I just find it weird that the RC bans cards based on how "unfun" they are to play against, yet there's tons of those cards that are perfectly legal that are just as "unfun" running around anyway. So the RC should either start putting a lot more cards like those on the ban list, or start taking other cards with the same criteria off the ban list. tl;dr RC should do their job.
@@nogardeh3720 Was gonna say - the one episode I'm fully on board with a Richard Take, and he ends the episode advocating for bulldozing half a city to put a freeway through the middle of it.
Rule zero really should be the opposite: you have a ban list and then when you play with a regular group you can unban ones you like together. Lets you more easily play with new playgroups at lgs
No, I like the way it is. Where I get to do whatever I people can't tell me I can't You can peer pressure people out of playing stacks or combo, you can't peer pressure someone into letting me play golos.
Before watching, I say not cedh needs to split but we realy need a clean split between low and high power casual, including banlist. As weird as it may sound CEDH is probably the best organized part of this community.
@@TheHayeShawn"regular" has so many variations though, just as big a power divide can be felt for say a precon player vs a veterna playing their fun but quite a bit more powerful deck they built as that veteran vs cedh
@@TheHayeShawn i would prefer a split, that said cedh is ALREADY its own thing anyway. I want a split in the casual comunity for lower and higher power.
I actually don't think that's weird at all. the opposite would be weird to me. the highest power levels in any game I know of are always the best organised, because the players know what's the strongest, what's "too strong" and everyone plays to win, so it is expected to get countered, blown up, your pieces removed etc. they are also the most organised because when you play at the literal highest power level, there is basically no discussion about "what power level are we playing?" because it's obviously the highest.
@@winter945 even precon powerlevel has increased dramatically, sometimes the powerdifference is real even in the same set so thats no longer a 1 size fits all either.
I have never had a cedh deck sit down at a table of precons. It's always some high power good stuff deck that is owning the pod and necessitating the rule 0 talk, decks that would get absolutely smacked in a cedh pod.
Not this. I have lost 2 large playgroups to CEDHification where a player claims to be thorarcling/ad nauseuming/winter orb urza high lord artificering "casually", forcing everyone to run more free interaction, lower cmca and ultimately, cEDH decks of their own.
@@bodaciouschad High power good stuff doesn't mean running cEDH staples or even infinite combos. I run a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck that can absolutely wreck the wrong...well most... casual tables, but would be laughed off a cEDH pod. Rule zero is a necessary entity to ensure everyone is on the same page. EDH isn't as simple a casual and competitive...there are almost infinite power levels.
i run a high powered OG atraxa deck that runs stax and mass land destruction when i want to get frisky on high poweed casual tables. i never play it against lower powered pods, and i always have the rule 0 discussion with the pod. it would never hold it's own at a cedh table but punishes the casuals. @@jacobalbert2603
As someone who loves city planning, The fix for san fran is NOT to build a through-fare highway Induced demand would desTROY that poor road Better public transit is the way
It’s kinda wild that cEDH, the healthiest implementation of the rule 0 conversation, is considered on the chopping block. cEDH is just EDH. If you split the format, casual EDH will just have a new max power cEDH. There is a no banlist cEDH and nobody plays it because it’s not EDH.
On the other hand, splitting could be beneficial to cEDH players. Casual can stay the same, no banlist. For cEDH, a banlist could be helpful to balance the game at competitive tables, foster the emergence of new strategies, help avoid standardization, etc. Similar to how it is like for 60-card formats.
I just don’t think cEDH can ever grow unless and until it adopts its own identity. Tournament cedh will just not be a thing until it is run by their own RC and they operate their own ban list
@haileydee9954 I think they are saying that when you sit at a table to play cedh, and everyone agrees we are playing cedh, it's like there is already been a rule 0 conversation, and the rule 0 is to expect to face everything that can be expected in cedh indeed
Honestly, the biggest problem isn’t cEDH. It’s the EDH community. As you said, going over rule 0 sucks. cEDH doesn’t do that, you play what you want. As others have said, if you segment off “cEDH” then you will have the EDH community slowly ban everything as what everyone thinks is fun is different and due to that everyone has a different idea of how the game should be played. Richard said you don’t bring a legacy deck to a standard game, but what’s actually happening is people are bringing standard decks to legacy games and complaining people are “playing to win”, which is the point of the game.
Neither cEDH or EDH are problems, they are just ways of play the game. Rule 0 doens't suck, it just take some time, but it works great when you have a playgroup that share expectations and can decide how they want to play the game.
@@BludMun There clearly is a competitiveness to CEDH, enough to host tournaments. I'm not sure what you find cringe, but typically cedh players are a lot less cringe than "casual" players. They're not wasting time whining about why they were attacked, why you countered their spell, or why you're playing *insert any card they don't like*
@@irisnegro You're looking at your playgroup in a bubble, which is fine, but not as possible at a table with 4 randoms. The rule 0 in my experience varies from LGS to LGS, and is so hard to get things to truly line up. What is casual at my LGS has been shown to be higher powered at others.
@@elemint2yes it is. You just aren’t being direct enough. People are scared to talk and use their words and calling rule zero bad is a personal issue. Not everyone at a table is lying and if they do, call them out and I’m sure they’ll think twice
Definitely. I love both cEDH and Casual commander. There's almost no point in banning anything in casual magic at all since everyone makes such a big deal over rule zero. If someone decides to play like a jerk and ignore the talk, don't play with them. Simple as that. Cards should only be banned if they would be a problem in cEDH. Blood moon effects and land destruction is considered "mean" in casual commander, which is why I'd never play them in a casual deck, but those cards aren't banned. Everyone just knows it's best not to play them.
I've always thought the RC should elect to do an official banlist and an suggested list. The suggested list would come as a "We understand these cards cause concern in lower powered stores and we want to issue guidance to store owners who do not run high powered metas" which would include thoracle, dockside etc. Basically keeping Cedh as a whole but allowing LGS to just point to a list
They could literally just use the EDHREC salt list. I don't agree with every card there, but I agree with the vast majority and could compromise on the ones I disagree with.
It's an interesting idea, idk how it would play out exactly. I think it's worth noting that dockside and perhaps thoracle should just be straight up banned, not just suggested.
I agree with Tomer at 53:20 Richard's example of a person netdecking "best commander deck" and rolling up with Thoracle combo doesn't feel like a realistic scenario. I feel like people get into Commander through word of mouth, and the majority of players love building around a commander, not building a goodstuff pile. It's hard to imagine someone buying into a $600+ format so blindly. Even if a player did that, would they know how to play it? Would they be able to execute the combo? Would they counterspell the correct threats?
I agree from personal experience - all people I've seen getting into commander have either bought precons, built their own terrible brew or got a deck built by a friend. Also if they'd split the format imo it would give spikey players even more reason to pubstomp. Right now it's glaringly obvious you're a dick when you bring a cEDH deck to a casual table. And if we can't get rid of rule 0 talk and varying powerlevels anyway, there's no real gain from a split.
My anecdotal experience of watching two people get into the game we’re literally netdecking niv mizzet decks with thoracle and niv combos. When they went to alter the deck later they kept refusing to cut the combos because those were the clearest cut strongest parts of the deck to them.
something Richard touched on reminded me of my first introduction into EDH. when I was first starting out there wasnt a CEDH scene and people played whatever but there were CEDH like decks that were being played by some of the more spike like players, those players didnt care about the unwritten rules and played high powered decks every game. I think that we tend to forget that there are lots of people who play MTG who can struggle with social interactions or dont care about them and are willing to pubstomp or play Armageddon on turn 4 just because thats funny to them. a new player coming to an LGS and running into Codie a few times might make them hate commander as a whole.
Alternatively, playing against a high power deck may inspire them to strive for higher power in their own decks. There are assholes in every format and there are helpful people who want to help welcome new people in every format too
@@jasonsavory9748yeah I got into EDH in a very high power meta back in college (before cEDH was as defined as it is now) and now I'm a cEDH player. It's so cool to see the broken card interactions that can exist.
A lot of comments claim a new cEDH would emerge at the top of casual EDH if the formats are split, which may be true because there will always be optimized decks. However, the ceiling of this new format would be far lower and lessen the gap in power between weaker and more powerful decks, leading to more games where weaker decks don’t immediately roll over to the more powerful ones. Resulting in less feel bads in random pods when rule zero is not brought up before play.
This feels like just bad match ups and the lack of calibrating power level seems like a pod failure. I don't think anyone (other than pub stompers) builds a cEDH deck, and thinks it is ok to play with people who don't have strong decks. Pub Stompers will just pivot to the new troll strategy. It also still leaves an incredibly wide spectrum of power levels, unless the ban list is INCRECIBLY extensive. I have decks with no cEDH staples (I mean, I guess Brainstorm), that are completely inappropriate at Precon tables. The ceiling is still high enough that the "problem" you are describing doesn't go away on the casual end, not to mention the Rule 0 conversation. On top of that, we have cards like MLD, that don't even really see play in cEDH, Richard keeps mentioning Armageddon, but except in super fringe stratagies that doesn't show up anyway in cEDH because it is very difficult to break parity. Most people I speak with who play casually also don't seem to mind it if it's a finisher (don't drag out the game with a reset button), and that is already how, in the rate instances it does see play, it is played in cEDH decks.
@@falconje11totally agree with your comment - a lot of the comments on this video seem to believe that cEDH players enjoy rolling up to casual tables and turn 2 thoracle + consult winning when the whole point of playing cEDH is to play your high power deck against high power decks - if someone is lying about the power level of their deck and smashing you with it they're not "a cEDH player," they're just an asshole 😂 separating the formats will in no way prevent assholes who want to pubstomp from building high power casual decks to smash casual tables - it might make those decks weaker, but they still won't be fun to play against unless we're proposing banning huge chunks of the commander card pool
literally no one is going around playing cedh decks in casual pods (if they do theyre literally j a dick and it isnt an issue of the format), this is all a nonissue
6:36 As an entrenched casual player, I think the formats should stay together. Simply put, cEDH doesn't really exist without the EDH. Part of the restriction for cEDH is the EDH banlist and rules, and that's what makes it fun and enticing. If they were to split, cEDH would lose a core part of its identity. That said, I think that both sides to the format are VERY distinct, and should be treated as such. For example: deck power scales. The effectiveness of deck power ranking aside, putting cEDH on the same scale as precons is asinine. Even on the most balanced scales, the jump from a 9 to a 10 (cEDH's usual ranking) is exponential, and in more was than one. Many cEDH decks run cards that aren't great by regular EDH metas, like Dispel and Pyroblast, and cEDH deck construction is so much more different from high-powered EDH decks (8-9's on most scales). Long story short: the system works well as-is and would only be complicated by trying to separate EDH and cEDH, although public perception on how the two relate definitely needs some work.
Competitive all the way to janky is a mindset on a spectrum. So cEDH isnt a clear cut line so where would you split the two formats and even if you did, there would almost immediatly be a new form of cEDH within EDH. The best decks within a format will always be considered competitive. The amount of formats would just grow indefinetly
CEDH aren't the best decks in the format, it's literally a different format already. They are molded for the meta they play in, it's dramatically different. High powered commander is not CEDH, and not all CEDH is high power.
Which is why the episode became "ban list, more or no?" Playign the best deck I can will always be a thing, the only question is what are the rules. We used to tuck commanders for example. They changed that effectively banning many cards. I can't tell you the last time I saw a Condemn or Spell Crumple. Cedh will always be fine, ban list expanding is all upside.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 they literally are though. Apart from 'metabreaker' decks, that are designed to thrive against other cEDH decks but might have a hard time in high power pods (some very reactive or stax decks would come to mind), cEDH decks are the strongest decks you could bring to a game of commander, regardless of the rest of the pod.
@@DavidVelic-l5t Lets say we engage in a thought exercise where we give an opponent a given board state with a set of parameters for how that board state will interact with you every turn. Do you believe that CEDH decks across the board can outperform non-CEDH decks in almost every possible scenario? The meta doesn't describe what's good and what's not. It describes what is, and how they interact. CEDH decks are not designed to be generically powerful, they're designed to perform well in relation to expected opponents. I'll repeat my original assertion to make sure we understand what's being talked about: CEDH is not a power level, it's a playstyle. Food for thought. How many game-warpingly strong cards are entirely disregarded solely due to how difficult it is to cast them in CEDH?
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I get where you're coming from and I certainly agree that what you're saying is right for some cEDH decks, but not for the majority, at least not for those with a real proactive gameplan. Because in any given format, there will always be a strongest deck, or maybe a few. In a meta independant vacuum, what would that be? I don't know the answer, but it would most definitely look very similar to the current top cEDH decks. Those cards that aren't good enough for cEDH aren't good enough for a reason though. they pretty much all have the same thing in common - they are strong, but too slow. it simply doesn't matter if you have grave pact or doubling season when all my deck does is consistently win turn 3, often earlier.
We should for sure make lines in the sand between Cedh and noncedh, it's not just about powerlevel but mentality, if you play this game to win just to win no matter what, go play Cedh that what the c stands for COMPETITIVE but commander isn't a game that about winning. (of course it is, someone has to win eventually.) To me a perfect commander game is a game where each player leaves the game happy and content, that they were able to play the game and have fun in a pod, going from strongest to weakest to rebuilding to eventual defeat at another player. in commander there are some players who single focus 1 opponents down only attack that person even when others are bigger threats or have more life, these kind of players should go off to Cedh. in CEDH you shouldn't give a flying fuck about your opponent's enjoyment of the game, that not what you're here for. A lot of players have certain cards or combo's they despise, whether that's MLD or certain INFs that don't immediately win, and you'll see that those players don't play those combos or cards themselves, cause they know how annoying or dreadful it is to play/lose against. if people understand and try to place themselves in their opponent's shoes, follow the golden rule of boardgames: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." and if you realise that you don't care about your opponent's feeling in a game, then pls don't play commander, go play any other format Cedh Legacy Modern
As someone who plays both, I genuinely think more people should actually try cedh. Because most people who don't seem to have opinions that, while are totally valid if it's just not your thing, aren't really based on actual experience. Experience that if had would help them, I think, in understanding what they actually want from a game
I think this problem is twofold: 1. I agree that the shadowban list is a confusing social dynamic, and that needs to be clarified for people in one way or another, and I am not picky as to how that is solved. 2. The actual problems in games at LGS's and the like is not "this person brought a CEDH deck to a precon battle", but it is "in the casual and relaxed format this player is running Mana Crypt and Force of Will". I would like the formats split and the banned lists adjusted so that I can either explicitly enter into fast mana and free counters world, or choose to stay inside uncastable haymakers world, without having a long discussion first. Additionally, I think it is worth noting that banning cards on power level may result in bans that people wouldn't necessarily expect. If you ban Armegeddon, you should probably ban Field of the Dead too. Land interaction exists to interact with lands, and if the interaction is banned, the lands cannot be interacted with.
To be fair though aren't those resealable questions to ask regardless? Are you playing free counters or super fast mana isn't much of a chore. I personally ask/ make clear every time I sit down regardless of power that I don't like playing against chaos (which I believe to be more headache inducing the longer the games go), but I don't feel it takes too long of time to clear small things like that up before starting a game with complete strangers.
Yeah, the idea that people are actively bringing proper Cedh decks to super casual commander nights is absurd. Cedh players are not interested in bullying people that can't fight back with turn 2/3 kills.
The biggest issue with banning all of the cEDH cards is that it doesn't actually solve the problem. Then you'll just get people coming up with the strongest possible EDH deck and they'll still get yelled at for doing that. To be frank, I got bullied out of casual. To clarify, the decks that I was playing were not good decks and people were just whining so much. CEDH games are so much less stressful for me. I know that I can just try to win and everybody I'm playing with is cool with that because they're also trying to win.
“Causal” EDH either needs a stricter ban list applicable everywhere, or no ban list at all and rely on Rule 0 and House/LGS rules to define what’s allowed. cEDH needs a ban list regulated just as any 60 card competitive format is regulated. The only reason this is a discussion is because there’s a wide variety of “cEDH cards” as Richard described that are inherently strong (stax, free spells, fast mana), and people use them in casual resulting in feel-bads because there’s a difference in expectation.
Most succinct comment so far. Rule 0 is absurd. The fact that free counter magic is only considered acceptable if your opponents agree to it is crazy. The cedh format only works because they embrace the banlist as fact, where as casual thinks of the banlist as suggestions
well, casual is already rule 0 either way. If me and my friends want to create a commander table where everyone plays with 3 commanders, a deck allowing 4ofs an 180 card decks who's going to enforce I don't? separate completely the 2 formats will just create unnecessary complexity. IMO, if you're really going to separate the formats you should be separating 1vs1 commander from FFA commander... and FFA commander should have INSANELY revamped banlist to weaken combos, as combos are pretty much the only strategy capable of giving over 25% win rate in a 4player game... ban every single tutor for starters.
@@seilaoquemvc2 problem is that casual EDH doesn’t only apply to friends playing at home, it applies to all games held at LGS, online over spell table or MTGO, at conventions, etc. With all those different methods to play, there needs to be a clear set of rules everyone abides by unless specifically agreeing not to. It’s no different than Standard/Pioneer/Modern versus Kitchen Table formats, apples to oranges.
@@pistolpete7422 sure. but balancing casual is simply impossible.\ because you go out there, ban every single mass land destruction, then someone will end up comboing with Field of the Dead after tutoring 8 cards, make a bazzilion zombies and insta win. You know that no matter how casual a table is, there's always the asshole that will combo off and kill the entire table on turn 6. what bothers some people will be different than what bothers other people... and the current commander banlist does a TERRIBLE job at keeping the "I win now, fuck you" strategies at bay. It bans some stupid cards that have no business being banned like Braids, Recurring Nightmate while keeping real offenders like Sol Ring and Demonic Tutor running rampant. It also bans hard reset symmetrical cards like Upheaval while allowing for "everyone is damned except me" cards like Cyclonic Rift... For some super weird reason, it bans Tolarian Academy but not Gaea's Craddle... bans Yawgmoth's Bargain and not Necropotence.... really what the hell? The issue here is MUCH bigger than just separating formats.... If this is to be taken seriously, it must be looked at with actual game theory backing, the banlist for commander is just a selection of cards that someone in the rules comitee doesn't like and not something trying to stop the broken strategies that the format has.
BTW thanks for bringing this conversation, while there's a deafening silence at the RC and CAG. You took the bullet for us and will be remembered for that.
The rule 0 discussion is always so funny to me. Splitting the formats doesn't make any changes on the cEDH side. The rule 0 for a cEDH game starts and stops at "hey are we gonna play some cEDH?" Splitting the games still makes casual commander games require a rule 0 discussion. Because everyone has their own opinion of what is and isn't okay in a casual format.
One approach i thought was interesting would be to do something similar to the fan made pokemon competitive rules for 1v1: tiers based on popularity. So if you want to play in the overused tier then you should expect a lot of staples, and if you want to tone that down you go play in the underused tier. You cant use overused cards in the underused format, but you can use underused cards in the overused format You'd have a lot of formats as a result, but people could gauge the power level and the "ban list" for a particular format would be self regulating via data. Other than some form of data driven approach, the split in formats would be arbitrary and you'd just have cEDH, casual commander, and sweaty commander
It’s cool that this is a comment because I was literally thinking this watching the video. CEDH would be Ubers High Power is OU Casual Commander is UU Jank is NU and RU
I think CEDH is too stream lined in the Meta to be considered “salty”. Your Commander colours automatically dictate about 80%+ of your deck (copy and paste) within the Meta ie. Lands, Fast Mana, Removal. From there, there are some obvious revisions and very minimal creativity. CEDH is about the minor nuances in how you setup your combo prior to your opponents. With experience, you can probably guess almost all of what is in your opponents deck (with maybe a few minor surprises) as soon as you see their Commander(s). Including any meta salty cards. EDH varies. You can have groups with a lot of ingenuity in their decks or you can have copy and paste from the EDHREC Top 20 groups. The salt in them varies a lot as well.
12:00: I love commander and I play it for over 10 years, but I have to agree with Richard here. Members of the RC created commander/EDH as a casual format. Fair, no complains. Over the years, there were many articles coming from RC members that Commander should (still) be a casual format. Still fair, no complains. But at the same time why does the ban list not reflect that?! There are so many cards you cannot play casually (for example many stax pieces, mass land destruction etc.). From my point of view you can ether call it casual and ban un-casual cards, or leave the collective mindset to the 4 persons who are playing (aka. Rule-0) and ban only toxic cards. (And even that should be up for debate). This unclear behaviour is the root for many, many discussions which will keep us from playing. I am in farvor of the first option, but I really do not get the philosophy here. If someone has some explaining thoughts, please feel free to share them :)
I feel like someone just thought the views were too low so he decided to hit a hornet's nest. The only two comments this conversation needs are: "If you break off cEDH the new top of Commander will be the new cEDH." "cEDH players choose what cEDH is so if they don't want to break off they won't." There, no more discourse.
The solution you want is actually a defined casual mindset, because casual players don't know what rules they are playing by whereas CEDH players do. It just so happens that casual players often don't want to play with the CEDH mindset. CEDH is a mindset with clear intentions. You can't separate it from the commander format, because it's just optimizing the card list and game actions.
times like this are where this podcast hurts itself by being so insular. it would have been very easy to get a guest or two of players/thinkers from the cedh community to give their input. please do that in the future.
I mean that isn't really the point of this podcast. If they had guests regularly than sure, but I'm not here for the most informed opinion per se. I am here because of their personalities and interesting opinions. Like they don't need to have PVDDR on to evaluate how good a card is either
This whole podcast emphasized what I believe is the core issue EDH has. The flaw is in the core design of the format, the social contract we all pretend to care about. Every "secret rule" and "shadowbanned card" discussed was because of the social contract of the format. Commander is the only place where the expectation is everyone has "fun" during the game. But that's the issue, nobody can agree on what's fun. There is always a give and take in a group game but in my experience very few players are willing to give up some of their fun so another player can have theirs. Rule 0 is honestly just an official excuse to gloss over this problem. The RC can sit back and not worry about defining what is "fun" or a "good experience" because they can point to Rule 0. It's up to playgroups to decide but every group will decide differently. That's what creates the social quagmire of talking about EDH online or going to big events. Commander is a great format because of that social aspect but it's also the largest weakness
10:15 Ive had this happen on 2 occasions. In both, they didnt have full CEDH decks with optimized mana, but they were playing CEDH strategies and said "I dont have a CEDH deck, this is a 7". The first guy was a guy who had played competitive magic a long time ago and was getting back into the game and trying EDH for the first time. He still had the competitive mindset so he was so excited to stax the table out with Winota and combo the table out with Magda. Even if they werent 10s, they were at least 8s with unfun win cons. The second guy was new to magic and looked up good commanders and found tivit. Again, he didnt have all the fast mana, but he still had a bunch of tutors, counters and infinite combos.
Or "casual" powercreeps to the point where if you bring a pre-con to the table it feels like you are playing against cEDH anyway, you sit there and cast the 5 weakest spells that get played that game and just don't meaningfully effect the game or really play. This is pretty much what my local meta is.
@patrickcole3730 then why have a rules committee? Why have a ban list at all? If Rule Zero handles everything then we don't need a format much less a committee.
If you split out cedh from commander all you will have done is make cedh and a lower powered cedh, itd make commander competitive and since commander is popular mid grade cards would be shooting up in price like how pauper makes some commons more expensive. Pauper is the perfect example. Its 'casual' 60 card, but now its juat cheaper competitive
As a cEDH player, the only people I've ever heard call for a split in the format is casual players who still think that cEDH players are going to show up to their LGS and pub stomp.
I mean I've had that experience. Im still new and dont know exactly what consitutes cEDH vs high power EDH but ive defo had times ive wanted to make new friends nd play w randos and everyone has high power decks full of expensive cards and complex combos and lots of interaction and sniped every fun thing i play while im playing a proxy deck or some low-mid power shitpost. I dont neccesarily think that the formats shd be split because of banlist reasons, and like a low power deck can have high power peices to make it playable, and i dont play tournaments so i cld totally be wrong, but ive never *not* had to have a rules chat with groups. People do show up with the intent to play cedh and dont always communicate that well. Ive had people play high power decks against my precons just to fuck w me and feel big and cool even after saying im playing a 5/10.
in hindsight i might be confusing cedh and high power casual since it wasnt any turn 3 win fuckery but i have met and played with a couple people who enjoy being a dick and not playing the same power as everyone else. I dont think its a long stretch to imagine cEDH players showing up and stomping
@Amythebard69 if that has been your experience then that definitely makes sense and I'm sorry that you were put through that, there's never an excuse for predatory behavior. Unfortunately though, there will always be people that will try to take advantage and I don't think splitting the format would change that. If that person was playing a deck that most would call cEDH to do that, they'll continue to do the same thing regardless of the ban list. I'd highly recommend you watch the video Tolarian Community College put up with Ryan from Playing With Power as I think they go over this better than I can, but in my experience that vast majority of cEDH players want to play against other cEDH decks with the same mindset and don't have the pub stomp motivation. Again, this doesn't invalidate your experience and I can definitely see why hearing "cEDH" after that would sound like a bad thing.
I think Richards arguement in the beginning is really funny because he brings up in basketball how you don’t talk about rules in advance. And yes that is true of a formal basketball game but if anyone has played pickup or “casual” you almost always determine whether we are playing by 1s and 2s, or if it’s “winners” or “losers” ball after a score. So i feel like commander is similar. There is a baseline set of rules in highly competitive games but once it’s casual, people play how they want to play to make it the most fun for them. That being said, if that is to work, the RC needs to make bans and rule changes based on the gameplay of the higher levels of competition, not try to base their regulations on casual playgroups.
a competitive format needs constant moderation because it has a meta, that isn't present in casual, Cedh should be it's own format with its own moderated banlist.
As someone that plays cEDH, I personally believe cEDH and EDH should stick together. The current banlist isn't competitively balanced, and that's a lot of the draw of cEDH. If cEDH was its own proper format, it would deserve its own banlist, which would be competitively balanced, and would reduce my enjoyment immensely. As for the calls to split the format based on pubstomping feelsbad, that isn't related to cEDH. You win ALWAYS have players who want to dunk on worse decks/less experienced players and the non-competitive nature of EDH magnifies the issue. If you're playing cEDH, you're not looking to stomp a pod of precons on t2, you're looking for a complicated and competitive gameplay experience between similarly powerful decks. If you're a pubstomper, you're specifically looking to dunk on people, so you are looking to crush a precon pod and are specifically avoiding a cEDH pod where you won't auto-win. TL; DR: Don't split the format, pubstompers are the issue, not cEDH. Casual EDH is just inherently antithetical to good pickup games. If anyone is interested in learning more about cEDH and the cEDH mindset (be that because you're thinking of playing or just to have a more informed opinion), ComedIan MTG has a website that covers most of it in a relatively succinct manner. www.cedh.guide/
Paused 10 seconds in to say no this is not a divisive topic. Just because the two different names of these formats are casual and competitive doesn't mean that that's the only axis that separates these unanimously considered separate formats.
I liked this episode but these guys missed the mark in the discussion about banning some CEDH (after a hypothetical split of the formats) and discussed about banning cards that are NOT CEDH staples, like Armageddon, just because they do not like the card or the effect (mass land destruction) not because they are played on CEDH.
CEDH is not as scary as people make it out to be. Usually the games are way less salty because everybody is trying to win so blowing up a land or countering the “cool thing” is expected
Its not thats its scary, its expensive and homogenizing. Lowering the power level by 20-40% makes commander decks $20 - $200 rather than $500 - $1000, also makes the to 5-10 commanders less ubiquitous making for more varied and interesting gameplay.
@@simic0racle157I played my first few games of cEDH last night, and they were an absolute blast. i was playing with real cards with a budget deck, but was still able to keep some pace with the full power proxy decks at the table! 99% of cEDH players are totally cool with proxies and actually expect them! the community as a whole is amazing.
I'm not scared its not the game I'm looking for. The current band list combined with powercreep is leading "casual" edh at my LGS to become not a game I am looking for.
If I hated rule 0 as much as casual commander players seem to hate rule 0, I don't think I would play the format where rule 0 is the thing separating you from Bowmasters, Lotus Petal, Narset, Timetwister, Thassa's Oracle, Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Necropotence, Mana Crypt, and others. But I'm glad that somehow it's cEDH that needs to be split off instead of just talking with the people around you.
I think the hyper casuals should just make their own format and leave the rest of us alone. They can have fun playing their midrange battlecruiser decks and accusing each other of being sweaty when one of them pulls ahead just a tad faster than the thinnest skinned player at the table thinks is still within the objective parameters of fun.
There is no point in banning “cEDH cards” because commander will still have different power levels associated with the fact there are so many cards in the format. Even if you completely got rid of many of the strongest cards there would only be a new set of top level cards and the same discussions around power level would still have to occur.
You can easily do broad banlist of anything which makes more mana than it costs etc. And banning non interactive and almost non interactive combos such as thoracle
I think cEDH should be in it's own tier. Lower the power ceiling of casual so the disparity between the higher and lower power decks would be narrower. There will always be a gap, but you can definitely mitigate a lot of it
@@thanatoscharunnot the person you asked, but the 'problem' with thoracle consult is that you can only really interact with it on the stack or by having stax pieces in play that preven the combo. you can't stop the combo win by removing the thoracle, limiting the amount of possible counterplay. Flash was even worse, since you could win the game for 2 mana at instant speed, which made it incredibly hard to stop if the flashhulk player had good timing.
The issue in my area is that if it's not on the banlist everyone wants to play it. I constantly have to play against cedh decks where the amount of cards being played is very limited. I would be happy to play another format that is commander but with a lot more card bans.
Tomer saying the two ways of having fun are superfluous because trying to assemble something fun is impossible vs cedh decks. You'll play thousand games before you get it off.
I definatley understand the sentiment; I have it roo about my lgs. But I don't think splitting/banning can solve the problem. There will always be a "best thing" that people will try to play. Commander's major problem (power level/playing to win vs playing for "fun") is fundementally a social problem, not a banlist one. Which means there is no easy solution.
The bannings would help because all we are trying to do is bring the power level down. If you have ever played 60 card standard versus an older format deck you quickly realize you are not playing a fair game. Each format has an expected win turn and currently cedh is turn 1-3 and regular casual commander is turn 7-10 they aren't the same game. The only reason I would advocate to switch them is because some people want to play all their old cards. But casual is a bunch of newer cards (mostly). I believe as is eventually commander will die out because people will continue to play better and better stuff until we don't see casual anymore. To a point of where we drive all newer players away because of the crazy prices. I guess we got brawl still? Lol.
The solution there isn’t to ban all the powerful cards, but rather either wizards aggressively reprinting them to make them more affordable, or everyone allows proxying.
Yeah, I was so confused about that point because if you don't talk when you start pickup basketball what are you doing? Especially if you're not playing at a court that is well-maintained.
I think you have it wrong about splitting play-to-win and play-for-fun players into different formats (28:27). A well-tuned ban list allows both types of players to coexist in the same format. It does that by limiting the power of the format such that top-tier decks cannot outright win games against lower powered decks with no counter play. Think of modern where SaffronOlive builds whacky budget decks that often compete reasonably against tier-1 decks. In commander that would be like a precon beating a cedh deck; it’s just never going to happen because the cedh decks are on such a wildly different power level. By having a more extensive ban list, you let people who mostly enjoy the competitive aspect of the game (like me) still have fun playing against their friends who play casually. In fact, limiting the power level makes deck building and gameplay more fun for competitive folks because they need to rely on deck building prowess and outplaying their opponents to win games instead of just playing more expensive/higher power cards than their play group.
My playgroup struggled with this so we created a format called Battlecruiser. Commander IS CEDH so we left it alone. Battlecruiser banned all zero and 1 cmc mana rocks, one and two mana tutors, big mana lands (ancient tomb, gaeas cradle, gemstone caverns, etc.), and all "free" interaction spells. This way we could define how we wanted to play by saying one phrase, "battlecruiser or Commander tonight?"
Richard, a commander game is a game where people win and lose, winning is an aspect of having fun. Some of the best game knight's episode for examples is where the jank deck win's out of nowhere like the Bear Force one modern horizons episode, the dude vibed, had fun and felt extra great about winning, by being the smallest threat. For cEDH the fun of it is playing against the stack as opposed to the board state and playing head games with your opponents when it comes to the answers which is the biggest difference in casual decks in principal. Casual often the fight is on the board, cEDH the fight is often on the stack or the mind games and timing. Tangentially I totally would play a cEDH tournament where the prize literally is just 10 packs of cards or heck even just and no cash prize, where the prize steaks are low, so the focus really is on having fun games. As low prize pools usually do translate minimal cheating and no entering of the more toxic try hard malicious pub stompers that often not are cEDH players.
So Richard's whole argument is not for separate formats but for an updated banlist. Nothing he stated is a good reason to separate CEDH from Edh. But even if the RC updates the banlist there is still gonna be a "most competitive deck" and CEDH will still exist. It will just exist within the new ban list.
@@shadogiantwhich is a bad idea. If cEDH was its own format, it would wither and die like French EDH. People want to play the most competitive tuned version of EDH - if you split cEDH into a new banlist people will just reinvent cEDH in EDH. They should have had a guest on that could provide this perspective.
If cEDH players wanted their own banlist, they would have implemented one on their own like French Commander did, you would see it when signing up for cEDH tournaments.
Obviously isn't wouldn't wither because CEDH players already don't use those decks with casual people. Clearly it is already a separate format that needs it's own balancing
Do you think the problem is a community mindset more than actual cards/decks being a problem? I see all these posts about power level, but none take into account how optimized or memey their deck is, or if the deck "pubstomping" them was just a hard counter to them. I've never heard of a cEDH player stomping a casual pod, but I've heard of Maelstrom Wanderer dunking on upgraded precons.
Honestly I think the format just needs a more active rules committee that also plays some cedh as well. Get people like comedian in the mix and I think the format as a whole would become more and more healthy.
I think a solution like canadian highlander is the best. The current version of how we try and measure power level is utterly defunct. Having a power level that resembles how many powerful strategies you are running is much more useful. When you add powerful, sweaty, salt-inducing cards you add points. This way you could theoretically have a point-threshold to declare your deck as cEDH. Decks that have no points can still have a noticable power difference but can then just be resolved with rule 0. Rule 0 would take way too long every game to define a perfect balance between decks that are supposedly all 7s (but are clearly not).
As a new commander player I agree with Seth. Commander has far too many unwritten rules at the moment. Having cEDH in the Commander format doesn´t make much sense, casual play versus play to win makes them different formats. This would also make tournaments in Commander or cEDH easier for new players. The vast majority of Commander players won´t take part in cEDH tournaments.
Richard's starting argument that a new player will get the most powerful commander deck and beat everyone is just a straw man argument. Not only would no new player spend hundreds on a new deck, they wouldn't be able to pilot a cEDH deck without extensive knowledge of Magic and the primer, if it even has one. This problem is made up.
I feel like one of the better ways to manage this would be kind of having apoint system for cards a little like canadian highlander. then you can base the conversation around the point levels of decks. but that's also waaaay too much work to make it a viable option sadly
I wanted to play commander but my friends are hard to get together. So I turned to Magic online. I went in with the toxic precon because I wanted to play other cards I didn't want to shell out money for them. Many games people auto scooped not knowing its a precon. And the games i got to play with it were cedh games where the game was over before turn 3 or 4. After that I just stopped trying to play commander on Magic online. I would like the split so I can play the game I love. I do agree that its vary difficult to determine what should or shouldn't be banned. Its all subjective.
I don't understand the question? How would they be split vs kept together? Like the only thing I can think of that would "split" them is a separate ban list? You can easily tell a modern vs vintage deck.. or standard vs pioneer... card pool restrictions rule those formats.. What would be the "split" here?
Correct. Splitting alone does nothing. Splitting only makes sense with a banlist adjustment. A banlist adjustment removes the need for a format split. The only question remaining is expanding the ban list or not.
@@raedienI presume the idea is that cEDH folks would want to keep playing fast mana and underworld breach and Thoracle. And casual EDH folks don't want to play with/against those. I highly doubt you could just add the top 50 cEDH cards to the EDH ban list without pissing off literally everyone in cEDH.
@NateFinch CEDH players are proxy friendly. There are literally not enough reserved list cards to go around. While there will always be damage with any ban, the overall gain should be the focus. Like any format people will play with the strongest they can get their hands on. Real cedh players are there for competition, the banlist is irrelevant. Someone complaining their cards got banned is a different issue than them being a cedh player. EDH *is* the way more of those older cards get played but the game is better without them. I love powering out an Onyx/Chain as the next guy but the fact is the fast mana is played to race/keep up with the other players. If no one can play it in the first place than you have to race in other ways maybe green would even be played!
Would love to see y'all have someone on the show who is very invested in the cEDH community. Maybe Jim from the spike feeders since he is also on the CAG.
I think that if the formats were split, the subsequent new banlist of cards would create a lot more cedh players. An issued in casual commander is that people don't know how to use their cards, they are running these insanely powerful cards (armageddon/cyclonic rift) without a way to finish the game afterwards. If you made these cards cedh only, the casual players that run them would be forced to realize what the decks they were building were actually trying to do, a lesson in deckbuilding/goal focusing, and they will understand, "Oh! cedh is my people!"
I agree completely. It would give players many cards that they would have to steer away from to ensure that your play group is playing at least a closer powered level. In my play group one of our players put a cyclonic rift in every deck and just uses it to slow the over players down because he is playing battle cruiser magic. It doesn't win him the game but makes it take so much longer.
That was my take as well - just like the legacy split from vintage years ago, it makes cedh/legacy better when they can control their own ban list. I don't think the split solves any problems for casual though, because nothing right now is being kept off the banlist for cedh. I think if you want to solve any issues for causal, it involves banlist fixes - splitting the format doesn't do anything on it's own.
They kinda have to be split up in some way. The issue is with priorities and whether fun or victory takes precedent. You can't play with fun being the #1 priority and have winning be the #1 priority or vice versa.
My only problem with commander and cedh being treated as the same is that there are like 3-5 players at my LGS who come to every FNM commander night with Blue Farm, Rog Si etc. They pubstomp their pods which are usually filled with precons and medium power decks because it’s just 4-8 packs for $10 to them. All the pods turn into 3v1s to see if we can get them low enough where they can’t ad naus for thoracle on turn 3. In the end the causal players stop coming because they traveled 30 mins to just lose on turn 4 and the causal player just has to hope that none of the cedh players lost to another cedh player where they are in the loser pods. It just sucks because cedh is some of my favorite magic content to watch, but it just leads to feels bads at casual tables which they are technically allowed to be at since it is a commander deck.
That sounds like more of an issue with those people and not cEDH. I’d argue that people who intentionally pubstomp are just bad people and it’s on the lgs for allowing it to happen. Any real cEDH player wants to play against people at a similar level. It’s one of the reasons the format is so proxy friendly
@@kendallhaight9383yeah, I asked the lgs owner about it and he said that commander night is technically a tournament and nothing in their decks were illegal since none of their cards were proxies, so they weren't breaking any rules. I get now how those players didn't have a proper cedh mindset, but at the time it definitely gave me a negative perception of it. It wasn't until I found channels like Playing with Power, Play to Win, cedh tv gameplay, spike feeders, and Mod Anonymous that I understood what cedh was actually about.
Seth- you should play 10 games of cEDH with a real cEDH deck in a real cedh pod . Imagine trying to have a perspective on Casual without having played it - try cEDH it’s popular for a reason
Alpha to current player here. All valid discussion points, can’t split the formats, tournaments have problems (colluding etc). I’m in Atlanta, which is one of the major cEDH hubs, and I’ve personally been snarked out of a top 4, and a win for a dual, over “buddies” colluding. As an L3, I truly hate how loose cEDH is.
i think CEDH players usually see CEDH as basically a different format, but we don't want it to be officially separated because the whole point is to play the most powerful stuff in EDH itself. so i think it would totally be fine to most CEDH players if a lot of bans happen for casual, and none happen for CEDH. the rules commitee should just do its job for casual and we as CEDH players would be fine. otherwise we would have already created our own format. edit: btw i play both a lot of CEDH and a lot of casual EDH
The Rc needs to either be much stricter about what cards are banned if any or just let it be the wild west by only banning cards that are banned in vintage. I'm admittedly a fan of the latter as commander is a casual format. with the reliance on rule zero to self-balance games already in effect a very limited banlist does very little and ultimately seems kinda backwards either they ban all quick instant wins, single cards that generate absurd resource imbalances by themselves, stax, and mass land destruction, and completely change cedh forever or every cedh game becomes a no banned list game and nothing changes at casual tables for the most part because they often play with self-contained banned lists anyway
@@jmanwild87 but both cases would be fine for CEDH players, we would still want to try to optimally play within the commander rules framework. the result (the decklists we play) would maybe change, but that would be fine. and it would also be fine if they don't change.
@@JHempel13 The problem is that within regular rules the banlist is technically a suggestion. We need an actual banlist with a good gameplay flow being the goal.
You can't separate the formats from one another because they are not separate formats. cedh is edh its in the name. What casual players want is to not get curb stomped by someone playing a better deck. That's why people need to discuss what they want from the game at the start. Casual players also need to understand that their "really strong deck" probably isn't THE best deck and need to be less upset when someone thoracles them when they said they are playing their "strongest deck" without conversation about what their deck can do. More conversation before the game leads to better games. Casuals like to hide how there decks work say its good and complain when they loose to actually good decks.
One of the best comments and imo correct takes. Commander is a social and complicated format. It's not as simple as here play. Communicating and discussing what we want is important in a social board game like format!!
I find I relate to Seth's point, I play suboptimal when trying to make sure everyone is having fun. I might have 4 wraths in my hand and not play them so people can go off. 28:58
I just play one wrath in my decks, and mostly only asimmetrical options. I too try to avoid making the game longer by using the "reset" button, and I love to see when decks get out of control
Maybe this is my perspective being skewed by the way I build decks, but I don't think wraths prevent people from going off. If your deck can't recover from multiple wraths, you're probably too spikey to build a good deck anyway.
The problem with WotC having full power over commander is that they regularly demonstrate that they're just gonna print anything that makes them money. So they'll keep power creeping their cards and they'll try to increase monetisation of the format (e.g, ban a staple and then print a replacement as a chase card)
I feel that it's important to recognise that the fault in the format lies in casual commander, not cEDH. The cEDH community is by far the most cohesive community (everyone is on the same wavelength regarding expected power levels, competition, game objectives and how to have fun etc.) All of the complaining and dissatisfaction comes from the core of casual players who stigmatise certain cards, strategies and play styles, but not cohesively. Some people hate combos but don't mind fast mana. Others hate tutors but don't mind free counterspells etc. Most casual players who don't have cEDH experience don't actually know what cEDH is - most of what people claim are cEDH decks are merely decks that are slightly higher on the power scale than their own (a deck that contains a few powerful cards like mana crypt or dockside extortionist isn't automatically cEDH viable!) All that is to say, I think separating cEDH into its own format is completely fine. But it doesn't eliminate the fundamental problem you have. You're lowering the power ceiling slightly (the top 1% of decks are now gone), but there will be practically the same amount of disagreement in the remaining 99%. And unless you're planning on clearly demarcating like 10+ power tiers for a casual format, you will have the same people complaining week after week about the same issues.
I think no one thinks cEDH/the (cEDH) community is a problem. It’s true that they just sit down and play and the salt is way less likely to spill. And that’s kinda the point. In casual, as you put it, everyone is salty at different things. Some are more ubiquitous than others, but the salt comes from somewhere. And that somewhere, in my opinion and i think richard’s argument both regarding how basketball is the same game regardless of where you play it, and how if someone is playing a cEDH game you’re expecting your opponent to have a “serious” deck and not a meme or “bears” deck they wanted to play. You don’t come into a boxing match and start pillow fighting. Splitting the format ideally fixes this problem for casuals (assuming the ban list is then updated for casual). CEDH, nothing would change, as you put it, business as usual. But casual edh would have a clear line in the sand of what can and can’t be played. No more unspoken rules that alienate newer players. No more social taboos of playing “too strong” of a card. No mistake of “accidentally” picking up a cEDH deck and building it over any other. Less salt across the table. Almost more importantly is the disparity in power level lessens and it’d be easier to just hop into a game without a pregame discussion. Bc everything that’s left would be fine. Im not saying it’d fix everything or that players won’t still throw a bitch fit over whatever. But there’d be less confusion, the gap on power of decks would grow smaller instead of wider, no more getting mad at someone for playing X or Y card bc it’d be legal and ideally fine for causal. There’d be a clear statement to the whole community. This side (pointing to casual) is weenie hut jr’s and this side (pointing to cEDH) is the Salty Spitoon.
@@jcstaff1007 That sounds good in theory but I doubt it'd work out that way. Hypothetically, let's say that the formats were separated and casual gets a banlist where all the powerful cEDH staples (cheap tutors, fast mana, stax, imba commanders etc.) were all banned alongside whatever other salt-inducing cards the community has mostly agreed on. This is what I imagine the result would be: The try-hard thoracle player arrives at your casual table with his new deck. He casually plays an early scheming symmetry (instead of vamp), winding canyons and then on t4, flashes in leveller and lab maniac, dazing your attempt at removal. The issue is not in the banlist - it's in the players. And I know that some people will say "what if we just blanket ban all insta-win combos?" That still doesn't address the difference in values between players. You're still going to have one player at the table playing horse tribal while another is running Tatyova landfall and the fact that they've lost their Sol Ring isn't really going to change the matchup.
EDH is not as simple as two power levels. Its not "casual" and cEDH. Casual commander has an almost infinite number of powers. Your whole episode premise is trying treat "casual" EDH like its a simple equation where every player wants exactly the same thing as every other player and every game. Commander is an extremely complex equation because player to player, game to game people want different things. EDH is as popular and fun as it is because the light touch on band allows for everyone to play the game they want. What you... especially Richard...propses leaves A LOT of commander players without a home. I know for me, and everyone in my playgroups, our drcks would be laughed out of a cEDH pod, but would be absolutely decimated by the heavy ban list you want. What makes your way better than ours.
Love you guys, but I have to point out... this discussion is just based on a fundamentally wrong premise. If you divide a game into a competitive format and a casual format, it is the competitive format that gets heavily regulated. Not the casual format.
cEDH is the most optimal form of EDH... It's the same format it's literally just a power level. It's not as easy as separating legacy and modern. If some budget player cracks a mana crypt, he's not allowed to play it cause it's on the edh banlist? Edit to elaborate my point cause people think I'm confused about how banlist work.. Adding a mana crypt to your precons doesn't make your deck cEDH. I can put together a pile of overpowered cards and the deck not be cEDH.
It's literally not. It's not power level, it's a deckbuilding mindset. CEDH decks aren't "stronger" than Commander decks, they're tuned for a more specific metagame.
I disagree. cEDH players' goal -> "win at all costs". EDH players' goal -> "Have fun no matter what". If the objective of the game is different, there's no way it can be considered *exactly* the same game.
@@Belena711 if I build a modern deck for fun, meaning it's made with cards that are legal in that format, it is still a modern deck.. same logic applies to edh. If I build an edh deck, I can build it as optimal as i like it is still an edh deck at the end of the day.
Im all for the formats being separated, the core reason being that you get to have cedh and edh have their own, personalized banlists. cEDh would have different banned cards if they so chose (and I know they would, looking at you seedborne muse and thoracle....) and also unban a bunch of things even casual players would go "yeah why is this banned again?". Its a different mentality, but separating the formats and banning out those power cards from casual tables (mana crypt, vault etc.) would absolutely give a more defined structure to the respective formats. Leaving it as a mindset just leaves room for misinterpretation and as a result, a bunch of feelbad moments that dont need to exist. No more "that decks a seven?!" after getting slapped by the classic land>sol ring>mana vault>mana crypt>signet>pass. If you want to define what cards are problems, you need to actually define them. The RC needs to take steps to do this or were going to be running around chasing our tails forever.
28:07 Richard you are wrong. I build decks to win. If they lose that’s fine too and I still have fun because I love playing magic. It is a fun game and everybody should build to win. I heavily upgraded my merfolk precon and it is a 8/9. I have so much fun with that deck whether I win or lose. Make no mistake I am playing to win.
@@Sandovian Implementing a specific strategy within the gamespace you enjoy is not the same as playing to lose. Winning with belcher in EDH is still playing to win, even if it's a meme deck because of the deck size and lack of redundancy.
Guys... TRULY casual games do not have ban lists because they're casual... the second you throw down a ban list you're indicating a level a seriousness. The format is inherently doomed because WotC printed cards specifically for it and added levels of power. There is literally no going back at this stage. That being said CEHD mentality is a problem, but it's literally baked into the product sooooo... it's the community that's the problem at this stage and that's hard to fix. EDIT: Richard describes setting up expectations before sitting down to play at a table with people but what he's describing is basically just rule 0 lol
Better comparison do you ban cyc rift, farewell and other mass artifact destroying spells since all decks that don't include green are artifact ramping instead of land ramping. So those other spells not only in effect Armageddon everyone not land ramping but hit all other support cards as well. Effectively beingg even more destructive and game delaying than a simple Armageddon.
@hopposai787 great question. Clearly, treasures were not a thing when Armageddon was released. Personally, I'm not in favor of banning any of these cards. The caveat is that it should contribute to your win con, not function as a massive delay of game. You want to Farewell, and Tefferi's Protection... go for it! But, if you Farewell and the game takes another hour I probably won't play against you again.
@@MaleusMaleficarumThat is literally not the purpose of armageddon at all wtf. Go look through beta and tell me how many ways green has to land ramp in that set.
Richard is the embodiment of inventing a type of person to be mad about. Every time he brings up some hypothetical situation its not a real problem that a reasonable person would ever run into. How many people can honestly say that their first EDH experience was netdecking a CEDH list for a LGS Commander game and getting run out?
It just happened to a friend of mine. It's probably pretty rare, but he played pioneer / arena first, then he went to a commander league with a nearly cEDH level deck and was really surprised everyone was passive aggressive and rude to him for comboing out the whole table.
"Rule zero sucks" okay but that's not a CEDH issue. Sure, some CEDH cards and strategies are needed in that conversation, but the power discrepancies in EDH are wide enough that the rule zero conversation doesn't go away. "I'm playing stax" is part of rule zero. So is, "I'm playing curiosity in my niv mizzet deck." In CEDH? Yes. In edh? Also yes. EDH has so, so many gameplay influencers that people expect in their rule zero conversations that aren't "CEDH." Splitting the format would do very little for rule zero conversations.
My biggest problem with the arguments Seth and Richard kept falling back on was that they kept just going back to "its too complicated to learn the unwritten rules / its too difficult to do easy pickup games it should be more like basketball". But commander is inherently at the fundamental level a social game. Stop thinking about it like basketball (although even then I'd argue their argument is flawed, who plays random pickup games of basketball with strangers? Nobody, that's who, you typically play with the same group who have an unspoken agreement on what casual basketball means to them). Commander is like DnD, its a game that does require you to talk with and discuss things with your fellow players, and requires an inherent amount of trust between players to even function. And, just like DnD, the rules are more fluid. And yeah, sure, the unwritten rules and faux pas of commander may be a little difficult for a brand new player to grasp. But that's where it is the responsibility of veteran players to TEACH the new players, just like how you teach a new DnD player that stealing from the party is wrong (even if your playing a rogue) or no pvping unless everybody consents. And saying "but I don't wanna have to waste time talking to my pod or teaching new players" just sounds downright lazy. You walking into a random lgs to play is no different then sitting down to another groups DnD table. Its your responsibility to ask and find out what's ok and not ok with the group/local meta, since your the stranger, and if you cant be asked to do that then you shouldn't play.
bro no new player is googling "best commander deck" looking at a cEDH list and buying that list as their first fucking deck and bringing that to an LGS and if they do, they are gunna have a bad time anyways
Well really he's correct about corporations being beholden to consumers voting with their wallets, its just that he isnt factoring in the fact that people don't even do that properly as a whole so it isnt effective
@@905LilO it's also kinda fucked imo that any system where people vote with their dollar means people with more dollars get more votes - when 90% of the wealth in America is held by 1% of people or whatever, that doesn't seem so good
My big problem with edh its where you put the line I quit for a year edh because people hated on my niv mizzet deck, that didnt have a good mana base, didn't have the best cantrips but have the combo It doesn't matter if i was stuck at 3 lands I'll always be the first to death But next to me its a kozileck deck that aleays play kozi on turn 3 or 4 filling up they hand and having access to counterspells way harder to interact and no one hate it I'm not able to put a goblin recruiter in my krenko deck because it makes the situation of if you dont have a wrath most likely ill win Or the equipment for 3 and untap give +2/+2 because if i have the singleton skirk prospector i win But there is an teysa that if draws the creature that when a creature dies make a treasure and insta wins Where's the line? I'm high competitive in most formats so they're scared of me, and i don't have a lot of money so all budget So the problem it's i like winning so i have to play suboptimal?
@@BingbongRecto that's not the competitive communities fault. If anything we get broken cards banned occasionally. Flash is a good example of that. Granted there's no fucking good reason why the ban list is as bad as it is.
@@B1ngusD1ngusI doesn’t sound to me like Richard is blaming the competitive community. He thinks the competitive community is doing well and wants to organize the casual community similarly
Yeah like it feels like he's throwing cEDH players under the bus for the failings of casual commander. The RC has made it clear that outside of Flash bans are not because of cEDH.
If you split them then banned a few hundred cards to represent all the unwritten rules. You would find that it much harder to keep up with casual vs competitive. Keeping up with a few hundred card ban list that will be always changing based on what ever is the most powerful. Or a new strategy comes out that makes people salty. This is not casual. As compared to a format that says we have the whole history of the game available and a few cards banned bc they just break the game. This would draw casual people. Not having to worry about the cards your buying or pulling being banned or the cards you own getting the hammer. Is very casual. You would find pods of low powered cEDH games happening. A whole new rule zero. No I’m playing mid powered cEDH so I can play a jank deck but use my fancy rystic study I worked really hard to get.
Since Richard is slagging off the rules committee, and the podcast is about splitting Commander into two formats, why don't you sit down as a group and decide two things: 1) The ban list for Casual Goldfish Highlander. 2) The ban list for Competitive Goldfish Highlander. Just start with the current Commander banlist and decide if it should be banned in one, the other, both or neither. Then talk about the "problem" cards" for each format. That could make for a very interesting podcast.
I love that every conversation about the format devolves into “the RC should do their job”
FOR REAL
100% agree
There's valid debate whether it's actually their job.
I’m almost at the point where I would want evil overlord WotC to manage it instead.
I just find it weird that the RC bans cards based on how "unfun" they are to play against, yet there's tons of those cards that are perfectly legal that are just as "unfun" running around anyway. So the RC should either start putting a lot more cards like those on the ban list, or start taking other cards with the same criteria off the ban list.
tl;dr RC should do their job.
“Just one more lane will fix it bro”-Richard
(Thanks tomer for the public transport representation)
He was talking sense until the end
@@nogardeh3720 Was gonna say - the one episode I'm fully on board with a Richard Take, and he ends the episode advocating for bulldozing half a city to put a freeway through the middle of it.
Hilarious considering public transit in the US was destroyed for freeways and look where we are now 😂 horrible analogy either way
Someone needs to explain induced demand to Richard
The funny thing is that adding another lane usually doesn't fix the issue
Rule zero really should be the opposite: you have a ban list and then when you play with a regular group you can unban ones you like together. Lets you more easily play with new playgroups at lgs
No, I like the way it is. Where I get to do whatever I people can't tell me I can't You can peer pressure people out of playing stacks or combo, you can't peer pressure someone into letting me play golos.
Before watching, I say not cedh needs to split but we realy need a clean split between low and high power casual, including banlist. As weird as it may sound CEDH is probably the best organized part of this community.
So do you want a split to happen or not? Because if you split the banlist then you will split competitive from regular.
@@TheHayeShawn"regular" has so many variations though, just as big a power divide can be felt for say a precon player vs a veterna playing their fun but quite a bit more powerful deck they built as that veteran vs cedh
@@TheHayeShawn i would prefer a split, that said cedh is ALREADY its own thing anyway. I want a split in the casual comunity for lower and higher power.
I actually don't think that's weird at all. the opposite would be weird to me.
the highest power levels in any game I know of are always the best organised, because the players know what's the strongest, what's "too strong" and everyone plays to win, so it is expected to get countered, blown up, your pieces removed etc.
they are also the most organised because when you play at the literal highest power level, there is basically no discussion about "what power level are we playing?" because it's obviously the highest.
@@winter945 even precon powerlevel has increased dramatically, sometimes the powerdifference is real even in the same set so thats no longer a 1 size fits all either.
I have never had a cedh deck sit down at a table of precons. It's always some high power good stuff deck that is owning the pod and necessitating the rule 0 talk, decks that would get absolutely smacked in a cedh pod.
this.
Not this. I have lost 2 large playgroups to CEDHification where a player claims to be thorarcling/ad nauseuming/winter orb urza high lord artificering "casually", forcing everyone to run more free interaction, lower cmca and ultimately, cEDH decks of their own.
@@bodaciouschad
High power good stuff doesn't mean running cEDH staples or even infinite combos. I run a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck that can absolutely wreck the wrong...well most... casual tables, but would be laughed off a cEDH pod. Rule zero is a necessary entity to ensure everyone is on the same page. EDH isn't as simple a casual and competitive...there are almost infinite power levels.
i run a high powered OG atraxa deck that runs stax and mass land destruction when i want to get frisky on high poweed casual tables. i never play it against lower powered pods, and i always have the rule 0 discussion with the pod. it would never hold it's own at a cedh table but punishes the casuals.
@@jacobalbert2603
@@jacobalbert2603 7:9 of the other players admitted to "casually" playing cedh decs off of edhrec to "keep up with the other cEDH decks".
As someone who loves city planning,
The fix for san fran is NOT to build a through-fare highway
Induced demand would desTROY that poor road
Better public transit is the way
Richard was specifically punishing us for agreeing with his mtg takes today, smh
Troy?
It’s kinda wild that cEDH, the healthiest implementation of the rule 0 conversation, is considered on the chopping block. cEDH is just EDH. If you split the format, casual EDH will just have a new max power cEDH. There is a no banlist cEDH and nobody plays it because it’s not EDH.
On the other hand, splitting could be beneficial to cEDH players.
Casual can stay the same, no banlist.
For cEDH, a banlist could be helpful to balance the game at competitive tables, foster the emergence of new strategies, help avoid standardization, etc.
Similar to how it is like for 60-card formats.
I just don’t think cEDH can ever grow unless and until it adopts its own identity. Tournament cedh will just not be a thing until it is run by their own RC and they operate their own ban list
CEDH is not a power level, it's a deckbuilding mindset.
How is it the healthiest implementation of rule 0? Am i misunderstanding that cEDH has no rule 0 except try to win?
@haileydee9954 I think they are saying that when you sit at a table to play cedh, and everyone agrees we are playing cedh, it's like there is already been a rule 0 conversation, and the rule 0 is to expect to face everything that can be expected in cedh indeed
Honestly, the biggest problem isn’t cEDH. It’s the EDH community. As you said, going over rule 0 sucks. cEDH doesn’t do that, you play what you want. As others have said, if you segment off “cEDH” then you will have the EDH community slowly ban everything as what everyone thinks is fun is different and due to that everyone has a different idea of how the game should be played. Richard said you don’t bring a legacy deck to a standard game, but what’s actually happening is people are bringing standard decks to legacy games and complaining people are “playing to win”, which is the point of the game.
But EDH began as a casual format for fun.
Neither cEDH or EDH are problems, they are just ways of play the game. Rule 0 doens't suck, it just take some time, but it works great when you have a playgroup that share expectations and can decide how they want to play the game.
@@BludMun There clearly is a competitiveness to CEDH, enough to host tournaments. I'm not sure what you find cringe, but typically cedh players are a lot less cringe than "casual" players. They're not wasting time whining about why they were attacked, why you countered their spell, or why you're playing *insert any card they don't like*
@@irisnegro You're looking at your playgroup in a bubble, which is fine, but not as possible at a table with 4 randoms. The rule 0 in my experience varies from LGS to LGS, and is so hard to get things to truly line up. What is casual at my LGS has been shown to be higher powered at others.
@@elemint2yes it is. You just aren’t being direct enough. People are scared to talk and use their words and calling rule zero bad is a personal issue. Not everyone at a table is lying and if they do, call them out and I’m sure they’ll think twice
I think its enough to keep cedh as a mindset change. You sit down at a table and know what to expect.
Definitely. I love both cEDH and Casual commander. There's almost no point in banning anything in casual magic at all since everyone makes such a big deal over rule zero. If someone decides to play like a jerk and ignore the talk, don't play with them. Simple as that. Cards should only be banned if they would be a problem in cEDH. Blood moon effects and land destruction is considered "mean" in casual commander, which is why I'd never play them in a casual deck, but those cards aren't banned. Everyone just knows it's best not to play them.
I've always thought the RC should elect to do an official banlist and an suggested list. The suggested list would come as a "We understand these cards cause concern in lower powered stores and we want to issue guidance to store owners who do not run high powered metas" which would include thoracle, dockside etc. Basically keeping Cedh as a whole but allowing LGS to just point to a list
I really like the idea of the suggested list
They could literally just use the EDHREC salt list. I don't agree with every card there, but I agree with the vast majority and could compromise on the ones I disagree with.
It's an interesting idea, idk how it would play out exactly. I think it's worth noting that dockside and perhaps thoracle should just be straight up banned, not just suggested.
I agree with Tomer at 53:20 Richard's example of a person netdecking "best commander deck" and rolling up with Thoracle combo doesn't feel like a realistic scenario. I feel like people get into Commander through word of mouth, and the majority of players love building around a commander, not building a goodstuff pile. It's hard to imagine someone buying into a $600+ format so blindly. Even if a player did that, would they know how to play it? Would they be able to execute the combo? Would they counterspell the correct threats?
Serge from LRR literally did this.
I agree from personal experience - all people I've seen getting into commander have either bought precons, built their own terrible brew or got a deck built by a friend.
Also if they'd split the format imo it would give spikey players even more reason to pubstomp. Right now it's glaringly obvious you're a dick when you bring a cEDH deck to a casual table. And if we can't get rid of rule 0 talk and varying powerlevels anyway, there's no real gain from a split.
My anecdotal experience of watching two people get into the game we’re literally netdecking niv mizzet decks with thoracle and niv combos. When they went to alter the deck later they kept refusing to cut the combos because those were the clearest cut strongest parts of the deck to them.
something Richard touched on reminded me of my first introduction into EDH. when I was first starting out there wasnt a CEDH scene and people played whatever but there were CEDH like decks that were being played by some of the more spike like players, those players didnt care about the unwritten rules and played high powered decks every game. I think that we tend to forget that there are lots of people who play MTG who can struggle with social interactions or dont care about them and are willing to pubstomp or play Armageddon on turn 4 just because thats funny to them. a new player coming to an LGS and running into Codie a few times might make them hate commander as a whole.
I remember those times, frankly if i didn't take a break back then I'd probably be a hard stax player today.
Alternatively, playing against a high power deck may inspire them to strive for higher power in their own decks. There are assholes in every format and there are helpful people who want to help welcome new people in every format too
@@jasonsavory9748yeah I got into EDH in a very high power meta back in college (before cEDH was as defined as it is now) and now I'm a cEDH player. It's so cool to see the broken card interactions that can exist.
A lot of comments claim a new cEDH would emerge at the top of casual EDH if the formats are split, which may be true because there will always be optimized decks. However, the ceiling of this new format would be far lower and lessen the gap in power between weaker and more powerful decks, leading to more games where weaker decks don’t immediately roll over to the more powerful ones. Resulting in less feel bads in random pods when rule zero is not brought up before play.
This feels like just bad match ups and the lack of calibrating power level seems like a pod failure. I don't think anyone (other than pub stompers) builds a cEDH deck, and thinks it is ok to play with people who don't have strong decks. Pub Stompers will just pivot to the new troll strategy. It also still leaves an incredibly wide spectrum of power levels, unless the ban list is INCRECIBLY extensive. I have decks with no cEDH staples (I mean, I guess Brainstorm), that are completely inappropriate at Precon tables.
The ceiling is still high enough that the "problem" you are describing doesn't go away on the casual end, not to mention the Rule 0 conversation. On top of that, we have cards like MLD, that don't even really see play in cEDH, Richard keeps mentioning Armageddon, but except in super fringe stratagies that doesn't show up anyway in cEDH because it is very difficult to break parity. Most people I speak with who play casually also don't seem to mind it if it's a finisher (don't drag out the game with a reset button), and that is already how, in the rate instances it does see play, it is played in cEDH decks.
Exactly. I'm here for it.
Those players need to get gud.
@@falconje11totally agree with your comment - a lot of the comments on this video seem to believe that cEDH players enjoy rolling up to casual tables and turn 2 thoracle + consult winning when the whole point of playing cEDH is to play your high power deck against high power decks - if someone is lying about the power level of their deck and smashing you with it they're not "a cEDH player," they're just an asshole 😂
separating the formats will in no way prevent assholes who want to pubstomp from building high power casual decks to smash casual tables - it might make those decks weaker, but they still won't be fun to play against unless we're proposing banning huge chunks of the commander card pool
literally no one is going around playing cedh decks in casual pods (if they do theyre literally j a dick and it isnt an issue of the format), this is all a nonissue
6:36 As an entrenched casual player, I think the formats should stay together. Simply put, cEDH doesn't really exist without the EDH. Part of the restriction for cEDH is the EDH banlist and rules, and that's what makes it fun and enticing. If they were to split, cEDH would lose a core part of its identity.
That said, I think that both sides to the format are VERY distinct, and should be treated as such. For example: deck power scales. The effectiveness of deck power ranking aside, putting cEDH on the same scale as precons is asinine. Even on the most balanced scales, the jump from a 9 to a 10 (cEDH's usual ranking) is exponential, and in more was than one. Many cEDH decks run cards that aren't great by regular EDH metas, like Dispel and Pyroblast, and cEDH deck construction is so much more different from high-powered EDH decks (8-9's on most scales).
Long story short: the system works well as-is and would only be complicated by trying to separate EDH and cEDH, although public perception on how the two relate definitely needs some work.
Competitive all the way to janky is a mindset on a spectrum. So cEDH isnt a clear cut line so where would you split the two formats and even if you did, there would almost immediatly be a new form of cEDH within EDH. The best decks within a format will always be considered competitive. The amount of formats would just grow indefinetly
CEDH aren't the best decks in the format, it's literally a different format already. They are molded for the meta they play in, it's dramatically different. High powered commander is not CEDH, and not all CEDH is high power.
Which is why the episode became "ban list, more or no?" Playign the best deck I can will always be a thing, the only question is what are the rules. We used to tuck commanders for example. They changed that effectively banning many cards. I can't tell you the last time I saw a Condemn or Spell Crumple.
Cedh will always be fine, ban list expanding is all upside.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 they literally are though. Apart from 'metabreaker' decks, that are designed to thrive against other cEDH decks but might have a hard time in high power pods (some very reactive or stax decks would come to mind), cEDH decks are the strongest decks you could bring to a game of commander, regardless of the rest of the pod.
@@DavidVelic-l5t Lets say we engage in a thought exercise where we give an opponent a given board state with a set of parameters for how that board state will interact with you every turn. Do you believe that CEDH decks across the board can outperform non-CEDH decks in almost every possible scenario?
The meta doesn't describe what's good and what's not. It describes what is, and how they interact. CEDH decks are not designed to be generically powerful, they're designed to perform well in relation to expected opponents.
I'll repeat my original assertion to make sure we understand what's being talked about: CEDH is not a power level, it's a playstyle.
Food for thought. How many game-warpingly strong cards are entirely disregarded solely due to how difficult it is to cast them in CEDH?
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I get where you're coming from and I certainly agree that what you're saying is right for some cEDH decks, but not for the majority, at least not for those with a real proactive gameplan. Because in any given format, there will always be a strongest deck, or maybe a few. In a meta independant vacuum, what would that be? I don't know the answer, but it would most definitely look very similar to the current top cEDH decks.
Those cards that aren't good enough for cEDH aren't good enough for a reason though. they pretty much all have the same thing in common - they are strong, but too slow. it simply doesn't matter if you have grave pact or doubling season when all my deck does is consistently win turn 3, often earlier.
We should for sure make lines in the sand between Cedh and noncedh, it's not just about powerlevel but mentality, if you play this game to win just to win no matter what, go play Cedh that what the c stands for COMPETITIVE
but commander isn't a game that about winning. (of course it is, someone has to win eventually.) To me a perfect commander game is a game where each player leaves the game happy and content, that they were able to play the game and have fun in a pod, going from strongest to weakest to rebuilding to eventual defeat at another player. in commander there are some players who single focus 1 opponents down only attack that person even when others are bigger threats or have more life, these kind of players should go off to Cedh. in CEDH you shouldn't give a flying fuck about your opponent's enjoyment of the game, that not what you're here for. A lot of players have certain cards or combo's they despise, whether that's MLD or certain INFs that don't immediately win, and you'll see that those players don't play those combos or cards themselves, cause they know how annoying or dreadful it is to play/lose against.
if people understand and try to place themselves in their opponent's shoes, follow the golden rule of boardgames: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." and if you realise that you don't care about your opponent's feeling in a game, then pls don't play commander, go play any other format Cedh Legacy Modern
12:27 Pretty funny to see this now after the bans and wizards of the coast taking over
So cool to learn about Dual commander and how it split off to its own format
This episode is crazy. It reminds me of your rule zero episode. This is a nothing burger. But still love hearing y’all’s opinions
It could've been a 2-word tweet by Richard instead, "Ban Armageddon"
As someone who plays both, I genuinely think more people should actually try cedh. Because most people who don't seem to have opinions that, while are totally valid if it's just not your thing, aren't really based on actual experience. Experience that if had would help them, I think, in understanding what they actually want from a game
I think this problem is twofold:
1. I agree that the shadowban list is a confusing social dynamic, and that needs to be clarified for people in one way or another, and I am not picky as to how that is solved.
2. The actual problems in games at LGS's and the like is not "this person brought a CEDH deck to a precon battle", but it is "in the casual and relaxed format this player is running Mana Crypt and Force of Will". I would like the formats split and the banned lists adjusted so that I can either explicitly enter into fast mana and free counters world, or choose to stay inside uncastable haymakers world, without having a long discussion first.
Additionally, I think it is worth noting that banning cards on power level may result in bans that people wouldn't necessarily expect. If you ban Armegeddon, you should probably ban Field of the Dead too. Land interaction exists to interact with lands, and if the interaction is banned, the lands cannot be interacted with.
"Mr. Gambini, that a is lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection. Overruled."
But in seriousness, this is exactly how a lot of us feel.
To be fair though aren't those resealable questions to ask regardless? Are you playing free counters or super fast mana isn't much of a chore. I personally ask/ make clear every time I sit down regardless of power that I don't like playing against chaos (which I believe to be more headache inducing the longer the games go), but I don't feel it takes too long of time to clear small things like that up before starting a game with complete strangers.
Yeah, the idea that people are actively bringing proper Cedh decks to super casual commander nights is absurd. Cedh players are not interested in bullying people that can't fight back with turn 2/3 kills.
@@stanislav328Sadly this happens fairly frequently. Some people just want to stomp on EZmode.
@@Blacklodge_Willy It can be covered, but it begins to be a chore when done over and over again. I play games to get away from my chores.
The biggest issue with banning all of the cEDH cards is that it doesn't actually solve the problem. Then you'll just get people coming up with the strongest possible EDH deck and they'll still get yelled at for doing that. To be frank, I got bullied out of casual. To clarify, the decks that I was playing were not good decks and people were just whining so much.
CEDH games are so much less stressful for me. I know that I can just try to win and everybody I'm playing with is cool with that because they're also trying to win.
“Causal” EDH either needs a stricter ban list applicable everywhere, or no ban list at all and rely on Rule 0 and House/LGS rules to define what’s allowed.
cEDH needs a ban list regulated just as any 60 card competitive format is regulated.
The only reason this is a discussion is because there’s a wide variety of “cEDH cards” as Richard described that are inherently strong (stax, free spells, fast mana), and people use them in casual resulting in feel-bads because there’s a difference in expectation.
Having different needs justifies splitting the format
Most succinct comment so far.
Rule 0 is absurd. The fact that free counter magic is only considered acceptable if your opponents agree to it is crazy. The cedh format only works because they embrace the banlist as fact, where as casual thinks of the banlist as suggestions
well, casual is already rule 0 either way.
If me and my friends want to create a commander table where everyone plays with 3 commanders, a deck allowing 4ofs an 180 card decks who's going to enforce I don't?
separate completely the 2 formats will just create unnecessary complexity.
IMO, if you're really going to separate the formats you should be separating 1vs1 commander from FFA commander...
and FFA commander should have INSANELY revamped banlist to weaken combos, as combos are pretty much the only strategy capable of giving over 25% win rate in a 4player game... ban every single tutor for starters.
@@seilaoquemvc2 problem is that casual EDH doesn’t only apply to friends playing at home, it applies to all games held at LGS, online over spell table or MTGO, at conventions, etc. With all those different methods to play, there needs to be a clear set of rules everyone abides by unless specifically agreeing not to. It’s no different than Standard/Pioneer/Modern versus Kitchen Table formats, apples to oranges.
@@pistolpete7422 sure.
but balancing casual is simply impossible.\
because you go out there, ban every single mass land destruction, then someone will end up comboing with Field of the Dead after tutoring 8 cards, make a bazzilion zombies and insta win.
You know that no matter how casual a table is, there's always the asshole that will combo off and kill the entire table on turn 6.
what bothers some people will be different than what bothers other people... and the current commander banlist does a TERRIBLE job at keeping the "I win now, fuck you" strategies at bay.
It bans some stupid cards that have no business being banned like Braids, Recurring Nightmate while keeping real offenders like Sol Ring and Demonic Tutor running rampant.
It also bans hard reset symmetrical cards like Upheaval while allowing for "everyone is damned except me" cards like Cyclonic Rift...
For some super weird reason, it bans Tolarian Academy but not Gaea's Craddle... bans Yawgmoth's Bargain and not Necropotence.... really what the hell?
The issue here is MUCH bigger than just separating formats....
If this is to be taken seriously, it must be looked at with actual game theory backing, the banlist for commander is just a selection of cards that someone in the rules comitee doesn't like and not something trying to stop the broken strategies that the format has.
Richard woke up today and chose violence 😂
Richard typically has absolutely atrocious takes. Normally I just find them bad but funny. Today I just found it obnoxious and offensive.
He has some great takes ngl
he was right on some of them too so @@jacobalbert2603
Which take(s) do you reference too? during this episode.
@@jacobalbert2603
"I feel the RCs job is to avoid social media hate" was 🔥🔥🔥
BTW thanks for bringing this conversation, while there's a deafening silence at the RC and CAG. You took the bullet for us and will be remembered for that.
The rule 0 discussion is always so funny to me. Splitting the formats doesn't make any changes on the cEDH side. The rule 0 for a cEDH game starts and stops at "hey are we gonna play some cEDH?" Splitting the games still makes casual commander games require a rule 0 discussion. Because everyone has their own opinion of what is and isn't okay in a casual format.
One approach i thought was interesting would be to do something similar to the fan made pokemon competitive rules for 1v1: tiers based on popularity.
So if you want to play in the overused tier then you should expect a lot of staples, and if you want to tone that down you go play in the underused tier. You cant use overused cards in the underused format, but you can use underused cards in the overused format
You'd have a lot of formats as a result, but people could gauge the power level and the "ban list" for a particular format would be self regulating via data.
Other than some form of data driven approach, the split in formats would be arbitrary and you'd just have cEDH, casual commander, and sweaty commander
It’s cool that this is a comment because I was literally thinking this watching the video.
CEDH would be Ubers
High Power is OU
Casual Commander is UU
Jank is NU and RU
Splitting cedh and casual isn't the issue. The problem is between the 5's and the 8's and 9's/10 where "casual" can still be combo pubstomping
I think CEDH is too stream lined in the Meta to be considered “salty”. Your Commander colours automatically dictate about 80%+ of your deck (copy and paste) within the Meta ie. Lands, Fast Mana, Removal. From there, there are some obvious revisions and very minimal creativity. CEDH is about the minor nuances in how you setup your combo prior to your opponents. With experience, you can probably guess almost all of what is in your opponents deck (with maybe a few minor surprises) as soon as you see their Commander(s). Including any meta salty cards.
EDH varies. You can have groups with a lot of ingenuity in their decks or you can have copy and paste from the EDHREC Top 20 groups. The salt in them varies a lot as well.
12:00: I love commander and I play it for over 10 years, but I have to agree with Richard here.
Members of the RC created commander/EDH as a casual format. Fair, no complains. Over the years, there were many articles coming from RC members that Commander should (still) be a casual format. Still fair, no complains. But at the same time why does the ban list not reflect that?! There are so many cards you cannot play casually (for example many stax pieces, mass land destruction etc.).
From my point of view you can ether call it casual and ban un-casual cards, or leave the collective mindset to the 4 persons who are playing (aka. Rule-0) and ban only toxic cards. (And even that should be up for debate).
This unclear behaviour is the root for many, many discussions which will keep us from playing.
I am in farvor of the first option, but I really do not get the philosophy here. If someone has some explaining thoughts, please feel free to share them :)
I feel like someone just thought the views were too low so he decided to hit a hornet's nest. The only two comments this conversation needs are:
"If you break off cEDH the new top of Commander will be the new cEDH."
"cEDH players choose what cEDH is so if they don't want to break off they won't."
There, no more discourse.
The solution you want is actually a defined casual mindset, because casual players don't know what rules they are playing by whereas CEDH players do. It just so happens that casual players often don't want to play with the CEDH mindset.
CEDH is a mindset with clear intentions. You can't separate it from the commander format, because it's just optimizing the card list and game actions.
times like this are where this podcast hurts itself by being so insular. it would have been very easy to get a guest or two of players/thinkers from the cedh community to give their input. please do that in the future.
I mean that isn't really the point of this podcast. If they had guests regularly than sure, but I'm not here for the most informed opinion per se. I am here because of their personalities and interesting opinions. Like they don't need to have PVDDR on to evaluate how good a card is either
This whole podcast emphasized what I believe is the core issue EDH has. The flaw is in the core design of the format, the social contract we all pretend to care about. Every "secret rule" and "shadowbanned card" discussed was because of the social contract of the format. Commander is the only place where the expectation is everyone has "fun" during the game. But that's the issue, nobody can agree on what's fun. There is always a give and take in a group game but in my experience very few players are willing to give up some of their fun so another player can have theirs.
Rule 0 is honestly just an official excuse to gloss over this problem. The RC can sit back and not worry about defining what is "fun" or a "good experience" because they can point to Rule 0. It's up to playgroups to decide but every group will decide differently. That's what creates the social quagmire of talking about EDH online or going to big events.
Commander is a great format because of that social aspect but it's also the largest weakness
Issue really is that edh became commander where it picked up on popularity quickly and started to be designed for
10:15 Ive had this happen on 2 occasions. In both, they didnt have full CEDH decks with optimized mana, but they were playing CEDH strategies and said "I dont have a CEDH deck, this is a 7".
The first guy was a guy who had played competitive magic a long time ago and was getting back into the game and trying EDH for the first time. He still had the competitive mindset so he was so excited to stax the table out with Winota and combo the table out with Magda. Even if they werent 10s, they were at least 8s with unfun win cons.
The second guy was new to magic and looked up good commanders and found tivit. Again, he didnt have all the fast mana, but he still had a bunch of tutors, counters and infinite combos.
Yeah because cEDH is EDH AND EDH needs a real ban list.
Or "casual" powercreeps to the point where if you bring a pre-con to the table it feels like you are playing against cEDH anyway, you sit there and cast the 5 weakest spells that get played that game and just don't meaningfully effect the game or really play. This is pretty much what my local meta is.
You don't get to decide what's "fun" or not it's a game. What's considered casual is vague at best and constantly changes.
@patrickcole3730 then why have a rules committee? Why have a ban list at all? If Rule Zero handles everything then we don't need a format much less a committee.
Is Tivit actually cEDH? I thought he was a silly little voting deck
If you split out cedh from commander all you will have done is make cedh and a lower powered cedh, itd make commander competitive and since commander is popular mid grade cards would be shooting up in price like how pauper makes some commons more expensive.
Pauper is the perfect example.
Its 'casual' 60 card, but now its juat cheaper competitive
As a cEDH player, the only people I've ever heard call for a split in the format is casual players who still think that cEDH players are going to show up to their LGS and pub stomp.
I mean I've had that experience. Im still new and dont know exactly what consitutes cEDH vs high power EDH but ive defo had times ive wanted to make new friends nd play w randos and everyone has high power decks full of expensive cards and complex combos and lots of interaction and sniped every fun thing i play while im playing a proxy deck or some low-mid power shitpost. I dont neccesarily think that the formats shd be split because of banlist reasons, and like a low power deck can have high power peices to make it playable, and i dont play tournaments so i cld totally be wrong, but ive never *not* had to have a rules chat with groups. People do show up with the intent to play cedh and dont always communicate that well. Ive had people play high power decks against my precons just to fuck w me and feel big and cool even after saying im playing a 5/10.
in hindsight i might be confusing cedh and high power casual since it wasnt any turn 3 win fuckery but i have met and played with a couple people who enjoy being a dick and not playing the same power as everyone else. I dont think its a long stretch to imagine cEDH players showing up and stomping
@Amythebard69 if that has been your experience then that definitely makes sense and I'm sorry that you were put through that, there's never an excuse for predatory behavior. Unfortunately though, there will always be people that will try to take advantage and I don't think splitting the format would change that. If that person was playing a deck that most would call cEDH to do that, they'll continue to do the same thing regardless of the ban list. I'd highly recommend you watch the video Tolarian Community College put up with Ryan from Playing With Power as I think they go over this better than I can, but in my experience that vast majority of cEDH players want to play against other cEDH decks with the same mindset and don't have the pub stomp motivation. Again, this doesn't invalidate your experience and I can definitely see why hearing "cEDH" after that would sound like a bad thing.
I think Richards arguement in the beginning is really funny because he brings up in basketball how you don’t talk about rules in advance. And yes that is true of a formal basketball game but if anyone has played pickup or “casual” you almost always determine whether we are playing by 1s and 2s, or if it’s “winners” or “losers” ball after a score. So i feel like commander is similar. There is a baseline set of rules in highly competitive games but once it’s casual, people play how they want to play to make it the most fun for them. That being said, if that is to work, the RC needs to make bans and rule changes based on the gameplay of the higher levels of competition, not try to base their regulations on casual playgroups.
a competitive format needs constant moderation because it has a meta, that isn't present in casual, Cedh should be it's own format with its own moderated banlist.
As someone that plays cEDH, I personally believe cEDH and EDH should stick together. The current banlist isn't competitively balanced, and that's a lot of the draw of cEDH. If cEDH was its own proper format, it would deserve its own banlist, which would be competitively balanced, and would reduce my enjoyment immensely.
As for the calls to split the format based on pubstomping feelsbad, that isn't related to cEDH. You win ALWAYS have players who want to dunk on worse decks/less experienced players and the non-competitive nature of EDH magnifies the issue.
If you're playing cEDH, you're not looking to stomp a pod of precons on t2, you're looking for a complicated and competitive gameplay experience between similarly powerful decks.
If you're a pubstomper, you're specifically looking to dunk on people, so you are looking to crush a precon pod and are specifically avoiding a cEDH pod where you won't auto-win.
TL; DR: Don't split the format, pubstompers are the issue, not cEDH. Casual EDH is just inherently antithetical to good pickup games.
If anyone is interested in learning more about cEDH and the cEDH mindset (be that because you're thinking of playing or just to have a more informed opinion), ComedIan MTG has a website that covers most of it in a relatively succinct manner.
www.cedh.guide/
Facts
Paused 10 seconds in to say no this is not a divisive topic. Just because the two different names of these formats are casual and competitive doesn't mean that that's the only axis that separates these unanimously considered separate formats.
I liked this episode but these guys missed the mark in the discussion about banning some CEDH (after a hypothetical split of the formats) and discussed about banning cards that are NOT CEDH staples, like Armageddon, just because they do not like the card or the effect (mass land destruction) not because they are played on CEDH.
CEDH is not as scary as people make it out to be. Usually the games are way less salty because everybody is trying to win so blowing up a land or countering the “cool thing” is expected
CEDH is LESS scary cuz you dont have to worry about 90% of the social issues that rule zero brings to the table
Its not thats its scary, its expensive and homogenizing. Lowering the power level by 20-40% makes commander decks $20 - $200 rather than $500 - $1000, also makes the to 5-10 commanders less ubiquitous making for more varied and interesting gameplay.
@@simic0racle157I played my first few games of cEDH last night, and they were an absolute blast. i was playing with real cards with a budget deck, but was still able to keep some pace with the full power proxy decks at the table! 99% of cEDH players are totally cool with proxies and actually expect them! the community as a whole is amazing.
I'm not scared its not the game I'm looking for. The current band list combined with powercreep is leading "casual" edh at my LGS to become not a game I am looking for.
@@nathand6467 that sucks to hear. Does your LGS not split the cedh pod and the casual?
If I hated rule 0 as much as casual commander players seem to hate rule 0, I don't think I would play the format where rule 0 is the thing separating you from Bowmasters, Lotus Petal, Narset, Timetwister, Thassa's Oracle, Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Necropotence, Mana Crypt, and others. But I'm glad that somehow it's cEDH that needs to be split off instead of just talking with the people around you.
I think the hyper casuals should just make their own format and leave the rest of us alone. They can have fun playing their midrange battlecruiser decks and accusing each other of being sweaty when one of them pulls ahead just a tad faster than the thinnest skinned player at the table thinks is still within the objective parameters of fun.
There is no point in banning “cEDH cards” because commander will still have different power levels associated with the fact there are so many cards in the format. Even if you completely got rid of many of the strongest cards there would only be a new set of top level cards and the same discussions around power level would still have to occur.
You can easily do broad banlist of anything which makes more mana than it costs etc. And banning non interactive and almost non interactive combos such as thoracle
I think cEDH should be in it's own tier.
Lower the power ceiling of casual so the disparity between the higher and lower power decks would be narrower.
There will always be a gap, but you can definitely mitigate a lot of it
@@lorei1556 how are you defining a non interactive combo?
@@lorei1556isn't part of the fun of Commander that you can play almost all cards? if I'd want a severely limited card pool I'd play Brawl instead
@@thanatoscharunnot the person you asked, but the 'problem' with thoracle consult is that you can only really interact with it on the stack or by having stax pieces in play that preven the combo. you can't stop the combo win by removing the thoracle, limiting the amount of possible counterplay.
Flash was even worse, since you could win the game for 2 mana at instant speed, which made it incredibly hard to stop if the flashhulk player had good timing.
The issue in my area is that if it's not on the banlist everyone wants to play it. I constantly have to play against cedh decks where the amount of cards being played is very limited. I would be happy to play another format that is commander but with a lot more card bans.
And also extremely expensive!
Tomer saying the two ways of having fun are superfluous because trying to assemble something fun is impossible vs cedh decks. You'll play thousand games before you get it off.
I definatley understand the sentiment; I have it roo about my lgs. But I don't think splitting/banning can solve the problem. There will always be a "best thing" that people will try to play. Commander's major problem (power level/playing to win vs playing for "fun") is fundementally a social problem, not a banlist one. Which means there is no easy solution.
The bannings would help because all we are trying to do is bring the power level down. If you have ever played 60 card standard versus an older format deck you quickly realize you are not playing a fair game. Each format has an expected win turn and currently cedh is turn 1-3 and regular casual commander is turn 7-10 they aren't the same game. The only reason I would advocate to switch them is because some people want to play all their old cards. But casual is a bunch of newer cards (mostly). I believe as is eventually commander will die out because people will continue to play better and better stuff until we don't see casual anymore. To a point of where we drive all newer players away because of the crazy prices. I guess we got brawl still? Lol.
The solution there isn’t to ban all the powerful cards, but rather either wizards aggressively reprinting them to make them more affordable, or everyone allows proxying.
Actually when playing pickup basketball it is common to have the "are we playing 1's and 2's or 2's and 3's" conversation
Yeah, I was so confused about that point because if you don't talk when you start pickup basketball what are you doing? Especially if you're not playing at a court that is well-maintained.
I think you have it wrong about splitting play-to-win and play-for-fun players into different formats (28:27). A well-tuned ban list allows both types of players to coexist in the same format. It does that by limiting the power of the format such that top-tier decks cannot outright win games against lower powered decks with no counter play. Think of modern where SaffronOlive builds whacky budget decks that often compete reasonably against tier-1 decks. In commander that would be like a precon beating a cedh deck; it’s just never going to happen because the cedh decks are on such a wildly different power level. By having a more extensive ban list, you let people who mostly enjoy the competitive aspect of the game (like me) still have fun playing against their friends who play casually. In fact, limiting the power level makes deck building and gameplay more fun for competitive folks because they need to rely on deck building prowess and outplaying their opponents to win games instead of just playing more expensive/higher power cards than their play group.
My playgroup struggled with this so we created a format called Battlecruiser. Commander IS CEDH so we left it alone. Battlecruiser banned all zero and 1 cmc mana rocks, one and two mana tutors, big mana lands (ancient tomb, gaeas cradle, gemstone caverns, etc.), and all "free" interaction spells. This way we could define how we wanted to play by saying one phrase, "battlecruiser or Commander tonight?"
Reasonable.
Perfect
Richard, a commander game is a game where people win and lose, winning is an aspect of having fun. Some of the best game knight's episode for examples is where the jank deck win's out of nowhere like the Bear Force one modern horizons episode, the dude vibed, had fun and felt extra great about winning, by being the smallest threat. For cEDH the fun of it is playing against the stack as opposed to the board state and playing head games with your opponents when it comes to the answers which is the biggest difference in casual decks in principal. Casual often the fight is on the board, cEDH the fight is often on the stack or the mind games and timing.
Tangentially I totally would play a cEDH tournament where the prize literally is just 10 packs of cards or heck even just and no cash prize, where the prize steaks are low, so the focus really is on having fun games. As low prize pools usually do translate minimal cheating and no entering of the more toxic try hard malicious pub stompers that often not are cEDH players.
So Richard's whole argument is not for separate formats but for an updated banlist. Nothing he stated is a good reason to separate CEDH from Edh. But even if the RC updates the banlist there is still gonna be a "most competitive deck" and CEDH will still exist. It will just exist within the new ban list.
It wouldn’t be a commander clash podcast if Richard didn’t have a bad opinion to share.
He is saying there should be two banlists. One for competitive and one for casual.
@@shadogiantwhich is a bad idea. If cEDH was its own format, it would wither and die like French EDH. People want to play the most competitive tuned version of EDH - if you split cEDH into a new banlist people will just reinvent cEDH in EDH.
They should have had a guest on that could provide this perspective.
If cEDH players wanted their own banlist, they would have implemented one on their own like French Commander did, you would see it when signing up for cEDH tournaments.
Obviously isn't wouldn't wither because CEDH players already don't use those decks with casual people. Clearly it is already a separate format that needs it's own balancing
Do you think the problem is a community mindset more than actual cards/decks being a problem?
I see all these posts about power level, but none take into account how optimized or memey their deck is, or if the deck "pubstomping" them was just a hard counter to them. I've never heard of a cEDH player stomping a casual pod, but I've heard of Maelstrom Wanderer dunking on upgraded precons.
Richard, why do you hate Armageddon so much, don't ban the wincon of my Avacyn deck!
Context of how you play a card makes a lot of difference.
it's not even played in cEDH. I don't get why he calls it a cEDH card.
Honestly I think the format just needs a more active rules committee that also plays some cedh as well. Get people like comedian in the mix and I think the format as a whole would become more and more healthy.
I agree, I think a cedh player like him would be good. I hope the game gets more fun in the future lol.
I think a solution like canadian highlander is the best. The current version of how we try and measure power level is utterly defunct. Having a power level that resembles how many powerful strategies you are running is much more useful. When you add powerful, sweaty, salt-inducing cards you add points. This way you could theoretically have a point-threshold to declare your deck as cEDH. Decks that have no points can still have a noticable power difference but can then just be resolved with rule 0. Rule 0 would take way too long every game to define a perfect balance between decks that are supposedly all 7s (but are clearly not).
Split out Casual EDH already exists - it's called Conquest and nobody plays it even though it's a fantastic format.
As a new commander player I agree with Seth. Commander has far too many unwritten rules at the moment. Having cEDH in the Commander format doesn´t make much sense, casual play versus play to win makes them different formats. This would also make tournaments in Commander or cEDH easier for new players. The vast majority of Commander players won´t take part in cEDH tournaments.
Cedh is really fun
Richard's starting argument that a new player will get the most powerful commander deck and beat everyone is just a straw man argument. Not only would no new player spend hundreds on a new deck, they wouldn't be able to pilot a cEDH deck without extensive knowledge of Magic and the primer, if it even has one. This problem is made up.
I feel like one of the better ways to manage this would be kind of having apoint system for cards a little like canadian highlander. then you can base the conversation around the point levels of decks. but that's also waaaay too much work to make it a viable option sadly
I wanted to play commander but my friends are hard to get together. So I turned to Magic online. I went in with the toxic precon because I wanted to play other cards I didn't want to shell out money for them. Many games people auto scooped not knowing its a precon. And the games i got to play with it were cedh games where the game was over before turn 3 or 4. After that I just stopped trying to play commander on Magic online. I would like the split so I can play the game I love. I do agree that its vary difficult to determine what should or shouldn't be banned. Its all subjective.
I don't understand the question? How would they be split vs kept together? Like the only thing I can think of that would "split" them is a separate ban list? You can easily tell a modern vs vintage deck.. or standard vs pioneer... card pool restrictions rule those formats.. What would be the "split" here?
Correct. Splitting alone does nothing. Splitting only makes sense with a banlist adjustment. A banlist adjustment removes the need for a format split.
The only question remaining is expanding the ban list or not.
@@raedienI presume the idea is that cEDH folks would want to keep playing fast mana and underworld breach and Thoracle. And casual EDH folks don't want to play with/against those.
I highly doubt you could just add the top 50 cEDH cards to the EDH ban list without pissing off literally everyone in cEDH.
@NateFinch CEDH players are proxy friendly. There are literally not enough reserved list cards to go around. While there will always be damage with any ban, the overall gain should be the focus. Like any format people will play with the strongest they can get their hands on. Real cedh players are there for competition, the banlist is irrelevant.
Someone complaining their cards got banned is a different issue than them being a cedh player.
EDH *is* the way more of those older cards get played but the game is better without them.
I love powering out an Onyx/Chain as the next guy but the fact is the fast mana is played to race/keep up with the other players. If no one can play it in the first place than you have to race in other ways maybe green would even be played!
Would love to see y'all have someone on the show who is very invested in the cEDH community. Maybe Jim from the spike feeders since he is also on the CAG.
I think that if the formats were split, the subsequent new banlist of cards would create a lot more cedh players.
An issued in casual commander is that people don't know how to use their cards, they are running these insanely powerful cards (armageddon/cyclonic rift) without a way to finish the game afterwards.
If you made these cards cedh only, the casual players that run them would be forced to realize what the decks they were building were actually trying to do, a lesson in deckbuilding/goal focusing, and they will understand, "Oh! cedh is my people!"
I agree completely. It would give players many cards that they would have to steer away from to ensure that your play group is playing at least a closer powered level. In my play group one of our players put a cyclonic rift in every deck and just uses it to slow the over players down because he is playing battle cruiser magic. It doesn't win him the game but makes it take so much longer.
That was my take as well - just like the legacy split from vintage years ago, it makes cedh/legacy better when they can control their own ban list. I don't think the split solves any problems for casual though, because nothing right now is being kept off the banlist for cedh. I think if you want to solve any issues for causal, it involves banlist fixes - splitting the format doesn't do anything on it's own.
They kinda have to be split up in some way. The issue is with priorities and whether fun or victory takes precedent. You can't play with fun being the #1 priority and have winning be the #1 priority or vice versa.
My only problem with commander and cedh being treated as the same is that there are like 3-5 players at my LGS who come to every FNM commander night with Blue Farm, Rog Si etc. They pubstomp their pods which are usually filled with precons and medium power decks because it’s just 4-8 packs for $10 to them. All the pods turn into 3v1s to see if we can get them low enough where they can’t ad naus for thoracle on turn 3. In the end the causal players stop coming because they traveled 30 mins to just lose on turn 4 and the causal player just has to hope that none of the cedh players lost to another cedh player where they are in the loser pods.
It just sucks because cedh is some of my favorite magic content to watch, but it just leads to feels bads at casual tables which they are technically allowed to be at since it is a commander deck.
That sounds like more of an issue with those people and not cEDH. I’d argue that people who intentionally pubstomp are just bad people and it’s on the lgs for allowing it to happen. Any real cEDH player wants to play against people at a similar level. It’s one of the reasons the format is so proxy friendly
@@kendallhaight9383yeah, I asked the lgs owner about it and he said that commander night is technically a tournament and nothing in their decks were illegal since none of their cards were proxies, so they weren't breaking any rules. I get now how those players didn't have a proper cedh mindset, but at the time it definitely gave me a negative perception of it. It wasn't until I found channels like Playing with Power, Play to Win, cedh tv gameplay, spike feeders, and Mod Anonymous that I understood what cedh was actually about.
Having prizes for a casual event is just asking to be taken advantage of. If there's prizes on the line, it's a cEDH event.
Seth- you should play 10 games of cEDH with a real cEDH deck in a real cedh pod . Imagine trying to have a perspective on Casual without having played it - try cEDH it’s popular for a reason
'Declaring something when I make the pod' - congratulations, you just recreated Rule Zero which you hated.
50:00 I understand the point about reserve list cards, but almost all CEDH tournaments allow proxies.
Colossal sky turtle is CEDH Tomer…
Alpha to current player here. All valid discussion points, can’t split the formats, tournaments have problems (colluding etc). I’m in Atlanta, which is one of the major cEDH hubs, and I’ve personally been snarked out of a top 4, and a win for a dual, over “buddies” colluding.
As an L3, I truly hate how loose cEDH is.
i think CEDH players usually see CEDH as basically a different format, but we don't want it to be officially separated because the whole point is to play the most powerful stuff in EDH itself.
so i think it would totally be fine to most CEDH players if a lot of bans happen for casual, and none happen for CEDH. the rules commitee should just do its job for casual and we as CEDH players would be fine. otherwise we would have already created our own format.
edit: btw i play both a lot of CEDH and a lot of casual EDH
This!
I've been playing long enough to see multiple rule and ban lost changes. We roll with it! If things get banned from my lists that's fine!
The Rc needs to either be much stricter about what cards are banned if any or just let it be the wild west by only banning cards that are banned in vintage. I'm admittedly a fan of the latter as commander is a casual format. with the reliance on rule zero to self-balance games already in effect a very limited banlist does very little and ultimately seems kinda backwards either they ban all quick instant wins, single cards that generate absurd resource imbalances by themselves, stax, and mass land destruction, and completely change cedh forever or every cedh game becomes a no banned list game and nothing changes at casual tables for the most part because they often play with self-contained banned lists anyway
Exactly this!! There is a no-ban-list cEDH format, but absolutely zero people play it - the point is to make the best deck with commander rules
@@jmanwild87 but both cases would be fine for CEDH players, we would still want to try to optimally play within the commander rules framework. the result (the decklists we play) would maybe change, but that would be fine. and it would also be fine if they don't change.
@@JHempel13 The problem is that within regular rules the banlist is technically a suggestion. We need an actual banlist with a good gameplay flow being the goal.
You can't separate the formats from one another because they are not separate formats. cedh is edh its in the name. What casual players want is to not get curb stomped by someone playing a better deck. That's why people need to discuss what they want from the game at the start. Casual players also need to understand that their "really strong deck" probably isn't THE best deck and need to be less upset when someone thoracles them when they said they are playing their "strongest deck" without conversation about what their deck can do. More conversation before the game leads to better games. Casuals like to hide how there decks work say its good and complain when they loose to actually good decks.
One of the best comments and imo correct takes. Commander is a social and complicated format. It's not as simple as here play. Communicating and discussing what we want is important in a social board game like format!!
I find I relate to Seth's point, I play suboptimal when trying to make sure everyone is having fun. I might have 4 wraths in my hand and not play them so people can go off.
28:58
I just play one wrath in my decks, and mostly only asimmetrical options. I too try to avoid making the game longer by using the "reset" button, and I love to see when decks get out of control
I honestly though everyone did.
Why play 4 board wipes then if you're not going to play them? Why not put in different cards you can play?
Maybe this is my perspective being skewed by the way I build decks, but I don't think wraths prevent people from going off. If your deck can't recover from multiple wraths, you're probably too spikey to build a good deck anyway.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I was with you until you said "too spiky." Spikes plan for the wrath.
The problem with WotC having full power over commander is that they regularly demonstrate that they're just gonna print anything that makes them money. So they'll keep power creeping their cards and they'll try to increase monetisation of the format (e.g, ban a staple and then print a replacement as a chase card)
Tomer with a 100% good take rate, the peoples champ
I feel that it's important to recognise that the fault in the format lies in casual commander, not cEDH. The cEDH community is by far the most cohesive community (everyone is on the same wavelength regarding expected power levels, competition, game objectives and how to have fun etc.) All of the complaining and dissatisfaction comes from the core of casual players who stigmatise certain cards, strategies and play styles, but not cohesively. Some people hate combos but don't mind fast mana. Others hate tutors but don't mind free counterspells etc. Most casual players who don't have cEDH experience don't actually know what cEDH is - most of what people claim are cEDH decks are merely decks that are slightly higher on the power scale than their own (a deck that contains a few powerful cards like mana crypt or dockside extortionist isn't automatically cEDH viable!)
All that is to say, I think separating cEDH into its own format is completely fine. But it doesn't eliminate the fundamental problem you have. You're lowering the power ceiling slightly (the top 1% of decks are now gone), but there will be practically the same amount of disagreement in the remaining 99%. And unless you're planning on clearly demarcating like 10+ power tiers for a casual format, you will have the same people complaining week after week about the same issues.
I think no one thinks cEDH/the (cEDH) community is a problem. It’s true that they just sit down and play and the salt is way less likely to spill. And that’s kinda the point. In casual, as you put it, everyone is salty at different things. Some are more ubiquitous than others, but the salt comes from somewhere. And that somewhere, in my opinion and i think richard’s argument both regarding how basketball is the same game regardless of where you play it, and how if someone is playing a cEDH game you’re expecting your opponent to have a “serious” deck and not a meme or “bears” deck they wanted to play. You don’t come into a boxing match and start pillow fighting. Splitting the format ideally fixes this problem for casuals (assuming the ban list is then updated for casual). CEDH, nothing would change, as you put it, business as usual. But casual edh would have a clear line in the sand of what can and can’t be played. No more unspoken rules that alienate newer players. No more social taboos of playing “too strong” of a card. No mistake of “accidentally” picking up a cEDH deck and building it over any other. Less salt across the table. Almost more importantly is the disparity in power level lessens and it’d be easier to just hop into a game without a pregame discussion. Bc everything that’s left would be fine. Im not saying it’d fix everything or that players won’t still throw a bitch fit over whatever. But there’d be less confusion, the gap on power of decks would grow smaller instead of wider, no more getting mad at someone for playing X or Y card bc it’d be legal and ideally fine for causal. There’d be a clear statement to the whole community. This side (pointing to casual) is weenie hut jr’s and this side (pointing to cEDH) is the Salty Spitoon.
@@jcstaff1007 That sounds good in theory but I doubt it'd work out that way. Hypothetically, let's say that the formats were separated and casual gets a banlist where all the powerful cEDH staples (cheap tutors, fast mana, stax, imba commanders etc.) were all banned alongside whatever other salt-inducing cards the community has mostly agreed on. This is what I imagine the result would be:
The try-hard thoracle player arrives at your casual table with his new deck. He casually plays an early scheming symmetry (instead of vamp), winding canyons and then on t4, flashes in leveller and lab maniac, dazing your attempt at removal.
The issue is not in the banlist - it's in the players. And I know that some people will say "what if we just blanket ban all insta-win combos?" That still doesn't address the difference in values between players. You're still going to have one player at the table playing horse tribal while another is running Tatyova landfall and the fact that they've lost their Sol Ring isn't really going to change the matchup.
EDH is not as simple as two power levels. Its not "casual" and cEDH. Casual commander has an almost infinite number of powers. Your whole episode premise is trying treat "casual" EDH like its a simple equation where every player wants exactly the same thing as every other player and every game. Commander is an extremely complex equation because player to player, game to game people want different things. EDH is as popular and fun as it is because the light touch on band allows for everyone to play the game they want. What you... especially Richard...propses leaves A LOT of commander players without a home. I know for me, and everyone in my playgroups, our drcks would be laughed out of a cEDH pod, but would be absolutely decimated by the heavy ban list you want. What makes your way better than ours.
Love you guys, but I have to point out... this discussion is just based on a fundamentally wrong premise. If you divide a game into a competitive format and a casual format, it is the competitive format that gets heavily regulated. Not the casual format.
cEDH is the most optimal form of EDH... It's the same format it's literally just a power level. It's not as easy as separating legacy and modern. If some budget player cracks a mana crypt, he's not allowed to play it cause it's on the edh banlist?
Edit to elaborate my point cause people think I'm confused about how banlist work.. Adding a mana crypt to your precons doesn't make your deck cEDH. I can put together a pile of overpowered cards and the deck not be cEDH.
Yes. That's how banlists work. Cracking the Crypt either gets sold for stuff for the edh decks or starts him building a separate cedh deck.
It's literally not. It's not power level, it's a deckbuilding mindset. CEDH decks aren't "stronger" than Commander decks, they're tuned for a more specific metagame.
I disagree. cEDH players' goal -> "win at all costs". EDH players' goal -> "Have fun no matter what".
If the objective of the game is different, there's no way it can be considered *exactly* the same game.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 they're tuned differently because it's a different format. Lmao. You almost had it then it slipped away!
@@Belena711 if I build a modern deck for fun, meaning it's made with cards that are legal in that format, it is still a modern deck.. same logic applies to edh. If I build an edh deck, I can build it as optimal as i like it is still an edh deck at the end of the day.
Im all for the formats being separated, the core reason being that you get to have cedh and edh have their own, personalized banlists. cEDh would have different banned cards if they so chose (and I know they would, looking at you seedborne muse and thoracle....) and also unban a bunch of things even casual players would go "yeah why is this banned again?".
Its a different mentality, but separating the formats and banning out those power cards from casual tables (mana crypt, vault etc.) would absolutely give a more defined structure to the respective formats. Leaving it as a mindset just leaves room for misinterpretation and as a result, a bunch of feelbad moments that dont need to exist.
No more "that decks a seven?!" after getting slapped by the classic land>sol ring>mana vault>mana crypt>signet>pass. If you want to define what cards are problems, you need to actually define them. The RC needs to take steps to do this or were going to be running around chasing our tails forever.
Tomer is a man of taste, listening to the Play to Win podcasts
To be honest I always thought EDH and CEDH were already split apart.
28:07 Richard you are wrong. I build decks to win. If they lose that’s fine too and I still have fun because I love playing magic. It is a fun game and everybody should build to win. I heavily upgraded my merfolk precon and it is a 8/9. I have so much fun with that deck whether I win or lose. Make no mistake I am playing to win.
list of the level 9 upgraded precon? The interwebs is curious
100% I'd love to see a 9 merfolk
But you're not everyone. Lots of my friends make decks with just a meme in mind, not the intention of winning.
@@nexgreymore8702 if they're playing to lose, then they shouldn't have opinions on any of this anyway 💁♀️
@@Sandovian Implementing a specific strategy within the gamespace you enjoy is not the same as playing to lose. Winning with belcher in EDH is still playing to win, even if it's a meme deck because of the deck size and lack of redundancy.
Guys... TRULY casual games do not have ban lists because they're casual... the second you throw down a ban list you're indicating a level a seriousness. The format is inherently doomed because WotC printed cards specifically for it and added levels of power. There is literally no going back at this stage.
That being said CEHD mentality is a problem, but it's literally baked into the product sooooo... it's the community that's the problem at this stage and that's hard to fix.
EDIT: Richard describes setting up expectations before sitting down to play at a table with people but what he's describing is basically just rule 0 lol
If you are banning land destruction... do you then ban Ramp spells?
Why?
Better comparison do you ban cyc rift, farewell and other mass artifact destroying spells since all decks that don't include green are artifact ramping instead of land ramping. So those other spells not only in effect Armageddon everyone not land ramping but hit all other support cards as well. Effectively beingg even more destructive and game delaying than a simple Armageddon.
@ianleggett8429 because Armageddon as a white spell, exists to counter the massive mana gains of green.
@hopposai787 great question. Clearly, treasures were not a thing when Armageddon was released. Personally, I'm not in favor of banning any of these cards. The caveat is that it should contribute to your win con, not function as a massive delay of game.
You want to Farewell, and Tefferi's Protection... go for it! But, if you Farewell and the game takes another hour I probably won't play against you again.
@@MaleusMaleficarumThat is literally not the purpose of armageddon at all wtf. Go look through beta and tell me how many ways green has to land ramp in that set.
Wouldn't you still have a rule 0 conversation about proxies? Everyone has different opinions on that
Richard is the embodiment of inventing a type of person to be mad about. Every time he brings up some hypothetical situation its not a real problem that a reasonable person would ever run into.
How many people can honestly say that their first EDH experience was netdecking a CEDH list for a LGS Commander game and getting run out?
I agree but I've seen some people bring armagedon and some other heavy stax as an upgrade precon tho
I’ve definitely seen people - not necessarily new players - play cards that Richard mentions when it isn’t really appropriate, like Armageddon.
@@pasdcinq2269 Armageddon is fine, it is wrongly maligned.
@@light-chemistry Armageddon is fine, it is wrongly maligned.
It just happened to a friend of mine. It's probably pretty rare, but he played pioneer / arena first, then he went to a commander league with a nearly cEDH level deck and was really surprised everyone was passive aggressive and rude to him for comboing out the whole table.
Again - Seth you could try a cEDH tournament before you decide they shouldn’t exist
"Rule zero sucks" okay but that's not a CEDH issue. Sure, some CEDH cards and strategies are needed in that conversation, but the power discrepancies in EDH are wide enough that the rule zero conversation doesn't go away. "I'm playing stax" is part of rule zero. So is, "I'm playing curiosity in my niv mizzet deck." In CEDH? Yes. In edh? Also yes. EDH has so, so many gameplay influencers that people expect in their rule zero conversations that aren't "CEDH."
Splitting the format would do very little for rule zero conversations.
people play basketball tournaments and people play basketball with their friends, its still basketball 45:27
My biggest problem with the arguments Seth and Richard kept falling back on was that they kept just going back to "its too complicated to learn the unwritten rules / its too difficult to do easy pickup games it should be more like basketball". But commander is inherently at the fundamental level a social game. Stop thinking about it like basketball (although even then I'd argue their argument is flawed, who plays random pickup games of basketball with strangers? Nobody, that's who, you typically play with the same group who have an unspoken agreement on what casual basketball means to them). Commander is like DnD, its a game that does require you to talk with and discuss things with your fellow players, and requires an inherent amount of trust between players to even function. And, just like DnD, the rules are more fluid. And yeah, sure, the unwritten rules and faux pas of commander may be a little difficult for a brand new player to grasp. But that's where it is the responsibility of veteran players to TEACH the new players, just like how you teach a new DnD player that stealing from the party is wrong (even if your playing a rogue) or no pvping unless everybody consents. And saying "but I don't wanna have to waste time talking to my pod or teaching new players" just sounds downright lazy. You walking into a random lgs to play is no different then sitting down to another groups DnD table. Its your responsibility to ask and find out what's ok and not ok with the group/local meta, since your the stranger, and if you cant be asked to do that then you shouldn't play.
Holy fallacy batman
bro no new player is googling "best commander deck" looking at a cEDH list and buying that list as their first fucking deck and bringing that to an LGS and if they do, they are gunna have a bad time anyways
I think Richard's trust in our corporate overlords is misplaced!
Its class consciousness. He's a business owner, so he is inclined to be nice to other business owners.
Well really he's correct about corporations being beholden to consumers voting with their wallets, its just that he isnt factoring in the fact that people don't even do that properly as a whole so it isnt effective
So cringey @@shadogiant
Where's the lie?
@@905LilO it's also kinda fucked imo that any system where people vote with their dollar means people with more dollars get more votes - when 90% of the wealth in America is held by 1% of people or whatever, that doesn't seem so good
My big problem with edh its where you put the line
I quit for a year edh because people hated on my niv mizzet deck, that didnt have a good mana base, didn't have the best cantrips but have the combo
It doesn't matter if i was stuck at 3 lands I'll always be the first to death
But next to me its a kozileck deck that aleays play kozi on turn 3 or 4 filling up they hand and having access to counterspells way harder to interact and no one hate it
I'm not able to put a goblin recruiter in my krenko deck because it makes the situation of if you dont have a wrath most likely ill win
Or the equipment for 3 and untap give +2/+2 because if i have the singleton skirk prospector i win
But there is an teysa that if draws the creature that when a creature dies make a treasure and insta wins
Where's the line? I'm high competitive in most formats so they're scared of me, and i don't have a lot of money so all budget
So the problem it's i like winning so i have to play suboptimal?
Welcome to the tainted version of edh
Richard wants a casual banlist and a competitive banlist but he doesn't realize the current banlist is the casual banlist.
He wants a real banlist, not a bunch of suggestions of what might be unfun strategies
@@BingbongRecto that's not the competitive communities fault. If anything we get broken cards banned occasionally. Flash is a good example of that. Granted there's no fucking good reason why the ban list is as bad as it is.
@@B1ngusD1ngusI doesn’t sound to me like Richard is blaming the competitive community. He thinks the competitive community is doing well and wants to organize the casual community similarly
Yeah like it feels like he's throwing cEDH players under the bus for the failings of casual commander. The RC has made it clear that outside of Flash bans are not because of cEDH.
@@B1ngusD1ngus it's not, but it's also silly to take the EDH banlist at face value. CEDH needs a true banlist
The biggest suprise is that wotc isn’t the rc for edh
The Rc has proved time and time again to be completely incompetent at there job
58:20 Colossal Skyturtle is cEDH. It’s in most Kinnan decks.
If you split them then banned a few hundred cards to represent all the unwritten rules. You would find that it much harder to keep up with casual vs competitive.
Keeping up with a few hundred card ban list that will be always changing based on what ever is the most powerful. Or a new strategy comes out that makes people salty. This is not casual.
As compared to a format that says we have the whole history of the game available and a few cards banned bc they just break the game. This would draw casual people. Not having to worry about the cards your buying or pulling being banned or the cards you own getting the hammer. Is very casual.
You would find pods of low powered cEDH games happening. A whole new rule zero. No I’m playing mid powered cEDH so I can play a jank deck but use my fancy rystic study I worked really hard to get.
Since Richard is slagging off the rules committee, and the podcast is about splitting Commander into two formats, why don't you sit down as a group and decide two things:
1) The ban list for Casual Goldfish Highlander.
2) The ban list for Competitive Goldfish Highlander.
Just start with the current Commander banlist and decide if it should be banned in one, the other, both or neither. Then talk about the "problem" cards" for each format.
That could make for a very interesting podcast.
Underrated comment ^