MTG: Why Can't Commander Players Agree On What "Play To Win" Means?

thegamer.com:

One of Magic: The Gathering’s most frustratingly persistent points of contention is how players talk about the power of their decks in the Commander format. A four-player, social-focused format where having a good time is more important than outright winning, it’s an open-ended mishmash of all kinds of decks, strategies, and efficiencies.

Everyone is encouraged to have ‘rule zero discussions’ to hash out the overall intent of the game before it starts: what decks are you playing, how fast can they win, are you working with combos or free interaction, to deal with the near-infinite number of decks you can play, and the problem of people playing differently levelled decks against each other.

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But in the endless discussions about if this Commander or that card is suitable for 'casual play' (glossing over what the hell ‘casual’ even means), one phrase seems to bring things grinding to a halt more frequently than anything else: 'I play to win'. For the sake of your Commander games, it’s worth thinking about how destructive that phrase is, and how very little it even says.

'I play to win' is a phrase so void of any actual meaning that it sucks the air out of the room and shuts down any further conversation. It sounds deep and meaningful, until you realise this is a game where only one person can win. Of course, everybody is playing to win, whether they’re a pubstomper bringing a cEDH deck to a precon table, or someone hoping their janky Okapi Tribal can cut it in a competitive pod. By throwing out 'I play to win!', you’re no longer talking about the game, you’re needlessly arguing for your place at that table.

The issue with ‘I play to win’