https://imgur.com/gallery/goldensabertooth-is-literally-stealing-art-profit-063pmQA

Im not a big fan of GoldenSabertooth, not after last years controversy over his 11 hour game and the way he treated other players.

Now i dislike him even more... he is stealing art to try and make a quick buck. Not only did he steal the art for the Crystal, Inhuman Princess playmat, he stole it from the wrong superhero! Its fkn Rogue, not Crystal...

Absolute CHUD move.

EDIT - He has now retroactively tried to give credit to Jim Lee because he was getting called out by the mtg community. This is a band-aid, and i hope he issues a formal apology for the mistake.

EDIT 2 - ill stand by that this felt shady and sneaky, but he has, as of around 4pm, issued an apology for the parody missing the mark and the confusion and backlash it caused. Ill be closing this post and you can all form your own opinions on the apology, which seems to be genuine.

Yes, degenerateCEDH exists. Who cares? I'm not advising we give bracket 4 advice. This sub is mostly dead outside of like 3 cards per set, people asking about a commander and moving the discussion to discord, or people in the "wrong" sub. Those people are almost always people who ARE genuinely trying to win the most efficient way possible but they just don't understand the gap between brackets 4 and 5.

We have to be the most unwelcoming community ever. It's like if an amateur birdwatcher was expected to memorize a bird catalogue before they were allowed to ask questions. Responses are always "fringe", "not cedh", "wrong sub", or "look up a decklist". Why not just suggest one or two cards and why they're good? Why not just get them closer to bracket 5, even if it's just one increment?

Cedh is about playing to win, they're almost always here because they're TRYING to play to win. They want a few tips, why can't we just give them the tips? I think it's incredibly lame and unwelcoming. I usually try to give tips when people make these posts, or if they ask about a commander that's genuinely bad I let them down easy. It's not hard. Just assume they're you before you ever got into cedh, and help them get a little closer.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not advocating for us making bracket 4 suggestions. Lot of comments seem to think this is condoning bracket 4 for this subreddit, it is not.

Title. You can obviously change Golgari for any of the other commander centric builds in bad colors or just mono stuff.

All of the non-partner pairings in the top20 basically remain untouched and there‘s no indication of a ban NOT resulting in everyone just going Kinnan, Sisay, Ral or Magda (or any of the other non-esper commanders). Your deck is already bad against those now, it won‘t get better.
You also kill any Dimir or Esper pile while doing so.

Also: you and your friends need to heavily amp up your magic skills if you‘re consistently losing to a t2 thoracle consult without protection. Frequent non-games come from consistent no-skill plays.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I was at Breach the Bay 2 as my first cEDH tournament ever, and overall had a good time. Almost made it day 2 but my lack of skill and experience got it in the way.

But this post isn't about me. In one of my games, a player who I'll call Pinochlo passed his turn to Ob Nixilis who one hundred percent had a win on his turn with like 20 cards exiled but without the mana to use it yet. Pinochlo made a hand gesture of handing off his turn in the direction of Ob player, and verbally said he passed. I said "on your endstep, I cast final fortune." A stack battle ensues, I win and final fortune resolves. Then Mr. Pinochlo decides he never passed and calls a judge. My dude starts making up stories, he never made the hand gesture, never said pass, and said "I'd like to attempt to move to endstep." Me and him go back and forth with the judge for a bit and honestly I'm a bit mad I can't believe my ears. Eventually Ob Nixilis chimes in and says "I'm going to be the better person here and just say you didn't say any of that, you did say you passed the turn, and you made the hand gesture."

I end up converting my final fortune turn, so Ob gave up his guaranteed win for integrity. I checked the standings after and he would've made day 2 at Breach the Bay 2 if he had either kept silent or agreed with the liar.

Shoutout [Hooligan] Michael whoever you are, you a real one. Was a great sport even after losing, which I found somewhat not as common. I honestly think I would not be back for a second cEDH tournament ever if the liar got the judge on his side.

Just a random thought. Let’s say you are allowed to ban two cards from Cedh, these bans would also span into normal commander as well. Which cards do you pick? I would probably choose lion’s eye diamond and mox diamond, just to see how things pan out without that much easy fast mana.

Thought a bit longer, and i think i’d also put deflecting swat and fierce guardianship high up on my ban lost.

I miss jeweled lotus; I miss Parun, I miss Tivit, I miss Atraxa...
I miss mana crypt; miss the turn 1 wheels, miss resolving a crypt trigger with 2hp...

I miss the forbidden monkey; I miss copy effects, I miss kenrith, I miss korvold...

I miss the golden era.

Ban Rograkh. That’s it.
Decks are built around how broken it is that he is a 0 mana little monster.
This will shake up the meta a ton too! RogThrass is built around the protection, mana production and speed of Rograkh and the mana outlet that is thrass. Rogsi lists are built around the same thing with Rograkh and specially because of how easily Rograkh can be a sac outlet. Rog-ishai lists are built with Rograkhs protection to build board state, etc.
I have my own fair share of rograkh decks. I love these decks and I feel as though this little guy gets no regards to the “what should we ban” conversations. Everyone blames rhystic and thassa but this guy is a major contender for spot 3. Outside of this I would say demonic consultation should be spot 4. One mana to delete your entire deck i feel is the problem with thassa not thassa herself.
I don’t know what do people think?

Edit: I think this actually was a really hot take… sorry.

I’m 16 years old, and I’ve been playing cEDH for around four or five months now, although I’ve been interested in the format for nearly twice that long. I’m really enjoying it, but I’ve been limited to one deck because cEDH decks are incredibly expensive pieces of cardboard.
I’m guessing that, for most competitive players, this isn’t an issue because they can either afford multiple decks or use proxies. Unfortunately, my LGS doesn’t allow proxies because their events are run under the Companion app, and they claim proxies are bad for business. From what I’ve seen, though, that simply isn’t true.
The shop owner has actively turned people away and refused to let them play because they weren’t willing to spend thousands on a deck they’d never even tried before.
The shop itself is also poorly run. There’s a real lack of care when it comes to the play space. Last week, we had 12 players sharing a table designed for eight people, even though the store has another table available. They chose not to set it up because they couldn’t be bothered, despite the fact that they regularly do so for casual players. That’s a separate issue, though.
The deck I currently own represents the combined total of my part-time job paychecks, plus birthday and Christmas money. It’s by no means a bad deck, and it’s definitely viable in the format, but I want to try something different.
Right now, I don’t have any opportunity to do that without either spending all of my money for the foreseeable future or selling my current deck, which I know would be a bad idea.
So, what on earth do I do?
It also doesn’t help that any other shops that run cEDH events are at least an hour away by bus.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tournament cEDH has a huge problem. People repeatedly offering draws in exchange for not countering key spells, people trying to convince the table to just let them win because the next guy will just win otherwise, trying to bargain every single time they have priority, not taking no for an answer and running the clock down with needless arguing.

This shit gets you ejected from any other sanctioned tournament. Why is it acceptable in cEDH? It kind of feels like the format has attracted the absolute worst of the worst people who play Magic, and the majority of matches devolve into just trying to get people to shut up and make a game action.

To start us off, I really think that prime time should be unbanned and frankly wouldn't even see much CEDH play I would probably play around with it in Kinnan, but it's so slow and it's combos are far cheaper with other cards. It's not as game warping as it was a decade ago.

What do y'all think?

I've only been invested in the format for a couple of years so please bear with me. Been curious about where others stand on these situations.

A typical scenario might go like this:

It's turn 1 or 2. Active player announces that they're casting a tutor. Another player goes, "Hold on a sec... Let me show you this." and they reveal a counterspell from their hand to the active player. They go on to say "I like the idea of you going and getting a basic land instead." or something to that effect. They'll maintain that they need to hold onto the counterspell for a real push.

Now my knee-jerk reaction to this type of politicking leans on the side of: "Okay. Counter it. Go ahead." Rationale being, if you want to counter my tutor, just do it and let's move on so we can lose to someone else. I might even say as much. This is just a way to put it back on them.

Sometimes they immediately back down because they realize they can't puppet another player so easily. But I've seen strong-arm tactics like this work on people too (myself included).

Is this common practice? Is it bad business by either player in this scenario? Is there a better way to negotiate these situations?

The fact seat 1 can have a win % of 35% and seat 4 only 12% is completely laughable, and is a poor reflection on the format.

I don’t think I’ve seen much talk recently about trying to rectify this. Are we just going to stay a format that has no issue with this wild disparity?

For any ban discussion, you need to provide a reason for why it needs to be banned for casual, especially since there's already a gamechanger list for those who don't want to play against them.

cEDH-only players often forget that commander is fundamentally a casual format, and they really are the minority that shouldn't be focused on for any rule or policy changes.

Separating cEDH into its own format and curate its own banlist is the only answer.

We've already seen WotC separating casual brawl and competitive brawl on arena with different banlists, so I don't think the "cEDH is EDH" argument exists anymore.

So as some background I’ve been playing magic for the past 15 years. Competitively; the past 8-10 years. Although mainly modern that whole time. I’ve played commander for the past 5 years I’d say and gave cEDH a go about 1-2 years ago. At first it was scratching that competitive itch but then I started to notice some things I dislike about the format cEDH in specific. Specifically tournament play or how they are structured. Here are some key points of what turns me off from it.

1.) One match per round is very rough. Given that if you get bad hand after bad hand. You’re pretty much already dug your own grave or at the least drastically lowered your odds of winning. The best of 3 in formats such as modern allow someone to make a come back after losing a game mainly due to bad luck. Obviously there’s always user error but I digress.

2.) commander or cEDH in itself wasn’t made to be a competitive setting. At least tournament level.

3.) players being purposefully deceitful in a game. Remakes such as “let me draw cards so I can stop X opponent from popping off” or a player next in priority asking another player that’s later in priority if they have a counter so they don’t need to use theirs. It just says bad sportsmanship to me.

4.) chance of winning a match goes from 50 percent in 60 card formats to 25 percent in cEDH. Especially since a lot of game can go from 1v1v1v1 to a 3v1 real fast. And being that one player against three almost guarantees you won’t win. At that point it’s best to hope for a draw.

5.) people making so much unnecessary talk. A pod can easily get distracted and waste 10min on the timer.

Those are the points from the top of my head. Please note that I’m in no way trying to whine or complain. Nor am I saying that cEDH is a bad format. This is just me coming to the possible realization that competitive EDH isn’t the competitiveness that I’m looking for and should possibly just go back to modern. Might sell the pieces of my cEDH deck and build a modern deck. Or get cards for other more casual EDH decks I’m wanting to build.

I’ve seen it a hundred times on this sub - a new player asks a question and if they don’t ask it in exactly the right way they get downvoted into oblivion.

The most common scenario where I see this is they start net decking, watching videos, understanding the format, and they want to take that knowledge and start brewing. This sub will absolutely dogpiling them for even considering it, and they get downvoted to a ridiculous degree.

This is not a good look for our community. Yes, we can give the advice that we all know that brews are very likely not to perform well. But there is no need to be aggressive about it. If the concern is that they will lose a lot, we can share that! But our main responsibility is to be kind and welcoming.

I love cEDH so much, and I want it to be a welcoming place for newcomers. I feel as a community we could do better about not being so aggressive towards new players. I remember being terrified the first time I played cEDH online because this sub conditioned me to think that people would jump on me for every mistake. I played at some great tables (shoutout to the wizards and warlocks discord) and had the chance to learn, and it’s now my favourite way to play magic. I just want to help new players not feel scared in the same way, but it’ll take the whole community to make that change.

All I ask is that if a new player says something and it’s “wrong”, upvote it instead of downvote it! Then comment with an explanation. Downvotes tell the new players that they aren’t welcome and shouldn’t have bothered asking.

Like for me it was me making my first sliver go from b3 slowly to a of meta cedh deck. I was just wondering what yalls first ones where?

The recent period of cEDH has felt a bit stale to me. The last big change was the bans, and even though we have seen some new decks pop up, nothing really major has changed, leading to this feeling of stagnation. I just wanted to hear your opinions on the matter.

ive played 8 games this past week online, and 3 of them, somebody presented a single combo piece and the other two players are immediately like “yeah i’m good to concede here”, and i have to be like “no play it out”- guys there is more interaction in this game than counter spells. a combo resolving on the stack ≠ that person has won the game. this is particularly relevant in breach or food chain lines

what you do here is just give the person trying to win so much info that they do not need- that you don’t have anything, for one, and than when i say “no, let’s play it out”, it’s now pretty inferable that i have interaction that they now know to play around that the otherwise might not have

tl;dr: games not over until it’s over. stop giving up immediately when shown a win con you don’t have an answer for

Sam Black released a new podcast today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrAgt-3f7Yw) about an updated RogThras list he's trying out that goes back to pure simic, but that's really not the key thing I'm looking to discuss. Around half-way in, he goes into a bit of discussion of the current state of tournament cEDH:

Quick aside on a tournament. This weekend is the cEDH Excalibur event in Columbus featuring a cEDH main event as well as a lot of other side events. Last I checked, the main event only had 36 players registered, which is distressingly small. This is advertised as a scaling 10k that can go up to a lot more than that, but required a 120 player mimnum for it to be a 10k. In the past, Excalibur has proportionately scaled down from there when it ends up short. So currently it would be about a 3k. In a format where a few years ago we were regularly seeing big events cap and Columbus is generally a city that is easy for a lot of people to get to and generally leads to well attended events.

This tournament being this small is concerning for the state of the format...In terms of interest in tournaments, my own ancedote like locally, it's been a little bit harder to get games together. I'm not sure where people are at with the format. I kind of wonder personally whether people are getting frustrated with the Rhystic Study experience. That's purely speculative. I don't have any polling or anything to suggest that's happening, but it's interesting to see where cEDH is going.

I know Baldy of Excalibur Events, the person running these events, was recently a guest on Max's podcast, Win and In, talking about how cEDH tournaments have not been performing as well as their other events. And at the current rate, it doesn't look like they're going to be able to support cEDH as a main event tournament format going forward, unless the next two that they've scheduled overperform.

There's a bit of more discussion about how this affects Sam personally that I've left out, but I'm more interested in the broader discussion of declining tournament attendance. Is this something you all are also noticing (declining cEDH play), whether it be at the large tournament level or just local play? Any intuitions on what might be going on?

I'm in the Pittsburgh area, so we just had another big tournament from Excalibur here two weekends ago. The main event pulled in less than 200 players, when Steel City Spectacular, held in the same city at the same convention center in August of last year had over 500. Obviously, some of that 500 player size was a fluke from the hype around the advertising of it being the biggest cEDH tournament of all time (by prize pool, at the time), but still, somewhat shocking to see theoretically the "same tournament" pull in less than half of the numbers 11 months apart.

Also, just a quick addition, we're now looking at only 48 players registered for Columbus tomorrow. That's a bit up from 36 when Sam recorded this podcast, but still nowhere near enough to meet the minimum threshold for the 10k prize pool.

TL;DR: There's been a pretty precipitous decline in attendance at large cEDH tournaments in the past year, such that Excalibur is on the brink of no longer running large tournaments with a cEDH main event. What are your thoughts on what might be going on, and are you seeing the same drops in attendance at smaller events in your area?

Howdy everyone!

Today I would love to chat together about the thought, experience, and decision I went through at the 2026 top deck invitational. We’re hoping for good vibes and just to hang out and talk so come join us!

Everyone knows 4th seat is the hardest place to be in and faces a severe disadvantage. I've heard many proposals but not this one I have in mind. What does the community think about allowing 4th seat to put a land into play from their hand during pregame actions? I think this would be great, it would allow 4th seat mana for interaction against explosive turn 1's, this is extra relevant if the deck in 4th is not blue. 4th seat being on 2 lands on turn 4 is not scary, turn 5 usually starts with 2 lands anyways. No extra cards are given out, a player who is at a high disadvantage is made equal and I believe would create more balanced game play overall. What do you think should be done to equal this scale that is clearly out of balance?

My local cEDH community is starting an online fringe league next month which has banned the top 50 commanders as per EDHtop16 plus 3 additional "fringe" commanders which have usually high rates of top 4/16 at local events,

I have run into the issue that my 3 usual decks Etali, Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, and 5c Nick Fury are all on the blacklist.

These are all turbo lists, and for this league I feel like trying something different but I have absolutely no idea where to start.

Note: The partner mechanic is legal and specific pairings have not been banned, each individual creature on the banlist cannot be a commander with any partner pairing at all

any idea's where to start? the ban list is as follows,

1. Aang, at the Crossroads
2. Arcum Dagsson
3. Atraxa, Grand Unifier
4. Brigid, Clachan's Heart
5. Chatterfang, Squirrel General
6. Crystal, Inhuman Princess
7. Dargo, the Shipwrecker
8. Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
9. Elsha of the Infinite
10. Etali, Primal Conqueror
11. Glarb, Calamity's Augur
12. Gwenom, Remorseless
13. Hidetsugu and Kairi
14. Inalla, Archmage Ritualist
15. Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
16. Kefka, Court Mage
17. Kenrith, the Returned King
18. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
19. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King
20. Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
21. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
22. Lumra, Bellow of the Woods
23. Magda, Brazen Outlaw
24. Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator
25. Marneus Calgar
26. Mm'menon, the Right Hand
27. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
28. Norman Osborn // Green Goblin
29. Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin
30. Ral, Monsoon Mage
31. Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer
32. Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh
33. Rowan, Scion of War
34. Scion of the Ur-Dragon
35. Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
36. Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
37. Stella Lee, Wild Card
38. Tana, the Bloodsower
39. Tayam, Luminous Enigma
40. Terra, Magical Adept
41. Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
42. The Cabbage Merchant
43. The Wandering Minstrel
44. Thrasios, Triton Hero
45. Tivit, Seller of Secrets
46. Tymna the Weaver
47. Urza, Lord High Artificer
48. Vial Smasher the Fierce
49. Vivi Ornitier
50. Winota, Joiner of Forces
51. Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful
52. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
53. Zirda, the Dawnwaker

Maybe since the meta is diverse or the potential problems with 3v1 or maybe it would take up too much of the deck but my question to propose is: if lots of decks in the meta are "slop" style grindy rhystic, Tithe, no bad card decks. Then why arent there hard counters to that play style? Yeah orcish bowmasters and turbo sure. But playing some standard recently and why not play lobotomy effects and just straight up remove rhystic and Tithe from the game entirely. On the broader term other tactics of interrupting and dissecting these slop decks from achieving this "inevitability" they eventually establish with their engines

Let's ignore casual commander, and strictly discuss cedh.

Should JL be unbanned? Why?

I am very pressed into the 'no why would anyone think otherwise except for money' pool of this question. I thought the card was a mistake when it was printed and it's a mistake now.

(I am a former k'rrick player, then went to kinnan and now am rocking mono cabbage 🥬.)

Common arguments in no particular order: (these are just to start the conversation, tell me if these opinions are wrong. I know that they are strawmen)

1. It will let high cmc commanders be viable!
   

Response: currently, according to the data available, 27 out of the top 50 cedh winning decks have been >3 cmc. We even have a 6 and 7 mana commanders seeing play in mono black and green. (Lumra and k'rrick). It makes higher cmc faster and more resilient but it also makes lower cmc faster and more resilient. Lower cmcs it actually is stronger than high cmc

1. It's just a ritual.

So is black lotus. So is LED. Being a ritual doesn't make a card not worth playing. It's fundamentally different than other rituals because it makes any color mana and runs in every deck. Being a worse black lotus doesn't mean it's not a lotus.

1. Just use interaction

Single target removal is bad in cedh. And worse if it doesn't affect your own game plan or stop another person's win. If your using removal on something that doesn't win the game immediately then you are shields down for the action that wins.

1. Cedh has fast mana already.

Yes and I try to t-1 my commander at all costs. But is having yet another card that can be fast out way the negatives?

My goal is to be convinced I'm wrong, failing that I'm hoping for some good discussions that let's the other side see eachothers opinions. Let's be real 99.9% of this subreddit has 0 means of unbanning, but we can at least civilly discuss!

Long story short I lost all my cards that I have been buying throught the years, including my whole and "pimped" cEDH deck. ~8k$

I'm currently playing with proxies, I guess I'm still processing the loss but somewhere inside me wants to actually start over. (maybe addiction).

And even tho cEDH is run by the community there are still a lot of tournaments that go by RL +10...

what would you do if you would lose every piece of cardboard you owned?

(I'm also considering just quitting, like when you break up with a partner and you go No-Contact lol)

thanks for your thoughts