The Truth About CEDH #mtg

#mtg #thetrinketmage #trinketmage

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I love cedh so much you and your friends should try it out at your next casual commander event!

MTGTop16:

CEDH Decklist Database:

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All the Music is by Chillpeach:

[Hatbx]

We should shorten casual edh to cEDH when talking about it

[CharlotteMimic]

LMAO at Empty-Shrine Kannushi and Argentum Masticore

For the curious:
-Kanuushi is for the Mono-White Initiative mirror, where it is the cheapest pro-white creature you can play. It steals the initiative unblockably, and it blocks pretty well too (doesn't block Archon of Emeria or Seasoned Dungeoneer, but everything else)

-Masticore is an artifact that kills artifact hate, so you can cast it off of Mishra's Workshop + Ancient Tomb and then destroy the Null Rod or Stony Silence or Collector Ouphe that is disabling your whole deck.

[__]

cEDH being so friendly to proxies because they want to see the absolute limit of a deck feels a lot like the spirit behind TASing

[x]

magic is a fun game. edh is a way to have fun. all formats are ways to have fun, at their hearts. cedh is a constructed format where the fun is in winning no matter the method to do so, and can then be a puzzle that the table helps solve (or so i've heard about friendly tables of it). casual edh is a format where the fun is *having your deck do a thing in a certain way*. this is meant to be a different social experience, but is still meant to be fun. i don't want my definition to be misunderstood - casual edh is still played to be won, but that's technically not the primary goal - it's to "do the thing". if that thing ends up causing a win, that's fine, but your primary goal was the journey, not the destination.

[danteclavere]

I find that I have more fun in CEDH pods because everyone is on the same page, power level wise. The sliding scale of casual to competitive in commander is a chasm, and that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation of power levels.

[deathsmbrace]

You forgot about a very important archetype in cEDH: Midrange. (since cEDH is in midrange hell right now)

[SelloutMillionare]

EDH is generally more fun when players have a general understanding of the power level of the decks in the game, so that they can bring a deck of similar power.

[thefluffymunchkin]

Kinnan is actually one of the top decks in the format and gets around a lot of the complaints people have! Some decks even get to run expensive fatties like Void Winnower. There is definitely variety in cEDH it's just slightly commander dependent.

[dylanpayne]

I've been playing cEDH for a while at my LGS. It's a pretty modest group (usually the same 4-8 players), but the games are really fun. People swapping decks around since the staples move around so easily, different matchups leading to many varied gamestates, and some of the most intricate stacks of people going for wins.

To go toward the "cEDH has complicated stacks" thing, I played a game recently where a rogsi player had a 30-minute turn of multiple win attempts and an Ardenn/Thrasios player cracking emergence zone for 2 win attempts over the rogsi player

[kormit-bx]

My favorite part of cEDH is that the lack of Rule Zero and in-it-to-win-it mentality means I get to be really mean and watch my friends be really mean. Making plays that are the Magic equivalent of kicking a puppy (i.e. flashing in a Bowmasters with a Wheel of Fortune on the stack) is what I live for. Plus, the fact that I can play the new Etali and be able to get the big dino out turn 3 is really satisfying to my inner Timmy.

[Dirkadirky]

I have a magda brazen outlaw deck that I love to play but even after taking clock of omens out, still overperforms with my play group so I don't play it often. I've been considering lately constructing it more towards CEDH but I always thought the format would be too competitive for my taste. This video has me thinking it's actually more casual than I initially thought so maybe I'll give it a try

[Jundsac]

Great video, as always.

I think the quote about complex boardstates and complex stacks is a testament to the speed and pacing of the format. Players will cast, remove, and counter game-deciding cards on the first 3 turns of the game (Blue farm might cast a turn 1 rhystic study, rogsi might cast a turn 1 necropotence). There's a higher number of dangerous plays and appropriate reactive spells. The time frame that it takes to finish a game is much shorter, which players tend to like.

I think other players would enjoy cEDH if they;
are willing to learn,
want to play with, and against very powerful cards,
and enjoy a much faster pace than more casual tables.

[Marcosomos]

cEDH is not a format, it's a style of players. There are no cEDH decks, there are cEDH players. If a friend wants to test in my group a deck highly tune for maximum winning chance we will allow it at least one time, for fun.

[Nidrog]

I disagree with a few things in this video. First, about the whole regular EDH is about fun then is cEDH not fun? Because cEDH isn't inherently about having fun. It's about winning. If you don't play cEDH to win then even if you got a cEDH deck you're not playing cEDH IMO. Now that is not to say that cEDH can't be fun I'm sure it is a lot of fun, but the main point of the game is to win, not to come to the table with a deck of cards and make the whole table cackle like Ben Brode did during EP 37 of Commander at home, I'm not gonna spoil what it is but that deck is just hilarious and could never be made at a cEDH table. And that I think is kinda the point of the whole EDH is about fun and cEDH isn't about fun point people make. Fun isn't the primary reason for having a deck, because winning is, why else would you make a cEDH deck?

The other thing I'll disagree with is the need for cEDH and EDH to be split because I personally think they do need to be split. Entirely because the two formats have two different needs. Like you said when Flash was banned most casual players just went. "Huh?" while the cEDH crowd didn't bat an eyelid at Iona, Shield of Emeria being banned because it didn't affect them, however, because of how many cards there are in Magic, and with how much is being released, that likely there is going to come a day when a card might need to be banned for EDH or cEDH and it's going to affect the other side of the spectrum negatively. By having two separate ban lists you can moderate both for what's best for them. Golos being banned for EDH is definitely a good choice, while Golos might be a neat cEDH commander, granted I don't play cEDH so I don't know if that is actually a good idea but it gets my point across I think.

Overall though a good video here. While I'm not gonna play cEDH because it's not my cup of tea, but its always nice to get insight into the format~

[Doki]

My biggest problem with CEDH is that it doesnt have the same creativity to me. The majority of decks are nearly the same though of course there are out outliers. But in a more casual setting I find it fun to see the jank and passion put into building around certain cards. That being said I still think CEDH is a perfectly fine format but I don't personally consider it the same as normal EDH. I wouldnt mind more bans and changes to actually make them 2 different formats.

[SwedeRacerDC]

I think some of the reasoning in your second half further proves why cEDH is a different format. The fact that it's a narrow pool of cards and you know what to expect and there's no salt as a result. Personally, I think casual pods could use more of a set of guiding principles for the current match. To remove the salt and make for more fun and balanced matches. It's tricky doing this, but I'm hoping to come up with an answer for how

[paulernst]

I don't think I've ever seen an MTG video with more misunderstandings of terminology. None of this is how card game metas work. For example, that "anti-meta" deck *is* a meta deck, because it specifically responds to the meta. Tier 2 decks are still often played in settings where they have a good matchup against specific Tier 1 decks. cEDH is a distinct category of EDH specifically because it cordons off a part of the game where other decks simply cannot compete. To lump in cEDH with lower power EDH isn't useful or practical.

The discussion about the ban list is entirely disingenuous as well. The point of a ban list is to make the game more interesting over the long term by removing degenerate strategies. I would argue that banning the Demonic Consultation TOracle combo would be productive because it removes an uninteresting 2-card combo that any Blue/Black deck can run (and almost all do). In general, if something is run in 70%+ of decks, that would be instantly banned or nerfed in almost any other game in existence.

Ultimately, this is why I dislike cEDH's current state. As you note in the section around 11:00, the format is unimaginably samey, with the base power level removing almost all strategies. This goes back to a point you casually brushed over earlier-- the "point of the format." The point of Highlander decks, from my perspective, is to provide incredible variance. This is what makes Commander a format with staying power. I can play the same casual deck, in the same pod, 20 times, and likely not have the game experience. You see different strata of each deck each game, with the unifying factor being the Commander that ties the theme together. What does cEDH do? Your commander is usually just there for the colors or for generic value. Your deck is almost entirely focused around a small number of instant-win combos that you're trying to tutor out ahead of everyone else's instant-win combos. This is the crux of the argument as to why cEDH is a completely different mindset-- because the cEDH mindset is to obliterate as much of the inherent variance that comes with a 100-card highlander deck.

To be clear, I don't mind cEDH's existence. If you have fun with it, great, I just won't play it. But this video presents poor arguments that gloss over and frankly demean the non-cEDH crowd (and even some of the cEDH crowd re: wanting bans to keep the format fresh so I don't see 4 decks with TOracle combos every game).

[tylergillian]

This channel is great I won't lie. You give a very different perspective than other, perhaps more sensationalized videos on magic. Additionally, you explain things in ways that make some more niche, or scary concepts much more approachable and easily parsed. Glad I found it.

[SwedeRacerDC]

I think people who say casual is for fun are people like me who don't enjoy cEDH. It's not what I want to do, which is why I play EDH. If you press a little deeper, they would probably agree that people obviously find it fun, but that they don't. I think it's more accurate to say casual is the fun first format and cEDH is all about winning. I can agree to an extent that the claim your making about the myth of cEDH if you compare it to modern meta vs kitchen table modern. Do they both technically play in the same format? Yes, but could you win a tourney with a casual modern deck? No. So why bother building your 60 card casual deck to fit a format? Why not just build what interests you and play it casually? Kitchen table 60 card is almost an entirely separate format from any of the other 60 card formats. As far as casual formats go, EDH was designed specifically for casual. This is the opposite and this is why cEDH is a separate format. It may never have a separate banlist, but it's very possible that it could in the near future.

[jackcarlson]

Please be nice to Vintage. You could proxy up some decks for that format and have a pretty great time too!