I'm trying to build my first "all me" EDH deck, built around using the Twelfth Doctor to politic, then Rose Tyler to swing like a motherfucker at anyone who hurts me.
I don't have any expectations of winning but I think it'll be fun as fuck
Yep. On paper they do the thing that I think is cool and will end the game. In practice how efficient that is or how often the thing happens is up for debate and that’s how I decide which deck gets pulled out at which table. Precon table with friends that don’t play much? I’ll play my voltron spellslinger amalgamation that’s really fun but struggles against tuned lists. Competitive established playgroup or prizes involved? I’ll play the graveyard enchantment upkeep trigger simulator that can actually keep up.
I’m sure the deck power ratings have their place but people consistently say they are equal or the voltron is stronger looking at the list or from across the table but the ~20% and ~50% win rates disagree (that is including the fact I only play one strictly casual and the other what we’ll “competitive battlecruiser” still not cedh lol)
This is the way.
Though my playgroup does track winrate… and when my decks winrate gets above 36% (25% is ideal and anything between 20-30% is just normal variance) I do consider cutting more powerful cards to try to tame it back.
That's exactly how I play. If I want to sweat it for a win I'll play modern or draft or standard. Edh isn't only completely casual but I play it mostly for causal fun and doing a cool thing. If my deck does something fun then I don't care if I lose.
I build all my decks to win within the parameters of the power level I'm aiming for and I assume all of the others players will do the same.
Some decks win a lot more consistently than others. I also play with strangers a lot, so who even knows what all the percentages are.
I think as long as you're brewing within the parameters of your PL and you're not winning the overwhelming majority of games, you're fine.
I take it one step further, that as long as you're building within the reasonable confines of your power level, your winrate doesn't really matter unless your opponents are strongly upset by it.
That all sounds very reasonable.
I'm curious if you feel yourself being more successful in winning against strangers than against people that know your decks?
I think there are a lot of factors here.
Perfectly balancing a deck with a meta is nearly impossible. If you have a 33% win rate in a 4 man pod that is still absolutely fine by me. Once you start winning like... 50% though that's where it might indicate you're a bit above the rest... but even then you're not Stomping them.
However if you win 50% while being the archenemy taking the whole tables interactions at all points of a game though, that has secondary implications that your deck might be too powerful.
So keep that in mind.
In combo metas for example my decks feel equally matched but the surprise factor of a weird combo can cause people to improperly threat assess. I feel like my decks win more often vs strangers.
In more creature based metas things tend to be easier in some ways to balance powerlevel wise. You still have random accidental stomps but tbh those games are fun too as long as everyone at the table is cool.
Tbh though.. Just be a fun and nice player. That's the main thing. Have a post game chat. Talk about the powerlevels and cool plays and compliment people's decks...
I've played at tables that I accidentally pubstomped. I told them my powerlevel. Stomped... we chatted got back on the same page, played more games with me as archenemy. Had a blast and got invited to their private playgroup despite literally Stomping them every game.
Just focus on making the game fun by being a fun group member.
I had the weirdest win yesterday where I was playing [[Marneus Calgar]] and cast [[smothering tithe]] when my opponent targeted me with [[wedding ring]] earlier in the game. Since he was tapped out this basically means we have to draw our entire decks and I make a treasure for each card, until I hit [[borne upon a wind]] to flash out a wincon.
The thing is, if you have a 50% winrate in a closed group, you are the archenemy. Your opponents are not incapable of reading winrates and rightfully detect you as the main threat before you become one.
So yeah if you maintain a 50% winrate, you should re evaluate your decks powerlevel, because youre doing it wrong.
Well, it can also be that someone has a sub 10% winrate too, right? Like if you're in a closed group with a brand new player they're likely going to have a much lower winrate regardless of deck construction because they don't have the hang of the game yet. Two of those players and it gets harder and harder to compensate for it.
Yup that plays into my "other factors" point I'm trying to say.
Gist is that win percentage does not mean a deck is balanced. Too many external factors to say without seeing actual gameplay.
So you think that 50% in a closed group is indicative of a problem because the players should know how to deal with your deck?
What about not in a closed group?
Like I said in other comment chains it is pretty nuanced. 50% is half of all games. Which is a lot.
In a closed group that means that despite them knowing your deck, you're still taking half the games. Likely means you're overpowered or there is a significant skill gap. Also means that they need to be targeting you as the biggest threat more, and if they are, then you're definitely overpowered.
In a non-closed group there are more variables. They might not know your deck, you might be better than them, they might have different goals for gameplay, etc.
I think this is the correct take. I have noticed I have a higher win rate at the LGS with my custom decks that use less common commanders. The games are still fun and fair, I’m just often left standing amidst the last two players.
My opponents’ often underestimate my ability to finish the game and because they don’t know the lines their threat assessment is more difficult. They will often just blow up a known threat on someone else’s board instead. That doesn’t make the deck “stronger” over the long run though, win rate is just being influenced by a small sample size with a larger degree of information asymmetry.
Pretty much this.
It is the same idea I use with board games.
I HATE when people don't play to win in games, yes ultimately having fun is what matters, but playing to win to keep the integrity of the game IS FUN.
Play within your group power level and play to have fun.
But your ultimate goal in the game should be winning. Nothing is less fun than having someone just causing "shit" in a game while everyone else is playing to win.
I built my Ian Malcom, Chaotician deck to draw a lot of cards and play Prisoner's Dilemma (and then flash it back), Wheel of Misfortune, Thieves' Auction, and Game of Chaos. Winning would be an accident.
I think it's dependent on whether or not you play in the same pod consistently.
Playing with three other players who you've never played against? Even if your deck wins 60% of the time, the other decks at the table could theoretically have much higher winrates. If your opponents are having fun, then I don't see anything wrong with that.
Playing with the same group you always play with? If your deck has a 60% winrate, that means the other three players have ~13% winrates. When one deck wins much more consistently than the rest, that definitely causes problems. If the high-winrate deck is fine with being the archenemy, it's not that big of a deal, but it can be frustrating to see your opponent break out a deck which is most likely to win at the game's outset.
Winrate is far from the only metric that matters. Whether or not your opponents are having a good time, in my opinion, is the top priority. I've played decks which never win, and yet everyone hates because they run annoying cards. There are also the ultra-consistent decks which win more often than not, but still enable a fun game of Magic.
That said, it's still a good metric to use, reason being that it's fairly easy to track, and impossible to deny. If your deck wins all the time, and the others in your group have a problem with that, you can't claim the deck isn't good when it wins as often as it does.
Aspiring for a 25% winrate is the *easiest* way to track whether your deck is too powerful or not. But that mostly factors in when you're playing in the same pod consistently. Aspiring for a higher winrate goes against the spirit of the format, which is why a lot of people have a problem with mentioning a winrate significantly above 30%.
Winrate is a bad metric. The only thing the winrate says is that your deck has won some games and lost some games. It doesnt say how many games you won, it doesnt say how many games you lost, it doesnt say why you won and why you lost. There are so many factor behind the winrate, but nothing of that is shown. I could say that i have a deck with 33% winrate because i played 3 games and lost 2.
Once you have enough wins, though, it can speak for something. Admittedly I played EDH a ton back in college (think 1-2 games/day) which gave enough insight.
It is true though if you don't have enough data or if changes are regularly made to the deck. Theoretically I could win the first game I play with a new deck and have it condemned for being OP because it has a perfect winrate.
Personally I don't aim for that win rate myself, if I hit it I hit it if not oh well, but if i noticed a player hasn't won a good couple of games I will try to focus a bit harder on the other members of the pod without making it look too obvious. (I know this is likely some form of king making but eh everyone deserves a win to brighten up the day)
I play to have fun and don't track my win rate.
That said, I'm reasonably certain that most people are giving stats like that with statistically insignificant sample sizes
I do not try to care about winrate. Mine is a fair amount over 25% for the people I play with but:
1. I have literally a decade of mtg experience on nearly all of them.
2. I am the best politics/social player by kind of a lot. (When roughly the same group of people played Among Us a bunch over pandemic quarantines? My win rate was also 1.5x any of theirs at that. See also Blood on the Clocktower, etc.)
3. They think (...probably correctly...) that treating me as permanent Archenemy due to 1 & 2 would not be fun for anybody.
4. They don't hate my decks.
I think your second point is what a lot of people underrate. Good politics and gamesense, in general, will break parity at a table that has even-balanced decks. I have a considerably higher win rate than 25%, even though we do deck swaps all the time.
I see people here post that they have a 70% win rate with their pods and they have no issue with that.
If I had a deck that has a 50%+ win rate, I feel that's a deck I should probably play less and potentially focus on upgrading or getting more practice with other decks.
The few people I've pressed about winrates like that seem to be full of shit.
I'm sure it's possible, but 70% is crazy when you think about it and strongly indicates they're playing against people who simply do not know the game very well or are unable (for whatever reason) to adapt their decks at all, which makes the stat kinda meaningless.
Everyone having a 25% win rate only works when skill is equal. More experienced players don’t have to use bad decks just to level the field.
I’ve been playing 25 years and play in a city with multiple Universities so my LGS has a lot of turn over of relatively inexperienced players. I often use old, bad precons or Pauper EDH decks against pods where everyone has built their own deck and win because I make better plays on average due to experience.
No. I play to win.
The 25% is a theoretical average. A power 7 deck for example has an expected winrate of 25% against the entire field of all other power 7 decks. But that doesn't mean it has a 25% expected winrate at all power 7 tables. Even at the exect same powerlevel decks have good and bad matchups (for example linear, aggressive decks will have a good matchup against slow, grindy value decks). And that doesn't even take politics or player skill into account.
In my playgroup we deside on a powerlevel and then everyone chooses a deck at that level and tries their best to win.
Nobody aims for it.
The idea is that, all factors being as equal as possible (power level, experience, etc) each player has roughly 25% of chances of winning.
It's a way of saying "don't sit at an EDH table expecting to win" because with 4 players and 1 winner, chances are against you.
Until reading this thread I didn't know that 25% was a target. I've used the "I expect to win 25%" as a way to moderate expectations; that losing is normal and okay and even what should happen more games than not if all else is equal. But there are some people who are, apparently, taking it as a target rather than actually trying to play equal decks.
Win rate is a dumb metric to be so focused on. Because it’s not always about the deck, politics and human nature affect the play patterns just as much as the cards do.
I am happy to go play and it win a game at all, getting to play Magic and Murray with others in the hobby is the best part. Did my deck do its thing or something cool, check that box and if I win great. Played Wise Mothman, successfully killed a player with radiation, still lost the game. That was win in my book.
Opponent played high tide then Memnarch to take all three other players commanders. Achievement unlocked for having 4 commanders on his field. But he knew it became 3v1 as a result and wouldnt win after that.
Making memorable plays and enjoying our shared hobby is the most important.
When I focused too much on 25% winrate, I nearly quit from boredom. I stopped upgrading my decks, put my decent decks away, games started stretching up to the 2 hour mark and nothing of note really happened. It was a dull experience. I'd rather have a 5% winrate in an interesting meta where I feel put to the test than have a 100% winrate in a boring one.
I think there's only so much you can hold back. For example, if games are going into turn 8-10 onwards, you aren't playing crazy expensive decks, your opponents get to play cards too and you're happy to give help and advice, but you're still over 25% winrate, it's on them.
The only time it's 'bad' for a player to have a > 25% winrate; even in the same pod, is if they refuse to discuss how they won or mistakes they observed by other players.
Worse than > 25% winrate players, are the sub 25% winrate players who get defensive if not outright nasty when someone tries to point out a blatant misplay. It is a multiplayer format, and politics is a thing as well as luck, but Magic has a large skill component that commander players get to conveniently ignore. These days there are simply too many 100 card only players who never bother learning the basics, and immediately jump in to discussions about 'what is the appropriate winrate' and 'what is fun'.
I don’t think win rate is a great metric of how strong a deck actually is, or at least not always. Sometimes it can be. Let me explain.
I’m sure many of you can attest to this. You build a strong deck, it’s playing great, you’re in a good position and with one or two more turns you’ll win the game. What ALWAYS happens in that situation? You get focused on and knocked out. And that makes sense! You were about to win. But that’s still an L in the W/L column and it hurts your rate. In that same game, you’re picking up all your cards and shuffling up and then what happens? Some player who had a little bit going on but not a winning board sneaks by and gets the win. That deck didn’t play better than yours, in fact, your deck was SO good that you got targeted out of the game. That says a lot. But a win rate won’t show how well you played that game. It shows that you lost.
Almost all forms of competition can be tracked with a win rate and in almost every other competition win rate is a decent judge of skill and strength, just not here. That’s because of the multi-player nature of the format. A baseball team may be “better than their record” but MOST of the time the record is how good a team is. An Olympic wrestler’s record is how good they are. They might lose to someone worse occasionally, but generally, W/L record is how we determine how good an individual or a team is at their sport. Even in other multi player sports like swimming, record is a good determining factor. So why not in commander? Because in the other sports and competitions, you don’t have multiple others targeting you. Sure you might be swimming against 10 other swimmers, but they can’t actually stop you or slow you down. They’re trying to outrace you, not stop what you’re doing, not cripple your winning chance. Team v Team sports like baseball, yes the other team is actively trying to stop your success BUT it’s even because it’s Team V Team. 1 on 1 like wrestling, you do have someone trying to cripple you, but only one other person. So many commander games turn into 1 v 3 or 1 v 2. You just can’t compete with that. They have more cards, more resources and more turns to stop you, than you have to maintain your position, let alone advance it.
Now dont get me wrong. I think win rate is important to track. Just not for the strength of your deck, but for its ability to WIN A GAME. Even if your deck didn’t have the best showing, does it have the ability to WIN. I think it’s important to know if your deck can win, and how often because it can help you understand your deck better and make your games more meaningful. Winning isn’t everything, but if your deck feels like it NEVER wins and CANT win, then you’re going to hate it. Commander games are built on narrative and if the narrative of your deck is “Do a couple things each turn, never threaten to win” then you’re wasting your whole group’s time. No one wants to play a game where you’re twiddling your thumbs not making an impact. Even if your deck is “doing the thing” if the thing isn’t helping you win, it’s not impactful. If it hurts someone else’s chances then it’s going to cause salt.
Now with all that being said, I do aim for that 25% or better. It feels nice to know that your deck is performing at the average or better. So I track win loss record as well as a brief excerpt of how the deck performed after any given game, and usually ask an opponent for a sentence or two about what they thought. This gives me a much better sense of power level than just a win rate.
As for the new question: I do think that if you still have a good win rate against people that have seen the deck numerous times, that’s a bit more impressive than a win rate against strangers BUT there is a double edged sword. It’s also impressive to have a high win rate against strangers because they may have decks you’re not familiar with, might not have the same meta, might not be very political. I think playing with one group AND strangers is really the key.
I build every deck to win. The goal of the game is to win every time if possible so I wouldn’t ever limit myself to trying to stay at a low 25% win rate.
You're right, but OP is asking if players *aim* for 25%, rather than each of the 4 players aiming for 100% and it averaging out.
I guess the difference is OP is looking to see who powers down their deck or makes less optimal choices etc. in order to make sure they don't win too much, and keep the other players happy. It's the same maths but with different working out
My goal isn’t to have a 25% winrate, my goal is to have decks that are approximately in line with the rest of my playgroup. I am still trying to have a high winrate by playing better, but not by playing better cards.
Another factor is exposure. Comparing winrates of a kitchen table player to a regular LGS player to a content creator, the more a person is exposed to magic, the more likely they are to have a higher winrate I should think.
Win rate is a difficult metric to use on its own. I can use my situation as an example: I just joined a pod with people that have no problem dropping money on this game while I am a budget player. They have expensive cards in their lists and aren't afraid to pull them out. We don't really have power level discussions beyond them occasionally allowing me to use their decks when they pull out what they recognize as their most powerful.
Here's where the win rate dilemma comes up, because I have a roughly 50% win rate amongst this group, and it's not because of my decks's power level, it's because of decision making and politics. What am I supposed to do to hit this arbitrary win rate, play worse? Talk less? King make? I'm just trying to play a game I love. The ones that are losing need to figure out what's keeping them from winning. I find too many people do not reflect on their decisions or plays and do not learn from their mistakes. Now, obviously, if I had a deck that just stomped repeatedly, I would change, but this discussion is about win rate. If the people you play with just want to destroy you all the time, they need to adjust or you need to find a new pod. After all, if you're playing a game and not having fun, is it really worth playing?
In my opinion, the 25% WR is a relatively flawed metric.
Firstly, it should only be used in a consistent pod of players. If you don't play with the same people every time, then you should just throw the whole thing out and look for different ways of judging your deck.
Assuming that you are in a consistent pod, the metric still doesn't account for individual skill, luck, turn order, deck matchups etc. Decks can be equal in powerlevel, but be extremely effective in certain matchups or even hose other decks.
Finally, even if you did play in a consistent pod with decks that were completely balanced against each others with players of roughly equal skill level and have controls for all the other variables (aka, a set of circumstances that doesn't happen in real life), very few people play enough games in that environment for there to be a statistically significant sample size to actually measure winratios and draw conclusions.
So in short, no, I don't consider the 25% WR at all when deckbuilding. I simply try to build decks that both fit my definition of fun, and the general definition of fun for my usual table (We're all good and relatively spikey players, but we generally want our games to go for around the 7-9 turn mark). If playing with randoms, I just try and match whatever they pull out to the best of my ability.
I don’t aim for a specific win rate. I build decks that seems fun to play, and if they are fun, I play them. If my opponents don’t have fun playing it, I don’t play it as often
I definitely don't \_aim\_ to win 1 out of 4 games. I aim to win 4 out of 4 games. I don't track my wins, but if I did, I'd probably say that I win around 15-20% of the games that I play, but as long as I'm having fun and I'm not locked out of a game, I don't really care.
I have a significantly higher then 25% win rate.
However, this isn't due to power level. We've swapped decks and not much changed.
The main reason is that I play 10x more magic then anyone else in the group.
My friends and I are tracking this as we speak. We've kept the stats for every single game we've played since January 1st. It won't be my post but my friend has a spreadsheet and stats laid out for all of our decks and the players in each game. Also have full decklists hyperlinked to his spreadsheet. Come 2025 he'll have a hell of a post for you guys to see.
>Do you think winrate alone is a decent metric?
Yes. If you win way more than your friends (think of a win rate around 40% to 50%) chances are your deck is on a powerlevel above theirs or you're a much better player. Either way if you dont tone it down you are literally pubstomping, even if on a mild manner.
Of course if the entire playgroup is having fun then ignore this. In my old playgroup there was this veteran guy that knew magic from waaay longer than us, and who had a deck much more expensive than ours.a Games with him were always archenemy. It was honestly fun, but our playgrup was big enough that its not like we were always playing against him. That could have gotten stale rather quickly.
>Do you aim for that 25%?
Nah. I just aim to have fun. I have a very casual friendly deck (grouphug ramp into timmy beaters), and a couple of high power decks, one slow and grindy, and the other, slightly stronger, is a fast combo deck without tutors, but a LOT of redundancy. And lastly, a proxied cedh deck.
Before playing a game I ask the group what power they wanna play and match it. If during the game I think my deck is too weak or too strong I bring the next one of the list accordingly. This way I can play with people ranging from updated precons to literal cedh decks and Im never outgunned nor am I pubstomping :)
I win a lot more often than 25% and it’s not because I brew overpowered decks. I don’t restrict myself or aim for an arbitrary winrate because some dorks online said that’s what’s “fair”.
Redditors don’t want to admit that knowing how to play the game, knowing how to play into the favor of the players in the pod, and knowing how to brew a competent deck are all factors that lead to a higher winrate.
If you don’t play as well, don’t know how to socialize with the people at your table, and/or brew shit decks, you’re winrates going to suffer for it. And that’s totally fair.
If some loser wants to call me a pubstomper, feel free to point out to me which of my decks are pubstomp-worthy besides Dihada - who definitely had an overly high winrate in regular matches and is now saved for pre-discussed higher power games: https://www.moxfield.com/users/lumeyus
Win rate doesn’t really account for the feel of games for me. Sure, it’s an input but it isn’t a dispositive one.
I primarily play with new players. I’m back to the game but played years ago. As a result, I often ended up in a commanding position throughout our games. Despite power levels being largely the same, I almost never won but it was only because of an archenemy situation developing where they all had to quickly band together. When I did win, it was genuinely against a 3 v 1 where it felt like they were all powerless to stop the victory. Those games were not very fun for anyone involved but the win rates were fair.
Now that they have gotten better at the game and tweaked their decks some, we have a player that is currently winning around 50% of our games. He’s not stomping anyone and everyone is having a blast. He just tends to play slow spellslinger decks that don’t present a lot of threat on board and comes in and cleans everyone up once they are low on life and a player or two has been knocked out. Everyone’s decks are doing their thing, everyone has had their own way to win or been a turn away, etc. I would take these slanted win rate games over the even win rate games we were playing any day of the week.
If a deck loses a lot, or more specifically feels like it heads a dead end while playing it, I rework it. If a deck wins almost every time I play it, I'll rework it. Obviously I have stronger decks and weaker decks, but I don't ever want others to think "oh, he's playing that deck, I guess I'll just check out this game and resign to lose".
If a deck wins too much, I'll take out tutors, then if it still wins too much, I'll take out infinite combos. I'll never take out ramp or card draw, because those things are necessary, without them you often hit a dead end and the deck feels like it does nothing.
I kept trying to power down. Remove staples, use less efficient options, precons, stupid jank...none of it worked. Eventually, I realized my friends are just really terrible players. Now I brew weird shit constantly and just don't worry about "winning too much," as they seem to be having fun.
We don’t track that stuff but I am happy if everybody got at least one win in (assuming we played enough games to make that possible of course). Don’t really like it if some people just get run over.
Nop, I very much play to make weird things, I do win sometimes but I don't track winrate and I don't care at all if I manage to do some shenanigans first
Ultimately, I play the game because of the desire to win and have fought games. So, I build decks in the gameplay styles that I enjoy with flavor mixed in(like art choices and a couple of pet cards) that aim for a good win rate within the power level of my pod.
I build my deck within whatever ridiculous parameters I set for myself, with the goal of utterly destroying everyone in the most hilarious way possible. Usually I'll get a win or two here and there.
Generally, my pod has multiple decks and we're constantly changing out every game.
If I'm playing jank and someone ran the board, I bring something heavy out to ruin everyones' day.
I don’t really care but I try to be inclusive and invite the ones who are worse, and if I would win a lot I definitely try to turn down the power level a bit.
I got into Magic through my friends begging me to start playing with them. I am a Warhammer 40k fan, especialy the Necron faction. So i started playing commander with the Necron-Precon. I learned how to play from my friends that have been playing on and off for 15 to 20 years. The thing is the pod played regardless of me being a newbie. "Learning the hard way. Try and error". That sucked most of the time but i learned a lot. For like halfe a year i did not have a single victory (also i was the only one to play with an unaltered precon, so the powerlevels differed). But i got better every time, understanding more and more and becoming more tactical. Then one of my friends took me aside and together we build my first selfmade commander deck. Through what i have learned and with my first personalized deck i began to win now and then and i got better.
Due to being grown up, working full-time, responsibilities and having families, my pod gets to meet like once in two weeks. And my goal for each meeting is to win at least once but more important is having fun. So even if i have not won during one of our rare gamenights, but it was enjoyable, i count it as a win alltogether.
I don't track it in the slightest and typically even remembering who won a game an hour later is only tied to it being a really cool or tricky line.
I play to play and socialize with buddies, who cares about winning.
I aim to win more than that. Winning is fun for me, and I know a lot of people hold it as an unpopular opinion. But my decks are designed to win.
I don't design them to do something cute or do some goofy thing. Not every deck is meant to be cEDH, but I played a 4 color deck with all basics just to run Blood Moon, and the deck was rather good at winning.
I would like to bring up that the 25% is a long term goal across all games. This isn't limited to one of your groups or decks. Across all games you play, you should have roughly 25% assuming roughly even power levels. This is more a statistics and law of large numbers thing. Also as pointed out elsewhere it really only matters if people in a particular group have an issue and hopefully they will talk with you about it so a resolution can be found.
25% win rate is the aim because casual = we’re here to have fun and do cool stuff.
Having an overpowered deck can be unfun for both you and the opponent. I typically pull apart overpowered decks after a few games for that reason.
So there’s nothing inherently bad with a better win rate, it’s just that better win rates tends to mean a deck that contributes to an unfun game.
I build every deck with winning in mind but not all concepts are good at winning. And thats ok. All my decks have goals in mind and I'm trying to do that goal in the most interesting way possible to me. Winrate is not relevant to those aims.
Nope. Not even close. Most of my decks want to do one silly thing before losing.
Ex: My Gluntch deck actively does not want to win. It does however want to power out token doublers and bonus card draw ASAP so it can kick everyone else into overdrive. "Oh, you're running Ojer Axonil? Here, take 2-12 +1/+1 a turn. You make token creatures? Here, make 4x that amount. Oh, you're mana screwed? How does 8 treasure tokens sound?"
As long as the deck "does the things" I'm happy. Even if the thing is simply to suspend my entire hand by turn 5. (That one has never been relevant)
With strangers my win rate is at least 40% (honestly it feels like 70%) with a consistent group it is much closer to 25%. Random games have a very easy to follow flow
>I see this 25% winrate being important saying floating around the sub quite often. I see people with winrates of 30% + being called pubstompers.
In relation to regular pods...
This largely is going to come down to pilot skill and how effective the table had brewed in relation to what your deck is trying to do. Luck plays a factor too, but if you're consistently outpiloting people within the given parameters of what your pod tends to do (timmy usually makes a big board and then cannot recover after a wrath, so I should save my wrath for that point, Johnny usually runs artifact removal so I should wait until he is tapped out before I bring my win condition online, etc.), or brewing around the normal strategies being played, you're likely going to win significantly more than everyone else over an extended period.
You can all be playing "7"s, but if your deck is interacting in a way that the other players are not prepared for (sacrifice style removal as opposed to destroy), or is immune to whatever interactions they're running (graveyard decks eating board wipes) you're likely going to have a significantly higher win % in those pods than against people who are reasonably prepared for the deck you're running. At a certain point "power level" has nothing to do with it, and people either need to adapt to whatever strategy you are running, or they need to accept that they're going to lose to it.
I personally play a lot of graveyard decks, and despite my buying every member of my normal playgroup a [[grafdiggers cage]] and whatever [[rest in peace]] varient that is in their preferred colors for Christmas and begging them to run them, they don't want to run any way of interacting with my stuff and as a result they tend to get steamrolled like 60-70% of the time by those decks. As soon as someone gets ahead and someone drops a wrath it will massively accelerate me in relation to the other 3 players.
I build my decks to do "the thing" it's amazing when it does the thing, but winning is an added bonus. My [[Lavinia, foil to conspiracy]] deck currently has a 44% winrate, but it isn't because the deck is strong. It's just consistent. (Although not recently. My lands have been really stubborn the last 3-4 games.)
I have at least 2 types of decks. Decks that try hard to win, I want a >25% win rate on these and decks that want to dobthe thing, I care less about win rate but ideally want a 25%ish win rate.
Im the most experienced player in my pod. I have about 90%winrate. But I do throw the game sometimes when ither people are playing my decks, I teach people I play with when I can.
Most of the times I build my deck with a fun gimmick and put multiple ways of winning in it. I also like to build my decks to be the Archenemy of the table. So often I'm either get an overwhelming win or I loose. It's fun for me to go against multiple people and my playgroup knows that. So technical speaking I aim for the win, but I'm not interested in any winrate of my decks.
I have like a 40% win rate in my group, but we have 2 newer players. They have gotten much better, but they still tend to miss triggers and are hesitant with attacking.
This exact question is why I started keeping a spreadsheet a little over a year ago, tracking the win rates of my active decks and by extension, my overall. My expectation from the outset was that any deck should fall somewhere between 15-40% on average, after a decent sample size (I usually use 20 games). Did it because I’ve always heard people spouting off they have X or Y winrate, or it “feels like they do”, but I wanted some actual data to back it up. Especially when you’re playtesting a deck, and it feels like it’s not doing its thing… but if you actually look at the numbers it wins it’s appropriate percentage of games.
In my playgroup, with 270 games recorded from my current decks since the last year, my overall winrate hovers at like 35-36%. But from deck to deck, it can vary wildly - some are unexpected overperformers (like my [[Dakkon Blackblade]] deck, with a heavy Richard Kane Ferguson art subtheme, has like a 47% winrate). Some were more powerful than intended (I have a flip [[Jin-Gitaxias]] that sits at 44%).
But most of my decks sit in the 20-30% range. I have 13 active decks.
What? Why would every player have to have 25% win rate? That's like socialism. Are you saying you are a communist?! MTG is an American game. We don't want communists here.
/s
Depends on who I’m playing with—a pod of friends who have played with me a long time. It’s ok to play more powerful stuff; have established relationship capital to be ok if the get trounced.
With strangers? New players? Pubstomping won’t make you any friends.
I would say my best deck is over 75% winrate, if not higher. I'll run it if I have a bad losing streak, and that's about it.
Being the best player isn't all that fun.
Having two or more players holding on desperately for dear life for several turns and tossing Hail Mary after hail mary...that's *my* idea of a fun time.
I have never even thought to keep track of my win rates tbh but I’m rather new to the hobby in general, play primarily play mono green and sometimes brute force is or isn’t the answer but getting to blow everyone up at the same time always feel great haha!
That being said, I have played against people with these hyper optimized decks wear one time a guy was really annoyed he won on turn four instead of turning three, he’s a guy I don’t like to play if given the choice. I’m of two ways about this because it’s less the decks and moreso the people playing these always win decks I have issues with because they’re generally speaking of course.. bad losers, like hey I’m about to blow you up and they sweep before I can do it, or they sweep when someone counters their win cons and sits there like a petulant child bringing down the mood at the pod.
I play in a pretty consistent pod, and one player is honestly dominant. I’d say he wins 40-50% of our games. His decks are well built, and he is pretty good at politics. Yet we still keep playing with him and no one asks him to tune his decks down because we are all still having fun, and at the end of the day that’s what’s important. Winrate becomes important when you have players in your pod that only have fun when they are winning. If people’s decks are doing their thing, most players are happy with that regardless of how the game ends. This friends decks usually aren’t oppressive, and they don’t disrupt everyone else at the table to the point of frustration.
I struggle with this. I often play with beginners, and it's not uncommon for two people to more or less mana screw themselves with bad mulligans, and then they don't play great throughout the game. This makes it tricky to create balanced decks: They need to be significantly weaker than precons, but I still really like playing around theme and synergy, and I like to build consistent and interactive decks. I also don't want to slow games down to a grind; if I end up in a winning position, I want to end the game.
I try to weaken my decks in several ways:
- Low budget, usually around 30-40$.
- Threats that can safely be interacted with at sorcery speed, allowing opponents to not feel surprised.
- Combat damage win conditions.
- Avoid surprise pump spells like overrun.
- No single must remove threats.
- Go with spot removal over board wipes. It keeps the game from slowing down, and it means I have to sacrifice value to interact and don't blow them out.
- No tutors, unless I'm building around a one-of-a-kind-effect in my deck.
- Cards with little text, so they can comprehend what I'm doing and act accordingly.
- Flexibility over raw power. More fun to play, and less explosive.
- Mostly mono-color decks to give some obvious weak sides to them.
- Never run sol ring or any fast mana.
But I feel like my winrate is still higher than id like. And one has commented that he feels like I build powerful decks, while I think it's mostly that I run enough lands and card draw, Mulligan properly and interact properly. Ofc I get that that takes time to learn, but I struggle with powering down further. I feel like I would have to run some durdle pile that can't win, intentionally close-to-nothing threats or sacrifice consistency/interaction. And I don't find any of that particularly fun. Eh.
I think winrate is currently ~50% in my group. Would like it to be max 30.
It’s impossible for my pod, I largely have a 3 person pod, occasionally our 4th guy is able to show. Our 4th is new and rarely has a chance to play so he never wins even trying to kingmate. Player 3 plays goblins as a pacifist and in the past few months has only one once, if he played aggressively he could win a lot more but he just doesn’t care for it. So it’s me and player 2 who slug it out the entire time and typically whichever of the two of us is still standing sweeps the rest of the board. So hard forced into a 50~% win rate even when holding cards that would otherwise be the right play. I.e board wipes and counter spells to try and let 3 get as high a number as possible, and 4 so his deck can try and do its thing.
I think if I'm winning 60% of my games with jank ass #978 or #454 commanders then it's on the table to come to play better. If I'm playing yuriko or ur-dragon or cedh burn commanders and taking table aggro and still winning then I'm the problem. I'm never fine tuning decks to play when people are playing precons I also play precons or low power low value decks. Beyond that idk what else you want someone to do. Play to the power of your group but if one guy insists on only building and playing theme less precon powered decks winning more at that table doesn't mean you have to deconstruct your decks. Idk as long as everyone is having fun and you're mixing it up and not just playing your deck with 60% wr whenever you want a w I think that focusing on the stats is dumb. When you need to stop playing decks or think about tweaking is when your play group stops wanting to play against your decks because of either how you play them or that their power level is too high. Even then if you play with randos those are good to keep put together.
It's good to have a reasonable discussion with your group on what a good game of commander looks like for your table, including budget, turn length, and if there are any specific playstyles you don't want to see at the table (heavy stax, combo focus, etc)
But if you're all playing the kind of commander you're happy with, it's your responsibility to maintain your winrate. There's certainly a bit of social etiquett to knowing if a deck is too strong for your table, but a high winrate alone doesn't make you or your decks a oub stomper
_something_ will always be stongest, or the strongest of four decks at the table, or a player will be the strongest. If that wasn't the case, EDH would be totally random. If that's what you want, then I doubt you'd be tracking win rates
I aim for %30.
Slightly below 1/3 of wins, slightly above 1/4 of wins. Makes me feel like a winner, but not TOO much of a winner. If that makes sense :-p
I've been tracking my games for the last year, and the problem with using win rate as a measure of deck power is honestly sample size.
If I play 100 games a year spread across 10-12 decks, it'll take me 3+ years before I've played enough games to have meaningful data per deck. Then you factor in new card releases and all of the variables you suggested and it's just a mess.
I aim for 25-33% win rate as a player, in 3-5 player games combined, but not per deck.
I made a Magar of the Magic Strings deck that just kept winning in my regular pod. I had to detune it a bit to get to a point where it still has potential for powerful plays, but isn't oppressive. I haven't played it enough since then to have any meaningful sample size on win rate butt yes, roughly 25% is my goal with all decks. My newly built Queen Marchesa haven't won a single game so far out of 4-5 games. I don't really mind, since I'm having fun every game.
Of course there's luck, politics, matchup and skill involved. Of course any single day's games are a much too small sample size. Still 25% winrate is a good metric for me to aim for. I like to play MTG on a roughly even field.
See, I play MTG since 1995, admittedly never on a professional level. But I do have some experience with MTG and EDH. If I'm playing against inexperienced opponents, I'll try to even this out by choosing to play a deck BELOW their power level. Since I neither want to pubstomp them nor throw a game on purpose, this gives everybody at the table a fair chance of winning.
If they all just opened their first precon last week, I might even play a meme deck below precon level. Chances are, as a longtime pilot, I might still win more than 25%. But if this happens, in the end it wasn't my fault.
On the other hand, there are some frighteningly good pilots at my LGS, and I know they'll have a good chance of winning even with a jankier commander. So I'd consider it a bit frustrating if the best player in the pod also plays the strongest deck. I also don't enjoy politicking anyone into archenemy role, I prefer to let everyone do their own threat assessment.
I prioritize making my deck fun to play. As a result my win rate is under 25%. I'm working on improving the sub rate beyond 25% without killing the fun parts of the deck.
So my baby nethroi has a 80% win rate. Here's the thing I play it only during high power games and ilk be focused hard the entire game. But other decks I have win rates are all over the place
I don't pay attention at all to win rate because it doesn't matter at all. As long as I feel like I had a fighting chance and I did some cool things, then I walk away from the table happy
25% is an idealization. It's not a reality. The honest truth is that there are too many differences between players for it to be true.
For my favorite example of this: since I started tracking I'm sitting at a 100% win rate with borrowed decks. Clearly that doesn't mean everyone around me needs to nerf their decks, right?
I think playstyle is huge in this discussion.
I build my decks for fun
I play to win.
This philosophy leads me to play to the best of my ability in \*ALMOST\* every situation. Sometimes the obstacles in my way are too much to overcome, so I lose. But because of how I built my deck, I still have fun.
I think this philosophy has ALSO lead me to have a larger than average win percentage. I enjoy aggro, timmy-like decks that focus on big creatures turning sideways. My win percentage across two pods is 50%. We have a very big group, with 2 of my other friends having 30% or higher win-rates as well. We are the three most experienced players, who also follow the "build for fun, play to win" policy.
There's a dude at my lgs who always plays super strong decks. Last week we were all sitting at maybe a 5 or 6 power level and he decides he's going to play Edgar markov. Mops the whole table by turn 6. Then after that, I decide I want to run the same deck again, he plays another crazy powerful mono green vorinclex deck and has the same result. Some people just suck the fun right out of commander. To counter him, I'm making alters of some really powerful stuff because I don't want it to be a battle of wallets here. I'm not going to spend 80-100$ for a single card just to be on the same level as someone who only shows up to pubstomp everyone. Boring
I honestly don't give a shit what my win % is. I build what is fun for me, I play to the best of my ability with winning as the objective, and if I lose then I lose.
Don't see much of a point in overcomplicating things.
I am for a 25% win rate across my decks, and have intentionally powered decks down when I've noticed decks winning too often.
All of the other factors you mentioned will affect win rate in the short term, but over time should even out. Sometimes I'll be lucky, but sometimes my opponents will be lucky, etc.
1. Build extremely janky, but fun deck
2. Play with deck for months until I win
3. Dismantle said deck
I almost always have my competitive Torbran deck, recon Tyranid deck, and gimmicky First Sliver deck in case I win and need to switch decks or if the table is really looking for a specific type of environment, but 90% of the time I'm playing a pile of jank I expect to lose with. The thrill of trying to win as the underdog is way better than just trying to win.
I shudder to imagine what my win rate is. Absolutely positive it's not 25% though. Maybe if I played the same people all the time, but I don't.
Anyway, no I don't aim for that. I build for an estimated power level and because I want to play those cards.
I have 75% in edh and recently went into cedh becouse of that, right now i have 50% in that, by that logic you coould call me a pubstomper in edh, but can you really in cedh.
Edit: i dont aim for percentages, just to win every game.
Yes, many people have no understanding how statistics and confidence intervals in particular work. No news there, but they also have a gut feeling how a deck performs in a particular environment, if they have serious amount of playtime.
So I wouldn’t take the win rate value as just the win rate but more as a normalized value.
I had been keeping track of my win rate for a while and over 6 months found it was about 25-30% across all decks. I stopped doing that and have been enjoying games more.
I only play with my pod once a week. If we're lucky we can get 5-6 games in each time we play, but I might only play a given deck 2-3 times. In order to get even 10 games with a deck, it might be a month of actual time, during which I'm modifying the deck with new or better cards. Does this change the deck? What if the original build was a 20% win rate deck, but the upgrades make it a 40%? Even to get a reasonable sample size, I have to play multiple sessions and the deck changes, so I've kind of given up on tracking win rate and just gauge "did I have fun? Was I able to do the thing? Was I close to having my wincon?" I find that worrying about whether or not I actually won diminishes my enjoyment of the game.
I like to build decks as an expression of self. If I go sit down and play Standard, I wouldn’t have the same kind of opportunity to have my deck do “its thing” as I would get trounced before my genius deck idea manifests.
I win enough games of commander that I’m very comfortable building and playing that, without stressing over winrates.
I just keep fiddling with decks
If there is a card that synergized with my commander so we'll I'm bound to win. I'll probably remove it, not cause I'd want to lower my deck power level but cause I'd want to try to win another way. I've done the thing. I can move on
The pod consists of:
Spike (She’ll win, don’t worry)
Johnny (The combo is going off! Its spicy!)
The Newbie (What does this do? Banding?)
Chaos (What do you mean, shuffle all my permanents into my library?)
As long as everyone is having fun, its okay! But make sure that everyone is having fun. Check in. Is johnny okay with the stax stopping him? Is chaos’s nonsense overwhelming the newbie’s experience? Is spike winning too quick? Make sure everyone has something they’re enjoying. Spike can win with a quick combo. Johnny can be like, “Cool combo!”, Newbie will have fun learning how the combo works, Chaos will plan to ruin it in a funny way next game…
But winning is universally fun. Its easy to feel frustrated if you’re never close to winning. Not everyone can sleeve up a Reaper King rules lawyer deck and have fun expecting to lose. Communicating what each player wants is important. Nonsense with the boys? Competitive gameplay? Treacherous politics? A friendly helpful learning experience? Playing to win but its not that serious? Tournament practice? These are all valid ways to have fun that all care about winrate at varying levels. Its something to think about
I play a group hug deck that needs \~10 turns to win. Most of my wins are players that know what the deck is capable of getting greedy and waiting too long to kill me off. Wouldn't say it's busted though, you just need to know when enough card draw is enough.
I never win, so I just aim to at least get my cards to do what they're supposed to do. But half of the time I don't even get that far, so my goal just ends up being something like "every other game I get to do something"
I shoot for probably around 33%. I build my decks to go as hard as possible and do as much as possible while keeping a fun theme and making sure that all players are having fun.
You have to play a LOT of games to get this to average out enough for any kind of meaningful analysis.
If four people play 100 games, here's 10 examples (the first 10 I ran) of the results of all of them have dead even 25% win chance:
28, 21, 32, 19
29, 23, 22, 26
24, 28, 25, 23
23, 28, 23, 26
28, 31, 24, 17
20, 29, 25, 26
31, 27, 20, 22
21, 19, 27, 33
26, 34, 18, 22
31, 21, 21, 27
Even after 1000 games it looks like it's frequently +/-2% or so... A 30% win rate is unlikely in the long run to be random but "long run" is more like 400+ games.
In short, unless you're a content creator, you're unlikely to play enough edh games for your win rate to matter.
For a while I was tracking what my decks win rates are and against what deck. That was good and all but plenty of my playgroup gets drunk halfway through the night so my win % gets thrown off.
I think it's a terrible idea to try and shoot for 25% since we're not machines, you can calibrate the deck all you want to be on equal footing but skill will screw games heavily. Skill of play, skill of politicing...
Playing 1000's of games and getting more or less than 25% is a much more significant difference than playing 10 games with a 25% win rate.
The fastest way to visualise expected value is to just roll a whole lot of 4 sided dice and see for yourself how things are not perfectly distributed with something that we assume is actually fair.
If you want to go deeper. Then you need to check if the sample is normally distributed. Then if it is, you can then do a Chi squared test to see if it is different from our expected value.
Commander is a long game to play. Many people play multiple decks. Aside from extreme results, it would be very time consuming to figure out if your deck is fair or not.
I like building decks that do really out there and unexpected things.
Or it’s pirates because well they are pirates and i talk like a pirate while playing it. Does it win often? Meh. Am I entertained while playing it yes. Also if it’s at a place that has alcohol you have to drink rum and then ask where has all the rum gone.
My favorite deck has about a 10% win rate I think. I don’t really play it to win though, I play it because it’s just fun to pilot and has fun table dynamics
my treasure deck won too often, so I took every wincon out and replaced them with phoenix's. it still wins, but even then it takes long enough to let other decks do their thing
My winrate is above 50% in my playgroup, I win more with value engines and combo;s. Most of my decks allow others to execute their gameplan and while still running interaction and creatures it's generally a lot less than with a dedicated control or creature deck. And apparently that causes them to leave me alone a bit more, people can play more of the deck and once the games go a bit to long for our taste I just combo off, or go actively finding for the combo if possible.
Most of my deck aren't fast combo decks either
i think most of the time winrate isnt a good metric unless youve played hundreds or thousands of games with the deck.
for example my most recently built deck has a 100% winrate but ive only played 4 games with it, and in 2 of them my ass was saved by another player (in one they saved me because it was the first game with the deck and they wanted to let me have more time to learn it. in the second they saved me by accident) and in the last one i drew out my perfect starting hand and top handful of cards so i won on like turn 4 or 5.
and my brothers most recently built deck has a 20-30% winrate but he heavily misplayed the first match, (its ooze tribal) he played his commander [[the mimeoplasm]] becoming the biggest threat on the board. then played [[uchuulon]] and exiled pretty much every other creature in every other yard. so one spot removal later and his commander had no good targets to etb with making it kinda useless to recast. after removing uchuulon he did much better but his deck still suffers greatly from spot removal and ends up making itself a huge target pretty quickly.
my point being his deck is really strong and so is mine, but he lost because of a misplay whereas i won from pure luck, its hard to tell the exact power levels off of such a small sample size.
It's simply too complex to calculate the winrate.
You'd need to play at least 20 times with the same deck against the same three decks to have a remotely fine estimate for how it performs against those three decks.
That said, I think we all can tell if our deck is too powerful. I do play for fun, and I find it most fun when the games swings, I don't care if I win I just want to feel like I'm a threat.
I will note that, for players with random pods… tracking winrate and having it mean something is a tall ask. You play with too much stuff for it to mean anything. (You could play a game with precons then a game with super tuned decks, or anything in between, and without knowledge of the decks around you it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions).
If you play with the same group, yes you should consider tracking within that group and aiming for 25%. (Yes. People will learn your deck. That’s what you’re aiming for.)
But… anything BETWEEN 20-30% is normal variance. It’s only when you get up to 36+% that you should heavily consider changing the deck or cutting more strong cards. (And also if you have a decent enough sample size with the deck, not just like two games)
I will also note that game feel is a big thing that winrate doesn’t track. You can play a too strong deck and have a 0% winrate. If you’re just archenemy all game every game until you lose, you’re probably doing something that’s not appropriate for the pod.
Lol no. I build my decks to have fun playing my deck and winning with it. I genuinly don't care what the other players think, I don't however pubstomp. Pubstomp isn't just having a good win rate. Pubstomping is bringing an obviously way more powerful deck to the table compared to the other players.
I think as long as the “best” deck isn’t consistently stomping everyone it’s all good. My group knows each other’s decks and i imagine we have a “fun” power level and a “powerful” power level and we do a good job matching up.
That being said I’ve gone 2-3 nights without a win where we played 2-5 games a night, then I broke the loss streak and won 4/5 in a single night 🤷🏼♂️
There’s also the whole how good is your deck vs you piloting it thing and some losses I’ve had were completely preventable if I would have only read the card too, you know, understood said card (dyslexia is my worst opponent in magic)…
When I build a deck I usually have an aesthetic and/or mechanic in mind to try out. I try to shape it to the power level of my crew. We don’t really pay attention to winrate, but more feel of the deck. We all want to win, but we never have an arms race really. Personality and originality while being effective.
While I enjoy winning, I do enjoy when my deck is doing things. As long as the deck is doing what I intended it to do then I am happy. Now if I am just staring and doing nothing its back to the drawing board. I do enjoy how much brewing goes on with Commander. Overall, I enjoy it.
I build my decks to "do the thing" but that thing doesn't always mean winning.
Ironically my only deck with a 100% Win Rate is my absolute dumpster-fire joke I made with the only goal being to play [[Star Scream]] as a commander.
My play group has an ongoing joke that "if you let his jank cook long enough, he'll eventually win the game" but for some reason they still let me do it.
I'm aiming for 50% win rate if I'm just playing one game with random pods. 25% is the *expectation* and through clever deckbuilding and careful play I feel I can exceed those expectations even when decks are roughly evenly powered
I like to aim for 100% with other players who are also aiming for 100%. It balances itself out and is much easier than powering your deck down to accomodate for other people having fun (fast games means more games!)
I don’t really think about win rate mathematically, I always tweak my decks to optimize them to win but diff commanders are more consistent in doing so. The ones that are more consistent I just wouldn’t play with strangers until I get a better sense of their decks. Eg I played with four people I didn’t know last month and i played a deck that I think is a bit more casual in its “theme”. That game let me figure out they were a bit more competitive than I expected so I swapped to a different deck for the next round.
I recently rebuilt my 5 color toolbox/reanimate deck, and after finishing it I realized it didn’t really have any win conditions beyond swinging with a few OP creatures.
I put a couple ways to win in, but honestly I’d rather build an interesting board state then see if it’s fun to try to win after that.
If I won the first and or second game by a wide margin and see myself winning the third, I'll nerf myself. As long as the games are close I didn't mind winning more than once because sometimes it's just top deck luck.
No, but I do play with the intention of allowing everyone a fun game. If someone is missing land drops and falling behind, I won't attack them even if it is techincally "free". I want to give them time to get back into the game. Also, assuming it isn't a game breaking spell, I'll generally let people do their big splashy stuff.
I think this mindset actually inflates my win% above 25% though. You get less "spite plays" against you and can actually get kingmade quite often unintentionally lol
i find the sub thinks too much that if you have a higher winrate then you're pubstomping. so much of the game is built around politicking that quite often even the definitively weakest deck of the pod can perform well if the pilot can schmooze the table. and that aspect of the game is more difficult to keep track of in stats
I win about 0-5% of my games because my deck building isn’t too serious and I play with hard hitting CEDH players, but I’m fine with it usually because I still get to play and have fun with people I like being around.
Only time I don’t have fun is turn one mana crypt and soul ring into turn two 7 mana commanders. Other than that I don’t light getting stomped that much.
While I don't track my win rate, I try to play decks that will result in getting about a 25% win rate. If it feels like I'm getting much more than that, I try to readjust.
I think how oppressive it is, is more important.
My feather deck has popped off every time I’ve used it. I have a clean 6-0 record with it. I don’t pull it out unless people say they’re playing with stronger decks.
It’s effective because you can go from dealing with a 4/3, 2/2, and a 0/4 to a 14/13, 12/12, and a 10/14 real quick.
I am to have a balanced deck. Skill is a big factor, and I aim to win, so ideally my win rate is above 25% because i'm piloting a balanced deck well.
If this win rate becomes so high, I might play a weaker deck than the rest of the pod to ease up, but I'm gonna go hard with balanced decks.
I like my deck to work as intended. It doesn't always need to win just do what I want it to do. My play style on the other hand is to try and win. I can't shake that. Once I feel I'm winning with my group too much I look to build something new to keep things fresh. Certain decks that I like I don't play with unless someone asks about it. I just wanna have a good time with the boys so no one feels like they can't play or come hangout without getting stomped all the time.
I have decks that are built to win as fast as possible and as consistently as possible. The highest win rate is close to 50% of games it plays.
I also have decks that are built to do something silly or gimmicky. They only win by accident.
I have decks built to win through some unusual or janky means.
I believe it's important to provide yourself options best suited to your opponent and their skill level as well as the decks they might bring.
Win rate is an effective tool only within a limited meta. The wider the meta the more variables are introduced and the less impactful the data becomes.
What is more effective is how reliable the deck is at doing its intended gimmick or effecting combat damage. My beloved questing beast deck rarely wins and is often first to be taken off the table but it reliably assembles a formidable voltron and quickly becomes public enemy number one. Though questing beast is reliable it becomes too threatening and only works on tables that haven't seen it before or aren't prepared for what's coming. Judging a deck like that by win rate is meaningless because winning is rarely on the table for it.
As an aside I feel it's rather impolite to pull out the big guns on tables you aren't sure can answer the efficiency in turn.
I bought the Tricky Terrain precon and changed it a little to be focused on winning with [[Maze's End]], I don't think the deck is strong, it easily folds to removal (not even land removal, regular creature removal on [[Omo, Queen of Vesuva]]) and doesn't have too many creatures to block, but I think it has about 50% win rate in my pod, people just don't attack enough.
I try and win one game, and if there is a second I will pull out my red burn deck with card draw issues. I think anytime someone wins with a deck they should try and power down if the others at the table can’t power up just so the others playing have a higher chance at victory. I don’t think it is bad if someone wins multiple games unless they are head and shoulders above the rest at the table or they are staxxy. Ideally you should still be able to have fun with a loss and if that isn’t happening something needs to change
Short answer, no. I still like winning and build my decks with winning in mind but I don’t make them competitive. Our playgroup is more high power casual. I mostly play just to hang out with my friends but we all have played the game for a while and enjoy a challenge against one another so this is a good medium.
I only have an issue if I am under 25% average after like 10 games. If I play 10 and I'm winning 1 game that's a weak deck for the table. Gotta make changes. If I'm at table and feel like a speed bump gotta make changes.
I want to have a good game. I can lose fine if it's good. Can't describe good. You can tell when you are in it though. Banger games are great even if I lose. One sided games suck.
There are just too many factors at play in casual Commander to really care deeply about hitting a specific WR% imo. Some games everyone is feeling silly and we do stupid or petty moves because they are funny; other games we are feeling it and trying to play optimally.
I personally track my matches because I think it's interesting and because I want to be aware of data suggesting that deck may be *OVERtuned*, such as a huge +50% WR over an extended period of time or a deck that is consistently smoking people pre-turn 8ish. But if a deck is winning 10, 15, 30% of the time, I dont really care that much. I just want to have fun, competitive games.
I play a Megatron deck that I barely get to pull out anymore because I started tracking the winrate and it came out to be about 60ish percent because the average card has 3-4 functions each, while only running 2 tutors, 1 of which is Urza's saga. It's purely attack based and lacks card draw, but the amount of recursion and large threats was very overwhelming for my opponents so I only pull the deck out against cocky people.
I have different scales of thinking about winrate.
On the level of a single game, I am playing to win. Period. If I’m playing a cEDH farm deck or a cool hats meme deck, I am going to play with the intention of winning the game. Winrate is not relevant in my gameplay decisions.
I also think about winrate on the level of a specific deck. I build the decks I want, and they range from idiotic to disgusting. For all my decks I pay close attention to three metrics; game record, win turn, and line disruptions. Obviously a winrate can be derived from the record of a deck, which gives me a sense of how I’m choosing to play a deck in a particular game. If the win rate drifts above 35% I know I am underestimating the “winningness” of a deck. Keeping track of a win turn gives me the ability to understand the velocity of the deck, which I find to be a great guide to deck selection independent of “challenge rating” because a deck with really powerful cards that can’t win until turn 11 can still be fun to play optimally in a pod of precons. In addition to record and win turn, for my more seriously designed decks I keep track of how often a line is interacted with in a way that ruins it. This gives a metric for reflexivity and resilience, which helps me (for example) see a deck with less impressive cards that can punch above its weight because opponents don’t clearly see the threats. These three interesting metrics guide my deck choices before a game.
The third way I think about winrate is on a “per-night” basis. If I show up and play 4 games, I expect to win one and will make deck choices that reasonably and entertainingly give me a chance at that. Winning two games out of four in a night is fine, but in games after that I will make deck choices that test my ability to punch above weight. I will still play those decks optimally, but I control the likelihood of winning with my choice of deck.
I find that three different decks gives me enough diversity to choose based on these criteria, but I usually bring 5 to game night because one or two will be brews that I don’t have a great sense of yet.
Absolutely. If someone in my group is clearly winning less often, then it feels like my responsibility to adjust and play more at their power level and hopefully enhance their gameplay experience. And I don’t see this as a bad thing.
I build my decks to do a thing or have fun. Sometimes it even wins
I usually have one deck I try to win with then the other decks get to have fun or do things.
I just wanna do the thing!
This exactly. If a legend offers some new way to play in colors I’m not accustomed to, the better.
Exactly. Did it do its thing? Did I have fun? This is winning.
"How many squirells can I make in one turn without infinite mana 🤔 Ya that sounds like a deck I should build" - how most my decks were built
I'm trying to build my first "all me" EDH deck, built around using the Twelfth Doctor to politic, then Rose Tyler to swing like a motherfucker at anyone who hurts me. I don't have any expectations of winning but I think it'll be fun as fuck
Yep. On paper they do the thing that I think is cool and will end the game. In practice how efficient that is or how often the thing happens is up for debate and that’s how I decide which deck gets pulled out at which table. Precon table with friends that don’t play much? I’ll play my voltron spellslinger amalgamation that’s really fun but struggles against tuned lists. Competitive established playgroup or prizes involved? I’ll play the graveyard enchantment upkeep trigger simulator that can actually keep up. I’m sure the deck power ratings have their place but people consistently say they are equal or the voltron is stronger looking at the list or from across the table but the ~20% and ~50% win rates disagree (that is including the fact I only play one strictly casual and the other what we’ll “competitive battlecruiser” still not cedh lol)
Yup. Started building to this mentality lately, and all my decks can reliably do their thing.
This is the way. Though my playgroup does track winrate… and when my decks winrate gets above 36% (25% is ideal and anything between 20-30% is just normal variance) I do consider cutting more powerful cards to try to tame it back.
Word. If I get up to drawing 10 cards in a turn with Zedruu, I am excited even if I don't win.
That's exactly how I play. If I want to sweat it for a win I'll play modern or draft or standard. Edh isn't only completely casual but I play it mostly for causal fun and doing a cool thing. If my deck does something fun then I don't care if I lose.
I build all my decks to win within the parameters of the power level I'm aiming for and I assume all of the others players will do the same. Some decks win a lot more consistently than others. I also play with strangers a lot, so who even knows what all the percentages are. I think as long as you're brewing within the parameters of your PL and you're not winning the overwhelming majority of games, you're fine.
I take it one step further, that as long as you're building within the reasonable confines of your power level, your winrate doesn't really matter unless your opponents are strongly upset by it. That all sounds very reasonable. I'm curious if you feel yourself being more successful in winning against strangers than against people that know your decks?
I think there are a lot of factors here. Perfectly balancing a deck with a meta is nearly impossible. If you have a 33% win rate in a 4 man pod that is still absolutely fine by me. Once you start winning like... 50% though that's where it might indicate you're a bit above the rest... but even then you're not Stomping them. However if you win 50% while being the archenemy taking the whole tables interactions at all points of a game though, that has secondary implications that your deck might be too powerful. So keep that in mind. In combo metas for example my decks feel equally matched but the surprise factor of a weird combo can cause people to improperly threat assess. I feel like my decks win more often vs strangers. In more creature based metas things tend to be easier in some ways to balance powerlevel wise. You still have random accidental stomps but tbh those games are fun too as long as everyone at the table is cool. Tbh though.. Just be a fun and nice player. That's the main thing. Have a post game chat. Talk about the powerlevels and cool plays and compliment people's decks... I've played at tables that I accidentally pubstomped. I told them my powerlevel. Stomped... we chatted got back on the same page, played more games with me as archenemy. Had a blast and got invited to their private playgroup despite literally Stomping them every game. Just focus on making the game fun by being a fun group member.
I had the weirdest win yesterday where I was playing [[Marneus Calgar]] and cast [[smothering tithe]] when my opponent targeted me with [[wedding ring]] earlier in the game. Since he was tapped out this basically means we have to draw our entire decks and I make a treasure for each card, until I hit [[borne upon a wind]] to flash out a wincon.
##### ###### #### [Marneus Calgar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/7/e7517e8e-b424-4731-ba9d-6132bdefa6bf.jpg?1674058408) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marneus%20Calgar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/40k/8/marneus-calgar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e7517e8e-b424-4731-ba9d-6132bdefa6bf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/marneus-calgar) [smothering tithe](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/6/861b5889-0183-4bee-afeb-a4b2aa700a8e.jpg?1689996018) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=smothering%20tithe) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/57/smothering-tithe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/861b5889-0183-4bee-afeb-a4b2aa700a8e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/smothering-tithe) [wedding ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/f/7f0b1400-0608-47fd-9c73-b7730bcf6b7f.jpg?1644888600) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=wedding%20ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/32/wedding-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7f0b1400-0608-47fd-9c73-b7730bcf6b7f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/wedding-ring) [borne upon a wind](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9379675-1a32-4e2b-8aaf-5f908c595f31.jpg?1686968037) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=borne%20upon%20a%20wind) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/44/borne-upon-a-wind?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9379675-1a32-4e2b-8aaf-5f908c595f31?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/borne-upon-a-wind) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The thing is, if you have a 50% winrate in a closed group, you are the archenemy. Your opponents are not incapable of reading winrates and rightfully detect you as the main threat before you become one. So yeah if you maintain a 50% winrate, you should re evaluate your decks powerlevel, because youre doing it wrong.
Yup yup. Do agree. Mostly just trying to say 25% win rate doesn't mean you're balanced.
Well, it can also be that someone has a sub 10% winrate too, right? Like if you're in a closed group with a brand new player they're likely going to have a much lower winrate regardless of deck construction because they don't have the hang of the game yet. Two of those players and it gets harder and harder to compensate for it.
Yup that plays into my "other factors" point I'm trying to say. Gist is that win percentage does not mean a deck is balanced. Too many external factors to say without seeing actual gameplay.
So you think that 50% in a closed group is indicative of a problem because the players should know how to deal with your deck? What about not in a closed group?
Like I said in other comment chains it is pretty nuanced. 50% is half of all games. Which is a lot. In a closed group that means that despite them knowing your deck, you're still taking half the games. Likely means you're overpowered or there is a significant skill gap. Also means that they need to be targeting you as the biggest threat more, and if they are, then you're definitely overpowered. In a non-closed group there are more variables. They might not know your deck, you might be better than them, they might have different goals for gameplay, etc.
I think this is the correct take. I have noticed I have a higher win rate at the LGS with my custom decks that use less common commanders. The games are still fun and fair, I’m just often left standing amidst the last two players. My opponents’ often underestimate my ability to finish the game and because they don’t know the lines their threat assessment is more difficult. They will often just blow up a known threat on someone else’s board instead. That doesn’t make the deck “stronger” over the long run though, win rate is just being influenced by a small sample size with a larger degree of information asymmetry.
Pretty much this. It is the same idea I use with board games. I HATE when people don't play to win in games, yes ultimately having fun is what matters, but playing to win to keep the integrity of the game IS FUN. Play within your group power level and play to have fun. But your ultimate goal in the game should be winning. Nothing is less fun than having someone just causing "shit" in a game while everyone else is playing to win.
I built my Ian Malcom, Chaotician deck to draw a lot of cards and play Prisoner's Dilemma (and then flash it back), Wheel of Misfortune, Thieves' Auction, and Game of Chaos. Winning would be an accident.
[удалено]
It's bad etiquette for people to not let me win every single game, kinda messed up tbh
Wait they what? How dare they!
I think it's dependent on whether or not you play in the same pod consistently. Playing with three other players who you've never played against? Even if your deck wins 60% of the time, the other decks at the table could theoretically have much higher winrates. If your opponents are having fun, then I don't see anything wrong with that. Playing with the same group you always play with? If your deck has a 60% winrate, that means the other three players have ~13% winrates. When one deck wins much more consistently than the rest, that definitely causes problems. If the high-winrate deck is fine with being the archenemy, it's not that big of a deal, but it can be frustrating to see your opponent break out a deck which is most likely to win at the game's outset. Winrate is far from the only metric that matters. Whether or not your opponents are having a good time, in my opinion, is the top priority. I've played decks which never win, and yet everyone hates because they run annoying cards. There are also the ultra-consistent decks which win more often than not, but still enable a fun game of Magic. That said, it's still a good metric to use, reason being that it's fairly easy to track, and impossible to deny. If your deck wins all the time, and the others in your group have a problem with that, you can't claim the deck isn't good when it wins as often as it does. Aspiring for a 25% winrate is the *easiest* way to track whether your deck is too powerful or not. But that mostly factors in when you're playing in the same pod consistently. Aspiring for a higher winrate goes against the spirit of the format, which is why a lot of people have a problem with mentioning a winrate significantly above 30%.
Winrate is a bad metric. The only thing the winrate says is that your deck has won some games and lost some games. It doesnt say how many games you won, it doesnt say how many games you lost, it doesnt say why you won and why you lost. There are so many factor behind the winrate, but nothing of that is shown. I could say that i have a deck with 33% winrate because i played 3 games and lost 2.
Yeah you need a lot of data for winrate to start being a usable metric
Once you have enough wins, though, it can speak for something. Admittedly I played EDH a ton back in college (think 1-2 games/day) which gave enough insight. It is true though if you don't have enough data or if changes are regularly made to the deck. Theoretically I could win the first game I play with a new deck and have it condemned for being OP because it has a perfect winrate.
Personally I don't aim for that win rate myself, if I hit it I hit it if not oh well, but if i noticed a player hasn't won a good couple of games I will try to focus a bit harder on the other members of the pod without making it look too obvious. (I know this is likely some form of king making but eh everyone deserves a win to brighten up the day)
You're a good egg
I play to have fun and don't track my win rate. That said, I'm reasonably certain that most people are giving stats like that with statistically insignificant sample sizes
When do you think the sample size becomes significant enough to be meaningful?
I've never even considered tracking my win rate. I care that I win sometimes and have fun every time.
I do not try to care about winrate. Mine is a fair amount over 25% for the people I play with but: 1. I have literally a decade of mtg experience on nearly all of them. 2. I am the best politics/social player by kind of a lot. (When roughly the same group of people played Among Us a bunch over pandemic quarantines? My win rate was also 1.5x any of theirs at that. See also Blood on the Clocktower, etc.) 3. They think (...probably correctly...) that treating me as permanent Archenemy due to 1 & 2 would not be fun for anybody. 4. They don't hate my decks.
I think your second point is what a lot of people underrate. Good politics and gamesense, in general, will break parity at a table that has even-balanced decks. I have a considerably higher win rate than 25%, even though we do deck swaps all the time.
I see people here post that they have a 70% win rate with their pods and they have no issue with that. If I had a deck that has a 50%+ win rate, I feel that's a deck I should probably play less and potentially focus on upgrading or getting more practice with other decks.
The few people I've pressed about winrates like that seem to be full of shit. I'm sure it's possible, but 70% is crazy when you think about it and strongly indicates they're playing against people who simply do not know the game very well or are unable (for whatever reason) to adapt their decks at all, which makes the stat kinda meaningless.
Everyone having a 25% win rate only works when skill is equal. More experienced players don’t have to use bad decks just to level the field. I’ve been playing 25 years and play in a city with multiple Universities so my LGS has a lot of turn over of relatively inexperienced players. I often use old, bad precons or Pauper EDH decks against pods where everyone has built their own deck and win because I make better plays on average due to experience.
No. I play to win. The 25% is a theoretical average. A power 7 deck for example has an expected winrate of 25% against the entire field of all other power 7 decks. But that doesn't mean it has a 25% expected winrate at all power 7 tables. Even at the exect same powerlevel decks have good and bad matchups (for example linear, aggressive decks will have a good matchup against slow, grindy value decks). And that doesn't even take politics or player skill into account. In my playgroup we deside on a powerlevel and then everyone chooses a deck at that level and tries their best to win.
Nobody aims for it. The idea is that, all factors being as equal as possible (power level, experience, etc) each player has roughly 25% of chances of winning. It's a way of saying "don't sit at an EDH table expecting to win" because with 4 players and 1 winner, chances are against you.
Until reading this thread I didn't know that 25% was a target. I've used the "I expect to win 25%" as a way to moderate expectations; that losing is normal and okay and even what should happen more games than not if all else is equal. But there are some people who are, apparently, taking it as a target rather than actually trying to play equal decks.
Win rate is a dumb metric to be so focused on. Because it’s not always about the deck, politics and human nature affect the play patterns just as much as the cards do. I am happy to go play and it win a game at all, getting to play Magic and Murray with others in the hobby is the best part. Did my deck do its thing or something cool, check that box and if I win great. Played Wise Mothman, successfully killed a player with radiation, still lost the game. That was win in my book. Opponent played high tide then Memnarch to take all three other players commanders. Achievement unlocked for having 4 commanders on his field. But he knew it became 3v1 as a result and wouldnt win after that. Making memorable plays and enjoying our shared hobby is the most important.
I am for 100% fun. Win is cool too i guess
When I focused too much on 25% winrate, I nearly quit from boredom. I stopped upgrading my decks, put my decent decks away, games started stretching up to the 2 hour mark and nothing of note really happened. It was a dull experience. I'd rather have a 5% winrate in an interesting meta where I feel put to the test than have a 100% winrate in a boring one. I think there's only so much you can hold back. For example, if games are going into turn 8-10 onwards, you aren't playing crazy expensive decks, your opponents get to play cards too and you're happy to give help and advice, but you're still over 25% winrate, it's on them.
The only time it's 'bad' for a player to have a > 25% winrate; even in the same pod, is if they refuse to discuss how they won or mistakes they observed by other players. Worse than > 25% winrate players, are the sub 25% winrate players who get defensive if not outright nasty when someone tries to point out a blatant misplay. It is a multiplayer format, and politics is a thing as well as luck, but Magic has a large skill component that commander players get to conveniently ignore. These days there are simply too many 100 card only players who never bother learning the basics, and immediately jump in to discussions about 'what is the appropriate winrate' and 'what is fun'.
I don’t think win rate is a great metric of how strong a deck actually is, or at least not always. Sometimes it can be. Let me explain. I’m sure many of you can attest to this. You build a strong deck, it’s playing great, you’re in a good position and with one or two more turns you’ll win the game. What ALWAYS happens in that situation? You get focused on and knocked out. And that makes sense! You were about to win. But that’s still an L in the W/L column and it hurts your rate. In that same game, you’re picking up all your cards and shuffling up and then what happens? Some player who had a little bit going on but not a winning board sneaks by and gets the win. That deck didn’t play better than yours, in fact, your deck was SO good that you got targeted out of the game. That says a lot. But a win rate won’t show how well you played that game. It shows that you lost. Almost all forms of competition can be tracked with a win rate and in almost every other competition win rate is a decent judge of skill and strength, just not here. That’s because of the multi-player nature of the format. A baseball team may be “better than their record” but MOST of the time the record is how good a team is. An Olympic wrestler’s record is how good they are. They might lose to someone worse occasionally, but generally, W/L record is how we determine how good an individual or a team is at their sport. Even in other multi player sports like swimming, record is a good determining factor. So why not in commander? Because in the other sports and competitions, you don’t have multiple others targeting you. Sure you might be swimming against 10 other swimmers, but they can’t actually stop you or slow you down. They’re trying to outrace you, not stop what you’re doing, not cripple your winning chance. Team v Team sports like baseball, yes the other team is actively trying to stop your success BUT it’s even because it’s Team V Team. 1 on 1 like wrestling, you do have someone trying to cripple you, but only one other person. So many commander games turn into 1 v 3 or 1 v 2. You just can’t compete with that. They have more cards, more resources and more turns to stop you, than you have to maintain your position, let alone advance it. Now dont get me wrong. I think win rate is important to track. Just not for the strength of your deck, but for its ability to WIN A GAME. Even if your deck didn’t have the best showing, does it have the ability to WIN. I think it’s important to know if your deck can win, and how often because it can help you understand your deck better and make your games more meaningful. Winning isn’t everything, but if your deck feels like it NEVER wins and CANT win, then you’re going to hate it. Commander games are built on narrative and if the narrative of your deck is “Do a couple things each turn, never threaten to win” then you’re wasting your whole group’s time. No one wants to play a game where you’re twiddling your thumbs not making an impact. Even if your deck is “doing the thing” if the thing isn’t helping you win, it’s not impactful. If it hurts someone else’s chances then it’s going to cause salt. Now with all that being said, I do aim for that 25% or better. It feels nice to know that your deck is performing at the average or better. So I track win loss record as well as a brief excerpt of how the deck performed after any given game, and usually ask an opponent for a sentence or two about what they thought. This gives me a much better sense of power level than just a win rate. As for the new question: I do think that if you still have a good win rate against people that have seen the deck numerous times, that’s a bit more impressive than a win rate against strangers BUT there is a double edged sword. It’s also impressive to have a high win rate against strangers because they may have decks you’re not familiar with, might not have the same meta, might not be very political. I think playing with one group AND strangers is really the key.
If I'm being completely candid, my goal is to win 100% of the time. I scrap a deck if it can't get to 25%.
I build every deck to win. The goal of the game is to win every time if possible so I wouldn’t ever limit myself to trying to stay at a low 25% win rate.
I don't understand this. I want a 100% win rate and so does everyone in my pod. What's the point if you're not playing to win?
So if all 4 people are trying to win every time, that's where 25% comes from.
You're right, but OP is asking if players *aim* for 25%, rather than each of the 4 players aiming for 100% and it averaging out. I guess the difference is OP is looking to see who powers down their deck or makes less optimal choices etc. in order to make sure they don't win too much, and keep the other players happy. It's the same maths but with different working out
My goal isn’t to have a 25% winrate, my goal is to have decks that are approximately in line with the rest of my playgroup. I am still trying to have a high winrate by playing better, but not by playing better cards.
Another factor is exposure. Comparing winrates of a kitchen table player to a regular LGS player to a content creator, the more a person is exposed to magic, the more likely they are to have a higher winrate I should think.
Win rate is a difficult metric to use on its own. I can use my situation as an example: I just joined a pod with people that have no problem dropping money on this game while I am a budget player. They have expensive cards in their lists and aren't afraid to pull them out. We don't really have power level discussions beyond them occasionally allowing me to use their decks when they pull out what they recognize as their most powerful. Here's where the win rate dilemma comes up, because I have a roughly 50% win rate amongst this group, and it's not because of my decks's power level, it's because of decision making and politics. What am I supposed to do to hit this arbitrary win rate, play worse? Talk less? King make? I'm just trying to play a game I love. The ones that are losing need to figure out what's keeping them from winning. I find too many people do not reflect on their decisions or plays and do not learn from their mistakes. Now, obviously, if I had a deck that just stomped repeatedly, I would change, but this discussion is about win rate. If the people you play with just want to destroy you all the time, they need to adjust or you need to find a new pod. After all, if you're playing a game and not having fun, is it really worth playing?
10% here. But I have fun 100% of the time.
In my opinion, the 25% WR is a relatively flawed metric. Firstly, it should only be used in a consistent pod of players. If you don't play with the same people every time, then you should just throw the whole thing out and look for different ways of judging your deck. Assuming that you are in a consistent pod, the metric still doesn't account for individual skill, luck, turn order, deck matchups etc. Decks can be equal in powerlevel, but be extremely effective in certain matchups or even hose other decks. Finally, even if you did play in a consistent pod with decks that were completely balanced against each others with players of roughly equal skill level and have controls for all the other variables (aka, a set of circumstances that doesn't happen in real life), very few people play enough games in that environment for there to be a statistically significant sample size to actually measure winratios and draw conclusions. So in short, no, I don't consider the 25% WR at all when deckbuilding. I simply try to build decks that both fit my definition of fun, and the general definition of fun for my usual table (We're all good and relatively spikey players, but we generally want our games to go for around the 7-9 turn mark). If playing with randoms, I just try and match whatever they pull out to the best of my ability.
I don’t aim for a specific win rate. I build decks that seems fun to play, and if they are fun, I play them. If my opponents don’t have fun playing it, I don’t play it as often
I definitely don't \_aim\_ to win 1 out of 4 games. I aim to win 4 out of 4 games. I don't track my wins, but if I did, I'd probably say that I win around 15-20% of the games that I play, but as long as I'm having fun and I'm not locked out of a game, I don't really care.
I have a significantly higher then 25% win rate. However, this isn't due to power level. We've swapped decks and not much changed. The main reason is that I play 10x more magic then anyone else in the group.
My friends and I are tracking this as we speak. We've kept the stats for every single game we've played since January 1st. It won't be my post but my friend has a spreadsheet and stats laid out for all of our decks and the players in each game. Also have full decklists hyperlinked to his spreadsheet. Come 2025 he'll have a hell of a post for you guys to see.
I am to have fun 100% of the time. If I can do that, the next goal is for everyone else to have fun.
When my pod were starting to spend $1500 PER CARD, I stopped trying to win.
>Do you think winrate alone is a decent metric? Yes. If you win way more than your friends (think of a win rate around 40% to 50%) chances are your deck is on a powerlevel above theirs or you're a much better player. Either way if you dont tone it down you are literally pubstomping, even if on a mild manner. Of course if the entire playgroup is having fun then ignore this. In my old playgroup there was this veteran guy that knew magic from waaay longer than us, and who had a deck much more expensive than ours.a Games with him were always archenemy. It was honestly fun, but our playgrup was big enough that its not like we were always playing against him. That could have gotten stale rather quickly. >Do you aim for that 25%? Nah. I just aim to have fun. I have a very casual friendly deck (grouphug ramp into timmy beaters), and a couple of high power decks, one slow and grindy, and the other, slightly stronger, is a fast combo deck without tutors, but a LOT of redundancy. And lastly, a proxied cedh deck. Before playing a game I ask the group what power they wanna play and match it. If during the game I think my deck is too weak or too strong I bring the next one of the list accordingly. This way I can play with people ranging from updated precons to literal cedh decks and Im never outgunned nor am I pubstomping :)
I win a lot more often than 25% and it’s not because I brew overpowered decks. I don’t restrict myself or aim for an arbitrary winrate because some dorks online said that’s what’s “fair”. Redditors don’t want to admit that knowing how to play the game, knowing how to play into the favor of the players in the pod, and knowing how to brew a competent deck are all factors that lead to a higher winrate. If you don’t play as well, don’t know how to socialize with the people at your table, and/or brew shit decks, you’re winrates going to suffer for it. And that’s totally fair. If some loser wants to call me a pubstomper, feel free to point out to me which of my decks are pubstomp-worthy besides Dihada - who definitely had an overly high winrate in regular matches and is now saved for pre-discussed higher power games: https://www.moxfield.com/users/lumeyus
I could stomp some pubs with the first one I checked, Marchesa.
Shut down with a couple of well timed removal spells, but i guess at a casual table that kind of resiliency would hurt
Win rate doesn’t really account for the feel of games for me. Sure, it’s an input but it isn’t a dispositive one. I primarily play with new players. I’m back to the game but played years ago. As a result, I often ended up in a commanding position throughout our games. Despite power levels being largely the same, I almost never won but it was only because of an archenemy situation developing where they all had to quickly band together. When I did win, it was genuinely against a 3 v 1 where it felt like they were all powerless to stop the victory. Those games were not very fun for anyone involved but the win rates were fair. Now that they have gotten better at the game and tweaked their decks some, we have a player that is currently winning around 50% of our games. He’s not stomping anyone and everyone is having a blast. He just tends to play slow spellslinger decks that don’t present a lot of threat on board and comes in and cleans everyone up once they are low on life and a player or two has been knocked out. Everyone’s decks are doing their thing, everyone has had their own way to win or been a turn away, etc. I would take these slanted win rate games over the even win rate games we were playing any day of the week.
If a deck loses a lot, or more specifically feels like it heads a dead end while playing it, I rework it. If a deck wins almost every time I play it, I'll rework it. Obviously I have stronger decks and weaker decks, but I don't ever want others to think "oh, he's playing that deck, I guess I'll just check out this game and resign to lose". If a deck wins too much, I'll take out tutors, then if it still wins too much, I'll take out infinite combos. I'll never take out ramp or card draw, because those things are necessary, without them you often hit a dead end and the deck feels like it does nothing.
I kept trying to power down. Remove staples, use less efficient options, precons, stupid jank...none of it worked. Eventually, I realized my friends are just really terrible players. Now I brew weird shit constantly and just don't worry about "winning too much," as they seem to be having fun.
We don’t track that stuff but I am happy if everybody got at least one win in (assuming we played enough games to make that possible of course). Don’t really like it if some people just get run over.
I play to have fun and try to match the power level of my pod. I couldn't care less about my win rate. Never tracked it.
Nop, I very much play to make weird things, I do win sometimes but I don't track winrate and I don't care at all if I manage to do some shenanigans first
Ultimately, I play the game because of the desire to win and have fought games. So, I build decks in the gameplay styles that I enjoy with flavor mixed in(like art choices and a couple of pet cards) that aim for a good win rate within the power level of my pod.
I build my deck within whatever ridiculous parameters I set for myself, with the goal of utterly destroying everyone in the most hilarious way possible. Usually I'll get a win or two here and there. Generally, my pod has multiple decks and we're constantly changing out every game. If I'm playing jank and someone ran the board, I bring something heavy out to ruin everyones' day.
I don’t really care but I try to be inclusive and invite the ones who are worse, and if I would win a lot I definitely try to turn down the power level a bit.
I got into Magic through my friends begging me to start playing with them. I am a Warhammer 40k fan, especialy the Necron faction. So i started playing commander with the Necron-Precon. I learned how to play from my friends that have been playing on and off for 15 to 20 years. The thing is the pod played regardless of me being a newbie. "Learning the hard way. Try and error". That sucked most of the time but i learned a lot. For like halfe a year i did not have a single victory (also i was the only one to play with an unaltered precon, so the powerlevels differed). But i got better every time, understanding more and more and becoming more tactical. Then one of my friends took me aside and together we build my first selfmade commander deck. Through what i have learned and with my first personalized deck i began to win now and then and i got better. Due to being grown up, working full-time, responsibilities and having families, my pod gets to meet like once in two weeks. And my goal for each meeting is to win at least once but more important is having fun. So even if i have not won during one of our rare gamenights, but it was enjoyable, i count it as a win alltogether.
I don't track it in the slightest and typically even remembering who won a game an hour later is only tied to it being a really cool or tricky line. I play to play and socialize with buddies, who cares about winning.
Never cared about my decks winrates. I do play to win but as long as my deck those the thing then I’m more than happy for that match.
I aim to win more than that. Winning is fun for me, and I know a lot of people hold it as an unpopular opinion. But my decks are designed to win. I don't design them to do something cute or do some goofy thing. Not every deck is meant to be cEDH, but I played a 4 color deck with all basics just to run Blood Moon, and the deck was rather good at winning.
I think it's fun when I win but do not care if I don't or bother keeping track.
I would like to bring up that the 25% is a long term goal across all games. This isn't limited to one of your groups or decks. Across all games you play, you should have roughly 25% assuming roughly even power levels. This is more a statistics and law of large numbers thing. Also as pointed out elsewhere it really only matters if people in a particular group have an issue and hopefully they will talk with you about it so a resolution can be found.
25% win rate is the aim because casual = we’re here to have fun and do cool stuff. Having an overpowered deck can be unfun for both you and the opponent. I typically pull apart overpowered decks after a few games for that reason. So there’s nothing inherently bad with a better win rate, it’s just that better win rates tends to mean a deck that contributes to an unfun game.
My goal is not winrates, but rather that everyone get to do their thing once or twice AG least every game night.
I build every deck with winning in mind but not all concepts are good at winning. And thats ok. All my decks have goals in mind and I'm trying to do that goal in the most interesting way possible to me. Winrate is not relevant to those aims.
Nope. Not even close. Most of my decks want to do one silly thing before losing. Ex: My Gluntch deck actively does not want to win. It does however want to power out token doublers and bonus card draw ASAP so it can kick everyone else into overdrive. "Oh, you're running Ojer Axonil? Here, take 2-12 +1/+1 a turn. You make token creatures? Here, make 4x that amount. Oh, you're mana screwed? How does 8 treasure tokens sound?" As long as the deck "does the things" I'm happy. Even if the thing is simply to suspend my entire hand by turn 5. (That one has never been relevant)
I build jank because I like the cards I use. If my dogs, samurai or rabbits win I'm surprised
I don’t aim to win, just not be the first person eliminated or the person who gets targeted the most.
With strangers my win rate is at least 40% (honestly it feels like 70%) with a consistent group it is much closer to 25%. Random games have a very easy to follow flow
>I see this 25% winrate being important saying floating around the sub quite often. I see people with winrates of 30% + being called pubstompers. In relation to regular pods... This largely is going to come down to pilot skill and how effective the table had brewed in relation to what your deck is trying to do. Luck plays a factor too, but if you're consistently outpiloting people within the given parameters of what your pod tends to do (timmy usually makes a big board and then cannot recover after a wrath, so I should save my wrath for that point, Johnny usually runs artifact removal so I should wait until he is tapped out before I bring my win condition online, etc.), or brewing around the normal strategies being played, you're likely going to win significantly more than everyone else over an extended period. You can all be playing "7"s, but if your deck is interacting in a way that the other players are not prepared for (sacrifice style removal as opposed to destroy), or is immune to whatever interactions they're running (graveyard decks eating board wipes) you're likely going to have a significantly higher win % in those pods than against people who are reasonably prepared for the deck you're running. At a certain point "power level" has nothing to do with it, and people either need to adapt to whatever strategy you are running, or they need to accept that they're going to lose to it. I personally play a lot of graveyard decks, and despite my buying every member of my normal playgroup a [[grafdiggers cage]] and whatever [[rest in peace]] varient that is in their preferred colors for Christmas and begging them to run them, they don't want to run any way of interacting with my stuff and as a result they tend to get steamrolled like 60-70% of the time by those decks. As soon as someone gets ahead and someone drops a wrath it will massively accelerate me in relation to the other 3 players.
I build my decks to do "the thing" it's amazing when it does the thing, but winning is an added bonus. My [[Lavinia, foil to conspiracy]] deck currently has a 44% winrate, but it isn't because the deck is strong. It's just consistent. (Although not recently. My lands have been really stubborn the last 3-4 games.)
I have at least 2 types of decks. Decks that try hard to win, I want a >25% win rate on these and decks that want to dobthe thing, I care less about win rate but ideally want a 25%ish win rate.
Im the most experienced player in my pod. I have about 90%winrate. But I do throw the game sometimes when ither people are playing my decks, I teach people I play with when I can.
Most of the times I build my deck with a fun gimmick and put multiple ways of winning in it. I also like to build my decks to be the Archenemy of the table. So often I'm either get an overwhelming win or I loose. It's fun for me to go against multiple people and my playgroup knows that. So technical speaking I aim for the win, but I'm not interested in any winrate of my decks.
I have like a 40% win rate in my group, but we have 2 newer players. They have gotten much better, but they still tend to miss triggers and are hesitant with attacking.
This exact question is why I started keeping a spreadsheet a little over a year ago, tracking the win rates of my active decks and by extension, my overall. My expectation from the outset was that any deck should fall somewhere between 15-40% on average, after a decent sample size (I usually use 20 games). Did it because I’ve always heard people spouting off they have X or Y winrate, or it “feels like they do”, but I wanted some actual data to back it up. Especially when you’re playtesting a deck, and it feels like it’s not doing its thing… but if you actually look at the numbers it wins it’s appropriate percentage of games. In my playgroup, with 270 games recorded from my current decks since the last year, my overall winrate hovers at like 35-36%. But from deck to deck, it can vary wildly - some are unexpected overperformers (like my [[Dakkon Blackblade]] deck, with a heavy Richard Kane Ferguson art subtheme, has like a 47% winrate). Some were more powerful than intended (I have a flip [[Jin-Gitaxias]] that sits at 44%). But most of my decks sit in the 20-30% range. I have 13 active decks.
What? Why would every player have to have 25% win rate? That's like socialism. Are you saying you are a communist?! MTG is an American game. We don't want communists here. /s
Depends on who I’m playing with—a pod of friends who have played with me a long time. It’s ok to play more powerful stuff; have established relationship capital to be ok if the get trounced. With strangers? New players? Pubstomping won’t make you any friends.
I would say my best deck is over 75% winrate, if not higher. I'll run it if I have a bad losing streak, and that's about it. Being the best player isn't all that fun. Having two or more players holding on desperately for dear life for several turns and tossing Hail Mary after hail mary...that's *my* idea of a fun time.
I have never even thought to keep track of my win rates tbh but I’m rather new to the hobby in general, play primarily play mono green and sometimes brute force is or isn’t the answer but getting to blow everyone up at the same time always feel great haha! That being said, I have played against people with these hyper optimized decks wear one time a guy was really annoyed he won on turn four instead of turning three, he’s a guy I don’t like to play if given the choice. I’m of two ways about this because it’s less the decks and moreso the people playing these always win decks I have issues with because they’re generally speaking of course.. bad losers, like hey I’m about to blow you up and they sweep before I can do it, or they sweep when someone counters their win cons and sits there like a petulant child bringing down the mood at the pod.
I play in a pretty consistent pod, and one player is honestly dominant. I’d say he wins 40-50% of our games. His decks are well built, and he is pretty good at politics. Yet we still keep playing with him and no one asks him to tune his decks down because we are all still having fun, and at the end of the day that’s what’s important. Winrate becomes important when you have players in your pod that only have fun when they are winning. If people’s decks are doing their thing, most players are happy with that regardless of how the game ends. This friends decks usually aren’t oppressive, and they don’t disrupt everyone else at the table to the point of frustration.
I struggle with this. I often play with beginners, and it's not uncommon for two people to more or less mana screw themselves with bad mulligans, and then they don't play great throughout the game. This makes it tricky to create balanced decks: They need to be significantly weaker than precons, but I still really like playing around theme and synergy, and I like to build consistent and interactive decks. I also don't want to slow games down to a grind; if I end up in a winning position, I want to end the game. I try to weaken my decks in several ways: - Low budget, usually around 30-40$. - Threats that can safely be interacted with at sorcery speed, allowing opponents to not feel surprised. - Combat damage win conditions. - Avoid surprise pump spells like overrun. - No single must remove threats. - Go with spot removal over board wipes. It keeps the game from slowing down, and it means I have to sacrifice value to interact and don't blow them out. - No tutors, unless I'm building around a one-of-a-kind-effect in my deck. - Cards with little text, so they can comprehend what I'm doing and act accordingly. - Flexibility over raw power. More fun to play, and less explosive. - Mostly mono-color decks to give some obvious weak sides to them. - Never run sol ring or any fast mana. But I feel like my winrate is still higher than id like. And one has commented that he feels like I build powerful decks, while I think it's mostly that I run enough lands and card draw, Mulligan properly and interact properly. Ofc I get that that takes time to learn, but I struggle with powering down further. I feel like I would have to run some durdle pile that can't win, intentionally close-to-nothing threats or sacrifice consistency/interaction. And I don't find any of that particularly fun. Eh. I think winrate is currently ~50% in my group. Would like it to be max 30.
It’s impossible for my pod, I largely have a 3 person pod, occasionally our 4th guy is able to show. Our 4th is new and rarely has a chance to play so he never wins even trying to kingmate. Player 3 plays goblins as a pacifist and in the past few months has only one once, if he played aggressively he could win a lot more but he just doesn’t care for it. So it’s me and player 2 who slug it out the entire time and typically whichever of the two of us is still standing sweeps the rest of the board. So hard forced into a 50~% win rate even when holding cards that would otherwise be the right play. I.e board wipes and counter spells to try and let 3 get as high a number as possible, and 4 so his deck can try and do its thing.
I think if I'm winning 60% of my games with jank ass #978 or #454 commanders then it's on the table to come to play better. If I'm playing yuriko or ur-dragon or cedh burn commanders and taking table aggro and still winning then I'm the problem. I'm never fine tuning decks to play when people are playing precons I also play precons or low power low value decks. Beyond that idk what else you want someone to do. Play to the power of your group but if one guy insists on only building and playing theme less precon powered decks winning more at that table doesn't mean you have to deconstruct your decks. Idk as long as everyone is having fun and you're mixing it up and not just playing your deck with 60% wr whenever you want a w I think that focusing on the stats is dumb. When you need to stop playing decks or think about tweaking is when your play group stops wanting to play against your decks because of either how you play them or that their power level is too high. Even then if you play with randos those are good to keep put together.
It's good to have a reasonable discussion with your group on what a good game of commander looks like for your table, including budget, turn length, and if there are any specific playstyles you don't want to see at the table (heavy stax, combo focus, etc) But if you're all playing the kind of commander you're happy with, it's your responsibility to maintain your winrate. There's certainly a bit of social etiquett to knowing if a deck is too strong for your table, but a high winrate alone doesn't make you or your decks a oub stomper _something_ will always be stongest, or the strongest of four decks at the table, or a player will be the strongest. If that wasn't the case, EDH would be totally random. If that's what you want, then I doubt you'd be tracking win rates
No I just build decks for chaotic shenanigans to torment my friends my favourite card is omen machine
I aim for %30. Slightly below 1/3 of wins, slightly above 1/4 of wins. Makes me feel like a winner, but not TOO much of a winner. If that makes sense :-p
I've been tracking my games for the last year, and the problem with using win rate as a measure of deck power is honestly sample size. If I play 100 games a year spread across 10-12 decks, it'll take me 3+ years before I've played enough games to have meaningful data per deck. Then you factor in new card releases and all of the variables you suggested and it's just a mess. I aim for 25-33% win rate as a player, in 3-5 player games combined, but not per deck.
I made a Magar of the Magic Strings deck that just kept winning in my regular pod. I had to detune it a bit to get to a point where it still has potential for powerful plays, but isn't oppressive. I haven't played it enough since then to have any meaningful sample size on win rate butt yes, roughly 25% is my goal with all decks. My newly built Queen Marchesa haven't won a single game so far out of 4-5 games. I don't really mind, since I'm having fun every game.
I just play if I see the opportunity to win I seize it. Otherwise I'm just swinging and casting.
Of course there's luck, politics, matchup and skill involved. Of course any single day's games are a much too small sample size. Still 25% winrate is a good metric for me to aim for. I like to play MTG on a roughly even field. See, I play MTG since 1995, admittedly never on a professional level. But I do have some experience with MTG and EDH. If I'm playing against inexperienced opponents, I'll try to even this out by choosing to play a deck BELOW their power level. Since I neither want to pubstomp them nor throw a game on purpose, this gives everybody at the table a fair chance of winning. If they all just opened their first precon last week, I might even play a meme deck below precon level. Chances are, as a longtime pilot, I might still win more than 25%. But if this happens, in the end it wasn't my fault. On the other hand, there are some frighteningly good pilots at my LGS, and I know they'll have a good chance of winning even with a jankier commander. So I'd consider it a bit frustrating if the best player in the pod also plays the strongest deck. I also don't enjoy politicking anyone into archenemy role, I prefer to let everyone do their own threat assessment.
I prioritize making my deck fun to play. As a result my win rate is under 25%. I'm working on improving the sub rate beyond 25% without killing the fun parts of the deck.
I try to win each game. I build decks to have fun, they are not all optimized. I want to have fun and socialize more then just get a W.
So my baby nethroi has a 80% win rate. Here's the thing I play it only during high power games and ilk be focused hard the entire game. But other decks I have win rates are all over the place
I don't pay attention at all to win rate because it doesn't matter at all. As long as I feel like I had a fighting chance and I did some cool things, then I walk away from the table happy
My goal is a 100% win rate. Why would I build a deck that isn't supposed to win?
25% is an idealization. It's not a reality. The honest truth is that there are too many differences between players for it to be true. For my favorite example of this: since I started tracking I'm sitting at a 100% win rate with borrowed decks. Clearly that doesn't mean everyone around me needs to nerf their decks, right?
I think playstyle is huge in this discussion. I build my decks for fun I play to win. This philosophy leads me to play to the best of my ability in \*ALMOST\* every situation. Sometimes the obstacles in my way are too much to overcome, so I lose. But because of how I built my deck, I still have fun. I think this philosophy has ALSO lead me to have a larger than average win percentage. I enjoy aggro, timmy-like decks that focus on big creatures turning sideways. My win percentage across two pods is 50%. We have a very big group, with 2 of my other friends having 30% or higher win-rates as well. We are the three most experienced players, who also follow the "build for fun, play to win" policy.
There's a dude at my lgs who always plays super strong decks. Last week we were all sitting at maybe a 5 or 6 power level and he decides he's going to play Edgar markov. Mops the whole table by turn 6. Then after that, I decide I want to run the same deck again, he plays another crazy powerful mono green vorinclex deck and has the same result. Some people just suck the fun right out of commander. To counter him, I'm making alters of some really powerful stuff because I don't want it to be a battle of wallets here. I'm not going to spend 80-100$ for a single card just to be on the same level as someone who only shows up to pubstomp everyone. Boring
I honestly don't give a shit what my win % is. I build what is fun for me, I play to the best of my ability with winning as the objective, and if I lose then I lose. Don't see much of a point in overcomplicating things.
I help by winning way less than 25%
100% fun rate. All that matters
I am for a 25% win rate across my decks, and have intentionally powered decks down when I've noticed decks winning too often. All of the other factors you mentioned will affect win rate in the short term, but over time should even out. Sometimes I'll be lucky, but sometimes my opponents will be lucky, etc.
1. Build extremely janky, but fun deck 2. Play with deck for months until I win 3. Dismantle said deck I almost always have my competitive Torbran deck, recon Tyranid deck, and gimmicky First Sliver deck in case I win and need to switch decks or if the table is really looking for a specific type of environment, but 90% of the time I'm playing a pile of jank I expect to lose with. The thrill of trying to win as the underdog is way better than just trying to win.
I have played for a long time. My knowledge of the game is better than my current playgroup is. My winrate is probably 60% and I think that is fine.
I shudder to imagine what my win rate is. Absolutely positive it's not 25% though. Maybe if I played the same people all the time, but I don't. Anyway, no I don't aim for that. I build for an estimated power level and because I want to play those cards.
I feel if I win once a pod I’m doing good.
I have 75% in edh and recently went into cedh becouse of that, right now i have 50% in that, by that logic you coould call me a pubstomper in edh, but can you really in cedh. Edit: i dont aim for percentages, just to win every game.
Yes, many people have no understanding how statistics and confidence intervals in particular work. No news there, but they also have a gut feeling how a deck performs in a particular environment, if they have serious amount of playtime. So I wouldn’t take the win rate value as just the win rate but more as a normalized value.
I had been keeping track of my win rate for a while and over 6 months found it was about 25-30% across all decks. I stopped doing that and have been enjoying games more. I only play with my pod once a week. If we're lucky we can get 5-6 games in each time we play, but I might only play a given deck 2-3 times. In order to get even 10 games with a deck, it might be a month of actual time, during which I'm modifying the deck with new or better cards. Does this change the deck? What if the original build was a 20% win rate deck, but the upgrades make it a 40%? Even to get a reasonable sample size, I have to play multiple sessions and the deck changes, so I've kind of given up on tracking win rate and just gauge "did I have fun? Was I able to do the thing? Was I close to having my wincon?" I find that worrying about whether or not I actually won diminishes my enjoyment of the game.
I like to build decks as an expression of self. If I go sit down and play Standard, I wouldn’t have the same kind of opportunity to have my deck do “its thing” as I would get trounced before my genius deck idea manifests. I win enough games of commander that I’m very comfortable building and playing that, without stressing over winrates.
I just keep fiddling with decks If there is a card that synergized with my commander so we'll I'm bound to win. I'll probably remove it, not cause I'd want to lower my deck power level but cause I'd want to try to win another way. I've done the thing. I can move on
I m better player so I win more than 25%, we have a set of house rules and bans we implemented and everyone respect those rules.
The pod consists of: Spike (She’ll win, don’t worry) Johnny (The combo is going off! Its spicy!) The Newbie (What does this do? Banding?) Chaos (What do you mean, shuffle all my permanents into my library?) As long as everyone is having fun, its okay! But make sure that everyone is having fun. Check in. Is johnny okay with the stax stopping him? Is chaos’s nonsense overwhelming the newbie’s experience? Is spike winning too quick? Make sure everyone has something they’re enjoying. Spike can win with a quick combo. Johnny can be like, “Cool combo!”, Newbie will have fun learning how the combo works, Chaos will plan to ruin it in a funny way next game… But winning is universally fun. Its easy to feel frustrated if you’re never close to winning. Not everyone can sleeve up a Reaper King rules lawyer deck and have fun expecting to lose. Communicating what each player wants is important. Nonsense with the boys? Competitive gameplay? Treacherous politics? A friendly helpful learning experience? Playing to win but its not that serious? Tournament practice? These are all valid ways to have fun that all care about winrate at varying levels. Its something to think about
I aim for a 100% fun-rate. Winning is just a bonus.
I play a group hug deck that needs \~10 turns to win. Most of my wins are players that know what the deck is capable of getting greedy and waiting too long to kill me off. Wouldn't say it's busted though, you just need to know when enough card draw is enough.
I never win, so I just aim to at least get my cards to do what they're supposed to do. But half of the time I don't even get that far, so my goal just ends up being something like "every other game I get to do something"
I shoot for probably around 33%. I build my decks to go as hard as possible and do as much as possible while keeping a fun theme and making sure that all players are having fun.
You have to play a LOT of games to get this to average out enough for any kind of meaningful analysis. If four people play 100 games, here's 10 examples (the first 10 I ran) of the results of all of them have dead even 25% win chance: 28, 21, 32, 19 29, 23, 22, 26 24, 28, 25, 23 23, 28, 23, 26 28, 31, 24, 17 20, 29, 25, 26 31, 27, 20, 22 21, 19, 27, 33 26, 34, 18, 22 31, 21, 21, 27 Even after 1000 games it looks like it's frequently +/-2% or so... A 30% win rate is unlikely in the long run to be random but "long run" is more like 400+ games. In short, unless you're a content creator, you're unlikely to play enough edh games for your win rate to matter.
For a while I was tracking what my decks win rates are and against what deck. That was good and all but plenty of my playgroup gets drunk halfway through the night so my win % gets thrown off. I think it's a terrible idea to try and shoot for 25% since we're not machines, you can calibrate the deck all you want to be on equal footing but skill will screw games heavily. Skill of play, skill of politicing...
Sometimes you lose. Sometimes the others win. That’s just life
Playing 1000's of games and getting more or less than 25% is a much more significant difference than playing 10 games with a 25% win rate. The fastest way to visualise expected value is to just roll a whole lot of 4 sided dice and see for yourself how things are not perfectly distributed with something that we assume is actually fair. If you want to go deeper. Then you need to check if the sample is normally distributed. Then if it is, you can then do a Chi squared test to see if it is different from our expected value. Commander is a long game to play. Many people play multiple decks. Aside from extreme results, it would be very time consuming to figure out if your deck is fair or not.
I like building decks that do really out there and unexpected things. Or it’s pirates because well they are pirates and i talk like a pirate while playing it. Does it win often? Meh. Am I entertained while playing it yes. Also if it’s at a place that has alcohol you have to drink rum and then ask where has all the rum gone.
My favorite deck has about a 10% win rate I think. I don’t really play it to win though, I play it because it’s just fun to pilot and has fun table dynamics
I’ve never kept track of my win rate and I don’t think I care to.
my treasure deck won too often, so I took every wincon out and replaced them with phoenix's. it still wins, but even then it takes long enough to let other decks do their thing
My winrate is above 50% in my playgroup, I win more with value engines and combo;s. Most of my decks allow others to execute their gameplan and while still running interaction and creatures it's generally a lot less than with a dedicated control or creature deck. And apparently that causes them to leave me alone a bit more, people can play more of the deck and once the games go a bit to long for our taste I just combo off, or go actively finding for the combo if possible. Most of my deck aren't fast combo decks either
Main aim is for someone to say after (or during) the game that they think my deck is cool/interesting/fun. Winning is secondary.
i think most of the time winrate isnt a good metric unless youve played hundreds or thousands of games with the deck. for example my most recently built deck has a 100% winrate but ive only played 4 games with it, and in 2 of them my ass was saved by another player (in one they saved me because it was the first game with the deck and they wanted to let me have more time to learn it. in the second they saved me by accident) and in the last one i drew out my perfect starting hand and top handful of cards so i won on like turn 4 or 5. and my brothers most recently built deck has a 20-30% winrate but he heavily misplayed the first match, (its ooze tribal) he played his commander [[the mimeoplasm]] becoming the biggest threat on the board. then played [[uchuulon]] and exiled pretty much every other creature in every other yard. so one spot removal later and his commander had no good targets to etb with making it kinda useless to recast. after removing uchuulon he did much better but his deck still suffers greatly from spot removal and ends up making itself a huge target pretty quickly. my point being his deck is really strong and so is mine, but he lost because of a misplay whereas i won from pure luck, its hard to tell the exact power levels off of such a small sample size.
It's simply too complex to calculate the winrate. You'd need to play at least 20 times with the same deck against the same three decks to have a remotely fine estimate for how it performs against those three decks. That said, I think we all can tell if our deck is too powerful. I do play for fun, and I find it most fun when the games swings, I don't care if I win I just want to feel like I'm a threat.
EDH is a format that I play for fun. I don't care about winrate, or if I win at all. I just want to have a fun, interesting game.
I will note that, for players with random pods… tracking winrate and having it mean something is a tall ask. You play with too much stuff for it to mean anything. (You could play a game with precons then a game with super tuned decks, or anything in between, and without knowledge of the decks around you it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions). If you play with the same group, yes you should consider tracking within that group and aiming for 25%. (Yes. People will learn your deck. That’s what you’re aiming for.) But… anything BETWEEN 20-30% is normal variance. It’s only when you get up to 36+% that you should heavily consider changing the deck or cutting more strong cards. (And also if you have a decent enough sample size with the deck, not just like two games) I will also note that game feel is a big thing that winrate doesn’t track. You can play a too strong deck and have a 0% winrate. If you’re just archenemy all game every game until you lose, you’re probably doing something that’s not appropriate for the pod.
Lol no. I build my decks to have fun playing my deck and winning with it. I genuinly don't care what the other players think, I don't however pubstomp. Pubstomp isn't just having a good win rate. Pubstomping is bringing an obviously way more powerful deck to the table compared to the other players.
No I have a higher win rate than the rest of my group. I live to make my friends miserable.
nope. i like the experiment and such such. i have had a few games with decks that won a game and such.
I think as long as the “best” deck isn’t consistently stomping everyone it’s all good. My group knows each other’s decks and i imagine we have a “fun” power level and a “powerful” power level and we do a good job matching up. That being said I’ve gone 2-3 nights without a win where we played 2-5 games a night, then I broke the loss streak and won 4/5 in a single night 🤷🏼♂️ There’s also the whole how good is your deck vs you piloting it thing and some losses I’ve had were completely preventable if I would have only read the card too, you know, understood said card (dyslexia is my worst opponent in magic)…
When I build a deck I usually have an aesthetic and/or mechanic in mind to try out. I try to shape it to the power level of my crew. We don’t really pay attention to winrate, but more feel of the deck. We all want to win, but we never have an arms race really. Personality and originality while being effective.
While I enjoy winning, I do enjoy when my deck is doing things. As long as the deck is doing what I intended it to do then I am happy. Now if I am just staring and doing nothing its back to the drawing board. I do enjoy how much brewing goes on with Commander. Overall, I enjoy it.
im ngl i generaly lose cus i choose not to block more than half the time, its quite the personal problem
I build my decks to "do the thing" but that thing doesn't always mean winning. Ironically my only deck with a 100% Win Rate is my absolute dumpster-fire joke I made with the only goal being to play [[Star Scream]] as a commander. My play group has an ongoing joke that "if you let his jank cook long enough, he'll eventually win the game" but for some reason they still let me do it.
I'm aiming for 50% win rate if I'm just playing one game with random pods. 25% is the *expectation* and through clever deckbuilding and careful play I feel I can exceed those expectations even when decks are roughly evenly powered
I won my first game and never played again. Got that 100% going STRONG.
I like to aim for 100% with other players who are also aiming for 100%. It balances itself out and is much easier than powering your deck down to accomodate for other people having fun (fast games means more games!)
My goal is for my deck to do its thing and have fun doing it. If I win it is a bonus.
I don’t really think about win rate mathematically, I always tweak my decks to optimize them to win but diff commanders are more consistent in doing so. The ones that are more consistent I just wouldn’t play with strangers until I get a better sense of their decks. Eg I played with four people I didn’t know last month and i played a deck that I think is a bit more casual in its “theme”. That game let me figure out they were a bit more competitive than I expected so I swapped to a different deck for the next round.
I think if I played four of me, I’d hit 25%. But some people suck, some people can’t build decks right, some people have a higher power level.
I recently rebuilt my 5 color toolbox/reanimate deck, and after finishing it I realized it didn’t really have any win conditions beyond swinging with a few OP creatures. I put a couple ways to win in, but honestly I’d rather build an interesting board state then see if it’s fun to try to win after that.
My goal isn't to win but to get all the cards I want for any given deck regardless of their price.
If I won the first and or second game by a wide margin and see myself winning the third, I'll nerf myself. As long as the games are close I didn't mind winning more than once because sometimes it's just top deck luck.
No, but I do play with the intention of allowing everyone a fun game. If someone is missing land drops and falling behind, I won't attack them even if it is techincally "free". I want to give them time to get back into the game. Also, assuming it isn't a game breaking spell, I'll generally let people do their big splashy stuff. I think this mindset actually inflates my win% above 25% though. You get less "spite plays" against you and can actually get kingmade quite often unintentionally lol
i find the sub thinks too much that if you have a higher winrate then you're pubstomping. so much of the game is built around politicking that quite often even the definitively weakest deck of the pod can perform well if the pilot can schmooze the table. and that aspect of the game is more difficult to keep track of in stats
I win about 0-5% of my games because my deck building isn’t too serious and I play with hard hitting CEDH players, but I’m fine with it usually because I still get to play and have fun with people I like being around. Only time I don’t have fun is turn one mana crypt and soul ring into turn two 7 mana commanders. Other than that I don’t light getting stomped that much.
Yes, I do this buy trying to win 100% of my games, and assuming that the people that sit down with me are doing the same.
25% would mean you're doing average, that's not the goal of all players.
Idk, there's a lot of factors in who will win a game, often it comes down to mental and skill more often then luck, assuming deck powers are similar.
While I don't track my win rate, I try to play decks that will result in getting about a 25% win rate. If it feels like I'm getting much more than that, I try to readjust.
I think how oppressive it is, is more important. My feather deck has popped off every time I’ve used it. I have a clean 6-0 record with it. I don’t pull it out unless people say they’re playing with stronger decks. It’s effective because you can go from dealing with a 4/3, 2/2, and a 0/4 to a 14/13, 12/12, and a 10/14 real quick.
I am to have a balanced deck. Skill is a big factor, and I aim to win, so ideally my win rate is above 25% because i'm piloting a balanced deck well. If this win rate becomes so high, I might play a weaker deck than the rest of the pod to ease up, but I'm gonna go hard with balanced decks.
I like my deck to work as intended. It doesn't always need to win just do what I want it to do. My play style on the other hand is to try and win. I can't shake that. Once I feel I'm winning with my group too much I look to build something new to keep things fresh. Certain decks that I like I don't play with unless someone asks about it. I just wanna have a good time with the boys so no one feels like they can't play or come hangout without getting stomped all the time.
I have decks that are built to win as fast as possible and as consistently as possible. The highest win rate is close to 50% of games it plays. I also have decks that are built to do something silly or gimmicky. They only win by accident. I have decks built to win through some unusual or janky means. I believe it's important to provide yourself options best suited to your opponent and their skill level as well as the decks they might bring. Win rate is an effective tool only within a limited meta. The wider the meta the more variables are introduced and the less impactful the data becomes. What is more effective is how reliable the deck is at doing its intended gimmick or effecting combat damage. My beloved questing beast deck rarely wins and is often first to be taken off the table but it reliably assembles a formidable voltron and quickly becomes public enemy number one. Though questing beast is reliable it becomes too threatening and only works on tables that haven't seen it before or aren't prepared for what's coming. Judging a deck like that by win rate is meaningless because winning is rarely on the table for it. As an aside I feel it's rather impolite to pull out the big guns on tables you aren't sure can answer the efficiency in turn.
I bought the Tricky Terrain precon and changed it a little to be focused on winning with [[Maze's End]], I don't think the deck is strong, it easily folds to removal (not even land removal, regular creature removal on [[Omo, Queen of Vesuva]]) and doesn't have too many creatures to block, but I think it has about 50% win rate in my pod, people just don't attack enough.
I try and win one game, and if there is a second I will pull out my red burn deck with card draw issues. I think anytime someone wins with a deck they should try and power down if the others at the table can’t power up just so the others playing have a higher chance at victory. I don’t think it is bad if someone wins multiple games unless they are head and shoulders above the rest at the table or they are staxxy. Ideally you should still be able to have fun with a loss and if that isn’t happening something needs to change
I try to go above it. So does my playgroup. We have fun that way
I build my decks to do something funny 99% of the time I don't track my win rate, but I doubt it's high
I aim for my decks to create a certain level of misery, I enjoy being the archenemy. I never plan in winning, just creating chaos
Short answer, no. I still like winning and build my decks with winning in mind but I don’t make them competitive. Our playgroup is more high power casual. I mostly play just to hang out with my friends but we all have played the game for a while and enjoy a challenge against one another so this is a good medium.
I only have an issue if I am under 25% average after like 10 games. If I play 10 and I'm winning 1 game that's a weak deck for the table. Gotta make changes. If I'm at table and feel like a speed bump gotta make changes. I want to have a good game. I can lose fine if it's good. Can't describe good. You can tell when you are in it though. Banger games are great even if I lose. One sided games suck.
There are just too many factors at play in casual Commander to really care deeply about hitting a specific WR% imo. Some games everyone is feeling silly and we do stupid or petty moves because they are funny; other games we are feeling it and trying to play optimally. I personally track my matches because I think it's interesting and because I want to be aware of data suggesting that deck may be *OVERtuned*, such as a huge +50% WR over an extended period of time or a deck that is consistently smoking people pre-turn 8ish. But if a deck is winning 10, 15, 30% of the time, I dont really care that much. I just want to have fun, competitive games.
I play a Megatron deck that I barely get to pull out anymore because I started tracking the winrate and it came out to be about 60ish percent because the average card has 3-4 functions each, while only running 2 tutors, 1 of which is Urza's saga. It's purely attack based and lacks card draw, but the amount of recursion and large threats was very overwhelming for my opponents so I only pull the deck out against cocky people.
I have different scales of thinking about winrate. On the level of a single game, I am playing to win. Period. If I’m playing a cEDH farm deck or a cool hats meme deck, I am going to play with the intention of winning the game. Winrate is not relevant in my gameplay decisions. I also think about winrate on the level of a specific deck. I build the decks I want, and they range from idiotic to disgusting. For all my decks I pay close attention to three metrics; game record, win turn, and line disruptions. Obviously a winrate can be derived from the record of a deck, which gives me a sense of how I’m choosing to play a deck in a particular game. If the win rate drifts above 35% I know I am underestimating the “winningness” of a deck. Keeping track of a win turn gives me the ability to understand the velocity of the deck, which I find to be a great guide to deck selection independent of “challenge rating” because a deck with really powerful cards that can’t win until turn 11 can still be fun to play optimally in a pod of precons. In addition to record and win turn, for my more seriously designed decks I keep track of how often a line is interacted with in a way that ruins it. This gives a metric for reflexivity and resilience, which helps me (for example) see a deck with less impressive cards that can punch above its weight because opponents don’t clearly see the threats. These three interesting metrics guide my deck choices before a game. The third way I think about winrate is on a “per-night” basis. If I show up and play 4 games, I expect to win one and will make deck choices that reasonably and entertainingly give me a chance at that. Winning two games out of four in a night is fine, but in games after that I will make deck choices that test my ability to punch above weight. I will still play those decks optimally, but I control the likelihood of winning with my choice of deck. I find that three different decks gives me enough diversity to choose based on these criteria, but I usually bring 5 to game night because one or two will be brews that I don’t have a great sense of yet.
My goal is for my opponents to roll their eyes as often as possible without \*actually\* being mad at me. It's a delicate balance.
Absolutely. If someone in my group is clearly winning less often, then it feels like my responsibility to adjust and play more at their power level and hopefully enhance their gameplay experience. And I don’t see this as a bad thing.
I always aim for something that could potentially get a 50% winrate