The EDHRec Effect

I noticed this with EDHREC so I do this ridiculous thing on Scryfall (it has a lot of filter options) where I look at every card ever printed in the filters I need and honestly it takes longer but my opponents never know what I'm gonna play

I really do think people should listen to the EDHRecCast more. Those guys do a good job analysing the data from their own site and telling people what to do with it. This is very apparent whenever they "challenge the stats"

It’s kind of funny that “four people playing solitaire and hoping to outrace each other” pretty much perfectly describes every “eurogame” board game

While i know its win-more, I will never give up my crucible of fire in my rakdos dragons deck.

Another good illustration of how this can go wrong is to think of 3 cards with 33.3% usage rate. There are 2 scenarios: 1. The cards are all used in different decks, every deck builder uses one of these three cards because they fill the same role in the deck and you only need one. 2. The cards are all used in the same deck. The cards are not good for the commander when used individually, but synergise well with each other and the commander. Both of these scenarios should lead you to build different decks, but appear identical on EDHRec.

EDHRec is magical. Even having access to data slurry is an amazing advantage. Put another way, I'm old af. I took a break from MtG and getting hints towards thing I never knew existed is OP, but bad deckbuilders gonna bad deckbuild. Having access to collective knowledge is valuable, but learning how to use scryfall's search terms is invaluable.

When I was a kid, I had a House-league hockey coach who said the most impactful sentence in terms of gameplay and approach to hobbies I have ever heard: "We're all here to have fun, but winning, is the most fun. So let's go out there and win!" Commander by all metrics can still remain a casual format, but I think what has been lost is that drive towards winning the game, not just "doing stuff". I hear too many times at tables now "I don't wanna make any enemies" or "They will just swing back and hurt me." GOOD! Force your opponents to have lines, force them to interact with you, BE THE PROBLEM. I have had many times where I have become the archenemy, lost quickly and loudly. As a result I make the whole board get moving, open up lines of attack, and actively made the game more explosive and end quicker, which then leads to more games. This is very well composed and I agree with MUCH of what is said here. I think why we see so little interaction is because we see so many "Win more" spells being jammed in as "Win Cons" when they are just loose snow that will never snowball itself. Crucible of Fire as you showed is an amazing example of this thought process in play.

Its always nice to see new players realize that the reason I win more is becaude I run plenty of interaction. Then they add interaction to their decks and our games become more fun.

I hope they soon reprint Staff of Frank. My Frank EDH currently runs budget staples because Staff of Frank was only ever printed in that one Frank secret lair.

Honestly, I think that your summary at the end is a perfect description of EDHRec, it’s a tool, one to be questioned. Heck, when I made my Ognis deck based on Viashino, barely any of my cards lined up with what it showed, yet it’s become my favorite deck solely because it can stop gameplans so fast

This philosophy is why I took Panharmonicon out of my Arcades deck a few years ago when I still had it: the vast majority of defenders do not do anything when they enter the battlefield. Instead using those deck slots for more redundancy to protect yourself while you're ahead, and more interaction to catch up when you're behind, simply makes more sense in a format with four players in regards to Quadrant Theory.

I think the big issue with EDHREC is that they only scrape from the most recent X years worth of online deck lists. The site doesn’t recognize non-updated lists that are over like 5 years old, which really skews the suggested inclusions and “popular” commanders. Every single precon commander ends up being in the top 100 over the last 2 years because everyone uploads their list to Moxfield, TappedOut, etc. and changes a few cards (or none at all). EDHREC is very good to find the ultimate synergy piece, most of the time you’ll find what is used as an infinite combo with the commander or something that plays really well based on keywords. But outside of those and the land suggestions, yes the compounding data inclusions really takes over.

Decks where the commander is required for the deck to function (e.g. Arcades, Feather, Fyn, Hapatra, Hinata, etc.) should be built expecting to have the commander on the field. You can't keep these decks in check by just casting a doom blade, as you put it at 12:00, because the deck should be being built with many cards to ensure the commander stays around. My Arcades deck runs multiple protection equipment, counterspells, protection instants, flicker/blink instants, etc. Once I cast it I expect it to stay on the field, and if somehow it doesn't I don't recast it until I think it will. In that deck Panharmonicon isn't a win-more card it's a setup piece, allowing you to drop your commander and chain Defenders onto the field and give haste and swing for lethal (or 2 turns if you can't find a haste enabler). But the beauty of a card like Panharmonicon is it synergises even if you don't have your commader, you can cast cards like Wall of Blossoms or Omens to dig for the pieces you need. I stuggle to believe you've every played against a competent Arcades deck. This goes true for Second Harvest and Junk Winder, they could be win-more if the only tokens in the deck are being produced by Volo. But that shouldn't be the case and a correctly built Volo deck should be able to use Second Harvest for secondary benefit: e.g. to double clue tokens to draw into something, treasure tokens to setup an explosive next turn, creature tokens produced from sources other than Volo for a surprise attack turn. Always ask for every card you put in a deck: "What is my main beeline plan for victory and is this necessary", then: "How can my opponents disrupt this plan" and if that happens: "How am I going to get back on track". Also if you can filter a EDHREC commander to show only variations that include a specific card in advanced filters, to see the synergies.

I think overall you're right on the money. My last commander game, one guy smoked the whole table cuz the rest of us were spending the whole game trying to build up our boards and take our commander actions while he board wiped, tutored, and then got two copies of Toxrill on the board with two meathook massacres. Well-timed counter spells or removal could have knocked him out before that happened.

I absolutely love win-more cards, whether I'm playing them or getting flattened by them. The big flashy plays are absolutely what I live for. Despite that, I'm really glad you made this video. I wish more people would just take 10 minites on Scryfall before hitting EDHrec. They'll probably see a lot of overlap, but the best moments in the game are when you add a card that no one else knows and it does something awesome. I was playing against Seth (probably better known as Saphron Olive), at Commander 30 in Vegas, and it was just the coolest thing ever watching him shift between bewilderment and excitement and jealousy and surprise over my inclusion of a Trove Warden in my Quintorious deck. It was sitting there recurring fetchlands every turn and he was just like, "I don't even think anyone's ever heard of this card!" You should've also mentioned in your video that EDHrec is REALLY bad at letting go of cards from precons. Wizards prints a garbage card in a precon, thousands of people post their deck with just a few upgrades or personalizations (or even just post the precon as is), and there are suddenly thousands of decks with this garbage card in it, so people looking at building that commander later decide to try it out, and sure enough it's garbage, but before they learned it was garbage like they suspected, they posted their deck, so there's another useful data point showing everyone that the garbage card is a staple in the deck.

Interesting. I have been clearly warned about the pitfalls of data scraping in an infinite feedback loop! The old fashioned version of this was, "all the cool kids are doing it. I should probably be doing it too."

I recently started playing online, and as a result understand why interaction and pressure is important. My more intentionally good decks usually have good immediate pressure as part of the playstyle, or can run protection/removal that keeps my win cons from blowing up. I always still never add quite enough and just add things because I like them. Top example: Kaldra Compleat Reason:it feels very awesome to suddenly have a very scary creature. Best actual usage: the graaz deck where the germ from living weapon becomes a 5/3. My favorite gimmick I came up with myself: using Narfi to evade taxes and repeatedly sacrifice him to get various effects. Best interaction moment: using toggo with archetype of finality to lock a toxrill player out of the game with a deathtouch rock in response to every creature cast.

Amazing video. I’ve been stuck on one of my decks and couldn’t figure out why. The way you introduced and explained pressure helped me realize it was the root of my problems. Having a ton more fun now. Thank you!!

I wish I saw this video 3 years ago when I started playing Magic. I’m three years into deck building and learning as I go and I feel like this making me rethink a portion of my deck building process, in a good way.

There's a balance you need to strike, I am generally supportive of the feedback loop theory you have laid out, and agree it can be a big problem for newer players. You do need win more cards though, there's a reason why they exist, especially in commander, you can't possibly control 3 players by yourself, so you need to present threats yourself and strike while people are re-building.