Key art | copyright Wizards of the Coast via MyNewsDesk

Hello, everyone! Matt Morgan of the EDHRECast here. Today marks an exciting announcement with an absolutely monumental shift for all Commander players out there.

Wizards of the Coast announced a new bracket system for describing deck power levels and a Game Changers list that will influence your deck's bracket.

What is the Commander Bracket System?

The new bracket method is a slimmer but more specific version of the old “1-10 power level,” deck descriptors that the community has used for some time.
A brand new Game Changer List that includes a subset of cards that contains some of the heaviest hitters in the format.

We’ll break down the announcement item by item.

First, the update to the bracket system unveils a new, five-tiered system.

This is fairly straightforward, with some added guidance to help players communicate this change. The brackets and their descriptions are below:

Bracket 1: Exhibition

Experience: Throw down with your ultra-casual commander deck!
Deckbuilding: No cards from the Game Changer list.
No intentional two-card infinite combos, mass land denial, or extra turn cards.
Tutors should be sparse.

This level of gameplay has been the ground level of the format; where self expression and creating a shared experience are the primary goals. Since there's a portion of the player base that prioritizes their overall experience over winning and raw power, it's good to see this reflected on a new scale. Many newer players to the format, budget players, and brand new brews will headline this power bracket.

Bracket 2: Core

Experience: The easiest reference point is that the average current preconstructed deck is at a Core level.
Deckbuilding: No cards from the Game Changer list.
No intentional two-card infinite combos or mass land denial.
Extra turn cards should only appear in low quantities and not intended to be chained in succession or looped.
Tutors should be sparse.

With preconstructed decks (precons) being such a massively popular product, choosing these to headline the "core," experience is a terrific decision. While precons have evolved and grown in power over time, they still represent a baseline experience that's easy to point to.

Bracket 3: Upgraded

Experience: These decks are souped up and ready to play beyond the strength of an average precon.
Deckbuilding: Up to three cards from the Game Changer list.
No intentional early game two-card infinite combos.
Extra turn cards should only appear in low quantities and not intended to be chained in succession or looped.
No mass land denial.

Bracket 3 is preserving a place for players to upgrade their decks without fully committing to the high powered experience. This lets players experiment in a controlled manner, like with extra turn spells, infinite combos, and the Game Changers. A majority of decks will exist in this space between Bracket 2 and Bracket 3. Infinite combos and instant win conditions will start to show up here, along with more tutors and extra turn spells, but not both simultaneously. Decks will likely have to balance power versus consistency, with decks in the next bracket choosing them both.

Bracket 4: Optimized

Experience: It’s time to go wild!
Deckbuilding: No restrictions (Other than the banned list)

Bracket 4 will host highly synergistic decks, powerful interactions, and Game Changers. This is the level where all cards on are the table and the decks are built to win. The social contract still exists, but decks will contain much more powerful individual cards and the tutors to find them. The commander bracket announcement describes the decks here as "bringing the best version of the deck you want to play."

Bracket 5: CEDH

Experience: This is high power with a very competitive and metagame focused mindset.
Deckbuilding: No restrictions (Other than the banned list)

The highest level of Commander play, optimized for a hyper competitive setting. Players seeking the tournament level experiences and only the most cutthroat decks will find their home at this bracket. Bracket 5 changes the mindset as the key focus from a social experience to the competitive one. "Winning matters more than self expression," is how the announcement describes the target decks for this level of play.

Now, this IS a shift from the draft of the brackets that were mentioned late last year. Bracket five for cEDH has been added to accommodate the highest level of play in the format to go along with the the four tiers of social play. What's completely new to us is how the Game Changer list influences these tiers.

The prior announcement had mentioned an even amount of categories to prevent the "my deck is a 7," effect where players typically gravitated towards a nebulous middle point. Considering this system is still a four-point scale for socially focused play, the added fifth point for cEDH levels of play makes sense.

Now, you might be wondering what these Game Changers are, and thankfully the article gives us plenty of details along with the list. The Commander Bracket announcement outlines these as cards that specifically warp the course of a Commander game around it. Cards can do this in all manners of ways, whether causing an excessive shift in resources to search for the strongest cards in decks at an efficient rate. The full list of cards is below.

The Game Changers

White

Blue

Black

Red

Green

Colorless

Multicolor

That is a lengthy list of what most consider the staples of the format. Game Changers range from cards known for their high power levels like The One Ring to cards known for disrupting the social aspect of the format like my personal (least) favorite Tergrid, God of Fright.

Initial Thoughts

Before we get into some data behind how often Game Changers might be showing up, let’s take a moment to circle back to the brackets. Brackets 1 and 2 state that no game changers can show up in these decks. However, with Bracket 2 containing present day preconstructed decks, it puts us at an interesting impasse since many preconstructed decks contain Game Changer cards.

The Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald deck from Baldur’s Gate contained a reprint of Jeska's Will. Similarly, Fierce Guardianship and its cycle was first printed in Commander preconstructed decks. Whether or not this could put a damper on how often or accessible reprints of these cards show up will be interesting to track in the future.

The commander bracket announcement also makes Brackets 3 and 4 the new home for Game Changers. Bracket 3 restricts players to only three cards off the Game Changers list in any given deck and Bracket 4 encompasses the “no holds barred,” arena.

One potential hurdle here is the added layer of policing that will be needed for unknown pods. Identifying Game Changers when browsing decklists online will be easy thanks to this finite list, which you can also find on Archidekt. Playing in a pod at a Magic Con or Command Fest won't have this luxury, and requires some amount of trust in other players. This shouldn’t be a major issue, but one critique to be aware of moving forward.

Decision time

Having a limit of three Game Changers in all but the highest level of decks creates an interesting decision tree in the deckbuilding process. Will a given deck benefit more from the mana generation of a Smothering Tithe or the card draw engine of Rhystic Study?

It will be interesting to see whether deck builders choose to scale up their Game Changers in decks playing one or two or to remove them entirely and move down a bracket. The Commander Brackets will definitely create more intentionality in the deckbuilding process and force players to ask themselves more about the decks they create.

The numbers at a glance

With forty of the most powerful cards in the format cards mentioned in the Game Changers list, it might be expected for this to impact a large number of games. Game Changers are some of the most played cards in the format after all, with cards like Cyclonic Rift and Rhystic Study being played in over 25% of Commander decks seen on Archidekt and Moxfield.

Thankfully, our team at EDHREC is able to dig into the numbers of the decks in our database for some interesting insight. The chart below displays the ebb and flow of how many Game Changers are included in decks on average coming from Archidekt and Moxfield.

(click the image to open it and see the full size)

As you can see, there is a significant amount of decks that choose not to play ANY Game Changers. Not counting for an occasional dip, decks running zero Game Changers occupy at least 40% of the decks we see between sites.

Not only is this is a rather large deviation from what I personally expected; in fact over 80% of decks are playing three or less Game Changers making Bracket 1 to Bracket 3 decks occupy a significant percentage of decks.

The upper tier of decks playing 10 or more Game Changers only occupies 5% or less of decks. The chart below maps the raw average of Game Changers in any given deck over time.

(click the image to open it and see the full size)

A new frontier for Commander

Players are sure to make adjustments to their decks in light of this announcement. Some will surely take the one Game Changer out of their deck to fall more in line with what power bracket they typically play at, while others might add one or two with the new freedom to play up to three.

Brackets encourage players to use these power levels as a conversation piece, and many players tend to fall in line with the typical rules of the format. Whether a majority of players adopt this new system will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months.

The biggest piece of the announcement sure to cause some flux is the entire Game Changers list. The list from the announcement contains 40 cards at present, but is sure to change. Some cards like Trouble in Pairs seem to stick out as powerful, but not necessarily egregious. Some of the omissions seem to stand out more than what is included on the list currently.

Mana Drain, The Great Henge, and Blood Moon are cards worth mentioning as warping games around them compared to some competitors. Whether these cards are added later or not remains to be seen.

It will also be curious to see which cards come off the ban list and are placed on the Game Changers list. The Game Changers helping regulate these cards to the appropriate tables where they're more appropriately powered will be a tool in the unbanning of some cards like Primeval Titan or Sway of the Stars. In the announcement, Gavin Verhey mentions April 2025 as a timeline for any potential unbans based on community feedback and further analysis of these changes.

This Commander Bracket announcement is sure to shake up the format. Every pregame conversation will start off with common language which will cut down on mismatches at events, while established playgroups can continue to play as they always did.

These decisions were made with the help of the Commander Format Panel:

Attack on Cardboard
Bandit
Benjamin Wheeler
Charlotte Sable
DeQuan Watson
Deco
Greg Sablan
Ittetu
Josh Lee Kwai
Kristen Gregory
Lua Stardust
Olivia Gobert-Hicks
Rachel Weeks
Rebell Lily
Scott Larabee
Tim Willoughby
Toby Elliott

What do you think is missing from the Game Changers list? Will you be looking to add more Game Changers or replace them from your lists? Let us know in the comments below!

system

Commander Bracket System Updates and Unbans - April 2025

WOTC Introduces New Bracket System for EDH