Hey gang, like the title says, I've been getting really into magic this last year. I've been playing standard with my girlfriend and we have a blast playing low power 1 v 1 sessions at our LGS. Recently a few of our friends have let me talk them into playing with us and we've grown to having a commander night on Wednesdays! SO FUN.
I have like 6 edh decks that I've built mostly from precons that I've upgraded. One of my buddies bought a SoS Lorehold precon and he's lovin it. I let everyone else use one of mine.
Big problem though... we start playing at like 630-7pm and we keep failing to get through a game without people kinda burning out on time / running out of time before we all feel like we're running too long and "it's getting pretty late".
Most of the time is spent with people not knowing how cards work, or not really being ready to play their turn when it gets to them. There's a ton of, "ok I untap and draw, I'll play this land, and then I'll tap.... wait, no... can I play this if I don't have ____? Oh... shoot ok well then hmmm I guess I'll tap this and etc etc".
I do a lot of explaining / learning on the fly with how cards like [[Serra Paragon]] work, or one that was kinda tough was "Blink" spells with exiling your own cards. I learn a bunch from this and have a ton of fun when we all figure it out... But it just takes too long and we loose steam and don't finish.
Tonight we were almost there... but my girlfriend played [[Deathbringer Reagent]] and it reset everything... she kinda knew it would make the game last too long too, but it was either that or let our buddy who was playing his Riders of Rohan precon just wipe us all out with his massive army of human tokens with trample.
I'm rambling, but I guess I'm looking for advice on what we should do. Keep playing and getting better and faster but just kinda accepting that we're not really gonna finish games for a while? Or is there other ways to play faster commander. I've thought of lowering life totals? But then what about the 21 damage rule? Is there another set of rules that people like for this scenario?
Thanks for the help / advice!
TLDR: I'm new and my friends are super new. We're struggling to finish games because sometimes it takes forever for us to figure out rules or mechanics etc. Any advice on what we should do?
EDIT: We're playing with 4 people. Me my girlfriend and consistently our other buddy. The 4th has been our other buddy's girlfriend, or that same guy's cousin. Buddy's GF and Cousin are brand new.
EDIT 2: Holy shit... I messed up and have not been keeping track of cumulative commander damage. I just thought if you take 21 damage in a single turn you die. Not cumulative damage from a certain commander regardless of life gain. This is gonna help so much. TY everyone.