This is the most ballanced and rational talk on the WotC and RC subject. Congrats! May the algorithm gods take this comment as tribute and be ever on your side.
As an addendum to that Pokémon example, what you’re discussing is competitive Smogon singles. It’s not an official format for Pokémon. Instead it is run by fans, where the community votes for things to be banned from certain tiers. The people actually playing, not making, the game determine rhe tiers. That’s why so many people are happy with it.
I don’t really understand the want for people playing the game to be running the game. Feedback from the player base is good, but sometimes players want something that is unattainable, but they don’t understand why.
@distractionmakers Smogon tiers are backed by data and it's not a general vote AFAIK. Even if it is, Smogon players are effectively experts in their given field. "Casual" players aren't bothering with Smogon. I have no thoughts on the tiers in Smogon singles because I am self-aware about my expertise of the subject (none). So while I agree with you conceptually, the Smogon players who influence the tier system do actually know what's up which is why it works.
@@distractionmakersSomgon is a slightly different case, because it's curated more than created. I'd also say that it's a streach to call the Somogon formats beloved. Except for like Gen III and IV OU, which still have bugbears.
@@FlyingNinjaish For me it's gen 6 UU. We had a tier leader with a real design vision that dictated what got suspect tested and either banned or put on notice. It was an example of a fan curated format being much better than what the developers could offer on their own.
@@distractionmakers also to note is that smogon is not just running a competitive format to rival the official one. vgc, the official pokemon format, is always double battles so if you want to play competitive singles there is no way to do that officially and smogon largely focuses on single battles as is the largest community to do competitive single
The part of the tiers that feels strange to me is the "Tier 1 is basically precons" bit. There is already a pretty wide variance in precon strength, and there are certainly cards included in some of them that will end up qualify as tier 2. I think there are ways that wizards could choose to deal with it, but until they acknowledge it I'm going to remain optimistically skeptical about the system.
The tier system wasn't WotC's day 0 idea. The RC had been working on this apparently for a little while. But they're very slow. WotC is hoping to put it together and have something out by the end of the month for MagicCon Vegas.
This is the aspect of this I think is a take that will be openly positive, WotC because they have people 100% geared towards the game they will be more able to make responses to problems quicker.
@@Mando0Melkor WotC definitely has less hesitancy to act and isn't afraid to make bigger changes they think will be good. They don't always get that right, as we see, but they don't sit on their hands nearly as much.
I run an LGS and we've always had low and high power tables at our League night and it has (for the most part) worked great. However, there's still a small percentage of players that just don't get it -- who drop a turn 1 Jeweled Lotus, Purphoros, Mountain, goblin (or worse) and kill the table in four turns or less and yet refuse to play at the high power table. Meanwhile, we have a new player in that pod with his first precon wondering what just happened. This helps facilitate that power level discussion and helps us sort players into the right pods. Yes, you'll still be able to play some pretty broken decks and claim they are low tier but this helps steer the conversation in the right direction.
I'd go so far as to say they do get it, and are the type of player that love low effort wins. I've seen the behaviour more than enough times, some people do just take joy in stomping players they know have no chance.
@@errrzarrrMaybe not just as before. It was community led before, at least in theory. Now it’s officially a format managed by WoTC. That might turn out to be a meaningful difference.
The tiers system in Pokémon isn't official, it's created and maintained by a 3rd party to balance the single battle, non-sanctioned, online simulator. The official format run by Nintendo is VGC, which follow a sort of white-list of what subset of Pokémon are legal for a given season
This tier solution is something I really do think commander was in need of. I think people forget that a part of what game designers do is developing a common language for players to communicate between themselves. The tier system creates a situation in which now players have a way to communicate effectively, an actual language to use instead of just saying "this deck is a 7"
as someone who have been thinking on play commander the last 10 years but never did because I dont own cards from the ancient times that many played in their commanders decks long ago, I can see myself finally start to play just on Tier 2 bracket, it seem the place for me, and if these tiers can make people feel part of something I think is a system is doing more good than bad
Re: "Players in [low tier] trying to win the game" problem. Players who bring decks that aren't trying to win are really looking for a large number of turns to do something. Maybe it's get the Weatherlight crew out there. Maybe it's have 20 snake tokens in play. Whatever. As long as the tier rules make the game long enough for most players to do what they want, it works. You can have players trying to win the game as efficiently as possible but if the rules make that just take longer because you eliminated the quick wins, then it works and those not trying to win will still be happy. For a 60-card analogy, if you tell people they can, for example, only play with cards from Standard, the game will last longer than if you allow the cards from Vintage because the card pool forces that. The jankers won't be happy playing in Vintage because the rules allow the game to end on turn 2. In Standard, that's impossible so people playing jank will be happy if they get their 6 turns to do something memorable, even if they lose at that point.
This is my fear too, if they do limit the scope to grading individual cards then people who want to pubstomp will still do it, they'll just do it slightly worse than before. Wotc can't tier 3/4 every single infinite combo or turn 5 win enabler, and the ones that do slip through the cracks will be so much more annoying to deal with because those people will feel justified wiping a table before anyone's played the game and saying "Oh well my decks Tier 2, you can't say this isn't fair" Grouping by combo/synnergy/wincon is a much better, albeit harder, way to tier things without being as exploitable as a general avoid list.
@@milii113 This is what I have been trying to instill in peoples heads, but they can't seem to grasp it. Explaining why walking ballista is just a pay off for infinite mana to win the game is important and the part that breaks the card is all the cards that come before it. It can just be an ok card in a +1/+1 counters deck to be able to provide burn as a win con instead of just swinging. But people don't seem to understand that. There are tens of thousands of cards that people can cook with and a tier system will not solve it. All it will do is justify needlessly competitive players to try and break each of the individual tiers to try and make decks that win as early as possible at each tier.
I feel the problem with this system is that there is this association going on that Tier 4 card = Tier 4 deck = CEDH player, Tier 2 card = Tier 2 deck = casual player. It neglects the fact that CEDH was devised to use the Commander banlist as it is, because these weren't players looking to play high power Commander, they were looking to play Commander at a high level. That player, that kind of play, those decks, can (and will) all exist at any tier level. What makes a deck a 4 or a 7 isn't any particular card or set of cards, it's a whole gameplay strategy and deckbuilding approach. Put simply, the number isn't how powerful the deck is, it's how hard the player is going. This is why you have people gravitating to this vague "it's a 7" feeling, because it's a reflection of how many players feel they want to play. They want to flex their skills but not get stressed out. In this sense, I feel the bracket system is a rigid authority superseding conversations about what kinds of games people actually want to play.
Depending on how its implemented, I'd agree with you. I've had similar concerns. But, I agree with them that that isn't so much an issue with the tier system as with commander as a whole. While the tier system doesn't fix that, I don't know that it will exasperate that, and if nothing else, its something that gives some kind of more "objective" way to find similar power levels to play with.
Thanks! I do have plans on bringing some of my old playmats back into the shop, just not sure of when that will happen exactly. More than likely it will be in late 2025.
I think its going to be along the lines of: Tier 4: Everything is available, except X,Y,Z "problem" cards Tier 3: No 0 Cost Artifacts that produce mana, No Mass Land Destruction, No OG Dual Lands Tier 2: No Stax, No Rituals Tier 1: No Tutors
this isnt rlly relevant to the video, but smogon ( the unofficial competitive pokemon people), actually have a lot more tiers, they add new ones to deal with the inflating number of pokemon in the new games. My favourite is PU, which doesnt actually stand for anything, its just the noise you make when u see such a smelly tier
Dockside was a one off card, and this can be seen by him not being reprinted till only recently as a chase card. Precons can sometimes drop powerful cards, but with a bracketed system those precons and the cards inside will almost always have a place somewhere to be played. Bracket one is likely frequently seen cards in precons like Swords to Plowshares, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and multi colored lands. Higher brackets will have fetch, shock, and surveil lands. I also expect a lot of Partners and Eminence to be kept at higher brackets due to their performance in game despite their shared printing in a precon. Still quite usable in some capacity.
My MAJOR concern is that they won't specifically give every card a tier rating (tier 1 can be 'everything unless noted otherwise), instead relying on vague 'things that do this' descriptions, which won't be solid enough to matter. My secondary concern is relying on anything other than a car's objective assessment (such as Sol Ring being in precons avoiding a ban) leading to holes in the ratings.
For all it's sins, I think the Smogon tiering system is one of the better ways of managing a game with a large number of THINGS that I've seen, enough that I'm surprised that it's stayed limited to a single unofficial format for a children's dogfighting game. Smash Ultimate, for example, could probably have a fascinating UU format with how big the roster is, but it would probably have to done the say way as early Smogon formats, with top players sort of agreeing that Steve, Kazuha, Game & Watch are OU/Ubers, since I think the usage and top 64 etc numbers don't 100% line up with the consensus best characters. For example.
I wonder if the Tier List could then circle back to designing cards in the future, like "We need to make x Tier 1 cards in this set, y Tier 2 cards, z Tier 3 cards..." Like, obviously you can't 100% predict a card's power level before it gets into players' hands, but as something for designers to think about and shoot for when designing new cards, I could see it potentially being useful.
The way Smogon / Showdown formats is Ubers [Vintage-Cedh] , OverUsed (OU) [Modern], UnderUsed (UU) [Pioneer], RarelyUsed (RU) [Standard], and NeverUsed (NU) [Pauper] Easiest way to digest this is UU (because it is the middle of the road). The UU is format includes 50% of the Pokemon a Competitive player would encounter per 20 Battles. This is to create variance and decrease homogenization that will occur as you go up the optimization ladder. It is important to note each of these formats are treated separately with their own ban lists and it should be noted this can sometime result in a creature being marooned because they are too good for one format and to under power for another. VGC, the official competitive Pokémon format, works kind of like Standard before they started to power-scale Standard sets way down (so that Master-Modern Horizzon could be a thing).
I gotta be honest I just don't believe that people are having such a hard time finding good games that this is a real problem. I can literally go on spell table and just type "EDH 7-8" as the lobby name, and 9 out of 10 times I end up having a good game with decks on a similar power level. I think the people in the community actually know how to find a game appropriate for the decks they want to play. Same story at my LGS. The reason "every deck is a 7" is because people build 7s bc they want to play 7s.
Your experience isn’t everyone’s experience. I think the issues pop up in players with less experience. If you’re using spell table you aren’t the average player.
I was at a table yesterday playing a newly built Kastral birds deck against a Sorin of House Markov, The Mothman, and Karlach/Sword Coast Sailor. The game got to the point that the Karlach player was swinging for two combats with a 20 power Karlach commander. He had taken out Sorin and The Mothman, but I was able to survive and remove Karlach thanks to Lieutenant Kirtar, at which point I had built up a nice board that secured my victory at the end. The Mothman player was a wee bit salty at the Karlach player, lamenting the uneven power of the deck. I was of the mind that while powerful, Karlach seemed to run out of steam just before taking out The Mothman player seeing as his hand size was small and he wasn't quite able to recover his commander after it's third cast. While I could still see something like this pop up in discussions after WotC's bracket system is produced, I expect it to be diminished as the lines of power will have been drawn and it will fall on a player's ability to build a deck under certain brackets than the power of their cards.
I actually prefer they divide commander into 4 clear tiers. I prefer to have standardization. As you said. Impartial 3rd party. The last thing I want to do is negotiate before a game. Just tell me the format.
Same. I like people introducing their deck with weird themes and stuff but I hate the negotiations like "I hope you guys are okay with me playing this design mistake 🥺"
I only see this tier system as a negative so far. An example is have a turtle themed deck which is likely teir 1 or 2 but I have what is likely tier 4 card draw effects in it like rustic study. Is that deck now a teir 4 deck just because I have some good card draw to make my goofy turtle deck run somewhat smoothly. I much prefer just being told are we playing low mid or hi power. Low being precon or janky gimmick decks. Mid being more tuned theme decks and hi being cedh or just under cedh.
@isambo400 yes I know i can play the deck the point is the tier system makes playing the deck harder because oh look I have a tier 4 card so it's now a tier 4 deck even though as a whole it's not. I dont like that as a system a long with how they want you to explain why I need or have those cards in the deck before a game. I just wanna sit down and play with the only pre game talk being is this low, mid, or high power.
Up until now, if you go by the official banlist, commander has been one of the most unbalanced formats ever, where basically every card is legal (including cancer like stasis and armageddon). Except the recent bans, the RC has done pretty much nothing to balance the game: they knew that what was keeping the format together was rule 0 and common sense from the players. Having different tiers is great whenever rule 0 isn't used and to give players a basic idea of where their deck stands in power level. I'd say overall a great change.
A problem with the proposed 'platinum, gold, silver, bronze lotus' idea is that if a card is still good enough, Tier 4 will just play all of them. Suppose that Mana Crypt was unbanned for tier 4, and there was a new Tier 3 equivalent printed that also cost 0 but only tapped for 1 mana, Tier 4 will simply play *both* Mana Crypt and the new one. Yes, the lower tiers are basically unaffected, but now tier 4 ends up with multiple copies of similar-enough cards. You can envision any number of slightly worse, but still good enough cards that would make tier 4 increasingly obnoxious to play, e.g. another copy of Rhystic Study but this one costs UUU instead of 2U.
From what I understand it, the tier system was something that the Rules Comittee and WotC has been working on developing together for some time now, and the announcement of it just happened to align in the timeline with WotC taking over the format
I love this fantasy that casual players are suddenly going to stop wanting the strongest cards or that they'll stop putting their best card in an otherwise jank deck. I wish I lived in the world this video proposes exists
@@TheMinskyTerrorist WotC addressed it, this video glosses over it in favor of fantasizing about a world in which players self select and the power brackets are used as anything other than self imposed deck restrictions for bored power gamers
@@DavMat007 They just repeat what WotC said, which is if you have a higher tier card in your deck you just let the other players know and make sure they're okay with it. It's the same rule 0 thing as before. I think that's kind of lame too but they didn't say anything other than what WotC said.
I'm a little concerned about the different metas in the tiers being wildly different. If they are too different then there won't be people 'moving up' by improving a deck they have, but only remaking something from scratch. If there are broad ideas like 'no land destruction or counterspells in tier 2', then many good decks from 2 to 3 will have little resemblance.
One problem they overlook when talking about different tiers decreasing card price is they talk about it as if you only want one version of the card. So they mention printing different 'platinum lotus, gold lotus, silver lotus' But if a tier 4 deck wants 'platinum lotus, they probably also want the next best effect ie 'gold lotus'. Also they mention that a lot of people will want a deck for each tier. Which means untiered cards that are good in that strategy will have a higher demand as players will want a copy for their deck in each tier.
Im sure my playgroup isn't normal but all of us are able to just have a quick conversation about what sort of game we're interested in at the moment since we have decks in all power levels. This does revolve around honesty and the ability to communicate well.
Really excited about this. This system will eventually create healthy restrictions depending on tiers level that will spark creativity and open new doors for WotC to design cards. There's also a very simple possibility to create a points based houseformat out of this. Tier 1 cards are 1 point, t2 are 2 points, t3 are 5points and t4 are 8 (for example). This way you could also compare decks free of tiers basedon total sum of points.
I have been organizing a Commander night as a volunteer at my LGS almost every week for six years. A tier list would allow me to set power levels in a way to encourage the behaviour I want to see. We already do Rule 0 talks but there are lots of people who just grunt and present their commander. Some of those folks are nice and lean into social play. A lot are all about the winning, and those folks should be finding pods where EVERYONE wants that. Rule 0 is not a farce just because you want to win and not talk about it.
I really appreciate your guys' optimism around the bracket system. I feel like too many content creators are ripping into it without the idea even being fully fleshed out
This is simultaneously reducing the complexity of play while DRAMATICALLY increasing the complexity of deckbuilding. There are going to be basically no true Tier 1 and few true Tier 2 decks until wizards prints the tier on the cards. Casual players will not look up the tier of all their cards, let alone 99 cards
I'm not sure the Tiers will *finally* kill rule zero conversations and discussions because it will be too much work for WotC to stay on top of the tier list while people constantly find new synergies that become so efficient they're outclassing the rest of the cards on that same Tier. However, for me at least I'm just glad I'll be able to go 'Yes this is Tier 4/5/CEDH you might want to skip if it bothers you that you might not get to "do the thing" with your deck because of it'' I don't even think that I necessarily *need* to include Tier 4+ cards but if they can act as a determent for me I'll lean on them for sure, although honestly just as proxies: I'm not gonna put down cash again.
I love your take on the shift taking place. The format is now poised to evolve into its next stage, and it needed the perspective of actual game designers to accomplish it. Using only ‘the spirit of commander’ as a guiding principle is not robust enough to be scaled onto a population-sized userbase. As you so put it: you need a philosophy AND a methodology.
they are correct, the tiers will not be used to keep competitive people out of games it will just give the the restrictions they need to optimize play. I don't think the commander players will be ready for people colming for all of the best lines of play without violating the arbitrary rules that allow them to do so. I wont need a rule 0 confirmation if I just build appropriately and if you lose thats just sour grapes... it is a tier 1 deck after all, don't be a whiner.
@@distractionmakers It wont matter people will just use the guidelines to not violate restrictions and validate their play. Its not my cards fault you can't beat me, its technically the power ceiling but still under so you just need to get good because asking me to change is unreasonable. Wizards themselves says so.
If they can assign 'mindsets' to each tier, that might work too. Tier 4 - winning is primary, I don't care how I win. Tier 3 - Winning is primary, but I want to use a non-optimal cards Tier 2 - Winning is primary, but I want to use non-optimal strategies (voltron, etc) Tier 1 - Winning is secondary, first I want you to guess which Chess piece each of my creatures is.
They can start with a few cards on the banned, tier 4 only, T3 list, and add more over time. It will be easy to sort on scryfall or other deckbuilders e.g. (tier
with the new tier system, literaly if there is 4 tiers have 4 different ban lists. each ban list starts as what cards are too good for this tier and as this grows then just slightly adjust the ban lists to fit players in the metas that get formed
I was just thinking about how some players might want to play at the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM level of power and ignore the banlist entirely, essentially creating a Tier 5. And this thought suddenly made me realize that their power tier lists are essentially multiple scaling banlists. If tier 4 ranked cards are only allowed in Tier 4 and not in 1, 2, or 3 then that means that tier 4 cards are essentially banned in all tiers except 4. I don't think this changes anything but it was just a thought that occured to me as a different way to think about the same thing.
The thing is; anyone who wants to play no-banlist EDH already can. The kind of people who do that are playing in groups where they discuss that sort of thing and play their own formats essentially.
@@IVIaskerade I do believe that the introduction of multiple tiers will make it easier for players who are looking for that totally unrestricted experience to actually find games that cater to them. Lots of players will instantly reject anything that is not "officially sanctioned" and be reluctant to experiment. As soon as any conversation about Commander begins with "what tier do you play?" it will plant the seed of possibility in people's mind, I think.
@@Mike_Hogsheart And if you want to talk to them about how your deck is actually tier 2 despite having one or two tier 4 cards in it, well, you're back to the rule 0 conversation you'd have had anyway, except now the rules of the game are set up for them to reject your explanation by default.
@@IVIaskeradeIs that worse? If a bunch of people all want to play by a set of rules, and you're the odd one out, that means you shouldn't play at that table, no? There's now just more tools to make that judgement call. Rule 0 has always been about exclusion, which is, of course, necessary for defining formats as discrete modes of play, but so much of the complaining I hear about the new system sounds like people who are annoyed at the thought they might be turned away for wanting something different than 3 other randos. Like, consider how everyone who used to play anything other than Commander has felt for years.
It's nice to hear some optimism, when it seems like so many are complaining. I wholeheartedly agree and look forward to what's coming. I'd been thinking of budget constraints and point-based wargame armies, as comparisons, but I really like the comparison to Pokemon's competitive tiers. Even if this arguably splits commander into multiple "formats," having different formats that can be played in feels like nothing but a good thing, where even lower-powered cards can have their opportunities to shine. Especially with Foundations coming out! Obvious cash grab, maybe, but it still allows an easy onboarding ramp for new players to join with relatively simple cards and not get overwhelmed the moment they try to play with strangers. Great video!
We’re looking forward to it too! I think there will be a playing to win/playing for fun split between tier 2 and 3. That alone will help players self select the experience they want.
At around Minute 14 there was a phrase: "i'm a Tier 2 player". IMO this is the core of the entire problem. The players themself decide how spiky, competetive and intensive they wanna play. Most players aren't even long enough in the game to realize, that games don't need to be won. They need to be played. That means for casual players (like parents with their Kids, or a Group of friends that know each other for half their lifes) they enjoy the time having with their mates more than winning. Or would a casual mom or dad never let their Kids win a game because those are not experienced or patient enough..... No, obviously they would let their Kids win games, even if they themselves had the win already. That's a social behavior that rewards you for having your beloved happy. This way everyone is willing to reflect what their own actions cause on other people. Most Player (IMO) aren't social. They still see magic as a game they have to win, rather than as a gift for showing other players you like to have them around you and you're not steeling their lifetime.
I agree that this can be a really positive change not only when playing at random tables on my LGS, but also me and my friends are very excited about deckbuilding with the tier restrictions
Everybody will just net-deck to get the most powerful decks in each tier. No one will want to go into an LGS playing their 2.1 deck vs. a bunch of 2.9 decks. Publicly listed companies have a legal requirement to maximise profits for shareholders (This is typically stated in their company charter). Having a rules/design committee focused on revenue, rather than player experience isn't likely to benefit players. I suspect that WOTC will start printing Rares and Mythics designed for each tier... thus reinforcing the "pay to play" issue. Commander is popular enough that WOTC can mess with the format, and people will still keep buying and playing. There remains a small chance that someone will create "Unofficial EDH Team Dot Com" and gain enough traction to guide the format in he interests of players. (Not competing in tournaments)
It's a lot easier to print pushed cards when EDH is divided into neat, well defined formats and they have direct control of the ban list. Prepare to start seeing WotC do what Konami does - they will print pushed shit for EDH, only to ban it when the time comes for them to sell the next set containing the next pushed card. Rinse and repeat.
I'll note that the Pokemon tiers are not official by The Pokemon Company, but rather by Smogon; however, Smogon is the de facto authority of competitive Pokemon as competitive Pokemon is officially only done in the VGC format. That said, VGC do also have different "tiers", but you can't really choose which to play - the Regulation regularly changes and affects what pokemon you can use, but there's only ever 1 Regulation at any time. It's also not based on power, for instance some Regulation may ban all Legendary pokemon despite some Legendary pokemon being underpowered. But you can imagine that Regulations that allow more pokemon are naturally gonna be a higher power level. I'll note though that Smogon generally decides the tiering of pokemon by usage rates. They also ban problematic pokemon, either by quickban when it is deemed to be too obviously a problem, or by letting the community vote, and banning the pokemon if a 60% majority vote to ban. I'll also note that some pokemon may be tiered as something like "UUBL" which means that they are banned from the tier UU, but are completely unviable from the tier above, for instance because there's already a pokemon that does the exact same thing but better. And yes, people are still upset at Smogon
Best conversation by far I've seen on this topic. Everyone has a valid opinion from being a long term player. However, this is the first game design standpoint that shows why we should be optimistic about WOTZ taking commander over. Look at pauper, many players in that format are saying it's the best it's been in a long time. I like this viewpoint of giving them a chance and giving some much needed structure to the format
Tiers just creates 4 separate formats. Part of the appeal of EDH was that it was a janky anything-goes thing, but WotC ruined that with their made for commander cards and are now trying to walk it back by splitting up the format into multiple different games. It also doesn't fundamentally solve the issues they're trying to fix, just creates a different way to optimise. There will still be people playing "unfun" tier 2 decks that shut down or lock out opponents, or decks that are just way faster than anyone else at the table and win through combos that are still good, but just not cEDH good.
I like you guys, it's good to hear your thoughts. I suppose it was only a matter of time before some kind of shake-up. I started playing "EDH" in 2009ish, and even then the "arms-race" and difficult task of everyone getting the game they were looking for existed. I'm looking forward to seeing how they envision these tiers.
I’m not sure there is anyway to perfectly solve that problem, but now we will have 4 ceilings for players to self select from instead of 1 and a bunch of opinions about where the others are.
I'm kinda exited for lower tier "cedh". I play mostly cedh, and one of my biggest annoyances is generic colors deck, especially with partner commanders. One of my favorite parts of commander is creating decks that synergize cards with your commander. For example, 3 of my favorite cedh decks are The Gitrog monster, Tayam, and Zada. I think the idea of playing in lower tiers where more generically good cards are "banned" might lead to metas with greater focus on commander synergies and that seems really cool.
Thanks for your views which are always interesting. The tier system might actually bring me back to the Commander table. Not that I play expecting to win but I want to play any card I fancy without having to listen to whining.
My only complaint with this system is that I can no longer hold up the bad cards I like with amazing cards. Vampiric tutor is busted but not when you are searching for Grizzly Bears.
@@distractionmakers Sure, but if all the tutors are moved to tier 3, that just makes tier 2 decks that previously relied on them (and would still be tier 2 with them) way worse for no gain.
"Opportunities for more cards to see play" - This is largely the principle behind Smogon tiering fyi. People want to play with their favorite pokemon, and the different tiers create homes for many pokemon. Not all, you'd need near infinite tiers to make every pokemon viable somewhere, but it does a good job of letting many pokemon find competitive viability where there otherwise wouldn't be any. That said, I also agree that this will likely reduce the casualization of commander.
Thanks for this. As someone who is a bit dormant on commander I wasn't sure how I felt about any of the upheaval going on. The way you all broke down your interpretation of the plan Wizards laid out is very helpful. And if what you say is true then I do think it can be a really good thing overall, and also makes me excited to get back into commander.
Re: competitive Pokemon: the tiers you’re referring to are for single battles, which is analogous to commander: an alternative to the official competitive format, with an external fan-run rules committee. The actual competitive Pokemon format is all double-battles and doesn’t have a tier system. They just have what amounts to a “ban list,” and it’s mostly just that you can’t normally use legendary Pokemon, except in “restricted format” tournaments, which allow a limited number of legendaries (usually two).
I agree with the statement that "power levels" are just refering to play patterns and should be used more like a vibe check than an actual structured and well thought out thing. Certain cards promote certain play patterns, but you are free to diverge from those patterns. As for the new system, I never had to give a rating to my decks (my playgroup is very chill), but if I absolutely had to, I would steer away from numbers and just use terms like low/mid/high power or competitive level, with the focus on how much or how efficient the deck aims to win the game being the main factor. I hope this new system to be something similar to that logic, with the highest label being "have you tried cEDH?" tier of cards.
I'm so happy with the endpoint of what was a horrifying few weeks. I've been pushed out and shunned from playing commander at pick up games because I enjoy playing "too competitively" and I actually can't enjoy the game otherwise. Now, I'll be able to build within the limits of whatever bracket people are playing in, and I'll be satisfied while also being able to play with anyone.
You kinda mean like how the Commander players came in and made it completely impossible for 60 card constructed players to interact with the game in paper at all? I'm sorry but I don't feel bad for you.
One frustration I have is that I am someone who actually enjoys playing against "negative" play patterns as long as they are flavorful. (Just for example, my favorite time to play Standard was "Zendikar" and "Mirrodin Besieged" because I thought Annihilater and Infect were flavorful mechanics.) But that doesn't necessarily mean I like "high-powered" games. And it doesn't *necessarily* sound like there will be much reason for people to have decks that include those kind of "feels bad" mechanics, but don't have super-fast/consistent decks playing expensive/must-buy staples. I would have preferred there instead be, like, 2 axes of ranking decks. One that is just removing mechanic taboos, and one that is instead focusing on how much fast-mana, card draw, and raw power there is. All in all, I'm still optimistic after listening to the fireside chat, but that is just something that stood out to me as an unsolved problem.
I almost feel like they should use a point system similar to WH40k. Like you can use Tiers if you want for individual cards but then there's less ambiguity if you have, say, an Ancient Tomb in your Tomb Deck, then your deck's point total would place it in a lower level since the rankings as a whole has more granularity and less ambiguity that you have to work with. CEDH = Anything goes, 50pts or less = Pretty Casual (level 2-4), etc. edit: oops didn't hold shift when hitting return, but also I don't think the issue of min/maxing would be much of a problem because of the gigantic size of the card pool. You can set most cards found in precons as having 0 points and still have the ability to adjust card values and bracket ranges in response to situations that come up.
I think the that having more competitive players in a playgroup that win more often isn't really as much of a problem as it seems by itself. I think everyone that has played any game with a group card games, video games, fighting games, board games etc, will have someone in the play group that has status as a more competitive player that tends to win more often or all the time. With games that have more variance, it always possible for the underdog to win, and when an underdog or new player in a playgroup beats the more competitive kind of mythical status player, its a really fun moment. That's the kind of thing someone will think about for years after. The time when they were a noob and they beat the best player in the group and it motivated them to keep playing. And in a way having the tiers keeps the amount of investment of money/time in deckbuilding from creating too much of a difference that the variance and hope for david to beat goliath to get too small. I think the issue is that some people that re really competitive, are just assholes about it. But that's just people being people, nothing wizards can do rules wise will really help with that.
Thank you for this video, there' a whole lot of people making videos saying the opposite but "exposing the truth that has always been there" is exactly what it is: nothing really changes for casuals, if not the fact that they will get a better experience overall. This change was long overdue, so long "no worries my deck is a 7".
Something that I imagine could be useful as well, if you have a player in your pod who is much better or more competitive than the rest, you can have them play down a tier to keep things balanced.
As you said, I like the self selection element of the tier system; but I'm worried about how "synergy packages" slot into the tiers and does that mean some commanders can only be kitchen table commanders because they need a teir 3 card to "work" or "it's a +1/+1 deck so it should have hardened scales".
This seems likely. You can have a rule 0 conversation about the 1 tier 3 card you need, but at official events I wouldn’t expect to be able to play it just to honor the system if nothing else.
I am so sad seeing so many people distressed about the biggest Format of the biggest trading card game in the world, not being managed by 5 people who can't even agree unanimously on their 2nd action as a group. WotC owns this game and I fully understand not trusting WotC & Hasbro to not be greedy with their design choices, but we as a community have proven that we won't respect the actions of anyone other than WotC themselves.
@@BingeThinker1814 I even doubt that. There will always be incredibly bad actors, and a bracket system isn't going to fix that. I would wager that those who were making death threats more than likely did not care about the bans in terms of playability, but due to their own financial investment in those cards.
The tier list obviously isn't gonna *replace* Rule 0 convo. It'll simply be a tool to make it easier. It's not like you're gonna have to pull out a deck list and start reading cards a numbers. Just say "I have a couple teir 4 cards but the deck is mostly tier 3." Or "I'd really like to play a tier 2-feeling game. If you have a lot of tier 3 or 4 cards in your deck, would you mind playing that one next game?"
1:50 "we had a 1-10 system" is generous. We had "people should rate their own decks out of 10 with no guidelines whatsoever", entirely based on the infallible idea that players would be unbiased and accurate about that.
Im also really excited to try to play at the max power of a power level. Before I was cutting sooo many cards and feeling super iffy when I was playing certain decks that were aggro, in playing the super aggro anthems and stax. So having a direct list to build around and find my favorite cards in each tier is awesome.
There's gonna be sooo much more talk about these tiers now. Used to be only 'X card should be banned/undbanned' now it will be 'X card should be tier Y instead of Z'!!
That will be interesting. I think it’s a good thing to have nuance instead of a binary yes/no. Also, hopefully we will have the ability to point to the list as the impartial 3rd party.
This tier system is almost certainly going to drastically affect the secondary market as well. Be prepared for a whole slew of cards to either jump or drop in price based on these tiers. Reason: if TOs use these tiers to establish the rules for their tournaments, then cards that are played in the more popular tournament formats/tiers are going to be more expensive, because there will now be an artificially increased demand for those cards. Similarly, and at the same time conversely, cards that are placed in to the higher tiers but that were not considered that strong before will also jump in price because there will be a higher demand for those cards as well - and also, some cards that were *thought* to be tier 4 or tier three, but get placed lower than expected, will probably see a decrease in price, because they will be less desireable (at least to some). This will also show WotC what they should incentivize reprinting, which will further cause market fluctuations. Magic isn't necessarily an investment - but that doesn't mean that all the cards should be worth nothing either. People don't like when things they spent money on suddenly become worthless, and with how WotC runs things, that's exactly what's going to happen to the majority of single cards today. Magic is dead, long live magic. P.S. A note concerning "printing cards/staples for each tier." Yes, that will almost certainly happen - and if it was happening only inside of commander products, that wouldn't be a problem. But it won't just happen in commander products, and if you need proof, look at Nadu. We are going to get *a lot* more Nadus and TORs. And that isn't good. P.S.S. Concerning whether or not Wizards has been thinking about this for a while. They absolutely have been. There is almost no way that the ban announcement was made without WotC's involvement, and years long conversations about it.
tier two ceiling could be something easy as, max of 2 board wipes, yada yada general rules like that until there is specific bans made after lots of data is gathered
I'll be happy with the tier list system if and only if Sol Ring is tier 2. There's a 0% chance it goes in tier 4 where it belongs but if tier 1 can be a tier where players can seriously restrict their deckbuilding (and get away from the most powerful card in the format) I think the format would benefit from it. It makes logical sense for precons to be tier 2 as well, that should probably be the baseline of the format. When I think of the absolute bottom tier a commander deck can be I think of ladies looking to the left tribal, or chair tribal. Those shouldn't be in the same tier as a precon. Being able to build a tier 1, 2, or 3 deck where the higher tiers are treated as an extended banlist sounds so good for the format.
I think in Pokemon pauper would be like Little Cup (LC), where you only used not-fully-evolved pokemon (minus a few banned ones like chansey). So if you want to play bulbasaur and mienfoo, and not in some cheesy way like FEAR Rattata, with a serious look on your face then you can. Neverused (NU) is like playing "modern but everything is banned until Siege Rhino is good again."
this is an absolutely wild ride. I think WoTC is gonna do well by the format for a few years, to regain trust and such. Eventually those diabolic whispers are gonna seep in and have them take advantage of it
Initially I didn't have any expectations for the new system to fix the problems with rule 0. You've explained it in a way that definitely helps ease that mentality for me, however that doesn't mean I trust WotC to maintain this in an effective manner. To address your point about proxies towards the end: WotC is responsible for the health of their game. Obviously if everyone proxies the company, game, and community will collapse. This is not an issue for the community, but for WotC to incentivise people to continue supporting them. If WotC continues to push the product prices, push power crept chase cards, reduce cards (aftermath sets), then they will deserve any amount of community push back in the form of proxies.
I think we need a voice to tell Wizards to add a tier for jank, the document puts precons on the lower tier, making jank have to compete with precon, and that's basically erasing the jank experience.
the reason they have a jump start on the Tier system is because the RC had been working on this system which is something they announced in their ban list update when they banned Lotus, crypt, dockside, and nadu.
I think this should be the brackets Bracket 4 -> CEDH ( no ban list or very limited ban list) Bracket 3 -> Standard Commander ( no fast mana (except sol ring) / 2 card combos / mass land destruction anything that creates wincons before T6) Bracket 2 -> Casual ( no mythic , no rares (this includes reprints at higher rarity) + ban list from Bracket 3) / Bracket 1 -> Kindred ( Bracket 3 bans + cards that destroys kindred builds exclusively) The idea that "one" card makes your deck a higher bracket but lower without it is silly. Commander is all about synergy and a ban list serves to micro manage what access players have to "that synergy" the above bracket system allows archetypes (albeit at lower consistency and optimization at lower brackets) to continue exist and allows WOTC to monitors those archetypes based on "expected experience"
Wizards having more resources than 5 volunteers to manage a format this big is indeed promising. It has been implied that the RC was already working on the bracket system, but again, 5 people with no dedicated means for the deed; what's going to take Wizards a few weeks would only be finished by the RC in half a year, maybe more? Things are moving fast already, buckle up! I hope Wizards doesn't go overboard with the ban list re-evaluation. Some cards will probably make sense to unban and tie to a bracket where one would expect more interaction and disruption, such as anticlimactic wins like Coalition Victory or Biorhythm, or oppressive play patterns such as Braids, both Titans or Sylvan Primordial.
I'm fairly optimistic for the tier system. My one worry is that I hope the Command zone isn't tiered. What I mean is, I hope I can build and play Selvala, Heart of the Wilds decks in both tier 1 and tier 4. That the tier system only applies to the 99.
Having a Precon level is enough to get me looking forward to buying my first commander deck. It comes down to costs. Precons back in the old days as I remember were no good. Im not a fan of the cross overs but I can see myself buying a commander one now that I will be able to know that I can bring it anywhere and be able to have a fair game. Everyone rightly deserves to want to win what makes it fun or not fun is the feeling of unfairness for me.
Hoping for two things: 1. The new Commander design team doesn't just release the Commander specifc cards to Standard again and we don't get another Nadu. Cause that Modern tournament was horrible to watch. 2. If WOTC are in complete control of Commander we get a decent multiplayer format in Arena instead of the Brawl format. Because my country's MTG scene is microscopic and I can't find it anymore, it will be expensive and impractical to buy paper cards that I'm going to use like once a year, maybe. Went to cons years ago and bought decks and boosters but they got lost.
Here’s the link to Gavin’s Kickstarter Pre-launch:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lastditchgames/bullets-and-teeth-and-aliens?ref=him1bs
the name of your game alone should bring tons of players, nice stuff
This is the most ballanced and rational talk on the WotC and RC subject. Congrats! May the algorithm gods take this comment as tribute and be ever on your side.
Thank you!
As an addendum to that Pokémon example, what you’re discussing is competitive Smogon singles. It’s not an official format for Pokémon. Instead it is run by fans, where the community votes for things to be banned from certain tiers. The people actually playing, not making, the game determine rhe tiers. That’s why so many people are happy with it.
I don’t really understand the want for people playing the game to be running the game. Feedback from the player base is good, but sometimes players want something that is unattainable, but they don’t understand why.
@distractionmakers Smogon tiers are backed by data and it's not a general vote AFAIK.
Even if it is, Smogon players are effectively experts in their given field. "Casual" players aren't bothering with Smogon. I have no thoughts on the tiers in Smogon singles because I am self-aware about my expertise of the subject (none).
So while I agree with you conceptually, the Smogon players who influence the tier system do actually know what's up which is why it works.
@@distractionmakersSomgon is a slightly different case, because it's curated more than created. I'd also say that it's a streach to call the Somogon formats beloved. Except for like Gen III and IV OU, which still have bugbears.
@@FlyingNinjaish For me it's gen 6 UU. We had a tier leader with a real design vision that dictated what got suspect tested and either banned or put on notice. It was an example of a fan curated format being much better than what the developers could offer on their own.
@@distractionmakers also to note is that smogon is not just running a competitive format to rival the official one. vgc, the official pokemon format, is always double battles so if you want to play competitive singles there is no way to do that officially and smogon largely focuses on single battles as is the largest community to do competitive single
The part of the tiers that feels strange to me is the "Tier 1 is basically precons" bit. There is already a pretty wide variance in precon strength, and there are certainly cards included in some of them that will end up qualify as tier 2. I think there are ways that wizards could choose to deal with it, but until they acknowledge it I'm going to remain optimistically skeptical about the system.
The tier system wasn't WotC's day 0 idea. The RC had been working on this apparently for a little while. But they're very slow. WotC is hoping to put it together and have something out by the end of the month for MagicCon Vegas.
This is the aspect of this I think is a take that will be openly positive, WotC because they have people 100% geared towards the game they will be more able to make responses to problems quicker.
@@Mando0Melkor WotC definitely has less hesitancy to act and isn't afraid to make bigger changes they think will be good. They don't always get that right, as we see, but they don't sit on their hands nearly as much.
@@JD-gk7eh TOR in Modern being in 50% of decks : 👀
@@crisgon9552 Clearly they are afraid Gollum will snatch the ring and Sauron will get it if they try to throw it into Mt Doom.
All of which was clearly stated in the video.
I run an LGS and we've always had low and high power tables at our League night and it has (for the most part) worked great. However, there's still a small percentage of players that just don't get it -- who drop a turn 1 Jeweled Lotus, Purphoros, Mountain, goblin (or worse) and kill the table in four turns or less and yet refuse to play at the high power table. Meanwhile, we have a new player in that pod with his first precon wondering what just happened.
This helps facilitate that power level discussion and helps us sort players into the right pods. Yes, you'll still be able to play some pretty broken decks and claim they are low tier but this helps steer the conversation in the right direction.
I'd go so far as to say they do get it, and are the type of player that love low effort wins. I've seen the behaviour more than enough times, some people do just take joy in stomping players they know have no chance.
Commander is dead; long live Commander
Nah. It is alive just as before.
M in &’nnj no
Commander will be fine. You’re being overly dramatic
Oh, the romance of being melodramatic lmao
@@errrzarrrMaybe not just as before. It was community led before, at least in theory. Now it’s officially a format managed by WoTC. That might turn out to be a meaningful difference.
The tiers system in Pokémon isn't official, it's created and maintained by a 3rd party to balance the single battle, non-sanctioned, online simulator. The official format run by Nintendo is VGC, which follow a sort of white-list of what subset of Pokémon are legal for a given season
This tier solution is something I really do think commander was in need of.
I think people forget that a part of what game designers do is developing a common language for players to communicate between themselves. The tier system creates a situation in which now players have a way to communicate effectively, an actual language to use instead of just saying "this deck is a 7"
Great point!
as someone who have been thinking on play commander the last 10 years but never did because I dont own cards from the ancient times that many played in their commanders decks long ago, I can see myself finally start to play just on Tier 2 bracket, it seem the place for me, and if these tiers can make people feel part of something I think is a system is doing more good than bad
Proxy?
Re: "Players in [low tier] trying to win the game" problem. Players who bring decks that aren't trying to win are really looking for a large number of turns to do something. Maybe it's get the Weatherlight crew out there. Maybe it's have 20 snake tokens in play. Whatever. As long as the tier rules make the game long enough for most players to do what they want, it works. You can have players trying to win the game as efficiently as possible but if the rules make that just take longer because you eliminated the quick wins, then it works and those not trying to win will still be happy.
For a 60-card analogy, if you tell people they can, for example, only play with cards from Standard, the game will last longer than if you allow the cards from Vintage because the card pool forces that. The jankers won't be happy playing in Vintage because the rules allow the game to end on turn 2. In Standard, that's impossible so people playing jank will be happy if they get their 6 turns to do something memorable, even if they lose at that point.
This is my fear too, if they do limit the scope to grading individual cards then people who want to pubstomp will still do it, they'll just do it slightly worse than before. Wotc can't tier 3/4 every single infinite combo or turn 5 win enabler, and the ones that do slip through the cracks will be so much more annoying to deal with because those people will feel justified wiping a table before anyone's played the game and saying "Oh well my decks Tier 2, you can't say this isn't fair"
Grouping by combo/synnergy/wincon is a much better, albeit harder, way to tier things without being as exploitable as a general avoid list.
@@milii113 This is what I have been trying to instill in peoples heads, but they can't seem to grasp it.
Explaining why walking ballista is just a pay off for infinite mana to win the game is important and the part that breaks the card is all the cards that come before it. It can just be an ok card in a +1/+1 counters deck to be able to provide burn as a win con instead of just swinging. But people don't seem to understand that.
There are tens of thousands of cards that people can cook with and a tier system will not solve it. All it will do is justify needlessly competitive players to try and break each of the individual tiers to try and make decks that win as early as possible at each tier.
I feel the problem with this system is that there is this association going on that Tier 4 card = Tier 4 deck = CEDH player, Tier 2 card = Tier 2 deck = casual player. It neglects the fact that CEDH was devised to use the Commander banlist as it is, because these weren't players looking to play high power Commander, they were looking to play Commander at a high level. That player, that kind of play, those decks, can (and will) all exist at any tier level.
What makes a deck a 4 or a 7 isn't any particular card or set of cards, it's a whole gameplay strategy and deckbuilding approach. Put simply, the number isn't how powerful the deck is, it's how hard the player is going. This is why you have people gravitating to this vague "it's a 7" feeling, because it's a reflection of how many players feel they want to play. They want to flex their skills but not get stressed out. In this sense, I feel the bracket system is a rigid authority superseding conversations about what kinds of games people actually want to play.
Depending on how its implemented, I'd agree with you. I've had similar concerns. But, I agree with them that that isn't so much an issue with the tier system as with commander as a whole. While the tier system doesn't fix that, I don't know that it will exasperate that, and if nothing else, its something that gives some kind of more "objective" way to find similar power levels to play with.
This channel is criminally underrated. Amazing videos. Forrest, wondering if any of the unavailable items in your shop will return?
Thanks! I do have plans on bringing some of my old playmats back into the shop, just not sure of when that will happen exactly. More than likely it will be in late 2025.
Right? RIGHT?!
@@ForrestImel I need that 5 Headed dragon mat like yesterday 😫so amazing.
@@ForrestImelI need that draggy mat too 🤯
I think its going to be along the lines of:
Tier 4: Everything is available, except X,Y,Z "problem" cards
Tier 3: No 0 Cost Artifacts that produce mana, No Mass Land Destruction, No OG Dual Lands
Tier 2: No Stax, No Rituals
Tier 1: No Tutors
Regarding proxies, my table decided that we can only proxy one quarter of our deck, and it's been working pretty well for us.
this isnt rlly relevant to the video, but smogon ( the unofficial competitive pokemon people), actually have a lot more tiers, they add new ones to deal with the inflating number of pokemon in the new games. My favourite is PU, which doesnt actually stand for anything, its just the noise you make when u see such a smelly tier
Thanks for the info! PU is funny 😆
Happy to hear your takes on this. Using the precons as an example of power level is weak when dockside and trade secrets were printed in precons.
Dockside was a one off card, and this can be seen by him not being reprinted till only recently as a chase card. Precons can sometimes drop powerful cards, but with a bracketed system those precons and the cards inside will almost always have a place somewhere to be played.
Bracket one is likely frequently seen cards in precons like Swords to Plowshares, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and multi colored lands. Higher brackets will have fetch, shock, and surveil lands. I also expect a lot of Partners and Eminence to be kept at higher brackets due to their performance in game despite their shared printing in a precon. Still quite usable in some capacity.
Your game looks sick! Congrats on getting to release!!!
Thank you! Gotta get the Kickstarter funded 😄
@@distractionmakers Well I plan on backing! I hope it goes well. I know game launches can be hit or miss on Kickstarter.
That Pot of Greed shirt
My MAJOR concern is that they won't specifically give every card a tier rating (tier 1 can be 'everything unless noted otherwise), instead relying on vague 'things that do this' descriptions, which won't be solid enough to matter. My secondary concern is relying on anything other than a car's objective assessment (such as Sol Ring being in precons avoiding a ban) leading to holes in the ratings.
For all it's sins, I think the Smogon tiering system is one of the better ways of managing a game with a large number of THINGS that I've seen, enough that I'm surprised that it's stayed limited to a single unofficial format for a children's dogfighting game. Smash Ultimate, for example, could probably have a fascinating UU format with how big the roster is, but it would probably have to done the say way as early Smogon formats, with top players sort of agreeing that Steve, Kazuha, Game & Watch are OU/Ubers, since I think the usage and top 64 etc numbers don't 100% line up with the consensus best characters. For example.
I wonder if the Tier List could then circle back to designing cards in the future, like "We need to make x Tier 1 cards in this set, y Tier 2 cards, z Tier 3 cards..."
Like, obviously you can't 100% predict a card's power level before it gets into players' hands, but as something for designers to think about and shoot for when designing new cards, I could see it potentially being useful.
The way Smogon / Showdown formats is Ubers [Vintage-Cedh] , OverUsed (OU) [Modern], UnderUsed (UU) [Pioneer], RarelyUsed (RU) [Standard], and NeverUsed (NU) [Pauper]
Easiest way to digest this is UU (because it is the middle of the road). The UU is format includes 50% of the Pokemon a Competitive player would encounter per 20 Battles. This is to create variance and decrease homogenization that will occur as you go up the optimization ladder. It is important to note each of these formats are treated separately with their own ban lists and it should be noted this can sometime result in a creature being marooned because they are too good for one format and to under power for another.
VGC, the official competitive Pokémon format, works kind of like Standard before they started to power-scale Standard sets way down (so that Master-Modern Horizzon could be a thing).
I gotta be honest I just don't believe that people are having such a hard time finding good games that this is a real problem. I can literally go on spell table and just type "EDH 7-8" as the lobby name, and 9 out of 10 times I end up having a good game with decks on a similar power level. I think the people in the community actually know how to find a game appropriate for the decks they want to play. Same story at my LGS. The reason "every deck is a 7" is because people build 7s bc they want to play 7s.
Same. Even with randos at fests and cons I'm usually fine.
Your experience isn’t everyone’s experience. I think the issues pop up in players with less experience. If you’re using spell table you aren’t the average player.
I was at a table yesterday playing a newly built Kastral birds deck against a Sorin of House Markov, The Mothman, and Karlach/Sword Coast Sailor. The game got to the point that the Karlach player was swinging for two combats with a 20 power Karlach commander. He had taken out Sorin and The Mothman, but I was able to survive and remove Karlach thanks to Lieutenant Kirtar, at which point I had built up a nice board that secured my victory at the end.
The Mothman player was a wee bit salty at the Karlach player, lamenting the uneven power of the deck. I was of the mind that while powerful, Karlach seemed to run out of steam just before taking out The Mothman player seeing as his hand size was small and he wasn't quite able to recover his commander after it's third cast.
While I could still see something like this pop up in discussions after WotC's bracket system is produced, I expect it to be diminished as the lines of power will have been drawn and it will fall on a player's ability to build a deck under certain brackets than the power of their cards.
I actually prefer they divide commander into 4 clear tiers. I prefer to have standardization.
As you said. Impartial 3rd party. The last thing I want to do is negotiate before a game. Just tell me the format.
Same. I like people introducing their deck with weird themes and stuff but I hate the negotiations like "I hope you guys are okay with me playing this design mistake 🥺"
I only see this tier system as a negative so far. An example is have a turtle themed deck which is likely teir 1 or 2 but I have what is likely tier 4 card draw effects in it like rustic study. Is that deck now a teir 4 deck just because I have some good card draw to make my goofy turtle deck run somewhat smoothly.
I much prefer just being told are we playing low mid or hi power. Low being precon or janky gimmick decks. Mid being more tuned theme decks and hi being cedh or just under cedh.
@@cread13you can still play that deck… nothing changed if you’re not trying to optimize
@isambo400 yes I know i can play the deck the point is the tier system makes playing the deck harder because oh look I have a tier 4 card so it's now a tier 4 deck even though as a whole it's not. I dont like that as a system a long with how they want you to explain why I need or have those cards in the deck before a game. I just wanna sit down and play with the only pre game talk being is this low, mid, or high power.
Up until now, if you go by the official banlist, commander has been one of the most unbalanced formats ever, where basically every card is legal (including cancer like stasis and armageddon). Except the recent bans, the RC has done pretty much nothing to balance the game: they knew that what was keeping the format together was rule 0 and common sense from the players. Having different tiers is great whenever rule 0 isn't used and to give players a basic idea of where their deck stands in power level.
I'd say overall a great change.
A problem with the proposed 'platinum, gold, silver, bronze lotus' idea is that if a card is still good enough, Tier 4 will just play all of them. Suppose that Mana Crypt was unbanned for tier 4, and there was a new Tier 3 equivalent printed that also cost 0 but only tapped for 1 mana, Tier 4 will simply play *both* Mana Crypt and the new one. Yes, the lower tiers are basically unaffected, but now tier 4 ends up with multiple copies of similar-enough cards. You can envision any number of slightly worse, but still good enough cards that would make tier 4 increasingly obnoxious to play, e.g. another copy of Rhystic Study but this one costs UUU instead of 2U.
The tiers create four different CEDH formats
Sorta, yeah.
Yes, and, that's good.
Tier 1 cedh sounds amazing tho
So, format names?
1. Standardmander?
2. Pioneermander?
3. Modernmander?
4. Legacymander?
It's going to be like spicy-ness.
Vanilla
Mild
Medium
Hot
From what I understand it, the tier system was something that the Rules Comittee and WotC has been working on developing together for some time now, and the announcement of it just happened to align in the timeline with WotC taking over the format
I hope you all can still enjoy Playing Commander, I still want to jam some games.
I love this fantasy that casual players are suddenly going to stop wanting the strongest cards or that they'll stop putting their best card in an otherwise jank deck. I wish I lived in the world this video proposes exists
They addressed that, that's where you do the group discussion just like before
@@TheMinskyTerrorist WotC addressed it, this video glosses over it in favor of fantasizing about a world in which players self select and the power brackets are used as anything other than self imposed deck restrictions for bored power gamers
@@DavMat007 They just repeat what WotC said, which is if you have a higher tier card in your deck you just let the other players know and make sure they're okay with it. It's the same rule 0 thing as before. I think that's kind of lame too but they didn't say anything other than what WotC said.
I'm a little concerned about the different metas in the tiers being wildly different. If they are too different then there won't be people 'moving up' by improving a deck they have, but only remaking something from scratch. If there are broad ideas like 'no land destruction or counterspells in tier 2', then many good decks from 2 to 3 will have little resemblance.
One problem they overlook when talking about different tiers decreasing card price is they talk about it as if you only want one version of the card. So they mention printing different 'platinum lotus, gold lotus, silver lotus' But if a tier 4 deck wants 'platinum lotus, they probably also want the next best effect ie 'gold lotus'.
Also they mention that a lot of people will want a deck for each tier. Which means untiered cards that are good in that strategy will have a higher demand as players will want a copy for their deck in each tier.
Yeah those are possibilities. Some players will also not want to play at higher tiers so maybe it’s all a wash.
Im sure my playgroup isn't normal but all of us are able to just have a quick conversation about what sort of game we're interested in at the moment since we have decks in all power levels. This does revolve around honesty and the ability to communicate well.
Really excited about this. This system will eventually create healthy restrictions depending on tiers level that will spark creativity and open new doors for WotC to design cards. There's also a very simple possibility to create a points based houseformat out of this. Tier 1 cards are 1 point, t2 are 2 points, t3 are 5points and t4 are 8 (for example). This way you could also compare decks free of tiers basedon total sum of points.
I have been organizing a Commander night as a volunteer at my LGS almost every week for six years. A tier list would allow me to set power levels in a way to encourage the behaviour I want to see. We already do Rule 0 talks but there are lots of people who just grunt and present their commander. Some of those folks are nice and lean into social play. A lot are all about the winning, and those folks should be finding pods where EVERYONE wants that. Rule 0 is not a farce just because you want to win and not talk about it.
Such a refreshing conversation in an ocean of videos about this topic. Thanks for bringing this to the table!
I really appreciate your guys' optimism around the bracket system. I feel like too many content creators are ripping into it without the idea even being fully fleshed out
This is simultaneously reducing the complexity of play while DRAMATICALLY increasing the complexity of deckbuilding. There are going to be basically no true Tier 1 and few true Tier 2 decks until wizards prints the tier on the cards. Casual players will not look up the tier of all their cards, let alone 99 cards
I'm not sure the Tiers will *finally* kill rule zero conversations and discussions because it will be too much work for WotC to stay on top of the tier list while people constantly find new synergies that become so efficient they're outclassing the rest of the cards on that same Tier.
However, for me at least I'm just glad I'll be able to go 'Yes this is Tier 4/5/CEDH you might want to skip if it bothers you that you might not get to "do the thing" with your deck because of it''
I don't even think that I necessarily *need* to include Tier 4+ cards but if they can act as a determent for me I'll lean on them for sure, although honestly just as proxies: I'm not gonna put down cash again.
I love your take on the shift taking place. The format is now poised to evolve into its next stage, and it needed the perspective of actual game designers to accomplish it. Using only ‘the spirit of commander’ as a guiding principle is not robust enough to be scaled onto a population-sized userbase. As you so put it: you need a philosophy AND a methodology.
they are correct, the tiers will not be used to keep competitive people out of games it will just give the the restrictions they need to optimize play. I don't think the commander players will be ready for people colming for all of the best lines of play without violating the arbitrary rules that allow them to do so.
I wont need a rule 0 confirmation if I just build appropriately and if you lose thats just sour grapes... it is a tier 1 deck after all, don't be a whiner.
I think tier 1 and 2 will be less clear than 3 and 4. The split will likely be 2 and under is play for fun, 3 and 4 is play to win.
@@distractionmakers It wont matter people will just use the guidelines to not violate restrictions and validate their play. Its not my cards fault you can't beat me, its technically the power ceiling but still under so you just need to get good because asking me to change is unreasonable. Wizards themselves says so.
cEDH, I think, is the best example of a working "rule 0" and pregame conversation. *cEDH? Great". No other discussion needed.
I hope the tiers can do the same.
If they can assign 'mindsets' to each tier, that might work too.
Tier 4 - winning is primary, I don't care how I win.
Tier 3 - Winning is primary, but I want to use a non-optimal cards
Tier 2 - Winning is primary, but I want to use non-optimal strategies (voltron, etc)
Tier 1 - Winning is secondary, first I want you to guess which Chess piece each of my creatures is.
Yeah, but now you can have Tier 1, 2, 3, or 4 CEDH. Competitive players eating good with this update.
They can start with a few cards on the banned, tier 4 only, T3 list, and add more over time. It will be easy to sort on scryfall or other deckbuilders e.g. (tier
One of my LGS has a 4 level tier system: common, uncommon, rare, mythic
(Mythic being Cedh) you pick a group and be honest, and play in that group
with the new tier system, literaly if there is 4 tiers have 4 different ban lists. each ban list starts as what cards are too good for this tier and as this grows then just slightly adjust the ban lists to fit players in the metas that get formed
Sol Ring should be tier 2 at least. 13:54
I was just thinking about how some players might want to play at the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM level of power and ignore the banlist entirely, essentially creating a Tier 5. And this thought suddenly made me realize that their power tier lists are essentially multiple scaling banlists. If tier 4 ranked cards are only allowed in Tier 4 and not in 1, 2, or 3 then that means that tier 4 cards are essentially banned in all tiers except 4. I don't think this changes anything but it was just a thought that occured to me as a different way to think about the same thing.
The thing is; anyone who wants to play no-banlist EDH already can. The kind of people who do that are playing in groups where they discuss that sort of thing and play their own formats essentially.
@@IVIaskerade I do believe that the introduction of multiple tiers will make it easier for players who are looking for that totally unrestricted experience to actually find games that cater to them. Lots of players will instantly reject anything that is not "officially sanctioned" and be reluctant to experiment. As soon as any conversation about Commander begins with "what tier do you play?" it will plant the seed of possibility in people's mind, I think.
@@Mike_Hogsheart And if you want to talk to them about how your deck is actually tier 2 despite having one or two tier 4 cards in it, well, you're back to the rule 0 conversation you'd have had anyway, except now the rules of the game are set up for them to reject your explanation by default.
@@IVIaskeradeIs that worse? If a bunch of people all want to play by a set of rules, and you're the odd one out, that means you shouldn't play at that table, no? There's now just more tools to make that judgement call. Rule 0 has always been about exclusion, which is, of course, necessary for defining formats as discrete modes of play, but so much of the complaining I hear about the new system sounds like people who are annoyed at the thought they might be turned away for wanting something different than 3 other randos. Like, consider how everyone who used to play anything other than Commander has felt for years.
@@fastpuppy2000 Sure, but I'm criticising the rules on the basis that they're not fit for purpose.
It's nice to hear some optimism, when it seems like so many are complaining. I wholeheartedly agree and look forward to what's coming. I'd been thinking of budget constraints and point-based wargame armies, as comparisons, but I really like the comparison to Pokemon's competitive tiers. Even if this arguably splits commander into multiple "formats," having different formats that can be played in feels like nothing but a good thing, where even lower-powered cards can have their opportunities to shine.
Especially with Foundations coming out! Obvious cash grab, maybe, but it still allows an easy onboarding ramp for new players to join with relatively simple cards and not get overwhelmed the moment they try to play with strangers.
Great video!
We’re looking forward to it too!
I think there will be a playing to win/playing for fun split between tier 2 and 3. That alone will help players self select the experience they want.
At around Minute 14 there was a phrase: "i'm a Tier 2 player".
IMO this is the core of the entire problem. The players themself decide how spiky, competetive and intensive they wanna play. Most players aren't even long enough in the game to realize, that games don't need to be won.
They need to be played.
That means for casual players (like parents with their Kids, or a Group of friends that know each other for half their lifes) they enjoy the time having with their mates more than winning.
Or would a casual mom or dad never let their Kids win a game because those are not experienced or patient enough..... No, obviously they would let their Kids win games, even if they themselves had the win already.
That's a social behavior that rewards you for having your beloved happy. This way everyone is willing to reflect what their own actions cause on other people.
Most Player (IMO) aren't social. They still see magic as a game they have to win, rather than as a gift for showing other players you like to have them around you and you're not steeling their lifetime.
I agree that this can be a really positive change not only when playing at random tables on my LGS, but also me and my friends are very excited about deckbuilding with the tier restrictions
Everybody will just net-deck to get the most powerful decks in each tier.
No one will want to go into an LGS playing their 2.1 deck vs. a bunch of 2.9 decks.
Publicly listed companies have a legal requirement to maximise profits for shareholders (This is typically stated in their company charter).
Having a rules/design committee focused on revenue, rather than player experience isn't likely to benefit players.
I suspect that WOTC will start printing Rares and Mythics designed for each tier... thus reinforcing the "pay to play" issue.
Commander is popular enough that WOTC can mess with the format, and people will still keep buying and playing.
There remains a small chance that someone will create "Unofficial EDH Team Dot Com" and gain enough traction to guide the format in he interests of players. (Not competing in tournaments)
It's a lot easier to print pushed cards when EDH is divided into neat, well defined formats and they have direct control of the ban list. Prepare to start seeing WotC do what Konami does - they will print pushed shit for EDH, only to ban it when the time comes for them to sell the next set containing the next pushed card. Rinse and repeat.
>Very competent designers
>Wizards of the Coast employees
Pick ONE
I'll note that the Pokemon tiers are not official by The Pokemon Company, but rather by Smogon; however, Smogon is the de facto authority of competitive Pokemon as competitive Pokemon is officially only done in the VGC format. That said, VGC do also have different "tiers", but you can't really choose which to play - the Regulation regularly changes and affects what pokemon you can use, but there's only ever 1 Regulation at any time. It's also not based on power, for instance some Regulation may ban all Legendary pokemon despite some Legendary pokemon being underpowered. But you can imagine that Regulations that allow more pokemon are naturally gonna be a higher power level.
I'll note though that Smogon generally decides the tiering of pokemon by usage rates. They also ban problematic pokemon, either by quickban when it is deemed to be too obviously a problem, or by letting the community vote, and banning the pokemon if a 60% majority vote to ban. I'll also note that some pokemon may be tiered as something like "UUBL" which means that they are banned from the tier UU, but are completely unviable from the tier above, for instance because there's already a pokemon that does the exact same thing but better.
And yes, people are still upset at Smogon
Best conversation by far I've seen on this topic. Everyone has a valid opinion from being a long term player. However, this is the first game design standpoint that shows why we should be optimistic about WOTZ taking commander over. Look at pauper, many players in that format are saying it's the best it's been in a long time. I like this viewpoint of giving them a chance and giving some much needed structure to the format
Tiers just creates 4 separate formats. Part of the appeal of EDH was that it was a janky anything-goes thing, but WotC ruined that with their made for commander cards and are now trying to walk it back by splitting up the format into multiple different games.
It also doesn't fundamentally solve the issues they're trying to fix, just creates a different way to optimise. There will still be people playing "unfun" tier 2 decks that shut down or lock out opponents, or decks that are just way faster than anyone else at the table and win through combos that are still good, but just not cEDH good.
I like you guys, it's good to hear your thoughts. I suppose it was only a matter of time before some kind of shake-up. I started playing "EDH" in 2009ish, and even then the "arms-race" and difficult task of everyone getting the game they were looking for existed. I'm looking forward to seeing how they envision these tiers.
I’m not sure there is anyway to perfectly solve that problem, but now we will have 4 ceilings for players to self select from instead of 1 and a bunch of opinions about where the others are.
I'm kinda exited for lower tier "cedh". I play mostly cedh, and one of my biggest annoyances is generic colors deck, especially with partner commanders. One of my favorite parts of commander is creating decks that synergize cards with your commander. For example, 3 of my favorite cedh decks are The Gitrog monster, Tayam, and Zada. I think the idea of playing in lower tiers where more generically good cards are "banned" might lead to metas with greater focus on commander synergies and that seems really cool.
This is my hope too! Partners better be tier 4 or banned honestly.
Thanks for your views which are always interesting. The tier system might actually bring me back to the Commander table. Not that I play expecting to win but I want to play any card I fancy without having to listen to whining.
catch me playing a tier 4 group hug deck at my table of tier 1 friends, and they love it
My only complaint with this system is that I can no longer hold up the bad cards I like with amazing cards. Vampiric tutor is busted but not when you are searching for Grizzly Bears.
My vanilla creatures deck empathizes with you.
Theoretically you won’t have to because the “bad” cards will be better when swaths of powerful cards are moved to their appropriate tier.
@@distractionmakers In some cases, yes. However if a card is not very good in its tier there is nothing you can do about it now.
@@distractionmakers Sure, but if all the tutors are moved to tier 3, that just makes tier 2 decks that previously relied on them (and would still be tier 2 with them) way worse for no gain.
"Opportunities for more cards to see play" - This is largely the principle behind Smogon tiering fyi. People want to play with their favorite pokemon, and the different tiers create homes for many pokemon. Not all, you'd need near infinite tiers to make every pokemon viable somewhere, but it does a good job of letting many pokemon find competitive viability where there otherwise wouldn't be any.
That said, I also agree that this will likely reduce the casualization of commander.
Thanks for this. As someone who is a bit dormant on commander I wasn't sure how I felt about any of the upheaval going on. The way you all broke down your interpretation of the plan Wizards laid out is very helpful. And if what you say is true then I do think it can be a really good thing overall, and also makes me excited to get back into commander.
This is the most optimistic we’ve felt about the format probably ever haha.
Re: competitive Pokemon: the tiers you’re referring to are for single battles, which is analogous to commander: an alternative to the official competitive format, with an external fan-run rules committee. The actual competitive Pokemon format is all double-battles and doesn’t have a tier system. They just have what amounts to a “ban list,” and it’s mostly just that you can’t normally use legendary Pokemon, except in “restricted format” tournaments, which allow a limited number of legendaries (usually two).
I agree with the statement that "power levels" are just refering to play patterns and should be used more like a vibe check than an actual structured and well thought out thing. Certain cards promote certain play patterns, but you are free to diverge from those patterns.
As for the new system, I never had to give a rating to my decks (my playgroup is very chill), but if I absolutely had to, I would steer away from numbers and just use terms like low/mid/high power or competitive level, with the focus on how much or how efficient the deck aims to win the game being the main factor. I hope this new system to be something similar to that logic, with the highest label being "have you tried cEDH?" tier of cards.
I'm so happy with the endpoint of what was a horrifying few weeks. I've been pushed out and shunned from playing commander at pick up games because I enjoy playing "too competitively" and I actually can't enjoy the game otherwise. Now, I'll be able to build within the limits of whatever bracket people are playing in, and I'll be satisfied while also being able to play with anyone.
You kinda mean like how the Commander players came in and made it completely impossible for 60 card constructed players to interact with the game in paper at all? I'm sorry but I don't feel bad for you.
One frustration I have is that I am someone who actually enjoys playing against "negative" play patterns as long as they are flavorful.
(Just for example, my favorite time to play Standard was "Zendikar" and "Mirrodin Besieged" because I thought Annihilater and Infect were flavorful mechanics.)
But that doesn't necessarily mean I like "high-powered" games. And it doesn't *necessarily* sound like there will be much reason for people to have decks that include those kind of "feels bad" mechanics, but don't have super-fast/consistent decks playing expensive/must-buy staples.
I would have preferred there instead be, like, 2 axes of ranking decks. One that is just removing mechanic taboos, and one that is instead focusing on how much fast-mana, card draw, and raw power there is.
All in all, I'm still optimistic after listening to the fireside chat, but that is just something that stood out to me as an unsolved problem.
I almost feel like they should use a point system similar to WH40k. Like you can use Tiers if you want for individual cards but then there's less ambiguity if you have, say, an Ancient Tomb in your Tomb Deck, then your deck's point total would place it in a lower level since the rankings as a whole has more granularity and less ambiguity that you have to work with.
CEDH = Anything goes, 50pts or less = Pretty Casual (level 2-4), etc.
edit: oops didn't hold shift when hitting return, but also I don't think the issue of min/maxing would be much of a problem because of the gigantic size of the card pool. You can set most cards found in precons as having 0 points and still have the ability to adjust card values and bracket ranges in response to situations that come up.
I think the that having more competitive players in a playgroup that win more often isn't really as much of a problem as it seems by itself. I think everyone that has played any game with a group card games, video games, fighting games, board games etc, will have someone in the play group that has status as a more competitive player that tends to win more often or all the time. With games that have more variance, it always possible for the underdog to win, and when an underdog or new player in a playgroup beats the more competitive kind of mythical status player, its a really fun moment. That's the kind of thing someone will think about for years after. The time when they were a noob and they beat the best player in the group and it motivated them to keep playing. And in a way having the tiers keeps the amount of investment of money/time in deckbuilding from creating too much of a difference that the variance and hope for david to beat goliath to get too small.
I think the issue is that some people that re really competitive, are just assholes about it. But that's just people being people, nothing wizards can do rules wise will really help with that.
Thank you for this video, there' a whole lot of people making videos saying the opposite but "exposing the truth that has always been there" is exactly what it is: nothing really changes for casuals, if not the fact that they will get a better experience overall. This change was long overdue, so long "no worries my deck is a 7".
Something that I imagine could be useful as well, if you have a player in your pod who is much better or more competitive than the rest, you can have them play down a tier to keep things balanced.
Oh man! I love this idea!
As you said, I like the self selection element of the tier system; but I'm worried about how "synergy packages" slot into the tiers and does that mean some commanders can only be kitchen table commanders because they need a teir 3 card to "work" or "it's a +1/+1 deck so it should have hardened scales".
This seems likely. You can have a rule 0 conversation about the 1 tier 3 card you need, but at official events I wouldn’t expect to be able to play it just to honor the system if nothing else.
I am so sad seeing so many people distressed about the biggest Format of the biggest trading card game in the world, not being managed by 5 people who can't even agree unanimously on their 2nd action as a group.
WotC owns this game and I fully understand not trusting WotC & Hasbro to not be greedy with their design choices, but we as a community have proven that we won't respect the actions of anyone other than WotC themselves.
You think the playerbase is going to respect WotCs decisions?
Have you paid any attention to the Modern format?
@@MomirsLabTech Respect them so far as to suddenly stop making death threats against individual people involved, sure
@@BingeThinker1814 I even doubt that. There will always be incredibly bad actors, and a bracket system isn't going to fix that.
I would wager that those who were making death threats more than likely did not care about the bans in terms of playability, but due to their own financial investment in those cards.
Yeah the RC fuked up, but that doesn't mean it was worthless.
You should put this out as a pod cast.
Commander is really three overlapping formats, distinguished by card selection:
* Casual Commander - No: stax, infinite loops, land destruction. Budget-friendly, no proxies.
* Pay-to-Win Commander - Casual plus pay-to-win cards > $25. Proxies require permission.
* Competitive EDH (cEDH) - Play-to-win, nothing legal excluded. Proxies taken for granted.
Prominent promoters of Pay-to-Win Commander are WotC, online card dealers, and corporate-sponsored RUclipsrs.
The tier list obviously isn't gonna *replace* Rule 0 convo. It'll simply be a tool to make it easier.
It's not like you're gonna have to pull out a deck list and start reading cards a numbers. Just say "I have a couple teir 4 cards but the deck is mostly tier 3." Or "I'd really like to play a tier 2-feeling game. If you have a lot of tier 3 or 4 cards in your deck, would you mind playing that one next game?"
1:50 "we had a 1-10 system" is generous. We had "people should rate their own decks out of 10 with no guidelines whatsoever", entirely based on the infallible idea that players would be unbiased and accurate about that.
Im also really excited to try to play at the max power of a power level.
Before I was cutting sooo many cards and feeling super iffy when I was playing certain decks that were aggro, in playing the super aggro anthems and stax. So having a direct list to build around and find my favorite cards in each tier is awesome.
There's gonna be sooo much more talk about these tiers now.
Used to be only 'X card should be banned/undbanned' now it will be 'X card should be tier Y instead of Z'!!
That will be interesting. I think it’s a good thing to have nuance instead of a binary yes/no. Also, hopefully we will have the ability to point to the list as the impartial 3rd party.
Much easier to understand! 🤪🙄
This tier system is almost certainly going to drastically affect the secondary market as well. Be prepared for a whole slew of cards to either jump or drop in price based on these tiers.
Reason: if TOs use these tiers to establish the rules for their tournaments, then cards that are played in the more popular tournament formats/tiers are going to be more expensive, because there will now be an artificially increased demand for those cards. Similarly, and at the same time conversely, cards that are placed in to the higher tiers but that were not considered that strong before will also jump in price because there will be a higher demand for those cards as well - and also, some cards that were *thought* to be tier 4 or tier three, but get placed lower than expected, will probably see a decrease in price, because they will be less desireable (at least to some). This will also show WotC what they should incentivize reprinting, which will further cause market fluctuations.
Magic isn't necessarily an investment - but that doesn't mean that all the cards should be worth nothing either. People don't like when things they spent money on suddenly become worthless, and with how WotC runs things, that's exactly what's going to happen to the majority of single cards today. Magic is dead, long live magic.
P.S.
A note concerning "printing cards/staples for each tier." Yes, that will almost certainly happen - and if it was happening only inside of commander products, that wouldn't be a problem. But it won't just happen in commander products, and if you need proof, look at Nadu. We are going to get *a lot* more Nadus and TORs. And that isn't good.
P.S.S.
Concerning whether or not Wizards has been thinking about this for a while. They absolutely have been. There is almost no way that the ban announcement was made without WotC's involvement, and years long conversations about it.
I'm looking forward for the brackets, I think they are the most solid suggestion we've had so far for ranking commander deck
tier two ceiling could be something easy as, max of 2 board wipes, yada yada general rules like that until there is specific bans made after lots of data is gathered
I'll be happy with the tier list system if and only if Sol Ring is tier 2. There's a 0% chance it goes in tier 4 where it belongs but if tier 1 can be a tier where players can seriously restrict their deckbuilding (and get away from the most powerful card in the format) I think the format would benefit from it. It makes logical sense for precons to be tier 2 as well, that should probably be the baseline of the format. When I think of the absolute bottom tier a commander deck can be I think of ladies looking to the left tribal, or chair tribal. Those shouldn't be in the same tier as a precon. Being able to build a tier 1, 2, or 3 deck where the higher tiers are treated as an extended banlist sounds so good for the format.
I think in Pokemon pauper would be like Little Cup (LC), where you only used not-fully-evolved pokemon (minus a few banned ones like chansey). So if you want to play bulbasaur and mienfoo, and not in some cheesy way like FEAR Rattata, with a serious look on your face then you can. Neverused (NU) is like playing "modern but everything is banned until Siege Rhino is good again."
this is an absolutely wild ride. I think WoTC is gonna do well by the format for a few years, to regain trust and such.
Eventually those diabolic whispers are gonna seep in and have them take advantage of it
THANK YOU FOR GETTING IT AND HAVING A SANE TAKE ON THIS SITUATION 😍😍😍😭😭😭
Initially I didn't have any expectations for the new system to fix the problems with rule 0. You've explained it in a way that definitely helps ease that mentality for me, however that doesn't mean I trust WotC to maintain this in an effective manner.
To address your point about proxies towards the end: WotC is responsible for the health of their game. Obviously if everyone proxies the company, game, and community will collapse. This is not an issue for the community, but for WotC to incentivise people to continue supporting them. If WotC continues to push the product prices, push power crept chase cards, reduce cards (aftermath sets), then they will deserve any amount of community push back in the form of proxies.
I think the most fair way to do it is make all the game pieces available and inexpensive. Then create special version for collectors.
1: Jank Tribal and silver border
2: pre-con/budget decks.
3: tuned/focused normal edh
4: high power/cEDH.
I think we need a voice to tell Wizards to add a tier for jank, the document puts precons on the lower tier, making jank have to compete with precon, and that's basically erasing the jank experience.
the reason they have a jump start on the Tier system is because the RC had been working on this system which is something they announced in their ban list update when they banned Lotus, crypt, dockside, and nadu.
Wotc measuring power levels? What could possiblie go wrong? They're so good at it!
I think this should be the brackets
Bracket 4 -> CEDH ( no ban list or very limited ban list)
Bracket 3 -> Standard Commander ( no fast mana (except sol ring) / 2 card combos / mass land destruction anything that creates wincons before T6)
Bracket 2 -> Casual ( no mythic , no rares (this includes reprints at higher rarity) + ban list from Bracket 3) /
Bracket 1 -> Kindred ( Bracket 3 bans + cards that destroys kindred builds exclusively)
The idea that "one" card makes your deck a higher bracket but lower without it is silly. Commander is all about synergy and a ban list serves to micro manage what access players have to "that synergy"
the above bracket system allows archetypes (albeit at lower consistency and optimization at lower brackets) to continue exist and allows WOTC to monitors those archetypes based on "expected experience"
no this is entirely too confusing and convoluted
@@Gweezy12 thanks for the feedback.what would you recommend?
I have never played commander. This change makes me want to try.
Could not agree with you guys more, this change rules and I'm very happy it finally happened.
Wonder where they're gonna put those commander game warping staples like rhystic study, smothering tithe, and cyclonic rift.
Every commander player in six mobths: "My deck is a bracket 2 deck, but within that bracket it is a 7."
Wizards having more resources than 5 volunteers to manage a format this big is indeed promising. It has been implied that the RC was already working on the bracket system, but again, 5 people with no dedicated means for the deed; what's going to take Wizards a few weeks would only be finished by the RC in half a year, maybe more? Things are moving fast already, buckle up!
I hope Wizards doesn't go overboard with the ban list re-evaluation. Some cards will probably make sense to unban and tie to a bracket where one would expect more interaction and disruption, such as anticlimactic wins like Coalition Victory or Biorhythm, or oppressive play patterns such as Braids, both Titans or Sylvan Primordial.
I'm fairly optimistic for the tier system. My one worry is that I hope the Command zone isn't tiered. What I mean is, I hope I can build and play Selvala, Heart of the Wilds decks in both tier 1 and tier 4. That the tier system only applies to the 99.
Having a Precon level is enough to get me looking forward to buying my first commander deck. It comes down to costs. Precons back in the old days as I remember were no good. Im not a fan of the cross overs but I can see myself buying a commander one now that I will be able to know that I can bring it anywhere and be able to have a fair game. Everyone rightly deserves to want to win what makes it fun or not fun is the feeling of unfairness for me.
Hoping for two things:
1. The new Commander design team doesn't just release the Commander specifc cards to Standard again and we don't get another Nadu. Cause that Modern tournament was horrible to watch.
2. If WOTC are in complete control of Commander we get a decent multiplayer format in Arena instead of the Brawl format. Because my country's MTG scene is microscopic and I can't find it anymore, it will be expensive and impractical to buy paper cards that I'm going to use like once a year, maybe. Went to cons years ago and bought decks and boosters but they got lost.