Why I Build EDH Competitive, Not Casual
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- This video is an excerpt from I stream I did building EDH decks based on requests from viewers.
Moxfield ► www.moxfield.com/users/AmmiO
0:00 Competitive vs. Casual
1:40 Casual-fying a cEDH Deck
7:36 Competitive Non-Starter
9:53 Scaling Down vs. Up
Music: "Space Jazz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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Love how you broke this down. I do not enjoy CEDH at all, I've tried it, given it an honest shot, and it just bores me to tears. I think power level problems in commander are largely due to dishonesty between players about how good their decks are. Can't count how many times I've seen a "medium" deck combo off on 2 and win, which is one of the reasons myself, and it seems like a lot of others, are somewhat unhappy with commander. I don't like CEDH, but at least there is a common expectation, which cannot be said for regular or casual commander.
I sugget you leave your Moxfield link in the description for people to check out.
Good idea. The description is now updated.
Tuning down tends to be easier than tuning up.
People in my groups don't tune down in a way that keeps synergy because they don't know how to deckbuild.
In my experience its the opposite. Sure, its easy to make a deck worse, but tuning down a list and still having it function in a fun and interesting way is imo much harder then just putting in the new powercrept staples every few months or making adjustments to local metas
This is why I am looking forward to/hoping you do some of the decks I am looking to build
And on the "make draft chaff good" comment, my River Song wincon is looping extra turn spells with the "put card from a graveyard to the bottom of it's owner's library" effects, so I got a new card for the deck that I was actively looking for as literal draft chaff (Tomb Trawler)
I'm personally a fan of the 'not necessarily cEDH but still powerful' commanders that incentivize weird deckbuilding choices.
The problem is, as stated, they still have to be powerful enough to tangle with the rest of the pod. You might have a fun commander, but if you constantly lose with it then how long is it going to stay fun?
Some people enjoy playing regardless of whether they can win, but I, and I think most other people, still need to have a reasonable shot of winning.
in cedh you can expect all type of play (turbo, stax, MLD, extra turns, etc) with no hard feeling and usually proxy friendly.
in casual its "rule zero" but hard to meet everyone expectations....
usually i bring 2 or more decks, 1 is for cedh pod and 1 for "casual" where i limit to precon power level / battlecruiser deck / creatures deck where the wincon is beatdown your opponents.
what order are you using to do these videos? do you have a list of commanders you are going to do, and pick one randomly? do you have a day of the week where you stream and make one? do you take requests / suggestions? ia it just by what you are feeling at any given time?
I sometimes stream and take requests from viewers on-stream and from comments. There is no set schedule. When I'm going live with MTG content I'll make CZcams and Twitter posts.
The commander guides are released essentially (but not entirely) at random.
Some (but not all) criteria used to "move up" a commander guide in the schedule are:
--It's a newly released commander; All the Thunder Junction videos came out shortly after the set.
--It creates a thematic connection with other videos; Multiple "tribal" commanders were released in a row.
--A viewer requests it ; )
Speaking from experience I decided to make a deck based off a casual list I found. It was too weak. I had no clue how to power it up so I scrapped it. I made a deck based off a cedh list and took out all the obviously cedh stuff. It was still strong but appropriate for a mid power table and it was a lot of fun.
I don't play casual decks, because I don't like to play 3 hour games of Commander where everyone is tired, annoyed and looking for the game to be over for the last 10 turns. That is why I play cEDH. That and the fact that cEDH is basically just singleton Vintage without Power 9 and as a combo player I find Vintage to be very enjoyable. Plus I play exclusively online now so I can actually afford to play whatever I want.
"Tuning down is easy" Dude replaced like half the deck. 😔
I agree with the points made, but now i want an arbitrary "tobias andrion" deck guide.
This one is just funny.
From an engineer: optimizing things is hard. De-optimizing things to make them "cute" or conform to certain non-performance parameter is super easy.
Showing powerful deck ideas that work and establishing how they win allows for the individual to tune them. It still takes skill, but it's a lot more viable.
I personally like to keep the experience at least slightly fun for my opponents playing casual.
I do build my decks a bit strong so that I can ease up, but when the cards in my hand call for it and im passing on mana, i have to inevitably crush the others.
Not as fun to build down from competitive bones than to build up a casual deck.
Pauper and legacy are the only worthwhile formats to play in the long term. And legacy is insane for prices, so that makes pauper the de facto best format.
Like, the endgoal of the game IS to win, so i totally agree.
If someone wants to make their deck "fun" and lose having fun, good for them. But we initially play to win
No, it's not that I don't want to play to win but like, what's the point of playing a 100 card singleton format when your gameplay is to tutor the same combo on turn 2 every game?
I have a day job, can just play legacy lol
When I look at your decklists they don't read ass cEDH, but they feel like they'd only fit high powered tables.
Some of them are CEDH, like Godo Combo.
To 99% of casual players anything strong is cEDH
Cedh is the way to go for me simply because it skips the “Rule Zero” conversation entirely. In Cedh, it’s expected that everyone is playing at the highest power level possible, so there’s no “My dEcK iS a SeVeN” conversation where an opponent is deliberately downplaying the power level of the deck to get away with playing with powerful cards when everyone else has precons. Everyone is there with the purpose of winning, so there’s no misconception or misunderstanding of the power scale/level. Skipping all of the awkward bs and getting straight to the gameplay is what works best for me, especially when I’m paying money to enter a tournament. When I’m paying to win a prize, I’m going to play my best deck. Period.
Rule zero is ripped duct tape peeling away: it doesn't work.
The whole 10 point scale doesn't work either because people have different ideas about what that means.
If your friend set you up on a date with someone they described as a 7 out of 10, some people would say that's terrible and you shouldn't settle, and others would say they're a good catch.
@@AmmiO2not to mention that everyone’s deck is at least a “7.” So the community isn’t even rating things on a scale of 1-10, it’s really 7-10, which makes things even worse.
It seems the community recognizes that there is a power gap from casual to competitive, but no one is willing to admit that they’re playing deliberately powered down decks to fit a specific scene. Everyone who sits at the table describes their deck as a “7,” even if it’s actually a 1 or a 2 because no one wants to admit that they built a worse deck by design. Fun/Casual decks definitely have their place in the format, but what complicates things are when local game stores charge an entry free for a tournament and offer a prize without setting any clear expectations. In tournament cases, Rule Zero should be established by the shop, rather than the players. There’s too much disconnection from pod to pod otherwise.
Cedh cuts all of that out, and that’s what makes it great, imo. Sure, you will see a lot of the same decks with a lot of the same cards, but that’s no different from any other competitive constructed format. It’s a byproduct of playing optimally, and it doesn’t bother me at all. At least in a Cedh tournament, you don’t have people getting salty about the power level of your deck, or make you the archenemy just because you play a 200 dollar card.
@@AmmiO2 I think the only way to have varying power levels in a competitive game would be to have multiple banlists. PL 9 bans important cards that make up CEDH decks, then PL8 bans cards that make up the high end competition in PL9, etc. etc. but that would take either a lot of guesswork or a massive amount of testing.
@@captainbarbossa289thats basically what the smogon community does for pokemon lol. the problem is that wotc would never want to dedicate that level of effort to smth only a few ppl would really care about, so it would need to be a community run effort.
i do hate that we've got this incredibly messy and complicated format that desperately needs some better leadership and organization, but instead what we get is a handwave and "rule 0, figure it out amongst yourselves"
F for Tobias Andrion
The only reason I keep mentioned Toby specifically is because some of the earliest cards I remember owning were those old vanilla legends, and he was the one that made a lasting impression.
does it have to do with how boring casual edh is
My favorite way to play EDH was the "battlecruiser era", where cards like Avenger of Zendikar was a top tier threat and commanders like Angus Mackenzie were legit.
That era no longer exists and now the format is split between cEDH and "casual" (i.e. still high power but with a million unofficial "rule zero" bans).
@@AmmiO2 I got into EDH during the more recent era, and at first it really appealed to me because it felt like there was a wide variety of possible strategies and you could do so many wacky things that weren't possible in 60 card formats. Except, over time, it just becomes clear that these aren't really different strategies. Even two decks that appear completely different at first end up playing basically the same, because their goal is essentially "assemble a critical mass combo". Over time the novelty of seeing how these engines work is lost and the gameplay just starts to feel shallow.
@@ohno5559 Casual EDH has over the top midrange decks, midrange with a combo decks and combo decks. Doesn't matter what the commander is, the play patterns aren't really that different.
i feel like we are allowed to ask, how much do you actually play edh? your dichotomy that people are either playing optimized borderline-cedh decks fully loaded with fast mana and hyperefficient wincons, or randomly tossing together piles of whatever crap cards they have lying around, is totally out of step with the reality of what you will find if you hop into a commander night at a game store. casual decks are labors of love, and people do pour loads of time, effort, and money into refining and polishing their decks around a unique strategy.
having listened to a bunch of your content, i have the perception that you think that casual edh players are generally annoying and bad at magic. while there are certainly valid reasons for you to believe that, if you do not actually play non-cedh edh, i think it's irresponsible and misleading for you to be pumping out all these decklists which are intended for a social gameplay environment that you are engaging with on a solely hypothetical level.
The time I enjoyed EDH the most was the "battlecruiser era" where cards like Avenger of Zendikar were top tier threats and commanders like Angus Mackenzie were top contenders. That is not the era we're in anymore.
The next question is, what are the "average power level" of "casual" decks? I don't think there's good data on this. I can only go from what I've observed at game stores in Southern California, which is that even supposedly "casual" decks are still running tons of S tier cards like Mana Crypt, Cyclonic Rift, etc.
@@AmmiO2you make the best content in mtg but I think you suffer from being a competitive player and not being able see the full scope of what it entails to be casual.
Bro, calm down. What did Tobais Andrion ever do to you? lol
attack or maybe block
I wouldn't say you know the meaning of casual edh. But you didn't seem like any type of casual player so I don't fault you
You are undervaluing how difficult it is to make a good casual deck, when playing casually the most important part of a deck is not winning but more the game design aspect of it: how fun it is to run and how fun it is to play against. And it's really hard to nail it. Also you basically swapped half the deck with random cards, I don't think this approach really works with every deck you make a guide on, and I mean if building a casual deck is as easy as throwing all the random cards you own in a pile then the majority of edh channels here on youtube should not exist
he did say "fun is more subjective than power" quoting a comment and I tend to agree, do you have some kind of objective basis for what makes a deck "fun" aside from winning?
"how fun it is to run and how fun it is to play against. And it's really hard to nail it"
So this is where you, the person watching the video come in. AmmiO cannot read your mind and determine what you think is fun, so it's up to you to decide which cards and which packages lead to unfun games, cut them from the deck and replace them with cards suited to your taste.
@@xboxgamer474246 you're missing the point. swapping out Cedh cards for slightly less expensive and slightly less powerful cards is not "casual"
Rule Zero is antithetical to the notion of playing a game. In terms of game theory, it is the mathematical equivalent to the absurd or an anomalous null factor. Perhaps it would be better just to separate Cedh from EDH, because the ubiquitous false hand wringing that comes before a simple card game is the most obnoxious and disingenuous bullcrap I have ever seen in my life (outside of politics).
tldr; making decks worse is easy, making decks better is hard
Unfortunately cEDH gameplay just kinda sucks lmao. The meta has basically been solved and filled with ppl playing Blue Farm.
And honestly, if you're not playing Blue Farm at this point, you're just playing a commander you enjoy which is a casual motive.
i mean, you can copy paste that sentence into any format. "Unfortunately, *format* gameplay just kinda sucks lmao. The meta has basically been solved and filled with ppl playing *most popular deck in format* "
@@ich3730
Well, no, that's why banlists exist. Like when modern became centralized by rakdos scam, WotC banned Fury to open up the meta & eventually VO once Cascade too common.
And that's why cEDH will never be a true competitive format. Because there is no real committee to tailor and shake up the meta. Shelden and co already don't do shet for casual EDH, so cEDH is further down their priority list than cleaning their toilet.
@ammonaustin9081 Shelden probably isnt worrying about the edh ban list on account of him being dead and all.