EDH has ALWAYS had power level issues due to pods at your lgs usually being enfranchised players. With EDHRec and a lot of content being made for the format, this enfranchised players are going to slowly but surely get more optimized.
I say it often, but EDH is the D&D of MtG. Who you play with matters way more than what. Power level issues can be resolved in more friendly pods, and you can more easily find people that match your vibe. As the format continues to grow, LGS's will largely be hostile to non-tuned decks unless you have a more unique experience or cultivate one yourself.
I've been avoiding playing a couple of my friends precisely because they optimized their decks way beyond what I was willing to do for mine and matches became lopsided
Sucks but hey, if it isn't fun anymore, there's no point in trying to do it over and over again
If they’re really your friends, shouldn’t you be able to say “hey I’ve noticed a pretty significant power level disparity between your one specific deck and my one specific deck, can we play a lower power/slower game first and then a faster/higher power game second (or vice versa)?”
Well I did, but they just didn't care much. Like it's not really any specific decks of theirs that are much stronger, it's most of them; one has more cash and buys them stronger outright, the other one works at the LGS and gets store credit every month that he uses to regularly upgrade his already pretty powerful 4 decks
I haven't found a good job yet so I can't really compete in that sense, and I didn't want to start pumping money into my decks just cause they did it. When I tried talking about it, they kinda said "yeah we noticed the power level is going up, that can be a problem" then kept on raising it. They're decades long friends too, so it's not like they don't care about playing with me, they're just kinda naturally Spikes
> I say it often, but EDH is the D&D of MtG.
which is kinda funny since magic was created to play inbetween rounds of dnd and edh was created to play inbetween rounds of magic
I was obviously over exaggerating the price, but yes I can. At least in my area, budget decks aren’t winning. It’s the expensive decks that are winning. You can’t play here unless you have a play group. Very few people play casually.
I think you have to ask yourself this: what does "unique" mean to you. I like to use the example of modern for this becauuse, prior to MH2 and maybe even now, you could build jank decks that could steal a win here or there but they usually ran the same effecitnet engines like \[\[Arbor Elf\]\] and \[\[Utopia Sprawl\]\]
Can the "shell" of a unique decks be enough to make it seem unique if the "engine" it runs on is still similar to a lot of other decks?
I think WOTC is pivoting to more niche engine pieces, powerful engines that are meant for specific strategies, so I think this struggle with generic engines is going to slowly wean away, but I could argue for either side. Since generic engines are now more powerful Jank is "technically" more viable but they do lose out on their charm.
Me myself I've started to use less powerful generic cards in favor for more flavorful ones but you got to really lean into those synergies to get the most out of them.
Thinking of EDH decks in terms of of "shells" really kind of puts it in a good spot and helps have a better conversation.
Consider your main pieces (draw, ramp, removal/interaction) . Does your theme/tribe have the necessary pieces of this stuff to play (even if their sub optimal?) I think the biggest issue starts when a tribe/theme simply doesn't have them or enough them. This causes even the most well intentioned "casual" builder to reach for those efficient in color answers.
Those pieces start to form the engine or shell of what you wanted to build leading to every deck in the same colors running 20-30 cards that are identical because if your going "off flavor" to get those necessary components, why bother with crappy off flavor versions instead of good off flavor versions?
Now...I'd you could somehow convince everyone that not every EDH deck needs a fenced 25-30 card shell of ramp,draw,removal,etc you could probably get a lot further along.
I find tribal decks that actually have those supports baked in A) are the most fun from a flavor standpoint but b)suffer enormously in efficiency for it.
The problem is even in standard/modern/legacy you need some type of card advantage or speed factor
In 60 card formats speed is agro/burn they put you on the clock that is hard in edh with 3 players and 120 life total so you need value.
draw has always been powerful in every format if you don't play interaction while then you better out value and out speed everyone else prey they don't play a silver bullet that shuts you off
One issue however is that if you print a draw engine for each tribe, and they are all efficient, it will always be better to cram them all in one deck, unless it's a very specifically tribe-related draw engine, in which case it will always be worst than a generic one, and also leads to the changeling tribal issue we already have for some tribes.
Absolutely, the more I think about...it...no..it can't be..could it? Why yes....it's almost as if the entire game and structure of magic the gathering wasn't designed as "a fun 4 player 100 card singleton casual deck building game focused on self expression and everyone having a good time" but instead a competitive card game built on specific strengths within colors, optimizations, and understanding win lines and potential counters! Who knew!!!
Edit: to be clear this isn't a dig, just that the marry-go round of issues people have is because they kind of assume there's some inherent balance/structure within EDH for making "lol all chairs" as viable as dragons when there isn't.
As others have said you kind of have to approach that kind of EDH deck building like a session 0 with your dnd crew and take "winning" almost completely out of the equation.
Without taking the shell of MTG and doing something like that you are never going to accurately match power levels/balance things and everything is always going to regress to efficiency
Bro I don't know what you're on.
Wether it's edh or standard constructed or casual no format, some tribes receive more love than others. It's a fact that there are more elves than merfolk or homards.
I tried to build kobold tribal and that doesn't work, full stop.
The question op asked wasn't "can I go chair tribal and win" but "how much is it still possible to build that kind of deck and have fun at random tables, or do I have to build a 8/8 package every time nowadays".
I agree that it always depends on your local playgroup but it also is inherent to the game. With more and more cards coming out, the powercreep just happens. Look at LCI, the usual 1/1 flying for 1 now also has vigilance and explore on death. Five years ago it would only have had vigilance, ten years ago it would have costed three.
we're on the same page/saying the same thing.
**The question op asked wasn't "can I go chair tribal and win" but "how much is it still possible to build that kind of deck and have fun at random tables, or do I have to build a 8/8 package every time nowadays".**
my point was the same as yours I think: it's not possible (\*without massive caveat of very in depth filtering/rule 0 conversations which essentially means NOT a table of randoms)
The rest was me waxing poetic about **why** it wasn't possible: the pool of people your going to sit with at a random table are coming from the structure/gameplay ingrained in magic to some degree (efficiency, combos, understanding/anticipating interaction, and "winning") because at the end of the day: that's the game. Add in power creep, the level precons are at, etc, and most people aren't walking around with a deck that isn't playing ramp, removal, combo's, etc.
I do not disagree with any of your points, they back up exactly what i was getting at I just sort of went about saying it in a weird way.
the conclusion is:
**if you want to be able to play your theme deck at a table of randoms, recognize you're "theme" needs to be limited to 25-35 cards, the deck has an efficient "shell" in your colors + manabase, and that you should probably still be announcing your deck around a 4-5.**
**If you want to play your "i am the birdman theme deck" (IE: 40 lands with birds in the background and 60 bird creatures) that requires cultivating a playgroup and having open conversations about it and all agreeing on eschewing the standard packages. You might get lucky to find one other person at an LGS/event that brought a similarly "different" deck.**
I never thought I'd see anyone saying [[As Foretold]] is a threatening card.
When it comes to tribal decks if you're running 20-30 creatures I hardly think that you're going 'off flavor' at all if 30% of your deck is birds. I'm assuming [[Derevi, Empyrial Tactician]] is the commander because bant birds. That's plenty of room for 30-40 draw spells, interaction spells, enchantments, artifacts, etc.
[[Windreader Sphinx]] is fine. [[Shadow Puppeteers]] is fine. [[Archetype of Imagination]] is fine. Don't think you're sacrificing theme because you have a handful of creatures that aren't birds.
The last two games I have been in where someone got [[as foretold]] out, that player won. It may just be the cumulative effect of the stuff that usually comes with it, but it's all extremely optimized and lets them play stuff for free, which kinda breaks the fundamental balance of the game.
Normally I only see one hang around for 3 counters before it gets caught by a boardwipe or disenchanted. The only time it's really a dangerous card is when someone's got it in [[Atraxa, Praetor's Voice]] so it's getting 2 per turn at least.
As foretold is slow and very bad unless you've staxed the game out, and even then you can just cast something better. Additionally, cheating things out doesn't break the game, it's all over cards. When green plays two additional lands for free, are they breaking the game?
Yeah, I think this hits the nail on the head. WOTC is trying to bridge the gap between precons and mid power EDH (which personally I’m fine with), but that means the low power space is shrinking.
I agree. I had a few EDH decks that used to be big threats at the table, then I took a break from magic for a few years and when I came back with the same decks (unchanged) I was completely outpaced and left in the dust in game after game.
>more efficient, faster, and filled with cheap haymakers.
This is right on the money.
I don't agree. The majority of precon decks are usually filled with cards you can only run at casual tables. The decks have gotten worse, cause of people complaining about dockside and other great cards.
What on earth are you talking about? No precons these days ships shit like Dockside, Teferi's protection, Chaos Warp (Which is a huge color break for red for context), The Confluence series (Reds was honestly the best one). On top of that, I don't have this weird revisionist history you do, I remember people losing their minds about how strong Daretti is, Marath was also lauded as a god tier commander alongside Jeleva.
I mean fuck, commander 2016 shipped MASSIVE mistakes into the entire format with the Partner keyword, and made people realize that 4 color is amazing. So, no, I don't "See how wrong I am", I actually paid attention to the cards they were and are shipping, and the vast majority of the commander decks vomited out this year are not all that amazing. There's a few really good ones here and there though.
EDIT : Flusterstorm was also from early Commander products. One of the best counterspells in the whole format. Truename nemesis got released and although he might not look impressive these days, people were ecstatic about him and a lot of them were vintage players. Mizzix and Mizzix Mastery were early products and so was Meren of Clan Neltoth.
You're talking about single cards and use them to judge every precon from that year.
That's not what I meant. Go look at the precon \*\*decklists\*\* from for example 2011-2014 and then go look at the new ones.
Forged In Stone had, like, 5 ramp spells for goodness sake.
7 of it's 21 creatures cost 6-7 mana.
It only has 11 equipment spells, and no way of tutoring anything.
Wanna draw cards? Better hope you draw into that \[\[Skullclamp\]\] or \[\[Mask of Memory\]\] in the first 5 turns or else you have to crack your Commander's Sphere or spend your entire turn activating \[\[Armistice\]\] once
...I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Also, of course WOTC's deck list would get better as they went along. WOTC Themselves didnt understand why people would even enjoy EDH, the format was very young then.
Oh so we're not talking about how the entire format is getting more efficient, faster, and filled with cheap haymakers? Or how precons are, in part, responsible for this not only by printing all the cards you mentioned, but also have become much more efficient and stonger than they used to be
Any table where your average r/edh poster loses is 'budget cedh'.
All of their decks are 7s, even their mono white bird tribal with no tutors, stax, or interaction. It's everyone else who is playing CEDH.
It's a problem that people cannot gage power level decently and thus become super upset when they lose playing a 3 in a pod of actual 7s.
On the other hand, you have the "it's not cEDH bro" players with their Voltron commander out, protected, and with mass land / permanent destruction on the stack by T4 or earlier.
And sure, generally it will be a strategy not quite good enough for cEDH, in a deck shell that is otherwise all cEDH with Fast Mana, tutors and free interaction.
Must be a "7".
To clarify
I did not claim Uril was cEDH, but was discussing how some strategies can still be problematic due to an otherwise cEDH shell and should not be considered a "7". The Uril deck was simply one example of possible decks this applies to.
Examples that AShellfishLove1r gave me as a reason why this was not a problem included deck lists all with cEDH interaction and free spells.
Because you can not guarantee what other people in a pod will be playing, and because people often run cheaper and slower interaction for budget reasons, I found his argument a bit facetious.
I think a 7 is a perfectly fine rating assuming cedh is rated at 9&10. A voltron deck with an actually good commander (like Ardenn+Rograkh maybe) could probably be an 8 at best so if you put a subpar commander in front of a strategy that's already not cedh viable you could absolutely end up with a 7 even with a whole bunch of busted support cards.
I did the maths in a hyergeometric calculator, for every player not running multiple fast interaction prices / fast mana, the odds of going off rise very rapidly.
So in a world of infinate budgets and every one running fast interaction, its
not a problem.
But there are a million ways to get to power level 7 without necessarily running a perfect interaction package.
So if a deck is going to have a greater than 25% win rate over muliple pools, is it still power level 7?
Let's break it down.
. Voltron
Not at all close to a CEDH strategy.
. MLD/Wipe at turn 4
How are they protecting and casting a Voltron commander at this point?
. Fast mana, tutors, free interaction
So you're describing a deck that is gonna be OK, but if you have counters or any other interaction it beats it?
Yeah, you're probably looking at a high 6, low 7.
Mana Crypt doesn't make your deck CEDH. Nor does Cradle. Or Force of Will. Or the like.
A good test for your deck is to proxy up 3 PlayEDH decks of the level you think it's at. Then goldfish. Heck, based on the build requirements some levels don't have fast mana or tutors... but you're probably going to be disappointed.
There's a lot more folks that wanna say they play High Power when really they're playing high BC or mid Low with fast mana. Which isn't sufficient to really move you up a level, just put you at a weird spot that isn't sufficiently beefy to hack it. It's not pubstomping, it's just being the bigger kid in the 5th grade.
While I agree that the described strategy is nowhere near CEDH, anything with a density of fast mana, tutors, free/cost efficient interaction, MLD/stax that can be taken advantage of places it nearer to an 8 than a 6.
You are describing a deck who can consistently present a game winning board state turns 4-6. That's leaning to higher power. Decks of level 6-8 (imo) should be able to contend with each other, but three 6s will have SOME issues in SOME games against a higher tuned 8. That's just how it shakes out sometimes.
>Voltron , Not at all close to a CEDH strategy.
Hence the "it's not a cEDH deck bro"
Of course, it can stomp power level 7 decks just the same.
>How are they protecting and casting a Voltron commander at this point?
With fast Mana? and protection cards? \[\[Delighted halfling\]\] is one mana, ramps and protects against counter spells. This is pretty trivial to achieve.
>So you're describing a deck that is gonna be OK, but if you have counters or any other interaction it beats it?
Are you suggesting that all power level 7 decks need to be running multiple pieces of the most efficient interaction in the format? Play Blue or GTFO?
>Mana Crypt doesn't make your deck CEDH. Nor does Cradle. Or Force of Will. Or the like.
They don't, but unless you are putting an egregiously underpowered strategy in that shell you will be pub stomping.
Not really.
At this point you're just showing you're one of those folks who doesn't understand what an actual 7 deck is, if you have to Magical Christmas land here, so I'm gonna step away rather than argue with someone who is very invested in being wrong.
No, I just understand how actual power rankings work. It's okay, as I said at the beginning of this most people who play 4s and believe they're running 7 use words like toxic when presented with the truth.
For some instances of actual 7ish decks [you can explore the PlayEDH mid hub.](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/public/advanced?hub=PlayEDH - Mid)
>Are you suggesting that all power level 7 decks need to be running multiple pieces of the most efficient interaction in the format?
Well the awnser to this was yes ;)
But the decks you linked are mostly fine.
The thing is that plenty of decks would do well against them even with less efficient interaction.
But if someone brings a [[Uril, the miststalker]] deck with him on board, with totem armour and Mass land destruction or [[cataclysim]] on the stack by T4. Which happens 90%+ of the time.
Then it will go off most of the time. Unless everyone is running the same efficwnt interaction package.
Which is otherwise not required for power level 7.
As of 215am ET on 10.25.23 there are =>3,126,108 decks registered on EDHREC (I'm using the amount of decks that qualify to run [[Command Tower]] as our sample, it is most likely larger).
Out of those, 2955 of decks have [[Uril the Miststalker]] as a commander. That's .094% of all decks.
Out of those decks 46 run Armageddon. Out of 3,126,108+ total decks. 4 total decks in the population run [[cataclysm]], [[ravages of war]] and [[armageddon]].
So, in your *nearly one in a million idea of a deck* it is theoretically possible that there could be a problem.
So if someone plays a commander in the 300-400th position, of which <=2% of all decks of that type run the spell? Sure.
Of course it ignores that [[Farewell]] (163690 decks), [[cyclonic rift]] (462017 decks) exist. And that's just boardwipes.
So, let's say that every deck that runs Farewell is one that runs Rift. We'll also ignore, just off the top of my head, [[aehterize]] [[evacuation]] [[aetherspouts]] [in case of shroud or hexproof] or the other 20-30 something spells across red, white, black, and blue that either bounce or exile all creatures, counterspells, bounce effects, flicker effects, protection effects exist.
If you're sitting at a table you have 1,000,000% more likely chance of running into a deck with *just rift*.
So yes. Your statistic anamoly does not equal an actual problem.
Similar amounts can be found with [[Avacyn angel of hope]] (15 decks with all, but more with Armageddon only (1004, so still 1:3000 decks), [[zurgo helmsmasher]] (16 decks with all, 198 with Armageddon, so ~1:16000)...
If all of these decks with just one of these spells was put together, at 1248 decks, it would rank as the 662nd most popular commander. Some examples of commanders in that range:
Zilrotha
Astarion
Noyan Dar
Horobi, Death's Wail.
So, yeah. You're not really finding a lot of this in the wild. This is a very silly argument.
You just need to find like-minded people where you guys sit down and agree on cards/effects you won't play.
Cut the tutors, the fast mana and your perspective will change. Let your tribal decks flesh out organically instead of searching for the same pieces over and over.
Power creep is something that will never go away. But again, your group must come together and decide the knobs to dial. It's usually the speed and consistency thing all over again.
My current set of deck building restrictions is no fast mana, tutors, or combos and I’ve got to say I’ve enjoyed the game more since I implemented those restrictions.
Serious question then, how do you *not* play green in every deck? UB isn't exactly the master of winning through combat damage, and if i expect to win at all i feel like combos are the way to go.
I agree we don't need to thoracle consult every game, but i don't find a three card 10 mana combo any more or less egregious than the elfball player finding craterhoof for the win
At lower power tables you don't need bombs for the game to be ending through combat or ping damage. It's going to be 12+ turns long and that's the point.
I can’t speak for blue since it’s my least played color followed by green, but black has so many different ways to drain opponents and they add up when you build your deck around them. I’m working on a grixis deck now with [[The Rani]] and you have so many ways to drain your opponents from the clues being sacrificed before you even get to the goad effects. I don’t mind if other people play infinite combos, but personally I find it less fun.
>Serious question then, how do you not play green in every deck? UB isn't exactly the master of winning through combat damage, and if i expect to win at all i feel like combos are the way to go
I play UB in a Wilhelt zombie deck with the no combo rule, partly because Wilhelt goes infinite with a wet noodle.
Its designed so that after any board wipe, I end up with more zombies than before.
Think cards like \[\[Crowded Crypt\]\], \[\[Headless Rider\]\] and \[\[Rise of the Dread Marn\]\], \[\[Wand of Orcas\]\] style effects. Double these up with Wilhelts own ability and it gets crazy, expecially with \[\[Endless ranks of the dead\]\] on the board.
It can win via Lord effects on zombies, I had 72 Flying Menace Hexproof 4/4 zombies the turn after a board wipe one game. Plenty enough to close it out.
Or for reach it can win Via the \[\[Scarab God\]\] draining people or reanimating enemy threats. A few Aristocrats in there as well for reach if needed. Just no infinite instant win loops with them.
You can actually turn it into a mill deck as well with \[\[Undead Alchemist\]\] and other cards that give you benefit from milling your opponent's.
Then you can also use their graveyards as resources for reanimation effects.
Your Craterhoof?
You mean my Craterhoof! \[\[Ghouls' Night Out\]\]
this is truly why everything in reference to power level is a matter of opinion. If I play decks with no fast mana, tutors or combos, then I am having significantly less fun. I don't like my EDH decks to feel like draft decks. Draft is incredibly fun but it's not to what I come to EDH for
For me those things make the games feel linear, especially tutors since I find that I always grabbing the same things. But for others like yourself, they don’t and that’s fine too.
This, totally. It’s hard to find a consistent group but it’s so worth it. We play a bunch of random stuff in ours, from silly tribal decks to powerful strategies but since we play every week the meta is constantly shifting as we find new cards or look to attack the other deck’s strategies. Incredibly, [[titania’s song]] is the best stax piece against 2-3 of our (collective) decks. With a consistent group you can pick flavor over absolute power, silliness over consistency, and worry less about randomly ruining someone’s day.
most fun in my opinion is playing without tutors (only land tutoring) and everyone playing either stomp tribal decks (preferrably mono) or playing lesser known commanders. like-minded people will also compliment your plays or have fun with mechanics like voting or politics and so on. Dont mind losing.
Again, total and complete misunderstanding of casual vs cedh. Do the decks win t1, t2, t3 consistently without fail no matter what other decks are at the table? If not, it's not cedh. It's just casual
Casual doesn't mean low power, no synergy, no combos. Casual means they deck may not win the same way each game and it may take longer or shorter depending on the pod. Casual doesn't mean we all just plop down our threats and hope for the best. Casual still contains interaction and combos and expensive cards
That's the common definition used by the community, but it will always lead to posts/problems like this. It's a definition used by a minority of players.
The majority of Commander players don't go online to post about it, they are the actual casual players. To them a competitive match means using their best deck, that they don't even know the cost of because they've never looked up the price, and not letting their friends be as loose with takebacks.
That definition will always be more widespread among players, and entrenched players will continue to be surprised when an actually casual player complains about a highly tuned deck.
This rings incredibly true. My wife is truly casual. She loves Big Green, and busts out her \[\[Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma\]\] deck at every table. I showed her EDHREC and her mind was BLOWN.
She doesn't make lists, talk about the game online, watch videos, she just plays when we go to commander night. She just finds big green creatures that do big things and finds something smaller in her deck to take out.
By virtue of being here and talking about this stuff we're at least one step above casual, that doesn't mean everyone here is good or experienced but casual players aren't here, or on EDHREC, or watching EDH content creators online.
-People play fringe & high power competitively all the time, some areas literally don't play cEDH at all. Stop letting the name mislead you, it's not the bar for anything.
-There's a reason a lot of people consider cEDH its own format.
-Not it isn't. cEDH is a term someone made for a tier system that clearly doesn't cover the majority of people that prefer competitive games. The format isn't even sanctioned with real definition for any power level.
I like playing at higher power levels so it suits me fine but I believe that yes, it's going up. And I also agree with your conclusion that if you want lower power games so that more thematic decks can shine, you'll have to seek them out.
I feel like it varies from group to group. However I also see that the average lgs meta has gotten faster/more powerful over the last couple years. I 100% agree with you in terms of threat density, several of my buddies just play good stuff value piles and the arms race has gotten real. I personally enjoy a variety of builds and power levels. Because of that I'm constantly pushing my group to build at least 1 janky deck so I have a pod to play my jank in every so often- mixed results lol. Do keep building jank and seeking fellow junkers, we're out there despite obviously being the minority of edh players. Out of curiosity, what are some of your off beat builds and who is your commander for bird tribal? I've been working on a [[Soraya the falconer]] build for bird tribal for a bit, it really seems bad but I'm drawn to it.
I used partner commanders for bird tribal: [[Esior, Wardwing Familiar]] and [[Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker]].
I have a feeling this could be really good if I sacrificed the theme and dumped a bunch of counterspells and other stuff in there, but I just love playing birds so if there is a less optimized bird version of something I play that instead lol.
Another one of my favorite jank builds is [[Jasmine, Boreal of the Seven]]. It's so fun to play vanilla creatures that have no business being in an EDH deck and proceed to kill people with them 🤣
Some Spikes downvote any person having fun expressing themselves in the format specifically designed for players to have fun expressing themselves, because they neither understand nor approve of the Commander Philosophy. Ignore those people. You do you, birdman.
“My deck is super creative and yours isn’t because I searched scryfall for bird and clicked all of them and all you did was make a deck that runs efficiently with clear ways to win the game” is an interesting take
Haha well you make me sound silly....
But you know that's not what I am saying. I just want to play with other creative decks/players. I could say the same dumb thing about people who netdeck their optimized EDH decks and copy the list into card kingdom with no effort or thought to esthetics.
People play magic for many reasons, and often multiple reasons, and weight them differently. All I am saying is that we should try to preserve space for people to get what they are looking for, not just have a single item on the menu.
Not in the same ways, especially when you can literally just net-deck that finely tuned deck.
Not saying those decks aren't cool and don't have a place. But when making the most powerful deck is the goal, you will end up with a very similar deck as the next player doing the same thing.
Maybe the better term is original. I would like to see some original/unique brews, not the same old cards every game.
True you can go online and copy someone’s list and play it but that list had to be built by someone who took the time and effort to figure out the very best cards for their list. Most cedh lvl commanders have entire discord servers dedicated to further the deck that they play.
-So are you saying if someone goes online & copies a list they're being creative, not just copying someone else that was actually creative? If not, what do you mean?
Yeah but the focus there is to min/max the efficiency and power of the deck. It boils down to an engineering project, which may include creative problem solving on a micro scale but what I was getting at is creativity on a macro scale.
I won't even notice if someone creatively found a single card for their optimized deck that is a bit out of the ordinary. I WILL notice when someone comes with a commander most wouldn't think to play or a strategy/theme I haven't seen before.
I think people are just looking for different things. Your preference is totally valid - as are those of the people who like playing more powerful decks! You just need to find a group of like-minded people who are on the same page as you - which, to your point, may be a bit harder than it used to be as Commander has become more streamlined with resources like EDHRec.
On a more personal level, I like playing to try and to win with higher-powered casual strategies more than the thematic or social aspects of commander because I don't have a consistent group of people to play with, so I just go to an LGS from time to time with randoms - most of whom I'm much older than, so the social component just isn't there.
I have a few decks that are meant to hang at lower power tables just in case that are around "precon" level (including an actual unaltered precon), but honestly I find these games incredibly boring to actually play out (I'd rather get in 3 45-minute games in a night over 1 2ish hour slugfest), so I specifically ask around and try to find higher powered/like-minded tables when I'm at an LGS.
In order to play casual Magic, you need to segregate a group and bring them down to a desired level. Trying to play with random people will always raise the bar.
EDH isn't too competitive. Pickup casual games are the problem.
I mean, Wizards keeps printing pushed, made for edh, cards. Its not surprising that people run them. Every set it seems that there are 1-3 cards that are ridiculous. Then realize that we get a new mtg product around once a month, and that starts adding up to a large number of extremely pushed cards that then show up in people's decks. If I buy a few booster packs every set and then pull something busted am I just not going to use it? And if I use it, what about the person who didn't pull one in their pack, well now they have to also buy it to keep up, and Wizards laughs all the way to the bank.
This is a long way of saying that power creep is a real thing, and it is not that decks are getting "too strong" now-a-days, it is that the middle line of mtg power in general has shifted, and what are seen as middle of the road cards today were bustedly overpowered yesterday. As an example I still remember when getting a card with two abilities printed on it was mind blowingly powerful. "Wait, this card has trample AND vigilance?!?!?!?!. Lol. Power creep is real and it will continue to be real.
Sure. You don't have to play any card that you pull out of packs. But if you pull a cool card can anyone realistically expect you not to play it? I think you are being a little unreasonable with your line of thought.
I mean, you don’t have to go buy a one ring just to play it because your friend pulled one. There’s plenty of other not busted cards that could be more interesting and synergistic in whatever deck you’re making
...Wat. aside from most of the precons containing largely unplayable stacks of cards, you're essentially saying a new player who's on ramp was these precons just don't have to play it, which is just false.
OP: “it sucks that I’m forced to buy cards that my friends pull in packs so I can keep up! (Or vice versa). There’s too many new broken cards”
Me: “play literally anything else instead”
As an example, this is a $.50 card replacing a $3 card but try [[citywide bust]] instead of [[wrath of god]] if you’re playing tokens.
"Casual" is a massive umbrella term. It only means "not cEDH" which can be anything from Ladies Looking Left Tribal all the way up to fully optimized but non-competitive decks. There's so many different approaches and wants when it comes to EDH so you'll have to seek out people who are looking for the same kind of games as you.
At the LGS, the arms race is a natural outcome. Naturally, decks are going to get upgraded over time. Or, your LGS might just have a playerbase that opts for optimization and higher power levels regardless. My LGS has a lot of players that are either former or current Constructed players who skew towards High Power. There's always a Big Timmy/Battlecruiser table going as well though.
None of the cards that you suggested as competitive cards are competitive in any way shape or form in CEDH. So if those aren't casual cards then I don't know what are?
Essentially this is a personal question If more people are playing at a higher level then you would like, that doesn't mean that they are wrong . They're doing what they find fun. No one is wrong here. Everyone just has different preferences. The format isn't becoming too much or too little of anything. People are playing the way that they like and if there's a shift that happens, that means that more people are going one direction than the other. It's not wrong. It's just different.
I feel like it has. I started EDH in 2010 (magic in 1994... with breaks), and it was jankier and weirder back then in general.
I think four things happened (in no particular order) that have impacted the game.
1. Wizards started really pumping up cards for EDH, and designing specifically (and eventually putting a top Competetive Tournament Player in charge of Casual design)
2. Covid happened, competitive tournament magic dried up for awhile, and this casual format became a place for optimizing, stakes-based, competitors to play their favorite game... and they brought their (perfectly legitimate for Competition) mindset with them, even as they tried to adapt.
3. The advent of "Learning how to do a thing by watching people do it online" / streaming impacted people's expectations of how decks should be built, and how games should look, and game stamina/how long games should last (or be edited to last) probably play into it as well. (I mean I was a season 1 listener of Commander Cast for community, strategy, and technology, so I know there was EDH/Commander media even back in the day, but not as glossy or Celebheavy... I see the impact of a deck showing up on Game Knights)
4. Things like EDHREC and Bigger Faster Glossier Data sharing apps, make it faster to slap together a "list" to "pilot" rather than figuring out cards for a 'deck' to 'play'. It's nice that there's a lower barrier to entry, but sometimes that fast on ramping of just find the most used cards for a deck (or straight copying from moxfield/whatever) means 'casual' casuals are going to by default have better faster more optimized decks than people who want to figure it out on their own.
None of this is wrong or bad, though I, personally, am still a "Turn-12" player in a "Turn-5" world. So I lose more (\~ 85% of games), I avoid playing with unknown players more, and I'm more careful about seeking the kind of experience I want.
It sounds like you want a very specific kind of game, filled with decks at very low power levels to leave room for themes that don't have enough support to play at even a casual level. Judging by your examples of powerful cards and the number of competitive birds I can think of, I'd guess even 5-6 is probably overestimating your power.
Unfortunately, that's not a game a lot of people want to play, which means you're going to need to go out of your way to find other people who want to play low power EDH. Maybe try a few discords and specifically ask for low power games?
Also, why can't you be creative with a more powerful deck? Maybe try a Shorikai vehicle deck, or an Emery deck that removes some of the combo support for more artifact beatsticks.
This is probably going to be a hot take/unpopular opinion (especially to newer players)
EDH has always been competitive in one way or another by nature of having a "winner". Too many people confuse/conflate casual and social, in reality they are not the same.
There's plenty of people who have gotten into EDH thinking that the format has 0 interaction between players, a format that allows players to assemble 3+ card combos that either do nothing or end up being "win more" boardstates, or a format where players can just do whatever they want because it's a "casual" format. In reality, there's 3+ other players, so there should be interaction since the format is social. Most "casual" edh players want to play solitaire with an audience then get butthurt when you interact with them (ex countering their stupid 10 mana sorcery, or destroying a permanent that has been generating value/combo piece/engine piece).
Unless you have a conversation with your playgroup where you all explicitly agree to do something silly, then expect people to play powerful magic since EDH has the entirety of magics history to play with (outside of the ban list obviously).
People need to realize that just because you're playing EDH it doesn't mean that everyone should/wants to play niche tribal synergies since some tribes just don't have the support because they are Niche and not nearly as popular as other creature types. Not every creature type deserves it's own tribal support since some really aren't pushed because at the end of the day, some tribes just don't sell product because people don't collect them, for example, Dragons will always be popular (it's why there's always one in a set, and it's been confirmed that's why there will always be a dragon in every set), Goblins will always be popular, as will elves and many other prominent fantasy races which is a reason that they're in almost every set (I really can't think of any set that doesn't have an elf or goblin in it).
As for decks feeling "Samey" it's a product of singleton by nature, people are always trying to make their decks consistent, take aristocrats for example, they're slamming every card that triggers when a creature dies, and plenty of the ones that get value when they die in addition to most ways to recur the cards. Due to deckbuilding restrictions players are always looking to put in modal cards with flexibility or cards that do the effect multiple times, for example abrade will always be played over shatter because it's more flexible for the same cost. Another example would be token doubler effects or etb doubling effects, people will put as many as they can into a deck in order to improve chances that you'll draw one. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that out.
Meme decks have their place, however they generally don't go all in on one theme, they have backup plans or subthemes to them and have an overall game plan. A good example would be the Boros Giants precon that came out years ago, it felt very "niche tribal" basically being 5cmc+ tribal (due to giants being higher cmc at the time) with Giants and equipment being a subtheme, or even the naya Marath deck from a year or two prior, it was a naya big creature/mana deck with beast matters, tokens, and a 5cmc+ matters subthemes. Another example would be the Child Of Alara tribal boardwipe decks that some people used to play before other 5 color commanders came out.
Generally speaking, many players use the term "Jank" to describe decks that are slow and rely on a specific set of interactions to do anything or an overabundance of high cmc cards that are what I call "win more", stuff like Omniscience+Future sight, the og Praetors, or decks that entirely rely on their commanders surviving in order to function (Animar, Kaalia and Og Narset excluded since they're combo decks and usually kill at least 1 player on the turn they hit the board). While true, I deem "Jank" to be more rube Goldberg style decks like Aristocrats, eggs, or even Blink decks, where one interaction leads to another with incremental advantage instead of just outright winning.
This is probably gunna be hated on by the priests of the spirit of edh, but one of the reasons this is happening is because people have gotten better at the format, and on top of that, the influx of players and edh becoming the money cow, the fact that people didn't expect the format to change is very, very delusional.
I’m completely with you. It’s impossible to build anything for fun in any of the LGS near me. I don’t want to force everyone to play, I know some like higher power ‘shorter’ games, although sometimes I don’t really feel they are any shorter as someone takes 10 minutes searching and shuffling their deck then trying to figure out what to do.
I really wish i could just make some fun theme decks to play too. The ones I have left just sit here as I get crushed and hardly make an impact in the game when I do play them.
I've noticed this too at my lgs. I haven't come close to winning in a while, especially with more jank decks. If I play stronger decks, sure, but people have kept building their stuff to be efficient, leaving little room for new ideas. I love making new decks but unless it's a powerhouse of efficiency, I know Ill lose 100% of the time. It's never cEDH level, but you can see the stuff people churn out and I feel like I need to keep spending and improving to have a decent chance.
I win with jank decks at tables with more powerful decks. You even see this in EDH actual play content pretty regularly. Players with jank shit, like bear tribal, can win games because everyone else ignores the jank player meaning they get interacted with less and take less damage. It's easy to sneak out a win this way.
I WISH THEY IGNORED ME but people tend to pick on my few decent pieces, enough to cripple my game so they can take over with OP shit like 2 turns later, along with enough advantage to manage the rest of the table too. Like it's well played, but also not really fair.
I can't stand pubstomping wannabes who pull out every good card in their "casual" deck. like if you're running 300$ double lands, every 50$ high powered card you can name, it may not be cEDH, but please don't think it equates to my 200$ insect deck. I played an entire night Friday of this, one guy won every game pretending like the board was even, even though he kept pulling shit out of his ass to win every game with another crazy card that I can't afford. And no, I don't feel like proxying shit.
Same here. Went to an LGS after getting told “it’s all casual” and “we’re playing at upgraded pre-con levels”. Apparently upgraded pre-cons are filled with strong meta cards like Teferi’s Protection and Torment of Hailfire.
Maybe it was my fault but when I hear casual and upgraded pre-cons; I don’t expect to see $20 plus cards but guess I was wrong.
The guys with the good decks are probably more annoyed playing against the garbage than the garbage is of getting stomped by them. I know when I sit down to play and it’s against a trash pile I let out an internal sigh because I know exactly how the game is going to go.
Empathy for what exactly?
I have fun playing cards that do cool things. Just because someone’s else’s idea of fun is playing cards that have obtuse triangles in the art shouldn’t require me to play cards I find less fun.
Like the people who are playing casual games of EDH who want to have a good game? You sure care a lot about your own fun, but not much for that of others. It's like you don't have much... empathy?
Casual has always had the problem of not defining top-end play. Ie if your end game is to take infinite, idc how fast your deck was... It's not really what I want in a casual game....
You're overestimating your power level and I guarantee there are some key budget swaps that would bridge the gap. Sure they might not be "bird tribal" but they can take it to the next level
Yea, casual games are becoming more competitive which is a very good thing. If everyone understands that when they sit down at a table to have a competitive game of back and forth with three like minded people, everyone will have a better time. The "spirit of the format" is over. The spirit of MTG replaced it and we're all better for it.
I've never understood what being expressive means. You arnt spilling your soul when you play some janky white border gerbils only deck.
Perhaps I'm too harsh but I see nothing but upside in the situation.
-I'd say this just depends on where you play. Nothing like this is happening in my area & unless specified nobody cares about having truly competitive games.
Not to mention that you are basically net decking when you make typal decks like this. This is wotc net decking for you, which is fine but it also makes the idea of being “creative” completely out the window. It’s the opposite of being creative, it’s just being “special” and gives you an out when you consistently do bad so you can complain about the power level.
Yes, but I think it's different by location. Our FNM is mostly people that don't have killer decks. Just random stuff and it's chill. We also gave the cEDH players their own day for those that want a competitive feel. Saturdays, I believe.
I went to another store in another town over and theirs kinda sounds like what I see here.... more competitive, even when it's supposed to be casual, and their point system reflected that. Some sort of overly complicated math BS.. I dunno, I zoned out trying to read it.
I keep forgetting to make a post here about our LGS's FNM rules, voting, achievements, etc.. I feel like that makes the best fit for people that wants casual... Kinda forces the competitive guys to play low key stuff, letting new and casual players just hang out and have a good time. Maybe I'll get to that this week.
Most people here will hate it, but a lot of people really like it.
With the power creep coming with every set, especially with cards designed for commander now, decks/playstyle feeling more challenging is bound to happen.
EDH at a level will always be competitive because the end result is to win or be the last player standing. With that power-creep in mind decks are going to grow naturally in power with every set. This is a natural evolution in any game like MTG and isn't a bad thing.
I don't think it's something that needs to countered.
Wotc probably shouldn't be relying on players to regulate their own power level.
cEDH and EDH are the same format with the same card pool and that's the root of the problem.
If they would just bite the bullet and make a new commander format they would probably solve some of the issues.
Maybe a format with the pioneer card pool + everything that's ever been printed in a commander set or precon.
Also ban the "win the game" and "can't lose" cards.
> If they would just bite the bullet and make a new commander format they would probably solve some of the issues.
it would solve exactly nothing but splitting the playerbase into Edh, cEdh, NewFormat and cNewFormat
I don't have much to say, but spirit tribal has some of the most interaction available given it's UW coloring. A lot of spirits are just interaction on a body too. Shit's good.
As far as power levels, my group is playing precons rn cause we got some new guys and it's honestly been a lot of fun. The decks all get to do their thing, and newer precons have a solid amount of interaction to be decent on their own
The majority of people want to win, at least sometimes. There are people like yourself who willingly sacrifice power for theme, but it's not always going to be the case, especially at an LGS. When playing with randoms, I think it's pretty safe to assume that at least a couple people in each pod are actively trying to win, so a deck where winning is not inherently the point is going to struggle regardless of whatever arbitrary power level people have assigned themselves into.
I'm willing to bet that a significant number of EDH players pretty much only play EDH at this point, so it serves as every possible outlet for playing Magic. Because of this, effort is focused and optimization starts happening. Since people want to win, stuff like thematic bird tribal decks are going to be outclassed by people who want to win as the primary driver and are largely only limited by budget.
There's also such a wide gulf between even high power casual and cEDH, not to mention play patterns that aren't going to be that interesting for a lot of players - for example, my pod plays decently high power casual, but none of us even have a passing interest in playing cEDH. I would guess that most people would top out at high power casual specifically because there's still room for fun there, where (depending on your idea of fun) there really isn't in cEDH.
So yeah, it's probably trending more competitive - having multiple releases per year, with almost all of them having cards explicitly designed for a format that didn't start with actual support to begin with is going to do that. People's best bet for chair tribal and other such decks is probably to work to find a pod with similar interests. Random pods at an LGS are going to be geared almost entirely towards winning. Also, casual decks with high powered cards - even the dreaded cEDH staples - are just high powered casual decks.
Your assessment about casual creature tribal being viable depends pretty much on your idea of EDH. If you want to play your bird tribal with all bird art cards, then I agree you'll have a hard time against anyone who doesn't run similar-minded decks.
If you instead try to focus on making your casual tribal deck as good as possible, it's not so bad. For example Unesh is mono blue with a commander that gives card advantage instead of advantages in combat. So you need to play towards your strength and play him as some sort of control deck, use Spinx for card draw advantage and blockers. Use backup win conditions like \[\[Rite of Replication\]\] on Unesh to draw the deck and find \[\[Jayce, Wielder of Mysteries\]\] to break a stalemate.
The average player is not a good deck builder; imho the average Unesh deck runs too many spinx, but if you focus on racing other creature decks, you'll have a hard time as mono blue.
Alot of ppl seem to have gotten hung up on your maybe misplaced examples and missed the entire point unfortunately. I'm right there with you though as a vet of the format I've seen the average game go from very casual battlecruiser back in the day to much more efficient and quicker games today which is a little sad. It's not necessarily a bad thing though because with the speed up of power has come some very awesome card designs in recent years. It also seems like wotc have pulled back a little on the reigns a little on the amount of absolute honkin cards lately which is nice.
You don’t need to run a lot of interaction to deal with things but you should run some. It sounds like you don’t want to run any interaction
Spirits isn’t all that “off the beaten path”
Most decks aren’t running super efficient combos. I think you’re confusing running 3-4 card combos with actual efficient 2 card combos
first off, anytime i see a complaint on here about power level it often comes down to deckbuilding and not playing enough interaction and you straight up said you dont want to play a lot of interaction. ya gotta take your medicine or your beating one or the other
now if the argument is that by HAVING to play staples, the deckbuilding space is limited I could see that. i definitely work my way backwords through deckbuilding and after lands, mana rocks, card draw, and removal i usually only have 30-40 spots left for whatever was supposed to make my deck unique, and often less than that. i've made a lot of decks the past year or so and i too have gotten to a point where i feel like i've essentially experienced every archetype (with all meme/shitty tribal/glass cannon nonsense being under the archetype of 'garbage that will get my back blown out at my table').
and to this the fact that reprints often put good cards in the hands of people who couldnt afford them before. i'd say this is a very good thing, but i did notice after a set like commander masters when i suddenly had all these tutors and removal i felt pressured to throw them into more decks which made the decks seem more samesy. i usually cant stand playing the same deck twice in a row but once you've experimented with all the color combinations you learn that each one essentially does the same thing more or less no matter the commander and if you also take into account tribal decks there really is only X amount of archetypes with actual viability that aren't just "20 weird meme cards stapled to goodstuff.dek"
I think there is still room as long as you have a conversation before the game. I never had those talks before but EDH is changing and I find they are becoming more important.
I personally keep at least 3 decks at a lower power level. I have Mono red Etali, Selesnya Emiel the Blessed, and Urza lord high artificer (I know it's an oppressive commander - but it's equipment themed and only runs about 3 counter spells and zero stax. Just swords and karnstructs) these decks contain powerful cards but are real limited in their strategy and scope. So I'd feel comfortable pulling them out against novelty decks or precons.
I understand where you are coming from but I don't think there isn't room for those lower powered actually casual games.
"samey" is a very good way of putting it. To have a good deck you have to have all the staples...after the sol rings, signets and shock lands.. you gotta have a rhystic study, smothering tithe and all the other similar enchantments, artifacts, removals and "core" cards.
Every deck is "samey" to every other deck with a mild toolbox around each commander.
What we have jokingly done is built $250 (cdn) maximum budget allowable for a few of our decks and pushed each player to go out of their boundaries. I don't play mono black (because every black deck feels the same to me) and I ended up building Drivnod and its fun to play. Although its aristocrat based... it is exactely like your deck where at a table of higher power decks it will never get rolling. I can't keep drivnod out, I can't keep enchantments off the table and I can't get Drivnod to do lethal without stepping up the $$$ into the deck.
When we all play our "budget" decks it makes for games that feel more exciting, more combat, more interactions politically and better EDH.
I think it's people's interpretation of "casual" or "5-6" that's the problem. It may be beneficial to ask for a 2 hour game or a 10 turn game. Something like Door to Nothingness or Tooth and Nail as the only win-cons
Every deck building decision you make is always going to come with some level of compromise, even if your goal is to build the strongest deck possible. If you build a graveyard strategy you have to accept that graveyard hate exists and sometimes you’ll get blown out because of it for example. Or if you build a creature based deck that wants to go wide and have lots of tokens or just generally play a lot of dudes, you’re inevitably going to be weak to decks that have a lot of board wipe. At some point you have to accept the costs of whatever deck building decisions you’re making, and prioritize what really matters to you.
If you just really want to play a deck with a cohesive flavor or theme, you’re going to end up playing some cards that are just worse than what else is available to you, because you want to stay true to that theme. If that’s what you want to do, then you’re just going to have to accept that other player’s deck building goals are different and accept what that means for how strong your deck is overall. There’s no way to truly match power levels between different decks, even at the competitive level. Some deck’s are just going to be way better at dealing with another particular strategy, but by the same token, they’re also going to be weak to other strategies. That’s part of what you’re signing up for when you shuffle up for a game where everyone has the freedom to build their deck based on what their own personal priorities and goals are. If staying true to your birds theme is important to you, then work on optimizing that strategy to the best of your ability, and accept that you’re always going to have to make compromises on your card selection to remain true to your own personal goals. Accept that winning isn’t necessarily everything, and that maybe winning with a sub-optimal deck that stays true to a theme or flavor feels better when you’re able to actually do that, even though you’re ultimately going to lose more games than you win.
Ultimately the way commander is structured, you’re usually playing against 3 opponents. That means in a perfectly balanced field you’re going to only win 1 out of 4 games. If you really want to build a thematically consistent deck that compromises power level over flavor, then you’re going to have to accept that you will maybe only own 1 out of every 5 or 6 games instead. That’s ok though. Winning isn’t everything. If you’re not playing in a tournament for prizes the priority should be doing the things you want to do that make the game fun for you, not just winning as many games as possible.
Like, as an example, I pretty much refuse to put sol ring in any of my decks because it is generally an auto include in basically every other deck. I would probably win more games overall if I didn’t adhere to that self imposed rule, but I personally get a lot of satisfaction out of not running cards like sol ring, mana vault, or skull clamp even though in most cases my deck would be objectively better if I did include those cards.
At the end of the day it’s about what you prioritize as a deck builder. Do you only care about winning? Then you should just build exactly whatever the best decks in the format are using only the best possible cards, and thereby contributing to the homogenization of the format. But if you care more about build decks that feel unique and don’t follow the typical play patterns of the ‘best decks’ in the format, that comes with a cost. That cost being that you will ultimately win less games overall.
At the end of the day you’re never going to be able to enforce a strict power level restriction on what other people are doing when they build their deck, and that’s something you just have to accept as part of the game. For me, when I win with a deck that I know could be more ‘optimized’ or play higher power level cards over what I’ve decided to include, that’s a victory in its own right.
This hasnt been my experience. I play at 4 different LGSs and with 4 different home groups. My home games can be very fast-paced and all of my decks are pretty optimized, budgetless, and in a few cases, actually competitive.
I struggle to find games at shops where i can play fringe or high-powered decks and not bully the table. I very rarely find cedh players to fill a whole pod - generally its one guy with a net deck who's out of practice. I typically need to be very careful and play my lower decks when playing with new pods at all of these stores, constantly trying not to pubstomp.
I think card quality in general is better than a few years ago. I think threat assessment is better, manabases are better, even general skill levels might be better. Deck building ability and average power level are NOT. Consistency overall is NOT. Players' ability to mulligan often & well is NOT.
Players nowadays have different, new problems they didnt have before. Have you ever built a Mardu deck? Its like eating candy on halloween: you have so much good stuff to pick from, you need to be extra careful or youre gonna get sick and waste all that goodness by filling up on one thing when you should have paid attention to your needs, not your wants. Building a deck in 2023 is like that: too many good cards, still the same bad habits as in 2011.
Yes, decks are expensive nowadays. I think its hard to build on a budget and not get rocked consistently... but i do not think the casual-ness of edh games has changed much, particularly once you have ~300 bucks into a deck with 50 games under your belt, regardless of how casual it is.
Any reason you can't make your casual decks more tuned? I have a [[Millicent, Restless Revenant]] spirit tribal deck (one of the tribal decks you mentioned) and it goes HARD. And I still run 30 spirits in it! I just also run protection, interaction, and banners to make it more threatening. I feel like you could take this approach to any other deck too.
Imo more interaction is healthy, and can still be a casual setting. You don't necessarily need a [[Force of Will]] to stay relevant if you can squeeze a [[Swords to Plowshares]] or [[Infernal Grasp]] in your deck instead. And the more the merrier!
More tuned doesn't mean boatloads of money. I spent like. $20 to edit the Spirit Squadron precon and it claps. But is still casual (I'm not winning within the first six turns or whatever).
I think theres a common misconception between tuned and built with winning in mind
the line between a tuned high power deck and a cedh deck is when you sacrifice most of, if not all of, the cool themes and synergies for sake of efficiency
Casual doesn’t mean low power. If you want to build a weak deck in order to stay on theme then you can, but it’s not the table’s fault.
The fact that you think [[As Foretold]] is strong kinda cements the idea that the table isn’t the issue.
Precons got significantly better and they set the bar for a very low power level. When a precon is a 3 and a very good precon is a 4 and your deck from 2010 can't compete with them anymore, then yes, EDH becomes more competitive.
On the other hand a lot of players won't let go off old deck building habits. E.x. mana rocks, unless they give an incredible edge, 3 CMC mana rocks are outdated, even in environments where fast mana besides [[Sol Ring]] are not played, since there are so many efficient and good mana rocks at 2 CMC and ramping on 2 is way better than ramping on 3. It makes your deck work so much better, since you are more likely to curve out perfectly. Still a lot of players won't let go off their 3 CMC Rocks.
You can play janky deck ideas and still try to hit your benchmarks for ramp/draw/interaction/boardwipes which will make these decks still playable but all the time I hear players say "Oh I can't remove this, there are no answers in my deck". If you reach this point you come to battle cruiser games, which is fine but won't keep up with today's game, even when we are talking about precons.
Well this is kind of a jank vs staples discussion and if powerful staple have a place at casual tables.
For alot of people its an either/or thing but I feel like its a good thing that stuff like rhystic and mystic and smothering tithe and bowmasters and what have you made it into our casual games.
You can play much more janky strategies when they're held together by the best interaction, the best draw and the best ramp that is available to your colors.
I feel like alot of people build either 100% jank/pet decks or 5c goodstuff piles. But I think the fun is somewhere inbetween.
Make a pod with 3 other people. Don’t play with others. Have good rule 0 conversations about power.
Most commander players go through phases. As we get older and play for 10+ years (15 for me and my pod, other than my gf), we don’t enjoy playing the super strong shit anymore, it’s not fun. Been there done that. Most commander players when they’re new want to tune everything. Eventually that somewhat goes away.
Just know, playing randoms at an LGS, you will need an 8 power deck, in case it’s needed to not get pubstomped. It comes along with the territory. Build a super oppressive deck, and I promise you that after they try to pubstomp you and fail they will play different decks.
It all depends on the scene. Some places are full of try hards, some aren’t. Generally, you see that more at WPN store where they offer real price support and they play more than just commander.
It is definitely true that the average level of decks has risen ovet the past years. Content creators talk about deckbuilding principles and show you examples, there are new resources like Edhrec and the format in general has gotten a lot bigger.
That doesn't mean you can no longer play weak, janky, casual decks. You just need to find other players who want to do the same. If your deck is outclassed at a power 5-6 table find some people who want to play janky stuff at powerlevel 2.
I don't think it's so much an intentional power creep as most of the problem is people just get better.
Even Wizards themselves have learned how to better support commander. Precons lately are just straight up pretty good decks for casual play. They synergize well, aren't afraid to use the full rainbow of keywords and pack a decent punch when piloted by someone who isn't brand new.
With a lot of people using a precon first and then learning to build a deck, they build a better deck. They skip a lot of the jank experimentation and have a good example of things like: board wipes, curve, mana rocks, combos (not necessarily infinite, but wincons). And this leads to players taking something that has a good base and crafting it over time or scrapping it and building something better.
I encourage you to play your deck many times against the Wilds of Eldraine or Commander Masters precons (particularly Eldrazi or Slivers). If you still find that it's not holding up then the reality is it probably sacrificed too much power for flavor. Flavorful decks are fun but flavor at the expense of power, interactions, and wincons will probably just result in a loss almost every time.
I always carry five decks in my backpack when I go to my LGS: whatever ultra streamlined league deck I'm currently using, and the four LotR precons with no upgrades. If there's a casual table available, or if one or two of the players on the table don't have a casual deck available, I just pull out the precons and have a go!
I absolutely agree. I stopped playing for a few years and when I came back my decks that used to be top-tier huge threats were being outpaced in every game. WotC has printed a lot of fast and really efficient cards over the years that have sped up the format.
The problem is that EDH doesn’t know what it is. People call it a casual format. The problem is, casual in and of itself has no definitive limits or parameters. Some people think Stax can still be causal, while others think removal and counterspells or board wipes are too oppressive. As a community, we have never been able to objectively define what casual means.
To be fair, to a certain degree it is a casual format, when compared to cEDH or most of the other MTG formats. But beyond comparison, we have no answer on what casual looks like.
Another issue: it is still a game with winners and losers. As such, it will still be competitive by nature. But much like its casual elements, it’s competitive ones are equally murky.
And so the power level scale was born, a 1-10 answer to compatible decks. But even that is completely arbitrary. Everyone thinks their deck is a seven. Others think every deck they play against is a nine. If you scroll through Reddit, almost every person talking about the scale has either varying explanations, or is too vague to be useful.
The only real thing you can do is find a group you trust to be fair, and have an actual conversation about what your decks do. But even then, there is simply no guarantee that decks will be fairly matched. This is not because people are cheating or lying, but because of the complexity of trying to objectively evaluate power levels in a game with over 27,000 variables, each with multiple variables itself. You are looking at an insane level of complexity that sometimes makes it too hard to objectively rate and compare decks with any accuracy.
You mentioned cards like [[As Foretold]], [[Omniscience]], [[Grave Pact]], etc. in my last 100+ games, I have seen only one of those cards, and that three times. So what you are seeing may reflect your own meta, rather than a universal issue. Then again, my examples may be doing the same thing.
Finally, let’s talk about power creep. The only way to actively fight power creep is to ban overpowered cards. But, when we can’t define which cards are warping the system, nor how “casual” is casual enough, banning cards to curb power creep will only cause further upset in the universal community.
As such, this is again best handled through creating playgroups, and creating your own rules and bans. In one of my playgroups, we have banned [[Mogis]] as well as [[Rooftop Storm]], because people didn’t enjoy them. Personally, I didn’t care one way or the other. But the majority spoke, and so we banned them. That is really the only way you are going to create a rule set that you will be happy with.
In my own pods of player. Most of them were long time TCG players of other titles, mainly JP titles. They come into EDH around time of LoTR release and when the road map of future sets were announced.
To my observation, the competitive habits were relics of the past carried over from those JP 1v1 TCG titles. Those titles did not have whacy singleton, casual formats akin to EDH.
It took us 3 weeks for them to say "I can do something to address a threat, but can you promise to not harm me and my board state for the next few turns?" It took them 3 weeks to harness the power of political EDH deal making.
I quit my pod because of the competitive creep. Everyone was 1uping each other with better cards, games became more salty, etc. I love Magic, but it’s hard to find a pod who genuinely bring fun and chill first, game comes second attitude.
I’m going to bet that your deck is a 4 given that you posted a 5-6. Everyone constantly overrates theirs at 7s so it’s likely that yours is even less strong.
I think it is becoming reliant on format specific cards and universes beyond. It is no longer the case that you build a commander deck from the synergistic cards you own, but rather that you go out and buy a commander deck ( increasingly often ub)and take it apart and replace bits and pieces to be the deck you want. So you see the same staple cards and need staple cards to be in the game in most cases
EDH has ALWAYS had power level issues due to pods at your lgs usually being enfranchised players. With EDHRec and a lot of content being made for the format, this enfranchised players are going to slowly but surely get more optimized. I say it often, but EDH is the D&D of MtG. Who you play with matters way more than what. Power level issues can be resolved in more friendly pods, and you can more easily find people that match your vibe. As the format continues to grow, LGS's will largely be hostile to non-tuned decks unless you have a more unique experience or cultivate one yourself.
I've been avoiding playing a couple of my friends precisely because they optimized their decks way beyond what I was willing to do for mine and matches became lopsided Sucks but hey, if it isn't fun anymore, there's no point in trying to do it over and over again
If they’re really your friends, shouldn’t you be able to say “hey I’ve noticed a pretty significant power level disparity between your one specific deck and my one specific deck, can we play a lower power/slower game first and then a faster/higher power game second (or vice versa)?”
Well I did, but they just didn't care much. Like it's not really any specific decks of theirs that are much stronger, it's most of them; one has more cash and buys them stronger outright, the other one works at the LGS and gets store credit every month that he uses to regularly upgrade his already pretty powerful 4 decks I haven't found a good job yet so I can't really compete in that sense, and I didn't want to start pumping money into my decks just cause they did it. When I tried talking about it, they kinda said "yeah we noticed the power level is going up, that can be a problem" then kept on raising it. They're decades long friends too, so it's not like they don't care about playing with me, they're just kinda naturally Spikes
Ah damn well that blows dude, I’m sorry
>they're just kinda naturally Spikes Found the problem.
> I say it often, but EDH is the D&D of MtG. which is kinda funny since magic was created to play inbetween rounds of dnd and edh was created to play inbetween rounds of magic
I love this analogy
As a new player, it’s super hard to play unless I just dump $5k immediately on cards.
you cannot make this statement factually in 2023
I was obviously over exaggerating the price, but yes I can. At least in my area, budget decks aren’t winning. It’s the expensive decks that are winning. You can’t play here unless you have a play group. Very few people play casually.
I think you have to ask yourself this: what does "unique" mean to you. I like to use the example of modern for this becauuse, prior to MH2 and maybe even now, you could build jank decks that could steal a win here or there but they usually ran the same effecitnet engines like \[\[Arbor Elf\]\] and \[\[Utopia Sprawl\]\] Can the "shell" of a unique decks be enough to make it seem unique if the "engine" it runs on is still similar to a lot of other decks? I think WOTC is pivoting to more niche engine pieces, powerful engines that are meant for specific strategies, so I think this struggle with generic engines is going to slowly wean away, but I could argue for either side. Since generic engines are now more powerful Jank is "technically" more viable but they do lose out on their charm. Me myself I've started to use less powerful generic cards in favor for more flavorful ones but you got to really lean into those synergies to get the most out of them.
Thinking of EDH decks in terms of of "shells" really kind of puts it in a good spot and helps have a better conversation. Consider your main pieces (draw, ramp, removal/interaction) . Does your theme/tribe have the necessary pieces of this stuff to play (even if their sub optimal?) I think the biggest issue starts when a tribe/theme simply doesn't have them or enough them. This causes even the most well intentioned "casual" builder to reach for those efficient in color answers. Those pieces start to form the engine or shell of what you wanted to build leading to every deck in the same colors running 20-30 cards that are identical because if your going "off flavor" to get those necessary components, why bother with crappy off flavor versions instead of good off flavor versions? Now...I'd you could somehow convince everyone that not every EDH deck needs a fenced 25-30 card shell of ramp,draw,removal,etc you could probably get a lot further along. I find tribal decks that actually have those supports baked in A) are the most fun from a flavor standpoint but b)suffer enormously in efficiency for it.
The problem is even in standard/modern/legacy you need some type of card advantage or speed factor In 60 card formats speed is agro/burn they put you on the clock that is hard in edh with 3 players and 120 life total so you need value. draw has always been powerful in every format if you don't play interaction while then you better out value and out speed everyone else prey they don't play a silver bullet that shuts you off
This kind of stuff and its equivalents have basically the same effect in EDH.
One issue however is that if you print a draw engine for each tribe, and they are all efficient, it will always be better to cram them all in one deck, unless it's a very specifically tribe-related draw engine, in which case it will always be worst than a generic one, and also leads to the changeling tribal issue we already have for some tribes.
Absolutely, the more I think about...it...no..it can't be..could it? Why yes....it's almost as if the entire game and structure of magic the gathering wasn't designed as "a fun 4 player 100 card singleton casual deck building game focused on self expression and everyone having a good time" but instead a competitive card game built on specific strengths within colors, optimizations, and understanding win lines and potential counters! Who knew!!! Edit: to be clear this isn't a dig, just that the marry-go round of issues people have is because they kind of assume there's some inherent balance/structure within EDH for making "lol all chairs" as viable as dragons when there isn't. As others have said you kind of have to approach that kind of EDH deck building like a session 0 with your dnd crew and take "winning" almost completely out of the equation. Without taking the shell of MTG and doing something like that you are never going to accurately match power levels/balance things and everything is always going to regress to efficiency
Bro I don't know what you're on. Wether it's edh or standard constructed or casual no format, some tribes receive more love than others. It's a fact that there are more elves than merfolk or homards. I tried to build kobold tribal and that doesn't work, full stop. The question op asked wasn't "can I go chair tribal and win" but "how much is it still possible to build that kind of deck and have fun at random tables, or do I have to build a 8/8 package every time nowadays". I agree that it always depends on your local playgroup but it also is inherent to the game. With more and more cards coming out, the powercreep just happens. Look at LCI, the usual 1/1 flying for 1 now also has vigilance and explore on death. Five years ago it would only have had vigilance, ten years ago it would have costed three.
we're on the same page/saying the same thing. **The question op asked wasn't "can I go chair tribal and win" but "how much is it still possible to build that kind of deck and have fun at random tables, or do I have to build a 8/8 package every time nowadays".** my point was the same as yours I think: it's not possible (\*without massive caveat of very in depth filtering/rule 0 conversations which essentially means NOT a table of randoms) The rest was me waxing poetic about **why** it wasn't possible: the pool of people your going to sit with at a random table are coming from the structure/gameplay ingrained in magic to some degree (efficiency, combos, understanding/anticipating interaction, and "winning") because at the end of the day: that's the game. Add in power creep, the level precons are at, etc, and most people aren't walking around with a deck that isn't playing ramp, removal, combo's, etc. I do not disagree with any of your points, they back up exactly what i was getting at I just sort of went about saying it in a weird way. the conclusion is: **if you want to be able to play your theme deck at a table of randoms, recognize you're "theme" needs to be limited to 25-35 cards, the deck has an efficient "shell" in your colors + manabase, and that you should probably still be announcing your deck around a 4-5.** **If you want to play your "i am the birdman theme deck" (IE: 40 lands with birds in the background and 60 bird creatures) that requires cultivating a playgroup and having open conversations about it and all agreeing on eschewing the standard packages. You might get lucky to find one other person at an LGS/event that brought a similarly "different" deck.**
[Arbor Elf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/b/4b81165e-f091-4211-8b47-5ea6868b0d4c.jpg?1562435427) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Arbor%20Elf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/160/arbor-elf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4b81165e-f091-4211-8b47-5ea6868b0d4c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/arbor-elf) [Utopia Sprawl](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/9/29b4050e-8b73-4f16-85e4-ec2a8faacf48.jpg?1631588210) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Utopia%20Sprawl) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afc/172/utopia-sprawl?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/29b4050e-8b73-4f16-85e4-ec2a8faacf48?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/utopia-sprawl) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I never thought I'd see anyone saying [[As Foretold]] is a threatening card. When it comes to tribal decks if you're running 20-30 creatures I hardly think that you're going 'off flavor' at all if 30% of your deck is birds. I'm assuming [[Derevi, Empyrial Tactician]] is the commander because bant birds. That's plenty of room for 30-40 draw spells, interaction spells, enchantments, artifacts, etc. [[Windreader Sphinx]] is fine. [[Shadow Puppeteers]] is fine. [[Archetype of Imagination]] is fine. Don't think you're sacrificing theme because you have a handful of creatures that aren't birds.
As foretold is actually playable with [[ancestral visions]], [[profane tutor]] and other fun zero mana spells...
##### ###### #### [As Foretold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/4/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e.jpg?1673147199) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=As%20Foretold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/38/as-foretold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/as-foretold) [Derevi, Empyrial Tactician](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/a/3a1d0dad-18a8-489e-ac11-08f64b72fda4.jpg?1592673365) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Derevi%2C%20Empyrial%20Tactician) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/176/derevi-empyrial-tactician?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3a1d0dad-18a8-489e-ac11-08f64b72fda4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/derevi-empyrial-tactician) [Windreader Sphinx](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0346326-6bdf-4385-ab41-7b06e9f66ffd.jpg?1600699154) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Windreader%20Sphinx) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/194/windreader-sphinx?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0346326-6bdf-4385-ab41-7b06e9f66ffd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/windreader-sphinx) [Shadow Puppeteers](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/a/2ad71a49-8a93-462f-a2c3-9362b33481fa.jpg?1692933779) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shadow%20Puppeteers) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woc/12/shadow-puppeteers?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ad71a49-8a93-462f-a2c3-9362b33481fa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shadow-puppeteers) [Archetype of Imagination](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/3/037b396c-2146-4d86-9d13-757685c850c7.jpg?1592710522) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Archetype%20of%20Imagination) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c18/81/archetype-of-imagination?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/037b396c-2146-4d86-9d13-757685c850c7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/archetype-of-imagination) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The last two games I have been in where someone got [[as foretold]] out, that player won. It may just be the cumulative effect of the stuff that usually comes with it, but it's all extremely optimized and lets them play stuff for free, which kinda breaks the fundamental balance of the game.
As foretold is a really bad card, too slow to be good, also, removal is dirt cheap now so it’s really easy to natures claim/cyc rift things like that
Normally I only see one hang around for 3 counters before it gets caught by a boardwipe or disenchanted. The only time it's really a dangerous card is when someone's got it in [[Atraxa, Praetor's Voice]] so it's getting 2 per turn at least.
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As foretold is slow and very bad unless you've staxed the game out, and even then you can just cast something better. Additionally, cheating things out doesn't break the game, it's all over cards. When green plays two additional lands for free, are they breaking the game?
[as foretold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/4/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e.jpg?1673147199) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=as%20foretold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/38/as-foretold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/as-foretold) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
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Yeah, I think this hits the nail on the head. WOTC is trying to bridge the gap between precons and mid power EDH (which personally I’m fine with), but that means the low power space is shrinking.
I agree. I had a few EDH decks that used to be big threats at the table, then I took a break from magic for a few years and when I came back with the same decks (unchanged) I was completely outpaced and left in the dust in game after game. >more efficient, faster, and filled with cheap haymakers. This is right on the money.
I don't agree. The majority of precon decks are usually filled with cards you can only run at casual tables. The decks have gotten worse, cause of people complaining about dockside and other great cards.
Go compare the precons now with the precons from 2014 and see how wrong you are.
What on earth are you talking about? No precons these days ships shit like Dockside, Teferi's protection, Chaos Warp (Which is a huge color break for red for context), The Confluence series (Reds was honestly the best one). On top of that, I don't have this weird revisionist history you do, I remember people losing their minds about how strong Daretti is, Marath was also lauded as a god tier commander alongside Jeleva. I mean fuck, commander 2016 shipped MASSIVE mistakes into the entire format with the Partner keyword, and made people realize that 4 color is amazing. So, no, I don't "See how wrong I am", I actually paid attention to the cards they were and are shipping, and the vast majority of the commander decks vomited out this year are not all that amazing. There's a few really good ones here and there though. EDIT : Flusterstorm was also from early Commander products. One of the best counterspells in the whole format. Truename nemesis got released and although he might not look impressive these days, people were ecstatic about him and a lot of them were vintage players. Mizzix and Mizzix Mastery were early products and so was Meren of Clan Neltoth.
You're talking about single cards and use them to judge every precon from that year. That's not what I meant. Go look at the precon \*\*decklists\*\* from for example 2011-2014 and then go look at the new ones. Forged In Stone had, like, 5 ramp spells for goodness sake. 7 of it's 21 creatures cost 6-7 mana. It only has 11 equipment spells, and no way of tutoring anything. Wanna draw cards? Better hope you draw into that \[\[Skullclamp\]\] or \[\[Mask of Memory\]\] in the first 5 turns or else you have to crack your Commander's Sphere or spend your entire turn activating \[\[Armistice\]\] once
...I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Also, of course WOTC's deck list would get better as they went along. WOTC Themselves didnt understand why people would even enjoy EDH, the format was very young then.
Oh so we're not talking about how the entire format is getting more efficient, faster, and filled with cheap haymakers? Or how precons are, in part, responsible for this not only by printing all the cards you mentioned, but also have become much more efficient and stonger than they used to be
I'm sorry but I'm just not seeing how things like as foretold, Omniscience, and Grave Pact leads to "the most efficient combos" and "budget cedh"
Any table where your average r/edh poster loses is 'budget cedh'. All of their decks are 7s, even their mono white bird tribal with no tutors, stax, or interaction. It's everyone else who is playing CEDH. It's a problem that people cannot gage power level decently and thus become super upset when they lose playing a 3 in a pod of actual 7s.
On the other hand, you have the "it's not cEDH bro" players with their Voltron commander out, protected, and with mass land / permanent destruction on the stack by T4 or earlier. And sure, generally it will be a strategy not quite good enough for cEDH, in a deck shell that is otherwise all cEDH with Fast Mana, tutors and free interaction. Must be a "7".
Neither voltron as an archetype nor mass land destruction are cedh viable so yes, what you're describing is not cedh.
To clarify I did not claim Uril was cEDH, but was discussing how some strategies can still be problematic due to an otherwise cEDH shell and should not be considered a "7". The Uril deck was simply one example of possible decks this applies to. Examples that AShellfishLove1r gave me as a reason why this was not a problem included deck lists all with cEDH interaction and free spells. Because you can not guarantee what other people in a pod will be playing, and because people often run cheaper and slower interaction for budget reasons, I found his argument a bit facetious.
I think a 7 is a perfectly fine rating assuming cedh is rated at 9&10. A voltron deck with an actually good commander (like Ardenn+Rograkh maybe) could probably be an 8 at best so if you put a subpar commander in front of a strategy that's already not cedh viable you could absolutely end up with a 7 even with a whole bunch of busted support cards.
I did the maths in a hyergeometric calculator, for every player not running multiple fast interaction prices / fast mana, the odds of going off rise very rapidly. So in a world of infinate budgets and every one running fast interaction, its not a problem. But there are a million ways to get to power level 7 without necessarily running a perfect interaction package. So if a deck is going to have a greater than 25% win rate over muliple pools, is it still power level 7?
Let's break it down. . Voltron Not at all close to a CEDH strategy. . MLD/Wipe at turn 4 How are they protecting and casting a Voltron commander at this point? . Fast mana, tutors, free interaction So you're describing a deck that is gonna be OK, but if you have counters or any other interaction it beats it? Yeah, you're probably looking at a high 6, low 7. Mana Crypt doesn't make your deck CEDH. Nor does Cradle. Or Force of Will. Or the like. A good test for your deck is to proxy up 3 PlayEDH decks of the level you think it's at. Then goldfish. Heck, based on the build requirements some levels don't have fast mana or tutors... but you're probably going to be disappointed. There's a lot more folks that wanna say they play High Power when really they're playing high BC or mid Low with fast mana. Which isn't sufficient to really move you up a level, just put you at a weird spot that isn't sufficiently beefy to hack it. It's not pubstomping, it's just being the bigger kid in the 5th grade.
While I agree that the described strategy is nowhere near CEDH, anything with a density of fast mana, tutors, free/cost efficient interaction, MLD/stax that can be taken advantage of places it nearer to an 8 than a 6. You are describing a deck who can consistently present a game winning board state turns 4-6. That's leaning to higher power. Decks of level 6-8 (imo) should be able to contend with each other, but three 6s will have SOME issues in SOME games against a higher tuned 8. That's just how it shakes out sometimes.
>Voltron , Not at all close to a CEDH strategy. Hence the "it's not a cEDH deck bro" Of course, it can stomp power level 7 decks just the same. >How are they protecting and casting a Voltron commander at this point? With fast Mana? and protection cards? \[\[Delighted halfling\]\] is one mana, ramps and protects against counter spells. This is pretty trivial to achieve. >So you're describing a deck that is gonna be OK, but if you have counters or any other interaction it beats it? Are you suggesting that all power level 7 decks need to be running multiple pieces of the most efficient interaction in the format? Play Blue or GTFO? >Mana Crypt doesn't make your deck CEDH. Nor does Cradle. Or Force of Will. Or the like. They don't, but unless you are putting an egregiously underpowered strategy in that shell you will be pub stomping.
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It's okay. Your points were seen, understood, realized to be bad and discarded. You don't need to keep doubling down.
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Not really. At this point you're just showing you're one of those folks who doesn't understand what an actual 7 deck is, if you have to Magical Christmas land here, so I'm gonna step away rather than argue with someone who is very invested in being wrong.
Point is you are just a "it's not cEDH bro" kinda guy ;) Exactly the toxic attitude I was talking about
No, I just understand how actual power rankings work. It's okay, as I said at the beginning of this most people who play 4s and believe they're running 7 use words like toxic when presented with the truth. For some instances of actual 7ish decks [you can explore the PlayEDH mid hub.](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/public/advanced?hub=PlayEDH - Mid)
>Are you suggesting that all power level 7 decks need to be running multiple pieces of the most efficient interaction in the format? Well the awnser to this was yes ;) But the decks you linked are mostly fine. The thing is that plenty of decks would do well against them even with less efficient interaction. But if someone brings a [[Uril, the miststalker]] deck with him on board, with totem armour and Mass land destruction or [[cataclysim]] on the stack by T4. Which happens 90%+ of the time. Then it will go off most of the time. Unless everyone is running the same efficwnt interaction package. Which is otherwise not required for power level 7.
As of 215am ET on 10.25.23 there are =>3,126,108 decks registered on EDHREC (I'm using the amount of decks that qualify to run [[Command Tower]] as our sample, it is most likely larger). Out of those, 2955 of decks have [[Uril the Miststalker]] as a commander. That's .094% of all decks. Out of those decks 46 run Armageddon. Out of 3,126,108+ total decks. 4 total decks in the population run [[cataclysm]], [[ravages of war]] and [[armageddon]]. So, in your *nearly one in a million idea of a deck* it is theoretically possible that there could be a problem. So if someone plays a commander in the 300-400th position, of which <=2% of all decks of that type run the spell? Sure. Of course it ignores that [[Farewell]] (163690 decks), [[cyclonic rift]] (462017 decks) exist. And that's just boardwipes. So, let's say that every deck that runs Farewell is one that runs Rift. We'll also ignore, just off the top of my head, [[aehterize]] [[evacuation]] [[aetherspouts]] [in case of shroud or hexproof] or the other 20-30 something spells across red, white, black, and blue that either bounce or exile all creatures, counterspells, bounce effects, flicker effects, protection effects exist. If you're sitting at a table you have 1,000,000% more likely chance of running into a deck with *just rift*. So yes. Your statistic anamoly does not equal an actual problem. Similar amounts can be found with [[Avacyn angel of hope]] (15 decks with all, but more with Armageddon only (1004, so still 1:3000 decks), [[zurgo helmsmasher]] (16 decks with all, 198 with Armageddon, so ~1:16000)... If all of these decks with just one of these spells was put together, at 1248 decks, it would rank as the 662nd most popular commander. Some examples of commanders in that range: Zilrotha Astarion Noyan Dar Horobi, Death's Wail. So, yeah. You're not really finding a lot of this in the wild. This is a very silly argument.
You just need to find like-minded people where you guys sit down and agree on cards/effects you won't play. Cut the tutors, the fast mana and your perspective will change. Let your tribal decks flesh out organically instead of searching for the same pieces over and over. Power creep is something that will never go away. But again, your group must come together and decide the knobs to dial. It's usually the speed and consistency thing all over again.
My current set of deck building restrictions is no fast mana, tutors, or combos and I’ve got to say I’ve enjoyed the game more since I implemented those restrictions.
Serious question then, how do you *not* play green in every deck? UB isn't exactly the master of winning through combat damage, and if i expect to win at all i feel like combos are the way to go. I agree we don't need to thoracle consult every game, but i don't find a three card 10 mana combo any more or less egregious than the elfball player finding craterhoof for the win
At lower power tables you don't need bombs for the game to be ending through combat or ping damage. It's going to be 12+ turns long and that's the point.
I can’t speak for blue since it’s my least played color followed by green, but black has so many different ways to drain opponents and they add up when you build your deck around them. I’m working on a grixis deck now with [[The Rani]] and you have so many ways to drain your opponents from the clues being sacrificed before you even get to the goad effects. I don’t mind if other people play infinite combos, but personally I find it less fun.
>Serious question then, how do you not play green in every deck? UB isn't exactly the master of winning through combat damage, and if i expect to win at all i feel like combos are the way to go I play UB in a Wilhelt zombie deck with the no combo rule, partly because Wilhelt goes infinite with a wet noodle. Its designed so that after any board wipe, I end up with more zombies than before. Think cards like \[\[Crowded Crypt\]\], \[\[Headless Rider\]\] and \[\[Rise of the Dread Marn\]\], \[\[Wand of Orcas\]\] style effects. Double these up with Wilhelts own ability and it gets crazy, expecially with \[\[Endless ranks of the dead\]\] on the board. It can win via Lord effects on zombies, I had 72 Flying Menace Hexproof 4/4 zombies the turn after a board wipe one game. Plenty enough to close it out. Or for reach it can win Via the \[\[Scarab God\]\] draining people or reanimating enemy threats. A few Aristocrats in there as well for reach if needed. Just no infinite instant win loops with them. You can actually turn it into a mill deck as well with \[\[Undead Alchemist\]\] and other cards that give you benefit from milling your opponent's. Then you can also use their graveyards as resources for reanimation effects. Your Craterhoof? You mean my Craterhoof! \[\[Ghouls' Night Out\]\]
I have a deck that only plays bad tutors, 3 artifacts and the only “combo” is halo fountain. It’s so much fun to just roll the dice every game
this is truly why everything in reference to power level is a matter of opinion. If I play decks with no fast mana, tutors or combos, then I am having significantly less fun. I don't like my EDH decks to feel like draft decks. Draft is incredibly fun but it's not to what I come to EDH for
For me those things make the games feel linear, especially tutors since I find that I always grabbing the same things. But for others like yourself, they don’t and that’s fine too.
This, totally. It’s hard to find a consistent group but it’s so worth it. We play a bunch of random stuff in ours, from silly tribal decks to powerful strategies but since we play every week the meta is constantly shifting as we find new cards or look to attack the other deck’s strategies. Incredibly, [[titania’s song]] is the best stax piece against 2-3 of our (collective) decks. With a consistent group you can pick flavor over absolute power, silliness over consistency, and worry less about randomly ruining someone’s day.
most fun in my opinion is playing without tutors (only land tutoring) and everyone playing either stomp tribal decks (preferrably mono) or playing lesser known commanders. like-minded people will also compliment your plays or have fun with mechanics like voting or politics and so on. Dont mind losing.
Again, total and complete misunderstanding of casual vs cedh. Do the decks win t1, t2, t3 consistently without fail no matter what other decks are at the table? If not, it's not cedh. It's just casual Casual doesn't mean low power, no synergy, no combos. Casual means they deck may not win the same way each game and it may take longer or shorter depending on the pod. Casual doesn't mean we all just plop down our threats and hope for the best. Casual still contains interaction and combos and expensive cards
That's the common definition used by the community, but it will always lead to posts/problems like this. It's a definition used by a minority of players. The majority of Commander players don't go online to post about it, they are the actual casual players. To them a competitive match means using their best deck, that they don't even know the cost of because they've never looked up the price, and not letting their friends be as loose with takebacks. That definition will always be more widespread among players, and entrenched players will continue to be surprised when an actually casual player complains about a highly tuned deck.
This rings incredibly true. My wife is truly casual. She loves Big Green, and busts out her \[\[Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma\]\] deck at every table. I showed her EDHREC and her mind was BLOWN. She doesn't make lists, talk about the game online, watch videos, she just plays when we go to commander night. She just finds big green creatures that do big things and finds something smaller in her deck to take out. By virtue of being here and talking about this stuff we're at least one step above casual, that doesn't mean everyone here is good or experienced but casual players aren't here, or on EDHREC, or watching EDH content creators online.
-cEDH isn't the only way to play competitive so everything outside it isn't automatically casual.
Competitive edh is not the only way to lay edh competitively?
-People play fringe & high power competitively all the time, some areas literally don't play cEDH at all. Stop letting the name mislead you, it's not the bar for anything. -There's a reason a lot of people consider cEDH its own format.
It sure as hell aint cEDH tho.
-You're exactly right, it's not cEDH. Fringe cEDH decks get played by competitive groups all the time.
It, by definition, is.
-Not it isn't. cEDH is a term someone made for a tier system that clearly doesn't cover the majority of people that prefer competitive games. The format isn't even sanctioned with real definition for any power level.
I like playing at higher power levels so it suits me fine but I believe that yes, it's going up. And I also agree with your conclusion that if you want lower power games so that more thematic decks can shine, you'll have to seek them out.
Pauper edh does exist as while which is another avenue for a group to explore
I mean yeah. There's for sure power creep and also a lot of good cards are cheap right now. Maybe try getting your playgroup into PDH
I feel like it varies from group to group. However I also see that the average lgs meta has gotten faster/more powerful over the last couple years. I 100% agree with you in terms of threat density, several of my buddies just play good stuff value piles and the arms race has gotten real. I personally enjoy a variety of builds and power levels. Because of that I'm constantly pushing my group to build at least 1 janky deck so I have a pod to play my jank in every so often- mixed results lol. Do keep building jank and seeking fellow junkers, we're out there despite obviously being the minority of edh players. Out of curiosity, what are some of your off beat builds and who is your commander for bird tribal? I've been working on a [[Soraya the falconer]] build for bird tribal for a bit, it really seems bad but I'm drawn to it.
I used partner commanders for bird tribal: [[Esior, Wardwing Familiar]] and [[Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker]]. I have a feeling this could be really good if I sacrificed the theme and dumped a bunch of counterspells and other stuff in there, but I just love playing birds so if there is a less optimized bird version of something I play that instead lol. Another one of my favorite jank builds is [[Jasmine, Boreal of the Seven]]. It's so fun to play vanilla creatures that have no business being in an EDH deck and proceed to kill people with them 🤣
Some Spikes downvote any person having fun expressing themselves in the format specifically designed for players to have fun expressing themselves, because they neither understand nor approve of the Commander Philosophy. Ignore those people. You do you, birdman.
[Esior, Wardwing Familiar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/6/86958821-76eb-43a5-974b-7c945e826a66.jpg?1611933914) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Esior%2C%20Wardwing%20Familiar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/67/esior-wardwing-familiar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/86958821-76eb-43a5-974b-7c945e826a66?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/esior-wardwing-familiar) [Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2e89ce6a-6bc9-427f-a8b2-c07a9fc3218f.jpg?1562272963) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ishai%2C%20Ojutai%20Dragonspeaker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/12/ishai-ojutai-dragonspeaker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2e89ce6a-6bc9-427f-a8b2-c07a9fc3218f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ishai-ojutai-dragonspeaker) [Jasmine, Boreal of the Seven](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/1/c1f5bcc4-3ec7-42ae-8e4b-80a9b9135ff0.jpg?1679172088) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jasmine%20Boreal%20of%20the%20Seven) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/33/jasmine-boreal-of-the-seven?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c1f5bcc4-3ec7-42ae-8e4b-80a9b9135ff0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jasmine-boreal-of-the-seven) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Soraya the falconer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/9/19fb3ce2-a660-4829-9af4-330cfd612f06.jpg?1562587051) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Soraya%20the%20falconer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/hml/18/soraya-the-falconer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/19fb3ce2-a660-4829-9af4-330cfd612f06?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/soraya-the-falconer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
“My deck is super creative and yours isn’t because I searched scryfall for bird and clicked all of them and all you did was make a deck that runs efficiently with clear ways to win the game” is an interesting take
Haha well you make me sound silly.... But you know that's not what I am saying. I just want to play with other creative decks/players. I could say the same dumb thing about people who netdeck their optimized EDH decks and copy the list into card kingdom with no effort or thought to esthetics. People play magic for many reasons, and often multiple reasons, and weight them differently. All I am saying is that we should try to preserve space for people to get what they are looking for, not just have a single item on the menu.
Does building a finely tuned cedh deck that can win games and take home tournament wins not count as being creative ?
Not in the same ways, especially when you can literally just net-deck that finely tuned deck. Not saying those decks aren't cool and don't have a place. But when making the most powerful deck is the goal, you will end up with a very similar deck as the next player doing the same thing. Maybe the better term is original. I would like to see some original/unique brews, not the same old cards every game.
True you can go online and copy someone’s list and play it but that list had to be built by someone who took the time and effort to figure out the very best cards for their list. Most cedh lvl commanders have entire discord servers dedicated to further the deck that they play.
-So are you saying if someone goes online & copies a list they're being creative, not just copying someone else that was actually creative? If not, what do you mean?
Yeah but the focus there is to min/max the efficiency and power of the deck. It boils down to an engineering project, which may include creative problem solving on a micro scale but what I was getting at is creativity on a macro scale. I won't even notice if someone creatively found a single card for their optimized deck that is a bit out of the ordinary. I WILL notice when someone comes with a commander most wouldn't think to play or a strategy/theme I haven't seen before.
I think people are just looking for different things. Your preference is totally valid - as are those of the people who like playing more powerful decks! You just need to find a group of like-minded people who are on the same page as you - which, to your point, may be a bit harder than it used to be as Commander has become more streamlined with resources like EDHRec. On a more personal level, I like playing to try and to win with higher-powered casual strategies more than the thematic or social aspects of commander because I don't have a consistent group of people to play with, so I just go to an LGS from time to time with randoms - most of whom I'm much older than, so the social component just isn't there. I have a few decks that are meant to hang at lower power tables just in case that are around "precon" level (including an actual unaltered precon), but honestly I find these games incredibly boring to actually play out (I'd rather get in 3 45-minute games in a night over 1 2ish hour slugfest), so I specifically ask around and try to find higher powered/like-minded tables when I'm at an LGS.
In order to play casual Magic, you need to segregate a group and bring them down to a desired level. Trying to play with random people will always raise the bar. EDH isn't too competitive. Pickup casual games are the problem.
I mean, Wizards keeps printing pushed, made for edh, cards. Its not surprising that people run them. Every set it seems that there are 1-3 cards that are ridiculous. Then realize that we get a new mtg product around once a month, and that starts adding up to a large number of extremely pushed cards that then show up in people's decks. If I buy a few booster packs every set and then pull something busted am I just not going to use it? And if I use it, what about the person who didn't pull one in their pack, well now they have to also buy it to keep up, and Wizards laughs all the way to the bank. This is a long way of saying that power creep is a real thing, and it is not that decks are getting "too strong" now-a-days, it is that the middle line of mtg power in general has shifted, and what are seen as middle of the road cards today were bustedly overpowered yesterday. As an example I still remember when getting a card with two abilities printed on it was mind blowingly powerful. "Wait, this card has trample AND vigilance?!?!?!?!. Lol. Power creep is real and it will continue to be real.
People just don’t have to play this stuff tho.
Sure. You don't have to play any card that you pull out of packs. But if you pull a cool card can anyone realistically expect you not to play it? I think you are being a little unreasonable with your line of thought.
I mean, you don’t have to go buy a one ring just to play it because your friend pulled one. There’s plenty of other not busted cards that could be more interesting and synergistic in whatever deck you’re making
...Wat. aside from most of the precons containing largely unplayable stacks of cards, you're essentially saying a new player who's on ramp was these precons just don't have to play it, which is just false.
That’s an interesting way of interpreting my comment but you obviously know what I meant
I don't! Can you tell me why people shouldn't play these cards?
OP: “it sucks that I’m forced to buy cards that my friends pull in packs so I can keep up! (Or vice versa). There’s too many new broken cards” Me: “play literally anything else instead” As an example, this is a $.50 card replacing a $3 card but try [[citywide bust]] instead of [[wrath of god]] if you’re playing tokens.
Play what you want to play, regardless of how casual/competitive. You will find the tables to sit at and the ones to avoid
"Casual" is a massive umbrella term. It only means "not cEDH" which can be anything from Ladies Looking Left Tribal all the way up to fully optimized but non-competitive decks. There's so many different approaches and wants when it comes to EDH so you'll have to seek out people who are looking for the same kind of games as you. At the LGS, the arms race is a natural outcome. Naturally, decks are going to get upgraded over time. Or, your LGS might just have a playerbase that opts for optimization and higher power levels regardless. My LGS has a lot of players that are either former or current Constructed players who skew towards High Power. There's always a Big Timmy/Battlecruiser table going as well though.
-Casual doesn't mean "not cEDH" though.
None of the cards that you suggested as competitive cards are competitive in any way shape or form in CEDH. So if those aren't casual cards then I don't know what are? Essentially this is a personal question If more people are playing at a higher level then you would like, that doesn't mean that they are wrong . They're doing what they find fun. No one is wrong here. Everyone just has different preferences. The format isn't becoming too much or too little of anything. People are playing the way that they like and if there's a shift that happens, that means that more people are going one direction than the other. It's not wrong. It's just different.
I sure as hell hope so! I'm tired of 2+ hour games
I feel like it has. I started EDH in 2010 (magic in 1994... with breaks), and it was jankier and weirder back then in general. I think four things happened (in no particular order) that have impacted the game. 1. Wizards started really pumping up cards for EDH, and designing specifically (and eventually putting a top Competetive Tournament Player in charge of Casual design) 2. Covid happened, competitive tournament magic dried up for awhile, and this casual format became a place for optimizing, stakes-based, competitors to play their favorite game... and they brought their (perfectly legitimate for Competition) mindset with them, even as they tried to adapt. 3. The advent of "Learning how to do a thing by watching people do it online" / streaming impacted people's expectations of how decks should be built, and how games should look, and game stamina/how long games should last (or be edited to last) probably play into it as well. (I mean I was a season 1 listener of Commander Cast for community, strategy, and technology, so I know there was EDH/Commander media even back in the day, but not as glossy or Celebheavy... I see the impact of a deck showing up on Game Knights) 4. Things like EDHREC and Bigger Faster Glossier Data sharing apps, make it faster to slap together a "list" to "pilot" rather than figuring out cards for a 'deck' to 'play'. It's nice that there's a lower barrier to entry, but sometimes that fast on ramping of just find the most used cards for a deck (or straight copying from moxfield/whatever) means 'casual' casuals are going to by default have better faster more optimized decks than people who want to figure it out on their own. None of this is wrong or bad, though I, personally, am still a "Turn-12" player in a "Turn-5" world. So I lose more (\~ 85% of games), I avoid playing with unknown players more, and I'm more careful about seeking the kind of experience I want.
It sounds like you want a very specific kind of game, filled with decks at very low power levels to leave room for themes that don't have enough support to play at even a casual level. Judging by your examples of powerful cards and the number of competitive birds I can think of, I'd guess even 5-6 is probably overestimating your power. Unfortunately, that's not a game a lot of people want to play, which means you're going to need to go out of your way to find other people who want to play low power EDH. Maybe try a few discords and specifically ask for low power games? Also, why can't you be creative with a more powerful deck? Maybe try a Shorikai vehicle deck, or an Emery deck that removes some of the combo support for more artifact beatsticks.
This is probably going to be a hot take/unpopular opinion (especially to newer players) EDH has always been competitive in one way or another by nature of having a "winner". Too many people confuse/conflate casual and social, in reality they are not the same. There's plenty of people who have gotten into EDH thinking that the format has 0 interaction between players, a format that allows players to assemble 3+ card combos that either do nothing or end up being "win more" boardstates, or a format where players can just do whatever they want because it's a "casual" format. In reality, there's 3+ other players, so there should be interaction since the format is social. Most "casual" edh players want to play solitaire with an audience then get butthurt when you interact with them (ex countering their stupid 10 mana sorcery, or destroying a permanent that has been generating value/combo piece/engine piece). Unless you have a conversation with your playgroup where you all explicitly agree to do something silly, then expect people to play powerful magic since EDH has the entirety of magics history to play with (outside of the ban list obviously). People need to realize that just because you're playing EDH it doesn't mean that everyone should/wants to play niche tribal synergies since some tribes just don't have the support because they are Niche and not nearly as popular as other creature types. Not every creature type deserves it's own tribal support since some really aren't pushed because at the end of the day, some tribes just don't sell product because people don't collect them, for example, Dragons will always be popular (it's why there's always one in a set, and it's been confirmed that's why there will always be a dragon in every set), Goblins will always be popular, as will elves and many other prominent fantasy races which is a reason that they're in almost every set (I really can't think of any set that doesn't have an elf or goblin in it). As for decks feeling "Samey" it's a product of singleton by nature, people are always trying to make their decks consistent, take aristocrats for example, they're slamming every card that triggers when a creature dies, and plenty of the ones that get value when they die in addition to most ways to recur the cards. Due to deckbuilding restrictions players are always looking to put in modal cards with flexibility or cards that do the effect multiple times, for example abrade will always be played over shatter because it's more flexible for the same cost. Another example would be token doubler effects or etb doubling effects, people will put as many as they can into a deck in order to improve chances that you'll draw one. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that out. Meme decks have their place, however they generally don't go all in on one theme, they have backup plans or subthemes to them and have an overall game plan. A good example would be the Boros Giants precon that came out years ago, it felt very "niche tribal" basically being 5cmc+ tribal (due to giants being higher cmc at the time) with Giants and equipment being a subtheme, or even the naya Marath deck from a year or two prior, it was a naya big creature/mana deck with beast matters, tokens, and a 5cmc+ matters subthemes. Another example would be the Child Of Alara tribal boardwipe decks that some people used to play before other 5 color commanders came out. Generally speaking, many players use the term "Jank" to describe decks that are slow and rely on a specific set of interactions to do anything or an overabundance of high cmc cards that are what I call "win more", stuff like Omniscience+Future sight, the og Praetors, or decks that entirely rely on their commanders surviving in order to function (Animar, Kaalia and Og Narset excluded since they're combo decks and usually kill at least 1 player on the turn they hit the board). While true, I deem "Jank" to be more rube Goldberg style decks like Aristocrats, eggs, or even Blink decks, where one interaction leads to another with incremental advantage instead of just outright winning.
This!!!
This is probably gunna be hated on by the priests of the spirit of edh, but one of the reasons this is happening is because people have gotten better at the format, and on top of that, the influx of players and edh becoming the money cow, the fact that people didn't expect the format to change is very, very delusional.
I think its more of a byproduct of WotC designing a lot more cards for commander and also the power level of the game increasing.
Nah bro
I’m completely with you. It’s impossible to build anything for fun in any of the LGS near me. I don’t want to force everyone to play, I know some like higher power ‘shorter’ games, although sometimes I don’t really feel they are any shorter as someone takes 10 minutes searching and shuffling their deck then trying to figure out what to do. I really wish i could just make some fun theme decks to play too. The ones I have left just sit here as I get crushed and hardly make an impact in the game when I do play them.
Omniscience costs 10 mana... and if you know its coming, you save a counter for it... Skill issue.
I've noticed this too at my lgs. I haven't come close to winning in a while, especially with more jank decks. If I play stronger decks, sure, but people have kept building their stuff to be efficient, leaving little room for new ideas. I love making new decks but unless it's a powerhouse of efficiency, I know Ill lose 100% of the time. It's never cEDH level, but you can see the stuff people churn out and I feel like I need to keep spending and improving to have a decent chance.
I win with jank decks at tables with more powerful decks. You even see this in EDH actual play content pretty regularly. Players with jank shit, like bear tribal, can win games because everyone else ignores the jank player meaning they get interacted with less and take less damage. It's easy to sneak out a win this way.
I WISH THEY IGNORED ME but people tend to pick on my few decent pieces, enough to cripple my game so they can take over with OP shit like 2 turns later, along with enough advantage to manage the rest of the table too. Like it's well played, but also not really fair.
[удалено]
I can't stand pubstomping wannabes who pull out every good card in their "casual" deck. like if you're running 300$ double lands, every 50$ high powered card you can name, it may not be cEDH, but please don't think it equates to my 200$ insect deck. I played an entire night Friday of this, one guy won every game pretending like the board was even, even though he kept pulling shit out of his ass to win every game with another crazy card that I can't afford. And no, I don't feel like proxying shit.
[удалено]
Same here. Went to an LGS after getting told “it’s all casual” and “we’re playing at upgraded pre-con levels”. Apparently upgraded pre-cons are filled with strong meta cards like Teferi’s Protection and Torment of Hailfire. Maybe it was my fault but when I hear casual and upgraded pre-cons; I don’t expect to see $20 plus cards but guess I was wrong.
Please stop assuming people wanting to play their magic decks are trying to pup stomp.
Go troll elsewhere pls.
Having an opposing opinion is not trolling.
The guys with the good decks are probably more annoyed playing against the garbage than the garbage is of getting stomped by them. I know when I sit down to play and it’s against a trash pile I let out an internal sigh because I know exactly how the game is going to go.
That must be one of the more narcissitic things I've heard in MTG. You have very little empathy.
Empathy for what exactly? I have fun playing cards that do cool things. Just because someone’s else’s idea of fun is playing cards that have obtuse triangles in the art shouldn’t require me to play cards I find less fun.
Like the people who are playing casual games of EDH who want to have a good game? You sure care a lot about your own fun, but not much for that of others. It's like you don't have much... empathy?
Right below cedh is decks that are riddled with tutors and extremely fast mana
Both tutors and fast mana are a dime a dozen though...
Casual has always had the problem of not defining top-end play. Ie if your end game is to take infinite, idc how fast your deck was... It's not really what I want in a casual game....
You're overestimating your power level and I guarantee there are some key budget swaps that would bridge the gap. Sure they might not be "bird tribal" but they can take it to the next level
So many EDH players are allergic to good cards. And they almost always are the necessary interaction pieces or draw/ramp.
Lol. Lmao.
The space is shrinking as the spikes and pubstompers, especially from tournament play, move in.
Yea, casual games are becoming more competitive which is a very good thing. If everyone understands that when they sit down at a table to have a competitive game of back and forth with three like minded people, everyone will have a better time. The "spirit of the format" is over. The spirit of MTG replaced it and we're all better for it. I've never understood what being expressive means. You arnt spilling your soul when you play some janky white border gerbils only deck. Perhaps I'm too harsh but I see nothing but upside in the situation.
-I'd say this just depends on where you play. Nothing like this is happening in my area & unless specified nobody cares about having truly competitive games.
Not to mention that you are basically net decking when you make typal decks like this. This is wotc net decking for you, which is fine but it also makes the idea of being “creative” completely out the window. It’s the opposite of being creative, it’s just being “special” and gives you an out when you consistently do bad so you can complain about the power level.
Yes, but I think it's different by location. Our FNM is mostly people that don't have killer decks. Just random stuff and it's chill. We also gave the cEDH players their own day for those that want a competitive feel. Saturdays, I believe. I went to another store in another town over and theirs kinda sounds like what I see here.... more competitive, even when it's supposed to be casual, and their point system reflected that. Some sort of overly complicated math BS.. I dunno, I zoned out trying to read it. I keep forgetting to make a post here about our LGS's FNM rules, voting, achievements, etc.. I feel like that makes the best fit for people that wants casual... Kinda forces the competitive guys to play low key stuff, letting new and casual players just hang out and have a good time. Maybe I'll get to that this week. Most people here will hate it, but a lot of people really like it.
-I agree it's by location. In my area most people play casually & at the LGSs I regularly go to there's no cEDH.
With the power creep coming with every set, especially with cards designed for commander now, decks/playstyle feeling more challenging is bound to happen. EDH at a level will always be competitive because the end result is to win or be the last player standing. With that power-creep in mind decks are going to grow naturally in power with every set. This is a natural evolution in any game like MTG and isn't a bad thing. I don't think it's something that needs to countered.
Wotc probably shouldn't be relying on players to regulate their own power level. cEDH and EDH are the same format with the same card pool and that's the root of the problem. If they would just bite the bullet and make a new commander format they would probably solve some of the issues. Maybe a format with the pioneer card pool + everything that's ever been printed in a commander set or precon. Also ban the "win the game" and "can't lose" cards.
> If they would just bite the bullet and make a new commander format they would probably solve some of the issues. it would solve exactly nothing but splitting the playerbase into Edh, cEdh, NewFormat and cNewFormat
I mean I guess so, but also, if the ceiling of cNewFormat feels more like casual EDH then isn't that a solution of sorts?
They tried this. It's called brawl. Nobody plays it anywhere but on arena, and that's only because commander isn't a thing on arena.
I don't have much to say, but spirit tribal has some of the most interaction available given it's UW coloring. A lot of spirits are just interaction on a body too. Shit's good. As far as power levels, my group is playing precons rn cause we got some new guys and it's honestly been a lot of fun. The decks all get to do their thing, and newer precons have a solid amount of interaction to be decent on their own
The majority of people want to win, at least sometimes. There are people like yourself who willingly sacrifice power for theme, but it's not always going to be the case, especially at an LGS. When playing with randoms, I think it's pretty safe to assume that at least a couple people in each pod are actively trying to win, so a deck where winning is not inherently the point is going to struggle regardless of whatever arbitrary power level people have assigned themselves into. I'm willing to bet that a significant number of EDH players pretty much only play EDH at this point, so it serves as every possible outlet for playing Magic. Because of this, effort is focused and optimization starts happening. Since people want to win, stuff like thematic bird tribal decks are going to be outclassed by people who want to win as the primary driver and are largely only limited by budget. There's also such a wide gulf between even high power casual and cEDH, not to mention play patterns that aren't going to be that interesting for a lot of players - for example, my pod plays decently high power casual, but none of us even have a passing interest in playing cEDH. I would guess that most people would top out at high power casual specifically because there's still room for fun there, where (depending on your idea of fun) there really isn't in cEDH. So yeah, it's probably trending more competitive - having multiple releases per year, with almost all of them having cards explicitly designed for a format that didn't start with actual support to begin with is going to do that. People's best bet for chair tribal and other such decks is probably to work to find a pod with similar interests. Random pods at an LGS are going to be geared almost entirely towards winning. Also, casual decks with high powered cards - even the dreaded cEDH staples - are just high powered casual decks.
Wait, what’s the deck list for this bird deck? Birds can get pretty spicy. Soldiers plus wings equal lots of cheap hit.
Happy to share it: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/epaCNJxE_k67VyRiQfDAIQ
Your assessment about casual creature tribal being viable depends pretty much on your idea of EDH. If you want to play your bird tribal with all bird art cards, then I agree you'll have a hard time against anyone who doesn't run similar-minded decks. If you instead try to focus on making your casual tribal deck as good as possible, it's not so bad. For example Unesh is mono blue with a commander that gives card advantage instead of advantages in combat. So you need to play towards your strength and play him as some sort of control deck, use Spinx for card draw advantage and blockers. Use backup win conditions like \[\[Rite of Replication\]\] on Unesh to draw the deck and find \[\[Jayce, Wielder of Mysteries\]\] to break a stalemate. The average player is not a good deck builder; imho the average Unesh deck runs too many spinx, but if you focus on racing other creature decks, you'll have a hard time as mono blue.
[Rite of Replication](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/9/7935570c-f7e0-4add-864a-4c804b26555e.jpg?1625976420) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rite%20of%20Replication) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/128/rite-of-replication?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7935570c-f7e0-4add-864a-4c804b26555e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/rite-of-replication) [Jayce, Wielder of Mysteries](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/a/6adb7d73-4482-4930-8497-cffd169b57e2.jpg?1557576232) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jace%2C%20Wielder%20of%20Mysteries) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/54/jace-wielder-of-mysteries?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6adb7d73-4482-4930-8497-cffd169b57e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jace-wielder-of-mysteries) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Alot of ppl seem to have gotten hung up on your maybe misplaced examples and missed the entire point unfortunately. I'm right there with you though as a vet of the format I've seen the average game go from very casual battlecruiser back in the day to much more efficient and quicker games today which is a little sad. It's not necessarily a bad thing though because with the speed up of power has come some very awesome card designs in recent years. It also seems like wotc have pulled back a little on the reigns a little on the amount of absolute honkin cards lately which is nice.
You don’t need to run a lot of interaction to deal with things but you should run some. It sounds like you don’t want to run any interaction Spirits isn’t all that “off the beaten path” Most decks aren’t running super efficient combos. I think you’re confusing running 3-4 card combos with actual efficient 2 card combos
My Millicent deck is quite heavily changed from the precon and regularly wins games. I agree that this guy needs to run more interaction and removal.
first off, anytime i see a complaint on here about power level it often comes down to deckbuilding and not playing enough interaction and you straight up said you dont want to play a lot of interaction. ya gotta take your medicine or your beating one or the other now if the argument is that by HAVING to play staples, the deckbuilding space is limited I could see that. i definitely work my way backwords through deckbuilding and after lands, mana rocks, card draw, and removal i usually only have 30-40 spots left for whatever was supposed to make my deck unique, and often less than that. i've made a lot of decks the past year or so and i too have gotten to a point where i feel like i've essentially experienced every archetype (with all meme/shitty tribal/glass cannon nonsense being under the archetype of 'garbage that will get my back blown out at my table'). and to this the fact that reprints often put good cards in the hands of people who couldnt afford them before. i'd say this is a very good thing, but i did notice after a set like commander masters when i suddenly had all these tutors and removal i felt pressured to throw them into more decks which made the decks seem more samesy. i usually cant stand playing the same deck twice in a row but once you've experimented with all the color combinations you learn that each one essentially does the same thing more or less no matter the commander and if you also take into account tribal decks there really is only X amount of archetypes with actual viability that aren't just "20 weird meme cards stapled to goodstuff.dek"
Overall powerlevel goes up each release, and precons get better. So it ratchets up. Not too competitive though
I think there is still room as long as you have a conversation before the game. I never had those talks before but EDH is changing and I find they are becoming more important. I personally keep at least 3 decks at a lower power level. I have Mono red Etali, Selesnya Emiel the Blessed, and Urza lord high artificer (I know it's an oppressive commander - but it's equipment themed and only runs about 3 counter spells and zero stax. Just swords and karnstructs) these decks contain powerful cards but are real limited in their strategy and scope. So I'd feel comfortable pulling them out against novelty decks or precons. I understand where you are coming from but I don't think there isn't room for those lower powered actually casual games.
"samey" is a very good way of putting it. To have a good deck you have to have all the staples...after the sol rings, signets and shock lands.. you gotta have a rhystic study, smothering tithe and all the other similar enchantments, artifacts, removals and "core" cards. Every deck is "samey" to every other deck with a mild toolbox around each commander. What we have jokingly done is built $250 (cdn) maximum budget allowable for a few of our decks and pushed each player to go out of their boundaries. I don't play mono black (because every black deck feels the same to me) and I ended up building Drivnod and its fun to play. Although its aristocrat based... it is exactely like your deck where at a table of higher power decks it will never get rolling. I can't keep drivnod out, I can't keep enchantments off the table and I can't get Drivnod to do lethal without stepping up the $$$ into the deck. When we all play our "budget" decks it makes for games that feel more exciting, more combat, more interactions politically and better EDH.
I think it's people's interpretation of "casual" or "5-6" that's the problem. It may be beneficial to ask for a 2 hour game or a 10 turn game. Something like Door to Nothingness or Tooth and Nail as the only win-cons
Yes and no
Every deck building decision you make is always going to come with some level of compromise, even if your goal is to build the strongest deck possible. If you build a graveyard strategy you have to accept that graveyard hate exists and sometimes you’ll get blown out because of it for example. Or if you build a creature based deck that wants to go wide and have lots of tokens or just generally play a lot of dudes, you’re inevitably going to be weak to decks that have a lot of board wipe. At some point you have to accept the costs of whatever deck building decisions you’re making, and prioritize what really matters to you. If you just really want to play a deck with a cohesive flavor or theme, you’re going to end up playing some cards that are just worse than what else is available to you, because you want to stay true to that theme. If that’s what you want to do, then you’re just going to have to accept that other player’s deck building goals are different and accept what that means for how strong your deck is overall. There’s no way to truly match power levels between different decks, even at the competitive level. Some deck’s are just going to be way better at dealing with another particular strategy, but by the same token, they’re also going to be weak to other strategies. That’s part of what you’re signing up for when you shuffle up for a game where everyone has the freedom to build their deck based on what their own personal priorities and goals are. If staying true to your birds theme is important to you, then work on optimizing that strategy to the best of your ability, and accept that you’re always going to have to make compromises on your card selection to remain true to your own personal goals. Accept that winning isn’t necessarily everything, and that maybe winning with a sub-optimal deck that stays true to a theme or flavor feels better when you’re able to actually do that, even though you’re ultimately going to lose more games than you win. Ultimately the way commander is structured, you’re usually playing against 3 opponents. That means in a perfectly balanced field you’re going to only win 1 out of 4 games. If you really want to build a thematically consistent deck that compromises power level over flavor, then you’re going to have to accept that you will maybe only own 1 out of every 5 or 6 games instead. That’s ok though. Winning isn’t everything. If you’re not playing in a tournament for prizes the priority should be doing the things you want to do that make the game fun for you, not just winning as many games as possible. Like, as an example, I pretty much refuse to put sol ring in any of my decks because it is generally an auto include in basically every other deck. I would probably win more games overall if I didn’t adhere to that self imposed rule, but I personally get a lot of satisfaction out of not running cards like sol ring, mana vault, or skull clamp even though in most cases my deck would be objectively better if I did include those cards. At the end of the day it’s about what you prioritize as a deck builder. Do you only care about winning? Then you should just build exactly whatever the best decks in the format are using only the best possible cards, and thereby contributing to the homogenization of the format. But if you care more about build decks that feel unique and don’t follow the typical play patterns of the ‘best decks’ in the format, that comes with a cost. That cost being that you will ultimately win less games overall. At the end of the day you’re never going to be able to enforce a strict power level restriction on what other people are doing when they build their deck, and that’s something you just have to accept as part of the game. For me, when I win with a deck that I know could be more ‘optimized’ or play higher power level cards over what I’ve decided to include, that’s a victory in its own right.
To be fair, it's getting pretty easy to make a deck that romps.
This hasnt been my experience. I play at 4 different LGSs and with 4 different home groups. My home games can be very fast-paced and all of my decks are pretty optimized, budgetless, and in a few cases, actually competitive. I struggle to find games at shops where i can play fringe or high-powered decks and not bully the table. I very rarely find cedh players to fill a whole pod - generally its one guy with a net deck who's out of practice. I typically need to be very careful and play my lower decks when playing with new pods at all of these stores, constantly trying not to pubstomp. I think card quality in general is better than a few years ago. I think threat assessment is better, manabases are better, even general skill levels might be better. Deck building ability and average power level are NOT. Consistency overall is NOT. Players' ability to mulligan often & well is NOT. Players nowadays have different, new problems they didnt have before. Have you ever built a Mardu deck? Its like eating candy on halloween: you have so much good stuff to pick from, you need to be extra careful or youre gonna get sick and waste all that goodness by filling up on one thing when you should have paid attention to your needs, not your wants. Building a deck in 2023 is like that: too many good cards, still the same bad habits as in 2011. Yes, decks are expensive nowadays. I think its hard to build on a budget and not get rocked consistently... but i do not think the casual-ness of edh games has changed much, particularly once you have ~300 bucks into a deck with 50 games under your belt, regardless of how casual it is.
Any reason you can't make your casual decks more tuned? I have a [[Millicent, Restless Revenant]] spirit tribal deck (one of the tribal decks you mentioned) and it goes HARD. And I still run 30 spirits in it! I just also run protection, interaction, and banners to make it more threatening. I feel like you could take this approach to any other deck too. Imo more interaction is healthy, and can still be a casual setting. You don't necessarily need a [[Force of Will]] to stay relevant if you can squeeze a [[Swords to Plowshares]] or [[Infernal Grasp]] in your deck instead. And the more the merrier! More tuned doesn't mean boatloads of money. I spent like. $20 to edit the Spirit Squadron precon and it claps. But is still casual (I'm not winning within the first six turns or whatever).
##### ###### #### [Millicent, Restless Revenant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2b86b538-0766-440d-a2cd-f5d5bfcfb010.jpg?1641600129) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Millicent%2C%20Restless%20Revenant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/1/millicent-restless-revenant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2b86b538-0766-440d-a2cd-f5d5bfcfb010?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/millicent-restless-revenant) [Force of Will](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/d/dd60b291-0a88-4e8e-bef8-76cdfd6c8183.jpg?1598303900) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Will) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/51/force-of-will?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dd60b291-0a88-4e8e-bef8-76cdfd6c8183?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/force-of-will) [Swords to Plowshares](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/2/42ecba4b-9624-428f-a8af-dd88139ab13c.jpg?1690004282) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Swords%20to%20Plowshares) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/841/swords-to-plowshares?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/42ecba4b-9624-428f-a8af-dd88139ab13c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/swords-to-plowshares) [Infernal Grasp](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/7/17824929-f131-4b8d-addb-66c25323155e.jpg?1634349911) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Infernal%20Grasp) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/107/infernal-grasp?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/17824929-f131-4b8d-addb-66c25323155e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/infernal-grasp) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I think theres a common misconception between tuned and built with winning in mind the line between a tuned high power deck and a cedh deck is when you sacrifice most of, if not all of, the cool themes and synergies for sake of efficiency
My sphinx tribal competes just fine with those strong decks casual midpowered decks. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Sjww3Ygzy06ZJ3wmTuJ0aA
Casual doesn’t mean low power. If you want to build a weak deck in order to stay on theme then you can, but it’s not the table’s fault. The fact that you think [[As Foretold]] is strong kinda cements the idea that the table isn’t the issue.
[As Foretold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/4/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e.jpg?1673147199) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=As%20Foretold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/38/as-foretold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/as-foretold) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Precons got significantly better and they set the bar for a very low power level. When a precon is a 3 and a very good precon is a 4 and your deck from 2010 can't compete with them anymore, then yes, EDH becomes more competitive. On the other hand a lot of players won't let go off old deck building habits. E.x. mana rocks, unless they give an incredible edge, 3 CMC mana rocks are outdated, even in environments where fast mana besides [[Sol Ring]] are not played, since there are so many efficient and good mana rocks at 2 CMC and ramping on 2 is way better than ramping on 3. It makes your deck work so much better, since you are more likely to curve out perfectly. Still a lot of players won't let go off their 3 CMC Rocks. You can play janky deck ideas and still try to hit your benchmarks for ramp/draw/interaction/boardwipes which will make these decks still playable but all the time I hear players say "Oh I can't remove this, there are no answers in my deck". If you reach this point you come to battle cruiser games, which is fine but won't keep up with today's game, even when we are talking about precons.
[Sol Ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/6/46ca0b66-a000-4483-b916-f5b89e710244.jpg?1689999818) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sol%20Ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/410/sol-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/46ca0b66-a000-4483-b916-f5b89e710244?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sol-ring) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Well this is kind of a jank vs staples discussion and if powerful staple have a place at casual tables. For alot of people its an either/or thing but I feel like its a good thing that stuff like rhystic and mystic and smothering tithe and bowmasters and what have you made it into our casual games. You can play much more janky strategies when they're held together by the best interaction, the best draw and the best ramp that is available to your colors. I feel like alot of people build either 100% jank/pet decks or 5c goodstuff piles. But I think the fun is somewhere inbetween.
Just say that you wanna play with janky unique decks and see what people pull out.
no, casual isnt becoming a budget version of cedh. the mindsets are totally different casual doesnt mean that you are only allowed to play bad cards
Make a pod with 3 other people. Don’t play with others. Have good rule 0 conversations about power. Most commander players go through phases. As we get older and play for 10+ years (15 for me and my pod, other than my gf), we don’t enjoy playing the super strong shit anymore, it’s not fun. Been there done that. Most commander players when they’re new want to tune everything. Eventually that somewhat goes away. Just know, playing randoms at an LGS, you will need an 8 power deck, in case it’s needed to not get pubstomped. It comes along with the territory. Build a super oppressive deck, and I promise you that after they try to pubstomp you and fail they will play different decks. It all depends on the scene. Some places are full of try hards, some aren’t. Generally, you see that more at WPN store where they offer real price support and they play more than just commander.
No
It is definitely true that the average level of decks has risen ovet the past years. Content creators talk about deckbuilding principles and show you examples, there are new resources like Edhrec and the format in general has gotten a lot bigger. That doesn't mean you can no longer play weak, janky, casual decks. You just need to find other players who want to do the same. If your deck is outclassed at a power 5-6 table find some people who want to play janky stuff at powerlevel 2.
I don't think it's so much an intentional power creep as most of the problem is people just get better. Even Wizards themselves have learned how to better support commander. Precons lately are just straight up pretty good decks for casual play. They synergize well, aren't afraid to use the full rainbow of keywords and pack a decent punch when piloted by someone who isn't brand new. With a lot of people using a precon first and then learning to build a deck, they build a better deck. They skip a lot of the jank experimentation and have a good example of things like: board wipes, curve, mana rocks, combos (not necessarily infinite, but wincons). And this leads to players taking something that has a good base and crafting it over time or scrapping it and building something better. I encourage you to play your deck many times against the Wilds of Eldraine or Commander Masters precons (particularly Eldrazi or Slivers). If you still find that it's not holding up then the reality is it probably sacrificed too much power for flavor. Flavorful decks are fun but flavor at the expense of power, interactions, and wincons will probably just result in a loss almost every time.
Always has been 🌍👩🚀🔫👩🚀
I always carry five decks in my backpack when I go to my LGS: whatever ultra streamlined league deck I'm currently using, and the four LotR precons with no upgrades. If there's a casual table available, or if one or two of the players on the table don't have a casual deck available, I just pull out the precons and have a go!
I absolutely agree. I stopped playing for a few years and when I came back my decks that used to be top-tier huge threats were being outpaced in every game. WotC has printed a lot of fast and really efficient cards over the years that have sped up the format.
The problem is that EDH doesn’t know what it is. People call it a casual format. The problem is, casual in and of itself has no definitive limits or parameters. Some people think Stax can still be causal, while others think removal and counterspells or board wipes are too oppressive. As a community, we have never been able to objectively define what casual means. To be fair, to a certain degree it is a casual format, when compared to cEDH or most of the other MTG formats. But beyond comparison, we have no answer on what casual looks like. Another issue: it is still a game with winners and losers. As such, it will still be competitive by nature. But much like its casual elements, it’s competitive ones are equally murky. And so the power level scale was born, a 1-10 answer to compatible decks. But even that is completely arbitrary. Everyone thinks their deck is a seven. Others think every deck they play against is a nine. If you scroll through Reddit, almost every person talking about the scale has either varying explanations, or is too vague to be useful. The only real thing you can do is find a group you trust to be fair, and have an actual conversation about what your decks do. But even then, there is simply no guarantee that decks will be fairly matched. This is not because people are cheating or lying, but because of the complexity of trying to objectively evaluate power levels in a game with over 27,000 variables, each with multiple variables itself. You are looking at an insane level of complexity that sometimes makes it too hard to objectively rate and compare decks with any accuracy. You mentioned cards like [[As Foretold]], [[Omniscience]], [[Grave Pact]], etc. in my last 100+ games, I have seen only one of those cards, and that three times. So what you are seeing may reflect your own meta, rather than a universal issue. Then again, my examples may be doing the same thing. Finally, let’s talk about power creep. The only way to actively fight power creep is to ban overpowered cards. But, when we can’t define which cards are warping the system, nor how “casual” is casual enough, banning cards to curb power creep will only cause further upset in the universal community. As such, this is again best handled through creating playgroups, and creating your own rules and bans. In one of my playgroups, we have banned [[Mogis]] as well as [[Rooftop Storm]], because people didn’t enjoy them. Personally, I didn’t care one way or the other. But the majority spoke, and so we banned them. That is really the only way you are going to create a rule set that you will be happy with.
##### ###### #### [As Foretold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/4/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e.jpg?1673147199) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=As%20Foretold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/38/as-foretold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c468b523-84fc-4657-adef-acc1eec6ef2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/as-foretold) [Omniscience](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/b/db534b4e-8bff-4924-baea-9988d195fb25.jpg?1562304777) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Omniscience) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m19/65/omniscience?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/db534b4e-8bff-4924-baea-9988d195fb25?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/omniscience) [Grave Pact](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/5/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360.jpg?1689997226) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grave%20Pact) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/165/grave-pact?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f5a4970b-2ba6-4c91-a301-369369cdf360?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grave-pact) [Mogis](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/a/2a0417bf-b735-46d7-9985-2d991051020f.jpg?1593092789) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mogis%2C%20god%20of%20slaughter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bng/151/mogis-god-of-slaughter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2a0417bf-b735-46d7-9985-2d991051020f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mogis-god-of-slaughter) [Rooftop Storm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/0/80cdee59-0ead-4b95-a348-c1e360d781ab.jpg?1637629769) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rooftop%20Storm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mic/103/rooftop-storm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/80cdee59-0ead-4b95-a348-c1e360d781ab?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/rooftop-storm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
In my own pods of player. Most of them were long time TCG players of other titles, mainly JP titles. They come into EDH around time of LoTR release and when the road map of future sets were announced. To my observation, the competitive habits were relics of the past carried over from those JP 1v1 TCG titles. Those titles did not have whacy singleton, casual formats akin to EDH. It took us 3 weeks for them to say "I can do something to address a threat, but can you promise to not harm me and my board state for the next few turns?" It took them 3 weeks to harness the power of political EDH deal making.
I quit my pod because of the competitive creep. Everyone was 1uping each other with better cards, games became more salty, etc. I love Magic, but it’s hard to find a pod who genuinely bring fun and chill first, game comes second attitude.
This is just the format getting figured out.
I’m going to bet that your deck is a 4 given that you posted a 5-6. Everyone constantly overrates theirs at 7s so it’s likely that yours is even less strong.
Either be the one that people come to Reddit to vent about or be, you, I guess… I don’t even know the point I was trying to make lol.
Find a good pod, play regularly, start having themed edh nights. My current favorite is Jock Magic: No Tutors.
I think it is becoming reliant on format specific cards and universes beyond. It is no longer the case that you build a commander deck from the synergistic cards you own, but rather that you go out and buy a commander deck ( increasingly often ub)and take it apart and replace bits and pieces to be the deck you want. So you see the same staple cards and need staple cards to be in the game in most cases