Threat

Anyone who has played raid-level world of warcraft is probably familiar with the concept of threat. In warcraft monsters determine who to attack based on how threatening each hero is. A hero’s threat value is determined by how much damage it has done to the monster plus any special threat modifiers on items/spells. Most heroes are not built to take damage, and thus have to manage their threat to avoid getting stomped.


A multiplayer free-for-all game of magic has clear similarities. Each card you play, and each decision you make carries a threat value. If your threat gets too high, the other players will collectively turn on you and probably wipe you out. You want to maximize your effectiveness without going over that line and winding up face down in the dirt.

There are essentially four types of threat in multiplayer EDH: commander, card, action, and reputation.


Commander Threat

To me, this is the largest component of a player’s threat value in a game - although it depends quite a bit on the experience of each player. If someone hasn’t seen Riku, Mereike, Brion, or Uril in action they might not understand what’s probably about to happen to them. In some cases experience may not matter if its clear that one general seriously hinders another (mimeoplasm vs tariel, vorosh vs karrthus, etc). In either event, the moment you reveal your general there’s a chance you will draw immediate heat based on how comfortable each opponent is in dealing with your general. If they can’t handle the general, they’ll be forced to try and kill you outright instead.



Card Threat

This is the threat most people use to make decisions. The actual state of play of the board at any given time and going after the “board leader”. The guy with the indestructible vulturous zombie and the debtor’s knell on the board is a lot more scary than the guy with the Orgg. This is also the threat you should be most comfortable generating, since at some point you need to establish a presence and see if anyone can stop you or not. In most games your threat will either be dealt with (destroyed) and forgotten about, or you’ll win. Individual card threat doesn’t usually linger the way commander threat does. Unless of course you’re playing graveyard recursion, in which case each card you’ve played does have a lingering threat value - possibly a very high one at that.


Action Threat
This refers to the decisions you make during the game. Who did you attack and why? What permanent did you destroy and why? As long as you’re spreading your damage and destruction around the table you can dodge this fairly easily. But if you come out and arbitrarily counterspell someone’s yavimaya elder, they are probably going to remember that. The worst instances of this type of threat are when two players get locked into a side-battle of ever-increasing threat towards one another. Bashing each other back and forth while disregarding the rest of the table. In the end they both lose, and it can make for some unfun and tense game play as well.


Reputation threat

This extends to both the player and their decks. Sometimes you know what a deck is going to do because you’ve played the guy before - like someone whipping out a brion stoutarm deck, but you know its not about stealing other people’s creatures. In that case their reputation reduces their threat.

In terms of player-based threat, we’ve kind of hammered this out in our playgroup. There were some rough situations in star games where you knew your two enemies, and that one had a weak deck while the other was strong. The winning play is obviously to beat down the guy you know is better and deal with the weaker player later, but that’s not really fun. We really encourage spreading damage around and not focusing a player (at least without good reason :p) so this is just a cultural thing for our group. 


In Summary
When choosing a commander and the cards for your deck, you should think about how much hate those cards will draw from the table. Sometimes a weaker card is actually better based on its lower threat value (e.g. tariel vs mimeoplasm). In other words, lay off the cheese and make more room for your pasta of choice.