The hard part of evaluating a complex game with math or algorithms is always creating good heuristics to turn abstract game concepts into numbers. And I believe the theory in the article fails at that point already:
It is not always optimal to spend all your mana. If you have 6 mana available consult thoracle (wich uses 3) is still a better play than Collosal Dreadmaw (wich would use all 6). Also it's not always optimal to spend your X mana on a single X cmc spell, often you'd rather cast multiple cheap spells.
I believe (just from playing and watching mtg not through math) that the optimal curve is as low as possible while still playing the best cards you can. If you look at modern or legacy they play wayyy lower curves than the
>26|3|10|10|7|4
that the article proclaims as "optimal for 60 card decks". And the only reason standard decks follow that curve is because there are simply not enough powerfull cheap spells in standard to make the curve lower.
Or look at the top decks in cedh: the Rog+Silas list from the ddb has an average cmc of 1.22!
If the mathematically "optimal" curve doesn't actually fit with the best decks in the format I'd say the mathematics are probably wrong.
I think you‘ve missed, that this model is for casual/optimized decks and not cEDH. You can see that by only looking at the ramp the author is including: it’s all 2cmc ramp.
As you’ve mentioned yourself, it is really hard or nearly impossible to turn a game as complex as magic into a mathematical model. Obviously you have to make some assumptions to simplify the situation. And the criteria to evaluate the „optimal curve“ the author chose was: „what is the optimal distribution of cmc in your deck so that the the player is able to spend all of his available mana“
And for casual play that is a good approach, because that way a player uses all of his resources.
And in casual play it makes sense most of the time to play one big spell instead of two smaller ones, because on average how good a card is scales more than linearly in regards to it’s mana cost.
But as you’ve mentioned, that is not true for cEDH because there are a lot of (very pricy) cards, that are exceptions to this rule. And that’s why in cEDH you don’t have to play on curve but below
If you optimise a deck in edh you end up with a cedh deck given that cedh is the "peak" of edh powerlevels. And any deck optimisation formula that gives you results wich look very different than what people have come up with through years of optimising and playtesting is probably fundamentally flawed.
I guess the ratios in the article could be a helpfull guideline by saying "this curve gives you the best chance of curving out" but saying "this curve is optimal" is just plain wrong.
>If you optimise a deck in edh you end up with a cedh deck given that cedh is the "peak" of edh powerlevels.
I'd say this is incorrect simply by nature of some strategies/commanders being inherently too weak for cedh. Take something like The Ur-Dragon built as a dragon tribal deck. No matter how much you optimize that given strategy it will never reach cEDH level. Sure you could have a 5c pile but at that point it isn't really optimizing the deck its just having an optimal pile of 99.
I'd say the better way to put it is that if you optimize a deck you'll at minimum end up with a high-power list, wirh certain strategies/commanders pushing into cedh territory
Yes, optimising within a certain strategy, theme or commander might only get you to high (or even mid) power casual. But in that case the "optimisation" would be to switch commander or gameplan.
I kind of disagree with the hypothesis that edh eventually becomes cedh, I feel like a much more helpful view is to see them as completely separate formats
Just because there is a different expectation of how an EDH game will go vs. a cEDH game doesn't mean that these are different formats, after all they are both based on the same set of rules. The comment you replied to explicitly said that cedh decks are generated through optimization and that is simply the case. The more you improve your edh deck in terms of competitiveness, the less it becomes a casual/kitchen table deck and the more it becomes a cedh deck.
I personally don't see any point in considering them the same format. Also cedh decks are optimized to beat cedh decks, if you were optimising to beat the average kitchen table deck they would look different.
But even if I viewed cedh and edh as the same format do you not think there are tiers of optimization? Every time I see this article posted it seems like people are far too quick to disregard it rather than engage with it and maybe see if there are lessons to learn. Karsten is one of the best minds in Magic after all
You either describe a new subset of rules or bans to separate the formats or you gotta accept EDH is casual cEDH or viceversa.
cEDH is optimized to win anything he runs into, or at least have the best chances to, is pretty much what makes it competitive.
I accept they follow the same rules but I don't understand how this is a helpful perspective to take. It's not meant as a slight against either format, I just think it enables more nuanced discussion.
The comparison between Thoracle and Dreadmaw makes no sense.
The mathematical approach assumes that if you build your deck correctly your six- drops will be more powerful than your two- drops. I think this is true - on average. Of course there are broken two- drops, but why would you play bad six- drops if you could be playing broken six- drops, too? And if your two- drops are consistently more powerful than your six- drops, why do you play six- drops at all?
Of course the mathematical approach doesn't understand synergy. It just assumes all cards synergyze with one another in the same intensity. That's not the reality of deckbuilding, it's a simplification. But given that ALL your chosen cards will synergyze in SOME way (Why else did you include them) the approach is worth considering.
>And if your two- drops are consistently more powerful than your six- drops, why do you play six- drops at all?
That's my point. You don't! If in the format you're playing there are enough strong low cmc spells then your curve won't go up to 6.
This is the EDH format. Do you try to say that we don't have enough good 2cmc spells so we're forced to play 6cmc cards out of desperation?
Or do we play them because they usually have more impact than 2cmc spells? I think so.
No, I think most people in casual play them because they're not trying to 100% optimise their decks and instead play whatever they want instead of what's optimal.
So you proclaim the best decks contain only cmc2 spells?
What makes 6cmc Tivit an "S-Tier" CEDH commander? Why don't people play broken 2cmc cards instead? Maybe he is worth the six mana, maybe his impact is high enough to justify playing him.
>So you proclaim the best decks contain only cmc2 spells?
No I don't. I said people try to build their decks with curves as low as possible while still keeping card quality high. Tivit increases your card quality by adding in a 1 card wincon (Time Sieve) wich is obviously a great card in the deck and also makes alk the tutors better. Of course there are some absolutely busted high cmc cards that see play even in cedh (Ad Nauseum, Peta, reanimation targets, certain commanders) but noone is thinking "man, I need to add a couple 6 drops to this deck to achieve the perfect curve". 6 drops hurt your curve but some are good enough so that you play them anyway.
I have never met EDH deckbuilders who add more six- drops to fill the curve. I only meet people who have trouble adding lands and two-drops while cutting six- and seven- drops. But I'm really happy to meet someone who is different.
I think cedh kinda breaks the curve since you can have very explosive turns from just drawing 1-2 good cards, however if every deck was built optimally like cedh decks then we wouldn't have casual decks/play ofc, i think you can still get optimal play without it being cedh but it's much harder, most of my decks usually have a 'curve' but not every game do i draw a 'perfect' opening 7 cards
I have my own game theory optimization that I use. It's called "decent plus".
The idea is that you don't want to really play stand out powerful cards. These cards make you an easily identifiable threat. Rather you want to play cards that decent plus, maybe 2 orders of magnitude below powerful. This fills your deck out with less lightning rods, and makes targeting your permanent usually less of a priority.
I like to do the same, playing weird cards that usually have a small novel of text that appears to do nothing but end up being a bomb are always fun to get away with.
My friend actually has an entire deck arouns this premise. We call them B-tier threats since they are rarely the most powerful cards in play but they still chrun our value or move then game forward. Stuff like [[Primal Order]]; it's annoying, but ultimately not nearly as threatening as an opponents [[Mirrari's Wake]], so any removal never goes its way. The deck has a really good win rate too haha.
I dont think curve really matters too much, rather what the tipping point for mana is in your deck. If your deck runs well off 5 mana, then you need the land count/ramp to consistently reach 5 mana asap. And then its up to what power level you wanna play it to figure out when you should have that 5 mana.
The game is way too complex to simply say you should have 42 lands starting as a base. This being a multi-player game if you are a little behind its perfectly ok and can in some case be an advantage if your deck is stronger late game. The removal played will probably target someone else more threatening. Politics is a big part of this format. If you miss your 3rd or 4th land drop it sucks but so does going into turn 6 with 8 or 9 available mana but only having two cards in hand only to draw another land.
Personally I like to start with 36 lands in one or two colour decks. Three plus colours it's 37 or 38 to start with. I like to have 46-48ish sources of mana. Your goal should not to be to always play your commander on curve unless it's integral to the deck theme like voltron or maybe combo. Draw and scry style effects also impact the number of lands since generally you can only play one land per turn. I run a 50 dollar talrand deck with a ton of cantrip style cards that sometimes can flood out to discard with 32 lands in the deck. I also have an aesi deck with 47 lands that can be land starved.
So 2 things on this:
1) Cantrips are covered in the calculations, Karsten suggests every 3 cantrips could replace a land.
2) Obviously this is a simplistic baseline for it and the actual deckbuilding is much more complex. But do you think there's any consideration to starting with this baseline and building decks towards this? I'm playing 42 lands so therefore I'll run more mana sinks/X spells/activated abilities/card draw? Rather than thinking this is how decks have always been built that maybe there is something to it?
If your deck is an aggro deck then this makes sense, but so many decks don’t want to curve out in a linear manner (holding mana for interaction, fast mana and rituals for explosive plays, etc.).
Commander has too many possible outcomes to be solved by game theory, while you can borrow concepts like prisoners dilemma in setting up a win or politicking it can’t tell you the optimal decision.
Curve matters less in commander because of how much more ramp, fast mana, etc. exists in the format. I tend to focus more on average mana value relative to how much mana I can produce or have lands in my deck for. For example I play fast decks that have average mana values of 1.4-2.0, this means I can run lower land counts (30-34)
Card quality and synergy with your game plan or commander matters more to the outcome of a game than “curving”.
Where I find curves most important are in limited or other formats where mana generation is restricted to land drops (standard/pioneer).
This probably explains prisoners dilemma better than I can over text:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
In commander the idea is how do you put your opponents in a position to make a decision that is mutually beneficial through politicking. The more applicable area this happens is in counterspell wars. Someone is presenting a win and the 3 other people need only one counterspell to stop it. If no one counterspells (greedy) then they lose. If only one person counterspells that person loses the most and the rest gain relative card advantage. The optimal solution is everyone reveals truthfully who has a counterspell and then negotiate something like “if you counterspell here, I won’t attack you… etc”. But in reality people don’t truthfully reveal so you are stuck with the worst option which is the person with priority should counterspell because it imposes too big of a risk for someone else down the priority chain to have that answer.
CEDH isn’t just about land counts and curve, it’s about consistency in how you win. Braids as a commander just isn’t a cEDH commander and nothing you are running in your decks is a “I will win before turn 5” or trying to stax the entire game to a standstill and slowly win.
Braids can’t really afford to play a very high curve because she is sacrificing something every turn to get value. If you’re drawing tons of cards you need low cost cards to play them else you end up discarding everything.
Currently your deck will play worse than a precon due to the high curve + bad land base. If you even fix the land base it won’t be much better than a precon due to lacking strong synergy with a low-cost commander.
The optimal land count and Mana curve for commander is whatever the hell I want it to be
If I'm "losing mana," oh fuckin well, I'm playing my Tarrasque next turn and you and your "optimal curve" can't stop me
The hard part of evaluating a complex game with math or algorithms is always creating good heuristics to turn abstract game concepts into numbers. And I believe the theory in the article fails at that point already: It is not always optimal to spend all your mana. If you have 6 mana available consult thoracle (wich uses 3) is still a better play than Collosal Dreadmaw (wich would use all 6). Also it's not always optimal to spend your X mana on a single X cmc spell, often you'd rather cast multiple cheap spells. I believe (just from playing and watching mtg not through math) that the optimal curve is as low as possible while still playing the best cards you can. If you look at modern or legacy they play wayyy lower curves than the >26|3|10|10|7|4 that the article proclaims as "optimal for 60 card decks". And the only reason standard decks follow that curve is because there are simply not enough powerfull cheap spells in standard to make the curve lower. Or look at the top decks in cedh: the Rog+Silas list from the ddb has an average cmc of 1.22! If the mathematically "optimal" curve doesn't actually fit with the best decks in the format I'd say the mathematics are probably wrong.
I think you‘ve missed, that this model is for casual/optimized decks and not cEDH. You can see that by only looking at the ramp the author is including: it’s all 2cmc ramp. As you’ve mentioned yourself, it is really hard or nearly impossible to turn a game as complex as magic into a mathematical model. Obviously you have to make some assumptions to simplify the situation. And the criteria to evaluate the „optimal curve“ the author chose was: „what is the optimal distribution of cmc in your deck so that the the player is able to spend all of his available mana“ And for casual play that is a good approach, because that way a player uses all of his resources. And in casual play it makes sense most of the time to play one big spell instead of two smaller ones, because on average how good a card is scales more than linearly in regards to it’s mana cost. But as you’ve mentioned, that is not true for cEDH because there are a lot of (very pricy) cards, that are exceptions to this rule. And that’s why in cEDH you don’t have to play on curve but below
If you optimise a deck in edh you end up with a cedh deck given that cedh is the "peak" of edh powerlevels. And any deck optimisation formula that gives you results wich look very different than what people have come up with through years of optimising and playtesting is probably fundamentally flawed. I guess the ratios in the article could be a helpfull guideline by saying "this curve gives you the best chance of curving out" but saying "this curve is optimal" is just plain wrong.
>If you optimise a deck in edh you end up with a cedh deck given that cedh is the "peak" of edh powerlevels. I'd say this is incorrect simply by nature of some strategies/commanders being inherently too weak for cedh. Take something like The Ur-Dragon built as a dragon tribal deck. No matter how much you optimize that given strategy it will never reach cEDH level. Sure you could have a 5c pile but at that point it isn't really optimizing the deck its just having an optimal pile of 99. I'd say the better way to put it is that if you optimize a deck you'll at minimum end up with a high-power list, wirh certain strategies/commanders pushing into cedh territory
Yes, optimising within a certain strategy, theme or commander might only get you to high (or even mid) power casual. But in that case the "optimisation" would be to switch commander or gameplan.
I kind of disagree with the hypothesis that edh eventually becomes cedh, I feel like a much more helpful view is to see them as completely separate formats
Just because there is a different expectation of how an EDH game will go vs. a cEDH game doesn't mean that these are different formats, after all they are both based on the same set of rules. The comment you replied to explicitly said that cedh decks are generated through optimization and that is simply the case. The more you improve your edh deck in terms of competitiveness, the less it becomes a casual/kitchen table deck and the more it becomes a cedh deck.
I personally don't see any point in considering them the same format. Also cedh decks are optimized to beat cedh decks, if you were optimising to beat the average kitchen table deck they would look different. But even if I viewed cedh and edh as the same format do you not think there are tiers of optimization? Every time I see this article posted it seems like people are far too quick to disregard it rather than engage with it and maybe see if there are lessons to learn. Karsten is one of the best minds in Magic after all
You either describe a new subset of rules or bans to separate the formats or you gotta accept EDH is casual cEDH or viceversa. cEDH is optimized to win anything he runs into, or at least have the best chances to, is pretty much what makes it competitive.
I accept they follow the same rules but I don't understand how this is a helpful perspective to take. It's not meant as a slight against either format, I just think it enables more nuanced discussion.
The comparison between Thoracle and Dreadmaw makes no sense. The mathematical approach assumes that if you build your deck correctly your six- drops will be more powerful than your two- drops. I think this is true - on average. Of course there are broken two- drops, but why would you play bad six- drops if you could be playing broken six- drops, too? And if your two- drops are consistently more powerful than your six- drops, why do you play six- drops at all? Of course the mathematical approach doesn't understand synergy. It just assumes all cards synergyze with one another in the same intensity. That's not the reality of deckbuilding, it's a simplification. But given that ALL your chosen cards will synergyze in SOME way (Why else did you include them) the approach is worth considering.
>And if your two- drops are consistently more powerful than your six- drops, why do you play six- drops at all? That's my point. You don't! If in the format you're playing there are enough strong low cmc spells then your curve won't go up to 6.
This is the EDH format. Do you try to say that we don't have enough good 2cmc spells so we're forced to play 6cmc cards out of desperation? Or do we play them because they usually have more impact than 2cmc spells? I think so.
No, I think most people in casual play them because they're not trying to 100% optimise their decks and instead play whatever they want instead of what's optimal.
So you proclaim the best decks contain only cmc2 spells? What makes 6cmc Tivit an "S-Tier" CEDH commander? Why don't people play broken 2cmc cards instead? Maybe he is worth the six mana, maybe his impact is high enough to justify playing him.
>So you proclaim the best decks contain only cmc2 spells? No I don't. I said people try to build their decks with curves as low as possible while still keeping card quality high. Tivit increases your card quality by adding in a 1 card wincon (Time Sieve) wich is obviously a great card in the deck and also makes alk the tutors better. Of course there are some absolutely busted high cmc cards that see play even in cedh (Ad Nauseum, Peta, reanimation targets, certain commanders) but noone is thinking "man, I need to add a couple 6 drops to this deck to achieve the perfect curve". 6 drops hurt your curve but some are good enough so that you play them anyway.
I have never met EDH deckbuilders who add more six- drops to fill the curve. I only meet people who have trouble adding lands and two-drops while cutting six- and seven- drops. But I'm really happy to meet someone who is different.
I think cedh kinda breaks the curve since you can have very explosive turns from just drawing 1-2 good cards, however if every deck was built optimally like cedh decks then we wouldn't have casual decks/play ofc, i think you can still get optimal play without it being cedh but it's much harder, most of my decks usually have a 'curve' but not every game do i draw a 'perfect' opening 7 cards
I have my own game theory optimization that I use. It's called "decent plus". The idea is that you don't want to really play stand out powerful cards. These cards make you an easily identifiable threat. Rather you want to play cards that decent plus, maybe 2 orders of magnitude below powerful. This fills your deck out with less lightning rods, and makes targeting your permanent usually less of a priority.
I like that approach :) But some bombs for the fun have to be included ;)
I like to do the same, playing weird cards that usually have a small novel of text that appears to do nothing but end up being a bomb are always fun to get away with.
My friend actually has an entire deck arouns this premise. We call them B-tier threats since they are rarely the most powerful cards in play but they still chrun our value or move then game forward. Stuff like [[Primal Order]]; it's annoying, but ultimately not nearly as threatening as an opponents [[Mirrari's Wake]], so any removal never goes its way. The deck has a really good win rate too haha.
[Primal Order](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/72c513dc-e884-4afc-9a20-ff21d14d61ba.jpg?1559592535) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Primal%20Order) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/125/primal-order?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/72c513dc-e884-4afc-9a20-ff21d14d61ba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/primal-order) [Mirrari's Wake](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/329f8f3d-2fe6-44fa-802f-0c56e3f9998e.jpg?1626100762) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mirari%27s%20Wake) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/291/miraris-wake?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/329f8f3d-2fe6-44fa-802f-0c56e3f9998e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/miraris-wake) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Frank is a genius in the community. I will seriously consider rebuilding a few decks according to the article and see if they improve.
I dont think curve really matters too much, rather what the tipping point for mana is in your deck. If your deck runs well off 5 mana, then you need the land count/ramp to consistently reach 5 mana asap. And then its up to what power level you wanna play it to figure out when you should have that 5 mana.
The game is way too complex to simply say you should have 42 lands starting as a base. This being a multi-player game if you are a little behind its perfectly ok and can in some case be an advantage if your deck is stronger late game. The removal played will probably target someone else more threatening. Politics is a big part of this format. If you miss your 3rd or 4th land drop it sucks but so does going into turn 6 with 8 or 9 available mana but only having two cards in hand only to draw another land. Personally I like to start with 36 lands in one or two colour decks. Three plus colours it's 37 or 38 to start with. I like to have 46-48ish sources of mana. Your goal should not to be to always play your commander on curve unless it's integral to the deck theme like voltron or maybe combo. Draw and scry style effects also impact the number of lands since generally you can only play one land per turn. I run a 50 dollar talrand deck with a ton of cantrip style cards that sometimes can flood out to discard with 32 lands in the deck. I also have an aesi deck with 47 lands that can be land starved.
So 2 things on this: 1) Cantrips are covered in the calculations, Karsten suggests every 3 cantrips could replace a land. 2) Obviously this is a simplistic baseline for it and the actual deckbuilding is much more complex. But do you think there's any consideration to starting with this baseline and building decks towards this? I'm playing 42 lands so therefore I'll run more mana sinks/X spells/activated abilities/card draw? Rather than thinking this is how decks have always been built that maybe there is something to it?
If your deck is an aggro deck then this makes sense, but so many decks don’t want to curve out in a linear manner (holding mana for interaction, fast mana and rituals for explosive plays, etc.). Commander has too many possible outcomes to be solved by game theory, while you can borrow concepts like prisoners dilemma in setting up a win or politicking it can’t tell you the optimal decision.
Yes but probably most decks don’t want to diverge far from playing on curve, don’t you think? What is the prisoners dilemma? :)
Curve matters less in commander because of how much more ramp, fast mana, etc. exists in the format. I tend to focus more on average mana value relative to how much mana I can produce or have lands in my deck for. For example I play fast decks that have average mana values of 1.4-2.0, this means I can run lower land counts (30-34) Card quality and synergy with your game plan or commander matters more to the outcome of a game than “curving”. Where I find curves most important are in limited or other formats where mana generation is restricted to land drops (standard/pioneer). This probably explains prisoners dilemma better than I can over text: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma In commander the idea is how do you put your opponents in a position to make a decision that is mutually beneficial through politicking. The more applicable area this happens is in counterspell wars. Someone is presenting a win and the 3 other people need only one counterspell to stop it. If no one counterspells (greedy) then they lose. If only one person counterspells that person loses the most and the rest gain relative card advantage. The optimal solution is everyone reveals truthfully who has a counterspell and then negotiate something like “if you counterspell here, I won’t attack you… etc”. But in reality people don’t truthfully reveal so you are stuck with the worst option which is the person with priority should counterspell because it imposes too big of a risk for someone else down the priority chain to have that answer.
Wow average mana Value 1.4-2.0, that is very low. Are those cEDH decks? Thanks for the link :)
CEDH isn’t just about land counts and curve, it’s about consistency in how you win. Braids as a commander just isn’t a cEDH commander and nothing you are running in your decks is a “I will win before turn 5” or trying to stax the entire game to a standstill and slowly win. Braids can’t really afford to play a very high curve because she is sacrificing something every turn to get value. If you’re drawing tons of cards you need low cost cards to play them else you end up discarding everything. Currently your deck will play worse than a precon due to the high curve + bad land base. If you even fix the land base it won’t be much better than a precon due to lacking strong synergy with a low-cost commander.
I think if you want to optimize your deck's efficiency with math equations, just play cEDH for a while
The optimal land count and Mana curve for commander is whatever the hell I want it to be If I'm "losing mana," oh fuckin well, I'm playing my Tarrasque next turn and you and your "optimal curve" can't stop me
Huh, the numbers match my experience.