Toxrill, the CorrosiveToxrill, the Corrosive Illustrated by Simon Dominic

Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas?

This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"

I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email [email protected] with your story, a pseudonym you want to use, and of course, only include details you don't mind in the column! You might see your story below one day. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast?

THIS PODCAST!

I'm Mike Carrozza and I'm learning to hug Nothing.

I want to hug everything and so I want to hug nothing. 

This week, graveyard decks, am I right?

(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)

SUBMISSION

VERDICT

Thank you for writing and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so if you, the reader, want to send me a story, whether it's your own or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to [email protected] and I'll get to it here.

I'll start by saying this: I would not be surprised to learn if Toxrill, the CorrosiveToxrill, the Corrosive is the card whose art has been the featured image for my article series the most amount of times.

So... I'd say not the best start, if I'm being real. Toxrill may not be a Game Changer since it eats a Path to ExilePath to Exile real nice, but Sluggy Sluggerson definitely changes how people have to play the game.

I can appreciate your playstyle being "I play to have fun, but I also like to win fairly", but I have questions for where on the spectrum one tips the scales for the other.

It sounds like you have fun by winning, but not too easily. I mean, that's fair, right? If it wasn't challenging, the game wouldn't be so engaging, but if you keep losing, you can get a little frustrated.

That said, looking at it from the other players' perspective, you kept bringing back a board wipe on legs and most decks are at least built around a creature people want to keep in play.

To try to see it from the receiving end's perspective, considering you kept having to reanimate Toxrill, it sort of sounds like the rest of the table's resources were used up to get rid of the big Slug in hopes that a large enough window allows for them to make a dent in your reanimation engine or to set up in a way that won't be affected by Toxrill.

Toxrill might have been the best card to reanimate to win the game eventually, but when does the tipping point of liking to have fun come into play here, and was it fun for you to keep doing this? As a fellow reanimator player, if the best option to bring back is the card that makes the table groan, at a certain point, I'll be picking the sub-optimal play because the game isn't all about me.

Inb4 people talk about the concept of "playing with your food", yada yada: I think it's important to let your opponents have a breather if they aren't willing to concede and all that's left is digging for your wincon. I'm very clearly erring on the side of "I like to have fun" rather than the "win fairly" end of your play philosophy, but I guess my question is "where is the line?" How badly is a win going to contribute to your fun if the rest of the group isn't stoked to be playing a multiplayer game with you?

It's the jury management problem from Big Brother and other such socially competitive reality shows; I talked about it in this article a while back and mostly recounted the Paul fiasco from memory, but it's definitely informed some of my decisions in Magic.

While you want to win, it's important to make people feel challenged and not trounced. If you are an unstoppable force and have inevitability, there is usually a recognition of the possibility of ending the game prematurely.

Some people don't like to bring it up when they're in the position of power, which is understandable, especially if they think the only way to do this is by asking repeatedly "do you want to just scoop?"

Instead, you can float the idea that you will continue to reanimate Toxrill as it is the best option to not only clear the board but also to provide you with the necessary tokens to draw your cards and get closer to closing out the whole deal.

Heck, Tox is a 7/7 that can probably get in for decent damage while it's wrecking everybody's board, there's some more inevitability. Bringing this up to the table might kickstart a discussion about whether or not it is worth it to play through the rest of the game or just give you the W.

On some level, the more competitive end of the spectrum, you're correct to keep bringing back Toxrill as this is what will get you closer to the end of the game, victorious.

On the fun side, if opponents are openly requesting you bring back something less oppressive and point to one of the all-time best Fleshbag MarauderFleshbag Marauder/Edict effects with a Saga that ends in Rise of the Dark RealmsRise of the Dark Realms, yeah, buddy, you might be going a little too hard.

You aren't wrong, but it's important to know who you're playing against. At an LGS, people are more hesitant to say what they're feeling for fear of stepping face first into a faux pas like Sideshow Bob in a yard of rakes.

Take the temperature, be more communicative and receptive to this communication. Your opponent begging for a break from the slime counters can sound a lot like "okay, you win this one, can we play it through without you reanimating Toxrill for a bit?"

Nobody's stopping you from tucking this one away as a win, spiritually. Enjoy knowing you had it, but then enjoy cranking up the difficulty level to your own game after being the high difficulty level for everybody else's.

I'm going to give you a Bolas here. Clearly showing my bias for "fun" being more of the social element and the progressive nature of a game engine rather than stalls.

If everybody at the table is playing competitively and telling you they need to play it through and they want to win really badly, then fine, you get this one, but otherwise, pull back, buddy, you've already won... basically.

I should also reiterate that I appreciate that you read the column and that you wrote in! It really means a lot. Being the Bolas isn't a constant state of being, but rather simply a moment in time. You're not a bad person for any of this.

<3

Mike