When is it considered unsportsmanlike to concede a game in MTG?

When is it considered unsportsmanlike to concede a game in MTG?

>playing against a dude with B/G removal/ManLands designed around plinking you away slowly while destroying any creature you can play
>Has over 23 removal spells
>I only have 20ish creatures, my gameplay is based around playing creatures
>he can literally in ANY hand deal with my opening hand of 3 playable creatures and remove anything I can play afterwards
>almost no responses, gamestate is just drawing cards, taking damage, playing a creature that gets blasted off the table

Next Standard night, if I run into him again with the same deck, I plan to concede the round to him. I understand this may seem salty, but my deck has almost literally 0 play against him. And in this current rotation, I don't have a real way to deal with his removal in a 15 card sideboard. I'm sure he enjoys playing things each turn and having things to do, but I don't enjoy sitting down for 30 minutes only to have almost 0 interactivity.

So, is it considered unsportsmanlike to concede when you see a deck type you literally cannot compete against?

No, but I know the pain you speak of. My senior year, one of my friends was a control player and constantly used a deck of nothing but kill spells.

You got mad

Use your sideboard or just play a game for humor and concede g2. He could potentially get mana screwed/flooded twice.

There is zero shame in knowing when you can't win and cutting to the chase.

However, sideboards are a thing; consider dedicating a few sideboard cards to matchups like this. Creatures with hexproof or indestructible, for example.

Just run a deck with hexproof creatures and you're golden

It's not unsportsmanlike, but if you wanted to win and didn't have anything else to do if you conceded, sit there and hope he bricks on his draws.

Question real quick: Is it normal for LGSs to have mostly tournaments and no regular "casual" nights where people just sit down and play Magic for fun? Because as far as I can tell my LGS has only EDH nights and thats it. Which is a shame because I really want to play my janky Modern decks.

Not a lot of hexproof in standard rotation currently, especially for W/G, aside from Sigarda, and even then he can kill sigarda t stop my humans getting hexproof.

To top this off, he has at least 4xLanguish, which gets around hexproof AND indestructible. A common theme is for him to use spells that give negative counters/negative power/toughness to kill my shit. As W/G humans with a counter emphasis, I basically need a perfect opening hand to still keep one creature on turn 4.

I think I will at least attempt a game 1 and see if he bricks, if he doesn't I'll concede game 2 because I'd rather get up, piss and eat/drink something than play a second game of draw, play creature, lose creature, take damage, repeat.

The problem is establishing segregation.
Tournaments cater to people who like to compete and win.
Casual (in ideal theory) caters people who like to do sub-optimal but fun things and aren't good enough to compete at tournament level.
Casual (in actuality) also caters to people who like bringing "the best deck" for easy wins.
If you can't keep the tournament winseekers from shitting in the casual games, you're soon not going to have casual games. Likewise, you have to let the tournament players who do know how to have fun in, or they'll get pissed and leave.

I have friends who would rather stay in an unwinnable game and just act pouty which makes it miserable for both parties. These are the same people who wont change their decks and take most advise as a personal attack especially if its against a pet card.
Also why not make a thread looking for deck advice instead of one where you just come off as stubborn and salty?

I don't quite get what you're trying to say. Is it normal to have not a lot of "casual" nights? I guess personally my issue is that the people at my LGS's idea of "fun" is just winning without having any care for an interesting and challenging match between two people.

Your janky modern deck probably destroys the guy looking to play his pile of this year's draft pulls and gets destroyed by the guy wanting to play his old extended deck, but all three of you might turn up to a casual night. It's incredibly difficult to define "casual" (and attempts generally render it non-casual: as soon as a certain type of player sees a set of restriction they're going to be motivated to optimize within the constraints). Functioning casual play groups are built from tight-knit players who can track every deck in the meta.

Because there's not a whole lot that can be changed within the current set of standard to stop this. Almost nothing can currently give hexproof in standard aside from Sigarda, and Sigarda can be easily removed.

If this were modern I would have no trouble sideboarding in something to deal with removal, but in this current standard rotation for w/g humans, aside from changing the deck entirely to fight this one deck, which is insane as my deck easily tables a lot of other opponents, there's not a lot I can do.

I was merely asking if it would be considered super salty to say "Your deck is clearly going to win this unless you get mana screwed or mana flooded and I get excellent draws. I concede your deck is better and concede the round".

GW has a ton of ways to fight heavy removal, Coco, walkers, secure the wastes, you could even just branch into simple WG tokens that has stuff like Hangarback an deven more walkers plus it usually just kills them before they can stabilize. and unless you do something silly like picking up your cards in a huff or bitching about it theirs nothing wrong with scooping to an unwinnable situation or matchup

just don't be a dick about it really

"Hah, I don't really have a sideboard for this matchup. You good if I fold?"

Relating to sportsmanship, if you're playing multiplayer and you concede in order to screw someone or get revenge, you can fuck right off. If someone attacks me with a 50/50 lifelink that I can't block, I'm not going to concede to keep him from also getting the life. My fucking friends do this and don't understand why it pisses me off.

There is no honor in bringing a knife to a gunfight. Just concede and gtfo.

The only thing you can do is adapt if his deck is going to be a problem in future games/tourneys,

There is a meme in our group called "gg, tempo loss"
Miss a land drop? gg, tempo loss
Opponents delver flips on first card? GG, tempo loss
Opponents makes a tempo play?
You get the idea.

This is good advice. There is a way to beat any deck, you just have to explore your options. Your opponent isnt playing blue, so there are no counterspells to deal with general threats. Planeswalkers should be good, as there are hardly any cards in black and green to deal with them. Also use discard like Duress and Transgress the mind to pick off problem cards.

The only situation I think conceding is unsportsmanlike is in a multiplayer to deny another player resources (lifelink and other similar stuff).

Not the same guy but what if I was in the exact same situation but running a UW spirits/tempo shell? I usually run into the same situation against a certain player in my LGS. Unless Ojutai + always watching hits the field im certain to lose. For this week my plan was a counter intensive sideboard and pray something sticks in the early game.

If you opponent is there to win, conceding is always acceptable.
If you opponent is there to play, conceding is only acceptable immediately before a loss.

This guy sounds like he's there to win. Just concede right away.
If he gets upset about not playing, he can play with a different deck or with someone else while he waits for the next round.


The rest of the thread is right about tailoring your deck/sideboard to the local meta though.

I am not familiar with MTG, but I have never heard of conceding being unsportsmanlike conduct.
Is this a thing with all american games or just MTG?

In my book the only time it's unsportsmanlike to concede is if you're playing a close game agaibst sone kind of engine deck, they finally got it online, and you presumably don't have an answer.

Let them have the satisfaction of finally overwhelming.

There was a guy I knew who ran a blue/white control deck that at the time was such a counter to any deck a newbie could fathom that we just outright refused to play against the deck. Later on, we still wouldn't play it, because although we had developed counters to it, all games boiled down to if our deck was prepared to shut him down or not, and each game became completely onesided based on that.

That's really the reason I quit playing Magic though, we ran into this situation more times than I cared to deal with. When you start, the sky's the limit on deckbuilding, as you continue, you start to face stronger and stronger decks to the point where you're playing a meta.