u/KirbyStarWarrior666

I just got Splintered Fate yestersay, and have been having a lot of fun with it. So far, I've had 5 runs, all of them failures. The first run I lost to enemies in the City streets levels. The second, third, and fourth run I all lost to the Beebop and Rocksteady boss (two to the Mouser section in between phases, one to the second phase of the two themselves) and the fifth phase to a miniboss encounter in the Rooftop level.

I'm gradually improving, but since I haven't reached Shredder yet, let alone defeat him, I was curious on what the average amount of runs it took other players to beat Shredder for the first time.

I got back into playing Magic the Gathering recently (I started playing last year, but haven't played since last summer, so I'm still pretty new to the game) and as I was looking back at some old posts I made about my experience on a Discord server, I started wondering if I broke the social contract and/or was kingmaking during my first commander game.

This happened all the way back in late May 2025, so I don't know all of the details. But I know I was playing with two other players in a board game cafe. I didn't have a commander deck of my own yet, so one of the players lent me his pirate deck with [[Admiral Brass, Unsinkable]] being the commander. One player was playing an Elf deck that was all about swarming the field with Elf tokens, while the other was playing a deck that combined angels and plants. (I remember the general themes of their decks, but I don't remember their commanders) The Elf player was dominating us for most of the game, and had a huge Life advantage over both of us (he was still in the high 20s or low 30s, while I was in the single digits, and the other player was in the low 10s). He was able to kill both of us for game, but I asked if he could spare both me and the Angel-Plant player so that we could battle it out for second place. The Elf player agreed so long as we didn't attack him until after one of us eliminated the other.

My turn came around, and I drew [[Dire Fleet Ravager]]. I casted it, and had all of us lose a third of our Life, which meant way more for the Elf player than it did for us since he had far more life. After that, I played a board wipe card (can't remember which one) that destroyed all our creatures except for one of the Angel-Plant player's, since it had indestructible. After that, I got out Admiral Brass Unsinkable and entered the combat phase. With Admiral Brass' effect, even though she herself couldn't attack due to summoning sickness, I was able to get Dire Fleet Ravager back and give him haste, and cutting all of our Life by a third once again. This put the Elf player relatively close in life to the Angel-Plant player, since his Life total being cut meant a lot more to him than it did for us.

The Angel-Plant player and I only attacked each other as agreed on, and he ended up defeating me. But because the Elf player had to build up his creatures all over again and had significantly less Life than he did before, the Angel-Plant player ended up beating him and winning the game

I never gave it much thought before, especally since from what I remember, both of my opponents had fun with the game. But now that I know more about the social contract in Commander, as well as learning about kingmaking, I started to wonder if what I did was breaking the social contract or not. I didn't attack the Elf player as agreed on, and I couldn't have known that I would draw into Dire Fleet Ravager. But I did know that I had a board wipe in my hand and casted it knowing that it would wipe out the Elf player's creatures as well as the Angel-Plant player's and kept that part hidden for the sake of leveling the playing field. At the end of the day, I guess I'm asking if what I did could be considered breaking the social contract?