With the recent bans, our LGS created 2 tier. No holds barred deck-you can say these are tier that are high power decks or cedh. Novice deck-there is banned list created specific by LGS to limit cedh type of gameplay. The purpose for this is to accommodate new player, budget builds, casuals and to open more exploited combo. Majority of the LGS' banned are enablers of infinite turns, efficient tutors, mana rocks. Good thing about our LGS respect these 2 tiers and conduct tournaments on weekends. Saturdays are for novice deck and Sundays are for NHB. Good video by the way. Ive learned a lot since im a noob in commander.
What you mentioned about doing the thing, and feeling satisfied if the deck did the thing once or twice despite not winning is exactly my approach to this game. I want to have fun and feel like I got good moments where everything clicked.
Thanks for this. Your narrative really aligns to my beliefs and thoughts about casual and high power vs competitive. I found it difficult to accept some narratives out there that casuals don't want to play with high-powered cards and only cedh players care about winning and playing the best a person can. It's a story of journey and growth in deck building and player. People may be playing bad cards is because that's all they got in their collection and that will grow over time into higher power levels.
I play both formats, and the concept you presented here will help someone differentiate between a casual high-power deck vs a badly-made or nerfed cEDH deck
I think the average commander player doesn’t really know how to build a deck and what to expect from a game of magic. They don’t think about their curve, how many lands to play, and that interaction isn’t a bad thing.
Casual: Hey, I don’t like that card and I’m gonna call it cEDH or pubstomping. Also we have a bunch of cards we call taboo, but we won’t outright ban them so we can continue to add cards to the unwritten taboo list, and how dare you not know what they are. High Power: Play what you want, just don’t tutor for combos. cEDH: No limits other than the ban list.
To me the difference of lower power casual and higher power casual is whether the deck is built around a late game. Lower power decks don't have a true late game and instead exist solely around the accumulation of value with no specific end goal in mind. Higher power casual decks have an end game in mind and the deck has stricter card choices made to facilitate that end game. An example of a card that perfectly separates the two is Primeval Titan. Since lower power is simply about the accumulation of value Prime Time is an apex creature -- it's a 6/6 that fetches more lands for more value. However, Prime Time falls off in higher power games because a 6 cmc creature that mostly just continues to ramp and isn't contributing to most strategies' late game win conditions is a suboptimal card slot for that mana value.
Cedh's entire meta was built around late game engines until recently. I feel like the scale of casual - competitive is largely a series of decisions that reflect your priorities in a game. If you have a ton of tutors for redundancy, you may not be looking for a lax playstyle unless you're assembling something odd
Primeval Titan is a poor example. The Land slot has a number of brilliant options worth fetching even late - it is an enormously powerful card, even more so when you actually have a game plan in mind.
@@lVideoWatcherl I agree Prime Time is a powerful card. In a vacuum it's probably the strongest 6 cmc creature in the format. But decks aren't built in a vacuum and strong cards don't necessarily impact the overall power level of a deck. In the vast majority of higher power casual games you have better things to be doing with 6 mana than fetching utility lands. With that much mana available you are looking to win the game and Prime Time and its lands don't do that.
@@imaginarymatter I would agree with you if you were talking about cEDH. Specifically higher power EDH is where I would say that you very much want a card like Primetime to tutor out the absurd power you can amass through your land base.
As well composed as this video is, I fear the reality of the topic is that no two play groups will agree on what is or isn't casual. The local shop I go to weekly is absolutely casual. The shop isn't even a sanctioned MTG shop. We just hang out and play. At this shop, most of the players have decks that prioritize flavor over consistency. Theme over function. A common trait is that most players here have decks with insufficient interaction spells. In turn, this has created an interesting off shoot in deck building logic on my end. I'm still kinda bad at deck building myself, but I believe I'm getting better slowly. And I also believe that I'm improving more than most others at the shop since my goal is to actually improve the deck, not remain stagnant with a cute theme. In an effort to keep in line with the tone of the shop, I've begun to force myself to learn how to build decks that DON'T rely on overpowered staples. My favorite commander is Indominus Rex Alpha. As a sultai commander, I have access to a lot of powerful cards- Rhystic Study, Demonic Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Fierce Guardianship ETC. I'm not running any of those. Yes, my deck would be much stronger with Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, but for a casual setting I sure as heck don't need them. There was no reason for me to over tune with power cards when the play group overall is not on that level. Where my deck is currently puts it at roughly a 30% win rate at the shop. I'm a little more consistent than the other decks purely because I'm constantly making adjustments and improvements without going overboard though. But I've also checked with my group, they are OK with my deck as it is. They don't feel oppressed, and my win rate isn't ridiculous either. The problem however is that I don't feel comfortable going to another shop that is more serious. My deck actually has less interaction than it should as well because Im relying on my creatures themselves to offer late game value that out grinds the interaction. But significant vulnerabilities remain naturally.
I started playing commanders recently, i played tournaments of modern 10 yrs ago so my mentality was "i want to win". I always liked combo control decks and my first commander was an anhelo deck(100€budget). Now im building an alela cunnings deck control faerie and a planning a k'rrik deck since i like combos, ofc i dont have the budget for a cedh deck but i like the concept of "i need a find a way to win" type of deck and use my brain a lot. Idk if u guys can relate with my thoughts and think its a good way to approach casual tables
In casual I'm really just trying to find a good experience, not a win, since the format is intended for fun first. Like I'd rather come away with some laughs than a W. That's not to say I don't have some fight in me, because that's part of the narrative.
@@SSolemn sure idk how to link it but i have it in public on my moxfield on the builded folder(my account is malacoda on it). Tbh dont expect a competitive deck, i just like to build deck but i ll be really happy to see your thought on it.
@@seanedgar164 i really like the "fun" in commnder cause when i was a kid and go to modern tournament i was surrounded by people who went to big tournaments who teach me how to play. Now in commander i just try to have fun, but my fun is combos decks which sometimes people against me doesnt find fun at all.
As commanders and strategies in general get more and more pushed, just "doing the thing" comes closer and closer to just accruing an insurmountable advantage. Nadu is an excellent example where "doing the thing" equates to slapping all your lands on the field and drawing 50 cards. They've already won, the game just isnt over yet. If you scapeshift and get a ton of value, a bunch of field of the dead zombies, draw a bunch of cards, etc, you've probably won the game. In a casual game, I'd be the asshole for countering your scapeshift because you "just want to do the thing" but if I let you do the thing you just win. Do you see how this creates friction? Casual can often become a race to see who "does the thing" first because the things we're doing in 2024 casual commander are game-winning. Making a board full of big dumb idiots and casting unnatural growth before combat wins the game. Milling yourself for 50 in a muldrotha deck wins the game. Casting a scapeshift and getting a ton of landfall triggers wins the game. In my opinion, casual players like to hide behind the "I just want to do the thing" mantra to gaslight their opponents into holding their interaction while the "casual" player accrues an unbeatable amount of advantage through absurdly splashy plays. I find that it's often disinegnuous and coming from someone who knows that what they're doing will win them the game and is just hoping the table rolls over and accepts it.
Interesting take. I think another factor to look into would be opponent experience, ie does my thing make my opponents' eyes glaze over? I relate that to power level in the sense that as you get closer to "winning is the main goal" gameplay, considerations like "opponent experience" are less likely to matter.
I think the biggest things a high budget allows is more consistency in doing a thing and more opportunities to stop others from doing the thing, if we're talking about a jump from $100 to $500. The $500 budget allows you to run efficient stuff like Tef Prot, FoW, Pact of Negation, Heroic Intervention, etc. A $100 budget won't let you do that.
Consistency here also meaning uniformity. Personally, I find 'building' Decks that finally are 30 % of the same to all other Decks I play against very boring, so why ever get a Teferi's Pro or Rhystic study?
I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts comparing your Xyris and Ishai/Tana, as they seem similar; which do you find more enjoyable to play regularly?
I think I find Xyris more fun to play as its much more of a casual experience, Ishai Tana is very fun too but since both commanders are such huge threats they tend to get targeted much more than xyris
ok i just saw the expensive rocco deck. i have one question because i have never seen someone use that card before you. fallaji wayfarer seems like a way to filter infinity tokens to rocco mana. that is my guess at least. if that is the case, if you already have infinite creatures what is the next step? in general great deck, i have build a 30 to 50 euro variant and usually is able to win at turn 5 or 6 in goldfish. the idea was the same, put cards in the there that allow me to win.
Casual and cEDH will NEVER be the same and the fact that people still believe cEDH and Casual shouldn't have different ban lists is absurd. cEDH doesn't care about deck theme, it's entire goal is winning above all, while Casual decks tend to want to win WITH a theme.
If there's a different banlist there will be just two different cedh metas, one using the cedh banlist and another using the casual banlist. There's always a meta, even if it's still being figured out or if the bar is lower and that will be considered cedh. I do think the banlist could be managed to make both better banning signpost problem cards in casual that also make cedh more unbalanced. But first we need to see the bracket system
60 card formats have casual players just like Commander does. They play off-meta decks with their pet cards and aren't strictly concerned with their win-loss ratio. However they are still playing the same format (Modern, Legacy, Standard, etc) with the same ruleset. The same is true here as described in the video. Some people's deck theme is going wide, tall, etc. In cEDH, the same theme is shared across all decks: play to win.
Cedh is just a meta and play philosophy. There's a huge intersection and no hard line to be drawn. Game Knights uses fast mana, has combo kills, often high interaction and play to win. Are they cedh?
The decks I tend to build lately want to win but they are casual, not cedh. They want to win in a thematic way. I make sure they have specific lines but they tend to be janky, require many pieces and/or a lot of mana. Or be very fragile to removal. My decks usually have very clear lines they don't just want to "do a thing" unless that thing results in winning the game. But it's the way in which the game is won that is different from cedh, it's much less efficient and more theme-centered. It will have limitations in mechanics, art, or flavor.
The main issue I see is people with non cedh decks that use that marker to call themselves casual when they're really not. Your highly efficient, no expenses spared, win in one turn dragons deck is competitive in spirit and above power for most games
My only real disagreement is the skill ideal. Paying attention to your sequencing while properly addressing threats is probably the biggest factor in winning a free for all game with 4 players. Especially if you're not playing a combo deck.
Skill, it’s ALWAYS skill. It comes down to the sheer complexity of MtG. If you actually ever have the chance of playing a pro, or someone who is VERY good, you know. No other game is Turing Complete. No other game has as high of a skill ceiling as Magic does. More than Poker, or Chess, or even Go. Commander selection does matter, but only on paper. Your deck may be a Turbo-Stomp Monster at one table, and a cute little plush puppy at the next table over. The actual decisions you make as you play through the game will ALWAYS weigh more heavily on the outcome, provided you are playing at a table where the relative deck power levels allow for dynamic gameplay. For casual commander, at least… It’s always 100% skill in all aspects for cEDH; from deck building to meta-gaming to actually piloting to a win. Magic is a game with the level of complexity where, almost always, the better player will win.
damm is this trigger bait? I don't understand how you could actually believe magic to be THAT difficult otherwise, does skill matter? sure, do the other things matter just as much? yes, is magic the hardest game ever? Hell no (and this is coming from someone who has played other games semi-professionally as well as someone who has a very high skill mtg player (talking top few hundred in arena palyer in their playgroup)
I have a friend that plays chatterfang, and it's a very fast combo deck. Typically tho if you have any interaction or removal available it's a pretty easy deck stop. He typically plays it when theres no blue to be seen at the table ahaha
cEDH plays overall "less" interaction in terms of removal, but more protection for their own combo. Stax pieces in non-blue colors need to stop opponents preemptive and not bother you. The typical casual commander deck will have much more point removal, mass removal and the like, as "creatures" are the name of the game and combat damage over several turns, while in cEDH the stack, spells and specific combos are the name of the game, and sometimes you dont need answers at all, you just need to be faster and more consistent. A lot of counterspells are only against non-creatures , so if your deck combos with creatures, you dodge a lot of cEDH interaction already. Another huge difference is how the decks ramp. In casual ramp is usually done with 2 mana Talisman/Signets and in green with 2 mana ramp spells for lands, you get a snowball of mana over several turns. In cEDH you just need mana right now and quickly to get something out that will provide you massive value and immediately win the game. A cEDH combo line is usually clearly defined how much mana and what color you NEED to win, if you have that, you can play the line as specified and you win pretty much deterministically, you dont really have to think much on the fly, you just need to know these lines. In casual games it can be much more painful to play out games with lots of mana and creatures involved, as the board gets massive quickly, and all kinds of opponents will bring decks with cards you might have never seen, random interactions that are not self explaining and all kinds of things that make the game overall more complicated to think every option through ... while in cEDH the interactions are much more set in stone, you can much more expect what your opponents aim to do and what you need to stop them, or power through them.
Yeah, you're just making stuff up. Cedh plays a lot of interaction, and a lot of spot removal as well. There are absolutely decks that run lightning bolt, for example, and swords and path still see plenty of play, as does chain of vapor. They don't play many board wipes, but most cedh decks still run one of some kind, usually toxic deluge. Stax is hilarious to bring up because it's pretty bad in cedh right now. It's just really hard to set up a lock fast enough. Finally, while some combo lines like Thoracle consult require little thinking, there absolutely are decks that require *a lot* of thinking. Sisay, for example, is more of a toolbox deck because it runs a tutor in the command zone. There are many lines in the deck and while the basic structure of most lines is the same, the actual cards you get each time can vary wildly depending on the game state.
This is so true. I’m a casual player. And my latest approach to deck building is Kingmaking. Decks filled with a tone of interaction and removal in purpose to control the game and who’s winning and who’s losing….i don’t care about myself winning. There’s just usually one deck in the game that has a win-con/play style I can’t stand seeing succeed…*coughInfiniteCombocough*.
There’s gotta be a line where an infinite combo doesn’t bother you. 2 card combo on the stack, I can get behind not appreciating that, but is a 3+ card combo all on the board the same thing?
@maximillianhallett3055 correct. For me, red flags pop up if the combo requires the commander, less than 3 pieces, and if the deck uses any tutors or extra card draw to search for the pieces. It's my own gripe. I just can't stand when I'm playing a long, intense game, all players have over 20 life with full boards, and then 1 single player beats all 3 opponents with an infinite combo. Very anti climactic in my opinion.
Rocco is my favorite deck, I play it in cEDH and I love to play it. Also have 2 different Rocco builds on for no budget cEDH and the other for Commander 500, a budget variant that we have in Brazil that that decks can cost up to 500 Reais (close to 100 dolars)
I have been struggling with this question too and struggling to figure out where my decks fit on power. This video helps a lot! But I will say, the phrase "Do the thing" is a little cringy after hearing it for so many years. Keep up the videos!
That cEDH has nothing to do with skill is a realy bad take i think. Just give 2 random guys a cedh deck and put them against 2 veterans. Play like 100 games. I would think the random guys win maybe 5- 10 games.
Cedh is playing commander by the rules, with the ban list. Changing any of that is just to help new players understand a very complex game. Casual players have the game set to easy mode, us more experienced players should be cranking the difficulty up to Legendary once we have mastered that. Don't be scuurd
![[EDH] What you NEED to make a Commander deck](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/prg6qNDgjsk/mqdefault.jpg)
Been enjoying your vids. You slot in nicely with the snail/elk/trinket style. And I can’t get enough of those videos.
Those 3 are the goats of jank, so glad they have a podcast now
@@thetyzonatorgoats of jank ?? Demo from edhdeckbuilding is king.
Thank you!
@@thetyzonator smh let's not forget that snail did it first and the others mimicked his style
Ew snail.
I agree with your philosophy on deck building approach. That’s why i love playing high-power casual; I wanna see everyone try to do their thing.
With the recent bans, our LGS created 2 tier.
No holds barred deck-you can say these are tier that are high power decks or cedh.
Novice deck-there is banned list created specific by LGS to limit cedh type of gameplay. The purpose for this is to accommodate new player, budget builds, casuals and to open more exploited combo.
Majority of the LGS' banned are enablers of infinite turns, efficient tutors, mana rocks.
Good thing about our LGS respect these 2 tiers and conduct tournaments on weekends. Saturdays are for novice deck and Sundays are for NHB.
Good video by the way. Ive learned a lot since im a noob in commander.
What you mentioned about doing the thing, and feeling satisfied if the deck did the thing once or twice despite not winning is exactly my approach to this game.
I want to have fun and feel like I got good moments where everything clicked.
Thanks for this. Your narrative really aligns to my beliefs and thoughts about casual and high power vs competitive. I found it difficult to accept some narratives out there that casuals don't want to play with high-powered cards and only cedh players care about winning and playing the best a person can. It's a story of journey and growth in deck building and player. People may be playing bad cards is because that's all they got in their collection and that will grow over time into higher power levels.
Im gonna support you through patreon soon because I want to get better and you explain things in a way that actually make sense
I play both formats, and the concept you presented here will help someone differentiate between a casual high-power deck vs a badly-made or nerfed cEDH deck
Love the video man. Happy to support on Patreon!
Thank you!
I think the average commander player doesn’t really know how to build a deck and what to expect from a game of magic. They don’t think about their curve, how many lands to play, and that interaction isn’t a bad thing.
Casual: "play what you like even if you loose and enjoy if you win"
High Power: "Win"
CEDH: "Win more"
Casual: Hey, I don’t like that card and I’m gonna call it cEDH or pubstomping. Also we have a bunch of cards we call taboo, but we won’t outright ban them so we can continue to add cards to the unwritten taboo list, and how dare you not know what they are.
High Power: Play what you want, just don’t tutor for combos.
cEDH: No limits other than the ban list.
@@maximillianhallett3055 I'm sorry but if that's your casual experience your table sucks lmao. Get better friends
To me the difference of lower power casual and higher power casual is whether the deck is built around a late game. Lower power decks don't have a true late game and instead exist solely around the accumulation of value with no specific end goal in mind. Higher power casual decks have an end game in mind and the deck has stricter card choices made to facilitate that end game.
An example of a card that perfectly separates the two is Primeval Titan. Since lower power is simply about the accumulation of value Prime Time is an apex creature -- it's a 6/6 that fetches more lands for more value. However, Prime Time falls off in higher power games because a 6 cmc creature that mostly just continues to ramp and isn't contributing to most strategies' late game win conditions is a suboptimal card slot for that mana value.
I know what you mean, but it’s an odd example since Primeval Titan is banned in commander…
Cedh's entire meta was built around late game engines until recently. I feel like the scale of casual - competitive is largely a series of decisions that reflect your priorities in a game. If you have a ton of tutors for redundancy, you may not be looking for a lax playstyle unless you're assembling something odd
Primeval Titan is a poor example. The Land slot has a number of brilliant options worth fetching even late - it is an enormously powerful card, even more so when you actually have a game plan in mind.
@@lVideoWatcherl I agree Prime Time is a powerful card. In a vacuum it's probably the strongest 6 cmc creature in the format. But decks aren't built in a vacuum and strong cards don't necessarily impact the overall power level of a deck. In the vast majority of higher power casual games you have better things to be doing with 6 mana than fetching utility lands. With that much mana available you are looking to win the game and Prime Time and its lands don't do that.
@@imaginarymatter I would agree with you if you were talking about cEDH. Specifically higher power EDH is where I would say that you very much want a card like Primetime to tutor out the absurd power you can amass through your land base.
Thanks for the lessons this has been enlightening.
As well composed as this video is, I fear the reality of the topic is that no two play groups will agree on what is or isn't casual. The local shop I go to weekly is absolutely casual. The shop isn't even a sanctioned MTG shop. We just hang out and play. At this shop, most of the players have decks that prioritize flavor over consistency. Theme over function. A common trait is that most players here have decks with insufficient interaction spells.
In turn, this has created an interesting off shoot in deck building logic on my end. I'm still kinda bad at deck building myself, but I believe I'm getting better slowly. And I also believe that I'm improving more than most others at the shop since my goal is to actually improve the deck, not remain stagnant with a cute theme.
In an effort to keep in line with the tone of the shop, I've begun to force myself to learn how to build decks that DON'T rely on overpowered staples.
My favorite commander is Indominus Rex Alpha. As a sultai commander, I have access to a lot of powerful cards- Rhystic Study, Demonic Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Fierce Guardianship ETC.
I'm not running any of those. Yes, my deck would be much stronger with Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, but for a casual setting I sure as heck don't need them.
There was no reason for me to over tune with power cards when the play group overall is not on that level. Where my deck is currently puts it at roughly a 30% win rate at the shop. I'm a little more consistent than the other decks purely because I'm constantly making adjustments and improvements without going overboard though. But I've also checked with my group, they are OK with my deck as it is. They don't feel oppressed, and my win rate isn't ridiculous either.
The problem however is that I don't feel comfortable going to another shop that is more serious. My deck actually has less interaction than it should as well because Im relying on my creatures themselves to offer late game value that out grinds the interaction. But significant vulnerabilities remain naturally.
Very well described differences between high power and cedh.
I started playing commanders recently, i played tournaments of modern 10 yrs ago so my mentality was "i want to win". I always liked combo control decks and my first commander was an anhelo deck(100€budget). Now im building an alela cunnings deck control faerie and a planning a k'rrik deck since i like combos, ofc i dont have the budget for a cedh deck but i like the concept of "i need a find a way to win" type of deck and use my brain a lot. Idk if u guys can relate with my thoughts and think its a good way to approach casual tables
I play a budget "cEDH" version for Alela (usd160) and I would love to see your list if you have one available, thank you!
In casual I'm really just trying to find a good experience, not a win, since the format is intended for fun first. Like I'd rather come away with some laughs than a W. That's not to say I don't have some fight in me, because that's part of the narrative.
@@SSolemn sure idk how to link it but i have it in public on my moxfield on the builded folder(my account is malacoda on it). Tbh dont expect a competitive deck, i just like to build deck but i ll be really happy to see your thought on it.
@@seanedgar164 i really like the "fun" in commnder cause when i was a kid and go to modern tournament i was surrounded by people who went to big tournaments who teach me how to play. Now in commander i just try to have fun, but my fun is combos decks which sometimes people against me doesnt find fun at all.
As commanders and strategies in general get more and more pushed, just "doing the thing" comes closer and closer to just accruing an insurmountable advantage. Nadu is an excellent example where "doing the thing" equates to slapping all your lands on the field and drawing 50 cards. They've already won, the game just isnt over yet.
If you scapeshift and get a ton of value, a bunch of field of the dead zombies, draw a bunch of cards, etc, you've probably won the game. In a casual game, I'd be the asshole for countering your scapeshift because you "just want to do the thing" but if I let you do the thing you just win.
Do you see how this creates friction? Casual can often become a race to see who "does the thing" first because the things we're doing in 2024 casual commander are game-winning. Making a board full of big dumb idiots and casting unnatural growth before combat wins the game. Milling yourself for 50 in a muldrotha deck wins the game. Casting a scapeshift and getting a ton of landfall triggers wins the game.
In my opinion, casual players like to hide behind the "I just want to do the thing" mantra to gaslight their opponents into holding their interaction while the "casual" player accrues an unbeatable amount of advantage through absurdly splashy plays. I find that it's often disinegnuous and coming from someone who knows that what they're doing will win them the game and is just hoping the table rolls over and accepts it.
Interesting take. I think another factor to look into would be opponent experience, ie does my thing make my opponents' eyes glaze over?
I relate that to power level in the sense that as you get closer to "winning is the main goal" gameplay, considerations like "opponent experience" are less likely to matter.
5:34 how do you sacrifice Arena rector to Vibien, if you already exiled it to tutor Vivien?
I think the biggest things a high budget allows is more consistency in doing a thing and more opportunities to stop others from doing the thing, if we're talking about a jump from $100 to $500. The $500 budget allows you to run efficient stuff like Tef Prot, FoW, Pact of Negation, Heroic Intervention, etc. A $100 budget won't let you do that.
Consistency here also meaning uniformity. Personally, I find 'building' Decks that finally are 30 % of the same to all other Decks I play against very boring, so why ever get a Teferi's Pro or Rhystic study?
My most played deck is Rocco where I just play Naya evasive beaters, initiative, and monarch cards
I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts comparing your Xyris and Ishai/Tana, as they seem similar; which do you find more enjoyable to play regularly?
I think I find Xyris more fun to play as its much more of a casual experience, Ishai Tana is very fun too but since both commanders are such huge threats they tend to get targeted much more than xyris
@@deckdriverMTG Appreciate the insight man; love your videos. :) You have definitely impacted the way I build decks, and for the better.
ok i just saw the expensive rocco deck. i have one question because i have never seen someone use that card before you. fallaji wayfarer seems like a way to filter infinity tokens to rocco mana. that is my guess at least. if that is the case, if you already have infinite creatures what is the next step?
in general great deck, i have build a 30 to 50 euro variant and usually is able to win at turn 5 or 6 in goldfish. the idea was the same, put cards in the there that allow me to win.
Couldnt agree more with what you're saying here.
Casual and cEDH will NEVER be the same and the fact that people still believe cEDH and Casual shouldn't have different ban lists is absurd. cEDH doesn't care about deck theme, it's entire goal is winning above all, while Casual decks tend to want to win WITH a theme.
Yes.
If there's a different banlist there will be just two different cedh metas, one using the cedh banlist and another using the casual banlist. There's always a meta, even if it's still being figured out or if the bar is lower and that will be considered cedh.
I do think the banlist could be managed to make both better banning signpost problem cards in casual that also make cedh more unbalanced. But first we need to see the bracket system
60 card formats have casual players just like Commander does. They play off-meta decks with their pet cards and aren't strictly concerned with their win-loss ratio. However they are still playing the same format (Modern, Legacy, Standard, etc) with the same ruleset.
The same is true here as described in the video. Some people's deck theme is going wide, tall, etc. In cEDH, the same theme is shared across all decks: play to win.
agree
Cedh is just a meta and play philosophy. There's a huge intersection and no hard line to be drawn. Game Knights uses fast mana, has combo kills, often high interaction and play to win. Are they cedh?
The decks I tend to build lately want to win but they are casual, not cedh. They want to win in a thematic way. I make sure they have specific lines but they tend to be janky, require many pieces and/or a lot of mana. Or be very fragile to removal. My decks usually have very clear lines they don't just want to "do a thing" unless that thing results in winning the game. But it's the way in which the game is won that is different from cedh, it's much less efficient and more theme-centered. It will have limitations in mechanics, art, or flavor.
Plus I also make sure everyone has fun and gets to do their thing. So the decks are built with that in mind.
The main issue I see is people with non cedh decks that use that marker to call themselves casual when they're really not. Your highly efficient, no expenses spared, win in one turn dragons deck is competitive in spirit and above power for most games
My only real disagreement is the skill ideal. Paying attention to your sequencing while properly addressing threats is probably the biggest factor in winning a free for all game with 4 players. Especially if you're not playing a combo deck.
Skill, it’s ALWAYS skill. It comes down to the sheer complexity of MtG. If you actually ever have the chance of playing a pro, or someone who is VERY good, you know. No other game is Turing Complete. No other game has as high of a skill ceiling as Magic does. More than Poker, or Chess, or even Go. Commander selection does matter, but only on paper. Your deck may be a Turbo-Stomp Monster at one table, and a cute little plush puppy at the next table over. The actual decisions you make as you play through the game will ALWAYS weigh more heavily on the outcome, provided you are playing at a table where the relative deck power levels allow for dynamic gameplay. For casual commander, at least… It’s always 100% skill in all aspects for cEDH; from deck building to meta-gaming to actually piloting to a win. Magic is a game with the level of complexity where, almost always, the better player will win.
damm is this trigger bait? I don't understand how you could actually believe magic to be THAT difficult otherwise, does skill matter? sure, do the other things matter just as much? yes, is magic the hardest game ever? Hell no (and this is coming from someone who has played other games semi-professionally as well as someone who has a very high skill mtg player (talking top few hundred in arena palyer in their playgroup)
Im sorry why did Chatterfang pop up when you said Fragile? 😂
I have a friend that plays chatterfang, and it's a very fast combo deck. Typically tho if you have any interaction or removal available it's a pretty easy deck stop. He typically plays it when theres no blue to be seen at the table ahaha
@@deckdriverMTG my buddy plays it whenever everybody is playing green lmao
cEDH plays overall "less" interaction in terms of removal, but more protection for their own combo.
Stax pieces in non-blue colors need to stop opponents preemptive and not bother you.
The typical casual commander deck will have much more point removal, mass removal and the like, as "creatures" are the name of the game and combat damage over several turns, while in cEDH the stack, spells and specific combos are the name of the game, and sometimes you dont need answers at all, you just need to be faster and more consistent. A lot of counterspells are only against non-creatures , so if your deck combos with creatures, you dodge a lot of cEDH interaction already.
Another huge difference is how the decks ramp. In casual ramp is usually done with 2 mana Talisman/Signets and in green with 2 mana ramp spells for lands, you get a snowball of mana over several turns.
In cEDH you just need mana right now and quickly to get something out that will provide you massive value and immediately win the game. A cEDH combo line is usually clearly defined how much mana and what color you NEED to win, if you have that, you can play the line as specified and you win pretty much deterministically, you dont really have to think much on the fly, you just need to know these lines.
In casual games it can be much more painful to play out games with lots of mana and creatures involved, as the board gets massive quickly, and all kinds of opponents will bring decks with cards you might have never seen, random interactions that are not self explaining and all kinds of things that make the game overall more complicated to think every option through ... while in cEDH the interactions are much more set in stone, you can much more expect what your opponents aim to do and what you need to stop them, or power through them.
Yeah, you're just making stuff up. Cedh plays a lot of interaction, and a lot of spot removal as well. There are absolutely decks that run lightning bolt, for example, and swords and path still see plenty of play, as does chain of vapor. They don't play many board wipes, but most cedh decks still run one of some kind, usually toxic deluge.
Stax is hilarious to bring up because it's pretty bad in cedh right now. It's just really hard to set up a lock fast enough.
Finally, while some combo lines like Thoracle consult require little thinking, there absolutely are decks that require *a lot* of thinking. Sisay, for example, is more of a toolbox deck because it runs a tutor in the command zone. There are many lines in the deck and while the basic structure of most lines is the same, the actual cards you get each time can vary wildly depending on the game state.
Gitrog being casual is a real stretch taking in consideration how stupid landfall is without ponza
Don't get me wrong it's strong, but I purposely avoid the infinites that come with it
My group bench power level by the time the deck wins
If you download the card images from scryfall as a PNG, they won’t have those white corners
Thank you!
This is so true.
I’m a casual player. And my latest approach to deck building is Kingmaking. Decks filled with a tone of interaction and removal in purpose to control the game and who’s winning and who’s losing….i don’t care about myself winning. There’s just usually one deck in the game that has a win-con/play style I can’t stand seeing succeed…*coughInfiniteCombocough*.
There’s gotta be a line where an infinite combo doesn’t bother you. 2 card combo on the stack, I can get behind not appreciating that, but is a 3+ card combo all on the board the same thing?
@maximillianhallett3055 correct. For me, red flags pop up if the combo requires the commander, less than 3 pieces, and if the deck uses any tutors or extra card draw to search for the pieces.
It's my own gripe. I just can't stand when I'm playing a long, intense game, all players have over 20 life with full boards, and then 1 single player beats all 3 opponents with an infinite combo. Very anti climactic in my opinion.
first 🎉
Welcome!
Rocco is my favorite deck, I play it in cEDH and I love to play it.
Also have 2 different Rocco builds on for no budget cEDH and the other for Commander 500, a budget variant that we have in Brazil that that decks can cost up to 500 Reais (close to 100 dolars)
I have been struggling with this question too and struggling to figure out where my decks fit on power. This video helps a lot! But I will say, the phrase "Do the thing" is a little cringy after hearing it for so many years. Keep up the videos!
Yeah I think it's a bit cringy too, but it seems to have become the most used lingo to describe it. Sadly.
@@deckdriverMTG Yep yep.
That cEDH has nothing to do with skill is a realy bad take i think. Just give 2 random guys a cedh deck and put them against 2 veterans. Play like 100 games. I would think the random guys win maybe 5- 10 games.
I think there's something wrong with your venn diagram
How so?
cedh circle should not be tht big noone plays tht sht 🤣 much more casual n high power players
much much more , not even close
@@Jon_Doe It's just a visual graph, it's size isn't based on any factor. Just there to show the different approaches to building a deck.
You all play cedh, most of you just have bad decks that hide behind the veil of 'casual' to protect your feelings 😂
Cedh is playing commander by the rules, with the ban list.
Changing any of that is just to help new players understand a very complex game.
Casual players have the game set to easy mode, us more experienced players should be cranking the difficulty up to Legendary once we have mastered that.
Don't be scuurd
@@brendans1983 well said. Many casuals are just too scared to go all the way