Prospect of a cEDH Committee on MTGNexus

[darrenhabib]

What has become abundantly clear is that there is a growing divide between how cEDH players want control over the way the game is shaped for their playing environment and the conflict this has with the RC philosophy and subsequent approach to the ban-list.

I'm personally am not a big player of cEDH. I will play competitive games, but I just want to make sure that people understand that this thread has nothing to do with my wants, but rather to see if something can be done for the cEDH community.

The idea is this. An official committee is created on MTGNexus. This would be formed hopefully by the most respected and trusted among the cEDH community, those that have shaped it's landscape and know the format very well.
Now I imagine the best way to do this is to have individuals nominate themselves. Once a list is curated, then anybody can vote for who they want on the committee. The top voted nominees will then form the committee.
I personally not sure who these will be, as I'm not really involved in the community. But I constantly see names like ShaperSavant and LabManiac Sigi (sorry don't know their real names) and I imagine individuals like this would be prime candidates.

The idea is that MTGNexus can literally give this cEDH Committee a forum to work with. They can be given a subforum to work with private discussions and public discussions, and it has the advantage over say something like Reddit in that documents/threads are easy to maintain and group, and not get lost in the popularity up/down vote system.
The cEDH Committee can be given moderator rights to their forum, to organize as they please.

The whole point of MTGNexus is to give tools to Magic players, and cEDH is one of this group of Magic players.

Then the idea is that this cEDH Committee can start forming their own official set of rules, most realistically a ban-list which they feel balances the game for their format.
How does an "official" cEDH Committee enforce rules on the rest of the world? Hey, I don't have all the answers, but I feel like if you can form a respected group of people among the community and give a platform for them to work with in an official capacity (within MTGNexus) with forum and moderator tools, then it's a real good start at least.

I just feel like you start somewhere and then momentum builds. As long as the players support their own committee, then there is no reason why it doesn't snowball into something that is recognized by everyone eventually.
Maybe close in the future an official website is created specially for 'cEDH' and it's committee, but I'm reaching out to the community that there is a real possibility to use the functionality of this website as a means to organize yourselves.

[cryogen]

My takeaway from other threads is that they don't want to become their own splinter group, they want to coexist with everyone else. That said, I am happy to work with anyone who would like to foster the cEDH community here. The main reason why we created a cEDH sub in the first place was to give players a focused place where they could discuss that aspect of the format and there wouldn't be any confusion that it was for "competitive" talk.

[Rumpy5897]

If splintering was the answer cEDH was looking for, I'm pretty sure it could have easily happened by now. My understanding of this is limited and instinctive, but isn't cEDH drawn to the very core of EDH, infusing it with a focus on immaculate builds around the most effective strategies?

[pokken]

I'd play cedh if it had it's own banlist. Take that for what it's worth j guess.

I don't think coexistence precludes separate ban lists. I have gotten. many ideas from duel lists over the years and I am sure cedh would be closer. The thousands of playgroups with different house ban lists kinda prove that out.

Count me in as an avid follower if it happens.

[ISBPathfinder]

The hard part would be finding a group to spearhead it that is acknowledged to some degree that others would listen to them. The RC had the advantage that they weren't splintering off of some other format really (ok technically they were off highlander but nobody really played that).

You would really want to make sure to pick some very prominent people to lead this and I am talking beyond internet forum famous, I am talking someone who is like kind of a known person in magic already potentially. The hardest part is giving people a reason to listen to a group in my opinion. A cEDH banned list should also be formed based on tournament results so you would want to try to host some high level events, take data, and move based on data that you can show.

[Sinis]

I'm absolutely in favour of cEDH players running a separate ban list. It's happened in the past with the French banlist, and I see no reason why it shouldn't happen now.

cEDH as a concept is entirely antithetical to the principles around EDH. The only solution that will ultimately result in both groups being happy is separate banlists.

[SocorroTortoise]

From an outsider's perspective, I'm not sure there's any desire in the cEDH crowd for a separate banlist. The sentiment that I've seen a lot in a couple threads on this site and on various Reddit threads is that they're interested in optimizing decks within the constraints of the EDH banlist, not creating a new one. If there's not going to be community buy in on a separate banlist, it's not going to go anywhere. That seems like the first question to answer for the topic on the whole.

For hosting it on MTGNexus, it feels like you're putting the cart before the horse. As promising as the site is it's still only been a week since the public opening of the site and it doesn't seem like there's much of a cEDH community established yet. There may need to be some focus on community growth before you jump into leadership proposals for it to have any kind of weight. I suspect most (if not all) of the people that the cEDH community would accept on a rules committee don't even have accounts here at this point.

[pokken]

I think there's definitely an appetite for a banlist more tuned to competitive play among some CEDH players. Tough to say where the actual sentiment is.

[MRHblue]

From an outsider's perspective, I'm not sure there's any desire in the cEDH crowd for a separate banlist. The sentiment that I've seen a lot in a couple threads on this site and on various Reddit threads is that they're interested in optimizing decks within the constraints of the EDH banlist, not creating a new one. If there's not going to be community buy in on a separate banlist, it's not going to go anywhere. That seems like the first question to answer for the topic on the whole.

If that was accurate, I don't think we would see the very large number of cEDH people complaining against Engine's ban, or wanting Flash banned. It seems the Venn diagram of the 3 overlap pretty strongly.

[SocorroTortoise]

Wanting cEDH to be considered in banlist discussions is not the same as wanting a separate banlist and that's definitely a common sentiment right now. I'm primarily basing my observation about format splitting on things like the announcement pinned to the cEDH subreddit explicitly saying that the mod team there is against a format split.

[cryogen]

From an outsider's perspective, I'm not sure there's any desire in the cEDH crowd for a separate banlist. The sentiment that I've seen a lot in a couple threads on this site and on various Reddit threads is that they're interested in optimizing decks within the constraints of the EDH banlist, not creating a new one. If there's not going to be community buy in on a separate banlist, it's not going to go anywhere. That seems like the first question to answer for the topic on the whole.

For hosting it on MTGNexus, it feels like you're putting the cart before the horse. As promising as the site is it's still only been a week since the public opening of the site and it doesn't seem like there's much of a cEDH community established yet. There may need to be some focus on community growth before you jump into leadership proposals for it to have any kind of weight. I suspect most (if not all) of the people that the cEDH community would accept on a rules committee don't even have accounts here at this point.

I'm not suggesting creating a cEDH Rules Committee here, just that I'm perfectly willing to help anyone that wants to develop the cEDH community here in a positive way.

[toctheyounger]

It’s awesome to see how willing our community is to try and resolve the divide between EDH/cEDH and make the community more inclusive. It’s a really good sign that as a community we recognize that there’s more we can do to make the community a more inclusive one that works for everyone. I’m honestly proud of everyone who has come to the party to share their thoughts, in this thread and others, for the betterment of our community and all of its members.

That being said, I’m not sure that a separate RC is what that minority wants. I’m not certain, mind - but my readings over the last few days indicates to me that this cohort of members wants validation from the existing RC and to be considered in decisions along with the rest of the community. Forming a subsect seems like acknowledging a difference and cutting ties, and while that might be what some want, comments from the cEDH members here like ‘we can coexist!’ tells me it’s not something all of them want.

If this is something that part of the community wants, then great, I’m all for it. I think the first step, though, is to have an open discussion as to what we as a community and the RC as leaders of that community can do to make them feel more included and welcomed - over and above ‘ban flash’.

[SocorroTortoise]

I'm not suggesting creating a cEDH Rules Committee here, just that I'm perfectly willing to help anyone that wants to develop the cEDH community here in a positive way.

That seems like the right approach. I was commenting on the fact that the thread title includes "a cEDH Committee on MTGNexus." It's also somewhat telling that all of the responses in this thread are coming from self-proclaimed not-cEDH players. I think your approach of helping anyone who's interested in growing that community here is excellent, but the overall tone of this thread doesn't feel inclusive when no one from the group being discussed is part of the discussion.

[pokken]

From what I've seen sentiment wise there're basically a few groups of CEDH players (and all of these were represented in the recent thread)

* wants everything to stay mostly the same (committee action wise) and doesn't really care about bans or unbans for competitive purposes
* wants minor changes in RC attitude toward competitive, addressing things like Flash
* would prefer that the banlist was purely competitive and did not take into account casual stuff at all
* wants a separate banlist (or some variation on that theme; points, optional addendum, etc).

I'm personally historically a competitive player (in other formats) and would prefer there be a fully tuned competitive banlist. I don't play CEDH today because my group tried it and found it wanting years ago (just too deeply unbalanced to be fun from our perspective).

I think assuming that loud people on reddit represent the population is probably a mistake.

I do think a solid survey on the subject woulds be pretty enlightening but it's tough to make sure you correct for CEDH players actually self-identifying correctly. If you just put the survey out generally to all commander players I think you would confound the data because I think a very large portion of casual players are in favor of a separate format for CEDH - and that really doesn't mean anything since the format has to satisfy CEDH players.

[Jim Wolfie]

New problems with separate banlists but not separate formats. Comments in the form of rhetorical questions because.

Rc says they don't want to multiple time, forcing that responsibility is sketchy
What does your lgs use now?
Are you sure it's the banlist you want?
What does the gp side event use?
What happens if you use a different banlist at home and don't find out till day of because your friend was wrong

An actual cedh banlist would probably have less cards on it than what we have now. Not more.

[pokken]

What the ban list looks like depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Need to start with the principles of CEDH.

Honestly I think crafting a principles document is something that should be done for CEDH even independent of a banlist.

[MRHblue]

If this is something that part of the community wants, then great, I’m all for it. I think the first step, though, is to have an open discussion as to what we as a community and the RC as leaders of that community can do to make them feel more included and welcomed - over and above ‘ban flash’.

I just think this flies right in the face of 'the EDH ban list is not concerned with competitive game play', which has been a mantra recently reinforced with the CAG and Philosophy documents.

Honestly I think that's the correct decision. Stick with whats made this game so popular, and let the chips fall where they may.

[cryogen]

New problems with separate banlists but not separate formats. Comments in the form of rhetorical questions because.

Rc says they don't want to multiple time, forcing that responsibility is sketchy
What does your lgs use now?
Are you sure it's the banlist you want?
What does the gp side event use?
What happens if you use a different banlist at home and don't find out till day of because your friend was wrong

An actual cedh banlist would probably have less cards on it than what we have now. Not more.

Well that's the issue you all have been trying to vocalize this whole time, right? In sanctioned play you have no choice but to use the official ban list as written. So the only solutions are to find some middle ground with the RC or create a new format with enough legitimacy to be recognized.

[Sheldon]

I made a point over on the Having Your Voice Heard thread which includes an articulation of why a split list doesn't work. I don't want to retype it here, so if you'd like details, please head over to that thread.

TLDR version: a split list doesn't work unless one list contains all the stuff on the other list. If that's the case, why have more than one list?

[toctheyounger]

If this is something that part of the community wants, then great, I’m all for it. I think the first step, though, is to have an open discussion as to what we as a community and the RC as leaders of that community can do to make them feel more included and welcomed - over and above ‘ban flash’.

I just think this flies right in the face of 'the EDH ban list is not concerned with competitive game play', which has been a mantra recently reinforced with the CAG and Philosophy documents.

Honestly I think that's the correct decision. Stick with whats made this game so popular, and let the chips fall where they may.

I don't necessarily think it is. The banlist doesn't currently take into account cEDH, sure. But that doesn't necessarily mean they need to be considered 'competitive' either. In reading through pretty close to 10 pages of back and forth on Sheldon's thread, it becomes pretty clear that while cEDH players play at a different speed and level of strategy than casual EDH players, they don't consider themselves 'competitive' - at least in the traditional sense of competing at tourneys, competing for money or prizes and so forth. Their fun just looks different to yours, and that's ok. It's a subjective metric and always has been. Excluding them or just not catering to them because of this seems a bit pedantic to me, when there's an opportunity to allow inclusion for them.

This point might all be semantics, but it's probably worth discussing whether it does allow for greater inclusion of these players in our community. Personally I'd hate to think that we could've done more to lessen their discontent and just didn't do it because it seemed too hard.

[Sheldon]

This point might all be semantics, but it's probably worth discussing whether it does allow for greater inclusion of these players in our community. Personally I'd hate to think that we could've done more to lessen their discontent and just didn't do it because it seemed too hard.

QFT (can I do a one-word answer without getting a warning?).

[pokken]

I made a point over on the Having Your Voice Heard thread which includes an articulation of why a split list doesn't work. I don't want to retype it here, so if you'd like details, please head over to that thread.

TLDR version: a split list doesn't work unless one list contains all the stuff on the other list. If that's the case, why have more than one list?

I certainly am not advocating for you guys to take on maintaining another list. I think that's simply too much to ask of you guys. You do way too much for free already.

I don't entirely agree with your point in the other thread, included here for reference:

Since we don't want to legislate F1s out of existence, we use the remaining tools that we have at our disposal--hence a social contract. This whole analogy, by the way, is also the reason a split list wouldn't work. Unless the casual list also contained all the cards on the competitive list, there would be no prevention against crossing the streams, as it were.

I think this is giving CEDH players too little credit, something I learned in the other thread. I think the vast majority of CEDH players really would rather play competitive games against competitive decks. Give them an outlet to do that and I think most of them would do it.

There would surely be less crossing of the streams than there is now, and it also puts a lot of ammo in the quiver of a casual player. Now they can point and say: "Listen, I think your deck really should be running the CEDH ban list."

And the beautiful thing is that a competitive banlist could probably (if curated well) make *weaker decks* than exist now. Which makes it so that if someone *does* bring their gun to a knife fight they are likely to be closer in power to a 75% deck packing unbanned CEDH cards but a weaker gameplan.

** I'm packing an assumption here that a true attempt at a competitive list would probably maintain most of the existing ban list, and probably do a lot more than just Flash to improve diversity over time. Not that I know for sure what that might be.

This point might all be semantics, but it's probably worth discussing whether it does allow for greater inclusion of these players in our community. Personally I'd hate to think that we could've done more to lessen their discontent and just didn't do it because it seemed too hard.

QFT (can I do a one-word answer without getting a warning?).

--reported. I KID. I kid.

[HoffOccultist]

And the beautiful thing is that a competitive banlist could probably (if curated well) make *weaker decks* than exist now. Which makes it so that if someone *does* bring their gun to a knife fight they are likely to be closer in power to a 75% deck packing unbanned CEDH cards but a weaker gameplan.

I think this assumes that cEDH decks are what is driving the general power level of Commander upward. I would contend it may be a small, small part of that, but that generally the increase in communication (via social media, content producers, etc) about Commander is a much bigger driver in pushing the power level of all EDH decks upward. I also think that if weaker decks were to exist, it would require a much more expansive ban list for EDH, which I would imagine that the RC is loathe to do--in part because one of the big draws to EDH is that you get to use powerful cards to do fun things that just aren't legal elsewhere.

In general, I think creating a separate cEDH committee is a poor decision, largely due to the fact that there are relatively few purely cEDH players. Almost everyone I've interacted with also greatly enjoys more laid back games as well, and needing to keep track of multiple ban lists is just a headache for anyone wanting to do that, let alone LGS's or CFB running commander events. And, as you mention, the "gun to knife fight" will still happen, and the gulf between a "75%" deck and "Guys with hats" tribal is still pretty large and creates a lot of feelbads. It's why when people say "Rule 0 is a cop out" I think they don't understand the purpose of it--you can't codify that people talk to one another, but it's really necessary here, whether you want to play Homarid tribal or Karador Goodstuff or smash different Flash Hulk decks into one another.

[Taleran]

I would also argue it is Wizards that is driving the power of Commander upwards even if the actual precons out of the box do not look like that.

[folding_music]

one of the big draws to EDH is that you get to use powerful cards to do fun things that just aren't legal elsewhere.

I don't think that's a universal draw at all! The most powerful cards in a format will homogenize the scene if you let 'em. I know people who deliberately don't use their Crypts and Survivals in EDH because their ethoses guide them to kick consistency out of the format instead of choke it with repetition. Not everyone is swept up in the edhrec arms race, there are enclaves of theme deckers out here who want this game to be as slow and as clunky as possible.

I'll play nice with optimizers cos they don't effect me - just don't characterize every player as being interested in what you're interested in! thanks