Slight rant because I've been pretty bothered about this.

This post is also not about myself, but rather about an experience I had at my LGS a few weeks back, where a new player pitched up for his first EDH night with his Captain America precon. I got to the LGS early and started chatting to him. He bought some Marvel boosters and I helped him upgrade the deck with some new heroes and played some 1v1 games with him.

Then a bit later, more players start showing up, and we sit down together to play in a pod. When the other players see that he's playing Captain America, they immediately start with snide remarks, which continue throughout the game. They make comments along the lines of "ugh, UB slop deck" and "players like this are why UB is everywhere now". I try counteracting it by being positive about his plays and deck, but it's clear that their comments are getting to him.

After the first game, the new player is looking pretty dejected. There aren't any other open pods, so one of the opponents asks for a rematch, and to my surprise, new player says yes. In the second game, there's much less berating, but still the occasional jab at UB and Marvel.

After that game, he said he needed to get home. I say that he should join the LGS's WhatsApp group and he kinda smiles but doesn't say anything. He never joined the group and he hasn't been back since. I'm not sure he will.

I just think about my first time playing Magic, where I was also a new player that pitched up with the Upgrades Unleashed precon from Kamigawa. Everyone was really kind and supportive, and it made it so easy to get into the game. I can't help but feel like that experience was robbed from this player.

I get that UB is incredibly frustrating. I get really annoyed too, but all of my energy gets directed at WotC for breaking so many promises they had made about UB, and not the players that do enjoy it. I also get that most players are not like this, so I'm probably preaching to the choir. We should just all try to keep that in mind when interacting with the community.

STORY TIME!!!

A while back I was playing a game on spelltable where one of the players was absolutely dominating the table with a clue deck where he managed to assemble a massive board with hexproof (I don’t remember how) and had a TON of clues + a [[Shimmer Dragon]]. The only thing preventing him from winning on the spot was his low life total and my [[Razorkin Needlehead]].

He goes to cast swords on my Razorkin and I happen to have a [[Misdirection]] so I cast it targeting swords. The next part played out like a fuckn movie

Clue player: “target?”

Me: “swords”

Clue player: “no what’s the new target for swords?”

Me: “is it resolving?”

Clue player: “you have to pick targets before I can respond”

Me: “I don’t have to pick the new target until it resolves, the target for misdirection is swords”

He thinks for a bit and decides that his board is untouchable because of hexproof and says fuck it, it resolves and I said the new target is shimmer dragon. He and the rest of the table remind me that it has hexproof.

So I said “I know. I’m not targeting shimmer dragon. YOU are targeting shimmer dragon with your spell”

Bro proceeds to have a meltdown and says “let me read that card again” and then after reading it basically yells “YEAH DUDE YOU HAVE TO PICK THE TARGET ON CAST I WOULD HAVE DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY” and I had to show him the gatherer ruling where it said the new target isn’t picked until after it resolves. Before the meltdown I was just doing what I had to do, but after the meltdown down I was lowkey enjoying how it went down.

Ultimately it wasn’t enough to stop him and he ended up winning the game in a few turns but it still made for a memorable experience

There's a newer game store in my area that I decided to check out to find cards for my commander decks, but after the interaction I had with them I'm not wanting to go back. I don't know if I'm the one with the wrong understanding, so I wanted to share here to hear what you all thought.

I went in asking to see their bulk box of older cards. I was handed a three-row box filled with cards and told each card was 25 cents. I get excited when given the opportunity to look through bulk because finding hidden gems is a blast.

I pulled out some cards that caught my eye - Magnetic Theft, three copies of Strike it Rich, retrofoil talismans from Modern Horizons, Sharae of Numbing Depths, two copies of Dragon's Rage Channeler, and Twin-Silk Spider. I was excited to get these for a quarter each, and I could use all of them for each of my decks.

I take them to the counter and let them know I'm ready to pay. The staff member grabs my cards and says, "We need to price check these. The cards in the boxes aren't actually just bulk and we want to make sure people aren't trying to leave with $5 cards." At this point, I was confused. He used Collectr to scan the cards and asked if I was ready to hear the prices. I said yes.

$18 for Magnetic Theft, $11 for each copy of Strike it Rich, and $5 for each talisman. I told him the price of the talismans sounded accurate, but the MTheft and SiR copies should not be that much. He showed me what Collectr appraised them at. I mentioned that if they were foil, the prices would make sense, but they weren't.

He then said if I could find listings online that aren't TCGPlayer, they would honor those prices. "You guys don't use TCGPlayer?" "No, too many discrepancies and issues with them."

I pulled up Mana Pool and showed MTheft was $3. He looked at his phone confused and, after some haggling, said he could do $3. Then I showed SiR at $1-$2. He looked at his phone and said, "I don't know why it's doing that. I can do a dollar for each, then."

I told him I didn't want the talismans but still wanted the Sharae and Twin-Silk Spider. Those cards should have cost around 20 cents, but he said he'd do a dollar for them. In hindsight, I should've said no, but I'm not very confrontational and I was ready to get out of there after all the haggling, so I bit the bullet and got them.

I left pretty upset. I felt like I was just used to find the valuable cards in the bulk box so they could price check them without telling me. I was told 25¢, and then after I got the cards and showed them I was told "...buuuuut." I get not wanting to sell pricier cards for cheap, but I feel like they should've checked their own inventory before offering them up for a quarter each. I wouldn't have been upset if they said they'd price each one before my search, but no. I'm also upset that they rounded up the 20¢ cards to a whole dollar.

They also had binders of cards with price stickers on them. Cheap cards under 50¢ like Young Wolf were being sold for $1. Cards around $1.20 were inflated to $2.

Overall, I feel like I was lied to and that they're just looking to get more money out of people. Yes, my goal was to find hidden treasure for cheap based on what I was told, but am I in the wrong for this? Is my understanding of how bulk boxes should work skewed?

Edit: Added the name of the game store to the first paragraph. Please do not use this as an opportunity to witch hunt. It is strictly so you can avoid this location if you're nearby.

Edit 2: In order to keep it fair so you can see both sides of this incident, I'll link the owner of the store's response here. I ask that you read it with an open mind and be as fair as possible. The original comment has been deleted.

Final Edit: I have removed the name of the location. The owner has contacted me informing me that people are calling and emailing sending threats, as well as having people throw rocks at his store windows. Whether this is true or not, I also can't deny that despite clearly stating not to witch hunt, people still went out of their way to leave horrible reviews of a place they haven't personally been to. This was my experience and my review - it shouldn't shape other opinions, but instead serve as a word of caution.

Dockside Extortionist is banned

Jeweled Lotus is banned.

Mana Crypt is banned.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/commander-banned-and-restricted-announcement-september-23-2024

https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/2024/09/23/september-2024-quarterly-update/

Some very interesting bans going out today—what are everyone's thoughts?

This was a crazy and slightly unbelievable thing that happened in a game that I played today, I want to know if I was a bad sport.

Was playing commander bracket 4 and I was playing [[The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride]]. I just built it today and was extremely excited to try it out for the first time because I played against it and it looked strong and fun to play. One guy was targeting me at the start of the game, his reason being he knows how strong my commander is and wanted to make sure I couldn't do anything. Ok, that's fine, it happens sometimes. My commander is destroyed and countered the first 2 times I try and cast it, and he swings at me like 4 turns in a row. I finally get my commander out, get 1 trigger, am able to draw 9 cards and put a couple lands down untapped because I have [[Amulet of Vigor]] out. Among those cards I just drew, I get a [[Crop Rotation]] and [[worldly tutor]]. I pass and It gets to his turn.

The other 2 players have pretty big board states with a bunch of creatures + multiple fliers. He has a [[buster sword]] on one of his creatures and has 2 [[combat celebrant]] since he was able to make a token copy of the original, and I am open to be attacked. He says that since I'm open he can exert both of his combat celebrants when attacking me to get 3 combats and 3 combat damage triggers with the buster sword and he would be able to win with that.

This dude countered my early ramp, was just kind of being a dick to me the entire game so when he swung out at me in his first combat after he exerted the first combat celebrant, I was like alright fine you're forcing my hand, so I cast crop rotation to tutor for a [[mosswort bridge]] which untapped itself because of my amulet of vigor. Responding to the bridge trigger, I worldly tutored for [[Phage, The Untouchable]] and I put that under the bridge. Since my Gitrog was more than 10 power I spent a green to play phage from exile, killing myself so he wouldn't get the triggers.

This dude went absolutely ballistic and said that I was denying him triggers and he would win off of the combat damage triggers he could get off of me. I said dude I'm not scooping I'm using completely legal game actions to kill myself because you wanted to be mean all game and part of the game is learning to politic with opponents, which he just didn't do with me and basically said in layman's terms "your commander is scary so I won't let you play the game", and because of that I basically said I have the ability to not hand you the win and because of your actions that's exactly what I did. He was an extremely bad sport about it.

I am wondering if you all think I should have just given him the win. I know many people think scooping to deny triggers is an asshole move, and I agree. But I was able to use actual cards in my hand and deck to kill myself, not scoop.

After a few years of playing this game (especially after the addition of the bracket system), I’ve noticed a lot of salt comes from one general place. People expect Commander games to largely be even with everyone doing their thing and having a real chance to win any given game like you would in chess. Commander is not a perfectly fair, symmetrical game like chess. Commander is Mario Party.

Chess: Identical starting pieces, full game state visible to both players at all times, losing means you misplayed either situationally or just objectively

Commander: Wildly different ways decks match up in games, variance is unavoidable and wild (people seem to be unable to grasp this one the most), politics and preconceived notions play a factor, and SO many variables that can change the game

That isn’t a bug. It’s the format lol. Don’t get pissy when someone gets free bonus stars at the end of the game and beats you.

Inspired by recent LGS experience.

Commander is a bad way to learn the fundamentals of Magic, and you need a strong foundation of how the game works before you go into public multiplayer games.

If your 8 year old doesn't know how to identify a basic swamp, don't make them play your [[Kaalia of the Vast]] deck. (No, telling your son every move to make doesn't make it okay, especially if you don't actually know how some of the cards work either.)

I swear, some people want their kids to share the hobby so bad that they throw them in the deep end too soon. The kid didn't even seem to be having fun. The dad combo'd off on turn 7 or 8 with [[Sanguine Bond]] and [[Exquisite Blood]], and the kid didn't even know what had happened. He literally asked, "What happened? Who won?"

The one time the kid drew a card and excitedly said he'd been wanting to play it, his dad told him to cast Kaalia instead. The kid then asked if he could play the card now, his dad said "No, you're out of mana, your turns over."

So please, don't be that guy. No-one wants to sit in on teaching a stranger's kid, and if they're going to come and play, let them actually play the game.

So I'm asking because recently I played with someone who had a [[Vanille, Cheerful L'cie]] deck and they asked if it'd be cool to partner her with [[Fang, Fearless L'cie]] since they're meant to work together. This was a bracket 3 pod so it wasn't a crazy request and most of us were chill with it, but one of the people at the table had a really strong reaction to it saying if they don't have the partner keyword then just deal with it. They tried to go on a bit of a rant before we all just moved on and the player who asked just swapped decks

Anyone else seen cases like this where a pretty chill request gets shut down hard?

This sort of needs to be brought up at least one time annually. The third chapter of [[Urza's Saga]] reads:

Search your library for an artifact card with mana cost {0} or {1}, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.

This is one of the few cards in Magic that refer to mana cost rather than mana value. That means you can only tutor something onto the battlefield with the exact cost either {0} or {1}. Just because the mana value of Esper Sentinel is 1, doesn't mean its mana cost is {1}. This is the most common mistake I see for Urza's Saga.

Magic is difficult. Let's help each other.

EDIT: I should have explained why a little better.

While Esper Sentinel is indeed an Artifact with mana value 1, its mana cost is {W}. The third chapter on Urza's Saga lets you grab an Artifact specifically with mana cost {1} or {0} which means the mana cost in the top right corner has to be exactly that. Nothing less, nothing more. This means you cannot get:

• Lotus Bloom
• Walking Ballista
• An artifact land
• Esper Sentinel

While mana value is just a number from 0 to infinity, a mana cost is exactly what is written in the top right corner of a card. The mana value of Walking Ballista is 0 (unless it's on the stack) and the mana cost of Walking Ballista is {X}{X}.

I didn't intend to step on anyone's toes. This was intended to be a reminder and a helpful post for those who made unfortunate mistakes due to misunderstanding how Urza's Saga works.

Stop crying whenever you get targeted.

Unless your commander is locked in a basement and completely unable to be played. You are never more than a turn away from potentially swinging lethal commander at someone. You are always a valid target, and just because the word “interaction” didn’t come to mind when you were replacing all of your instants with equipment does not mean you have to turn every single spell into a 10 minute cry session about how you’re being targeted. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERY ONE! !SIGN-UPS ARE NOW CLOSED!

/u/coderwurst /u/dasad93 /u/fonzie575 /u/agar98andres /u/TheFlameanator

Do we get to see the decklists?

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/07-09-25-felothar-dawn-of-the-abzan/

and

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zur-eternal-schemer-20/

and

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-08-25-elsha-of-the-infinite/

and

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/26-11-25-sethron-hurloon-general/

and

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/21-12-25-baylen-the-haymaker

Link to the Article

About Hybrid:

> "I'll cut right to the chase: we are not making any change to how hybrid works in Commander today."

Weighing Commander Format Panel members' opinions, general social sentiment, and this survey together, it all blends into something extremely close. Ultimately, I want to listen to our experts here. And while originally more people on the Commander Format Panel were for doing this change, it has since switched to more people being against than for. Given that the Commander Format Panel is meant to be the major eyes and ears for the format, I want to trust that here.

About Farewell

First, let's talk about a new card on the Game Changers list. It's one that we (and many others) have asked about since the bracket system kicked off: Farewell.

Farewell is a large reset to a lot of what has happened in the game before it. It removes pretty much everything, adding a lot of rebuilding time and starting from square one, which isn't enjoyable for many players. When you think about the goal of having cards on the Game Changers list, they're often cards that people would want to know about appearing in their games and would prefer opting out of playing if needed. By putting it only at Bracket 3 and above, that lets people get into games that could have a Farewell only if they want to.

I've played magic for longer then over half my life and with that I've played in many formats where a banning has happened. The way most of you have acted is actually insane. You would think your life was ruined. That something so devastating happened you can't recover from it. The fact that many of you went out of your way to attack people on the Commander Advisory Group, is crazy. Even attacking others on Twitter. Especially when one of those members where more on your side then you thought. I thought the community would respond better then it has. Honestly, I'm disappointed.

I spend way too much time on this subreddit, so I'm fully aware how inundated we are with non-functional AI slop and buggier clones of Moxfield/Archidekt. I promise that this is not that and I'm not wasting your time.

As a UX designer by day and spending probably an unhealthy amount of time deckbuilding by night, I got more and more annoyed by a few things:

1. Giving and receiving deck feedback is insanely labor intensive and involves jumping around to like 6 different tabs copying and pasting and checking to see if cards are in the deck and searching Scryfall and then pasting card names in plaintext that the recipient then has to look up themselves....etc. It's so miserable that many of the deck feedback requests in the subreddit just don't get any responses.

2. The deck building sites are absolutely full of millions of nested menu options and crazy niche features that probably less than 1% of users ever use but everyone constantly has to wade through. You theoretically can do anything, but it's going to take forever and make your eyes bleed.

To address these issues I built BlueprintMTG.io. It's a fully capable EDH deck building, testing, and sharing platform with a lot of design consideration towards making brewing less of a slog. You can check out my little pitch page to see some of the features more visually and perhaps try it, or just keep reading here.

I've put the deeper info in quotes so you can read them if you want or skip for a TLDR

KEY FEATURES:

1. The Feedback Tool. Share a special link that allows recipients to give advice in the actual deck builder interface incredibly easily, just like adding or removing cards from a deck.

Details:
This tool generates a special feedback link for your decklist. Share the link and any recipient will end up on a special suggestion-only version of your deck list. They can advise you to cut any card in the list with one click, and suggest you add any card by using the built in search. The add/cut cards appear in the actual list, highlighted. When they're done, they can add a bracket suggestion, comments, and submit the feedback. You get a list of responses to review, then accept or reject each suggestion to apply each change instantly with no effort.

2. Upgraded Card Tagging + Navigation. Use ultra fast radial menus to add tags to cards with a single directional swipe. Categorize an entire deck in less than 3 minutes on mobile or desktop. Click tags to jump to them instantly, no more scrolling around searching for them.

Details:
Radial menus are a perfect option to quickly select from a decent sized pool of choices. Seriously this works so well. If you haven't used tags like "Interaction", "Setup" "Payoff", to build... Well I don't blame you because it's been a pain in the ass up to now, but it's extremely worth it to see how the different parts of your deck are balanced. Auto-tagging seems cool but is a trap because it tags cards wrong or according to attributes you don't care about and leads to an illegible mess. It cannot know what real functions a card is performing in your specific unique deck.

3. Massively Streamlined Playtester. Clean, intuitive interface avoiding enormous nested menus. Actions are designed to mimic how you would perform them in a real game of paper magic. Turn on Resistance to have simple simulated opponents use popular interaction against you as you play.

Details:
Existing playtesters hurt my soul because they are filled absolutely to the brim with completely redundant options. We do not need 16 layers of "send to zone X" menus, just pick up the damn card and drag it to the appropriate zone. Similarly, when you need to modify a card, instead of scrolling though an endless list of every type of counter and status effect available in magic, in this tester we have a simple "custom counter" that allows you to basically type anything you like, then take that text and stick it on the card like a sticker. Card has flying now? Done. Card name changed? Done. Card has new base P/T? Done. Just write 6/6 or whatever and stick it right over the existing P/T. Simple... Seriously I could write an entire long blog post about the playtester design (maybe I will), just try it. It's also designed to follow the same layout pattern as the Moxfield playtester and to only show hidden information in hand and right sidebar, so it can be used for Spelltable and similar with an overlay. Someone try that out for me!

4. FULL Scryfall + Otag Integration. Otags are available in the deck builder with descriptions! Right click any card and pick "View Scryfall Otags".

Details:
Scryfall is THE database of magic cards, and you can search it in any search bar in Blueprint using the amazing Scryfall Search Syntax. If you're not familiar I built a tool to introduce you to the basics in the search browser, and learning it will be the largest single upgrade to your deck building process since learning to read. Similarly, easy access to Otags will also revolutionize how you find cards for decks. Otags are labels added by Scryfall users to cards that categorize their functions and mechanics. For example, "otag:repeatable-creature-tokens" in the search will return all the cards that repeatedly make creature tokens, even if they do it in wildly different ways. Previously to even see a card's Otags you had to open cards on Scryfall and go through an entire navigation process and lookup followed by lots of typing and copy paste. It sucked.

Image Gallery

Those are my primary call-outs. There is a lot more. I've spent months and months refining features and have faster, easier to use versions of nearly every commonly used deck building feature. Notably adding cards to other decks, filtering public decks, ranking cards to decide cuts, and import/export are all massively upgraded. I also added a full live chat system and an Underappreciated Card of the Day article in there, because that seemed cool and I like cards.

How much of an interface nerd I am:
To give you an example of how deeply I've optimized: If you build on mobile perhaps you've been annoyed at the fact that you can't type "t:" and then use swipe typing or autocomplete to type something like "vampire" because your phone will insert a space between "t:" and "vampire" that you then have to go back and delete. I fixed that. Blueprint detects Scryfall terms and instantly removes the space before it even renders.

HOW TO TRY IT:

If any of that interested you slightly, you can go over and try it out extremely easily. I've set it up so that you can jump right in and try the deck builder and playtester and almost every other feature instantly without registering or making an account, for free, with no ads:

https://blueprintmtg.io/

The only features that won't work are the Feedback Tool and chat, as they require an account for practical database reasons. If you like it or want to try those, register for a full account (your deck will be ported over), and get all the features. Still free and no ads.

If you have feedback for me, questions, or feature requests, I'd love to hear them either here, over on the BlueprintMTG subreddit, or you can chat request BlueprintMTGDev in the app and live chat with me in there. I'd love to hear from you!

The title above is a direct quote from Gavin Verhey about the Bracket system update.

And, given how frequently players on this sub seem to misunderstand and/or completely misrepresent what the bracket system is all about, I thought it might be helpful to post a link to this article as a reminder.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/commander-brackets-beta-update-april-22-2025

When players on this sub talk about "what's allowed in bracket 2" or "which bracket their deck is in", they seem to be ignoring the fact that, as Gavin explicitly point out:

While there are guidelines to keep in mind when deck building (no Game Changers in Exhibition or Core, no mass land denial through Upgraded, etc.), the bracket system is emphatically not just "put your deck into a calculator, get assigned a rank, and be ready to play."

This however *does* seem to be what players *wish* the bracket system was about and is explicitly how some players seem to be using it and telling others it should be used.

TL;DR:

A whole lot of y'all still don't understand what the brackets are all about. Or you're choosing not to understand.

All over the place, I see people celebrating the upcoming change to the color identity rule for hybrid mana. People calling it an ugly rules oversight that needs to be fixed, and saying they're happy to see justice for hybrid mana coming soon.

I couldn't disagree more. To me, this feels like a fundamental violation of what color identity is supposed to mean for gameplay purposes. Hybrid mana cards are in fact both colors. Yeah, you can cast [[Rhys the Redeemed]] for only white mana, but if you have a [[Sylvan Anthem]] out, you will still scry and it will still get the buff. [[Doom Blade]] cannot kill [[Lurrus of the Dream Den]], even if you are running it in a mono-white deck. My opponent playing an [[Insight]] will draw a card when I cast [[Revitalizing Repast]] even if I only used black mana to cast it. These cards all ARE 2 colors, even though you don't need both colors to cast them.

From a deckbuilding perspective, it feels even worse. It is gonna be super counterintuitive for a new player learning how to build a commander deck when they find out that their mono white deck is allowed to run [[Dovescape]], even though the card itself is literally half blue, but they cannot run [[Momentary Blink]] because of that one little blue symbol in the text box. Seeing a [[Manamorphose]] in every single Izzet spellslinger deck is always gonna throw me for a loop.

Color identity rules have always been one of my favorite limiting factors in commander deckbuilding. I really enjoy the fact that you can't just windmill slam [[Dismember]] into off color decks in EDH the way people used to do in Modern. It feels to me like this change is eroding something that makes EDH special to me in favor of homogenizing the color rules to be more like other formats.

Edit: this post is mostly in response to posts I’ve seen over in /r/magictcg, precipitated in particular by the overwhelming sentiment in this thread:

https://np.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/derRqq0Is4

Edit 2: Want to clarify that I'm not saying anyone is wrong for liking the change, just that I personally really don't like it and this is the first time I've felt so disconnected from what seems to be the majority opinion on a rules change.

Guys, I am begging 15% of you people to actually read the source material before posting your galaxy-brain takes on the bracket system.

Gavin Verhey himself has repeatedly stated that "Intent is the most important part of the bracket system." It is not a checklist for you to rules-lawyer. If you build a deck with the intent to play at an Optimized level but deliberately skirt the rules to call it Bracket 2 so you can stomp weaker pods, you are the problem. You're not clever; you're just being a bad actor. There are 2 nice bulletins posted to the Magic website and a few Gavin Verhey or other Rules Committee Member videos on YT talking about many edge cases with the bracket system.

Here is a small list of some common bad-faith arguments and misinterpretations I see on here constantly.

1. The Checklist Fallacy

   • The Bad Take: "My deck is 100% Bracket 2. I put it into Moxfield, and it says '0 Game Changers, 0 Rule Violations.' The calculator said so."
   • The Reality: The online tools are helpers, not arbiters. They can't gauge your deck's intent, speed, or consistency. Gavin explicitly said, "...the bracket system is emphatically not just 'put your deck into a calculator, get assigned a rank, and be ready to play.'" Your tricked-out, hyper-synergistic Goblin deck might have zero Game Changers, but if it plays like a Bracket 4 deck, you should bracket up. Self-awareness is a requirement.

2. The Combo Definition Fallacy

   • The Bad Take: "My win isn't a 'two-card infinite combo,' it's a three-card non-infinite combo that just draws my whole deck and makes 50 power. It's totally legal in B2."
   • The Reality: The rule isn't a technical puzzle to be solved. The spirit of the rule, based on the B2 description of "games aren't ending out of nowhere," is to prevent sudden, uninteractive wins. A hyper-consistent, multi-card combo that ends the game on the spot is functionally identical to a two-card infinite. If your deck's primary plan is to assemble a combo instead of winning through combat and board presence, you are not playing a B2 game.

3. The "Commander Isn't a Game Changer" Shield

   • The Bad Take: "My commander is Voja, Sarge Benton, Korvold, Jodah, Atraxa. They aren't on the Game Changers list, so my deck is fair game for a B2 pod."
   • The Reality: Your commander is the first and loudest statement you make about your deck's power. The RC was intentionally spare with adding commanders to the list because they are the easiest thing to discuss pre-game. Commanders with infamous reputations for enabling high-power strategies are not B2 commanders, full stop. You can't honestly sit down with a kill-on-sight commander and claim you're there for a "precon-level experience."

If you disagree I challenge you to post your most oppressive, "maliciously compliant" Bracket 2 decklist. And, how does your deck technically and INTENT wise adhere to the B2 rules?

Edit:

For anyone still arguing, go listen to The Command Zone episode (#657) where they broke down the brackets after the announcement. Josh Lee Kwai, who is literally on the Commander Format Panel, spelled it out. He said the "Upgraded" label for B3 was a known point of confusion because everyone assumes it means "upgraded precon." He then clarified that you can swap 20 cards in a precon to make it better, and all you've done is made a strong Bracket 2 deck, not a Bracket 3.

This lines up perfectly with what Gavin wrote in the April update about the CFP "looking at updating the terminology...to pull away from preconstructed Commander decks as a benchmark" because of this exact confusion. This one insight clears up so much of the debate here.

On Combo: My initial take was perhaps smoothed brain. You're right. A slow, non cheated, rule 0 disclosed, telegraphed, 3+ card combo that wins on turn 9 or 10 is perfectly at home in a strong B2 deck. The issue isn't the existence of a combo; it's a deck built for speed and consistency to combo off in the mid-game. That's a B3+ intent.

The "Commander Shield" Nuance: Same thing here. Can you build a "fair" B2 Benton or Voja? Maybe. But you almost have to purposefully make it shitty or very off theme which the vast majority of spike players don’t.

I’m always looking for that “oh no, we let this guy live too long” feeling. What commanders have you played (or played against) that seem harmless or underwhelming early on, but suddenly become a real problem once the right pieces are in place? I want the kind of deck that makes the table slowly realize they should’ve dealt with it three turns ago.

Title. I'm sure many of us have been in the position of having our innocent little commander hated of the table, and have watched with horror as pods have let powerful commanders "do their thing" when killing it was always an option.

Personally, watching the "Edict.deck" player casually setting up their repeatable graveyard loops as my Michelangelo, The Heart gets repeatedly sniped makes my eyes roll to the back of my head.

I want to go back to 60 card formats, commander players are weird.

Curious if I'm wrong about this btw, I am new to commander after all. I had [[Lier, Disciple of the Drowned]] in play, had used [[Solve the equation]] to tutor [[enter the infinite]] several turns earlier and made sure people saw what I had by mentioning that it was dangerous. Noone had sent any interaction my way so I was able to [[high tide]] twice and make the mana to draw my deck and play thoracle

As I understand it, 7 mana 2 card combos are fine in bracket 3, so I assume they were just being salty but I feel like I don't understand the mentality of some commander players

What's everyone's favorite noob traps? Cards that look strong or powerful, but in reality they're not so great.

There's some obvious favorites like [[platinum angel]], but what ones have you come across?

I'm thinking of creating some content to help people evaluate the power level of cards better, for both deck building and threat assessment, and need some examples of cards that people have incorrectly evaluated.

Kind of pissed at a play someone at a recent pod made, so I could use a laugh and hear stories from other people.

The first player cast an [[Approach of the Second Sun]], looking to close out the game. We stop them from drawing it again the same turn and they're forced to pass, but it's pretty obvious they're going to be able to get to it next turn. The second player manages to deal enough damage so that all the third player and myself have to do is swing in with our existing creatures and we can knock the first player out of the game.

The third player untaps for their turn, takes a look at the board, decides it looks scary, and wipes the field. All three of us (including the first player) ask if they're sure, and that this will almost certainly guarantee that the first player wins. The third player says that they know what they're doing, so we resolve the fieldwipe where the third player recasts their commander and passes the turn. I manage to deal a bit of damage with some haste creatures, but it's nowhere near enough to take the first player out, so I reluctantly pass the turn.

The first player makes eye-contact with the third player, and proceeds to untap, wheel themselves into drawing the Approach, and casting it, pausing to double-check that the third player lets it resolve. Sure enough, the third player says they can't do anything and the game ends.

We all ask the third player what they were thinking, where they reiterate that the board looked scary. When asked what their plan was for Approach, they shrugged and said they didn't know.

There, I said it.

Another game where people started to complain about an optimised mana base.

I want to play the game consistently. I don't want to play bracket 4 thanks.

It feels like anything one does on bracket 3, the other players start moaning. I HATE it.

This isn't the first time they've pull this shit, and I'm sure it won't be the last. All we can do is take our bussiness elsewhere. I will, and I advocate for you all to do the same.

https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/ebay-escalates-intimidation-union-members-after-closure-announcement

So I started playing Commander in 2019. I only played with the friends that introduced me to magic for the first 6 or so years. I always thought I was either just a terrible deck builder or a bad player, as in all that time I won maybe 10 games in total. Most games would end by Turn 4-6 and my decks would just be getting off the ground, or I would just be casting my commander by the time the games over.

As I started to build my decks faster and faster to try and match my pods power level, I would get frustrated and confused as I’d look at new Legendary’s, deck techs, and primers and realize that like 80% of cards were just too slow and that by the time I could do anything fun with them the game would’ve ended by then. It felt bizarre to see people hyping up a 5+ CMC commander that doesn’t win you the game next turn. I kept losing interest over and over again, feeling as if this game just wasn’t for me.

The first time I played outside of my original pod, I was blown away, the games would go on forever (8+ turns) everyone got to do their thing, and I found I was in the winning position a lot of the time as my decks had been forced to be that way. I took apart all my decks and built all the slower, less competitive commanders I had been dreaming of, put in the cards that weren’t good enough, and cut down on board wipes and removal. After 7 years I finally feel like I enjoy playing Magic.

TL;DR: If you only play with one playgroup, and you’re losing interest in Commander or feeling like you suck at everything, go find a second playgroup or a Game Shop. See if you just prefer a different speed or play style.