Recent Game Knights Episode (spoilers) and Commander Play Styles

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

duducrash wrote:
3 years ago
Can you elaborate? I'm really intereste in the idea but I feel I'm not goood enough of a player/deckbuilder to go trough with the idea.
If you plop your deck into one of the deck tags here, or put it on tappedout/deckbox/etc. you will get some numbers. I really like the charts here because they do average CMC with and without lands which gives you some different things to think about.

Anyway, average CMC is basically the sum of all the CMC of cards in your deck divided by the number of cards in your deck (so 260 / 100 = 2.6) or whatever.

Your typical CEDH deck will have a curve <2, sometimes under 1.5 for really linear decks.

Your typical precon has an avg CMC of around 4 (give or take, depending on theme).

So all things considered, commander decks range from 1.5 to 4 or so from a curve perspective, barring few outliers (e.g. Shadowborn Apostle decks and high cmc tribal decks, or even cycling or cascade decks).

Lots of key things this number hints at, ranging from how much ramp and removal you're probably playing to when you think the game will end or be decided (critical turn).

If you take nothing else away from this, if you take your decks and put them in a deckbuilder and the numbers come out closer to 1.5 than 4 they're probably stronger. Closer to 4, probably weaker.

If you straight up plot decks on a chart:

<2 = cedh
>2<2.5 = high powered
>2.5<3.33 = medium powered
>3.33<4 = glop
>4 = blorf

You'll be probably not super far off.



If you want a couple case studies:

My Ephara deck
https://deckbox.org/sets/665530

CMC of 2.66 -- not quite right because of some free spells but close enough. This deck plays a lot of powerhouse cards and some infinite combos though, it's really right on the border between mid and high powered.


My Mangara casual deck

https://deckbox.org/sets/2845393

Definitely glop tier with 3.5 CMC and a ton of terrible cards and not much ramp, no infinite combos and a fair as heck gameplan. It'll outpower precons but it's not going to win a lot of games against a table full of the Ephara deck's power level - basically just get wrecked over and over again because it's just starting to play around turn 6 whereas Ephara is probably approaching end game around turn 6 or 7 most of the time.

My Opus thief CEDH deck:
https://deckbox.org/sets/2543861

This deck is a bit out of date and has a high curve of 1.94 for a CEDH deck because 1) it's kinda slow for a CEDH deck and 2) it's old :P.

But if you tried to play this even with Ephara level decks you're going to be ending the game on turn 4. Mangara probably wouldn't even get to play in that kind of game, and Ephara would be way behind developing.

(Disclaimer: There's a lot of argument to be made for nonland CMC being far more representative of a deck's power, so keep that in mind. Decks that play a lot of lands will distort the math a little more than they do if you just do the nonland CMCs. The numbers are very different that way as CEDH nonland CMCs approach 1.2-1.5 for example.

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duducrash
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Post by duducrash » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
duducrash wrote:
3 years ago
Can you elaborate? I'm really intereste in the idea but I feel I'm not goood enough of a player/deckbuilder to go trough with the idea.
If you plop your deck into one of the deck tags here, or put it on tappedout/deckbox/etc. you will get some numbers. I really like the charts here because they do average CMC with and without lands which gives you some different things to think about.

Anyway, average CMC is basically the sum of all the CMC of cards in your deck divided by the number of cards in your deck (so 260 / 100 = 2.6) or whatever.

Your typical CEDH deck will have a curve <2, sometimes under 1.5 for really linear decks.

Your typical precon has an avg CMC of around 4 (give or take, depending on theme).

So all things considered, commander decks range from 1.5 to 4 or so from a curve perspective, barring few outliers (e.g. Shadowborn Apostle decks and high cmc tribal decks, or even cycling or cascade decks).

Lots of key things this number hints at, ranging from how much ramp and removal you're probably playing to when you think the game will end or be decided (critical turn).

If you take nothing else away from this, if you take your decks and put them in a deckbuilder and the numbers come out closer to 1.5 than 4 they're probably stronger. Closer to 4, probably weaker.

If you straight up plot decks on a chart:

<2 = cedh
>2<2.5 = high powered
>2.5<3.33 = medium powered
>3.33<4 = glop
>4 = blorf
Thank, it helped a lot. Really cool with the examples

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toctheyounger
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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

Having now seen the roundtable i guess there's a few more thoughts on the issue. Mostly the issue for was bad threat assessment.

Everyone at the table was happy with the decks they had and were playing against, to the point of even JLK dispensing with one plan to try a different deck entirely (and honestly, there's a chance his original idea could left Cash for dead). They all knew what they were facing and still let it happen.

Part of it i think is letting everyone get a chance to play through for the sake of the production, and part of it is why the ever living f*** did Jimmy not bonk the fish and Ashlen not bonk the merfolk? Honestly it just seemed like heat of the moment poor decisions.

The other part of it seems to me like they played what they wanted to play and let Cash do the same, despite their end goals being different. Cash pretty much said he picked the commabder he did because it was very good and gave him a good chance of victory. Jimmy and Ashlen both picked commanders you would typically expect them to pick because those are colors they like and synergies they like. JLK we'll set aside because he picked a second deck to table police. He shouldn't have had to, but there we are. So knowing that they went in with differing expectations for the game its no wonder it ended up being that lopsided.

All that being said, I personally really like going up against a high powered deck and seeing if I can take it down. But I'm going in with a very different mindset than that seen here of nice pal time. I'm paying close attention to lines of play and looking for an opening to sweep the rug out from under the high power player.

Wrapping this episode up my thoughts are that I'll continue watching GK, but its really for the production value and to see the latest sets in action. Its not where I go to learn how to play, its not what I want my mets to look like, and thats ok. If they enjoy games the way this last was played, more power to them, I won't whine about what I'm seeing. I think its probably just worth remembering with these guys they're not pro tour champions, and they're not too tier commander players either. They're good and occasionally make the same sort of mistakes everybody does, so if this is where you're learning your chops in the format, grain of salt necessary.
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