Alternative card counts - 60, 80

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

So, something that's always bothered me about EDH is the giant decks and how annoying they can be to properly randomize. I run into folks who seriously can't shuffle with some regularity -- who only faro shuffle or will crappily mash shuffle once, etc.

I've often wondered if 60 or 80 card decks would be better; many more parasitic themes like energy become more achievable because you just don't need as many cards. Shuffling is easier. Deck construction in general is cheaper. Tutors are both more and less powerful (you're more likely to see a specific card but also more likely to see a tutor), card draw probably becomes a bit more powerful. Mill possibly becomes more viable.

On the flipside, lots of different issues. It becomes far easier to achieve critical mass of consistency with seeing a ramp spell and a tutor in your opener, and card selection becomes a lot more powerful (Ponder, for example, is way stronger). Combos with generals become a lot easier to fire off.

It feels like in some ways it would reduce the value of having a great commander because you generally have to play fewer weak cards, so the power of a commander relative to the rest of your deck is going to be lower (a lot of the time).

It may also increase the reliance on staples, as you need fewer fringe cards to plug in gaps when you just don't have to play as many cards.

Is 100 cards a completely sacred number? Are there other things it breaks to go to 60 or 80 that I'm not thinking about? Has anyone ever experimented?

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

Well, it seems like it would be a lot more consistent and leave room for fewer oddball cards. It would increase the value of having a strong commander because its easier to find the support cards for it. If a less random, more streamlined format is what your going for, its a great idea. Otherwise, its pretty bad. Might be interesting as a separate format, but I personally wouldn't be all in on legacy brawl.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
Well, it seems like it would be a lot more consistent and leave room for fewer oddball cards. It would increase the value of having a strong commander because its easier to find the support cards for it. If a less random, more streamlined format is what your going for, its a great idea. Otherwise, its pretty bad. Might be interesting as a separate format, but I personally wouldn't be all in on legacy brawl.
You could be right about commander synergies though, things like food chain or even engine cards.

Yeah, I think 80 might be a better split than 60. Enough variety.

60 especially might do some interestingly positive stuff to manabases though, since you've almost surely got to cut back on fetches a bit if you're playing rainbow lands.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

I don't think that I want decks to be smaller to be honest but I really never understood why it had to be exactly 100 cards rather than that being the minimum. Any good magic player will tell you that adding more cards to your deck makes things worse. But at the same time like, if someone wants to play Battle of Wits do I really care?

If I were to make any change to deck size I would just change the 100 card requirement to a 100 card minimum.

I guess this isn't really on theme of what you are asking but it got me thinking about it. I wouldn't really care to decrease deck size now after having played 100 cards for so long but at the same time if commander had been a 60, 80, or 120 card deck its really not important. I just don't really see a reason to change that now I guess.
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Post by Hermes_ » 4 years ago

I would think a lower card count would hurt 5c decks a lot,since they would have to narrow down the mana base.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Hermes_ wrote:
4 years ago
I would think a lower card count would hurt 5c decks a lot,since they would have to narrow down the mana base.
Wouldn't it raise the value of the rainbow lands quite a lot to compensate, since you're more likely to draw them? mana confluence et al.

It would be interesting to see what manabases look like with 60 or 80 cards though for sure. The 30 land manabases of most CEDH decks would become something like 18 with a 60 deck count, which means like 10 fetches 8 fetchables or something which is very awkward (or 10 fetches 4 fetchables 4 rainbow?).

I honestly have no idea what the optimal build would look like at 18/60 land 4c/5c decks, probably really awkward.

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Post by Pip_Maxwell » 4 years ago

I will just link these here:
https://www.channelfireball.com/all-str ... and-drops/
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/br ... many-lands

And this was before london mulligan was a thing.

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Post by RxPhantom » 4 years ago

I'm not really a fan of the idea. While I'm sympathetic to the struggle of shuffling a 100-card deck (especially since I've recently began double-sleeving), I can think of no other conceivable benefit. I like the format's variance and relative lack of homogeny. I think lowering deck size would compromise those things, and perhaps implicitly promote the philosophy that all decks should be maximally tuned.
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Post by Hermes_ » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Hermes_ wrote:
4 years ago
I would think a lower card count would hurt 5c decks a lot,since they would have to narrow down the mana base.
Wouldn't it raise the value of the rainbow lands quite a lot to compensate, since you're more likely to draw them? mana confluence et al.

It would be interesting to see what manabases look like with 60 or 80 cards though for sure. The 30 land manabases of most CEDH decks would become something like 18 with a 60 deck count, which means like 10 fetches 8 fetchables or something which is very awkward (or 10 fetches 4 fetchables 4 rainbow?).

I honestly have no idea what the optimal build would look like at 18/60 land 4c/5c decks, probably really awkward.
I wouldn't know since the only 5c deck i have is the dragon percon and I haven't touched it's manabase
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
4 years ago
I'm not really a fan of the idea. While I'm sympathetic to the struggle of shuffling a 100-card deck (especially since I've recently began double-sleeving), I can think of no other conceivable benefit. I like the format's variance and relative lack of homogeny. I think lowering deck size would compromise those things, and perhaps implicitly promote the philosophy that all decks should be maximally tuned.
At the bare minimum parasitic strategies like energy (and there are a ton of these) would be improved, so there are at least a few benefits. I think in general tribal decks would be quite a bit more fun and achievable.

I suspect it would also make a lot of cards that are fringe staples a lot cheaper as well. So from a financial standpoint requiring fewer cards means fewer cards are "playable" so more cards on the fringes go unplayed.

The whole tuning thing / staplitis is a huge risk. But I think it's weird if you can't see some upsides.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

Making fringe staples cheaper isn't really a benefit if the reason they are cheaper is that they are no longer useful.

While I agree that some less supported tribes and parasitic mechanics would become more viable in theory, as it's easier to fill a 60 card deck with them vs a 100 card deck, most of those would get swept away by the increased consistency from the archetypes that benefit from streamlining. I mean, sure, it's easier to run orcs now but goblins and elves just got a lot better by being able to just run solid gold while you still have to include draft chaff. At the 100 card limit, on the other hand, you have enough room to build another theme around the tribe or parasitic mechanic to bridge the gap a bit. Skeletons, for instance, is a weak tribe with poor support, and still is at 60 card, but at 100 card I can build Muldrotha skeletons with a sac and dredge support theme to take advantage of the many ways skeletons can come back from the yard (supported by Muldrotha) and aid them with the generic tribal boosters. Energy meanwhile can be built into a proliferate deck, and get support from a counter theme with energy as just the main focus.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

Decks would be "too tuned" at lower card counts. We'd really miss out on a diversity of decks to play and the cards that you'd see.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

umtiger wrote:
4 years ago
Decks would be "too tuned" at lower card counts. We'd really miss out on a diversity of decks to play and the cards that you'd see.
I am not sure about that; I suspect if it had been 80 from the start the game would have been fine. 60 maybe too vintagey? I dunno.

I think it's possible that smaller decks open a lot of doors to be more consistent without needing to play so many tutors as well for more casual builds. Right now if you think about it most decks are functionally 80 cards by virtue of all the tutors and cantrips they play.

If you want a comparison you can look at Burn vs. say, UW Control in Modern. There're a lot of ways of achieving consistency but the one that plays more action cards and less searching/filtering cards will be more positive from a tempo perspective. But that isn't really viable in EDH because of how many crappy cards you have to play to round out the curve if you're not playing tutors.

I suspect that at 60 cards, aggro decks that strive to play action every turn would be actually feasible which I think could be a huge win for the format overall -- at 80 I think some types of decks could stand to shave on tutors.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

If decks are functionally 80 now because of tutors and cantrips, then it would be functionally 60 if it were 80, and functionally 40 if it were 60.

I also disagree that aggro I not viable, outside of cEDH. It requires more thought to build and pilot than mid-range, but that's true in any multiplayer format. Aggro is only ever simple 1v1, otherwise you need to play smart, correctly assess threats, and have ways to keep cards flowing. Simply playing action every turn without interaction or replenishing your hand isn't, and shouldn't, be a viable strategy in multiplayer (it barely is in 1v1, the tension there is between getting an opponent from 20-0 before running out of gas). Aggro in commander, or any other multiplayer format, requires a way to play the long game, and that's a feature rather than a bug. You always have infect for extreme all in aggro, otherwise there are plenty of ways to keep the gas flowing, stuff like Sygg or Ephara or Tymna, all in colors that have plenty of ways to get around blockers. Mono red or Boros all in aren't viable in 75%, but Boros hate bears is, and Krenko and Purphoros exist. Or is Purphoros, which tries to flood the board with creatures to bring everyone to 0 asap, somehow not an aggro deck? I see your Ephara list, it's aggro control, and looks pretty viable (I built my own more creature heavy and it works well online, without a combo in it).

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
If decks are functionally 80 now because of tutors and cantrips, then it would be functionally 60 if it were 80, and functionally 40 if it were 60.
Yes, absolutely the case. *if* you ran the full suite of tutors. I think the attractiveness of tutors goes down as your deck size goes down, especially for redundant approaches (e.g. ramp and fatties/card draw). That's not the case for the most powerful approaches, but I think general purpose decks could be built with fewer tutors.

I might not be explaining this well but in general as your average card quality goes up you would rather play more efficient cards and card draw than search for a specific card. Drawing 2 cards for 2 mana becomes closer to equal to searching for a card for 3 mana (kind of the default rate of 'balanced' effects -- night's whisper vs. fabricate, say. So you still play the busted tutors, but cards like trophy mage and what not become far less critical; just draw more cards.

Similarly, as the game speeds up the tempo loss from tutoring to the top of your deck becomes a bit more hurtful. So vampiric tutor and mystical tutor stock goes down a little in medium power builds, especially as people are able to play a higher ratio of very good interaction (you don't have to branch out to cancel once you run out of memory lapse and mana drain.

In general I think the 100 card limit forces some degree of tutoring to achieve any level of consistency of approach -- if you want to always draw a game changing fattie, you either have to play 10 of them or play a bunch of tutors, and by the time you get to 10 the quality of them is pretty shoddy.

Again, I'm sorry if I am not conveying that well. To restate the two key thoughts carefully:

* As the required card count decreases, the average quality of each card in your deck increases, allowing for more potential consistency through redundancy.

* As the required card count decreases, the chances of card draw and filtering effects finding specific cards comes closer to tutors (that is, draw 5 sees 10% of your deck vs. 5.5% of your deck, assuming it's cast on turn 3 or so (when you have 50 v. 90 cards left in your deck).

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Yes, absolutely the case. *if* you ran the full suite of tutors. I think the attractiveness of tutors goes down as your deck size goes down
Lower minimum deck count = less tutors is simply not true, regardless of power level.

For instance, in my Child of Alara Lands.dec, chopping from 100 cards to 80 cards doesn't mean I'm cutting Demonic Tutor. It would make me cut Maze's End from my deck. You would just see less cool things from players' decks if people only had to run 80 cards. Putting a lower cap on deck size means that less cards will be played. The most powerful cards, i.e. tutors, will still be played the same amount. A lower cap is a mandate for players to cut cool cards (e.g. Maze's End) and decks would just more homogeneous.

It's a myth that lower power decks run less powerful cards.
pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Similarly, as the game speeds up the tempo loss from tutoring to the top of your deck becomes a bit more hurtful. So vampiric tutor and mystical tutor stock goes down a little in medium power builds, especially as people are able to play a higher ratio of very good interaction (you don't have to branch out to cancel once you run out of memory lapse and mana drain.

* As the required card count decreases, the average quality of each card in your deck increases, allowing for more potential consistency through redundancy.

* As the required card count decreases, the chances of card draw and filtering effects finding specific cards comes closer to tutors (that is, draw 5 sees 10% of your deck vs. 5.5% of your deck, assuming it's cast on turn 3 or so (when you have 50 v. 90 cards left in your deck).
Tutors being played in other formats have been shown the tempo loss is more than worth it to have a specific card at a specific time. Heck, the even tempo loss from having non-tutors like Brainstorm, Ponder, etc. is worth it.

Sure the average card quality increases, but even in a format with the highest average card quality (Vintage) plays tutors. Because the difference between the highest card and the lowest card is still a chasm.

Yes, card draw will dig harder and be generally more effective in the long run. But that's in the aggregate. In any given game, card draw only digs towards random cards and you cannot the discount the massive variance in a highlander format. For those games where the card you want is at the bottom or near bottom, no amount of card draw will get you there.

At the end of the day, having to play 100 cards is a feature of the format. Getting to trim down to 80 or 60 (basically playing a pseudo alt-Vintage format) would make the format less fun. You'd see more of the same things even more. I just don't see any positives from lowering deck size.

Even if it lets people with smaller hand shuffle easier (which is a silly thing to even bring up). This isn't a game like basketball where kids get to play on a 8 foot hoop instead of a 10 ft hoop.

But on the other hand, 100 does feel like a sacred cow in that people should be allowed to play more than 100.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I do not understand the "I don't see any advantages" stance and it makes me very confused. I think it's very possible it would be worse. I see all the disadvantages. But that statement is so rhetorically loaded to try to win an argument I just don't get it.

How can I see all the disadvantages but easier shuffling is the only potential benefit you can see?

Thought exercise: try to think of some advantages. This thread is about thinking about it not trying to win.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I do not understand the "I don't see any advantages" stance and it makes me very confused. I think it's very possible it would be worse. I see all the disadvantages. But that statement is so rhetorically loaded to try to win an argument I just don't get it.

How can I see all the disadvantages but easier shuffling is the only potential benefit you can see?

Thought exercise: try to think of some advantages. This thread is about thinking about it not trying to win.
That's pretty loaded. Its entirely possible for someone to not see any advantage in the switch, simply because the potential benefits are all very tied to preference and taste, so while they may be benefits to some people they would be negatives to others. They seem to mostly correlate as well, so if someone doesn't like some of the supposed benefits they are likely to dislike most or all of them.

The potential benefits, or more accurately the effects that some could see as benefits, as I see them are:

1. More consistency

2. Reduced shuffling, possibly, if weak tutors are cut. Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, etc aren't getting cut and don't lose value in 60 card. Diabolic does, but Diabolic is already pretty weak. Getting exactly what you need is much better than drawing 2 or 3 cards, and the best tutors give this for 1 or 2 mana (which is lower than most draw spells, excluding cantrips).

3. All in Aggro gets better, because it is more consistent

4. Some niche, parasitic mechanics and tribes with few cards become more buildable because you don't have to find as many cards to make them work.

5. Power levels of decks generally increase

6. Mill maybe gets better without having to go to combo

Unfortunately, most of those are completely subjective, so here's the counters

1. Being less consistent than normal magic is one of EDH's primary draws, and one of the reasons for its creation. Making decks significantly more consistent goes against the spirit, and intention, of the format, and what drew many players to it. Making digging into your collection less important is a knock off effect of this, and again in direct opposition to the principles of the format.

2. This benefit isn't certain, will be nonexistent in more powerful metas, and will be negligible in weaker metas.

3. All in Aggro will still face hurdles given this is a multiplayer format, and even more because of the higher life totals. All in Aggro also tends to be pretty disliked by many players, especially in EDH, because it punishes bad draws and has a tendency to knock players out of the game early without actually winning. People hate getting knocked out early then sitting around for 10 more turns because their killer couldn't close the game out. Infect is pretty infamous for this already, and while non infect all in aggro loses the proliferate inevitability it maintains the ability to drop a targeted player quickly then run out of gas. I'm certainly not alone in thinking that this is an archetype that should remain marginalized for the health of the format, so while some would see its increased viability as a benefit, I, and many others, would see it as a negative.

4. Again this is uncertain. While such decks would get more consistent, so would everything else, so I'm not even sure if anything of the sort would materialize beyond a couple tribes. Still, this remains mostly upside.

5. A few people might see an across the board power level upgrade in the format as a benefit. Most would see it as a detriment.

6. Mill can be a controversial wincon already, and while fair mill becomes more viable with the change, but still not good enough, while combo mill becomes even better since its easier to hit, so a rule change that strengthens mill has the effect of promoting mill which leads leads people to mill combo in an effort to make mill work. It shouldn't be difficult to see that some would see this as a negative.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

onering wrote:
4 years ago
That's pretty loaded. Its entirely possible for someone to not see any advantage in the switch, simply because the potential benefits are all very tied to preference and taste, so while they may be benefits to some people they would be negatives to others. They seem to mostly correlate as well, so if someone doesn't like some of the supposed benefits they are likely to dislike most or all of them.
I appreciate you having a go; I think at the bare minimum there are a handful of things most people would agree are advantages. I'm not trying to be cantankerous at all but I covered most of the disadvantages in the OP; I can see all the disadvantages. The one that got brought up I hadn't covered was about 5c deck manabases.

I do think it's pretty obvious that the likelihood of a change is extremely low; but perhaps when the next commander variant starts they'll think along these lines. So fundamentally the discussion is pretty pointless -- I was just hoping for more brainstorming atmosphere and less trying to counterargument everything that gets said.

Being 60 cards is easily my favorite thing about both Brawl and Oathbreaker (not that I play either, just follow academically) -- building a deck is just so much less irritating, and all the mechanics of handling it, sleeving it, shuffling it, storing it, etc. But it's possible that simply the increase in reach of cards that the 100 card EDH format creates is part of the format's enduring appeal. You're encouraged to delve way further outside of the norm.

I will say that part of what disgusts me about CEDH decks from an aesthetic standpoint is that they become just a pile of the same 30 lands, the same 50 best cards, and then at most 20 cards of unique identity for the archetype. And it's entirely possible that gets pushed down to the next power realm if you shave 20 cards.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I do not understand the "I don't see any advantages" stance and it makes me very confused. I think it's very possible it would be worse. I see all the disadvantages. But that statement is so rhetorically loaded to try to win an argument I just don't get it.

How can I see all the disadvantages but easier shuffling is the only potential benefit you can see?

Thought exercise: try to think of some advantages. This thread is about thinking about it not trying to win.
Rather than quoting "I don't see any advantages," if you could respond to each of the points that I made to get there, I'd think that you also find few if any advantages yourself.

From my perspective, every "advantage" that you mentioned wouldn't actually play out the way you described. You provided several examples of "advantages" to support your idea that lower deck size might be worth considering. I don't feel as if I should come up with any other "advantages" of my own, especially since this is not a change that I feel would be a good idea to implement. In practice, the only thing that would actually happen the way you describe would be the "easier to shuffle" part.

1. Deck construction is not any cheaper. Because the cards that people actually want to play the most don't become any cheaper due to deck size. A 100 card casual deck built with leftovers + a Gaea's Cradle costs roughly the same as a 80 card casual deck built with leftovers + Gaea's Cradle.

2. Tutors are not any less powerful in 80 card vs 100 card.

3. Low-power parasitic deck themes are still going to be low-power in the format also. Energy doesn't become a strong build-around because it' still highlander. If an energy deck doesn't have to play ~30-ish filler cards (and that's generous), the artifact deck doesn't have to play ~10-ish filler cards either.

4. Mill doesn't become more viable, because what hurt it wasn't that it's tough to mill out an opposing 100 card deck. You mill out one person, but if that's how you win you've still got to mill out 2-3 other opponents. That Glimpse the Unthinkable you have to burn on a guy with 4 cards left or that Fraying Sanity that you can only curse one player with...milling scales poorly such that you're relying on a combo or combo-like engine to actually mill people. I also don't think aggro stands any better chance due to lower library because it not being strong is more to do with 40 life and Wrath of God.

5. Brawl is 60 because otherwise you'd be forced to run draft chaff. The structure of it being standard only also brought upon horrible designs like Arcane Signet and blatantly pushed generals like Chulane and Korvold. 60 card deck size might be the only contribution from Brawl, but I'd say downsides like Arcane Signet and Chulane/Korvold being printed into existence is a god-awful trade.

6. If the homogeneity of CEDH is unappealing to you, once again, I do not see the effort in making an appeal for anything less than 100 cards. Because that's kind of how I feel regular EDH would become more like. I definitely feel that 100 cards is part of the charm in EDH. That and 40 life is what I feel lead to people at the beginning of the format building the way they built. Now to me, the 40 life is out-dated, but the 100 cards is not. That's another discussion.

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Post by onering » 4 years ago

I think we need to remember that the 100 card thing wasn't arbitrary at all. EDH was created as a variant of 100 card Singleton, which used to be a fairly popular casual format that occasionally received tournament support. Its draw was that it was less consistent than 60 card 4 of decks, and it forced you to dig deeper into your collection, two things that remain two of commanders big selling points.

Sometimes I see the argument thrown around about different aspects of the format (or things in general) that if a proposed change had been the way it was done from the start, nobody would object to it, but it's a really poor argument. I'm against just excepting things the way they are out of blind deference to tradition, but it's just as bad to act like the way things are is arbitrary. You need to actually think about why things are the way they are, and think about what went into those decisions. 100 card Singleton wasn't an arbitrary decision, it was an already established format that had characteristics that Sheldon and the rest wanted EDH to have. 40 life came about to make the life totals consistent game to game, as before that they were using a pooled total that got evenly divided between the players, which meant the fewer players the higher the life totals. The reason they wanted higher starting life in the first place was to make the games slower to allow for a different style of magic than was currently available to thrive, allowing battlecruiser a place to exist, and to put importance on the commanders themselves through commander damage. The former is still applicable, edh is the only format where battlecruiser magic is viable, and the latter still matters when your dealing with larger generals and Voltron (though it doesn't matter as much as back when only the elder dragons could be generals). Everything about edh was designed to impose deckbuilding restrictions that forced you deeper into your collection, with the availability of the commander in the command zone being the one aspect that added consistency (and it originally did that in a way that promoted the style of magic Sheldon wanted to showcase, and later I a way that promoted deck diversity).

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

umtiger wrote:
4 years ago


Rather than quoting "I don't see any advantages," if you could respond to each of the points that I made to get there, I'd think that you also find few if any advantages yourself.

From my perspective, every "advantage" that you mentioned wouldn't actually play out the way you described. You provided several examples of "advantages" to support your idea that lower deck size might be worth considering. I don't feel as if I should come up with any other "advantages" of my own, especially since this is not a change that I feel would be a good idea to implement. In practice, the only thing that would actually happen the way you describe would be the "easier to shuffle" part.

1. Deck construction is not any cheaper. Because the cards that people actually want to play the most don't become any cheaper due to deck size. A 100 card casual deck built with leftovers + a Gaea's Cradle costs roughly the same as a 80 card casual deck built with leftovers + Gaea's Cradle.

2. Tutors are not any less powerful in 80 card vs 100 card.

3. Low-power parasitic deck themes are still going to be low-power in the format also. Energy doesn't become a strong build-around because it' still highlander. If an energy deck doesn't have to play ~30-ish filler cards (and that's generous), the artifact deck doesn't have to play ~10-ish filler cards either.

4. Mill doesn't become more viable, because what hurt it wasn't that it's tough to mill out an opposing 100 card deck. You mill out one person, but if that's how you win you've still got to mill out 2-3 other opponents. That Glimpse the Unthinkable you have to burn on a guy with 4 cards left or that Fraying Sanity that you can only curse one player with...milling scales poorly such that you're relying on a combo or combo-like engine to actually mill people. I also don't think aggro stands any better chance due to lower library because it not being strong is more to do with 40 life and Wrath of God.

5. Brawl is 60 because otherwise you'd be forced to run draft chaff. The structure of it being standard only also brought upon horrible designs like Arcane Signet and blatantly pushed generals like Chulane and Korvold. 60 card deck size might be the only contribution from Brawl, but I'd say downsides like Arcane Signet and Chulane/Korvold being printed into existence is a god-awful trade.

6. If the homogeneity of CEDH is unappealing to you, once again, I do not see the effort in making an appeal for anything less than 100 cards. Because that's kind of how I feel regular EDH would become more like. I definitely feel that 100 cards is part of the charm in EDH. That and 40 life is what I feel lead to people at the beginning of the format building the way they built. Now to me, the 40 life is out-dated, but the 100 cards is not. That's another discussion.
The reason I didn't respond point by point is because your absolutist language makes me doubt you are approaching the discussion with any openness. That's why I specifically addressed that language.

I feel like your reasoning is fairly aggressively phrased such that rebutting points will become circular fairly quickly, but I'm willing to engage on one topic at a time if you'd like: the weakening of less efficient tutoring with lower card counts is one I feel pretty strongly I am right about. You also seem to be missing the nuance and simply stating that I'm wrong on that subject.

But feel free to pick your topic. Parasitic decks like energy is another one I feel fairly strongly you're oversimplifying.

I realize this response is going to be a bit offputting but perhaps you can see from my point of view that your response to every point I made was basically "no, you're 100 percent wrong." And that is not much of a basis for dialog.

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