This week, we finally got to see the first stage in Wizards’ plan for the future of Commander. After their takeover of the format last September, the community has been waiting with bated breath for more word. On Tuesday, we saw the first pass of the new Commander Brackets system for MTG. This is a major change, and one that will forever change how players build Commander decks once it’s fully realized.
It’s also, as Principal Designer Gavin Verhey is keen to point out, not a hard and fast solution. In a follow-up thread to the announcement, Verhey discussed how the new system is as much about deckbuilding philosophy as it is about objective power level. Those hoping for a quick-fix solution to unbalanced games will be disappointed. Those willing to put in the work to sculpt the kind of play experience they want, however, should thrive.
Gavin Verhey Speaks On MTG Commander Brackets
Verhey released the thread in question on Twitter yesterday. He responded to the discourse about the announcement so far, and noted that he wanted to add a caveat to the discussion players have been having.
“The philosophy/description of each bracket is really important! It’s not just about running your deck through Archidekt/Moxfield, seeing a #, and calling it good. I’m SO happy to have them for the rollout, and they are meant to help in the right direction – not be the arbiter.”
Gavin Verhey
This distinction about philosophy is an important one to make. While the brackets do support a numbers-based approach to Commander deckbuilding, where decks can be objectively weighed against each other to an extent, it’s not the ultimate goal. Instead, players should be looking at the philosophies behind each bracket too. These can be found in the announcement article, and will likely evolve over time as the brackets themselves do.
For many players, this isn’t exactly what they wanted to hear. Many were hoping for a cleaner delineation of Commander, possibly into four or five sub-formats of different power levels. This emphasis on philosophy over numbers goes against that idea. as Verhey points out, however, such a system wouldn’t really be feasible in the first place.
“Magic has thousands of cards and no site can (nor should) perfectly know your deck’s goals and where it sits. A description Josh+Rachel said on the CZ podcast I liked is: “it’s part art, part science.” Decklist guidelines are the science. The description guidance is the art.”
Gavin Verhey
This is an extremely fair point. The issue with a purely numbers-based Commander balancing system is that it can never fully account for context. Tutors and draw engines like Rhystic Study are only as powerful as the cards they get you, after all. In cEDH decks, these boost you towards an early win. In janky typal brews, they simply give you a chance to play at all. A bracket system can give these cards a high value, and indeed the new Game Changers list has both, but it can never grasp the value of a full deck in the same way.
A Matter Of Philosophy
This is where the philosophies behind each of the new MTG Commander Brackets come in. The announcement article goes into each of them, from bracket one (Exhibition) to bracket five (cEDH). At the Exhibition level are the ‘for fun’ strategies, built more to showcase unusual cards than to win games. The article cites “Oops, All Horses!” as an example deck here. cEDH, on the other hand, is a bracket “where winning matters more than self-expression.”
The other brackets represent degrees between these two extremes, using preconstructed decks as a baseline. Bracket two, Core, is the average power level of a precon. Bracket three, Upgraded, allows for some best-in-slot adjustments. Lastly bracket four, Optimized, ups the ante to include high-powered tutors and combo pieces.
I’ve given brief descriptions of each bracket here, as did Wizards in their core imagery in the article. Verhey reflected in his thread that this was part of the problem in terms of players misunderstanding the new system off the bat.
“A lot of people have honed in on the decklist guidance due to the infographic shared on stream. In retrospect we could have made it more clear by putting the descriptions longer, and more front and center there.”
Gavin Verhey
In order to properly make use of the brackets system, Magic: The Gathering players will need to dive a little deeper. The exact philosophy behind each bracket tends be more complex than the surface belies. Bracket two, for instance, “usually has some cards that aren’t perfect from a gameplay perspective but are there for flavor reasons, or just because they bring a smile to your face.” Bracket four, conversely, is about “bringing the best version of the deck you want to play, but not one built around a tournament metagame.”
Verhey’s main message in his thread is that players will need to meaningfully engage with these deeper philosophies in order for the brackets system to function as intended. It’s not a simple recipe, but rather a tool for starting conversations with yourself and your playgroup.
Taken In Good Faith
This is all well and good for those willing to put in the work and meet the new system where it is. For the less scrupulous, however, the MTG Commander Brackets are ripe for exploitation. A common genre of post since Tuesday’s announcement has been players bringing up powerful combinations of cards that technically get around the bracket restrictions, while not matching the spirit of the system at all.
Mtg_hotdog, for example, pointed out that a bracket one deck can run Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Both of these cards allow for easy combo wins in many situations. On the other end of the spectrum, Chimeraiam pointed out that a deck containing 99 basic lands and a Mystical Tutor would technically be considered bracket three in the new system.
This came in a comment on a thread started by Rachel Weeks of the Command Zone. Weeks replied that this was a “bad faith use of the system,” which really gets to the crux of the issue. Verhey also drew attention to this potential issue in the announcement article.
“This system (nor really any system) cannot stop bad actors. If someone wants to lie to you and play mismatched, we can’t prevent that. However, a lot of people just want to play games in earnest with other decks like theirs, and this aims to help in that regard.”
Gavin Verhey
This sums things up nicely. For those who sneakily misrepresent their deck’s power levels to stomp down casual tables, the new bracket system isn’t going to stop them. What the bracket system does do is give players who genuinely want to create a great play experience for everyone in their pod the tools to do so.
In that sense, the system is really just an extension of the existing ‘Rule Zero’ principle. Commander has always been a tricky format, given it’s unsanctioned nature and how often it’s played with strangers. If used properly, however, this new system should make things a little less tricky.
