Heliod, the Radiant DawnHeliod, the Radiant Dawn | Art by Victor Adame Minguez

One of my favorite things to say about my Heliod, the Radiant DawnHeliod, the Radiant Dawn deck is that it's banned in my local meta. It's funny because those who have played against it don't really understand why it would be so hated that it would be banned. However, in my local meta, I absolutely know why. It's the kind of deck where the harder you try to dismantle it and longer the game goes, the more exhausting the turns become. My local meta knows how to play against this deck and it makes it miserable to handle. This colors the ecosystem.

What Do Local Ecosystem and Meta Mean?

Let's clarify what I mean by the local ecosystem and meta. The local ecosystem includes the meta, but they're not the same thing. The local meta is the play patterns and building styles that are popular in your typical play group(s). The meta might be something along the lines of lots of removal and board wipes in your games. It could be running only the top 100 EDHREC salty commanders like Atraxa, Praetors' VoiceAtraxa, Praetors' Voice; Kaalia of the VastKaalia of the Vast; and Krenko, Mob BossKrenko, Mob Boss.

The local ecosystem is one step deeper into the conversation. It's the meta and how players respond to these kind of situations. It's social and emotional regulation. Are there salty scoops (sometimes at instant speed), spite plays, spite brewing, hate cards, and greedy brewing around the meta? You combine these two things — social/emotional regulation, and the play-and-build meta — and you get the local ecosystem.

What would you say if I suggested that your local ecosystem might be making you a worse Magic player?

The Trouble With Local Ecosystems

Okay, maybe that last line was a little clickbait. Not every ecosystem is inherently making you a worse player, but it definitely can be bad for you if it encourages bad habits.

What are these bad habits? Running low land counts but expecting infinite free mulligans is an example. This can make you radically underestimate how many lands you will see in your opening hand and throughout the game. It can also make your deck more explosive than other decks if you're given the grace to mulligan endlessly, and it can cause tension with other players who understand the strength of infinite mulligans and greedy land bases, but still want you to have a fun time playing. Mulligan rules are in games to balance them. Ignoring them gives players bad building habits.

Another bad habit is running zero protection for your commander because it's taboo to remove them in your local ecosystem. We all build our decks around our commander. We're emotionally and intellectually invested in our commanders. That means that most of the time they are the right thing to remove to stop all the plates spinning against another player's deck.

I'm not saying it doesn't feel bad to have your commander removed over and over, but if your commander coming out could have ended the game, it should have been done. I find that players who have fragile Commander decks like Raph & Mikey, TroublemakersRaph & Mikey, Troublemakers or Kaalia of the VastKaalia of the Vast need to expect to be stopped and therefore prepare for the removal, or the deck will lose constantly to pods with accurate threat assessment.

Having only one removal spell or board wipe because no one else runs removal is another bad habit. You might want to put more gas in your decks instead of your veggies, but interaction is necessary in most decks. If you think you can turbo into a win without them, sure, risk it. I have a few decks that risk that, but you have to know you're risking it.

If The Ur-DragonThe Ur-Dragon player or the Krenko player has played a Terror of the PeaksTerror of the Peaks or a Sting, the Glinting DaggerSting, the Glinting Dagger respectively, you have to do something about it or you might just be dead. The problem here is that running less interaction means you might not have any answers for decks that have gotten out of hand. Don't rely on others to solve problems for you. That means you lose.

Ultimately, I bring up some of these bad habits because they are mainly developed through constant exposure to a specific way of playing, a specific kind of ecosystem. This makes you a somewhat worse player in terms of universal skill, but what if I told you that there are other bad habits from specific kinds of ecosystems that make you a player no one likes either?

The Other Trouble With Building to a Local Ecosystem

Are you familiar with hate cards, spite brewing, or counter-picking decks? Oh baby, let me open up a whole can of worms. Let's start with "hate cards." They are cards that turn off one specific type of strategy or negatively affect a particular color in the game. These cards are often uniquely bad because of how situational they are.

Any card can technically be a hate card. It's all about intention, really. Why is that card in your deck? Is it to stop another one of your friends strategy specifically? Yes? Does this help you win? No? Might be a hate card, then.

Leyline of the VoidLeyline of the Void is a card that often doesn't help a deck's strategy but turns off graveyard decks. Umbris, Fear ManifestUmbris, Fear Manifest might love a card like this for its strategy, but a K'rrik, Son of YawgmothK'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth deck might not really need this kind of card. I'd say it comes back to why you're including it.

CompostCompost is a card that might feel like a hate card but isn't. I'd make a slight distinction here because most black decks are putting black creatures to the graveyard and might draw you a decent amount of cards. It's still a little bit like a hate card, mainly because it's useless in your deck against non-black decks, but it ultimately isn't trying to detract from any other strategy.

Hate cards are the sort of thing you include in your deck because you find that playing against a particular deck in your ecosystem needs this particular card to be stopped. Not only does it make your deck less efficient in most situations but it also makes the person you're building against feel targeted. If I feel like you're including a direct counter in all your decks regardless of how it helps you win, just to stop my one deck, I'm going to hate playing against you. I might avoid you completely. Not because I'm stopped, but because you sacrificed your ability to win in most situations just to stop me from winning. In most situations it feels like a hateful thing to do. I just won't play that deck against yours.

Spite brewing is a more important gripe, though. I say "gripe," because I sort of get it, in some situations. Spite brewing is building a deck in response to another deck in your ecosystem. Sometimes you build a more powerful deck because the arms race of power in your ecosystem is going up. Maybe you're building more Bracket 4 instead of Bracket 3. This is all very reasonable to play with your friends effectively. This is not often called spite brewing, but it might seem like it.

Spite brewing has a little more negativity to it. It's building a Lord WindgraceLord Windgrace Land Destruction deck against a Zimone, Mystery UnravelerZimone, Mystery Unraveler Landfall deck. It's building an Oloro, Ageless AsceticOloro, Ageless Ascetic Lifegain deck against an Ojer Axonil, Deepest MightOjer Axonil, Deepest Might Burn deck. Building a whole deck to outpace and win against a single deck? That's spite brewing. It's often very targeted and might make your opponent not enjoy playing against you. The deck might even be good, but part of the problem with spite brewing is actually counter-picking decks.

Counter-picking is seeing what another player is playing and picking something that's good against it. Spite brewing doesn't work if you're not paired up against the thing you're trying to stop. It's also not fun to bring out your Danitha, New Benalia's LightDanitha, New Benalia's Light Voltron deck only to get someone counter-picking a Creature Sacrifice strategy like Tergrid, God of FrightTergrid, God of Fright.

Now, I'm not saying a little conversation about picking a neutral commander after being paired up with one that completely shuts down your strategy is unreasonable. I can understand not wanting to play a graveyard deck like Coram, the UndertakerCoram, the Undertaker into an Ketramose, the New DawnKetramose, the New Dawn deck that focuses on graveyard exiling. I do think it's important for your deck to have ways to push through opposition, specifically anything that hard-stops your deck, but there is only so much you can do against a direct counter. Either way, it's unpleasant to be counter-picked all the time.

I isolated some of these habits because they're the sort of thing that might run rampant in your local ecosystem and rub some other people the wrong way. I've also isolated habits that potentially make your win rate less consistent.

Do Local Ecosystems Make Us Bad Players or Bad People?

Haha, no. Not really. If you're always content playing in your local pod, good on you. You're as good a player as you need to be to have fun. No shame in that. However, I do think if you want to ramp up your skills building and playing, as well as your pod's enjoyment, it's definitely important to play outside of your local play group. This will highlight, through exposure to other play groups, the shortcomings of your ecosystem. You'll be able to grow and adapt in various environments, making you a more experienced and balanced player.

This fact only matters if you want to assess and improve the power of your decks and skill universally. Getting away from your play group's social formulations, too — like greedy building, infinite mulligans, or counter-picking — will give you insight into the weaknesses of your deck in other ecosystems. Anyway, that's what I think. I'm just @strixhavendropout on everything.