During that time my opponents were enjoying all sorts of success. One player started off with some amazing ramp and it just seemed to lead to even more ramp. At one point I was at five lands, and he already had access to fifteen mana each turn. His board state had begun to evolve and was reaching critical mass when another opponent Wrathed the board. At that point it was his moment to shine. His recovery from the Wrath was phenomenal and he started to dominate. That will happen when you have three planeswalkers that survive the Wrath and help you to recover!

Our life totals were starting to shrink at this point. Okay, low-30's and high 20's isn't exactly tiny, but they are less than 40! The three of us formed an unspoken pact against the player who Wrathed. Between attacking their planeswalkers and removing a few threatening artifacts, it didn't take long until their powerful battlefield from a few turns ago didn't seem much stronger than the rest of us.

Of course just as soon as we got that player under control, the remaining player in the game saw her graveyard recursion really start to churn value. Getting to use and reuse creatures and spells is a key to winning Commander games and her deck came alive. Watching an end of turn loop that gave her eight plants right before her turn for four consecutive turns is more than a little depressing for us and delightful for her. Thankfully I happened to find my Bojuka Bog and shut that down. The plants were still there, but at least we weren't seeing more and more of them! We were all in the low-20's and high teens at this point.

I got my chance to make the big play once and managed to destroy a creature, gain some life, and hit with a Guiltfeeder! I was looking forward to my next kick at the can when my Graveyard Recursion opponent said the words I dread most in the middle of a game: "Game's Gotta End."

That is when she played Exsanguinate and ended the game. Once it was clear that no one was going to counter it or survive, I watched as the other two opponents scooped up their cards with defeated looks on their faces. I tipped the cards in my hand faceup and used the edges to drag all the cards on my battlefield into a pile in the middle of my playmat, then shuffled them into my library and started to shuffle to minimize how much I would have to shuffle the next time I play Grenzo.

No One Actually Wins

I was talking about a similar situation on Twitter involving a "game that had to end" Expropriate. While the discussion wandered off topic, I suggested there is no winner when someone plays a "Game's Gotta End" card.

Consider this rules change in Magic: When you have access to nine mana, on your upkeep, flip a coin. If you win the flip, the game ends. If you lose the flip, continue playing. If players are including cards like Exsanguinate or Expropriate simply as a way to end a game, doesn't this just make more sense instead? It involves just as much skill at Magic to win with Exsanguinate as it does to win with this rule in play. In neither situation does it feel like I actually won the game. I did work to get your mana base to a point where I could cast the card and win, but was there any skill involved? Did I wait for the right moment to play the card? Did I jump through a series of hoops to build the situation where the card earned you the win? No. In the end, I didn't win the game, I just ended the game.

What about games that are just dragging?

Many players claim that the games that are locked in a miserable slog "just need to end." Those games where no one seems to be able to get a leg up on their opponents so that it just keeps going. There are a couple of issues with those games. The first is deciding when that game actually exists. What appears to be a slog to you, may just be a game when your opponent is trying to find that single card that can break the whole thing open. They aren't going to tell you they are close to opening it up because you'll just become the target and that will only make it that much harder to get the win.

The second issue asks why one player gets to decide when the game is dragging for everyone and end it. If you are genuinely ending the game as a mercy to the other players (and really, if games gotta end, aren't you just implying that you are doing a service to everyone in the game?), why not let them decide? If your game has reached that point, why can't everyone agree that the game is miserable and it should be ended and start over? Why does it have to continue until you happen to have the card that can end it?

It is Just an Excuse

And this is when we come to the reality of the situation. "Game's gotta end" just means one of two things: the player is too uninventive to come up with a fun way to end a game; or they know the card isn't fun, and its overpowered, but I need an excuse to play with it anyway. It is just an excuse. They don't play it as a mercy to their opponents, they are playing it because winning is more important to them than the fun game experience that most people are looking for from a Commander game. I guarantee that if you are about to put them out of a game, they'll play that card or card combo to win.

Play decks that guide you to winning plays

I hate to end on a negative so rather than run cards that bring games to abrupt endings, build your decks to move toward that end game. If your deck is built to win a certain way, players soon learn that and can generally see how close you are to winning, based on what your deck is trying to do. Obviously some cards can alter the path of victory for your deck, and other cards jump you forward along that path, but your deck is trying to win along that axis. Whether the deck is strong or a little more durdle, you are moving along that path. When I play my Vorel of the Hull Clade deck, players generally know that I intend to win with creatures that are fat with +1/+1 counters, because that is what I'm trying to do with Vorel. The deck is built to win on that path. Dropping Expropriate into that deck simply doesn't make sense. It is just me saying that I'm hoping for some cheap wins and I'm not really concerned about whether the others playing the game are having a good time.

I want my games to be fun. I want to win, but not at the cost of everyone enjoying the game. I want to win because my deck has done what it is supposed to do, not because I happened to draw a card that ends the game out of the blue in my favor.

Games don't "gotta end." Just make the games more fun!

Bruce

@manaburned