re: decline in attendance while I can't speak to any particular event involving bad sportsmanship that has happened in the preceding months, it just doesn't seem likely that there was some fundamental shift in how cEDH players -- in the aggregate -- started playing in tournaments such that said change in behavior would have such a noticeable and quick effect on attendance. that said, it *is* pretty trivial to look at the bannings and notice that they almost directly correspond with the data on declining attendance. it's not hard to imagine why the bans had such an effect -- a lot of people have pet decks that are just no longer meaningfully competitive (RIP any commander that's > 3 CMC; or any sort of Dockside-reliant list). a lot of players lost a lot of "value" in their collections (what makes this issue worse is that it overwhelmingly affected the *enfranchised* players -- i.e. the folks who have played for 5+ years, have countless Mana Crypts, and were willing to get Jeweled Lotuses for their more competitive decks). if the bans had somehow opened up the format, maybe they wouldn't be as detested as they are now. instead we have a format that has lost a lot of really unique approaches to deckbuilding in favor of homogeneous card advantage engines. not playing Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora? have fun losing. it's my opinion that if the format really wants to thrive, we need a separate ban list. it's honestly kind of insulting to be told -- by a bunch of people who are self-admitted casuals! -- that we competitive folks can't play with a certain card that has been legal for decades simply because now, after all this time, the card has apparently become a "problem"... and, when you press them for information as to why this card was suddenly banned, they point to nebulous anecdotal data instead of anything nearing concrete. (... all of this despite the fact that the card in question is one of the most well-known cards in the format and is *extremely* easy to filter out of games by asking if someone is playing "fast mana"; yeah, I'm still bitter about it) also, y'all should have touched on how the banning of Dockside is likely the single reason 4th seat win percentage has gone down. the card was busted but also acted as a sort of rubber band as far as benefiting players who are behind on board (or later in turn order); and, as mentioned previously, it allowed for an entire subarchetype of kooky decks. I don't think the format is dead but it'll take some time to rebuild. I hope WotC goes ham on the current banlist and unbans a ton of stuff (and, if they ban anything, ban Rhystic Study).
I think this is a very good take and Joseph and I did not do it enough justice. All good points which we mostly agree on ( as someone who goes to a lot of tourneys, I have definitely observed an upshift on angle shooting, aggressive players, and scummy tactics at tournaments but everyone’s experience is different) and only covered at the surface level. We think a separate ban list would make the most sense but think that’ll happen (unless the proposed bracket system by WoTC does that). Thank you for including this perspective, I think it’s really helpful and provides a different point of view. We find it very valuable to see others opinions, some agree with you that the ban had an impact, others say it was the drama, so on and so forth. 1:38
@@MTG_Basics I'm on the west coast and we don't have nearly the number of high profile events so the angle-shooting just isn't something I'm super familiar with; point taken! the bans, despite being "bad" (in this humble player's opinion) are valuable is showing how banning the "most powerful card" isn't always the best way to go about "fixing" a format (in my mind banning Dockside was equivalent to banning, say, Brainstorm or Reanimate from Legacy; yes, the card is ridiculously powerful but it also fosters entire archetypes that greatly increase diversity). I'm also one of those people who would love for cEDH to do a proper reset, unban everything, put together some tournament results, and go from there. my guess is that most of the cards on the banlist are fine and don't need to be banned (though I acknowledge unbanning power and, like, Channel is probably "not a good idea" 😂). regardless, thanks for the video! it's fun to talk about even if it's not the most fun to play right now.
@@heirophantpm actually look at tournament results and lots of commanders people thought would be no longer relevant still are. I am a krikk player and i thought krikk was dead, but to my suprise krikk has been top 8ing recently. Almost every deck that was thought dead like korvold, etali and such has actually been putting up decent results. These decks all require deep rebuilds from their former lists though and that can be disheartening to players but as they see their favorite commanders are finding new ways to be relevant i would not be suprised to see attendance start ticking up. Many cedh players are finding the post ban format to be much more fun and i have to say i am leaning that way too. I despised the bans and how they were handled, but i played with those cards in lots of games and my copies arent going anywhere valuable or not, so in the long run i am ok with slotting them into the binder and playing with some different lists for a while.
cEDH isn't going anywhere. We now have a "season" that ends in fall. Much like other annual seasons, it peaks close to "the main event" and falls off shortly after, only for momentum to re-build as the next season goes on. I think there are a *lot* of newer players so many don't yet have the context to appreciate the longer time horizon. This also correlates to bans as we haven't had a single ban in 3 years vs what 3-6 months of other formats. The format is fine, attendance is up though may be consolidating around larger events. The meta is what people make it. Want less durdle, play less durdle. A skilled player can win on most decks, some just take longer to learn. I think the gemstone question raises an interesting point, so I will be looking at it more critically now. I would be interested to see how gemstone performs between green vs non green decks and card advantage commanders vs non-CA commanders.
@@jacobburrows311 Maybe it's a shift from online tournament to IRL tournaments, but the webcam tournaments that did a lot of the heavy lifting for the format are all but gone, and maybe while it is less frequent, folks will go to the largest tournaments as you pointed out. Time will tell, though from our own experience in the format, the lows never felt this low (maybe recently bias?). Let us know what you find the with the gemstone, we are curious if we are extremely off field, or finding something. I'll start keeping an eye of Green decks v non green decks and between commanders with engines and non engines, shooting from the hip, I think the all in turbo decks probably do better with it than decks that rely on card quality!
A buddy of mine told me that yall were talking about Ral! I am the writer of the main original Ral primer and the pioneer of the cEDH list (Dry Heat). Love to hear you talk about. I truely believe it is the fastest deck in the format. Great podcast and video! 🎉
Oh that's awesome! We'll have to link your primer in the description! I think this is it right? www.moxfield.com/decks/ylEDEK28602K5p9z-q9AHA . Really fast deck!
@ yup that’s it! The discord and some deck tech and gameplay videos are in the primer was well. Hmu if you ever wanna have a guest on to talk it over or talk about the scene in general via Zoom / Discord etc. I’m out of AZ
I played my first post ban event last week. The game play seemed very similar to me. In fact there was more diversity than before in this very small sample. I think it’s not so bad. I’d prefer the bans reversed (not just because I lost thousands) But the game still feels about the same to me. Much closer than I was worried it wouid
Good to see your experience hasn't changed too much, do the games seem slower to you? I think pre-dockside bans, the games felt much faster and less sluggish. But yea free the rocks => make wallet happy
Two TnT players talking about a sluggish meta hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Also, I think the drama this year and the resulting topdeck falloff has definitely affected event visibility, probably more than the bans.
You too can be a TnT player 😉. You’re probably right, people aren’t waiting to buy // go to those tournaments, impacting the player turnout and therefore TOs not putting on as many tournaments
We actually had close to 30 guest this year (90% of them being active tournament grinders) and some of them included folks from outside of Colorado. But yep, 52 games is not enough but it’s the start of a trend which is my Hope others will contribute and let us know if true/false 😃
@MTG_Basics i would rather look at the information on a place like top 8 and collect the data of where decks placed in actual tournaments, maybe a little hard to discover placements after starting with a caverns pregame action, but your sample size with numbers of people and games is way too small to take anything from except that it could be something interesting to look in to. One problem with your data could be, do your pods tend to team up on someone who pregames a gemstone, and other factors like that, those things would skew the data from being useful to overall cedh play around the world. It is interesting though and i would love to hear more from a bigger data pool.
So.. turn order matters a lot. Of all the games when a player started w pregame G Caverns, 0% played first and 1/3 played last. And this is way too low a sample size to be relevant anyway
While I agree the same size is small, I would had expect more than a singular win (52 games across, with many different decks, at many different times, with many different players) just something to track. Started keeping an eye more for it, and have since seem more players lose with it out. Correlation =/= causation but just an interesting trend
I noticed everyone in the cedh meta play with the same decks. They are not the same cards in the decks but run the same. There is no creativity. And when a player makes a deck out of the sky and wins out of no where. Everyone wants to know how to build that deck and play it.
There is a definitively a hivemind mentality, and everyone uses very similar cards. I think that's why sometimes people who brew their own decks have such a large brewers advantage because no one knows how to play against it, unlike, Kinnan
I think gemstone cavern and mox diamond are really similar.. people play it in control deck and are bad.. if you break the code on this like kinnan or turbo deck like jhoira for mox is the opposite.. they are all star. But if you mulligan the story changes. Try to solve yourself the puzzle!
My 2 Cents. A majority of commander players enjoy the social aspect of the 4 person play style and that's what attracts them to the format. Im sure to many people, cEDH takes away from that, as almost no game goes past turn 4. The pool of viable commanders is much smaller, and the fact is most people don't have the money or the collection to be playing cEDH anyway.
Add on the aggressive politicking and we can see why some might be turned off. There is a competitiveness to it that attracts folks from the 60 cards (along with games not lasting +2hrs)
I think what it is is that people are just tired of commander. This proposed tier list is unappealing and Tbf, commander is teaching newer players that it’s okay to have a poor attitude towards folks who spend big $$ on cards. At my shop the casual pods were getting much more toxic than the cEDH pods after the ban announcement dropped. So much so to the point where now I only own 4 commander (cEDH decks being the only ones I’ve kept) decks and been enjoying other formats.
I would be very interested on sales data for WoTC, i would think commander is still their money cow (even though they keep milking it). Duel commander has been very fun to play, it has the fun of the singleton commander, and the 1v1 aspect of modern/legacy.
I played my first post ban event last week. The game play seemed very similar to me. In fact there was more diversity than before in this very small sample. I think it’s not so bad. I’d prefer the bans reversed (not just because I lost thousands) But the game still feels about the same to me. Much closer than I was worried it wouid
re: decline in attendance
while I can't speak to any particular event involving bad sportsmanship that has happened in the preceding months, it just doesn't seem likely that there was some fundamental shift in how cEDH players -- in the aggregate -- started playing in tournaments such that said change in behavior would have such a noticeable and quick effect on attendance.
that said, it *is* pretty trivial to look at the bannings and notice that they almost directly correspond with the data on declining attendance.
it's not hard to imagine why the bans had such an effect -- a lot of people have pet decks that are just no longer meaningfully competitive (RIP any commander that's > 3 CMC; or any sort of Dockside-reliant list). a lot of players lost a lot of "value" in their collections (what makes this issue worse is that it overwhelmingly affected the *enfranchised* players -- i.e. the folks who have played for 5+ years, have countless Mana Crypts, and were willing to get Jeweled Lotuses for their more competitive decks).
if the bans had somehow opened up the format, maybe they wouldn't be as detested as they are now. instead we have a format that has lost a lot of really unique approaches to deckbuilding in favor of homogeneous card advantage engines. not playing Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora? have fun losing.
it's my opinion that if the format really wants to thrive, we need a separate ban list. it's honestly kind of insulting to be told -- by a bunch of people who are self-admitted casuals! -- that we competitive folks can't play with a certain card that has been legal for decades simply because now, after all this time, the card has apparently become a "problem"... and, when you press them for information as to why this card was suddenly banned, they point to nebulous anecdotal data instead of anything nearing concrete.
(... all of this despite the fact that the card in question is one of the most well-known cards in the format and is *extremely* easy to filter out of games by asking if someone is playing "fast mana"; yeah, I'm still bitter about it)
also, y'all should have touched on how the banning of Dockside is likely the single reason 4th seat win percentage has gone down. the card was busted but also acted as a sort of rubber band as far as benefiting players who are behind on board (or later in turn order); and, as mentioned previously, it allowed for an entire subarchetype of kooky decks.
I don't think the format is dead but it'll take some time to rebuild. I hope WotC goes ham on the current banlist and unbans a ton of stuff (and, if they ban anything, ban Rhystic Study).
I think this is a very good take and Joseph and I did not do it enough justice. All good points which we mostly agree on ( as someone who goes to a lot of tourneys, I have definitely observed an upshift on angle shooting, aggressive players, and scummy tactics at tournaments but everyone’s experience is different) and only covered at the surface level. We think a separate ban list would make the most sense but think that’ll happen (unless the proposed bracket system by WoTC does that).
Thank you for including this perspective, I think it’s really helpful and provides a different point of view.
We find it very valuable to see others opinions, some agree with you that the ban had an impact, others say it was the drama, so on and so forth. 1:38
@@MTG_Basics I'm on the west coast and we don't have nearly the number of high profile events so the angle-shooting just isn't something I'm super familiar with; point taken!
the bans, despite being "bad" (in this humble player's opinion) are valuable is showing how banning the "most powerful card" isn't always the best way to go about "fixing" a format (in my mind banning Dockside was equivalent to banning, say, Brainstorm or Reanimate from Legacy; yes, the card is ridiculously powerful but it also fosters entire archetypes that greatly increase diversity).
I'm also one of those people who would love for cEDH to do a proper reset, unban everything, put together some tournament results, and go from there. my guess is that most of the cards on the banlist are fine and don't need to be banned (though I acknowledge unbanning power and, like, Channel is probably "not a good idea" 😂).
regardless, thanks for the video! it's fun to talk about even if it's not the most fun to play right now.
@@heirophantpm actually look at tournament results and lots of commanders people thought would be no longer relevant still are.
I am a krikk player and i thought krikk was dead, but to my suprise krikk has been top 8ing recently.
Almost every deck that was thought dead like korvold, etali and such has actually been putting up decent results.
These decks all require deep rebuilds from their former lists though and that can be disheartening to players but as they see their favorite commanders are finding new ways to be relevant i would not be suprised to see attendance start ticking up.
Many cedh players are finding the post ban format to be much more fun and i have to say i am leaning that way too.
I despised the bans and how they were handled, but i played with those cards in lots of games and my copies arent going anywhere valuable or not, so in the long run i am ok with slotting them into the binder and playing with some different lists for a while.
Do you think cEDH is decreasing or increasing in popularity? Or do you think Gemstone Caverns is a trap card?
cEDH isn't going anywhere. We now have a "season" that ends in fall. Much like other annual seasons, it peaks close to "the main event" and falls off shortly after, only for momentum to re-build as the next season goes on.
I think there are a *lot* of newer players so many don't yet have the context to appreciate the longer time horizon. This also correlates to bans as we haven't had a single ban in 3 years vs what 3-6 months of other formats.
The format is fine, attendance is up though may be consolidating around larger events.
The meta is what people make it. Want less durdle, play less durdle. A skilled player can win on most decks, some just take longer to learn.
I think the gemstone question raises an interesting point, so I will be looking at it more critically now. I would be interested to see how gemstone performs between green vs non green decks and card advantage commanders vs non-CA commanders.
@@jacobburrows311 Maybe it's a shift from online tournament to IRL tournaments, but the webcam tournaments that did a lot of the heavy lifting for the format are all but gone, and maybe while it is less frequent, folks will go to the largest tournaments as you pointed out. Time will tell, though from our own experience in the format, the lows never felt this low (maybe recently bias?).
Let us know what you find the with the gemstone, we are curious if we are extremely off field, or finding something. I'll start keeping an eye of Green decks v non green decks and between commanders with engines and non engines, shooting from the hip, I think the all in turbo decks probably do better with it than decks that rely on card quality!
It's the bois 😎!
Great content guys!
Thanks for watching! Hope it was helpful!
Surprise video!!🎉
😉😎
A buddy of mine told me that yall were talking about Ral! I am the writer of the main original Ral primer and the pioneer of the cEDH list (Dry Heat). Love to hear you talk about. I truely believe it is the fastest deck in the format. Great podcast and video! 🎉
Oh that's awesome! We'll have to link your primer in the description! I think this is it right? www.moxfield.com/decks/ylEDEK28602K5p9z-q9AHA . Really fast deck!
@ yup that’s it! The discord and some deck tech and gameplay videos are in the primer was well. Hmu if you ever wanna have a guest on to talk it over or talk about the scene in general via Zoom / Discord etc. I’m out of AZ
@@Holden_Prio Will do! Or if you ever find yourself in colorful Colorado, at a 5k per se ;)
@ hell yeah, wish it was so far to drive from Tucson, maybe fly out one day with my buddy (he’s from there).
I’m also testing that spicy card!! Don’t be afraid to share we need more data!!
Joseph is currently testing Clever impersonator as an additional clone to copy anything on the battlefield (rhystic study, TOR, Tithe etc)
@ oh, I thought we were talking about fairy of anticipation!
@@rexone9564what fairy is this 👀👀?
@@MTG_Basics high fae trickster. I thought that was more spicy than the clone.
@ that card is absolute gas ⛽️, worth putting on every TnT deck
I played my first post ban event last week. The game play seemed very similar to me. In fact there was more diversity than before in this very small sample.
I think it’s not so bad.
I’d prefer the bans reversed (not just because I lost thousands)
But the game still feels about the same to me. Much closer than I was worried it wouid
Good to see your experience hasn't changed too much, do the games seem slower to you? I think pre-dockside bans, the games felt much faster and less sluggish. But yea free the rocks => make wallet happy
We can certainly hope so. With any luck regular commander will go away with it soon after.
Two TnT players talking about a sluggish meta hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Also, I think the drama this year and the resulting topdeck falloff has definitely affected event visibility, probably more than the bans.
You too can be a TnT player 😉.
You’re probably right, people aren’t waiting to buy // go to those tournaments, impacting the player turnout and therefore TOs not putting on as many tournaments
Great episode +1 algorithm boost
;)
Watching on 0.25x speed to boost the algo
Not all heroes wear capes 🫡
I used to play cEDH a lot more, but when 10-20% of games end with you having little to no influence on the outcome (win or lose) got pretty old.
Because of the cards or because of the opponents?
@ Cards mostly. There a plenty of matches you could list the top 12-15 cards of each players library and have an excel sheet determine the winner
I guess that's why the same top tier players keep consistently winning tournaments.... man the 0iq takes in this comment section are crazy
@@hv7920 I mean, let’s not even start talking about collusion in the tEDH scene.
52 games and just your group of players is not enough statistics.
We actually had close to 30 guest this year (90% of them being active tournament grinders) and some of them included folks from outside of Colorado. But yep, 52 games is not enough but it’s the start of a trend which is my Hope others will contribute and let us know if true/false 😃
@MTG_Basics i would rather look at the information on a place like top 8 and collect the data of where decks placed in actual tournaments, maybe a little hard to discover placements after starting with a caverns pregame action, but your sample size with numbers of people and games is way too small to take anything from except that it could be something interesting to look in to. One problem with your data could be, do your pods tend to team up on someone who pregames a gemstone, and other factors like that, those things would skew the data from being useful to overall cedh play around the world. It is interesting though and i would love to hear more from a bigger data pool.
So.. turn order matters a lot.
Of all the games when a player started w pregame G Caverns, 0% played first and 1/3 played last.
And this is way too low a sample size to be relevant anyway
While I agree the same size is small, I would had expect more than a singular win (52 games across, with many different decks, at many different times, with many different players) just something to track. Started keeping an eye more for it, and have since seem more players lose with it out. Correlation =/= causation but just an interesting trend
@ I hear you. It’s a surprise. But it’s a really small sample and that’s all people who didn’t play first which subtracts from their expectation too.
Cutting gemstone caverns ASAP
Trend starter? 🫡
I noticed everyone in the cedh meta play with the same decks. They are not the same cards in the decks but run the same. There is no creativity. And when a player makes a deck out of the sky and wins out of no where. Everyone wants to know how to build that deck and play it.
There is a definitively a hivemind mentality, and everyone uses very similar cards. I think that's why sometimes people who brew their own decks have such a large brewers advantage because no one knows how to play against it, unlike, Kinnan
Cedh is stale, just ban the auto includes paytowin cards in every deck ever. You know which those are
Banning Rhystic would be the best thing that could be done for the format and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.
there is literally not a single pay to win cards in the format, no this makes no sense
Firstly ban Thassa's Oracle. Also cards that cost the price of an automobile.
I think gemstone cavern and mox diamond are really similar.. people play it in control deck and are bad.. if you break the code on this like kinnan or turbo deck like jhoira for mox is the opposite.. they are all star.
But if you mulligan the story changes.
Try to solve yourself the puzzle!
hear hear!
You might be a broncos fan, but you're def not from the boomer gen. :)
9 season playoff drought hahaha ☠️, boomer at heart :-)
Folks keep telling me cedh rancid now. I don't know but folks are not having fun which is a shame
My 2 Cents.
A majority of commander players enjoy the social aspect of the 4 person play style and that's what attracts them to the format. Im sure to many people, cEDH takes away from that, as almost no game goes past turn 4. The pool of viable commanders is much smaller, and the fact is most people don't have the money or the collection to be playing cEDH anyway.
Add on the aggressive politicking and we can see why some might be turned off. There is a competitiveness to it that attracts folks from the 60 cards (along with games not lasting +2hrs)
Cedh groups are the most relaxed groups when it comes to proxies, money (unless at a lgs sanctioned tournament) is not a problem.
I think what it is is that people are just tired of commander. This proposed tier list is unappealing and Tbf, commander is teaching newer players that it’s okay to have a poor attitude towards folks who spend big $$ on cards. At my shop the casual pods were getting much more toxic than the cEDH pods after the ban announcement dropped. So much so to the point where now I only own 4 commander (cEDH decks being the only ones I’ve kept) decks and been enjoying other formats.
I would be very interested on sales data for WoTC, i would think commander is still their money cow (even though they keep milking it). Duel commander has been very fun to play, it has the fun of the singleton commander, and the 1v1 aspect of modern/legacy.
I played my first post ban event last week. The game play seemed very similar to me. In fact there was more diversity than before in this very small sample.
I think it’s not so bad.
I’d prefer the bans reversed (not just because I lost thousands)
But the game still feels about the same to me. Much closer than I was worried it wouid