My former LGS gave "prizes" at commander night but they were all in the form of a raffle. The store owner also made sure to take care of the younger players who couldn't afford all the best cards by making sure they gave out a few extra promos to those players. As someone who comes from a family without disposable income I appreciate that our community helped out those players (many of use giving them cards we didn't need but they could use or even given some of our store credit from tournament play to those players who could use it).
My old favorite LGS (went under because their lease was raised and they couldn't afford it... they've been gone for 5 years and no one has rented that space yet ffs) also did raffles. If you showed up to a paid event you got a raffle ticket for a booster box, so if you went to a bunch of events every month you could rack up raffle tickets. It was a good system.
Things like this make me realise again how mad I am at some of the people at our store who can't afford cards and use proxies. I used 2 or 3 proxies in one of my decks, nothing powerful, just 2 uncommons, but 2 of the guys who are regularly at the store and who I play DnD with just absolutely dunked on me for using proxies. It's now apparently an "inside joke" that I'm the proxy player (which makes no sense), and when I asked them why they feel so strongly against it, they say it's because they are "old school" (which also doesn't make any sense, since people have been using proxies for a long time) It's nice to hear that at some LGS somewhere, poorer people are actually being catered for.
@@ThePhoenixSlayer Lol, I'm sure I can find some unlimited basic lands with "Shivan Dragon" written on them in sharpie and then played unsleeved if they want to feel real 'old school'.
I used to go to a store that has unfortunately closed that had prizes for Commander but they were door prizes. You paid 10 bucks for the month and every week you would get at least a pack and sometimes more I walked away with multiple art prints from that store but it was never based on winning games it was just based on being there. I miss that place.
That's how my lgs do it. It's always door prizes, or a random reason for a prize. Like who is wearing a band tee, or a color of a deck box ect. Never is it based on if you win or lose games.
@@trizkit995 I did once play in a non-cEDH tournament with prizes at GenCon several years ago that worked out well. Each player was given some vouchers that counted as a number of prize wall tickets, 100 I think, the winner of each four person pod got 1 voucher from the other players and then you were meant to give your vouchers to the players that you thought contributed best to the game. Things like "coolest deck concept" or "most clutch play". I got a bunch of vouchers for taking out the Flash-Hulk player with an Aetherflux resevoir storm. It was fun.
My lgs does something Similar. Amazing people. You pay 5$ for Casual commander nights for FNM, with the main rule is "No infinites by like... turn 3-5.", and they do enforce it with warnings from experience. For new players, it's such a good gesture. you pay 5$ a week, but you get 5$ recharged on their gift card for store credit. (Which understandably, can't be used for tournament entry, but literally anything, Magic, Warhammer, VIdeo games, Booster boxes, etc is available on their gift cards.) So within a month, you get 20$ of store credit just for playing, have fun playing commander for a reasonable 5$ every Friday, no prizes to attract new players to have fun, and not play to win, etc. And be able to... For example, buy a Nintendo switch game, for having fun playing Magic. It's a win/win, and the lgs has nearly 50 players for fnm. It shows that participation awards attract more players compared to offering prizes for the CedH players/toxic players
I think it's a great strategy too. My LGS does something similar for YGO, mostly because they get OTS packs anyways, but you pay an event fee for YGO night and then get an OTS pack in round 2 regardless of record. The top players get normal booster product too, but for the most part you can just hang out and play casually and it's great.
Thank you. I run an LGS and every commander event with prizes I've ever hosted has been a nightmare. Just bad feelings all around. I've since moved commander to a weekly free-to-play day where every hour we raffle off a promo to someone checked in to the event. We often get 40+ player and they organize themselves. Some play casual, some play cedh. A simple hourly raffle is enough to encourage players to check in, which helps my WPN metrics and in turn provides the shop with more promos. We don't even charge a table fee. My game room exists to create demand of the stuff I sell in my store front. On commander days we spend the whole day taking in card-list orders, selling singles, and selling packs. The enthusiasm in the game room alone is enough to generate plenty of sales for the day. It's often one of our best days of the week sales wise. We get requests for commander tournaments and leagues and I just know better. It's not for us.
My local lgs did a two headed giant league but it turned Cedh very quickly. After that they did precon league where you’d buy from the recent set and upgrade the precon 5 times for 5-6 weeks. Needless to say the precon league was a Lot more popular you get points based on number of eliminations and placement in the pod.
See this feels like the fun way to do things. Everyone buys a precon there, thus supporting the store, and you all battle it out on a more even playing field. Some of the most fun games I've played have been 'Oops! All Precons!', and even more so when it's a new (to you or otherwise) deck. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the hell out of some sweaty CEDH, but sometimes it's hard to beat basic precon games.
My last precon league was similar but was a horrible experience as opposed to the precon league at the same shop before. Points based elims systems became more of players just waiting until the 5 minute mark and getting a kill before time runs out, so they'd still be alive for points instead of trying to win from the start. It gets worse if you end up in a pod where two players are friends. I believe I'm not the only one who loathed it because after the second week they could barely get full pod together from what I know.
What my LGS does is charges you 10 buck but gives you $10 in store credit it solves a lot of the problems with free comander nights. The price is still "free" but you put $10 and you get $10 out as long as you spend it at the store.
I see the same kind of thing at my favorite LGS. Plus everyone gets something out of the promo bucket. Another store I went to didn't do a table fee at all, but had less prizes and did them in a raffle. Excellent stuff.
I entered into a 2-headed commander event at a commandfest with a buddy, and we teamed up urza and teferi, both very highly tuned cedh level decks. We sat down across from korvold and ur-dragon our first pod and though “ok, sure, this could be some powerful sleeper home brew action”, then proceeded to shut them out of the game so hard that they only ever used a nevinyrral’s disk, which cleared my board but my friend combo’d out the next turn, turn 5. We felt kinda bad but we paid to play, so we assumed it was going to be very competitive and brought our sweaty decks.
My LGS owner started chargin $5 table fees. Too many people would show up for EDH night, at most pay a dollar for a coke or water out of the fridge, be there 4-10 hours, then bounce. Someone confronted him about it at one point and he bluntly told them if they're not spending money at the store they're not customers and customers are who get priority on tables. As one of the few people who has pumped a significant amount of money relative to the usual clientele into the store I don't ever personally have to pay it though I have covered for a couple other people. He also used to give a FNM promo pack (the little 3-5 card one idr exactly) to each pod and instead of one person winning the pack, the better you place in the pod the earlier you get to pick a card from that promo pack. Everyone is basically guaranteed something, and it makes people feel a lot better when there's 2 or more good hits in the little pack and they *have* to be split. That stopped after a shitty employee opened almost all of them thinking they weren't on camera and threw away anything they didn't want from the little packs. If you offer prizes for non-competitive commander you have a tough balancing act ahead of you.
The way my LGS does it is to randomize promos at the table. We also have no entry fee. We let people know we hand out promos at random, and that winning the pod doesn't mean you get the promo pack. People seem happy with that arrangement, and folks are playing deck that are more fun and less powerful. Nothing is banned, no special rules. We also tell people that if you go infinite, the rest of the table reserves the right to play for second place while you sit and watch them durdle for the next 30-45 mins ;)
Vince, my LGS' Commander night does a bounty event. You get points for doing things: IE, you get a point if you roll a 1 or 20 on a D20 when determining turn order. You get a point for being the first to deal damage. And on new set releases, you get points for doing set specific things: IE, casting an Adventure Spell, etc... Lastly, you get negative points for "toxic" stuff: playing fast mana on turn 1, eliminating someone before their 5th turn, going infinite.
My local game store had a very interesting system involving an actual bingo card, with various things a player could do in a game of Magic printed on it, varying from "cast your commander 15 times across all your games" to "attack with 20 creatures" to "Win without casting your commander". When one of those things happened, you get a stamp on that space, and if you fill out a line, you got a pack. I think it encouraged people to still play to win, but not just pubstomp people, because there were other ways to "win" besides just actually winning the game.
We did a Commander league where you used the precons that came out that year as your deck and we did have prize support from the store. We did the achievement thing as well and it was a lot of fun.
My lgs gives you a random draft booster (or if you're lucky a collector booster) that you literally pull from a mystery box lol. Then one person from every pod is randomly given a promo pack. And then on occasion promo cards are randomly given. I ended up getting one of the lotus pedals myself. Despite no prize support, commander night is easily the most popular event at the store. (Almost a shame because limited events never have any attendance)
The thing my store does is monthly task that people do like "playing a battle" or "having 5 different permanent types on the bf" and such. There's a certain number of task set for a month and there's a buy-in and buy-out that is pretty much capped. Most often than not even when there's a task for winning games as an achievement a lot of the time other players help that person at getting their task complete and it usually doesn't sour the game.
Our store does a giveaway instead, which is 100% uninfluenced by performance. The one time they did give limited promos based on whoever did a task first, we all jumped on their asses about it.
I wish I could say prizes are ok when it's small stuff. This is what lead to my hate of competitive players. Long before EDH became popular and became Commander, my store was an early adopter. A customer got into it and wanted to push the format. We always encouraged that so we promoted it, etc. He put prizes out from his own collection. Nothing huge, just basic building block cheap rares that are good cards for the format to help people along. What happened? A trust fund baby and his 3 friends came in with their competitive decks because ZOMG THERE ARE PRIZES and started roflstomping everyone. For what? Janky dollar rares that they already had multiple copies of? They turned our 25+ player EDH nights into 6 or 7 people if we were lucky. They completely destroyed the scene and never understood why. When we asked them to please tune down their decks, one of them whined "you just hate blue" (he played Kira). The Trust Fund Baby played Zur the Enchanter in a deck that was fully foiled and foreign.
@@W4llh4k - this was when EDH was in its infancy. Also, have you ever considered that some people like the casual format that EDH was intended to be and don't want to be forced to play the bastardized competitive version?
@@jumanjiman86 - that's when I look at them and go "it's a casual format, you can't ban proxies, sorry." That's the type of store that I PRAY has a local competitor, because I'd start running events there just to ruin the other store.
My LGS does a precon league as their tournament arc for EDH. It helps them move product but also auto-generates an environment where the decks are by design pretty balanced.
I visited my parents for the summer and a new lgs had opened up in the town, and what a pleasurable surprise it was to me, as an avid cedh player, that they had a weekly edh tournament separate from just casual edh night that they ran with pay in and prizes. I had assumed, that because it was a tournament, and because there was a different day for casual magic, that people would be playing high quality decks. So I brought good ol' turbo naus and proceeded to absolutely trounce everyone else involved. Not only was it mostly casual decks, some barely better than precons, but it was a 1 v 1 environment that meant I was completely unstoppable unless I intentionally blundered, which I did a couple times over the next 2 weeks as I was understanding the 'format' to give other people a chance. Flash forward 2 months, I'm playing a different deck on 1v1 night and it's far more to scale with at least a reasonable half of the competition. But now half of the people there hate me because I was a pub stomper, and several people at casual edh night refused to even play with me, even though I was planning on sitting down with an upgraded precon and some had never even played magic with me. All because I was told prizes were on the line and people were playing to win months prior.
During the pandemic I invited my trusted friends over for a weekly Commander Night. I had TWO House rules. First, the Mulligan. Partial Mulligans: you look at your hand say "I don't want these 3 seven drops in my hand" put them aside, draw 3 new cards, and shuffle the old ones back in. You could do this one time only. My store adopted this rule, but as cEDH players took over, it was phased out as they would just "sculpt their perfect hands." Try this one at home if you're not playing cEDH though, it's great. The second rule was simple. If you won a game, you started first in the next game. Didn't matter if any or all players switched decks, you still go first. And we still hate you for winning the last game! Good luck. For prizes, I joked about having a leader board. That was it. Fun was had for all.
My lgs does offer prizes, but the prize pack can either go to the winner of the pod or you can collectively choose to roll dice for it. They also offer different tiers that cost more but have better prizes, which lets everyone play at the level they’re most comfortable with.
I fixed the Commander night at my store I help run by making it a buy-in, but everyone just gets two packs at a discount for joining in with their entry fee. Everyone knows if they play two pods worth of games they get two packs and theyre satisfied. Its been a huge help for keeping the games more casual and not creating an arms race.
It’s probably the reason my lgs keeps commander away from prizes, and just hands promo packs out randomly. Any prized event we have is anything except commander. The issue with that, is our turnout for those events is abysmal compared to casual commander, since no one wants to compete. I make no exaggeration when I say the turnout for Casual commander (Friday-Saturday) is anywhere between 20-40, and for anything else, maybe 8 on a good day.
This is why I play at the bar. We get like 40 people in there on Tuesdays because we all are trying to avoid the characters that frequent game stores. The vibe has always been on point. New players, 25 year players, we all do whatever we want and nobody bitches.
I think my lgs does something decent to cater to all edh players. They have three queues. Casual has a small banlist (no two card combos or 0 mana rocks) explicitly intended for newer players and casual decks. Midtier has no added bans, and its free game on combos, and theres also an explict cedh pod. All three have prizes, but its done so that even if you lose both games, your going home with packs, or store credit equal to the 20 dollar entrance fee. Winning gets you more packs but not store credit. Its not perfect but it keeps most people happy.
Don't forget that WPN stores cannot run tournaments that allow Proxies. The problem seems to be how a store can foster a fun EDH community while still making some money/moving some product. How do you determine who gets the cool prizes at the end of the day? Pure randomness also might feel bad for the people involved.
My local WPN store allows a proxy friendly cEDH tournament to play there, but they don't run it. That's how they get around it. It's a nod and a wink situation where the guy who runs it works there but does it on his own time, through his own organization. Your entry in to the tournament is split between the store as a table fee and his group for prize support.
The problem is Commander is well known to be a broken format. Cedh is a joke. It would be more fun to give the prize to a random game goal or just straight randomly.
@@nykthosacolyte5710 true but don’t WPN stores get better promos and other stuff based on event attendance? Why would they run non-sanctioned events? Encouraging proxy events is counterintuitive to selling singles. Leave the proxies to free play.
@@chim007azo because usually when stores allow proxies for events how they are SUPPOSED to they are MONEY maker events that they rarely do. Like paper vintage with a high cost to play relative to the prizing. It's worth having a night without your prize support being increased when many stores have multiple non mtg nights anyways when it means getting a ton of money in entry fees.
I can GUARANTEE you, there WILL be people who “bring a friend” (are as i call them, co-conspirators) specifically to play off of each other and kingmake. “you play X, and I’ll play Y and benefit, then when i, er, *we* win, we can either split prizes or alternate who gets the weekly prize” There are some super trashy people who play this game, and they definitely aren’t above doing this stuff. They already do it to ruin casual games.
I think stores should adopt a voting system. Don't give the prizes to the winner of a pod, but have the players vote (anonymously) on stuff like coolest play or most sportsman like, ect. Then prize based on that. This puts the incentive where you want it, on the fun and not necessarily the winning.
This. Also seen another comment about deducting points for an infinite combo, I think that’s stupid. Games have to end, I have 40+ commander decks and only 3 have infinite combo, so I am not a fan of playing them myself, but I don’t begrudge others playing them.
our FNM has "solved" this issue by giving players a point. There is one point for winning the pot and then each participant has one point to give away to a player for whichever reason they see fit. This created a casual friendly environment where sportsmanship, creative play and general having fun are promoted and rewarded at the end of the evening. We host this type of event once before a prerelease and all the other weeks we have casual commander without prize support, as we have other forms of magic which we do have prize support for on those evenings.
I stopped going to my lgs for edh night because I got Food chained in 3 out of 4 matches and the other match someone won with godo turn three. Multiple people were using the same food chain combo deck I didn’t even matched poorly, they were just copying each others CEDH deck to get the 3 free packs as prizes. Fun times.
My LGS does a regular event that is usually a cedh slugfest, then they do an event with non-sol ring mana-positive rocks banned that has a set of objectives which give points for completing them. The objectives are things like "have the largest creature in the game" or "get a commander damage win"
My FLGS does a weekly casual commander tournament. It's free to enter. It regularly gets 60+ players. Players in a pod vote after each game and the store owners mix up the pods for the next game. Prizes are only awarded for the _Most Creative Deck_ and _Best Sportsmanship._ It really fosters a great culture. Half of the players stay around to play more after the tourney ends. It is generally accepted that spicey decks should come out late if the pod agrees. The prizes aren't weak either. Precon decks are common top prizes, collector boosters, and the like. Last week saw the top vote-getters receive Commander Masters precons.
My old LGS used a point system for month-long EDH leagues. I remember a trust fund kid who brought in a deck that was casting his commander (Maelstrom Wanderer) as early as turn two on a regular basis. One of the scoring points was understanding of the necessity of taking out troublesome lands. You would lose a point for every land you destroyed beyond the first that was controlled by the same opponent, in one turn. There were actually a dozen permanent scoring categories, as well as a random list of another 100 that a handful were drawn from. It made things interesting, but also prevented pre-designing decks to take advantage of a certain scoring category (none of the permanent ones were particularly back-breaking, though I can't remember the specifics... it's been years since the store was open).
@@chim007azo at least when you have the real thing to show I get a show and a glimpse at cherished magic history with my blowout. I own an unlimited plateau and a badlands myself.
@@h2ojr1how about we show off our history outside of the game and play a light casual game of commander without infinite tokens or +1/+1’s. Sounds like a better time to me
There's an LGS in Ireland where you do buy into commander night and you get a pack from the most recent standard set. I think that is the best way to do it imho
An lgs I used to go to (they had to close down 😢 ) once had a commander league where they gave you a bingo card with different achievements for games on it (think cast x creatures, draw so many cards in a game ect) then gave prizes for filling out the card. You paid a small fee each night you wanted to play in the league. I also don't mind paying at my local lgs each sunday. They have you pay 5 or 6 to get into the tournament then at the end of the 3 rounds you get either a draft or set pack depending on how much you paid there isnt any prize support in it but they set up random pods each round, which is refreshing.
At a local lgs ive gone to they do commander events with prize pools, but it is a point system where everyone in a pod gets to vote for their favorite deck they faced, and points are determined by the amount of votes and not my winning matches
My LGS has two nights for commander. The first is 3 rounds, no prizes, $11 buy-in but you get $8 back as store credit. The second night has the same buy-in but is 4 rounds and promos are handed out RANDOMLY to whoever is playing. They literally put a big wheel up on the screen to select people. There's another store nearby that does similar, the prizes are given randomly and they're usually a couple foil commons or uncommons from the most recent set. I think that's the only way to do "prizes" without commander turning into a spike fest.
Our "store"(more like friend that runs a bar that organizes MtG stuff) does not do Commander tournaments. The usual Commander night goes like this. 5€ for the entrance. You get 1 drink (alcoholic too). Go nuts. Drunk commander at 1am is where it's at. The nearest LGS does do Commander tournaments and they have a custom banlist and all. People still try to break it and it alienates new players.
My store does a commander league that runs for ~2 months. People get points for winning games and at the end of the league, the top 3 people get prizes. There's a different theme each league and the budget is usually $50. Infinite combos are banned and there are usually a few commanders each league that are banned, but often the worst ones are priced out. This helps the store sell cards and incentivizes people to come in while keeping the playing field fairly level. I like this system and think it works fairly well. This gives a commonality for most patrons to play together and then if people want to play more powerful decks for whatever, they can do so outside of the league.
Where I live has 2 pretty well traveled stores. One of them, has an enforced casual commander with a small rules list, i.e. no 1 mana searchers, no 2 card infinite combos, no proxies etc. the prizes are randomly rolled for so no incentive to win or lose. The other location has a much more competitive scene due to winning having a higher likelihood to earn prizes with no restriction on decks, and thus has a much more toxic scene. I have seen people there play Winter Orb Stax, Tergrid, Braids land sac/destruction, and Tivit infinite turns.
My local originally did prizes based on winning, but after a while the meta became slowly more and more competitive, so they eventually converted to door prizes. The power level has not risen since then by much thankfully, as people haven't felt like they needed to buy better and better cards to actually get prizes
Returning to my LGS after lockdown with a handful of budget commander decks at £25 each alongside a friend who did the same. We pay £3 each to sit there all night, buy some snacks from the store and have fun. Each player gets to pick a promo at the end of the night and the growing number of people who have also taken up the EDH deck for the price of a pre release challenge don't care about winning - just that it was fun and watch each others decks go off as intended. It has made commander accessible to all - introduced new players to the game and store without the fear of being completely ruined by turn 4.
Great video Vince. Here in Spain, at least locally where I live, for the tournaments we have to buy a booster to play and they normally raffle another prize. What I have found very strange is that cEDH and EDH players play all in the same tournaments. I am new to Commander, having mostly played Modern, Standard, Draft/Limited and Legacy on Magic Online. I was shocked that there was no talk of rule(s) zero. So I rolled up to play and was met in game 1 with docksides and all the moxes you can imagine.
On a public holiday recently my LGS ran a treasure hunt Commander event. Every half hour a card would be named and the first player to cast it got to pick a prize. To make things more interesting when Cyclonic Rift was named the prize was only given if you cast it normally. The only problem I found was you were tempted to hold back key cards you thought might get called as it was all cards commonly seen in Commander games leaning heavily into stuff printed in Commander Masters. But there were plenty of cards commonly printed in pre-cons too. Regular commander on Mondays and Fridays they charge $5 if you are not a member but that goes into store credit. Usually the only prizes involve promo cards given away to everyone plus everyone goes into the door prize draw. The shop doesn't skimp on these either as I have personally won a couple of set booster boxes over time and there are usually 3 or 5 door prize draws with the set boosters being the big one if enough players are there on the day/night. This encourages players to spend at the store out of loyalty as the store really looks after us. Plus they sell coffee, drinks and snacks. I'll happily pay a little more if I have to if it helps keep the store afloat.
My local shop does $5 for an "FNM Commander" event. You get to play, a $5 (or less) pack, and a promo from a giant stack of old promos/ non-foil promo packs.
My LGS does Commander nights occassionally. When we join, we are given the choice of CEDH or casual. CEDH, prizes are given for the last man standing. Casual OTOH, prizes are gained through playing bingo. There are 1-5 randomized bingo sheets, prizes are given for filling all 5 in the middle, the corners, and 5 in a row. Lately, there has been a 4th prize for a super-secret list that you only get after you successfully complete all 25 challenges. Thus far, one person has successfully collected the super secret prize. But casual games, there is no prize given for knocking out your opponents.
My store is typically $5 for casual commander with 2 rounds, and if you win at a table you get a $5 credit and a promo card or two, if you win the first table you get more promo cards with the winner at that table getting yet another promo card or pack. Then if there is a real prize on the line, the entry is $10, then it mostly plays out the same with a $10 credit and booster packs for the winners table.
My local card shop has a free event set up and there are prizes but the prizes are randomly given out. If you sign up you're entered into the raffle, if you win you're pod you get 1 more chance of getting in, but it's still a random chance. For casual commander I think that works, but at a cEDH level I can see an actual prize structure being balanced around it
"If you win your pod you get", nope nope, any reward for winning is a terrible idea and eventually leads to bad outcomes. If you incentivize winning in any way, then eventually some players will prioritize winning at the expense of anything else. That's just human nature.
@@Tvboy777 It has yet to cause any issues and they've been doing it for years, the odds do not increase enough from winning for it to entice anyone. The extra chance of a pack doesn't get advertised either.
Stories about our old LGS. Before I moved we went to a store that you paid $5 USD and you got three tickets. You put your name on one and drop it in a fish bowl. The other two you give to somebody you played that night for wahtever reason. At the end of the night they would draw names out to give away pack in whatever was in standard at the time. The other thing they would do is have minigames kinda like the price is right, Everybody from your pod would go up there and they would play this game. Normally at least two people came away with packs, but you could always game with them to spin the wheel. So basically it was an experience just playing at the store no matter how your games worked out. Also nobody played CEDH during those days. They had a night where you can play in a tournament for prizes which was for CEDH decks. To me that is the best way to play Commander. We moved and I miss my old LGS.
Fun warhammer events I went to had prizes for: Best Painted (of course), but also "Most Thematic", "Most Fun", "Best Sportsman" etc. Those would be fine for commander.
The store I like to play at distributes prizes via drawing for commander night, like they pull a name from the pool of participants to win one of several prizes they have set aside. They also do low stakes prizes for prereleases: 1 set booster per win, 1 draft booster per tie, paid out at each round. Though the new play packs will probably fuck with that a little.
I like how one of my local stores does it. You pay $10 for a "quest card" and a raffle ticket. The Quests are set up like Sagas; complete the first part for a raffle ticket, then you can complete the second part for another, and then the third part for a final raffle ticket. Raffles called every 2 hours (running from noon to 6 pm) The quest parts themselves are things you'll likely do with minimal foreknowledge; stuff like "ramp 3 turns in a row", "have X 2/2 creatures", "end your turn with no untapped permanents", stuff like that. And since it's a raffle, you never know what the reward is going to be, so how crazy you may need to go for them. It could be a draft pack, set pack, collector pack, Prerelease kit, a playmat, I've seen quite a few different things up. Do some people just come to play and decide that their high-power decks just blow the whole pod apart? Sure, but you can absolutely get people working together so everyone can get their tickets. Edit: I myself have taken decks in not realizing just how powerful they are (ohai Necron Dynasty with minor tweaks), or also gone into a pod where I was told "everyone else is playing high power" and I show up with a minor adjustment to the Enduring Enchantments deck (and won :D)
When I had time to go play commander weekly i was apart of a pretty uniqe commander leauge. Yes we did play for some prizes, but we also had really fun build around ideas. Each week we would tweak the rules to make the games way more intresting, like one week you could only play 3 cmc or less decks, another week we could play 2 copies of each card. they were very chill with proxies and the grand prize was you got to ban or unban any card for the leauge. No matter what everyone always got some form of booster pack even if you were dead last. you also got achievement points for doing cool stuff and helping others out. This also wasn't the main commander group as they also had tons of free commander events.
My local LGS (also in Michigan, like gamer's wharf) has two commander nights. One is the commander league where there's store credit on the line based a number of points gained for various actions throughout the month. As well as a casual night where people pay $5 to enter, and everyone who plays gets their $5 back in store credit. As I play periodically I've been having more fun during the Friday night due to being able to use less optimized decks. Current favorite being a $20 Buduget Anhelo deck. That said, because it's not only based on who wins, but what game actions are taken (or not taken) during the game, I enjoy their approach for a prize oriented league.
The idea of an achievement list is very interesting, because WotC themselves did something similar for Return to Ravnica block pre-releases. Things like "find another Gruul player at the pre-release and high five them" and whatnot. Simple and fun things that encourage you to find a cool combo, or keep attending pre-releases. It was pretty sweet.
One of the game stores I play at on occasion for their commander night is they do a buy in and then each table gets a randomozed set of achievements and whatever player does the achievement first will get a pack for that achievement. So for example: First Blood Cast your commander x times Reanimate x creatures End the game with the least amount of lands Have the most cards in deck at the end of the game Etc They are only revealed after decks are selected and the round has begun. So sometimes decks cant actually do the achievements which is somewhat feels bad. But it works.
The way it works at my LGS is you buy in to get a pack and you go into a raffle for collector boosters or boxes or sleeves or other prizes. I managed to win the last two weeks and go me some Dr Who collectors packs which was sweet :).
What happens at my stores is one breaks open promo packs and we pick cards at random and the other one, they do a drawing and people win multiple packs.
I completely feel this. I left my old card shop because they had a edh and cedh nights and people would build and bring cedh to the edh night and demolish everyone other than the people doing the same purely because there's a prize during one game one of these guys complained because me and the other lower power players at the table ganged up on him. It's like what do you expect when you are outclassing us completely and we know before the game starts how you play. I even participated in a dollar general pod same thing happened someone brought a hyper efficient deck and ruined everyone else's time. Point is cedh is separate for a reason.
Don't know how I missed this video, but it perfectly sums up how I feel about commander prizes. I have to drive an hour away just to find a store without prizes where I can chill and play commander, and I do it every time.
Idea for if you want to incorporate prizes into an EDH tournament (not CEDH, just regular EDH): Have one prize for the winner worth the price of entry but not much more (single booster pack or something like that). But, in addition to that, at the end of each round, each player votes for which deck/opponent they most enjoyed playing against (obviously they cannot vote for themselves). The person with the highest average of votes in their favour wins a more extravagant prize (a collector's booster pack or something similar). This way players are rewarded more heavily if they strive to create a healthy game environment then they are for stomping others into the ground.
I have to agree, as someone who plays for prizes at my store. We have a commander league with specific deck building requirements, and for the most part, this means we're all playing things that are deliberately low powered or silly. But the final prize is always a really interesting card, for example, this time it is a store-stamped textless Thallia and the Gitrog Monster. Me and 2 other people are currently vying for first, and although the rest of the league is just based solely on participation points, assuming none of us misses a week of FNM, we're all going to be playing something much higher powered against each other at the end, which is just silly.
As an old-hat player of both M:tG (since Revised) and tabletop wargames, I have 3 rules: 1. Unless the establishment has hellaciously well kept, and there is a legitimate value add for it, I don't play at places that require a table fee or membership fee to play. 2. If i am going to a shop to play a game, or just to hang out, I will NEVER take space at a table without buying something, even if it's just something small, like a few beverages, or packs. 3. The only time i buy cards or kits outside of the local network of LGSs is if i can't find it locally, and if they can't order them in a reasonably short span of time. Stores offering performance-based prize pools for casual play will always be asking for trouble. That said, randomized door prizes are a cool way to thank people for coming out, and are fairly common to see, in my neck of the woods. All that said, a lot of this discussion would be unnecessary if players didn't behave like short-sighted, entitled twats, getting all of their cards and kits from big-box stores, or internet retailers, but expecting that their LGS will allow them to play there for nothing in return.
At my old LGS we used to have commander events with prize packs, but they weren't awarded for winning in a pod. Rather, at the end of each game players would vote for the opponent they most enjoyed playing with, or whoever they thought had built the most interesting deck. You couldn't vote for yourself and so usually people would end up bringing highly political, creative decks, but even people with precons or who borrowed a friend's deck would still win some packs. Commander and prizes aren't completely incompatible, in fact I think when focused on celebrating the strengths of casual commander they can be a lot of fun.
This video gave me a pretty big perspective check, I had no idea door fees *weren't* a normal thing. The lgs I go to has a 15 dollar door fee that includes a 5 dollar voucher and the latest draft booster as a guaranteed prize, plus maybe two more depending on if you win games. The owner also shuffles the pods around after a game or two so the strong players tend to go up against each other towards the ends. Not an exact tourney setting, the spread of decks is still anywhere from "not-quite-edh, certainly-not-cedh" to "im playing an unsleeved precon i just gave the owner 40 bucks for." The prizes are kinda an afterthought? Maybe the store's just cultivated a good vibe
I've not played much in-person magic since I moved to go to university, but my regular game store back home charged £2 at the door to play magic. I always saw that as a phenomenal deal for my Sunday afternoons out, so the idea that some people are going to their game stores and just... not paying to play, is so weird for me. They gotta keep the lights on somehow and paying a couple quid for somewhere I'll be spending 4 hours in never felt unreasonable to me. Never even occurred to me that there would be some places where that wasn't the norm
Doesn't seem necessary because being in the store means you're more likely to buy more stuff. And you probably bought the cards from them. And it encourages other people to buy cards or make another deck. It makes it's own money
At my lgs we have a wheel with around 25 different things on it like gaining the most life in a turn or having the most creatures, every hour or so the person who won that challenge gets something from the prize box which has promos and random foils in it and then spin the wheel again
my local Board Game Bar has a monthly points system. with packs going to the most point getters. 1 point for a win. 1 point for a commander kill. 1 point for playing the months deck theme. THEN you can also vote for your favorite player! if you arent a jerk, you could possibly get 3 points per game, 2 games per pod. -1 point for a 10 minute turn, -1 point for infinite turns. it really incentivizes fun play rather than spiky. im a casual only player, and i routinely dont win, but because i have a jovial personality, each month i walk away with more packs than the people who play the strongest decks. Looks like it doesnt suck to suck! haha
A regional franchise that ran a bunch of LGS's had one that used to be in my area and would give out a small amount of free store credit (only $2) if enough people showed up an actually played a few games, it was paid out around closing. It was initially supposed to be used as a pool for a tournament but the Manager of the store also felt the sentiment that commander night shouldn't be about trying to be competitive and just showing up to have fun. They made their money back in the increased revenue that was brought in by all the people that showed up. Sadly the pandemic and rent increases in most markets forced the franchise to downsize to an extremely small level and the two stores they have aren't really close anymore.
My buddies game store in Dubuque IA had prizes at commander night however it wasn't necessarily for winning the games. They had a sheet of accomplishments that were worth points that weren't revealed to any of the players before the games started. I can't remember if it restricted how many decks you could bring to play with but it was kind of brilliant
My LGS has an entry for commander, but everyone gets a pack, and the winner gets an additional promo pack as a small bonus for winning Edit: Power levels are also split into cedh, high power, and casual. It facilitates itself decently well. However, I have seen some issues with people under rating their decks power.
I've been playing at a tabletop club for a couple years now, they took us on when the lgs stopped running magic (they still offer fab and pokemon). So I've seen this sort itself out naturally in that time, edh is actually 3 different formats - cEDH, high power and casual and everyone has gradually equipped themselves with a deck for each option that gets decided on as each table gets assembled and often switches up after each game or so in that same pod. Some of us have auslander, modern, pioneer, pauper and pauper edh decks also and we'll occasionally organise a tournament for one of those or just a game or two of one of those formats in our group chat. All community driven we all pitch in to help out the club as a whole, I can't imagine it being any other way anymore.
4:24 I enjoy the analogy of a pickup basketball game. like, you wanna throw the ball around, shoot some baskets, but you're mainly there to sweat, enjoy yourself, maybe be a little social. sure, you will occasionally get someone on the court that is clearly ahead of you but that's not a reason not to play them; just have fun. if somebody's playing something you find unfun, say something and if necessary adapt or move on. i just enjoy the wide array of commanders and i've collected a lot of the precons... have yet to upgrade them beyond very minorly, haha, but i have fun with it.
A few LGS have started charging table fees in my area. Product is not moving, Paid events are not firing due to commander, and most ppl either proxy or go online to buy singles.. 2 of the 4 stores that are closest to me even stopped buying and selling singles.
My experience is actually the opposite. I’ve found that the chance that someone is going to yell at you or get salty and sulk in a way that makes the environment really uncomfortable is much lower at the competitive stores than at stores that are known for being casual, and the players that I think make the game really unfun are typically casuals that get upset when they don’t have a 100% win rate with their terrible home brew decks. Maybe it’s a regional difference between players bases, but the competitive players I run into as someone who’s kind of in the between of being competitive and casual are much more pleasant to play with.
My store doesn't do competitive on commander. Instead they do "Commander Checklist" that they tie into promo giveaways from Wizards. They flavor it with the recent releases, like some of your tasks in the Dr. Who was "Have a staring contest" (Dont Blink) and some average things like "Knock a player out of the game". Finish your list and you get a pack worth about $6 or less (the buy in cost). It encourages us to help each other play in the pod to finish each other's lists.
My local game store doe raffles a few times each day. So buying in doesn't guarantee any participation prizes, but it does give you a ticket to potentially get like a booster or promo card when they call out the raffles every few hours. I think it works out pretty well, to incentivize players to hang out and play for a while
At my lgs we used to have duel commander tournaments for store credit and product. It was $5 entry and obviously you could win stuff depending on your performance. Since it was 1v1 everyone went hard af and it was fine because theres no social contract to breach, everyone is jusy playing to win. Eventually we swapped to normal commander to get new people in (duel commander is more niche and we usually just had the regulars but no growth of playerbase) and they tried to make it a pay to play thing and I noticed bad habits amongst players (myself included) because when there is something on the line its not about having fun anymore. Luckily we stopped that long ago and commander night is just show up and have fun. Its much better and healthier.
At the LGS I go to, they did 2 times a commander league for a moth. The first one had some extra achievements for extra points, but since there was no proxy list and such it basically was a P2W situation. For the second time around they did a proxy allowed list, and basically it turned into a cEDH tournament. All good for me, but some people weren't that happy about it. But if you don't do a proxy list, it turns into a P2W tournament, and if you do a proxy list, people cry about it. It's a difficult thing to balance. I agree with you with someone should take a crack at making a achievements system of some kind, that would b awesome!
My LGS has a really good strategy to handing out "prizes". They walk to each table with a D4 and decides an order and rolls it, the player who had that number gets the prize winning means nothing and that is how it should be everywhere imo
If you want competitive commander, go play CEDH. I am a competitive player, so I'm interested in CEDH, but I'd never try to pubstomp cause smurfing is boring af
Some time ago, my playgroup and I talked to our LGS about organizing EDH tournaments. I was quite unsure about the outcome, but I wrote some rules (basically no infinite combos, so that matches don't end up too quickly) to make the best out of the two rounds that we have time for and a point system for incentivizing things like killing other players. It did not matter. Random rules lawyers arguing that their "infinite loop is not against the rules because they can stop it whenever they want" and people doing weird plays so that their opponents don't win extra points (like fogging an attack that does not affect them), for example, were things that I refuse to deal with in my hobbies. And all of that just because of some stinky prize boosters lol. It was not even close to the commander experience I've had for a lot of time, so a lot of people (like myself) stopped attending and started to just hang out in the free tables. Next week the LGS is going to try a change so that prize boosters are raffled among the attendants and I hope that is going to change the ambience. Some people will still be a pain to play against but I won't feel bad to lose to a sweaty nerd because it won't make a difference in prize terms lol
My lgs nails this. We have a monthly event with a 10€ entry. Everyone gets 1 set boosters. Then there's a list of "bounty cards" announced just the might before. Basically it's a list of board states and the first to get it wins the card. Sometimes you'll have people colluding to help their opponent get it. Then we also have 5 of usually the best cards of the set as part of "commendation". Each of the 3 rounds everyone gets 3 slips of paper to put someone else's name on if you liked them, they had a good deck, they were fun, and the names go in a hat. Top 5 names in the hat choose from the commendations in order. Everyone shows up here with mid decks, and it's fun and very chill! Even during our pre release they don't do prize boosters. Everyone gets 2 set boosters. The games are just for fun!
there is a really cool system a game store does where everyone gets a "vote" each round. you get 3 points for winning and 2 points for every vote you get. there was an incentive for winning but more of an incentive for making the game generally enjoyable for people. what ended up happening is that a lot of creative and powerful decks ended up getting the most points and at the end of the event when the tally was done had their hand at the prize pool of stuff first.
I 100% agree with prize support to all the issues with prize motivations you mentioned. Let competitive formats have their prize support and let commander be a social game for fun’s sake!
My LGS has a neat Commander League. Each 12-week League has a gimmick, such as using an unomodified precon, or a budget deck, or a deck who's Commander is not in the top 200 most popular on edhrec. If your deck meets that requirement, you get an extra point for each game you complete. You also get a point for your placement in the game (ie, if you die first, 1 point, if you win, 4 points), meaning that good play is rewarded more than just meeting the gimmick, but it still matters. There is also a "Cool Point," where the players vote on who who they think did the coolest thing in that game. These cool points generate some of the best conversation in the League, and playing to do the cool thing is often vied for. At the end of the 12 week League, the prize (usually a box of something exciting) gets split among the top 3-4 players, with weekly prizes of promos to every single player regardless of ranking. So far, it's seemed to work well enough. There's a lot of nuance in there I'm not bringing up (for example, "Combo" wins or, like, a DC=>Thoracle on Turn 2 only gets you 2 points instead of 4), but in general.... our League polices itself in making the games fun, while also earning the store a little revenue, while also giving us all a place to just play Commander.
To elaborate: Let's say I'm playing the Gimmick and got the Cool Point. I earned 3 points in this game. The pub-stomping dude won, and got 4 points. Sure, he's ahead, but he actually isn't ahead by much, and in a 12-week league of an average of 4 games per night... the players that play into the League's culture tend to win more, and more often.
Where I lived a few years ago, the store didn't have enough 60 card players to fire any events, so FNM was a commander tournament where the winners did get extra prizes. But honestly it was not much of a problem. The price of entry was $5 and you got a pack included with it so people would come in with precons and still be happy. All that happened was during round 1 the sweaty players would win quickly, and then everybody would be much better balanced for the remaining 4 rounds. Weirdly though they did set infect damage to 20. They were fine with cedh decks but not infect lol
Gotta change the quote to: "Maybe the real Magic were the enemies we made along the way". On another note, some LGS' do give out boosters for participating or holding a commander activity, then having a draft pick from a prize promo pack based on standing.
500 point GW store tournament in around 2003, lists had to be org chart legal - alongside two min. size eldar guardian squads, managed to squeeze in three wraithlords. Absolutely stomped.
My MGS has a league with prizes. It dosnt matter if you win a game it matter how many points you accumulate over the season. The store has a sheet that has points values for certin game actions that pushes players to build deck they want to play and that are fun since you get way less points if you combo off turn 3. It balances really well and is so much fun.
The buy-in comment is a pretty fair point, shops can use the guise of “pay X amount of dollars to play where you earn achievements towards an obtainable goal” to get regulars engaged
My former LGS gave "prizes" at commander night but they were all in the form of a raffle. The store owner also made sure to take care of the younger players who couldn't afford all the best cards by making sure they gave out a few extra promos to those players. As someone who comes from a family without disposable income I appreciate that our community helped out those players (many of use giving them cards we didn't need but they could use or even given some of our store credit from tournament play to those players who could use it).
My old favorite LGS (went under because their lease was raised and they couldn't afford it... they've been gone for 5 years and no one has rented that space yet ffs) also did raffles. If you showed up to a paid event you got a raffle ticket for a booster box, so if you went to a bunch of events every month you could rack up raffle tickets. It was a good system.
Things like this make me realise again how mad I am at some of the people at our store who can't afford cards and use proxies. I used 2 or 3 proxies in one of my decks, nothing powerful, just 2 uncommons, but 2 of the guys who are regularly at the store and who I play DnD with just absolutely dunked on me for using proxies. It's now apparently an "inside joke" that I'm the proxy player (which makes no sense), and when I asked them why they feel so strongly against it, they say it's because they are "old school" (which also doesn't make any sense, since people have been using proxies for a long time) It's nice to hear that at some LGS somewhere, poorer people are actually being catered for.
@@ThePhoenixSlayer Lol, I'm sure I can find some unlimited basic lands with "Shivan Dragon" written on them in sharpie and then played unsleeved if they want to feel real 'old school'.
I used to go to a store that has unfortunately closed that had prizes for Commander but they were door prizes. You paid 10 bucks for the month and every week you would get at least a pack and sometimes more I walked away with multiple art prints from that store but it was never based on winning games it was just based on being there.
I miss that place.
That's how my lgs do it. It's always door prizes, or a random reason for a prize. Like who is wearing a band tee, or a color of a deck box ect. Never is it based on if you win or lose games.
@@trizkit995 I did once play in a non-cEDH tournament with prizes at GenCon several years ago that worked out well. Each player was given some vouchers that counted as a number of prize wall tickets, 100 I think, the winner of each four person pod got 1 voucher from the other players and then you were meant to give your vouchers to the players that you thought contributed best to the game. Things like "coolest deck concept" or "most clutch play". I got a bunch of vouchers for taking out the Flash-Hulk player with an Aetherflux resevoir storm.
It was fun.
My lgs does something Similar. Amazing people.
You pay 5$ for Casual commander nights for FNM, with the main rule is "No infinites by like... turn 3-5.", and they do enforce it with warnings from experience. For new players, it's such a good gesture.
you pay 5$ a week, but you get 5$ recharged on their gift card for store credit. (Which understandably, can't be used for tournament entry, but literally anything, Magic, Warhammer, VIdeo games, Booster boxes, etc is available on their gift cards.)
So within a month, you get 20$ of store credit just for playing, have fun playing commander for a reasonable 5$ every Friday, no prizes to attract new players to have fun, and not play to win, etc. And be able to... For example, buy a Nintendo switch game, for having fun playing Magic. It's a win/win, and the lgs has nearly 50 players for fnm. It shows that participation awards attract more players compared to offering prizes for the CedH players/toxic players
I think it's a great strategy too. My LGS does something similar for YGO, mostly because they get OTS packs anyways, but you pay an event fee for YGO night and then get an OTS pack in round 2 regardless of record. The top players get normal booster product too, but for the most part you can just hang out and play casually and it's great.
Thank you. I run an LGS and every commander event with prizes I've ever hosted has been a nightmare. Just bad feelings all around. I've since moved commander to a weekly free-to-play day where every hour we raffle off a promo to someone checked in to the event. We often get 40+ player and they organize themselves. Some play casual, some play cedh. A simple hourly raffle is enough to encourage players to check in, which helps my WPN metrics and in turn provides the shop with more promos.
We don't even charge a table fee. My game room exists to create demand of the stuff I sell in my store front. On commander days we spend the whole day taking in card-list orders, selling singles, and selling packs. The enthusiasm in the game room alone is enough to generate plenty of sales for the day. It's often one of our best days of the week sales wise. We get requests for commander tournaments and leagues and I just know better. It's not for us.
Listening to a Commander player talk in-depth about Commander culture is an experience.
I’m reeling
My local lgs did a two headed giant league but it turned Cedh very quickly. After that they did precon league where you’d buy from the recent set and upgrade the precon 5 times for 5-6 weeks. Needless to say the precon league was a Lot more popular you get points based on number of eliminations and placement in the pod.
See this feels like the fun way to do things. Everyone buys a precon there, thus supporting the store, and you all battle it out on a more even playing field. Some of the most fun games I've played have been 'Oops! All Precons!', and even more so when it's a new (to you or otherwise) deck. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the hell out of some sweaty CEDH, but sometimes it's hard to beat basic precon games.
My last precon league was similar but was a horrible experience as opposed to the precon league at the same shop before. Points based elims systems became more of players just waiting until the 5 minute mark and getting a kill before time runs out, so they'd still be alive for points instead of trying to win from the start. It gets worse if you end up in a pod where two players are friends. I believe I'm not the only one who loathed it because after the second week they could barely get full pod together from what I know.
What my LGS does is charges you 10 buck but gives you $10 in store credit it solves a lot of the problems with free comander nights. The price is still "free" but you put $10 and you get $10 out as long as you spend it at the store.
Mine does this but $5 for most of their events and I really love it
I see the same kind of thing at my favorite LGS. Plus everyone gets something out of the promo bucket.
Another store I went to didn't do a table fee at all, but had less prizes and did them in a raffle. Excellent stuff.
I entered into a 2-headed commander event at a commandfest with a buddy, and we teamed up urza and teferi, both very highly tuned cedh level decks. We sat down across from korvold and ur-dragon our first pod and though “ok, sure, this could be some powerful sleeper home brew action”, then proceeded to shut them out of the game so hard that they only ever used a nevinyrral’s disk, which cleared my board but my friend combo’d out the next turn, turn 5. We felt kinda bad but we paid to play, so we assumed it was going to be very competitive and brought our sweaty decks.
My LGS owner started chargin $5 table fees. Too many people would show up for EDH night, at most pay a dollar for a coke or water out of the fridge, be there 4-10 hours, then bounce. Someone confronted him about it at one point and he bluntly told them if they're not spending money at the store they're not customers and customers are who get priority on tables. As one of the few people who has pumped a significant amount of money relative to the usual clientele into the store I don't ever personally have to pay it though I have covered for a couple other people. He also used to give a FNM promo pack (the little 3-5 card one idr exactly) to each pod and instead of one person winning the pack, the better you place in the pod the earlier you get to pick a card from that promo pack. Everyone is basically guaranteed something, and it makes people feel a lot better when there's 2 or more good hits in the little pack and they *have* to be split. That stopped after a shitty employee opened almost all of them thinking they weren't on camera and threw away anything they didn't want from the little packs.
If you offer prizes for non-competitive commander you have a tough balancing act ahead of you.
The way my LGS does it is to randomize promos at the table. We also have no entry fee. We let people know we hand out promos at random, and that winning the pod doesn't mean you get the promo pack. People seem happy with that arrangement, and folks are playing deck that are more fun and less powerful. Nothing is banned, no special rules. We also tell people that if you go infinite, the rest of the table reserves the right to play for second place while you sit and watch them durdle for the next 30-45 mins ;)
Vince, my LGS' Commander night does a bounty event. You get points for doing things: IE, you get a point if you roll a 1 or 20 on a D20 when determining turn order. You get a point for being the first to deal damage. And on new set releases, you get points for doing set specific things: IE, casting an Adventure Spell, etc... Lastly, you get negative points for "toxic" stuff: playing fast mana on turn 1, eliminating someone before their 5th turn, going infinite.
My local game store had a very interesting system involving an actual bingo card, with various things a player could do in a game of Magic printed on it, varying from "cast your commander 15 times across all your games" to "attack with 20 creatures" to "Win without casting your commander". When one of those things happened, you get a stamp on that space, and if you fill out a line, you got a pack. I think it encouraged people to still play to win, but not just pubstomp people, because there were other ways to "win" besides just actually winning the game.
We did a Commander league where you used the precons that came out that year as your deck and we did have prize support from the store. We did the achievement thing as well and it was a lot of fun.
We were friends until you bounced my lands 😳 😂 and a decade+ of friendship just makes me feel old!
My lgs gives you a random draft booster (or if you're lucky a collector booster) that you literally pull from a mystery box lol. Then one person from every pod is randomly given a promo pack. And then on occasion promo cards are randomly given. I ended up getting one of the lotus pedals myself. Despite no prize support, commander night is easily the most popular event at the store. (Almost a shame because limited events never have any attendance)
This is the way
lol, in my lgs got everybody the lotus pedal 🤣
The thing my store does is monthly task that people do like "playing a battle" or "having 5 different permanent types on the bf" and such. There's a certain number of task set for a month and there's a buy-in and buy-out that is pretty much capped. Most often than not even when there's a task for winning games as an achievement a lot of the time other players help that person at getting their task complete and it usually doesn't sour the game.
Our store does a giveaway instead, which is 100% uninfluenced by performance. The one time they did give limited promos based on whoever did a task first, we all jumped on their asses about it.
I wish I could say prizes are ok when it's small stuff. This is what lead to my hate of competitive players. Long before EDH became popular and became Commander, my store was an early adopter. A customer got into it and wanted to push the format. We always encouraged that so we promoted it, etc. He put prizes out from his own collection. Nothing huge, just basic building block cheap rares that are good cards for the format to help people along. What happened? A trust fund baby and his 3 friends came in with their competitive decks because ZOMG THERE ARE PRIZES and started roflstomping everyone. For what? Janky dollar rares that they already had multiple copies of? They turned our 25+ player EDH nights into 6 or 7 people if we were lucky. They completely destroyed the scene and never understood why. When we asked them to please tune down their decks, one of them whined "you just hate blue" (he played Kira). The Trust Fund Baby played Zur the Enchanter in a deck that was fully foiled and foreign.
Like, that's why Cedh prometes using proxies, so the local moneybags doesn't ruin the scene.
Keep crying scrub.
@@W4llh4k - this was when EDH was in its infancy. Also, have you ever considered that some people like the casual format that EDH was intended to be and don't want to be forced to play the bastardized competitive version?
At my lgs they banned proxies so people couldn’t compete with their whales. Shockingly I didn’t go back
@@jumanjiman86 - that's when I look at them and go "it's a casual format, you can't ban proxies, sorry." That's the type of store that I PRAY has a local competitor, because I'd start running events there just to ruin the other store.
My LGS does a precon league as their tournament arc for EDH. It helps them move product but also auto-generates an environment where the decks are by design pretty balanced.
"Maybe the real magic were the friends we made along the way".
That is when PleasantKenobi's heart grew three sizes...
I visited my parents for the summer and a new lgs had opened up in the town, and what a pleasurable surprise it was to me, as an avid cedh player, that they had a weekly edh tournament separate from just casual edh night that they ran with pay in and prizes. I had assumed, that because it was a tournament, and because there was a different day for casual magic, that people would be playing high quality decks. So I brought good ol' turbo naus and proceeded to absolutely trounce everyone else involved. Not only was it mostly casual decks, some barely better than precons, but it was a 1 v 1 environment that meant I was completely unstoppable unless I intentionally blundered, which I did a couple times over the next 2 weeks as I was understanding the 'format' to give other people a chance.
Flash forward 2 months, I'm playing a different deck on 1v1 night and it's far more to scale with at least a reasonable half of the competition. But now half of the people there hate me because I was a pub stomper, and several people at casual edh night refused to even play with me, even though I was planning on sitting down with an upgraded precon and some had never even played magic with me. All because I was told prizes were on the line and people were playing to win months prior.
You and I are very like-minded on this. Great content. Good points.
Thanks for watching!
During the pandemic I invited my trusted friends over for a weekly Commander Night. I had TWO House rules.
First, the Mulligan. Partial Mulligans: you look at your hand say "I don't want these 3 seven drops in my hand" put them aside, draw 3 new cards, and shuffle the old ones back in. You could do this one time only. My store adopted this rule, but as cEDH players took over, it was phased out as they would just "sculpt their perfect hands." Try this one at home if you're not playing cEDH though, it's great.
The second rule was simple. If you won a game, you started first in the next game. Didn't matter if any or all players switched decks, you still go first. And we still hate you for winning the last game! Good luck.
For prizes, I joked about having a leader board. That was it. Fun was had for all.
NOPE.
My lgs does offer prizes, but the prize pack can either go to the winner of the pod or you can collectively choose to roll dice for it. They also offer different tiers that cost more but have better prizes, which lets everyone play at the level they’re most comfortable with.
Tiers are subjective and just lead to more bad feels.
I fixed the Commander night at my store I help run by making it a buy-in, but everyone just gets two packs at a discount for joining in with their entry fee. Everyone knows if they play two pods worth of games they get two packs and theyre satisfied. Its been a huge help for keeping the games more casual and not creating an arms race.
This is the way.
This is the way
It’s probably the reason my lgs keeps commander away from prizes, and just hands promo packs out randomly. Any prized event we have is anything except commander.
The issue with that, is our turnout for those events is abysmal compared to casual commander, since no one wants to compete. I make no exaggeration when I say the turnout for Casual commander (Friday-Saturday) is anywhere between 20-40, and for anything else, maybe 8 on a good day.
This is why I play at the bar. We get like 40 people in there on Tuesdays because we all are trying to avoid the characters that frequent game stores. The vibe has always been on point. New players, 25 year players, we all do whatever we want and nobody bitches.
I love drafting commander sets but i HATE how sweaty it gets when prize packs are on the line
Prizes are dumb. You should be dominating noobs simply because you enjoy making them cry.
@@GrombrindalSome people don't need incentives to be toxic.
@@drpibisback7680” “There is a finite amount of fun to be had in a game of Magic; I aim to possess all of it.”
I think my lgs does something decent to cater to all edh players. They have three queues. Casual has a small banlist (no two card combos or 0 mana rocks) explicitly intended for newer players and casual decks. Midtier has no added bans, and its free game on combos, and theres also an explict cedh pod. All three have prizes, but its done so that even if you lose both games, your going home with packs, or store credit equal to the 20 dollar entrance fee. Winning gets you more packs but not store credit. Its not perfect but it keeps most people happy.
Don't forget that WPN stores cannot run tournaments that allow Proxies. The problem seems to be how a store can foster a fun EDH community while still making some money/moving some product. How do you determine who gets the cool prizes at the end of the day? Pure randomness also might feel bad for the people involved.
My local WPN store allows a proxy friendly cEDH tournament to play there, but they don't run it. That's how they get around it. It's a nod and a wink situation where the guy who runs it works there but does it on his own time, through his own organization. Your entry in to the tournament is split between the store as a table fee and his group for prize support.
The problem is Commander is well known to be a broken format. Cedh is a joke. It would be more fun to give the prize to a random game goal or just straight randomly.
this is not true. WPN stores CAN allow proxies on their own events provided they aren't done as sanctioned events.
@@nykthosacolyte5710 true but don’t WPN stores get better promos and other stuff based on event attendance? Why would they run non-sanctioned events? Encouraging proxy events is counterintuitive to selling singles. Leave the proxies to free play.
@@chim007azo because usually when stores allow proxies for events how they are SUPPOSED to they are MONEY maker events that they rarely do. Like paper vintage with a high cost to play relative to the prizing. It's worth having a night without your prize support being increased when many stores have multiple non mtg nights anyways when it means getting a ton of money in entry fees.
I can GUARANTEE you, there WILL be people who “bring a friend” (are as i call them, co-conspirators) specifically to play off of each other and kingmake.
“you play X, and I’ll play Y and benefit, then when i, er, *we* win, we can either split prizes or alternate who gets the weekly prize”
There are some super trashy people who play this game, and they definitely aren’t above doing this stuff.
They already do it to ruin casual games.
I think stores should adopt a voting system. Don't give the prizes to the winner of a pod, but have the players vote (anonymously) on stuff like coolest play or most sportsman like, ect. Then prize based on that. This puts the incentive where you want it, on the fun and not necessarily the winning.
This. Also seen another comment about deducting points for an infinite combo, I think that’s stupid. Games have to end, I have 40+ commander decks and only 3 have infinite combo, so I am not a fan of playing them myself, but I don’t begrudge others playing them.
our FNM has "solved" this issue by giving players a point. There is one point for winning the pot and then each participant has one point to give away to a player for whichever reason they see fit. This created a casual friendly environment where sportsmanship, creative play and general having fun are promoted and rewarded at the end of the evening. We host this type of event once before a prerelease and all the other weeks we have casual commander without prize support, as we have other forms of magic which we do have prize support for on those evenings.
I stopped going to my lgs for edh night because I got Food chained in 3 out of 4 matches and the other match someone won with godo turn three. Multiple people were using the same food chain combo deck I didn’t even matched poorly, they were just copying each others CEDH deck to get the 3 free packs as prizes. Fun times.
My LGS does a regular event that is usually a cedh slugfest, then they do an event with non-sol ring mana-positive rocks banned that has a set of objectives which give points for completing them. The objectives are things like "have the largest creature in the game" or "get a commander damage win"
My FLGS does a weekly casual commander tournament. It's free to enter. It regularly gets 60+ players. Players in a pod vote after each game and the store owners mix up the pods for the next game.
Prizes are only awarded for the _Most Creative Deck_ and _Best Sportsmanship._
It really fosters a great culture. Half of the players stay around to play more after the tourney ends. It is generally accepted that spicey decks should come out late if the pod agrees.
The prizes aren't weak either. Precon decks are common top prizes, collector boosters, and the like. Last week saw the top vote-getters receive Commander Masters precons.
My old LGS used a point system for month-long EDH leagues. I remember a trust fund kid who brought in a deck that was casting his commander (Maelstrom Wanderer) as early as turn two on a regular basis. One of the scoring points was understanding of the necessity of taking out troublesome lands. You would lose a point for every land you destroyed beyond the first that was controlled by the same opponent, in one turn. There were actually a dozen permanent scoring categories, as well as a random list of another 100 that a handful were drawn from. It made things interesting, but also prevented pre-designing decks to take advantage of a certain scoring category (none of the permanent ones were particularly back-breaking, though I can't remember the specifics... it's been years since the store was open).
There is a particular saltiness when you're on the losing end of a proxy Gaea's Cradle with a back row of proxy dual lands to go with it.
You would feel better losing to my real Cradle and real duals? How about if I had proxies on the table but the real stuff in a binder with me?
@@chim007azo at least when you have the real thing to show I get a show and a glimpse at cherished magic history with my blowout.
I own an unlimited plateau and a badlands myself.
@@h2ojr1how about we show off our history outside of the game and play a light casual game of commander without infinite tokens or +1/+1’s. Sounds like a better time to me
There's an LGS in Ireland where you do buy into commander night and you get a pack from the most recent standard set. I think that is the best way to do it imho
An lgs I used to go to (they had to close down 😢 ) once had a commander league where they gave you a bingo card with different achievements for games on it (think cast x creatures, draw so many cards in a game ect) then gave prizes for filling out the card. You paid a small fee each night you wanted to play in the league. I also don't mind paying at my local lgs each sunday. They have you pay 5 or 6 to get into the tournament then at the end of the 3 rounds you get either a draft or set pack depending on how much you paid there isnt any prize support in it but they set up random pods each round, which is refreshing.
At a local lgs ive gone to they do commander events with prize pools, but it is a point system where everyone in a pod gets to vote for their favorite deck they faced, and points are determined by the amount of votes and not my winning matches
My LGS has two nights for commander. The first is 3 rounds, no prizes, $11 buy-in but you get $8 back as store credit. The second night has the same buy-in but is 4 rounds and promos are handed out RANDOMLY to whoever is playing. They literally put a big wheel up on the screen to select people. There's another store nearby that does similar, the prizes are given randomly and they're usually a couple foil commons or uncommons from the most recent set.
I think that's the only way to do "prizes" without commander turning into a spike fest.
Our "store"(more like friend that runs a bar that organizes MtG stuff) does not do Commander tournaments. The usual Commander night goes like this. 5€ for the entrance. You get 1 drink (alcoholic too). Go nuts.
Drunk commander at 1am is where it's at.
The nearest LGS does do Commander tournaments and they have a custom banlist and all. People still try to break it and it alienates new players.
My store does a commander league that runs for ~2 months. People get points for winning games and at the end of the league, the top 3 people get prizes. There's a different theme each league and the budget is usually $50. Infinite combos are banned and there are usually a few commanders each league that are banned, but often the worst ones are priced out. This helps the store sell cards and incentivizes people to come in while keeping the playing field fairly level. I like this system and think it works fairly well. This gives a commonality for most patrons to play together and then if people want to play more powerful decks for whatever, they can do so outside of the league.
Where I live has 2 pretty well traveled stores. One of them, has an enforced casual commander with a small rules list, i.e. no 1 mana searchers, no 2 card infinite combos, no proxies etc. the prizes are randomly rolled for so no incentive to win or lose. The other location has a much more competitive scene due to winning having a higher likelihood to earn prizes with no restriction on decks, and thus has a much more toxic scene. I have seen people there play Winter Orb Stax, Tergrid, Braids land sac/destruction, and Tivit infinite turns.
At mtgcon we just decided to pool and divide points equally before starting each game. Made the environment very nice.
My local originally did prizes based on winning, but after a while the meta became slowly more and more competitive, so they eventually converted to door prizes. The power level has not risen since then by much thankfully, as people haven't felt like they needed to buy better and better cards to actually get prizes
Returning to my LGS after lockdown with a handful of budget commander decks at £25 each alongside a friend who did the same. We pay £3 each to sit there all night, buy some snacks from the store and have fun. Each player gets to pick a promo at the end of the night and the growing number of people who have also taken up the EDH deck for the price of a pre release challenge don't care about winning - just that it was fun and watch each others decks go off as intended.
It has made commander accessible to all - introduced new players to the game and store without the fear of being completely ruined by turn 4.
Great video Vince. Here in Spain, at least locally where I live, for the tournaments we have to buy a booster to play and they normally raffle another prize. What I have found very strange is that cEDH and EDH players play all in the same tournaments. I am new to Commander, having mostly played Modern, Standard, Draft/Limited and Legacy on Magic Online. I was shocked that there was no talk of rule(s) zero. So I rolled up to play and was met in game 1 with docksides and all the moxes you can imagine.
I’m enjoying the recent move towards more commander centric content on your channel:)
On a public holiday recently my LGS ran a treasure hunt Commander event. Every half hour a card would be named and the first player to cast it got to pick a prize. To make things more interesting when Cyclonic Rift was named the prize was only given if you cast it normally. The only problem I found was you were tempted to hold back key cards you thought might get called as it was all cards commonly seen in Commander games leaning heavily into stuff printed in Commander Masters. But there were plenty of cards commonly printed in pre-cons too.
Regular commander on Mondays and Fridays they charge $5 if you are not a member but that goes into store credit. Usually the only prizes involve promo cards given away to everyone plus everyone goes into the door prize draw. The shop doesn't skimp on these either as I have personally won a couple of set booster boxes over time and there are usually 3 or 5 door prize draws with the set boosters being the big one if enough players are there on the day/night. This encourages players to spend at the store out of loyalty as the store really looks after us. Plus they sell coffee, drinks and snacks. I'll happily pay a little more if I have to if it helps keep the store afloat.
My local shop does $5 for an "FNM Commander" event. You get to play, a $5 (or less) pack, and a promo from a giant stack of old promos/ non-foil promo packs.
My LGS does Commander nights occassionally. When we join, we are given the choice of CEDH or casual.
CEDH, prizes are given for the last man standing.
Casual OTOH, prizes are gained through playing bingo. There are 1-5 randomized bingo sheets, prizes are given for filling all 5 in the middle, the corners, and 5 in a row. Lately, there has been a 4th prize for a super-secret list that you only get after you successfully complete all 25 challenges. Thus far, one person has successfully collected the super secret prize.
But casual games, there is no prize given for knocking out your opponents.
My store is typically $5 for casual commander with 2 rounds, and if you win at a table you get a $5 credit and a promo card or two, if you win the first table you get more promo cards with the winner at that table getting yet another promo card or pack. Then if there is a real prize on the line, the entry is $10, then it mostly plays out the same with a $10 credit and booster packs for the winners table.
My local card shop has a free event set up and there are prizes but the prizes are randomly given out. If you sign up you're entered into the raffle, if you win you're pod you get 1 more chance of getting in, but it's still a random chance. For casual commander I think that works, but at a cEDH level I can see an actual prize structure being balanced around it
"If you win your pod you get", nope nope, any reward for winning is a terrible idea and eventually leads to bad outcomes. If you incentivize winning in any way, then eventually some players will prioritize winning at the expense of anything else. That's just human nature.
@@Tvboy777 It has yet to cause any issues and they've been doing it for years, the odds do not increase enough from winning for it to entice anyone. The extra chance of a pack doesn't get advertised either.
Stories about our old LGS. Before I moved we went to a store that you paid $5 USD and you got three tickets. You put your name on one and drop it in a fish bowl. The other two you give to somebody you played that night for wahtever reason. At the end of the night they would draw names out to give away pack in whatever was in standard at the time. The other thing they would do is have minigames kinda like the price is right, Everybody from your pod would go up there and they would play this game. Normally at least two people came away with packs, but you could always game with them to spin the wheel. So basically it was an experience just playing at the store no matter how your games worked out. Also nobody played CEDH during those days. They had a night where you can play in a tournament for prizes which was for CEDH decks. To me that is the best way to play Commander. We moved and I miss my old LGS.
the local storers makes enough money. from all the drinks and snacks!
Fun warhammer events I went to had prizes for: Best Painted (of course), but also "Most Thematic", "Most Fun", "Best Sportsman" etc. Those would be fine for commander.
The store I like to play at distributes prizes via drawing for commander night, like they pull a name from the pool of participants to win one of several prizes they have set aside.
They also do low stakes prizes for prereleases: 1 set booster per win, 1 draft booster per tie, paid out at each round. Though the new play packs will probably fuck with that a little.
I like how one of my local stores does it. You pay $10 for a "quest card" and a raffle ticket. The Quests are set up like Sagas; complete the first part for a raffle ticket, then you can complete the second part for another, and then the third part for a final raffle ticket. Raffles called every 2 hours (running from noon to 6 pm)
The quest parts themselves are things you'll likely do with minimal foreknowledge; stuff like "ramp 3 turns in a row", "have X 2/2 creatures", "end your turn with no untapped permanents", stuff like that.
And since it's a raffle, you never know what the reward is going to be, so how crazy you may need to go for them. It could be a draft pack, set pack, collector pack, Prerelease kit, a playmat, I've seen quite a few different things up.
Do some people just come to play and decide that their high-power decks just blow the whole pod apart? Sure, but you can absolutely get people working together so everyone can get their tickets.
Edit: I myself have taken decks in not realizing just how powerful they are (ohai Necron Dynasty with minor tweaks), or also gone into a pod where I was told "everyone else is playing high power" and I show up with a minor adjustment to the Enduring Enchantments deck (and won :D)
When I had time to go play commander weekly i was apart of a pretty uniqe commander leauge. Yes we did play for some prizes, but we also had really fun build around ideas. Each week we would tweak the rules to make the games way more intresting, like one week you could only play 3 cmc or less decks, another week we could play 2 copies of each card. they were very chill with proxies and the grand prize was you got to ban or unban any card for the leauge. No matter what everyone always got some form of booster pack even if you were dead last. you also got achievement points for doing cool stuff and helping others out. This also wasn't the main commander group as they also had tons of free commander events.
My local LGS (also in Michigan, like gamer's wharf) has two commander nights. One is the commander league where there's store credit on the line based a number of points gained for various actions throughout the month. As well as a casual night where people pay $5 to enter, and everyone who plays gets their $5 back in store credit. As I play periodically I've been having more fun during the Friday night due to being able to use less optimized decks. Current favorite being a $20 Buduget Anhelo deck. That said, because it's not only based on who wins, but what game actions are taken (or not taken) during the game, I enjoy their approach for a prize oriented league.
Our buy in for commander night is a pack promos shere given by the table group choosing or by having it shuffled into the planes chase deck.
The idea of an achievement list is very interesting, because WotC themselves did something similar for Return to Ravnica block pre-releases. Things like "find another Gruul player at the pre-release and high five them" and whatnot. Simple and fun things that encourage you to find a cool combo, or keep attending pre-releases. It was pretty sweet.
One of the game stores I play at on occasion for their commander night is they do a buy in and then each table gets a randomozed set of achievements and whatever player does the achievement first will get a pack for that achievement.
So for example:
First Blood
Cast your commander x times
Reanimate x creatures
End the game with the least amount of lands
Have the most cards in deck at the end of the game
Etc
They are only revealed after decks are selected and the round has begun. So sometimes decks cant actually do the achievements which is somewhat feels bad. But it works.
The way it works at my LGS is you buy in to get a pack and you go into a raffle for collector boosters or boxes or sleeves or other prizes. I managed to win the last two weeks and go me some Dr Who collectors packs which was sweet :).
What happens at my stores is one breaks open promo packs and we pick cards at random and the other one, they do a drawing and people win multiple packs.
I completely feel this. I left my old card shop because they had a edh and cedh nights and people would build and bring cedh to the edh night and demolish everyone other than the people doing the same purely because there's a prize during one game one of these guys complained because me and the other lower power players at the table ganged up on him. It's like what do you expect when you are outclassing us completely and we know before the game starts how you play. I even participated in a dollar general pod same thing happened someone brought a hyper efficient deck and ruined everyone else's time.
Point is cedh is separate for a reason.
Don't know how I missed this video, but it perfectly sums up how I feel about commander prizes. I have to drive an hour away just to find a store without prizes where I can chill and play commander, and I do it every time.
Idea for if you want to incorporate prizes into an EDH tournament (not CEDH, just regular EDH): Have one prize for the winner worth the price of entry but not much more (single booster pack or something like that). But, in addition to that, at the end of each round, each player votes for which deck/opponent they most enjoyed playing against (obviously they cannot vote for themselves). The person with the highest average of votes in their favour wins a more extravagant prize (a collector's booster pack or something similar). This way players are rewarded more heavily if they strive to create a healthy game environment then they are for stomping others into the ground.
I have to agree, as someone who plays for prizes at my store. We have a commander league with specific deck building requirements, and for the most part, this means we're all playing things that are deliberately low powered or silly. But the final prize is always a really interesting card, for example, this time it is a store-stamped textless Thallia and the Gitrog Monster. Me and 2 other people are currently vying for first, and although the rest of the league is just based solely on participation points, assuming none of us misses a week of FNM, we're all going to be playing something much higher powered against each other at the end, which is just silly.
As an old-hat player of both M:tG (since Revised) and tabletop wargames, I have 3 rules:
1. Unless the establishment has hellaciously well kept, and there is a legitimate value add for it, I don't play at places that require a table fee or membership fee to play.
2. If i am going to a shop to play a game, or just to hang out, I will NEVER take space at a table without buying something, even if it's just something small, like a few beverages, or packs.
3. The only time i buy cards or kits outside of the local network of LGSs is if i can't find it locally, and if they can't order them in a reasonably short span of time.
Stores offering performance-based prize pools for casual play will always be asking for trouble. That said, randomized door prizes are a cool way to thank people for coming out, and are fairly common to see, in my neck of the woods.
All that said, a lot of this discussion would be unnecessary if players didn't behave like short-sighted, entitled twats, getting all of their cards and kits from big-box stores, or internet retailers, but expecting that their LGS will allow them to play there for nothing in return.
At my old LGS we used to have commander events with prize packs, but they weren't awarded for winning in a pod. Rather, at the end of each game players would vote for the opponent they most enjoyed playing with, or whoever they thought had built the most interesting deck. You couldn't vote for yourself and so usually people would end up bringing highly political, creative decks, but even people with precons or who borrowed a friend's deck would still win some packs.
Commander and prizes aren't completely incompatible, in fact I think when focused on celebrating the strengths of casual commander they can be a lot of fun.
This video gave me a pretty big perspective check, I had no idea door fees *weren't* a normal thing. The lgs I go to has a 15 dollar door fee that includes a 5 dollar voucher and the latest draft booster as a guaranteed prize, plus maybe two more depending on if you win games. The owner also shuffles the pods around after a game or two so the strong players tend to go up against each other towards the ends. Not an exact tourney setting, the spread of decks is still anywhere from "not-quite-edh, certainly-not-cedh" to "im playing an unsleeved precon i just gave the owner 40 bucks for." The prizes are kinda an afterthought? Maybe the store's just cultivated a good vibe
I've not played much in-person magic since I moved to go to university, but my regular game store back home charged £2 at the door to play magic. I always saw that as a phenomenal deal for my Sunday afternoons out, so the idea that some people are going to their game stores and just... not paying to play, is so weird for me. They gotta keep the lights on somehow and paying a couple quid for somewhere I'll be spending 4 hours in never felt unreasonable to me. Never even occurred to me that there would be some places where that wasn't the norm
Doesn't seem necessary because being in the store means you're more likely to buy more stuff. And you probably bought the cards from them. And it encourages other people to buy cards or make another deck. It makes it's own money
At my lgs we have a wheel with around 25 different things on it like gaining the most life in a turn or having the most creatures, every hour or so the person who won that challenge gets something from the prize box which has promos and random foils in it and then spin the wheel again
my local Board Game Bar has a monthly points system. with packs going to the most point getters. 1 point for a win. 1 point for a commander kill. 1 point for playing the months deck theme. THEN you can also vote for your favorite player! if you arent a jerk, you could possibly get 3 points per game, 2 games per pod. -1 point for a 10 minute turn, -1 point for infinite turns. it really incentivizes fun play rather than spiky. im a casual only player, and i routinely dont win, but because i have a jovial personality, each month i walk away with more packs than the people who play the strongest decks. Looks like it doesnt suck to suck! haha
A regional franchise that ran a bunch of LGS's had one that used to be in my area and would give out a small amount of free store credit (only $2) if enough people showed up an actually played a few games, it was paid out around closing. It was initially supposed to be used as a pool for a tournament but the Manager of the store also felt the sentiment that commander night shouldn't be about trying to be competitive and just showing up to have fun.
They made their money back in the increased revenue that was brought in by all the people that showed up.
Sadly the pandemic and rent increases in most markets forced the franchise to downsize to an extremely small level and the two stores they have aren't really close anymore.
I loved the franchise so much that I will actively buy from them when a card I want is on their TCGplayer store.
My buddies game store in Dubuque IA had prizes at commander night however it wasn't necessarily for winning the games. They had a sheet of accomplishments that were worth points that weren't revealed to any of the players before the games started. I can't remember if it restricted how many decks you could bring to play with but it was kind of brilliant
My LGS has an entry for commander, but everyone gets a pack, and the winner gets an additional promo pack as a small bonus for winning
Edit: Power levels are also split into cedh, high power, and casual. It facilitates itself decently well. However, I have seen some issues with people under rating their decks power.
I've been playing at a tabletop club for a couple years now, they took us on when the lgs stopped running magic (they still offer fab and pokemon). So I've seen this sort itself out naturally in that time, edh is actually 3 different formats - cEDH, high power and casual and everyone has gradually equipped themselves with a deck for each option that gets decided on as each table gets assembled and often switches up after each game or so in that same pod. Some of us have auslander, modern, pioneer, pauper and pauper edh decks also and we'll occasionally organise a tournament for one of those or just a game or two of one of those formats in our group chat. All community driven we all pitch in to help out the club as a whole, I can't imagine it being any other way anymore.
4:24 I enjoy the analogy of a pickup basketball game. like, you wanna throw the ball around, shoot some baskets, but you're mainly there to sweat, enjoy yourself, maybe be a little social. sure, you will occasionally get someone on the court that is clearly ahead of you but that's not a reason not to play them; just have fun. if somebody's playing something you find unfun, say something and if necessary adapt or move on. i just enjoy the wide array of commanders and i've collected a lot of the precons... have yet to upgrade them beyond very minorly, haha, but i have fun with it.
A few LGS have started charging table fees in my area. Product is not moving, Paid events are not firing due to commander, and most ppl either proxy or go online to buy singles.. 2 of the 4 stores that are closest to me even stopped buying and selling singles.
My experience is actually the opposite. I’ve found that the chance that someone is going to yell at you or get salty and sulk in a way that makes the environment really uncomfortable is much lower at the competitive stores than at stores that are known for being casual, and the players that I think make the game really unfun are typically casuals that get upset when they don’t have a 100% win rate with their terrible home brew decks. Maybe it’s a regional difference between players bases, but the competitive players I run into as someone who’s kind of in the between of being competitive and casual are much more pleasant to play with.
I've had similar experiences, I've never swung at someone during a cedh game and heard the phrase "why are you attacking me".
My store doesn't do competitive on commander. Instead they do "Commander Checklist" that they tie into promo giveaways from Wizards. They flavor it with the recent releases, like some of your tasks in the Dr. Who was "Have a staring contest" (Dont Blink) and some average things like "Knock a player out of the game". Finish your list and you get a pack worth about $6 or less (the buy in cost). It encourages us to help each other play in the pod to finish each other's lists.
My local game store doe raffles a few times each day. So buying in doesn't guarantee any participation prizes, but it does give you a ticket to potentially get like a booster or promo card when they call out the raffles every few hours. I think it works out pretty well, to incentivize players to hang out and play for a while
At my lgs we used to have duel commander tournaments for store credit and product. It was $5 entry and obviously you could win stuff depending on your performance. Since it was 1v1 everyone went hard af and it was fine because theres no social contract to breach, everyone is jusy playing to win. Eventually we swapped to normal commander to get new people in (duel commander is more niche and we usually just had the regulars but no growth of playerbase) and they tried to make it a pay to play thing and I noticed bad habits amongst players (myself included) because when there is something on the line its not about having fun anymore. Luckily we stopped that long ago and commander night is just show up and have fun. Its much better and healthier.
At the LGS I go to, they did 2 times a commander league for a moth. The first one had some extra achievements for extra points, but since there was no proxy list and such it basically was a P2W situation. For the second time around they did a proxy allowed list, and basically it turned into a cEDH tournament. All good for me, but some people weren't that happy about it. But if you don't do a proxy list, it turns into a P2W tournament, and if you do a proxy list, people cry about it. It's a difficult thing to balance. I agree with you with someone should take a crack at making a achievements system of some kind, that would b awesome!
My LGS has a really good strategy to handing out "prizes". They walk to each table with a D4 and decides an order and rolls it, the player who had that number gets the prize winning means nothing and that is how it should be everywhere imo
If you want competitive commander, go play CEDH.
I am a competitive player, so I'm interested in CEDH, but I'd never try to pubstomp cause smurfing is boring af
When playing at casual commander I will always ask if people WANT to play against my money deck. If not I will simply play something else.
Some time ago, my playgroup and I talked to our LGS about organizing EDH tournaments. I was quite unsure about the outcome, but I wrote some rules (basically no infinite combos, so that matches don't end up too quickly) to make the best out of the two rounds that we have time for and a point system for incentivizing things like killing other players. It did not matter. Random rules lawyers arguing that their "infinite loop is not against the rules because they can stop it whenever they want" and people doing weird plays so that their opponents don't win extra points (like fogging an attack that does not affect them), for example, were things that I refuse to deal with in my hobbies. And all of that just because of some stinky prize boosters lol. It was not even close to the commander experience I've had for a lot of time, so a lot of people (like myself) stopped attending and started to just hang out in the free tables.
Next week the LGS is going to try a change so that prize boosters are raffled among the attendants and I hope that is going to change the ambience. Some people will still be a pain to play against but I won't feel bad to lose to a sweaty nerd because it won't make a difference in prize terms lol
My lgs nails this. We have a monthly event with a 10€ entry. Everyone gets 1 set boosters. Then there's a list of "bounty cards" announced just the might before. Basically it's a list of board states and the first to get it wins the card. Sometimes you'll have people colluding to help their opponent get it.
Then we also have 5 of usually the best cards of the set as part of "commendation". Each of the 3 rounds everyone gets 3 slips of paper to put someone else's name on if you liked them, they had a good deck, they were fun, and the names go in a hat. Top 5 names in the hat choose from the commendations in order.
Everyone shows up here with mid decks, and it's fun and very chill!
Even during our pre release they don't do prize boosters. Everyone gets 2 set boosters. The games are just for fun!
there is a really cool system a game store does where everyone gets a "vote" each round. you get 3 points for winning and 2 points for every vote you get. there was an incentive for winning but more of an incentive for making the game generally enjoyable for people. what ended up happening is that a lot of creative and powerful decks ended up getting the most points and at the end of the event when the tally was done had their hand at the prize pool of stuff first.
I 100% agree with prize support to all the issues with prize motivations you mentioned. Let competitive formats have their prize support and let commander be a social game for fun’s sake!
My LGS has a neat Commander League. Each 12-week League has a gimmick, such as using an unomodified precon, or a budget deck, or a deck who's Commander is not in the top 200 most popular on edhrec.
If your deck meets that requirement, you get an extra point for each game you complete. You also get a point for your placement in the game (ie, if you die first, 1 point, if you win, 4 points), meaning that good play is rewarded more than just meeting the gimmick, but it still matters.
There is also a "Cool Point," where the players vote on who who they think did the coolest thing in that game. These cool points generate some of the best conversation in the League, and playing to do the cool thing is often vied for.
At the end of the 12 week League, the prize (usually a box of something exciting) gets split among the top 3-4 players, with weekly prizes of promos to every single player regardless of ranking.
So far, it's seemed to work well enough. There's a lot of nuance in there I'm not bringing up (for example, "Combo" wins or, like, a DC=>Thoracle on Turn 2 only gets you 2 points instead of 4), but in general.... our League polices itself in making the games fun, while also earning the store a little revenue, while also giving us all a place to just play Commander.
To elaborate: Let's say I'm playing the Gimmick and got the Cool Point. I earned 3 points in this game. The pub-stomping dude won, and got 4 points. Sure, he's ahead, but he actually isn't ahead by much, and in a 12-week league of an average of 4 games per night... the players that play into the League's culture tend to win more, and more often.
Where I lived a few years ago, the store didn't have enough 60 card players to fire any events, so FNM was a commander tournament where the winners did get extra prizes. But honestly it was not much of a problem. The price of entry was $5 and you got a pack included with it so people would come in with precons and still be happy. All that happened was during round 1 the sweaty players would win quickly, and then everybody would be much better balanced for the remaining 4 rounds.
Weirdly though they did set infect damage to 20. They were fine with cedh decks but not infect lol
Gotta change the quote to: "Maybe the real Magic were the enemies we made along the way".
On another note, some LGS' do give out boosters for participating or holding a commander activity, then having a draft pick from a prize promo pack based on standing.
500 point GW store tournament in around 2003, lists had to be org chart legal - alongside two min. size eldar guardian squads, managed to squeeze in three wraithlords.
Absolutely stomped.
My MGS has a league with prizes. It dosnt matter if you win a game it matter how many points you accumulate over the season. The store has a sheet that has points values for certin game actions that pushes players to build deck they want to play and that are fun since you get way less points if you combo off turn 3. It balances really well and is so much fun.
There's a store near me has a player incentive: you pay a R50 table fee but you get it back in store credit AND you get promos.
The buy-in comment is a pretty fair point, shops can use the guise of “pay X amount of dollars to play where you earn achievements towards an obtainable goal” to get regulars engaged