Thassa's OracleThassa's Oracle | Art by Jesper Ejsing

A little over a week ago, cEDH had the biggest tournament in the format's history. With a showing of 514 competitors, a prize pool of $20,000, and enough round of gameplay to cover a convention hall for two days, the Steel City Spectacular truly lived up to its name and was, well, spectacular.

So, what can we take away from the event? Let's dig in.

Competitive Commander Is Booming

First off, let's get the obvious out of the way - cEDH has a lot of momentum right now. Tournaments are being run at record numbers globally, the number of players in those tournaments is skyrocketing, and community engagement is through the roof.

All in all, if the Steel City Spectacular proved anything, it's that cEDH isn't just the niche highest-power bracket of Commander; it's a thriving community of eager players all brewing, playtesting, and competing the world over.

This momentum matters for two key reasons. First off, despite being recognized by Wizards of the Coast thanks to the new bracket system, cEDH isn't a Wizards-sponsored format. There is no cEDH Pro Tour, nor are there cEDH precons.

Sure, the ever-increasing complexity and power level of Magic cards in a world where nearly everything has a designed-for-Commander component necessarily means that more things will bleed into cEDH, but that isn't the same as direct support. As such, players and independent tournament organizers have to pick up the slack - a hefty ask given the price of organizing events.

So, to see events routinely fire with one, five, and now twenty-thousand dollar payouts doesn't just mean the format is limping along; it means that an institution is being built to keep it thriving and growing.

Secondly, this momentum matters because of another key hurdle for the format: the cost of playing. For most Commander decks, the price of the deck comes from the bling that players and collectors add as flourishes for their favorites. Masterpieces, Serialized cards, etc - these make up the foundations of Commander's costliest decks.

While such cards are similarly commonplace in cEDH, they serve to raise the prices on decks that already have incredibly high floors. If you're playing Blue Farm, for example, you need six dual lands - that's a couple thousand dollars right there, and you still have 94 cards left to go. If you're playing RogSi, then there's a good chance you'll want to play TimetwisterTimetwister, and that's a $4,000 card on its own.

So, what's the format supposed to do? Stay small, mostly online, and (hopefully) dedicated, like Vintage? Or is it to risk falling by the wayside, like Wizards' recent treatment of Legacy these past few years? Well, as we all saw succeed in stellar fashion in Pittsburg earlier this month (the host of Steel City Spectacular), the answer is clear: embrace proxies.

Commander has long had a bit of a tussle with proxies. For some, proxies made perfect sense for the casual format. For others, the price of cards helped keep power levels in check.

Well, given the power level agreement inherent to playing in a competitive format, cEDH never needed to worry about the scaling issues which are implicated by opening the floodgates on everyone having every card.

Rather, by granting everyone access regardless of wallet heft, the competitive arena has been made all the more equal, incentivizing the vast participation needed to keep a community-run format going - especially one with decks that can easily eclipse $5,000.

Draws Are a Problem

Competitive Commander isn't all sunshine and rainbows, however. While the format may be bustling with players eager to play in tournaments, there is still one pretty immediate structural flaw with how cEDH tournaments are run, and yet no one has quite settled on a fix for it yet. Simply put, draws are too common in cEDH, and the tournament experience is suffering because of it.

By and large, cEDH tournaments (outside of Japan) use the following point breakdown:

• A win is five points,
• A draw is one point,
• And a loss is zero points.

While this makes intuitive sense, the implementation of this structure really starts to break down when the political aspect of playing cEDH is brought into picture. Here's an example:

• Player A is the active player, and has already resolved a Thassa's OracleThassa's Oracle. With the enters-trigger on the stack, they hold priority and cast Demonic ConsultationDemonic Consultation.
• Players B passes priority on Demonic ConsultationDemonic Consultation.
• Player C casts Borne Upon a WindBorne Upon a Wind, a spell that signals their intent to win the game before the Thassa's Oracle trigger resolves.
• Player D reveals to the table that they have a single piece of interaction - a Force of NegationForce of Negation. This causes the table to pause for a moment, as Player D offers a draw.
• If they counter the Borne Upon a Wind, then player A wins due to the Thassa's Oracle combo. If they don't, then player C likely wins on top of the Thassa's Oracle combo. As such, Player D is in a king-making scenario and can decide who wins the game. In either case, Player D would leave the game with zero points, rather than the one which they'd receive from a draw.

The sirens of a play-to-time format.

Given the current structure of one-point draws, many games which would otherwise end in a declared victor are either being ended by mutual agreement, or because the games go to time. Commander games can last a while, especially with Rhystic StudyRhystic Study and talkative players roaming around just about every pod, and this has led to many games ending either prematurely and/or without satisfaction.

In our earlier example, if the game were a zero-point draw structure, then the likely outcome would've been that the Borne Upon a Wind was allowed to resolve, as - despite being a likely win - it nonetheless was not a prima-facie guaranteed win (as compared to the immediately observable defeat at the hands of Thassa's Oracle).

There's Plenty of Room to Brew

Finally, let's talk about the decks that were played. But first, a look back at where we came from.

The championship deck - not a blue pip in sight.

Just about a year ago, Commander saw the biggest shakeup in recent memory: Dockside ExtortionistDockside Extortionist, Jeweled LotusJeweled Lotus, Mana CryptMana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged WisdomNadu, Winged Wisdom were all banned.

While Nadu had already established itself as a premier cEDH deck, it had only been around for a little while and as such its sudden banning felt like just a blip on the history of the format - a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. The other three, meanwhile, were universal cards in cEDH. Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus supported a plethora of commander-dependent strategies, and Dockside Extortionist was the go-to game ender for a bevy of non-blue decks.

Love these cards or hate them, they defined cEDH.

When they vanished in an instant, it was natural for players to panic. All eyes turned to the partner pair Rograkh, Son of RohgahhRograkh, Son of Rohgahh and Silas Renn, Seeker AdeptSilas Renn, Seeker Adept as the next tier-zero boogeyman of the format. The deck was fast, didn't need Jeweled Lotus, and was far less reliant on Dockside Extortionist than most other red decks in the format. So, why wouldn't it be the best of the best?

Well, time heals all wounds, and I'm more than happy to say that - a little under a year later - RogSi was not the only deck at the Steel City Spectacular. In fact, there was only one player piloting the deck in the format's top 16.

Rather, the partner-pair of Tymna the WeaverTymna the Weaver and Kraum, Ludevic's OpusKraum, Ludevic's Opus (Blue Farm) had the most players - four - piloting it in the top 16. Looking at the rest of the entrants - including the rest of the top 16 - and we see an incredibly diverse meta full of pet decks and experiments.

Of the top 16 decks at the Steel City Spectacular, there were thirteen unique entrants. Other than the aforementioned Blue Farm, no one deck had a repeat among the finalists or semi-finalists. There are, of course, plenty of common cards and colors across decks - I won't lie and say that Rhystic Study didn't play a big role in the tournament overall - but the tournament certainly wasn't homogenous.

Wrap Up

Competitive Commander has its fair share of rough edges. Blue Farm is heads and shoulders above the rest of the meta, Rhystic Study is a problematic card, and the tournament structure is still in its relative infancy.

Despite all this, though, more players than ever are showing up to tournaments, eager to play in the competitive environment, all while being able to play decks that are uniquely theirs.

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