What are the Beta Commander Brackets? They are an attempt from Wizards of the Coast to streamline rule 0 conversations about power levels of Commander Decks. They are broken down into 5 Brackets: Exhibition, Core, Upgraded, Optimized, and CEDH. It discusses mass land destruction, tutors, two-card infinite combos, and Game Changers. Game changers are essentially cards that are very powerful that would swing the game in your favor. Each Bracket attempts to give simple rules for what qualifies for each category of power.

Sounds like a good tool, right? We've all been in the situation where someone says their deck is a 7, but it's really a 5 or a 9. It was hard in the past to specify what that means. This system attempts to solve that problem, but the question is how effectively it does that. Is it any better than the power 10 conversation?

Concern 1:

"The Brackets aren't well designed to solve the problem it thinks it solves." Once again, the Brackets are broken down into 5 Brackets: Exhibition(1), Core(2), Upgraded(3), Optimized(4), and CEDH(5). The first concern is that bracket 1-2 are almost in essence the same. A precon and a below precon aren't really a huge distinction for normal players. Even if someone is running a deck that just runs a bunch of vanilla 1/1s, it is more unlikely that it would both be worse than a precon, and be common enough to deserve a bracket to themselves.

It feels like both precon and below precon constructed should be the same bracket, while the chasm between 3 and 4 is enormous. Going from no mass land denial, no chaining extra turns, late Game 2-card infinites, and a max of 3 game changers to no restrictions is monumental. There are tons of decks that fall between those two. Decks that run 4 game changers and mid-Game 2-card infinites wouldn't be the same as a deck running mass land destruction, chaining infinite combos, and all the game changers. They are in different orbits.

Okay, heard. The problem with this concern though is that it goes entirely off of the strictest reading of this picture:

Going just off the picture doesn't factor in the way this picture was introduced and intended to be used. I'll be saying this a lot in this article, but this system is an aid, not the antidote. It is meant to give players language to discuss their power levels. The bracket numbers aren't perfectly encapsulating the checklist, but the spirit of the blurb under the bracket name. We aren't just following the checklist to decide our brackets. Moxfield put it perfectly on BlueSky, "We don't want people to take us as gospel." It is a guide to give us a way to better analyze a rough estimate of where our decks go. We follow the blurb and the checklist together with our instincts of our decks. In that regard, it functions perfectly. People will just have to understand this isn't ever going to be a 1 for 1 perfect categorization system. It really shouldn't be though. Magic is complex for that.

Concern 2:

"What if players lie? What if they just lie about their bracket or use this bracket system in bad faith and play a high power deck with no game changers, no mass land denial, no chain extra turns, and still hose the table every time. What do we do? How does this bracket system help us?" Well, first, what were we doing before the brackets about players like this? Nothing. This improves on nothing.

WOTC created this system because people often willfully or unwillfully make this mistake about power levels. This system will improve conversations for unwillful players who just don't know what things to discuss when discussing power. It doesn't solve the problem of liars. But you can always just bring the concern to them after a game and reframe the conversation. Let them know that according to the blurb, this deck more consistently falls into a high bracket. If they refuse, don't play with them? Rule zero conversations are meant to be flexible. They don't force people to stop being mean or liars.

Concern 3:

"This system is so confusing that new players, the intended audience for these brackets, won't use them anyway." So this system of Game Changers and Brackets are a lot. I do feel it does put a lot of pressure on new players to learn a lot when Magic: The Gathering is already an incredibly nuanced and difficult game to understand and play. However, I think I would disagree that this bracket system's intended audience is Commander players opening their first precon for the first time. This is not for "newly born" Commander players, but rather for players who understand how to tap their mana for spells and understand most keywords. It's for players already invested enough in the game that they want a balanced enough experience that they have a chance at winning. Be so for real: If they are already invested enough in a game to learn about "the stack" they can learn what category their decks fall into.

If the concern is about learning the game changers, Moxfield and EDHREC, have already done a great job of trying to reinforce that information in the deck-building process. It is a toughest hurdle, I agree. It is annoying to bring out the list every time, but we need to do more for things to be better and this is a minor inconvenience. It does make people too reliant on hard numbers because of the Moxfield bracket assignments, but I think it scales up, typically making decks fall into higher brackets rather than lower ones. Overall that seems like a better situation that the chaos of the power 10 system

Concern 4:

"There are not enough game changers. This will open up the conversation for unbannings." I feel like it needs to be said that these are excellent concerns. We do need more cards on this list, because a lot of cards that dodged this list are seemingly getting a free pass. The list below though, is a BETA. They need feedback from the community to itemize the top 0.001% of 25,000 Magic cards that completely clear players from the pack. It is an initial list.

The idea that cards would unban, does scare me only if the bracket system gets optimized through assistance of the community. It would lead cards that are over utilized in those decks to being in higher brackets. Leading to conversations about how my decks don't compete, and should be played against decks that can match the energy. I want people to be able to use broken cards, but only against other broken cards. I want to match energies, not stifle people. That is only if we can get the Brackets into a better, more consistent form though.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of concerns I wasn't able to get to in this article. Feel free to send them over to me @strixhavendropout and maybe I can do part 2. Overall, I think the takeaway is what another one of our authors, Stephen Andreu, said, "My two cents, it's worth reiterating when possible that the bracket system is just meant to be a starting point for rule 0 conversation, not meant to be taken hyper literally. Plus each bracket will have some fuzziness at the ends for decks that are very good 2s and very bad 3s. Largely, brackets exist to give players the language to communicate their power level and intention, not to exist as 5 independent formats." Thank you so much for taking the time to read. I hope this helps in your next deck-building session!