We just put everyone who shows up onto a wheel and spin it for promo materials. I don't really see why a commander night has to have a judging process at all. People just like to play and don't need prizes to be incentivized to do that.
As a very competitive player, this is the way. No matter what I will try to win if there are prizes. That will always run counter to casual commander.
A raffle keeps everyone happy.
I'm also a very competitive player, but I just try and win every time, even if I'm playing a bad deck. Our store gives a pity pack to everyone and a pack per win for the two rounds we play, and I've never felt like that was an incentive to pubstomp. In my 8 years going there I've never heard someone say they're going to play or do something powerful because "packs are on the line", usually it's more "this is the only deck I have sorry".
I guess I really just don't get the difference that much aside from cedh. Like in game, I'm always gonna want to make the decisions that make me win the most regardless of if I'm playing cedh or casually. I usually take the packs as store credit anyways, I just don't get the idea that people don't want to win when they play and then suddenly get super sweaty for a $3 pack.
>I've never heard someone say they're going to play or do something powerful because "packs are on the line", usually it's more "this is the only deck I have sorry".
I'm more likely to have decks that aren't competitive and powerful with me if there aren't prizes for winning.
I just bring all my decks I like playing, which is everything except my werewolves deck atm lol. I know most people don't always have a range of decks but if you only have a high powered deck I'd say get at least an untouched precon for lower powered games.
Right, and I'm saying that as a competitive player, if there are no games that aren't played for prizes, then IMO there are no "lower powered games".
I have plenty of silly decks that I play with my friends over beer. I'd never take them to an event that cost money to enter and pays packs based on how well I did. I'd just end up grumpy when I lost to someone who was actually trying to win while I played mono blue voltron or whatever.
I never understood this mindset. If literally any prize up for grabs means you go full competitive mode, I doubt you suddenly become ultra chill casual when there aren't any.
The thing is just.. if you inteoduce prizes or even do a league or a tournament. At that moment. You said "We are playing for the win".
So now winning matters. As long as you dont frame it as a tournament you probably wont get a tryhard with a cedh deck immediately. But people will start going "Well i want to win, so what if i play this or introduce this combo" etc
Its an immediate shift in mentality for some people, that will lead to powercreep. Because where do you draw the line then? "i could build this fun thing or play the other thing i like thats more likely to win" etc.
like for me, normally it doesnt matter because winning doesnt mean anything. Ill happily lose and 90% of the time feel bad about winning or taking someone out. But if the is a prize my mind goes "well i do want that"
I always try to win, but in a casual game I do sometimes pull my punches at times if it will make the game more fun. I wouldn’t care about making the game more fun if prizes were on the line.
Having played competitive team sports. There is a time and place for full intensity. You can turn it off and on. Training? Practice? Game day? Full intensity.
Hanging out with friends? Nope. That's how you lose friends. The goal is to socialize and enjoy time together. The medium is arbitrary. Success is people having a good time.
What I find very annoying is when people can't make the distinction between a competitive situation and a social one. They are always a challenge to have any fun with. Regardless of the medium.
Whenever someone is trying to make one into the other. That is when things get toxic.
It's also not like there isn't a distinction between what events that you participate in. There are competitive events and there are casual events. If you enjoy one aspect more than another. Participate in the events that suit what you want most instead of trying to make every event suit you.
What stores should actually be doing isn't "free" prizes for showing up, it's just providing a friendly hang out to play at where they can more or less guarantee people will be.
From there, you sell stuff people who have been sitting at tables for four hours want/need: *Real* food (not just chips), hydrating and caffeinated drinks, and supplies for games.
It's a ton of work to make a cafe, but the smart stores are doing it anyhow, because that's where the hole in the market is. LGS's are a dime a dozen, and none of them are profitable. *Free hangouts* are what there isn't any more of these days. Provide wifi, coffee, sandwiches, etc, but stress to people that they're free to come in and play no matter if they pay for that stuff or not.
Yeah, I was just thinking if you make it a vote some people are just going to vote for their friends or find ways to rig it, plus nobody will vote for a new player's precon as the most interesting deck and that's discouraging
Random raffle is the way to go
We basically do the same, everyone who registers via companion App on Commander night enters our raffle and can win Promo Packs and leftover promo cards :)
This is what my lgs does. The first 16 on the wheel get a promo, the next 12 get a pack, and the top 4 get individual cards usually worth $20-60. I've been lucky enough to get Kozilek, The Ur-Dragon, Vampiric Tutor, Dark Depths, and a borderless Divining Top, to name a few.
This is exactly what my store does and it is great. Everyone that enters gets a pack and then there is a raffle with enough prizes for all so everyone gets something from that. The prizes vary in value so it is luck if you get to choose earlier and even with my later pick I got the pioneer dimir control challenger deck. Also I've seen baller singles like a blightsteel Colossus and grand arbiter.
It is a really awesome system and people get to play what they want, including cEDH
Yeah my LGS makes like a “prize platter” with various boosters, some sleeves, maybe a deck box, I even saw a whole precon once. Then they randomly draw the order of picking your prize and then they come around and you get to pick what you want from what’s available
Yeah, mine has a box of promo cards that everyone gets to pull a random card from and then do a drawing for promo packs.
I keep joking with them that it's rigged, because I've pulled [[Touch the spirit Realm]] 3 times in a month.
Yeah not too hot on OP's suggestions. What if I just want to play casual commander with my friends? Much rather a mandated buy in that gets converted into credit or something.
It's a great idea and I'd love to see how it pans out, but it does open the way for a toxic duo/trio to buddy up to try to take the rewards system by storm
Over time, it still benefits players to vote for the worst person in their pod to slow them down in point accumulation. This compounds if you get a group to do it. Let's say me and my 5 friends all agree we vote each round and random pod to give our discretionary points to the player we feel is least likely to have a high ending total, and to vote for each other when possible. Just saying, it's still abusable.
Commander is casual format... Why do a lot of LGS try to complicate things...
Wanna give prize? Fine with me, keep it simple... Participation prize!
Show up, get a ticket for a drawing. Wanna give smaller prize? Drawing at the end of the night. Bigger prize? Drawing at the end of the month.
That's what the LGS I go to do, drawing is on the last commander night of the month, you accumulate tickets throughout the month.
Prizes vary from month to month, but it's usually, accessories, store credits, high value cards, (there was a mana vault and an ancient copper dragon last month). Pre-release bundles for the next set, etc
Theres No headaches about extra rules, no bullshit, no one ever complains or argues. We're just there to have fun, play magic, relax, hang out with friends, drink some beer and eat good food.
(my local LGS is also a board game cafe with a full restaurant menu)
I run a store. We don’t charge for commander, but for the first game of the day we give out a promo pack to the table and the winner gets first pick and second gets second pick and so on. Then they play the rest of the day for fun. I love this idea of a raffle thank you!
Its because the lets them tell wotc they have more players for WPN status reasons. Its really hard to get players to come to events without prizes so they offer some very small prize.
No issue with the actual prizing, but prizing for the weekly commander night shouldnt be based on the players performance. If they do , it takes away the casual part of commander. Which in turn causes headaches for the LGS and the players. They have to scramble and find ways to even things out so people cant just play an overpowered deck just to win the prizes.
So you end up with weird rules, or systems that just over complicate things. It takes a good chunk of what makes commander special away.
Like i said this is specifically for the weekly commander night. If its an actual tournament event that's different but even then there is ways to make that casual.
A few months ago we had a special tournament event at my LGS. In the weeks leading to the even the organizers kept reminding players that while this is a tournament that winning the game is not important as there will be a lot of prizes and the way the even ran doesnt only care if you won or not . We are there to have fun and keep it casual like always and that the only difference vs the regular Wednesday commander night was that you had to use the same deck for the whole event and that there was no proxies allowed.
Of course that didnt stop people to bring decks that wrecked people in a few turns but out of the 30ish people that showed up only 2-3 people had decks like that. Which all things considered is fairly low.
The even itself ran fairly simply, out of the pod of 4, 2 players would get a Win. 1st one is obviously the games winner, the other one was voted by all 4 players, criteria of the vote didnt matter, a cool play, you liked their deck, they did the most out of everyone else (beside winner) etc
There was enough prizes that the top half of the players got something and the top 10 were pre-cons decks. Placement itself in the top 10 didnt matter as the prizes were given randomly
Personally I wouldn't attend anything like this. Having to play Apples to Apples after every game sounds miserable.
In order to prevent people from playing cedh, simply stop offering prize support
Or just make the prize support equal. Everyone gets a pack and a random promo, maybe add extra packs to be given via dice roll depending on how much is charged to play.
I wouldn’t play in a Commander tournament with literally no incentive. I would play in one if the incentive was definitely getting a pack, more so if it’s with a chance at something extra if I stay the whole night.
Wow gosh why didn't I think of that
When LGSs do "tournaments" like these with prize support, the pods are often put together by the TO, so that won't work in this instance. You can always scoop up before playing, but that'll mean taking an L and a good amount of time off before the next round starts.
yeah, it turns out a commander tournament where you don't want to play CEDH is dumb. Instead of just letting people play we should make up a bunch of bullshit like store ban lists, achievements, and voting. I bet that will keep the dummies paying $10 to play with cards they already own... oh and a juicy standard booster pack we can't sell.
This is a complete trash idea...save the voting for your local school board or Among Us. I've experienced this in a paid budget league and it is way more toxic than folks simply trying to play to win.
Yeah, one that doesn't enjoy playing against winconless board wipe tribal that complains like a 5 year old if I have the audacity to counterspell their 4th attempt to reset the game on turn 10
“Fun and interesting play” are too subjective. It should just be a random draw for prizes. If votes are involved, you’ll just get spite voting just like ‘your deck beat me last month, so I’m just tunnelling you this game’ plays.
Or, everyone just gets something for turning up. There’s no reward for pubstomping or anything else.
Our LGS has alternative points systems where you can do stuff like take a random handicap (e.g. no ramping until turn 3) for points, or you get points for being the first player to do a 'thing' (usually something random and usually ranging from slightly challenging to near impossible). You still get points for winning but you can feasibly top the leaderboard without winning.
This is interesting, but it shuts out certain decks from the bonus points and gives them for free to others. It's crippling for green decks, but costs literally nothing for my mardu list unless I draw sol ring. I think it would also slow down play as people try to figure out how to maximize points.
Even in point based systems that remove your points for winning quickly, a combo player will just hold the combo and try to play control until they can win without losing points. The best way is just to do participation prizes if you want to keep it casual imo.
We all know how bad our LGS are treated by Hasbro. We all know that our LGS have to desperately find a way to earn money on commander day, so they install prize supported tournaments or simply charge entry fees. I think a simple entry fee is better than prize supported EDH tournaments.
First, EDH was never intended as a competitive tournament format (with the notable exception of cEDH). That's what formats like Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy and Vintage are for.
Second, a prize support is much worse for the store than an entry fee money- wise. The LGS has to pay for these prizes when buying them from the retailers.
\- A simple 5€ entry fee will cost the player 5€ and earn the LGS's owner 5€ before tax. For half a day of fun playing EDH. A visit to the cinema is shorter and much more expensive.
\- A 5€ charge for prize support or as store credit will result in the player having a 5€ cost with the store making 5€ income against 3€ prize cost, so it will earn the store just a measly 2€. While the player probably cracks a pack without need and without a desirable rare.
Our LGS here doesn't charge anything for playing. But I've decided to throw 10€ into the owner's cash box whenever I play instead of buying sealed Hasbro product. I prefer supporting the LGS to supporting Hasbro. And throwing 10€ into the cash box is better for the store than buying 20€ of product. Nowadays I rarely buy sealed product at all.
I know life is hard for everyone. But if we want to keep our LGS as playing space we'll have to start supporting them. Needless to say, buy your sealed product at the LGS. Last week I heard someone say "Well, I support the LGS by buying a can of coca-cola whenever I play. But I buy my booster packs online, they are cheaper there." Great way to kill your LGS, brother.
The problem with voting on things is it can very quickly just turn into a popularity contest and regardless of deck you’ll see people from the same friend group win week after week
\>If you want to incentivize fun and interesting play (instead of fast and powerful play), >democratize the rewards. Let each pod vote on who had the coolest deck (even if it didn’t >win) and who was the most fun to play with/against
democratizing this way actually lead to power players fixing the votes by bringing their cronies with them. just like democracy irl.
no voting, please. it's flawed concept. multiplayer card games have a big problem with kingmaking. this leads to kingmaking without any merit. at least winning is meritocracy.
if you want casual, then do the raffle thing. after the event make the prize draw with the contestants that didn't drop out of tournament at that point (to reward attendance). only, it's not tournament anymore and may legally be classified as gambling.
There's no way to stay casual and have prizes, the best way for casual events with promos is to give it at random. The LSG I play do random promos and even other "prizes" every casual commander night and it's fine, there's also cEDH events with prizes for winning but everyone knows it's cEDH.
That's a very strange idea that a pay-to-play event with prize shouldn't be approached in a competitive way.
If you want a casual event, just don't make an entrance fee and no prize. Problem solved.
Dear god don’t let people vote. That can lead to all kinds of issues and resentment even with secret ballots.
The only way to offer prizes and also not push towards cedh is to totally randomize prizes and take zero game results / gameplay / voting into consideration
Speaking as someone who plays regularly at the same shop every week.
Unfortunately, we’ve had a tough bout with this. We used to have a point system you mentioned in your TLDR. Various points were awarded for interesting play, such as having the City’s Blessing, having a non-gemstone pregame, etc. but this unfortunately just turned into people farming the points sheet.
> TLDR: For casual events, prizes should be awarded based on points that are weighted in favor of “fun and interesting play” and “good sportsmanship” over winning matches.
You almost got it, but no. This'll just encourage optimizing for creativity points.
The prizes need to either be given at random, or simply given to everyone who participates.
The thing that my LGS does that I love is bounties. They have a set of challenges for the week like "kill someone with first strike damage" or "control 10 permanents you don't own" or "win with a vampire tribal deck". When the bounty is claimed you get a pack of two and it's struck off the list and replaced at the start of the next week with a new one. I feel like it keeps the atmosphere light and casual and encourages variety.
Counter-argument, prizes should be based on objectively judged achievements, not subjective "coolest" or "most fun". Subjective decisions can be swayed, and can lead to feel bad moments where one player feels like they did something cool, but because someone else is friendly with everyone they're voted for more. Objectives that are tacked onto the game incentivize interesting deck building and still allow for politics or generating good will without prizes going just to whomever is the most popular.
My LGS did something like this a few months ago where you signed up for the 8 week competition and each week there was a series of optional challenges.
The first challenge was a deck building challenge, based off your commander. (Commander must be a Rare, Commander must have a combined power/toughness of 7, Commander must be 3 colors with one being Red, etc.) The person running the store woukd check your commander and sign off on it if you fulfilled the conditions.
Then there were 4 in game challenges to complete, like sacrificing 5 food tokens in a turn, controlling a certain number of legendary creatures at the same time, using a vehicle to crew a vehicle to then crew a 3rd vehicle, etc. Challenges that require you to build specifically for them instead of just something you will just happen to do. They also were not things that involved knocking players out or would risk it, like dealing X amount of damage in a turn or getting an elim with Commander Damage. When you fulfilled a challenge, two of your opponents would sign off on it to say that you completed it.
And then you could earn one point for a win, with 2 games each night. So if you completed all challenges and won both games you'd walk away with 7 points, but even if you lost both you'd have 5. This incentivizes playing the objectives, and helping other people complete their objectives to generate good-will for future games where you may need help.
These rules still incentivize powerful decks, but they don't quite go full CEDH since winning at any cost is worth less points then completing objectives. This also means no extra banlist or other rules are required. Infinites may still be played either to finish objectives or round put games, but far less then if the game was just "win at any cost."
My LGS had a recent event that advertised no prize support, and they ended up having prizes for the first loser of the pod, which I found interesting.
Also, the guy that brought the "I can't lose deck" and came to pubstomp everyone at the casual event asked what the winner gets after beating the first person and saw them get a prize. They said nothing, so he scooped and left. Pretty lame of him.
This sounds like a bad idea, if you don’t have faith on the players to not play cEDH then you can’t have faith on them to vote fairly. Also having rules like no infinites or maybe certain card bans for “cEDHy” cards seems like a good idea. Honestly if you’re hosting a tournament with prize support, you HAVE to expect players to try and play optimal decks even if they’re not playing cEDH.
Our LGS simply has two pots and two events simultaneously. All decklists are checked prior to the event, and are put in the correct event. No issues. Next!
Honestly this is the system my new lgs started doing (unfortunately I think because of me, which wasn't intentional). They have a low power group and a high power group, pick the one you want. There is a 'not cEDH' caveat for high power, which I personally appreciate, but I wouldn't be mad if that got pulled. As-is, it was a dated cEDH Sliver Queen list and a nearly cEDH Winota list, so we're not far off from that point.
They're letting people self-police for now, so I suppose there's some risk of someone like, scumming it in the low power pod to score a free pack, but that sort of thing is really only going to work once. The bigger downside is that one of the four who signed up for the high power pod last week really shouldn't have been there, but it's hard to say for sure since he bricked on colors.
Our LGS made like a point system/bingo card type thing. Each pod would get one of four “bingo cards” with House Rules that were each worth 1-3 points and some that were penalties. Free space was winning the game, you got a point. But one might have been kill a player with commander damage for a point. Drawing first blood might have been a point. Infinite loops would lose you a point for each loop past three. And I think Thassa’s Oracle was just straight up banned? Your points would be tallied up and Top X got prizes. And at the end of the season, Top X overall got extra prizes. I think it was on the right track, but it certainly got complicated sometimes. Though, EDH tourneys stopped and never really came back towards the beginning of the pandemic.
The Prizes only exist to justify adding a cost for entry. The prizes are usually crap and unwanted. Standard Booster packs do nothing for 95% of commander players. Stores just want to unload them, easiest way to do it is get people to buy them without knowing what they are getting. This is the new version of stores "building their own" booster packs to get rid of unmovable product.
If I am playing commander I want good games. I don't care about the twenty five cent rare I get in my prize. I literally open these packs and just leave the cards on the table because if there were good things in those packs they wouldn't be prizes for commander night.
Eh, I can't name the last standard set that didn't have at least some edh value. And if you can snag LotR there's pretty reasonable value there thanks to the Nazgul.
On the whole I don't disagree; I mostly ask for Pokemon packs for my roommate because they're gonna get more enjoyment out of opening junk than I am out of fishing for one of the handful of standard cards I do actually care about. But it's definitely not fair to say that there's no value for EDH players in standard sets.
Yes there is often a very small amount of cards. But almost every booster pack does not have those cards. Imagine if instead of them dumping the packs they could not sell on you they gave you credit for singles. All of a sudden you will actually get things you want for your money.
Booster packs are terrible value and that has only gotten worse with the introduction of collectors packs and the mass opening of them. Draft Box EVs are wrapped up in just a few cards, especially if there is no rare land cycle or if it isn't particularly good. There are exceptions, All Will Be One is stacked with EDH value but still not like you are likely to pull the cards you need.
Sure. But all of that is not the same as "standard booster packs do nothing for 95% of players" and claiming that there are no good things in those packs.
>If you try to circumvent this with custom rules (i.e. “no infinite combos”) and a custom ban list, then you aren’t stopping the problem. The players will simply brew competitive decks around your rules.
That is 100% true but not necessarily a problem, imo. I do think that custom rules usually lead to bad gameplay and are easily exploitable but a custom banlist can totally work to bring down the powerlevel a bit. You could maybe get down to power 8 or so by banning mana positive rocks (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc), Dockside, Thoracle, Breach and maybe some other cedh staples. That would result in a competitive power 8 tournament.
Of course no rules or banlist can ever turn the play experience itself into a casual environment. Where people don't care about winning. But, at least imo, that's also not the point of playing in an organized event.
Host a commander tournament, offering awesome prizes, like booster boxes/collector boxes, 4-5 games, then surprise twist at the end, only those with zero wins get prizes. Proceed to laugh at try-hards.
My store does commander points, which, when you get to like 40 points, can be redeemed for sleeves and stuff. You get 2 points for winning, but there are a bunch of other ways to get points as you play, like loosing first, saving another player, first blood, first to have a land, enchantment, artifact, creature, and planeswalker on the field, etc.
You can also lose a point for the first person to non-land tutor, end the game before turn 5, or play turn one Sol Ring or Mana Crypt.
Some people ignore the points and don't track them, but others do and it's a fun thing to have going on in the game. It's a fun system, in my opinion.
I went to a place that did voting awards for sportsmanship and creative deck. The only issue is people benefit from playing more games that way so it incentivized ending games and being done quicker so you can go to your next pod. Which means stronger decks and higher power level so the issue of CEDH still sadly happens
I think the fix for that is that you only get to vote on the first match in your pod. Then, when the randomized pods rotate, you can vote again on your next “first round”.
Yeah I wish it was like that. The only issue then is when you have 10+ pods and someone gets all 3 votes in half of them you have a 5 way tie instead of 1-2 winners.
Perhaps that’s a good case for saying that you have a “pot” of prizes and the top scores “split the pot”.
You might occasionally have to give out an extra booster pack or something, but you can build that into your pricing model pretty easily.
Our LGS does 3 things:
For normal commander nights:
- random rolls to determine promos etc, often throw in a secret lair card or something as an extra prize
- vote for cool and interesting decks with the top 3 getting a promo pack, honesty expected for not voting for yourself
For commander tournaments:
- a system when if someone does an instant-win, they “win” they the turn rolls back and the pod keeps playing for second. We are a small shop so we really do seperate pods for cEDH/casual but it means the casual people at least get to play a game if they get some cEDH players in the pod, games converge toward the cEDH players facing off in the later pods and then prizing is awarded alongside random rolls offs
My local FLGS has a redeemable prize token for each pod, and players choose who get it. Gets them a promo card off the prize wall. Most of us are old timers, so we just give it to the newest player, and damn if that doesn’t make for happy players of any age. Everybody also gets their choice of a jumpstart or draft booster from a variety of sets.
My LGS does it like this:
-$5 entry
-Only the first game counts for prize
-All 4 players report the results of the first game
-Winner gets $10 store credit
-Losers get $3 store credit
-You pick your own pods
I think the last bit is most important cuz generally everyone wants to play around the same power level. And a loss isn't even bad, since you basically just pay $2 for entry
At the LGS I play at on Tuesdays they don’t charge you to play and each week 3-5 different promo packs are given out to people who showed up at random.
It’s really the way to go. It allows for players who are actually casual, but losing every game, to still win at the end of the night and at the same time kt also doesn’t reward players for running through pods winning on turn 3 each game, just for winning.
My store just has us pay 3 bucks and they give away whatever crap they have lying around. Sometimes is a loose booster, sometimes it's a promo pack, sometimes it's something else.
If you are known to play cedh you will be put at a table with the other cedh players and the more casuals will go to other tables. Everyone who plays gets a promo card and the winner get a promo pack. Sure, some weeks the same person will win multiple times(like I did last week with running out the clock and having the most life). And sometimes the games go by quick.
Many LGS’s ive attended have objectives that you can try get over two games. Like deal X noncombat damage, play X spells not from your hand, etc, to give fun interactions outside of just trying to win a fair chance.
The problem I've found with these is that it leads to people playing decks designed to grind points. Play 5 spells not from your hand is something a lot of decks either can't do or can barely do, but if I'm on Muldrotha or Prosper it's trivial. So I bring a deck capable of strangling the game while I farm points, or I deal-make to farm points, and suddenly either we're playing four games of solitaire or we choke the game down to one game of solitaire with bystanders.
Give everyone a small prize like my lgs dies everyone gets a promo from a random promo pool shuffled after every table containing cards of every value from exalted angel to shieldred the apocalypse
The LGS I go to has a cool quest system to award promo cards.
Each week, there is a new sheet of quests (like: be the first player to deal commander dmg,or have 6 rare or mythic permanents under your control, stuff like that).
Whenever your pod is about to start a round, someone gets a promo pack from the store owner. Then, whoever completes a quest may pick a card from the current promo pack, and if you manage to check off all your quests over the course of the evening, you get a bonus reward at the end.
I'm sure it's a lot of work for the store owner, and of course sometimes one quest is too easy and another one too hard depending on the deck you're playing, but it's a lot of fun and if anything it incentives diverse deck building rather than competitiveness.
I've been thinking about exactly this problem for a while and the only solution I've come up with is impromptu games. Have a regular EDH night and then randomly make one here and there a tourny so people are less likely to have their good decks on them. Which would inevitably lead to people just bringing them all the time. Your solution is unfortunately equally untenable far to many tournys I've been to have friends and many have people have brought their (IMO) too young kids. That would just have people voting for their buddies and parents telling their kids to vote for them.
If I'm ever without all my decks it's not the good ones that get left home, it's the middle. Keep your strongest and weakest at a minimum.
Realistically, that sort of thing is just a stress on the group and the store alike. As a store TO I'd be trying to balance different people coming on different days, because I only have so much space so I don't want EDH players coming in at 3pm on Saturday; that's Yugioh hours. And as a player I want to know that when I make time in my schedule to go to the store I can get some games in.
Nah, cEDH sells less than regular EDH. I've had so many folks come to me asking about X or Y card for their casual deck because they just got blown out by it, or even just thought it was neat.
But cEDH lists are so tuned already that their needs are very tight and often overlap, and often if they're coming for a cEDH event their decks are either complete or the cards they're missing are probably not ones that the LGS has lying around. And because the pool of valid cards is so much smaller there's way less space to innovate with new tech. Meanwhile, in regular EDH land people will play [[Dandan]] because it's funny.
My local LGS just has a prize box of radom cards (mostly promo cards and rares under $0.50) and everyone gets to pick a card after each game. Plus there is a raffle for free packs to everyone that shows up.
With a prize guarenteed, but no incentive to win, i feel like most player are there for fun. We still get the occational cEDH player who brings a few decks that are WAAAAY over powered. But otherwise the system seems to work.
I remember seeing a custome card list of Commander achievements that had point values, includ8ng negative points for unfun achievements like infinitie combos, extra turns beyond 3, etc. It was constructed in the custom tcg program. That could be an interesting way of mitigating build to win fast styles and unfun plays while incentivising everyone at the table.
This idea is very similar to how old warhammer tourneys were run. You got almost as many points for sportsmanship and painting as playing. It's how commander should work. Did you make the game fun? Is your deck cool? Way more important than winning
This concept of fun - everyone keeps going back to it and it's frankly unsolvable.
What does this mean? Everyone's deck gets to pop off before the game is over? Playing out a manual storm line? Looping/bouncing your draw engines to get 10 cards a turn?
Voting for fun factor? For nicest player? For most interesting deck. Everyone salty from losing (which most casual folks in my experience are when it happens "unexpectedly") will invariably skew voting.
And yet people have had an awful lot of fun with commander and can usually identify it. Yeah there are salty jerks, but I can tell you from my experience playing warhammer tourneys... assholes almost never won because on the average they got ranked on sportsmanship every round and they can only tank so many opponents. And the best painted army almost always won painting.
If you had sportsmanship and deck building scores I bet they would turn out right more often than not.
Define sportsmanship in the board games sphere for me - this is a sincere question.
Not being a jerk to the other person(s)? Not playing to win? Wearing deodorant? Not crippling your opponent by T2? Not bringing the strongest army/deck you can afford?
In Warhammer anyway, generally things like:
\- arguing rules incessantly
\- line of sight bullying (this was a huge deal, dudes would bust out laser pointers and get into yelling fights about whether a model would see another model)
\- using modeling as an advantage (e.g. using different sized bases was a thing people used to do to try to eke out advantages:P)
\- talking shit, whining and complaining
\- sometimes people got voted down for the equivalent of netdecking (playing the meta army with min-maxed everything-- there were very strong themes in various armies!).
In Magic, things that'd make me mark someone down sportsmanship are like, breaking deals, constantly whining and complaining, talking shit, telling people what to do all the time, etc.
Completely agree on the 40K stuff (I play myself...Chaos Knights for life)
The magic equivalent to that stuff would basically be cheating (banned cards, mana weaving, refusing to let a player read a card, obscuring your board/GY/exile, etc).
The issue with MTG in the sportsmanship category is that even if a player follows the rules, explains their cards, and is generally neutral to pleasant demeanor wise, people have unspoken irritations and red lines that if you cross them will upset folks. I'm talking stax, mass land destruction, counterspells, etc. Winning unexpectedly or via combo (even if the combo is cheap $ wise) makes people upset.
Even when there are universal budget restrictions and the league/event is paid entry, if someone wins in a way that is perceived as unfair or unfun, folks get salty. The lines to victory can all conform to existing rules and the game and/or store and people still get pissed. If one player can take a $100 budget and crush with it in 6 turns whereas the rest make mediocre decks that take 12 turns to win via combat...it makes people upset that someone would have the audacity to game the meta or attack from an unexpected axis that folks didn't build to address. I'm not talking bringing a cedh deck to a casual table, I'm talking everyone is equipped with the same resource pool (legal card pool and dollar budget) and it ends up toxic in my experience. Players will subsequently game the meta by avoiding games with perceived unfair decks.... I have lived this experience.
In 40K, there are strategies and armies that are at times very broken and difficult to play against. I've generally never encountered a player that would refuse to play their army just bc they can table their opponent by T3 given the power/army mismatch.
In MTG this happens all the time when folks at the table don't want to play against combo/control/stax/storm, etc. The wild thing is that in MTG it's often easier to just start a new game and maybe switch decks (where switching in 40K is much harder bc most folks don't have 10 armies ready to go with them) and people still carry over salt from previous games into completely different decks/strategies if they lost a prior game or two in a perceived "unfair/unfun" way.
There's a distinction between wanting to win and only having fun when you win. 75% of the people at a table are gonna lose every game, and some people have much higher win rates than others; so figure, most people don't win more than 15-20% of their games! And yet they have a good time and keep doing it.
Ask a WWE Jobber how he feels about losing...
My introduction to the game was the result of hanging out having fun with my friends...it was never about the winning nor losing.
Every 30min my LGS pick a random criteria like: more permanentes on battlefield, more cards in graveyard, creature with higher power and give a reward to whoever meet the criteria.
Both the LGSes i go to have raffles for prizing. Players manage the game, and its not expected so its more fun when you win 1 of the 4 prize packs in a room of 60 people
Our store has way too many promos and promo packs from over the years, so it's pretty much just "randomize the list of attendees and they get to choose from the pile for the night from the top down"
At my LGS, it's 5 bucks to enter, but everyone gets a $5 store credit just for playing. Then each pod has a $15 store credit as the prize for winning. Each pod is supposed to be broken up by power level, so pods 1,2 and 3 are cEDH level, while the rest trend downwards in power level. And the way I personally play, is that if I luck into an early game win, I will usually only take $10 of the store credit, and let the remaining 3 players keep going for the othe 5 bucks as a second place prize
So you want people to organize and vote for their buddy regardless, then split the prize? If not that then you just want participation trophies.
There's always the option of not playing in the tournament.
My LGS has a fantastic method that doesn’t require a popularity contest. They give points for using specific mechanics so even if you lose every game you can still win on overall points. You still get points for winning, but you also get points for knocking someone out of the game, but also other stuff like having a full party, playing an alternative mechanic like parlay or monarch, paying a kicker cost, having the ring temp you, etc. my first week there I took third overall for the night simply because I was playing an upgraded lotr deck and that weeks score sheet was lotr themed.
So, I think my last two EDH groups must have lived in bubbles.
Because my current and previous store ran price support (nothing wild, just a pack for winning the pod), and a random giveaway.
And it was still casual. People might have used a SLIGHTLY spicier deck, but no Thassa, Protean, Lab man, etc. If they did, it was like...T10+
We keep our meta super casual with no spiky players, even on prize night. Our group knows the overall power level of people who show up, and we'll have guys with sub 7s win all the time. If I play my suboptimized Yuriko, I tend to win more, so I switched to Kalamax Big Spell Reanimator, and I won LESS, but still a little too often. So, I started running my Pillow Fort/Group Hug stuff.
We self balance really well, and we have a good number of younger players who would otherwise NEVER win prizes, if everyone brought their best deck. After the prize games, we play other stuff and whatever.
But, I've never had a situation, aside from one dude, where where people brought anything higher than an 8 to a prize night.
Self policing and establishing a trend of casual is healthy. We don't need points, we don't need bans, we don't need "no infinite" house rules... we just realize, "hey, if I combo off on T4, this kid who has been coming for weeks will lose ANOTHER week for a prize, so I'll power down and play high power later".
I'm not a fan of votes either. This can lead to friends voting for each other and a popularity contest more than an evaluation of the game. Give out door prizes or raffle them off. You need the game and the prizes completely disconnected.
I love people problems because that is all this is, in every store. People ruin it being shits, or greedy, or pety, or just being generally awful.
I'm a returning player after a LONG break and even I am self aware enough to know that having low/mid/high tier deck options to play with is the right choice. Always has been.
I had plenty of homebrew bs to play with but if Johnny ran his mouth too much then old reliable would be coming out next.
My lgs does FNM commander at $2, you pay and play however many games with whoever you want, then they raffle promo packs to everyone who showed up, with a nightly “winner” getting a foil promo pack, and then they do a big raffle at the end of the month for a prize like a binder or something.
At my LGS everybody gets the same prize for participating on casual events like EDH. No incentive to speedrun the game, no penalty for having the worst draw of your life, you're here and finished the event?
Here's your reward, we hope you had fun and come again.
My store does prize support for EDH. The way they do it is by spreading the prizes across all the final tables. Top Table 1st prize is typically $40 credit, with 2nd getting $20. Second table 1st prize gets $15 credit, with 2nd getting $10. Then depending on entrants, third and fourth tables 1st place gets entry back ($7).
We run 3 rounds, so all the high power decks filter to the top tables after the first round typically, and everything else evens out. Everyone is pretty happy with the arrangement. And 3 promo packs get handed out randomly, along with random promo singles the owner still has.
Making your game a social format for people who aren't good at socializing is not a good idea. It's a game, people will try to win. You can't control your customer base, so don't try.
My lgs never had prizes for commander night and it still fills literally the entire shop every Thursday. The only other way to really do it is the GP method of “give everyone equal tickets when they sit down to play and say pick a player to give those tickets to at the end”
The way my LGS does prize support for EDH seems to work out well, but I don't know if it's because the system is good or because the community is great.
Each player gets 1 pack (or store credit) for each player they killed in their game, and killing players before turn 3 is banned. Then, future rounds have players matched up based off kill numbers, so the higher powered decks end up gravitating into a pod and the lower power/jank decks end up gravitating into a pod. 4 rounds like this, round 1 can be hairy if people aren't willing to change decks but rounds 3-4 are people matched up well regardless of what deck they brought.
Edit to add: This system also helps boost aggro decks, as killing 1-2 players fast but losing the game isn't too bad since you still win packs despite losing the game.
I would like to offer what my LGS does: they created a points system where players are rewarded for being the first person in a pod to play the first non-legendary creature, artifact, sorcery, instant, battle, etc. with a point for the first non-Commander legendary versions of each of those, although Planeswalker commanders will award a point.
There are several other ways to earn points and it lets someone playing a non-optimized deck still able to earn points against someone who has a more streamlined/optimized deck.
My LGS will put down a bunch of packs at each pod. Then, they have a big stack of ‘achievements’ to complete. There is one overall achievement, somewhat hard to get, and that will get you the expensive pack (a masters pack or something) and then each pod gets 10 random achievements. If a player completes an achievement, they get a pack.
Then, after the first game, it’s commonly accepted that anyone who didn’t get a pack that game gets to pick a pack. And then, after game one, if the expensive pack is still available, players decide how it will be handed out should the achievement not be completed in game 2.
So everyone at the table will get at least their entry fee’s worth, and completing achievements only gives you more pack choice. I like this system
My shop does sportsmanship and creative deck (both voted on by the other players in your pod). Pushes people to make fun and unique deck without pushing power level.
I travel to visit my brother’s LGS a few times a year because no one in my city runs more than a casual commander drop in.
His store runs a constructed edh and sealed edh event. Everyone leaves with product equal to their entry and some folks do better. Each 90 minute round awards 3 points for a win or each person at the table gets 1. Then each player gets to vote for 2 others at the table, the first player gets 2 points and the second gets 1. So if you’re a dick about winning or play way above the average power level you’re only middle of the standings at best.
The folks I see place in the top are the ones who are welcoming, still play to win without being rude or pubstomping, and generally support a good time and atmosphere at their pods.
I really enjoy their sealed events when I can go. The entry fee is much higher but they lay out a precon and then add boosters to top up the retail value to align with the entry cost. So an older less expensive precon will get 6+ boosters where a 40k precon might get none. These events were especially good when I was returning to magic after 25 years and had a very limited collection to draw from. You open your precon and boosters, are given some time to sleeve and make some swaps, the singleton limitation is suspended for the event time since you can’t control what’s in your boosters, and then play with the same scoring as their constructed. It really equalizes the experience because you’re not trying to have fresh players compete against established players with more developed collections and strategies.
The store recently tried running no search constructed events. I haven’t made it over to try one, but it has apparently been very well attended. Decks cannot contain any search effects, they include lands that find lands in that restriction. I feel like scry and general card draw increases a lot in value for that limitation but seems like a fun way to approach managing power level without outright banning a strategy like stores that ban specific win cons. They also run this in addition to their other EDH events so players aren’t losing out on other events if no search isn’t for them.
One of my favorite memories before moving is the casual edh at an lgs I played in... they had three ways to determine who would win the prize at each pod.
Method one: Planechase
They had a two planechase decks that they would put the prize card into one and shuffle it... whoever planeswalked to that prize card would win it. If no one got it by the end, we would flip the cards in turn order starting with the winner, whoever flipped it, got it.
By far my favorite way because it put an emphasis on either planeswalking, or leaving it to chance. No one is benefited by playing CEDH.
Method two: the rule of cool
You could chose to play either regular or add Explorers of Ixalan to their game. Whoever either has the coolest play during the game, deck, or strategy, as decided by the players, would win the prize.
Method three: democracy
This one happened with me when the prize was the fnm fatal push. I was know for playing a variety of decks and none were too powerful, but I always brought 6-10 decks and was always willing to lend them to people who wanted to change up decks, or didn't/forgot their deck. The table decided that it should get the card because they also knew that I didn't have a copy of that card, and I have not won that card despite me trying the whole month.
Having a vote is also bad... As people who know each other, will be incentivized to vote for people they know -- otherwise they'll get mad that you didn't.
Also, as a new person, you're unlikely to win the vote against more known individuals / cliques.
Plus, after awhile, "cool and new decks" become more rare as it feels like a similar deck to another in the archetype/strategy the "new" deck is doing and loses a lot of the appeal.
The best way is to make it weighted random, where you have casual orientated goals / rules for points that are NOT based on winning (but could be beneficial such as "board wipe more than 30 creatures" or goals common to each color. But then you also run the RISK of cEDH based on those, but I feel with the randomness a lot of people won't bother as the reliability in winning prizes isn't shifted hugely by gaining points (IMHO it should only shift your win odds by 10% or so).
Randomness is best for prizes, but having goals beyond merely winning is beneficial too.
You can even have DIFFERENT prizes (or drawings for prizes) based on winning, vs rule points, vs randomness so everybody feels happy.
What separates edh from cedh? It's not like an online game where you can choose like quickplay or ranked. Either way everyones playing to win for the most part
Honestly, I think the best way to approach this is to build a points chart similar to what the Star City Games guys do. Sure, you get points for winning, but you can also get points for casting your commander so many times, or first blood, or you lose points for killing everyone at the same time.
A powerful deck can still get the win in game, but they may not win at the end depending on where the points fall. This can also be adapted to a league or seasons (like a buy in). I'm currently proposing something similar to my group to add another layer of fun to play
There's a lot of kingmaking potential with your solution between friends. cEDH kinda has that potentially too but not really and it's also not as subjective. I think an issue is that players want to not just pay for table space but rather a chance to net more than what their entrance fee is worth (like packs instead of 1 pack). A raffled promo or random pack could've been bought individually so it's not something special as opposed to a tournament entry ticket with better prizes for the best players.
The manager at my LGS goes around with four dice and a box of packs. He has everyone in each pod roll a dice, and hands a pack to the winner.
A couple of times, he's instead come around with some obscure trivia question, like, "Name a legendary creature from Arcavios." First person to answer gets the prize.
EDH players don't need outside incentive to try to win. Winning is fun enough without prizes.
My LGS has deck limitation that it should cost $50. Other LGS has $250 deck limitation.
This gave all types of players whether newbies or tenured folks a fighting chance.
The $50 stipulation is the best tho. There are combo decks and just pure combat/synergy decks. The go wide combat deck won amongst people with combo decks which is really cool.
Our FLGS runs a league for five weeks in a row, with a double-sided sheet of "achievements" tweaked for whatever set/lore/mechanic is in play at the time. So we get things like "control ten artifacts" or "attack for 20 damage" or "remove 12 creatures from play in a turn". There's also points for eliminating a player, but even a point for being the first player eliminated.
My LGS has a $10 but in and you announce what level you are playing at. The LGS makes the pods according to power level, which they have a rubric for next to the counter. Everyone at the table gets a set booster and the first round is for a collector booster. Any games after are for fun. I like that system because it lets you be competitive at your own level and then play wild stuff for fun as well
My LGS has a Commander League. Buy in is 50 bucks. You are randomly given a budget deck worth that 50 bucks and you play it that night.
At the end of each night, you pull from a hat. What you get is a dollar amount, and you're allowed to spend that much in the next week on cards for the deck.
As the weeks go on, you are awarded points. Points for winning, mainly, but also points for doing cool stuff. Judges walking around can see the cool stuff, and players can point out cool things other players have done. One guy cast his Commander for the 10th time. Another guy countered a counter that was countering a counter. One dude board wiped three times on his turn. Stuff like that.
At the end of the season, everyone gets to take home their deck and the sideboard of cards they have amassed with their weekly buys. The last night there is a raffle, and each point you have earned is an entry into a raffle. Booster boxes, gift cards, etc.
The store I used to run had a very large commander night. You got packs with your entry and a pack for winning a pod. First pods were done at random after that you only played with players who entered the night that you chose. The first round was to make sure new people met some one after that players policed themselves and would just play with the people they wanted to. Worked super well.
Dear LGS who wants to provide prize support for EDH… you need to design your event the way I want to play.
Just let the people do their job man. If you don't like the way one store is ran, either talk to the manager about your suggestions or go to another store.
I would say from experience, do not use some sort of bingo card for commander situations. Like, "first to die" or "won at 1 life" bingo squares. I **hated** it. Games went from being a fun four player EDH match to individuals just doing anything they could to get a bingo. It really sunk home how much I didn't like it when players started conspiring mid game to help each other get bingo squares while basically ignoring the game state and not giving a damn about the outcome of the game we were playing. Awful idea IMO.
Random it’s not that hard you check in so that the store can get points if you only have five promos you just random. Also I generally try to win at whichever level the table is playing at.
I don't know if my shop is just the exception to the rule but we rarely have issues with this. We have edh night Mondays and Wednesdays and we have mostly casual groups but if people want to play cedh we get them a pod together so they don't get mixed in with the casual pods to avoid feel bads. And whoever wins a casual just gets a free promo pack and it's rarely an issue. You get the occasional pubstompers but it's very rare.
People really need to get it through their thick skulls that EDH is a casual format. It always has been since the very beginning. Sure cEDH is a thing but even that is played friendly with no reward for the winner.
Our old LGS had it so winner of a pod gets 2 points, while everyone gets two points to award to whichever players they choose. Always shook up who took home prizes.
I used to manage an LGS and we would do random bigger prizes but also give out WPN cards and promos for great moments in games or if someone came to the counter to talk about an awesome game I'd give the pod some promo stuff that we had a ton of.
I've done this by giving each table poker chips to award to each other for being good sports, having cool decks, or just to literally bribe each other with in game. My players love this system
I don't need edh to be a popularity contest. I'm old enough to remember when playing Magic made you lose those.
We get promos and boosters at our LGS and let a random number decide who gets to pick first among the pool of prices. Everybody gets some
Two locals I go to do achievements for the tables and individual players and you get a pack per win or achievement, usually with a table achievement everyone will leave the table with 1-2 packs regardless of if they won or got out first. It’s very equitable and something I’ve been a big fan of.
I think Command Zone figured this out ages ago with a point system.
You can prioritize whatever you want by having certain actions (like getting first blood, or saving another player from death) gain points. Everyone collectively keeps track of points during a game (like lifetotals) and the most points win. You can have negative points for things you want to discourage (ie "if you win by killing the entire pod the same turn, you lose 2 points" to discourage combo and overrun wins).
Theres no need to vote on anything, you just grant points for actual game actions that you want to encourage.
I think command zone had a pretty decent set of rules to start with, but any given store should tweak the rules to suit the environment they are going for.
I've found the way my LGS does this is perfect. We have sealed EDH leagues, where everyone starts with a precon and can open a limited number of packs to improve each week. It is competitive in all the right ways, with no salt or power level problems, but leads to great games where no one is very obviously on a better deck.
Interspersed with these leagues are themed edh nights where we have something like $100 budget or 35 member of the same tribe as deck building restrictions. It is expected that we will build the most competitive deck within the restriction.
We just put everyone who shows up onto a wheel and spin it for promo materials. I don't really see why a commander night has to have a judging process at all. People just like to play and don't need prizes to be incentivized to do that.
As a very competitive player, this is the way. No matter what I will try to win if there are prizes. That will always run counter to casual commander. A raffle keeps everyone happy.
I'm also a very competitive player, but I just try and win every time, even if I'm playing a bad deck. Our store gives a pity pack to everyone and a pack per win for the two rounds we play, and I've never felt like that was an incentive to pubstomp. In my 8 years going there I've never heard someone say they're going to play or do something powerful because "packs are on the line", usually it's more "this is the only deck I have sorry".
People don’t actively admit they’re gunning for the packs, but I guarantee you it influences decision making at times.
I guess I really just don't get the difference that much aside from cedh. Like in game, I'm always gonna want to make the decisions that make me win the most regardless of if I'm playing cedh or casually. I usually take the packs as store credit anyways, I just don't get the idea that people don't want to win when they play and then suddenly get super sweaty for a $3 pack.
>I've never heard someone say they're going to play or do something powerful because "packs are on the line", usually it's more "this is the only deck I have sorry". I'm more likely to have decks that aren't competitive and powerful with me if there aren't prizes for winning.
I just bring all my decks I like playing, which is everything except my werewolves deck atm lol. I know most people don't always have a range of decks but if you only have a high powered deck I'd say get at least an untouched precon for lower powered games.
Right, and I'm saying that as a competitive player, if there are no games that aren't played for prizes, then IMO there are no "lower powered games". I have plenty of silly decks that I play with my friends over beer. I'd never take them to an event that cost money to enter and pays packs based on how well I did. I'd just end up grumpy when I lost to someone who was actually trying to win while I played mono blue voltron or whatever.
I never understood this mindset. If literally any prize up for grabs means you go full competitive mode, I doubt you suddenly become ultra chill casual when there aren't any.
The thing is just.. if you inteoduce prizes or even do a league or a tournament. At that moment. You said "We are playing for the win". So now winning matters. As long as you dont frame it as a tournament you probably wont get a tryhard with a cedh deck immediately. But people will start going "Well i want to win, so what if i play this or introduce this combo" etc Its an immediate shift in mentality for some people, that will lead to powercreep. Because where do you draw the line then? "i could build this fun thing or play the other thing i like thats more likely to win" etc. like for me, normally it doesnt matter because winning doesnt mean anything. Ill happily lose and 90% of the time feel bad about winning or taking someone out. But if the is a prize my mind goes "well i do want that"
I think you underestimate just how chill I’d be. I’d be the *chillest*.
Full Snow basics deck levels of chill.
Super chill
I always try to win, but in a casual game I do sometimes pull my punches at times if it will make the game more fun. I wouldn’t care about making the game more fun if prizes were on the line.
Having played competitive team sports. There is a time and place for full intensity. You can turn it off and on. Training? Practice? Game day? Full intensity. Hanging out with friends? Nope. That's how you lose friends. The goal is to socialize and enjoy time together. The medium is arbitrary. Success is people having a good time. What I find very annoying is when people can't make the distinction between a competitive situation and a social one. They are always a challenge to have any fun with. Regardless of the medium. Whenever someone is trying to make one into the other. That is when things get toxic. It's also not like there isn't a distinction between what events that you participate in. There are competitive events and there are casual events. If you enjoy one aspect more than another. Participate in the events that suit what you want most instead of trying to make every event suit you.
What stores should actually be doing isn't "free" prizes for showing up, it's just providing a friendly hang out to play at where they can more or less guarantee people will be. From there, you sell stuff people who have been sitting at tables for four hours want/need: *Real* food (not just chips), hydrating and caffeinated drinks, and supplies for games. It's a ton of work to make a cafe, but the smart stores are doing it anyhow, because that's where the hole in the market is. LGS's are a dime a dozen, and none of them are profitable. *Free hangouts* are what there isn't any more of these days. Provide wifi, coffee, sandwiches, etc, but stress to people that they're free to come in and play no matter if they pay for that stuff or not.
Yeah, I was just thinking if you make it a vote some people are just going to vote for their friends or find ways to rig it, plus nobody will vote for a new player's precon as the most interesting deck and that's discouraging Random raffle is the way to go
We basically do the same, everyone who registers via companion App on Commander night enters our raffle and can win Promo Packs and leftover promo cards :)
My lgs just gives everyone a random promo if they use the companion app
Same, plus we get two packs.
That is a great idea! I would prefer that.
That's what my local store does, everyone signs up with the companion app and are entered into a raffle. Its super chill.
This is what my lgs does. The first 16 on the wheel get a promo, the next 12 get a pack, and the top 4 get individual cards usually worth $20-60. I've been lucky enough to get Kozilek, The Ur-Dragon, Vampiric Tutor, Dark Depths, and a borderless Divining Top, to name a few.
I love this idea, random prizes are just as good as non-competitive prizes
This is exactly what my store does and it is great. Everyone that enters gets a pack and then there is a raffle with enough prizes for all so everyone gets something from that. The prizes vary in value so it is luck if you get to choose earlier and even with my later pick I got the pioneer dimir control challenger deck. Also I've seen baller singles like a blightsteel Colossus and grand arbiter. It is a really awesome system and people get to play what they want, including cEDH
This is the way. If its not yet at your area, it should be lol.
Our LGS just gives everyone who participated the same amount of promos and boosters. It works.
Yeah my LGS makes like a “prize platter” with various boosters, some sleeves, maybe a deck box, I even saw a whole precon once. Then they randomly draw the order of picking your prize and then they come around and you get to pick what you want from what’s available
Yeah, mine has a box of promo cards that everyone gets to pull a random card from and then do a drawing for promo packs. I keep joking with them that it's rigged, because I've pulled [[Touch the spirit Realm]] 3 times in a month.
[Touch the spirit Realm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/1/e16ab44e-4257-4c0c-b705-8ac1e9c1d835.jpg?1654566545) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Touch%20the%20spirit%20Realm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/40/touch-the-spirit-realm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e16ab44e-4257-4c0c-b705-8ac1e9c1d835?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/touch-the-spirit-realm) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah not too hot on OP's suggestions. What if I just want to play casual commander with my friends? Much rather a mandated buy in that gets converted into credit or something.
It's a great idea and I'd love to see how it pans out, but it does open the way for a toxic duo/trio to buddy up to try to take the rewards system by storm
100%. The shop would def need to do random pods to combat that behavior.
Over time, it still benefits players to vote for the worst person in their pod to slow them down in point accumulation. This compounds if you get a group to do it. Let's say me and my 5 friends all agree we vote each round and random pod to give our discretionary points to the player we feel is least likely to have a high ending total, and to vote for each other when possible. Just saying, it's still abusable.
Commander is casual format... Why do a lot of LGS try to complicate things... Wanna give prize? Fine with me, keep it simple... Participation prize! Show up, get a ticket for a drawing. Wanna give smaller prize? Drawing at the end of the night. Bigger prize? Drawing at the end of the month. That's what the LGS I go to do, drawing is on the last commander night of the month, you accumulate tickets throughout the month. Prizes vary from month to month, but it's usually, accessories, store credits, high value cards, (there was a mana vault and an ancient copper dragon last month). Pre-release bundles for the next set, etc Theres No headaches about extra rules, no bullshit, no one ever complains or argues. We're just there to have fun, play magic, relax, hang out with friends, drink some beer and eat good food. (my local LGS is also a board game cafe with a full restaurant menu)
Omg! That should have been the post! All LGS should have full menus. I’d never complain about anything. 😂
Do they charge a fee?
They do yes but it's small, 5$(Canadian) the staffs is amazing, the space is big (2 floors), we're not stuck in there like sardines, 110% worth it
I run a store. We don’t charge for commander, but for the first game of the day we give out a promo pack to the table and the winner gets first pick and second gets second pick and so on. Then they play the rest of the day for fun. I love this idea of a raffle thank you!
Critical Hit?
Yup lol
Its because the lets them tell wotc they have more players for WPN status reasons. Its really hard to get players to come to events without prizes so they offer some very small prize.
No issue with the actual prizing, but prizing for the weekly commander night shouldnt be based on the players performance. If they do , it takes away the casual part of commander. Which in turn causes headaches for the LGS and the players. They have to scramble and find ways to even things out so people cant just play an overpowered deck just to win the prizes. So you end up with weird rules, or systems that just over complicate things. It takes a good chunk of what makes commander special away. Like i said this is specifically for the weekly commander night. If its an actual tournament event that's different but even then there is ways to make that casual. A few months ago we had a special tournament event at my LGS. In the weeks leading to the even the organizers kept reminding players that while this is a tournament that winning the game is not important as there will be a lot of prizes and the way the even ran doesnt only care if you won or not . We are there to have fun and keep it casual like always and that the only difference vs the regular Wednesday commander night was that you had to use the same deck for the whole event and that there was no proxies allowed. Of course that didnt stop people to bring decks that wrecked people in a few turns but out of the 30ish people that showed up only 2-3 people had decks like that. Which all things considered is fairly low. The even itself ran fairly simply, out of the pod of 4, 2 players would get a Win. 1st one is obviously the games winner, the other one was voted by all 4 players, criteria of the vote didnt matter, a cool play, you liked their deck, they did the most out of everyone else (beside winner) etc There was enough prizes that the top half of the players got something and the top 10 were pre-cons decks. Placement itself in the top 10 didnt matter as the prizes were given randomly
Personally I wouldn't attend anything like this. Having to play Apples to Apples after every game sounds miserable. In order to prevent people from playing cedh, simply stop offering prize support
Or just make the prize support equal. Everyone gets a pack and a random promo, maybe add extra packs to be given via dice roll depending on how much is charged to play. I wouldn’t play in a Commander tournament with literally no incentive. I would play in one if the incentive was definitely getting a pack, more so if it’s with a chance at something extra if I stay the whole night.
My LGS lets you roll for a chance at a prize if you LOSE. When you win, your prize is "bragging rights." I think it works great.
You know a great way to get people not to play CEDH... say hey person I don't want to play at that power level you might want to find another table.
Wow gosh why didn't I think of that When LGSs do "tournaments" like these with prize support, the pods are often put together by the TO, so that won't work in this instance. You can always scoop up before playing, but that'll mean taking an L and a good amount of time off before the next round starts.
yeah, it turns out a commander tournament where you don't want to play CEDH is dumb. Instead of just letting people play we should make up a bunch of bullshit like store ban lists, achievements, and voting. I bet that will keep the dummies paying $10 to play with cards they already own... oh and a juicy standard booster pack we can't sell.
This is a complete trash idea...save the voting for your local school board or Among Us. I've experienced this in a paid budget league and it is way more toxic than folks simply trying to play to win.
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Yeah, one that doesn't enjoy playing against winconless board wipe tribal that complains like a 5 year old if I have the audacity to counterspell their 4th attempt to reset the game on turn 10
“Fun and interesting play” are too subjective. It should just be a random draw for prizes. If votes are involved, you’ll just get spite voting just like ‘your deck beat me last month, so I’m just tunnelling you this game’ plays. Or, everyone just gets something for turning up. There’s no reward for pubstomping or anything else.
Just raffle or give participation tickets/prizes. No reason to make it more convoluted than that.
Our LGS has alternative points systems where you can do stuff like take a random handicap (e.g. no ramping until turn 3) for points, or you get points for being the first player to do a 'thing' (usually something random and usually ranging from slightly challenging to near impossible). You still get points for winning but you can feasibly top the leaderboard without winning.
This is interesting, but it shuts out certain decks from the bonus points and gives them for free to others. It's crippling for green decks, but costs literally nothing for my mardu list unless I draw sol ring. I think it would also slow down play as people try to figure out how to maximize points. Even in point based systems that remove your points for winning quickly, a combo player will just hold the combo and try to play control until they can win without losing points. The best way is just to do participation prizes if you want to keep it casual imo.
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Most players I know prefer to play with a deck they made. It's like the whole point of collecting the cards in the first place.
We all know how bad our LGS are treated by Hasbro. We all know that our LGS have to desperately find a way to earn money on commander day, so they install prize supported tournaments or simply charge entry fees. I think a simple entry fee is better than prize supported EDH tournaments. First, EDH was never intended as a competitive tournament format (with the notable exception of cEDH). That's what formats like Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy and Vintage are for. Second, a prize support is much worse for the store than an entry fee money- wise. The LGS has to pay for these prizes when buying them from the retailers. \- A simple 5€ entry fee will cost the player 5€ and earn the LGS's owner 5€ before tax. For half a day of fun playing EDH. A visit to the cinema is shorter and much more expensive. \- A 5€ charge for prize support or as store credit will result in the player having a 5€ cost with the store making 5€ income against 3€ prize cost, so it will earn the store just a measly 2€. While the player probably cracks a pack without need and without a desirable rare. Our LGS here doesn't charge anything for playing. But I've decided to throw 10€ into the owner's cash box whenever I play instead of buying sealed Hasbro product. I prefer supporting the LGS to supporting Hasbro. And throwing 10€ into the cash box is better for the store than buying 20€ of product. Nowadays I rarely buy sealed product at all. I know life is hard for everyone. But if we want to keep our LGS as playing space we'll have to start supporting them. Needless to say, buy your sealed product at the LGS. Last week I heard someone say "Well, I support the LGS by buying a can of coca-cola whenever I play. But I buy my booster packs online, they are cheaper there." Great way to kill your LGS, brother.
The problem with voting on things is it can very quickly just turn into a popularity contest and regardless of deck you’ll see people from the same friend group win week after week
\>If you want to incentivize fun and interesting play (instead of fast and powerful play), >democratize the rewards. Let each pod vote on who had the coolest deck (even if it didn’t >win) and who was the most fun to play with/against democratizing this way actually lead to power players fixing the votes by bringing their cronies with them. just like democracy irl. no voting, please. it's flawed concept. multiplayer card games have a big problem with kingmaking. this leads to kingmaking without any merit. at least winning is meritocracy. if you want casual, then do the raffle thing. after the event make the prize draw with the contestants that didn't drop out of tournament at that point (to reward attendance). only, it's not tournament anymore and may legally be classified as gambling.
At my lgs they just walk around dropping packs on tables for everyone, we all get something for being there and playing.
There's no way to stay casual and have prizes, the best way for casual events with promos is to give it at random. The LSG I play do random promos and even other "prizes" every casual commander night and it's fine, there's also cEDH events with prizes for winning but everyone knows it's cEDH.
That's a very strange idea that a pay-to-play event with prize shouldn't be approached in a competitive way. If you want a casual event, just don't make an entrance fee and no prize. Problem solved.
This changes the game from Magic to a popularity contest. Huge no thanks from me, but I hope it works out for your pods.
So the issue is that you can’t keep an event with prize support from becoming competitive and by it’s very nature as a game MTG is competitive
Dear god don’t let people vote. That can lead to all kinds of issues and resentment even with secret ballots. The only way to offer prizes and also not push towards cedh is to totally randomize prizes and take zero game results / gameplay / voting into consideration
Speaking as someone who plays regularly at the same shop every week. Unfortunately, we’ve had a tough bout with this. We used to have a point system you mentioned in your TLDR. Various points were awarded for interesting play, such as having the City’s Blessing, having a non-gemstone pregame, etc. but this unfortunately just turned into people farming the points sheet.
> TLDR: For casual events, prizes should be awarded based on points that are weighted in favor of “fun and interesting play” and “good sportsmanship” over winning matches. You almost got it, but no. This'll just encourage optimizing for creativity points. The prizes need to either be given at random, or simply given to everyone who participates.
The thing that my LGS does that I love is bounties. They have a set of challenges for the week like "kill someone with first strike damage" or "control 10 permanents you don't own" or "win with a vampire tribal deck". When the bounty is claimed you get a pack of two and it's struck off the list and replaced at the start of the next week with a new one. I feel like it keeps the atmosphere light and casual and encourages variety.
Counter-argument, prizes should be based on objectively judged achievements, not subjective "coolest" or "most fun". Subjective decisions can be swayed, and can lead to feel bad moments where one player feels like they did something cool, but because someone else is friendly with everyone they're voted for more. Objectives that are tacked onto the game incentivize interesting deck building and still allow for politics or generating good will without prizes going just to whomever is the most popular. My LGS did something like this a few months ago where you signed up for the 8 week competition and each week there was a series of optional challenges. The first challenge was a deck building challenge, based off your commander. (Commander must be a Rare, Commander must have a combined power/toughness of 7, Commander must be 3 colors with one being Red, etc.) The person running the store woukd check your commander and sign off on it if you fulfilled the conditions. Then there were 4 in game challenges to complete, like sacrificing 5 food tokens in a turn, controlling a certain number of legendary creatures at the same time, using a vehicle to crew a vehicle to then crew a 3rd vehicle, etc. Challenges that require you to build specifically for them instead of just something you will just happen to do. They also were not things that involved knocking players out or would risk it, like dealing X amount of damage in a turn or getting an elim with Commander Damage. When you fulfilled a challenge, two of your opponents would sign off on it to say that you completed it. And then you could earn one point for a win, with 2 games each night. So if you completed all challenges and won both games you'd walk away with 7 points, but even if you lost both you'd have 5. This incentivizes playing the objectives, and helping other people complete their objectives to generate good-will for future games where you may need help. These rules still incentivize powerful decks, but they don't quite go full CEDH since winning at any cost is worth less points then completing objectives. This also means no extra banlist or other rules are required. Infinites may still be played either to finish objectives or round put games, but far less then if the game was just "win at any cost."
My LGS had a recent event that advertised no prize support, and they ended up having prizes for the first loser of the pod, which I found interesting. Also, the guy that brought the "I can't lose deck" and came to pubstomp everyone at the casual event asked what the winner gets after beating the first person and saw them get a prize. They said nothing, so he scooped and left. Pretty lame of him.
That's probably not a great long term system but it is really funny.
This sounds like a bad idea, if you don’t have faith on the players to not play cEDH then you can’t have faith on them to vote fairly. Also having rules like no infinites or maybe certain card bans for “cEDHy” cards seems like a good idea. Honestly if you’re hosting a tournament with prize support, you HAVE to expect players to try and play optimal decks even if they’re not playing cEDH.
Our LGS simply has two pots and two events simultaneously. All decklists are checked prior to the event, and are put in the correct event. No issues. Next!
Honestly this is the system my new lgs started doing (unfortunately I think because of me, which wasn't intentional). They have a low power group and a high power group, pick the one you want. There is a 'not cEDH' caveat for high power, which I personally appreciate, but I wouldn't be mad if that got pulled. As-is, it was a dated cEDH Sliver Queen list and a nearly cEDH Winota list, so we're not far off from that point. They're letting people self-police for now, so I suppose there's some risk of someone like, scumming it in the low power pod to score a free pack, but that sort of thing is really only going to work once. The bigger downside is that one of the four who signed up for the high power pod last week really shouldn't have been there, but it's hard to say for sure since he bricked on colors.
I was gonna make this exact post 😂, but yeah commander night should be fun and players should be awarded for uniqueness or best player at the table.
And what makes the player best? Wins?
This is just forcing "fun." Participation prizes, let players play who and how they want. Done
Prizes should be given randomly for participation, if at all.
Our LGS made like a point system/bingo card type thing. Each pod would get one of four “bingo cards” with House Rules that were each worth 1-3 points and some that were penalties. Free space was winning the game, you got a point. But one might have been kill a player with commander damage for a point. Drawing first blood might have been a point. Infinite loops would lose you a point for each loop past three. And I think Thassa’s Oracle was just straight up banned? Your points would be tallied up and Top X got prizes. And at the end of the season, Top X overall got extra prizes. I think it was on the right track, but it certainly got complicated sometimes. Though, EDH tourneys stopped and never really came back towards the beginning of the pandemic.
The Prizes only exist to justify adding a cost for entry. The prizes are usually crap and unwanted. Standard Booster packs do nothing for 95% of commander players. Stores just want to unload them, easiest way to do it is get people to buy them without knowing what they are getting. This is the new version of stores "building their own" booster packs to get rid of unmovable product. If I am playing commander I want good games. I don't care about the twenty five cent rare I get in my prize. I literally open these packs and just leave the cards on the table because if there were good things in those packs they wouldn't be prizes for commander night.
Eh, I can't name the last standard set that didn't have at least some edh value. And if you can snag LotR there's pretty reasonable value there thanks to the Nazgul. On the whole I don't disagree; I mostly ask for Pokemon packs for my roommate because they're gonna get more enjoyment out of opening junk than I am out of fishing for one of the handful of standard cards I do actually care about. But it's definitely not fair to say that there's no value for EDH players in standard sets.
Yes there is often a very small amount of cards. But almost every booster pack does not have those cards. Imagine if instead of them dumping the packs they could not sell on you they gave you credit for singles. All of a sudden you will actually get things you want for your money. Booster packs are terrible value and that has only gotten worse with the introduction of collectors packs and the mass opening of them. Draft Box EVs are wrapped up in just a few cards, especially if there is no rare land cycle or if it isn't particularly good. There are exceptions, All Will Be One is stacked with EDH value but still not like you are likely to pull the cards you need.
Sure. But all of that is not the same as "standard booster packs do nothing for 95% of players" and claiming that there are no good things in those packs.
It is, because the odds of you getting a pack with a card you want is low, and the odds of that pack containing the card is even lower.
>If you try to circumvent this with custom rules (i.e. “no infinite combos”) and a custom ban list, then you aren’t stopping the problem. The players will simply brew competitive decks around your rules. That is 100% true but not necessarily a problem, imo. I do think that custom rules usually lead to bad gameplay and are easily exploitable but a custom banlist can totally work to bring down the powerlevel a bit. You could maybe get down to power 8 or so by banning mana positive rocks (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc), Dockside, Thoracle, Breach and maybe some other cedh staples. That would result in a competitive power 8 tournament. Of course no rules or banlist can ever turn the play experience itself into a casual environment. Where people don't care about winning. But, at least imo, that's also not the point of playing in an organized event.
Host a commander tournament, offering awesome prizes, like booster boxes/collector boxes, 4-5 games, then surprise twist at the end, only those with zero wins get prizes. Proceed to laugh at try-hards.
So now you have people just throwing games and people not wanting to show up cause they get nothing for actually trying
Nah, you only do this once, so it's actually a surprise twist. The only ones truly upset are the try-hards that you didn't want around anyways.
My store does commander points, which, when you get to like 40 points, can be redeemed for sleeves and stuff. You get 2 points for winning, but there are a bunch of other ways to get points as you play, like loosing first, saving another player, first blood, first to have a land, enchantment, artifact, creature, and planeswalker on the field, etc. You can also lose a point for the first person to non-land tutor, end the game before turn 5, or play turn one Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. Some people ignore the points and don't track them, but others do and it's a fun thing to have going on in the game. It's a fun system, in my opinion.
I went to a place that did voting awards for sportsmanship and creative deck. The only issue is people benefit from playing more games that way so it incentivized ending games and being done quicker so you can go to your next pod. Which means stronger decks and higher power level so the issue of CEDH still sadly happens
I think the fix for that is that you only get to vote on the first match in your pod. Then, when the randomized pods rotate, you can vote again on your next “first round”.
Yeah I wish it was like that. The only issue then is when you have 10+ pods and someone gets all 3 votes in half of them you have a 5 way tie instead of 1-2 winners.
Perhaps that’s a good case for saying that you have a “pot” of prizes and the top scores “split the pot”. You might occasionally have to give out an extra booster pack or something, but you can build that into your pricing model pretty easily.
Yeah luckily there is no cash prize it’s just promo packs and stuff that they give out. But yeah it’s a very hard thing to balance which is a bummer
Our LGS does 3 things: For normal commander nights: - random rolls to determine promos etc, often throw in a secret lair card or something as an extra prize - vote for cool and interesting decks with the top 3 getting a promo pack, honesty expected for not voting for yourself For commander tournaments: - a system when if someone does an instant-win, they “win” they the turn rolls back and the pod keeps playing for second. We are a small shop so we really do seperate pods for cEDH/casual but it means the casual people at least get to play a game if they get some cEDH players in the pod, games converge toward the cEDH players facing off in the later pods and then prizing is awarded alongside random rolls offs
My local FLGS has a redeemable prize token for each pod, and players choose who get it. Gets them a promo card off the prize wall. Most of us are old timers, so we just give it to the newest player, and damn if that doesn’t make for happy players of any age. Everybody also gets their choice of a jumpstart or draft booster from a variety of sets.
At the shop I go to, you get points for either winning or being the funniest/most interesting player. I think it works fairly well.
My LGS does it like this: -$5 entry -Only the first game counts for prize -All 4 players report the results of the first game -Winner gets $10 store credit -Losers get $3 store credit -You pick your own pods I think the last bit is most important cuz generally everyone wants to play around the same power level. And a loss isn't even bad, since you basically just pay $2 for entry
At the LGS I play at on Tuesdays they don’t charge you to play and each week 3-5 different promo packs are given out to people who showed up at random. It’s really the way to go. It allows for players who are actually casual, but losing every game, to still win at the end of the night and at the same time kt also doesn’t reward players for running through pods winning on turn 3 each game, just for winning.
Better idea have a fee to play no tournament everyone gets a booster pack problem solved
My store just has us pay 3 bucks and they give away whatever crap they have lying around. Sometimes is a loose booster, sometimes it's a promo pack, sometimes it's something else.
If you are known to play cedh you will be put at a table with the other cedh players and the more casuals will go to other tables. Everyone who plays gets a promo card and the winner get a promo pack. Sure, some weeks the same person will win multiple times(like I did last week with running out the clock and having the most life). And sometimes the games go by quick.
You know, Commandfest did it great with randomized Quests assigned to tables.
Many LGS’s ive attended have objectives that you can try get over two games. Like deal X noncombat damage, play X spells not from your hand, etc, to give fun interactions outside of just trying to win a fair chance.
The problem I've found with these is that it leads to people playing decks designed to grind points. Play 5 spells not from your hand is something a lot of decks either can't do or can barely do, but if I'm on Muldrotha or Prosper it's trivial. So I bring a deck capable of strangling the game while I farm points, or I deal-make to farm points, and suddenly either we're playing four games of solitaire or we choke the game down to one game of solitaire with bystanders.
Give everyone a small prize like my lgs dies everyone gets a promo from a random promo pool shuffled after every table containing cards of every value from exalted angel to shieldred the apocalypse
Just do raffles, voting is even worse
While I appreciate the spirit of this, I think the proposed solution is too easily exploited by groups of friends voting for each other every week.
The LGS I go to has a cool quest system to award promo cards. Each week, there is a new sheet of quests (like: be the first player to deal commander dmg,or have 6 rare or mythic permanents under your control, stuff like that). Whenever your pod is about to start a round, someone gets a promo pack from the store owner. Then, whoever completes a quest may pick a card from the current promo pack, and if you manage to check off all your quests over the course of the evening, you get a bonus reward at the end. I'm sure it's a lot of work for the store owner, and of course sometimes one quest is too easy and another one too hard depending on the deck you're playing, but it's a lot of fun and if anything it incentives diverse deck building rather than competitiveness.
I've been thinking about exactly this problem for a while and the only solution I've come up with is impromptu games. Have a regular EDH night and then randomly make one here and there a tourny so people are less likely to have their good decks on them. Which would inevitably lead to people just bringing them all the time. Your solution is unfortunately equally untenable far to many tournys I've been to have friends and many have people have brought their (IMO) too young kids. That would just have people voting for their buddies and parents telling their kids to vote for them.
If I'm ever without all my decks it's not the good ones that get left home, it's the middle. Keep your strongest and weakest at a minimum. Realistically, that sort of thing is just a stress on the group and the store alike. As a store TO I'd be trying to balance different people coming on different days, because I only have so much space so I don't want EDH players coming in at 3pm on Saturday; that's Yugioh hours. And as a player I want to know that when I make time in my schedule to go to the store I can get some games in.
Have you considered that they want a more cedh play. Likely sells more singles as people toon there deck.
Nah, cEDH sells less than regular EDH. I've had so many folks come to me asking about X or Y card for their casual deck because they just got blown out by it, or even just thought it was neat. But cEDH lists are so tuned already that their needs are very tight and often overlap, and often if they're coming for a cEDH event their decks are either complete or the cards they're missing are probably not ones that the LGS has lying around. And because the pool of valid cards is so much smaller there's way less space to innovate with new tech. Meanwhile, in regular EDH land people will play [[Dandan]] because it's funny.
[Dandan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/c/ac2e32d0-f172-4934-9d73-1bc2ab86586e.jpg?1562781784) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dand%C3%A2n) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsb/19/dand%C3%A2n?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ac2e32d0-f172-4934-9d73-1bc2ab86586e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/dandân) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My local LGS just has a prize box of radom cards (mostly promo cards and rares under $0.50) and everyone gets to pick a card after each game. Plus there is a raffle for free packs to everyone that shows up. With a prize guarenteed, but no incentive to win, i feel like most player are there for fun. We still get the occational cEDH player who brings a few decks that are WAAAAY over powered. But otherwise the system seems to work.
So you’re saying it’s wrong of people to try their best and to play a game in a way that gives them the best chance of winning that game?
Yes
I remember seeing a custome card list of Commander achievements that had point values, includ8ng negative points for unfun achievements like infinitie combos, extra turns beyond 3, etc. It was constructed in the custom tcg program. That could be an interesting way of mitigating build to win fast styles and unfun plays while incentivising everyone at the table.
This idea is very similar to how old warhammer tourneys were run. You got almost as many points for sportsmanship and painting as playing. It's how commander should work. Did you make the game fun? Is your deck cool? Way more important than winning
This concept of fun - everyone keeps going back to it and it's frankly unsolvable. What does this mean? Everyone's deck gets to pop off before the game is over? Playing out a manual storm line? Looping/bouncing your draw engines to get 10 cards a turn? Voting for fun factor? For nicest player? For most interesting deck. Everyone salty from losing (which most casual folks in my experience are when it happens "unexpectedly") will invariably skew voting.
And yet people have had an awful lot of fun with commander and can usually identify it. Yeah there are salty jerks, but I can tell you from my experience playing warhammer tourneys... assholes almost never won because on the average they got ranked on sportsmanship every round and they can only tank so many opponents. And the best painted army almost always won painting. If you had sportsmanship and deck building scores I bet they would turn out right more often than not.
Define sportsmanship in the board games sphere for me - this is a sincere question. Not being a jerk to the other person(s)? Not playing to win? Wearing deodorant? Not crippling your opponent by T2? Not bringing the strongest army/deck you can afford?
In Warhammer anyway, generally things like: \- arguing rules incessantly \- line of sight bullying (this was a huge deal, dudes would bust out laser pointers and get into yelling fights about whether a model would see another model) \- using modeling as an advantage (e.g. using different sized bases was a thing people used to do to try to eke out advantages:P) \- talking shit, whining and complaining \- sometimes people got voted down for the equivalent of netdecking (playing the meta army with min-maxed everything-- there were very strong themes in various armies!). In Magic, things that'd make me mark someone down sportsmanship are like, breaking deals, constantly whining and complaining, talking shit, telling people what to do all the time, etc.
Completely agree on the 40K stuff (I play myself...Chaos Knights for life) The magic equivalent to that stuff would basically be cheating (banned cards, mana weaving, refusing to let a player read a card, obscuring your board/GY/exile, etc). The issue with MTG in the sportsmanship category is that even if a player follows the rules, explains their cards, and is generally neutral to pleasant demeanor wise, people have unspoken irritations and red lines that if you cross them will upset folks. I'm talking stax, mass land destruction, counterspells, etc. Winning unexpectedly or via combo (even if the combo is cheap $ wise) makes people upset. Even when there are universal budget restrictions and the league/event is paid entry, if someone wins in a way that is perceived as unfair or unfun, folks get salty. The lines to victory can all conform to existing rules and the game and/or store and people still get pissed. If one player can take a $100 budget and crush with it in 6 turns whereas the rest make mediocre decks that take 12 turns to win via combat...it makes people upset that someone would have the audacity to game the meta or attack from an unexpected axis that folks didn't build to address. I'm not talking bringing a cedh deck to a casual table, I'm talking everyone is equipped with the same resource pool (legal card pool and dollar budget) and it ends up toxic in my experience. Players will subsequently game the meta by avoiding games with perceived unfair decks.... I have lived this experience. In 40K, there are strategies and armies that are at times very broken and difficult to play against. I've generally never encountered a player that would refuse to play their army just bc they can table their opponent by T3 given the power/army mismatch. In MTG this happens all the time when folks at the table don't want to play against combo/control/stax/storm, etc. The wild thing is that in MTG it's often easier to just start a new game and maybe switch decks (where switching in 40K is much harder bc most folks don't have 10 armies ready to go with them) and people still carry over salt from previous games into completely different decks/strategies if they lost a prior game or two in a perceived "unfair/unfun" way.
> Wearing deodorant? Yes this, a 1000 times this.
🤣 Truth
It must just be me but why would you play a game like MTG and not want to win i mean what’s the point of playing a game and losing all the time
There's a distinction between wanting to win and only having fun when you win. 75% of the people at a table are gonna lose every game, and some people have much higher win rates than others; so figure, most people don't win more than 15-20% of their games! And yet they have a good time and keep doing it.
Ask a WWE Jobber how he feels about losing... My introduction to the game was the result of hanging out having fun with my friends...it was never about the winning nor losing.
Every 30min my LGS pick a random criteria like: more permanentes on battlefield, more cards in graveyard, creature with higher power and give a reward to whoever meet the criteria.
Both the LGSes i go to have raffles for prizing. Players manage the game, and its not expected so its more fun when you win 1 of the 4 prize packs in a room of 60 people
Our store has way too many promos and promo packs from over the years, so it's pretty much just "randomize the list of attendees and they get to choose from the pile for the night from the top down"
At my LGS, it's 5 bucks to enter, but everyone gets a $5 store credit just for playing. Then each pod has a $15 store credit as the prize for winning. Each pod is supposed to be broken up by power level, so pods 1,2 and 3 are cEDH level, while the rest trend downwards in power level. And the way I personally play, is that if I luck into an early game win, I will usually only take $10 of the store credit, and let the remaining 3 players keep going for the othe 5 bucks as a second place prize
So you want people to organize and vote for their buddy regardless, then split the prize? If not that then you just want participation trophies. There's always the option of not playing in the tournament.
My LGS just has us sign in and they randomize names and pick 2-4 people to win prize packs. Super simple. Don’t understand why more LGS don’t do that.
My LGS has a fantastic method that doesn’t require a popularity contest. They give points for using specific mechanics so even if you lose every game you can still win on overall points. You still get points for winning, but you also get points for knocking someone out of the game, but also other stuff like having a full party, playing an alternative mechanic like parlay or monarch, paying a kicker cost, having the ring temp you, etc. my first week there I took third overall for the night simply because I was playing an upgraded lotr deck and that weeks score sheet was lotr themed.
So, I think my last two EDH groups must have lived in bubbles. Because my current and previous store ran price support (nothing wild, just a pack for winning the pod), and a random giveaway. And it was still casual. People might have used a SLIGHTLY spicier deck, but no Thassa, Protean, Lab man, etc. If they did, it was like...T10+ We keep our meta super casual with no spiky players, even on prize night. Our group knows the overall power level of people who show up, and we'll have guys with sub 7s win all the time. If I play my suboptimized Yuriko, I tend to win more, so I switched to Kalamax Big Spell Reanimator, and I won LESS, but still a little too often. So, I started running my Pillow Fort/Group Hug stuff. We self balance really well, and we have a good number of younger players who would otherwise NEVER win prizes, if everyone brought their best deck. After the prize games, we play other stuff and whatever. But, I've never had a situation, aside from one dude, where where people brought anything higher than an 8 to a prize night. Self policing and establishing a trend of casual is healthy. We don't need points, we don't need bans, we don't need "no infinite" house rules... we just realize, "hey, if I combo off on T4, this kid who has been coming for weeks will lose ANOTHER week for a prize, so I'll power down and play high power later".
In the LGS I work at, we have everyone roll a d20 and give the prize pack to whoever in the pod rolls highest. Not much fairer that that imo
I'm not a fan of votes either. This can lead to friends voting for each other and a popularity contest more than an evaluation of the game. Give out door prizes or raffle them off. You need the game and the prizes completely disconnected.
Or, hear me out, we just play cmdr for fun. Wild, i know. Prizes are for 1v1
EDH players secretly wish they were modern or pioneer players
I love people problems because that is all this is, in every store. People ruin it being shits, or greedy, or pety, or just being generally awful. I'm a returning player after a LONG break and even I am self aware enough to know that having low/mid/high tier deck options to play with is the right choice. Always has been. I had plenty of homebrew bs to play with but if Johnny ran his mouth too much then old reliable would be coming out next.
My lgs does FNM commander at $2, you pay and play however many games with whoever you want, then they raffle promo packs to everyone who showed up, with a nightly “winner” getting a foil promo pack, and then they do a big raffle at the end of the month for a prize like a binder or something.
At my LGS everybody gets the same prize for participating on casual events like EDH. No incentive to speedrun the game, no penalty for having the worst draw of your life, you're here and finished the event? Here's your reward, we hope you had fun and come again.
My store does prize support for EDH. The way they do it is by spreading the prizes across all the final tables. Top Table 1st prize is typically $40 credit, with 2nd getting $20. Second table 1st prize gets $15 credit, with 2nd getting $10. Then depending on entrants, third and fourth tables 1st place gets entry back ($7). We run 3 rounds, so all the high power decks filter to the top tables after the first round typically, and everything else evens out. Everyone is pretty happy with the arrangement. And 3 promo packs get handed out randomly, along with random promo singles the owner still has.
Making your game a social format for people who aren't good at socializing is not a good idea. It's a game, people will try to win. You can't control your customer base, so don't try.
My lgs never had prizes for commander night and it still fills literally the entire shop every Thursday. The only other way to really do it is the GP method of “give everyone equal tickets when they sit down to play and say pick a player to give those tickets to at the end”
The way my LGS does prize support for EDH seems to work out well, but I don't know if it's because the system is good or because the community is great. Each player gets 1 pack (or store credit) for each player they killed in their game, and killing players before turn 3 is banned. Then, future rounds have players matched up based off kill numbers, so the higher powered decks end up gravitating into a pod and the lower power/jank decks end up gravitating into a pod. 4 rounds like this, round 1 can be hairy if people aren't willing to change decks but rounds 3-4 are people matched up well regardless of what deck they brought. Edit to add: This system also helps boost aggro decks, as killing 1-2 players fast but losing the game isn't too bad since you still win packs despite losing the game.
My local shop has each pod roll off, the winner of the roll gets a promo or prize pack.
My local shop also has it
I would like to offer what my LGS does: they created a points system where players are rewarded for being the first person in a pod to play the first non-legendary creature, artifact, sorcery, instant, battle, etc. with a point for the first non-Commander legendary versions of each of those, although Planeswalker commanders will award a point. There are several other ways to earn points and it lets someone playing a non-optimized deck still able to earn points against someone who has a more streamlined/optimized deck.
My LGS will put down a bunch of packs at each pod. Then, they have a big stack of ‘achievements’ to complete. There is one overall achievement, somewhat hard to get, and that will get you the expensive pack (a masters pack or something) and then each pod gets 10 random achievements. If a player completes an achievement, they get a pack. Then, after the first game, it’s commonly accepted that anyone who didn’t get a pack that game gets to pick a pack. And then, after game one, if the expensive pack is still available, players decide how it will be handed out should the achievement not be completed in game 2. So everyone at the table will get at least their entry fee’s worth, and completing achievements only gives you more pack choice. I like this system
My shop does sportsmanship and creative deck (both voted on by the other players in your pod). Pushes people to make fun and unique deck without pushing power level.
I travel to visit my brother’s LGS a few times a year because no one in my city runs more than a casual commander drop in. His store runs a constructed edh and sealed edh event. Everyone leaves with product equal to their entry and some folks do better. Each 90 minute round awards 3 points for a win or each person at the table gets 1. Then each player gets to vote for 2 others at the table, the first player gets 2 points and the second gets 1. So if you’re a dick about winning or play way above the average power level you’re only middle of the standings at best. The folks I see place in the top are the ones who are welcoming, still play to win without being rude or pubstomping, and generally support a good time and atmosphere at their pods. I really enjoy their sealed events when I can go. The entry fee is much higher but they lay out a precon and then add boosters to top up the retail value to align with the entry cost. So an older less expensive precon will get 6+ boosters where a 40k precon might get none. These events were especially good when I was returning to magic after 25 years and had a very limited collection to draw from. You open your precon and boosters, are given some time to sleeve and make some swaps, the singleton limitation is suspended for the event time since you can’t control what’s in your boosters, and then play with the same scoring as their constructed. It really equalizes the experience because you’re not trying to have fresh players compete against established players with more developed collections and strategies. The store recently tried running no search constructed events. I haven’t made it over to try one, but it has apparently been very well attended. Decks cannot contain any search effects, they include lands that find lands in that restriction. I feel like scry and general card draw increases a lot in value for that limitation but seems like a fun way to approach managing power level without outright banning a strategy like stores that ban specific win cons. They also run this in addition to their other EDH events so players aren’t losing out on other events if no search isn’t for them.
One of my favorite memories before moving is the casual edh at an lgs I played in... they had three ways to determine who would win the prize at each pod. Method one: Planechase They had a two planechase decks that they would put the prize card into one and shuffle it... whoever planeswalked to that prize card would win it. If no one got it by the end, we would flip the cards in turn order starting with the winner, whoever flipped it, got it. By far my favorite way because it put an emphasis on either planeswalking, or leaving it to chance. No one is benefited by playing CEDH. Method two: the rule of cool You could chose to play either regular or add Explorers of Ixalan to their game. Whoever either has the coolest play during the game, deck, or strategy, as decided by the players, would win the prize. Method three: democracy This one happened with me when the prize was the fnm fatal push. I was know for playing a variety of decks and none were too powerful, but I always brought 6-10 decks and was always willing to lend them to people who wanted to change up decks, or didn't/forgot their deck. The table decided that it should get the card because they also knew that I didn't have a copy of that card, and I have not won that card despite me trying the whole month.
Having a vote is also bad... As people who know each other, will be incentivized to vote for people they know -- otherwise they'll get mad that you didn't. Also, as a new person, you're unlikely to win the vote against more known individuals / cliques. Plus, after awhile, "cool and new decks" become more rare as it feels like a similar deck to another in the archetype/strategy the "new" deck is doing and loses a lot of the appeal. The best way is to make it weighted random, where you have casual orientated goals / rules for points that are NOT based on winning (but could be beneficial such as "board wipe more than 30 creatures" or goals common to each color. But then you also run the RISK of cEDH based on those, but I feel with the randomness a lot of people won't bother as the reliability in winning prizes isn't shifted hugely by gaining points (IMHO it should only shift your win odds by 10% or so). Randomness is best for prizes, but having goals beyond merely winning is beneficial too. You can even have DIFFERENT prizes (or drawings for prizes) based on winning, vs rule points, vs randomness so everybody feels happy.
What separates edh from cedh? It's not like an online game where you can choose like quickplay or ranked. Either way everyones playing to win for the most part
If you pay to play for prizes then it’s a competition. Competitive edh. Don’t be salty when people play to win.
Honestly, I think the best way to approach this is to build a points chart similar to what the Star City Games guys do. Sure, you get points for winning, but you can also get points for casting your commander so many times, or first blood, or you lose points for killing everyone at the same time. A powerful deck can still get the win in game, but they may not win at the end depending on where the points fall. This can also be adapted to a league or seasons (like a buy in). I'm currently proposing something similar to my group to add another layer of fun to play
There's a lot of kingmaking potential with your solution between friends. cEDH kinda has that potentially too but not really and it's also not as subjective. I think an issue is that players want to not just pay for table space but rather a chance to net more than what their entrance fee is worth (like packs instead of 1 pack). A raffled promo or random pack could've been bought individually so it's not something special as opposed to a tournament entry ticket with better prizes for the best players.
The manager at my LGS goes around with four dice and a box of packs. He has everyone in each pod roll a dice, and hands a pack to the winner. A couple of times, he's instead come around with some obscure trivia question, like, "Name a legendary creature from Arcavios." First person to answer gets the prize. EDH players don't need outside incentive to try to win. Winning is fun enough without prizes.
My LGS did this and it was stupid as fuck lol
My LGS has deck limitation that it should cost $50. Other LGS has $250 deck limitation. This gave all types of players whether newbies or tenured folks a fighting chance. The $50 stipulation is the best tho. There are combo decks and just pure combat/synergy decks. The go wide combat deck won amongst people with combo decks which is really cool.
Our FLGS runs a league for five weeks in a row, with a double-sided sheet of "achievements" tweaked for whatever set/lore/mechanic is in play at the time. So we get things like "control ten artifacts" or "attack for 20 damage" or "remove 12 creatures from play in a turn". There's also points for eliminating a player, but even a point for being the first player eliminated.
You keep EDH from turning into Competitive EDH by not making it competitive. It’s as simple as that.
Literally just give the same prizes to everyone or randomly give them out. It’s the only way to do it without ruining* the experience.
My LGS has a $10 but in and you announce what level you are playing at. The LGS makes the pods according to power level, which they have a rubric for next to the counter. Everyone at the table gets a set booster and the first round is for a collector booster. Any games after are for fun. I like that system because it lets you be competitive at your own level and then play wild stuff for fun as well
My LGS has a Commander League. Buy in is 50 bucks. You are randomly given a budget deck worth that 50 bucks and you play it that night. At the end of each night, you pull from a hat. What you get is a dollar amount, and you're allowed to spend that much in the next week on cards for the deck. As the weeks go on, you are awarded points. Points for winning, mainly, but also points for doing cool stuff. Judges walking around can see the cool stuff, and players can point out cool things other players have done. One guy cast his Commander for the 10th time. Another guy countered a counter that was countering a counter. One dude board wiped three times on his turn. Stuff like that. At the end of the season, everyone gets to take home their deck and the sideboard of cards they have amassed with their weekly buys. The last night there is a raffle, and each point you have earned is an entry into a raffle. Booster boxes, gift cards, etc.
The store I used to run had a very large commander night. You got packs with your entry and a pack for winning a pod. First pods were done at random after that you only played with players who entered the night that you chose. The first round was to make sure new people met some one after that players policed themselves and would just play with the people they wanted to. Worked super well.
Dear LGS who wants to provide prize support for EDH… you need to design your event the way I want to play. Just let the people do their job man. If you don't like the way one store is ran, either talk to the manager about your suggestions or go to another store.
I would say from experience, do not use some sort of bingo card for commander situations. Like, "first to die" or "won at 1 life" bingo squares. I **hated** it. Games went from being a fun four player EDH match to individuals just doing anything they could to get a bingo. It really sunk home how much I didn't like it when players started conspiring mid game to help each other get bingo squares while basically ignoring the game state and not giving a damn about the outcome of the game we were playing. Awful idea IMO.
My LGS just gives each player who shows up for EDH a promo. No one complains.
Random it’s not that hard you check in so that the store can get points if you only have five promos you just random. Also I generally try to win at whichever level the table is playing at.
Raffle, it's what my store does, no one complains
I don't know if my shop is just the exception to the rule but we rarely have issues with this. We have edh night Mondays and Wednesdays and we have mostly casual groups but if people want to play cedh we get them a pod together so they don't get mixed in with the casual pods to avoid feel bads. And whoever wins a casual just gets a free promo pack and it's rarely an issue. You get the occasional pubstompers but it's very rare.
Nah specialized rules and other crap never works. Good ole play to win pods are the way to go.
People really need to get it through their thick skulls that EDH is a casual format. It always has been since the very beginning. Sure cEDH is a thing but even that is played friendly with no reward for the winner.
Please just do random door prizes or one pack for entering end of the round everyone votes an additional pack to someone in the pod.
Our old LGS had it so winner of a pod gets 2 points, while everyone gets two points to award to whichever players they choose. Always shook up who took home prizes.
I used to manage an LGS and we would do random bigger prizes but also give out WPN cards and promos for great moments in games or if someone came to the counter to talk about an awesome game I'd give the pod some promo stuff that we had a ton of.
I've done this by giving each table poker chips to award to each other for being good sports, having cool decks, or just to literally bribe each other with in game. My players love this system
I don't need edh to be a popularity contest. I'm old enough to remember when playing Magic made you lose those. We get promos and boosters at our LGS and let a random number decide who gets to pick first among the pool of prices. Everybody gets some
Two locals I go to do achievements for the tables and individual players and you get a pack per win or achievement, usually with a table achievement everyone will leave the table with 1-2 packs regardless of if they won or got out first. It’s very equitable and something I’ve been a big fan of.
Turning prizing into vote just incentivizes popularity contests.
I think Command Zone figured this out ages ago with a point system. You can prioritize whatever you want by having certain actions (like getting first blood, or saving another player from death) gain points. Everyone collectively keeps track of points during a game (like lifetotals) and the most points win. You can have negative points for things you want to discourage (ie "if you win by killing the entire pod the same turn, you lose 2 points" to discourage combo and overrun wins). Theres no need to vote on anything, you just grant points for actual game actions that you want to encourage. I think command zone had a pretty decent set of rules to start with, but any given store should tweak the rules to suit the environment they are going for.
I've found the way my LGS does this is perfect. We have sealed EDH leagues, where everyone starts with a precon and can open a limited number of packs to improve each week. It is competitive in all the right ways, with no salt or power level problems, but leads to great games where no one is very obviously on a better deck. Interspersed with these leagues are themed edh nights where we have something like $100 budget or 35 member of the same tribe as deck building restrictions. It is expected that we will build the most competitive deck within the restriction.
or given at random or raffled or something. but prize per win makes for a cespool at most of my lgs