Every sliver player ive ever played against gets infuriated whenever i attack them over everyone at the table like im just gonna sit there and let them stack slivers until they are unstoppable.
Took out the Niv Mizzet player when he had 40 life with an Aetherflux and people were asking me why I did. Sir, that is a combo deck. That player also admitted he had an infinite combo next turn. People need to less salty about losing. If I sit across the table from a commander I'm familiar with and I know it's game style is oppressive or wins out of nowhere, I'll be going after it. Only exception I'll make is if they're like "Hey, this isn't THAT deck." Then I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, Brago player, I don't want to sit here for 3 hours watching you play solitaire while you're holding the entire table captive.
@TiltedSquare When my friends play a pod by borrowing any 3 of my numerous decks I make it a point to tell everyone in the pod the playstyle of each deck and whether or not combos exist within. That way all my friends are aware of the threats so they can attempt to prepare for them. That being said when I play at the LGS that conversation doesn't really happen because nobody else is willing to give away their secrets.
I play Slivers every now and again and it's fun to play up the "I'm just a little bean with 2 little guys" but that is absolutely a ruse and I should not be believed. Hit me while you have the chance, before every one of these is an indestructible flyer with death touch and a whole bunch of other nonsense! Even the Pre-con sliver deck, unaltered, punches well above it's weight class if the mana base doesn't absolutely screw you
Started playing commander a bit over a year ago and turned my 60 card 5 color sliver jank pile with a terrible mana base into a commander deck and despite the still super budget mana base (more than half my lands enter tapped and the rest are mostly basics) it performs surprisingly well and my friends hate it because of that, so yeah i'll remember to take the punches without complaint when i'm playing this one.
This is just the epic "What is Casual?" thread from the MTG message boards in the early 2000's before they killed the forum. Went on for hundreds of pages. Result: People who want to complain will complain, no matter what.
@@thetrinketmage It got pretty ugly and personal. I was part of 'Team Play What You Want in 1v1 Casual' even though I primarily played janky combo decks that killed with things like Vizzerdrix and Jinxed Choker. Nothing ever really got resolved in those threads. In MODO 1v1 Casual people would autoscoop to Counterspell or Stone Rain and Grim Lavamancer would draw a shower of insults and endless accusations of noobery. Wasn't all that great tbh, I cashed out in 05 and bought real cards.
@@ameliaward7429 tbh summary of casual play, if {thing} negatively affects {player:(you)}, {thing}={unreasonable} just seems to be what it comes down to.
Everything being a 7/10 goes even further than magic. 7/10 is considered an average grade, 7/10 is an acceptable approximation of an overwhelming majority, the 70/30 rule, usw...
This world. Human perception does not match objective criteria. The subject they're referring to dives into human psychology, it's very interesting. I can recommend reading into it a little.
@@GodzillaFreak that makes no sense, just because you people are disregarding low ranks doesn't make it somehow average. you just choose to ignore them that doesn't make them disappear.
Whole heartedly resonate with this. I am currently battling for my spot in my playgroup because of this exact thing. I play Timmy/midrange/combo/aggro decks mostly and am often told my decks are too powerful because I like lethality. I’ve chopped cards and removed infinites to satisfy some memebers but it’s still not good enough. The way they like to play is jank convoluted commit every thing to the board with small incremental non combat damage using combat as a finisher. Their decks although budget and janky are very well made, often running a coherent suite of interaction in order to hold parity before they assemble their pieces. My decks are tuned to threaten around turn 6-8. I like decks that offer ways to get through and around a boggy board. Other restrictions placed on the group are one of effects like insurrection and rise of the dark realms and akromas will to mention a few. All the restrictions are in pursuit to acjieve a more balanced gaming experience however I have challenged that voicing that I believe the restriction yield the opposite. Got any advice anyone?
It sounds like they want to play a slower game with high interaction. I suggest you match them. Try a Timmy/midranged that commits jank to the board and then use combat as a finisher. Maybe tune your deck to have a board by 6-8 that gradually builds but threatens around turn 10-12?
Play in a different play group. The kind of game they enjoy and the kind of game you enjoy are different. Cut your losses and actually have fun with likeminded players rather than trying to sell apples to people that only want bananas.
@@thetrinketmage what I have choosen to do is build with the ability to generate more non combat damage. Some decks this is incremental and some decks it’s chunks. The reason I have done this is because the board state tends to become really boggy. There is alot of variables that are the catalyst for this. One player has very strong decks and tends to have an overwhelming advantage but plays passively. Another is that other players sandbag cards in hand and possibly run too little interaction. If I win I normally win via the value I’ve generated in the side and maybe finish with combat. The biggest fundamental disconnect is that I present the conversation to the group to have decks that vary across the power levels but one person refuses to play even precon or above levels. His adjustment to the others is to run much more interaction that he uses to take out the threat he deems to be “unbalanced for the table” rather than game state.
@@gaddocknz2476 honestly those people seem cheeks, they are complaining that you outplay them at that point, they have the tools to interact yet choose to use them poorly.
This is a God-Tier video my dude. Thank you. My local shop has a lot of issues with power level. Well, I feel like I'm the only one who thinks this. My shop isn't even a sanctioned store, we are as casual as casual gets. Perhaps not pre-con casual, but only slightly better than that. A common problem across the majority of the decks in this store is that they lack proper interaction pieces. Easy fix, but if they aren't asking for help, I'm out of line to just blindly suggest it. There is one player at the store however who is VERY good at the game. He's been playing for years and has thousands of games under his belt. One of his main decks is Kennrith the Ruined King. That 5 color utility commander. He plays the deck as a tribal legendary theme. All the creatures with only a couple exceptions, are legendary for a creative toolbox style build. His deck is very slow in the first few turns, but if left alone, becomes nearly impossible to break as layers of overlapping synergy fall into place. And usually it comes out of nowhere. Other players new to the store that drop by will call the deck cEDH level, but he insists that it's not because it's far too slow to be cEDH. I'm not skilled enough at the game to say either way. But what i can say is that any pod he's in usually results in his win. Most of the time. I could be wrong and off base here, but I'd argue his win rate is north of 60%. Your video made me realize that part of the problem- a lot of the problem is with the rest of us. Most of us are too unskilled at the game to play proactively. We do things reactively which puts us behind his plays at every turn. He gets annoyed if we do stuff to him early game when he's not a threat yet, but I think we need to simply stop feeling bad and just do it anyways. Then again, under normal circumstances, that probably wouldn't be ideal threat assessment. I don't know. He's also expressed recent complaints about feeling the need to water down his own decks just because we can't keep up. We don't believe that his decks aren't an 8. Yet we still play with him anyways. My main deck currently is Slimefoot and Squee. I'm playing the deck as a mid range creature control and burn damage deck. Butcher of Malikar and similar type effects are in the deck. Decent into Avernus and similar effects too. Archfiend of Despair ETC. I'm constantly debating if Dockside should be in the deck or not. As a reanimator deck, I obviously run sac outlets. But with Dockside it means I have many temptations to go infinite mana. Commander is the first game where fun is weighted higher than winning. So balancing my own expectations with literal power level is hard for me. I'm not sure where to rank my deck. Left unchecked, it can establish powerful situations sure. But that is true for literally all decks. Unlike that Kennrith deck however, my deck isn't nearly as resilient.
I have a massacre girl known killer deck. 13 aoe board wipes and I give others creatures to kill. I got warned at my local LGS about playing that deck because it's extremely oppressive. I have some fast mana (jeweled and chrome and mox diamond) but the deck isn't consistently a win. It's a creature control deck which benefits off killing opponents creatures. Someone was playing Omnath in that same pod and dealt me 57 damage in the end during round and I still won. I had Vein Ripper and another similar effect on the field and I board wiped. And I got warned about playing that deck... like really?
"Why are you attacking me, I haven't even done anything?" Well, [KENRITH PLAYER], it's because it's nearly impossible to do anyone once you have done something. Dude has to reconcile that he's a good player and brews good decks. It's not about 'watering down' what he's playing with, it's about bringing something to the table that fits the same restrictions that other players didn't realize they're putting on themselves. Or, you know, just having a conversation and helping those players build their decks up to better interact with and secure wins from him.
In my experience with edh the people that have the most skill and experience in competitive games are the ones that usually have the most restraint, because the only thing that really matters is the play experience. His argument demonstrates his own weakness as a player, he should have the foresight to understand that a deck can easily feel like a 10 power level if it's being played in a format that doesn't actually punish slow early games. It's super easy to make incredibly oppressive decks that thrive in a setting that doesn't have a meta of other powerful decks with checks and balances.
That Kenrith player is an absolute dirtbag if he knows that people complain about his deck being too powerful and also makes you feel bad about attacking him. That's too much. Also, I just built a Slimefoot and squee deck and I feel it's super resilient and I am loving it. Mine is combo oriented but without dockside or many tutors in order to keep it in check. And I would completely understand if you attack me before I find all the peaces of my combos, in fact I encourage you to do so, s&s is a great blocker!
The deck is nowhere near CEDH at all he is correct in that regard. If he complains about early aggression just say "you are the best here and as such you are the threat.'. Another option is to start running effects that mess with his deck Invasion of Fiora and cursed totem are examples. What he is doing is exploitable so exploit it. If he is a good player he will adapt and then you can get an interesting shifting meta where different styles of decks are better or worse each week. SO MORE PLAYERS GET TO HAVE MEANINGFUL AND FUN GAMES. If he doesn't then you no longer have to deal with an oppressive meta where one deck is at the top. TDLR: Adjust your deck to specifically beat his it allows more people to have more fun as the way decks are played at your LGS isn't stagnant and festering.
budget cEDH is definitely an oxymoron, but most casual decks aren't cheap either. Proxies should be socially accepted in casual settings as much as they are in cEDH.
Budget cEDH is most definitely not an oxymoron. cEDH is more of a social contract or a mindset than anything. You can build at deck with $100 that is way too strong or mean to hang at casual tables and that has the sole goal of winning.
i disagree with the first statement. budget cedh is a very interesting thing to do as a deckbuilding exercise. i have a around 100 euros niv mizzet deck that has won against actual full fledge cedh decks. it is possible to do so in specific strategies and it is fun thing to try to do. for context half of the budget of the deck is dockside which i happened to have because i had bought the precon it came in. for the second part i am fully on board with proxying everything, but if you want to improve in deck building especially when you are starting out i would argue against it. yeah ofc if even buying sleeves and printing the deck is any issue don't listen to this. if your budget is 13 euros on sleeves and like 3 euros in proxied cards proxy everything, but if you want to learn to play and you have like 5 or 10 euros every 2 weeks or once a month to put in the game you are going to learn a lot by valuing your budget. (if you simply don't want to give money to wizard is also a valid reason, this advice apply only if you are willing to pay for the game which you don't have to) so a social thing i am full on board for proxies. I am against them the same way I am against using assisting software when you are new to something. they are usually too powerful and the amount of options will overwhelm you. ofc if you only care for netdecking and you don't want to build stuff my advice is pointless and no one should be forced to engage with deckbuilding if it is not their cup of tea. i know from myself that a lot of times i enjoy playing others peoples decks and try to navigate their thought process on how those decks work. there are many ways to engage with magic and commander so yeah there is that.
I mean I have a Pauper CEDH deck. Not quite the same as it's generally a turn 5 kill, but it is CEDH....for Pauper. Great fun. Turn 4 looks pathetic with like 5 1/1s then swing for 270 trample/first strike
No, they shouldn't. Budget is a great limiting factor and actually breeds creativity. If people actually have to play some cards like Filter Out or Spectral Deluge instead of running Cyclonic Rift in every deck, that actually keeps the game more diverse and fun. Same for Mana Crypt, Ancient Tomb, Jeweled Lotus and the most powerful tutors. And yes, power level discussions can help mitigate the arms race that proxies can cause, but only to an extent. I personally also hate how difficult to read a table full of proxies can be since it's hard enough to keep track of everything in a 4-player-game when every Magic card is an actual card.
I try to explain my decks using a three axis system, with budget being the hidden fourth axis. It's just generally acceptable to measure a deck by its explosiveness, its resilience, and its consistency before all else. A deck that can turn a corner on a given turn and risk dominating is strong, a deck that can do that with greater and greater consistency is stronger, etc. My pet deck over the past 6-7 years is Five-Rare Zada. If you are new and don't know what it does, I get to explain that it can be explosive and fairly reliably, but can be shut down with even a couple of kill spells. Usually gets the point across better than a number system that hopes everyone has the same understanding.
I like where you're going with this. There's a guy who plays a Light-Paws deck at my LGS. The deck's very consistent - every aura is effectively a tutor for another aura, and from practice the deck's pilot knows what auras can grab what other powerhouse auras. Its goal is to make a 21+ power/toughness Light-Paws with vigilance and protection from creatures and redundant Totem Armor, at which point it just removes players from the game. It's also pretty quick - when each Aura is searching for and putting another Aura into play it's quickly very dangerous and not something you want to just swing into. It does fall flat on resilience. If you can respond with instant-speed removal to an aura about to ETB you can waste the spell, prevent a tutor, and undo a ton of the deck's progress. Remove the commander once or twice and the deck just falls flat. (It's funny - Light-Paws is still in Standard and sees ZERO play, partially for this reason: instant-speed removal blows it out)
@@51gunner i'd add that having your opponents knowing the points of interaction is very important. for instance i made a fairly junky (as junky this deck can be) tivit deck with the curve mostly at 4 5 and 6 with 5 or so cards even higher on the curve. i managed to have an explosive turn and then the table managed to revome my engines, but most importantly they removed my mana accelerants and the deck was toasted. it sounds rude but it is a valid option that many in the casual tables ignore. attacking someones mana rocks is a very good idea actually.
@@hellNo116 I agree! The more your opponents know about what you're trying to do and when exactly you're at your most dangerous, the less surprising your deck is. If your opponents know when you're actually a threat they might not spend time hitting you before you're actually dangerous too. I'm building a Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy deck right now and I'm pretty sure I'll point his 'free' attack-triggered removal at a lot of mana rocks though. It CAN point at the clue he made for himself, but I can pay 2 to get the card out of that anyway. People's Sol Rings and signets - those are brutal to lose early if the opponent is relying on them for fixing or ramp.
I advocate for ranking decks based on four criteria: Speed, consistency, resilience and interaction. Because at the end of the day, that's what "powerful" really means in deck terms. Now, how you go about measuring each is the difficult part, I could suggest a method, but in the end any power level scale only works if we all agree on a standardized way of measuring anyway
This is definitely a video I need to share whenever I find a playgroup that starts to complain about combos. Magic has many axis's to it. Some games win through deck out(very rarely) some win through wide board states, some just use a big guy to punch you for game, and some use burn damage. All are valid but many casual edh players just seem allergic to anything that makes them lose. In my experience, casual players care more about winning than even CEDH players do, and it's a constant struggle for someone like me who likes playing control or combo decks
One thing to consider RE power is those "god hands" and how often they disrupt a game. Usually those are strong because you drew Sol Ring or some other card that is much stronger than the average card in your deck. That game your deck will play much stronger than everyone expected from the pregame conversation. I think it is worthwhile for us to reduce the chance of these disruptions. I have removed Sol Ring from all of my decks because none of them runs any other fast mana. Similarly, in a deck I am building, I removed Wild Growth since it cost 1 and all my other ramp (Gifts of Paradise) cost 3.
@@thetrinketmage It is part of a broader lesson I took from D&D. In both D&D and Commander, stronger =/= better experience. So at some point we get our decks to a desired power level, but that doesn't stop us tuning our decks. At that point we are tuning the deck so it becomes better at being the deck we wanted to play (doing the thing, and the enjoyment of the other players) while staying at the designed power level.
Happy to see another non Sol Ring player! In my experience, it does one of two things, paints a target on someone's head or pushes them so far forward that the they bury the table by turn 4. I'd rather run another card with more synergy/flavor. Sol Ring is so boring to me.
I'm with you! At some point, I turned a corner and started running Arcane Powerstone and Three Visits instead--still powerful, mind you! Just less explosive.
As someone who likes using janky strategies, high mana cards, and commanders which are overcosted by today’s standards, you can pry my Sol Ring from my cold dead hands. But then, with my most powerful, mana efficient deck (an artifact centric deck using Urza, Prince of Kroog as it’s commander), if I get a god-tier hand, with Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Training Grounds, Heartstone, plus a Lightning Greaves to ensure my commander doesn’t get removed, plus a Seat of the Synod and a Thoughtcast. This allows me to play either my commander or Heartstone and Thoughtcast on turn 2. And then on turn three, assuming I drew the best possible cards, I play Training Grounds, Thoughtcast, and draw the fastest win-con in my deck…Lux Artillery, Astral Cornucopia, and Energy Chamber. This gives the table somewhere between ~5 to ~9 turns to either destroy either Lux Artillery, to end the threat of the combo, my commander, to delay it by an additional 30 or so turns at least, or Astral Cornucopia, to delay it by about 12 turns at least. And even if the ‘combo’ goes off, it will probably take two turns to actually kill all my opponents, assuming at least one person has a way of gaining a bit of life. So yeah, if I win, it was because everyone else at the table decided to ignore me in favor of bullying the mill player or something, not because my deck was overpowered. I can still win through more conventional strategies like swarming players with giant robots using Simulacrum Synthesizer, Conjurer’s Closet, and an artifact creature with CMC 3. In that sense, I’d probably put it at a 4 out of 10; actually capable of winning by a number or different means, and able to deal with threats from opponents via removal or counterspells, but not actually likely to win unless I get lucky and my opponents don’t dedicate resources to deal with me.
In regards to fast mana, it's also good to take into account the commander's mana value. Sure, i have fast mana in the deck, but my commander costs 7, and I'd like to play them more than once a game.
Great video! I love that Magic has so many of these dedicated “tutor” (no pun intended) channels to help the new/middling MTG players understand EDH. Myself included, ofc. Just subscribed. I hope you and all the other tutor channels rise in popularity! You deserve it. Respectfully, the mono-white “I play EDH on hard mode” player.
Your bit about the Mox Diamond into Goblin Tunneler reminded me of the time I cracked a Jeweled Lotus to get out Neera Wild Mage faster in a meme deck with no win cons. I got told this was too powerful. When I said early on this was a deck purely about memes with no win cons just designed to make the table a silly time. I said it wasn't powerful, it was just stupid but faster.
Love this. Very concise and clear. Plus it’s easy to understand and use. I think people can get really deep into the weeds trying to make power levels complex. They don’t need to be
hey man, just getting back into commander after literal years and stumbled upon your videos. You produce amazing high quality content, basically binged every one! Keep it up man!
I always used a player's mindset while building their deck to rank power levels. _Low Power:_ You built your deck either without a gameplan or with synergies in mind but no proper shell to back them up. _Mid Power:_ Your deck tries to do the thing and every card in the deck supports that thing. _High Power:_ Your deck tries to do the thing as efficiently as possible. _cEDH:_ You built your deck to _win._ No holds barred.
I'm a huge Capenna fan, and most of my decks are themed around characters I've roleplayed as so your example of the Arabian Nights theme deck speaks to me. Currently working on a "Steal everything that isn't tied down" deck with Evelyn, the Covetous, and a lot of Red cloning/Blue & artifact flicker.
Hey there, I personally advise players to prioritize assessing the preferred gameplay experience over the power level of decks. The goal of a pregame talk is not to completely balance the game or to agree on what power level belongs to each deck, but to align on what kind of game we want to play this time. Arrive at a shared set of expectations about the game first, and then select the decks that best match that experience. How far people want to go to win and how far they are willing to keep others from winning have been 2 questions that have proven to work well when approaching pregame talks with this strategy. Also, fun to see you used one of my older guides in the video (the right one at around 1m20). Note that this one already addressed several of the concerns you brought up. I agree though that using numbers in a pregame talk is not a good idea. I ended up removing them all together in later versions. Anyway, nice video. It’s an accessible way to think about it and a good strategy to get into a similar enough ballpark quickly.
@@thetrinketmage I did! Glad to hear you liked it. I actually ended up making several ones, each with a different complexity and intended use (I also made one similar to yours with only 4 categories and no numbers). If you go the the link that’s included at the bottom of the picture you can read all about it.
I once played a Sauron reanimator deck on a table where a guy had a full-proxied mmonogreen deck with a mana crypt. I won because nobody on the table thought I was a threat until I pulled off a janky Worldgorger Dragon combo. I think I can relate to everything on this video lol
@@IsenSura Sadly I no longer run that combo, but my Sauron deck works amazingly with graveyard synergies. It's basically a "cheat big creatures into the battlefield" deck that works perfectly even when the commander is not on the field. I can share with you the deck list once I get it ready on moxfield!
Had a really enlightening experience the other day. I jumped into a pod of all mono-red decks. Me and two other players were playing jank, but the other player had Krenko. I was able to pop off with an extra cobat spell and took out the Krenko player as fast as i could. I felt kinda guilty about it, but the guy just smiled and said "oh you guys were so dead next turn." Just evaluate threats and play to win.
i put my deck into one of the power calculator and got a two. one of the reason was i only had one stax card. the stax card in question was a creature that returns target creature the opponent controls to their hand. my deck has seven other cards that return target percent to their controllers hands, several of which can return multiple and one returns the permanent to the top of the controllers library. these weren’t counted though because they don’t solely target my opponent despite being much stronger stax. i still think my deck is mid, a 5 at best, it can pop off hard but can also drag out a game for a long time if things don’t go as planned, but it’s definitely not a two. these calculators just aren’t physically able to see how an actual strategy may play out and never will with how many different cards and kinds of interactions there are
So, my personal scale for determining a commander deck's power has been pretty useful & consistent in determining the power of my own decks and my friends' decks - it's a hypothetical thought experiment posed in the form of the following question: "Assume you have a perfect starting hand for this deck, your opponents have no interaction to stop you, and you are trying to win as soon as possible. On what turn does your deck consistently present a win? (Lethal damage, infinite combo, poison, locks, etc.)" How the player answers the question determines approximately how powerful their deck is with objective information (turns required to win), and quantifies it on an inverse scale: the lower the number, the faster and more powerful the deck. Generally, in my experience, turns 0-4 is cEDH, 5-7 is high power, 8-10 is low power, and anything that is 11 or more turns required to win is casual. Player Experience can also sway the effective power of the deck. A newer player might not be able to answer the question because they A) haven't played/tested the deck enough to see it in a wining position, or B) simply don't have a win condition other than to reduce life to 0 with combat damage. Both of these possibilities would limit the effective power of the deck as a result. Conversely, a player that has much experience might be able to take the same deck and have a path to a win condition in mind while they play, effectively boosting the deck's power simply through recognizing advantages and minimizing risks.
Someone at my LGS said I'll play a precon if someone buys it for me at a prize-supported EDH tournament. And then they proceeded to wipe the floor with the Kalvalax precon. Absolute madlad. Great moment.
I often play combo and engine decks. I tell people all the time if they want to beat me, they have to attack me early, destroy my pieces and make me have a bad time. I might look innocent with my one creature, a mana rock and an enchantment, but I'll be biggest threat at the table by the end of my next turn if you ignore me, and I fully expect to (and should) be harassed.
Got my mono G omnath that has no fast mana, the main 3 tutors, no real protection aside from ascetisim called a "CEDH Cancer" when they let me just keep funneling mana into omnath until I was able to genesis wave for 34 and win with concordant and craterhoof. Commander is wild sometimes
I think a good simple system would be to give two numbers for your deck-the first is the turn your deck would win on average with minimal disruption, and the second is the combined number of fast mana pieces, combos, and tutors. That way you could sit down, say your deck is an 8-5, and match safely against all the 9-6s, 8-7s, and 10-3s out there
I think there are three kinds of Commander players. Those that both deck build AND play to have fun. Those that deck build for fun but play to win. Those that both deck build AND play to win. Understanding that dynamic has become really important for me lately.
my favorite decks were made because i saw something and thought "oh this sounds fun" and with my true fav deck its just every fun phyrexian i like in a deck
there is a fourth: deck build to win, play to have fun. I absolutely LOVE optimizing my decks. Tinkering, upgrading, making it the best version of itself it can be. On the other hand, I don't care much about winning. Sure it's nice, and it happens, but since so much of the joy for me is making cool interactions between cards happen, it turns out there's a lot of joy in watching someone else's deck pop off and do cool things. So long as I'm taking relevant game actions and my deck is doing something, I'm happy win or lose.
I find it crazy how people would ever rate precons at a 5 and cedh at 9/10, precons are extremely weak and having half the scale being taken up by such a small samplesize of deck is crazy to me. My group developed a 12 point scale with precons being 1-2 and cedh being 11 (decks that are weaker than precons are a 0), of course it's not perfect and it's usually only used to contexctuize what sort of upgrades/downgrades to add, but it's much less top loaded.
I personally rank my decks on a powerlevel from 1-10 where precons are between a 3 and a 6 (yes, the early precons that were essentially 2 halves of 2 different decks and precons like the one with Hakbal are actually that far apart), most Commander decks are between a 5 and an 8, but 9 and 10 are still casual Commander decks, not CEDH (although 10 could technically be both). I find it crazy that The Command Zone would just casually throw a different format into the mix of their otherwise casual Commander power scale and everybody else just kind of goes along with it. It would be like rating Standard decks on a 1-10 powerscale, but wait: 9 and 10 are actually Modern decks. And no, the "it's the same card pool" and "CEDH is a gradient"-arguments don't actually fly. Yes, technically, you could show up to a Modern tournament with your last weeks draft chaff, but that's not what anybody actually plays in the format. Similarly, you could show up to your friends' casual Commander night, where folks are trying to get a few cool dinos of a Gishath trigger with your CEDH deck that tries to get a Thoracle or Breach combo off on turns 1-3 (so about 4-5 turns before Gishath even gets cast), but - again - that's not what anybody actually plays in the "casual Commander"-format. A lot of the most powerful combos and combo enablers are pretty much "shadow-banned" in casual Commander due to the social contract, meaning that they're only technically part of the available card pool, same for the most powerful stax pieces (your Gishath-playing friend isn't going to be much happier about your Blind Obedience + Stasis lock than they would be about your turn 2 Breach combo win). And yes, at the highest levels of casual Commander, there would - theoretically - be a gradient between some very high-powered casual Commander decks and CEDH decks due to budget constraints, but CEDH is full of proxies (another reason why I absolutely despise that format, but that aside) so that argument doesn't work, either.
precons are a 3-4 that scale would not work at my shop because a lot of people bring purposfully gimped decks for fun, chair tribal, that kinda thing. 1 is a deck that you literally went into the stores trash box and grabbed every common/uncommon in color or gimp yourself, 3 is a low level precon, 4 is a mid level precon, and a 5 is a top tier precon. the way we explain it to people is that above a 5 its what turn you want to optimally win on, turn 1-6 on an average hand (NOTE, AN AVERAGE HAND, NOT AN OPTIMAL HAND) without being interacted with is a 10 or 9 (based on how well they handle interaction) 8 and 7 win between games 6 and 10, any deck that just wants to build a board and not particularly win, but cannot just make the game go infinitely long is a 7 or 6 depending on interaction resistance. the important part is that we use this scale only with people who know the shop, if a new person comes in we ask about when it wins and what it uses, then classify it. fortunately we have had enough strong pillow fort and superfriends decks and because of our particular rating system we know, players=/=planeswalkers and walkers should basically always be hit, and while killing someone is frowned upon at powers 6ish and below on our system anywhere higher then that we are aggressive AF
@@Grimphoenix6969 Well, there is room for purposefully gimped decks and meme decks in my scale at the 1-2 level. Precons vary extremely widely in powerlevel. The Hakbal precon is strong enough to completely destroy a lot of more casual, hand-built decks with ease while the oldest precons were literally 2 different deck-halves shuffled together. Still stronger than last week's draft chaff (power level 1) and "silly hat tribal" (power level 2), but that's about it. Which turn a deck would win is an interesting concept for a power scale, but it doesn't take variance into account and, imho, doesn't take the biggest factor into account that matters in actual casual Commander games: Resilience. You could build a very glass-cannon-y Krenko deck that theoretically wins very early without any interaction, but if that decks completely folds to the first boardwipe, I'd argue it's still not stronger than a very well-built Muldrotha deck, even though that Muldrotha deck might only every grind out a very slow turn 10-12 win, even when not interrupted.
One of my favorite things to bring up when people talk about not doing combos is that the Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer Precon has an infinite skip all opponent's untap phases combo in it with Vesuvan Shapeshifter + Brine Elemental.
How would banning combos even work. What happens if i put first day if class in a goblin deck and dont realise it makes a combo until the middle of a game?
I've been in rut for the last couple of months when it comes to power level, and tuning and refining my deck. I'd say I'm still somewhat inexperienced since I've only played EDH for about 3 years now. My main issue is that I don't know what's acceptable anymore or what I should do to create an experience that's good for everyone. I often end up losing with my favorite deck and it just sucks the enjoyment out of playing the game sometimes. Maybe my issue is that I try to appease everyone. I'm in a play group and that has two completely different types of players. Some are enjoying a highly interactive game of Magic and the other plays inconsistent, explosive and somewhat low interaction Commander. It's difficult to find a balance when I can play against Atraxa or Voja, or custom card monolith Commanders with high interaction.
10:30 Me watching the guy who hates me for some reason blast my arcane signet with removal while the guy next to me has already drawn 3 extra cards with his Esper sentinel. Then two turns later he complains when I boardwipe away all non-artifacts and the guy with the Esper sentinel/artifact deck KO's him for being the next biggest threat on the table.
It hasn’t been until this video that I realized why so many on Spelltable were really confused when I was attacking on turn 3 with a Gallia “All Satyr” deck because no one has attacked anyone yet… but to be honest, Commander is a four player free for all and the game has to end at some point, so I’d rather leave the first attack to chance. Let the Lords of Chaos decide who shall be attacked first! 😂
Saying that combos in general being banned is dumb is subjective. The difficulty of said combo might be irrelevant at some tables. Some players might want to just play “honest magic” Lifegain decks- still plenty of ways to kill them without infinites You then bring up cards and combos that would likely also be banned at that particular table. The players are likely stopping combos altogether just to ensure nobody brings uninteractive combo decks. That’s fine, just adjust and bring a commander that works. Ban sol ring. Ban fast mana in general It shouldn’t have to do with win rate. Its why and how they won. If your deck can win on turn 3, its a strong deck or janky and doesn’t belong in casual. Alot of the issues with figuring out the strength of decks in casual commander come from op cards not being banned in commander even when they are banned in legacy. If a certain power per mana was figured out and tons of cedh cards banned, alot of these issues would go away
The bit about "only attack people who attack you" was the complete opposite of my old group, but taken further in the other direction. If you countered/destroyed/milled anything, you would be hard targeted.
I totally agree with you. The only thing with combos I would mention is, that many new players don’t now what to remove, because they don’t know the combos (or pieces). Sure most player nowadays will recognize the well known (cEDH) combos, but the lesser known combos can be problematic for them. I built a Kenny Deck with as many combos / I win cards as possible. Newer players have no idea what to remove.
Was discussing with some of my friends on this (but more of a who-to-kill first). We came to an agreement on whether a deck can correctly represent threats on the board before going off and lead time for people to interact with the problem. A deck that is able to hides threats on the board and the inability for the card to be interacted with (e.g. cast trigger vs ETB trigger); usually a combo player, is a lot higher up in power level vs a powerful deck that have to place information on the table before going off. Essentially a player that needs 1 turn cycle to go off is a lot less of a threat vs a turbo player who can say I have the card to ramp (aka dockside) + a win condition, I go off NOW and if nobody can stop the interaction now, the game is almost over.
With that spelunking combo keep in mind that it will stop working if at any point you let the safekeeper effects resolve because once the creatures have shroud you cannot activate the ability anymore.
Just found your videos, so now I am leaving many comments with my thoughts and recent stories. Like yesterday's. I finally caved bought the Explore Merfolk Precon from Lost Caverns of Ixallan and downsized it to 60 cards because we don't really play EDH. Two in our group have decks, I am constantly tempted and that's all I know rn. And the deck got rolling pretty well in its first outing. I could have taken out two at one point, but didn't feel like were anywhere in the game yet. Lost a few turns later, but I was more than okay with that. I play for fun, not winning.
It seems like people who put "precon" down at the bottom of the power scale may not have revised opinions upwards for a while. If I understand correctly, some of the first commander precons were very dubious - weird spell choices, little synergy, and none of the tools one would now consider to be staples. Newer precons might not ship with tons of expensive staples, but at least they now come with coherent themes and tools to interact with the board. It doesn't really matter if a wrath is getting cast by the expensive deck or the precon, the board's getting cleared either way. They could probably stand to improve mana somewhat, but their commander probably does something useful and the 99 supports it. The Caesar precon from Fallout, for example, seems to be a pretty reliable engine from the times I've sat across the table from it.
I bought Riku (original precons), Ghired, Strixhaven(Simic and Izzet), and Tyranids(Universe beyond precons). The decks have improved, and there are always notable outliers. However I would still put the majority of precons in a "5" and the outliers in a "6". Lately it is mostly the interaction suite that limits precons and their offense is limited (except for the outliers). The benchmark of "precons are a 5" originated around the Ghired precon age, not the Riku precon age. Design has not changed that much since then. The Riku precon (half the interaction it should have, negligible draw, jank threats) would be a "4" or even a "3".
People forget that player skill counts for a lot of power. Say I'm a really good player and take deck A to a win at turn 5. Then my friend who is a newer player can take the same deck but can only win on turn 9. Even though we're playing the exact same deck, if you go purely by "what turn does this deck win on?" then you'll completely misjudge certain decks. And yes, player skill levels not being equal means that "I on average should aim for a 25% win rate" is also bogus Also, deck matchups matter. My control deck might steamroll a combo meta. But if everyone at the table is playing aggo, then I might keel over and die before I can get a chance to do anything. These two factors, among others, makes the 1-10 power level scale basically useless in EDH.
My main problem with combo is how difficult a lot of the big name ones, like the Thoracle you mentioned, can be to interact with, even with a robust removal package. Things that can basically only be stopped with Counterspells, which not every color or deck has access to. Heliod/Walking Ballista is another example. Only other options that come to mind for that one are exile Enchantment removal (which too is nichely distributed), or specifically Chaos Warp (on Heliod) or Krosan Grip (on Ballista). Course, I’m not getting worked up over incidental 5-card Rube Goldberg machines here. But I personally find that banning combos leads to both more interesting gameplay AND more interesting deckbuilding in casual settings. Restrictions breeding creativity and all that. Heck, I’ve specifically taken OUT incidental combo pieces like an Aggravated Assault in a deck that has a Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, and I’ve never found myself missing it. Also, Commander damage still exists as a safety valve against lifegain decks. That and other alternate win conditions, even when not built in as the end point of an infinite.
11:00 I had something similar experience happen that resulted slight salt in a 4 player game pod next to me which is also my friend. Player 1(P1) play enchantment control deck, and Player 2(P2) (recently new to mtg) play rush down rat toxic deck. I didnt really know the board state, but basically P2 swing 2 rat on P1 early on result 2 poison counter, and then next turn, P2 going to declare swing another 5 on P1 again , which resulted slight heated questioning. i just want to share my thought from this is that most casual commander (i could be wrong) , do not like the idea of losing too early/being targeted heavily out of 3 opponent. i knew that because i played mothman deck and played mesmeric orb on turn 2 and die by turn 5-6.💀 But back to the rush down toxic vs enchantment deck situation, if im playing my 1 shot voltron/counter deck , depending on situation probably either the control deck or biggest board, because late game I know wont able to win against them, and yet some of my circle hated being targeted , has to make it seem like must have a solid reason, even tho the most solid reason is their deck being strong and being acknowledged and thus targeting them. And also in that situation, enchantment control deck worst match up is straight up rush down deck similar to fighting game. people didnt realize their deck is weak against certain play style and yet they furious when it happen. Imagine yourself playing against a mirrim deck on 1v1, can you imagine wining against them?(usually they kinda auto win after mirrim out, and a couple of more creature)
I'm more of a casual player, and I usually search for player that have a power level 6 deck, but essentially for the mindset rather than the deck level itself. In this power level people tend to have deck that rely less on powerfull stables and more on weird synergetic stuff. I have the impression of meeting more different and singular strategies, decks that are less likely to be a pile of good stuff and powerfull staples. The problem is usually why the deck isn't very powerful. It's usually a problem if it's because it's not consistent, with games where the deck is too powerful and games where the deck is too weak, it's generally not very healthy or fun for anyone. People who accept that their deck isn't powerful are generally more chill and less competitive, which results in more pleasant interaction in general. There are also far fewer strategies that slow the game down considerably, as they are unsuitable for low-level tables.
My personal scale 1 - dysfunctional decks 2 - jank/themed decks 3 - (most) precons and precon-equivalents 4 - Upgraded precons and similar 5 - casual decks that are missing 1 or 2 of the following: Ramp, Draw, Removal, Damage* 6 - casual decks with Ramp, Draw, Removal, and Damage*, or a high amount of two of those 7 - casual decks with a high amount of two of the categories above and acceptable quantities of the other two 8 - casual deck with a high amount of three of the categories above and acceptable quantities of the other one 9 - "High power" 10 - fringe cEDH 11 - tier 1-2 cEDH *Damage is any form of game-winning ability, including mill or combos
When people say to keep budget in mind, it's rarely a hard and fast cap to your deck's budget. What I've found is that they're saying that if you paid more than $15-$20 for a single card, it shouldn't be in the deck. At least, that was our pod's price out point until we introduced a guy who tries to say it's casual to run jeweled lotus and mana crypt--two cards we'll NEVER HAVE A CHANCE OF MATCHING without proxies. And at that point, you're edging into CEDH anyway.
I have one deck that I don't have any restrictions on. It's Galea Kindler of Hope. Primarily it's a Voltron deck, but it has fast mana, tutors, combos, infinites and win conditions. It's just about fully optimized but it doesn't have any proxies or reserved list so it's just really high powered. Besides that I have a The locust God deck that is a 7, but it has infinites that are Goofy but effective. I also have a Simic deck that is designed to not break any rules... But it's got a ton of vegetables
@@thetrinketmage yeah, my Simic deck is a really fun deck full of ramp, draw, and +1/+1 counters. It doesn't have any infinites, or poison, or a lot of interaction. It's one of my favorite decks to me around with and change around between inga and Esika, ezuri claw of progress, and aesi, tyrant of gyre straight... And quite a few more. The deck used to be chulane once upon a time, but everyone hates him lol.
I'm of the practice to use an XY axis with X being your experience with the deck/cards and Y being the optimization of the deck. Some example of this application would be some decks I play. Rielle the Everwise is one of my most played commanders and I've put a fair bit of time into building her up to be quite solid, there are fetch lands, Dockside Extortionist, and a couple more expensive discard spells (Firestorm being the most expensive of them). It's still not optimized, but it's edging towards a competitive level. Tetzin Gnome Champion is a commander I have a bit of experience with as an artifact enjoyer, but the number of power cards is notably smaller and kind of just slapped on. The last deck is Niv-Mizzet Guildpact. I got this budget list from a video (SurisMTG) and I don't have much experince with 5 color, but Gates have gotten a fair amount of consistency buffs to help them out.
I think it’s 100 of the same. I was just testing some stuff about how edhrec works. I made a video about it basically if you have a bunch of identical decks it does not pollute the data
The part about interactivity is the real key. People that have "powerful" decks but no interaction will just lose to combos, as they have nothing to stop them, while they will stomp on decks that try to play fair. If someone does drop a Rhystic study and people just mindlessly play into it and they draw 20+ extra cards, that alone will win them the game. If someone clearly has to wrath the board and people just mindlessly play more stuff into it, that Farewell will hit you even harder than it should and you never recover. At this point all decks "should" have plenty of interaction, due to stuff like Boseiju, the double face lands from Modern Horizon 3, your decks can all have a couple of removal spells that are basically free to include in your regular deck that runs a couple basic lands.
About the infinites, synergy alone can make it happen, I made an Cathars Crusade and Herd Baloth infinite combo in +1/+1 Atraxa deck, I didn't thought of doing it, it was a spontaneous accident.
I always think it's fair that people are attacking my planeswalkers in my superfriends deck right up until the one or 2 other people have a very threatening board state. Don't ask me to help take care of the guy with 40 creatures on board, you have killed everything I have that could have helped. People tend to see planeswalkers and lose all sense of threat assessment and that's awful.
1 or 2 I would guess are most commander decks made before 2011, when it was still EDH and decks were literally just piles of cards you thought were kinda neat. Like, the first precons made by wizards when they recognized the format? Those are 4 at most. Pretty very bad.
PlayEDH mention! Note that a major component of the PlayEDH system is not only the attempt to clearly articulate precisely what is meant, but the independent Mentor system. The Mentor staff are trained for consistency in their ratings, and their relative impartiality helps a lot as compared to self-assessment.
I still like using a scale involving numbers with 9-10 being cEDH, 1-3 being anything from a pile of cards to a theme 4-6 being precon and low budget decks and 6-8 being mid to high power casual decks. And it should be based on in how many turns can the deck threaten or consistently stop a win
My Nekusar grixis wheels has Underworld Breach, Orcish Bowmasters, Bloodchief Ascension, Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and Kess (Dissident Mage). It has gone through changes, but it's probably safe to say the deck is still one heck of a powerhouse. My Dargo//Breeches monoR pirates got Ragavan, Dockside, and Jeska's Will for the 98 not too long ago, so I feel like it went from being a janky kitchen table pile, to a pretty okay brew. My Skanos Dragonheart//Acolyte of Bahamut monoG dragons still fold to boardwipe tribal, but there has been occasions where I was able to get a janky synergy of doubling an Earthquake Dragon's already massive power with Choose Your Weapon in one game I won, and there was another janky synergy in a game I lost, where my Skanos hit for 14 points of commander damage, and I was able to get almost 14 basic lands off of a Traverse the Outlands, but I didn't have enough basics left in my library. The landfall triggers would have been pretty sweet, had I any payoffs to capitalize on it. On another note, I'm not always the best pilot of my own decks, and some of my decks have the worst luck against removal and board-sweeping, so it would be unwise to put a power level number on my decks. In addition, some decks are explosively powerful, but have little to almost no good recovery after getting interacted with.
I have a laminated card for each of my decks and I use a points system to help Force a Conversation about the decks at the table. I’m curious what others think. This is obviously not a perfect system and I am working to better refine it. Fast Mana 0,1,2,3 Combos 0,1,2,3 Free Interaction 0,1,2,3 Tutors: 0,1,2,3 Synergy Level 0,1,2,3,4 Turn to Go Brrr 0,1,2,3,4 Total Points: 20 Fast Mana (Includes some Ramp that puts you permanently ahead of curve including Dockside/ 0 None: No Sol Ring/Basic Land Ramp/2 Mana Rocks 1 Sol Ring/Basic Land Ramp and 2 Mana Rocks 2 2 or More Fast Mana or Aggressive Ramp as well as Sol Ring/2 Mana Rocks 3 All the Fast Mana/Rocks/Ramp Combos 0 None 1 Janky Multiple Card Combos/Unintentional Combos providing advantage only. 2 Multiple 3+ Card Combos to go Infinite 3 2 Card Combos Tutoring to Acquire/Combo Deck/Main Win Cons are Combos Tutors 0 None 1 One or Two 2 A Few (Synergistic Tutors) 3 A Bunch (Best Tutors/Most Efficient) Free Interaction 0 None 1 1-2 2 2-4 3 4 or more Synergy Level 0 None Just Rando Cards 1 Minor Synergy 2 More Synergy than Not +.5 for Good Stuff Cards 3 Very Synergistic +.5 for Good Stuff Cards 4 As Synergistic/Refined As Possible Around a Powerful Theme/Ability +.5 for Good Stuff Cards Turn to Go Brrrr (Assuming Average Opening Hand) 0 Just Doesn’t Go Brrrr 1 Turn 9-11 2 Turn 7-9 3 Turn 5-7 4 Turn 3-5 This point system doesn’t take into account the power level of certain Mechanics such as cascade and or the inherent power of any specific commander. Yuriko or Korvold are just on a higher level than say my Faldorn and that’s ok. I also think that more players should track turns their decks pop off so they have some realistic idea of when this can happen assuming a lack of meaningful interaction. Another thing I’ve incorporated lately is a discussion regarding the amount of interaction needed to keep my decks in check. If you aren’t playing ways to remove some of my pieces my deck is going to feel and perform much stronger. This is a generality that I think some players overlook or don’t give enough credence to. I’m curious how others feel about my “system” for discussing decks. @thetrinketmage ??
Honestly still a alien concept for me with these power level stuff since I’ve been playing before these things started being brought up. So far I simplify power level as Low Risk being 5 and below and High Risk being 6and above. I mean since the other players will keep others in check.
I don't look at it like power level? for me it's threat level. what is the threat level of your deck when it starts popping off. I usually measure threat level in turns. so, for example... if people start hating my commander and to the command zone and three turns? then I would consider a threat level 3 deck.
I'd really like to see you make a video on what you consider to be magic at it's best. To me, I consider mid range decks with no infinites to be peak magic experience for everyone involved.
Man that thing about "why are you attacking? I've done nothing" stuff is relatable 4th game of a day of commander and I'm throwing a few small creatures towards the player who has won 2 of the earlier games with a combo deck (he was playing a new one we hadn't seen by now) and had no blockers compared to the other players, and he ended up scooping He said it was because we were targeting him, but to be generous to him he also left soon after because of a migrane starting, so might have been that He is a great guy and playing against his decks with my own combo deck is rewarding, but has a tendancy to make combo decks that are far more resilient than he realizes so he has developped a reputation
I pretty much use your system with one change. In the casual bracket I split my own decks into either rather strong or rather weak. It’s nothing I disclose to others and most of my decks can play on both levels but some a more clear in one. I don’t bring this split up in pregame discussion but instead beeing at my lgs rather often I get to know players a little and try to estimate their power based on the interaction to know what to get out. If in doubt I tend to go for a weaker option. Anyway this split is mostly there because at my specific lgs there are a lot of beginners and very uncompetitive people playing and I try to keep my winrate at a reasonable level.
Honestly, I think what most people need to do rather than give a deck a sliding scale of what your decks power level is, is just say what your deck is aiming to do. For me most of the time when I get "upset" at magic is when I realize too late what a deck is aiming to do. I think everyone has played against someone whose deck we underestimated or against someone who had one of those one hit wonder decks, in both instances part of what lead to that decks ability to win was the fact that no one understood or fully grasped the strength of the deck or understood how it wanted to win. I think once players understand that the deck they are playing against is a combo deck which needs specific pieces on the board to work, or that if you prevent the other players from casting their commander or having it stick their game plan falls apart these games become much more interesting and less salt inducing because you understand what you need to do to win. I think addtiionally, knowing this stuff is important because of the color balance in the game. If you are a mono black player and someone is playing an enchantment pillow fort deck and you didn't know that game is gonna be miserable because back has no enchantment removal outside like 2ish cards. Knowing that thier is a enchantment pillow fort deck at the table lets you know that you should maybe focus your early game efforst on hitting that player OR that you should work with the other people at the table to take that player down,
I recently played a game where a guy got upset with two us because our decks were to strong. After scooping the match and saying he had not fun he went on to spend time talking to his friend about how he likes to build weak decks and base them off of what old bordered cards he has available to him. If you like building themed or weak decks, thats fine, but remember that someone else isn't lying about their power level just because you play a bad decks.
i play a filthy muldrotha control deck that abuses permanaent based interaction like the seals and hesitation. i have lab man and jayce but only as insurance, over maybe 25 games ive won 3 times with them and sometimes the threat of them wins the game. but im not trying to mill myself out, just control the board until everyone else runs out of gas. so no consultation or such, just lots of slow and steady mill like crawling sensation, nyxweaver and perpetual timepiece.
Competitive EDH is both an amazing way to play commander, and also a joke. The number of times i've lost the game because of a play that was "plausible deniability" seemingly targeting me without looking like they're targeting me when everyone seems to be on the same level of threat is uncanny. for as much as i'd like to do MTG commander videos, i need to set myself to learn Olive or the base microsoft video maker. And i need to just use the text to speech cause my mic picks up everything somehow when recording.
Go for it! I use shotcut it’s open source and works well enough. As for audio turn the gain down and record while under a blanket or buy some acoustic foam
Given that the most recent set of precons from Outlaws of Thunder Junction has 2 decks that are quite high power (The Izzet R/U and the Desert deck) and the other 2 are less so but good enough as a starting point. I always look at precons as "it's a nice start but you need to adapt it to your style more".
I own a three. I intentionally built it to be a three. It is a mono blue enchantment based, Calliope beloved of the sea combat deck, to teach new players how to play. It's simple. Keeps me from overpowering the table allows me to have a very threatening creature still. Has a cheap enough Commander that I can get it back out if it dies enough times without it being annoying. And I can run lots of interesting effects that allow me to teach a new player about lots of the various ways that magics able to change the rules of the game on the fly. It is a three but that doesn't mean it doesn't want to win still. There are no combos. Just fun ways to stack your cards and a few interesting counter spells.
I have described my decks as 9 and 10s. I have also encountered a 1 a Vorthos build built around "egypt" art cards. It just played a couple irrelevant cards a game and then lost.
The "retaliation only" mindset is why I've often felt like I'm on crazy pills whenever I focus down one person at a time in our commander group; everyone wants to abdicate responsibility for reducing everyone's life total to zero, despite being the main way you win the game lol Meanwhile I'm over here like Schwarzenegger going "I'M OVER HERE. DO IT. KILL ME." as I present consistent pressure the whole time whenever I have an opening It's extra funny too when someone gets knocked out, and they suddenly go into full-on "boxing coach" mode to try and help people kill you while they watch the game play out lmao
I love that you said this; I have the exact same experience in my group. I enjoy playing decks that seek to draw blood early and consistently, largely because of the tendency of others to build decks which just try to stack as many triggered abilities as possible until they become gods. My Ziatora the Incinerator fling deck is apparently "too high-power", but when my opponents have creatures which could attack in the early turns, they instead don't while holding out for some dream board state they want to assemble.
@@Dynme That's the point: it doesn't work lol. Most of the people in my group play with precons, so there aren't any combo finishers. People just have to learn to not feel bad about attacking
I used to be a YuGiOh player for the longest time, and before link monsters were introduced one of my and my old friends favorite game mode was 4 way free for alls (they worked basically how they do in the anime.) Despite being so aimilar to commander in having 4 players swinging at each other, i never faced the problems I face now in commander with "Power levels" and "You shouldnt attack because no one attacked you." It was generally agreed not to use the tier 0 archetypes (Yugioh's version of cEDH) and apart from that it was literally an all out brawl. Games lasted significantly shorter time then commander while having similar amount of turns. Best part is, that your everyday Yugioh Deck could participate in a free for all, because by there nature they all have multiple sources of interaction. But those days are long gone since master rule 4 😅 so now I play commander and sometimes red dragon inn to fill that hole.
I have a $6 (aud) krenko, tinstreet kingpin deck, it is always the threat and i run only one piece of removal,even though the deck is "janky" i consider it a term meaning loose fun.
I straight warned the last group I played with that my Sharuum deck was a ten even though it wasn’t fully optimized and they didn’t believe me til I went off with top and chip. “But you didn’t even play your commander?!” Yeah I made sure the deck could function without the commander.
In my experience it is even a rare occasion to have a random pod of casual players who all actually know how the game (and the cards in their decks) really work, so expecting that everyone can correctly determine the own decks power level is simply delusional... even if there was a clear scale. Not to shame, or to say I am better than anyone, most players are just not thaaaat deeply invested in MTG. Simple as that. I also believe that the personality and intentions of the players matter way more, than what's in the decks. Personally I always try to describe my way of playing, the basic functionality of the current deck and also point out any typically saltier cards like tutors, craterhoofs, rhytic studies and so on in a few short sentences, rather than using a power level number. Something like: Hi. I'm playing mono green midrange/stompy. Ramping and running you guys over with big stuff and trample. I play to have fun, not neccesarily to win, but my deck contains a Craterhoof, Triumph of the Hordes and a Gaeas Cradle that I am willing to play as a forrest, if anyone has a problem with it.
I love the intent but I hate when players do this to me. I feel like it ruins the surprise of learning what they are doing. I think figuring out a theme is really fun! Granted I am a very invested player so my opinion is biased that way
@@thetrinketmage Yeah I see what you mean and I too really enjoy that part of the game. I always try to keep it as vague as possible, but especially things like Triumph of the Hordes, the Hoof and so on are such drama magnets, that I rather just point them out up front instead of ruinig someones evening with them and in response mine, cause somebody made a scene... Don't need that in my happy fun times 🙃 There are still enough surprises left in all my decks, even if I give one or two things away.
Every sliver player ive ever played against gets infuriated whenever i attack them over everyone at the table like im just gonna sit there and let them stack slivers until they are unstoppable.
Yea get them!
Took out the Niv Mizzet player when he had 40 life with an Aetherflux and people were asking me why I did. Sir, that is a combo deck. That player also admitted he had an infinite combo next turn.
People need to less salty about losing. If I sit across the table from a commander I'm familiar with and I know it's game style is oppressive or wins out of nowhere, I'll be going after it. Only exception I'll make is if they're like "Hey, this isn't THAT deck." Then I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, Brago player, I don't want to sit here for 3 hours watching you play solitaire while you're holding the entire table captive.
@TiltedSquare When my friends play a pod by borrowing any 3 of my numerous decks I make it a point to tell everyone in the pod the playstyle of each deck and whether or not combos exist within. That way all my friends are aware of the threats so they can attempt to prepare for them. That being said when I play at the LGS that conversation doesn't really happen because nobody else is willing to give away their secrets.
I play Slivers every now and again and it's fun to play up the "I'm just a little bean with 2 little guys" but that is absolutely a ruse and I should not be believed. Hit me while you have the chance, before every one of these is an indestructible flyer with death touch and a whole bunch of other nonsense! Even the Pre-con sliver deck, unaltered, punches well above it's weight class if the mana base doesn't absolutely screw you
Started playing commander a bit over a year ago and turned my 60 card 5 color sliver jank pile with a terrible mana base into a commander deck and despite the still super budget mana base (more than half my lands enter tapped and the rest are mostly basics) it performs surprisingly well and my friends hate it because of that, so yeah i'll remember to take the punches without complaint when i'm playing this one.
It's crazy how the trinket mage basically called WOTC's bracket system 5 months before it got announced
"Maybe you drew a bad hand" *reliquary tower appears* oh that sick burn.
This is just the epic "What is Casual?" thread from the MTG message boards in the early 2000's before they killed the forum. Went on for hundreds of pages. Result: People who want to complain will complain, no matter what.
I wish I read more of those back in the day
@@thetrinketmage It got pretty ugly and personal. I was part of 'Team Play What You Want in 1v1 Casual' even though I primarily played janky combo decks that killed with things like Vizzerdrix and Jinxed Choker. Nothing ever really got resolved in those threads. In MODO 1v1 Casual people would autoscoop to Counterspell or Stone Rain and Grim Lavamancer would draw a shower of insults and endless accusations of noobery.
Wasn't all that great tbh, I cashed out in 05 and bought real cards.
@@ameliaward7429 tbh summary of casual play, if {thing} negatively affects {player:(you)}, {thing}={unreasonable} just seems to be what it comes down to.
Everything being a 7/10 goes even further than magic. 7/10 is considered an average grade, 7/10 is an acceptable approximation of an overwhelming majority, the 70/30 rule, usw...
In what world is a 7/10 average? Average would be 5/10.
This world. Human perception does not match objective criteria. The subject they're referring to dives into human psychology, it's very interesting. I can recommend reading into it a little.
@@garaktartv36475/10 is not average since everything low rated is disregarded
@@GodzillaFreak that makes no sense, just because you people are disregarding low ranks doesn't make it somehow average. you just choose to ignore them that doesn't make them disappear.
@@garaktartv3647 Average can be in reference to something other than what the point system is in reference to
Whole heartedly resonate with this. I am currently battling for my spot in my playgroup because of this exact thing. I play Timmy/midrange/combo/aggro decks mostly and am often told my decks are too powerful because I like lethality. I’ve chopped cards and removed infinites to satisfy some memebers but it’s still not good enough.
The way they like to play is jank convoluted commit every thing to the board with small incremental non combat damage using combat as a finisher. Their decks although budget and janky are very well made, often running a coherent suite of interaction in order to hold parity before they assemble their pieces. My decks are tuned to threaten around turn 6-8. I like decks that offer ways to get through and around a boggy board. Other restrictions placed on the group are one of effects like insurrection and rise of the dark realms and akromas will to mention a few. All the restrictions are in pursuit to acjieve a more balanced gaming experience however I have challenged that voicing that I believe the restriction yield the opposite.
Got any advice anyone?
It sounds like they want to play a slower game with high interaction. I suggest you match them. Try a Timmy/midranged that commits jank to the board and then use combat as a finisher. Maybe tune your deck to have a board by 6-8 that gradually builds but threatens around turn 10-12?
How do you find yourself actually winning at the end of games?
Play in a different play group. The kind of game they enjoy and the kind of game you enjoy are different. Cut your losses and actually have fun with likeminded players rather than trying to sell apples to people that only want bananas.
@@thetrinketmage what I have choosen to do is build with the ability to generate more non combat damage. Some decks this is incremental and some decks it’s chunks. The reason I have done this is because the board state tends to become really boggy. There is alot of variables that are the catalyst for this. One player has very strong decks and tends to have an overwhelming advantage but plays passively. Another is that other players sandbag cards in hand and possibly run too little interaction. If I win I normally win via the value I’ve generated in the side and maybe finish with combat. The biggest fundamental disconnect is that I present the conversation to the group to have decks that vary across the power levels but one person refuses to play even precon or above levels. His adjustment to the others is to run much more interaction that he uses to take out the threat he deems to be “unbalanced for the table” rather than game state.
@@gaddocknz2476 honestly those people seem cheeks, they are complaining that you outplay them at that point, they have the tools to interact yet choose to use them poorly.
This is a God-Tier video my dude. Thank you.
My local shop has a lot of issues with power level. Well, I feel like I'm the only one who thinks this. My shop isn't even a sanctioned store, we are as casual as casual gets. Perhaps not pre-con casual, but only slightly better than that. A common problem across the majority of the decks in this store is that they lack proper interaction pieces. Easy fix, but if they aren't asking for help, I'm out of line to just blindly suggest it.
There is one player at the store however who is VERY good at the game. He's been playing for years and has thousands of games under his belt. One of his main decks is Kennrith the Ruined King. That 5 color utility commander. He plays the deck as a tribal legendary theme. All the creatures with only a couple exceptions, are legendary for a creative toolbox style build. His deck is very slow in the first few turns, but if left alone, becomes nearly impossible to break as layers of overlapping synergy fall into place. And usually it comes out of nowhere. Other players new to the store that drop by will call the deck cEDH level, but he insists that it's not because it's far too slow to be cEDH. I'm not skilled enough at the game to say either way. But what i can say is that any pod he's in usually results in his win. Most of the time. I could be wrong and off base here, but I'd argue his win rate is north of 60%.
Your video made me realize that part of the problem- a lot of the problem is with the rest of us. Most of us are too unskilled at the game to play proactively. We do things reactively which puts us behind his plays at every turn. He gets annoyed if we do stuff to him early game when he's not a threat yet, but I think we need to simply stop feeling bad and just do it anyways. Then again, under normal circumstances, that probably wouldn't be ideal threat assessment. I don't know. He's also expressed recent complaints about feeling the need to water down his own decks just because we can't keep up. We don't believe that his decks aren't an 8. Yet we still play with him anyways.
My main deck currently is Slimefoot and Squee. I'm playing the deck as a mid range creature control and burn damage deck. Butcher of Malikar and similar type effects are in the deck. Decent into Avernus and similar effects too. Archfiend of Despair ETC. I'm constantly debating if Dockside should be in the deck or not. As a reanimator deck, I obviously run sac outlets. But with Dockside it means I have many temptations to go infinite mana. Commander is the first game where fun is weighted higher than winning. So balancing my own expectations with literal power level is hard for me. I'm not sure where to rank my deck. Left unchecked, it can establish powerful situations sure. But that is true for literally all decks. Unlike that Kennrith deck however, my deck isn't nearly as resilient.
I have a massacre girl known killer deck. 13 aoe board wipes and I give others creatures to kill. I got warned at my local LGS about playing that deck because it's extremely oppressive. I have some fast mana (jeweled and chrome and mox diamond) but the deck isn't consistently a win. It's a creature control deck which benefits off killing opponents creatures. Someone was playing Omnath in that same pod and dealt me 57 damage in the end during round and I still won. I had Vein Ripper and another similar effect on the field and I board wiped. And I got warned about playing that deck... like really?
"Why are you attacking me, I haven't even done anything?"
Well, [KENRITH PLAYER], it's because it's nearly impossible to do anyone once you have done something.
Dude has to reconcile that he's a good player and brews good decks. It's not about 'watering down' what he's playing with, it's about bringing something to the table that fits the same restrictions that other players didn't realize they're putting on themselves. Or, you know, just having a conversation and helping those players build their decks up to better interact with and secure wins from him.
In my experience with edh the people that have the most skill and experience in competitive games are the ones that usually have the most restraint, because the only thing that really matters is the play experience. His argument demonstrates his own weakness as a player, he should have the foresight to understand that a deck can easily feel like a 10 power level if it's being played in a format that doesn't actually punish slow early games. It's super easy to make incredibly oppressive decks that thrive in a setting that doesn't have a meta of other powerful decks with checks and balances.
That Kenrith player is an absolute dirtbag if he knows that people complain about his deck being too powerful and also makes you feel bad about attacking him. That's too much. Also, I just built a Slimefoot and squee deck and I feel it's super resilient and I am loving it. Mine is combo oriented but without dockside or many tutors in order to keep it in check. And I would completely understand if you attack me before I find all the peaces of my combos, in fact I encourage you to do so, s&s is a great blocker!
The deck is nowhere near CEDH at all he is correct in that regard. If he complains about early aggression just say "you are the best here and as such you are the threat.'. Another option is to start running effects that mess with his deck Invasion of Fiora and cursed totem are examples. What he is doing is exploitable so exploit it. If he is a good player he will adapt and then you can get an interesting shifting meta where different styles of decks are better or worse each week. SO MORE PLAYERS GET TO HAVE MEANINGFUL AND FUN GAMES. If he doesn't then you no longer have to deal with an oppressive meta where one deck is at the top.
TDLR: Adjust your deck to specifically beat his it allows more people to have more fun as the way decks are played at your LGS isn't stagnant and festering.
budget cEDH is definitely an oxymoron, but most casual decks aren't cheap either. Proxies should be socially accepted in casual settings as much as they are in cEDH.
Budget cEDH is most definitely not an oxymoron. cEDH is more of a social contract or a mindset than anything.
You can build at deck with $100 that is way too strong or mean to hang at casual tables and that has the sole goal of winning.
i disagree with the first statement. budget cedh is a very interesting thing to do as a deckbuilding exercise. i have a around 100 euros niv mizzet deck that has won against actual full fledge cedh decks. it is possible to do so in specific strategies and it is fun thing to try to do. for context half of the budget of the deck is dockside which i happened to have because i had bought the precon it came in.
for the second part i am fully on board with proxying everything, but if you want to improve in deck building especially when you are starting out i would argue against it. yeah ofc if even buying sleeves and printing the deck is any issue don't listen to this. if your budget is 13 euros on sleeves and like 3 euros in proxied cards proxy everything, but if you want to learn to play and you have like 5 or 10 euros every 2 weeks or once a month to put in the game you are going to learn a lot by valuing your budget. (if you simply don't want to give money to wizard is also a valid reason, this advice apply only if you are willing to pay for the game which you don't have to)
so a social thing i am full on board for proxies. I am against them the same way I am against using assisting software when you are new to something. they are usually too powerful and the amount of options will overwhelm you.
ofc if you only care for netdecking and you don't want to build stuff my advice is pointless and no one should be forced to engage with deckbuilding if it is not their cup of tea. i know from myself that a lot of times i enjoy playing others peoples decks and try to navigate their thought process on how those decks work. there are many ways to engage with magic and commander so yeah there is that.
I mean I have a Pauper CEDH deck. Not quite the same as it's generally a turn 5 kill, but it is CEDH....for Pauper.
Great fun. Turn 4 looks pathetic with like 5 1/1s then swing for 270 trample/first strike
No, they shouldn't. Budget is a great limiting factor and actually breeds creativity. If people actually have to play some cards like Filter Out or Spectral Deluge instead of running Cyclonic Rift in every deck, that actually keeps the game more diverse and fun. Same for Mana Crypt, Ancient Tomb, Jeweled Lotus and the most powerful tutors. And yes, power level discussions can help mitigate the arms race that proxies can cause, but only to an extent. I personally also hate how difficult to read a table full of proxies can be since it's hard enough to keep track of everything in a 4-player-game when every Magic card is an actual card.
@@Nr4747that's a reason to just proxy and run filter out, like set your budget at 100 then proxy
I always ask "how fast is your deck" and that is so much better then asking for power level
I try to explain my decks using a three axis system, with budget being the hidden fourth axis. It's just generally acceptable to measure a deck by its explosiveness, its resilience, and its consistency before all else. A deck that can turn a corner on a given turn and risk dominating is strong, a deck that can do that with greater and greater consistency is stronger, etc.
My pet deck over the past 6-7 years is Five-Rare Zada. If you are new and don't know what it does, I get to explain that it can be explosive and fairly reliably, but can be shut down with even a couple of kill spells. Usually gets the point across better than a number system that hopes everyone has the same understanding.
I like where you're going with this.
There's a guy who plays a Light-Paws deck at my LGS. The deck's very consistent - every aura is effectively a tutor for another aura, and from practice the deck's pilot knows what auras can grab what other powerhouse auras. Its goal is to make a 21+ power/toughness Light-Paws with vigilance and protection from creatures and redundant Totem Armor, at which point it just removes players from the game. It's also pretty quick - when each Aura is searching for and putting another Aura into play it's quickly very dangerous and not something you want to just swing into.
It does fall flat on resilience. If you can respond with instant-speed removal to an aura about to ETB you can waste the spell, prevent a tutor, and undo a ton of the deck's progress. Remove the commander once or twice and the deck just falls flat. (It's funny - Light-Paws is still in Standard and sees ZERO play, partially for this reason: instant-speed removal blows it out)
@@51gunner i'd add that having your opponents knowing the points of interaction is very important. for instance i made a fairly junky (as junky this deck can be) tivit deck with the curve mostly at 4 5 and 6 with 5 or so cards even higher on the curve. i managed to have an explosive turn and then the table managed to revome my engines, but most importantly they removed my mana accelerants and the deck was toasted. it sounds rude but it is a valid option that many in the casual tables ignore. attacking someones mana rocks is a very good idea actually.
@@hellNo116 I agree! The more your opponents know about what you're trying to do and when exactly you're at your most dangerous, the less surprising your deck is. If your opponents know when you're actually a threat they might not spend time hitting you before you're actually dangerous too.
I'm building a Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy deck right now and I'm pretty sure I'll point his 'free' attack-triggered removal at a lot of mana rocks though. It CAN point at the clue he made for himself, but I can pay 2 to get the card out of that anyway. People's Sol Rings and signets - those are brutal to lose early if the opponent is relying on them for fixing or ramp.
I advocate for ranking decks based on four criteria: Speed, consistency, resilience and interaction. Because at the end of the day, that's what "powerful" really means in deck terms. Now, how you go about measuring each is the difficult part, I could suggest a method, but in the end any power level scale only works if we all agree on a standardized way of measuring anyway
This is definitely a video I need to share whenever I find a playgroup that starts to complain about combos. Magic has many axis's to it. Some games win through deck out(very rarely) some win through wide board states, some just use a big guy to punch you for game, and some use burn damage. All are valid but many casual edh players just seem allergic to anything that makes them lose. In my experience, casual players care more about winning than even CEDH players do, and it's a constant struggle for someone like me who likes playing control or combo decks
Whether its Magic the Gathering or every movie on IMDB, all of humanity unites to rate everything a 7 outta 10
"How would you rate your own looks on a scale from 1 to 10?" "umm probably 7 or 7.5" -everyone
One thing to consider RE power is those "god hands" and how often they disrupt a game. Usually those are strong because you drew Sol Ring or some other card that is much stronger than the average card in your deck. That game your deck will play much stronger than everyone expected from the pregame conversation. I think it is worthwhile for us to reduce the chance of these disruptions. I have removed Sol Ring from all of my decks because none of them runs any other fast mana. Similarly, in a deck I am building, I removed Wild Growth since it cost 1 and all my other ramp (Gifts of Paradise) cost 3.
I’ve honestly thought about doing that. Like I never want to be arch enemy in my slow control decks so I don’t want to pop off too much
@@thetrinketmage It is part of a broader lesson I took from D&D. In both D&D and Commander, stronger =/= better experience. So at some point we get our decks to a desired power level, but that doesn't stop us tuning our decks. At that point we are tuning the deck so it becomes better at being the deck we wanted to play (doing the thing, and the enjoyment of the other players) while staying at the designed power level.
Happy to see another non Sol Ring player! In my experience, it does one of two things, paints a target on someone's head or pushes them so far forward that the they bury the table by turn 4. I'd rather run another card with more synergy/flavor. Sol Ring is so boring to me.
I'm with you! At some point, I turned a corner and started running Arcane Powerstone and Three Visits instead--still powerful, mind you! Just less explosive.
As someone who likes using janky strategies, high mana cards, and commanders which are overcosted by today’s standards, you can pry my Sol Ring from my cold dead hands. But then, with my most powerful, mana efficient deck (an artifact centric deck using Urza, Prince of Kroog as it’s commander), if I get a god-tier hand, with Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Training Grounds, Heartstone, plus a Lightning Greaves to ensure my commander doesn’t get removed, plus a Seat of the Synod and a Thoughtcast. This allows me to play either my commander or Heartstone and Thoughtcast on turn 2. And then on turn three, assuming I drew the best possible cards, I play Training Grounds, Thoughtcast, and draw the fastest win-con in my deck…Lux Artillery, Astral Cornucopia, and Energy Chamber. This gives the table somewhere between ~5 to ~9 turns to either destroy either Lux Artillery, to end the threat of the combo, my commander, to delay it by an additional 30 or so turns at least, or Astral Cornucopia, to delay it by about 12 turns at least. And even if the ‘combo’ goes off, it will probably take two turns to actually kill all my opponents, assuming at least one person has a way of gaining a bit of life.
So yeah, if I win, it was because everyone else at the table decided to ignore me in favor of bullying the mill player or something, not because my deck was overpowered. I can still win through more conventional strategies like swarming players with giant robots using Simulacrum Synthesizer, Conjurer’s Closet, and an artifact creature with CMC 3.
In that sense, I’d probably put it at a 4 out of 10; actually capable of winning by a number or different means, and able to deal with threats from opponents via removal or counterspells, but not actually likely to win unless I get lucky and my opponents don’t dedicate resources to deal with me.
In regards to fast mana, it's also good to take into account the commander's mana value. Sure, i have fast mana in the deck, but my commander costs 7, and I'd like to play them more than once a game.
That’s a good point
Great video! I love that Magic has so many of these dedicated “tutor” (no pun intended) channels to help the new/middling MTG players understand EDH. Myself included, ofc.
Just subscribed. I hope you and all the other tutor channels rise in popularity! You deserve it.
Respectfully, the mono-white “I play EDH on hard mode” player.
Your bit about the Mox Diamond into Goblin Tunneler reminded me of the time I cracked a Jeweled Lotus to get out Neera Wild Mage faster in a meme deck with no win cons. I got told this was too powerful. When I said early on this was a deck purely about memes with no win cons just designed to make the table a silly time. I said it wasn't powerful, it was just stupid but faster.
Love this. Very concise and clear. Plus it’s easy to understand and use. I think people can get really deep into the weeds trying to make power levels complex. They don’t need to be
hey man, just getting back into commander after literal years and stumbled upon your videos. You produce amazing high quality content, basically binged every one! Keep it up man!
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words! Good luck getting back into commander
I always used a player's mindset while building their deck to rank power levels.
_Low Power:_ You built your deck either without a gameplan or with synergies in mind but no proper shell to back them up.
_Mid Power:_ Your deck tries to do the thing and every card in the deck supports that thing.
_High Power:_ Your deck tries to do the thing as efficiently as possible.
_cEDH:_ You built your deck to _win._ No holds barred.
I'm a huge Capenna fan, and most of my decks are themed around characters I've roleplayed as so your example of the Arabian Nights theme deck speaks to me.
Currently working on a "Steal everything that isn't tied down" deck with Evelyn, the Covetous, and a lot of Red cloning/Blue & artifact flicker.
Hey there,
I personally advise players to prioritize assessing the preferred gameplay experience over the power level of decks. The goal of a pregame talk is not to completely balance the game or to agree on what power level belongs to each deck, but to align on what kind of game we want to play this time. Arrive at a shared set of expectations about the game first, and then select the decks that best match that experience. How far people want to go to win and how far they are willing to keep others from winning have been 2 questions that have proven to work well when approaching pregame talks with this strategy.
Also, fun to see you used one of my older guides in the video (the right one at around 1m20). Note that this one already addressed several of the concerns you brought up. I agree though that using numbers in a pregame talk is not a good idea. I ended up removing them all together in later versions.
Anyway, nice video. It’s an accessible way to think about it and a good strategy to get into a similar enough ballpark quickly.
Oh you made the infographic?!?! I think it’s good which is why I used it as an example. But I think more simplicity is better!
@@thetrinketmage I did! Glad to hear you liked it. I actually ended up making several ones, each with a different complexity and intended use (I also made one similar to yours with only 4 categories and no numbers). If you go the the link that’s included at the bottom of the picture you can read all about it.
I once played a Sauron reanimator deck on a table where a guy had a full-proxied mmonogreen deck with a mana crypt. I won because nobody on the table thought I was a threat until I pulled off a janky Worldgorger Dragon combo. I think I can relate to everything on this video lol
Decklist please?
@@IsenSura Sadly I no longer run that combo, but my Sauron deck works amazingly with graveyard synergies. It's basically a "cheat big creatures into the battlefield" deck that works perfectly even when the commander is not on the field. I can share with you the deck list once I get it ready on moxfield!
Had a really enlightening experience the other day. I jumped into a pod of all mono-red decks. Me and two other players were playing jank, but the other player had Krenko. I was able to pop off with an extra cobat spell and took out the Krenko player as fast as i could. I felt kinda guilty about it, but the guy just smiled and said "oh you guys were so dead next turn."
Just evaluate threats and play to win.
i put my deck into one of the power calculator and got a two. one of the reason was i only had one stax card. the stax card in question was a creature that returns target creature the opponent controls to their hand. my deck has seven other cards that return target percent to their controllers hands, several of which can return multiple and one returns the permanent to the top of the controllers library. these weren’t counted though because they don’t solely target my opponent despite being much stronger stax. i still think my deck is mid, a 5 at best, it can pop off hard but can also drag out a game for a long time if things don’t go as planned, but it’s definitely not a two. these calculators just aren’t physically able to see how an actual strategy may play out and never will with how many different cards and kinds of interactions there are
Starting precons at a 3 adds slot between 4-8 ti help better quantify deck power in that middle area.
i love this video found it today and the thing you were talking about where people dont play interaction happened
So, my personal scale for determining a commander deck's power has been pretty useful & consistent in determining the power of my own decks and my friends' decks - it's a hypothetical thought experiment posed in the form of the following question:
"Assume you have a perfect starting hand for this deck, your opponents have no interaction to stop you, and you are trying to win as soon as possible. On what turn does your deck consistently present a win? (Lethal damage, infinite combo, poison, locks, etc.)"
How the player answers the question determines approximately how powerful their deck is with objective information (turns required to win), and quantifies it on an inverse scale: the lower the number, the faster and more powerful the deck.
Generally, in my experience, turns 0-4 is cEDH, 5-7 is high power, 8-10 is low power, and anything that is 11 or more turns required to win is casual.
Player Experience can also sway the effective power of the deck. A newer player might not be able to answer the question because they A) haven't played/tested the deck enough to see it in a wining position, or B) simply don't have a win condition other than to reduce life to 0 with combat damage.
Both of these possibilities would limit the effective power of the deck as a result.
Conversely, a player that has much experience might be able to take the same deck and have a path to a win condition in mind while they play, effectively boosting the deck's power simply through recognizing advantages and minimizing risks.
Won't that underestimate control decks?
I particularly run land board wipes in my super forneds deck because that is extremely beneficial once i get the prismatic bridge out
I feel like if you have the set up to win the land destruction is alright to me
Great video, I play a good bit of mid-power, high-power, and CEDH. This is very similar to how I like to rank my decks' power levels.
Someone at my LGS said I'll play a precon if someone buys it for me at a prize-supported EDH tournament. And then they proceeded to wipe the floor with the Kalvalax precon. Absolute madlad. Great moment.
I often play combo and engine decks. I tell people all the time if they want to beat me, they have to attack me early, destroy my pieces and make me have a bad time. I might look innocent with my one creature, a mana rock and an enchantment, but I'll be biggest threat at the table by the end of my next turn if you ignore me, and I fully expect to (and should) be harassed.
Got my mono G omnath that has no fast mana, the main 3 tutors, no real protection aside from ascetisim called a "CEDH Cancer" when they let me just keep funneling mana into omnath until I was able to genesis wave for 34 and win with concordant and craterhoof. Commander is wild sometimes
Bro the part where you brought up niche combos and showed Samwise Gamgee and Syr Ginger with anointed procession had me dying XD
I think a good simple system would be to give two numbers for your deck-the first is the turn your deck would win on average with minimal disruption, and the second is the combined number of fast mana pieces, combos, and tutors. That way you could sit down, say your deck is an 8-5, and match safely against all the 9-6s, 8-7s, and 10-3s out there
I think there are three kinds of Commander players.
Those that both deck build AND play to have fun.
Those that deck build for fun but play to win.
Those that both deck build AND play to win.
Understanding that dynamic has become really important for me lately.
my favorite decks were made because i saw something and thought "oh this sounds fun" and with my true fav deck its just every fun phyrexian i like in a deck
Ah, but you see, there's a fourth type you've not considered: people who deck build for fun but DON'T play! It's me, I need more edh friends.
there is a fourth: deck build to win, play to have fun. I absolutely LOVE optimizing my decks. Tinkering, upgrading, making it the best version of itself it can be. On the other hand, I don't care much about winning. Sure it's nice, and it happens, but since so much of the joy for me is making cool interactions between cards happen, it turns out there's a lot of joy in watching someone else's deck pop off and do cool things.
So long as I'm taking relevant game actions and my deck is doing something, I'm happy win or lose.
There is also the toxic player.
The person who deck build and play to ruin any enjoyment you can have while winning.
@@Prince_Smugarina That's not toxic that's just stax. Toxic is building a crappy timmy deck and complaining that other people don't let you win.
I find it crazy how people would ever rate precons at a 5 and cedh at 9/10, precons are extremely weak and having half the scale being taken up by such a small samplesize of deck is crazy to me. My group developed a 12 point scale with precons being 1-2 and cedh being 11 (decks that are weaker than precons are a 0), of course it's not perfect and it's usually only used to contexctuize what sort of upgrades/downgrades to add, but it's much less top loaded.
This is a good point. Hardly anyone would ever play something deliberately weaker than a precon, so it is dumb for precons to be the midpoint.
some precons are cracked and some are so useless i dont know why they even get released, and then you have cedh that get clapped
I personally rank my decks on a powerlevel from 1-10 where precons are between a 3 and a 6 (yes, the early precons that were essentially 2 halves of 2 different decks and precons like the one with Hakbal are actually that far apart), most Commander decks are between a 5 and an 8, but 9 and 10 are still casual Commander decks, not CEDH (although 10 could technically be both).
I find it crazy that The Command Zone would just casually throw a different format into the mix of their otherwise casual Commander power scale and everybody else just kind of goes along with it. It would be like rating Standard decks on a 1-10 powerscale, but wait: 9 and 10 are actually Modern decks. And no, the "it's the same card pool" and "CEDH is a gradient"-arguments don't actually fly. Yes, technically, you could show up to a Modern tournament with your last weeks draft chaff, but that's not what anybody actually plays in the format. Similarly, you could show up to your friends' casual Commander night, where folks are trying to get a few cool dinos of a Gishath trigger with your CEDH deck that tries to get a Thoracle or Breach combo off on turns 1-3 (so about 4-5 turns before Gishath even gets cast), but - again - that's not what anybody actually plays in the "casual Commander"-format.
A lot of the most powerful combos and combo enablers are pretty much "shadow-banned" in casual Commander due to the social contract, meaning that they're only technically part of the available card pool, same for the most powerful stax pieces (your Gishath-playing friend isn't going to be much happier about your Blind Obedience + Stasis lock than they would be about your turn 2 Breach combo win).
And yes, at the highest levels of casual Commander, there would - theoretically - be a gradient between some very high-powered casual Commander decks and CEDH decks due to budget constraints, but CEDH is full of proxies (another reason why I absolutely despise that format, but that aside) so that argument doesn't work, either.
precons are a 3-4 that scale would not work at my shop because a lot of people bring purposfully gimped decks for fun, chair tribal, that kinda thing. 1 is a deck that you literally went into the stores trash box and grabbed every common/uncommon in color or gimp yourself, 3 is a low level precon, 4 is a mid level precon, and a 5 is a top tier precon. the way we explain it to people is that above a 5 its what turn you want to optimally win on, turn 1-6 on an average hand (NOTE, AN AVERAGE HAND, NOT AN OPTIMAL HAND) without being interacted with is a 10 or 9 (based on how well they handle interaction) 8 and 7 win between games 6 and 10, any deck that just wants to build a board and not particularly win, but cannot just make the game go infinitely long is a 7 or 6 depending on interaction resistance.
the important part is that we use this scale only with people who know the shop, if a new person comes in we ask about when it wins and what it uses, then classify it.
fortunately we have had enough strong pillow fort and superfriends decks and because of our particular rating system we know, players=/=planeswalkers and walkers should basically always be hit, and while killing someone is frowned upon at powers 6ish and below on our system anywhere higher then that we are aggressive AF
@@Grimphoenix6969 Well, there is room for purposefully gimped decks and meme decks in my scale at the 1-2 level. Precons vary extremely widely in powerlevel. The Hakbal precon is strong enough to completely destroy a lot of more casual, hand-built decks with ease while the oldest precons were literally 2 different deck-halves shuffled together. Still stronger than last week's draft chaff (power level 1) and "silly hat tribal" (power level 2), but that's about it. Which turn a deck would win is an interesting concept for a power scale, but it doesn't take variance into account and, imho, doesn't take the biggest factor into account that matters in actual casual Commander games: Resilience. You could build a very glass-cannon-y Krenko deck that theoretically wins very early without any interaction, but if that decks completely folds to the first boardwipe, I'd argue it's still not stronger than a very well-built Muldrotha deck, even though that Muldrotha deck might only every grind out a very slow turn 10-12 win, even when not interrupted.
So glad I saw the video you did with Salubrious Snail
I got warned at my LGS for playing my decks. As far as I know I'm the only one being warned..
Got a list to share?
One of my favorite things to bring up when people talk about not doing combos is that the Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer Precon has an infinite skip all opponent's untap phases combo in it with Vesuvan Shapeshifter + Brine Elemental.
How would banning combos even work. What happens if i put first day if class in a goblin deck and dont realise it makes a combo until the middle of a game?
I've been in rut for the last couple of months when it comes to power level, and tuning and refining my deck.
I'd say I'm still somewhat inexperienced since I've only played EDH for about 3 years now.
My main issue is that I don't know what's acceptable anymore or what I should do to create an experience that's good for everyone. I often end up losing with my favorite deck and it just sucks the enjoyment out of playing the game sometimes. Maybe my issue is that I try to appease everyone.
I'm in a play group and that has two completely different types of players. Some are enjoying a highly interactive game of Magic and the other plays inconsistent, explosive and somewhat low interaction Commander.
It's difficult to find a balance when I can play against Atraxa or Voja, or custom card monolith Commanders with high interaction.
10:30 Me watching the guy who hates me for some reason blast my arcane signet with removal while the guy next to me has already drawn 3 extra cards with his Esper sentinel. Then two turns later he complains when I boardwipe away all non-artifacts and the guy with the Esper sentinel/artifact deck KO's him for being the next biggest threat on the table.
It hasn’t been until this video that I realized why so many on Spelltable were really confused when I was attacking on turn 3 with a Gallia “All Satyr” deck because no one has attacked anyone yet… but to be honest, Commander is a four player free for all and the game has to end at some point, so I’d rather leave the first attack to chance.
Let the Lords of Chaos decide who shall be attacked first! 😂
Saying that combos in general being banned is dumb is subjective.
The difficulty of said combo might be irrelevant at some tables. Some players might want to just play “honest magic”
Lifegain decks- still plenty of ways to kill them without infinites
You then bring up cards and combos that would likely also be banned at that particular table.
The players are likely stopping combos altogether just to ensure nobody brings uninteractive combo decks. That’s fine, just adjust and bring a commander that works.
Ban sol ring. Ban fast mana in general
It shouldn’t have to do with win rate. Its why and how they won. If your deck can win on turn 3, its a strong deck or janky and doesn’t belong in casual.
Alot of the issues with figuring out the strength of decks in casual commander come from op cards not being banned in commander even when they are banned in legacy. If a certain power per mana was figured out and tons of cedh cards banned, alot of these issues would go away
The bit about "only attack people who attack you" was the complete opposite of my old group, but taken further in the other direction. If you countered/destroyed/milled anything, you would be hard targeted.
I totally agree with you. The only thing with combos I would mention is, that many new players don’t now what to remove, because they don’t know the combos (or pieces). Sure most player nowadays will recognize the well known (cEDH) combos, but the lesser known combos can be problematic for them.
I built a Kenny Deck with as many combos / I win cards as possible. Newer players have no idea what to remove.
True but that is something you can learn! Just over time you will learn more combos
Was discussing with some of my friends on this (but more of a who-to-kill first). We came to an agreement on whether a deck can correctly represent threats on the board before going off and lead time for people to interact with the problem. A deck that is able to hides threats on the board and the inability for the card to be interacted with (e.g. cast trigger vs ETB trigger); usually a combo player, is a lot higher up in power level vs a powerful deck that have to place information on the table before going off.
Essentially a player that needs 1 turn cycle to go off is a lot less of a threat vs a turbo player who can say I have the card to ramp (aka dockside) + a win condition, I go off NOW and if nobody can stop the interaction now, the game is almost over.
With that spelunking combo keep in mind that it will stop working if at any point you let the safekeeper effects resolve because once the creatures have shroud you cannot activate the ability anymore.
Just found your videos, so now I am leaving many comments with my thoughts and recent stories. Like yesterday's. I finally caved bought the Explore Merfolk Precon from Lost Caverns of Ixallan and downsized it to 60 cards because we don't really play EDH. Two in our group have decks, I am constantly tempted and that's all I know rn. And the deck got rolling pretty well in its first outing. I could have taken out two at one point, but didn't feel like were anywhere in the game yet. Lost a few turns later, but I was more than okay with that. I play for fun, not winning.
It seems like people who put "precon" down at the bottom of the power scale may not have revised opinions upwards for a while. If I understand correctly, some of the first commander precons were very dubious - weird spell choices, little synergy, and none of the tools one would now consider to be staples.
Newer precons might not ship with tons of expensive staples, but at least they now come with coherent themes and tools to interact with the board. It doesn't really matter if a wrath is getting cast by the expensive deck or the precon, the board's getting cleared either way. They could probably stand to improve mana somewhat, but their commander probably does something useful and the 99 supports it. The Caesar precon from Fallout, for example, seems to be a pretty reliable engine from the times I've sat across the table from it.
I bought Riku (original precons), Ghired, Strixhaven(Simic and Izzet), and Tyranids(Universe beyond precons). The decks have improved, and there are always notable outliers. However I would still put the majority of precons in a "5" and the outliers in a "6". Lately it is mostly the interaction suite that limits precons and their offense is limited (except for the outliers).
The benchmark of "precons are a 5" originated around the Ghired precon age, not the Riku precon age. Design has not changed that much since then. The Riku precon (half the interaction it should have, negligible draw, jank threats) would be a "4" or even a "3".
11:26 I always start attacking as soon as possible but that probably because I play super aggressive decks
People forget that player skill counts for a lot of power. Say I'm a really good player and take deck A to a win at turn 5. Then my friend who is a newer player can take the same deck but can only win on turn 9. Even though we're playing the exact same deck, if you go purely by "what turn does this deck win on?" then you'll completely misjudge certain decks. And yes, player skill levels not being equal means that "I on average should aim for a 25% win rate" is also bogus
Also, deck matchups matter. My control deck might steamroll a combo meta. But if everyone at the table is playing aggo, then I might keel over and die before I can get a chance to do anything. These two factors, among others, makes the 1-10 power level scale basically useless in EDH.
I usually play 8-12 spot removal (this includes counterspells), and 3-5 board wipes. That is a baseline, and tends to end up larger.
Just want to say as someone getting back into magic through edh, I really like your videos :)
My main problem with combo is how difficult a lot of the big name ones, like the Thoracle you mentioned, can be to interact with, even with a robust removal package. Things that can basically only be stopped with Counterspells, which not every color or deck has access to. Heliod/Walking Ballista is another example. Only other options that come to mind for that one are exile Enchantment removal (which too is nichely distributed), or specifically Chaos Warp (on Heliod) or Krosan Grip (on Ballista).
Course, I’m not getting worked up over incidental 5-card Rube Goldberg machines here. But I personally find that banning combos leads to both more interesting gameplay AND more interesting deckbuilding in casual settings. Restrictions breeding creativity and all that. Heck, I’ve specifically taken OUT incidental combo pieces like an Aggravated Assault in a deck that has a Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, and I’ve never found myself missing it.
Also, Commander damage still exists as a safety valve against lifegain decks. That and other alternate win conditions, even when not built in as the end point of an infinite.
11:00
I had something similar experience happen that resulted slight salt in a 4 player game pod next to me which is also my friend.
Player 1(P1) play enchantment control deck, and Player 2(P2) (recently new to mtg) play rush down rat toxic deck.
I didnt really know the board state, but basically P2 swing 2 rat on P1 early on result 2 poison counter, and then next turn, P2 going to declare swing another 5 on P1 again , which resulted slight heated questioning.
i just want to share my thought from this is that most casual commander (i could be wrong) , do not like the idea of losing too early/being targeted heavily out of 3 opponent. i knew that because i played mothman deck and played mesmeric orb on turn 2 and die by turn 5-6.💀
But back to the rush down toxic vs enchantment deck situation, if im playing my 1 shot voltron/counter deck , depending on situation probably either the control deck or biggest board, because late game I know wont able to win against them, and yet some of my circle hated being targeted , has to make it seem like must have a solid reason, even tho the most solid reason is their deck being strong and being acknowledged and thus targeting them.
And also in that situation, enchantment control deck worst match up is straight up rush down deck similar to fighting game. people didnt realize their deck is weak against certain play style and yet they furious when it happen. Imagine yourself playing against a mirrim deck on 1v1, can you imagine wining against them?(usually they kinda auto win after mirrim out, and a couple of more creature)
I'm more of a casual player, and I usually search for player that have a power level 6 deck, but essentially for the mindset rather than the deck level itself.
In this power level people tend to have deck that rely less on powerfull stables and more on weird synergetic stuff. I have the impression of meeting more different and singular strategies, decks that are less likely to be a pile of good stuff and powerfull staples.
The problem is usually why the deck isn't very powerful.
It's usually a problem if it's because it's not consistent, with games where the deck is too powerful and games where the deck is too weak, it's generally not very healthy or fun for anyone.
People who accept that their deck isn't powerful are generally more chill and less competitive, which results in more pleasant interaction in general.
There are also far fewer strategies that slow the game down considerably, as they are unsuitable for low-level tables.
My personal scale
1 - dysfunctional decks
2 - jank/themed decks
3 - (most) precons and precon-equivalents
4 - Upgraded precons and similar
5 - casual decks that are missing 1 or 2 of the following: Ramp, Draw, Removal, Damage*
6 - casual decks with Ramp, Draw, Removal, and Damage*, or a high amount of two of those
7 - casual decks with a high amount of two of the categories above and acceptable quantities of the other two
8 - casual deck with a high amount of three of the categories above and acceptable quantities of the other one
9 - "High power"
10 - fringe cEDH
11 - tier 1-2 cEDH
*Damage is any form of game-winning ability, including mill or combos
as a fellow metalhead can we get a decklist of your mate's metal deck? I'd be interested to see what cards he put in it.
OXYMORON MENTIONED RAAAH
When people say to keep budget in mind, it's rarely a hard and fast cap to your deck's budget.
What I've found is that they're saying that if you paid more than $15-$20 for a single card, it shouldn't be in the deck. At least, that was our pod's price out point until we introduced a guy who tries to say it's casual to run jeweled lotus and mana crypt--two cards we'll NEVER HAVE A CHANCE OF MATCHING without proxies. And at that point, you're edging into CEDH anyway.
do you think that you could make a short or a video explaiing that infiite combo in your gruul deck?
I made a video about the deck. Just swap amulet for spelunking
ua-cam.com/video/hHl12ZXwG_Q/v-deo.htmlsi=y-knmAS2H1A0eh9Q
@@thetrinketmage ty!
I have one deck that I don't have any restrictions on. It's Galea Kindler of Hope. Primarily it's a Voltron deck, but it has fast mana, tutors, combos, infinites and win conditions. It's just about fully optimized but it doesn't have any proxies or reserved list so it's just really high powered. Besides that I have a The locust God deck that is a 7, but it has infinites that are Goofy but effective. I also have a Simic deck that is designed to not break any rules... But it's got a ton of vegetables
Vegetables as in ramp and draw?
@@thetrinketmage yeah, my Simic deck is a really fun deck full of ramp, draw, and +1/+1 counters. It doesn't have any infinites, or poison, or a lot of interaction. It's one of my favorite decks to me around with and change around between inga and Esika, ezuri claw of progress, and aesi, tyrant of gyre straight... And quite a few more. The deck used to be chulane once upon a time, but everyone hates him lol.
I'm of the practice to use an XY axis with X being your experience with the deck/cards and Y being the optimization of the deck.
Some example of this application would be some decks I play. Rielle the Everwise is one of my most played commanders and I've put a fair bit of time into building her up to be quite solid, there are fetch lands, Dockside Extortionist, and a couple more expensive discard spells (Firestorm being the most expensive of them). It's still not optimized, but it's edging towards a competitive level. Tetzin Gnome Champion is a commander I have a bit of experience with as an artifact enjoyer, but the number of power cards is notably smaller and kind of just slapped on. The last deck is Niv-Mizzet Guildpact. I got this budget list from a video (SurisMTG) and I don't have much experince with 5 color, but Gates have gotten a fair amount of consistency buffs to help them out.
Nice video, but why are there 100 different versions of Ragnar decks on your Moxfield page?
I think it’s 100 of the same. I was just testing some stuff about how edhrec works. I made a video about it basically if you have a bunch of identical decks it does not pollute the data
The part about interactivity is the real key.
People that have "powerful" decks but no interaction will just lose to combos, as they have nothing to stop them, while they will stomp on decks that try to play fair.
If someone does drop a Rhystic study and people just mindlessly play into it and they draw 20+ extra cards, that alone will win them the game.
If someone clearly has to wrath the board and people just mindlessly play more stuff into it, that Farewell will hit you even harder than it should and you never recover.
At this point all decks "should" have plenty of interaction, due to stuff like Boseiju, the double face lands from Modern Horizon 3, your decks can all have a couple of removal spells that are basically free to include in your regular deck that runs a couple basic lands.
About the infinites, synergy alone can make it happen, I made an Cathars Crusade and Herd Baloth infinite combo in +1/+1 Atraxa deck, I didn't thought of doing it, it was a spontaneous accident.
Your videos are awesome, keep it up!
Thanks!
I always think it's fair that people are attacking my planeswalkers in my superfriends deck right up until the one or 2 other people have a very threatening board state. Don't ask me to help take care of the guy with 40 creatures on board, you have killed everything I have that could have helped. People tend to see planeswalkers and lose all sense of threat assessment and that's awful.
I agree, there are points where I shouldn’t just run down the walker player. Threat assessment is more advanced than what this video shows
Axis, board investment, consistency, speed, and resilience
ABCSR if you will.
I always put precons at a scale from 3-6 because some are really good but then i ask my self what the hell classifies as a 1 or a 2
Right, like is a 1 just a pile of basics? Who’s deck is that
1 or 2 I would guess are most commander decks made before 2011, when it was still EDH and decks were literally just piles of cards you thought were kinda neat.
Like, the first precons made by wizards when they recognized the format? Those are 4 at most. Pretty very bad.
PlayEDH mention! Note that a major component of the PlayEDH system is not only the attempt to clearly articulate precisely what is meant, but the independent Mentor system. The Mentor staff are trained for consistency in their ratings, and their relative impartiality helps a lot as compared to self-assessment.
The Command Sphere Podcast had a great way to classify decks: as either sizzle or steak.
When I play Mr House deck and my pod is Voja and that one voltron commander with 3 mana and trample vigilance that can cast aura from grave
You should watch the Command Zone's deck power level podcast video. They go over pretty thoroughly what makes each deck fall into the 1-10 scale.
I still like using a scale involving numbers with 9-10 being cEDH, 1-3 being anything from a pile of cards to a theme 4-6 being precon and low budget decks and 6-8 being mid to high power casual decks. And it should be based on in how many turns can the deck threaten or consistently stop a win
My Nekusar grixis wheels has Underworld Breach, Orcish Bowmasters, Bloodchief Ascension, Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and Kess (Dissident Mage). It has gone through changes, but it's probably safe to say the deck is still one heck of a powerhouse.
My Dargo//Breeches monoR pirates got Ragavan, Dockside, and Jeska's Will for the 98 not too long ago, so I feel like it went from being a janky kitchen table pile, to a pretty okay brew.
My Skanos Dragonheart//Acolyte of Bahamut monoG dragons still fold to boardwipe tribal, but there has been occasions where I was able to get a janky synergy of doubling an Earthquake Dragon's already massive power with Choose Your Weapon in one game I won, and there was another janky synergy in a game I lost, where my Skanos hit for 14 points of commander damage, and I was able to get almost 14 basic lands off of a Traverse the Outlands, but I didn't have enough basics left in my library. The landfall triggers would have been pretty sweet, had I any payoffs to capitalize on it.
On another note, I'm not always the best pilot of my own decks, and some of my decks have the worst luck against removal and board-sweeping, so it would be unwise to put a power level number on my decks. In addition, some decks are explosively powerful, but have little to almost no good recovery after getting interacted with.
I have a laminated card for each of my decks and I use a points system to help Force a Conversation about the decks at the table. I’m curious what others think. This is obviously not a perfect system and I am working to better refine it.
Fast Mana 0,1,2,3
Combos 0,1,2,3
Free Interaction 0,1,2,3
Tutors: 0,1,2,3
Synergy Level 0,1,2,3,4
Turn to Go Brrr 0,1,2,3,4
Total Points: 20
Fast Mana (Includes some Ramp that puts you permanently ahead of curve including Dockside/
0 None: No Sol Ring/Basic Land Ramp/2 Mana Rocks
1 Sol Ring/Basic Land Ramp and 2 Mana Rocks
2 2 or More Fast Mana or Aggressive Ramp as well as Sol Ring/2 Mana Rocks
3 All the Fast Mana/Rocks/Ramp
Combos
0 None
1 Janky Multiple Card Combos/Unintentional Combos providing advantage only.
2 Multiple 3+ Card Combos to go Infinite
3 2 Card Combos Tutoring to Acquire/Combo Deck/Main Win Cons are Combos
Tutors
0 None
1 One or Two
2 A Few (Synergistic Tutors)
3 A Bunch (Best Tutors/Most Efficient)
Free Interaction
0 None
1 1-2
2 2-4
3 4 or more
Synergy Level
0 None Just Rando Cards
1 Minor Synergy
2 More Synergy than Not +.5 for Good Stuff Cards
3 Very Synergistic +.5 for Good Stuff Cards
4 As Synergistic/Refined As Possible Around a Powerful Theme/Ability +.5 for Good Stuff Cards
Turn to Go Brrrr (Assuming Average Opening Hand)
0 Just Doesn’t Go Brrrr
1 Turn 9-11
2 Turn 7-9
3 Turn 5-7
4 Turn 3-5
This point system doesn’t take into account the power level of certain Mechanics such as cascade and or the inherent power of any specific commander. Yuriko or Korvold are just on a higher level than say my Faldorn and that’s ok. I also think that more players should track turns their decks pop off so they have some realistic idea of when this can happen assuming a lack of meaningful interaction. Another thing I’ve incorporated lately is a discussion regarding the amount of interaction needed to keep my decks in check. If you aren’t playing ways to remove some of my pieces my deck is going to feel and perform much stronger. This is a generality that I think some players overlook or don’t give enough credence to.
I’m curious how others feel about my “system” for discussing decks. @thetrinketmage ??
Honestly still a alien concept for me with these power level stuff since I’ve been playing before these things started being brought up.
So far I simplify power level as Low Risk being 5 and below and High Risk being 6and above.
I mean since the other players will keep others in check.
I don't look at it like power level? for me it's threat level. what is the threat level of your deck when it starts popping off. I usually measure threat level in turns. so, for example... if people start hating my commander and to the command zone and three turns? then I would consider a threat level 3 deck.
I'd really like to see you make a video on what you consider to be magic at it's best. To me, I consider mid range decks with no infinites to be peak magic experience for everyone involved.
Man that thing about "why are you attacking? I've done nothing" stuff is relatable
4th game of a day of commander and I'm throwing a few small creatures towards the player who has won 2 of the earlier games with a combo deck (he was playing a new one we hadn't seen by now) and had no blockers compared to the other players, and he ended up scooping
He said it was because we were targeting him, but to be generous to him he also left soon after because of a migrane starting, so might have been that
He is a great guy and playing against his decks with my own combo deck is rewarding, but has a tendancy to make combo decks that are far more resilient than he realizes so he has developped a reputation
I pretty much use your system with one change. In the casual bracket I split my own decks into either rather strong or rather weak. It’s nothing I disclose to others and most of my decks can play on both levels but some a more clear in one. I don’t bring this split up in pregame discussion but instead beeing at my lgs rather often I get to know players a little and try to estimate their power based on the interaction to know what to get out. If in doubt I tend to go for a weaker option.
Anyway this split is mostly there because at my specific lgs there are a lot of beginners and very uncompetitive people playing and I try to keep my winrate at a reasonable level.
The saltiness website is probably more accurate than people's own takes.
Honestly, I think what most people need to do rather than give a deck a sliding scale of what your decks power level is, is just say what your deck is aiming to do. For me most of the time when I get "upset" at magic is when I realize too late what a deck is aiming to do. I think everyone has played against someone whose deck we underestimated or against someone who had one of those one hit wonder decks, in both instances part of what lead to that decks ability to win was the fact that no one understood or fully grasped the strength of the deck or understood how it wanted to win. I think once players understand that the deck they are playing against is a combo deck which needs specific pieces on the board to work, or that if you prevent the other players from casting their commander or having it stick their game plan falls apart these games become much more interesting and less salt inducing because you understand what you need to do to win. I think addtiionally, knowing this stuff is important because of the color balance in the game. If you are a mono black player and someone is playing an enchantment pillow fort deck and you didn't know that game is gonna be miserable because back has no enchantment removal outside like 2ish cards. Knowing that thier is a enchantment pillow fort deck at the table lets you know that you should maybe focus your early game efforst on hitting that player OR that you should work with the other people at the table to take that player down,
I recently played a game where a guy got upset with two us because our decks were to strong. After scooping the match and saying he had not fun he went on to spend time talking to his friend about how he likes to build weak decks and base them off of what old bordered cards he has available to him. If you like building themed or weak decks, thats fine, but remember that someone else isn't lying about their power level just because you play a bad decks.
i play a filthy muldrotha control deck that abuses permanaent based interaction like the seals and hesitation. i have lab man and jayce but only as insurance, over maybe 25 games ive won 3 times with them and sometimes the threat of them wins the game. but im not trying to mill myself out, just control the board until everyone else runs out of gas. so no consultation or such, just lots of slow and steady mill like crawling sensation, nyxweaver and perpetual timepiece.
Competitive EDH is both an amazing way to play commander, and also a joke. The number of times i've lost the game because of a play that was "plausible deniability" seemingly targeting me without looking like they're targeting me when everyone seems to be on the same level of threat is uncanny. for as much as i'd like to do MTG commander videos, i need to set myself to learn Olive or the base microsoft video maker. And i need to just use the text to speech cause my mic picks up everything somehow when recording.
Go for it! I use shotcut it’s open source and works well enough. As for audio turn the gain down and record while under a blanket or buy some acoustic foam
@@thetrinketmage i just realized, why don't people just play "Brawl commander? Brawl decks but in a "pod of four?" And thank you for the advice!
@@MageSkeleton I think the problem with brawl is it’s a rotating format. We see less and less people play those
Given that the most recent set of precons from Outlaws of Thunder Junction has 2 decks that are quite high power (The Izzet R/U and the Desert deck) and the other 2 are less so but good enough as a starting point.
I always look at precons as "it's a nice start but you need to adapt it to your style more".
Is the desert one good? It looks very weak to me
@@thetrinketmage It's often rated higher than the other two based mostly on consistency from what I've seen of people's opnions/reviews.
I own a three. I intentionally built it to be a three. It is a mono blue enchantment based, Calliope beloved of the sea combat deck, to teach new players how to play. It's simple. Keeps me from overpowering the table allows me to have a very threatening creature still. Has a cheap enough Commander that I can get it back out if it dies enough times without it being annoying. And I can run lots of interesting effects that allow me to teach a new player about lots of the various ways that magics able to change the rules of the game on the fly. It is a three but that doesn't mean it doesn't want to win still. There are no combos. Just fun ways to stack your cards and a few interesting counter spells.
I have described my decks as 9 and 10s. I have also encountered a 1 a Vorthos build built around "egypt" art cards. It just played a couple irrelevant cards a game and then lost.
The "retaliation only" mindset is why I've often felt like I'm on crazy pills whenever I focus down one person at a time in our commander group; everyone wants to abdicate responsibility for reducing everyone's life total to zero, despite being the main way you win the game lol
Meanwhile I'm over here like Schwarzenegger going "I'M OVER HERE. DO IT. KILL ME." as I present consistent pressure the whole time whenever I have an opening
It's extra funny too when someone gets knocked out, and they suddenly go into full-on "boxing coach" mode to try and help people kill you while they watch the game play out lmao
How is "retaliation only" even supposed to work? If no one defects and attacks first, aren't you just handing the game to combo players?
I love that you said this; I have the exact same experience in my group. I enjoy playing decks that seek to draw blood early and consistently, largely because of the tendency of others to build decks which just try to stack as many triggered abilities as possible until they become gods. My Ziatora the Incinerator fling deck is apparently "too high-power", but when my opponents have creatures which could attack in the early turns, they instead don't while holding out for some dream board state they want to assemble.
@@Dynme That's the point: it doesn't work lol. Most of the people in my group play with precons, so there aren't any combo finishers. People just have to learn to not feel bad about attacking
I used to be a YuGiOh player for the longest time, and before link monsters were introduced one of my and my old friends favorite game mode was 4 way free for alls (they worked basically how they do in the anime.)
Despite being so aimilar to commander in having 4 players swinging at each other, i never faced the problems I face now in commander with "Power levels" and "You shouldnt attack because no one attacked you."
It was generally agreed not to use the tier 0 archetypes (Yugioh's version of cEDH) and apart from that it was literally an all out brawl. Games lasted significantly shorter time then commander while having similar amount of turns.
Best part is, that your everyday Yugioh Deck could participate in a free for all, because by there nature they all have multiple sources of interaction.
But those days are long gone since master rule 4 😅 so now I play commander and sometimes red dragon inn to fill that hole.
I have a $6 (aud) krenko, tinstreet kingpin deck, it is always the threat and i run only one piece of removal,even though the deck is "janky" i consider it a term meaning loose fun.
I straight warned the last group I played with that my Sharuum deck was a ten even though it wasn’t fully optimized and they didn’t believe me til I went off with top and chip. “But you didn’t even play your commander?!” Yeah I made sure the deck could function without the commander.
I need 2 basic commander decks, i wanted teach my wife how to play(and i lost all my cards), you think precons are bad for that?
In my experience it is even a rare occasion to have a random pod of casual players who all actually know how the game (and the cards in their decks) really work, so expecting that everyone can correctly determine the own decks power level is simply delusional... even if there was a clear scale.
Not to shame, or to say I am better than anyone, most players are just not thaaaat deeply invested in MTG. Simple as that.
I also believe that the personality and intentions of the players matter way more, than what's in the decks. Personally I always try to describe my way of playing, the basic functionality of the current deck and also point out any typically saltier cards like tutors, craterhoofs, rhytic studies and so on in a few short sentences, rather than using a power level number.
Something like: Hi. I'm playing mono green midrange/stompy. Ramping and running you guys over with big stuff and trample. I play to have fun, not neccesarily to win, but my deck contains a Craterhoof, Triumph of the Hordes and a Gaeas Cradle that I am willing to play as a forrest, if anyone has a problem with it.
I love the intent but I hate when players do this to me. I feel like it ruins the surprise of learning what they are doing. I think figuring out a theme is really fun! Granted I am a very invested player so my opinion is biased that way
@@thetrinketmage Yeah I see what you mean and I too really enjoy that part of the game. I always try to keep it as vague as possible, but especially things like Triumph of the Hordes, the Hoof and so on are such drama magnets, that I rather just point them out up front instead of ruinig someones evening with them and in response mine, cause somebody made a scene... Don't need that in my happy fun times 🙃
There are still enough surprises left in all my decks, even if I give one or two things away.
I've learned that any time somebody asks what power level the other players' decks are, I'm not going to have any fun in the ensuing game.
Isn't that a pretty normal pre-game question?
@@earthbowser1493 Not where I'm from at least.
Gotta get a system where you add up points for each card like it's a Warhammer army.