Tiered Banned List(s)/Defined Power Levels

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ZenN
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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

I'll preface this by saying that I fully recognize that this will very likely never happen, and wouldn't really be feasible for several reasons.

I was thinking about the concept of a tiered banned list. Essentially, splitting the list to be like "banned if playing at X power level or lower" sort of thing.

This way, in theory, specific power levels of play could be defined. For example, if playing at a super casual level, maybe most of the good MLD cards, extra turn spells, and common combo pieces are banned. With something like 3 or 4 defined power levels, I'd assume it would cover the way the majority of groups want to play, and would make a specific standard to which other players could build. For any of you who may be familiar, I was thinking of it sort of like the Smogon tiers in competitive Pokémon battling. :P

Like I started with, I get this isn't really realistically, and almost certainly would never happen. I was just thinking about how "casual", "75", and "cEDH" are sort of nebulous, and don't mean the same thing to all people, and how different groups want different things banned. Figured it was sort of a neat idea.
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DirkGently
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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

One problem I see conceptually with this is that, by strictly defining what is and isn't at each tier level, you're basically creating sub-formats. Just like cEDH players optimize within an originally casual format like commander, there would be people trying to find the optimum decks within each tier you're defining. The only way to avoid this, really, is to keep the "tiers" very nebulous so there's no precise rules within which to optimize. Once you define them, there's always going to be optimization. Honestly, a well-built deck can survive the lack of certain specific cards quite easily. I exclude lots of cards for power-level reasons, but my decks are still pretty consistently quite strong. No matter what banlist you're using, the power-level difference between a well-built deck and a badly built deck will still be enormous.

I used to play brawl decks against commander decks. Commander decks using cards like necropotence and DEN and other combo stuff. I still won more than my fair share of games. So many that one guy got really pissed off and thought I had a huge unfair advantage because of it being a 60 card deck, despite playing with a standard-only card pool (lol). Because constructing a cohesive deck and playing it well is way more important than just having individual powerful cards.

It would also very likely make the lower tiers undesirable for most players, even those who are playing weak decks. I've played against plenty of decks that I'd rate at a 3/10 or so, but which run a sol ring - a card which is, obviously, extraordinarily powerful. Tutors like diabolic tutor are obviously too slow for cEDH as it exists now, and are popular with casual players, but would probably enable relatively fast combo kills in lower tiers unless you started banning every combo piece in existence. Good luck with that.

It's kind of a cute idea, and I do think it'd be fun to try to optimize within a very strict banlist that make all the things I really dislike about cEDH no longer viable (combo, MLD, fast mana, etc), but trying to actually create such a list would be a train wreck that would almost certainly exclude a lot of what many EDH players like to do.
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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

it's divisive. I see the merit in it because Commander is really huge and the format contains players who want totally incompatible things from the game but this'd be just another house rule type thing, really.

low-power tier systems that immediately came to me would be like:

1. Penny banlist

2. Pauper banlist with uncommon legendary commander, which i know is already a relatively-active subformat. You can play Crop Rotation and a few other broken things in this but whatever, not like yr gonna be fetching a Gaea's Cradle giggle

3, folding_music's custom slow zone: banlist is the legacy banlist, plus all cards that say shuffle or double

4. precons only? some of the custom made-for-Commander cards are really obscene and they tend to have gross reprints. the new Jeskai Commander 20 has Fluctuator, a credible blink game-plan and a free counterspell lol honestly it scares me

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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

I agree that making that list in the first place would be very difficult. But I also agree that it would be a lot of fun to try to optimize within those different tiered restrictions.

I think, in general, the precons can be considered sort of a baseline for a casual deck. Anything below a precon is like hyper casual. The gap between precons and 75 is huge, though, and few people seem to agree on what's what.

For example, I used to play with randoms a lot, and would join casual games with something like a Saskia the Unyielding aggro/hatebears deck with zero combos, zero MLD, and would get accused of playing a competitive deck. I've also had randoms refer to things like my Maelstrom Wanderer deck as cEDH, which really isn't even close.

It's the sort of thing that can make it difficult for randoms to play together, since there is no clear definition of what is casual, and what is 75, and what is cEDH. I think even without the concept of a tiered banned list, some sort of more formal definition of what those terms mean that we can all agree upon would be pretty helpful for a lot of people.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I developed a point analyzer that - if it had a more complete dataset - I think would be very useful for this kinda thing. Points/relative scoring are potentially much more accurate for this kinda thing (e.g. canadian highlander). Although my analyzer is quite a bit more robust in applying scores for things like how many ramp spells and draw spells you have, etc.

I could never get anyone onboard to help populate the dataset, which looks like this right now:


I do think Rorseph added quite a bit to it so I can update that at some point. The app itself is:
https://cmdrdeckrank.rpsands.com/

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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

That sounds like a horrific mess if you're playing in PuG's. Finding games would be a nightmare.

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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

Airi wrote:
3 years ago
That sounds like a horrific mess if you're playing in PuG's. Finding games would be a nightmare.
Maybe. I'm not sure it would be any harder than it is now, since we've already got three different "tiers" just without proper definition.
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Airi
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Post by Airi » 3 years ago

ZenN wrote:
3 years ago
Airi wrote:
3 years ago
That sounds like a horrific mess if you're playing in PuG's. Finding games would be a nightmare.
Maybe. I'm not sure it would be any harder than it is now, since we've already got three different "tiers" just without proper definition.
Yes, but as it is now, I don't have to worry about whether or not my deck is actually even legal to play at a new store.

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Post by Maluko » 3 years ago

It's funny because I had a very similar idea, also thinking about the Smogon tier list for Pokémon :grin: I think this is a very good idea if you address such tier lists as suggestive, rather than as banned lists. They would help new players identify at what kind of power level they are building their decks, and what kinds of cards tend to create more miserable game states. For example, Armageddon and other similar MLD cards could be tiered at a power level of 7-8, and cEDH combo cards can be tiered at a power level 9-10.

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ZenN
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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

ZenN wrote:
3 years ago
For any of you who may be familiar, I was thinking of it sort of like the Smogon tiers in competitive Pokémon battling.
Maluko wrote:
3 years ago
This concept reminds me of Pokémon and the Smogon tier level, in which most legendary Pokémon could only be used in the Ubers tier, for example.
Aayyyy
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Post by onering » 3 years ago

I had an idea a couple of years ago that was similar, but instead of being divided by power tiers it was more of a modular create your own banlist. The idea was that there would be groups of cards that would be banned, or unbanned, together. You'd start by narrowing down the baseline banlist by taking out a couple groups of cards that would form their own modules, like the win out of nowhere cards (Biorythm et Al) and the repetitive cards (recurring Nightmare and Panoptic Mirror for example). Then have fast Mana as its own module (Sol ring, Mana crypt, Mana vault, ancient tomb), slow play inducing cards (Top mainly), a module that would be essentially a cEDH banlist focused on competitive balance). I abandoned it because I was lazy, but also because I realized that it was more of an interesting thought experiment than something that would actually be valuable to people.

One issue I could see with banning by tier is that power level has less to do with the cards than how they are used. I have a red etb matters deck helmed by Dong Zhou. It uses a number of strong cards like fast Mana and Kiki jiki, but it's mid powered at best. Take out zealous conscripts and it loses its combo, which it already lacks a consistent way to find (Kiki and conscripts coming together has to rely on luck, but they're both in the deck for what they do on their own rather than with the objective to get them together). Jam a bunch of fast Mana into an otherwise weak deck with a legends vanilla as a general isn't going to be a problem. I feel like the only tier that would really benefit is cEDH, because it's the most likely to be beset by a problem card that doesn't cause issues in other tiers, and several cards could be straight up unbanned for them without causing problems. All the big Mana win from nowhere cards, Panoptic Mirror, Paradox Engine, Prime Time, Sylvan P, Sundering Titan, Prophet, Recurring Nightmare, Rofellos, Braids, Balance, Emrakul, Library, Iona, Grislebrand, Gifts, and Academy could all be unbanned and be fine, some might even help the subformat by strengthening strategies that are borderline. Granted, a few of those could probably be fine generally, and people will disagree on which ones (personally I'd say mirror, nightmare, and Gifts), but that's still a ton of cards that are bad for casual that cEDH could make use of.

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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

It's hard enough to remember one banlist, and the mental real estate needed to commit several to memory simply isn't there for me. On top of that, quantifying power levels is tough enough as it is. I'd like to say my that most of my decks are 7's or 8's, have been stomped by decks I'd swear are 5's, and have wiped the floor with 9's.
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