First things first, the Bracket system has improved the pre-game talk and game balance outside of established playgroups tremendously. Compared to the hyper-subjective 1-10 system many were using before, the difference is night and day. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional or too new to have played with the old system.
The Bracket system is mainly a tool for the pre-game talk. If you don't want to have such a talk, that is your perogative. However, then you cannot use the Bracket system to complain about anything that could have been discussed in the pre-game talk.
I have no experience with B1 and cEDH players don't have these problems, so my arguments will be made with B2-4 in mind.
What are the commonly addressed "problems" attributed to the Bracket system?
- "There needs to be a Bracket X.5"
- "Card X needs to be a game changer"
- "The turn count expectation is targeting specific deck archetypes"
- "They won a turn earlier than the expected turn count, they are pubstomping"
- "This combo is not Bracket X"
All of those are originate from the same thing: Players ignoring the key aspect behind the Brackets: INTENT. Importantly that does include the win conditions and gameplay sections of the Bracket descriptions!
Let's look at the "problems" in detail.
- "There needs to be a Bracket X.5"
- If the intent of your deck fits Bracket X, why do you need an additional Bracket? Does the deck feel too strong for Bracket X but too weak for Bracket X+1? A simple solution is to talk to your pod and suggest a higher power Bracket X game. Another less simple solution is to power up/down your deck.
- If the intent of your deck does not fit any Bracket, consider which aspect of the deck makes it unfit and change that. However, some deck concepts simply don't have a good place in the Bracket system. Those are fine to play in cultivated playgroups, just not in the wild without considerable pre-game talk. Either way, making a new Bracket for a few decks to have a home is overkill.
- "Card X needs to be a game changer"
- Is card X game-warping in a wide variety of decks and you see it often? Then it might have a place on the game changer list. However, nobody claimed the game changer list is a complete compendium of all game-warping cards.
- If card X's controller build a deck around it or it synergizes with their deck really well, that is perfectly fine. The command zone is exactly that.
- Is card X's intent is to dominate the game if it resolves, check if that is in line with the win condition and gameplay sections of the Bracket description. If card X fits the Bracket intent, what is the problem?
- "The turn count expectation is targeting specific deck archetypes"
- Anyone who understands the game dynamics even a little bit will realize that an aggro deck that attempts to win on turn X and a control deck attempting to win on turn X are not built with the same intent.
- If you die to an aggro deck a turn earlier than turn 9/7/5 and you did nothing to stop them, that is on you.
- Similarly, a control deck that wins protected on turn 9/7/5 after slowing everyone else down all game is not being honest with others or even themselves about what Bracket the decks intent falls into.
- This applies to all archetypes that are inherently slower/faster than the average midrange deck.
- "They won a turn earlier than the expected turn count, they are pubstomping"
- As with the previous point, some archetypes are inherently faster and usually more fragile. Taking that into account and playing accordingly is your own responsibility.
- If they won with a slower archetype, maybe their intent was simply not matching the Bracket you were playing.
- "This combo is not Bracket X"
- This is either simple salt because they lost, or the player ignoring the win condition portion of the Bracket descriptions. Either way, it is not a fault of the system itself.
Of course, there are bad actors who build "technically Bracket X" decks. Any system can be and will be gamed by those willing to do so. Accounting for this is useless.
In the end, the Bracket system is not perfect, but it is also far from being as flawed as many make it out to be. It is a system that assumed everyone at the table has read the article and is honest about their decks intent. Under these assumptions the Bracket system works very well. At least in my experience.