Magic: The Gathering is a game filled with competitive number-wrangling, percentage trimming, and constant optimization. It’s a game that requires players to keep track of what they might be drawing, every potential line of play in front of them, and every potential line of play that their opponent might have too.
However, it’s also a game where there are formats that just ignore that completely in favor of pure chaos. Commander is one of those formats for sure, and while there are a lot of great ways to make the most of the multiplayer mash that happens with enough players in the format, few of those are quite as gratifying as goad.
That player said mean things about your dog
Goad is a mechanic that reads, “Until your next turn, those creatures attack each combat if able and attack a player other than you if able.” It makes it so that you can make sure people have to attack, but at no real risk to yourself other than the innate aggro you’ll draw from them by making them have to do things. After all, nobody likes being told what to do.
Goad has a wide range of uses other than making sure players have to do things. For starters, it means you can get players to have to figure out who they’re going to attack, which can lead to more politics as you go anyway, and can actually get you off the hook. “I made them have to attack, but they could have hit the other player and not you, that’s really on them.” See, masterful stuff.
There’s also the fact that it leaves that player largely defenceless too. If they have to attack with all of their creatures, then it means they can’t play defensively. It’s a great way to speed games up a bit, and if you can goad every creature on the board on the same turn, then it’s an excellent way to make sure that you’ll likely be in a strong positon to pick someone to leave the game on your next turn.
Read More: You Should Allow Proxies In Commander
