You can’t really keep people from getting salty, but I like to do what I can to try to get ahead of these things. Conversely, a jank-lord might play what they genuinely think is an 8, have a terrible experience playing against “real” power level 8 decks, and feel like they had been lied to. You can swear by your numeric power levels all you like, but I’ve grown to feel that power levels and the implied promise of a fair game can be really problematic. It’s worth noting that any scale that looks at the turn a deck can win requires a caveat. There are decks that do not try to win the game early, but which will instead try to lock the board down in some way so that other players cannot win. For that reason, I like to say that I care about the turn a deck can win or lock the game.

What is “Power level 7” to you?

This can somewhat defeat the original intention of the format as a fun place to play the cards you like but don’t have a home elsewhere. If you have more fun building decks specifically around themes or cards that you love, don’t worry if it’s technically a four, sometimes that’s the correct number to build for. The idea of power levels in Commander is a point of contention for some Magic players. While I can definitely see the merit of being able to measure the relative power of your deck, a 1-10 scale is a somewhat nebulous rating system with a lot of room for subjectivity.

A free spell or two won’t break the game, but a handful of interaction while you’re tapped out can be a hard hurdle to overcome. I see the attraction of being able to quantify your deck’s strength, speed and resiliency and I appreciate that smart people like complicated solutions to things. I just think the temptation to label your deck a 6.5 and then upgrade it to a 7.0 or 7.5 if it’s been doing well is just a little unrealistic.

Games like this throw off your turncount, so you need to play even more before you can make an accurate power level measurement. Since power levels are meant to help players find the appropriate deck to play for a given game, it’s a little tricky to navigate multiple play sessions until you can figure it out. I personally do not own a cEDH deck, but figuring out if your Commander decks function at this power level is not too difficult. Outside of decks trying to win the game in the first three turns, anything that functions on a similar level to the decks featured on the Playing With Power cEDH YouTube channel is comfortably in a 9-10 range.

If another loves a graveyard shenanigans deck, drop that Bojuka Bog when you feel it’s right. As part of Wizards of the Coast’s takeover announcement of the Commander format this week, a new way to segment the format has been officially revealed. Solve the case of the Murders at Karlov Manor with these brand-new Commander decks, releasing with the set on February 9, 2024. Four new Commander decks (and Collector’s Edition Commander decks) will hit stores when Modern Horizons 3 releases June 14, 2024! Check out all the details and decklists here once they’re previewed. “This is one of my most tuned decks. It’s flexible and reliable, good production, but I wouldn’t use it in cutthroat competitive Commander.”

Magic: The Gathering – 7 Signs Your Commander Deck Might Not Be A Seven

If it is well above a prebuilt Commander power level, the following question gauges how the deck would stand up at a cEDH table. That said, even among prebuilt decks, there is a wide range of power level differences. We have grown comfortable with the in-between because it doesn’t require us to define our decks beyond the extremes. We have shortcutted ourselves, and so transformed the pregame conversation into a hollow and empty ritual.

Magic: The Gathering: How to Build the Ideal Commander Deck

When players feel like they have been lied to, they are much more likely to be salty. You can also run into problems where players may not have the same level of understanding of the format. Even if you take a whole container of table salt with the rating that the calculator spits out, the tool generally helps you categorize your deck and can show you the types of cards you may have too many of. Play with that weakness to your advantage and you’ll likely win.

I find the ten-point scale to be rather useless when it comes to discussing these middle decks. Instead, the best way to define these decks’ power level comes down to intent. Sure, you can attempt to define power level via synergies, card advantage, or mana acceleration; however, some recent precons have incredibly high synergies, yet don’t live in this realm. As for mana acceleration, a deck can contain incredibly powerful pieces but not use them in a way that takes them to the same realm as cEDH. Casual players love casting Cultivates, expensive draw spells, and battlecruiser creatures.

Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Jeweled Lotus and other early ramp cards that help define the starting, possibly explosive turns of the game are a part of this category. This would immediately mean that a deck has more early turn potential than other decks that don’t have these cards. Let’s say you are running a coin flip deck that wants to run Mana Crypt for the coin toss and everything else in the deck is power level 1. Then you could tell your table, “I’m a Power Level 1 deck with a single copy of Mana Crypt, is that ok?

This is where your commander resides during the game when they are not in play. At the start of the game, each player puts their commander face up into the command zone. A commander can be cast from the command zone for its normal costs, plus an additional two mana for each previous time it’s been cast from the command zone this game. If your commander would be put into your library, hand, graveyard or exile from anywhere, you may return it to your command zone instead.

Additionally, WotC stated that they are exploring app integration ideas to help players find appropriate playgroups based on their deck’s power level. According to this list, most of my decks are either an 8 or a 3 and nothing in between. That said, my prebuilt upgrades do tend to have a game plan and wincons, so they could also be considered a 5, even though they are just upgraded prebuilt decks. On the more detailed list provided, most of my decks would either fall around a 5.5 or a 7.5, depending on the power level of the table.

I’m finally at a point where I can walk over to a table or just observe from a far how things are going. Typically, if I see that people are playing pre-cons/tribal I won’t even make an attempt to ask to play – if I hear complaints about the power of a commander/card I’ll steer clear of that pod too. I’m sure the majority of people on this site know what kind of games pauper decks of commander they want to play and the only struggle will be finding a consistent group of like minded people.