What would change if there was a solution to the format?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on June 23, 2020, 2:56 a.m. by SynergyBuild
EDH and cEDH are famous for not having a serious metagame, statistics are incredibly hard to find or judge, and as major tournaments and official results are difficult to work with given the random and multiplayer politics messing with results, massive databases of games with minimal misplays, tuned decks, optimized play patterns and politics, as well as getting enough games for some level of consistency would be absurd.
Since the format, unlike 4x-60 card decks, leading to a roughly 6.7*inconsistency rate, which is absurd, considering matchup playing is almost impossible with so many highly tiered cEDH decks, as well as rogue tuned EDH lists, and also no sideboards but additionally 3 opponents to matchup against.
It's too complicated, but if there was a proper database, what do you think would be the outcome, would netdecking be more popular if you could accurately give winrates and proper metagame percentages to each card and deck? If there were perfect primers, yet people could still choose to play casually, like kitchen-top magic is normally, would it affect the format in any major ways?
Would it help the format, giving more information to those that seek it, or would the information itself be hurtful to the format, or take away something that would make it unique?
lagotripha says... #3
Pile on that the number of possibilities and the almost unique state of any game table and we reach a point where even categorising decks as aggro/combo/control may be difficult, let alone assessing card choice or misplays beyond 'this seems to win more somehow' regardless of the volume of data our ability to interpret that data is still limited.
While homogenization is a risk, that's more down to 'flavour of the month' herd mentality than the actual state of the meta.
Being able to see when the meta revolves around a card would be neat however-especially when that card is healthy for the format and the tables it's at, which should allow for more varied responses to that and increased deck variety.
June 23, 2020 8:28 a.m.
Metachemist says... #4
I think you'd find that the percentage of wins among "decks" would even out pretty quickly, just because you only have a 25% chance of winning to begin with along with all the above mentioned issues. What I would love to see solid data on is the win rates of certain combo lines, which is where I think you would see a meta evolve as people find consistent lines that play around control/interaction,
June 23, 2020 9:03 a.m.
The reason i was never interested in such data is because i think it's highly likely to be biased. Especially from previous sources such as tournament data. I think people would be even less exploratory as players thunder towards what's first winning, and maybe even overlooking less obvious second or third solutions, since in some cases they may not need them. Anything that theoretically causes players to shortcut experiments i see as a drawback to mathematical approaches.
Also shameless plug: we have a netdeck vs homebrew metric coming today or tomorrow for some formats. Though we can discuss that elsewhere if need be i don't want to derail.
June 23, 2020 9:31 a.m.
I think netdecking would absolutely become more popular, and is necessary in order for cedh to succeed.
Every deck builder is a magic player
Not every magic player is a deck builder.
June 23, 2020 10:51 a.m.
There’s a certain beauty to brewing with what you have/find fun, sitting down with friends, and having a good fun game of magic. Commander is the only format that has retained that... ah... magic. Magic the way Richard Garfield intended.
Every other format requires investing in a top deck, and beyond the local GP level, games become more about winning than about having fun. Basically: magic is the one tcg known for not having fully devolved into a ranked ladder, and commander as a format is the greatest bastion of defense against that devolution.
Honestly, I don’t care what would happen if the commander meta were solved. I’m extremely happy with commander as is, and I’d rather not meddle with it. That said, what I suspect would happen is this:
-Massive price spikes for staple cards among top decks. I’m talking about Fierce Guardianship competing with Force of Will for price.
-commander devolving into a “competitive laddering” format. It happens to every solved game. Modern, standard, legacy, hearthstone, Pokemon, MTG online, yugioh, the list goes on.
-A massive drop in interest for the format among casual players. To this point specifically: I don’t agree with the counter argument that casuals can still brew however they want. They could do the same in modern or standard but they don’t. Casuals can tell when a game is a bit too competitive for their tastes. I’ve made a lot of friends through commander, and I can confidently say that if commander were “solved”, I never would have met 2/3 of them. Even as a software engineer, I’d take the friends over the data any day of the week.
June 23, 2020 11:28 a.m. Edited.
TriusMalarky says... #8
The fun thing about EDH is that you have to have built the deck to understand how it's supposed to run. Only you know why that one specific card is in there -- and if someone doesn't understand, and cuts the card, they could have accidentally ruined the deck.
I think people would be burned by random brews coming up to the top. I mean, in Modern you can look at the deck and figure it out, but since there are effectively infinite absurd decks, a massive portion of which don't need super expensive cards, and because the nature of players is to attack whoever's obviously winning or whoever's won most in the past, you can easily have some 17-yr-old with a $40 deck that they threw together over the weekend suddenly dominating an EDH GP, only for their deck to be bought out by speculators and suddenly you have hundreds of people running this one deck and losing.
Sorry for the wall of text.
I mean, seriously though -- there could be an established meta -- sort of. In some decks, there'd be enough card choices that you can say "Commander X is 30% of the competitive format" but actually they're 12 decks that are all seven cards apart with drastically different playstyles. On top of the fact that I can come in and spike a tournament one time just for fun with my stupid combo deck. And it doesn't even have a decent manabase -- the mana is mostly taplands. Guildgates FTW, amirite?
See, the only reason any sort of 'meta' exists in 60-card formats is because of hype bias. There will always be the deck(or seven) that nobody is talking about because it's always around #9-12. There will always be those strategies that are only slightly worse than the top tier insanity -- and they will sit there mostly unnoticed because people would rather talk about Veil or Astrolabe, or T3f or Uro, or Breach or Inverter or Grapeshot or Stinkweed Imp or Agent of Treachery. In EDH, that will be so much more pronounced that it's not even funny. The difference of one card can easily change a deck's gameplan drastically depending on the deck and the card.
TLDR The combinatorics are too large for the bad information we currently have. EDH tourney stats would just be an LSD trip of rainbows, random rogue decks dominating for exactly one tournament, and people using decks that cost more than their house.
June 23, 2020 1:18 p.m.
Metachemist says... #9
Thinking on this throughout the day kinda brought me to a conclusion. EDH/Commander is solved already, that's what cEDH already is and why FlashHulk was such a damned problem.
Now by comparison to other solved formats? Oh yeah there is a A LOT of room for jank/homebrews that are highly tuned or run combo packages that significantly more powerful that the rest of the deck might suggest.
Hell any deck running U/B can slot in a Demonic Consultation/Thassa's Oracle/Demonic Tutor package for all of about $50 USD and suddenly present a real threat when on three mana. Now granted that won't be at nearly the consistency of an actually cEDH list but I think the point still stands.
What I find interesting is that cEDH and EDH seem to largely co-exist peacefully out in the wild. Pre-covid at my LGS several of us had made a dedicated effort to really push at least one of our decks in cEDH territory, maybe not full blown 9.5-10s but still. We only played them against each other or when other people wanted to see how they worked. We also still had our less powerful decks and had a lot of fun playing them as well. This actually lead a fun play pattern for most days of 1 game of jank/meme/silly decks, 1 game of reasonably powered EDH, 1 game of tooled up decks, and 1 game of cEDH.
For me at least getting into cEDH made me a better deck builder and I actually went back and rebuilt of a couple of my older decks and while not making them more powerful, I did make them more interactive and a bit faster (ie less taplands, hell just more basics in most cases) just to make them more fun to pilot and to watch being played.
Anyway just wanted to share these thoughts as they rattled around in my brain because what else is the internet for? :)
June 23, 2020 1:53 p.m.
Metachemist "What I find interesting is that cEDH and EDH seem to largely co-exist peacefully out in the wild."
We have a saying,
no matter how competitive and consistent you build your deck
somewhere there is a 25 cent card that shuts the hole thing down,
and some casual player has it in there deck.
June 23, 2020 2:19 p.m.
Metachemist says... #11
For sure, I've forced high powered reanimator decks into scoops just by timely use of a Nihil Spellbomb or a Tormod's Crypt and those are dirt cheap.
But what I was getting at was DuTogira's point about casuals being turned off by the format being solved. Commander is the most popular format by a country mile and still growing. At the same time cEDH also seems to be getting more popular as well with a growing interest and appetite for content related to it on various platforms. That's more what I meant about them co-existing peacefully.
June 23, 2020 2:30 p.m.
griffstick says... #12
SynergyBuild I feel the possibility of randomness is just way to high even for a computer to compile that data. With that being said this is hypothetical only. Edhrec is the closest I think we will come. And opinion rated tier rating systems with primers. I think with new cards all the time it's just not possible.
What we know is what colors are the strongest. And what the weak colors are. And that's conclusive.
Now if that was possible to compile that data and keep it updated then I think I it would be awesome.
June 23, 2020 2:51 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #13
I mean not sure how many of you went to commandfest and played in the cedh tournment/competitive pods but almost every table had an urza deck/partners.
June 23, 2020 3:10 p.m.
@RNR_Gaming absolutely
In order to play competitively you need to constantly get your win con off before anyone else. its more of a race then it is interactive
(keeping it simple because going in depth into probabilities gives me a headache)
running partner commanders gives you a 98 card deck which puts you 1 turn ahead in probabilities of drawing the card you need.
combine that with now having constant access to 2 cards with powerful utility in every game
and the only thing that would surprises me is a cedh deck that doesn't have Thrasios, Triton Hero as a commander
June 23, 2020 4:45 p.m.
Metachemist says... #15
SynergyBuild I think you accidentally left your response on my user page
June 23, 2020 4:47 p.m.
I'll be honest: I do not engage with Commander in a competitive sense. I approach it in the same way I'd approach any game on board game night. I'm not looking to throw or lose Betrayal at House on the Hill, but winning is a secondary goal to enjoying playing the game. And as a competitive format I think Commander is more variable and unbalanced than something like singleton Legacy, Canadian Highlander, or even Duel Commander. Forcing it into being a competition like Standard/Pioneer/Modern/Legacy/Vintage seems like a misapplication of the format.
And frankly the way I see it is that the best "competitive" deck would just be whatever two-card combo is fastest and least able to be interacted with to win. So either you race to that, or wait and play politics and try to point the group at someone else until you hit your combo. Those solitaire-until-someone-gets-their-combo games so bored my college playgroup we started experimenting with alternate rules because our games were devolving into everyone sitting around, ramping, doing nothing to interact with the game until someone suddenly goes for their combo and wins.
Also, do we not have that metagame information now? There are already loads of Commander content creators talking about decks and combos and the cards you should be running, not to mention EDHRec telling you what the percentage inclusion is of a card in all decks with that commander.
June 25, 2020 7:38 a.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #17
SpammyV most of the content creators share your sentiment. The bigger channels like TCC and Commanders quarter play for fun and abide by the social contract. Now by comparison Cedhtv, spike feeders, in the 99, cedh cast, casually competitive and lab maniacs all try to push the envelope though for the most part their content isn't nearly as popular; you can look at decks on here too. You can make some ultra competitive version of a commander but I guarantee a budget build with a catchy name will gain more traction. Anyways, the point is there are a lot of ways to enjoy the game and even between content creators and websites like edhrec meta data has so much variance due to the many approaches players have for this format. You can do just about anything with a large card Pool but it doesn't mean every player wants to climb or even improve. Competitive players love validation. If there were tournments with real money on the line, similar to GPs and opens that required deck lists you can bet everyone would bring their A game and that is what we'd like the data from. Right now the data is small and for the most part incestuous.
RNR_Gaming says... #2
So, I would love easy to access accurate tournment data. However, I do believe it would overall be harmful to the format. We'd have more people clamoring for bannings. Also, homogenization would likely occur at a ridiculous rates. If edh started having opens/GPS specifically for the format we'd probably see an initial spike followed by a sharp decline.
June 23, 2020 5:33 a.m.