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Rule 0 was supposed to cover this. I know the power levels my playgroup typically play with because we talk about it before literally every game. Idk how big a problem this really was (vocal minority?) but it just seems like WotC wanted to make commander their own so here we are.
Rule 0 still exists. This is meant to help give a quick distinction for playing in “untrusted groups” where you don’t know what other people consider a “7.” You can state clearly that by the brackets, your deck is considered a 3, but also mention that it plays out more powerfully, like a 4.
For most players, this is a pretty helpful guide:
- 1 is for your jank and meme decks. It’s not designed to be strong, it’s just to do something funny.
- 2 is for precon level decks. Not awful, but definitely not optimized. A number of budget decks and pet decks may fit in here.
- 3 is for your good decks, but with the caveat that they’re not full of the salt-inducing “game changers” or Mass Land Destruction or 2-card combos that go off turn 2.
- 4 is for your best non-CEDH decks. Push it as far as you want, understanding that other people at the table likely did the same
- 5 is for CEDH. If you don’t know what that is, you’re not playing a 5, just a powerful 4.
I know that most of my decks are 2s, or a 3 with 1-2 Game Changers. None that would really be 4s, but sometimes I can play them at a 4-level table and still luck out into a win.
I’m pretty excited to see the brackets! I think there are a lot of unrealistic expectations going around about how effective they will be, leading to a lot of unnecessary negativity. But I guess that’s just a normal reaction to changes in hobby spaces. Most people that get upset probably didn’t read the article and just looked at the brackets and Game Changers list to find things to complain about. Also it’s just a beta! Anyway, in my eyes it just has to be better than what we currently have and that’s not too hard. Also it won’t replace the pre-game talk. It’s supposed to complement it.
I quite like the 5 brackets. They represent the different deck types, that I see most often, well enough. Of course there is still the possibility for vastly varying power levels within these, if you only consider what you’re not allowed to play instead of adhering to the bracket’s “spirit”. There will still be people that consider their weird but high-synergy deck to be bracket 1 or 2, because it adheres to the rules, but at least I don’t have to worry about facing cards from the Game Changers list. There will always be a way for bad actors to spoil everyone’s fun if they really try, but that’s another issue I think. We’ll see if the brackets communicate their power level well enough for more balanced games.
I really like the idea of the Game Changers list. Way better than having a list for each bracket. It’s also great to have a half-way step before bans, which will allow for unbans of various cards that are fine in higher power games. I like that I can look at that list and get a feel what I can expect to see and what not in the different brackets. It’s a really elegant solution! It does look a little short, though. I expected to see Burgeoning, Necropotence, Farewell and more on that list.
All in all I’m excited to adjust my decks to fit into the different brackets to see if it actually works out. Commander is such a great game if everybody is roughly playing on the same level and you have some idea of what you can expect to see. Over the last years this most often happened when my pod brought their cEDH adjacent, high power decks. Anything less than that had way more power level inconsistencies. Which felt especially worse, because the games took way longer. Hopefully this is a step to fix this!
What do you more experienced players think of this? I’m kinda bad but this tiering doesn’t really fit my decks, as it puts 9/10 into T1 and the tenth one above T2 but below T3 because it’s got one “game changer” even though it’s definitely not my best-performing deck
I own an FLGS and run casual commander one night a week. As time goes on everyone’s decks start to get more and more powerful. As the decks creep towards cEDH less and less people come in to play until there is no one for a few weeks. Then we go back to casual and repeat. Now having a defined tier list will help keep decks to 1 & 2 with an occasional 3 and maybe 4 for special events.
You don’t have to play 3 Game Changers for your deck to be in bracket 3. I think the “rules” are more like guard rails. It may be more helpful to consider the bracket descriptions to gauge where your decks fall. Just because your high power optimized deck adheres to the “rules” in bracket 1, doesn’t mean it is a bracket 1 deck. As they wrote, this will not protect you from bad actors.
Edit: This is also answered in the FAQ part of the article:
My best deck has no Game Changers and is technically a Bracket 2 deck. Should I play it there?
You should play where you think you belong based on the descriptions. For example, if your deck has no-holds-barred power despite playing zero Game Changers, then you should play in Bracket 4!
I don’t have too much of an idea about actual power of decks since we only play with people in our group of five (we played once against a random at LGS and we had a very bad experience since dude skimmed over the fact that Rofellos is banned and brought a T5 Ulamog against our precons), but reading the descriptions instead of the infographic moved all my decks to T2 and the one with one game changer card should be a T2 as well but it can’t fit since it’s got that lol only two or three other decks in our playgroup are actual T3 by infographic + description
Basically, these tiers are nothing new, and they’re not especially helpful. My strongest and weakest decks are in adjacent tiers, which tells me the whole thing is pointless at best, and harmful at worst because some people will feel justified in saying which tier their deck is, and obliterating the rest of the pod.
If you’re playing with new people, the solution continues to be having a conversation, and these tiers do very little to affect that conversation.
@TheMagicer @MysticKetchup My best performing deck only needs to take out Ancient Tomb to drop back down to tier 1, and I’m not sure I’ve ever drawn it.
