Tag: EDH

New Commander Brackets and Game Changers!

The new Wizards Rules committee has come out with a new Bracket system to help players find more games that will be evenly matched.

The Game Changer cards referenced are here:

Full artical: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/introducing-commander-brackets-beta

So what does this mean for most commanders players… nothing. For most people, they will continue playing with their friends using their own power assessments to try and play games with decks they are familiar with.

However, this will help with the MagicCon problem of asking “What level is your deck?” and almost universally getting a response of “7” usually with some kind of qualifier of what kind of 7 the deck is.

Looking at my own personal decks I am seeing that it is clear which are 1s and 2s and which are 4s. I do not really think I have any CEDH decks. My main concern here is the bracket 3 decks. Looking at the Game Changers list and many of my own decks, I have noticed that in this system many decks that I would consider the similar power level are now in different brackets. For instance my Eriette deck and my Heiko deck would now be considered bracket 3 where as my Lumra deck is considered a two. They are all solid decks, but they are not designed to close out a game fast, I usually describe them as being tuned decks. I would feel comfortable playing them all against the old 6s or 7s or even 8s. That said, they are not looking to close out a game until later turns, 6 or later at least. Right now, the only thing putting Eriette and Heiko in a category in 3 category is that they each have one “Game Changer” with Serra Sanctum and Jeska’s Will respectively, where Lumra does not. With the current system adding this game changer “mechanic” to the ranking system I think players will put too much emphasis on those cards. While I do think that list will be expanded as this system is tested, I think it is better to use the Game Changer cards as a guide, similar to their reference to mass land denial. Saying a 3 can have up to 3 game changers almost gamifies the process of deck building. While my Heiko deck has won against fine tuned decks, and I would consider it a 3 or 4, by the current system I could take out one card, Jeska’s Will, and easily claim it as a 2. Now, I would not do this as I understand the spirt of the rule and have a long tenure of assessing power levels, but I can certainly see how the addition of game changers could confuse new players.

Well that turned out to be more negative than I meant. I will certainly be trying this during MagicCon Chicago and we shall see if my concerns are warrented or not. In the end this is a beta, so testing and failing is part of the process. I appreciate Wizards making an effort to help the community find well balanced games.

Future of Commander: New Advisory Panel

Wizards has made another announcement on the future of the Commander format. 

Incase you missed the announcement here it is:  https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/introducing-the-commander-format-panel

TLDR: There will be a 17 person panel that advises Wizards on the decisions it makes for the format. Those people are from various levels of play from casual to cEDH and include people from all over the world. Some members will stay on, but some will rotate out after one year. The final call on all decisions will be Wizards, there is nothing holding Wizards to decide things based on the advice of the panel.

So, what does this mean going forward? While some of my more casual play friends may be worried, I am excited. As a competitive player in Modern, Standard and Legacy I am excited to see what Wizards does. Many of the bannings in Commander have not always made sense to me. I understand there are some cards that just don’t work in the format, or are so warping that they need to be banned. However, most of the list I felt would be better handled by rule 0 conversations. Why should Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus get the ban hammer, while Ravages of War and Armageddon do not. These discrepancies are what I hope Wizards cleans up. eventually make a true ban list where any card NOT included in the ban list is acceptable to play. 

The bracket system. This is the current template Wizards seems to be playing with for Commander. A tier system by which players can easily (hopefully) identify how powerful their decks are and relay that to other players to match power levels. This seems like an over complicated version of what we already have. It was not uncommon to sit down at a table and have someone give a vague description of their deck, a power estimate, and then you shuffle up and play. I always felt this was good enough. Even just saying, this is a competitive deck, but not as good as a cEDH deck was enough to tell other players to put their precons away. Or vice versa, when someone would sit down with an upgraded precon, say they were relatively new and that they were hoping to have a more fun and crazy game, well then us veteran players know to reach for that one pet deck we have that 1 in 100 times does something wacky. Was this system perfect, nope. Did people sometimes get stomped, yup. But we were able to have a discussion for game two, maybe make some adjustments and get playing again. 

I am not sure a bracket system can improve on this. Cards like Armageddon are not at the same power level as Demonic Tutor, but listed as examples as potential “Tier 4” cards in the bracket system. If you are playing a tutor based combo deck and I am playing mass land destruction jank, you will win, the vast majority of the time. That means a power level discussion is still needed. However, the bracket system may just make that more complicated. 

In the end, I am hoping we get a more thought out banlist, with reasoning and purpose behind bans and I would like to see more things come off that current list. As for the power level system vs a bracket system, I think a power level system with better descriptions of what each level means, would be better than certain cards getting a rating. I would hope for some official version of this:

1 – Complete jank/random pile of cards.
2 – Most precons.
3 – Good or upgraded precons 
4 – Decks that only do one thing 
5 – Casual deck with poor interaction and/or no wincon.
6 – Casual deck with some of the below but not all the way there.
7 – Focused casual deck, good at doing what it is trying to do.
8 – High powered but not quite cEDH, could win a game within 5-6 turns. 
9 – Fringe or outdated cEDH, can win a game within 5 turns constantly. 
10 – True cEDH, win as fast as possible with ways to protect your win con. Wins possibly even in the first few turns. 

I do not want to take credit for the above list, it is adapted from many found across the interwebs.