How to survive your first cEDH tournament
Introduction
Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH, is one of the most popular Magic the Gathering formats. Still, it is, by now, a bit of an unknown for the Judge community, starting as a fairly low-powered, 4-player, board-game-like format, where each player would create a deck using the original Elder Dragons. With its rise in popularity, EDH started getting more traction, with the format accepting any legendary creature as commander. It’s been almost 14 years since WOTC printed the first Commander products, including Kaalia of the Vast, Edgar Markov or the Ur-Dragon. Since then, the format has flourished into a wide variety of power levels, strategies, and ways to reimagine old and new cards alike, breathing life into the game.
Still, Commander was, and is, a casual format, which may raise a question. Why am I, a Magic Judge, learning about Commander? Don’t they rule 0 anything they want and just have fun? Well…
In the last few years, the popularity of EDH has skyrocketed. more and more stores are creating events, hosting tournaments, or even creating subformats or special events. There are Budget Commander events, where players play with a maximum budget. There are FNMs, weekly events, and even full on championships around the format, which, slowly, is increasing the demand for EDH judges.
In this document, we’ll focus on the unique aspects of the game, the challenges of an EDH judge, and the definition, rules, and special procedures found on cEDH, by far the most competitive EDH option as of date.
Why is EDH so different?
At first glance, EDH is a boardgame-esque, fun, casual format. But beware, since it is one of the most complex formats in the game! At any competitive or semi-competitive EDH event, you’ll encounter situations arising from the uniqueness of the format. Some of these are:
- 4 player pods create, by necessity, a more complex game environment, where there are twice as many triggers, continuous effects, permanents and decisions happening. This increases the probability of a player making any kind of mistake, and creates an environment where more disagreements may occur.
- EDH is an eternal format. Like Vintage or Legacy, EDH encapsulates the whole MTG card pool, barring bans, and, not only that, includes all made-for-EDH cards, such as Arcane Signet. Not only that, EDH is, most probably, the format with the most number of playable cards, considering it´s a singleton format.
- The casual format implies a greater ignorance of the rules. Do not expect a (casual) EDH player to know all the correct procedures, rules and regulations of a typical tournament. Considering most of your EDH experience will be in casual or regular REL events, this will not be an issue for normal EDH, but we´ll go a bit in depth on how to handle this in cEDH.
As we said, these are not huge issues in a casual environment. Remember that, for any casual or REL events, the JAR is, for any format, a great example of possible actions and fixes to be made. Still, you may want to keep an eye on fixes, as they could be applied in Regular REL.
But, as a judge, your most important role will most probably be at Competitive or Professional REL. That is why, from now on, we´ll focus on the most popular competitive variant of EDH.
Competitive scene of a casual Format
As we said, EDH is, primarily, a casual format. However, the politics, powerful synergies, and unique challenges of the format have created a group of people who wish to play this game in a competitive manner. If the most important rule of EDH is rule 0 (pregame conversation about the nature of the game), cEDH´s (competitive EDH) rule 0 is that there is no rule 0. Each player must strive for victory in the match and, while politics and talking are allowed and encouraged, there is no such thing as a “too powerful deck” or “power level” (see places like https://www.playedh.com/power-levels). Every deck in cEDH is a 9-10 in this scale.
While we´ll not go into detail about the EDH ban list, we recommend you look at it (https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/banned-list/).
You will see some notable cards like Seething Song, Dark Ritual, all the “newer” moxes (Mox Diamond, Chrome, and Opal), and problematic cards like Underworld Breach, Gaea´s Cradle, and other extremely powerful cards from the history of Magic being legal in the format. Add this to the already convoluted format EDH is and you have a recipe for some of the most complex calls you could ever have as a Magic Judge. Thus, you should familiarize yourself with the structure of a game, the tournament rules, and the community
Understanding the structure of EDH game
Preparing the game
In a cEDH tournament, tables will usually consist of 4 player tables, being fairly common to avoid 3-player tables at all cost. Command Tower, by Topdeck, is the most utilized software for tracking of EDH events, and it will automatically set the table order, as well as all the necessary calculations for tiebreakers.
Remember, the first player will always draw on their first turn, and there is a free mulligan rule.
Whose say is it, anyway?
Remember, priority will always be APNAP, but this rule may not be as clear in EDH. Priority will always start from the Active Player, and advance through turn positions until it comes back to AP. If all players pass priority, the spell or ability on the stack resolves. This may be confusing if you are not used to it, but here is an example!
Juan, Amy, Jojo and Laura are having a match of cEDH. The positions are as shown, with Juan going first and Laura last. If Jojo plays a spell, priority will be:
Jojo -> Laura -> Juan -> Amy
If, instead, Amy plays a spell, priority will go:
Amy -> Jojo -> Laura -> Juan
Easy, right? Remember, priority cannot go back.
If you know how the stack works (and you should before reading this article!), you will notice that the last player to gain priority will put their triggers on the stack first.
Winning the game
cEDH is a combo centric format. Even creature heavy decks and control decks will usually rely on a “winning the game” combo to close out the game. Some good examples of these are:
Thassa’s oracle and a forbidden tutor
The most iconic combo in the format, it leverages the one/two mana library exiling effect of Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact to win via Thassa’s Oracle’s “Win the game” trigger.
Dualcaster Mage and a copy spell
Any copy spell that gives haste, such as Twinflame or Heat Simmer, as well as the most recent Molten Duplication, are used to create infinite hasty tokens to close out a game.
Underworld breach and Brain Freeze
Underworld Breach is a broken Magic card, banned in Legacy, and is seen as a problematic card. Pair it with mana sources like Lions Eye Diamond and a graveyard filler like Brain Freeze, and you’ll end up basically drawing your library and winning the game on the spot:
These are just some of them. This document is just not enough to make an exhaustive list, but you may look at cEDH tournaments online and learn about the playstyle!
What you should take from this section is that you should expect a stack-heavy game, full of strange and, sometimes, complicated interactions that could prove challenging. Thus, be ready and try to familiarize yourself with them.
Interaction. A lot of it
As a turn 2-3 format, cEDH decks are prepared to deal with fast wins, as well as being fast themselves. For this, interaction is key. Being it in the form of removal or counterspells, expect to find stacks of interaction and complicated states.
So, knowing the structure of a game, let’s see how you can survive a whole day of this.
Stay tuned folks, next part is coming soon and it will help you to survive your first cEDH tournament!
Meet the Author
Ander Quiroga
I am a recent L1 judge with interest in EDH as a format, who came back into magic as a cEDH player and got into judging as a way to learn about the game (now going back to 60-cards, as Dr.Garfield intended).
