The Awkward In-Between: Commander too Strong for Casual, too Weak for cEDH

    In Commander, it is customary, when sitting down with a group of strangers, to discuss their expectations for the game before diving in. This is normally referred to as “Rule Zero.” The objective of Rule Zero is to avoid as many bad feelings as possible. For example, if players in the pod dislike decks that monopolize time, leaving everyone sitting around, it may not be a good idea to bring out the storm and combo decks. However, there is one problem.

    In more recent years, with the rise in popularity of cEDH tournaments, a new wave of cEDH players and brewers has emerged, bringing with it innovation. For those in the sphere of cEDH, you can look at a decklist and determine if it is, in fact, a cEDH deck by its intent. Many of the ramp, card draw, and removal cards are different from what is normally seen in traditional Commander. For example, in casual Commander, the most popular counterspell is Counterspell. In cEDH pods, you are more likely to see Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap, or Mental Misstep, due to mana efficiency being a priority. Technically, any commander can be made into a cEDH deck if the deck is designed with the intent to play in those pods, it may just perform poorly. However, there are commanders that I call “The Inbetweeners.” High-power casual Commander pods are hard to come by, and there are commanders that simply don’t seem to fit anywhere. They aren’t good enough for a cEDH tournament, and bringing them to a casual Commander pod usually results in death glares and passive-aggressive comments. Here are my top 10.

1) Urza, Lord High Artificer - Known for his ability to make cards like Winter Orb and Static Orb one-sided, Urza can effectively turn every artifact you control into mana rocks and utilize that extra mana for more spells at random. Even attempting to make the deck an equipment-based Voltron deck is still creeping its way out of casual pods. There are some potential builds with this deck in cEDH utilizing Polymorph into a Hullbreaker Horror, but that deck has not proved itself on a bigger stage yet.

2) Marwyn, the Nurturer - I believe Marwyn is the strongest elfball commander that has been built, though Voja of the Conclave has been proving to be quite formidable. The ability to play out your hand and get infinite mana is so quick and consistent, it's nearly impossible to build this deck casually as the clock toward victory is simply too fast. However, the lack of additional colors and limited stax pieces and interaction make it more difficult to play in cEDH.

3) Korvold, Fae Cursed King - When this commander initially came out, it was a concerning commander, but not completely over the top. Shortly after the commander’s release, it got the renaissance of treasure/clue/food tokens. All of these trigger Korvold, making this commander a MASSIVE threat every time it hits the table. Though not quite viable in cEDH, this deck really cannot be fairly played against a lower power deck like a precon.

4) Jodah, the Unifier - Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE playing legendary matters decks, and I absolutely love Jodah. The amount of sheer power this deck produces is incredible. You can build this with one creature type in mind, like humans, and the pool of legendary creatures is still immensely deep. Every legend will find another and permit the Jodah player to have a lethal board state as quickly as one turn. Unless you play in a removal-heavy meta, this commander is probably not going to work casually and is too slow for cEDH.

5) Tergrid, God of Fright - Of all the things commander players hate the most, the top three are normally losing all of their things, being prevented from playing the game, and getting their things stolen (especially if those things are being used to kill them). Tergrid decks consistently utilize all three. Tergrid wants to be in play and see cards being discarded or sacrificed. So, naturally, the deck is stuffed with those types of effects. Even if Tergrid is removed multiple times to the point that playing her isn’t a viable plan, the 99 is still built in a way that suggests that everyone will be in top deck mode in no time. Because of the feel-bads, I don’t see this card being run in a casual table without a lot of pushback.

6) Narset, Enlightened Master - One of the OGs of the competitive scene, this deck at its finest is a glass cannon. One attack from this creature leads into another combat phase of extra turns until we reach the point that either everyone dies, an alternate win condition is used like Approach the Second Sun, or the Narset player fizzles and everyone kills them. The main issue with this strategy is a time equity issue as well as an extreme use of fast mana to get Narset out as soon as possible. Because Narset’s turn in rotation takes so long, people are not going to want to play against it and usually opponents will resort to pulling out their phones or just not paying attention.

7) Kaalia of the Vast - Another of the OGs, Kaalia is a textbook definition of a kill-on-sight commander. Every time she attacks, a demon, angel, or dragon gets put into play attacking that player as well. This could be a simple bulk rare dragon, or an Avacyn Angel of Hope. I have seen these decks aggressively tutor for Avacyn and then look to cast an Armageddon, effectively ending the game.

8) Koma, Cosmos Servant - Koma is an absolute beast of a card. Not being counterable and putting an extra 3 power on the board every upkeep is incredibly solid. It also helps that the deck is in Blue/Green, which allows for excessive ramp, card draw, counterspells, and protection, making this deck near impossible to stop once the train gets rolling. On top of this, the deck is also fond of making clones of Koma, thus extending this problem. Likely, if a deck has 3-4 Komas in play and putting 9-12 power on the board every upkeep, you’re not going to have that game go much longer. Due to the restrictive nature of the card, it's hard to have it see play in casual, but the deck is way too slow for cEDH.

9) Talrand, Sky Summoner - In the last couple of years, we have gotten this effect on commanders with more colors that dilute this issue, but Talrand’s major crime is being mono-blue. Similar to Baral, Chief of Compliance, you as the pilot of the deck benefit from casting as many instant and sorceries as possible. Because of this and having only blue to work with, this usually means the deck is going to run north of 15-25 counterspells. The stack denial is simply too strong for a casual pod, and the card quality is way too low for cEDH.

10) Grand Arbiter Augustin IV - Speaking of denial, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is here to make all your opponent’s spells cost 1 more, as well as make your spells cheaper. I have seen multiple versions of this deck, some as diabolical as playing a strategy of cloning him as many times as possible, to even superfriends decks exploiting the slower pace and accelerated costs of blue and white planeswalkers. Either way, going back to being denied game actions, Stax decks really have a rough go of it. Though there are cEDH stax decks that exist, there isn’t really a casual stax deck that can be pulled out at a random LGS without an extensive Rule Zero conversation.

So, with the multitude of commanders that don’t really see play in casual pods but are not at the level of cEDH, where do these decks cards go? I think the solution is there needs to be a more universal understanding of what decks actually are at a cEDH level and what isn’t. I think the distinction between casual/traditional and competitive is simply too vague. Some formats like Canadian Highlander are implementing a points system for their decks, but it is too cumbersome and impractical to track for EDH in my opinion. I think we need to have 4 groups for commander and keep the likes very black and white about it. Casual, where pre-cons are at; Traditional, where your level 7 deck goes; Challenging, which is those in-between commanders; and cEDH for the no-holds-barred decks that want to win at all cost. By dividing into these 4 groups rather than the scale, I think it would be much simpler trying to find pods. At the end of the day, the challenging player is not going to have fun in a casual pod or vice versa, so by having this system in place, we can find games we enjoy much easier.

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