In the never-ending quest to balance the inherently unbalanced format that is Commander, the Commander Format Panel (CFP, also known as the organization at Wizards of the Coast which took over for the Commander Rules Committee) has given us its latest method: Commander Brackets.

There are other articles on this very site and others which can explain them to you, so I'm not going to. Instead, I'd like to offer some clarity: let's look at some actual decks which meet the various criteria of the various brackets. I'm mostly going to use decks I've built for the site, because those are the ones I know, but I have definitely never built a Bracket 5 deck for this site, and I doubt I've built a Bracket 4. We might even have a story or two along the way.

Bracket 1

My daughter, now seven, still adores Frozen. Back when Wilds of Eldraine came out, they made an Elsa card, so I built a deck for her. Every card in this deck is something Elsa would have used or cast, or a place she would have lived - there are cards with "chill", "frozen", and "icy" in their names. Even the Lands are Snow. The deck is capable of winning, but that's not the reason it exists. (There's an argument every deck is capable of winning.) This deck is so my kid gets excited about Magic.

That's the theory behind Bracket 1. Your deck might win, but that's not the point. You're not running anything super powerful, you're not tutoring, and you're not running a combo. You're building something fun, clever, or themed (but probably not Kindred).

Bracket 2

A few months ago I was rather taken with a card based around prime numbers, so I built a deck. The deck makes a token (Primo) and attempts to beat people up with it. It doesn't search out a combo or attempt to stop people from doing what they're doing. It would also play well against a table of preconstructed decks right out of the box (preconstructed decks are labeled, for the most part, as Bracket 2).

In Bracket 2, you're going to try to win, but you're going to do so fairly - probably in the Red Zone, or if it's a combo it's going to be something janky and more than two cards. You're also, though, going to run Sol Ring even though it's not on-theme.

Bracket 3

A while back, I did a whole series on decks which don't try to win in Commander. You might think they would all be Bracket 1, but in truth they're really more Bracket 3, and nowhere is that more clear than with this deck, which tries to turn the whole table into a petting zoo.

I point out in the article that technically, the deck actually does win if it pulls off what it's doing, but the keys here are this: the deck runs a Game Changer (Rhystic Study) and it runs a late-Game 2-card combo (actually, it runs a couple, but the point is to assemble one).

On the other hand, it doesn't attempt to do it particularly quickly. It pillow forts to stay alive and slowly assembles a two-card infinite mana combo... but ultimately it has to have more pieces than that to do what it wants. If it pops off, though, it's going to win the game by turning everyone's stuff into a petting zoo, and while that's hilarious, it's also stronger than most preconstructed decks.

Bracket 4

I have a couple of Bracket 4 decks in my stable, but it's not really my lane here. (My Narset, Enlightened Master deck scares the pants off my table every time I pull it out, and it wins by chaining extra turns.) My colleague Stephen Johnson, on the other hand, has dabbled in higher-power decks (even cEDH) and has built some great ones, including this solid build.

There are at least three Game Changers here (Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and The One Ring), but the big key is the Commander functions as one part of a two-card combo, and the second card can be one of several in the list. It goes off and wins the game, and it does so quickly and efficiently.

At any given casual table, a deck like this is likely to simply win the game outright, often before a precon would even be set up. But there's a key difference between this and Bracket 5, too.

Bracket 5

This one's harder to nail, since we don't have a ton of cEDH content on the site, but more importantly, intent is really the key. In some cases, the previous deck might actually be Bracket 5, but in a vacuum, it's a Bracket 4. (My colleague Nigel Kurtz did do this great article on Partners in cEDH last summer.)

Many years ago, my dad, living across the country, told me about a Commander tournament his LGS was holding. He wanted to talk strategy. I asked him what he wanted to do. Did he want to go and play and have fun? Or did he want to win? He said he wanted to win, so I told him I should send him my Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck and, with a couple of adjustments, he would win.

He added a Cryptic Command and won the tournament. He split the box of Modern Masters with me, which was pretty cool.

And that's the point - a Bracket 5 is really just a Bracket 4, but optimized for a specific metagame. If you're playing a tournament at a local store, and you know what people play and you take your most powerful deck and tune it to beat all those players, that's Bracket 5. If you're playing a larger tournament, like at a convention or something, and you read about all the cEDH decks out there and build to beat them, that's Bracket 5. The point is, it's optimized not just to be the best, but to specifically attack the precise event you're playing and win, with no space for casual cards or pet choices. Every card is there to make sure you win the game.

I will say one more thing: we have to be honest in our self-assement, and we have to be willing to deal with it when something breaks some rules but not others. If I build a deck which runs a bunch of (4- and 5-mana tutors) to assemble some weirdo six-card combo which is super fragile but ultimately goes infinite using Gaea's Cradle and Trinisphere (now I kind of want to figure out what that would be), what bracket is it? In most cases, it probably won't win to a precon, but it's using two Game Changers and running a ton of tutors. Does the inclusion of Rhystic Study automatically put something in Bracket 3? What if it's your library-themed or college-themed deck? Keep talking, keep sharing, keep explaining.

Thanks for reading.