Can cEDH Work Without Proxies? 

Beyond the argument around current price... if CEDH exploded, there legitimately aren't enough copies in circulation of some of these cards to support a new and serious demand.

Proxies are what keep Cedh alive. Legacy and vintage are all but dead with tiny dedicated pockets. Competitive play should not be about who’s more willing to spend money. Proxy everything!

If you look at some cedh builds the prices range from a used car to a house down payment.

I know a couple of vintage players irl. They all got into Magic in the mid 90s & aren't super interested in tournament play. They'll all occasionally go to vintage events in person or host a game night at one of their houses. From the way they talk about it, they believe that's basically the entire vintage paper scene.

I think proxies of cards on the RL should be allowed by wizards. They are no longer making money on any sales for those cards, and those cards are the biggest reason people can't play these expensive formats.

Do not know if anyone has mentioned this but cedh already had a meta database for the best decks and win rates it’s called edhtop16 and it is widely used in cedh circles so I don’t think it will affect cedh plays as much as casual players as they have not seen the true meta before

12:45 well, there is edhtop16 that tracks cEDH tournaments, and there are actually quite a few of them going on. The three best decks are TymnaKraum, Kinnan and Sisay, with Najeela and Tivit as 4 and 5. TymnaKraum is also the most popular deck, by far.

I'm trying to get into cEDH. I live in Portland Oregon and there's a huge scene for it here. All the LGS in my area are totally fine with proxies and they're completely allowed at all the cEDH tournaments in my area. The main barrier for me is just finding a deck that I want to invest the time into learning and also just finding initial games with people where I can start to learn.

“cEDH without proxies can’t really work” unless the RL is banned from cEDH. This is important when WotC wants to give prize support in exchange for increased interest in desirability for reprint-ability and subsequent sales of sealed product. I wonder if this may be a door-opener to try to reprint RL cards.

Also huge tournaments have been running for years now, and most of them are proxy friendly

The solution is to reprint the reserve list. That would also curb power creep, as WOTC currently handles getting around it is by printing more powerful versions of RL cards.

As someone who plays cEDH, Casual EDH, and Legacy in a small midwest town (

Competitive and Casual don't mix when there are prizes on the line. Pick a lane.

Proxies are vital to the format being as big as it is, but it also can't continue at the rate it does if WOTC gets involved runs official events (which is inevitable). Perhaps a 5 Proxy limit will exist, I could also see WOTC being more aggressive with the banlist and hitting stuff like Mana Crypt, Lion's Eye Diamond, etc. that will bring the overall price down.

I used to have a cedh Urza deck that was about 2-4k that I got way before the spikes and sold during COVID. I'd love to eventually get it back together but it's just way too much money. The reserve list, buyouts, and collectors make the format less accessible for everyone. The true thing that should happen here is wizards either allowing proxies for reserve list cards or abolishing the reserve list. We see it with imperial seal, cheapest copy was previously $400 now it's $80 ish. Reprints help and that's what would resolve this. One of the most common CEDH cards is mox diamond which is played in any deck and that's easily $500+ . Back in 2016 I bought mine for $90 and sold it around $400. We should be able to play with these pieces of the game and not have it locked away by prices.

I’m not sure what WOTC thinks they’d accomplish if they don’t allow proxies. Existing cEDH events do, so if players can’t afford it they’ll just play non-WOTC events. If they decide to ban these cards, people can just play them in the normal commander leagues with RC banlist.

There are multiple sites that are data driven, but the easiest comparison to mtg golfish is the cedh database.

Proxies are a part of a nutricious MTG breakfast

I love cedh. We play with a newly started tournement with 100% proxies allowed.

We have a local shop that runs monthly cEDH win-a-duals and it is 100% proxy friendly. We had a convention that ran a regional level event, which allowed up-to-10 proxies... this is typically enough for the average dedicated player to be able to get a deck together.

I would say wotc printed proxies. With proxy printed on it or something else. They could sell it like a secret lair.

In my opinion proxies are fine for everyday play at your lgs/tabletop game, but when there's a prize pool of pricey cards or a cash payout for a tournament, you should only be able to play with what you have.

If they want to support paper cEDH without proxies and aren't going to remove(and heavily reprint) the reserve list, they have to ban the reserve list in it's entirety. Would this affect the format, yes. Anything relying on Breach for their wins would be severly nerfed with a LED ban, and some of the fast mana is reserve list. There is probably some other sillyness going around that depend on reserve list cards too. Not to mention the slight damage to manabases. Though I would agree far from as much as you might think. life total often does not matter in cEDH(often, not always) and the main damage is losing the access to a second untapped dual if you want it.

for anyone trying to find resources and get into the format, the cedh deck list database is a great starting point, also edh top16 provides winning lists and metagame share

Great discussion of the accessibility of high power formats. I think wizards will need to allow at least some proxies in tournament play in order for cedh to thrive as a format in paper and subsequently online.

Ever since the magic 30th anniversary my store has pretty much just said proxies are fine because spending anywhere from $300-$700 for a single dual land is just too rough on most of our community. Like I understand that for WPN reasons that most stores will ask you to not play with proxies but with inflation and everything else going on it's straight up not do able for the people looking from the outside. So to make the format more accessible to people they will allow proxies as long as its not the entire deck or you can borrow a deck as long as you're in their pod. Everyone has stuff they need to pay for outside of magic and that is fine. You should be allowed to enjoy magic however you like (well except if you are a filthy cheater).

The most realistic thing they could do is a real life rental service where they have sanction proxies they make right there theyd look like test cards or having the cards om hand which seems kinda unreasonable Unless wizards makes there own proxies they have proven that tournament use of them is very against their business practices

So then would it be possible to create a cEDH proxy list? Like a list of cards that players are free to proxy, and that can be changed once the cards availability increases. And could there be a fee given to those who proxy, to make it fair for those who don’t? That would be hard but a possible idea to make peace in a format like this.

I think that cEDH tournaments should be able to use the gold border reprints from tournament decks, and WOTC should endorse this. Itll give them a reason to reprint more expensive cards at a cheaper floor without them "breaking the reserve list" rule

Based on all of the new formats that they have spun off in the past 5-6 years, the solution they seem most likely to do is create a new sanctioned format that is essentially Commander minus the reserved list. They could honestly probably co-opt the commander banlist by officially sanctioning organized EDH tournaments, publishing an official banlist for the "Commander" format, and banning the reserve list. This would isolate the dedicated cEDH players into a splinter community that prefers to play in the higher power environment with proxies, but it would allow wizards to nip the proxy issue in the bud with serious competitve edh play. One major upside of this is that it would potentially also allow them to trim the meta a bit, perhaps banning dockside, underworld breach, thassa's oracle, bowmasters, things like that here and there in order to try to increase card variety.

I think proxies only have an issue in more casual pods, cause its a weird thing when someone will complain about rystic study and then play a fully optimised land base and see no issue

How has this anything to do with CEDH on MTGO? Cards, even the RL, are cheaper on MTGO than IRL. CEDH on MTGO is actually a good thing, you can much easier afford a Timetwister on MTGO than IRL. I believe Seth's post was connected to WOTC talking to CEDH TO's to have them organize events (like the European Champs in November) without proxies, in exchange for support - which would be bad for the format. But SCG is now doing the same in US, and the top16 lists are unrefined and missing key cards like TT

Im from a small town and our FNM was legacy for a long time, mostly because it was a lot of older players who had the cards. Now our fnm is commander

The biggest saying (for me at least) in cEDH is I want to play you not your wallet. When the viable decks (not even meta) are at minimum a grand not allowing proxys makes the barrier to entry impossible to cross

Now I agree the cards are too expensive with things not getting reprinted. To be honest, my solution is to bring back a product that they made sometime ago but not fuck it up. Wotc used to print a gold bordered (not legal official play) copy of the world championship deck. This is of course a great idea executed poorly because it means you cannot play with the fucking cards. They should hold a vintage, legacy, modern, and standard world championship, and then print the deck that won (the world championship series deck) for some reasonable cost (say $80). This will increase the availability of staple cards and ensure that if some card retains competitive relevance it will keep getting reprinted for as long as needed. But you might say "but what about the reserve list" and this does indeed cause issues, the solution in my opinion is to either 1) find a way to abolish the reserve list or 2) ban all the RL cards (issue some press release saying that these cards were reserved for collectors and as such they should never have been legal in organised play) Now we get a constant stream of cards that people actually use entering the format. Now scalpers you might say: well there are two ways to handle this, get your flgs to do a preorder system (limit 1/customer), or have wotc print that sucker Into the ground But re collectable value of my cards you might ask? Have the world champion decks use different art? That way it is different

tbh im at the point where for all formats i only proxy. im not winning a tournament any time soon, im cool w my monday night modern and chill friend games

at my lgs there are 2 commander nights per week 1 draft and every other week a pauper or pioneer event that rarely is a modern event because most people that play 60 card formats keep to the cheaper formats like pauper and pioneer.

I thought we had data available already for cEDH EDHtop16

I live in a small town with a semi large game store and even though we don’t play vintage a few people have really cEDH decks 😮 They are always cool and allow us to play with proxies

So I play cEDH and proxies are needed but if you want to play it budget the commander options are limited and extremely niche Birgi god of storytelling/urbask mono red storm or god eternal kefnet extra turns which both have the same issue focused on your commander I’m excited to see what comes out of the format but cEDH isn’t really a format you just get in

cEDH is the only EDH were you know exactly what you're getting. It's the only EDH that you can play with strangers. It allows proxies which is amazing. It is a great format I have no idea why the haters are so vocal about this specific format.

New to your channel. Good video!

My lgs does a cedh pods for fnm. 10 porxy limit +gold+ magic 30th allowed. In casual cmdr /other fnms (besides legacy and vintage) has no proxys. Works out fine.

Proxies are not killing Magic, Commander/Edh is. The present market is built to appease Whales creating an artificial shortage of cards. Every card in a Edh deck, is one card less in the pool. Just think about shock lands and fetchlands recently reprinted remaing the same price.

I'm in the minority of proxy players, mostly because I make a deck and only play it until it pops off. Then I take it apart and try something new. So most of my proxies now are functional reprints of things in tribes that have very few creatues. Like bears really suck, it's like 85% vanilla 2/2s, so I just took some werewolves/beasts and came up with a name/art and made a bear deck that was probably a power level 6/10.

Same argument as i have with my playgroup, is not a budget problem, its a card problem. As long as the reserved list exist Proxies are necessary. I do have the RL i need but even if all cards were 5 bucks each, there are not simply enought of them for everyone that needs/wants them. I agree with the reserved in terms about the colectors, but we do need something to allow players to compensate that lack of cards. Simply some legal proxies for just tournaments should be done, we even thought in some proxies done by the organization that are rented for 20 bucks that are returned when you return them at the end of the tournament. We kinda dont like that idea because need to charge some people (even if its temporal) an extra to play, but we couldnt think about anything else. What do you think about this solution?

Competitive shouldn't be Wallet/Skills vs. Wallet/Skills, should be Mind/Skills vs. Mind/Skills

If a deck requires cards whose indivuald cost is more than a days worth of food, or cards from the reserve list or the universes beyond the reserve list, then proxying cards is just fine.

There is only one shop around that has any legacy events, so there's not a ton of people around, there's definitely a decent group that does around here. with respect to proxies, although I generally don't have a problem with them, I still feel compelled to include my actual Underground Seas in my legacy deck because I don't want people getting salty if I use proxies for those. But then the problem comes up that inevitably somebody will look at those and ask if those are proxies and don't necessarily always believe that they are not proxies and that they're real because who in their right mind would put such expensive cards into a deck to go play at a local store.

I think like legacy you might have online play be popular but paper play only really exist with proxy tournaments. I would say the more annoying thing will be a proper meta tierlist because I like it being community run. Penny dreadful, another unsupported format, is mostly fun because it’s a brewers paradise

I live in a small town, and nobody here plays vintage or legacy that I know of. We only play edh at the one lgs in town

Question, why can't the reserve list be reprinted?

Proxies need to be allowed but I would say for official tournaments there needs to be a list of cards that are allowed to be proxied. Be it either the cards on the reserve list or cards that are over $100, not sure what’s the best way to go. But speaking of the list, I can see a way for any of the cards on the list to ever be reprinted. I understand that they won’t every reprint them but even if they would what every set the print them In will have huge sell out and problems for players to get the cards without have to pay double or more what the product should be priced at.

It can on a small scale. That is how my local store does it, and budget decks even win against people who actually have the money cards, but if it becomes a huge thing, then it will fall apart.

from my experiences on spell table proxies are a mandatory thing once money gets involved everything is messy on spell table but when their is absolutely no money involved proxies are perfect just a fun game but once that money is involved and you haft to play with real cards their is absolutely no way everyone wouldn’t cheat I mean if I spent 3,000 dollars on a deck just to play in a tournament it’s just not good for anyone involved so oddly enough Cedh should just be a casual format with some in person tournament support but anything above that it will get way to messy

I'm hearing that Commander might one day bring an end to the Reserve List .....

Also if WotC tries to use MOL fpr ban list adjustments to cEDH it will cause issues more than adding palace jailer to MoL did lol

Hey i’m sorry to say this. But edh top16 and mtg top8 already aggreagte the meta for cedh, but I do agree with you.

I can't wait to play with my Voja deck 😈

Magic ITSELF cannot function without proxies, considering there are tokens that cards require that were never printed. Lookin at you Ophiomancer, and also like 40 other cards.

edhtop16 is already a very good metagame tier list used by cEDH players run by the community based on all tournaments.

On a note to having formats like legacy. I live in a mid-sized city and we don't even have a modern community let alone a legacy one going. We have Pioneer no paper standard really and then draft. So just another person's experience out there.

Remember Fellas, it isn't the Top 10% of people ruining your cEDH experience and Games. Its the Casuals who have inferiority complexes Gatekeeping you. (but I do support Gatekeeps because you do actually want to Gatekeep Toxic people from your games and hobbies)

I live in a fairly small town and we're fortunate enough to have a shop that hosts commander tournaments throughout the month. Since I've started playing there more people have been moving towards cEDH decks and new players that already have accumulated large collections have started showing up with tier lists. It definitely shows the difference of budget decks vs tier decks. I have always felt that players shouldn't have to worry about their opponent's disposable income, but whether or not they are good players. CEDH, and magic as a whole, isn't entirely pay to win, but when someone can't afford the fast mana and free interaction in a format, they aren't going to be favored by any means.

Everyone would print identical blue farm lists, budgeting breathes variety into the game

This seems to come from a perspective of someone that doesn't play a format.

I’m curious to see what happens at scg-con. I assume no proxies are allowed so then your basically saying the the biggest wallet will have the strongest deck. To me that’s not a real tournament. And if you’re gonna do a RL ban, then it’s not cedh. IMO. They should have RL list cards there to use just for the tournament. Wotc should provide them if they are involved.

not unless you want everyone playing yuriko tempo since thats the only budget freindly cedh deck and thats if your really pushing it

cEDH should absolutely be proxy friendly. It keeps the format alive, because inaccessibility of cards is a huge issue, and removing the financial barrier to entry, even for casual play, is a huge feat in terms of building culture and mutual understandings socially. I think there is also a place for cEDH without proxies, but I reckon the sweet spot is to simply run both types of tournaments. Proxy friendly tournaments you call the skill based tournaments, and the proxy banned tournaments you call collection based tournaments. Setting up a form of deck hire system for cards for collection based (no proxy) tournaments would also be great. I wouldn't run tournaments online, and I'm surprised they offered prizes at all. Cheating is far too easy for people without the ability of opponents to at least cut their deck in person. As long as you offer your opponent the opportunity to shuffle your deck if they want, that goes a long way towards minimising cheating.

Couldn't they just do like they used to do with Worlds decks and include X blank cards you can proxy for whatever you want in your deck, or have a random chance for a blank card in a pack? Prob wouldn't be too hard to accomplish given we have checklist cards already and the token copy cards.

I play both Legacy and cEDH at my local LGS with people who have been playing for twenty years, and they really don't care what cards I own. I think people who are against proxies were priced out when they started playing and think the "grind" is necessary, as the competitive spirit of the format means that you want your opponent to be able to win through their skill alone.

The issue is that we want people to join the format and no one will want to if they feel required to blow hundreds or thousands on a single card. It’s simply not a realistic expectation for a game that we just want to enjoy and should be accessible.

Cedh is not toxic. I think casual is toxic because everyone complains if your playing a specific win condition. Literally in cedh no one complains. Everyone just plays what is best to win. Who cares about proxies. The most toxic thing about this conversation is the prices and limited amount of cards wizards produces and that dang reserve list. That or wizards just bans everything over 100 dollars and watch the market adjust.

In general we should eliminate the outside game advantage as much as possible, guess what is one of the most outside game element that effect mtg now aday in many format. It's the card price, not the proxy. People should proxy anything they like.

They should make cards that are edh legal only that if you have it in the deck you can't play the reserved list equivalent in the deck and also print the heck out of it.

Let's be honest, the majority of the "pricing out" is the original dual lands, Mox Diamond, and Lions Eye Diamond. In my opinion, WotC should had made Diamond Lion a ONE CMC creature, but i digress. If WotC makes another dual land type with a special "ETB untapped" condition it will just be an additional cost and not replace the OG dual lands... Which cannot be reprinted (as legitimate cards) but the "official" proxy and "tournament" printings of such cards (including Gaea's Cradle) are still demanding a high price when they were meant to be ways more players can enjoy those cards without having to go to an actual card printer business for personalized proxies. This is why we got "Circle of Dreams Druid" and "Growing Rites of Itlimoc" however as i said they've become "additional" instead of a functional replacement.

WotC would NEVER do this… but I think some form of standardized proxying should be allowed in formats where RL cards exist. Like, obviously in a tournament setting the proxies shouldn’t be distinguishable from regular cards before you draw them, and they shouldn’t shuffle differently than the other cards, but some form of official/semiofficial proxying would maybe breathe new life into these otherwise inaccessible formats.

Honestly i can take or leave proxies. But im one of the lucky ones who got most of their RL cards before they became unobtainium. Honestly the meta would just adapt like anything else.

You absolutely can and should proxy. Wizards have shown that they have no interest in removing the reserved list, so it seems like they have created this price issue themselves. My lgs has no problems with proxying period, except for sanctioned events of course. We even have full proxy legacy and modern tournaments!

It can. But then no one would play it cause it would be stupid expensive

Most cEDH tournaments allow 20ish proxies. That usually covers all of your fast mana and expensive RL cards. And the cEDH community downright expect each player to be running proxies. I don't think there's a problem here.

I don't even understand the "entry level deck" argument in paper Online you get a budget deck to start grinding resources to then play a new thing, in paper if you build a 1k deck you're just 6k dollars away from the 5k deck you really want to play Entry level in paper is proxy the whole deck, try it, see if you like it, then if you want to make it you start buying the cards, and that just doesn't work with those formats, because the cards get more and more scarce, rarer and rarer, and chances are your disposable income stays the same

Cedh deck lists should be public Information in competitive play. Wether in a sheet of paper or be able to be pulled up in the tournament registry via companion app. Would really help against "bad actors". As for proxies, bring em on. Get blown out by your premium "card selection" due to others premium "card selection"

$1000 for a deck, ha, I have more than that on single cards for minor optimization. I know about 3 people who can have legacy decks put together, its mostly modern and edh at my lgs.

My pod hates proxies unless you own a copy.

Also there is EDHTOP16

Something that my LGS did for legacy that worked well was that they allowed proxies, but the entry was slightly higher. If your deck didnt have any proxies the entry was like $5 but if you ran proxies it was like $8. It made the event accessible for everyone and allowed the meta to not get stale, as everyone could come with a different deck each week. However it also slightky benefited the people who did spend the money on their decks.

I don't want wotc getting too big on proxies, just because last time they did they sold them for $250 a damn pack

Ban timetwister and get rid of the reserve list. Print expensive cards into the ground. There paper magic is solved. Also CEDH is already a vibrant format, proxies should be optional. Also, people dunk on Seth because him and his group are notoriously known for their awful magic takes.

Data worship is a real problem. It can be skewed, not fairly representative, does not take into consideration player skill or luck, and any given tournament, if replayed, would have completely different results. 💯

Here are 2 solutions, wotc ends the reserved list and starts reprinting cards at affordable prices or memelord saffron olive waits sitting comfortably because we will continue playing cedh with proxy

ppl actually rent decks? never knew that was a generally accepted thing.

Almost all Cedh Tournaments are Proxy fiendly. This is not a problem

You should have done more research before posting this or maybe reach out to a cedh content creator. Bro said there is no meta database for cedh. Dude could have done a Google search. More and more you talk about cedh it makes me feel like you don't understand the format at all. Please reach out to someone in the community.

Personally, i encourage people to proxy any amount that they want. It's ultimately the personal preference. Just keep that preference to how you yourself play. I for one proxy above the cost that it is to proxy the card 95% of the time, which basically rules out tcgplayer and the like entirely. Not because of the ability to afford it, but rather, i just prefer the proxy art, and i feel it's just unwise to be investing into a tcg, invest into something more universal.

Saying no to proxies is just people gatekeeping their hobby. If its just playing cedh for fun and nothing is on the line, it should not matter. I understand why official rules need to be enforced at tournaments though, which is completely different.

Wizards actually printed proxys as a product, so i completely agree that proxys should be allowed in CEDH. Not everyone can afford the cost of the most expensive cards to play a deck that they really want to play. But that's just my opinion.

Guess there's only one solution to this.. hit the reset button and reprint everything.

I think the biggest issue here is that Magic has many flavors and not every flavor is for everyone. CEDH isn't for everyone, and I don't think the people who play it with intent to stay with the format care too much about proxies or price, the same stands for legacy, vintage, and even modern. The biggest danger to the format is casual EDH players forcing bans on cEDH cards. Banning cards because of their price point isn't sustainable, and banning things like fast mana and RL because of their availability isn't sustainable either. I think people just need to stay in their lane.

I think, ironically, cedh is a much more fun format to play casually. It plays more like a traditional 4 player table top game, where each player knows they are trying to win and what they’re doing. It’s not hyper competitive, and anyone who wants to play cedh is probably a capable player and won’t get bogged down in the stack. You also get those old school commander games where everyone runs out of cards and it takes 3 hours to finish. Casual commander to me feels unfun because everyone wants to durdle and run shit decks and I just run over them even playing precons. If you know a good bit about edh deck building it becomes impossible to make something janky enough to not just run over 75% of games.