Should CEDH Be Its Own Thing? | Commander Clash Podcast 132
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Should CEDH formally be its own format?
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0:00 intro
3:59 what do we think?
6:35 rule zero sucks
15:16 democracy
26:07 cEDH pushes existing limits
31:47 split kind of already exists
34:35 oracle should be banned
56:57 community
42:00 would the split actually be good for casual
44:05 tournaments
51:39 other singleton formats that lost support
58:37 conclusion
1:05:26 outro - Hry
“Just one more lane will fix it bro”-Richard
(Thanks tomer for the public transport representation)
He was talking sense until the end
@@nogardeh3720 Was gonna say - the one episode I'm fully on board with a Richard Take, and he ends the episode advocating for bulldozing half a city to put a freeway through the middle of it.
Hilarious considering public transit in the US was destroyed for freeways and look where we are now 😂 horrible analogy either way
Someone needs to explain induced demand to Richard
The funny thing is that adding another lane usually doesn't fix the issue
I love that every conversation about the format devolves into “the RC should do their job”
FOR REAL
100% agree
There's valid debate whether it's actually their job.
I’m almost at the point where I would want evil overlord WotC to manage it instead.
I just find it weird that the RC bans cards based on how "unfun" they are to play against, yet there's tons of those cards that are perfectly legal that are just as "unfun" running around anyway. So the RC should either start putting a lot more cards like those on the ban list, or start taking other cards with the same criteria off the ban list.
tl;dr RC should do their job.
Rule zero really should be the opposite: you have a ban list and then when you play with a regular group you can unban ones you like together. Lets you more easily play with new playgroups at lgs
I feel like someone just thought the views were too low so he decided to hit a hornet's nest. The only two comments this conversation needs are:
"If you break off cEDH the new top of Commander will be the new cEDH."
"cEDH players choose what cEDH is so if they don't want to break off they won't."
There, no more discourse.
I have never had a cedh deck sit down at a table of precons. It's always some high power good stuff deck that is owning the pod and necessitating the rule 0 talk, decks that would get absolutely smacked in a cedh pod.
this.
Not this. I have lost 2 large playgroups to CEDHification where a player claims to be thorarcling/ad nauseuming/winter orb urza high lord artificering "casually", forcing everyone to run more free interaction, lower cmca and ultimately, cEDH decks of their own.
@@bodaciouschad
High power good stuff doesn't mean running cEDH staples or even infinite combos. I run a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck that can absolutely wreck the wrong...well most... casual tables, but would be laughed off a cEDH pod. Rule zero is a necessary entity to ensure everyone is on the same page. EDH isn't as simple a casual and competitive...there are almost infinite power levels.
i run a high powered OG atraxa deck that runs stax and mass land destruction when i want to get frisky on high poweed casual tables. i never play it against lower powered pods, and i always have the rule 0 discussion with the pod. it would never hold it's own at a cedh table but punishes the casuals.
@@jacobalbert2603
@@jacobalbert2603 7:9 of the other players admitted to "casually" playing cedh decs off of edhrec to "keep up with the other cEDH decks".
I've always thought the RC should elect to do an official banlist and an suggested list. The suggested list would come as a "We understand these cards cause concern in lower powered stores and we want to issue guidance to store owners who do not run high powered metas" which would include thoracle, dockside etc. Basically keeping Cedh as a whole but allowing LGS to just point to a list
I really like the idea of the suggested list
They could literally just use the EDHREC salt list. I don't agree with every card there, but I agree with the vast majority and could compromise on the ones I disagree with.
It's an interesting idea, idk how it would play out exactly. I think it's worth noting that dockside and perhaps thoracle should just be straight up banned, not just suggested.
My biggest issue with splitting the formats is that you would end up with 3 formats. "cEDH", "Commander", and "New cEDH with Commander rules". At the end of the day you are going to have people who want to play optimally. Splitting the format will not change that.
Absolutely agree. I'm so confused as to how people don't see this point clearly.
Yeah, but you still get commander without sol ring. People will play more optimally for sure, but without fast mana a lot of “more optimal” stuff is more fair overall. I don’t want to play with sol ring unless it’s a high power format, it just polarizes casual games.
@@Blacklodge_Willy Yes but thats what i want? For a "meta" to form (with meta beiing what you call "new cEDH") and for cards that skew that meta to be banned into cEDH which should have no banned list or maybe a restricted. Kinda the way legacy and vintage work. Cuz thats basically how 60 card casual works in every group ive played with up and down the east coast of America, just to make my experience biases clear.
Is it a bad thing that people will be playing optimally?
I’m rather confused by this because I imagine the optimal list for a deck would look very different depending on which side of the split format you end up playing.
@@DemikDragonganger its the same on the west coast. I think maybe the best fix is making it a “tiered” format, in the same way pokemon does for competitive singles on smogon. You have fast mana banned from Casual, you have the untapped duals and thoracle banned from the new format (lets call that Optimized) and all lower formats, and a power nine and flash banlist for CEDH.
Before watching, I say not cedh needs to split but we realy need a clean split between low and high power casual, including banlist. As weird as it may sound CEDH is probably the best organized part of this community.
So do you want a split to happen or not? Because if you split the banlist then you will split competitive from regular.
@@TheHayeShawn"regular" has so many variations though, just as big a power divide can be felt for say a precon player vs a veterna playing their fun but quite a bit more powerful deck they built as that veteran vs cedh
@@TheHayeShawn i would prefer a split, that said cedh is ALREADY its own thing anyway. I want a split in the casual comunity for lower and higher power.
I actually don't think that's weird at all. the opposite would be weird to me.
the highest power levels in any game I know of are always the best organised, because the players know what's the strongest, what's "too strong" and everyone plays to win, so it is expected to get countered, blown up, your pieces removed etc.
they are also the most organised because when you play at the literal highest power level, there is basically no discussion about "what power level are we playing?" because it's obviously the highest.
@@winter945 even precon powerlevel has increased dramatically, sometimes the powerdifference is real even in the same set so thats no longer a 1 size fits all either.
As someone who loves city planning,
The fix for san fran is NOT to build a through-fare highway
Induced demand would desTROY that poor road
Better public transit is the way
Richard was specifically punishing us for agreeing with his mtg takes today, smh
Troy?
I think CEDH is too stream lined in the Meta to be considered “salty”. Your Commander colours automatically dictate about 80%+ of your deck (copy and paste) within the Meta ie. Lands, Fast Mana, Removal. From there, there are some obvious revisions and very minimal creativity. CEDH is about the minor nuances in how you setup your combo prior to your opponents. With experience, you can probably guess almost all of what is in your opponents deck (with maybe a few minor surprises) as soon as you see their Commander(s). Including any meta salty cards.
EDH varies. You can have groups with a lot of ingenuity in their decks or you can have copy and paste from the EDHREC Top 20 groups. The salt in them varies a lot as well.
I think its enough to keep cedh as a mindset change. You sit down at a table and know what to expect.
Definitely. I love both cEDH and Casual commander. There's almost no point in banning anything in casual magic at all since everyone makes such a big deal over rule zero. If someone decides to play like a jerk and ignore the talk, don't play with them. Simple as that. Cards should only be banned if they would be a problem in cEDH. Blood moon effects and land destruction is considered "mean" in casual commander, which is why I'd never play them in a casual deck, but those cards aren't banned. Everyone just knows it's best not to play them.
Honestly, the biggest problem isn’t cEDH. It’s the EDH community. As you said, going over rule 0 sucks. cEDH doesn’t do that, you play what you want. As others have said, if you segment off “cEDH” then you will have the EDH community slowly ban everything as what everyone thinks is fun is different and due to that everyone has a different idea of how the game should be played. Richard said you don’t bring a legacy deck to a standard game, but what’s actually happening is people are bringing standard decks to legacy games and complaining people are “playing to win”, which is the point of the game.
But EDH began as a casual format for fun.
Neither cEDH or EDH are problems, they are just ways of play the game. Rule 0 doens't suck, it just take some time, but it works great when you have a playgroup that share expectations and can decide how they want to play the game.
@@BludMun There clearly is a competitiveness to CEDH, enough to host tournaments. I'm not sure what you find cringe, but typically cedh players are a lot less cringe than "casual" players. They're not wasting time whining about why they were attacked, why you countered their spell, or why you're playing *insert any card they don't like*
@@irisnegro You're looking at your playgroup in a bubble, which is fine, but not as possible at a table with 4 randoms. The rule 0 in my experience varies from LGS to LGS, and is so hard to get things to truly line up. What is casual at my LGS has been shown to be higher powered at others.
@@elemint2yes it is. You just aren’t being direct enough. People are scared to talk and use their words and calling rule zero bad is a personal issue. Not everyone at a table is lying and if they do, call them out and I’m sure they’ll think twice
Richard woke up today and chose violence 😂
Richard typically has absolutely atrocious takes. Normally I just find them bad but funny. Today I just found it obnoxious and offensive.
He has some great takes ngl
he was right on some of them too so @@jacobalbert2603
Which take(s) do you reference too? during this episode.
@@jacobalbert2603
"I feel the RCs job is to avoid social media hate" was 🔥🔥🔥
It’s kinda wild that cEDH, the healthiest implementation of the rule 0 conversation, is considered on the chopping block. cEDH is just EDH. If you split the format, casual EDH will just have a new max power cEDH. There is a no banlist cEDH and nobody plays it because it’s not EDH.
On the other hand, splitting could be beneficial to cEDH players.
Casual can stay the same, no banlist.
For cEDH, a banlist could be helpful to balance the game at competitive tables, foster the emergence of new strategies, help avoid standardization, etc.
Similar to how it is like for 60-card formats.
I just don’t think cEDH can ever grow unless and until it adopts its own identity. Tournament cedh will just not be a thing until it is run by their own RC and they operate their own ban list
CEDH is not a power level, it's a deckbuilding mindset.
How is it the healthiest implementation of rule 0? Am i misunderstanding that cEDH has no rule 0 except try to win?
@haileydee9954 I think they are saying that when you sit at a table to play cedh, and everyone agrees we are playing cedh, it's like there is already been a rule 0 conversation, and the rule 0 is to expect to face everything that can be expected in cedh indeed
something Richard touched on reminded me of my first introduction into EDH. when I was first starting out there wasnt a CEDH scene and people played whatever but there were CEDH like decks that were being played by some of the more spike like players, those players didnt care about the unwritten rules and played high powered decks every game. I think that we tend to forget that there are lots of people who play MTG who can struggle with social interactions or dont care about them and are willing to pubstomp or play Armageddon on turn 4 just because thats funny to them. a new player coming to an LGS and running into Codie a few times might make them hate commander as a whole.
I remember those times, frankly if i didn't take a break back then I'd probably be a hard stax player today.
Alternatively, playing against a high power deck may inspire them to strive for higher power in their own decks. There are assholes in every format and there are helpful people who want to help welcome new people in every format too
@@jasonsavory9748yeah I got into EDH in a very high power meta back in college (before cEDH was as defined as it is now) and now I'm a cEDH player. It's so cool to see the broken card interactions that can exist.
“Causal” EDH either needs a stricter ban list applicable everywhere, or no ban list at all and rely on Rule 0 and House/LGS rules to define what’s allowed.
cEDH needs a ban list regulated just as any 60 card competitive format is regulated.
The only reason this is a discussion is because there’s a wide variety of “cEDH cards” as Richard described that are inherently strong (stax, free spells, fast mana), and people use them in casual resulting in feel-bads because there’s a difference in expectation.
Having different needs justifies splitting the format
Most succinct comment so far.
Rule 0 is absurd. The fact that free counter magic is only considered acceptable if your opponents agree to it is crazy. The cedh format only works because they embrace the banlist as fact, where as casual thinks of the banlist as suggestions
well, casual is already rule 0 either way.
If me and my friends want to create a commander table where everyone plays with 3 commanders, a deck allowing 4ofs an 180 card decks who's going to enforce I don't?
separate completely the 2 formats will just create unnecessary complexity.
IMO, if you're really going to separate the formats you should be separating 1vs1 commander from FFA commander...
and FFA commander should have INSANELY revamped banlist to weaken combos, as combos are pretty much the only strategy capable of giving over 25% win rate in a 4player game... ban every single tutor for starters.
@@seilaoquemvc2 problem is that casual EDH doesn’t only apply to friends playing at home, it applies to all games held at LGS, online over spell table or MTGO, at conventions, etc. With all those different methods to play, there needs to be a clear set of rules everyone abides by unless specifically agreeing not to. It’s no different than Standard/Pioneer/Modern versus Kitchen Table formats, apples to oranges.
@@pistolpete7422 sure.
but balancing casual is simply impossible.\
because you go out there, ban every single mass land destruction, then someone will end up comboing with Field of the Dead after tutoring 8 cards, make a bazzilion zombies and insta win.
You know that no matter how casual a table is, there's always the asshole that will combo off and kill the entire table on turn 6.
what bothers some people will be different than what bothers other people... and the current commander banlist does a TERRIBLE job at keeping the "I win now, fuck you" strategies at bay.
It bans some stupid cards that have no business being banned like Braids, Recurring Nightmate while keeping real offenders like Sol Ring and Demonic Tutor running rampant.
It also bans hard reset symmetrical cards like Upheaval while allowing for "everyone is damned except me" cards like Cyclonic Rift...
For some super weird reason, it bans Tolarian Academy but not Gaea's Craddle... bans Yawgmoth's Bargain and not Necropotence.... really what the hell?
The issue here is MUCH bigger than just separating formats....
If this is to be taken seriously, it must be looked at with actual game theory backing, the banlist for commander is just a selection of cards that someone in the rules comitee doesn't like and not something trying to stop the broken strategies that the format has.
I agree with Tomer at 53:20 Richard's example of a person netdecking "best commander deck" and rolling up with Thoracle combo doesn't feel like a realistic scenario. I feel like people get into Commander through word of mouth, and the majority of players love building around a commander, not building a goodstuff pile. It's hard to imagine someone buying into a $600+ format so blindly. Even if a player did that, would they know how to play it? Would they be able to execute the combo? Would they counterspell the correct threats?
Serge from LRR literally did this.
I agree from personal experience - all people I've seen getting into commander have either bought precons, built their own terrible brew or got a deck built by a friend.
Also if they'd split the format imo it would give spikey players even more reason to pubstomp. Right now it's glaringly obvious you're a dick when you bring a cEDH deck to a casual table. And if we can't get rid of rule 0 talk and varying powerlevels anyway, there's no real gain from a split.
My anecdotal experience of watching two people get into the game we’re literally netdecking niv mizzet decks with thoracle and niv combos. When they went to alter the deck later they kept refusing to cut the combos because those were the clearest cut strongest parts of the deck to them.
As someone who plays both, I genuinely think more people should actually try cedh. Because most people who don't seem to have opinions that, while are totally valid if it's just not your thing, aren't really based on actual experience. Experience that if had would help them, I think, in understanding what they actually want from a game
Splitting cedh and casual isn't the issue. The problem is between the 5's and the 8's and 9's/10 where "casual" can still be combo pubstomping
I think this problem is twofold:
1. I agree that the shadowban list is a confusing social dynamic, and that needs to be clarified for people in one way or another, and I am not picky as to how that is solved.
2. The actual problems in games at LGS's and the like is not "this person brought a CEDH deck to a precon battle", but it is "in the casual and relaxed format this player is running Mana Crypt and Force of Will". I would like the formats split and the banned lists adjusted so that I can either explicitly enter into fast mana and free counters world, or choose to stay inside uncastable haymakers world, without having a long discussion first.
Additionally, I think it is worth noting that banning cards on power level may result in bans that people wouldn't necessarily expect. If you ban Armegeddon, you should probably ban Field of the Dead too. Land interaction exists to interact with lands, and if the interaction is banned, the lands cannot be interacted with.
"Mr. Gambini, that a is lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection. Overruled."
But in seriousness, this is exactly how a lot of us feel.
To be fair though aren't those resealable questions to ask regardless? Are you playing free counters or super fast mana isn't much of a chore. I personally ask/ make clear every time I sit down regardless of power that I don't like playing against chaos (which I believe to be more headache inducing the longer the games go), but I don't feel it takes too long of time to clear small things like that up before starting a game with complete strangers.
Yeah, the idea that people are actively bringing proper Cedh decks to super casual commander nights is absurd. Cedh players are not interested in bullying people that can't fight back with turn 2/3 kills.
@@stanislav328Sadly this happens fairly frequently. Some people just want to stomp on EZmode.
@@Blacklodge_Willy It can be covered, but it begins to be a chore when done over and over again. I play games to get away from my chores.
Competitive all the way to janky is a mindset on a spectrum. So cEDH isnt a clear cut line so where would you split the two formats and even if you did, there would almost immediatly be a new form of cEDH within EDH. The best decks within a format will always be considered competitive. The amount of formats would just grow indefinetly
CEDH aren't the best decks in the format, it's literally a different format already. They are molded for the meta they play in, it's dramatically different. High powered commander is not CEDH, and not all CEDH is high power.
Which is why the episode became "ban list, more or no?" Playign the best deck I can will always be a thing, the only question is what are the rules. We used to tuck commanders for example. They changed that effectively banning many cards. I can't tell you the last time I saw a Condemn or Spell Crumple.
Cedh will always be fine, ban list expanding is all upside.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 they literally are though. Apart from 'metabreaker' decks, that are designed to thrive against other cEDH decks but might have a hard time in high power pods (some very reactive or stax decks would come to mind), cEDH decks are the strongest decks you could bring to a game of commander, regardless of the rest of the pod.
@@user-jr1rl5uz2d Lets say we engage in a thought exercise where we give an opponent a given board state with a set of parameters for how that board state will interact with you every turn. Do you believe that CEDH decks across the board can outperform non-CEDH decks in almost every possible scenario?
The meta doesn't describe what's good and what's not. It describes what is, and how they interact. CEDH decks are not designed to be generically powerful, they're designed to perform well in relation to expected opponents.
I'll repeat my original assertion to make sure we understand what's being talked about: CEDH is not a power level, it's a playstyle.
Food for thought. How many game-warpingly strong cards are entirely disregarded solely due to how difficult it is to cast them in CEDH?
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I get where you're coming from and I certainly agree that what you're saying is right for some cEDH decks, but not for the majority, at least not for those with a real proactive gameplan. Because in any given format, there will always be a strongest deck, or maybe a few. In a meta independant vacuum, what would that be? I don't know the answer, but it would most definitely look very similar to the current top cEDH decks.
Those cards that aren't good enough for cEDH aren't good enough for a reason though. they pretty much all have the same thing in common - they are strong, but too slow. it simply doesn't matter if you have grave pact or doubling season when all my deck does is consistently win turn 3, often earlier.
Actually when playing pickup basketball it is common to have the "are we playing 1's and 2's or 2's and 3's" conversation
Yeah, I was so confused about that point because if you don't talk when you start pickup basketball what are you doing? Especially if you're not playing at a court that is well-maintained.
Tomer with a 100% good take rate, the peoples champ
Paused 10 seconds in to say no this is not a divisive topic. Just because the two different names of these formats are casual and competitive doesn't mean that that's the only axis that separates these unanimously considered separate formats.
One approach i thought was interesting would be to do something similar to the fan made pokemon competitive rules for 1v1: tiers based on popularity.
So if you want to play in the overused tier then you should expect a lot of staples, and if you want to tone that down you go play in the underused tier. You cant use overused cards in the underused format, but you can use underused cards in the overused format
You'd have a lot of formats as a result, but people could gauge the power level and the "ban list" for a particular format would be self regulating via data.
Other than some form of data driven approach, the split in formats would be arbitrary and you'd just have cEDH, casual commander, and sweaty commander
It’s cool that this is a comment because I was literally thinking this watching the video.
CEDH would be Ubers
High Power is OU
Casual Commander is UU
Jank is NU and RU
This episode is crazy. It reminds me of your rule zero episode. This is a nothing burger. But still love hearing y’all’s opinions
It could've been a 2-word tweet by Richard instead, "Ban Armageddon"
i think CEDH players usually see CEDH as basically a different format, but we don't want it to be officially separated because the whole point is to play the most powerful stuff in EDH itself.
so i think it would totally be fine to most CEDH players if a lot of bans happen for casual, and none happen for CEDH. the rules commitee should just do its job for casual and we as CEDH players would be fine. otherwise we would have already created our own format.
edit: btw i play both a lot of CEDH and a lot of casual EDH
This!
I've been playing long enough to see multiple rule and ban lost changes. We roll with it! If things get banned from my lists that's fine!
The Rc needs to either be much stricter about what cards are banned if any or just let it be the wild west by only banning cards that are banned in vintage. I'm admittedly a fan of the latter as commander is a casual format. with the reliance on rule zero to self-balance games already in effect a very limited banlist does very little and ultimately seems kinda backwards either they ban all quick instant wins, single cards that generate absurd resource imbalances by themselves, stax, and mass land destruction, and completely change cedh forever or every cedh game becomes a no banned list game and nothing changes at casual tables for the most part because they often play with self-contained banned lists anyway
Exactly this!! There is a no-ban-list cEDH format, but absolutely zero people play it - the point is to make the best deck with commander rules
@@jmanwild87 but both cases would be fine for CEDH players, we would still want to try to optimally play within the commander rules framework. the result (the decklists we play) would maybe change, but that would be fine. and it would also be fine if they don't change.
@@JHempel13 The problem is that within regular rules the banlist is technically a suggestion. We need an actual banlist with a good gameplay flow being the goal.
BTW thanks for bringing this conversation, while there's a deafening silence at the RC and CAG. You took the bullet for us and will be remembered for that.
My only problem with commander and cedh being treated as the same is that there are like 3-5 players at my LGS who come to every FNM commander night with Blue Farm, Rog Si etc. They pubstomp their pods which are usually filled with precons and medium power decks because it’s just 4-8 packs for $10 to them. All the pods turn into 3v1s to see if we can get them low enough where they can’t ad naus for thoracle on turn 3. In the end the causal players stop coming because they traveled 30 mins to just lose on turn 4 and the causal player just has to hope that none of the cedh players lost to another cedh player where they are in the loser pods.
It just sucks because cedh is some of my favorite magic content to watch, but it just leads to feels bads at casual tables which they are technically allowed to be at since it is a commander deck.
That sounds like more of an issue with those people and not cEDH. I’d argue that people who intentionally pubstomp are just bad people and it’s on the lgs for allowing it to happen. Any real cEDH player wants to play against people at a similar level. It’s one of the reasons the format is so proxy friendly
@@kendallhaight9383yeah, I asked the lgs owner about it and he said that commander night is technically a tournament and nothing in their decks were illegal since none of their cards were proxies, so they weren't breaking any rules. I get now how those players didn't have a proper cedh mindset, but at the time it definitely gave me a negative perception of it. It wasn't until I found channels like Playing with Power, Play to Win, cedh tv gameplay, spike feeders, and Mod Anonymous that I understood what cedh was actually about.
Having prizes for a casual event is just asking to be taken advantage of. If there's prizes on the line, it's a cEDH event.
Richard, why do you hate Armageddon so much, don't ban the wincon of my Avacyn deck!
Context of how you play a card makes a lot of difference.
it's not even played in cEDH. I don't get why he calls it a cEDH card.
I think that if the formats were split, the subsequent new banlist of cards would create a lot more cedh players.
An issued in casual commander is that people don't know how to use their cards, they are running these insanely powerful cards (armageddon/cyclonic rift) without a way to finish the game afterwards.
If you made these cards cedh only, the casual players that run them would be forced to realize what the decks they were building were actually trying to do, a lesson in deckbuilding/goal focusing, and they will understand, "Oh! cedh is my people!"
I agree completely. It would give players many cards that they would have to steer away from to ensure that your play group is playing at least a closer powered level. In my play group one of our players put a cyclonic rift in every deck and just uses it to slow the over players down because he is playing battle cruiser magic. It doesn't win him the game but makes it take so much longer.
That was my take as well - just like the legacy split from vintage years ago, it makes cedh/legacy better when they can control their own ban list. I don't think the split solves any problems for casual though, because nothing right now is being kept off the banlist for cedh. I think if you want to solve any issues for causal, it involves banlist fixes - splitting the format doesn't do anything on it's own.
You cant dictate what someone else wants to play. Banning a group of players because you cant possibly figure out a way to hinder or stop them in this game is ridiculous and childish. Also what would your distinction between casual and competitive even be?
Split out Casual EDH already exists - it's called Conquest and nobody plays it even though it's a fantastic format.
The issue in my area is that if it's not on the banlist everyone wants to play it. I constantly have to play against cedh decks where the amount of cards being played is very limited. I would be happy to play another format that is commander but with a lot more card bans.
And also extremely expensive!
Tomer saying the two ways of having fun are superfluous because trying to assemble something fun is impossible vs cedh decks. You'll play thousand games before you get it off.
I definatley understand the sentiment; I have it roo about my lgs. But I don't think splitting/banning can solve the problem. There will always be a "best thing" that people will try to play. Commander's major problem (power level/playing to win vs playing for "fun") is fundementally a social problem, not a banlist one. Which means there is no easy solution.
The bannings would help because all we are trying to do is bring the power level down. If you have ever played 60 card standard versus an older format deck you quickly realize you are not playing a fair game. Each format has an expected win turn and currently cedh is turn 1-3 and regular casual commander is turn 7-10 they aren't the same game. The only reason I would advocate to switch them is because some people want to play all their old cards. But casual is a bunch of newer cards (mostly). I believe as is eventually commander will die out because people will continue to play better and better stuff until we don't see casual anymore. To a point of where we drive all newer players away because of the crazy prices. I guess we got brawl still? Lol.
The solution there isn’t to ban all the powerful cards, but rather either wizards aggressively reprinting them to make them more affordable, or everyone allows proxying.
A lot of comments claim a new cEDH would emerge at the top of casual EDH if the formats are split, which may be true because there will always be optimized decks. However, the ceiling of this new format would be far lower and lessen the gap in power between weaker and more powerful decks, leading to more games where weaker decks don’t immediately roll over to the more powerful ones. Resulting in less feel bads in random pods when rule zero is not brought up before play.
This feels like just bad match ups and the lack of calibrating power level seems like a pod failure. I don't think anyone (other than pub stompers) builds a cEDH deck, and thinks it is ok to play with people who don't have strong decks. Pub Stompers will just pivot to the new troll strategy. It also still leaves an incredibly wide spectrum of power levels, unless the ban list is INCRECIBLY extensive. I have decks with no cEDH staples (I mean, I guess Brainstorm), that are completely inappropriate at Precon tables.
The ceiling is still high enough that the "problem" you are describing doesn't go away on the casual end, not to mention the Rule 0 conversation. On top of that, we have cards like MLD, that don't even really see play in cEDH, Richard keeps mentioning Armageddon, but except in super fringe stratagies that doesn't show up anyway in cEDH because it is very difficult to break parity. Most people I speak with who play casually also don't seem to mind it if it's a finisher (don't drag out the game with a reset button), and that is already how, in the rate instances it does see play, it is played in cEDH decks.
Exactly. I'm here for it.
Those players need to get gud.
@@falconje11totally agree with your comment - a lot of the comments on this video seem to believe that cEDH players enjoy rolling up to casual tables and turn 2 thoracle + consult winning when the whole point of playing cEDH is to play your high power deck against high power decks - if someone is lying about the power level of their deck and smashing you with it they're not "a cEDH player," they're just an asshole 😂
separating the formats will in no way prevent assholes who want to pubstomp from building high power casual decks to smash casual tables - it might make those decks weaker, but they still won't be fun to play against unless we're proposing banning huge chunks of the commander card pool
literally no one is going around playing cedh decks in casual pods (if they do theyre literally j a dick and it isnt an issue of the format), this is all a nonissue
As a cEDH player, the only people I've ever heard call for a split in the format is casual players who still think that cEDH players are going to show up to their LGS and pub stomp.
I mean I've had that experience. Im still new and dont know exactly what consitutes cEDH vs high power EDH but ive defo had times ive wanted to make new friends nd play w randos and everyone has high power decks full of expensive cards and complex combos and lots of interaction and sniped every fun thing i play while im playing a proxy deck or some low-mid power shitpost. I dont neccesarily think that the formats shd be split because of banlist reasons, and like a low power deck can have high power peices to make it playable, and i dont play tournaments so i cld totally be wrong, but ive never *not* had to have a rules chat with groups. People do show up with the intent to play cedh and dont always communicate that well. Ive had people play high power decks against my precons just to fuck w me and feel big and cool even after saying im playing a 5/10.
in hindsight i might be confusing cedh and high power casual since it wasnt any turn 3 win fuckery but i have met and played with a couple people who enjoy being a dick and not playing the same power as everyone else. I dont think its a long stretch to imagine cEDH players showing up and stomping
@Amythebard69 if that has been your experience then that definitely makes sense and I'm sorry that you were put through that, there's never an excuse for predatory behavior. Unfortunately though, there will always be people that will try to take advantage and I don't think splitting the format would change that. If that person was playing a deck that most would call cEDH to do that, they'll continue to do the same thing regardless of the ban list. I'd highly recommend you watch the video Tolarian Community College put up with Ryan from Playing With Power as I think they go over this better than I can, but in my experience that vast majority of cEDH players want to play against other cEDH decks with the same mindset and don't have the pub stomp motivation. Again, this doesn't invalidate your experience and I can definitely see why hearing "cEDH" after that would sound like a bad thing.
I think a solution like canadian highlander is the best. The current version of how we try and measure power level is utterly defunct. Having a power level that resembles how many powerful strategies you are running is much more useful. When you add powerful, sweaty, salt-inducing cards you add points. This way you could theoretically have a point-threshold to declare your deck as cEDH. Decks that have no points can still have a noticable power difference but can then just be resolved with rule 0. Rule 0 would take way too long every game to define a perfect balance between decks that are supposedly all 7s (but are clearly not).
I don't understand the question? How would they be split vs kept together? Like the only thing I can think of that would "split" them is a separate ban list? You can easily tell a modern vs vintage deck.. or standard vs pioneer... card pool restrictions rule those formats.. What would be the "split" here?
Correct. Splitting alone does nothing. Splitting only makes sense with a banlist adjustment. A banlist adjustment removes the need for a format split.
The only question remaining is expanding the ban list or not.
@@raedienI presume the idea is that cEDH folks would want to keep playing fast mana and underworld breach and Thoracle. And casual EDH folks don't want to play with/against those.
I highly doubt you could just add the top 50 cEDH cards to the EDH ban list without pissing off literally everyone in cEDH.
@NateFinch CEDH players are proxy friendly. There are literally not enough reserved list cards to go around. While there will always be damage with any ban, the overall gain should be the focus. Like any format people will play with the strongest they can get their hands on. Real cedh players are there for competition, the banlist is irrelevant.
Someone complaining their cards got banned is a different issue than them being a cedh player.
EDH *is* the way more of those older cards get played but the game is better without them.
I love powering out an Onyx/Chain as the next guy but the fact is the fast mana is played to race/keep up with the other players. If no one can play it in the first place than you have to race in other ways maybe green would even be played!
I would support unbanning everything in EDH, and then just make Weenie Hut Jr. EDH as a separate format where you have a big ban list of good cards. XD
That's basically what we need, lol
😂😂
Can’t wait for Tinker and Tolarian Academy!
times like this are where this podcast hurts itself by being so insular. it would have been very easy to get a guest or two of players/thinkers from the cedh community to give their input. please do that in the future.
I mean that isn't really the point of this podcast. If they had guests regularly than sure, but I'm not here for the most informed opinion per se. I am here because of their personalities and interesting opinions. Like they don't need to have PVDDR on to evaluate how good a card is either
Richard wants a casual banlist and a competitive banlist but he doesn't realize the current banlist is the casual banlist.
He wants a real banlist, not a bunch of suggestions of what might be unfun strategies
@@BingbongRecto that's not the competitive communities fault. If anything we get broken cards banned occasionally. Flash is a good example of that. Granted there's no fucking good reason why the ban list is as bad as it is.
@@B1ngusD1ngusI doesn’t sound to me like Richard is blaming the competitive community. He thinks the competitive community is doing well and wants to organize the casual community similarly
Yeah like it feels like he's throwing cEDH players under the bus for the failings of casual commander. The RC has made it clear that outside of Flash bans are not because of cEDH.
@@B1ngusD1ngus it's not, but it's also silly to take the EDH banlist at face value. CEDH needs a true banlist
Colossal sky turtle is CEDH Tomer…
The problem with WotC having full power over commander is that they regularly demonstrate that they're just gonna print anything that makes them money. So they'll keep power creeping their cards and they'll try to increase monetisation of the format (e.g, ban a staple and then print a replacement as a chase card)
I think Richards arguement in the beginning is really funny because he brings up in basketball how you don’t talk about rules in advance. And yes that is true of a formal basketball game but if anyone has played pickup or “casual” you almost always determine whether we are playing by 1s and 2s, or if it’s “winners” or “losers” ball after a score. So i feel like commander is similar. There is a baseline set of rules in highly competitive games but once it’s casual, people play how they want to play to make it the most fun for them. That being said, if that is to work, the RC needs to make bans and rule changes based on the gameplay of the higher levels of competition, not try to base their regulations on casual playgroups.
There is no point in banning “cEDH cards” because commander will still have different power levels associated with the fact there are so many cards in the format. Even if you completely got rid of many of the strongest cards there would only be a new set of top level cards and the same discussions around power level would still have to occur.
You can easily do broad banlist of anything which makes more mana than it costs etc. And banning non interactive and almost non interactive combos such as thoracle
I think cEDH should be in it's own tier.
Lower the power ceiling of casual so the disparity between the higher and lower power decks would be narrower.
There will always be a gap, but you can definitely mitigate a lot of it
@@lorei1556 how are you defining a non interactive combo?
@@lorei1556isn't part of the fun of Commander that you can play almost all cards? if I'd want a severely limited card pool I'd play Brawl instead
@@thanatoscharunnot the person you asked, but the 'problem' with thoracle consult is that you can only really interact with it on the stack or by having stax pieces in play that preven the combo. you can't stop the combo win by removing the thoracle, limiting the amount of possible counterplay.
Flash was even worse, since you could win the game for 2 mana at instant speed, which made it incredibly hard to stop if the flashhulk player had good timing.
If you are banning land destruction... do you then ban Ramp spells?
Why?
Better comparison do you ban cyc rift, farewell and other mass artifact destroying spells since all decks that don't include green are artifact ramping instead of land ramping. So those other spells not only in effect Armageddon everyone not land ramping but hit all other support cards as well. Effectively beingg even more destructive and game delaying than a simple Armageddon.
@ianleggett8429 because Armageddon as a white spell, exists to counter the massive mana gains of green.
@hopposai787 great question. Clearly, treasures were not a thing when Armageddon was released. Personally, I'm not in favor of banning any of these cards. The caveat is that it should contribute to your win con, not function as a massive delay of game.
You want to Farewell, and Tefferi's Protection... go for it! But, if you Farewell and the game takes another hour I probably won't play against you again.
@@MaleusMaleficarumThat is literally not the purpose of armageddon at all wtf. Go look through beta and tell me how many ways green has to land ramp in that set.
The solution you want is actually a defined casual mindset, because casual players don't know what rules they are playing by whereas CEDH players do. It just so happens that casual players often don't want to play with the CEDH mindset.
CEDH is a mindset with clear intentions. You can't separate it from the commander format, because it's just optimizing the card list and game actions.
Alpha to current player here. All valid discussion points, can’t split the formats, tournaments have problems (colluding etc). I’m in Atlanta, which is one of the major cEDH hubs, and I’ve personally been snarked out of a top 4, and a win for a dual, over “buddies” colluding.
As an L3, I truly hate how loose cEDH is.
I think Richard's trust in our corporate overlords is misplaced!
Its class consciousness. He's a business owner, so he is inclined to be nice to other business owners.
Well really he's correct about corporations being beholden to consumers voting with their wallets, its just that he isnt factoring in the fact that people don't even do that properly as a whole so it isnt effective
So cringey @@shadogiant
Where's the lie?
@@905LilO it's also kinda fucked imo that any system where people vote with their dollar means people with more dollars get more votes - when 90% of the wealth in America is held by 1% of people or whatever, that doesn't seem so good
CEDH is not as scary as people make it out to be. Usually the games are way less salty because everybody is trying to win so blowing up a land or countering the “cool thing” is expected
CEDH is LESS scary cuz you dont have to worry about 90% of the social issues that rule zero brings to the table
Its not thats its scary, its expensive and homogenizing. Lowering the power level by 20-40% makes commander decks $20 - $200 rather than $500 - $1000, also makes the to 5-10 commanders less ubiquitous making for more varied and interesting gameplay.
@@simic0racle157I played my first few games of cEDH last night, and they were an absolute blast. i was playing with real cards with a budget deck, but was still able to keep some pace with the full power proxy decks at the table! 99% of cEDH players are totally cool with proxies and actually expect them! the community as a whole is amazing.
I'm not scared its not the game I'm looking for. The current band list combined with powercreep is leading "casual" edh at my LGS to become not a game I am looking for.
@@nathand6467 that sucks to hear. Does your LGS not split the cedh pod and the casual?
I really love these kinds of discussions. I’m okay with the way the format is going now. I think the only way to split it would be to narrow down the rules, which kind of defeats the purpose of playing commander (imo). I don’t see a clean way of splitting this up in its current form. 🤷♀️ Thanks for the episode, y’all!
Here a simple rule..... "No Infinity Combos" You go off Infinity, you lose also if anything 3 loops at max. + Bigger Ban List. Their should be new cards added to Ban list every 6 months. Big rules should be nothing that restarts the game (like Armageddon), like you can destroy 2 lands per player per game. No Extra Turns.
EDH is not as simple as two power levels. Its not "casual" and cEDH. Casual commander has an almost infinite number of powers. Your whole episode premise is trying treat "casual" EDH like its a simple equation where every player wants exactly the same thing as every other player and every game. Commander is an extremely complex equation because player to player, game to game people want different things. EDH is as popular and fun as it is because the light touch on band allows for everyone to play the game they want. What you... especially Richard...propses leaves A LOT of commander players without a home. I know for me, and everyone in my playgroups, our drcks would be laughed out of a cEDH pod, but would be absolutely decimated by the heavy ban list you want. What makes your way better than ours.
My playgroup struggled with this so we created a format called Battlecruiser. Commander IS CEDH so we left it alone. Battlecruiser banned all zero and 1 cmc mana rocks, one and two mana tutors, big mana lands (ancient tomb, gaeas cradle, gemstone caverns, etc.), and all "free" interaction spells. This way we could define how we wanted to play by saying one phrase, "battlecruiser or Commander tonight?"
Reasonable.
Perfect
We should for sure make lines in the sand between Cedh and noncedh, it's not just about powerlevel but mentality, if you play this game to win just to win no matter what, go play Cedh that what the c stands for COMPETITIVE
but commander isn't a game that about winning. (of course it is, someone has to win eventually.) To me a perfect commander game is a game where each player leaves the game happy and content, that they were able to play the game and have fun in a pod, going from strongest to weakest to rebuilding to eventual defeat at another player. in commander there are some players who single focus 1 opponents down only attack that person even when others are bigger threats or have more life, these kind of players should go off to Cedh. in CEDH you shouldn't give a flying fuck about your opponent's enjoyment of the game, that not what you're here for. A lot of players have certain cards or combo's they despise, whether that's MLD or certain INFs that don't immediately win, and you'll see that those players don't play those combos or cards themselves, cause they know how annoying or dreadful it is to play/lose against.
if people understand and try to place themselves in their opponent's shoes, follow the golden rule of boardgames: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." and if you realise that you don't care about your opponent's feeling in a game, then pls don't play commander, go play any other format Cedh Legacy Modern
Im all for the formats being separated, the core reason being that you get to have cedh and edh have their own, personalized banlists. cEDh would have different banned cards if they so chose (and I know they would, looking at you seedborne muse and thoracle....) and also unban a bunch of things even casual players would go "yeah why is this banned again?".
Its a different mentality, but separating the formats and banning out those power cards from casual tables (mana crypt, vault etc.) would absolutely give a more defined structure to the respective formats. Leaving it as a mindset just leaves room for misinterpretation and as a result, a bunch of feelbad moments that dont need to exist.
No more "that decks a seven?!" after getting slapped by the classic land>sol ring>mana vault>mana crypt>signet>pass. If you want to define what cards are problems, you need to actually define them. The RC needs to take steps to do this or were going to be running around chasing our tails forever.
10:15 Ive had this happen on 2 occasions. In both, they didnt have full CEDH decks with optimized mana, but they were playing CEDH strategies and said "I dont have a CEDH deck, this is a 7".
The first guy was a guy who had played competitive magic a long time ago and was getting back into the game and trying EDH for the first time. He still had the competitive mindset so he was so excited to stax the table out with Winota and combo the table out with Magda. Even if they werent 10s, they were at least 8s with unfun win cons.
The second guy was new to magic and looked up good commanders and found tivit. Again, he didnt have all the fast mana, but he still had a bunch of tutors, counters and infinite combos.
Yeah because cEDH is EDH AND EDH needs a real ban list.
Or "casual" powercreeps to the point where if you bring a pre-con to the table it feels like you are playing against cEDH anyway, you sit there and cast the 5 weakest spells that get played that game and just don't meaningfully effect the game or really play. This is pretty much what my local meta is.
You don't get to decide what's "fun" or not it's a game. What's considered casual is vague at best and constantly changes.
@patrickcole3730 then why have a rules committee? Why have a ban list at all? If Rule Zero handles everything then we don't need a format much less a committee.
Is Tivit actually cEDH? I thought he was a silly little voting deck
Right now, commander is split into 2 very distinct camps: casual and cedh. If we section off cedh, we'll just have 3 camps: cedh, casual, and casual cedh. Splitting will not solve the problem, as a good chunk of people will just find the most competitive decks with the restrictions, then we go right back to square 1
We'd realistically end up with 4 imo. Ultra casual, ultra cedh, casually competive with people who still wanna play with the cards that would now be banned in casual, and competitive casual for people who follow the new banlist but push the format to its limits
It's already three tier
CEDH
High Power
Casual
@@Naren25
I'd argue there are way more than three tiers. I'd also argue that that's actually a good thing, it's why the format is so popular. It gives everyone a home where they can play the style they prefer.
the biggest issue isn't even cedh... its a lack of understanding from casual players in the difference between cedh and high power... high power decks can still have a level of consistency and combo power that will obliterate a casual deck.. but will get obliterated even worse by cedh. there is a bigger power gap between cedh and high then there is between high and mid imo.
I'd argue cedh isn't a "camp". The majority of cedh players also play commander at a lower power level, we're just commander players with no rule zero and no bad feelings
The biggest issue with banning all of the cEDH cards is that it doesn't actually solve the problem. Then you'll just get people coming up with the strongest possible EDH deck and they'll still get yelled at for doing that. To be frank, I got bullied out of casual. To clarify, the decks that I was playing were not good decks and people were just whining so much.
CEDH games are so much less stressful for me. I know that I can just try to win and everybody I'm playing with is cool with that because they're also trying to win.
The rule 0 discussion is always so funny to me. Splitting the formats doesn't make any changes on the cEDH side. The rule 0 for a cEDH game starts and stops at "hey are we gonna play some cEDH?" Splitting the games still makes casual commander games require a rule 0 discussion. Because everyone has their own opinion of what is and isn't okay in a casual format.
So Richard's whole argument is not for separate formats but for an updated banlist. Nothing he stated is a good reason to separate CEDH from Edh. But even if the RC updates the banlist there is still gonna be a "most competitive deck" and CEDH will still exist. It will just exist within the new ban list.
It wouldn’t be a commander clash podcast if Richard didn’t have a bad opinion to share.
He is saying there should be two banlists. One for competitive and one for casual.
@@shadogiantwhich is a bad idea. If cEDH was its own format, it would wither and die like French EDH. People want to play the most competitive tuned version of EDH - if you split cEDH into a new banlist people will just reinvent cEDH in EDH.
They should have had a guest on that could provide this perspective.
If cEDH players wanted their own banlist, they would have implemented one on their own like French Commander did, you would see it when signing up for cEDH tournaments.
Obviously isn't wouldn't wither because CEDH players already don't use those decks with casual people. Clearly it is already a separate format that needs it's own balancing
The idea that they should be "separate" is a complete misnomer. They effectively already are, and by splitting them on some different banned list effectively makes 2 cEDH formats. One that is "cEDH" and one that is the regular banned list but taken to the utmost extreme that cEDH currently is at. What problem does this actually solve? There isn't one.
I feel like one of the better ways to manage this would be kind of having apoint system for cards a little like canadian highlander. then you can base the conversation around the point levels of decks. but that's also waaaay too much work to make it a viable option sadly
Rule 0 is a curse for our lgs since we have weekly commander games with optional prices if you want some spice in games. Most people bring out midtier decks and games are good but some people just refuse to play anything under pure cedh even though they might kill us every single time on turn two without any effort. Our options would be just to refuse or ask lgs to ban the player or ask the player to tune down their decks but neither of those would be a real option.
If there was a different banlist which pretty much just banned fastest combos and 0 mana mana stones and similar our weekly games would be perfect. ESPECIALLY thoracle combo since not everyone wants to play blue to interact with the combo.
I'm assuming you mean "optional prizes" and if so that might be a big part of the issue imo. When prizes are on the line there are always going to be people who go all out.
@@elijahdavila3684 no, the same people would play the same decks eve without prizes because that is what commander is to them, in my town we dont use rule 0 at all cause most think its stupid so only option would be real official bans to fix the problem
"Rule zero sucks" okay but that's not a CEDH issue. Sure, some CEDH cards and strategies are needed in that conversation, but the power discrepancies in EDH are wide enough that the rule zero conversation doesn't go away. "I'm playing stax" is part of rule zero. So is, "I'm playing curiosity in my niv mizzet deck." In CEDH? Yes. In edh? Also yes. EDH has so, so many gameplay influencers that people expect in their rule zero conversations that aren't "CEDH."
Splitting the format would do very little for rule zero conversations.
cEDH is the most optimal form of EDH... It's the same format it's literally just a power level. It's not as easy as separating legacy and modern. If some budget player cracks a mana crypt, he's not allowed to play it cause it's on the edh banlist?
Edit to elaborate my point cause people think I'm confused about how banlist work.. Adding a mana crypt to your precons doesn't make your deck cEDH. I can put together a pile of overpowered cards and the deck not be cEDH.
Yes. That's how banlists work. Cracking the Crypt either gets sold for stuff for the edh decks or starts him building a separate cedh deck.
It's literally not. It's not power level, it's a deckbuilding mindset. CEDH decks aren't "stronger" than Commander decks, they're tuned for a more specific metagame.
I disagree. cEDH players' goal -> "win at all costs". EDH players' goal -> "Have fun no matter what".
If the objective of the game is different, there's no way it can be considered *exactly* the same game.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 they're tuned differently because it's a different format. Lmao. You almost had it then it slipped away!
@@Belena711 if I build a modern deck for fun, meaning it's made with cards that are legal in that format, it is still a modern deck.. same logic applies to edh. If I build an edh deck, I can build it as optimal as i like it is still an edh deck at the end of the day.
I think its pretty funny that people want thoracle banned when its just one of many cards that say shuffle up and play another game rather than sit at a table where you did the math and know you died 3+ turns early
If you split them then banned a few hundred cards to represent all the unwritten rules. You would find that it much harder to keep up with casual vs competitive.
Keeping up with a few hundred card ban list that will be always changing based on what ever is the most powerful. Or a new strategy comes out that makes people salty. This is not casual.
As compared to a format that says we have the whole history of the game available and a few cards banned bc they just break the game. This would draw casual people. Not having to worry about the cards your buying or pulling being banned or the cards you own getting the hammer. Is very casual.
You would find pods of low powered cEDH games happening. A whole new rule zero. No I’m playing mid powered cEDH so I can play a jank deck but use my fancy rystic study I worked really hard to get.
I have not watched the episode yet,
But everything Ive heard from cedh players is that they want to play with the cracked cards like Citadel and want only enough bans to prevent horrid play patterns like 4 Flash Hulk players at the same table and generally want EDH to be considered 1 format.
Cedh is really fun
We got some banging topics for discussion the last few episodes.
I think a solution that could actually be practical is make basically a format variant that has certain cards banned, ie cards from the edhrec saltiest card list or some other way of voted overpowered/unfun cards, and just give it a name as like commander modern or something so when you say is your deck commander modern legal, everyone's in the same set. This might be a little off topic regarding casual vs Cedh, but you can keep casual with power levels along with cedh and a properly defined variant with community defined banned cards(even if those banned cards aren't banned purely on power level).
I find I relate to Seth's point, I play suboptimal when trying to make sure everyone is having fun. I might have 4 wraths in my hand and not play them so people can go off.
28:58
I just play one wrath in my decks, and mostly only asimmetrical options. I too try to avoid making the game longer by using the "reset" button, and I love to see when decks get out of control
I honestly though everyone did.
Why play 4 board wipes then if you're not going to play them? Why not put in different cards you can play?
Maybe this is my perspective being skewed by the way I build decks, but I don't think wraths prevent people from going off. If your deck can't recover from multiple wraths, you're probably too spikey to build a good deck anyway.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I was with you until you said "too spiky." Spikes plan for the wrath.
Tomer is a man of taste, listening to the Play to Win podcasts
This whole podcast emphasized what I believe is the core issue EDH has. The flaw is in the core design of the format, the social contract we all pretend to care about. Every "secret rule" and "shadowbanned card" discussed was because of the social contract of the format. Commander is the only place where the expectation is everyone has "fun" during the game. But that's the issue, nobody can agree on what's fun. There is always a give and take in a group game but in my experience very few players are willing to give up some of their fun so another player can have theirs.
Rule 0 is honestly just an official excuse to gloss over this problem. The RC can sit back and not worry about defining what is "fun" or a "good experience" because they can point to Rule 0. It's up to playgroups to decide but every group will decide differently. That's what creates the social quagmire of talking about EDH online or going to big events.
Commander is a great format because of that social aspect but it's also the largest weakness
Issue really is that edh became commander where it picked up on popularity quickly and started to be designed for
Richard, a commander game is a game where people win and lose, winning is an aspect of having fun. Some of the best game knight's episode for examples is where the jank deck win's out of nowhere like the Bear Force one modern horizons episode, the dude vibed, had fun and felt extra great about winning, by being the smallest threat. For cEDH the fun of it is playing against the stack as opposed to the board state and playing head games with your opponents when it comes to the answers which is the biggest difference in casual decks in principal. Casual often the fight is on the board, cEDH the fight is often on the stack or the mind games and timing.
Tangentially I totally would play a cEDH tournament where the prize literally is just 10 packs of cards or heck even just and no cash prize, where the prize steaks are low, so the focus really is on having fun games. As low prize pools usually do translate minimal cheating and no entering of the more toxic try hard malicious pub stompers that often not are cEDH players.
58:20 Colossal Skyturtle is cEDH. It’s in most Kinnan decks.
Second comment: I also thought it could be cool to have a points system for deck building like warhammer. If a card is powerful it has more points. Then u find a pod of approximate matching total points. This system obviously is quite advanced, but it would be empirical and work i think in practice?
I keep thinking about something like that, but it would be very difficult to make foolproof with various combo cards etc. On the other hand, even a simple system like that would have some advantages - rather than a one-size banlist or some weird multi-level thing, you are essentially letting each group decide how aggressively they want to restrict the card pool without being forced to house rule everything.
@@RedWurm yea it definitely has its issues, such as when someone wants to play an exploitable card fairly. But still, maybe still a more accurate balancing than we have now ?
As someone that plays cEDH, I personally believe cEDH and EDH should stick together. The current banlist isn't competitively balanced, and that's a lot of the draw of cEDH. If cEDH was its own proper format, it would deserve its own banlist, which would be competitively balanced, and would reduce my enjoyment immensely.
As for the calls to split the format based on pubstomping feelsbad, that isn't related to cEDH. You win ALWAYS have players who want to dunk on worse decks/less experienced players and the non-competitive nature of EDH magnifies the issue.
If you're playing cEDH, you're not looking to stomp a pod of precons on t2, you're looking for a complicated and competitive gameplay experience between similarly powerful decks.
If you're a pubstomper, you're specifically looking to dunk on people, so you are looking to crush a precon pod and are specifically avoiding a cEDH pod where you won't auto-win.
TL; DR: Don't split the format, pubstompers are the issue, not cEDH. Casual EDH is just inherently antithetical to good pickup games.
If anyone is interested in learning more about cEDH and the cEDH mindset (be that because you're thinking of playing or just to have a more informed opinion), ComedIan MTG has a website that covers most of it in a relatively succinct manner.
www.cedh.guide/
Facts
My favorite difference between cedh and edh is the lack of these weird expectations or taboos about what cards you can play; if it’s not banned you can play it.
If you increase the ban list to “split” cedh, you would just get most cedh players to build decks for the new ban list/meta. The only way to split the formats would be to have the rule committee make like a sub format and I don’t see that going well
Richard is the embodiment of inventing a type of person to be mad about. Every time he brings up some hypothetical situation its not a real problem that a reasonable person would ever run into.
How many people can honestly say that their first EDH experience was netdecking a CEDH list for a LGS Commander game and getting run out?
I agree but I've seen some people bring armagedon and some other heavy stax as an upgrade precon tho
I’ve definitely seen people - not necessarily new players - play cards that Richard mentions when it isn’t really appropriate, like Armageddon.
@@pasdcinq2269 Armageddon is fine, it is wrongly maligned.
@@adamhenwood1114 Armageddon is fine, it is wrongly maligned.
It just happened to a friend of mine. It's probably pretty rare, but he played pioneer / arena first, then he went to a commander league with a nearly cEDH level deck and was really surprised everyone was passive aggressive and rude to him for comboing out the whole table.
'Declaring something when I make the pod' - congratulations, you just recreated Rule Zero which you hated.
Honestly I think the format just needs a more active rules committee that also plays some cedh as well. Get people like comedian in the mix and I think the format as a whole would become more and more healthy.
I agree, I think a cedh player like him would be good. I hope the game gets more fun in the future lol.
50:00 I understand the point about reserve list cards, but almost all CEDH tournaments allow proxies.
See my biggest problem with Commander is when i was introduced to the format i was told it was the format for battle cruiser magic and silly stuff to do the things you can't in regular competitive play. Now, my play group has absorbed some super sweaty competitive players and they just run over everyone with OP cards and strats when I'm playing Charix Voltron "Crab Knife" deck and when they stick some brutal thing that can't be dealt with they sound like a broken record "play more interaction play more interaction play more interaction" and it becomes a super unfun style of play. And when we have the power level conversation they say "This deck is like a 7! It can only win on like turn 5!" And now the power level of the group has been turned way up to deal with these players and lots of us can't afford the powerful staples and don't want to play that kind Magic in this format.
You were introduced incorrectly. If "battlecruiser" was the actual format it would have a real banlist.
It's always been "do what you want except what the RC doesn't personally like."
And that's fine when it was a niche format...less so know that it's the biggest.
Magic is a competitive game with winners, losers, and optimization. Commander was never about battlecruising and silly stuff, it's like when people watch a little too much Critical Role and think DnD is theater troupe practice sessions with zany characters and scenarios.
@@TeamSprocket exactly. Everyone loves calling it a "casual" format. It is a social format. Those are not the same thing.
Definately agree with the sentiment that banning/splitting cannot slove "power level problems" in casual.
My solution would be to keep a relatively small banlist like we currently have, but add a point system similar to CanLander for "cedh" cards. Obviously that comes with a bunch of logistics on what cards get points, when to rebalance, how many points per deck, etc. But being able to say "My deck is x points" would give a definitive "power level" for a deck. Probably not the most practicle solution, but I think it would be the best.
Honestly I think just utilizing and implementing the canlander point system JUST to describe power levels seems reasonable/doable.
I definately think it is doable. It would take some time and probably a few interations full or growing pains, but very doable.
My concern would be that ot makes the format harder to approach as a new player. Though I guess we have that problem with power level already, so maybe that is a moot point.
In my group agreed that the French Dual Commander banlist was a very straight way to make it more casual (slower)
I would prefer starting with a more aggressive and active ban list, but, I do think this is possible, and probably a good solution too. People who bring up the counter point that its too much bookkeeping or out of game work for players, specially new players, I don't believe that at all. To build a deck in the first place you are using edhrec or gatherer or scryfall, 99% of players already using online resources to help build their decks anyway.
I am not very familiar with the dual commander banlist. It's great that it works for your group. But I firmly believe no banlist can solve power level at a format level for commander. Not matter what, some players will build "competetive" decks and some will build "casual" decks.
Magic is the same as its always been, except 'kitchen table' is commander now. I dont think the answer to making it more beginner friendly is adding 50+ cards to the banlist though lol
My LGS separates them for its commander night into 3. Casual has no stakes and is about precon level, mid comp is high power but not CEDH, and CEDH. I think it helps a lot as long as people recognize their deck correctly. There's less feels bad moments and pub stomping. It's not without controversy and spirited discussion, but we tried getting rid of mid comp for a few weeks and people hated it so the separation definitely helped.
It actually looks like a perfect differentiation. Basically you have casual, high power and degeneracy. No need for more divisions and it's pretty easy to understand.
Since Richard is slagging off the rules committee, and the podcast is about splitting Commander into two formats, why don't you sit down as a group and decide two things:
1) The ban list for Casual Goldfish Highlander.
2) The ban list for Competitive Goldfish Highlander.
Just start with the current Commander banlist and decide if it should be banned in one, the other, both or neither. Then talk about the "problem" cards" for each format.
That could make for a very interesting podcast.
Underrated comment ^
If you divide the formats, you have to define them, and especially define how they are different. And that is the biggest obstacle, in my opinion. We know what the extremes are, but where's the line? Until we define that, hard define it, we can't split them.
And if you can define it, you don't need a split.
Crim being on the side of, keep it together made me spit out my coffee. Thanks Goldfish, you owe me a shirt.
I NEED a Codfather and Play 2 Win collab now
Before watching I will put down what I think, and I don't think my mind will change after listening: cEDH actually is a 'casual' format. It's a casual format in the way legacy and vintage are 'casual': "come play our wild west format where every card is a broken card and proxying is encouraged because it would die if you were required to actually buy the cards we play". You cannot call yourself a real, serious, competitive format if no one even tries to curate a fair, balanced and (somewhat) accessible format because those people either don't care about it or are actively hostile toward it. I get it's fun to play with powerful cards, but that's exactly why it's 'casual'! The reason why modern and standard have been the premier competitive formats in magic's history is because they're (relatively) affordable and because format warping, auto-include cards get banned. No one cares about banning brainstorm in legacy because legacy is an unserious format. That's not to say legacy, vintage or cEDH are bad formats, or there is anything wrong with them, but if you want to have a true, competitive, 4 player format, you should start it from scratch and get people who are actually invested in it to run and manage it.
As a casual EDH player, cEDH is fine, I have no problem with its "anything goes" policy. What needs clarification is what is considered "casual" EDH. Recent EDH games streamed on CZcams have featured blatant $1000+ pay-to-win decks stacked with infinite combos, which IMO, should rule them out of casual EDH play. To their credit, cEDH channel Play to Win has put forth their own casual EDH deck construction rules, summarized here:
* NO infinite loops
* NO "I win right now" cards
* NO mana-positive rocks (except Sol Ring)
* NO land producing more than one mana
* NO tutors less than 3 mana cost
* NO free counterspells
* NO card priced over $100
Tomer, you are so lucky. I am in a major city and there's no shortage of money nor CEDH players here. It's sufficient that if our largest LGS doesn't actively make a call out to split the CEDH players out from the rest of the Commander crowd it's a problem. The larger the CEDH player base is in an area, the less likely it is for those players to show up with a Commander deck! And as Richard touched upon... for those of us in larger cities, it's common for new players to show up with Net Decks. Since we are in a major city, there's a lot more money going around so its not uncommon for people to see a game on CZcams with Post Malone and assume that showing up with a $2000+ deck is normal.
I believe there needs to be a massive revision and approach to the Commander Rules Committee in order to address the issue that Rule Zero exists. If that means that CEDH players then decide to be separate that's fine BUT they need their OWN CEDH Rules Committee with their own banning Philosophy! The Commander Rules Committe should NOT be involved in any capacity.
My biggest problem with the arguments Seth and Richard kept falling back on was that they kept just going back to "its too complicated to learn the unwritten rules / its too difficult to do easy pickup games it should be more like basketball". But commander is inherently at the fundamental level a social game. Stop thinking about it like basketball (although even then I'd argue their argument is flawed, who plays random pickup games of basketball with strangers? Nobody, that's who, you typically play with the same group who have an unspoken agreement on what casual basketball means to them). Commander is like DnD, its a game that does require you to talk with and discuss things with your fellow players, and requires an inherent amount of trust between players to even function. And, just like DnD, the rules are more fluid. And yeah, sure, the unwritten rules and faux pas of commander may be a little difficult for a brand new player to grasp. But that's where it is the responsibility of veteran players to TEACH the new players, just like how you teach a new DnD player that stealing from the party is wrong (even if your playing a rogue) or no pvping unless everybody consents. And saying "but I don't wanna have to waste time talking to my pod or teaching new players" just sounds downright lazy. You walking into a random lgs to play is no different then sitting down to another groups DnD table. Its your responsibility to ask and find out what's ok and not ok with the group/local meta, since your the stranger, and if you cant be asked to do that then you shouldn't play.
Holy fallacy batman
Four guys yelling at clouds.
Almost as sad as people yelling at four guys yelling at clouds
As long as players share the same intent and communicate with each other, the competitive side of magic is commander. Intent is a sliding scale between playing to win (More competitive) and playing to have fun (More causal) so every table/pod needs to find that balance. This balancing act is a big factor why my group of friends have been slowly power creeping decks to stay competitive but at the same time we've still been focused on each others enjoyment of the game over winning.
The huge benefit that I didn't hear discussed much is that if you made Cedh it's own format that you could unban a bunch of cards and possibly broaden the amount of win conditions in the format. From what I have heard, most complaints are that Cedh is to limited in that area.
28:07 Richard you are wrong. I build decks to win. If they lose that’s fine too and I still have fun because I love playing magic. It is a fun game and everybody should build to win. I heavily upgraded my merfolk precon and it is a 8/9. I have so much fun with that deck whether I win or lose. Make no mistake I am playing to win.
list of the level 9 upgraded precon? The interwebs is curious
100% I'd love to see a 9 merfolk
But you're not everyone. Lots of my friends make decks with just a meme in mind, not the intention of winning.
@@nexgreymore8702 if they're playing to lose, then they shouldn't have opinions on any of this anyway 💁♀️
@@Sandovian Implementing a specific strategy within the gamespace you enjoy is not the same as playing to lose. Winning with belcher in EDH is still playing to win, even if it's a meme deck because of the deck size and lack of redundancy.