I try to only answer anything if I absolutely have to. Instead, you have to be judicious with your answers. While it’s technically possible to win this way, you give up a lot of control in the game, and I don’t think it’s ultimately a very good strategy. If answering anything is always bad, you could theoretically not play any cards that answer anything and only play threats.
Also, sometimes there’s something that is only threatening you, and then no one else will answer it for you, so you have to be able to answer it. However, if you never answer anything, sometimes you’ll lose to something you couldn’t answer.
Because of this, you never want to be the player to answer something. For the most part, any time any player answers a threat, it hurts them and it hurts the player whose threat is being answered, and it helps the other players at the table. To me, the most foundational aspect of multiplayer politics is the question of who’s going to answer a threat. I grew up playing multiplayer games with a group of friends who were very into the political side of things, and recently I’ve been playing a lot of cEDH, so I wanted to discuss one of the core concepts behind politics in Commander, which is the role of public information. The political aspect of multiplayer formats is a completely different skill than two player Magic tests, and for me, it’s one of the most interesting parts.
