'they can't really powercreep modern without super creeping standard' modern horizons, Mordor horizons and Marvel horizons: allow us to introduce ourselves
LOTR and Modern Horizons 2 are the best selling sets in Magic history, with MH3 likely to join them. This is why we got to see Modern played at the Pro Tour in Amsterdam. Unfortunately with 4 Nadus in the top 4, Nadu being the one big design mistake in MH3 (along with Necrodominance, possibly).
At the end of the day they are a product company. The only reason they ever had tournaments was because it helped them sell product. If they can sell more product by catering to casuals, they'll never spend the money to hold tournaments.
We should be happy they print mainly for casual and dont force some degree of deck rotation. Powercreep exists but some old lists end up having staying power. Zur still sees play, Derevi launched up in powerlevel when TOR was printed, its like Mons said, only getting 1-5 cards per set at most is good for our section of the format.
To fix competitive EDH, we must first work on casual EDH. All games trend towards optimization, and as the magnitude of optimization increases, so must elements of cooperative play. We need to help the EDH community as a whole understand that cEDH is NOT against the spirit of EDH. Conversely, any edh ban list needs to be in the spirit of making the game one that says, "if you lose, it's your fault." It needs to preserve archetype, color and play style diversity to the greatest extent possible. EDH is very much a "your guy/girl/foo" format, where people become attached to the commander of their choice. Moreover, any committee who would take on leading EDH/cEDH must emphasize etiquette, outreach and education. EDH players need to work on ensuring civility, and cEDH players need to be willing to teach newcomers.
cEDH is absolutely against the spirit of EDH. It's not a gathering of friends to relax and play Magic. It's seeing who can do the most degenerate broken things in the game. WotC will never recognize cEDH as official because they would have to step in for the broken no-fun play patterns. cEDH is for overly competitive narcissists who don't care about the play experience of anyone else.
@@chim007azo I swear casual players are 10,000x more elitist than cEDH players. cEDH: "Oh cool combo, let's play another game." Casual: "You have violated the sanctity of my game, how dare you enjoy yourself in a way that I don't like, you have defiled everything that is good and holy."
@@Paul-ip1jh This is such BS. Why do over competitive players always pretend to be stupid? It has nothing to do with “enjoying yourself in a way I don’t like” it has to do with unfun play patterns. In a social format created to avoid the rigors and stress of tournament play and see interesting things happen optimizing your deck for a turn 4 or less win or locking everyone else out of the game is not fun for the other players. It’s a sad joke that people putting together a broken deck in a broken format to get a win really think they did something. It’s EASY to build level 10 deck, it’s actually HARDER to build a deck that’s a fun play experience. So do people have an issue with the person who only cares about their own experience and the pathetic rush of win in a broken game, you’re absolutely right they have a problem with that.
@@cedhtv I don’t think the RC would do that either, but they should based on their philosophies, but I know being coherent and consistent is not one of their philosophies. I do believe Wizards would overtake them; after all, I think most of the demand for the Reserve List at this time comes from commander players, so banning them in Commander would be worse than reprinting it and would actively hurt their value.
There is no way this is ever going to happen. It's a fantasy. As 95% of the RL is completely irrelevant to EDH anyway? And Duals don't even impact the power level of the format. Are we talking about Timetwister? Exactly one top cEDH deck plays it. Are we really making this whole argument because of Cradle (a card that for how strong, and meta, worsen your mulligans), Wheel (is never going to benefit you outside of turn 1 or asymmetrical stax + bowmasters exists), and Mox Diamond (a worse chrome mox)? I might add that costs gatekeeping cEDH (which is a real thing of course) are very partially due to the RL. Even after banning Crypt and Sol Ring (ridicolous but ok). Decks are way over 1000€/$ without duals and RL cards.
@@cedhtv Would love to hear your opinions as always ! The fact that every red decks plays it might screw with the data analysis a bit tho. It might catch some effects of red as a whole and not just dockside.
Yes. It is an auto include so it is hard to isolate it. I have to look at all red colors vs all none red colors to start with I think. But it will be hard.
I agree with you totally...i started as a Casual,got bored fast cause these stupid Rule Zero whining...the more Casual a Table is the more salty it is. Currently i Play whats called high power ,have a Ellivere Staxdeck that with some Additions could participate on Cedh Tables but then there is the Point of Original Duals and Gaeas Cradle which are that expensive . Probably i would buy them over time..but here in Germany there are nearly zero Tournaments Just dont know how to start without the extreme expensive Cards and without any Option to play these Cards..my local Lgs even bans Sol Ring...
I'd suggest 60 card formats. I started with commander, went to FNM at local stores, got tired of "my high power strategy is fine, your's is illegal", and got into 60 card formats. If pauper is played locally in your area, I'd recommend pauper. I'd also recommend pioneer and standard. Standard if you want faster change, pioneer if you want slower change over time.
@@Hapkins-le6xf Exactly my Experience. Last Saturday is the best Example... Necrobloom,massive Landfall destroying everyone til i used my highly modified Omo, Queen of Vezuva with some Combos ,in His Case Strip Mine and Crucible of Worlds and some Graveyardhate. "You arent allowed to Play These Combo,Land Destruction is forbidden" etc etc
@diskuslars7527 yeah, I honestly think the only way to play commander consistently without issues is 1. Cedh, 2. Among your friend group (no randos), and 3. Pauper commander. Because pauper comander has a much more limited card pool, it's a lot harder to have to play into "accepted" super strong strategies. The games in turn take longer though.
@@diskuslars7527 proxy away and hop right into cedh. It's a good time. At a tournament level, I think the meta is a little small. But at a non tournament level, any high power deck should be fine. Also, 60 card formats. I know there's a mental barrier going from edh to 60 card formats, especially if you started with edg. But I'd recommend checking out what is played in your area. Pauper, standard and pioneer are great. Modern is honestly great to, but too much money for me personally to try to keep up with the format.
At our LGS we had tournaments in casual edh and also faced the problems addressed by this video. Our solution is a hybrid of a banlist and something like the Canadian highlander point system, where there are only a certain amount of card categories such as tutors, fast mana rocks and free spells are allowed in the casual high power format. Above that we just have cEDH.
@@cedhtv card prices vary to widely and quickly, that seems too burdensome on the participants. Canadian highlander is the best way for commander to go legit.
@@cedhtv the problem we had with this is that some budget decks such as animar artifact storm, with ancestral statue, were extremely dominant and 30$ so we restricted the minimum mana value for commander combos and game winning two card combos in general.
imo a 4 player format isnt a great game mode to run tournaments. So many issues like kingmaking and politics being used in twisted ways turns me off from playing cedh in a tournament, but much more interested in playing with friends where everyone is interested in a good experience and competitive integrity.
Three Tree City is a good example of a card that will be very impactful in casual or high power EDH. In many decks it will be the most powerful land in your deck (especially if you play a tribal deck without green so you can't run Gaea's Cradle). At the same time the card is not likely to disrupt competitive formats.
Not to be that guy, but Lurrus isn't banned in vintage, it's banned in Legacy xD (it was unbanned in vintage in 2021). Also, interestingly enough, they didn't accidentally reprint Mox Diamond. They had been printing reserve list cards for years in limited promotional ways (Judge Gift Program, e.g. Gaeas's Cradle). But because the Mox Diamond printing was so large, people complained enough that Wizards decided to change their policy and not reprint reserve list cards AT ALL. P.S. love your channel, you give some of the most digestible meta breakdowns on the web!
Of course it will differ based on your LGS or playgroup, but I've never encountered a commander player that opposes proxies for people who want to play certain cards and can't afford them. As long as you don't play a deck that wildly overpowers the rest of the pod, that is.
@@TheMattmatic so then you play some cards that mildly edge the power level in your favor. Then someone responds, then some responds, etc. You get the boiling frog.
@@chim007azo In my playgroup the power level is fairly balanced I find, once decks are at a certain level. With different decks you can also adjust to the table with which deck you choose to play. The good thing about EDH as a format is that there is an element to it that self balances, as long as players are fairly good at threat assessment and run enough interaction to stop a player that is clearly ahead.
no correct. casual commander: we hate everything, especially any kind of interaction that may kill any of my stuff. Also i dont want to do combat math. actually, I dont like to play magic at all. You opnly have to read a single day worth of reddit edh and mtg threads. Edh players just hate playing magic, simple as that xD
There's only 3 people I have lent cards for tournaments but they in turn have offered their power 9 and others to me but outside of that it's not worth the risk. Wotc running cedh tournaments , no way they don't properly manage the formats they do have . We do not like bans . Wotc likes bans and refuse to ban new cards bc their selling packs and perfer to wreck our collections instead. Cedh tournaments over the years have evolved grown in numbers and the current organizers have already gone threw the what works what doesn't work etc. * also imo their aren't enough judges who are familiar with the complexity of cedh. Cedh judges imo are specialist in the format (as in knowledge) Judges working at wotc events be so amazed by what happens at edh pods they have to rule on. 😅
I haven’t finished a video yet, but I think a problem that would arise is that wizards of the coast wouldn’t want people to use proxies, and CEDH is very proxy friendly. Tournaments would boil down to who can afford the guy cradle or time twister, etc. While, I do know there are budget decks and budget options for CEDH. Some Necessary cards are thousands of dollars.
I stopped playing Magic about 5 years ago, and picked up Blood Bowl instead. There is a surprising amount of corssover. Blood Bowl, and commander are casual games. But there are high level competitive tournaments. Both games have rules committees that are not run by the creators of the game. But the commander rules committee are really hands off, while the blood bowl one is really hands on. The result in Blood Bowl, is that every tournament has slightly different rules and a slightly different banlist. Which is amazing! It adds so much variety to the competitive side of the game. If I were to fix commander, I would recommend that the rules committee has a casual banlist, the way they currently do. But they could also have a couple of suggested "Tournament Packs" that tournament organisers can use to inspire their own rules sets. E.g. - Have a budget limit. - Have a points limit, like canadian highlander - The top 20 most played cards in cEDH are banned. - Have a bunch of cards UNbanned. It's works amazing in Blood Bowl, and I think it has great potential for cEDH.
26:51 I have thinking about this for a while. Something like an alternative cheaper cost for powerfull cards if that card has the exact same color identity as your commander. Imagine Colorless getting good cards that wouldn't be broken in other decks.
Maybe what wizards could do is hold a once or twice a year event with custom ban list/rules, kind of like the pride month event, giving players at home something fun for their play groups, and giving competitive players an actual tournament.
MTGGoldfish did a fantastic podcast episode about how they actually turned modern (and even somewhat commander) into a “soft” rotating format via modern horizons. Highly recommend you check it out! Kind of depressing honestly but it’s definitely counterintuitive to how most of us traditionally thought about eternal formats
Wizards could print a new set only for EDH with a different border color and they could print the cards that are on the reserve list. That could help get more ppl on cEDH
The way the RL is redacted, that's not possible. Even changing the name of a RL card with the same exact test and costs is a no-go. The key words are "functionally identical". Say they print a Cradle that is not Legendary: that I guess could work. Say they print Triomes that don't come in play tapped? Cool but then every legal format wants them. A wheel that costs 2B? Great. I think that this would lead to future further complaining though, because who will come later will have more to purchase that is very relevant, and who already has the stuff can't see them very happy to be coharsed into getting 50€ packs. Everyone loses. It's very hard to agree with me here but I feel like I am right so not looking for a debate. Say a casual player come to a cEDH table hyped to try its new additions. He will just discover that the pilot makes or breakes the deal much more than RL cards. Players with format knowledge, skilled at mulligans, will always leverage their advantage: printed Cradle or not.
I love the concept of the reserve list, I’m actually in the process of layaway purchasing two blue duals (volc and trop) however I firmly believe these cards specifically fast mana and OG dual lands. Should be banned from edh tournament play. The main reason is proxies. Proxies are not fair to the game as a whole. If cards like mox diamond or LED are allowed in a format, they will always warp the format around them. Same goes for the dual lands. They are mandatory cards that need to be in your deck or you will be strictly playing an inferior and less competitive deck. The idea of just allowing people to proxy these 500$ plus cards to make it fair simply forces EVERYONE to play essentially the same decks. They ban reserve list fast mana and duals, now the format will become a slower more value and political game. Which is exactly what EDH should be. Leave your arguments below I’d love to discuss this further.
Well I don't have much to say. No arguments here but I agree. somewhat. I actully think that if EDh was made today it would not allow reserve list cards.
haha yeah. Well I am testing how it feels not to have a green screen there. It kinda gave me a lot of space. Don't know what to do with it for now. But either the green screem comes back or a book case.
Honestly, I'm game for a 0 proxy cEdh world. My local shop fires 0 proxy tournaments on the regular. Most decks actually don't need every single piece as long as they can play the deck well.
They can't take over for the RC. Trying to balance commander the way they balance competitive formats would result in hundreds of card bans. Then, cedh. This is a format where if you can't proxy you need to shell out 4k. Legacy is the same and legacy is dead. Without proxies, cedh is dead and wotc will not allow proxies in tournaments.
I see a lot of comments about proxies and different stances on it, and I understand how proxing is considered normal and encouraged, because whaling a lot of money to get all the best cards and then winning because of just better card quality is stupid. But I also have an idealistic view where there are certain extra rare cards, like there always were in all the card-game animes, that not a lot of people have, and they are powerful, and cool but You only see them only once in a while. With proxing You are losing that feeling - and it also annoys me, I don't know why, seeing some powerful vintage cards proxied. On one hand I know that it doesn't matter whether it is a "real" card or not, but on the other one I always have that ick about them :/ And You may say I am an elitist, but would You be fine with playing with somebody that just took some pieces of paper and wrote on them the card text etc.? In my (not profesional) opinion if we consider that old expensive cards, a must have that cannot be reasonably obtained by just getting a legitimate copy, then just ban those old, powerful obscure cards. I understand people wanting EDH to be non-rotating, and people overall that don't like throwing their old stuff away with rotations, but there is other side to consider - rotation encourages different playstyles, You get to play a lot of new stuff, because ironically constraints birth creativity (removing constraints removes the point, if we would remove "constraints" that are rules of how to play magic, then we wouldn't be able to play the game - constraints give form to things) - and thus some kind of rotating EDH format would be neat. tl;dr if original card is too expensive too obtain legitimetly then just ban it.
A couple things: I don't think EDH is actually the most popular format (or at least it wasn't when they were first saying it). You absolutely SHOULD NOT TRUST MARK ROSEWATER. He is first and foremost a marketing and hype man. He will say whatever he has to to shill the product or shape public opinion to his purposes. If he takes one on the chin and admits fault, it is always a performative display to stay in the good graces of players. I think he said EDH was the most popular format because he wanted it to be true. EDH was identified as the best vector for monetization, so Rosewater went to work puffing it up and making it foremost in players minds. Wizards taking over EDH would be terrible. The "attention" and "care" of WotC is comparable to the burning gaze of the Eye of Sauron. It's too late, because Wizards took over the care of EDH as soon as "commander" became a thing. The RC is clearly WotC's whipped bitch. They can't oppose any of WotC's decisions because their entire legitimacy comes from WotC not obliterating them with lawfare. They have zero leverage over WotC to compensate for this.
This is why you get multiple people from the cEDH community in a Discord/Skype/Zoom meeting, you analyze tournament results and go. If a strat is over 20-25% win-rate in Top 8, etc. then you ban that card. You can also unban stuff like Coalition Victory and so on. I stopped cEDH years ago, the lack of change to the banned list and the lack of change in win-cons made the format too stale for me. Ironcially, I've moved to PreEDH, which never changs but also doesn't have cEDH wincons, and Pauper, which definitely changes but is much more affordable. Also, I think Wizards supported cEDH event in Europe, no-proxies iirc. If they really wanted this, they could just bull rush events onto main and give crazy prizes like they do for Eternal Weekend. I'm not a fan of non Magic Online cEDH, there's been a ton of shadiness around on-camera play that I am not interested in engaging in.
Given legacy tournaments in the US fire and they have way more expensive decks than cEDH is (with the 4of playset nature) , the format availability of cards isnt really that much of an issue. There are plenty of Underground Seas around to have 10.000 players with them. And like with any legacy format, if you dont have the cards, you dont need them "right now" , play a different cheaper deck, run more mono colored decks if you have to, cEDH does have "budget" decks to run for smaller tournaments, if you are going to play a lot of cEDH you can buy into the bigger cards and doing so makes them more expensive, so buying them is even a good idea because of that. So far, tournaments that benefit from being sanctioned can get WotC price support, for a LGS thats a good thing and it attracts people from a much wider area as people are willing to drive longer for tournaments that are sanctioned as well, while the proxy friendly tournaments, especially the online ones, are much more casual in nature, the barrier of entry ensures much less "casual" people play in these events, without proxy cards, the people that end up playing are much more competitive minded. The stores that want to promote non-proxy cEDH events usually carry a lot of legacy singles and sell them too. They literally sell dual lands to the players and give them out as prices for the events (Like Win-A-Dual events fire weekly). WotC certainly has a interest to promote non-proxy events, as the culture of proxy tournaments is exactly what WotC does NOT want to promote at all and its hurting quite a bunch of LGS as well, if the players adapt a proxy-friendly mindset, they spend less money or even no-money at all, so there is very little incentive for an LGS to promote proxy events (unless you have a gigantic community that provides you with tournaments entree fees regularly to compensate).
cEDH is a card game within which everyone has equal chances regardless of money spent on cards and thus it's the best format and will continue to grow. Long live cEDH !!
Legacy is pretty much dead in the US. There are some big yearly events that require people to travel from all around the US. And there are a handful of stores in the most population dense cities that might have some events, but mist of those events require allowing proxies. Legacy is just that, a legacy. It's dead at 99.999999% of stores. Nearly all play is online and that is shrinking over time instead of growing.
If Wizards sells Commander Decks then, just sell the decks that are leagal for Commander competitive play and if you by a Commander deck you have to play the 100 cards in that deck and you cant change them.....If you play Stella then you have to play all the cards in that Stella deck win or lose?
Reserve list should be banned in cEDH imo. I see no downside to the players who just want to play the format. Lions eye diamond, duals, and cradle are d u m b.
so that is what the c in cEDH stands for. Well yes it was thought of such and still is. But some like to play tournaments. and some want wizards to take over for the RC instead of having an RC. But nothing is casual or competitive just becouse you say it is. It is what you make of it.
Have to agree with OP. Everything is a spectrum, and even though EDH is generally considered "casual". The fact is there are decks that are better than others, and there are players that are better than others. This now opens up that there is an "ideal" deck, and "perfect" play, I would argue even more so than modern or standard, as there you only have so many chess pieces to choose from and only so many that you can put into your deck. In EDH you have 100 different chess pieces to choose from! And in decks where you sit there with 3 or 4 possible lines to win and dozens of moves to get there, I would argue it has a much higher skill ceiling. But because of all this, there is a reason Cedh is blowing up. It is because there is always a better play and always a better card.
@@Vescense I would at minimal say that EDH as a format has far to little tweeking of the banlist, which has lead to disconent at tables forcing people to inventy the Tier system. as wizards wont ban problem cards that make the format unfun or atleast sperate out CEDH and EDH
@@cedhtv To me, If you are playing to win instead of playing to play, you are comp. If you are playing for stakes, you are comp. If you don't allow takebacks, you are comp. The differentiation is pretty clear. The NBA is comp, but me picking up a basketball and playing with friends is casual. There's nothing at stake. If we decide to bet beers or slushies or w/e, it's a comp event. Additionally the cEDH v.casual has caused a rift locally so we've moved the casual pods to people's homes and supporting stores while the cEDH have gone online, everyone has won.
'they can't really powercreep modern without super creeping standard'
modern horizons, Mordor horizons and Marvel horizons: allow us to introduce ourselves
LOTR and Modern Horizons 2 are the best selling sets in Magic history, with MH3 likely to join them. This is why we got to see Modern played at the Pro Tour in Amsterdam. Unfortunately with 4 Nadus in the top 4, Nadu being the one big design mistake in MH3 (along with Necrodominance, possibly).
At the end of the day they are a product company. The only reason they ever had tournaments was because it helped them sell product. If they can sell more product by catering to casuals, they'll never spend the money to hold tournaments.
We should be happy they print mainly for casual and dont force some degree of deck rotation. Powercreep exists but some old lists end up having staying power. Zur still sees play, Derevi launched up in powerlevel when TOR was printed, its like Mons said, only getting 1-5 cards per set at most is good for our section of the format.
Or rather its good Imo
@@crazykhespar8487 I agree. The less attention they pay to EDH in general, the better.
To fix competitive EDH, we must first work on casual EDH.
All games trend towards optimization, and as the magnitude of optimization increases, so must elements of cooperative play.
We need to help the EDH community as a whole understand that cEDH is NOT against the spirit of EDH.
Conversely, any edh ban list needs to be in the spirit of making the game one that says, "if you lose, it's your fault." It needs to preserve archetype, color and play style diversity to the greatest extent possible. EDH is very much a "your guy/girl/foo" format, where people become attached to the commander of their choice.
Moreover, any committee who would take on leading EDH/cEDH must emphasize etiquette, outreach and education. EDH players need to work on ensuring civility, and cEDH players need to be willing to teach newcomers.
I have to say I really do like what your writing here.
Your foo 😂
cEDH is absolutely against the spirit of EDH. It's not a gathering of friends to relax and play Magic. It's seeing who can do the most degenerate broken things in the game. WotC will never recognize cEDH as official because they would have to step in for the broken no-fun play patterns. cEDH is for overly competitive narcissists who don't care about the play experience of anyone else.
@@chim007azo I swear casual players are 10,000x more elitist than cEDH players.
cEDH: "Oh cool combo, let's play another game."
Casual: "You have violated the sanctity of my game, how dare you enjoy yourself in a way that I don't like, you have defiled everything that is good and holy."
@@Paul-ip1jh This is such BS. Why do over competitive players always pretend to be stupid? It has nothing to do with “enjoying yourself in a way I don’t like” it has to do with unfun play patterns. In a social format created to avoid the rigors and stress of tournament play and see interesting things happen optimizing your deck for a turn 4 or less win or locking everyone else out of the game is not fun for the other players. It’s a sad joke that people putting together a broken deck in a broken format to get a win really think they did something. It’s EASY to build level 10 deck, it’s actually HARDER to build a deck that’s a fun play experience. So do people have an issue with the person who only cares about their own experience and the pathetic rush of win in a broken game, you’re absolutely right they have a problem with that.
I firmly believe that if the RC ever pulls the trigger to ban the reserve list, Wizards will immediately take over EDH.
I am not sure they would do that. ALso I don't know if RC would do that.
@@cedhtv I don’t think the RC would do that either, but they should based on their philosophies, but I know being coherent and consistent is not one of their philosophies.
I do believe Wizards would overtake them; after all, I think most of the demand for the Reserve List at this time comes from commander players, so banning them in Commander would be worse than reprinting it and would actively hurt their value.
There is no way this is ever going to happen. It's a fantasy. As 95% of the RL is completely irrelevant to EDH anyway? And Duals don't even impact the power level of the format.
Are we talking about Timetwister? Exactly one top cEDH deck plays it. Are we really making this whole argument because of Cradle (a card that for how strong, and meta, worsen your mulligans), Wheel (is never going to benefit you outside of turn 1 or asymmetrical stax + bowmasters exists), and Mox Diamond (a worse chrome mox)?
I might add that costs gatekeeping cEDH (which is a real thing of course) are very partially due to the RL. Even after banning Crypt and Sol Ring (ridicolous but ok). Decks are way over 1000€/$ without duals and RL cards.
If they won't ban dockside, why would they ban reserved list?
@@john_wick272 Because it has terrible optics.
After all, a 5-color edh deck properly built costs a minimum of 4k based on the dual lands alone.
Great one as always.
Waiting for your "should Dockside be banned" video discussion after seing this ^^
You know I should try and see what the data say on that. Persoanlly I do have some opinions.
@@cedhtv Would love to hear your opinions as always ! The fact that every red decks plays it might screw with the data analysis a bit tho.
It might catch some effects of red as a whole and not just dockside.
Yes. It is an auto include so it is hard to isolate it. I have to look at all red colors vs all none red colors to start with I think. But it will be hard.
@@cedhtvI think dockside is more of a symptom of fast mana rocks than a real problem. Dockside's power in casual is no where as strong as in cedh
nahh i just got mine, shush
I nominate you to join as a permanent member of the rules committee.
haha thank you!
I agree with you totally...i started as a Casual,got bored fast cause these stupid Rule Zero whining...the more Casual a Table is the more salty it is.
Currently i Play whats called high power ,have a Ellivere Staxdeck that with some Additions could participate on Cedh Tables but then there is the Point of Original Duals and Gaeas Cradle which are that expensive . Probably i would buy them over time..but here in Germany there are nearly zero Tournaments
Just dont know how to start without the extreme expensive Cards and without any Option to play these Cards..my local Lgs even bans Sol Ring...
I'd suggest 60 card formats. I started with commander, went to FNM at local stores, got tired of "my high power strategy is fine, your's is illegal", and got into 60 card formats. If pauper is played locally in your area, I'd recommend pauper. I'd also recommend pioneer and standard. Standard if you want faster change, pioneer if you want slower change over time.
@@Hapkins-le6xf Exactly my Experience.
Last Saturday is the best Example... Necrobloom,massive Landfall destroying everyone til i used my highly modified Omo, Queen of Vezuva with some Combos ,in His Case Strip Mine and Crucible of Worlds and some Graveyardhate.
"You arent allowed to Play These Combo,Land Destruction is forbidden" etc etc
@diskuslars7527 yeah, I honestly think the only way to play commander consistently without issues is 1. Cedh, 2. Among your friend group (no randos), and 3. Pauper commander. Because pauper comander has a much more limited card pool, it's a lot harder to have to play into "accepted" super strong strategies. The games in turn take longer though.
@@Hapkins-le6xf Then Cedh
..i hate "3-Hour-Rounds"
^^
@@diskuslars7527 proxy away and hop right into cedh. It's a good time. At a tournament level, I think the meta is a little small. But at a non tournament level, any high power deck should be fine.
Also, 60 card formats. I know there's a mental barrier going from edh to 60 card formats, especially if you started with edg. But I'd recommend checking out what is played in your area. Pauper, standard and pioneer are great. Modern is honestly great to, but too much money for me personally to try to keep up with the format.
At our LGS we had tournaments in casual edh and also faced the problems addressed by this video. Our solution is a hybrid of a banlist and something like the Canadian highlander point system, where there are only a certain amount of card categories such as tutors, fast mana rocks and free spells are allowed in the casual high power format. Above that we just have cEDH.
I like it but I often go with budget restrictions. Like the entier deck cant cost more then 500$. Or so.
@@cedhtv card prices vary to widely and quickly, that seems too burdensome on the participants. Canadian highlander is the best way for commander to go legit.
@@cedhtv the problem we had with this is that some budget decks such as animar artifact storm, with ancestral statue, were extremely dominant and 30$ so we restricted the minimum mana value for commander combos and game winning two card combos in general.
imo a 4 player format isnt a great game mode to run tournaments. So many issues like kingmaking and politics being used in twisted ways turns me off from playing cedh in a tournament, but much more interested in playing with friends where everyone is interested in a good experience and competitive integrity.
Three Tree City is a good example of a card that will be very impactful in casual or high power EDH. In many decks it will be the most powerful land in your deck (especially if you play a tribal deck without green so you can't run Gaea's Cradle). At the same time the card is not likely to disrupt competitive formats.
Not to be that guy, but Lurrus isn't banned in vintage, it's banned in Legacy xD (it was unbanned in vintage in 2021).
Also, interestingly enough, they didn't accidentally reprint Mox Diamond. They had been printing reserve list cards for years in limited promotional ways (Judge Gift Program, e.g. Gaeas's Cradle). But because the Mox Diamond printing was so large, people complained enough that Wizards decided to change their policy and not reprint reserve list cards AT ALL.
P.S. love your channel, you give some of the most digestible meta breakdowns on the web!
Commander is really three overlapping formats, distinguished by card selection:
* Casual Commander - No: stax, infinite loops, land destruction. Budget-friendly, no proxies.
* Pay-to-win Commander - Casual plus pay-to-win cards > $25. Proxies require permission.
* Competitive EDH (cEDH) - Play-to-win, nothing legal excluded. Proxies taken for granted.
Prominent promoters of Pay-to-Win Commander are WotC, online card dealers, and corporate-sponsored UA-camrs.
Of course it will differ based on your LGS or playgroup, but I've never encountered a commander player that opposes proxies for people who want to play certain cards and can't afford them. As long as you don't play a deck that wildly overpowers the rest of the pod, that is.
@@TheMattmatic so then you play some cards that mildly edge the power level in your favor. Then someone responds, then some responds, etc. You get the boiling frog.
@@chim007azo In my playgroup the power level is fairly balanced I find, once decks are at a certain level. With different decks you can also adjust to the table with which deck you choose to play. The good thing about EDH as a format is that there is an element to it that self balances, as long as players are fairly good at threat assessment and run enough interaction to stop a player that is clearly ahead.
no correct.
casual commander: we hate everything, especially any kind of interaction that may kill any of my stuff. Also i dont want to do combat math. actually, I dont like to play magic at all.
You opnly have to read a single day worth of reddit edh and mtg threads. Edh players just hate playing magic, simple as that xD
There's only 3 people I have lent cards for tournaments but they in turn have offered their power 9 and others to me but outside of that it's not worth the risk.
Wotc running cedh tournaments , no way they don't properly manage the formats they do have .
We do not like bans . Wotc likes bans and refuse to ban new cards bc their selling packs and perfer to wreck our collections instead.
Cedh tournaments over the years have evolved grown in numbers and the current organizers have already gone threw the what works what doesn't work etc.
* also imo their aren't enough judges who are familiar with the complexity of cedh.
Cedh judges imo are specialist in the format (as in knowledge)
Judges working at wotc events be so amazed by what happens at edh pods they have to rule on. 😅
I do not work for the RC or WOTC and I am not running for political office but I approve this message.
hahaha
I haven’t finished a video yet, but I think a problem that would arise is that wizards of the coast wouldn’t want people to use proxies, and CEDH is very proxy friendly. Tournaments would boil down to who can afford the guy cradle or time twister, etc.
While, I do know there are budget decks and budget options for CEDH. Some Necessary cards are thousands of dollars.
Well you did guess correct there.
I stopped playing Magic about 5 years ago, and picked up Blood Bowl instead.
There is a surprising amount of corssover. Blood Bowl, and commander are casual games. But there are high level competitive tournaments.
Both games have rules committees that are not run by the creators of the game. But the commander rules committee are really hands off, while the blood bowl one is really hands on.
The result in Blood Bowl, is that every tournament has slightly different rules and a slightly different banlist.
Which is amazing! It adds so much variety to the competitive side of the game.
If I were to fix commander, I would recommend that the rules committee has a casual banlist, the way they currently do. But they could also have a couple of suggested "Tournament Packs" that tournament organisers can use to inspire their own rules sets.
E.g.
- Have a budget limit.
- Have a points limit, like canadian highlander
- The top 20 most played cards in cEDH are banned.
- Have a bunch of cards UNbanned.
It's works amazing in Blood Bowl, and I think it has great potential for cEDH.
26:51 I have thinking about this for a while. Something like an alternative cheaper cost for powerfull cards if that card has the exact same color identity as your commander. Imagine Colorless getting good cards that wouldn't be broken in other decks.
Maybe what wizards could do is hold a once or twice a year event with custom ban list/rules, kind of like the pride month event, giving players at home something fun for their play groups, and giving competitive players an actual tournament.
People will just rule 0 it out
MTGGoldfish did a fantastic podcast episode about how they actually turned modern (and even somewhat commander) into a “soft” rotating format via modern horizons. Highly recommend you check it out! Kind of depressing honestly but it’s definitely counterintuitive to how most of us traditionally thought about eternal formats
I will listen to that thanks!
You lost me at "MTGGoldfish did a fantastic podcast"
Its a Saffron Olive solo video its actually very good@@SenorCoupon
Wizards could print a new set only for EDH with a different border color and they could print the cards that are on the reserve list. That could help get more ppl on cEDH
Yeah I guess they could do that. They did that once. I guess they could print like all dual lands on gold borders like they did before.
The way the RL is redacted, that's not possible. Even changing the name of a RL card with the same exact test and costs is a no-go. The key words are "functionally identical". Say they print a Cradle that is not Legendary: that I guess could work. Say they print Triomes that don't come in play tapped? Cool but then every legal format wants them. A wheel that costs 2B? Great.
I think that this would lead to future further complaining though, because who will come later will have more to purchase that is very relevant, and who already has the stuff can't see them very happy to be coharsed into getting 50€ packs. Everyone loses. It's very hard to agree with me here but I feel like I am right so not looking for a debate.
Say a casual player come to a cEDH table hyped to try its new additions. He will just discover that the pilot makes or breakes the deal much more than RL cards. Players with format knowledge, skilled at mulligans, will always leverage their advantage: printed Cradle or not.
That messes up the rules regarding nontraditional borders
i just want to have the banlist be consistent. coalition victory is banned because of out of nowhere wins yet thoracle is legal?
Yeah if cEDH was created today thassas with this logic it would be banned.
I love the concept of the reserve list, I’m actually in the process of layaway purchasing two blue duals (volc and trop) however I firmly believe these cards specifically fast mana and OG dual lands. Should be banned from edh tournament play. The main reason is proxies. Proxies are not fair to the game as a whole. If cards like mox diamond or LED are allowed in a format, they will always warp the format around them. Same goes for the dual lands. They are mandatory cards that need to be in your deck or you will be strictly playing an inferior and less competitive deck. The idea of just allowing people to proxy these 500$ plus cards to make it fair simply forces EVERYONE to play essentially the same decks. They ban reserve list fast mana and duals, now the format will become a slower more value and political game. Which is exactly what EDH should be. Leave your arguments below I’d love to discuss this further.
Well I don't have much to say. No arguments here but I agree. somewhat. I actully think that if EDh was made today it would not allow reserve list cards.
Did someone steal your furniture?
YES! It was a bunny! It ate it all!
@@cedhtv it got polymorphed bye the bunny
haha yeah. Well I am testing how it feels not to have a green screen there. It kinda gave me a lot of space. Don't know what to do with it for now. But either the green screem comes back or a book case.
Honestly, I'm game for a 0 proxy cEdh world. My local shop fires 0 proxy tournaments on the regular. Most decks actually don't need every single piece as long as they can play the deck well.
They can't take over for the RC. Trying to balance commander the way they balance competitive formats would result in hundreds of card bans.
Then, cedh. This is a format where if you can't proxy you need to shell out 4k. Legacy is the same and legacy is dead. Without proxies, cedh is dead and wotc will not allow proxies in tournaments.
i hope they never so the proxies ethos never gets damaged
I agree. I like how things are ATM.
I support Mons being part of the RC advisory group.
Every magic player I know is in and out of decks. They are constantly spending.
Dont forget the oldschool 93/94 players needing playsets of useas 😂
Ah those!
Long live cEDH, it doesn't need the intervention of WotC😁😁
I see a lot of comments about proxies and different stances on it, and I understand how proxing is considered normal and encouraged, because whaling a lot of money to get all the best cards and then winning because of just better card quality is stupid.
But I also have an idealistic view where there are certain extra rare cards, like there always were in all the card-game animes, that not a lot of people have, and they are powerful, and cool but You only see them only once in a while.
With proxing You are losing that feeling - and it also annoys me, I don't know why, seeing some powerful vintage cards proxied. On one hand I know that it doesn't matter whether it is a "real" card or not, but on the other one I always have that ick about them :/
And You may say I am an elitist, but would You be fine with playing with somebody that just took some pieces of paper and wrote on them the card text etc.?
In my (not profesional) opinion if we consider that old expensive cards, a must have that cannot be reasonably obtained by just getting a legitimate copy, then just ban those old, powerful obscure cards.
I understand people wanting EDH to be non-rotating, and people overall that don't like throwing their old stuff away with rotations, but there is other side to consider - rotation encourages different playstyles, You get to play a lot of new stuff, because ironically constraints birth creativity (removing constraints removes the point, if we would remove "constraints" that are rules of how to play magic, then we wouldn't be able to play the game - constraints give form to things) - and thus some kind of rotating EDH format would be neat.
tl;dr
if original card is too expensive too obtain legitimetly then just ban it.
I hate to be that guy but handel should be handle, have a nice day!!!
handle?
@@cedhtvin the title 😅
Ah thanks! I will fix!
@@cedhtv no problem, I love cedh , your channel is super helpful!!!
A couple things:
I don't think EDH is actually the most popular format (or at least it wasn't when they were first saying it). You absolutely SHOULD NOT TRUST MARK ROSEWATER. He is first and foremost a marketing and hype man. He will say whatever he has to to shill the product or shape public opinion to his purposes. If he takes one on the chin and admits fault, it is always a performative display to stay in the good graces of players. I think he said EDH was the most popular format because he wanted it to be true. EDH was identified as the best vector for monetization, so Rosewater went to work puffing it up and making it foremost in players minds.
Wizards taking over EDH would be terrible. The "attention" and "care" of WotC is comparable to the burning gaze of the Eye of Sauron.
It's too late, because Wizards took over the care of EDH as soon as "commander" became a thing. The RC is clearly WotC's whipped bitch. They can't oppose any of WotC's decisions because their entire legitimacy comes from WotC not obliterating them with lawfare. They have zero leverage over WotC to compensate for this.
I am super happy with the state of the game right now. People are hosting their own Tournaments and i love to participate
This is why you get multiple people from the cEDH community in a Discord/Skype/Zoom meeting, you analyze tournament results and go. If a strat is over 20-25% win-rate in Top 8, etc. then you ban that card. You can also unban stuff like Coalition Victory and so on.
I stopped cEDH years ago, the lack of change to the banned list and the lack of change in win-cons made the format too stale for me. Ironcially, I've moved to PreEDH, which never changs but also doesn't have cEDH wincons, and Pauper, which definitely changes but is much more affordable.
Also, I think Wizards supported cEDH event in Europe, no-proxies iirc. If they really wanted this, they could just bull rush events onto main and give crazy prizes like they do for Eternal Weekend. I'm not a fan of non Magic Online cEDH, there's been a ton of shadiness around on-camera play that I am not interested in engaging in.
online tournaments definatly have that problem.
Yes they did host a european cEDH even in amsterdam. It had some problems and was quite expensive.
Commander is a casual format .
Consider cEDH as the competitive side of the casual formal ;)
Well said.
@@IrvingMG is just casual with extra steps
Ban the reserve list and the worst problems of cost prohibition are under control.
Given legacy tournaments in the US fire and they have way more expensive decks than cEDH is (with the 4of playset nature) , the format availability of cards isnt really that much of an issue.
There are plenty of Underground Seas around to have 10.000 players with them.
And like with any legacy format, if you dont have the cards, you dont need them "right now" , play a different cheaper deck, run more mono colored decks if you have to, cEDH does have "budget" decks to run for smaller tournaments, if you are going to play a lot of cEDH you can buy into the bigger cards and doing so makes them more expensive, so buying them is even a good idea because of that.
So far, tournaments that benefit from being sanctioned can get WotC price support, for a LGS thats a good thing and it attracts people from a much wider area as people are willing to drive longer for tournaments that are sanctioned as well, while the proxy friendly tournaments, especially the online ones, are much more casual in nature, the barrier of entry ensures much less "casual" people play in these events, without proxy cards, the people that end up playing are much more competitive minded.
The stores that want to promote non-proxy cEDH events usually carry a lot of legacy singles and sell them too. They literally sell dual lands to the players and give them out as prices for the events (Like Win-A-Dual events fire weekly).
WotC certainly has a interest to promote non-proxy events, as the culture of proxy tournaments is exactly what WotC does NOT want to promote at all and its hurting quite a bunch of LGS as well, if the players adapt a proxy-friendly mindset, they spend less money or even no-money at all, so there is very little incentive for an LGS to promote proxy events (unless you have a gigantic community that provides you with tournaments entree fees regularly to compensate).
cEDH is a card game within which everyone has equal chances regardless of money spent on cards and thus it's the best format and will continue to grow. Long live cEDH !!
Legacy is pretty much dead in the US. There are some big yearly events that require people to travel from all around the US. And there are a handful of stores in the most population dense cities that might have some events, but mist of those events require allowing proxies. Legacy is just that, a legacy. It's dead at 99.999999% of stores. Nearly all play is online and that is shrinking over time instead of growing.
But you know what they WILL and HAVE handled? Duel Commander :) I hope one day you can get into it!
I have played that. Might get back to it. We will see.
They should just ban all the reserved list cards haha
I genuinely feel EDH is better off without Wizards further involvement.
What is bro yapping about? 😭😭😭You don’t understand I need this reserve list card I can’t just use a modern dual land that’s not special.😭
What are YOU yapping about? What's your point?
making edh a competitive format is thhe most stupid idea ive ever heard
If Wizards sells Commander Decks then, just sell the decks that are leagal for Commander competitive play and if you by a Commander deck you have to play the 100 cards in that deck and you cant change them.....If you play Stella then you have to play all the cards in that Stella deck win or lose?
Reserve list should be banned in cEDH imo. I see no downside to the players who just want to play the format. Lions eye diamond, duals, and cradle are d u m b.
I don’t think this means all casual decks turn into cEDH decks and I think it should be obvious
Anyway thanks for talking about this. It’s been on my mind as a casual player getting into cEDH and feeling gatekept by $
Because EDH = casual
so that is what the c in cEDH stands for. Well yes it was thought of such and still is. But some like to play tournaments. and some want wizards to take over for the RC instead of having an RC. But nothing is casual or competitive just becouse you say it is. It is what you make of it.
Have to agree with OP. Everything is a spectrum, and even though EDH is generally considered "casual". The fact is there are decks that are better than others, and there are players that are better than others. This now opens up that there is an "ideal" deck, and "perfect" play, I would argue even more so than modern or standard, as there you only have so many chess pieces to choose from and only so many that you can put into your deck. In EDH you have 100 different chess pieces to choose from! And in decks where you sit there with 3 or 4 possible lines to win and dozens of moves to get there, I would argue it has a much higher skill ceiling.
But because of all this, there is a reason Cedh is blowing up. It is because there is always a better play and always a better card.
@@Vescense I would at minimal say that EDH as a format has far to little tweeking of the banlist, which has lead to disconent at tables forcing people to inventy the Tier system. as wizards wont ban problem cards that make the format unfun or atleast sperate out CEDH and EDH
@@cedhtv at first, try to find a definition for cEDH vs EDH. have fun with that task!
@@cedhtv To me, If you are playing to win instead of playing to play, you are comp. If you are playing for stakes, you are comp. If you don't allow takebacks, you are comp. The differentiation is pretty clear. The NBA is comp, but me picking up a basketball and playing with friends is casual. There's nothing at stake. If we decide to bet beers or slushies or w/e, it's a comp event.
Additionally the cEDH v.casual has caused a rift locally so we've moved the casual pods to people's homes and supporting stores while the cEDH have gone online, everyone has won.