I like the analogy, but if they really wanted to baby-proof the format the banlist would be enormous, including all land destruction, all counterspells, and most removal.
The current list serves neither casual nor competitive players, and is mostly just a joke to point and laugh at while we enjoy the format in spite of it (because the original idea was so damn good, thank you Adam Staley!).
I dont know who to quote here but there are absolutely times where you vant curate your pods. Where you have no choice in who you play and refusing to means no game.
For instance one shop here gets about 8 players. Thats two pods. If you refuse to play against someone, well youre ***** out of luck that round.
Another place gets about 40 people. They only do 2 or 3 rounds. Again, if you refuse to play against someone... well maybe you can swap but chances are your ass is skipping that round
Point is that for some places edh night is organized and structured. Social contract and communication on power level just does not work in that environment because you cant predict what youre going to be up against, and everyone is playing for different reasons. Discussing it doesnt always do anything because some people only bring one deck, some people have different perceptions of power levels, sometimes youre the 8th man at an 8 person event where the 7 others are friends and go full bore where you cant.
Edh experiences vary.
And yet the only person responsible for your fun, is still you...
I am not sure why this is such a hard concept for some of you all to grasp, but you can skip structured commander nights at your LGS and instead call or text friends to schedule time to sit down and play, any other night of the week...
This arguments here for how that is impossible, are absolutely comical.
and i don't understand why this is so hard for you to grasp, while you can do that, and a lot of people do, its not always an option.
this has zero to do with dictating your own fun. hell if anything, toning down your play, or bumping it up, would have more to do with dictating someone elses fun. we're going to show up to an event and play what we feel is fun and it sucks to have that experience mitigated and diminished because johnny-no-cards wants to play wurm tribal, or the guy who hates counterspells throws a fit the minute a blue card hits play but this also works the other way by being thrown into a pod with the one dude in town who owns a timetwister.
if i build something new, i want to play it. i don't want to carry around 12 different decks ranging from garbage beeble tribal tier to tier 0 just to try to match the other people in the pod i'm forced to play in that night, and then hope that the other players also did that, and that we can all discuss it.
regarding setting up your own groups/times: a lot of us might be free on thursday for edh, and not on any other night of the week. so the shop has an event. we want to support the shop and its the easiest place to meet/utilize the space because its central to everyone. now if someone else shows up, wtf are they expected to do? sit and watch? make their own group with the no one else that's there? sometimes you also want to interact with new people, see fresh takes on edh, try something different. attendance to these events would logically show that there are more than a few other people of a like mind when it comes to their edh environment because if they felt they could get that select group of people together outside of the structured event... well they would be doing that.
this doesn't even get into maybe the guys you regularly play cards with aren't the type of friends you want to invite into your home for... reasons. we can all relate to that, dudes we enjoy gaming with at a store but really don't want to hang out with beyond that.
sometimes everyone is only free for just a few hours too.
unrelated to that, i do enjoy being able to explore the vast array of cards and archetypes in edh currently. it makes for some dynamic games. that said, i do feel the committee is slow to act sometimes, and ignores some problematic cards as they don't fit their style of play at all so they don't see them often. its a balance. a difficult one. right now its in a reasonable spot. but the idea that you can always discuss power level with the people in your pod and meet accordingly, or that all problems are solved with house bans is patently ridiculous once you move to an organized, structured, event. that's a concept you're just going to have to accept as that is a reality for a lot of people.
again, who dictates power level? i can sit down locally with my feldon build and be absolutely crushed by the guys i regularly play with... and still have a good time. at the same time i can go an hour north and play at a different store, and absolutely destroy them with the exact same deck. to me the power level of that build is very low, to another group its very high. discuss it all you'd like but perspective matters. why should someone be expected to go brew up something that's just god awful to meet someone elses expectations? this also works both ways, but at the same time the nature of the game dictates that people should be striving to make their decks more powerful anyway because of how varied the environment is.
On that note: There's definitely a lot of problems being caused by the existence Command Zone's power level scale, since it inherently lumps every deck into the 7 slot with little to no room for variance and most players default to that measuring stick.
It would definitely help if we had a more concrete and well-though-out system.
A 1-10 scale inhabiting the 6-9 space of most people's current scales would be a good start. 10s are irrelevant - you don't need a number to validate your thoroughly validated cEDH top deck, and that's what 10s are in every list. You also don't need 5 tiers of not as good as a bad precon draft-chaff trash. The lowest tier should be the deck anyone can own for whatever a precon goes for these days. Willfully being worse than a canned 20-30 investment isn't worth anyone's time analyzing. So, there's a useful spread of power where most decks inhabit - the 6-9 range, and breaking that up so that everyone's not a 7 would be a good start.
I honestly think there's a lot of value in telling people that average means average, and de-stigmatizing so-called 'variant' players by making it clear that there is as much variation in power level at their tables as anyone else's. FWIW:
0) Weak budget deck/Bad on purpose/A literal pile of cards/Chair tribal
1) Average budget deck
2) Strong budget deck
3) Transition between budget/casual
4) Weak casual deck 5) Average casual deck/this is where your '7' goes, knock it off
6) Strong casual deck
7) Transition between casual/competitive
8) Weak competitive deck
9) Average competitive deck
10) Strong competitive deck 11) Thrasios/Tymna consult
...and precons go in the 1-3 range depending, but who cares. Ideally you'd play within 1 level of each other, but within 2 is still a game. 3+ levels of difference makes for non-games. And that's really what any such list should strive to lay out: who is going to have an actual game with who? Having distinct and parallel bands within each subsection helps with self-reporting.
The problem with trying to create a perfect scale where not everyone is a seven is that:
-everyone's scale is going to be a bit different - one guys 10 is T&T cEDH, another guys 10 is niv combo, another guys 10 is anything with fetches in it.
-even if everyone got on the same page and we had a perfect scale with clear markers of strength (this deck is exactly a 6, so if you're stronger you're 6+ and if you're weaker you're 5-)...players, especially edh players, are still really bad at gauging how good their decks are. It's really not that easy to be sure either. Some decks look insane one game and awful other games depending on lots of factors. Unless you're playing your deck over and over against a wide variety of decks it's be really hard to get it down a specific number.
Most people say their decks are 7s because narrowing it down more precisely is difficult. Not because the scale is bad. If you make precons 2s, then instead of everyone saying 7, some people will say 4 and some will say 7, and it will still be a total crapshoot which is actually better.
Tbh I rarely have major issues with power level discrepancies, and a power level discussion usually does fine even if it's not very precise - within a reasonable margin of error, multiplayer usually sorts things out.
I definitely agree that there will always be a degree of subjectivity to any scale, but I still believe that its worth making the existing system better. Currently the flaws in said system are (to an extent) being smoothed over by the multiplayer nature of the format as you say, however its not doing anyone any favors by setting people up for disappointment when they think 'Tuned' is a useful description in this context. A system with clear strata would go a long way towards guiding people to the right tables, whereas now its more of a trial-and-error situation.
One of the biggest problems with making any sort of power scale is the concept of a decks "budget-ness" being considered.
Budget decks can be extremely powerful. A mildly degenerate commander piloting a deck full of less-than-$1 can be built optimally and can still stand against most non-budget casual decks. Also a non-budget $20k decks can be vanity casual projects.
It's a shame that this game has such an exploitable financial market associated with it. Many problems would vanish if some cards like mana crypt/mana drain/ancient tomb/etc were reprinted to death and cost nothing.
One of the biggest problems with making any sort of power scale is the concept of a decks "budget-ness" being considered.
Budget decks can be extremely powerful. A mildly degenerate commander piloting a deck full of less-than-$1 can be built optimally and can still stand against most non-budget casual decks. Also a non-budget $20k decks can be vanity casual projects.
It's a shame that this game has such an exploitable financial market associated with it. Many problems would vanish if some cards like mana crypt/mana drain/ancient tomb/etc were reprinted to death and cost nothing.
I'll vouch for budget =/= power. Back in 2014/2015 I had what amounted to a mono-black expensive deck. I don't know that it had a theme outside of a belief that expensive cards were better cards. The Abyss, Chains of Mephistopheles, etc - it covered all the bragging rights bases - as a generally staxy control deck, it barely won a game, ever. Truly, the deck was less than the sum of its parts.
Price is also relative, until Feather came around most cards people used with her where .25 bulk and skull briar got a boost from the keyword counter deck.
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I'll concede that budget is not an absolute indicator of power level, but all things equal building-skill-wise, a bigger budget will invariably lead to stronger decks. Aside from cards that are expensive because of collectibility (read: reserved list, underprinted, rare promos), expensive cards are expensive for a reason and that reason is that they're powerful.
Also, yeah, expensive is relative. Some people think buying physical cards at all is a racket. Some people play with Alpha duals.
EDH has followed the same track as an indie game that gets picked up by a popular YouTube/Streamer. EDH was popular before the original precondition were released, and from the way it was trending back in the day, it would probably still be the most popular casual format today without wizards involvement.
No matter how you feel about it, the RC gets credit for its original success for bringing it to the masses and giving everyone a foundation to build their groups and giving everyone a common language to play even if they have never played together before. Wizards, however, made EDH Accessible with the precons. I know people who would have never made the effort to build a deck if they didn’t have one to upgrade. Without Wizards involvement, EDH would not have got as fast, but it definitely would have steadily got more popular on its own.
To answer OP’s question. Sheldon specifically has always been narrow minded, made RC decisions based on his small playgroup and his Armada games league was one of the most draconian rulesets to to use.
There is no denying that Sheldon has done great things for this format. I believe those great things were necessary in the beginning. At this point in commander I think it needs to go further, I am sure the RC is aware of “problem cards” that cannot be outed by the “social contract” of commander. Would it hurt to try banning a card and see what happens then unban it? Would it hurt to unban a card because it was banned based off old meta or small sample size? Probably not but until him and his original group are gone it’s going to stay this way
There is no denying that Sheldon has done great things for this format. I believe those great things were necessary in the beginning. At this point in commander I think it needs to go further, I am sure the RC is aware of “problem cards” that cannot be outed by the “social contract” of commander. Would it hurt to try banning a card and see what happens then unban it? Would it hurt to unban a card because it was banned based off old meta or small sample size? Probably not but until him and his original group are gone it’s going to stay this way
That's what they did with Protean Hulk though. They unbanned it, saw that it was creating a mess in the cEDH community, then banned Flash.
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Sorry for my possible english mistakes, I'm not a native speaker.
Is casual Modern still a thing? I remember people playing that a few years back, building off-beat tier 3 decks for non-tournament play, many of which could play a decent game against less competitive tier 2 Modern decks. I haven’t heard much in that direction recently, if it’s dead I imagine a lot of those players are doing EDH now and given the nature of what casual Modern was I imagine they tend to run more well tuned decks in EDH.
Other than that, the current state of EDH is more the result of WotC printing cards than the rules committee. As EDH has become popular, WotC has been printing more cards specifically for the format. Even standard sets are full of cards that suck in 60 card competitive but great in EDH, especially starting with Ixalan. I remember looking at the mythic rares of both Ixalan sets and thinking most of these are garbage for competitive standard but look pretty good as Commander jank. The rules committee from what I can tell has always managed EDH with a very light touch, with it assumed that the social contract will take care of things. Are people saying that they aren’t doing enough to deal with the power creep of WotC cranking out new EDH staples at the rate they have been?
The other two questions I see being asked is whether the EDH social contract still works for LGS pickup games with strangers, and whether people still playing 2009 style battlecruiser EDH should still be able to expect to win vs well tuned decks filled with interaction. For the second, I’m not talking about cEDH, I’m talking about decks at a lower power level but running 3 or so board wipes and 8-10 or so pieces of targeted interaction. I don’t have the answers to these questions, I’ve only recently started playing EDH and LGS with strangers isn’t available to me yet, and I haven’t personally encountered any old school Commander jank either.
I haven’t personally encountered any old school Commander jank either.
I mean, it is an evolving equation right? At one point in the format - things were not solved. people didn't have a greater understanding of toolbox loops, the density of counters to conquer a stack to combo. People were winging a lot of things, which inherently leads to scenarios where something like Uril, the Miststalker could just run over a table. Fast forward a couple of years and people start having a better understanding of not only the concepts I just mentioned, but also what Commanders are naturally capable of crossing a general playability threshold. Fast forward a few more years and even those Commanders have fallen behind to ones that better lend themselves to core concepts and even finer tuning. People have a greater understanding of what to do in any color combination now than they have ever had before, regardless of who the commander is... and the result of that is that the ceiling is significantly higher, as is the floor.
Die-hards wanting to go back to those days, are going to need to curate environments where everyone is in agreement of where the floor and ceiling are and that is simply impossible to do in open play no matter how 'casual' people say they may be (because it is different for everyone). No amount of banning is going to change that, and I would argue that it really only just makes the format less approachable for folks.
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The current list serves neither casual nor competitive players, and is mostly just a joke to point and laugh at while we enjoy the format in spite of it (because the original idea was so damn good, thank you Adam Staley!).
and i don't understand why this is so hard for you to grasp, while you can do that, and a lot of people do, its not always an option.
this has zero to do with dictating your own fun. hell if anything, toning down your play, or bumping it up, would have more to do with dictating someone elses fun. we're going to show up to an event and play what we feel is fun and it sucks to have that experience mitigated and diminished because johnny-no-cards wants to play wurm tribal, or the guy who hates counterspells throws a fit the minute a blue card hits play but this also works the other way by being thrown into a pod with the one dude in town who owns a timetwister.
if i build something new, i want to play it. i don't want to carry around 12 different decks ranging from garbage beeble tribal tier to tier 0 just to try to match the other people in the pod i'm forced to play in that night, and then hope that the other players also did that, and that we can all discuss it.
regarding setting up your own groups/times: a lot of us might be free on thursday for edh, and not on any other night of the week. so the shop has an event. we want to support the shop and its the easiest place to meet/utilize the space because its central to everyone. now if someone else shows up, wtf are they expected to do? sit and watch? make their own group with the no one else that's there? sometimes you also want to interact with new people, see fresh takes on edh, try something different. attendance to these events would logically show that there are more than a few other people of a like mind when it comes to their edh environment because if they felt they could get that select group of people together outside of the structured event... well they would be doing that.
this doesn't even get into maybe the guys you regularly play cards with aren't the type of friends you want to invite into your home for... reasons. we can all relate to that, dudes we enjoy gaming with at a store but really don't want to hang out with beyond that.
sometimes everyone is only free for just a few hours too.
unrelated to that, i do enjoy being able to explore the vast array of cards and archetypes in edh currently. it makes for some dynamic games. that said, i do feel the committee is slow to act sometimes, and ignores some problematic cards as they don't fit their style of play at all so they don't see them often. its a balance. a difficult one. right now its in a reasonable spot. but the idea that you can always discuss power level with the people in your pod and meet accordingly, or that all problems are solved with house bans is patently ridiculous once you move to an organized, structured, event. that's a concept you're just going to have to accept as that is a reality for a lot of people.
again, who dictates power level? i can sit down locally with my feldon build and be absolutely crushed by the guys i regularly play with... and still have a good time. at the same time i can go an hour north and play at a different store, and absolutely destroy them with the exact same deck. to me the power level of that build is very low, to another group its very high. discuss it all you'd like but perspective matters. why should someone be expected to go brew up something that's just god awful to meet someone elses expectations? this also works both ways, but at the same time the nature of the game dictates that people should be striving to make their decks more powerful anyway because of how varied the environment is.
be a little real here.
It would definitely help if we had a more concrete and well-though-out system.
0) Weak budget deck/Bad on purpose/A literal pile of cards/Chair tribal1) Average budget deck
2) Strong budget deck
3) Transition between budget/casual
4) Weak casual deck
5) Average casual deck/this is where your '7' goes, knock it off
6) Strong casual deck
7) Transition between casual/competitive
8) Weak competitive deck
9) Average competitive deck
10) Strong competitive deck
11) Thrasios/Tymna consult...and precons go in the 1-3 range depending, but who cares. Ideally you'd play within 1 level of each other, but within 2 is still a game. 3+ levels of difference makes for non-games. And that's really what any such list should strive to lay out: who is going to have an actual game with who? Having distinct and parallel bands within each subsection helps with self-reporting.
-everyone's scale is going to be a bit different - one guys 10 is T&T cEDH, another guys 10 is niv combo, another guys 10 is anything with fetches in it.
-even if everyone got on the same page and we had a perfect scale with clear markers of strength (this deck is exactly a 6, so if you're stronger you're 6+ and if you're weaker you're 5-)...players, especially edh players, are still really bad at gauging how good their decks are. It's really not that easy to be sure either. Some decks look insane one game and awful other games depending on lots of factors. Unless you're playing your deck over and over against a wide variety of decks it's be really hard to get it down a specific number.
Most people say their decks are 7s because narrowing it down more precisely is difficult. Not because the scale is bad. If you make precons 2s, then instead of everyone saying 7, some people will say 4 and some will say 7, and it will still be a total crapshoot which is actually better.
Tbh I rarely have major issues with power level discrepancies, and a power level discussion usually does fine even if it's not very precise - within a reasonable margin of error, multiplayer usually sorts things out.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Budget decks can be extremely powerful. A mildly degenerate commander piloting a deck full of less-than-$1 can be built optimally and can still stand against most non-budget casual decks. Also a non-budget $20k decks can be vanity casual projects.
It's a shame that this game has such an exploitable financial market associated with it. Many problems would vanish if some cards like mana crypt/mana drain/ancient tomb/etc were reprinted to death and cost nothing.
Links to my most current deck lists;
Primary EDH; Rakka Mar Token Perfection, Crosis Mnemonic Betrayal, Cromat Villainous, Judith Gravestorm, Rakdos Empty Storm, Exava Artifacts, Bant Trash, & Fumiko Voltron!
EDH kept at home; Ruzzian Isset & Rakdos LoR!
EDH (nostalgic/pimp/retired) in storage;
Latulla Burns, Akroma Smash, Jeska Voltron, Rakdos Storm, Bladewing Darghans, Lyzolda Worldgorger, Xantcha Steals your Heart, Jori Storm, Wydwen Permission, Gwendlyn Paradox, Jeleva Warps, & Sigarda Brick!
Legacy Showanimator and High Tide!
I'll vouch for budget =/= power. Back in 2014/2015 I had what amounted to a mono-black expensive deck. I don't know that it had a theme outside of a belief that expensive cards were better cards. The Abyss, Chains of Mephistopheles, etc - it covered all the bragging rights bases - as a generally staxy control deck, it barely won a game, ever. Truly, the deck was less than the sum of its parts.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Also, yeah, expensive is relative. Some people think buying physical cards at all is a racket. Some people play with Alpha duals.
No matter how you feel about it, the RC gets credit for its original success for bringing it to the masses and giving everyone a foundation to build their groups and giving everyone a common language to play even if they have never played together before. Wizards, however, made EDH Accessible with the precons. I know people who would have never made the effort to build a deck if they didn’t have one to upgrade. Without Wizards involvement, EDH would not have got as fast, but it definitely would have steadily got more popular on its own.
To answer OP’s question. Sheldon specifically has always been narrow minded, made RC decisions based on his small playgroup and his Armada games league was one of the most draconian rulesets to to use.
That's what they did with Protean Hulk though. They unbanned it, saw that it was creating a mess in the cEDH community, then banned Flash.
Other than that, the current state of EDH is more the result of WotC printing cards than the rules committee. As EDH has become popular, WotC has been printing more cards specifically for the format. Even standard sets are full of cards that suck in 60 card competitive but great in EDH, especially starting with Ixalan. I remember looking at the mythic rares of both Ixalan sets and thinking most of these are garbage for competitive standard but look pretty good as Commander jank. The rules committee from what I can tell has always managed EDH with a very light touch, with it assumed that the social contract will take care of things. Are people saying that they aren’t doing enough to deal with the power creep of WotC cranking out new EDH staples at the rate they have been?
The other two questions I see being asked is whether the EDH social contract still works for LGS pickup games with strangers, and whether people still playing 2009 style battlecruiser EDH should still be able to expect to win vs well tuned decks filled with interaction. For the second, I’m not talking about cEDH, I’m talking about decks at a lower power level but running 3 or so board wipes and 8-10 or so pieces of targeted interaction. I don’t have the answers to these questions, I’ve only recently started playing EDH and LGS with strangers isn’t available to me yet, and I haven’t personally encountered any old school Commander jank either.
I mean, it is an evolving equation right? At one point in the format - things were not solved. people didn't have a greater understanding of toolbox loops, the density of counters to conquer a stack to combo. People were winging a lot of things, which inherently leads to scenarios where something like Uril, the Miststalker could just run over a table. Fast forward a couple of years and people start having a better understanding of not only the concepts I just mentioned, but also what Commanders are naturally capable of crossing a general playability threshold. Fast forward a few more years and even those Commanders have fallen behind to ones that better lend themselves to core concepts and even finer tuning. People have a greater understanding of what to do in any color combination now than they have ever had before, regardless of who the commander is... and the result of that is that the ceiling is significantly higher, as is the floor.
Die-hards wanting to go back to those days, are going to need to curate environments where everyone is in agreement of where the floor and ceiling are and that is simply impossible to do in open play no matter how 'casual' people say they may be (because it is different for everyone). No amount of banning is going to change that, and I would argue that it really only just makes the format less approachable for folks.
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