Should CEDH Be Its Own Thing? | Commander Clash Podcast 132 

“Just one more lane will fix it bro”-Richard (Thanks tomer for the public transport representation)

I love that every conversation about the format devolves into “the RC should do their job”

Rule zero really should be the opposite: you have a ban list and then when you play with a regular group you can unban ones you like together. Lets you more easily play with new playgroups at lgs

Before watching, I say not cedh needs to split but we realy need a clean split between low and high power casual, including banlist. As weird as it may sound CEDH is probably the best organized part of this community.

I've always thought the RC should elect to do an official banlist and an suggested list. The suggested list would come as a "We understand these cards cause concern in lower powered stores and we want to issue guidance to store owners who do not run high powered metas" which would include thoracle, dockside etc. Basically keeping Cedh as a whole but allowing LGS to just point to a list

I have never had a cedh deck sit down at a table of precons. It's always some high power good stuff deck that is owning the pod and necessitating the rule 0 talk, decks that would get absolutely smacked in a cedh pod.

As someone who plays both, I genuinely think more people should actually try cedh. Because most people who don't seem to have opinions that, while are totally valid if it's just not your thing, aren't really based on actual experience. Experience that if had would help them, I think, in understanding what they actually want from a game

My biggest issue with splitting the formats is that you would end up with 3 formats. "cEDH", "Commander", and "New cEDH with Commander rules". At the end of the day you are going to have people who want to play optimally. Splitting the format will not change that.

I think its enough to keep cedh as a mindset change. You sit down at a table and know what to expect.

As someone who loves city planning, The fix for san fran is NOT to build a through-fare highway Induced demand would desTROY that poor road Better public transit is the way

Richard woke up today and chose violence 😂

I think CEDH is too stream lined in the Meta to be considered “salty”. Your Commander colours automatically dictate about 80%+ of your deck (copy and paste) within the Meta ie. Lands, Fast Mana, Removal. From there, there are some obvious revisions and very minimal creativity. CEDH is about the minor nuances in how you setup your combo prior to your opponents. With experience, you can probably guess almost all of what is in your opponents deck (with maybe a few minor surprises) as soon as you see their Commander(s). Including any meta salty cards. EDH varies. You can have groups with a lot of ingenuity in their decks or you can have copy and paste from the EDHREC Top 20 groups. The salt in them varies a lot as well.

I think a solution like canadian highlander is the best. The current version of how we try and measure power level is utterly defunct. Having a power level that resembles how many powerful strategies you are running is much more useful. When you add powerful, sweaty, salt-inducing cards you add points. This way you could theoretically have a point-threshold to declare your deck as cEDH. Decks that have no points can still have a noticable power difference but can then just be resolved with rule 0. Rule 0 would take way too long every game to define a perfect balance between decks that are supposedly all 7s (but are clearly not).

something Richard touched on reminded me of my first introduction into EDH. when I was first starting out there wasnt a CEDH scene and people played whatever but there were CEDH like decks that were being played by some of the more spike like players, those players didnt care about the unwritten rules and played high powered decks every game. I think that we tend to forget that there are lots of people who play MTG who can struggle with social interactions or dont care about them and are willing to pubstomp or play Armageddon on turn 4 just because thats funny to them. a new player coming to an LGS and running into Codie a few times might make them hate commander as a whole.

Honestly, the biggest problem isn’t cEDH. It’s the EDH community. As you said, going over rule 0 sucks. cEDH doesn’t do that, you play what you want. As others have said, if you segment off “cEDH” then you will have the EDH community slowly ban everything as what everyone thinks is fun is different and due to that everyone has a different idea of how the game should be played. Richard said you don’t bring a legacy deck to a standard game, but what’s actually happening is people are bringing standard decks to legacy games and complaining people are “playing to win”, which is the point of the game.

“Causal” EDH either needs a stricter ban list applicable everywhere, or no ban list at all and rely on Rule 0 and House/LGS rules to define what’s allowed. cEDH needs a ban list regulated just as any 60 card competitive format is regulated. The only reason this is a discussion is because there’s a wide variety of “cEDH cards” as Richard described that are inherently strong (stax, free spells, fast mana), and people use them in casual resulting in feel-bads because there’s a difference in expectation.

Actually when playing pickup basketball it is common to have the "are we playing 1's and 2's or 2's and 3's" conversation

I agree with Tomer at 53:20 Richard's example of a person netdecking "best commander deck" and rolling up with Thoracle combo doesn't feel like a realistic scenario. I feel like people get into Commander through word of mouth, and the majority of players love building around a commander, not building a goodstuff pile. It's hard to imagine someone buying into a $600+ format so blindly. Even if a player did that, would they know how to play it? Would they be able to execute the combo? Would they counterspell the correct threats?

I feel like someone just thought the views were too low so he decided to hit a hornet's nest. The only two comments this conversation needs are: "If you break off cEDH the new top of Commander will be the new cEDH." "cEDH players choose what cEDH is so if they don't want to break off they won't." There, no more discourse.

Splitting cedh and casual isn't the issue. The problem is between the 5's and the 8's and 9's/10 where "casual" can still be combo pubstomping

BTW thanks for bringing this conversation, while there's a deafening silence at the RC and CAG. You took the bullet for us and will be remembered for that.

Competitive all the way to janky is a mindset on a spectrum. So cEDH isnt a clear cut line so where would you split the two formats and even if you did, there would almost immediatly be a new form of cEDH within EDH. The best decks within a format will always be considered competitive. The amount of formats would just grow indefinetly

10:15 Ive had this happen on 2 occasions. In both, they didnt have full CEDH decks with optimized mana, but they were playing CEDH strategies and said "I dont have a CEDH deck, this is a 7". The first guy was a guy who had played competitive magic a long time ago and was getting back into the game and trying EDH for the first time. He still had the competitive mindset so he was so excited to stax the table out with Winota and combo the table out with Magda. Even if they werent 10s, they were at least 8s with unfun win cons. The second guy was new to magic and looked up good commanders and found tivit. Again, he didnt have all the fast mana, but he still had a bunch of tutors, counters and infinite combos.

This episode is crazy. It reminds me of your rule zero episode. This is a nothing burger. But still love hearing y’all’s opinions

It’s kinda wild that cEDH, the healthiest implementation of the rule 0 conversation, is considered on the chopping block. cEDH is just EDH. If you split the format, casual EDH will just have a new max power cEDH. There is a no banlist cEDH and nobody plays it because it’s not EDH.

Tomer with a 100% good take rate, the peoples champ

I think this problem is twofold: 1. I agree that the shadowban list is a confusing social dynamic, and that needs to be clarified for people in one way or another, and I am not picky as to how that is solved. 2. The actual problems in games at LGS's and the like is not "this person brought a CEDH deck to a precon battle", but it is "in the casual and relaxed format this player is running Mana Crypt and Force of Will". I would like the formats split and the banned lists adjusted so that I can either explicitly enter into fast mana and free counters world, or choose to stay inside uncastable haymakers world, without having a long discussion first. Additionally, I think it is worth noting that banning cards on power level may result in bans that people wouldn't necessarily expect. If you ban Armegeddon, you should probably ban Field of the Dead too. Land interaction exists to interact with lands, and if the interaction is banned, the lands cannot be interacted with.

If you are banning land destruction... do you then ban Ramp spells?

One approach i thought was interesting would be to do something similar to the fan made pokemon competitive rules for 1v1: tiers based on popularity. So if you want to play in the overused tier then you should expect a lot of staples, and if you want to tone that down you go play in the underused tier. You cant use overused cards in the underused format, but you can use underused cards in the overused format You'd have a lot of formats as a result, but people could gauge the power level and the "ban list" for a particular format would be self regulating via data. Other than some form of data driven approach, the split in formats would be arbitrary and you'd just have cEDH, casual commander, and sweaty commander

Cedh is really fun

The issue in my area is that if it's not on the banlist everyone wants to play it. I constantly have to play against cedh decks where the amount of cards being played is very limited. I would be happy to play another format that is commander but with a lot more card bans.

I don't understand the question? How would they be split vs kept together? Like the only thing I can think of that would "split" them is a separate ban list? You can easily tell a modern vs vintage deck.. or standard vs pioneer... card pool restrictions rule those formats.. What would be the "split" here?

Paused 10 seconds in to say no this is not a divisive topic. Just because the two different names of these formats are casual and competitive doesn't mean that that's the only axis that separates these unanimously considered separate formats.

Richard, why do you hate Armageddon so much, don't ban the wincon of my Avacyn deck! Context of how you play a card makes a lot of difference.

Split out Casual EDH already exists - it's called Conquest and nobody plays it even though it's a fantastic format.

My only problem with commander and cedh being treated as the same is that there are like 3-5 players at my LGS who come to every FNM commander night with Blue Farm, Rog Si etc. They pubstomp their pods which are usually filled with precons and medium power decks because it’s just 4-8 packs for $10 to them. All the pods turn into 3v1s to see if we can get them low enough where they can’t ad naus for thoracle on turn 3. In the end the causal players stop coming because they traveled 30 mins to just lose on turn 4 and the causal player just has to hope that none of the cedh players lost to another cedh player where they are in the loser pods. It just sucks because cedh is some of my favorite magic content to watch, but it just leads to feels bads at casual tables which they are technically allowed to be at since it is a commander deck.

Colossal sky turtle is CEDH Tomer…

i think CEDH players usually see CEDH as basically a different format, but we don't want it to be officially separated because the whole point is to play the most powerful stuff in EDH itself. so i think it would totally be fine to most CEDH players if a lot of bans happen for casual, and none happen for CEDH. the rules commitee should just do its job for casual and we as CEDH players would be fine. otherwise we would have already created our own format. edit: btw i play both a lot of CEDH and a lot of casual EDH

Richard wants a casual banlist and a competitive banlist but he doesn't realize the current banlist is the casual banlist.

I think that if the formats were split, the subsequent new banlist of cards would create a lot more cedh players. An issued in casual commander is that people don't know how to use their cards, they are running these insanely powerful cards (armageddon/cyclonic rift) without a way to finish the game afterwards. If you made these cards cedh only, the casual players that run them would be forced to realize what the decks they were building were actually trying to do, a lesson in deckbuilding/goal focusing, and they will understand, "Oh! cedh is my people!"

I would support unbanning everything in EDH, and then just make Weenie Hut Jr. EDH as a separate format where you have a big ban list of good cards. XD

I think Richard's trust in our corporate overlords is misplaced!

I think Richards arguement in the beginning is really funny because he brings up in basketball how you don’t talk about rules in advance. And yes that is true of a formal basketball game but if anyone has played pickup or “casual” you almost always determine whether we are playing by 1s and 2s, or if it’s “winners” or “losers” ball after a score. So i feel like commander is similar. There is a baseline set of rules in highly competitive games but once it’s casual, people play how they want to play to make it the most fun for them. That being said, if that is to work, the RC needs to make bans and rule changes based on the gameplay of the higher levels of competition, not try to base their regulations on casual playgroups.

A lot of comments claim a new cEDH would emerge at the top of casual EDH if the formats are split, which may be true because there will always be optimized decks. However, the ceiling of this new format would be far lower and lessen the gap in power between weaker and more powerful decks, leading to more games where weaker decks don’t immediately roll over to the more powerful ones. Resulting in less feel bads in random pods when rule zero is not brought up before play.

Tomer is a man of taste, listening to the Play to Win podcasts

I find I relate to Seth's point, I play suboptimal when trying to make sure everyone is having fun. I might have 4 wraths in my hand and not play them so people can go off. 28:58

We got some banging topics for discussion the last few episodes.

I really love these kinds of discussions. I’m okay with the way the format is going now. I think the only way to split it would be to narrow down the rules, which kind of defeats the purpose of playing commander (imo). I don’t see a clean way of splitting this up in its current form. 🤷‍♀️ Thanks for the episode, y’all!

CEDH is not as scary as people make it out to be. Usually the games are way less salty because everybody is trying to win so blowing up a land or countering the “cool thing” is expected

58:20 Colossal Skyturtle is cEDH. It’s in most Kinnan decks.

I feel like one of the better ways to manage this would be kind of having apoint system for cards a little like canadian highlander. then you can base the conversation around the point levels of decks. but that's also waaaay too much work to make it a viable option sadly

We should for sure make lines in the sand between Cedh and noncedh, it's not just about powerlevel but mentality, if you play this game to win just to win no matter what, go play Cedh that what the c stands for COMPETITIVE but commander isn't a game that about winning. (of course it is, someone has to win eventually.) To me a perfect commander game is a game where each player leaves the game happy and content, that they were able to play the game and have fun in a pod, going from strongest to weakest to rebuilding to eventual defeat at another player. in commander there are some players who single focus 1 opponents down only attack that person even when others are bigger threats or have more life, these kind of players should go off to Cedh. in CEDH you shouldn't give a flying fuck about your opponent's enjoyment of the game, that not what you're here for. A lot of players have certain cards or combo's they despise, whether that's MLD or certain INFs that don't immediately win, and you'll see that those players don't play those combos or cards themselves, cause they know how annoying or dreadful it is to play/lose against. if people understand and try to place themselves in their opponent's shoes, follow the golden rule of boardgames: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." and if you realise that you don't care about your opponent's feeling in a game, then pls don't play commander, go play any other format Cedh Legacy Modern

There is no point in banning “cEDH cards” because commander will still have different power levels associated with the fact there are so many cards in the format. Even if you completely got rid of many of the strongest cards there would only be a new set of top level cards and the same discussions around power level would still have to occur.

Four guys yelling at clouds.

The problem with WotC having full power over commander is that they regularly demonstrate that they're just gonna print anything that makes them money. So they'll keep power creeping their cards and they'll try to increase monetisation of the format (e.g, ban a staple and then print a replacement as a chase card)

I NEED a Codfather and Play 2 Win collab now

Right now, commander is split into 2 very distinct camps: casual and cedh. If we section off cedh, we'll just have 3 camps: cedh, casual, and casual cedh. Splitting will not solve the problem, as a good chunk of people will just find the most competitive decks with the restrictions, then we go right back to square 1

As a cEDH player, the only people I've ever heard call for a split in the format is casual players who still think that cEDH players are going to show up to their LGS and pub stomp.

Alpha to current player here. All valid discussion points, can’t split the formats, tournaments have problems (colluding etc). I’m in Atlanta, which is one of the major cEDH hubs, and I’ve personally been snarked out of a top 4, and a win for a dual, over “buddies” colluding. As an L3, I truly hate how loose cEDH is.

Richard, a commander game is a game where people win and lose, winning is an aspect of having fun. Some of the best game knight's episode for examples is where the jank deck win's out of nowhere like the Bear Force one modern horizons episode, the dude vibed, had fun and felt extra great about winning, by being the smallest threat. For cEDH the fun of it is playing against the stack as opposed to the board state and playing head games with your opponents when it comes to the answers which is the biggest difference in casual decks in principal. Casual often the fight is on the board, cEDH the fight is often on the stack or the mind games and timing. Tangentially I totally would play a cEDH tournament where the prize literally is just 10 packs of cards or heck even just and no cash prize, where the prize steaks are low, so the focus really is on having fun games. As low prize pools usually do translate minimal cheating and no entering of the more toxic try hard malicious pub stompers that often not are cEDH players.

Second comment: I also thought it could be cool to have a points system for deck building like warhammer. If a card is powerful it has more points. Then u find a pod of approximate matching total points. This system obviously is quite advanced, but it would be empirical and work i think in practice?

"Rule zero sucks" okay but that's not a CEDH issue. Sure, some CEDH cards and strategies are needed in that conversation, but the power discrepancies in EDH are wide enough that the rule zero conversation doesn't go away. "I'm playing stax" is part of rule zero. So is, "I'm playing curiosity in my niv mizzet deck." In CEDH? Yes. In edh? Also yes. EDH has so, so many gameplay influencers that people expect in their rule zero conversations that aren't "CEDH." Splitting the format would do very little for rule zero conversations.

Would love to see y'all have someone on the show who is very invested in the cEDH community. Maybe Jim from the spike feeders since he is also on the CAG.

Crim being on the side of, keep it together made me spit out my coffee. Thanks Goldfish, you owe me a shirt.

So Richard's whole argument is not for separate formats but for an updated banlist. Nothing he stated is a good reason to separate CEDH from Edh. But even if the RC updates the banlist there is still gonna be a "most competitive deck" and CEDH will still exist. It will just exist within the new ban list.

The idea that they should be "separate" is a complete misnomer. They effectively already are, and by splitting them on some different banned list effectively makes 2 cEDH formats. One that is "cEDH" and one that is the regular banned list but taken to the utmost extreme that cEDH currently is at. What problem does this actually solve? There isn't one.

50:00 I understand the point about reserve list cards, but almost all CEDH tournaments allow proxies.

Magic is the same as its always been, except 'kitchen table' is commander now. I dont think the answer to making it more beginner friendly is adding 50+ cards to the banlist though lol

EDH is not as simple as two power levels. Its not "casual" and cEDH. Casual commander has an almost infinite number of powers. Your whole episode premise is trying treat "casual" EDH like its a simple equation where every player wants exactly the same thing as every other player and every game. Commander is an extremely complex equation because player to player, game to game people want different things. EDH is as popular and fun as it is because the light touch on band allows for everyone to play the game they want. What you... especially Richard...propses leaves A LOT of commander players without a home. I know for me, and everyone in my playgroups, our drcks would be laughed out of a cEDH pod, but would be absolutely decimated by the heavy ban list you want. What makes your way better than ours.

times like this are where this podcast hurts itself by being so insular. it would have been very easy to get a guest or two of players/thinkers from the cedh community to give their input. please do that in the future.

Im all for the formats being separated, the core reason being that you get to have cedh and edh have their own, personalized banlists. cEDh would have different banned cards if they so chose (and I know they would, looking at you seedborne muse and thoracle....) and also unban a bunch of things even casual players would go "yeah why is this banned again?". Its a different mentality, but separating the formats and banning out those power cards from casual tables (mana crypt, vault etc.) would absolutely give a more defined structure to the respective formats. Leaving it as a mindset just leaves room for misinterpretation and as a result, a bunch of feelbad moments that dont need to exist. No more "that decks a seven?!" after getting slapped by the classic land>sol ring>mana vault>mana crypt>signet>pass. If you want to define what cards are problems, you need to actually define them. The RC needs to take steps to do this or were going to be running around chasing our tails forever.

I think its pretty funny that people want thoracle banned when its just one of many cards that say shuffle up and play another game rather than sit at a table where you did the math and know you died 3+ turns early

I have not watched the episode yet, But everything Ive heard from cedh players is that they want to play with the cracked cards like Citadel and want only enough bans to prevent horrid play patterns like 4 Flash Hulk players at the same table and generally want EDH to be considered 1 format.

cEDH is the most optimal form of EDH... It's the same format it's literally just a power level. It's not as easy as separating legacy and modern. If some budget player cracks a mana crypt, he's not allowed to play it cause it's on the edh banlist? Edit to elaborate my point cause people think I'm confused about how banlist work.. Adding a mana crypt to your precons doesn't make your deck cEDH. I can put together a pile of overpowered cards and the deck not be cEDH.

Colossal Skyturtle is unironically cedh playable. The channel abilities help play around Grand Abolisher, Silence, etc

This was a really good discussion. I went in thinking I had an opinion, but now I'm not sure.

28:07 Richard you are wrong. I build decks to win. If they lose that’s fine too and I still have fun because I love playing magic. It is a fun game and everybody should build to win. I heavily upgraded my merfolk precon and it is a 8/9. I have so much fun with that deck whether I win or lose. Make no mistake I am playing to win.

My playgroup struggled with this so we created a format called Battlecruiser. Commander IS CEDH so we left it alone. Battlecruiser banned all zero and 1 cmc mana rocks, one and two mana tutors, big mana lands (ancient tomb, gaeas cradle, gemstone caverns, etc.), and all "free" interaction spells. This way we could define how we wanted to play by saying one phrase, "battlecruiser or Commander tonight?"

To tomer's point on new players, my lgs in Melbourne Australia, Plenty of Games (check it out), have a pretty sizeable cedh scene and a lot of newer players there, started magic with commander, and transitioned into primarily cedh, fairly quickly.

Here a simple rule..... "No Infinity Combos" You go off Infinity, you lose also if anything 3 loops at max. + Bigger Ban List. Their should be new cards added to Ban list every 6 months. Big rules should be nothing that restarts the game (like Armageddon), like you can destroy 2 lands per player per game. No Extra Turns.

'Declaring something when I make the pod' - congratulations, you just recreated Rule Zero which you hated.

Definately agree with the sentiment that banning/splitting cannot slove "power level problems" in casual. My solution would be to keep a relatively small banlist like we currently have, but add a point system similar to CanLander for "cedh" cards. Obviously that comes with a bunch of logistics on what cards get points, when to rebalance, how many points per deck, etc. But being able to say "My deck is x points" would give a definitive "power level" for a deck. Probably not the most practicle solution, but I think it would be the best.

Tomer, you are so lucky. I am in a major city and there's no shortage of money nor CEDH players here. It's sufficient that if our largest LGS doesn't actively make a call out to split the CEDH players out from the rest of the Commander crowd it's a problem. The larger the CEDH player base is in an area, the less likely it is for those players to show up with a Commander deck! And as Richard touched upon... for those of us in larger cities, it's common for new players to show up with Net Decks. Since we are in a major city, there's a lot more money going around so its not uncommon for people to see a game on RU-vid with Post Malone and assume that showing up with a $2000+ deck is normal. I believe there needs to be a massive revision and approach to the Commander Rules Committee in order to address the issue that Rule Zero exists. If that means that CEDH players then decide to be separate that's fine BUT they need their OWN CEDH Rules Committee with their own banning Philosophy! The Commander Rules Committe should NOT be involved in any capacity.

Tomer's Salt score ban is a fantastic metric

Since Richard is slagging off the rules committee, and the podcast is about splitting Commander into two formats, why don't you sit down as a group and decide two things: 1) The ban list for Casual Goldfish Highlander. 2) The ban list for Competitive Goldfish Highlander. Just start with the current Commander banlist and decide if it should be banned in one, the other, both or neither. Then talk about the "problem" cards" for each format. That could make for a very interesting podcast.

If you divide the formats, you have to define them, and especially define how they are different. And that is the biggest obstacle, in my opinion. We know what the extremes are, but where's the line? Until we define that, hard define it, we can't split them.

I think a solution that could actually be practical is make basically a format variant that has certain cards banned, ie cards from the edhrec saltiest card list or some other way of voted overpowered/unfun cards, and just give it a name as like commander modern or something so when you say is your deck commander modern legal, everyone's in the same set. This might be a little off topic regarding casual vs Cedh, but you can keep casual with power levels along with cedh and a properly defined variant with community defined banned cards(even if those banned cards aren't banned purely on power level).

Not a tournament, but a buy in with a raffle would be nice for store events

Richard is the embodiment of inventing a type of person to be mad about. Every time he brings up some hypothetical situation its not a real problem that a reasonable person would ever run into. How many people can honestly say that their first EDH experience was netdecking a CEDH list for a LGS Commander game and getting run out?

You don’t have to be cEDH to play high power. I have a mono green deck that is either grindy or wins on turn 5 through combat tricks

Honestly I think the format just needs a more active rules committee that also plays some cedh as well. Get people like comedian in the mix and I think the format as a whole would become more and more healthy.

Rule 0 is a curse for our lgs since we have weekly commander games with optional prices if you want some spice in games. Most people bring out midtier decks and games are good but some people just refuse to play anything under pure cedh even though they might kill us every single time on turn two without any effort. Our options would be just to refuse or ask lgs to ban the player or ask the player to tune down their decks but neither of those would be a real option. If there was a different banlist which pretty much just banned fastest combos and 0 mana mana stones and similar our weekly games would be perfect. ESPECIALLY thoracle combo since not everyone wants to play blue to interact with the combo.

See my biggest problem with Commander is when i was introduced to the format i was told it was the format for battle cruiser magic and silly stuff to do the things you can't in regular competitive play. Now, my play group has absorbed some super sweaty competitive players and they just run over everyone with OP cards and strats when I'm playing Charix Voltron "Crab Knife" deck and when they stick some brutal thing that can't be dealt with they sound like a broken record "play more interaction play more interaction play more interaction" and it becomes a super unfun style of play. And when we have the power level conversation they say "This deck is like a 7! It can only win on like turn 5!" And now the power level of the group has been turned way up to deal with these players and lots of us can't afford the powerful staples and don't want to play that kind Magic in this format.

A lot of these issues stem from WotC themselves power creeping the format. The stax pieces, fast mana, and Armageddons only exist in an almost entirely separate format called cEDH. These cards don't really affect regular EDH at all. The average power level of pods is creeping up because WotC is very clearly pushing every Standard set to contain powerful EDH cards. Even the pre-cons are no longer a reliable indicator of power level because they get more powerful every year. With the One Ring entering the format you have a card that is so pushed that it is probably a cEDH card, but it is new enough that people haven't figured out where it fits yet. Then we got Wandering Throne. The old cards aren't a problem, the problem is the new pushed cards in every set release, and the lag between the player base getting access to those cards and figuring out where they fit between EDH and cEDH.

You cant dictate what someone else wants to play. Banning a group of players because you cant possibly figure out a way to hinder or stop them in this game is ridiculous and childish. Also what would your distinction between casual and competitive even be?

The huge benefit that I didn't hear discussed much is that if you made Cedh it's own format that you could unban a bunch of cards and possibly broaden the amount of win conditions in the format. From what I have heard, most complaints are that Cedh is to limited in that area.

cEDH is EDH. Same format, just with a different mindset and goal.

Maybe try giving every card a rating 1-10 based on effectiveness/ table impact and speed and then basing power level off the top couple of cards in the seck

My third commander night ever someone pulled me aside to have "the talk" about land destruction. Over a single-target land destruction spell. They then proceeded to take a 10 minute turn to thoracle out against precons. In hindsight, I can't fathom why I gave their opinion half a second's consideration.

My biggest problem with the arguments Seth and Richard kept falling back on was that they kept just going back to "its too complicated to learn the unwritten rules / its too difficult to do easy pickup games it should be more like basketball". But commander is inherently at the fundamental level a social game. Stop thinking about it like basketball (although even then I'd argue their argument is flawed, who plays random pickup games of basketball with strangers? Nobody, that's who, you typically play with the same group who have an unspoken agreement on what casual basketball means to them). Commander is like DnD, its a game that does require you to talk with and discuss things with your fellow players, and requires an inherent amount of trust between players to even function. And, just like DnD, the rules are more fluid. And yeah, sure, the unwritten rules and faux pas of commander may be a little difficult for a brand new player to grasp. But that's where it is the responsibility of veteran players to TEACH the new players, just like how you teach a new DnD player that stealing from the party is wrong (even if your playing a rogue) or no pvping unless everybody consents. And saying "but I don't wanna have to waste time talking to my pod or teaching new players" just sounds downright lazy. You walking into a random lgs to play is no different then sitting down to another groups DnD table. Its your responsibility to ask and find out what's ok and not ok with the group/local meta, since your the stranger, and if you cant be asked to do that then you shouldn't play.