SaberTech, Yeah, I would get that a lot when my Brago deck had Medomai in it and would take 3 turns of doublestriked ETB effects. People don't like it when it takes too long to get back to their turn.

Ohthenoises, That's the problem with systems like that for a game that has no concept of second and third place. It doesn't really make sense for the person who won the game to leave it and have the other players stay in. A better system would be just basing it off of the losing player's life totals.

The problem with using life totals is that it punishes strategies that use life totals aggressively, like anything with Ad Naus or Necro.

@Ohthenoises

Yeah, there's a difference between doing a bunch of things on one turn (which can take time), and slow play caused by trying to work through a bunch of different decisions. Taking 30 min. to work through a turn is pretty excessive.

Slow play is a common worry for me when playing Animar because in some instances it can take a fair bit of time to work out which combo lines are the best to go for and how best to spend my mana based on what I may or may not draw into while chaining plays. I think that if you are playing in a competitive environment there is a certain element of courtesy involved in trying to have as thorough an understanding of your deck as possible. It not only helps you win, but it speeds up your plays and decision decision making so that situations like the once you described don't pop up as often. It's easier to wait through all the plays that an opponent is making if you can tell that they know what they are doing, as opposed to when it looks like they are stumbling through things by the seat of their pants.

We simply just let the first place finisher take first and leave the game to let people fight it out for second and third. This means that you can't get everyone but your best friend to a low life total and then combo out and win so that both of you go home with $65 to split two ways.

If we implemented a life total based system for payouts we would go right back to what we were doing before, and that bred a lot of people coming in in pairs, one guy running what amounted to a partner deck before Partner was a mechanic that was designed to support the primary and then get given second when the primary comboed out.

Honestly it was very toxic seeing as we play every week and we would see the same pairs of people come in week after week. Letting people play for and earn second and third cut down on collusion and toxicity in our group.

As merrowMania mentioned it also punishes specific decks and deckbuilding. We went through a phase where it was "only these colors", "only ravnica legends", etc. We found that attendance took a massive nosedive when we were restrictive of the decks that could be played. Also, if we paid out to life totals we would have much the same issue where all you would have to do is come in with a lifegain deck and when the player that takes first combos out you would be guaranteed second place every single week.

Trust me, it's not like we haven't paid out based on life totals, that's what we started out doing but our experience has been very negative with that and it left a bad taste in everyone's mouths when dude 1 and dude 2 come in, dude 2 counters anything that goes to interrupt dude 1, then when dude 1 wins he gives dude 2 second and rolls a rando d6 for third.

Ohthenoises, You see, the shops I play at just make it clear that's not allowed and then ban people for doing it.

Social problem = Social solution

And I see punishing people for overly draining their life total as a benefit to gameplay. People put life draining cards in a deck because they accelerate them to a win fastest. If you don't win, then draining your life lower than anyone else should have some consequence.

"Do I risk AdNausing this turn even though one of my wincons got Extracted? Or do I want ride it out and try for second?"

I had the same problem with my mizzix deck. Needed excessive practice and goldfishing to be able to get all the lines fast enough so that your turn does not take more than 15 minutes. It was usually just one big turn that almost always won but it felt bad because I was kind of playing solitaire .... Now I have a lot of decks that do storm too but in a faster way

Rakdos lor has about the same interaction as animar with ancestral statue. And with tendrils purphoros and the like, do you think this could bebe a wincon for him in cedh. Colorless storm that is. Or is that what ge already is. I dont see him discussed

So, have we come to any conclusions on tiers for the new commanders? I would like to nominate one of the Razaketh lists above for tier 1.5, there may be a tier 1 list rise soon. I think neheb is at least tier 2.5 with the shenanigans i have seen him pull. The sphinx is tier 4 likely, dheru too. The scarab god is 4 or 3, there might be some infinite zombies and life loss thing. The scorpion god is 4 or 5. Lastly, the locust god is 3 or 4, you can probably infinitly draw with an eldrazi titan discard and swing with locusts.

Again, I feel like there needs to be a separate category for commanders that are mostly useless but just win from the command zone with infinite mana. There are so many... (oona, locus god, etc.)

I think neheb can probably be tier 2.5 or 2 with some of the decks that keep taking combats, there are a few ways to make infinite mana for infinite burn.

Stop rushing me guys...

Megacomment inbound:

Tiehana should be at LEAST T2.5. She looks to be a strictly better Zegana as the head of a Food Chain deck. I know I said I would not address leaked cards whatsoever after almost getting banned, but this IS a Merfolk we're talking about here.

There is little to nothing I, for one, disagree with about your post. One thing to note, Ghost Council of Orzhova is its own sac outlet.

When evaluating placement of the infinite mana outlets their colors should play a major role.

For example, Ghost Council of Orzhova would rank above Bosh, Iron Golem due to access to black and tutors but well below Oona, Queen of the Fae.

sonnet666 Is there anyway you can send me The Locust God deck list? There is no link in the description for it.

It's there. I just put it in the T3 section by accident.

I get that later.

ok thank you =D

It's in the archives somewhere, i still think sygg, river cutthroat should be moved up to tier 3 with the guys doomsday deck from awhile back. Ghost Council of Orzhova should also provably be tier 3 or 2.5 as you can easily get the bomberman combo to go off such as Ghost Council - Bomberman. The list might need a little tweaking, but i can get a version together when i get back in town, still a strong deck. The other ghost council can stay t4 probably as it doesn't sac itself.

Why is Jeleva and Yidris storm ranked above Breya Ad Nas? Most games i goldfished, the Breya deck won faster and was more consistent

One of the tribes of C17 will be Cats. The commander leaked does not look good. Easily Tier 5 jank.

That will be all as I am only comfortable going into as much detail as I just did.

You should move up Kamahl, Pit Fighter to Tier 0, he's the best general in the entire format. Thanks, Ipreferbagels

Is it weird that I view Dystopia and Boil as color hate but not Pyro- or Red Blast?

Because pyro and red blast are literally counterspell counters and barely ever used for anything else

It's kinda weird, if just because of how it's a total non-sequitur for you to bring it up...

IPreferBagels, How can I contend with such a flawless argument? I'll move him right away.

merrowMania & Ohthenoises, You know, I could have sworn Ghost Council said "sacrifice another creature." Yeah, this makes him even better I guess...

viperfang4, I wouldn't bother making another list. That one you posted is basically perfect already.

Mataogetrekt, I'm not entirely certain, since I leave management of the upper tiers to people more versed in playing cEDH then me, but here are some general ideas that might help explain it:

• Jeleva and Yidris are both Storm decks while Breya is a combo deck.

Storm decks tend to be higher ranked than combo decks because they are much more difficult to disrupt. The fact that you are playing a bunch of little spells vs a few big ones makes it much harder for a player to stop you with a well timed Counterspell. This natural resiliency is always an edge for storm.

• Breya is much more focused on having access to your commander than Jeleva or Yidris are.

Two out of the three combos in our sample Breya list are based around getting infinite mana and funneling it into her ability. Most other Breya lists use similar combos as well. While that's a good gameplan, it's safe to say that any Breya deck will be majorly hurt by losing access to her if someone plays something like Nevermore. Obviously, it's not game over, since there's removal and the Doomsday back up plan, but if you compare it to Jeleva or Yidris, who have never needed to cast their commander, it's a slight edge in their favor.

• It might just be that you're bad at playtesting storm decks.

No offense meant. Personally, I can't make head or tails of storm. Storm decks tend to be massively complicated due to all their moving parts, and the intricacies of their lines of play only become apparent after playing many, many games yourself. When you're not super familiar with the deck, it can lead to a lot of cases where you could have won a turn or two earlier, but you just didn't realize how. I have almost no sense for it, and that is why I mostly stick to building combo decks.

Hope that helped.

In other news, I tried building an infinite Vela the Night-Clad deck. I mostly stuck to Palinchron combos, since they double as ways to make creatures LTB infinitely. Check it:

The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

Commander / EDH* sonnet666

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Also, I'm like the 15th person on this site to name a deck that...

Can you explain your ranking method, and how you got the commanders to the tiers in which they are listed? It seems to me that this list is extremely inaccurate, but perhaps there is something I'm missing.

-What is the size of the games that you used to test these rankings? (French, 3P, 4P, 5P, 6P, 7+P)?-Did you take note of the more common decks across metas, and play against those decks more often while also including the less common decks enough to make them relevant?-How many times did you test a given deck before determining it's rank?-Is there a budget for these decks, or is each deck given maximum potential?

Lethgorias, the rankings here are based off of the player experience of contributors to the list, as well as consensus from cEDH forums like the cEDH subreddit and some raw data from the results cEDH tournaments.

Commanders are ranked based off of how quickly they can win the game, how difficult it is to disrupt them from winning the game, and how well they are able disrupt opponents while advancing their strategy.

Certain commanders that have not been popular in the cEDH community might be ranked higher than expected, based off of theory-crafting and the decks we have been able to build around them. Check the optimized decklists section in the description for examples of most of the commanders in tiers 1 through 3.

All decks are built and ranked assuming they are to be played in a 4 player game, and there is no budget. In fact, we encourage deckbuilders to disregard the monetary cost of cards in list they submit for the description. The goal is to make the best deck that is possible using all of the cards in Magic.

We are, technically, eyeballing it, because it would take thousands of manhours to systematically test every commander against each other.

If you see any particular inaccuracies that you think need to be fixed, you're welcome to bring them up, and we will discuss any possible changes that could be made. This list is still evolving, and we do not claim that it is a perfect representation of the format. Be warned that people here will expect you to provide evidence of any claim you make.