Threat Assessment

Question about a commander game I had last night. To set the scene me and 3 friends are playing precons we’d not played before and were about 4/5 turns in.

In turn order: 1 playing Henzie from streets Me playing Firkraag from Baldur 1 playing Saheeli from Aether 1 playing Zimone from Duskmourn

We’ve all got a creature/commander on the field or two but Henzie is the only player with a Sol ring and arcane signet.

Henzies turn and he plays Etali primal storm, none of us interact and he passes turn to me. I then attack with Firkraag and goad the Etali - my logic being that he’s 100% attacking next turn anyway so it might aswell not be 6 damage coming at me. Saheeli and Zimone take their turns, nothing to note.

Henzies turn again, Etali attacks the Zimone for 6 unblocked damage and we all give Etali a card. He gets whisperwood elemental from Zimone, astral dragon from me, and a basic 3/3 from Saheeli. As Astral enters he chooses to copy his Sol ring giving him 2 3/3 Sol Ring dragon creatures. At his end step he manifests from whisperwood elemental. At this point I jest “at least we know who’s the problem” - mans got like 7 creatures on board and has like 13 mana.

My turn next, I play Kazuul to try and give myself some form of defence as I have no removal (heart of the cards ey) and then to keep value with my Firkraag I attack the Zimone. My logic being that I can’t attack Henzie as he could block and kill me, Saheeli has 1 creature on board compared to Zimones 4 from manifest dread. The Zimone player then casts reality shift which exiles my commander.

At this point I’m triggered and a little argument ensues. My point is that he just let Etali attack him for 6 damage and ramp off to oblivion when he could’ve exiled Etali before even attacking. But me attacking him for 4 damage and getting no cards off anyone was a bigger problem.

There wasn’t any more removal before Etalis next turn. He attacked again next turn and got nothing from Saheeli, dissipation field from me, and primordial mist from Zimone. Like 2 turns later, spells have been cast etc and Zimone ends up taking 37 damage to the face and dying, me and the Saheeli then scoop because we can’t stop Henzie.

After the game we’re arguing again any Zimone is defending his removal choice with his reasons being: 1) Etali had already gotten benefit after attacking so there was no point removing it (confused????)

2) he didn’t want to be goaded by Firkraag

3) he could deal with Henzies board state and it wasn’t affecting him (again… confused??? Henzie won like 2 turns later so????)

4) it wasn’t fair he was “responsible” for dealing with Etali as me and Saheeli weren’t doing anything to stop it either

It’s literally the next day and I’m still feeling pissy from the game. Am I correct in thinking Etali should’ve been the recipient of the exiling or is my friend justified in his threat assessment and reasoning?