

The biggest problem with taking casual EDH and trying to play 1v1 is that it is practically impossible to play casually with just 2 players. The defining aspect of “casual” is playing cards you wouldn’t usually play if you were focused on winning the game. Without an audience or potential allies there’s no incentive to run these sub-optimal cards. There’s nobody to applaud you or take it easy on you for playing icatian town, and there’s no downside to playing douchery cards like elesh norn or grave pact. In the world of 1v1 choosing to play silly or cute cards and avoiding the cutthroat stuff just means you get to consistently concede by turn 8.

In multiplayer you can generally skimp on the removal cards and/or play more marginal/expensive ones. In 1v1 you do not have the luxury of either, as every problem is your problem. Opponent got progenitus out? Its up to you to draw that wrath. Debtor’s knell ticking away every turn? Hope you put enough disenchants in your deck. Efficient, versatile removal spells are critical in 1v1, ideally with tutors to find the right one for the current problem. While retribution and mirrorweave are flavourful and interesting multiplayer cards, 1v1 demands only the top-notch (predictable) removal like swords to plowshares and control magic. Besides making every deck look very similar regardless of general, this also further restricts the number of cards that are realistically playable in 1v1 EDH.

What sets multiplayer apart is that it cannot truly be competitive due to the politics involved. The player with the strongest deck will often become a shared target for the lesser players, and no deck really stands a chance 2v1 or 3v1. Trying to play competitively in multiplayer - i.e. focusing on the win - is actually counterproductive and usually infuriating. The only way to play effectively in multiplayer is to first and foremost play amusing cards and try to have some laughs, with winning as a peripheral objective. What sets EDH apart from say, standard multiplayer, is how its cardpool, deckbuilding restrictions, and increased life totals embrace and enable the use of obscure cards.

Ultimately there’s no real harm in people doing their 1v1 EDH and their EDH tournaments. It just irks me that players need to take the one real casual format and try to turn it into a competitive snore-a-thon.