Sheldon Menery, godfather of soul EDH, posted on his facebook last week, "if you love EDH, tune into magicthegathering.com on 2 December for an exciting announcement."

[caption id="attachment_12903" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="Sheldon Menery, Level 5 DCI Judge + Godfather of EDH"][/caption]

For those who are unacquainted with Menery, he was one of the founders of EDH and has largely driven its adoption. His views on EDH boil down to: "it is a social, self-policing format." So this announcement would not (at least as far as he sees things) result in a push to 'competitive' EDH over 'casual' EDH.

Competitive EDH involves, as Benny Smith coined it, “EDH DB” card choices and actions. Mass land destruction, multiple counterspells, boring/hard to disrupt combos, (Mind Over Matter + anything, Niv-Mizzet + anything, Sword/Foundry, etc) and casting time stretch. Also, anyone using a list they didn't create themselves aka netdecking.

However, casual EDH does not mean 'bad EDH decks.' These are decks tuned to be fun to play. When I make my decks I purposefully try to build without certain cards or try to stick tightly to a decks theme. For example, I just added Hermit Druid to my Adun Oakenshield deck, and then took out almost all the nonbasic lands in the deck to make him most effective. (Plenty of basic land search in the deck as well) It might not work out well, but tinkering is part of the fun. (Yes, as Matt Sperling noted months ago, so is the 'look how cool my deck is' factor)

Of course, this announcement could mean a few different things.

New Article Series?

Perhaps Sheldon will be migrating from StarCityGames to the Mothership with his EDH articles. Or perhaps dailymtg will have a column focused on EDH discussions specifically. WoTC could be bringing Sheldon into the discussion of the format in some official capacity, as to keep R&D abreast of the format's needs and issues.

EDH-specific Product

Many have pointed out that the announcements for From The Vault and "summer multiplayer" product tend to come in January. So it is also reasonable that it could be a product announcement aimed directly at EDH players. Perhaps From the Vault: Legends or 4 Preconstructed EDH decks, similar to Archenemy and Planechase. The precons would be more interesting, as the highlander nature of the decks will be wanting for more playable cards than the usual EDH deck.

The commander precons released last year on MTGO had 5 rares in each, but also included cards like Fact or Fiction, Swords to Plowshares, and cards that are staples that hadn't been released in their own set. Rhystic Study being one, and it is probably 10 times the headache online than it is in paper, which says plenty.

A paper EDH precon would be interesting and it wouldn't hurt the format any. It isn't like people aren't running around with nigh-carbon copies of certain decks anyway. (Momir...and other EDH generals that tutor immediately come to mind) The interesting thing about such a precon is that the power level would be higher than the average precon, because they could use whatever commons and uncommons they wanted. This allows the deck to work, while still leaving plenty of room to be upgraded with rares, and a Sol Ring, if you feel like it.

Official EDH Format

Some believe this announcement means that EDH is going to be an official sanctioned format now. Sheldon doesn't want that. I highly doubt that. At least, I don't believe they would do any sanctioning that would result in more competitive decks being encouraged. If they used the wheelbarrow full of cash they saved from axing MPR, they could set up some sort of 'sanctioned EDH leagues' or just regular 'sanctioned EDH matches' wherein each player receives a promo, and players that have played X matches of EDH (or another casual format that is entered into reporter) receive a better promo.

As things are, I am trying to see how viable an EDH league would be for my LGS. It is tricky to set these up, because you have to encourage fun AND reward the players that win at the same time. Sheldon operates his on a (complex as I see it) points awarding basis, kind of like 'in-game achievements'. Things that are frowned upon, like taking extra turns, cause a player to lose points.

The league I was in followed rules like "attack left," and "can only target the players to your left and right." Points were awarded for kills and winning the table. These limitations had their pros and cons. Needless to say, the player running 'Niv Mizzet combo circa 2007' got quite a few wins. Many of the people in the league brought decks that were fair, and it was certainly fun, but far from perfect.

Magic Online's Commander is not directly comparable to EDH currently.

The social aspects are nonexistent, and competitive decks are everywhere and hard to avoid. Additionally there were several rules changed, likely a result of 'coding issues' cause the formats to play differently. Clone is not a general removal spell; the Shards trilands can go in any deck and Bringer of the Green Dawn can go into a mono-green deck. Pushing through all the triggers make EDH staple cards like Mind's Eye irritating, even if they do cause infinite combos to be effectively 'banned'.

The final weeks of the year for Magic are all about Worlds, and teasing the next set. Last year WoTC has us searching for a pot of gold (aka Jace, the Mind Sculptor) all across the world. In other years, they have previewed cards at Worlds itself.

All I want for Snowflake Day is some news or rumors!