How to Evaluate the Power Level of Your Commander Deck 

I would say an honorable mention or even a top 6 you should include is “How much does your deck rely on the commander.” I’ve found that decks that don’t really need their commander to operate tend to be stronger decks.

I think fast mana, free interaction, and tutors should be discussed together.

I love how even after all these years the number system for deck power still doesn't have a definitive chart by the company itself even though they started the rating system themselves with the old precon decks they used to make.

Fun magic means everyone playing their deck and having a good time! I love the thoughts in the honorabke mentions about taking out cards that shut down whole decks is amazing. Caring about the other players' experience in a game is what real friends do.

Thanks for the explanation of the power levels. I was always wondering how people ranked their decks.

This is perfect. I was just looking for a video on this exact subject.

Completely with Veggie that the number scale is not useful. Everything is relative, and decks even at the same theoretical power level can be horribly unbalanced against each other. You kind of just need to talk about what the deck does to win and contextualize it with some of the cards in your deck that represent how strong it is

Everyone having a Sol Ring is like everyone having a first hand crit chance. It's the one thing everyone has a chance to do. It's also super removable

The first topic covered and y’all hit the nail in the head. I have been only playing since April 2023 and I have gone head first into magic. My main deck is a power 8/9 commander deck but I don’t have the experience level to operate it fully tuned lol

Love this! Thanks Veggie and NerdGirl, as an old player who is just getting back into Magic i have no idea what the power levels of my decks are. This really helped, thank you! -NRLSCSponge

When me and my group play and someone has a new deck we usually just have the 'this is what I want to do to win' convo. That way we know if they have a piece of a combo on the board and we have time to try and deal with it (or them) before they end it. It usually works pretty well.

Thank you, MtGNG. I cut Black Market because it was slow, but I also felt that my Shelob was spending too much time back in the Command Zone, but you make a good point, I’m going to put it back in.

hope you are feeling better nerdgirl and thank you both for all the content yall give us

Veggie's powerlevel is the highest cause you can't predict it

Back in the old days of 2016, you just played EDH knowing sometimes swamp monsters attack

I had a person at my lgs that has too powerful decks. In his mono color decks he just randomly chooses a commander in his deck. He had a ldg dragon that cost 7 mana that dealt 4 and 2, 3 damage to targets. He had a god hand for turn one. A mana crypt then a montain then played Jessica's will and got 7 red mana and summond his commander on turn 1.

The number 1 power indicator is Card draw. It’s better than tutors, it’s better than fast mana. Seven 50 cent cards are better than one hundred dollar card. Card advantage is talked about so much in Magic, but it’s never mentioned in the power level scale. Even if you have no win con and win on turn 12, if you are refilling your hand every turn and have enough board wipes and removal, your power level Sky rockets

Even years of experience can still involve limited experience, because mono-green and mono-blue are a couple of blind spots for me, even if it just so happens to be Ruxa vanilla creatures or Hakim enchantments. As for power level, mono-color decks have a bit of an edge over decks with more colors, since it isn't difficult to have all the necessary colors when you only need one color. Building above two colors is a pain in the rear for me, taking me somewhat close to a whole decade of being a commander player to finally have a deck for each of the three-color combinations (also being a picky hipster for most of them). My last 3 were Sultai, Naya, and Esper (Nine-Fingers gates, Kamahl//Bruse battlecruiser tokens, and Inquisitor Greyfax clues respectively). For a color combo which can seemingly solve itself so easily, Jund continues to baffle me, but it is still VERY fun to experiment with. The Shattergang Brothers ran into the problem of having little leeway of building options to maintain aristocrats control and power (AND FUN), so after years of mostly avoiding playing the deck, it is now a Gilanra//Vial Smasher battlecruiser deck, featuring more proper big monsters and healthy amounts of ramp. The original intent here wasn't necessarily lowering the power level, even though the deck has a couple common rarity beholders at 6 mana value. A deck which can get additional combat steps at decent power on turn 5 or 6 is my Akroma//Kraum keyword soup deck. Too many colors can be limiting, but one of my favorite ways to take such in stride is by running one or more legends of all the deck's colors in the 99/98, namely Shu Yun (the deck's original commander), Elsha, and Numot. One of these stinkin' days, I will make a 4-color commander deck, but Wizards is still taking some sweet old time getting around to it.

The power level list isn't posted or linked too. Would you mind sharimg please.

Serious question. If my deck was a 7 five years ago, would it still be a 7 today? Or would it have been power creeped down to like a 5? Because the format does keep getting stronger.

All of my decks are a 7. Just kidding. Great video.

I try to have decks at all areas of the power scale. My 10 has no reserved list, but it's fully optimized besides that and can take over the game on any turn and has combos and every non-reserve list fast mana, and all the relevant tutors. I still maintain that my 10 is not a cedh deck though, it would probably be an 8 at those tables. It's Jhoira weatherlight captain as a heads up😊

in one of my decks i found my win combo by someone used assassin trophy on me and found out i didn't have any basic land. So i didn't have any repeating names.

You should make a graphic with you bullet points on these 5 (7) power gauges

Is having multiple ways to go infinite sacs with persist creatures scummy?

I believe if you are playing outside of green you have to say you have fast mana, also if youre running stuff that could stack many mana rocks in one turn, other than that, expect it lol, sol ring and arcane signet have been in every precon for years, opening turn 1 sol ring is just lucky, if you dont play it thats not my fault 😅

i have infinite combos in my newer decks and playing a card that shuts down tribal or artifact decks is fine as long as there is interaction. besides i have a lot of decks ones being mono colored , tribal and or artifact based. as for weakening a deck i wont but i will bring a few decks of various levels or play style ( i have 50+ decks not counting precons).

I think the scale on 1-10 is where this all fall appart. Nobody's gonna say there deck is anything but a 7 or an 8, so it's a scale of 2. It's nowhere precise enough. It's more about thing to be discussed, how many turn do you take to win, free interactions, combo, tutors, budget?

One thing i have learned is that there are some people that are just combo players. They aren't interested in winning any other way such as combat, all their decks combo and that's how they like it. Nothing wrong with that but you do need to watch out for them since there are many people like myself and MTGNerdgirl that aren't into that kind of thing and can bring a lot of salt to the table if rule zero wasn't defined well.

Btw my player experience level is a 7

My Way for Powerlevel: play it against precons, when i stomp them completly it is probably too strong.

My decks don't have any $10€+ cards. Maybe sometimes there can be an exception. I'm quite new but i replace most cards in my precons. I might have bee able to improve them. My guess is that all my decks are 5 tops

Luckily when I do cEDH at my lgs no one has to worry about any of this

I startet commander thinking my deck was a seven. Than someone told me my deck is a 6. Now the same deck one year later I got told it's a 3... Is that just the powercreep at my lgs 😅? I noticed people can't evaluate there own decks well and even if they can everybody has a different skale. So giving numbers doesn't really matter. 🤔... The questions that are maybe most important are when are you trying to win or lock the table. Second would that wincon only be instant speed interactable and how many cards do you need for a combo including commander if you are winning with combo. Than the usual fast mana, free spells, tutors question maybe. 🤔 And for casual questions Massland destruction, stax, extra turns, repeatable gravehate, salt stuff. And than a half hour later you can play😂 By now I am Stil not sure what to ask in rule zero, maybe just, what kind of game people want to play, interaction haevy combo stuff, or big creatures go smash. 🤔

power level is weird, my most optimized deck that I've put the most time in isn't my strongest, despite it being the one I still continually modify since I bought the cards for it, and every single card in it has a purpose to the point where I have a "sideboard" of probably 10-20 cards at this point. It will still always be beaten by one of my newest decks that can win consistently on my turn 5 or 6

I find it very hard to play fairly agaisn't deck like this orzhov list. It doesn't look like it always impact the game with treats, but it has tutor and game winning combo, so you have to dunk on it until it is dead if you play on the board, otherwise you'll loose eventually, even if it hadn't produced real treat yet.

elenda the dusk rose and bitterblossom and divine visitation are kinda must actually elenda as the commander is kinda better for this kind ofaristocrat theme but everyones own choice its just my opinion

RANDOM ON SPELLTABLE: "yeah i got a lvl 6-7" ME:" oh sounds fun ... whats in it? RANDOM:" ohhh just sol ring ,mana crypt,2 tutors,dem and vamp. or and mystical... sorry 3 maybe?oh like 3 free spells like deadlly rolick.etc.. and 2 infinite combos ,1 is a 2 card combo with my commmander! yeah its totally around a 6-7.ME:"(me in shock over how dumb people are)ummm im gonna find another game"........

Ice Age was the best set

My deck's a 7 btw

1. Fast mana? I only play Sol Ring, Cradle of Itlimoc in Gishath because of course with the Judge Promo, and Coffers + Urborg in Skittles. I refuse to play Crypt/Vault. 2. Combos? No thanks. I go with synergies, never combos. Don't like them. There is one exception, also in Gishath: Forerunner of the Empire/Polyraptor/Boros Charm. But that one was just incidental. 3. I just want to turn stuff sideways (or do that and mill, in one deck) and kill (or compleat) my opponents.

its hard to set the power lvl of ur deck if u dont know every card that would go in that deck and what r the best ones ''upgrades'' playing it u will learn it and get some recommendations from other players, i usually play up to an 8 max so i ust ask players what ''upgrades'' did u leave out of ur deck to make it an 8 or lower..................

lol ... no fast mana ,,, turn 1 soul ring

Wow, I made it for zero views zero comments. Nice :)

The only thing I will say is that basing things off of what a powerful card is in a vacuum is wrong. Using cards, they gave as an example: Craterhoof behemoth is not really played in cedh for being too slow and combat not being a great way to finish the game most times, and even dockside while extremely powerful in cedh metas is not so great in lower teared player games due to cedh players using multiple lower costed, more powerful artifacts than in lower tiered groups. I've also found that certain cedh decks don't always perform the best against lower tiered decks due to them not being able to capitalize off of the opponents well, alla dockside extortionist. I love, through, the honorable mention of player experience. I now ask players what their personal ability is, are they new up to have they been to a protour before essentially (or grinded pptqs and stuff, gps, and the like)

I'd be more fearful of the optimizer who actually does their own research over just looking at EDH REC. EDH REC by its nature is a self fulfilling prophecy: it inspires decks that are then added to its DB. Regularly great cards are missed and even if they are in the results the player may not exactly know how and why to play it. On the other hand the player who loves to optimise and does their own work knows exactly why the cards are there and is more likely to find the hidden gems.

A sideboard is only good for best of 3 games. That doesn’t exist in commander. How would you sideboard? During the game? It doesn’t work

FYI, deleting comments that don't violate any guidelines or rules is pretty petty.

I personally refuse to use Sol Ring because it is so busted and so boring in the end. I would rather have a more fun card in there. Plus, it just means MUCH less diversity overall when everyone uses it.

How fast and consistently does your deck pop off? Those tell you everything you need to know. It concisders your experience and skill in combo with your cards. You can have new players with fast mana, free interaction, tutors and pilot the deck ineffectively. Vice-versa you can have an experienced player pilot of pile of crap and absolutely dominate. New players often go out and get the powerful cards, but they’re not building balanced decks. If you're incapable of answering the question of how fast and consistent your deck pops off, you're either new, or a liar. If you're new, I don't care what you run, your cards in a silo isn't going to win you games consistently. If you're a liar I'll find a new group.

😑 P r o m o s m

Or you could just shuffle up and play the game. I play 5s and 6s because of budget and play against 7-8s all the time and I just choose to treat it as a challenge instead of complaining. I find the pre-game convo can quickly become unnecessarily tedious and pointless and gets in the way of just getting games played.

I have a homie who plays chatterfang who thinks his deck is a 6 just because “I could make it more powerful if I wanted” and yet he has 2 ways to go infinite in it. End the game immediately is not a 6