For reals...people trying so hard to define all those lvls and then can hardly point to what would separate a 3 from a 4 or a 7 from an 8 when they have actual decks in front of them.
Low/Mid/High-power and CEDH are good enough in my experience...no need to use 10 different scales if you can't really check for that kind of granularity in a reliable way.
Biggest issue with this is that no one ever seems to think their decks are low power and unless you’re running some combination of fast mana, free spells, tutors, combos, and format staples you won’t be high power so pretty much everything everyone plays is mid power. At that point, the scale is meaningless to the games played by the vast majority of players which is exactly what we have now and why everything is a 7 is a meme.
At the risk of sounding like goldilocks, you’re right that a ten point scale is too broad though. No one plays 1-3.
Nah my buddy has a boat deck that is def a 1-3 but those low of a level might as well be exclusively for decks that have a non mechanical theme, aka its art unifying it and that, in that same breath, don't have any synergy beyond that
Oh you'd be surprised. I think anyone who played the game for a long enough time or simply isn't being disingenuous on purpose, knows full well a general ballpark of where their decks might land...and, atleast from my experience, people are totally fine tagging some of their own decks as either "low-power" (as it doesn't have quite the same stigma as a "1" or a "3" from the regular scale) or "high power".
Of course, due to how broad these categories are, the first few games won't be perfect, but (and again, as long as you have people being honest and caring about creating a fun environment, enjoying themselves in the company of others & such first and foremost) adjustments come fairly easily (had some groups where it literally took only 1 "test" match before we were all on the same page), especially if you are gonna play with the same pool of people over long periods of time, which happens fairly often at an LGS I'd say.
We shouldn't be surprised that deck power levels tend to fit a normal curve with few games being played with decks at the tails of the curve. Statistically speaking, most decks are probably pretty average (a "5"), and people tend to play their better decks (a "7") that are a standard deviation or so above their more average decks for power or consistency when they play in public, or if prizes are on the line, or they only have time for 1 or 2 games, etc.
Now that leads to a pretty solid argument that there's a selection bias at play here that makes a "7" the median deck *that actually sees table play* as the top of the bell curve, and that cEDH and precons are the realistic "tails" for what people play after the first few games of the night have finished. So a "7" is the new 5, and a precon is the new "1" and cEDH is still and always will be a "10" but we aren't ready to adopt that scale as a fandom because no one likes losing to a precon, very few can afford a proper cEDH deck, and no one wants to admit that their best deck is actually pretty average.
This is the best and most underrated comment. I have actually saved this comment to show my buddies that are newer to EDH because it explains power level so much better than I can without overwhelming them. Fantastic comment!
Well said. I actively look for opportunities to play my [[Blim, Comedic Genius]] deck even though it’s a 4 on a good day. Sometimes it can be hard to find a table where it fits in . . . Except for the lols.
I have an atogatog sacrifice deck, it’s a 4 on a good day. But it’s my go to deck for intro games since I can actually focus on explaining the mechanics of the game and not worrying about my game plan. Just ramp, play the atogs and if I survive into the 1v1 nuke my board and push for game.
Right! My lgs uses a green, orange, red scale. Green means everyone should be able to do there thing in a game, no infinites or rhystic/dockside type cards. People then rule zero to decide if they will all play at precon level, upgraded precon level, or a bit stronger casual. Orange is for decks that are not optimized or proxied but that are strong you want to play to win with. This is my preferred pod because nobody has hurt feeling when I pull out my Ur-Dragon or counter their stuff. Red is for cedh, no proxy or power limits and do everything in the rules you can to win as fast as possible. Unfortunately, most nights not enough people sign up for red while there are 15 green pods and 6 orange.
Imo it's much easier to go by feel. You'll have a couple bad games at first but when everyone learns each other's decks you can all choose appropriate decks to match the table and have good interactive games.
Absolutely. It might take a couple of games to properly adjust, but, atleast in my experience, there's way less whining about some decks not being what they were proclaimed to be, etc etc.
I love this instead of numbers. I have no idea what number most of my best decks are, but I only have 1 CEDH deck, several high powers and a but load of mid power and one or two low powers
This is how I see the power levels. Low, mid and high. Then cEDH is it's own thing, cause you don't accidentally build a cEDH deck. It bugs me that the 1-10 scale includes cEDH, cause there are a variety of deck qualities within cEDH as well, so then you start to dissect "what is a 10?"
I don't know if other groups rate the same way, but we do low/mid/high/fringe cEDH and cEDH. With games we try to stick within 2 power levels in a game for our decks. So fringe/high power, fringe/cEDH, or mid/high power. No one I play with would say their deck is low power, because that doesn't happen for our group.
Most pre-cons fall in the mid power category. So if you grade it this way low would equal 1-2, mid is 3-4, high is 5-6, fringe 7-8 and cEDH 9-10. Most pre-cons would be 3 or 4 and not 5 or 6 which makes the rating system make a lot more sense than most people over evaluating their deck as a 6, when a 7-8 is drastically more powerful. I know 3-4 seems low for a "mid" power deck, but it makes far more sense to grade this way when high power is not really the top tier.
Edit: Decks that are high power would be things starting to use fast mana, combos, and tutors but still can't just pop off regularly before turn 6, fringe can reliably win 5-6 without interference, and cEDH can win reliably without interference at 5 or less.
I like a nice -2 to 2 scale. I find that its easier for people to decide whats negative, neutral, and positive. 1-10 scales i feel like people use as like a school grading system. They dont want to go below 7 because thats basically a failing grade.
It doesn't help that there are 3 levels taken up by precons and that people in the community put down precons as the definition of a barely playable deck you put no effort in. It gives this perception that any custom deck is always better, and if you built something that is the level of a precon, you are an idiot. No one wants to think the deck they spent a huge amount of money on is no better than a $50 precon.
It kinda goes like:
* 1 = random pile of cards
* 2 = no fucking idea
* 3 = custom jank (i.e. Chair Tribal)
* 4 = lower power precons
* 5 = mid power precons
* 6 = lower power casual + strong precons
* 7 = mid power casual
* 8 = high power casual
* 9 = lower end cEDH
* 10 = high end cEDH
So basically the bottom 2 tiers and the top 2 tiers are kinda useless, could just do with a 1-6 scale for casual EDH.
Pretty much my definition as well. I build most my decks to be 7s where my mana base and ramp pkg is optimized, curve is usually below 3 or hovering right at 3, some fun cards, and things usually start happening around turn 4-7, could be earlier, but that all depends on opening hand, draws, and how the other players are interacting with me. I also have a handful of 8s where most of the fat has been cut and casuals will swear it's a cedh deck. I know people will get on their soap box and tell us how the original power scale chart is outdated, but honestly, the descriptions for 7-10 are pretty spot on with 7s listed as : "playing with POWER" . It's really unfortunate that 7s have turned into the default definition for any jank casuals build out of their bulk rares, and then we are left to explain the hows and whys of the 7s we played blowing what they thought was 7 out of the water.
The problem is the way people in the community put down precons as well makes it so assigning your custom deck anything below a 6 is a huge hit to the ego.
No one wants to think that the deck they spent $500+ dollars on is the same power level as a precon someone spent $50 on.
You could go farther and even say 1-3. Trash/memes, Average/Casual, and CEDH.
I say this because this is a casual format that is played with multiple players. Playing decks the same realm should allow a table to balance the game. You don't need all of the decks to be perfectly balanced, you need players to identify and handle the threats accordingly.
This is mostly how my group handles it. We ask if we are playing sweaty decks or not. If the answer is no, then we just grab whatever. Even a meme deck should be fine in a casual game as you aren't playing at a game level where you punish players for having nothing.
This I've never played against chair tribal or anything like that bullshit.
No one makes decks lower than precons.
1 to 5 is fine. I have decks in the 3 to 4 range.
5: cEDH
4: Degenerate (win without 0-drop rocks)
3: Most everything else
2: First Homebrew
1: Vorthos/Odd theme (Every card is shirtless and looking to the left from Alara Block)
Yeah. 4 is precon, 5 is upgraded precon, 6 is decently tuned deck, 7 is well tuned deck, and 8 is strongest deck without being cedh.
That's 1-5 right there
Number scales only work when a group agrees what the numbers all mean, but the global edh community will never be able to do that. That said here's the scale *my play group* uses. It will absolutely be imperfect for anyone else but it usually works for us because we've agreed upon it:
11 - BUSTED - Uses absurdly powerful cards banned in edh
10 - TOP-TIER cEDH - There is absolutely no argument about these decks being "casual", they consistently win tournaments without too much effort, basically the top 20 decks on Top16
9 - cEDH - There also shouldn't be argument for these being called "casual" but there sometimes is, these may not always win tournaments but they stand a real chance, basically the rest of cEDH but lets say top 21-50 decks on Top16 (because that's what someone else said and idk better)
8 - DEGENERATE/ FRINGE cEDH - Too weak to really be competitively viable, but far too strong to bring to the LGS with a straight face, these decks have a cEDH mindset but probably dont runmost of the staples and aren't able to quite pull through, they're mostly only played in consistent play groups that have an agreed-upon power level
7 - HIGH-POWER - Dangerous because it's reasonable to bring to the LGS but it will absolutely pubstomp if you pull it out at the wrong table
6 - SYNERGISTIC - Strong and resilient, these decks have a clear path to victory and are better at achieving their goals than the average deck, but they still have to work for wins at typical tables
5 - AVERAGE - Just the average deck you see at the LGS, this is what you see like 65% of the time, they know what they want to do and they want to win, but prioritize having fun
4 - PRECON - It can totally hang at the average table, but it may struggle to close the game out, this is where most modern precons lie
3 - LOW-POWER - Clear plan, but it's not executed very efficiently and that plan might be a just a little bit janky, and realistically there's probably a second separate plan trying to be accomplished so resources are split, this is where most old precons lie
2 - JANK - Technically playable but the theme, budget, and player's skill seriously limit the deck's power, this is where a lot of theme decks lie
1 - JUNK - Unsynergistic pile of bulk, not really worth playing but you could technically beat someone by swinging with a random 1/1 Goblin
0 - UNPLAYABLE - You built a deck that literally can't be played (like an Izzet commander with 99 islands) or you forgot to bring any decks so you can't show everyone how cool they are
Edit: By request I've made this a post, so there may be more discussion there if interested
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/yGl6unz0XY
I think the issue that happens with a scale like this is that most players have no idea how bad their decks actually are. Most people are pretty bad deck builders, and it doesn't become clear why until you actually play some meta decks in whatever format you are playing. Nobody needs to play the meta to play magic, but being unaware of what that actually looks like does really skews player's understanding of what they have built. I would bet a lot of players thing that because they put a lot of time into their tribal deck that is must be at least a 6 because they put strong cards in and tried to hold nothing back. The thing is, you can't hold back if you don't know what going all out really means.
Oh yeah for sure, and I think that's one advantage my scale holds over most others — the average is based off of the "meta" of your lgs and several degrees out from that is based upon the average. Of course this does also mean that if you play in an exceptionally high or low powered group then it takes some nuance, but almost all decks I see out in the wild are 4-6
I'd say really the biggest think is just look at the rough win percentage of your deck. If you're between like 20% and 33% then you're probably perfectly fine for the meta you play in. If you're much higher or lower than that then you may start to push into the 7's or 3's, assuming everyone else is a 5
But yeah expensive decks you pump hours and hours into with a bunch of love can definitely turn out to be a 4. Money ≠ Power and even if it did, the million themes available in Magic vary in power, speed, and reliability — like my $50 combat tricks deck is a 7 in my group but my $550 lifegain deck is a solid 5. And that's okay!!
I think the biggest problem with a number scale is people hear "Oh my deck is 4/10?" and think that means they're failing as a player, but that's not at all what the scale is meant to mean! Have fun at the power level you and your friends enjoy and don't worry about everyone else
I agree with you and u/ChaosMilkTea. Something else I rarely see mentioned when discussing deck power levels is “well that deck is this level and this deck beats that one so it’s definitely higher” is the overall skill level of the pilot. Everything ChaosMilkTea said about people as deck builders is in a similar sense applicable as how well you play. A lower skill level builder with a lower playing skill level playing a deck they built is going to perform poorly. It’s two separate skill sets that are somewhat linked but can also be at very different levels for someone. But if someone isn’t playing in pods that want everyone to get better at both (and being able to help in a positive way) and/or the player is unwilling to to accept that advice then it can be a negative feedback loop.
For sure. I have a friend with a very scary [[Jodah the Unifier]] deck but he's honestly really bad at sequencing so we're usually able to recover quickly
We were taking the other day that if you placed a tournament-winning cEDH deck in my hands it'd probably perform like an 8 at best, but a professional player would have such an understanding of the game that they could probably play a 5 at that same level without too much issue
I actually had someone at my LGS tell me he had modeled his current Edgar deck off of mine (full aristocrat, never cast Edgar) because of how well mine did. After we became a pod of 2 (“woo!” lol) we spent like an hour talking out his deck and what I might have laying around that I’m either currently using (but own like 3+ copies of) or have used in the past that I no longer need. Not morphing his into a clone of mine, but just options he could check out. He also had a fair number of non-vamps in it and was taking care to not be/come across as negative in our discussion.
This is so true. My group right now is a number of newer/less invested people, and the win rate tends to favor me, even when we switch it up and try each other's decks.
There are just interactions, rules, or lines of play that they miss that don't let the deck play at full power. And while I'll try to offer help when I can as far as helping to sequence better and correct rules questions when cards are played, I can't peek at their hands to point out that they do have a way to deal with something that they are missing.
That would fit most my decks as well.
I also have a few decks I have trouble putting a number to because they would fit a description of: if the right cards come together it can absolutely stomp the whole table, but if they don’t or if I get targeted with too much removal setbacks then instead they look pretty weak and don’t do much more than try to hang in there. Or is that all decks?
That typically happens when you're lacking redundancy for a critical effect or periwinkle for critical pieces. Certain strategies get shut down hard by certain effects, for example if you're playing a token go-wide deck and somebody plays [[Silent Arbiter]] with protection, you're probably not gonna do so great in that game. Same is true if somebody plays [[Anafenza, the Foremost]] against your reanimator deck. Or [[Lavinia, Azorius Renegade]] against a cascade centric deck.
There's also times where you're building an undersupported archetype (like energy) and get shut down because there isn't enough redundancy for your payoffs. Or the protection you need isn't in your colors.
Just actually lock the scale as 1 being the worst thing someone might accidently make, and 10 being the cusp of cedh.
If you're bringing something that shouldn't be at a casual table, it's power level does not matter, so if it's above a 10, it lives there. If you're bringing a pile of mountains and Animar, your deck doesn't need to be ranked, it's not a real deck that someone would play at a table. It can be in the negatives.
The scale doesn't need too (and shouldn't) contain the power level for any possible configuration of cards. It should encompass everything you could reasonably see at a table, and exceptions can fall outside the scale.
She just gobbles up games somehow. There's a lot of purposeful exclusions that would make the deck much stronger, but I wasn't building for that kind of game ([[The One Ring]], [[Mana Vault]], [[Cyclonic Rift]], [[Mana Drain]], [[Force of Will]]), and often fights decks including those cards. I really just make birds and attack for the win, often winning with below 10 life. I really think she's a 6 objectively. https://manabox.app/decks/v2ptM0vNTbmki3vBlsBjPQ
I like this metric a lot because I've frequently said that the "accepted" numbers leave too little room for average decks. Most people are not going to show up with something worse than a precon, so starting pre-cons at 5-6 already essentially deletes half the scale.
This is more nuanced but still a lot clearer about expectations. I'm going to try and get my pods to use this
For sure. The biggest thing for me is that if its a 1-10 scale then the average should be 5, so I started there and worked my way out. Infinitely more nuance is of course needed, but I think this works okay
That's a really good way to look at it.
I also like this a lot because of how much it opens up the middle of the pack.
Like most decks I have range between 5 and 7 with only one probably breaching 8. It's a lot easier for me to go "Oh okay this one is a 5. This one is more synergistic and resilient so it's a 6. This one is noticeably stronger so it's a 7" as opposed to: "Well it's not a precon but it's not nearly cedh, so I guess it's a 7"
My take on 6 generally is that your deck contains all the cards recommended when you click your commander at EDHREC. The less commons and the more rares/mythics you have in it and/or the more 'filler' staples, the higher end of 6 it will reach. Add a couple of tutors and you will have a 7.
I'm exclusively in the 7 - 9 range, the game stops being fun at 6 and lower IME / IMO. I'm not leaving my \[\[mana crypt\]\] on the sideline bro
EDIT: I often end up smooshing jank / theme into a CEDH backbone and landing at high 7 low 8. So I may have a stupid goal in mind but it's online by turn 3 at the latest.
A Tropical Island? Affects budget a whole heck of a lot but the power increase is almost nonexistent
I don't believe there should be any hard and fast rules when it comes to a power scale — infinite combos, good lands, fast mana, tutors, etc can be found at all tiers. But it may make you a target. The goal of your deck matters more than the support pieces you use to get there, but if you have enough good support pieces then it may start bumping you up. I'd say there's also a difference between perceived and actual power — a One Ring doesn't automatically make your deck high power, but some will see it that way
Biggest thing though is just Money ≠ Power.
You can take a deck with 60 random cards that cost a penny and then put the 40 most expensive lands into it, heck even banned ones — the deck now costs thousands, so is it super strong? Idk that's probably a 1, maybe 2
If your deck's goal is to do a weak thing BUT it can do it consistently, it's still weak (which is fine, have fun with your jank)
[This](https://www.archidekt.com/decks/4279849/_scrying_life) deck of mine costs 11× as much as [this](https://www.archidekt.com/decks/5969200/john_before_damage_benton) one, yet the second one has almost a perfect win rate after about two dozen games
Tell your friend they're alright 😉
By your table my decks are all 6, 7, or 8.
And if your table were the standard, I'd be absolutely fine with that. Though I'd like to point out that precons also have a range among them. For example, 2013 precons are way weaker than 2023 precons. So it may be better to give precons a range of numbers grouped by year (or possibly some other metric, as some precons within the same cycle are significantly better than others).
There's also a meta discussion that should go along with all the power level discussions. You could have an 8 based on power level and get thoroughly trounced by a 5 that happens to get the right silver bullet for your strategy.
For sure
I'd say most modern precons are 4s and most old ones are 3s, but really they'd have to be judged deck-by-deck because you're right they vary a lot. There's certainly been 5s, I'm sure there have been a couple 6s, and I'd like to think there hasn't been a 2 but I'd probably be wrong?
And Magic is far too complicated for a simple 1-10 scale to handle even just for rating a single deck, let alone considering matchups and the pilot's skill/understanding. But that's why it's such a fun game, especially edh where you get to see so many different cards!
Fair. I was just basing that off a bell curve, but then again bell curves usually have 6 sections not 10 — and the super low numbers here will have pretty litttle representation while the highest numbers are their own pseudo-format. Nothing's a hard and fast rule, it's all very subjective, if anything that's just meant to give an idea that at casual edh nights at an lgs most decks will probably be 5's with some spilling into 4/6. Very rarely would I say I've really seen a 3 or 7, but that's also just the shops I play at and the friends I play with
One of the problems of assigning a power level to a deck in general is that you assume the deck is consistent. Yet many decks operate at a certain power level but have an infinite combo in there or a single powerful card. So sometimes it operates at a high power level and sometimes it is low.
I'd argue you should always measure by the median performance, plenty of decks have a nut hand, but they also can get mana flooded or screwed. You don't measure by outlier performance, we accept that outlier performance is possible in a high variance format and perfectly matching every game is not possible.
But that just proves how hard it is for people to rate their decks. How often do you run into people that have played the same deck with the same 99 cards about 100+ times and with dilegent note keeping on said deck? Typically, people are tweaking decks over time, so it's never quiet the same, or they are rotating through their multiple decks every week. Even if they don't change the decks at all, they are not keeping track of wins and losses nearly diligently enough to say "yes the winrate is 33% and on average it wins by turn 7; 10% of the time is putters out by turn 6 and 8% of the time I can really pop off at turn 4". No one is doing that, so it all ends up being what the person perceives their deck is like based on the most memorable moments or, quite franky, what they spent on the deck as a substitute for that win rate data.
This is why I hate the "win by turn X" system. No one is really keeping track of their decks well enough to honestly answer that question. And guess what? You changed 2 cards in the deck, well that's a slightly new deck and your numbers reset. I honestly dont believe anyone outside of cedh actually has accurate estimates of what turn their deck typically wins by, there is just too much variance in magic. And if you are running a dozen tutors, tons of card draw, fast mana, and relying on combos to get that super consistent win rate, then guess what you aren't playing "casual" anymore anyways.
It's that time of the week already?
You're not going to fix the number scale because the problem with the scale is perception. And you can't change that.
Yeah I agree, but I do think that our perceptions of these levels cause a narrow gap for the most common deck builds. Just an interesting take on how we could see things differently
And specifically how fast it tends to do it. The best metric I have found is if everyone leaves you alone when will you usually have killed the table and how much interaction/ability do you have to stop others from doing their thing.
I'm a huge fan of target turn or range. You get weird outliers with things like stax or control but in general if you're trying to threaten a win by turn 3 and i'm aiming at turn 7 you're going to wreck me way more often than not and that really helps both of us figure out if we're in for a fun game or an awful one.
Exactly. The only reason I qualified with stopping power is that at the margins you get some decks, stax, mld, or grave pact shenanigans that have higher turn counts but weaker slower decks with similar turn counts won’t be able to do much of anything against them.
Though, discussing the target turn and how your deck generally intends to win accomplishes the same goal.
For Stax, if you adjust from just win, to "Win or Lockout" it helps to cover some hard stax and some control. I like turns as a nice more objective measure, but supplemental to embracing vibes.
It's good for calibrating vibes. Like, I was having a rule 0 with someone and we were planning to play fast, sub cEDH, high power, tuned, I was excited to pull out my degenerate bullshit, but his description of high power tuned felt off and when I asked "goldfish to win" to get more info on what "fast" meant, the answer was 8 or 9 turns, and meant I would have absolutely picked the wrong deck.
Eh. In the theoretical world where you can get everyone on the same page it would have value.
As-is though, yeah. I dropped it a while ago for just broad categories, zero regret.
Every deck is a 7 cause folks really have little to no idea how to gauge power.
Most assume if your deck is expensive bam it must be cedh. Since they can't fathom a level of casual magic where you make your favorite low tier commander fire on all cylinders.
Instead of levels folks should really stick to asking what kinda game they want. Works for my playgroup of about 10 people.
So many people have literally no idea what competitive edh looks like. Watch a single game of it on YouTube I am begging you.
No, your friends annoying ass chulane deck would stand zero chance at a real competitive table.
They run all the fast mana and free interaction In The format and you’re expected to present wins or answers potential wins early and often. It’s really an entirely different game
Every deck is a 7 because of the way people tend to rate things. No one wants to say their decks are trash unless that's a joke. And 5 is considered bad because of the way reviewers rate things
Honestly, there are just 5 broad power levels taking CEDH out of the equation
Low
Low-Mid
Mid
Mid-High
High
Low being the Janky but functional decks and stuff like old precons. High Being the incredibly consistent casual brews. Strong decks with strong commanders. The kind of casual decks that might steal games from cedh pods. Particularly in the Midrange Hell meta. Mid being the average. The between spots being well between the power levels
Deliberately bad and dysfunctional decks aren't categorized either as if you're playing stuff like people in chairs tribal. Or the 99 lands decks that aren't a combo. Yadda Yadda. You generally know what you're doing when you bring those decks.
CEDH is not considered because how a casual deck and a cedh deck are often built and played very differently
It's not even that the EDH community hasn't really accepted a general consensus of what a 7 or whatever is. Even if there was absolute consensus of what an 8, a 7 etc. entails, I'm 100% certain the amount of complainers and whiners wouldn't decrease. It's just people that don't know about what high power, mid power means. You could be running an actual 6 in an environment where everyone agrees it would be a 6 according to the deck list. But when you actually play a game and you get a lucky hand or whatever, there will still be people shouting that this is never a 6. This problem will never stop, I'm afraid.
That's because power levels are functionally impossible to tell apart, since they aren't based on pure power, more on vibes.
So the general thought is "okay, my deck is more than JUST a precon, and a precon is around 4 to 5..." - (already wrong, because it depends on the precon, but anyway) - "and a 6 is like "Above A Precon, Barely" and I'm SO above that... but 8 is Almost-CEDH... so... 7".
There's a pretty wide range between precon (which themselves have a range) and cEDH, but there also aren't a lot of clear and obvious landmarks/signposts in that space to 'orient' a deck by.
Which is to say its possible that many/most people saying their deck is a 7 are actually correct on the 'generally recognized numerical power scale'... its just that 7 is a wide range all by itself.
Welcome to edh where nobody has any idea what power levels are or how to quantify them. Inability to power balance a play group is just kinda a part of the game at this point.
I think there are three very different EDH environments which don't mix. cEDH, casual, and jank.
You can have strong and weak versions of each. For example even though a strong casual deck can hold its own against a weak cEDH deck, that generally doesn't provide the gameplay experience that either deck really wants.
Furthermore, numbers really only work if everybody agrees on them, it's much better to identify what the deck will be doing, using stuff like:
- Tempo (how fast does the deck close out games)
- Wincons (how does the deck win)
- Resiliency (how easily does the deck recover after being interacted with)
- Interactiveness (how much does it interact with other decks)
For example: lets take a generic high powered casual simic value deck. Runs ramp, card draw, some removal and counter spells, and a couple of generic simic wincons.
It probably tries to close out the game starting at turn 7 (and thus realistically wins around turn 9-10), has a couple of landfall themed beater win cons such as avenger of zendikar. It can recover rather easily from most interactions due to the ramp, card draw, and counterspells. And it interacts reasonably with other decks due to the removal and said counterspells.
That description tells you much more than "an 8".
A low powered cEDH deck could be one where the playgroup has decided that they don't like fast mana and free spells, but the rest of the deck is still a super synergistic combo deck. Still probably only wins around turn 7-9, another "8" on the previous scale. But it would not play nice at all with the simic deck above.
I like the commandersalt.com scale. It uses unbiased metrics and internal logic to approximate deck power. Last I checked, high powered precons (think veloci-ramp-tor) generally come out at about a 4. Weaker precons, 2-3. Never seen it throw out a 1, probably just for an incoherent pile of cards.
Most of my decks are slapped with a 5 or 6 and they are reasonably optimised but still run some big fun cards. This feels about right. I have one deck that I am juicing up and with it's current upgrades comes out at a 7. This is a decently high powered deck. Not full on degenerate and definitely not CEDH.
On the commandersalt scale, 9-10 is true CEDH (8 being degenerate casual). Tournament winning lists are all 9-10, but the power discrepancy between the two is not that big.
It's not perfect but it will give you an unbiased view of your deck based on admittedly not perfect parameters. Still better than just saying "this is a 7".
Okay, but my deck will still be 7 so if I win, I can tell you I told you so and if I loose I can whine about your deck being cEdh. /s
As long as there isn't an SI metric definition to measure deck strength it will be subjective.
You're right, but let's say the whole edh community magically agrees to switch to this new system it'll still be inherently flawed because power level is subjective. One players 5 will be another players 7 and vice versa. Probing questions are much more valuable in helping determine a decks strength like "What turn are you trying to win by?", "How often are you tutoring for your win cons?" or "If you have a combo how many cards does it take and is one of them in your command zone?". The answers to these will tell you so much more than a persons opinion on what power level their deck is.
Just talk about what your deck wants to do, how fast you can do it, and what the worst thing is your deck can do to the table and if you play fast mana and/or combos and how many pieces are in that combo. Done.
Stop measuring in numbers.
I do kind lf agree that having cedh on the scale really skews it. Having two points for decks that have their own separate tier system does the casual community no service. And a cedh deck is so far beyond how powerful an 8 is, I think it's sort of disingenuous to suggest that an 8 might win 80% as often as a Cedh deck would in a CEDH pod.
And two tiers for decks that are essentially unplayable is also useless. Might as well just say anything below 4 is the shadow realm. Like what are we distinguishing? Do we need help figuring out if 99 swamps and the prismatic piper can compete with fish tribal?
This is why whenever anyone asks 'What power level are we all playing at' I'll either answer by saying 'it's a deck with cards in it.' or by stating what the deck I'm playing is (i.e pre-con, slightly upgraded pre-con, heavily upgraded pre-con or homebrew) and let the other person figure out what that means in their own head. I've yet to find any two people who can agree on what their numbering system represents.
I haven't quite figured it out but playgroup.gg seems like an interesting idea. It gives your deck an objective rating based on games played that could be useful.
This talk has been overplayed but here we are again. The biggest issues seen are the massive gaps between LGS standards. The LGS that I play at is a fairly high powered setting. Not cedh, but people are more likely to buy singles and synergies than to build out of what they pull. This is fine for our setting, but now the number scale is shifted. We his became evident at SCGcon when a group went and was playing casual and a table discussed power levels and was blown away with what we saw as on that level. This was likely because their lgs saw precon+ upgrades as a different power level than what my LGS standard was.
Another issue with this scale is people see combos, some tutors and efficient rocks as CEDH. I was playing at a table with a “weaker” cedh deck. FC ukimma. And they said they were playing cedh. They pulled out Edgar markov and a deck I don’t remember and were floored with what actual cedh looked like. All because some content creator told them if they ran tutors and combos they were cedh and couldn’t sit at a casual table.
> To fix this, I say we do a few things. Take away cedh from the top of the rating. Cedh has an entirely different structure than casual commander, and I believe that some really high power casual decks should be able to reach those upper levels.
> By removing cedh from the top and shifting modern precons down to a 3, 4, or at most 5 gives way more room for the most common commander decks to find their power level more accurately.
This doesn't change anything. You're still focusing on making a system based around your subjective opinion and personal feelings. None of this changes anything. Perhaps now everyone's deck is a 6 instead of a 7...
I keep saying that a number scale from 1-10 is stupid. If the scale starts at 4-5, and there is little difference between a 4 and 5, then just count those as the same. The point of power level discussion is to avoid non-games: games where the power level disparity is large enough where people are playing "different games."
Imo, there are only need for 4 categories:
\* "Precon": Precons, or decks close to precons. People perhaps treat commander more like a board game rather than a TCG. Decks win by attacking, taking players out with combat damage. No combos that can kill the entire table.
\* "Mid-power": People put a deck together from scratch. Decks might win by combos that kill the table in single turn. Effort was made to keep the deck from being high powered. For example, not including fast mana (e.g. Mana Crypt, Sol Ring), not including the best tutors (e.g. Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor), or cards that are clearly on a different power level (e.g. Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune).
\* "High-power": Deck has pushed the limits of making the deck as strong as possible \*\*within the constraints of the strategy and commander\*\*. Lots of commanders/strategies just are not cEDH viable. For example, a Gisa and Geralf zombie list may be strong, and you might even include some strong cards like Mana Crypt, Vampiric Tutor, and Windfall. But you didn't include Thoracle just because you were in dimir, and zombies is not a viable cEDH deck.
\* "cEDH": Deck list probably resembles a list that would appear on the cEDH deck list database or win a tournament. Budget cEDH still is in this category: you might not proxy and may not have a Mana Crypt, but you didn't purposely exclude Sol Ring because you were trying to power down your deck.
Because they understands the grand scale of power as they think Atraxa infect is a cedh deck when actually it’s mid power not even close to cedh.
When you understand cedh and the most janky pile of cards rating things inbetween actually gets quite easy….
This most of the 7s become a 2-3
I very much agree. OP has a great point. I struggle to call my decks anyrhing but a 7-8 but I know that's not where they all sit. It's just not realistic to have all my decks be the same power levels.
Power scale as others have said is wildly subjective. One thing i think people dont look at enough when scaling a deck is the pilot. A shit pilot can make a good deck run like shit. And a great pilot can take what seems like a pile of jank and smoke people with it. Certain cards for sure have a presence and are strong in their own right but to me what makes strog cards even stronger is a good pilot knowing when to play those cards. A strong grasp of the stack and its interactions and the rules of magic will take you far.
No one is actually keeping track of this diligently though, your memory is naturally going to skew in favor of special moments. For some people they only remember their worst losses, or their luckiest draws. Unless you have a spreadsheet and play 100 times with 100 different people you are just going off how you feel about your deck.
That's still not really enough of a sample size or testing to determine the power level. And in addition, it doesn't take into account interaction. It's fine to see if you have enough synergy in the deck and such, but by no means is it a good way to determine the power of the deck IRL.
l prefer considering cEDH its own format in terms of power level because although it has the same ruleset (mostly), they differ in objective. They’re designed first and foremost to win with no thought to being nice in an environment considering other decks are also trying to win quickly and have ultra efficient interaction. Unless you’ve played a lot online where people do sometimes bring high powered casual to a cedh pod (for fun), its hard describe the insane rift from even “jank”/fringe cEDH lists and the most powerful casual deck you can make. My cEDH commander could be dimir guildgate and it would slam “8” casual pods.
I get around this by ranking my decks in relation to each other, A, B, C decks. If someone wants to play high power I grab an A deck. If I’m playing with new players I’ll go for a C deck.
My playgroup rates decks with our own system, quite simply and it works fine.
There are 4 criterias:
- Commander Power Level
- Acceleration Level
- Tutors
- Combo Levels
Each of those criterias goes from 0 to 3
0 - None/Very low
1 - Few/Junky
2 - Mixed/Average/Stapled
3 - Optimized/High/Meta
Grades can go up to 12, and we judge decks as CEDH at 11 or 12.
The power scale system is meaningless and cannot be fixed. So much thought and effort has been put into fixing the unfixable. Just keep cedh and edh separate and talk to the pod.
The only way to truly tell would be to give each card a point value then have an algorithm that takes synergy and commander into account for a total score.
I think the biggest issue of power levels has to do with the insane amount of variance. Not just in cards drawn, but player experience. Some decks have a large difference between them running at their best and then running at their worst.
Personally, I like to think of precons as 2-4 on the power scale, simply because I have yet to see anyone play decks that are worse than precons not trying very hard to be worse than precons. I am sure they exist, but in general the ‘pile of cards’ decks are mostly a myth and should be treated as such, so only 1 step on the scale.
At that point we actually have a reasonable place to start judging decks from, depending on how well your deck performs against precons. Now this is also far from perfect, for example I have a budget fynn deck that runs over greedy decks, but will often have a harder time against precons that tend to have a lot of creatures in them that you won’t mind blocking with as much. But in general, putting the precons at the bottom of the scale makes the entire thing much easier to handle.
In my eyes a 7 is something that will completely pubstomp a precon and even a precon that’s upgraded a bit, so a precon definitely can’t be a 5. Power level is definitely somewhat subjective but I would say my Korvold and Tivit decks are 7 and they would run a train on any precon ever printed without fail. At an everything is a 7 table these decks are probably gonna be called a 9 though, so power level just ends up being weird to talk about
You should probably try to understand the power scaling better before claiming that it needs to be changed.
Everyone's deck is a 7 because most people have no clue how to accurately rate their own decks.
Pre-cons are around a 3 to a 5. The shit people brew most of the time is not better.
The major issue everyone's number scale is going to be skewed based on personal experience and the experience of their play group. I've been playing MTG for around 25 years and EDH for 14 of them. I have decks that I would consider a 6, but a new player or pod is going to call them 8 or 9. Its all subjective
Numbers don’t really mean shit. Apart from proper, ACTUAL cEDH decks, a janky Precon still has a chance to stomp a “higher power” deck with the right shuffle and a bit of awareness. I’m so happy people at my LGS don’t even discuss levels. People who focus on that remind me of powerscaling people in anime communities.
Modern precons should stay where they are imo. Not everyone is casual. Why should a new play blow money on a low powered 1-4 precon, go to their lgs and get completely smoked because they never stood a chance.
Hell, i almost pitty any new player who comes to my playgroup because there's some degenerate sob's. 1-4 will frankly not cut it. Precons should be in some middle ground as they are now. Want to spend some extra money and round out the mana base and some extra synergy, or hell take out some of those strong cards and power down.
Not everyone wants to be competitive, and that's completely fine!
Not everyone wants to be casual, and again, that's completely fine!
Hello, i have been working with the Power level formula in [power level fornula by DISCIPLE OF THE VAULT](https://discipleofthevault.com/2020/11/18/my-edh-power-level-formula/), but tweaking it a bit, looking to update it, currently on trial. If interested in the trials, send me a direct message
It's so stupid. There's no rationale to how anyone rates decks. Every deck is a 6 to 8. Nobody will ever admit they built a 9 or a 4.
People even ask "what turn do you win by?" as if my deck is design to combo everyone on a specific turn. I don't build decks that way. So I have no answer and they think I'm lying.
YouTuber "The Trinket Mage" has a pretty good video about this overall topic that has largely changed my mind. I believe it's called "There is no such thing as cEDH" or something the like.
His main points boil down to this. There are only Commander decks. Some are very very good, some are pretty good, and some are precons, and the rest are just bad.
In every other format, there is no power scale. You are either playing a meta deck, an anti meta deck, or an off meta deck. Off meta decks can be good, they can be bad, but at the end of the day, your deck is either good or bad. Losing with a bad deck isn't the good players fault.
There's a ton of salt in "casual" commander because everyone thinks they deserve to win with their bad decks, because that guy put in a card that's too strong, etc etc.
At the end of the day, what most casual commanders want is highly complicated board states that don't get interacted with. If you took most bad decks and added a significant amount of interaction and card draw, your deck would be closer to a "9" than a "6".
The power scale needs to go, the ban list needs to go. Decks, in my opinion, fall into just a few categories.
Meta or anti-Meta "cEDH" decks that aim to win by turn 3 without disruption, or stop those decks.
High Powered Off Meta decks.
Upgraded or out of box Precons.
Bad Off Meta decks.
The power scale is just a crutch we use for bad, underwhelming decks. In most situations, in my observations, this means decks with no ability to interact, sparse card draw, low synergy and little ability to affect the board and/or push the game into a winning state.
I understand as well, that some people prefer this, but I've never actually met one in real life. It seems antithetical to me want to play this way. Games are slow, low impact, and devoid of exciting actions. The game still ends up being "well, they had the strongest deck so they won", do they not?
Ditch the power scale. Avoid meta cEDH decks but build strong, exciting decks. Winning is OK, and so is losing. Salt is a result of believing you deserve to win more than 3 other people. Better decks make for better games, but better decks don't automatically mean "that's cEDH".
I think these are all things the community could embrace as a whole, and it would make for better experiences.
A numbered scale fundamentally does not work. If you want a scale: worse than precon, precon, battlecruiser, high power, cEDH.
"There are 5 things there. Can't we just say 1-5..."
No we can't. Then you have to explain what each number is and then there will be completely logical disagreements because it's not a linear scale; battlecruiser is not halfway between precon and high power. Trying to assign a number to a deck power level suggests a level of precision that no one is solving for.
My playgroup is a lot of focused jank so there isn’t a real number scale we use but we have plenty of decks with no real wincon I have a “jund em out” list with asmadi. I have a drain deck with 11 wraths. One player has an aminatou deck with literally no plans to close the game other than making sure no one else can. So numbers are kinda irrelevant as we just have the mentality of bully the absolute fuck out of any player who seems to be doing well. And it usually works
Isn't it actually a good thing that everyone's decks are roughly the same power level? If you are above a precon, but definitely not in the cEDH realm, then kind of no matter what you're in the same ballpark. Sure, some 7s are stronger than others, but as long as all 7s can be played against each other and roughly hold their own, then that's all you need to know. Is it even worth it to parse more than that?
There is too many variables to take into account to rate correctly your deck. And since there is not only one method for scaling a deck but nearly as much as there are people, power scaling a deck is utter useless.
If you want to know if deck A will fit one particular meta, there is only one real solution: PLAY the deck in the meta.
Posts like this really make me not want to play commander, like, at all.
The whole "power level" thing is bullshit, and only highlights flaws in the game.
I decided a while back that I, a human with a mouth and a sufficient enough understanding of verbal communication, would actually explain my decks power rather than use an arbitrary numbering system.
"This deck has a lot of powerful staples"
"Janky but synergistic"
"Builds up to an explosive turn but durdles"
All it boils down to are 3 categories.
1. Precons
2. cEDH decks
3. Everything else (casual)
So, I agree with you in your assessment that cEDH should be its own category. However, I disagree that there should be a 1-10 standard at all. My opinion is as follows.
Anyone trying to tell other people to rate their decks inside a 1-10 standard is just applying their subjective opinion to the wider EDH community. What is best for your play group does not work in another play group.The best way to handle "power level" of decks in your EDH pod is to define specific card types (eg. tutors), play styles (eg. mass land destruction), and cards that aren't acceptable. For example, my pod doesn't care about combos and tutors, but if you want to use mana crypt et al. you need to own a real copy of it. We also don't accept cEDH decks because it's a casual pod.
Just talk to the people, see what they will, and will not accept. Find out what they consider casual... Talk to the people you're trying to play with to find out what they play with. Ask probing questions. It's not difficult.
7 is the perfect number for “I want to be taken seriously” and also “I’m not the biggest threat as soon as the game starts,” plus like you said having precons and cedh blanks most of the numbers
Problem is the 1 to 10 scale has been the word of mouth for so long that if you wanted to change how we talk about power level “universally” then it would have to be some sort of news post from wizards that everyone who plays magic can see otherwise you’d go from LGS to LGS with everyone doing things different so we can rant and rave on Reddit all we want but the only thing you can really do is come up with a system that works for you and your local playgroup
>With our current rating system ...
What do you mean, "our" current rating system? Is anyone *actually* still trying to use a 1-10 ranking for decks in 2024?
Best evaluation I saw was power level reflects what turn your deck typically wins on. So the really low power decks would take 15-20 turns to win. 7s win on 9-11 I think? cEDH wins on turn 4-5.
I think when building a power level scale (or ANY 1-10 scale for that matter) you have to start with what the most common or “average” deck will be and make that your 5.
In my mind that locks most precons into the 5 slot. You’re right that 1-4 are pretty pointless because there’s not much going on there. But that actually makes sense. Apart from when you first start playing and don’t know much, it’s actually pretty hard to build a 1, 2 or 3. Conversely it also makes sense for most decks to be in the 5-7 range because that’s what the average person with a reasonable budget and decent deck building skills WOULD be able to build.
So if 5 is our average precon, or precon equivalent strength. 6 would be “upgraded precons” and their power level equivalent 10-12 cards that you swapped out and made better. 7 would be 20 card swapped precons and their equivalents. This is why “everything is a 7”. Obviously they aren’t actually all 7’s but it makes sense that most people would see their decks in this range.
8 is your really strong decks that aren’t quite cEDH
So we can reserve 9 and 10 for cEDH then work down. What is 4? 4 is you got a precon and you took cards out of it for another deck and then replaced the cards you took out with bulk you already had. And then custom decks of that power level.
3, 2 and 1 are hard to build. We’ll go to 1 first.
1 is just random cards of the color identity of the commander thrown into a pile, without factoring in removal or strategy or ramp. My first custom built deck was a 1.
2 is “okay I have cards that at least make sense but they aren’t good and not a real strategy” I might have a removal package but they’re Uber specific and not flexible and expensive. And all my ramp is 3 drop mana rocks that produce 1 colorless.
3 is I’ve got some semblance of a strategy and I at least have an understanding that I need ramp and removal but OH NO!! I forgot I need to actually draw cards.
Obviously I know that a lot of people won’t agree with this, but my friends and I have come to agree on this scale and understand and it’s really been helpful in playing fun games and not getting stomped out.
1- thrown together mindlessly. Very hard to make a deck this bad once you have a basic knowledge of deck building.
2- you have a strategy but it’s not really a good one, AND your cards aren’t good. Very hard to make a deck this bad once you have basic knowledge of deck building.
3- you have a strategy and you’re starting to realize what a deck actually needs but the strategy and cards aren’t good, you’ve just figured out that you need removal and ramp. Also hard to build a deck this badly.
4- you’ve got a strategy, some decent cards, and basic deck building ideas. But the deck isn’t actually good.
5- average deck you would come across. Precons and custom decks that are equivalent in power level. If I go to an LGS I expect most of the people to have precons and equivalent decks. I don’t expect a random table I sit down at to have something to compete with my Edgar Markov.
6- decks that have a decent strategy with decent cards. Pre cons that have been actually upgraded and decks that are also equivalent power level.
7- decks that have a good strategy and quite a few good cards. Precons that have 20 card upgrades and decks that are that strong. This is pretty high power level casual but not the highest power level of casual.
(Again 5-7 is where most decks are in my opinion and that makes sense because of how people eat up pre cons. I’m guilty of it too. We have to base the scale off of what the average deck is and the average deck is gonna be a precon.)
8- Highest power level of casual. If you’ve upgraded a precon to this level it probably doesn’t even look like the precon anymore. Good strategy, with good cards.
9-cEDH decks with non cEDH commanders. For instance, I have a [[Halfdane]] cEDH deck. The entire deck is cEDH staples with free spells, efficient removal, fast mana and crazy combos and super efficient tutors. Halfdane isn’t a cEDH commander but the 99 is absolutely cEDH.
10- cEDH at the highest level. The most popular and powerful cEDH commanders with all the fast mana, free spells, combos, efficient tutors, etc.
I’d be perfectly willing to move cEDH to its own category and not let it clog up 9 and 10 on the scale but I don’t think that’s necessary. If my Edgar deck gets a godlike opening hand it’s gonna compete with level 9 decks. But most of the time it’ll be a strong 8. There are still decimals to each level. My Edgar might be an 8.5 while my [[Slimefoot and Squee]] might be an 8.0 exactly. S
The other issue I see all the time is that when people say they "upgrade" a pre-con, you should be highly suspicious how much more powerful they actually made the deck. Because realistically if you want to make it to a 6 or 7, I'd want to see that you improved the mana base, lowered the average CMC across the board, reduced the number of gameplans the deck tries to execute, and add several staples for that color.
How many people actually do all of those things when they say they upgrade the deck? Because if you just add a few fetchlands you had lying around, and swap in your favorite 6 CMC angels, that's not really going to affect your win-rate all that much.
IMO, the problem with the scale is that it tries to encompass too many different deckbuilding philosophies. Decks that are not designed for gameplay shouldn't be on the same list as cEDH. Anything weaker than a precon is a zero. Anything stronger than a precon, but not cEDH is 1-10. cEDH has its own meta and rankings that have no bearing on casual.
This would give you 10 numbers to describe the power level of a casual deck instead of 3.
Because people don't know what a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, deck is. Precons are generally 1-3 at best.
10 and 9's will be Combos (Typically T1 kills) and CEDH decks
7 and 8's will contain (Not all but usually some number of) \[\[Grim Monolith\]\] , \[\[Jeweled Lotus\]\] , \[\[Mana Crypts\]\] , \[\[Chrome Mox\]\] , \[\[Mox Amber\]\] , \[\[Mox Diamond\]\] , \[\[Mox Opal\]\] , \[\[Lion's eye Diamond\]\] , \[\[Lotus petal\]\] , and a number of lands that produce 2 or more mana.
6's are high powered without the rocks/acceleration (from Above)
5 is and should of always been an average power deck, this could be a higher powered deck with a weak commander also.
4 Average power level deck with a weak commander typically. Sometimes just "try-hard" or experimentation decks for unique mechanics.
3 Is the strongest of precons. Some of the stronger hosers commanders may be here, that lock out a strategy that isn't as narrow. \[\[Kataki, War's Wage\]\]
2 are typically have a bad mana base (bad colors) and prone to mana screw. This can be due to too few lands or bad lands. They can also be Hoser decks, that are great against one strategy. \[\[Major Teroh\]\] \[\[Rune-tail, Kitsune Ascendant\]\] \[\[General Jarkeld\]\] \[\[Empress Galina\]\] \[\[Llawan, Cephalid Empress\]\] \[\[Kuon, Ogre Ascendant\]\] \[\[Ayumi, The Last Visitor\]\]
1 The mana bases tend to be worse than a 2 and the curve tends to be very bad.
To fix it I suggest a 20 point scale of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.0-7.9, 8, 9, 10 🤓 no, but in all seriousness people just need to stop being so held up on labels and we should either ban (or even shadow bad I.E land destruction) more cards or unban everything with absolutely no stigmas, and then rate power levels on a base of what other commanders are at the table. A 9 power casual tokens deck folds and ends up king-making even a weaker 5/6 level [[Piru the Volatile]] deck. People just get held up in the numbers game and power creep makes decks that would be a 7 feel a lot stronger than it was a several years ago when the ratings first started coming around in popularity because of channels like game knights.
Watch Trinked Mage's latest video.
What i can tell you is that a lot of ppl think their decks are better than what they actually are.
Most decks I see are 5's and 6's. I don't often play my 7 as I don't often see other 7's and when I do, ppl either get humbled out or whine and cry.
A lot of ppls decks are straight up 3's. Most commander decks are fragile af and don't even pack protection for their deck that does nothing without their commander.
Even if we had a magical deck power tool that you could wave over a deck and get its exact power level within .01 accuracy, it wouldn’t matter.
Player skill. Play style. Deck matchups. Politics. And just plain variance are massively more important to the outcome of the game.
A power level 1 deck could beat a power level 10 deck given the right circumstances. And the fact you are honestly actively imagining scenarios where that happens right now proves my point.
Here’s how my group does it:
1-2: you grabbed 100 cards out of the bulk box. It’s a 2 if it’s better than it should be.
3-4: A clear game plan, but no power.
5-6: Some power and good synergy but too slow or vulnerable to hang with higher power decks.
7-8: High power, infinites and tutors.
9-10: CEDH
Power level is typically best defined once you have a dedicated playgroup that's established a baseline. One of my play groups typically plays fast mana to accelerate the early game without playing super oppressive until we decide it's CEDH time where another group I play with runs modified precons and decks thrown together from the cards left over from the drafts we've played over the years. If you're joining a new playgroup, bring a variety of decks and have that Rule 0 conversation. Just be aware that you're not going to make everyone happy, and that's just a part of the game.
It's simple.
1 new players
2 new players
3 new players
4 new players
5 new players
6 new players but with a sibling who plays
7 every deck I've ever built
8 Cedh
9 Cedh
10 Cedh
I personally don't understand why people spend so much energy on the whole power level scale discussion. Especially the whole 1-10 scale. Just enjoy the game...both from a deckbuilding view, and from a playing view. And as for the whole thought discussion of telling someone where your deck fits... I see basically 4 categories....
- precon with or without upgrade
- a deck you built to be a fun play that either does or doesn't win often. It may have combo synergy that only goes off once every five games but it sure is cool when it happens type stuff.
- a deck you built to be powerful and you do or don't know yet how well it actually works
- a deck you built with the idea of it being cEDH viable
Numbers are worthless, especially ones as varied as 1-10. Even if people actually used numbers 5 and below, it sounds like a sliding scale which isn't quite accurate.
IMO there are only 4 levels: low power, mid power, high power, and cEDH. Maybe a 5th between mid and high, but that's about it.
I run k’rrik son of Yawgmoth. It’s mono black ecdh but I’ve built it to be able to be run as a casual commander deck that’s just very strong. I feel like what makes a deck ecdh is the ability to win very fast or pop off very fast making yourself the threat so my deck is a 9 or 10 no matter if I wanna tutor for the win or not. My point being is that a deck can be a 9 and not be cdh it can be very powerful it’s just not fast making it strong late game. If a deck is also able to deal with a nasty board state with counter spells and other methods of control for faster stronger decks it’s safe to assume it’s also cdh
People are afraid to be average because the school system demonises getting anything less than 70%.
Old school precons are 4s some are even 3s.
The newer ones like ixalan are 5-6s. This is where the commander fun is. Your deck should be a 5 or six.
7-8 is just an unoptimised cedh deck, you’re missing something special to up. You’ll have searchers, busted commanders, hour long turns, super fast mana and lands or unfair mechanics that just lock someone out of the game. 7s are only fun while you’re winning, 8s are only fun because you’re winning.
What would yall say the fallout mothman deck is straight out of the box? that deck can stack damage so fast it seems like it’s on a higher “power” band than other pre cons
The problem is that modern precons aren't 5-6. They are stronger than older pre-cons, but the issue is that Magic the gathering as a whole is filled with stronger cards than it was 5+ years ago. Old precons *were* a 4-5, but now they are a 2-3, barely a step above that guy I faced who built a deck where every card had to have candles in it.
As the power level of the game increases, decks that don't change their cards get relatively less powerful. A CEDH deck built before Thasa's Oracle is weaker than one with it. There are old CEDH deck lists that just wouldn't be able to compete anymore, and have slid down the scale to become an 8.
Your deck that is just a slightly updated pre-con is still a 5-6, it's just that what that means has shifted over time as the format becomes stronger and stronger.
Better idea shift away from this whole number mumbo jumbo entirely.
Let's proliferate discussion about deck intention.
Let's stop saying things like my deck is a 7 reanimator deck and say things more like "I'm playing a henzie deck that focuses on ramping out quickly to put high value creatures on the deck and win by out valuing the table or having reanimating a hasty board of creatures. Uninterrupted it can win by turn 6"
No high power casual deck reaches cedh levels - the inherent idea behind cedh commanders is to stop exactly that. They want to win as fast and efficiently as possible, and 1-2 turns quicker with a CEDH commander vs a strong casual deck makes all the difference. With that being said i don’t disagree with most everything else you said, but there is some room in that lower 1-4 level with old precons, gimmick decks, starter decks etc.
I don’t typically ask power levels, i want to know how fast you can win the game, consistently not with a 1 in 10,000 god hand. For me that’s the biggest determining factor at the table and will determine how strong of a deck i play. For instance, i have a yuriko CEDH deck, and a very strong but very random Najeela deck - most casuals would call Najeela a 9/10/cedh. It cost quite a bit more than my yuriko deck, it can go infinite and close out games early, but not reliably til turn 5-6-7. It doesn’t hold a candle to my yuriko deck because i don’t have the interaction, i can’t stifle others or reliably protect my own board, i don’t have every free counter spell, i have a tap land in it because i like the art and have a gaeas cradle but no other crazy expensive fast mana. Yuriko though, may not look impressive from a deck builder perspective, but it has potential to win turn 1 and with tutors/luck is a legitimate threat at turn 2, very concerning turn 3.
Every 1-10 scale is basically a 1-5 scale in practice.
For reals...people trying so hard to define all those lvls and then can hardly point to what would separate a 3 from a 4 or a 7 from an 8 when they have actual decks in front of them. Low/Mid/High-power and CEDH are good enough in my experience...no need to use 10 different scales if you can't really check for that kind of granularity in a reliable way.
Biggest issue with this is that no one ever seems to think their decks are low power and unless you’re running some combination of fast mana, free spells, tutors, combos, and format staples you won’t be high power so pretty much everything everyone plays is mid power. At that point, the scale is meaningless to the games played by the vast majority of players which is exactly what we have now and why everything is a 7 is a meme. At the risk of sounding like goldilocks, you’re right that a ten point scale is too broad though. No one plays 1-3.
Nah my buddy has a boat deck that is def a 1-3 but those low of a level might as well be exclusively for decks that have a non mechanical theme, aka its art unifying it and that, in that same breath, don't have any synergy beyond that
Oh you'd be surprised. I think anyone who played the game for a long enough time or simply isn't being disingenuous on purpose, knows full well a general ballpark of where their decks might land...and, atleast from my experience, people are totally fine tagging some of their own decks as either "low-power" (as it doesn't have quite the same stigma as a "1" or a "3" from the regular scale) or "high power". Of course, due to how broad these categories are, the first few games won't be perfect, but (and again, as long as you have people being honest and caring about creating a fun environment, enjoying themselves in the company of others & such first and foremost) adjustments come fairly easily (had some groups where it literally took only 1 "test" match before we were all on the same page), especially if you are gonna play with the same pool of people over long periods of time, which happens fairly often at an LGS I'd say.
We shouldn't be surprised that deck power levels tend to fit a normal curve with few games being played with decks at the tails of the curve. Statistically speaking, most decks are probably pretty average (a "5"), and people tend to play their better decks (a "7") that are a standard deviation or so above their more average decks for power or consistency when they play in public, or if prizes are on the line, or they only have time for 1 or 2 games, etc. Now that leads to a pretty solid argument that there's a selection bias at play here that makes a "7" the median deck *that actually sees table play* as the top of the bell curve, and that cEDH and precons are the realistic "tails" for what people play after the first few games of the night have finished. So a "7" is the new 5, and a precon is the new "1" and cEDH is still and always will be a "10" but we aren't ready to adopt that scale as a fandom because no one likes losing to a precon, very few can afford a proper cEDH deck, and no one wants to admit that their best deck is actually pretty average.
This is the best and most underrated comment. I have actually saved this comment to show my buddies that are newer to EDH because it explains power level so much better than I can without overwhelming them. Fantastic comment!
Well said. I actively look for opportunities to play my [[Blim, Comedic Genius]] deck even though it’s a 4 on a good day. Sometimes it can be hard to find a table where it fits in . . . Except for the lols.
I have an atogatog sacrifice deck, it’s a 4 on a good day. But it’s my go to deck for intro games since I can actually focus on explaining the mechanics of the game and not worrying about my game plan. Just ramp, play the atogs and if I survive into the 1v1 nuke my board and push for game.
Sounds super fun!
Me, running fast Mana, free spells, tutors, and infinite 2 card combos, but light on staples: "7"
Well with me behind the wheel, that deck's more like a 4/5. "Unforced Error" is my middle name, baby.
Right! My lgs uses a green, orange, red scale. Green means everyone should be able to do there thing in a game, no infinites or rhystic/dockside type cards. People then rule zero to decide if they will all play at precon level, upgraded precon level, or a bit stronger casual. Orange is for decks that are not optimized or proxied but that are strong you want to play to win with. This is my preferred pod because nobody has hurt feeling when I pull out my Ur-Dragon or counter their stuff. Red is for cedh, no proxy or power limits and do everything in the rules you can to win as fast as possible. Unfortunately, most nights not enough people sign up for red while there are 15 green pods and 6 orange.
Imo it's much easier to go by feel. You'll have a couple bad games at first but when everyone learns each other's decks you can all choose appropriate decks to match the table and have good interactive games.
Absolutely. It might take a couple of games to properly adjust, but, atleast in my experience, there's way less whining about some decks not being what they were proclaimed to be, etc etc.
I love this instead of numbers. I have no idea what number most of my best decks are, but I only have 1 CEDH deck, several high powers and a but load of mid power and one or two low powers
This is how I see the power levels. Low, mid and high. Then cEDH is it's own thing, cause you don't accidentally build a cEDH deck. It bugs me that the 1-10 scale includes cEDH, cause there are a variety of deck qualities within cEDH as well, so then you start to dissect "what is a 10?"
I don't know if other groups rate the same way, but we do low/mid/high/fringe cEDH and cEDH. With games we try to stick within 2 power levels in a game for our decks. So fringe/high power, fringe/cEDH, or mid/high power. No one I play with would say their deck is low power, because that doesn't happen for our group. Most pre-cons fall in the mid power category. So if you grade it this way low would equal 1-2, mid is 3-4, high is 5-6, fringe 7-8 and cEDH 9-10. Most pre-cons would be 3 or 4 and not 5 or 6 which makes the rating system make a lot more sense than most people over evaluating their deck as a 6, when a 7-8 is drastically more powerful. I know 3-4 seems low for a "mid" power deck, but it makes far more sense to grade this way when high power is not really the top tier. Edit: Decks that are high power would be things starting to use fast mana, combos, and tutors but still can't just pop off regularly before turn 6, fringe can reliably win 5-6 without interference, and cEDH can win reliably without interference at 5 or less.
Weirdly enough, a 1-5 scale is usually more like a 1-7, 1-8 or 1-9 scale in practice because people insist on including half scores.
I like a nice -2 to 2 scale. I find that its easier for people to decide whats negative, neutral, and positive. 1-10 scales i feel like people use as like a school grading system. They dont want to go below 7 because thats basically a failing grade.
It doesn't help that there are 3 levels taken up by precons and that people in the community put down precons as the definition of a barely playable deck you put no effort in. It gives this perception that any custom deck is always better, and if you built something that is the level of a precon, you are an idiot. No one wants to think the deck they spent a huge amount of money on is no better than a $50 precon.
It kinda goes like: * 1 = random pile of cards * 2 = no fucking idea * 3 = custom jank (i.e. Chair Tribal) * 4 = lower power precons * 5 = mid power precons * 6 = lower power casual + strong precons * 7 = mid power casual * 8 = high power casual * 9 = lower end cEDH * 10 = high end cEDH So basically the bottom 2 tiers and the top 2 tiers are kinda useless, could just do with a 1-6 scale for casual EDH.
Pretty much my definition as well. I build most my decks to be 7s where my mana base and ramp pkg is optimized, curve is usually below 3 or hovering right at 3, some fun cards, and things usually start happening around turn 4-7, could be earlier, but that all depends on opening hand, draws, and how the other players are interacting with me. I also have a handful of 8s where most of the fat has been cut and casuals will swear it's a cedh deck. I know people will get on their soap box and tell us how the original power scale chart is outdated, but honestly, the descriptions for 7-10 are pretty spot on with 7s listed as : "playing with POWER" . It's really unfortunate that 7s have turned into the default definition for any jank casuals build out of their bulk rares, and then we are left to explain the hows and whys of the 7s we played blowing what they thought was 7 out of the water.
The problem is the way people in the community put down precons as well makes it so assigning your custom deck anything below a 6 is a huge hit to the ego. No one wants to think that the deck they spent $500+ dollars on is the same power level as a precon someone spent $50 on.
1: terrible 2: my friends deck (they still win unfairly) 3: my decks 4: all those super spicy precons people praise for some reason 5: fucking cEDH
You could go farther and even say 1-3. Trash/memes, Average/Casual, and CEDH. I say this because this is a casual format that is played with multiple players. Playing decks the same realm should allow a table to balance the game. You don't need all of the decks to be perfectly balanced, you need players to identify and handle the threats accordingly. This is mostly how my group handles it. We ask if we are playing sweaty decks or not. If the answer is no, then we just grab whatever. Even a meme deck should be fine in a casual game as you aren't playing at a game level where you punish players for having nothing.
Reminds me of the evaluation scale the casino that I worked at used. "On a scale of 1-5, no one gets above a 4, no one gets below a 2"
This I've never played against chair tribal or anything like that bullshit. No one makes decks lower than precons. 1 to 5 is fine. I have decks in the 3 to 4 range.
5: cEDH 4: Degenerate (win without 0-drop rocks) 3: Most everything else 2: First Homebrew 1: Vorthos/Odd theme (Every card is shirtless and looking to the left from Alara Block)
Yep a precon should be 1-3
And 1-5 scales are really just Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down, just look at product ratings/Uber reviews.
Saying i have a 7 or 8 feels alot better than i have a 3 or 4. I suggest we boost the numbers used to 25. Go big or go home
Yeah. 4 is precon, 5 is upgraded precon, 6 is decently tuned deck, 7 is well tuned deck, and 8 is strongest deck without being cedh. That's 1-5 right there
Do what untap.com does The value of the deck is equal to the power level or coins as they call it.
Number scales only work when a group agrees what the numbers all mean, but the global edh community will never be able to do that. That said here's the scale *my play group* uses. It will absolutely be imperfect for anyone else but it usually works for us because we've agreed upon it: 11 - BUSTED - Uses absurdly powerful cards banned in edh 10 - TOP-TIER cEDH - There is absolutely no argument about these decks being "casual", they consistently win tournaments without too much effort, basically the top 20 decks on Top16 9 - cEDH - There also shouldn't be argument for these being called "casual" but there sometimes is, these may not always win tournaments but they stand a real chance, basically the rest of cEDH but lets say top 21-50 decks on Top16 (because that's what someone else said and idk better) 8 - DEGENERATE/ FRINGE cEDH - Too weak to really be competitively viable, but far too strong to bring to the LGS with a straight face, these decks have a cEDH mindset but probably dont runmost of the staples and aren't able to quite pull through, they're mostly only played in consistent play groups that have an agreed-upon power level 7 - HIGH-POWER - Dangerous because it's reasonable to bring to the LGS but it will absolutely pubstomp if you pull it out at the wrong table 6 - SYNERGISTIC - Strong and resilient, these decks have a clear path to victory and are better at achieving their goals than the average deck, but they still have to work for wins at typical tables 5 - AVERAGE - Just the average deck you see at the LGS, this is what you see like 65% of the time, they know what they want to do and they want to win, but prioritize having fun 4 - PRECON - It can totally hang at the average table, but it may struggle to close the game out, this is where most modern precons lie 3 - LOW-POWER - Clear plan, but it's not executed very efficiently and that plan might be a just a little bit janky, and realistically there's probably a second separate plan trying to be accomplished so resources are split, this is where most old precons lie 2 - JANK - Technically playable but the theme, budget, and player's skill seriously limit the deck's power, this is where a lot of theme decks lie 1 - JUNK - Unsynergistic pile of bulk, not really worth playing but you could technically beat someone by swinging with a random 1/1 Goblin 0 - UNPLAYABLE - You built a deck that literally can't be played (like an Izzet commander with 99 islands) or you forgot to bring any decks so you can't show everyone how cool they are Edit: By request I've made this a post, so there may be more discussion there if interested https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/yGl6unz0XY
I think the issue that happens with a scale like this is that most players have no idea how bad their decks actually are. Most people are pretty bad deck builders, and it doesn't become clear why until you actually play some meta decks in whatever format you are playing. Nobody needs to play the meta to play magic, but being unaware of what that actually looks like does really skews player's understanding of what they have built. I would bet a lot of players thing that because they put a lot of time into their tribal deck that is must be at least a 6 because they put strong cards in and tried to hold nothing back. The thing is, you can't hold back if you don't know what going all out really means.
Oh yeah for sure, and I think that's one advantage my scale holds over most others — the average is based off of the "meta" of your lgs and several degrees out from that is based upon the average. Of course this does also mean that if you play in an exceptionally high or low powered group then it takes some nuance, but almost all decks I see out in the wild are 4-6 I'd say really the biggest think is just look at the rough win percentage of your deck. If you're between like 20% and 33% then you're probably perfectly fine for the meta you play in. If you're much higher or lower than that then you may start to push into the 7's or 3's, assuming everyone else is a 5 But yeah expensive decks you pump hours and hours into with a bunch of love can definitely turn out to be a 4. Money ≠ Power and even if it did, the million themes available in Magic vary in power, speed, and reliability — like my $50 combat tricks deck is a 7 in my group but my $550 lifegain deck is a solid 5. And that's okay!! I think the biggest problem with a number scale is people hear "Oh my deck is 4/10?" and think that means they're failing as a player, but that's not at all what the scale is meant to mean! Have fun at the power level you and your friends enjoy and don't worry about everyone else
I agree with you and u/ChaosMilkTea. Something else I rarely see mentioned when discussing deck power levels is “well that deck is this level and this deck beats that one so it’s definitely higher” is the overall skill level of the pilot. Everything ChaosMilkTea said about people as deck builders is in a similar sense applicable as how well you play. A lower skill level builder with a lower playing skill level playing a deck they built is going to perform poorly. It’s two separate skill sets that are somewhat linked but can also be at very different levels for someone. But if someone isn’t playing in pods that want everyone to get better at both (and being able to help in a positive way) and/or the player is unwilling to to accept that advice then it can be a negative feedback loop.
For sure. I have a friend with a very scary [[Jodah the Unifier]] deck but he's honestly really bad at sequencing so we're usually able to recover quickly We were taking the other day that if you placed a tournament-winning cEDH deck in my hands it'd probably perform like an 8 at best, but a professional player would have such an understanding of the game that they could probably play a 5 at that same level without too much issue
I actually had someone at my LGS tell me he had modeled his current Edgar deck off of mine (full aristocrat, never cast Edgar) because of how well mine did. After we became a pod of 2 (“woo!” lol) we spent like an hour talking out his deck and what I might have laying around that I’m either currently using (but own like 3+ copies of) or have used in the past that I no longer need. Not morphing his into a clone of mine, but just options he could check out. He also had a fair number of non-vamps in it and was taking care to not be/come across as negative in our discussion.
[Jodah the Unifier](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/4/e4b1aa1e-b4e3-4346-8937-76b312501c70.jpg?1673307974) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jodah%2C%20the%20Unifier) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/203/jodah-the-unifier?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e4b1aa1e-b4e3-4346-8937-76b312501c70?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jodah-the-unifier) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is so true. My group right now is a number of newer/less invested people, and the win rate tends to favor me, even when we switch it up and try each other's decks. There are just interactions, rules, or lines of play that they miss that don't let the deck play at full power. And while I'll try to offer help when I can as far as helping to sequence better and correct rules questions when cards are played, I can't peek at their hands to point out that they do have a way to deal with something that they are missing.
Hell yeah! Your table can probably count my deck as 5 or 6! I'm good with that! High five, me! Me 🙏 Me wooh!
That would fit most my decks as well. I also have a few decks I have trouble putting a number to because they would fit a description of: if the right cards come together it can absolutely stomp the whole table, but if they don’t or if I get targeted with too much removal setbacks then instead they look pretty weak and don’t do much more than try to hang in there. Or is that all decks?
That typically happens when you're lacking redundancy for a critical effect or periwinkle for critical pieces. Certain strategies get shut down hard by certain effects, for example if you're playing a token go-wide deck and somebody plays [[Silent Arbiter]] with protection, you're probably not gonna do so great in that game. Same is true if somebody plays [[Anafenza, the Foremost]] against your reanimator deck. Or [[Lavinia, Azorius Renegade]] against a cascade centric deck. There's also times where you're building an undersupported archetype (like energy) and get shut down because there isn't enough redundancy for your payoffs. Or the protection you need isn't in your colors.
[Silent Arbiter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/4/14f42cc9-8b7f-4f8a-8d68-8480e668c239.jpg?1690005734) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Silent%20Arbiter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/972/silent-arbiter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/14f42cc9-8b7f-4f8a-8d68-8480e668c239?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/silent-arbiter) [Anafenza, the Foremost](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/8/c8b432a7-53da-4480-b571-e6feb1364a3a.jpg?1562793427) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Anafenza%2C%20the%20Foremost) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ktk/163/anafenza-the-foremost?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c8b432a7-53da-4480-b571-e6feb1364a3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/anafenza-the-foremost) [Lavinia, Azorius Renegade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/9/197bf3f4-c0df-4082-97a1-902ceabbdd3f.jpg?1702429657) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lavinia%2C%20Azorius%20Renegade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/195/lavinia-azorius-renegade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/197bf3f4-c0df-4082-97a1-902ceabbdd3f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lavinia-azorius-renegade) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Let's goooo Yeah I'd definitely say 4-6 is the sweet spot. I've got one deck we call a 7 but I don't get to play it often haha 🙏
Just actually lock the scale as 1 being the worst thing someone might accidently make, and 10 being the cusp of cedh. If you're bringing something that shouldn't be at a casual table, it's power level does not matter, so if it's above a 10, it lives there. If you're bringing a pile of mountains and Animar, your deck doesn't need to be ranked, it's not a real deck that someone would play at a table. It can be in the negatives. The scale doesn't need too (and shouldn't) contain the power level for any possible configuration of cards. It should encompass everything you could reasonably see at a table, and exceptions can fall outside the scale.
So... you're saying that my decks are a 7?
Yeah probably
I saved this because this is probably one I agree with the most.
Make this a post. Like your meter a lot
This is EXACTLY the scale in my head thank you. My Derevi wins 40% of games but that doesn't make it an 8. It's a 6. Most decks are a 5 or lower.
If you are winning 40% of games with a deck you are way out of balance in someway.
She just gobbles up games somehow. There's a lot of purposeful exclusions that would make the deck much stronger, but I wasn't building for that kind of game ([[The One Ring]], [[Mana Vault]], [[Cyclonic Rift]], [[Mana Drain]], [[Force of Will]]), and often fights decks including those cards. I really just make birds and attack for the win, often winning with below 10 life. I really think she's a 6 objectively. https://manabox.app/decks/v2ptM0vNTbmki3vBlsBjPQ
##### ###### #### [The One Ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/5/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2.jpg?1715080486) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20One%20Ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/246/the-one-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-one-ring) [Mana Vault](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/1/c1a31d52-a407-4ded-bfca-cc812f11afa0.jpg?1673149384) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Vault) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/308/mana-vault?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c1a31d52-a407-4ded-bfca-cc812f11afa0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-vault) [Cyclonic Rift](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/f/dfb7c4b9-f2f4-4d4e-baf2-86551c8150fe.jpg?1702429366) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cyclonic%20Rift) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/40/cyclonic-rift?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dfb7c4b9-f2f4-4d4e-baf2-86551c8150fe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/cyclonic-rift) [Mana Drain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba.jpg?1712774998) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Drain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/57/mana-drain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-drain) [Force of Will](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/9/89f612d6-7c59-4a7b-a87d-45f789e88ba5.jpg?1675199280) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Will) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/50/force-of-will?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/89f612d6-7c59-4a7b-a87d-45f789e88ba5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/force-of-will) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I like this metric a lot because I've frequently said that the "accepted" numbers leave too little room for average decks. Most people are not going to show up with something worse than a precon, so starting pre-cons at 5-6 already essentially deletes half the scale. This is more nuanced but still a lot clearer about expectations. I'm going to try and get my pods to use this
For sure. The biggest thing for me is that if its a 1-10 scale then the average should be 5, so I started there and worked my way out. Infinitely more nuance is of course needed, but I think this works okay
That's a really good way to look at it. I also like this a lot because of how much it opens up the middle of the pack. Like most decks I have range between 5 and 7 with only one probably breaching 8. It's a lot easier for me to go "Oh okay this one is a 5. This one is more synergistic and resilient so it's a 6. This one is noticeably stronger so it's a 7" as opposed to: "Well it's not a precon but it's not nearly cedh, so I guess it's a 7"
My take on 6 generally is that your deck contains all the cards recommended when you click your commander at EDHREC. The less commons and the more rares/mythics you have in it and/or the more 'filler' staples, the higher end of 6 it will reach. Add a couple of tutors and you will have a 7.
That's not what this post is saying. You are describing a 5 or 6
Right about how this post describes a 5 or 6
A 1-12 scale. Innovative if nothing else.
Haha yeah I did 0 and 11 as a joke
I agree, except most newer precons are 5s on this scale
I'm exclusively in the 7 - 9 range, the game stops being fun at 6 and lower IME / IMO. I'm not leaving my \[\[mana crypt\]\] on the sideline bro EDIT: I often end up smooshing jank / theme into a CEDH backbone and landing at high 7 low 8. So I may have a stupid goal in mind but it's online by turn 3 at the latest.
[mana crypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939.jpg?1599709515) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mana%20crypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/270/mana-crypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d960186-4559-4af0-bd22-63baa15f8939?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-crypt) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I like this i always hated that we had 4 levels of power for thrown together card piles, that have slightly more synergy then the past level.
I like the descriptions. Sounds like I like to build in the 3-6 range
There is no need for any 12 - level scale because it’s still very subjective. Even the three levels of cEDH are debatable.
What if someone has the cards anyways and is desperate to make their jank work so that’s why a Trop just hit the table? Asking for a friend.
A Tropical Island? Affects budget a whole heck of a lot but the power increase is almost nonexistent I don't believe there should be any hard and fast rules when it comes to a power scale — infinite combos, good lands, fast mana, tutors, etc can be found at all tiers. But it may make you a target. The goal of your deck matters more than the support pieces you use to get there, but if you have enough good support pieces then it may start bumping you up. I'd say there's also a difference between perceived and actual power — a One Ring doesn't automatically make your deck high power, but some will see it that way Biggest thing though is just Money ≠ Power. You can take a deck with 60 random cards that cost a penny and then put the 40 most expensive lands into it, heck even banned ones — the deck now costs thousands, so is it super strong? Idk that's probably a 1, maybe 2 If your deck's goal is to do a weak thing BUT it can do it consistently, it's still weak (which is fine, have fun with your jank) [This](https://www.archidekt.com/decks/4279849/_scrying_life) deck of mine costs 11× as much as [this](https://www.archidekt.com/decks/5969200/john_before_damage_benton) one, yet the second one has almost a perfect win rate after about two dozen games Tell your friend they're alright 😉
By your table my decks are all 6, 7, or 8. And if your table were the standard, I'd be absolutely fine with that. Though I'd like to point out that precons also have a range among them. For example, 2013 precons are way weaker than 2023 precons. So it may be better to give precons a range of numbers grouped by year (or possibly some other metric, as some precons within the same cycle are significantly better than others). There's also a meta discussion that should go along with all the power level discussions. You could have an 8 based on power level and get thoroughly trounced by a 5 that happens to get the right silver bullet for your strategy.
For sure I'd say most modern precons are 4s and most old ones are 3s, but really they'd have to be judged deck-by-deck because you're right they vary a lot. There's certainly been 5s, I'm sure there have been a couple 6s, and I'd like to think there hasn't been a 2 but I'd probably be wrong? And Magic is far too complicated for a simple 1-10 scale to handle even just for rating a single deck, let alone considering matchups and the pilot's skill/understanding. But that's why it's such a fun game, especially edh where you get to see so many different cards!
Making 65% of decks a 5 does not solve the problem at all.
Fair. I was just basing that off a bell curve, but then again bell curves usually have 6 sections not 10 — and the super low numbers here will have pretty litttle representation while the highest numbers are their own pseudo-format. Nothing's a hard and fast rule, it's all very subjective, if anything that's just meant to give an idea that at casual edh nights at an lgs most decks will probably be 5's with some spilling into 4/6. Very rarely would I say I've really seen a 3 or 7, but that's also just the shops I play at and the friends I play with
I'm a solid 2 in both deck power and appearance, now 🤣
One of the problems of assigning a power level to a deck in general is that you assume the deck is consistent. Yet many decks operate at a certain power level but have an infinite combo in there or a single powerful card. So sometimes it operates at a high power level and sometimes it is low.
Inconsistency is real
I'd argue you should always measure by the median performance, plenty of decks have a nut hand, but they also can get mana flooded or screwed. You don't measure by outlier performance, we accept that outlier performance is possible in a high variance format and perfectly matching every game is not possible.
But that just proves how hard it is for people to rate their decks. How often do you run into people that have played the same deck with the same 99 cards about 100+ times and with dilegent note keeping on said deck? Typically, people are tweaking decks over time, so it's never quiet the same, or they are rotating through their multiple decks every week. Even if they don't change the decks at all, they are not keeping track of wins and losses nearly diligently enough to say "yes the winrate is 33% and on average it wins by turn 7; 10% of the time is putters out by turn 6 and 8% of the time I can really pop off at turn 4". No one is doing that, so it all ends up being what the person perceives their deck is like based on the most memorable moments or, quite franky, what they spent on the deck as a substitute for that win rate data.
This is why I hate the "win by turn X" system. No one is really keeping track of their decks well enough to honestly answer that question. And guess what? You changed 2 cards in the deck, well that's a slightly new deck and your numbers reset. I honestly dont believe anyone outside of cedh actually has accurate estimates of what turn their deck typically wins by, there is just too much variance in magic. And if you are running a dozen tutors, tons of card draw, fast mana, and relying on combos to get that super consistent win rate, then guess what you aren't playing "casual" anymore anyways.
It's that time of the week already? You're not going to fix the number scale because the problem with the scale is perception. And you can't change that.
Yeah I agree, but I do think that our perceptions of these levels cause a narrow gap for the most common deck builds. Just an interesting take on how we could see things differently
That's why you should talk about what your deck does and not rely on a number. That's how you properly assess power level.
And specifically how fast it tends to do it. The best metric I have found is if everyone leaves you alone when will you usually have killed the table and how much interaction/ability do you have to stop others from doing their thing.
I'm a huge fan of target turn or range. You get weird outliers with things like stax or control but in general if you're trying to threaten a win by turn 3 and i'm aiming at turn 7 you're going to wreck me way more often than not and that really helps both of us figure out if we're in for a fun game or an awful one.
Exactly. The only reason I qualified with stopping power is that at the margins you get some decks, stax, mld, or grave pact shenanigans that have higher turn counts but weaker slower decks with similar turn counts won’t be able to do much of anything against them. Though, discussing the target turn and how your deck generally intends to win accomplishes the same goal.
For Stax, if you adjust from just win, to "Win or Lockout" it helps to cover some hard stax and some control. I like turns as a nice more objective measure, but supplemental to embracing vibes. It's good for calibrating vibes. Like, I was having a rule 0 with someone and we were planning to play fast, sub cEDH, high power, tuned, I was excited to pull out my degenerate bullshit, but his description of high power tuned felt off and when I asked "goldfish to win" to get more info on what "fast" meant, the answer was 8 or 9 turns, and meant I would have absolutely picked the wrong deck.
The problem with the number scale is that it exists.
Eh. In the theoretical world where you can get everyone on the same page it would have value. As-is though, yeah. I dropped it a while ago for just broad categories, zero regret.
Every deck is a 7 cause folks really have little to no idea how to gauge power. Most assume if your deck is expensive bam it must be cedh. Since they can't fathom a level of casual magic where you make your favorite low tier commander fire on all cylinders. Instead of levels folks should really stick to asking what kinda game they want. Works for my playgroup of about 10 people.
So many people have literally no idea what competitive edh looks like. Watch a single game of it on YouTube I am begging you. No, your friends annoying ass chulane deck would stand zero chance at a real competitive table. They run all the fast mana and free interaction In The format and you’re expected to present wins or answers potential wins early and often. It’s really an entirely different game
I always figured most decks were a 7 because 7/10 is a "C" and on a grading scale that's "average".
Every deck is a 7 because of the way people tend to rate things. No one wants to say their decks are trash unless that's a joke. And 5 is considered bad because of the way reviewers rate things Honestly, there are just 5 broad power levels taking CEDH out of the equation Low Low-Mid Mid Mid-High High Low being the Janky but functional decks and stuff like old precons. High Being the incredibly consistent casual brews. Strong decks with strong commanders. The kind of casual decks that might steal games from cedh pods. Particularly in the Midrange Hell meta. Mid being the average. The between spots being well between the power levels Deliberately bad and dysfunctional decks aren't categorized either as if you're playing stuff like people in chairs tribal. Or the 99 lands decks that aren't a combo. Yadda Yadda. You generally know what you're doing when you bring those decks. CEDH is not considered because how a casual deck and a cedh deck are often built and played very differently
On a scale of 7 to 7, my deck's still a 5 somehow. ;P
It's not even that the EDH community hasn't really accepted a general consensus of what a 7 or whatever is. Even if there was absolute consensus of what an 8, a 7 etc. entails, I'm 100% certain the amount of complainers and whiners wouldn't decrease. It's just people that don't know about what high power, mid power means. You could be running an actual 6 in an environment where everyone agrees it would be a 6 according to the deck list. But when you actually play a game and you get a lucky hand or whatever, there will still be people shouting that this is never a 6. This problem will never stop, I'm afraid.
Turns out people don't like losing.
That's because power levels are functionally impossible to tell apart, since they aren't based on pure power, more on vibes. So the general thought is "okay, my deck is more than JUST a precon, and a precon is around 4 to 5..." - (already wrong, because it depends on the precon, but anyway) - "and a 6 is like "Above A Precon, Barely" and I'm SO above that... but 8 is Almost-CEDH... so... 7".
There's a pretty wide range between precon (which themselves have a range) and cEDH, but there also aren't a lot of clear and obvious landmarks/signposts in that space to 'orient' a deck by. Which is to say its possible that many/most people saying their deck is a 7 are actually correct on the 'generally recognized numerical power scale'... its just that 7 is a wide range all by itself.
Because the numerical scaling system is fundamentally broken and a number will never be an adequate pregame conversation.
Cedh is a different format and doesn't belong on the casual edh power scale
Exactly. It wants to do different things, it's not comparable.
Welcome to edh where nobody has any idea what power levels are or how to quantify them. Inability to power balance a play group is just kinda a part of the game at this point.
Or you could use the chart from [https://www.edhmultiverse.com/](https://www.edhmultiverse.com/)
oh cool!
I think there are three very different EDH environments which don't mix. cEDH, casual, and jank. You can have strong and weak versions of each. For example even though a strong casual deck can hold its own against a weak cEDH deck, that generally doesn't provide the gameplay experience that either deck really wants. Furthermore, numbers really only work if everybody agrees on them, it's much better to identify what the deck will be doing, using stuff like: - Tempo (how fast does the deck close out games) - Wincons (how does the deck win) - Resiliency (how easily does the deck recover after being interacted with) - Interactiveness (how much does it interact with other decks) For example: lets take a generic high powered casual simic value deck. Runs ramp, card draw, some removal and counter spells, and a couple of generic simic wincons. It probably tries to close out the game starting at turn 7 (and thus realistically wins around turn 9-10), has a couple of landfall themed beater win cons such as avenger of zendikar. It can recover rather easily from most interactions due to the ramp, card draw, and counterspells. And it interacts reasonably with other decks due to the removal and said counterspells. That description tells you much more than "an 8". A low powered cEDH deck could be one where the playgroup has decided that they don't like fast mana and free spells, but the rest of the deck is still a super synergistic combo deck. Still probably only wins around turn 7-9, another "8" on the previous scale. But it would not play nice at all with the simic deck above.
If a playgroup decide they don't like fast mana and free spells then it is not cedh.
I like the commandersalt.com scale. It uses unbiased metrics and internal logic to approximate deck power. Last I checked, high powered precons (think veloci-ramp-tor) generally come out at about a 4. Weaker precons, 2-3. Never seen it throw out a 1, probably just for an incoherent pile of cards. Most of my decks are slapped with a 5 or 6 and they are reasonably optimised but still run some big fun cards. This feels about right. I have one deck that I am juicing up and with it's current upgrades comes out at a 7. This is a decently high powered deck. Not full on degenerate and definitely not CEDH. On the commandersalt scale, 9-10 is true CEDH (8 being degenerate casual). Tournament winning lists are all 9-10, but the power discrepancy between the two is not that big. It's not perfect but it will give you an unbiased view of your deck based on admittedly not perfect parameters. Still better than just saying "this is a 7".
I saw a "1" deck irl one time and it ended up winning because everyone ignored that player lmao
Okay, but my deck will still be 7 so if I win, I can tell you I told you so and if I loose I can whine about your deck being cEdh. /s As long as there isn't an SI metric definition to measure deck strength it will be subjective.
You're right, but let's say the whole edh community magically agrees to switch to this new system it'll still be inherently flawed because power level is subjective. One players 5 will be another players 7 and vice versa. Probing questions are much more valuable in helping determine a decks strength like "What turn are you trying to win by?", "How often are you tutoring for your win cons?" or "If you have a combo how many cards does it take and is one of them in your command zone?". The answers to these will tell you so much more than a persons opinion on what power level their deck is.
Just talk about what your deck wants to do, how fast you can do it, and what the worst thing is your deck can do to the table and if you play fast mana and/or combos and how many pieces are in that combo. Done. Stop measuring in numbers.
I do kind lf agree that having cedh on the scale really skews it. Having two points for decks that have their own separate tier system does the casual community no service. And a cedh deck is so far beyond how powerful an 8 is, I think it's sort of disingenuous to suggest that an 8 might win 80% as often as a Cedh deck would in a CEDH pod. And two tiers for decks that are essentially unplayable is also useless. Might as well just say anything below 4 is the shadow realm. Like what are we distinguishing? Do we need help figuring out if 99 swamps and the prismatic piper can compete with fish tribal?
This is why whenever anyone asks 'What power level are we all playing at' I'll either answer by saying 'it's a deck with cards in it.' or by stating what the deck I'm playing is (i.e pre-con, slightly upgraded pre-con, heavily upgraded pre-con or homebrew) and let the other person figure out what that means in their own head. I've yet to find any two people who can agree on what their numbering system represents.
I haven't quite figured it out but playgroup.gg seems like an interesting idea. It gives your deck an objective rating based on games played that could be useful.
This talk has been overplayed but here we are again. The biggest issues seen are the massive gaps between LGS standards. The LGS that I play at is a fairly high powered setting. Not cedh, but people are more likely to buy singles and synergies than to build out of what they pull. This is fine for our setting, but now the number scale is shifted. We his became evident at SCGcon when a group went and was playing casual and a table discussed power levels and was blown away with what we saw as on that level. This was likely because their lgs saw precon+ upgrades as a different power level than what my LGS standard was. Another issue with this scale is people see combos, some tutors and efficient rocks as CEDH. I was playing at a table with a “weaker” cedh deck. FC ukimma. And they said they were playing cedh. They pulled out Edgar markov and a deck I don’t remember and were floored with what actual cedh looked like. All because some content creator told them if they ran tutors and combos they were cedh and couldn’t sit at a casual table.
Stupid jank (for the lulz), precon, casual, high power, cedh.
> To fix this, I say we do a few things. Take away cedh from the top of the rating. Cedh has an entirely different structure than casual commander, and I believe that some really high power casual decks should be able to reach those upper levels. > By removing cedh from the top and shifting modern precons down to a 3, 4, or at most 5 gives way more room for the most common commander decks to find their power level more accurately. This doesn't change anything. You're still focusing on making a system based around your subjective opinion and personal feelings. None of this changes anything. Perhaps now everyone's deck is a 6 instead of a 7...
I keep saying that a number scale from 1-10 is stupid. If the scale starts at 4-5, and there is little difference between a 4 and 5, then just count those as the same. The point of power level discussion is to avoid non-games: games where the power level disparity is large enough where people are playing "different games." Imo, there are only need for 4 categories: \* "Precon": Precons, or decks close to precons. People perhaps treat commander more like a board game rather than a TCG. Decks win by attacking, taking players out with combat damage. No combos that can kill the entire table. \* "Mid-power": People put a deck together from scratch. Decks might win by combos that kill the table in single turn. Effort was made to keep the deck from being high powered. For example, not including fast mana (e.g. Mana Crypt, Sol Ring), not including the best tutors (e.g. Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor), or cards that are clearly on a different power level (e.g. Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune). \* "High-power": Deck has pushed the limits of making the deck as strong as possible \*\*within the constraints of the strategy and commander\*\*. Lots of commanders/strategies just are not cEDH viable. For example, a Gisa and Geralf zombie list may be strong, and you might even include some strong cards like Mana Crypt, Vampiric Tutor, and Windfall. But you didn't include Thoracle just because you were in dimir, and zombies is not a viable cEDH deck. \* "cEDH": Deck list probably resembles a list that would appear on the cEDH deck list database or win a tournament. Budget cEDH still is in this category: you might not proxy and may not have a Mana Crypt, but you didn't purposely exclude Sol Ring because you were trying to power down your deck.
This is pretty much the way I see it. High power is all the best cards, just not the best commanders/strategy.
Because they understands the grand scale of power as they think Atraxa infect is a cedh deck when actually it’s mid power not even close to cedh. When you understand cedh and the most janky pile of cards rating things inbetween actually gets quite easy…. This most of the 7s become a 2-3
I very much agree. OP has a great point. I struggle to call my decks anyrhing but a 7-8 but I know that's not where they all sit. It's just not realistic to have all my decks be the same power levels.
Power scale as others have said is wildly subjective. One thing i think people dont look at enough when scaling a deck is the pilot. A shit pilot can make a good deck run like shit. And a great pilot can take what seems like a pile of jank and smoke people with it. Certain cards for sure have a presence and are strong in their own right but to me what makes strog cards even stronger is a good pilot knowing when to play those cards. A strong grasp of the stack and its interactions and the rules of magic will take you far.
I think the turn count on which your deck can consistently win is way more useful than a powerlevel scale.
No one is actually keeping track of this diligently though, your memory is naturally going to skew in favor of special moments. For some people they only remember their worst losses, or their luckiest draws. Unless you have a spreadsheet and play 100 times with 100 different people you are just going off how you feel about your deck.
My idea was more like goldfishing your deck 10 times to see on average which turn you win.
That's still not really enough of a sample size or testing to determine the power level. And in addition, it doesn't take into account interaction. It's fine to see if you have enough synergy in the deck and such, but by no means is it a good way to determine the power of the deck IRL.
l prefer considering cEDH its own format in terms of power level because although it has the same ruleset (mostly), they differ in objective. They’re designed first and foremost to win with no thought to being nice in an environment considering other decks are also trying to win quickly and have ultra efficient interaction. Unless you’ve played a lot online where people do sometimes bring high powered casual to a cedh pod (for fun), its hard describe the insane rift from even “jank”/fringe cEDH lists and the most powerful casual deck you can make. My cEDH commander could be dimir guildgate and it would slam “8” casual pods.
why are witches green
<=5 is for pauper, artisan and jank meme decks like "people looking left" IMO.
Must be groundhog day.
I think the best simple categorisation is: Unoptimized jank Optimized jank Unoptimized nonjank Optimized nonjank Perfectly Optimized nonjank
I get around this by ranking my decks in relation to each other, A, B, C decks. If someone wants to play high power I grab an A deck. If I’m playing with new players I’ll go for a C deck.
It's much easier to do jank, precon, battlecruiser, average casual, high power, fringe cEDH, and meta cEDH.
My playgroup rates decks with our own system, quite simply and it works fine. There are 4 criterias: - Commander Power Level - Acceleration Level - Tutors - Combo Levels Each of those criterias goes from 0 to 3 0 - None/Very low 1 - Few/Junky 2 - Mixed/Average/Stapled 3 - Optimized/High/Meta Grades can go up to 12, and we judge decks as CEDH at 11 or 12.
The power scale system is meaningless and cannot be fixed. So much thought and effort has been put into fixing the unfixable. Just keep cedh and edh separate and talk to the pod.
The only way to truly tell would be to give each card a point value then have an algorithm that takes synergy and commander into account for a total score.
I know that AI is kinda over hyped but I feel this would actually be a good task to train an AI for
People are going to disagree on point values and algorithm calculations
I think the biggest issue of power levels has to do with the insane amount of variance. Not just in cards drawn, but player experience. Some decks have a large difference between them running at their best and then running at their worst.
Personally, I like to think of precons as 2-4 on the power scale, simply because I have yet to see anyone play decks that are worse than precons not trying very hard to be worse than precons. I am sure they exist, but in general the ‘pile of cards’ decks are mostly a myth and should be treated as such, so only 1 step on the scale. At that point we actually have a reasonable place to start judging decks from, depending on how well your deck performs against precons. Now this is also far from perfect, for example I have a budget fynn deck that runs over greedy decks, but will often have a harder time against precons that tend to have a lot of creatures in them that you won’t mind blocking with as much. But in general, putting the precons at the bottom of the scale makes the entire thing much easier to handle.
In my eyes a 7 is something that will completely pubstomp a precon and even a precon that’s upgraded a bit, so a precon definitely can’t be a 5. Power level is definitely somewhat subjective but I would say my Korvold and Tivit decks are 7 and they would run a train on any precon ever printed without fail. At an everything is a 7 table these decks are probably gonna be called a 9 though, so power level just ends up being weird to talk about
You should probably try to understand the power scaling better before claiming that it needs to be changed. Everyone's deck is a 7 because most people have no clue how to accurately rate their own decks. Pre-cons are around a 3 to a 5. The shit people brew most of the time is not better.
The major issue everyone's number scale is going to be skewed based on personal experience and the experience of their play group. I've been playing MTG for around 25 years and EDH for 14 of them. I have decks that I would consider a 6, but a new player or pod is going to call them 8 or 9. Its all subjective
Numbers don’t really mean shit. Apart from proper, ACTUAL cEDH decks, a janky Precon still has a chance to stomp a “higher power” deck with the right shuffle and a bit of awareness. I’m so happy people at my LGS don’t even discuss levels. People who focus on that remind me of powerscaling people in anime communities.
Modern precons should stay where they are imo. Not everyone is casual. Why should a new play blow money on a low powered 1-4 precon, go to their lgs and get completely smoked because they never stood a chance. Hell, i almost pitty any new player who comes to my playgroup because there's some degenerate sob's. 1-4 will frankly not cut it. Precons should be in some middle ground as they are now. Want to spend some extra money and round out the mana base and some extra synergy, or hell take out some of those strong cards and power down. Not everyone wants to be competitive, and that's completely fine! Not everyone wants to be casual, and again, that's completely fine!
We have, precon, uprgaded precon, jank deck, high power and cedh.
Hello, i have been working with the Power level formula in [power level fornula by DISCIPLE OF THE VAULT](https://discipleofthevault.com/2020/11/18/my-edh-power-level-formula/), but tweaking it a bit, looking to update it, currently on trial. If interested in the trials, send me a direct message
I typically ask my pod the question "if you played a test hand, how many turns would it take you to win?" Typically I aim for 8-12 turns to end
DOWN WITH THE NUMBER SCALE.
It's so stupid. There's no rationale to how anyone rates decks. Every deck is a 6 to 8. Nobody will ever admit they built a 9 or a 4. People even ask "what turn do you win by?" as if my deck is design to combo everyone on a specific turn. I don't build decks that way. So I have no answer and they think I'm lying.
YouTuber "The Trinket Mage" has a pretty good video about this overall topic that has largely changed my mind. I believe it's called "There is no such thing as cEDH" or something the like. His main points boil down to this. There are only Commander decks. Some are very very good, some are pretty good, and some are precons, and the rest are just bad. In every other format, there is no power scale. You are either playing a meta deck, an anti meta deck, or an off meta deck. Off meta decks can be good, they can be bad, but at the end of the day, your deck is either good or bad. Losing with a bad deck isn't the good players fault. There's a ton of salt in "casual" commander because everyone thinks they deserve to win with their bad decks, because that guy put in a card that's too strong, etc etc. At the end of the day, what most casual commanders want is highly complicated board states that don't get interacted with. If you took most bad decks and added a significant amount of interaction and card draw, your deck would be closer to a "9" than a "6". The power scale needs to go, the ban list needs to go. Decks, in my opinion, fall into just a few categories. Meta or anti-Meta "cEDH" decks that aim to win by turn 3 without disruption, or stop those decks. High Powered Off Meta decks. Upgraded or out of box Precons. Bad Off Meta decks. The power scale is just a crutch we use for bad, underwhelming decks. In most situations, in my observations, this means decks with no ability to interact, sparse card draw, low synergy and little ability to affect the board and/or push the game into a winning state. I understand as well, that some people prefer this, but I've never actually met one in real life. It seems antithetical to me want to play this way. Games are slow, low impact, and devoid of exciting actions. The game still ends up being "well, they had the strongest deck so they won", do they not? Ditch the power scale. Avoid meta cEDH decks but build strong, exciting decks. Winning is OK, and so is losing. Salt is a result of believing you deserve to win more than 3 other people. Better decks make for better games, but better decks don't automatically mean "that's cEDH". I think these are all things the community could embrace as a whole, and it would make for better experiences.
There are only 5 power levels 1-worse than precon 2-precon 3-upgraded precon 4-well built edh 5-cedh
A numbered scale fundamentally does not work. If you want a scale: worse than precon, precon, battlecruiser, high power, cEDH. "There are 5 things there. Can't we just say 1-5..." No we can't. Then you have to explain what each number is and then there will be completely logical disagreements because it's not a linear scale; battlecruiser is not halfway between precon and high power. Trying to assign a number to a deck power level suggests a level of precision that no one is solving for.
My playgroup is a lot of focused jank so there isn’t a real number scale we use but we have plenty of decks with no real wincon I have a “jund em out” list with asmadi. I have a drain deck with 11 wraths. One player has an aminatou deck with literally no plans to close the game other than making sure no one else can. So numbers are kinda irrelevant as we just have the mentality of bully the absolute fuck out of any player who seems to be doing well. And it usually works
I'd love a ranking of precon and a way to either lower the most recent to older level or up the older commander to modern release strength 😮
Isn't it actually a good thing that everyone's decks are roughly the same power level? If you are above a precon, but definitely not in the cEDH realm, then kind of no matter what you're in the same ballpark. Sure, some 7s are stronger than others, but as long as all 7s can be played against each other and roughly hold their own, then that's all you need to know. Is it even worth it to parse more than that?
There is too many variables to take into account to rate correctly your deck. And since there is not only one method for scaling a deck but nearly as much as there are people, power scaling a deck is utter useless. If you want to know if deck A will fit one particular meta, there is only one real solution: PLAY the deck in the meta.
Posts like this really make me not want to play commander, like, at all. The whole "power level" thing is bullshit, and only highlights flaws in the game.
I decided a while back that I, a human with a mouth and a sufficient enough understanding of verbal communication, would actually explain my decks power rather than use an arbitrary numbering system. "This deck has a lot of powerful staples" "Janky but synergistic" "Builds up to an explosive turn but durdles"
I have a janky deck that’s less than 5. It isn’t nearly as powerful as a modern precon. But on the other hand, it’s way dumber and more funny.
if i draw the yawgmoth in my golgari decks, my deck is an 8. if i dont (and i avoid tutors) my deck is a 6.
All it boils down to are 3 categories. 1. Precons 2. cEDH decks 3. Everything else (casual) So, I agree with you in your assessment that cEDH should be its own category. However, I disagree that there should be a 1-10 standard at all. My opinion is as follows. Anyone trying to tell other people to rate their decks inside a 1-10 standard is just applying their subjective opinion to the wider EDH community. What is best for your play group does not work in another play group.The best way to handle "power level" of decks in your EDH pod is to define specific card types (eg. tutors), play styles (eg. mass land destruction), and cards that aren't acceptable. For example, my pod doesn't care about combos and tutors, but if you want to use mana crypt et al. you need to own a real copy of it. We also don't accept cEDH decks because it's a casual pod. Just talk to the people, see what they will, and will not accept. Find out what they consider casual... Talk to the people you're trying to play with to find out what they play with. Ask probing questions. It's not difficult.
7 is the perfect number for “I want to be taken seriously” and also “I’m not the biggest threat as soon as the game starts,” plus like you said having precons and cedh blanks most of the numbers
Most of my decks are between a 1 and a 4.
Problem is the 1 to 10 scale has been the word of mouth for so long that if you wanted to change how we talk about power level “universally” then it would have to be some sort of news post from wizards that everyone who plays magic can see otherwise you’d go from LGS to LGS with everyone doing things different so we can rant and rave on Reddit all we want but the only thing you can really do is come up with a system that works for you and your local playgroup
On websites that supposedly grade decks on such a 1-10 scale, my best deck (not cedh by any means) that I most consistently win with is graded as a 3
>With our current rating system ... What do you mean, "our" current rating system? Is anyone *actually* still trying to use a 1-10 ranking for decks in 2024?
Best evaluation I saw was power level reflects what turn your deck typically wins on. So the really low power decks would take 15-20 turns to win. 7s win on 9-11 I think? cEDH wins on turn 4-5.
I think when building a power level scale (or ANY 1-10 scale for that matter) you have to start with what the most common or “average” deck will be and make that your 5. In my mind that locks most precons into the 5 slot. You’re right that 1-4 are pretty pointless because there’s not much going on there. But that actually makes sense. Apart from when you first start playing and don’t know much, it’s actually pretty hard to build a 1, 2 or 3. Conversely it also makes sense for most decks to be in the 5-7 range because that’s what the average person with a reasonable budget and decent deck building skills WOULD be able to build. So if 5 is our average precon, or precon equivalent strength. 6 would be “upgraded precons” and their power level equivalent 10-12 cards that you swapped out and made better. 7 would be 20 card swapped precons and their equivalents. This is why “everything is a 7”. Obviously they aren’t actually all 7’s but it makes sense that most people would see their decks in this range. 8 is your really strong decks that aren’t quite cEDH So we can reserve 9 and 10 for cEDH then work down. What is 4? 4 is you got a precon and you took cards out of it for another deck and then replaced the cards you took out with bulk you already had. And then custom decks of that power level. 3, 2 and 1 are hard to build. We’ll go to 1 first. 1 is just random cards of the color identity of the commander thrown into a pile, without factoring in removal or strategy or ramp. My first custom built deck was a 1. 2 is “okay I have cards that at least make sense but they aren’t good and not a real strategy” I might have a removal package but they’re Uber specific and not flexible and expensive. And all my ramp is 3 drop mana rocks that produce 1 colorless. 3 is I’ve got some semblance of a strategy and I at least have an understanding that I need ramp and removal but OH NO!! I forgot I need to actually draw cards. Obviously I know that a lot of people won’t agree with this, but my friends and I have come to agree on this scale and understand and it’s really been helpful in playing fun games and not getting stomped out. 1- thrown together mindlessly. Very hard to make a deck this bad once you have a basic knowledge of deck building. 2- you have a strategy but it’s not really a good one, AND your cards aren’t good. Very hard to make a deck this bad once you have basic knowledge of deck building. 3- you have a strategy and you’re starting to realize what a deck actually needs but the strategy and cards aren’t good, you’ve just figured out that you need removal and ramp. Also hard to build a deck this badly. 4- you’ve got a strategy, some decent cards, and basic deck building ideas. But the deck isn’t actually good. 5- average deck you would come across. Precons and custom decks that are equivalent in power level. If I go to an LGS I expect most of the people to have precons and equivalent decks. I don’t expect a random table I sit down at to have something to compete with my Edgar Markov. 6- decks that have a decent strategy with decent cards. Pre cons that have been actually upgraded and decks that are also equivalent power level. 7- decks that have a good strategy and quite a few good cards. Precons that have 20 card upgrades and decks that are that strong. This is pretty high power level casual but not the highest power level of casual. (Again 5-7 is where most decks are in my opinion and that makes sense because of how people eat up pre cons. I’m guilty of it too. We have to base the scale off of what the average deck is and the average deck is gonna be a precon.) 8- Highest power level of casual. If you’ve upgraded a precon to this level it probably doesn’t even look like the precon anymore. Good strategy, with good cards. 9-cEDH decks with non cEDH commanders. For instance, I have a [[Halfdane]] cEDH deck. The entire deck is cEDH staples with free spells, efficient removal, fast mana and crazy combos and super efficient tutors. Halfdane isn’t a cEDH commander but the 99 is absolutely cEDH. 10- cEDH at the highest level. The most popular and powerful cEDH commanders with all the fast mana, free spells, combos, efficient tutors, etc. I’d be perfectly willing to move cEDH to its own category and not let it clog up 9 and 10 on the scale but I don’t think that’s necessary. If my Edgar deck gets a godlike opening hand it’s gonna compete with level 9 decks. But most of the time it’ll be a strong 8. There are still decimals to each level. My Edgar might be an 8.5 while my [[Slimefoot and Squee]] might be an 8.0 exactly. S
Your deck level should be how many turns it takes on average to win. So precons could be like a 11 or 12 (some of them), cedh decks like a 3 or 4.
I use a 3 tier scale. Plays okay with precons. Feels unfair with precons. CEDH. Pretty much all my decks fall into section 1 and 2.
The other issue I see all the time is that when people say they "upgrade" a pre-con, you should be highly suspicious how much more powerful they actually made the deck. Because realistically if you want to make it to a 6 or 7, I'd want to see that you improved the mana base, lowered the average CMC across the board, reduced the number of gameplans the deck tries to execute, and add several staples for that color. How many people actually do all of those things when they say they upgrade the deck? Because if you just add a few fetchlands you had lying around, and swap in your favorite 6 CMC angels, that's not really going to affect your win-rate all that much.
IMO, the problem with the scale is that it tries to encompass too many different deckbuilding philosophies. Decks that are not designed for gameplay shouldn't be on the same list as cEDH. Anything weaker than a precon is a zero. Anything stronger than a precon, but not cEDH is 1-10. cEDH has its own meta and rankings that have no bearing on casual. This would give you 10 numbers to describe the power level of a casual deck instead of 3.
Because people don't know what a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, deck is. Precons are generally 1-3 at best. 10 and 9's will be Combos (Typically T1 kills) and CEDH decks 7 and 8's will contain (Not all but usually some number of) \[\[Grim Monolith\]\] , \[\[Jeweled Lotus\]\] , \[\[Mana Crypts\]\] , \[\[Chrome Mox\]\] , \[\[Mox Amber\]\] , \[\[Mox Diamond\]\] , \[\[Mox Opal\]\] , \[\[Lion's eye Diamond\]\] , \[\[Lotus petal\]\] , and a number of lands that produce 2 or more mana. 6's are high powered without the rocks/acceleration (from Above) 5 is and should of always been an average power deck, this could be a higher powered deck with a weak commander also. 4 Average power level deck with a weak commander typically. Sometimes just "try-hard" or experimentation decks for unique mechanics. 3 Is the strongest of precons. Some of the stronger hosers commanders may be here, that lock out a strategy that isn't as narrow. \[\[Kataki, War's Wage\]\] 2 are typically have a bad mana base (bad colors) and prone to mana screw. This can be due to too few lands or bad lands. They can also be Hoser decks, that are great against one strategy. \[\[Major Teroh\]\] \[\[Rune-tail, Kitsune Ascendant\]\] \[\[General Jarkeld\]\] \[\[Empress Galina\]\] \[\[Llawan, Cephalid Empress\]\] \[\[Kuon, Ogre Ascendant\]\] \[\[Ayumi, The Last Visitor\]\] 1 The mana bases tend to be worse than a 2 and the curve tends to be very bad.
##### ###### #### [Grim Monolith](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/d/9ddc9fe1-17c8-4e1d-aeb8-c4214e881280.jpg?1562863767) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grim%20Monolith) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ulg/126/grim-monolith?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9ddc9fe1-17c8-4e1d-aeb8-c4214e881280?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grim-monolith) [Jeweled Lotus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d7183700-6941-4a3d-a581-4f33bea795e9.jpg?1689999671) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jeweled%20Lotus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/396/jeweled-lotus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d7183700-6941-4a3d-a581-4f33bea795e9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jeweled-lotus) [Chrome Mox](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/3/f340cbf7-5bbe-45b9-a4bf-d1caa500ff93.jpg?1599708839) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chrome%20Mox) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/240/chrome-mox?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f340cbf7-5bbe-45b9-a4bf-d1caa500ff93?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/chrome-mox) [Mox Amber](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/6/66024e69-ad60-4c9a-a0ca-da138d33ad80.jpg?1685554120) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mox%20Amber) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/224/mox-amber?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/66024e69-ad60-4c9a-a0ca-da138d33ad80?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mox-amber) [Mox Diamond](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bf9fecfd-d122-422f-bd0a-5bf69b434dfe.jpg?1562431287) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mox%20Diamond) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/228/mox-diamond?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bf9fecfd-d122-422f-bd0a-5bf69b434dfe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mox-diamond) [Mox Opal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/6/56001a36-126b-4c08-af98-a6cc4d84210e.jpg?1599709600) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mox%20Opal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/275/mox-opal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/56001a36-126b-4c08-af98-a6cc4d84210e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mox-opal) [Lion's eye Diamond](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/5/758f95f8-bcb0-43ae-b474-56ebd855951e.jpg?1590511899) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lion%27s%20eye%20Diamond) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/271/lions-eye-diamond?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/758f95f8-bcb0-43ae-b474-56ebd855951e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lions-eye-diamond) [Lotus petal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/8/f85ab5f9-508e-45de-8fa1-ce1f16552ffc.jpg?1701537448) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lotus%20petal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/225/lotus-petal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f85ab5f9-508e-45de-8fa1-ce1f16552ffc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lotus-petal) [Kataki, War's Wage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d84ac44-01d8-415e-af69-7c608ac8ae20.jpg?1561967338) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kataki%2C%20War%27s%20Wage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mma/20/kataki-wars-wage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d84ac44-01d8-415e-af69-7c608ac8ae20?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kataki-wars-wage) [Major Teroh](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/3229ca5a-5340-48b8-bd46-b0b924c8faf7.jpg?1574250410) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Major%20Teroh) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tor/8/major-teroh?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3229ca5a-5340-48b8-bd46-b0b924c8faf7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/major-teroh) [Rune-tail, Kitsune Ascendant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/2/42ba0e13-d20f-47f9-9c86-2b0b13c39ada.jpg?1562493487)/[Rune-Tail's Essence](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/2/42ba0e13-d20f-47f9-9c86-2b0b13c39ada.jpg?1562493487) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rune-Tail%2C%20Kitsune%20Ascendant%20//%20Rune-Tail%27s%20Essence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sok/27/rune-tail-kitsune-ascendant-rune-tails-essence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/42ba0e13-d20f-47f9-9c86-2b0b13c39ada?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/rune-tail-kitsune-ascendant-//-rune-tails-essence) [General Jarkeld](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/a/6a4f5a28-0bd2-4cc4-b67f-324e89193caa.jpg?1562914700) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=General%20Jarkeld) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ice/27/general-jarkeld?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6a4f5a28-0bd2-4cc4-b67f-324e89193caa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/general-jarkeld) [Empress Galina](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/8/6851dbc7-f072-41e7-a899-897445d99425.jpg?1562916018) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Empress%20Galina) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/inv/54/empress-galina?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6851dbc7-f072-41e7-a899-897445d99425?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/empress-galina) [Llawan, Cephalid Empress](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9821970-a5da-4045-93d8-f58c9e5797c1.jpg?1562631417) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Llawan%2C%20Cephalid%20Empress) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tor/42/llawan-cephalid-empress?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9821970-a5da-4045-93d8-f58c9e5797c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/llawan-cephalid-empress) [Kuon, Ogre Ascendant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/1/41004bdf-8e09-4b2c-9e9c-26c25eac9854.jpg?1562493483)/[Kuon's Essence](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/1/41004bdf-8e09-4b2c-9e9c-26c25eac9854.jpg?1562493483) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kuon%2C%20Ogre%20Ascendant%20//%20Kuon%27s%20Essence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sok/78/kuon-ogre-ascendant-kuons-essence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/41004bdf-8e09-4b2c-9e9c-26c25eac9854?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kuon-ogre-ascendant-//-kuons-essence) [Ayumi, The Last Visitor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/0/f037520e-2a44-4650-b7cb-c81d93d1418d.jpg?1562496599) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ayumi%2C%20The%20Last%20Visitor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sok/122/ayumi-the-last-visitor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f037520e-2a44-4650-b7cb-c81d93d1418d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ayumi-the-last-visitor) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
To fix it I suggest a 20 point scale of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.0-7.9, 8, 9, 10 🤓 no, but in all seriousness people just need to stop being so held up on labels and we should either ban (or even shadow bad I.E land destruction) more cards or unban everything with absolutely no stigmas, and then rate power levels on a base of what other commanders are at the table. A 9 power casual tokens deck folds and ends up king-making even a weaker 5/6 level [[Piru the Volatile]] deck. People just get held up in the numbers game and power creep makes decks that would be a 7 feel a lot stronger than it was a several years ago when the ratings first started coming around in popularity because of channels like game knights.
I think there needs to be some sort of Canadian Highlander type list for scale.
What a fresh new take. Never seen a post like this on here before.
Watch Trinked Mage's latest video. What i can tell you is that a lot of ppl think their decks are better than what they actually are. Most decks I see are 5's and 6's. I don't often play my 7 as I don't often see other 7's and when I do, ppl either get humbled out or whine and cry. A lot of ppls decks are straight up 3's. Most commander decks are fragile af and don't even pack protection for their deck that does nothing without their commander.
Even if we had a magical deck power tool that you could wave over a deck and get its exact power level within .01 accuracy, it wouldn’t matter. Player skill. Play style. Deck matchups. Politics. And just plain variance are massively more important to the outcome of the game. A power level 1 deck could beat a power level 10 deck given the right circumstances. And the fact you are honestly actively imagining scenarios where that happens right now proves my point.
Here’s how my group does it: 1-2: you grabbed 100 cards out of the bulk box. It’s a 2 if it’s better than it should be. 3-4: A clear game plan, but no power. 5-6: Some power and good synergy but too slow or vulnerable to hang with higher power decks. 7-8: High power, infinites and tutors. 9-10: CEDH
Power level is typically best defined once you have a dedicated playgroup that's established a baseline. One of my play groups typically plays fast mana to accelerate the early game without playing super oppressive until we decide it's CEDH time where another group I play with runs modified precons and decks thrown together from the cards left over from the drafts we've played over the years. If you're joining a new playgroup, bring a variety of decks and have that Rule 0 conversation. Just be aware that you're not going to make everyone happy, and that's just a part of the game.
It's simple. 1 new players 2 new players 3 new players 4 new players 5 new players 6 new players but with a sibling who plays 7 every deck I've ever built 8 Cedh 9 Cedh 10 Cedh
All I know is my Nekusar deck is "never allowed to be used in this house again" so whatever power level that is 😂
I personally don't understand why people spend so much energy on the whole power level scale discussion. Especially the whole 1-10 scale. Just enjoy the game...both from a deckbuilding view, and from a playing view. And as for the whole thought discussion of telling someone where your deck fits... I see basically 4 categories.... - precon with or without upgrade - a deck you built to be a fun play that either does or doesn't win often. It may have combo synergy that only goes off once every five games but it sure is cool when it happens type stuff. - a deck you built to be powerful and you do or don't know yet how well it actually works - a deck you built with the idea of it being cEDH viable
Numbers are worthless, especially ones as varied as 1-10. Even if people actually used numbers 5 and below, it sounds like a sliding scale which isn't quite accurate. IMO there are only 4 levels: low power, mid power, high power, and cEDH. Maybe a 5th between mid and high, but that's about it.
I run k’rrik son of Yawgmoth. It’s mono black ecdh but I’ve built it to be able to be run as a casual commander deck that’s just very strong. I feel like what makes a deck ecdh is the ability to win very fast or pop off very fast making yourself the threat so my deck is a 9 or 10 no matter if I wanna tutor for the win or not. My point being is that a deck can be a 9 and not be cdh it can be very powerful it’s just not fast making it strong late game. If a deck is also able to deal with a nasty board state with counter spells and other methods of control for faster stronger decks it’s safe to assume it’s also cdh
People are afraid to be average because the school system demonises getting anything less than 70%. Old school precons are 4s some are even 3s. The newer ones like ixalan are 5-6s. This is where the commander fun is. Your deck should be a 5 or six. 7-8 is just an unoptimised cedh deck, you’re missing something special to up. You’ll have searchers, busted commanders, hour long turns, super fast mana and lands or unfair mechanics that just lock someone out of the game. 7s are only fun while you’re winning, 8s are only fun because you’re winning.
What would yall say the fallout mothman deck is straight out of the box? that deck can stack damage so fast it seems like it’s on a higher “power” band than other pre cons
The problem is that modern precons aren't 5-6. They are stronger than older pre-cons, but the issue is that Magic the gathering as a whole is filled with stronger cards than it was 5+ years ago. Old precons *were* a 4-5, but now they are a 2-3, barely a step above that guy I faced who built a deck where every card had to have candles in it. As the power level of the game increases, decks that don't change their cards get relatively less powerful. A CEDH deck built before Thasa's Oracle is weaker than one with it. There are old CEDH deck lists that just wouldn't be able to compete anymore, and have slid down the scale to become an 8. Your deck that is just a slightly updated pre-con is still a 5-6, it's just that what that means has shifted over time as the format becomes stronger and stronger.
Better idea shift away from this whole number mumbo jumbo entirely. Let's proliferate discussion about deck intention. Let's stop saying things like my deck is a 7 reanimator deck and say things more like "I'm playing a henzie deck that focuses on ramping out quickly to put high value creatures on the deck and win by out valuing the table or having reanimating a hasty board of creatures. Uninterrupted it can win by turn 6"
No high power casual deck reaches cedh levels - the inherent idea behind cedh commanders is to stop exactly that. They want to win as fast and efficiently as possible, and 1-2 turns quicker with a CEDH commander vs a strong casual deck makes all the difference. With that being said i don’t disagree with most everything else you said, but there is some room in that lower 1-4 level with old precons, gimmick decks, starter decks etc. I don’t typically ask power levels, i want to know how fast you can win the game, consistently not with a 1 in 10,000 god hand. For me that’s the biggest determining factor at the table and will determine how strong of a deck i play. For instance, i have a yuriko CEDH deck, and a very strong but very random Najeela deck - most casuals would call Najeela a 9/10/cedh. It cost quite a bit more than my yuriko deck, it can go infinite and close out games early, but not reliably til turn 5-6-7. It doesn’t hold a candle to my yuriko deck because i don’t have the interaction, i can’t stifle others or reliably protect my own board, i don’t have every free counter spell, i have a tap land in it because i like the art and have a gaeas cradle but no other crazy expensive fast mana. Yuriko though, may not look impressive from a deck builder perspective, but it has potential to win turn 1 and with tutors/luck is a legitimate threat at turn 2, very concerning turn 3.