This is my rough transcript and summary of the things talked about during today’s WeeklyMTG stream. Most of it is not direct quotes but I try to summarize each talking point and preserve the message communicated.

The full VOD is available here on twitch or on youtube

preplanned discussion

on context/background

  • Gavin: We started talking mid last week w/ the RC, different paths forward and collaboration they could do, eventually they all came to the conclusion for the RC to give wizards the format
  • Aaron (on safety): Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened to wizards employees or high profile community figures; we have protocols for both online and in-person events to beef up our security
  • Gavin: Still all very early, but we don’t have firm concrete answers on a lot of things. “although we are managing the format, it remains a community format. that is critical, that is part of commander’s success, that is how we have gotten where we are today, that’s something we really want to strive to do going forward”
  • Gavin: We are working with RC and CAG trying to figure out what we want to do going forwards, direction we think we’re settling on is something akin to what we’ve done with the Pauper Format Panel. more information as it comes available, but that kind of thing is exactly what we want to be doing here with putting the community at the center
  • Aaron: Community involvement… whatever shape that’s going to take is vital

“fans are worried about profit motive seeping into decisions”

  • Aaron: I am also here for the love of the game… yes, hasbro wants things my boss wants things… I have a lot of freedom to execute as I see fit for the best thing for magic as a whole. we want people to keep playing, to keep enjoying the game … that’s how we plan on running the banlist and how we’ve been running card design all these years

on the article talking about looking at the banlist

  • Gavin: One of the things we’re doing w/ management of the format is to reevaluate the banlist. we’re not going to be banning any cards as a part of that, whether cards will be unbanned is TBD. want community to be a part of this, so this will be waiting until the panel or analogous structure is in place
  • Gavin: One thing I want to stress is that we know that commander moves slowly, we don’t want to make changes all the time. we want an initial evaluation, but we’re not looking at doing tons and tons of check-ins and changes. stability is a key part of what makes commander commander
  • Gavin: Commander will not be aligned to the normal b&r cadence. I could imagine a world where we do quarterly updates like the RC, but that’s TBD

on the bracket system

  • quick example graphic they mocked up
  • Gavin: Have recently begun talking/collaborating with RC about developing this bracket system. take a lot of staples for commander and divvy them up into 4 buckets.
    • bracket 1 are cards any decks can play, staple-y cards, “precon power level”
    • bracket 4 are some of the strongest cards you can play *and* many cards people don’t want to play against (e.g geddon)
    • your deck is defined by the highest bracket card in your deck
  • Gavin: System is not perfect, but what we found from the 1-10 power level system is that people like having something quick to reference. 1-10 has a lot of failures - no clear benchmarks or context, 1-5 is basically useless. bracket system is designed to have clearer benchmarks (specific cards) on power, be a useful conversational tool
  • Aaron/Gavin: Trying to make unwritten rules of the format a bit more clear
  • Blake: Not necessarily a strict power level thing (e.g something like a lotus petal is not necessarily very powerful but can be a signal). lot of conversation about where cards will settle
  • Gavin: Brackets can’t replace a conversation with your table but can help start/supplement it
  • Gavin: Involving the community is going to be a big part of [determining brackets], send thoughts my way via social media or our discord; our design team is also going to be looking at it.
  • Gavin: Rule 0 / pregame conversations are still some of the most valuable things you can do, but this can shortcut some of those conversations

on brackets and cEDH

  • Gavin: Internally at wizards, what we primarily design for is what we call casual commander, and that’s what the brackets are going to be designed for. we know cEDH is something people enjoy and I want to make sure at least one person on that panel is someone versed in that competitive play
  • Aaron: We’re not planning on doing two separate banlists. maybe level 4 gets thought of as [a cEDH power level], that’s something we need to talk about. bulk of our work/decision making will be about lower stakes gameplay

on precons & brackets

chat question: “I feel like the 1-4 system will limit the reprints in future commander products” … “aaron how are you thinking about precons and the brackets”

  • Aaron: Can’t say I’ve thought a ton about it; I’m pretty sure that whatever ends up in the 4th band is not something we would be putting in precons - the armageddons of the world, even things like vampiric tutors. that does make me wonder, if we put a 3 in a precon, does that make the precon a 3? we’ll have to think more about that, this is pretty hot off the presses and there will be a lot of things we need to re-evaluate as we poke holes in things
  • Blake: what about sol ring?
    • Gavin: Sol ring is the iconic commander card. sol ring is not going anywhere, I would expect sol ring to almost be in a “bracket 0”. yes, it’s very powerful, if it were any other card it would be in any other tier, but it’s part of the format.
    • Aaron: It’s gonna be in bucket 1, it’s in every precon, I made peace with sol ring years ago… it’s part of this format, that’s fine, and fun in many cases. polluted delta … is going to be in bucket 1 as well, it’s not going to just be raw power level in a vacuum. what does this do to the format, what message does it send, how do we want to help people find games that feel appropriate to one other

on a points system

  • Gavin: It’s something we’ve thought about … points are a very nuanced thing and are very hard in non-competitive formats. commander is more about what kind of play experience you want. points lead to a lot of min-maxing, and there can also be a lot of gradation (20 1 point cards vs 2 10 point cards) which don’t necessarily make it easier to align on play experience. there are lessons we can take from points, but we like the brackets system

on combos & brackets

  • Gavin: Definitely keeping combos in mind. probably not every combo will be on this system but we’ll definitely be looking at putting some of the more iconic ones on there (mentioned thoracle/consult specifically)

on arena’s bucketing

  • Gavin: I actually only learned about this recently but there are definitely lessons we can learn from it. brawl has a lot of nuances vs commander but it’s certainly a heartening data point to here

on recent bannings and card design

  • Gavin: We’ve talked a lot about the power level of these cards over the past few years. “For example, I would say that Jeweled Lotus was a mistake. Like Arcane Signet, or Smothering Tithe, or cards in that vein, these are cards that we would not make with the heuristics we have today, knowing what we know about commander”
  • Gavin: The big philosophy I’ve been espousing to the [design) team is that one of the biggest danger to commander as a format is ubiquity. trying to make cards that are good in specific archetypes/strategies but avoiding cards that show up in every commander decks in that color, pushing back / internal reviews against that. the cards banned on Monday are cards we are trying not to make by today’s standards
  • Aaron: Nadu does not embody any design philosophy, there was never any intent there, that was just a design mistake. sometimes design mistakes find a home (in cube, in legacy, in commander, etc) and sometimes like nadu we need to ban them which is always hard because there are people that will defend every card out there, oh it’s actually fun to strip mine crucible people learn to build a better deck if you don’t want to get strip mined
    • Blake: “it is actually fun to strip mine crucible people”

on digital integration and tooling

  • Blake: [digital team] has already started discussing digital tool integration for something like a widget where you put your decklist in and see what bracket it is, that all takes time but it’s something we’re already thinking about

on the RC’s silver border project

  • Gavin: I think that’s a cool project … I’ll be candid, it’s not as important as some of the other things we’re working on now, but at some point in the future I think it’s something we’ll resume and look at.

what kind of timeline?

  • Gavin: The goal I’d like to shoot for is having something with the bracket system ready for Vegas and get to try it out there. No promises, the important thing is we take the time to do it right
  • Garon: My first goal is to get the committee identified and start those conversations, I don’t want to make too many decisions without them. Need a lot of introspection and input, don’t want to do anything crazy or kneejerk. I believe those conversations will be happening this week, identifying and reaching out to people
  • Gavin: Community focus here is critical to us, before figuring anything out in earnest having that touchpoint created is really really important

chat Q&A portion

“how big do you envision the new team directly in charge of commander will be”

  • Gavin: In terms of the community group, still figuring it out, looking at a range of 10-20 but still TBD based on a number of things. in terms of wizards, commander design team has maybe 12 people and they will be working on this as well

“will this new community panel have anyone from the cedh community”

  • Gavin: Yep, mentioned earlier, but it’s really important to me that we have at least one person on that panel that can speak to that community. The focus of commander is on that casual play but I don’t want to downplay that cedh is a community with a very excited audience and a lot of active and passionate players, want to make sure they have a seat at the table

“old RC was very american based, how will you work on making it less so, and how will you make sure europe/asia/so on get a voice as well”

  • Gavin: Something very critical to me when putting together the PFP was making sure we got a wide spread, from across many different areas. Too early to tell for this new commander community focused panel but making sure we have a spread of people to provide feedback is really important, we want to be able to hear from many different regions about what’s happening in their communities. Can’t guarantee any specific percentage but getting representation will do us a lot of good

“would you consider a 5th bracket for cedh”

  • Gavin: We’re not tied to 4 brackets. we tried 3 and it felt like not enough, we could possibly talk about doing more, but I’d like to start with 4 and see how it turns out. I also personally don’t like scales with midpoints because it forces you to pick a side, but that’s not any heuristic we’re beholden to

“any plans about printing how-to guides explaining the brackets like precons”

  • Aaron: That’s an interesting idea; at the very least we can put URLs or QR codes in there. I do think that on our website/in companion is the best place for it rather than on paper, but the product should acknowledge that this exists and talk about it and where to find it. That pathing will be important to build in for sure
  • Gavin: It’ll take some time to get there, we need to flesh this out and make sure it’s achieving its goals, but I think something like that will be great

“given safety concerns after the recent announcements, would [wizards] have the commander advisory committee anonymous/public/give them a choice?”

  • Gavin: Still in discussion. don’t want to make it seem like a shadowy cabal so want some visibility, whether they all have to be public facing or what framework that is is all TBD. said committee will also just be one input mechanism, we’ll continue interfacing with the community in all sorts of fashions
  • Aaron: I think it’s good for us if there are people on this committee that are very public about it, if there are people who can say ‘if you have an axe to grind come to my discord and talk about’, but I can easily say us making allowances for saying that there are some other people here who don’t want to go public with their identity. It’s by no means our intent to ever expose anyone to harm/danger

“can you talk a little bit more about the complications around combos on the [bracket] list”

  • Gavin: Super early conversations, but one thing we’ve been talking about is for combos that they should be more philosophical. for example, bracket 4 - most efficient combos, 2/3 mana 2 card combos that win the game. bracket 3 - little harder or more mana intensive, like exquisite blood/sanguine blood. bracket 2 - probably no inf combos, or 4-5 inf combos are acceptable. too early to know exactly how it’s going to shake out, but I think it’s very plausible that a more philosophical approach could help catch some of this.
  • Gavin: One of the things I want to do with the list is talk about why they’re where they are, and what that means
  • Blake: Aaron, when you think about the brackets, do you imagine strictly lists or philosophical definitions?
  • Aaron: I don’t think at the middle or bottom we can make lists, there’s too many cards. For the top I’m more hopeful we can be a little more concrete, combos are definitely tricky. We won’t be able to capture all combos; I don’t think we should be putting cards into brackets based on their worst case especially when they have fair uses people enjoy.
  • Aaron: I don’t expect the middle brackets to be much more than guidance and talking about the experience these cards generate and the speed. I’d like the top to be pretty clear, but we’ll see how clear we can go. I don’t want it to be like 900 cards long, then it’s not that useful.

Blake: “we’ve referred to the pauper advisory group a number of times, how does that group work?”

  • Gavin: The way the pauper format panel is set up (and I’m not going to say the commander one will be exactly the same) is that the members talk throughout the week, basically every week, about what’s happening in the format, what trends people are seeing, data from daybreak/mtgo, when the community has a big outcry about something, etc. When it comes to take action, we work on the announcement together and what we want to communicate on the topic. We also talk about philosophy, in terms of what we think is important and what we think is okay shifting over time
  • Gavin: It’s been very positive and the way we’ve communicated to the public in a transparent way has been really successful and appreciated. With Commander, I would expect something similar in terms of communication with what we want to do with you
  • Aaron: That panel was basically an admission on our end that we don’t have the expertise in the building - we don’t design for pauper, we don’t have people that spend hundreds of hours playing it. We do have those people in the room for Commander, but the community is so huge and no amount of people in the building looking at the format is going to give us a read on how the world is engaging with it, so we need more ways to provide ourselves with that input

Blake: If you’re someone out in the world, what are the best ways to provide feedback?

  • Gavin: We have a new discord (channel) set up to talk about this, you can tweet at me. Reddit is one of the most visited websites on my phone, I read the magic subreddit a lot, I read articles, I’ll be reading the discord some and I’m sure Blake will be sending over highlights. The community panel will also help with this, people hear different things and having that group to pick up on all those different threads will be helpful
  • Blake: We also made a bunch of forum subchannels for discussing various aspects of the commander changes. You can also tweet at me, Aaron’s fairly active on twitter, we are open and eager to hear more thoughts on commander, on the bracket system, on moving forward.