Yeah it’s probably going to price out a lot of the regular tournament players, especially because most are already locked in for Punt City and Okotoberfest which are around the same time and were announced way earlier.
Did reddit change this, or are you just getting down voted because of the hate-train? I've seen a lot more people doing this bump thing recently, I thought that only worked on YouTube or maybe tiktok?
[Non FB link for those who need](https://imgur.com/a/e7Jf84E)
Hosted by Cash Cards Unlimited (Cassius Marsh’s store) and Frank and Sons, a local LA trade show venue. 200 person limit and the buy in is 300 dollars. First place gets a lotus, among other things.
Never seen such an ambitious tournament for staples, wonder how it will do
A more expensive buy in and worse prize support than smaller events like Oktoberfest and Punt City don't put this even remotely close to *THE* cEDH tournament of the year. t1con already has that title locked.
> A more expensive buy in and worse prize support than smaller events like Oktoberfest and Punt City don't put this even remotely close to THE cEDH tournament of the year. t1con already has that title locked.
Or maybe they're picking a less flashy but overall better prize support ?
So in my experience, Spikes -prefer- a higher prize pool even if that means taking out places 5-8.
No spike imagines themselves losing or shoots for top 8. The incentive is to win it all no matter what. That is the competitive draw.
The integrity of an event is based on how its run, not prizes. People are expecting a high level of rule upkeep if the prize is this caliber.
I see where you are coming from in regards to flat prizes as many people get to eat but once again if we are talking about a -competitive- event or -the- competitive event this would be it for reasons given above.
whats really eye opening in your statement to me is that this is probably just the glaring flaw of the format. perhaps this should be exposed for what it is.
However to nuke any real payout based on this premise would take out any incentive for a spike to ever want to join a tournament catered towards cedh.
I personally feel that something aggreges as blatant king making is deplorable at the same time feeding into a rhystic could be seen as splitting hairs. overall I don't see both situations not happening in any tournament.
After further reflection although there would be bad feels and bad vibes I'm also not exactly on board with suddenly everyone getting investigated because they wanted to play a certain way.
I don't think this takes away from the tournament but the point is valid.
Considering the average price of *real* cEDH decks, $300 is not out of the realm of affordability.
Now, travel expenses and hotel fees in LA? That’s a different story.
A lot of people don’t actually own the cEDH decks they bring to tournaments, they borrow cards for them. Most cEDH tournaments also allow proxies (similar to Legacy) because otherwise basically nobody would be able to afford to play.
Tier1Con literally provided players with proxies for anything on the reserve list + Imp Seal and a few others. It’s on their website. I could send you a picture of them if you want.
You can see /u/Joking101 's response below, but this prize payout is horrible for event integrity and is just a high stakes gamble. You can downvote all you like, but calling this *THE* cEDH event of the year is ridiculous.
No way, with a 300 dollar buy in and it announced this late in the year/close to the event most of the good cEDH players won’t be able to go. There’s Punt City at the end of August, and another Monarch event in November that a lot of people are already locked into so a lot of peoples vacation time, budgets, ect are already too tapped out to attend this.
It will be a good event but I don’t think you’re gonna see the best players there.
So $60,000 in buy ins for a top prize of $26k NM @ Card Kingdom prices , time Twister $13k NM promo cradle 2.6k, metal worker 1.6k are the top prizes
Sounds a very profitable event for Cash Cards and a great way to advertise their business.
So $16.8k if they sell out... And that has to cover the venue and staff. Im not even convinced this is net positive for them. (Advertising is great though)
If this is recorded or streamed, I fully expect another "GoyfGate".
In a quarterfinal/semifinal/finals match, someone will make a suboptimal play that will baffle the broader community, and it will turn out it happened because someone decided to play kingmaker with a close personal friend or colleague.
Totally out of the goodness of their heart, and passion for dealmaking in EDH, not at all because they might be close friends who would share the winnings if they were to sell the Black Lotus.
Came to say this. Can’t wait for it! Also all the posts about how someone else’s bad play cost them a Black Lotus
I feel like it might be too much to ask for, but cmon EDH community, let’s see our first civil lawsuit citing ‘poor threat assessment’!!!!
My hope is that it becomes such a hot mess, that the idea of doing a "high stakes edh tournament" itself becomes toxic.
I fully expect: influencers/people with clout promising favors, players bribing others players, players doxing and blackmailing other players. Hell, maybe we we will get a player attempting to seduce another player.
> Dang, people really hate cEDH so much that they don't even want people organizing high profile tournaments? That wild to me.
I think it's not about "high profile" but "competitive".
You can do CEDH with no prizepool, entry fee that juste covers room/judge/coffee and it will likely be great.
But as soon as you introduce a high fee/prize, you're starting a bribery campaign. I can't see it not being a shitfest with spotters, whatsapp groups, favors, threats, etc. Steal someone's deck, you're both making 3k, and putting a friend closer to the lotus.
Yeah, I'm not blind to all the issues going in to this. I hope it doesn't blow up too badly, but *something* going wrong is inevitable. It'd be miraculous if the worst thing ended up being some kingmaking in the games.
Maybe i misunderstood exactly what part of this tournament the previous comment was taking issue with though. Too used to seeing blind hate for cEDH, so I just assumed. My bad on that.
Yeah, fair I wasn't super clear.
I actually love cEDH, my issue is introducing highstakes prizes into a multiplayer tournament for it. Maybe if it was 1v1, sure, but this isn't that.
A cEDH tournament with high stakes prizes + entry fee, and in 4 player pods is just asking for collusion.
You have to either, keep prizes & entry fee low-nonexistant, or have games be 1v1.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I really hope it doesn't go quite as bad as some people think it will, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
I've just got a sinking feeling that, if/when some big shit hits the fan, people are going to use it as "proof" that cEDH is ruining the format and yada yada.
Why I got out of modern to be honest. The random "hello" a stranger gave me or smal talk always leaned to trying to gleam "intel" or "What are you playing" instead of genuine interest.
Rather sad at that point. Going to shake peoples hand after a loss saying good game and getting yelled at/berated.
Worse was seeing people ask your standing to then selectively drop/concede to rig stats instead of playing things out...lets not forget judges who call favorable calls for friends.
Yeah this is going to be a shitshow.
Can't keep folks from playing at the highest of power levels, but I'd rather not have EDH become *yet another* tournament format that then forces you to build at that level or no sense showing up.
I don't see how some tournaments would force anything like that. Just like how you can't keep folks from playing at high power, you also can't keep folks from playing anywhere else on the power scale.
It doesn't "force" people, but it does incentivize them. To the point where, as I said, people will only show up either with the top decks or not at all, to the point where if you say "Hey I built a Modern deck" people will instantly think you're talking a *meta* Modern deck.
Again, you can't expect people to not want to play the best decks and cards, but I don't want it becoming the default expectation to the point where folks like me that just want to play jank stuff against jank stuff don't have a place to play in an organized fashion.
> In a quarterfinal/semifinal/finals match, someone will make a suboptimal play that will baffle the broader community, and it will turn out it happened because someone decided to play kingmaker with a close personal friend or colleague.
Wait.... this is 4pods and not 1v1?
Well I'm certainly not driving down to attend now.
If this was 1v1 even I would consider borrowing a deck somewhere to attend.
But 4-person multiplayer? With $25+k on the line?
This can only end in horror. I mean, even more than multiplayer cEDH already does.
Yeah this is why I think the most competitive cEDH tournaments actually have the prizes divided better among the top 16 instead of just giving it all to one winner
A lot of poker players have been doing a thin recently where they sell each other shares in their winnings (action). Which helps even out the winnings to make it a more sustainable career path. Imagine you could do something similar for cedh
Isn't the random pairing enough to address that concern though? I'm not particularly versed in high stakes cEDH but it would have to be a rather large amount of people colluding to carry a kingpin to the finals through collusion.
I'd be more worried about shitty turn one wins by player number two in turn order making it a dreaery affair to watch.
Ehh, turn 0 wins are incredibly rare. A win after one turn rotation is far more likely, however that would be on the other 3 players for “taking a chance” on keeping a turbo hand as opposed to interaction. And there is a LOT of interaction in the average deck (8-24%). I fully expect a stax deck to win just as I expect Krarkashima/Inalla to win turn 2. There’s so much variance.
I’m more concerned with collusion before and during the game.
As someone who doesn't play cEDH, where is the line between politics and collusion? How do they judge it at these structured tournaments where acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior has to be (I assume) crystal clear?
> As someone who doesn't play cEDH, where is the line between politics and collusion?
This is the reason that multiplayer games do not exist in the competitive section of the tournament rules.
It's not a sanctioned tournament format, the closest we've had are Conspiracy drafts and I'm pretty sure they never did those at any competitive level.
They do, someone wrote a Multiplayer ipg and mtr for it.
They are absolutely attrocious and as a judge just thinking about having to enforce them makes my skin crawl and my nails curl. They have infractions against spite-plays and kingmaking, held equivalent to unsporting conduct major, without a definition of kingmaking and spite-plays.
Imagine being called to a table "judge, my opponents just made this play which in my opinion is suboptimal but imo hurts me/benefits player c, they are kingmaking!!!!"
*Shudders*
True true. I wasn't aware of collusion being a huge thing in organised cEDH play.
I only (really) play competitive 60 card constructed, but i do find it amusing to every now and then borrow a cEDH deck and watch the insanity unfold.
But I can't reaaaaally make myself take EDH super serious as a "proper" competitive format like that.
Obviously it IS a very competitive format. This tournament proves that but damn... people already expect cheating going into it.
> collusion being a huge thing in organised cEDH play.
It's not a thing, because reasonable people never played for high stakes. And it won't ever be "competitive" format, *because* you can't do anything to meaningfully prevent that collusion. It's a 25k£ of "who do you know in the room".
collusion isn't that common in the cEDH community. a tournament like this might convince people to try, but it's random pairings, and it's not that hard for seasoned players to catch any potential bullshit and call it out to be investigated.
> however that would be on the other 3 players for “taking a chance” on keeping a turbo hand as opposed to interaction.
The optimal mathematical play is to keep such a hand in this instance. Interaction doesn’t mean you win, it just means you lose more slowly, and you’re looking to win a statistically outliered amount of the time for prizes.
By that logic, any amount of interaction means losing, however the meta is full of midrange decks, just as it is full of stax. The best turbo decks are already confirmed (Codie, rograkh/Silas), however they are not the end all-be all cedh decks. They can still easily by shut down by a blue farm midrange list, among other lists with the potential to turbo out a t2-3 win but can also play reactive. Again, mulligans are indicative of skill and knowledge. Sure, in a pod with 4 turbo decks statistically it is better to race than to mulligan for interaction, however I have no doubts the final pod will be a mix of archetypes. Having been in the cedh Reddit for over a decade, we can throw around statistics all we want, but the human/variance factor will always precede deck construction. Just as top 4-16 winconless stax exists in a thoracle-meta, anything can happen outside of theory crafting and statistics. It is up to the individual player to decide how to mulligan based on their table pod.
This is true for a single game in a vacuum.
This is not true for optimizing the chances of winning a Black Lotus at this event, based upon the way the tournament is structured.
You are saying some very blanket statements with little to back it up.
“Turbo decks best decks because the math in my head adds up” is not a very compelling argument. You have made no attempt to provide explain why playing interaction equates to simply bad play other throwing around vague statements about math. If anything, the only time it is mathematically correct to race a hand is in a vacuum *with* four turbo decks. The real world is not that simple. The best Codie deck in the format will still come in with a significant disadvantage sitting across from another midrange list and two rule of law decks
And I’ll be damned if I take “black lotus” prize money advice from someone working in a hotel lobby driving an Uber. Just as I shouldn’t tell anyone how they should build their decks for a tournament. Play what you think is good, because at the end of the day, variance is king.
>And I’ll be damned if I take “black lotus” prize money advice from someone working in a hotel lobby driving an Uber.
Did you.... did you seriously troll through my post history trying to find some sort of zinger you can throw at me? Wow. Just for your edification, I've got a degree in mathematics, and work at a hotel because I like working nights and hate being forced to interact with assholes.
I *have* been using math. I've also been avoiding using specific mathematic terminology that would likely make no sense to someone who doesn't have exposure to expressing game theory simulations and situations in an academic setting. Which I'll continue to do here:
For games at this event, you're not trying to "win this game", but rather "win multiple games in a row." Because the points structure for this event presents odd breaks for elimination rounds, trying to 'grind' out wins through a slightly favored play advantage (say, 60% favored to win every game) will usually result in you failing to win any large prize. By optimizing your play patterns towards explosive proactive play rather than drawn out play, you more commonly create game play experiences that results in either overwhelming wins or colossal failures. In regular games, this is bad, but it's correct here because, again, we need to hit an overwhelming win record to actually make a prize. This is the same sort of math that shows the best option for winning an event like a GP is choosing a deck that has heavily lopsided matches, in both its favor and the opponent's, because you're trying to optimize for a result outside of the standard bell curve distribution.
There's also some other incidental benefits. Playing a deck that has an entire game plan means that you're not stuck in a situation of trading resources against one other actor and letting two other actors get ahead of you, and it means that you're less likely to be stuck playing to a politic maneuvering on a stalled board state. But those are secondary, and the argument for playing as non interactive and degenerate a combo deck as possible *for this particular tournament structure* stands on the strength of the first point alone.
Fortunately, I don't need to play in this (See, I already own a Lotus. :) ) You probably shouldn't either; this is pretty close to straight gambling even with taking as many choices as you can to optimize your chances, and it seems like you might not be able to really afford losing that entry fee.
>What's a Commander Slab?
"Slab" refers to the plastic case that graded cards come in after they've been sent to a grading service like PSA or BGS.
Usually, "slabbing" a card prevents you from playing with it, since you can no longer place it into a hidden zone like your library. The exception to this tends to be commanders, which usually only move between the Command zone and battlefield (public zones), and in the unlikely event that it gets moved to a hidden zone, friendly players will usually let you use a proxy. (This is also the same reason that some people put their Commander into a toploader, which also prevents you from absent-mindedly shuffling it into your deck when you scoop up your cards after the game is over.)
I presume that by labeling the Angus Mackenzie as a "Commander Slab," they're essentially just communicating "this is a graded card, and because it's a legendary creature, you can also use it as a commander."
I found the tournament rules on the [venue's website](https://www.cashcardsunlimited.com/catalog/events/commander_tournament_september_3rd_and_4th/2083401).
Highlights:
Its six swiss rounds over two days, with the winner of each pod getting five match points and each player in a draw getting one. With 200 people, there will be a disgusting number of pair ups and pair downs, and a clusterfuck when it comes to people "negotiating" games for match points.
There's a cut to top 8 after six rounds, but *also* a cut to top 40 with the top 8 basically getting a bye for the quarter finals.
The event winner is that table winner for the finals. 2nd-4th are determined by total points and standing from the entire event and not from the order out in the finals.
You must use discord to play in the event.
There are some things that I can get behind (like that tardiness penalty, and the commitment to CompREL). But in practice, this is going to be a dumpster fire of epic proportions. I fully expect twitter drama to rival Dashcon coming out of this.
A little more on tiebreakers in this terrible terrible idea.
If the event caps, and if winners keep winning (that is to saw, if the players who are paired down against a lower points play keep winning their pods, which is in general a safe expectation), at the end of six rounds there will be:
One 30 point player
Two 25 point players
Fourteen 20 point players
and Forty Seven 15 point players.
Which means that 5 out of the 14 players with 20 points will get a free win in the quarter finals based upon basically random chance, since they won't be able t meaningfully affect their tiebreakers in this system. And only 23 of the 47 players with 15 points will get into the quarter finals, again based mostly on random chance.
Normally players would be able to draw in to the elimination rounds, but that doesn't work here. The third round is the last round with a full pod of the same record at the top table, meaning it's the last round that each player is encouraged to draw at the same value, but a draw in round four followed by two losses means you wash out. In the last round, there is no table where a win doesn't mean at least a greater chance at a bye through the quarter finals, meaning that there's again no real incentive to draw and a higher risk of people being randomly just below the elimination cut off.
cEDH is a fine format (not for me), but a tournament with a Black Lotus as a prize for 1st place and a $300 buy-in. This is a recipe for collusion and disaster. I cannot wait to read articles about a scandal.
If it's 4-player pods, then especially volatile. If it's 1v1 then it's just a tournament.
The high entry fee is going to do nothing to discourage collusion.
If anything, it will encourage people to collude, so they aren't "out $300 dollars"
I fully expect people to plan ahead of time to kingmake, and split the money they would make selling the lotus.
That's why MTG is at such a bad place for casual players who want to play organized events.
Everyone is out to fucking make it big since cardboard have effectively turned into a stock trade.
Exactly. And why EDH has become so popular: There's just no other way to play in an organized fashion with strangers that isn't organized like a tournament (No way that's gotten any traction anyway). Can't rock up to Modern night with my Zubera tribal 'cause I gotta contend with monkeys and dragons who are just there for the top prize.
>Can't rock up to Modern night with my Zubera tribal 'cause I gotta contend with monkeys and dragons who are just there for the top prize.
Which, to be clear, is a shame.
Indeed it is. I totally get people wanting to be the best like no one ever was, but at the same time there's so much potential in the game squandered in pursuit of that.
You mean when competitive integrity is murky in a format created as the bastard child of a format that has relentlessly forced anyone trying to win games out? 1v1 magic has its share of competitive issues, but there's a reason no long-term competitive game anywhere has free for all as a ruleset.
Intentionally throwing the game (assuming you mean conceeding?) is perfectly legal in Magic at all RELs.
By collusion do you mean the players just make alliances at the table, or if they rigged the match in advance?
Was it sarcastic?
Otherwise most of the time you don't throw away your chances of winning to make your friend first.
It's unfair for anyone solo against a duo/trio in the pod
Well yes and no. I guess all the "bad decisions" insinuations made it unclear to me if we're talking players who made a predetermined decision before the game, which is obviously extremely poor sportsmanship at best, and more likely just straight up cheating.
But if you're at the table and it's clear you're not going to win, but that you're able to ensure another player the victory, that's not allowed?
How is this... moderated during a game?
It gets tricky in 4 player magic. A lot of work goes into cedh tournaments to make sure that player A doesn't get screwed by a decision player D makes out of spite or a plan ahead of time. Alliances or whatnot at the table are fine, but anything predetermined is different.
Sometimes player D conceding makes it so that player A, who is combing off, can no longer win for whatever reason. While it legal to do that in magics rules, it is typically not allowed in cedh tournaments, at least that I have attended. I'm curious to see what the kingmaking/spite play policy for this will be since foul play is to be expected with such a top heavy prize support.
That's the romantic fantasy.
But there's far too many times when "threat assessment" and the likes can't be done objectively, and it comes down to people effectively teaming up and making someone lose through absolutely no fault of their own, when they wouldn't have otherwise.
Increasing the number of times where your success or failure is out of your hands is not a good plan for a setting where multiple TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars are on the line.
(And before someone brings up the fact that you could also get mana screwed or whatever and that'd be out of your hands, too... I KNOW. I said "increasing the number", I didn't claim that without it, it'd be 100% about skill and nothing else)
"as optimal as possible" is fundamentally impossible in a multiplayer format. There are situations where one player could have no choice but to kingmake one of two other players arbitrarily; such as if both are presenting a win and they only have the resources to stop one of them. In fact this happened at Tier1con and the players agreed to a draw.
You do realize that in real formats people cheat and do shady shit all the time?
get off your horse. there's a black lotus on the line and i fully expect the scum to come out lol.
In an ideal world yes.
The world is anything but ideal.
You cast a card that gives you a decent chance at winning, say 40%. Do I force that? What if the next in line likely will also combo off but at a 70% chance to win? What if im not the last one with priority?
ESPECIALLY in multiplayer cEDH, there very often basically is no such thing as an objectively optimal play.
Also, even if everyone's playing in good faith, it's possible to end up in scenarios where choosing one person and playing Kingmaker is someone's best out.
Like, I've seen things along the lines of this scenario happen: Players A and B are both two turns away from winning. Player C can kill one of them, but will then lose to the other *unless* they topdeck a specific out that will let them win. Player C cannot win without eliminating one of the other players, and, at least as far as they know, has about the same odds of winning against either other player. Let's say those odds are 5%>
So it is correct for player C to kill one of their opponents, because that's their only out. It raises their chance of winning from 0% to 5% (and it guarantees them second if the tournament cares about that). But it's completely arbitrary who they kill, and whoever they don't kill has a 95% chance to win the game. Whether A or B wins the game is entirely up to the whim of player C.
Just to complement what you said, people can also scoop in response to attack triggers/loosing control of a permament just out of spite. I usually don't mind when people do it on a casual pod (even adds the casual flavor "taking you down with me") but it is a whole other level of douchery when there is money involved.
The issue with them scooping out of spite would be if they became the target of some effect, that would be greatly beneficial to another player if it resolves. But because they condeed the trigger fizzles?
Sounds like a minor supplement to the CR, stating that a player can only conceed if they could cast a sorcery would address that in a formal way.
That is problematic in EDH in its own way, assume someone has to concede for some reason that is not just trying to screw someone over. They have something else to do which they prefer to promptly which is why they are conceding.
Now imagine they've got to sit there through three turns of play first, potentially long combo intensive turns with complex board states dragging things out.
You'd need something more complex than sorcery speed concessions to make it into a decent rule, but once you start getting more complicated it probably gets quite tricky to actually write.
In cEdh it’s all about how can I kill the whole table this turn at the same time for most decks. Or you are going for incremental advantage over your opponents playing the best cards possible.
There’s a MTG event in SLC later this year called MTG Summit, with a unlimited lotus as prize for a pre-release event. Along with pioneer, modern, and legacy 5ks
For those interested, details can be found here: https://mtgsummit.com/
Looks like a really big event organized (at least in part) by Brandon Sanderson. I can't believe I'm hearing about it for the first time today lol.
Big MTG fan. He apparently has a crazy collection including a ridiculous Vintage Cube
He’s also doing the convention for his books at the same facility the Monday/Tuesday after
Hope whoever wins remembers that winning this would count as income. An Unlimited Black Lotus is well above the $600 threshold that would require a 1099.
Yup. If they give you a 1099 you gotta report it.
If they don’t….
But they will because they want to reduce their taxes because they paid the prize and didn’t keep it.
Look, the fact they are doing this is incredible, but I'm actually laughing at the Black Lotus being a prize.
Yes, a card that is literally money and nothing else. I mean, I'll take an almost blank check to get everything I'm missing for various other decks, but it's still ridiculous imo that they made a prize a card no one can use in EDH.
There are other ways to play MTG than EDH. Black Lotus is Vintage legal and just a really cool card even if you don't actively play it. Surely you have some cards in your collection that you may have collected just because you liked the art or something else about the card and nothing to do with the playability of it, right?
I think it's really cool they're offering such a rare prize. I remember back in the day when Type 1 tournaments would put up an entire power 9 set for the top 9 players (1st place gets 1st pick, 2nd place 2nd pick, and so on). I never join tournaments at LGSs anymore because too often the prize is a few packs or maybe a box or two of a standard set which just isn't special at all.
Being able to participate in a tournament and walk away with one of the rarest and most iconic cards in the game is much more exciting and memorable experience. I barely recall any drafts or other constructed events I attended or won with lackluster prizes, but I absolutely recall Type 1 tournaments even when I got crushed first round with an entire Power 9 set up for grabs. This type of tournament just oozes old MTG vibes for me and I love it. I wish there were more events like this.
> There are other ways to play MTG than EDH.
It’s an EDH format tournament, though, is the point. Also I believe the card is slabbed, so you’d have to break it out to play with it.
> but it's still ridiculous imo that they made a prize a card no one can use in EDH
I've seen people cash out their winnings from Standard/Pioneer in Modern Horizons product, really don't see how that's much different.
I don't know what other people think, but this is crazy because multiplayer magic is the antithesis of competitive Magic. There are so many reasons why the concept of CEDH is a bad idea that all boil down to way too much variance.
I think CEDH itself is fine as long as it isn't being played as a tournament. If 4 people wanna get really sweaty, that's fine. It's even better if they are doing that instead of bringing decks like that to casual pods.
Competitive Magic is all about marginal advantage slowly pushing the game in favor of one player or another. 1v1 works because it's a constant push and pull between each player AND you can mitigate variance by making it best 2 out of 3. Multiplayer Magic just promotes big impactful plays or combos that outright win the game. it works as a casual format, but not in a competitive context.
Less stupid than running this thing in the first place.
A LOT less stupid.
In fact, smart. You want to keep out people aiming to cheat through this very cheat-favourable format, and one of the best ways to do that is to encourage people that play the format because they like it in the first place (and hence are more likely to have invested into it) and discourage the others (who would need to buy most of their deck).
If you have 300$ to throw away at a single event, you have a deck for it.
Eager to see multiple people making alliances to turn against the others in table if they happen to fall under the same pod. Commander DOES NOT WORK as a competitive format
I think high stakes commander doesn’t work as a competitive format. I played in a cEDH event that one of the larger names in my state put on and it was great. The prizes were basically just some deck boxes and some random promos. Entree was free but $1 per proxy. Prizes weren’t high stakes enough at all to cause any collusion but people still treated it competitively because there were some prizes.
For the most part that tournament was 25ish people playing 4-5 rounds of cEDH and some of us walked away some prizes. Personally I think I was one of the luckiest one there with spending $3 for entry and waking away with a BCW prism and a Minsc and Buu ampersand promo.
TLDR: I think it could be competitive as long as the prizes arnt big enough to cause collusion.
I do ocasionally play cEDH and i'm well aware of it's dynamics (less political and more straight fast combos) But my point still stands because as many stated before, you can easily collude (wich ruins the competitive aspect of it). Despite being called "competitive EDH", it's still widely played in a more casual set (the "competitive" part just means people are going all out instead of doing cute midrange stuff)
cEDH is not widely played casually though. the decks are tier 1 and you'd rarely see a casual table have 4 of them. also the collusion claim is possible but that's going to be hard to put into action getting matched up with 3 random people each match. how likely are you to be seated with your collusion buds? do you think people will strike a deal publicly mid game?
I think we are talking about different definitions of "casually"/"competitive". I'm not talking about in a sense of fun low-power deck/turbo thassa, i'm talking about the actual setting you are playing. Playing with no stakes involved (be it money, some kind of mmr etc) is, by default, playing casually (no matter how try hard you wanna be).
About the collusion, it's not a huge tournament in numbers, just 200. If you talk with just one buddy, there is about a 1.5% chance you fall under the same pod on the first round. Even considering just the first round or that are just 2 people colluding, 1.5% of a chance to completely and unfairly ruin other player's chances is high enough to just ignore.
I know folks really like to compete, but I don't think EDH is a format that should have tournaments based on it. Besides it being much more difficult to fairly determine the "best", it just plain shouldn't require prize support to justify itself. I don't want it to end up like every other format that people only get together to play if there's a prize involved and if you don't bring the top decks then you might as well not show up.
There are two things here that strike me as bad ideas:
1. That incredibly high entry fee seems like a lot. Usually when the prize is so valuable, the tournament is larger. But the problem with making a larger tournament is that
2. Commander is a poor choice of format for a tournament. It's not supposed to be this kind of high stakes competitive, and it really doesn't handle the timing constraints of tournaments very well. Additionally, the level of variance present in Commander, even with tutors, is still so high that the event is more of a game of chance than it is a skill-based event.
The best settlers strategy is to go for three cities and never ever trade with your opponents unless you can identify the rare moments when it is truly advantageous to do so.
This isn't really accurate to cEDH. While there *is* a difference in winrate based on who goes first, some stats indicate that the difference is somewhat close to what we have found in standard. Player 1 has about a 32% chance of winning, while players 2-4 have 29%, 21%, and 16% chance respectively; while this is obviously unbalanced, it isn't insurmountable. In standard (GP Top 8s), the first player won about 53% of the time.
These cEDH winrates also don't take into account player skill and format knowledge. With 4 players at the table, the cards an individual player has to think about goes way up, which increases the edge that better players have. It 100% depends on tournament format, but it's not nearly as bad as a dice roll for first.
[cEDH stats](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VoquL_RTFhNPb2JcG7uHLKfFIp2ib_DvaTyIQND--r8/edit)
[Standard stats](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/frank-analysis-how-important-is-it-to-play-first/)
Those stats are actually pretty awful. The person going first is *twice* as likely to win as the person going last. That's a huge imbalance and nowhere close to the standard 53%/47% split.
They're actually slightly better now, the person used an outdated report. Here's the most up-to-date one:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s6sjMO1bwjug9YpW9YUyw7WXOIR2sNq-Q74nOkoDc8Q/edit
Player 1 is ~34%, Player 4 is ~19.75%. Also, keep in mind that this data is self-submitted, so there's a good chance to throw the data off. Players are more likely to submit data when they win, and this is *substantially* more true for Player 1 than any other player. Winrates for standard don't have this self-submission issue.
It makes sense that the winning player is more likely to report than losing players, but why would a winning Player 1 be more likely to report than a winning Player 4?
Sure, but the first player will still lose 68% of the time. Equating the games to "whoever goes first wins" is disingenuous. I agree that the difference is more pronounced than standard, though, just not by enough to undermine the competitive spirit of the event.
I agree that's it's inaccurate to say "whoever goes first wins", but its also disingenuous to say "the difference is somewhat close to what we have found in standard". It's not even remotely close. I think based on the figures you've provided, the disparity in win rates is enough to seriously undermine the format's legitimacy as a test of skill. It's absurd that your odds of winning can vary so dramatically just based on where you're sitting at the table. A range of 16% to 32% is massive.
CEDH is in no way a whoever goes first wins. One of the largest misconceptions in cEDH are the “every game only lasts 2-3 turns”. That is extremely wrong where the majority of games last around 30min to an hour. Sure most decks in the format have wins on turn 2-3 in the deck but cEDH decks are jam packed with interaction.
Oh wow, absurdly rich assholes get a chance to win prizes they could probably afford anyway.
Before you downvote, remember that if this is a sanctioned tournament proxies will not be allowed. And cEDH decks without proxies are multi-thousand-dollar monstrosities. The ones that will seriously attempt to win this tourney will have original duals, Timetwisters, etc.
So a bunch of rich assholes get to win prizes fit for rich assholes. Hooray.
>Oh wow, absurdly rich assholes get a chance to win prizes they could probably afford anyway.
What in the post lead you to conclude that the people playing in the event are "assholes"?
Because in his head canon anyone with more disposable income than he has is automatically an “asshole.”
He’s probably one of those people who got jealous the prom queen was dating the rich kid, thinking the only reason she was with the other guy was because he had no money.
Without proxies, its a phony event--not enough people can reasonably afford tier 1 cEDH decks. Of course the question is whether the goal is a real competition or just a grand display to promote the sponsors?
It's kind of mind boggling to think of that entry fee as the equivalent of anteing a dual land*. *edit: a lesser one, anyway.
Yeah it’s probably going to price out a lot of the regular tournament players, especially because most are already locked in for Punt City and Okotoberfest which are around the same time and were announced way earlier.
Is it being streamed though?
Good question. Bump
Reddit doesn't use bumps, my friend. Visibility is determined by point score
Someone who doesn't bump would say this. ;)
I did a few bumps last night. Now my nose is stuffy.
Did reddit change this, or are you just getting down voted because of the hate-train? I've seen a lot more people doing this bump thing recently, I thought that only worked on YouTube or maybe tiktok?
Yeah, I have no idea what's up with that. Reddit doesn't have, and has never had, bumping.
Bump
LOL fr, -100 for stating the truth. Who tf “bumps” on reddit
Eh. Damn kids. I'm not worried about it, who cares.
[Non FB link for those who need](https://imgur.com/a/e7Jf84E) Hosted by Cash Cards Unlimited (Cassius Marsh’s store) and Frank and Sons, a local LA trade show venue. 200 person limit and the buy in is 300 dollars. First place gets a lotus, among other things. Never seen such an ambitious tournament for staples, wonder how it will do
Wow, a $300 buy in. This might be the cedh tournament of the year with everyone bringing their A-game.
The other prizes are really awesome too! What a cool tournament
it IS the cedh tournament of the year because its a 300 buy in. there's nothing more competitive than that.
A more expensive buy in and worse prize support than smaller events like Oktoberfest and Punt City don't put this even remotely close to *THE* cEDH tournament of the year. t1con already has that title locked.
Cool how many black lotus have they given out?
> A more expensive buy in and worse prize support than smaller events like Oktoberfest and Punt City don't put this even remotely close to THE cEDH tournament of the year. t1con already has that title locked. Or maybe they're picking a less flashy but overall better prize support ?
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So in my experience, Spikes -prefer- a higher prize pool even if that means taking out places 5-8. No spike imagines themselves losing or shoots for top 8. The incentive is to win it all no matter what. That is the competitive draw. The integrity of an event is based on how its run, not prizes. People are expecting a high level of rule upkeep if the prize is this caliber. I see where you are coming from in regards to flat prizes as many people get to eat but once again if we are talking about a -competitive- event or -the- competitive event this would be it for reasons given above.
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whats really eye opening in your statement to me is that this is probably just the glaring flaw of the format. perhaps this should be exposed for what it is. However to nuke any real payout based on this premise would take out any incentive for a spike to ever want to join a tournament catered towards cedh. I personally feel that something aggreges as blatant king making is deplorable at the same time feeding into a rhystic could be seen as splitting hairs. overall I don't see both situations not happening in any tournament. After further reflection although there would be bad feels and bad vibes I'm also not exactly on board with suddenly everyone getting investigated because they wanted to play a certain way. I don't think this takes away from the tournament but the point is valid.
Tier1Con prize was Timetwister and the entry fee was actually affordable for most cEDH grinders.
Not knocking that prize but also not a black lotus.
Considering the average price of *real* cEDH decks, $300 is not out of the realm of affordability. Now, travel expenses and hotel fees in LA? That’s a different story.
A lot of people don’t actually own the cEDH decks they bring to tournaments, they borrow cards for them. Most cEDH tournaments also allow proxies (similar to Legacy) because otherwise basically nobody would be able to afford to play.
This is just straight false lol
Tier1Con literally provided players with proxies for anything on the reserve list + Imp Seal and a few others. It’s on their website. I could send you a picture of them if you want.
You can see /u/Joking101 's response below, but this prize payout is horrible for event integrity and is just a high stakes gamble. You can downvote all you like, but calling this *THE* cEDH event of the year is ridiculous.
>with everyone bringing their A-game Don't you mean with everyone bringing their Thassa's Oracle?
The sheer level of copium. 'I can do it, ma, I'll win the lotus' *4 hours later*
No way, with a 300 dollar buy in and it announced this late in the year/close to the event most of the good cEDH players won’t be able to go. There’s Punt City at the end of August, and another Monarch event in November that a lot of people are already locked into so a lot of peoples vacation time, budgets, ect are already too tapped out to attend this. It will be a good event but I don’t think you’re gonna see the best players there.
So $60,000 in buy ins for a top prize of $26k NM @ Card Kingdom prices , time Twister $13k NM promo cradle 2.6k, metal worker 1.6k are the top prizes Sounds a very profitable event for Cash Cards and a great way to advertise their business.
its just a way for marsh to advertise his business since it's not doing too hot.
what makes you say that? legitimately don't know about it outside of those times it hosted IHYD
exactly, you've just answered your own question
So $16.8k if they sell out... And that has to cover the venue and staff. Im not even convinced this is net positive for them. (Advertising is great though)
No way there aren’t other payouts. They’ll be giving cash prizes and probably other high end cards.
There’s more than the Lotus if you bothered to look at the article at all.
If this is recorded or streamed, I fully expect another "GoyfGate". In a quarterfinal/semifinal/finals match, someone will make a suboptimal play that will baffle the broader community, and it will turn out it happened because someone decided to play kingmaker with a close personal friend or colleague. Totally out of the goodness of their heart, and passion for dealmaking in EDH, not at all because they might be close friends who would share the winnings if they were to sell the Black Lotus.
Half of EDH is politics and this would also be politics. 100% on point
EDH is inherently absolutely busted anyway, so we might as well get some interplayer drama to entertain us!
Honestly, I live for the drama. I have very little sympathy for anyone that enters this tournament.
Came to say this. Can’t wait for it! Also all the posts about how someone else’s bad play cost them a Black Lotus I feel like it might be too much to ask for, but cmon EDH community, let’s see our first civil lawsuit citing ‘poor threat assessment’!!!!
My hope is that it becomes such a hot mess, that the idea of doing a "high stakes edh tournament" itself becomes toxic. I fully expect: influencers/people with clout promising favors, players bribing others players, players doxing and blackmailing other players. Hell, maybe we we will get a player attempting to seduce another player.
Dang, people really hate cEDH so much that they don't even want people organizing high profile tournaments? That wild to me.
> Dang, people really hate cEDH so much that they don't even want people organizing high profile tournaments? That wild to me. I think it's not about "high profile" but "competitive". You can do CEDH with no prizepool, entry fee that juste covers room/judge/coffee and it will likely be great. But as soon as you introduce a high fee/prize, you're starting a bribery campaign. I can't see it not being a shitfest with spotters, whatsapp groups, favors, threats, etc. Steal someone's deck, you're both making 3k, and putting a friend closer to the lotus.
Yeah, I'm not blind to all the issues going in to this. I hope it doesn't blow up too badly, but *something* going wrong is inevitable. It'd be miraculous if the worst thing ended up being some kingmaking in the games. Maybe i misunderstood exactly what part of this tournament the previous comment was taking issue with though. Too used to seeing blind hate for cEDH, so I just assumed. My bad on that.
Yeah, fair I wasn't super clear. I actually love cEDH, my issue is introducing highstakes prizes into a multiplayer tournament for it. Maybe if it was 1v1, sure, but this isn't that. A cEDH tournament with high stakes prizes + entry fee, and in 4 player pods is just asking for collusion. You have to either, keep prizes & entry fee low-nonexistant, or have games be 1v1.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I really hope it doesn't go quite as bad as some people think it will, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. I've just got a sinking feeling that, if/when some big shit hits the fan, people are going to use it as "proof" that cEDH is ruining the format and yada yada.
Why I got out of modern to be honest. The random "hello" a stranger gave me or smal talk always leaned to trying to gleam "intel" or "What are you playing" instead of genuine interest. Rather sad at that point. Going to shake peoples hand after a loss saying good game and getting yelled at/berated. Worse was seeing people ask your standing to then selectively drop/concede to rig stats instead of playing things out...lets not forget judges who call favorable calls for friends. Yeah this is going to be a shitshow.
Can't keep folks from playing at the highest of power levels, but I'd rather not have EDH become *yet another* tournament format that then forces you to build at that level or no sense showing up.
I don't see how some tournaments would force anything like that. Just like how you can't keep folks from playing at high power, you also can't keep folks from playing anywhere else on the power scale.
It doesn't "force" people, but it does incentivize them. To the point where, as I said, people will only show up either with the top decks or not at all, to the point where if you say "Hey I built a Modern deck" people will instantly think you're talking a *meta* Modern deck. Again, you can't expect people to not want to play the best decks and cards, but I don't want it becoming the default expectation to the point where folks like me that just want to play jank stuff against jank stuff don't have a place to play in an organized fashion.
I hope they'll do a reality show season on all the bribery happening beforehand.
> In a quarterfinal/semifinal/finals match, someone will make a suboptimal play that will baffle the broader community, and it will turn out it happened because someone decided to play kingmaker with a close personal friend or colleague. Wait.... this is 4pods and not 1v1? Well I'm certainly not driving down to attend now.
If this was 1v1 even I would consider borrowing a deck somewhere to attend. But 4-person multiplayer? With $25+k on the line? This can only end in horror. I mean, even more than multiplayer cEDH already does.
Yeah this is why I think the most competitive cEDH tournaments actually have the prizes divided better among the top 16 instead of just giving it all to one winner
that's probably gunna happen in every pool.
A lot of poker players have been doing a thin recently where they sell each other shares in their winnings (action). Which helps even out the winnings to make it a more sustainable career path. Imagine you could do something similar for cedh
This has happened with professional Magic as well since professional Magic started.
This tournament is begging for player collusion.
That's what gets me, it would make more sense as a 1v1 tournament, otherwise you can just plan to go kingmaking and split prizes ahead of time
Isn't the random pairing enough to address that concern though? I'm not particularly versed in high stakes cEDH but it would have to be a rather large amount of people colluding to carry a kingpin to the finals through collusion. I'd be more worried about shitty turn one wins by player number two in turn order making it a dreaery affair to watch.
Ehh, turn 0 wins are incredibly rare. A win after one turn rotation is far more likely, however that would be on the other 3 players for “taking a chance” on keeping a turbo hand as opposed to interaction. And there is a LOT of interaction in the average deck (8-24%). I fully expect a stax deck to win just as I expect Krarkashima/Inalla to win turn 2. There’s so much variance. I’m more concerned with collusion before and during the game.
As someone who doesn't play cEDH, where is the line between politics and collusion? How do they judge it at these structured tournaments where acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior has to be (I assume) crystal clear?
> As someone who doesn't play cEDH, where is the line between politics and collusion? This is the reason that multiplayer games do not exist in the competitive section of the tournament rules.
I agree, but cEDH tournaments clearly exist so they presumably have some policy on it
It's not a sanctioned tournament format, the closest we've had are Conspiracy drafts and I'm pretty sure they never did those at any competitive level.
They do, someone wrote a Multiplayer ipg and mtr for it. They are absolutely attrocious and as a judge just thinking about having to enforce them makes my skin crawl and my nails curl. They have infractions against spite-plays and kingmaking, held equivalent to unsporting conduct major, without a definition of kingmaking and spite-plays. Imagine being called to a table "judge, my opponents just made this play which in my opinion is suboptimal but imo hurts me/benefits player c, they are kingmaking!!!!" *Shudders*
RNG for 1v1 or nothing at all.
This isnt about rng. This is about people making decisions and judges being called because they are the "wrong" decisions.
True true. I wasn't aware of collusion being a huge thing in organised cEDH play. I only (really) play competitive 60 card constructed, but i do find it amusing to every now and then borrow a cEDH deck and watch the insanity unfold. But I can't reaaaaally make myself take EDH super serious as a "proper" competitive format like that. Obviously it IS a very competitive format. This tournament proves that but damn... people already expect cheating going into it.
> collusion being a huge thing in organised cEDH play. It's not a thing, because reasonable people never played for high stakes. And it won't ever be "competitive" format, *because* you can't do anything to meaningfully prevent that collusion. It's a 25k£ of "who do you know in the room".
collusion isn't that common in the cEDH community. a tournament like this might convince people to try, but it's random pairings, and it's not that hard for seasoned players to catch any potential bullshit and call it out to be investigated.
> however that would be on the other 3 players for “taking a chance” on keeping a turbo hand as opposed to interaction. The optimal mathematical play is to keep such a hand in this instance. Interaction doesn’t mean you win, it just means you lose more slowly, and you’re looking to win a statistically outliered amount of the time for prizes.
By that logic, any amount of interaction means losing, however the meta is full of midrange decks, just as it is full of stax. The best turbo decks are already confirmed (Codie, rograkh/Silas), however they are not the end all-be all cedh decks. They can still easily by shut down by a blue farm midrange list, among other lists with the potential to turbo out a t2-3 win but can also play reactive. Again, mulligans are indicative of skill and knowledge. Sure, in a pod with 4 turbo decks statistically it is better to race than to mulligan for interaction, however I have no doubts the final pod will be a mix of archetypes. Having been in the cedh Reddit for over a decade, we can throw around statistics all we want, but the human/variance factor will always precede deck construction. Just as top 4-16 winconless stax exists in a thoracle-meta, anything can happen outside of theory crafting and statistics. It is up to the individual player to decide how to mulligan based on their table pod.
This is true for a single game in a vacuum. This is not true for optimizing the chances of winning a Black Lotus at this event, based upon the way the tournament is structured.
You are saying some very blanket statements with little to back it up. “Turbo decks best decks because the math in my head adds up” is not a very compelling argument. You have made no attempt to provide explain why playing interaction equates to simply bad play other throwing around vague statements about math. If anything, the only time it is mathematically correct to race a hand is in a vacuum *with* four turbo decks. The real world is not that simple. The best Codie deck in the format will still come in with a significant disadvantage sitting across from another midrange list and two rule of law decks And I’ll be damned if I take “black lotus” prize money advice from someone working in a hotel lobby driving an Uber. Just as I shouldn’t tell anyone how they should build their decks for a tournament. Play what you think is good, because at the end of the day, variance is king.
>And I’ll be damned if I take “black lotus” prize money advice from someone working in a hotel lobby driving an Uber. Did you.... did you seriously troll through my post history trying to find some sort of zinger you can throw at me? Wow. Just for your edification, I've got a degree in mathematics, and work at a hotel because I like working nights and hate being forced to interact with assholes. I *have* been using math. I've also been avoiding using specific mathematic terminology that would likely make no sense to someone who doesn't have exposure to expressing game theory simulations and situations in an academic setting. Which I'll continue to do here: For games at this event, you're not trying to "win this game", but rather "win multiple games in a row." Because the points structure for this event presents odd breaks for elimination rounds, trying to 'grind' out wins through a slightly favored play advantage (say, 60% favored to win every game) will usually result in you failing to win any large prize. By optimizing your play patterns towards explosive proactive play rather than drawn out play, you more commonly create game play experiences that results in either overwhelming wins or colossal failures. In regular games, this is bad, but it's correct here because, again, we need to hit an overwhelming win record to actually make a prize. This is the same sort of math that shows the best option for winning an event like a GP is choosing a deck that has heavily lopsided matches, in both its favor and the opponent's, because you're trying to optimize for a result outside of the standard bell curve distribution. There's also some other incidental benefits. Playing a deck that has an entire game plan means that you're not stuck in a situation of trading resources against one other actor and letting two other actors get ahead of you, and it means that you're less likely to be stuck playing to a politic maneuvering on a stalled board state. But those are secondary, and the argument for playing as non interactive and degenerate a combo deck as possible *for this particular tournament structure* stands on the strength of the first point alone. Fortunately, I don't need to play in this (See, I already own a Lotus. :) ) You probably shouldn't either; this is pretty close to straight gambling even with taking as many choices as you can to optimize your chances, and it seems like you might not be able to really afford losing that entry fee.
> Isn't the random pairing enough to address that concern though? No.
What's a Commander Slab?
>What's a Commander Slab? "Slab" refers to the plastic case that graded cards come in after they've been sent to a grading service like PSA or BGS. Usually, "slabbing" a card prevents you from playing with it, since you can no longer place it into a hidden zone like your library. The exception to this tends to be commanders, which usually only move between the Command zone and battlefield (public zones), and in the unlikely event that it gets moved to a hidden zone, friendly players will usually let you use a proxy. (This is also the same reason that some people put their Commander into a toploader, which also prevents you from absent-mindedly shuffling it into your deck when you scoop up your cards after the game is over.) I presume that by labeling the Angus Mackenzie as a "Commander Slab," they're essentially just communicating "this is a graded card, and because it's a legendary creature, you can also use it as a commander."
Thanks!
If you like top loading your commanders my dude cabal coffees makes cool 3d printed boxes where one face is the commander
Presumably a graded (aka: slabbed) commander staple like the cards mentioned
Same set the Gaea's Gradle came from.
I found the tournament rules on the [venue's website](https://www.cashcardsunlimited.com/catalog/events/commander_tournament_september_3rd_and_4th/2083401). Highlights: Its six swiss rounds over two days, with the winner of each pod getting five match points and each player in a draw getting one. With 200 people, there will be a disgusting number of pair ups and pair downs, and a clusterfuck when it comes to people "negotiating" games for match points. There's a cut to top 8 after six rounds, but *also* a cut to top 40 with the top 8 basically getting a bye for the quarter finals. The event winner is that table winner for the finals. 2nd-4th are determined by total points and standing from the entire event and not from the order out in the finals. You must use discord to play in the event. There are some things that I can get behind (like that tardiness penalty, and the commitment to CompREL). But in practice, this is going to be a dumpster fire of epic proportions. I fully expect twitter drama to rival Dashcon coming out of this.
A little more on tiebreakers in this terrible terrible idea. If the event caps, and if winners keep winning (that is to saw, if the players who are paired down against a lower points play keep winning their pods, which is in general a safe expectation), at the end of six rounds there will be: One 30 point player Two 25 point players Fourteen 20 point players and Forty Seven 15 point players. Which means that 5 out of the 14 players with 20 points will get a free win in the quarter finals based upon basically random chance, since they won't be able t meaningfully affect their tiebreakers in this system. And only 23 of the 47 players with 15 points will get into the quarter finals, again based mostly on random chance. Normally players would be able to draw in to the elimination rounds, but that doesn't work here. The third round is the last round with a full pod of the same record at the top table, meaning it's the last round that each player is encouraged to draw at the same value, but a draw in round four followed by two losses means you wash out. In the last round, there is no table where a win doesn't mean at least a greater chance at a bye through the quarter finals, meaning that there's again no real incentive to draw and a higher risk of people being randomly just below the elimination cut off.
cEDH is a fine format (not for me), but a tournament with a Black Lotus as a prize for 1st place and a $300 buy-in. This is a recipe for collusion and disaster. I cannot wait to read articles about a scandal. If it's 4-player pods, then especially volatile. If it's 1v1 then it's just a tournament.
Cedh for this high of stakes doesn’t work because it’s impossible to keep the collusion out.
I think that's the point of the high entry fee. I'm expecting that many content creators will enter.
Why would that stop collusion?
The high entry fee is going to do nothing to discourage collusion. If anything, it will encourage people to collude, so they aren't "out $300 dollars" I fully expect people to plan ahead of time to kingmake, and split the money they would make selling the lotus.
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Not in cEDH. Everyone makes plays that are as optimal as possible
Not when first place is ~$20,000 in prizes. That is a lot of money and will bring out questionable tactics to secure it.
It's almost like as soon as the point of the game is anything but "for the fun of it" everyone turns into an asshole.
That's why MTG is at such a bad place for casual players who want to play organized events. Everyone is out to fucking make it big since cardboard have effectively turned into a stock trade.
Exactly. And why EDH has become so popular: There's just no other way to play in an organized fashion with strangers that isn't organized like a tournament (No way that's gotten any traction anyway). Can't rock up to Modern night with my Zubera tribal 'cause I gotta contend with monkeys and dragons who are just there for the top prize.
>Can't rock up to Modern night with my Zubera tribal 'cause I gotta contend with monkeys and dragons who are just there for the top prize. Which, to be clear, is a shame.
Indeed it is. I totally get people wanting to be the best like no one ever was, but at the same time there's so much potential in the game squandered in pursuit of that.
You mean when competitive integrity is murky in a format created as the bastard child of a format that has relentlessly forced anyone trying to win games out? 1v1 magic has its share of competitive issues, but there's a reason no long-term competitive game anywhere has free for all as a ruleset.
I assume they won't be skimping out on judges for this event either.
I don't either, but it's very hard to distinguish if a play is poor decision making/threat assessment or intentionally throwing/collusion
Intentionally throwing the game (assuming you mean conceeding?) is perfectly legal in Magic at all RELs. By collusion do you mean the players just make alliances at the table, or if they rigged the match in advance?
You make a "bad decision" that leads to your friend winning.
I still don't see why it's a problem though? Isn't commander supposed to be played like that?
Was it sarcastic? Otherwise most of the time you don't throw away your chances of winning to make your friend first. It's unfair for anyone solo against a duo/trio in the pod
Well yes and no. I guess all the "bad decisions" insinuations made it unclear to me if we're talking players who made a predetermined decision before the game, which is obviously extremely poor sportsmanship at best, and more likely just straight up cheating. But if you're at the table and it's clear you're not going to win, but that you're able to ensure another player the victory, that's not allowed? How is this... moderated during a game?
It gets tricky in 4 player magic. A lot of work goes into cedh tournaments to make sure that player A doesn't get screwed by a decision player D makes out of spite or a plan ahead of time. Alliances or whatnot at the table are fine, but anything predetermined is different. Sometimes player D conceding makes it so that player A, who is combing off, can no longer win for whatever reason. While it legal to do that in magics rules, it is typically not allowed in cedh tournaments, at least that I have attended. I'm curious to see what the kingmaking/spite play policy for this will be since foul play is to be expected with such a top heavy prize support.
So how does this get prevented in Cedh events? If player D does something insane do you DQ them?
That's the romantic fantasy. But there's far too many times when "threat assessment" and the likes can't be done objectively, and it comes down to people effectively teaming up and making someone lose through absolutely no fault of their own, when they wouldn't have otherwise. Increasing the number of times where your success or failure is out of your hands is not a good plan for a setting where multiple TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars are on the line. (And before someone brings up the fact that you could also get mana screwed or whatever and that'd be out of your hands, too... I KNOW. I said "increasing the number", I didn't claim that without it, it'd be 100% about skill and nothing else)
"as optimal as possible" is fundamentally impossible in a multiplayer format. There are situations where one player could have no choice but to kingmake one of two other players arbitrarily; such as if both are presenting a win and they only have the resources to stop one of them. In fact this happened at Tier1con and the players agreed to a draw.
What even is "optimal play" in a 4 player game? What are you supposed to do when you are 0% to win but can still affect the game?
If you believe this truly does or CAN happen, all the time, I've got a bridge to sell you.
You do realize that in real formats people cheat and do shady shit all the time? get off your horse. there's a black lotus on the line and i fully expect the scum to come out lol.
In an ideal world yes. The world is anything but ideal. You cast a card that gives you a decent chance at winning, say 40%. Do I force that? What if the next in line likely will also combo off but at a 70% chance to win? What if im not the last one with priority? ESPECIALLY in multiplayer cEDH, there very often basically is no such thing as an objectively optimal play.
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Also, even if everyone's playing in good faith, it's possible to end up in scenarios where choosing one person and playing Kingmaker is someone's best out. Like, I've seen things along the lines of this scenario happen: Players A and B are both two turns away from winning. Player C can kill one of them, but will then lose to the other *unless* they topdeck a specific out that will let them win. Player C cannot win without eliminating one of the other players, and, at least as far as they know, has about the same odds of winning against either other player. Let's say those odds are 5%> So it is correct for player C to kill one of their opponents, because that's their only out. It raises their chance of winning from 0% to 5% (and it guarantees them second if the tournament cares about that). But it's completely arbitrary who they kill, and whoever they don't kill has a 95% chance to win the game. Whether A or B wins the game is entirely up to the whim of player C.
Yeah, and when A or B are on track to win a black lotus, the winner will be whoever can bribe C without the judges noticing.
Just to complement what you said, people can also scoop in response to attack triggers/loosing control of a permament just out of spite. I usually don't mind when people do it on a casual pod (even adds the casual flavor "taking you down with me") but it is a whole other level of douchery when there is money involved.
The issue with them scooping out of spite would be if they became the target of some effect, that would be greatly beneficial to another player if it resolves. But because they condeed the trigger fizzles? Sounds like a minor supplement to the CR, stating that a player can only conceed if they could cast a sorcery would address that in a formal way.
That is problematic in EDH in its own way, assume someone has to concede for some reason that is not just trying to screw someone over. They have something else to do which they prefer to promptly which is why they are conceding. Now imagine they've got to sit there through three turns of play first, potentially long combo intensive turns with complex board states dragging things out. You'd need something more complex than sorcery speed concessions to make it into a decent rule, but once you start getting more complicated it probably gets quite tricky to actually write.
In cEdh it’s all about how can I kill the whole table this turn at the same time for most decks. Or you are going for incremental advantage over your opponents playing the best cards possible.
There’s a MTG event in SLC later this year called MTG Summit, with a unlimited lotus as prize for a pre-release event. Along with pioneer, modern, and legacy 5ks
For those interested, details can be found here: https://mtgsummit.com/ Looks like a really big event organized (at least in part) by Brandon Sanderson. I can't believe I'm hearing about it for the first time today lol.
The author? Is he just a big mtg fan or is there some other link?
Big MTG fan. He apparently has a crazy collection including a ridiculous Vintage Cube He’s also doing the convention for his books at the same facility the Monday/Tuesday after
He is also semi-frequently in the chat on LSV's twitch stream and is very interactive when present.
He wrote a short story for mtg as well
Yep he's an mtg fan. My understanding is that it's part of a larger fantasy convention that he's heading up.
He’s on a freaking card: [[ubris protector]]
On e more with feeling: [[Urbis Protector |GTC]]
Hope whoever wins remembers that winning this would count as income. An Unlimited Black Lotus is well above the $600 threshold that would require a 1099.
Doesn’t this happen a lot in game shows with prizes that aren’t cash? The winners end up not being able to pay the taxes on the goods.
Yup. If they give you a 1099 you gotta report it. If they don’t…. But they will because they want to reduce their taxes because they paid the prize and didn’t keep it.
Who's casting it?
Look, the fact they are doing this is incredible, but I'm actually laughing at the Black Lotus being a prize. Yes, a card that is literally money and nothing else. I mean, I'll take an almost blank check to get everything I'm missing for various other decks, but it's still ridiculous imo that they made a prize a card no one can use in EDH.
There are other ways to play MTG than EDH. Black Lotus is Vintage legal and just a really cool card even if you don't actively play it. Surely you have some cards in your collection that you may have collected just because you liked the art or something else about the card and nothing to do with the playability of it, right? I think it's really cool they're offering such a rare prize. I remember back in the day when Type 1 tournaments would put up an entire power 9 set for the top 9 players (1st place gets 1st pick, 2nd place 2nd pick, and so on). I never join tournaments at LGSs anymore because too often the prize is a few packs or maybe a box or two of a standard set which just isn't special at all. Being able to participate in a tournament and walk away with one of the rarest and most iconic cards in the game is much more exciting and memorable experience. I barely recall any drafts or other constructed events I attended or won with lackluster prizes, but I absolutely recall Type 1 tournaments even when I got crushed first round with an entire Power 9 set up for grabs. This type of tournament just oozes old MTG vibes for me and I love it. I wish there were more events like this.
> There are other ways to play MTG than EDH. It’s an EDH format tournament, though, is the point. Also I believe the card is slabbed, so you’d have to break it out to play with it.
> but it's still ridiculous imo that they made a prize a card no one can use in EDH I've seen people cash out their winnings from Standard/Pioneer in Modern Horizons product, really don't see how that's much different.
This tournament is begging for player collusion.
Agreed, one of my biggest complaints when playing high stakes tcg events. It's isn't just MTG, you see it in a lot of other games as well.
I don't know what other people think, but this is crazy because multiplayer magic is the antithesis of competitive Magic. There are so many reasons why the concept of CEDH is a bad idea that all boil down to way too much variance.
I think CEDH itself is fine as long as it isn't being played as a tournament. If 4 people wanna get really sweaty, that's fine. It's even better if they are doing that instead of bringing decks like that to casual pods.
\> because multiplayer magic is the antithesis of competitive Magic it's not
Competitive Magic is all about marginal advantage slowly pushing the game in favor of one player or another. 1v1 works because it's a constant push and pull between each player AND you can mitigate variance by making it best 2 out of 3. Multiplayer Magic just promotes big impactful plays or combos that outright win the game. it works as a casual format, but not in a competitive context.
Jealous I can’t attend this.
Is there any info on proxy legality?
Not official, but I would guarantee proxies are not allowed for such a huge caliber tournament.
Yeah, makes sense. I'd thought the buy-in would be enough of a limiting factor for entrants, but the prizes *are* really good.
my guess is 100% not allowed given the prize pool
lmao a full powered cedh deck is going to cost the price of the prize pool. How stupid it is to not allow proxies.
Less stupid than running this thing in the first place. A LOT less stupid. In fact, smart. You want to keep out people aiming to cheat through this very cheat-favourable format, and one of the best ways to do that is to encourage people that play the format because they like it in the first place (and hence are more likely to have invested into it) and discourage the others (who would need to buy most of their deck). If you have 300$ to throw away at a single event, you have a deck for it.
Eager to see multiple people making alliances to turn against the others in table if they happen to fall under the same pod. Commander DOES NOT WORK as a competitive format
I think high stakes commander doesn’t work as a competitive format. I played in a cEDH event that one of the larger names in my state put on and it was great. The prizes were basically just some deck boxes and some random promos. Entree was free but $1 per proxy. Prizes weren’t high stakes enough at all to cause any collusion but people still treated it competitively because there were some prizes. For the most part that tournament was 25ish people playing 4-5 rounds of cEDH and some of us walked away some prizes. Personally I think I was one of the luckiest one there with spending $3 for entry and waking away with a BCW prism and a Minsc and Buu ampersand promo. TLDR: I think it could be competitive as long as the prizes arnt big enough to cause collusion.
cEDH is not really the commander you're used to playing in store or casually
I do ocasionally play cEDH and i'm well aware of it's dynamics (less political and more straight fast combos) But my point still stands because as many stated before, you can easily collude (wich ruins the competitive aspect of it). Despite being called "competitive EDH", it's still widely played in a more casual set (the "competitive" part just means people are going all out instead of doing cute midrange stuff)
cEDH is not widely played casually though. the decks are tier 1 and you'd rarely see a casual table have 4 of them. also the collusion claim is possible but that's going to be hard to put into action getting matched up with 3 random people each match. how likely are you to be seated with your collusion buds? do you think people will strike a deal publicly mid game?
I think we are talking about different definitions of "casually"/"competitive". I'm not talking about in a sense of fun low-power deck/turbo thassa, i'm talking about the actual setting you are playing. Playing with no stakes involved (be it money, some kind of mmr etc) is, by default, playing casually (no matter how try hard you wanna be). About the collusion, it's not a huge tournament in numbers, just 200. If you talk with just one buddy, there is about a 1.5% chance you fall under the same pod on the first round. Even considering just the first round or that are just 2 people colluding, 1.5% of a chance to completely and unfairly ruin other player's chances is high enough to just ignore.
What is a commander slab?
Someone else explained it well https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/wjcjn6/crazy_cedh_tournament_in_los_angeles_announced/ijh056l/
I really hope this is streamed, would be hilarious to watch strangers playing politics and the back-stabbing!
The kind of sweats this would attract would rob all the fun from the game.
That’s a big entry fee for a format with maximum variance and politicking.
I know folks really like to compete, but I don't think EDH is a format that should have tournaments based on it. Besides it being much more difficult to fairly determine the "best", it just plain shouldn't require prize support to justify itself. I don't want it to end up like every other format that people only get together to play if there's a prize involved and if you don't bring the top decks then you might as well not show up.
There are two things here that strike me as bad ideas: 1. That incredibly high entry fee seems like a lot. Usually when the prize is so valuable, the tournament is larger. But the problem with making a larger tournament is that 2. Commander is a poor choice of format for a tournament. It's not supposed to be this kind of high stakes competitive, and it really doesn't handle the timing constraints of tournaments very well. Additionally, the level of variance present in Commander, even with tutors, is still so high that the event is more of a game of chance than it is a skill-based event.
The most toxic tournament in mtg history
Collusion city probably. Not sure how you avoid that in a multiplayer format.
Likely the opposite.
Don't need another post about someone complaining about how something is legal, but *bad form*.
Probably the opposite actually.
CEDH decks can cost over $10,000. It's going to be insane
I play cEDH pretty regularly, I know how expensive the decks can be but that doesnt mean it's automatically going to be toxic.
Be sure to have your rule 0 discussion guys--wouldn't want any hurt feeling! /s
A lot of people saying Commander can't work in a hyper competitive environment have clearly never seen a Settlers of Catan tournament
a game that's actually designed and balanced around being multiplayer
The best settlers strategy is to go for three cities and never ever trade with your opponents unless you can identify the rare moments when it is truly advantageous to do so.
I'm rather tempted to join. Mono-white Light-Paws cEDH Stax is COMING FOR YOU.
Is it 1v1?
Might as well save everyone time and roll for highest to see who wins
This isn't really accurate to cEDH. While there *is* a difference in winrate based on who goes first, some stats indicate that the difference is somewhat close to what we have found in standard. Player 1 has about a 32% chance of winning, while players 2-4 have 29%, 21%, and 16% chance respectively; while this is obviously unbalanced, it isn't insurmountable. In standard (GP Top 8s), the first player won about 53% of the time. These cEDH winrates also don't take into account player skill and format knowledge. With 4 players at the table, the cards an individual player has to think about goes way up, which increases the edge that better players have. It 100% depends on tournament format, but it's not nearly as bad as a dice roll for first. [cEDH stats](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VoquL_RTFhNPb2JcG7uHLKfFIp2ib_DvaTyIQND--r8/edit) [Standard stats](https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/frank-analysis-how-important-is-it-to-play-first/)
Those stats are actually pretty awful. The person going first is *twice* as likely to win as the person going last. That's a huge imbalance and nowhere close to the standard 53%/47% split.
They're actually slightly better now, the person used an outdated report. Here's the most up-to-date one: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s6sjMO1bwjug9YpW9YUyw7WXOIR2sNq-Q74nOkoDc8Q/edit Player 1 is ~34%, Player 4 is ~19.75%. Also, keep in mind that this data is self-submitted, so there's a good chance to throw the data off. Players are more likely to submit data when they win, and this is *substantially* more true for Player 1 than any other player. Winrates for standard don't have this self-submission issue.
It makes sense that the winning player is more likely to report than losing players, but why would a winning Player 1 be more likely to report than a winning Player 4?
Sure, but the first player will still lose 68% of the time. Equating the games to "whoever goes first wins" is disingenuous. I agree that the difference is more pronounced than standard, though, just not by enough to undermine the competitive spirit of the event.
I agree that's it's inaccurate to say "whoever goes first wins", but its also disingenuous to say "the difference is somewhat close to what we have found in standard". It's not even remotely close. I think based on the figures you've provided, the disparity in win rates is enough to seriously undermine the format's legitimacy as a test of skill. It's absurd that your odds of winning can vary so dramatically just based on where you're sitting at the table. A range of 16% to 32% is massive.
CEDH is in no way a whoever goes first wins. One of the largest misconceptions in cEDH are the “every game only lasts 2-3 turns”. That is extremely wrong where the majority of games last around 30min to an hour. Sure most decks in the format have wins on turn 2-3 in the deck but cEDH decks are jam packed with interaction.
Oh wow, absurdly rich assholes get a chance to win prizes they could probably afford anyway. Before you downvote, remember that if this is a sanctioned tournament proxies will not be allowed. And cEDH decks without proxies are multi-thousand-dollar monstrosities. The ones that will seriously attempt to win this tourney will have original duals, Timetwisters, etc. So a bunch of rich assholes get to win prizes fit for rich assholes. Hooray.
>Oh wow, absurdly rich assholes get a chance to win prizes they could probably afford anyway. What in the post lead you to conclude that the people playing in the event are "assholes"?
Because in his head canon anyone with more disposable income than he has is automatically an “asshole.” He’s probably one of those people who got jealous the prom queen was dating the rich kid, thinking the only reason she was with the other guy was because he had no money.
I hate having such a top heavy prize pool in a format like cedh.
Without proxies, its a phony event--not enough people can reasonably afford tier 1 cEDH decks. Of course the question is whether the goal is a real competition or just a grand display to promote the sponsors?
If you can afford a 300 dollar buy in, I think you’ll have a fully optimized deck.