Why We're Optimistic About Commander's Future | Magic the Gathering
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2024
- Gavin's Kickstarter: www.kickstarte...
Last week, Wizards of the Coast revealed their early plans for a new 4-tiered bracket system to Magic: the Gathering's Commander format. Since then, players and content creators have been speculating and debating the new proposed system, even suggesting alternative systems like a more granular point system. Today, we are discussing some of these alternative systems and look at the pros and cons of them and Wizards official bracket system. How do you feel about the new system?
WeeklyMTG | On the Future of Commander: • WeeklyMTG | On the Fut...
Hosts:
Forrest Imel forrestimel.com/
Gavin Valentine www.gavinvalen...
Join the Distraction Makers Discord: / discord
Thumbnail Artwork: Swords to Plowshares by Jesper Ejsing
Here’s the link to Gavin’s Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/lastditchgames/bullets-and-teeth-and-aliens?ref=him1bs
Forrest! It was Soren Johnson who said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game". I use that quote all the time haha.
Thank you! Now I will know who to credit when I say it haha
I don't know why I always think it's a Sid Meier quote. The moment I stop looking at this comment, I know the fact that it's a Soren Johnson quote is going to be erased from my brain and replaced with the certainty it was Sid Meier.
what I like about the bracket system the most is that it's going to be easy to implement into Moxfield and Archidekt, and once you're done deckbuilding there shouldn't be any ambiguity about your "power level" - I can even imagine this enhancing a more "creative" approach to brewing a more synergistic deck of bracket 1-2 cards, without automatically reaching for the universally stronger cards
💯
It comes down to this: "my deck is mostly in Bracket 2 but it has Rhystic Study and Mana Crypt, is that okay" is a much easier Rule Zero conversation to have than "my deck is a 6-7, it's got some good stuff in there but nothing degenerate."
Yes, this is exactly the defense I've been making of this system!
I don't see how those differ other than now I have to reference some big spreadsheet of problem cards before having that conversation now.
@@tylermfdurdenthey are the same thing, but with the brackets conversation, there's a shared knowledge of exactly what cards you don't have to think about because they are in a higher bracket. Just as a quick example, you can immediately know if someone has zero mana interaction
Yeah this. So many times i have people coming to a 5 power games and slaps dockside on the table or say my deck is hard to go infinite but does it turn 5 anyways.
It's easier, but it's still not the full conversation: You can still have Rhystic Study and Mana crypt as your only 'Tier 4' bracket cards but have win conditions that produce what the old RC called 'Negative play patterns' in short: stack pieces or cards that combo with each other can easily be considered Tier 2 on their own and do not raise to the Tier 4 level of 'Notorious combo pieces' simply because they're less effective/efficient.
Keeping the example in blue I can include a lot of cheap mill/draw combos and run Laboratory Maniac instead of Thassa's Oracle and successfully put together a Tier 2 cards only deck that wins very fast and unexpectedly, it's just not used in cedh since it's way easier to use Thassa's powerful ETB effect than to have the Lab Maniac's effect require either flash or surviving an entire round or finding another way to draw immediately after full mill.
By the way this is also a weakness of the point system anyway, I just think people should temper their expectations there can never be shortcuts to rule zero conversations: you're always working against the competitive nature of the tcg itself.
Congratulations on making the first good take on brackets on RUclips. 🏆You boys don't miss. Also bracket 1 CEDH is gonna go so hard.
congratulations on pointing out why brackets won't work (bracket 1 CEDH)
@@edhdeckbuildingsounds like a skill issue
@edhdeckbuilding The brackets system might create 4 metas of power level, similar to if the format had 4 overlapping banlists. Bracket 1 cedh (or more simply: bracket 1 meta) could totally be a thing. I think it's good too because it will offer more variety for everyone, whether or not any one player likes competing. Let the grinders will test all the broken cards for everyone else and smooth out the boundaries of the brackets. Meanwhile everyone reaps the benefit of having a clearer view of the power and speed of each bracket while maintaining the creative aspect of casual edh
@@gokuvssummonerswar8984 this comment is also why brackets will fail.
@@edhdeckbuilding is that really a problem though? cedh isnt a problem, miscommunicating is, I always see the cedh group at my lgs having more fun than anyone else there. Saying cedh is the problem wont fix anything.
I'm glad we're discussing the bracket system without nitpicking "power level" card by card. If this structure is really meant to just be indicative of play patterns, it's sure going to take some time to adjust, but should ultimately be healthy and helpful.
After seeing Prof's video proposing points and yours defending tiers, I must say I am more on the Tiers side as of now. I love that Magic has creators capable of presenting their ideas is such a Profesional way. At the end we all want magic to be better.
The gamification of commander deck building via a points system (optimizing deck construction based on current point values for cards) is possibly the worst approach for casual commander. I was also glad to see pushback against Prof's video proposing such a points system, as it's only a valuable deck building constraint for heavily enfranchised players, but overcomplicates the format for new players in a clunky and extremely technology-dependent way
I think Canadian Highlander makes sense because you don't have to worry about pointing every miscellaneous common, uncommon, or bulk rare; it's really only a handful of cards you're worried about.
But I do like the idea of Tiered Bannings.
You were also the only channel out of dozens I used to follow that did the actual math on how often those explosive starts would even happen. Everyone else acted like it was every other game for years. You really shined that light into the darkness of the MTG Creator sphere.
I'm glad there's at least one channel out there who has points about the change in Commander beyond the changes being bad because WotC is a for-profit company.
The thing is that since Wizards is the one needing the profit they need to have player's be on their side, otherwise players won't support the product and they will lose money. They are now solely responsible for the outcome of this format and I think that's not necessarily a bad thing, it means they no longer have a third party they could potentially point to as a scape goat for decisions.
@@imaginarymatter I've been seeing a lot of content creators holding WotC to a standard they wouldn't hold the RC to and it is particularly galling.
@@MadMage86When you get paid to do something, I think being held to a higher standard is fine.
@@Wakkowolf nonsense. You are implying that the RC being unpaid gave them some kind of excuse to not do the job properly. This whole 'they were volunteers!' thing is disingenuous, they held a position of prestige within the community and mismanaged it because they refused to engage with that community.
And WotC might be 'paid' for cards but I doubt the entire panel they assemble will be purely paid WotC employees either way.
People need to stop bending over backwards to absolve the RC--and Sheldon--of their failures to this community.
Im glad people are arguing the brackets over points. I dont want to calculate 10 decks of points let alone trust my opponents to do so perfectly and correctly. Brackets are quicker and easier. Id honestly just quit with point systems.
I think a point system would be pretty easy because a) not many cards would be pointed and b) if your deck is on moxfield or something they could just do it automatically. I still would prefer a bracket system or perhaps some hybrid system, because I think points systems encourage competitive play.
I will never support a points system, I’d rather just play budget commander.
@@jadegrace1312it depends on the point system in play. The Canadian system mentioned here where only the most powerful cards have a points value would/could work given the relatively smaller pool of powerful cards in the vast collection of MTG cards. But the Warhammer style of points, where every single card from a basic Forest or Swamp to The One Ring and Emrakul would have a point value assigned to it, would never work in MTG, there's simply too many moving pieces between raw number of cards and how the 5 different colors, 6 if we count colorless, play and interact with each other. A mono black "vanilla" creature (as an example) can get regenerated if killed, easier than most other colors and a mono green version of the exact same creature can get more +1/+1 tokens to get bigger easier then other colors, both of which would need a different point cost based on the ease of access to their respective buffs in there respective colors. So if it's easier to regen with mono black then pump +1/+1 tokens with mono green, based on how many cards have the respective effect the mono black creature WILL cost more because of the wider support. And should there ever be a Green+Black version of that EXACT same"vanilla" creature in our example, it would need yet another value based on the fact that it can get the mono black Regen, mono green stat bumps AND any Green+Black Regen with stat bumps that may exist. So for what would otherwise be an identical, 2mana vanilla 2/2 creature we have no less than 3 different point costs based on if it's color identity is Mono Black, Mono Green or a Black+Green combo. And that just gets worse when we add the other mono colors and all the multi color combo identities.
I wouldn't quit, but I'd probably go from 10+ decks down to 2 or 3. Yeah, points lists would suck hard
WotC already uses a point system to control Brawl on Arena. Dew to a bug or an oversight it was revealed that every card on Arena has an associated number of how "good" it is in Brawl and sum of all the numbers facilitates decks overall tier. It determines the matchmaking process for decks, trying to match decks in similar amount of points. And that system only somewhat worked because it was completely hidden from the players. The only way we could know about deck weighting was the so called Hell queue, where picking certain commanders would put you into certain pool of other overpowered commanders to play against.
I believe part of the issue is that commander is the most popular format.
Haha us too
My fear is that players will naturally take this tier system that WotC probably intends to be used as a rule 0 conversation guide, and instead use it as a hard-rule deck building restriction that transforms the game from a casual social experience into 4 power levels of cedh
What it sounded like to me is that brackets 3 and 4 will be defined as you’re saying and be play to win minded. Where 1 and 2 will be more loose and play for fun. Hopefully it works out that way.
It's still social. It's about the experience. If you're willing to play dranniths and Armageddons, you should be ok with your opponents playing them against you.
I find your comment weird because I specifically DEMAND that they make this bracket system the RULES, not a part of Rule 0 or some kind of signpost which can be ignored. If they aren't willing to stand by this system it is worthless and I fully intend to treat it as clearly defined lines for deckbuilding.
@@MadMage86 all the power to you?
@@BAdCommander sorry, I don't follow.
I finally *want* to play Commander, instead of playing just because it's the only version of magic people will touch anymore
I hope the ban list gets dismissed entirely (except for ante, dexterity, silver/accorn cards, and whatever) and Tier 4 is "anything goes"
Brackets are nothing more than banlists for different formats, except the card pool is less restricted. Imagine if peopled called vintage tier 4, legacy tier 3, modern tier 2 and standard tier 1, and you get what you Wizards is proposing for commander. And yeah I understand the frustration of having your pet card exist in a tier above what you want to play because you personally don't do anything degenerate with it, but my traps deck with up the beanstalk as it's main engine was also not some degenerate usage of the cards but that doesn't mean it's ban in modern was incorrect. There are other reasons it was incorrect, but not because it made the funnest deck I played in aged be banned out of the format.
I think the points system like Canadian highlander is better, if someone has a precon and decides to add a few cards that raise the point value slightly higher but would put it in a bracket 3 or 4 i dont think that the deck would bne able to compete with a deck that was intentionally built at a high tier. Id remove the ceiling of points for a deck tho and use the system to just discuss with your table what is going on
Yeah, I made like $15 dollars worth of upgrades to the Izzit Thunder Junction deck and it's fully capable of going infinite. It feels weird to think it'll be the same tier as a $1500 cdh deck
This whole video is an accidental explanation of why Sol ring should be bracket 4 and not bracket 0
Haha it’s true
I know it only appeals to certain players and definitely does not apply to the wider commander player base, but spreadsheet deck building is so fun I welcome that kind of points restriction
So refreshing to not have a doom and gloom podcast to check out. Thank you both for that.
Games discussed on this video include:
Magic: The gathering (specifically Commander)
Bullets and Teeth and Aliens (sponsoring the episode)
Warhammer 40k
Richard Garfield was mentioned (and a quote was misattributed to him).
Haha we also mentioned Warhammer.
@@distractionmakers Good catch. I've added it to the list.
It's really cool to see the difference between a game designer's view of the brackets and a player's view (like TCC or Game Knights). I'm excited to see the card list they end up creating
"point totals" per cards already kind of exist,
Just replace "points" with your local currency, and you got a list.
Got a cyclonic rift, I mean, that card is about 40 bucks, thats like, 1/5th to 1/2 of your decks total "point" allocation, and will induce some salt.
Is it perfect, hell no, it was never designed for this, does it kinda work, yes, everybody I know dislikes the one ring
Personally, my biggest problem with a bracket system is that it measures control/staxx cards in the same axis as power. Or at least, so it appears at first glance. I personally like adding a few staxx pieces to control decks, because running proactive interaction in commander is a recipe to get run over by 3 players who do build big board states. However I fear all of these tools will be related to tier 3-4, where it might be difficult to find a pod/ might not be in line with their power level.
For example, if tier 4 is essentially cedh, as why would you play it, if not for the fact that all the combo's are allowed, thoracle go brrr. Then how is one supposed to use Armageddon if its simply not a busted card on the wins games metric.
somehow my instincts tell me an Alpha Shivan Dragon is as impactful as 5 Cyclonic Rifts, but what do I know?
This exactly my point. Total deck price is THE point system.
I agree, deck price is AT LEAST a strong indicator of power level. Plus most people already know to distinguish between [pet decks they've blinged out] and [decks they've optimized] (though often they're one and the same).
@@zbaschtian This is mostly the exception that proves the rule: Scarcity of recent cards due to *desirability* has no impact on scarcity of older cards simply because much more limited runs: You can see an amplified version of any legacy card on foil: the variation on cards can be so extreme as to go from 1- 2 dollars for the non foil to 50 USD or more for the foil version, both are still mostly non sought after just one of the incredibly more scarce from lack of supply instead of great demand.
@@zbaschtian Like I said, its far from perfect. Id personally pick the cheapest identical card when it comes to pricing. Since ones deck does not get better by being all foils.
In addition, if someone has a cracked manabase with original duals, the rest of the deck is a drop in the bucket "point" wise, and could be anything. However if someone went out of their way to get perfect mana, it is safe to assume the deck is probably functional to high power.
Policing a point system without decklists is nigh impossible. You'd have to wait for a player to reveal enough cards to sum up beyond the threshold. With a tier system, the first disallowed card you see is enough information to declare a deck inappropriate for the stated tier.
Great point
This is exactly why i favour a tier system to a points system!
My favorite thing about the bracket backlash is a bunch of people with zero game design experience or wisdom trying to say that their version of it is better or that brackets are on-their-face bad.
Let the designers design the game. That's thejr job. You can, as a player, express what the design makes you feel, but that is as far your usefulness goes. The designers' job is to interpret that feeling and design something that no longer creates that negative feeling.
I just find it weird that people act like the company that literally makes the game they are playing for over three decades has absolutely no idea what they are doing.
@@imaginarymatterit's been like that forever but it got worse over the past decade with the popularity of content creators giving their opinion on games and design, with no credibility.
It's created a weird arrogance where a lot of people with no exp either parrot creators' with bad takes or think, they too, can have a "good" opinion like their favorite content creators.
game designer here. IMO a lot of the valid criticisms to any format constraints is that WoTC has not been clear about their vision of the format. When you think about constructed formats, you know there's a clear statement that differentiates Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Legacy. Both their print and ban policies support these statements and have kept these formats relatively stable over time.
The problem with EDH is that no one seems to be willing to actually define the core Commander audience(s), and the definitions given by the community vary wildly between the competitive, casual and social segments. I don't think you can, or even should, attempt to satisfy all these audiences at the same time.
WoTC also has a vested interest in keeping players buying their product. I don't know if this will translate to a better or worse format, and they're known for doing both in the past.
@@imaginarymatter To be fair, the people at said company are constantly rotating and thus you keep seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again. So I can't blame the audience for thinking the people in charge have no idea what they're doing.
isnt commander a player made format? no game designers needed. brackets suck.
Great take on the brackets, totally agree that point systems are too complex and don’t fix most actual problems we had with the “my deck is a 7” system. Really hope the brackets end up happening and people adopt them
I think it's really interesting that we have a game like Magic that is competitive at its core and then a multiplayer format comes out that is casual and in some ways looking to curate an experience amongst a group of four players. Using points or brackets reminds me of being a DM in D&D and trying to create balanced encounters based of the Challenge Rating system to put my players through. The problem with this is that most of these systems have a hard time taking into account synergies and strategies for different combinations of cards/monsters to really advise well on the type of experience you might be having with this game.
I welcome any sort of tool to help with this, but I agree with Gavin that most of these tools might become a barrier to entry for new players who just want a quick in and out experience with the game without having to worry so much about the point value of their precon deck.
For points, all you have to do is obviously display each deck's point total. The political nature of Commander (theoretically) does a lot to even out any imbalance.
That’s a good point. Though, I think the bigger issue is in getting to that point total and that being a barrier for new players.
@@distractionmakers I’d assume WoTC would create a tool to just run the decklist through if they went that direction
@@distractionmakersJust dont give point to EVERY single card. Give points to the Staples, Powerful cards and combos. The same cards that would be listed on the Brackets and players would have to check anyway...
I think the tiers are just ban lists for four different formats.
Essentially
As usual you guys have the most measured and thought out takes on mtg. You guys clearly have a game design background and clearly think about MTG in terms of design. Most channels think in terms of likes/dislikes, which is fine, but generally ends up making opinions more shallow
Much appreciated! It’s hard to separate feelings sometimes. We aren’t perfect in that regard either. The most important thing is trying to put yourself in the shoes of the most casual player and think about what you’re asking them to do.
@@distractionmakers Is as you guys say in the video, when thinking of a system you have to think in terms of extremes. Looking at the game experience and trying to discern what's the pros and cons of the designed system for the most casual and most competitive players.
Thanks for the reply, and great video as always
Let's make it more insane. Use the points system for each card plus a handicap to even it out. The handicap would be a increase in life for the lower deck depending on the power gap.
To be honest, my hope (after giving Commander a shot in the interest of fairness, and finding it somewhat disappointing), is that maybe the player base as a whole starts experimenting with new grassroots ideas for how to play Magic now that the format is officially controlled by WoTC. I liked a lot of the ideas behind Commander/EDH (especially the idea of having a commander), but they were a little extreme in execution IMO. The amount of variance just felt TOO high, and the amount of consistency too low. I think 25 or 30 life would have been more manageable than 40, and maybe a preset range for deck size rather than exactly 100 cards. I also didn't really vibe with strict singleton, and would have preferred if there were some limited number of copies of cards allowed, so you had a meaningful choice to make over where to use up the allotted amount of duplicates during deck building.
Great ideas. I also miss the cohesive plans and play patterns 60 card has.
The problem is everything you're saying is abstract. Of course a 1-4 system could work, but trusting WotC to do it accurately is wishful thinking, not even considering the mess of a video they put out about it. I recommend Red Bobcat's video about that; he takes a bunch of quotes from them and shows how contradictory they are and how it gives away they haven't even thought this through. They have been worse and worse at even balancing cards for standard for nearly a decade now if you look at the bannings per year chart, and you expect them to do this not only for current cards, but keep up with the added workload of doing that every new set? (and that's the video "WeeklyMTG | On the Future of Commander" on their official channel here) Also, most of this video is talking about the problems with the alternates or old ways compared to any value judgments on this new idea, so there's that, and their proposed system is really just a variation of those old ways, so honestly, your video spend more time saying this isn't a good idea even if you don't realize it.
I guess we’re glass half full kinda guys. Whether we agree with every decision or not WOTC has made MTG successful over 30 years.
I like canadian point system, with points for only certain cards or combos. But without a points limit. It should be just descriptive. Its not that different from the brackets. You check a list to see if your cards are there in both cases. In the bracket, it says "you have this card, so your deck is this bracket". In the points, you just add the points, wich is just basic math.
And "playing for fun" as oposed to "playing to win" makes no sense. Yes, there are meme decks and people that plays to achieve something else. But the vast majority of players are trying to win the game, be it casual or more hardcore.
Why is it that you guys are literally the ONLY reasonable voices I see on this whole thing? The primary point I have been trying to make since I literally got into Commander are that your rules need to look at the EXTREME cases, not the common use, when determining boundaries and the RC--especially Sheldon--was famously focused on their so-called 'silent masses', essentially kitchen table players who didn't need rules in the first place. When I went to their old forum after the Paradox Engine ban and asked why they even exist if not to make rules for the least trusted environments you can play in they specifically told me, verbatim, that 'EDH is not meant to be played with strangers', a bafflingly dismissive view of what to me seems like a majority of EDH players.
Yeeesshh. I would hope the goal would be to have as many people as possible play together.
The longer watcy goes without announcing a new system, the worse it will be; functionality and adjustment
magic con Vegas is right around the corner
If I'm understanding this right it seems like people dislike the fact that a bracket system would mean they can't put one or two really powerful cards in their fun decks. Wouldn't the obvious solution to this be that you would need to include several higher bracket cards to make the deck categorized as a higher bracket ? There seems to be this assumption that as soon as you include any higher bracket card the deck has to count as a higher bracket deck.
Or take out the 1 or 2 cards and have fun at a lower bracket.
The most poignant part of this entire video is right the end.
The vaat majority of CMDR players, just like the vast majority of MTG players, are *awful* at the game.
Keep in mind I'm not trying to say anything specifically bad about anyone. The vast majority of people who "play basketball" are awful at basketball. Most drivers are awful, etc..
That said...MtG players tend to self-assess as "smart" and they are wrong.
The most obvious solution is to just take those cards out of the deck. The problem with including several cards is that you can still slip in something like Demonic Consultation / Thassa's Oracle and then fit in a bunch of low power tutors and still be a "low powered" deck.
To me this is obviously what will happen, over time.
"My deck is a 2, but I have a Tony Stark Rhystic Study that I opened on the Marvel Legends bonus sheet."
"Oh, that's fine; mine's a 2, but I'm playing Sylvan Library."
"Oh, okay, cool."
I expect for casual play, the brackets are just going to evolve into a way to specifically target Rule 0 conversations.
@dungeonmastermonkey which is fine...but you could just take those out for less efficient CA engines and just cut the conversation put. "1?" "1." Shuffle.
@@raedien Yes. That's an option available to you.
We've posted back and forth to each other about brackets before. Whereas I see them as jumping-off points to fine-tuning your pod / table's choices, it seems you very much would like them to be hard limits.
Can I ask - why are you so passionate about it? What's the advantage of, "cutting the conversation out", in a social format?
Do you anticipate that "Well, we're all playing with Bracket 2 Decks, so whatever happens is automatically entirely both equitable and desirable. Even though none of us like Dave's deck that makes 10,000 tokens because it makes his Cathar's Crusade a logistical nightmare, we all have to be okay with him shuffling it up again without conversation, since it's Bracket 2" is going to be a Thing?
Because it's my thought that, even within brackets, individual pods / playgroups will still need to discuss / customize their preferences, whereas you seem to think this is effectively the end of Rule 0 conversations, and - genuinely - I don't understand that position.
I like the idea of having a combined bracket and point system. However, point assignment would be very simple: Tier 3 cards are all worth 3 points each, Tier 4 cards are all 4 points each, and Tier 1 and Tier 2 cards aren't worth any points. This way, if you have a Tier 4 deck, but only one Tier 4 card and maybe two Tier 3 cards, you deck is a Tier 4 - 10 point deck. Then it wouldn't seem too powerful to play against a Tier 3 - 36 point deck, but it would still be slotted as Tier 4
Interesting idea!
People keep running into this roadblock. timestamp 13:07
"I have a low deck, but it's got a [mana crypt] in it, why am I being punished"
I don't go to modern with an off-meta deck and say, "I'm playing brainstorm, but its ok cause my deck sucks".
No. If you want to go play brainstorm, go play legacy. If you want to play modern, take the brainstorm out of your deck.
Definitely agree here. Commander players aren’t used to binary restrictions though. Usually the mindset is “I’m not using it in the broken way, so it’s fine” when most the time it isn’t.
@@distractionmakers I had an ongoing argument with someone about this issue over Thassa's Oracle not too long ago; they argued that they should be allowed to play it in a generic Merfolk deck and that banning it out of a lower tier unfairly when it is basically a bad card in that deck. What I found odd was that they would move that goalpost whenever it was beneficial to their argument: if it's a bad card then merfolk decks aren't losing much, right? No, he said it's still a good card and an alternate wincon. So it's a powerful card that probably doesn't belong at the level of play you are playing at? No, it's a bad card and I should be able to use it. Sometimes the mental gymnastics people do are just exhausting.
I don’t think brackets will divide cedh from casual, I think there will be cedh in each bracket. More cedh is likely to happen at bracket 4 though so I think the people who will have the worst time with brackets are those who still want to play ‘high power casual’ in bracket 4.
whatever happens with it, i hope moxfield helps us out lmao
My biggest problem with the tier system as it stands is precons being the lowest level. It seems like it could punish players who want to make a commander potentially out of their limited pulls, or other "jank". It also slightly seems like wizards is saying you need to buy our official product to enter when that's not the case. Lastly it's ignoring the sol ring problem, that sol ring if judged fairly would not be considered a lowest power level card.
It won't hurt those players, because those players are already getting pubstomped by borderline cEDH decks. Can't get any worse than the current system for those players
I’ve never had someone describe their power level as anything less than precon which is telling considering people mostly under-sell their decks’ power. Now I’m sure these people exist who play these kinds of decks, but there’s nothing stopping them from declaring that their deck is weaker than a precon under the bracket system. So if this is a problem that needs solving under brackets then it’s a problem that already exists without them.
Yes, they need to specify that the brackets are also about saltiness and that they're making exceptions for the mascot cards (as lame as that is).
@@philipmantos2544 I actually have been pointing out for anlong time that the core reason the 1-10 system failed is because precons were not put at 1. They represent the baseline entry point and if your deck is somehow less functional then it is just a 0.
Many like to point out that newer precons are better than old ones, but that is a representation of power creep - the format in general has become higher power so the old precons get knocked off the list by newer entry points.
As someone who dabbles in Pauper Commander, I also think it's kind of bizarre the Precon is the lowest tier. Surely we can go lower than a ~$150 deck at a bargain price point?
As an avid player of Warhammer's 2 main games for the past 15 years and a relatively new player to MTG, the Warhammer points system WILL NOT work with MTG based on the number of different peices in the card variety, different play styles, mixed colors haveing multiple pools of possible game pieces and the inconsistency of the Mana curve. Warhammer points are calculated not only by the individual power of the unit but how they work within the wider army, and the consistancy of their abilities and power. For example units in undead armies and deamon armies that regenerate units or summon new ones wholesale are generally have higher costs than otherwise equivalent armies that don't summon or regen. Likewise highly random units that do things like roll for weapon stats every time you shoot, or are really inaccurate with their BFGs are gonna be highly inconsistent with their DPS spiking high and low and as such might cost less than a more consistent unit that doesn't spike nearly as high but also not as low either. To translate that into the Mtg framework as i understand it, Black and/or Green creatures will probably cost more points than the exact same thing in a different color because Black and Green are the colors of "bring it back" and "make it bigger". Whether or not you bring the "bring it back" or "make it bigger" cards is irrelevant, Black and Green have those tools in their box so they will cost more points. And creatures that are BOTH Black and Green will cost even more than Mono Black/Green creatures because they have acess to both "bring it back" and "make it bigger" strats but also probably some "bring it back bigger" stuff as well. So for, let's call it a 2mana 2/2 with flying, you'd have at least 3 different points costs based, not on the power of the exact cards in question as in this example they are all "identical" 2 mana 2/2s with flying, but rather on its color identity and the other cards in those colors that *COULD* be in your deck. Then there's the consistency and how it relates to mana curve. Cards that are high mana cost, are generally more inconsistent in their use because it's harder to pay the resources needed to use them, it usually has to be a certain, mid to late game, turn before your have enough lands to pay for it. As such they might be pointed a bit cheaper than one might expect but they have to not be too cheap because fast mana exists even if it's a bit less good without mana crypt. Then we also have to consider that Green is the fast mana color so green big boys are gonna have to be more expensive than other colors again regardless of if you decide to bring that stuff at all. I think the Canadian system where only the most powerful cards have points and you're limited in those choices would work infinitely better as you have to focus on balancing the cost between a smaller set of cards. Not just currently but in all future sets as every new set adds new peices that needs to be compared and contrasted with all the other cards that exist, but also all the other cards that exist will need adjustments based on any new power creep. And this is all without mentioning that the point system in Warhammer is updated and changes every 3 months to try and create a balanced meta where all 28 different factions and their 10s to dozens of units (depending on the army) are within a somewhat fair and balanced 45-55% win rate range. It just can't be done imo with how many new sets and cards WotC are adding to the game over the course of a year.
Thanks for your insight!
@@distractionmakers you're welcome! I've been seeing the idea of a points system being used in MTG for a bit now and while I do think it *is* a better idea than an almost vibes based 1-10 where one person's 7 is another person's 8 or more or WotC's tier system where your deck is the tier of your most powerful card regardless of how it fits into what the deck is trying to do, giving every single land and legendary a points cost is madness imo. Because you would end up having to give even basic lands a cost, even if it's 1-3 pts in a 500-1000 pt system, given how they fit into the puzzle of mana costs, mana colors and the play identities of those colors.
It you think about it, you could make a point system out of the rank system! A tier 1 deck is 100 points, and you could say "We're going to play a game where the point cap is 150."
The numbers end up kinda high, but it's pretty intuitive, and it's really flexible!
"Players will optimize the fun out of the game - Richard Garfield "
- Soren Johnson
They need to specifically state that the "power" brackets are not always actually about power and they're more about saltiness and play patterns, and they need to rank certain combos of cards as a higher bracket even when those cards alone are a lower bracket. Outside of that it's miles better than what currently exists.
Love your takes on brackets. I really hope the bracket system is what they implement.
Canadian Highlander point system already exists. If modified, it can help with power balance and promote creativity. It is both restrictive and descriptive.
The idea of a bracket system, but it is divided by deck design and intent. For instance lowest tier has no infinite combos, second tier has a limit on the amount an combo can run. No mass land destruction as a focus below tier 4. Like you said, to formalize the rule zero. Rule zero is rarely about specific cards, but what those cards do in the deck. So make the tiers reflect that.
from a game designer perspective i'm sure brackets seem like a great idea.
Hey hey! Love your videos! Do you think there’s a disconnect between designer and player?
@@distractionmakers i had a comment from a guy who organized tournaments all the time. he also loved this idea, because he thought it made his life alot easier. i would say the same is true from a design perspective. having defined lines for power level helps with these kinds of things without a doubt. from my point of view, it won't help with the main issue that the brackets are supposed to be for in the first place. you will still have people pubstomping in each individual bracket and the people who thought it would be easier to find a fun casual game just by making a bracket 1 deck will be sadly disappointed.
@@edhdeckbuilding how do you forsee pumbstomping occuring, practically speaking?
For example, if bracket 1 specifically outlaws any wincon besides combat damage and commander damage along with fast mana and tutors how would you envision a player sitting down at that table and effectively pubstomping?
A further question: what do you mean when you say someone pubstomped? Specifically, not something vague like a power imbalance. To me it is using a strategy that your opponents are not capable of interacting with effectively - and if you limit those strategies how would one pubstomp? A more consistent deck? Are you saying that a better deckbuilder or player is inherently pubstomping even if he is limited to the same strategies for victory as his opponents?
@@MadMage86 magic players will find a way. they always do. the guys who just want to win will assemble the best possible deck in bracket 1 and stomp everybody else.
@@edhdeckbuilding you are avoiding the question though - how is the best deck within a tier pubstomping?
If a speed limit sign says 45mph and I drive 45mph, would you say that I am speeding?
The question I have is also: are the brackets evolving. Like what happens if a card becomes better over time, would it jump to the next bracket? If yes when? How? Would this follow the BnR announcement?
WOTC has said they will be updating similar to BnR, but less frequently.
@@distractionmakers right that's cool! Hope they put basic forest bracket 4
From the outside looking in, i imagine the easiest way for a group to balance its own pod is "cost of deck" given that MTG's cost is tied to its playability, mostly. But obviously thats not something a company can enforce.
I have two issues with how WOTC/RC have framed the bracket setup.
First, it's described as a "power level" system rather than a play experience system. I think given the inclusion of Armageddon at B4, and Swords to Plowshares at B1 it's not about power. I would say they're targeting the following experiences:
B1) Mostly synergy/sluggy decks with minimal answers/interaction
B2) Expect your main wincons to be countered sometimes, some combo wins.
B3) More focused, most decks have interaction, lots of combos, might see some more intense resource denial.
B4) Expect to see salt cards, hard-stax, very efficient decks with lots of interaction, tutors, and fast combos.
My second issue is the approach "deck bracket is the highest card bracket." There are way too many decks out there that aren't built to a B4, but have 1-2 B4 cards in them, and making the deck automatically a B4 can mismatch tables and then defeats the purpose of the brackets. It also leads me to feel like certain play groups/stores will force this as a rule, and decrease the fun of creativity and playing the cards you own. If WOTC/RC were more clear about experiential expectations for each bracket, I think they could remove this problematic phrasing and make it easier for folks to figure out which bracket a deck lives in.
A canadian highlander points system would also jack up the price of all poitned cards, and jack up the occurrence of the most efficiently pointed cards. If you have 10 points of powerful cards to play with, and rhystic study happens to be the most efficiently pointed card, then everyone will be putting it in the deck to simply not waste their resources
I've noticed that Commander players seem to view powerful/"broken" cards as a kind of amorphous value that raises the power level of a deck generally and across the board rather than a singular fluke of power in a deck leading to (admittedly subectively) excess variance.
This is funny to me considering Commander players as a group are on average newer and less-skilled-in-a-tournament-sense than 60-card players, and newer/less skilled players tend to overvalue one off occurrences relative to average states. That being said, Commander also teaches wonky deck building sensibilities relative to 60-card leading to a whole lot of synergy-mish-mash-value-pile type deck building, so I can see how being trained to think in that context would keep you from evaluating a card as a card over a card as a lego piece.
This also comes down to a difference between a deck in it's own context and a deck in the context of a meta. A meta might have some deck that occasionally steals wins "unfairly" but rarely such that that might be a necessary evil, or at least a largely benign one, and that deck might even keep other even less fun decks out of the meta entirely. (Also sometimes, unfortunately, the deck is only unfair if you aren't a good enough player to see the out. In that instance it might even be a great time to play against if you ARE in the know. For instance, losing to mill is awful, but beating mill feels great, and if you're losing to mill, you're probably actually losing to control in general, and it doesn't really matter if the thing that dealt the killing blow was decking out or a giant flyer. What killed you was lack of speed in the face of counterspells.)
With all that being said, and with many Commander players seeming to dislike the idea of a meta as a concept at all, CHOOSING to put in a card that just steals wins by sudden and unexpected swings of power is terrible. And I mean that strategically, even. Misrepresenting your power level is a huge strategic consideration in a political game, but just having singular powerful cards gives you no control over that. You just suck for real until you make yourself a massive target. And in the case of ramp, you're probably making yourself a target early in the game and in service of playing a big stupid do-nothing beast or something.
Maybe players who are likely to misunderstand the stack and... casting a spell... shouldn't be so centered in matters of game design and balance for a game that was doing pretty well over-all for like 20 years before.
If the rules for pro baseball also had to be able to bend into a set of rules for wiffle ball, and balance changes to one affected the other, that'd be silly.
And if EDH players are getting testy about a push towards competitiveness and optimization, I welcome them to the game and suggest they keep their eyes out for Foundations, which is likely to be a pretty cool place to start.
A point system might be an interesting system for a digital card game. Since the computer can do it automatically for you.
It exists before digital in the cardboard space. Is the deck price system
Sad to not hear you bring up my biggest problem with the bracket system. We live in a commander format where single cards are very rarely the problem in the format, because a single card that becomes a format-wide problem is usually “rule 0 banned” at most tables. One of the greatest things about Magic and commander is that synergy between cards, not single cards themselves, are what lead to powerful games. As an example, there’s a very strong self-mill combo deck in Historic on Arena atm that uses a Persist -> Scholar of the Lost Trove -> Emergent Ultimatum combo that wins on turn 2 fairly consistently. I know this isn’t commander, but it presents an important question - are any of these cards powerful enough on their own to be restricted to the top level of play? In my mind, absolutely not. However, the combination of the three (and many redundant cards) would lead to the kind of commander deck that absolutely doesn’t belong at any casual table. In my mind, there’s no way to “rank” or give points to the majority of cards in the format that doesn’t unintentionally catch many non-problematic playstyles and deck constructions in the crossfire. At the same time, there is no way to catch all problematic playstyles either, and there will always be someone at the table (like you mentioned) that optimizes their deck to be above the rest of the table within the restrictions. The only thing that brackets seem to accomplish in my mind is restricting the freedom and creativity of players in deck building while moving a min-max mindset that doesn’t belong in commander to the forefront of many players’ minds.
I'm not satisfied with either system vs just a good set of banlists for each bracket.
Casual players won't bother to calculate or optimize for points, but that doesn't mean you should try to protect them from bad game feel they aren't equipped to deal with. Competitive players will just figure out the optimal way to satisfy the constraints of the bracket regardless of how you implement them. Why add extra busywork to the deckbuilding and tournament registration and enforcement processes?
IMO they should be focusing more on what the ideal experiences for each tier are:
- How many turns does the game take on average?
- How are players expected to interact with each other?
- What interaction types are players discouraged from?
- What strategies are meant to be supported by the format?
If you answer these questions, you have a solid format statement, and crafting/maintaining a good banlist becomes much easier.
More great content guys, really love how chill it is 😎
It took a few looks at the title to realize there wasn't an "'not" between we're and optimistic
The solution is to assign a card's points based on card rarity. That way, the "point total" can be eyeballed and found in the moment with a count of the different rarity of cards, rather than specific cards. No software necessary.
Rhystic study is a common 🤔
@@distractionmakersReally enjoying your content lately!
Yes, Rhystic Study was printed at Common. And Archangel's Light is a Mythic Rare. Do you want that to be your pack 1 pick 1 Mythic Rare in draft? /s
One thing I've come to terms with in Magic is that there are always ALWAYS exceptions to any rule. If they don't exist already, WoTC will purposely design them in the future. As such, we can't let the fact that exceptions exist distract our thought processes or we'll struggle to make any meaningful changes.
I get your point, though. "A card's rarity doesn't necessarily tell you its power level..." is a refrain I hear often when I argue this idea.
But so what? Most cards are much stronger or much weaker depending on the cards around them. This means that any attempt to account for synergistic bumps in power level would require a super complex points system be adopted, and that just isn't practical or easy.
The problem of specific cards being "too strong" for certain games isn't solved by a points system, regardless.
IMO, I think we can safely generalize that, more often than not, a Common is weaker than an Uncommon, and an Uncommon is weaker than a Rare, and a Rare is weaker than a Mythic Rare. I would further say that this is on purpose, and that we see it play out in marketing strategies (Chase mythics sell boxes) and in Draft environments (Mythics are bombs and you draft your deck based on them, Rares are strong cards that you go out of your way to include, Uncommons point you towards archetypes and mechanics, and Commons embody those archetypes and mechanics).
A couple things about using card Rarity for this purpose: 1) Every playable Magic card always has a rarity, and therefore using it for this purpose requires no alterations and can be implemented immediately. 2) If every rarity has a nice, round point value, a quick tally of card rarities in a Commander deck can take moments, and requires no spread sheet or software. 3) Rarity is already used as a power level limiter in Pauper/Pauper EDH, so we know that by cutting out entire rarities from a format's card pool, we generate a unique, "powered down" version of the game that has its own competitive ceiling.
Thanks!
Im excited for the bracket system! I want to point at a deck and say "does this have rhystic/vamp tutor/armegeddon", but without being an asshole about it
Agreed!
The pointing system (card per card pointing system) already exists since long ago. It’s the deck total price
We should have brought this up! It’s not quite 1 to 1 though as some powerful cards are quite cheap and some less powerful are expensive because they haven’t been reprinted.
I am not sure why, but in all these discussions around the - basically at this point - reformation of the Commander Format, seldom, pretty much never (well except you both maybe), does anyone talk about the elephant in the room: The paradoxical way the community has defined the terms "casual" and "competitive" for themselves, instead of acknowledging the fact that Magic the Gathering is a game about setting your opponent's life total to 0 and literally winning the game.
Magic was never designed as a "casual" or "social" experience, yet the culture and marketing especially around Commander has created the illusion that it is. It's for that reason that I believe Commander will further split into different sub-formats with increasingly different philosophies, playstyles and banlists, probably with an increasing local touch to them.
EDIT:Just wanted to add how fascinating this is in mirroring real life society and how it changes and is molded by outside and inside pressures. Hopefully some Magic player and sociologist will look into that further...
💯
@@benjaminfeiner6851 one of my biggest gripes is the lack of actual universal definitions for such terms. The RC could have at the very least given us a similar language to work with because at this point the term 'casual' means literally nothing in this setting and the RC could have easily given us a common language to at least help facilitate conversation if they weren't going to do their damned jobs.
The way I see the bracket system is as a layered banlist based on the level of play you intend to play certain decks. Playing at a bracket two and someone dropping a bracket three card turns into a red flag, much like someone calling their deck a seven while packing an Ancient Tomb and Mana Crypt.
My issue with the current format is that it carries both the casual and competitive sides of the game so when RC was banning cards, ideally they should be taking both sides into account. This didn't happen recently, and now we're in the fallout of that spontaneous decision.
Point value system doesn't really work in a physical setting of a 100 card deck. It works in Warhammer because you have like 20 miniatures to present which are more obvious to track from the outset.
Brackets gives shops the opportunity to host local commander pods to common power levels players can agree to without deliberating too hard on deck quality. And if a competitive player does play at a lower bracket then the odds are likely they can improve casual player's deck quality as they can present cards that are good for decks which will likely be at a lower cost than to try and get them to invest in something like Mana Crypt to make their stompy Dinosaur arrive a couple turns earlier.
The problem I’m having with how wizards is approaching this is in their examples for tier 4 cards they have Armageddon listed. In no way is Armageddon a competitive powerful card. It is a salty card that some casual players don’t want to play against.
This means that we’re including both power level and salt level into these rankings. What’s determined as powerful can be easily measured by looking at a cards performance in tournaments and such. But what’s determined as salty is all in the perspective and opinion of the individual player.
My point being, “salty” cards shouldn’t be included with powerful cards in these brackets.
" In no way is Armageddon a competitive powerful card"
🤦♂
@@BatCaveOz please explain how this statement is wrong. It’s a 4 mana sorcery that equally destroys all lands. Widely available at about $5 a copy. What’s powerful about this single card by itself?
Armageddon is both. The brackets (at least as of now) aren't factoring in cEDH so 4 is something like high power non-cEDH and at that power level Armageddon is a house. It's a 4 cmc card that will knock players completely out of the game. Very few other cards have that level of impact on a game.
Tell me you weren't around to play against Ernhamgeddon without telling me you weren't around to play against Ernhamgeddon...
@@imaginarymatter how does it knock players out of the game? If a player chooses to scoop because they don’t want to wait to redevelop their mana base, then that’s their own decision.
Armageddon requires a preset up board state in order for it to actually feel powerful and game ending.
I thought you’d go
“If you play 2 and 1, your playing for fun
If your playing 3 and 4 your playing for more”
Is there a point average system that would work this out? Say there's a point value for cards in a deck and the average is taken minus basic lands and that's the comparative number? Your vanilla creature deck would then reflect the value of the cradle and Sylvan library while also reflecting the low value creatures.
Brackets are for avoiding homogeny, bans are for handling power outliers/mistakes. I think the bracket system has legs. My main concern has to do with bracket 1. I think it will need to have a few more guard rails to protect newer players. There’s a high risk that the worst type of players will maximize bracket 1, and make it an awful experience for new players.
That could be more explicit limitations IE: no fetches and shocks, so on and so forth, a rather long list, or more realistically a limited card pool. Like only cards legal in standard or pioneer.
Obviously, wizards can make an exception for precons. Unaltered precons always get to be a bracket 1. That way they’re at the top end of bracket 1 rather than the middle or bottom.
If there are 4 different brackets that are clearly defined I'm pretty sure eventually that will just be "4 formats."
The equivalent of Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. Formats with no rotations and technically a lot of shared cards but with their own independent ecosystems.
Somebody will be out there wanting to find "the best deck in tier 2" or whatever, just like there is in Modern. The competitive Modern players don't swap to Legacy.
I think the main thing non-TCG heads don't understand is that this just adds complications. There's the "just Rule Zero it," but the fact that it's now shifted to what is, in essence, a power ratio system will cause a rift with players who literally just want to play with their favorite cards. Isn't that experience the one that we're trying to preserve? The casual one?
The brackets just add semantics that do more to harm casual "kitchen table" MTG than good. You can't add rules then expect established players to just ignore them, it just causes tension.
If anything, the mere idea that my favorite card, whatever it may be, being in a bracket higher than your favorite card is going to cause problems.
The main problem with brackets is they don't actually add anything. "Armageddon is a 4" is not that different from "we don't like Armageddon", "my deck plays *insert card here* but is a 1" is literally already accounted for by bracketing Sol Ring at 0.
A bracket system is simple, and therefore also useless.
Hmm have to disagree here. It will now be defined by an objective and impartial 3rd party that Armageddon is a powerful/unfun way to play.
Ofcourse. But the point remains that a bracket system is doing very little but reproducing existing systems for rating power level. "Your deck isn't a 7 it plays Armageddon" is in no way different in the bracket system. As complicated as points systems might be, they are actually communicating a little more once you've put in the work of doing whatever equation is required.
@arvidsteel6557 you are completely missing the burden switch that happens.
If you sit to play a "level 7" match, each individual player has their own view on what cards makes a deck a 7. Armageddon might be trash so it can be in a 7 deck.
The Brackets impose a consensus from the get go. When you sit to play a "tier 2" game, Armageddon is out of the equation objectively. It is up to the player wanting to break the bracket to convince other players why their tier 3/4 card should be allowed.
@@enriquewicks7797 I'm not missing it at all. I just don't see how that's relevant for comparing the three systems. If WotC made a system and said "Armageddon means your deck is not a 7, here are other cards and decks you're not allowed to play it and call your deck a 7", it would also switch the burden in the exact same way.
@@arvidsteel6557That would just be 10 brackets instead of 4 which I think you would agree is too much
Looking forward to the video!
I can’t imagine being invested enough in magic to be on top of all the news, follow releases and bannings, while also only playing commander. At a certain point you- as this theoretical person- are no longer a casual player, and therefore commander is no longer for you
Are you guys aware of how smogon brackets work? I imagine it will be something like that
As someone who has played Warhammer for years (and seen point allocation change there for the worse) I think it would be better for Commander to adopt a Highlander / Xpoint system and eventually a ban or formatting system similar to Smogon (pokemon)
The brackets are similar to Smogon.
@@distractionmakers, do the brackets already have their own individual ban and restricted list? Because that was what I was referring to when I was talking about formatting the Tiers.
ex. Out of 20
Tier 4 (Anything Goes = the Old Banlist)
Tier 3
Dual 3 pt
Fetch 2 pt
Shock 1 pt
Tier 2 (no Duals)
Fetch 3 pt
Shock 2 pt
Bond 1 pt
Tier 1 (no fetches)
Shock 3 pt
Bond 2 pt
Scry 1 pt
(edit) from a fixed point each tier would then create adaptive updates, thus giving each Tier there own unique heuristic
I’m looking forward to the tiers (but I hope either WotC creates or coordinates with someone to release a digital tool). Too often others would join our casual pod as a 4th, saying it’s their weakest deck, only for them to stomp the rest of us. I’m not so hyped to start another when the last one barely got going.
This tier system is so redundant. If you’re playin kinnan I’m going to keep an eye on your bullshit. If you’re playing 5c Jodah or sisay I’m gonna keep an eye on your bullshit lol its simple
Not that I expect it to matter to me since I play purely kitchen table casual Commander with my friends, but if I'm told my jankfests that fizzle more often than not are in someone really high tier because I have the odd really good card in them, it's definitely going to get a big laugh from me.
I think the point thing would be interesting if you could do a wargame sorta thing where having fewer points gives you some advantage to make up for having less power, at least on-paper, than your opponents, like the player with a lower-point deck goes first or draws an extra card on Turn 1 or something like that, but that would probably be better as a thing implemented in a brand new format from the get-go rather than stapling it on late in the format's life.
The commander show "the worst possible" with CGB actually kind of does what the bracket system is getting at which is... whats the strongest thing your deck does? and how do we feel about that? if my best thing is the exquisite blood infinite but I have no tutors to get it and I have no sac-outlet stuff to insta-pop it that's quite different from running multiple tutors and a sac ping package to insta-gib the entire table.
same goes for basically everything... if you're running white weenies with anthem effects and have smothering tithe I frankly don't care but smothering tithe is pretty goddamn annoying and powerful in cases where the deck isn't goofy and they've got a serious gameplan afoot.
So yeah... is vamp tutor tier 4? sure it's a non conditional instant tutor. is your garbage vampire bat deck tier 4 because it runs vamp tutor for flavor and to get your favorite bats out? uhhh no dude lol it's a tier 1 deck with a tier 4 card that helps you do the cool/fun thing more often.
But yeah so I think the conversation should just be more of "whats the worst thing your deck can do to us and how?" is the best thing to know rather than an individual card with zero context. I still like brackets because I think they're a step in this direction at least but they don't quite achieve this which I think is the real goal here. (though I think it begins to facilitate that convo)
A lot of people already use "spreadsheets" when building decks. We just call it moxfield
The difference is it being a requirement. Casual players aren’t using moxfield.
I like the brackets but I worry about the cognitive load of playing against players who say their deck is bracket X and watching out for cards that aren't allowed in the bracket. We have to memorize 4 banlists, that's just the long and short of it.
The announcement should be clear that it is really more of a suggestion, except as it concerns official events--'cons, and maybe LGS tournament events.
Also, a point system would be a nightmare to enforce. Presenting your army before a WH40k game is, I presume, fairly easy. Presenting 100 cards each in a 4-player pod before playing a game is pretty insane. They would have to show you their phone with their Moxfield decklist on it. It's pretty impractical. CanLander gets closer to being viable but has the flaws you guys mentioned--the 50/50 deck where it's 50% vanilla 0's and 50% competitive cards and if you draw just one of those halves you become either the speed bump or the pubstomper.
I think the problem with the bracket system is that it doesn't solve anything. All it really does is facilitate how many cards of similar effects that you get to keep in your deck. Let's look at the example of Mana Crypt and Sol Ring. They both are mana ramps which serves the same goal. All the bracket system would do is say that in one tier you can use both and in another you can't use Mana Crypt, but you replaced it with a different mana rock. The argument that the bracket system opens up deck design is one done in bad faith. It doesn't actually fix the problem. If someone wants to build for example Stacks, Commander is an eternal format with so many cards, that you would have to literally put every card that could potentially reproduce Stacks into the same bracket to prevent its unfun play style at more casual tiers. Just because a deck now sub-optimally plays a turn or two slower does not mean it is any more fun to play against. Then, again with Sol Ring, it raises questions about why this and not that are in their respective brackets. Also, does this mean that WotC will release new bracket lists every time a new set comes out? Like, what if they released a Mana Crypt 2.0, where you pay half your life total to untap it? How is that card still not a problem? It causes the same headaches, just for a greater cost that we all know optimal players wouldn't bat an eye at. The problem with the bracket system, as-is, is that it is arbitrary and doesn't follow any strict guidelines, it is a whimsical in nature. The argument here made against a point system also works against a bracket system.
Both L5R and Netrunner have point systems to deal with bringing in out of faction cards of various strengths, it isn’t thaaaat difficult. Especially if it is descriptive and not a hard cap.
Hear me out, what if we have like a list of all the cards that are way too powerful? That way we know that we will never find those cards in a deck. Then you just don't run those cards. Crazy concept but just seems so much easier than trying to figure out a deck's power level or what bracket it falls under.
So… brackets?
are you ignoring power levels in this discussion, or just aren't aware they exist in commander?
That is called the *Banned List.*
(It has been around for decades).
This really is what brackets are attempting to do, while keeping things open for player preference. I hear ya though, it would be nice if everyone could agree on a set of cards that are too powerful.
Well obviously nothing is too powerful so nothing should go on that list
I don't think a point system for individual cards really works that much because much of the "power" in a commander deck comes from synergy and homogenization.
1 Sol Ring in a deck isn't a big deal, but having 5 sources of fast mana? Having 1 tutor in your deck? Can be okay. Having 4 tutors in your deck? This will cause issues. If a point system gets established, I think it needs to account for this, and I think doing that starts making it clumsy for all players and untenable for newer players.
I think if the bracket system was presented as a “whitelist” instead of a power level system it would be more appealing for most people.
Instead of banning a card, WotC can just throw it into tier 4. That would draw the line in the sand and let people playing with/against the card to decide which level they want their playgroup to exist in. Tier 4 Commander could essentially be the “anything goes” format.
I think it gives the players more agency and provides a universal language that rule zero conversations can be framed around.
(Also a points system would be way too complicated for the average tabletop player, IMO.)
Agreed. 👍
You talk about people optimizing the fun out of things, and I think that both a points system and a tier system run afoul of this. Exactly as you say, players are going to see what they can do within any particular bracket or tier or point total. When you create metrics like these proposed systems, there are going to be Spikes who find all the edge and corner cases.
In a competitive format, this is fine. Good, even! But commander is not supposed to be a competitive format. It is supposed to be a casual, kitchen table format. Rather than creating systems which can be optimized against, I would rather that players be given better instruction on how to have the Rule 0 conversation, and to communicate the *kind* of game they are looking for.
My feeling is that, rather than banning specific cards, it would be better to describe particular play patterns which people often don't like playing against, and letting players know that *if* they are playing a deck which might fall into one or more of those patterns, they should tell the table. Indeed, I think that banning specific cards might not even be the solution to certain problems, as there are a lot of cards which can be played relatively fairly, and are only problematic in combination with certain other cards (e.g. Thassa's Oracle is a good scry on a body absent something like Demonic Consultation, and Demonic Consultation is a dangerous tutor absent something like Thassa's Oracle).
For example:
Fast Mana: Decks which can rapidly increase the amount of mana available to them make it easier for a player to create an unsurmountable board state and win the game very quickly. Many commander players prefer a slower game in which they have an opportunity to play their cards and do a "cool thing". Fast man cards include things like Jeweled Lotus, Dark Ritual, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Moxen, (insert more complete list here). If you are playing with one or more of these cards, you should discuss your deck with your playgroup, and be prepared to either swap these cards out, or play a different deck.
Instant Win Combos: There are a number of different ways in which different combinations of a small number of cards can lead to an out-of-nowhere, instant victory for one player. These unexpected win conditions can leave other players at the table feeling like they didn't get a chance to play the game or interact. Such combos include Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation, Coalition Victory, (insert a longer list here). If you are playing with this kind of combo win in your deck, you should discuss this with your playgroup, and be prepared to swap out the key combination pieces or to play a different deck.
...
And so on. The idea is that players are not being given something to optimize against, but ways of starting conversations at their table, as well as advice about the kinds of things which are likely to set other people off. I think that this was the spirit of the original commander banlist (the RC wrote about "signpost cards" a lot).
That said, I think that these kinds of descriptions of play patterns can work well in conjunction with a more competitive, tournament focused systems. By all means, create a bracket or point system for the tournament grinders, and invite players to use those brackets or points as a part of their Rule 0 conversations ("We are playing tier 2 tonight. My deck *does* contain an infinite combo, but it requires two cards other than my commander to pull off, and another card to actually do anything interesting. Is that okay with everyone else?"). However, at the end of the day, I would prefer that we have more tools for talking about how we want to play the game, and fewer rules which are going to encourage people to optimize the fun out of things.
Brackets fracture Commander into 4 formats each with their own ban-list. Putting a card in a bracket means it's banned in lower brackets.
I think in practice it will be mostly two formats. Play for fun and play to win. Brackets 1/2 will be for fun and 3/4 to win. Some players will prefer the power level of 3 or 4. I would imagine players will have decks in various brackets.
My issue with the bracket system is that if 99 of my cards are normal and I have 1 card that is bracket 4, then my entire deck is bracket 4? How can that be the same as someone else who's 100 cards are ALL bracket 4 cards? How is that comparable? If I have a barrel with 99 apples and 1 banana, calling it a barrel of bananas seems highly inaccurate.
You have two options in that case. Rule 0 the card with the table or remove it from your deck. In either case you would be playing in the bracket the majority of the cards are in.
Dont put that one card in your deck list then ? its 100 card singleton how often are you planning to see it in play ?
Brackets suck.
Trying to duct tape a comprehensive competitive regulation system to a casual format of a pay-to-win game is just wild.
Best thing that could happen for obsessive compulsive people who wish life involved more spreadsheets
I think is good as a starting point, specially for newer players or for tournaments. But it doesn't have the nuance or dept of Rule 0. Commander is a social format, and that means that the group of players playing it determine the game they want to play, even bans are optional.
Honestly, I don't think this will see wide-spread adoption, if it ever comes out. For a new system to see wide adoption, it has to make things easier and/or be more accurate than the system that came before it, and this has neither, as it has been explained thus far, and it's very easy to illustrate this. Match any newer precon (some exceptions apply) against any older precon and see what happens. I'd say, conservatively, that the newer precon would win 75% of the time. It wouldn't even be close to fair. Yet they're both 1's, because every card printed in a precon is, by definition, a tier 1 card.
This is part of the very fundamental failing of the brackets as described: Even between those 8 measly cards they used to illustrate the system,, the basis of judgement is wildly different. Some are judged on accessibility, others on salt, yet others on pure power. It can only end one way: In an inconsistent mess that will cause a lot more problems than it solves.
So even with brackets, you'll still need to have a pregame/rule 0 discussion to assure that someone doesn't just stomp all over the rest of the table, and people still need to be mindful when building their decks. So, no problems really gets solved, it's just putting a slightly different hat on the old 1-10 system.
Then comes to pure insanity that would be the administrative work in maintaining these brackets. If they want the brackets to be representative of the reality of the game, and _if_ they flipped over to judging cards purely on power/impact, as they should, every old card needs to be reassessed and their tiers updated, for every set. That's upwards of 8 full revisions the entire card base per year, and the card base gets some 3000-4000 new cards per year.
Case and point in Chain of Smog - An absolute nothingburger that didn't see any play until Magecraft came along, and suddenly it's a tier 4 ca,rd. This dynamic will just keep on happening, as they always have, but now someone has to formalize all those changes. The community can take on the responsibility of rating cards, but there still has to be someone on the other end, at Wizards, who manually verifies what's being reported and updating the brackets. That's a Herculean task.
This feels a lot like a castle made of air and wishes - All vibes and no substance, and will evaporate as soon as anyone even tries to touch it.
Help I got transported from my home timeline to one where distraction makers has positive things to say about commander
On a more serious note I can’t see how a point system would work in a game where card A is 10 points and card B is two points and having both gives you a super busted infinite combo worth way more than the sun if their individual values
Am I the last mtg player in the world who could not care less about anything commander?
Eventually all will be one
I feel this.
Commander was my jam but with this insane power creep and all stupid stuff going on now with brackets vs points, I'm done. I have my dandan deck. I'm good.
Modern has been a ban factory for the 5 years or so I went to commander thinking I could just chill tf out and play. This game has lost its way.
MTG is not designed to be fair. That's just a fact. It's all over the place. I'm good with that. What alt do we have? Nothing practical, that's for sure.
What the hell kind of exit is this? You guys need a sign off