The EDHRec Effect
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- Written, edited, and expertly illustrated by Alex Hutchinson
Rummaging performance by Mr. Hans
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0:00 Intro to EDH
2:01 Deckbuilding Process
5:33 EDHRec Effect
9:10 Resulting Issues
It’s kind of funny that “four people playing solitaire and hoping to outrace each other” pretty much perfectly describes every “eurogame” board game
I mean, some of them are very interactive but like. Yeah those games definitely exist
It's even more funny, that it is much better than it sounds, as such games are still a lot of fun.
I have Everdell & Istanbul, lovely worker placement games, but there's little ways of meaningful interaction.
To be fair that is how Combo decks try to play lol
You haven't played a lot of them have you? Even settlers of catan the most default Eurogamer ever isn't like that
I really do think people should listen to the EDHRecCast more.
Those guys do a good job analysing the data from their own site and telling people what to do with it.
This is very apparent whenever they "challenge the stats"
They play 3/10 power level lol
@@damo9961who does?
@@damo9961while they definitely play at a lower power level, I think the notion they are playing at the base precon level isn't exactly true.
No thanks, the EDCRECast is completely uninteresting for invested players.
Yeah they play to get the most fun out of games and try to keep it a healthy gamestate, i enjoy their content. Not everybody is an oppressive degenerate!
I noticed this with EDHREC so I do this ridiculous thing on Scryfall (it has a lot of filter options) where I look at every card ever printed in the filters I need and honestly it takes longer but my opponents never know what I'm gonna play
I respect a fellow scryfall deep diver
I have found that sorting by artist is a good way to remove bias
I have definitely sifted through several hundred search results to add like 3 cards to a deck. I love doing that and seeing a card and going ooooooooooh that's spicy
I used to do this too and am now getting back to it cause EDHREC made my decks more generic and boring
Knowing how to search Scryfall is a huge buff
While i know its win-more, I will never give up my crucible of fire in my rakdos dragons deck.
Never take out a Crucible in a Dragon deck. That's a rule. Now if I could just stop using Dragons Roost.....
Never cut pet cards
Win-more? Is it?
It makes me recover from a Wrath with a single dragon. A 4 mana 9/8 with haste and flying? Don't mind if I do!
@@rolandking640 damn mate i didnt even knew that card, had to google it. O couldnt contain my laughter regarding the current power level 😂
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof I was just thinking this, it may be a win-more but it becomes an equaliser if someone sweeps your creatures and you have to rebuild. I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with win-more cards as such, more that you shouldn't just stack only those kinds of cards to the detriment of some generic removal and interaction.
Another good illustration of how this can go wrong is to think of 3 cards with 33.3% usage rate.
There are 2 scenarios:
1. The cards are all used in different decks, every deck builder uses one of these three cards because they fill the same role in the deck and you only need one.
2. The cards are all used in the same deck. The cards are not good for the commander when used individually, but synergise well with each other and the commander.
Both of these scenarios should lead you to build different decks, but appear identical on EDHRec.
Sometimes this is compensated with the "themes" for a commander, which can separate ie a "the ring tempts you" Galadriel deck from a "scry matters" Galadriel deck.
EDHRec is magical. Even having access to data slurry is an amazing advantage.
Put another way, I'm old af. I took a break from MtG and getting hints towards thing I never knew existed is OP, but bad deckbuilders gonna bad deckbuild.
Having access to collective knowledge is valuable, but learning how to use scryfall's search terms is invaluable.
agreed, EDHRec is amazing to figure out the auto includes and highly synergistic cards for any given commander, but it's up to the builder to take these cards, see what they have in common and then search up for similar things on Scryfall
One of the problems is the lack of distinction between well performing decks, and random piles.
Sites like LimitlessTCG for Pokémon primarily tracks decks that perform well, so you know the cards actually work in the deck (and aren’t just there because a word/ mechanic matches)
Scryfall is excellent!
Hand a man a fish, feed him for a night. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime
I'm in the same boat. Played from maybe 96'-00' but was turned off when it became very pay to play. Getting back into it now and man is it overwhelming lol. I buy precons, mod some of them and use EDH rec to get staples / see what other folks have done. This helps me better understand game mechanics and synergies. Without those tools, I'd be completely overwhelmed and don't think I'd have the patience to navigate the endless possibilities. I am at least getting to a point where I can look at a list and wonder why someone would add that.
Interesting. I have been clearly warned about the pitfalls of data scraping in an infinite feedback loop! The old fashioned version of this was, "all the cool kids are doing it. I should probably be doing it too."
Luckily you broke the loop by not being cool.
I absolutely love win-more cards, whether I'm playing them or getting flattened by them. The big flashy plays are absolutely what I live for.
Despite that, I'm really glad you made this video. I wish more people would just take 10 minites on Scryfall before hitting EDHrec. They'll probably see a lot of overlap, but the best moments in the game are when you add a card that no one else knows and it does something awesome. I was playing against Seth (probably better known as Saphron Olive), at Commander 30 in Vegas, and it was just the coolest thing ever watching him shift between bewilderment and excitement and jealousy and surprise over my inclusion of a Trove Warden in my Quintorious deck. It was sitting there recurring fetchlands every turn and he was just like, "I don't even think anyone's ever heard of this card!"
You should've also mentioned in your video that EDHrec is REALLY bad at letting go of cards from precons. Wizards prints a garbage card in a precon, thousands of people post their deck with just a few upgrades or personalizations (or even just post the precon as is), and there are suddenly thousands of decks with this garbage card in it, so people looking at building that commander later decide to try it out, and sure enough it's garbage, but before they learned it was garbage like they suspected, they posted their deck, so there's another useful data point showing everyone that the garbage card is a staple in the deck.
Yes win-more cards are more fun, that is why we play them
Can you explain your Trove Warden loop? It sounds interesting.
@@Swnkmstr Basically, crack a fetch land or two with the Trove Warden in the field. Exile the fetch lands with the triggered ability. Sac and reanimate the Warden. Do it all over again.
In this case, I think I put a Gift of Immortality on the Trove Warden, had some sort of sac outlet (I don't recall which), and a couple fetches. I was ramping twice each turn, plus getting four leaves the graveyard triggers from Quintorious, plus a couple other dies/leaves the battlefield/whatever triggers from other stuff on the board. It was just a lot of value, and a ton of free ramp, especially for boros.
@jaredwonnacott9732 thats actually cool, and the gift of immortality leaving the crave triggers Quintorious too? Sounds like value town. Thanks for sharing.
As a man of budget I use edhrec but also only include what I think is good and also use scryfall to fill in gaps. You can use edhrec just also use your brain
Its always nice to see new players realize that the reason I win more is becaude I run plenty of interaction. Then they add interaction to their decks and our games become more fun.
I even had this moment 8 years into playing. My old playgroup was relatively casual, running mostly upgraded precons, and I was the player that won a lot of games because of my interaction. When I joined a new group that had more experienced players in it, I was the one losing games due to not running enough interaction.🤣
Honestly, I think that your summary at the end is a perfect description of EDHRec, it’s a tool, one to be questioned. Heck, when I made my Ognis deck based on Viashino, barely any of my cards lined up with what it showed, yet it’s become my favorite deck solely because it can stop gameplans so fast
When I was a kid, I had a House-league hockey coach who said the most impactful sentence in terms of gameplay and approach to hobbies I have ever heard:
"We're all here to have fun, but winning, is the most fun. So let's go out there and win!"
Commander by all metrics can still remain a casual format, but I think what has been lost is that drive towards winning the game, not just "doing stuff". I hear too many times at tables now "I don't wanna make any enemies" or "They will just swing back and hurt me." GOOD! Force your opponents to have lines, force them to interact with you, BE THE PROBLEM. I have had many times where I have become the archenemy, lost quickly and loudly. As a result I make the whole board get moving, open up lines of attack, and actively made the game more explosive and end quicker, which then leads to more games.
This is very well composed and I agree with MUCH of what is said here. I think why we see so little interaction is because we see so many "Win more" spells being jammed in as "Win Cons" when they are just loose snow that will never snowball itself. Crucible of Fire as you showed is an amazing example of this thought process in play.
I agree with the idea, but personally don't like where this aggressive line of thinking typically ends up in commander. I definitely think people should be brave enough to attack out and throw some damage around and get interaction happening, but when you get to cEDH level, then every single deck looks identical and it all costs $1000 for a decent land base to really keep winning.
I think the big issue with EDHREC is that they only scrape from the most recent X years worth of online deck lists. The site doesn’t recognize non-updated lists that are over like 5 years old, which really skews the suggested inclusions and “popular” commanders.
Every single precon commander ends up being in the top 100 over the last 2 years because everyone uploads their list to Moxfield, TappedOut, etc. and changes a few cards (or none at all).
EDHREC is very good to find the ultimate synergy piece, most of the time you’ll find what is used as an infinite combo with the commander or something that plays really well based on keywords. But outside of those and the land suggestions, yes the compounding data inclusions really takes over.
People should stop uploading their precons online. What's the fcking purpose? They aren't doing anything with it.
@@nCedric1 personally I did it when I bought one because I planned on swapping out cards. It’s nice to get a visual look at the curve, mana requirements, etc. and make quick decisions between cards.
I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t planning on making swaps
You’re certain they don’t archive data older than 2 years?
@@Oopsall they did a whole video on how the site collects data, I don’t recall the exact timeframe but I remember vividly that they mentioned decklists needed to be actively updated at least within a certain timeframe for them to be counted.
since first discovering EDHrec, my main use for that site was to see which commanders were most popular so i could avoid them. and i still do that regularly. my original standard was only commanders under 100 decks on EDHrec.
Decks where the commander is required for the deck to function (e.g. Arcades, Feather, Fyn, Hapatra, Hinata, etc.) should be built expecting to have the commander on the field. You can't keep these decks in check by just casting a doom blade, as you put it at 12:00, because the deck should be being built with many cards to ensure the commander stays around.
My Arcades deck runs multiple protection equipment, counterspells, protection instants, flicker/blink instants, etc. Once I cast it I expect it to stay on the field, and if somehow it doesn't I don't recast it until I think it will. In that deck Panharmonicon isn't a win-more card it's a setup piece, allowing you to drop your commander and chain Defenders onto the field and give haste and swing for lethal (or 2 turns if you can't find a haste enabler). But the beauty of a card like Panharmonicon is it synergises even if you don't have your commader, you can cast cards like Wall of Blossoms or Omens to dig for the pieces you need. I stuggle to believe you've every played against a competent Arcades deck.
This goes true for Second Harvest and Junk Winder, they could be win-more if the only tokens in the deck are being produced by Volo. But that shouldn't be the case and a correctly built Volo deck should be able to use Second Harvest for secondary benefit: e.g. to double clue tokens to draw into something, treasure tokens to setup an explosive next turn, creature tokens produced from sources other than Volo for a surprise attack turn.
Always ask for every card you put in a deck: "What is my main beeline plan for victory and is this necessary", then: "How can my opponents disrupt this plan" and if that happens: "How am I going to get back on track". Also if you can filter a EDHREC commander to show only variations that include a specific card in advanced filters, to see the synergies.
Yup, agree with all this. In my most commander-reliant deck I run 12 protection spells, to great effect. You just gotta be thoughtful about this sort of thing ahead of time. And also-I love junkwinder as a card. I’ve just heard the sentiment “this card makes every creature I play tap something down” far too many times.
I hope they soon reprint Staff of Frank. My Frank EDH currently runs budget staples because Staff of Frank was only ever printed in that one Frank secret lair.
Just run a proxy Staff of Frank. I have a foil full art that I got for 20 cents
You might want to consider Frank or Fiction and Frankless Looting for a bit of card velocity
I think overall you're right on the money. My last commander game, one guy smoked the whole table cuz the rest of us were spending the whole game trying to build up our boards and take our commander actions while he board wiped, tutored, and then got two copies of Toxrill on the board with two meathook massacres. Well-timed counter spells or removal could have knocked him out before that happened.
It was a real slime bag play wasn't it.
Adding in removal to a decklist is kind of like eating your vegetables, it’s just not that much fun. The only way I’d not do it is by netdecking and working more closely off of someone else’s list rather than just looking at them for inspiration.
@@Dyllon2012maybe for you but removal is easily the best part of the game, interaction is the cornerstone of the game otherwise everyone would just be comboing off and playing solitaire.
@@alexmaragh7766 everybody likes different stuff. I like the solitaire-esque gameplay because it's hard for me to keep track of everything. It gives me more time to chat with people XD
@@alexmaragh7766 I personally like just playing must answers and forcing people to have interaction rather then do the one interacting, I have a decklist with only 5 ways to actually interact with the board (either protection on removal) and it's still able to pull through counters, spot removal, and board wipes if they don't have them nearly ever time I check for it. It's just a matter of taste imo
This philosophy is why I took Panharmonicon out of my Arcades deck a few years ago when I still had it: the vast majority of defenders do not do anything when they enter the battlefield. Instead using those deck slots for more redundancy to protect yourself while you're ahead, and more interaction to catch up when you're behind, simply makes more sense in a format with four players in regards to Quadrant Theory.
Well, why would anyone run an ETB doubling card when your deck is about thick defenders attacking? Did you not read the commander (chuffed brotherly questioning).
@@Nex41354 The commander's card draw doubles with panharmonicon, meaning you are gaining advantage instead of just replacing your thick defenders. Ignore this if you already knew that, can't detect sarcasm over internet.
Most of the time, i use edhrec to find themes related to a commander i'm interested in, most of the cards i put on my decks come from hours of looking through scryfall and decklists, but when i just want to make a deck quickly to get a feel of the commander, i'll use edhred and twik just a bit then proxy the cards just so i can begin playing before committing to a deck
Exactly, this!
Yeah made a monkey ape deck and it would have been so much extra work if EDHREC didn't exist to tell me what monkeys were actually worth playing and which ones I'm just playing to have more monkeys I think it's great for. Combos too like my mikaeus the unhallowed deck it was nice to know all the things that go infinite and what the best sack outlets are but overall I think it's great to start a deck and to finish a deck with but overall don't think it's good in the middle you need to actually put thought into your deck at the end of the day it's great for making a pile of cards or finding hidden gems but ultimately it's up to you to decide what's a win more card and what's a win now card theme decks make it hard too and I also like the story behind some cards personal or fun facts about magic and it's history so even if the card is sub optimal I'll play it but only in certain decks I have my silly decks and I have my serious decks I get accused of bringing too powerful of a deck no matter what I do
I recently started playing online, and as a result understand why interaction and pressure is important. My more intentionally good decks usually have good immediate pressure as part of the playstyle, or can run protection/removal that keeps my win cons from blowing up. I always still never add quite enough and just add things because I like them. Top example: Kaldra Compleat Reason:it feels very awesome to suddenly have a very scary creature. Best actual usage: the graaz deck where the germ from living weapon becomes a 5/3. My favorite gimmick I came up with myself: using Narfi to evade taxes and repeatedly sacrifice him to get various effects. Best interaction moment: using toggo with archetype of finality to lock a toxrill player out of the game with a deathtouch rock in response to every creature cast.
Amazing video. I’ve been stuck on one of my decks and couldn’t figure out why. The way you introduced and explained pressure helped me realize it was the root of my problems. Having a ton more fun now. Thank you!!
The BEST commander, skeleton ship, made a cameo! Yes!
As the proud owner of an absolutely terrible proliferate deck, I simply had to include it.
I wish I saw this video 3 years ago when I started playing Magic. I’m three years into deck building and learning as I go and I feel like this making me rethink a portion of my deck building process, in a good way.
There's a balance you need to strike, I am generally supportive of the feedback loop theory you have laid out, and agree it can be a big problem for newer players.
You do need win more cards though, there's a reason why they exist, especially in commander, you can't possibly control 3 players by yourself, so you need to present threats yourself and strike while people are re-building.
thats totally true, but i think what alex is trying to explain here is that these win-more cards aren't presenting some new dangerous threat, they are bonus being stacked on top of your already game ending formula. Junk winder isnt going to win you the game if he hits the field in that volo deck, in fact his impact might be less then many other of the serpents that deck could be running and copying, but because of its unique interaction, many players will see it as some sort of important cog in their winning machine. an important thing to do when looking at these cards is to think about when they hit the field, and what might they be doing once they are there.
You literally don't understand what win-more means. If something is actually contributing to the foundation of your victory, it is not win-more. You're saying that spoilers are necessary for cars because they need to be aerodynamic. That's what the windshield is for. You don't need anthems in your dragon deck, you don't need a bunch of 8-drops in your Meren deck, and by the seventh clone effect you are losing value instead of gaining it.
Some cards are win more in some games, in other games they allow you to push your advantage to defeat multiple players instead of just one! All win more cards are dreams waiting to be lived for.
I'm a very conservative deckbuilder, not satisfied until mana and card advantage roll very smoothly. I still make space for a sweet interaction or a pet card that needs many things to go right. This is one of the things I play this format for.
Yeah this is fair, some inclusion of that sort of card is reasonable since in a typical game there might be periods of being ahead that can be capitalized on. I just get sick of the sorts of decks that run a ton of those and then either sit around doing nothing or explode the entire table, with not much in between.
@@MasterDecoy1W You don't need them, but it is kinda fun sometimes.
For me EDH rec has always been a usefull tool. I can quickly find some cards that work well together. And start building a list of what I want/don't want. Then once I have figured out the right mixture of core cards, I go right to adding removal, counterspells, card advantage, win conditions ect... if you know what your doing EDH rec can be a great place to source cards...but if your new or hell still relatively green to the way that commander works, you might find yourself stuffing your druid deck with 50+ druids and calling it a day, similar to when I built my first seton krosan protector deck. But I didn't use EDHrec for that. I used Gatherer, typed in "druid" and only used green druids for it. What came later wad adding bomb creatures like the eldrazi. Some spot removal (which is very hard in green) pump spells, and good gowide pumps along with creature based draw effects.
The number one thing I recommend players is to get better at EDH and deckbuilding in general...is drafting. Sounds weird but being forced to make hard cuts and choices throughout a draft makes you realize very quickly how much you need to think ahead. Cube drafting amplifies this to greater heights. With Vintage Cube being the my favorite. Learning the complexities of what I should pick, what I should leave behind. What might be a good color to splash, what might be too greedy, and how to build a proper mana base that contains all the pips on the right turns.
TLDR: Learn to draft, it helps more than you could ever know.
Drafting is great and will 100% destroy a player’s preconceptions about the game in the best possible way.
Super good analysis!! There's a level of player enfranchisement between "I need a deck to play with my friends" and "I am brewing often now" that most players exist between, and the awareness that edhrec is a tool and not the ultimate play book is good knowledge to spread!
God this is why i love edhrec. I never used to be able to play lost legacy style effects back in the 2010's due to having to waste one to scout a deck. Now i can just look at a commander and instantaneously know what card to name to cripple a deck.
One trick I often use, is identify the one card which I think is actually the best card in the deck synergistically. And then filter to only decks who also include that card. Like corpse dance with child of alara for instance
The main thing people forget when disparaging edhrec is that 1. It is a tool, not something that beats down your door and beats you into the dirt if you don’t run cards used by it, and 2. You can absolutely say “no” to a card. Giving you the opportunity to quickly throw together a deck is something we’ve never had, and all the tools available to you outside edhrec are still available.
This video isn't disparaging edhrec, but warning that "numbers and data aren't objective truth".
@@ubermenschen01 I didn’t say it was, but many in the comment section are.
This video sums up most of the issues with the internet. Search engines suggest and find what people click most, people click what they find on the front page. Its a loop.
YES THANK YOU, I had one friend in my first play group that always said he was surprised at how easy it was to build good decks with us and I never understood why, I made a Hazezon deck that went great in this type of group but I realized against better decks just did not hold its own at all. PRESSURE AND WIN MORR ARE TOO IMPORTANT!! ive heard and tried to apply both but never at the same time and one replaced the other, genuinely opened my eyes, as I'm looking to sell out my final deck to stay may actually be great, thank you so much!!
I myself am a long time commander player, my friends as well at varying levels - some newer than others. Your analysis is a simple and refreshing piece of content that I really admire both in its lightheartedness and way of being informative - and certainly also something my friends and I all have come to a bit more of an understanding by watching. we would frequently have discussions, arguments and observations about deckbuilding because it's definitely a complicated process without some veteran knowledge. my friend most notorious for encountering this edhrec effect built Golos Tireless Pilgrim and stuffed it full of various theros/nyx Gods (and no plan at all), and it's pretty clear there was a "#1" / "eyeballs on the top of the list" / "edhrec effect" going on here. needless to say he had a pretty low winrate amongst our varied group, and so it's understandable because he kind of just sauntered into EDHREC looked at the Golos page - laden with the theros block gods - and just kind of bought into it mindlessly. At the same time another friend here built Golos at relatively the same time contrarily inspired by what he could pull off by what Eldrazi (his favorite creature type) could DO in Golos - in 5 color. It was the strongest deck in our group until Golos got the arguably deserved ban. At which point both of them dissolved their newly illegal commander and have simply moved on from there. This is also only one example of things similarly occurring amongst my group(s).
I discovered this video after watching your "My Playgroup's Best Deck is $20" (great title) shortly before this one, and felt inspired by ya boi Hans on what it means being both strategic about this game AND having fun as a whole when it comes to 3+ multiplayer commander. If I had to have a point here - you cast a light on a problem that I myself was struggling to articulate and made a video that did it better than I ever could.
For that you have my thanks. I like your videos!
Makes sense. I bet a lot of tribal decks also focus in a lot on the tribe because its easy to think its a good idea, when really they need options outside their tribe to make up for the tribes flaws.
Glad to hear someone say it. There are good tribal synergies in other cards, whether directly or coincidentally, and I'm pretty sure that's by design.
One big area I found this with is in my Kyler humans deck. Angels love helping humans, so I have a few pieces of really powerful angels that directly help my strategy.
Humans also love making and getting human tokens (and so does Kyler) so things that make tokens is a part of the deck that aren’t strictly just humans.
“Net decking: how it is really works”.
Great video.
You should do a video on how mana bases are effected by edhrec
The part about a player whining about attacking somebody else reminds me of most commander games I get into. The table feels bad about the guy not doing much at all, but then they always pop off in a combo because they weren't bothered for a turn or two.
Excellent video! Finally TH-cam is showing me things worth watching.
Edhrec is definitely good for giving exposure to cards as you said rather than direction.
I've had commanders that got card recommendations that flat out don't work with what the deck itself is trying to achieve, and a simple gatherer check or 2 seconds of thinking about the rules lets you realize that
Absolutely - I just built a Phenax deck, and the EDHrec page just vomited every single mill-themed creature and card; I ended up hammering that into a Moxfield deck, and found I had an utter glut of stuff at 4-5 mana that was totally redundant.
It was definitely a start point, but what I've really noticed is that EDHrec often won't dig up general good deckbuilding suggestions. Mirko Vosk has some vague synergy in that it also mills, but what Phenax really wants is some big booty creatures that get bigger for stuff being in graveyards, and frankly couldn't be bothered trying to force through a hit on a 2/4 flyer like Mirko. I'd be better off running some blue card draw engine or just a looter to dig through my own deck and provide card selection, but EDHrec won't spot that.
I'd end up with a deck of some number of lands, fifty spells that say "mill", and a bunch of random other cards.
Excellent video indeed! I've been earnestly attempting to elucidate the concept of synergy versus card quality to my colleagues. The video accomplishes this more effectively than I ever could have!
Nice video! I would love to see more from you
I love using EDHRec to build my decks because it's pretty simple and I get to see all the "best" cards and decide which ones I think are too funky for my playgroup, but something I love more for pretty much this exact reason is when new commanders get released. It forces me to actually use my skull when deckbuilding and consider lots of different things instead of only going a couple different places to build a commander that's already been well-expanded upon. I loved building the new Judith when she came out because I could go find the funny burn spells myself!
That is something I have noticed about the site as well. And that's why I use it as more of an idea while gathering info from other sources and looking at cards. Sometimes, just digging around will get you better ideas than some of the weird ideas that that site will give you.
The first deck I built (pauper format) I read (almost) every legal card on gatherer and wrote down everything interesting in an excel sheet. I read 8000 cards just to see them essentially. I didn't know what I was doing, so I missed a lot of cool cards, and it was hard to figure out what other people might consider the best cards in the format in such a vacuum. I got a lot of tips from my partner who actually studied the format and meta of cool cards that synergized and helped focus my strategy.
Now, I like to read deck lists online to help cover that problem. I've drafted a ton of vintage cube, so in a way I have deck building experience, but I've only made a few constructed decks.
I've been working on a faerie commander deck (I irrationally want it to be tribal, im not here to build the best deck ever and my style tends to be 'I like this theme, how can I make it playable') and looking all over for thoughts from players, and I can really see how edhrec crosses wires in its lack of clarity for how cards are used. I could build a combo deck where cloud of faeries is a key card, I could build tegwyll and look to put deathtouch on my faeries and control the board that way, I could build a spells based deck, so many directions. I would not have guessed the wild angles people take on the faerie commanders available without looking in a ton of other places first.
Good video! The perils of that feedback loop make a lot of sense, and you definitely notice things like how cards that were included in the same precon take forever to leave the recommended lists.
I find EDHREC as a starting point. I find a deck theme/commander/color/art that I like and run with it. I look through a myriad of decklists that people have made and find something affordable (bonus points if I have most the cards already). I try to figure out it's issues by doing some play tests on my own and then play test again keeping in mind my typical opponents. Then I play my typical opponents and from there determine the issues with my deck. I don't think this is uncommon - as many probably do almost exactly this method of deck construction, but EDHREC definitely helps at least.
I do, however, encourage people to get something like ManaBox, an MtG app that allows you to look up cards and make decks that you can import/export, and just use their random card search feature with filters. I like to filter search for legendary creatures with themes I want to try to make and then from there go to EDHREC and find similar concepts to a commander I like. Then I'll keep using ManaBox's search filtering features to find keywords I think would be useful around my deck.
But like others have stated, the "win-more" cards I think are sensible to have in many commander decks, not because they... win more.. but because 4 players with 40 life encourages a slower game and with a slower game, high-cost game changers are a given. Not to mention not all decks work without the "win-more" cards, and that's fine.
Also, I definitely agree that due to the feedback loop, a lot of cards get cycled in a deck just because it can kinda match the theme of the deck, despite the fact that the card wouldn't entirely be useful because by the time you cast it, you should already be ahead. But, again, when you're playing a slow game like commander, sometimes you just need stacking "win-more" cards.
Ultimately, I really like your video and think it's a good thing to keep in mind for new and veteran players alike - try not to completely depend on EDHREC but just use it as a tool for deck construction.
Manabox is 🤌🤌
I never really thought about where all that data came from, until now. Thank you for your insight and opening my eyes!
I think a big part of the problem is that there's no consistent metric for analyzing the QUALITY of EDH deck submissions, as the very nature of the EDH format can make it nearly impossible to figure out if deck A is better than deck B, and if it is, by how much? This makes mass data scraping much less effective, as you end up collecting a ton of essentially junk data.
Compare this to the mass data scraping of 60-card competitive formats on something like MTGTop8, which produces a *significantly* higher quality output than EDHREC because the requirement to get your deck onto MTGTop8 involves having your deck meet some demonstrable and quantifiable metric of success, as opposed to only needing to spend the time to type out 100 card names on EDHREC.
Love the video. I think so much more can be said about EDHrec and the effect it has had on the format
One of my favorite commanders is Judith the scourge diva. She incentivizes you to play an aristocrats theme, and build aggressive, but no card that synergizes with her is that bad on its own
The Edhrec Cast does a Good job addressing this and a recurring thing you hear while listening to the show other than dad jokes is that the website is by no means telling you that you have to run something that decision is yours to make it instead is simply a collection of data for the sake of making deck building a little less time consuming but that the data has flaws.
Best illustration of this is how every single episode includes a "Challenge the Stats" portion where they directly call out some cards that are being played too much or too little with a given commander.
great explanation! when i first started playing magic last year i was recommended to try edhrec, which resulted in my first two deckbuilds being very suboptimal. i did plenty of research and combed many decks built by other people across various websites, but my decks were performing very slowly with little threat at the table. it wasnt until recently when i started looking up cedh deckbuilds of my desired commanders that i learned which cards are actually powerful and impactful. seeing what competitive players are running to make decks perform at their peak is a helpful way of utilizing your access to colors in the most optimal ways. you don't necessarily have to include anything you don't want to, but it's definitely better to pay less mana now to accomplish the same thing i was doing otherwise in my suboptimal deckbuild previously.
Good stuff, very eye-opening. I had already understood that EDHREC is simply an aggregate of what cards people tend to play and not to take it as perfect but I didn't know how it's biased in a feed-back loop like you described.
Dang dude this is an extremely important video for anybody running Commander formats, thanks for the information! :D
I just like seeing a handful of combos and high synergies at a glance and comparing them to what I own.
wow what a video well made and to the point, ive recentlysstarted playing commander more online and inn doig so have been used edhrec to build a deck. definitly a great video and i hope it gets more attention
I build all my decks pretty much from scratch. I use edhrec to get a good foundation of the strategy that my deck should be doing, but after that I use scryfall to search for cards with specific effects or interactions that would possibly be useful.
I usually end up with a bulk of 400 cards that I have to chisel down like a marble statue to get my final deck
I find that Synergy is a really good way to lo at the data on EDHREC. This is the difference between how often the card shows up generally vs how often it shows up in this particular Commander. These are often the cards which have a specific synergy with this Commander.
But you really need to be able to construct a deck on your own before you can use EDHREC efficiently.
something that SHOCKED me when building my Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy deck was the lack of Curse of Unbinding on the page. that card goes perfectly with him if you cast it on yourself
I tend to use a little bit of multiple sources for working on my deck. A little EDHrec, a little rummaging through my collection, and a bit of searching card databases; usually for cards that fit flavorfully or that synergize.
I never thought about it this way, but makes sense, I like it. I have been finding myself removing cards that I think fit into this category, but never could explain properly why I was doing it, besides having bad game experience. Thanks!
I agree man. I just had this conversation a few weeks back with one of my playgroups. It's a group with not as experienced players and we often talk about why we add cards or how we built decks and I noticed that they almost only took EDHREC into consideration for making card choices. That kinda made me feel bad because I suggested the website to them when they started playing EDH to get a feel for deck building and card selection. And it's true, it makes their decks clunky because they try to stuff in all "good" cards without considering why they are good or bad in the first place. I mean everybody has their own opinion on what makes good deck building or how to evaluate cards, but you have to create this opinion on your own and not because a website suggests it to you. Even EDHREC acknowledges this, which is why they have their podcast. It's a great source of information but the data should not be taken as absolute and needs context.
I believe that's a step that all players should take, in 60 cards it happended to me with mtggoldfish, to the next gen it happened with mtgazone, and edhrec is there for the new edh players.
But how you adressed it as a community is what lets all evolve as muchas the site is changing
When making a deck, I usually scroll through scryfall using certain filters, looking for some cards that would go well in the deck, then looking through EDHRec for cards I might have missed to fill out the remaining slots. I never even considered using it by itself to create an entire deck.
This is the video that showed up randomly in my feed that I think is going to take off your youtube career. It's a really solid video. Maybe around 4 minutes in we start talking about EDHRec. Maybe six and half minutes in we start talking about the compounding problems. 8:00 "Peculiar, Questionable on it's own, but works when the commander is out, and is left untouched, is a win more card. Cards 50% or Less." about 12 minutes in "Pressure - Just keep putting creatures out and turning sideways while they are durdling doing nothing and Removal - target their commander to shut down their strategy, since they over rely on it. Not enough decks are playing these, so the win more card decks go unpunished and it becomes multiplayer solitaire."
Overall I agree with the point of this video, but why on earth would you pick Arcades and Panharmonicon as your main examples of this point? Have you ever even PLAYED an Arcades deck?
Arcades, by his very nature, is a deck that completely falls apart without the commander on the battlefield. As such, prority number one needs to be loading the deck full of ways to protect him; you need to run FAR more protection than the average deck. As such, running cards that assume your commander is going to stick is only sensible; your commander *IS* far more likely to stick than in most other decks. This doesn't even take into account how much more work Panharmonicon does in a deck like Arcades than it does in most other decks.
Sure, Panharmonicon is somewhat overplayed, but you're falling into the exact same trap that you're decrying in the video: looking only at generalized numbers and not trying to understand the reason behind them.
Also, wtf are you talking about in the beginning, when you said that Magic "followed the model of many card games"? Card games involving "little dudes doing things" were unheard of when Magic was invented.
He's like ten years old, give him a break.
I came here to say exactly this. I play at a very high level playgroup and I would never even consider removing Panharmonicon from Arcades.
as someone new to commander making my first deck and heavily relying on edhrec due to lack of knowledge and experience this video is a helpful idea to keep in mind
I like this. incredibly well made video with a nuanced take.
I fail to understand why Reality Acid is being considered a questionable card for Brago. If anything, it should be run in nearly every Brago deck. See, when you use Brago's ability to exile and return Reality Acid, two things happen. First, Acid leaves the battlefield and the player who had the permanent it was attached to is forced to sacrifice it. Second, when Acid enters the battlefield again, you are able to attach it to any permanent you want, even those with Hexproof or Shroud, because it only targets a permanent when it is cast. It's basically a repeatable removal spell that gets around nearly all forms of protection.
I get why people like it and it’s a card worth considering, but it’s also a card that’s only good when you’re able to attack with your commander, which is a turn after you played it unless your opponent neglected to remove your lightning greaves. I’m unconvinced that 60% of decks actually want it.
But brago decks are BUILT around brago attacking. He’s the type of commander that has decks built around his gimmick. Most of the cards are going to want to be flickered. Not building around him attacking doesn’t make sense, if you don’t focus on his strength why are you making him the commander? There’s plenty of other azorious commanders that don’t rely on their tricks to function. He’s Similar to Teysa Karlov decks focus on her deathharmonicon ability or a feather deck focusing on cheap targeting cantrips that want most of the cards they play to synergize with the commander ability.
@@salubrioussnail The thing is, you shouldn't be building your deck so that Brago is your only blink source, specifically because commanders can be locked out for a variety of reasons. Now, the majority of blink cards do focus on creatures, but Displacer Kitten, Felidar Guardian, Flickerwisp, Glimmerpoint Stag, and Leonin Relic-Warder can all hit enchantments, for example. So there are ways to get use out of it with secondary blink pieces as well, which also help move your game plan forward without needing Brago. Not all commanders can be replaced so easily, but redundancy is an important thing to consider when making a deck like this one.
Something o find is helpful since I do t have a lot of time, but I'm fairly experience in actually playing is put something together quickly using edhrec, play test 5times, find out what feels bad to draw and what your deck feels like it needs more of, replace the bad feeling cards. Then play test again and repeating this until I feel the deck is "finished". This has encouraged me to play more as opposed to build a deck, scrutinize it to the 9s only to find out when I play it that I don't enjoy the play pattern the deck encourages
If you use EDHrec for what it is intended for, it works perfectly fine. You use it to find cards that have synergy with your commander. You then pull them out from all your binders and make a selection of the ones you want to play with the most. Removal & staples should be completely ignored unless the removal/carddraw/landfetch has some synergy with your commander. Then they should be prioritized since a piece of removal that has synergy with your commander is more fun than removal that does not. When you have all the cards you want for your commander, then the rest of the deck slots for all the 'fixed' interaction & ramp cards can be filled with what you have available in your binders. Then in the end, you can have a final look to assess the real power level and can always opt to exchange some of the commander synergy cards with boring staples like Consecrated sphinx. At least, that is how I do it. I know most of the commons/uncommons with some synergy displayed on EDHrec are often not good enough, but I also know that loads of these decks are made by people with tighter budgets.
Subbed, loves the animations and stuff. Really good video.
Honestly EDHrec is perfect for keeping up with how to keep a deck "up to date" more-so than to build a deck from scratch. having the "new additions" on the top helps lazy players like me not having to keep up with 11 sets/precons/secret lairs in the span of two weeks or however fast sets are coming out nowadays.
That’s definitely one of the better features on the site IMO and also helps mitigate the issue of certain cards getting entrenched within the site’s recommendations.
My main use for edhrec is mostly to see what cards that I already own that I could put in my decks or to find cards I wouldn't have ever known or thought about
I try to always add removal, card draw and ramp pieces first bc it’s so much harder later if you’ve already eaten those slots up with synergy
/game plan pieces.
Fantastic video, keep up the good work!
PSA: If you're gonna upload a precon with the intent of messing with the list later, make it private until youre confident its "done".
This fights the data looping.
I remember working on my obeka deck and looking through the recs. There were several non-bos due to people not underetanding exactly what wording works with obeka's effect and why that's so. Cant imagine too many people were happy finding that out later on.
Being a new player and building my first commander deck, it did take a bit of thinking and planning on how to even begin. (I was also a yugioh player for about ~10 years so deck building as a concept wasn't foreign to me)
EDHRec *did* give some logical synergistic cards towards the commander I chosen. But not other support spells like graveyard hate, recursion or interaction with other cards like swords. That's when I realized it is recommending cards that go and support the commander but not the *player* (if that makes sense). Circumstances that calls for a board wipe or exiling cards from a graveyard, etc.
Not to mention that the general 'direction' of the deck I wanted it to go might not go hand in hand with EDHRec's recommendations too. Personally I use cards from specific planes. So if a commander is from Ikoria, I will use as many cards as possible from Ikoria. (searching art:ikoria, etc)
11:45 - One thing I've noticed with some pods/tables is that being the one to run pressure & removal can turn into either getting hated out of the game real quick, or dealing with players upset that they got focused out of a game real quick. For example, I was at a table the other day with a pretty new player running The First Sliver. The correct play in my mind is relentless attacking to kill them before the luck of the cascade lottery farts half the deck onto the table, but two of the other players seemed determined not to knock the new guy out first.
If I run a greedy ramp deck in 1v1 I've got only myself to blame if my opponent flattens me. With 40 life to protect the greed play and two other players who might try to kneecap you, it feels like aggressive decks just get sandbagged sometimes.
Whenever I make a new commander deck I look up any card that I can think of using scryfall.
Before finalizing the list and ordering the missing card I usually go to edhrec to see if I missed any cards, but usually I already have all the most used cards on my list.
I also built a Volo deck with Second Harvest and Junk Winder and have seen both underperform. However, I keep them in the deck on the off chance I can use them with Hornet Queen because that's what we live for.
Great video man. The concepts you hit on are what me and my play group have been talking about for years to describe why exactly we felt frustrated with the rest of our magic community. We find enjoyment out of the distinct counterplay and interaction that is exclusive to EDH because of its multiplayer and singleton gameplay. But, we have found that many players in the community want to jam all of the stock cards from EDHRec which we find underwhelming, boring, or flat out bad. So, its nice to see someone speak out about this in the community. Thanks
I'm a bit late to this, but the idea of a rarely used partner pairing or single commander really strongly appeals to me for this reason. It feels like my decisions are genuinely my own when I get useless data from edhrec. It is also incredibly fun to push commanders in a direction that is diametrically opposed to what you might find in the typical list. Cedh commander pairings like Rog/Szat aren't going to specialize in reanimation, but they certainly are good for that strategy since they provide you with card advantage to offset your discard synergies.
I agree; building something like Dune-Brood Nephilim was fun because I had to scape for data myself from similar commanders, different strategies, and the seldom few decks out there that weren't even on EDHRec or Scryfall or TappedOut or what have you. That was cool 😎
Awesome video! This is the same reason I don't use edhrecs top cards for my videos anymore! Subbed!!
I won't pretend to be good at identifying cards as win-more to know when to avoid them and better prioritize interaction, but I also make sure to only resort to data aggregation for deck building tips after doing my own manual search for useful cards and making several trimming passes. Occasionally it will heavily influence my selection, but usually it just helps me identify blindspots in my initial search to better refine my deck's capabilities.
Solid video, mate
I take the opposite approach. I start with EDHrec to see which direction people have taken a deck I wanna build and then do further research on individual cards with scryfall to see if I can find hidden gems
You sure did put a lot of effort into this video for only having 166 subs...
Happy to be 167. Let's gooooo. Keep it up bro!
So it seems we should basically use it as a starting place to see what type of card interaction you should go for
Great video on a topic more players should think about. thanks
Not enough people use the filtering and theme options to sort through the data much more precisely. The default page can be good for an overview, but even straightforward commanders can be played many ways, and those tools let you see closer to the strategy you want
Thoughtful, thank you for this perspective!
I would be interested in you taking a look at my decks in Moxfield and letting me know what you think. I do use EDHrec, but I try to think about how the card works in the deck and make adjustments other then just adding the highly suggested cards. However I feel all my decks are highly reliant on the commander.
I don’t feel fully qualified to nor do I particularly want to spend the time critiquing specific decks, but I can give you this note. Decks reliant on the commander aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but you should consider a few things:
1. How high is the commander’s mana cost? If it’s 4 or less then you’re not shelling out too much after it dies, but more than that and a couple removal spells will ruin your day.
2. Protection. I have an intrinsic hatred for playing a deck that relies on keeping a commander in play, so for my one deck that is fully based around keeping the commander in play for long stretches, I run 12 protection spells (it’s an equipments deck so most of them are generally decent as well).
3. How scary is the commander? Volo is an example of a commander that you need to kill immediately or the deck might just murder you the following turn, but there are lots of grindier commanders where this isn’t the case. Scarier commanders will be more likely to get bonked and thus shut down a commander-based deck.
Very wel said and very valid points to be had. I do think that indeed if this formula keeps going and all decks eventually turn out EDHREC copies.. That we are essential just going in circles.
I have found quite often that cards I add to my deck are not even in EDHREC as a card suggestion, that I find kind of odd, cause to me it was very clear that said card would fit very wel in the deck.
But that is the thing, people wil start using EDHREC as their go2, build from there and that data wil be added, making it more and more streamlined towards very specific cards eventually making people miss out on a whole bunch of cards that they could be using.
Win more cards are definitely good to take out of your deck, though this might be difficult to know what cards are win more sometimes. The 'Crucible of Fire' was the most clear one, giving dragons +3/+3 really doesn't do much. They are already big creatures, so being slightly bigger does pretty much nothing. Still many would add that to their deck, cause they feel it is in theme. Heck I might have even used it in my dragon deck at some point.
I always look at EDHREC with a grain of salt. I check what cards they mention for the decks and then look at them critically. But I get that for newer players that might be a difficult task, thus they fall into the pitfalls of such sites.
Thanks for this video, really appreciate it. :D
Some good points. Personally, I like EDHREC because it shows me cards I otherwise would never know existed. As well as gives me a price point and ease of purchase. Yeah, it's not perfect, but with tens of thousands of cards out there over 30 years it can make it much easier for someone new or returning after a long hiatus.
Yeah I only play casually and haven't really played until a few years ago, so it's useful for finding out stuff like keywords I didn't know or specific text wording that I wasn't searching for on scryfall that greatly increases the amount of cards that will work with my decks.
Last I checked there are roughly 21,000 cards that are legal in EDH. As you point out there are simply too many cards to ever remember them all.
Although I think that a solid 90% of all cards could be ruled out of being added into any particular deck in under 1 second of examination. But even considering 10% of all cards is still a monumental task.
Yeah. For me I use edhrec as a commander's synergy list. Then add in archetype staples from a few of their archetype pages along with similar commanders. Check multiple shared color combos if possible. Then just toss in all the in color staple cards, usually including a removal suite, tutors, drawpower, and ramp. This usually gives me a broader pool to cut down from.
This is Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
That's why I supplement EDHRec with curated scryfall searches at which I've become quite adept and going to discord communities so I can learn more about how the deck generally functions. Going to discord is more for my higher powered decks and less so necessary for anything I want to be low-mid power.
And my decklists are kept unlisted on Moxfield for the most part. If there's one I'm particularly proud of, I'll let it go public but I don't actually contribute to the data.
Playing a synergy card over a commander staple is a good thing imo. Even if its lowers the power.
Otherwise, I agree with many views. I'd call it 'enablers' and 'pay offs'. If enablers are also good on their own, that's a card to keep. And don't run too many pay offs, rather more Interaction.
So far, my best use of EDHRec has been as a place to start when I find an intersting card, but have no idea what commanders could use it. Getting an idea of what people like to do with it helps the crawl through Scryfall much easier. In the end I always end up doing something dumb like taking out good removal for more thematic removal, anyway.
very good video. m main use of edh rec is the "average deck" option and just trying out new commanders and playstyles while i was learning the game and just wanted to see what was possible. now that i know more about mtg i tend to not use edhrec as much and just use it for ideas and neat combos
Personally I find edhrec best when there is a certain type of card I'm after but isn't always phrased the same or I don't know how it would be worded. Assuming it's a type of effect that makes sense for a commander I can typically find examples of what I'm after and then use them to inform searches on sites like scryfall
Wizards, thankfully, has been eratting cards to have the same verbiage, which is making scryfall better. But I do get that sometimes you have to word the same idea multiple ways to get all the cards you're looking for.
Commander isn’t 4 player, it’s multiplayer with usually at least three, but there’s no official guidance on how many people play.
Imagine a 20 person game of commander
4 player isn't a requirement, but the game is clearly balanced for 4 players. Any more or less than 4 total players makes effects that happen once per opponent weaker or stronger than they were intended to be.
I always filter by cards i want to use on a commander i want. Turns out there isnt always a lot to go off of. I searched for 2 or 3 specific cards on Syr Konrad and my deck was the only one that came up for the reccomended.