Happy Monday! Today I'm going to share my thoughts on my recent adventures dipping my toe into the part of the Commander format best known as cEDH.

This past year the LGS I play at, NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire, started up a Monday night High Powered / cEDH league. Our plan is to play a 9-month season with three 3-month "sprints". Points are 2 per win and a half point for a draw. Each month's winner will earn a seat at the sprint's final table and each sprint's final table winner will earn a seat at the end of season finals table. Since we prefer four player games, each finals table will be preceded by a semifinal game to determine who wins that fourth seat. The basic idea is that it's more exciting to have winners determined in an actual game than by sorting a range in the league spreadsheet.

I want the store to succeed, so while I'm not that into cEDH I decided I would go through my decks and see if I could put together a playable deck for Monday nights. I didn't expect to be winning many games, but in the early days of the league I knew it would help to have an extra body to fill out a table. This league started as a no-proxy league, in line with the store's tradition for commander league play. I had a few duals and knew I could get a list close enough to cEDH level that I'd be able to get by. I was missing Underground Sea, Mox Diamond, Timetwister and a few other high dollar cards but I was also not obsessed with having to play the "best possible" list for my chosen commander.

Before I dive into my own story about getting into cEDH, it's worth a quick discussion of what cEDH actually is.

What is cEDH?

I've seen a few different takes on what it means to be building and playing cEDH so I should take a moment to explain what it means to me.

Some players look at cEDH as a mindset, and maintain that you can build a cEDH version of any commander by simply making that deck as tuned as possible. I do appreciate that the idea of playing as well as possible is a core concept behind competitive EDH, but I don't think it makes sense to just say that any commander can be cEDH. You could outfit a bunch of little leaguers with the very best uniforms, gloves and bats, but they wouldn't stand a chance against a professional baseball team.

For the term cEDH to have any real meaning, I think there has to be some standards that have to be met.

I look at cEDH as the highest level of Commander play, where games are usually won or lost well before turn five and the early turns are just loaded up with fast mana and interaction. If you're playing a deck that won't regularly threaten a win or be able to stop a win before turn five, you're probably not playing cEDH. One might even suggest that you need to threaten a win before turn five with some sort of counterspell backup, interaction, or protection to really qualify as cEDH.

There are a lot of players who have never actually seen this top tier of EDH play and think that their high powered deck is "cEDH". They might have seen incredible success at their LGS or in their local meta and can't imagine that what I've been describing really exists. All I can say is that when they hit their first top tier cEDH table, they will find it to be a really eye-opening experience. It might be a little depressing to find out that their great deck isn't doing much at these faster tables.

It's OK to call your best deck a competitive deck, and it's OK to think that it's cEDH. Your perspective is going to be based upon what you've seen and played against. All I'm saying is that when you're used to playing against sixes and sevens, your eight might feel like a ten.

If you're really crushing tables right and left, you would do well to look for stiffer competition. Find a way to matchup against other high powered and cEDH decks and see what else is out there. Come to the games humble and willing to learn. You might keep winning, but you also might find out that as the waters get deeper, the fish get bigger, and your win rate may even out a bit.

Najeela

I used to have a Najeela, the Blade-Blossom deck that was full of warriors but also had combo pieces to make infinite combats. The list I was running was a bit too strong for casual LGS play and too weak for today's cEDH. I was running cards like Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives, Bear Umbra, and Sword of Feast and Famine.

You might think I'm crazy for saying that those cards don't belong in a 2023 cEDH Najeela list. The cEDH meta at my store is fast enough that there's a good chance I'll never get enough lands out to use those last two cards and the first two token doublers are really more suited for a longer, more casual game. By longer I mean five or more turns, which in today's cEDH is not unheard of but is also far from guaranteed.

My decision to rebuild Najeela was an easy one. I had altered a copy of Najeela, the Blade-Blossom to look like Janice, a Muppet from the Electric Mayhem band in The Muppet Movie. I've got four other decks with alters of members of that fuzzy, fictitious rock band and it would make me happy to have this one be at the head of a deck that I was actually playing.

I also knew Najeela was a strong option for a cEDH build and I had some understanding of how the deck could win games. I knew I'd have to make wholesale changes to the list, dropping out a bunch of warriors and adding interaction, combo pieces, tutors and hatebears like Drannith Magistrate and Opposition Agent. I'd definitely be moving outside of my comfort zone.

My first step was to find a starting point. My starting point would not be my old list - I wanted to find a known and proven cEDH Najeela build to work from. That ended up being "Warrior Queen", a well known Najeela list created by a cEDH deck-builder who goes by "Pongo". You can see that list here.

It's a deck that has been slimmed down to be able to win off of Ad Nauseam, a powerful spell that trades life for card advantage. A successful "naus" on an opponent's end step should set you up to win on your turn.

At the start of this cEDH league we were not using proxies, so my list ended up varying from Pongo's list a lot. I simply didn't have a bunch of the more expensive cards. When it became clear that I wouldn't be matching his list it became easier to make other changes. My end result was very much my own list, but I have been picking up cards to try to move it closer to Pongo's list. I'm still trying to use Ad Nauseam but I've added combos and cards that I like and I've accepted that my current goal isn't to be crushing major cEDH tournaments. My goal is to just get more familiar with the cEDH game and maybe, just maybe, to win a match at some point in time.

The Learning Curve

There were a lot of things I needed to learn as I started playing cEDH on Monday nights. I already knew I was going to lose a lot of games. That's true across all of EDH, but when making the leap into cEDH it's especially true.

What I didn't know at the outset was how many little things end up mattering a lot during those games.

As an example, my first week had Najeela on Ad Nauseam but I still had Bear Umbra and Sword of Feast and Famine in the 99. Those cards aren't incredibly mana intensive, but I had underestimated how fast the games would be. Najeela can win using combat damage with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician on the field or using attack triggers with Druid's Repository. Instead of loading up a deck with redundant combo pieces, a tuned cEDH will replace a few redundant combo pieces with tutors so you can either tutor to go for the win or tutor to try to stop someone else from winning. Pongo's list only uses Derevi, Empyrial Tactician but can win using other combos. The wincon of going to combat is just one of several wincons. I decided to keep Druid's Repository in my list but dropped both the Umbra and the Sword.

The next thing I am still struggling to learn is when to go for the win and when to hold back and keep mana up for interaction. By interaction I mean both removal and counterspells. Some tables will need the former, some will need the latter, and many will require both. It's not at all uncommon for someone to try to win in response to someone else winning. When you have one wincon on the stack and a second player is able to try to win in response, you might just be playing cEDH.

So far, my feeling is that if you have a way to protect your attempt to win the game and you have a chance to go for it, you should - even if someone has mana open. They will usually have a way to stop you, but not always.

If you have the win in hand and nobody has open mana, that doesn't mean you'll be able to win the game. There are lots of ways to interact that don't cost any mana.

Just this past Monday I had an opening hand that included a land, Dockside Extortionist, Hermit Druid, and Lightning Greaves.

On my second turn I was in a position to play Dockside, make seven treasures, play both Hermit Druid and Greaves, equip the Greaves and activate Hermit Druid. I had no way to protect the win, but everyone was tapped out.

I'm not used to being able to go for a win on turn two, but there I was on turn two, looking at a possible win.

To quote Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

If there's no open mana on the battlefield, I'm of the mindset that you might as well go for it. Some of those shots will go in, right?

In this case, a tablemate on Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator and Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh was tapped out but had both of their commanders on the field and used a Deflecting Swat when I attempted to use Dread Return to bring Thassa's Oracle back to the battlefield from the graveyard after I milled my entire library. Hermit Druid mills your whole library when you activate it and have no basic lands in your deck. I was stopped and no longer had a library. Great.

I ended up having a turn cycle where I was able to play some defense before drawing from my empty library on my turn and dying. I removed a polymorph target - Rograkh - from the Malcolm player's board to stop his win attempt, but didn't use my other removal spell. In cEDH it is highly frowned upon to make "spite plays" and I wasn't even feeling spiteful. I sometimes use interaction just to make sure it gets used but I'm trying to settle into the cEDH mindset and that means interacting to increase your chances of either winning or not dying. I knew I was going to die on my draw step and I wouldn't have benefited in any way from bouncing another permanent on my way out with the Cyclonic Rift I had in hand.

One fascinating thing about cEDH is that there is a huge focus on finding and trying to gain even the slightest advantage in whatever situation you are in.

In the case of my Hermit Druid faceplant, I had a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer on the field. In post-game conversation it was suggested that I should have swung Ragavan at the player most likely to have a card on top of their library that would have let me protect my attempt to win.

It seems obvious in retrospect but I was so stunned to be looking at a viable turn two win with no opponents showing open mana that I didn't think to take that extra step. Chances were good that Ragavan wouldn't have given me a card that could have helped, but you never know. My win attempt got stopped and I hadn't done everything I could possibly do to try to protect it.

Managing Expectations

Going into the fourth Monday in April we had three players at 2 wins apiece. I hadn't won a game, but was making sure I showed up to try to ensure we had at least 4 players in each match. Godo, Bandit Warlord had won twice on our very first cEDH League Monday night. The First Sliver and Malcolm / Rograkh Polymorph players had split wins on the second and third Mondays.

I had been making upgrades to my deck, sinking some money into it as I was planning on continuing to play and wanted to make it better. I had picked up a Gilded Drake, Grim Hireling, and a few other cards and knew that Najeela was capable of winning games even if I hadn't gotten there with this build yet.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I hadn't pulled Druid's Repository out of my list. I ended up winning both games, each time using Druid's Repository to pay for extra combat steps. I even kept Godo off the board in one match using a Wash Away that I had been close to dropping from the list.

With four players each having two wins apiece, we'll be playing a tiebreaker game the next time the four of us are all at the LGS at the same time. I don't have high expectations that I'll win that match, but you never know.

When evaluating decks, I've got a bad habit of forming opinions without a large enough sample size. After two weeks of playing in this league I was genuinely feeling like I'd never notch even a single win. I had seen enough interaction and fast wins without my own deck making a serious threat to close the game out that I was questioning a lot of my deck-building and in-game decisions. If I had gotten lucky in the first few games I might just as easily have been riding high, thinking I was the next cEDH mastermind.

The reality is that you have to stick it out through the highs and the lows to get a genuine understanding of where your deck falls in your meta.

When you play enough games you'll get a better understanding of two key aspects of cEDH - mulligans and meta changes.

I'm still struggling with when to keep a starting hand and when to mulligan, but I'm under the impression that this is an incredibly important part of cEDH. In a casual game you generally have the time for a bad starting hand to smooth out, but when games can end well before turn five you need to start with fast mana, interaction, or both. Starting with "the win in hand" is obviously tempting, but if you can't protect it you have to decide if it's really a "win in hand" or just a threat for someone to easily stop.

Meta changes are another thing that are very important. When you play online against strangers or you play in a tournament and have no idea what you'll be facing, it's hard to adapt your deck to what you'll be playing against. In a smaller meta like a league or tournament at an LGS, you should be thinking about what other decks are in the meta. In my case I kept Wash Away in my list because I knew I might need to counter a Godo, Bandit Warlord just to stay alive. Godo can win the game on the turn he is cast. Keeping that card off the table is hugely important if you want to survive long enough to find your own wincon.

Epic Experiments

I don't mean to suggest that I'm going to be running Epic Experiment in my Najeela list. I am starting to enjoy the idea that even though I'm trying to pilot a highly tuned cEDH deck, there is room for experimentation. If a new card actually pulls its weight, it may or may not feel "epic" but I love tweaking my decks and I'd be foolish not to do that in cEDH.

That doesn't mean my experiments will work, but for me to enjoy this cEDH stuff, I'm going to need to play around with my list and not just build it towards someone else's tried and true cEDH tournament winning list.

As an example, I recently put Beamtown Beatstick into my Najeela deck. Beamtown Beatstick costs one mana, gives the equipped creature +1/+0 and menace, and whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player I'll create a Treasure token.

When first getting into cEDH I didn't really understand how many decks wouldn't really play out blockers. Adding menace to my commander makes it extra safe to attack, as an opponent would have to block with at least two creatures. The real benefit is the fact that it lets me create an additional treasure. My deck's infinite combat wincon relies upon one of two cards - Druid's Repository or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. If I can make an extra treasure each time I go to combat and do damage, that makes it that much easier for me to hit that critical number of attackers to let me combo off. Najeela does make 1/1 Warrior creature tokens, but it isn't always easy to hit that five mana to get that key first activation.

Do I think Beamtown Beatstick will become the next cEDH staple?

Of course not.

Do I think it's going to prove its worth anytime soon?

I haven't yet drawn into my Gilded Drake, so I really have no way of knowing if it will pop up in my next game or hide in the 99 for a month or more. It's possible that paying two mana to equip Beamtown Beatstick is just too much mana and will impact my ability to interact in those key early turns, but I'm willing to give it a try.

What I do know is that adding and removing cards is fun for me. While my experiments will sometimes make the deck worse, it's important that I engage in this format in a way I enjoy. No list will ever guarantee a win, and I'm still fairly early in the learning process so I might as well play around a bit. My guess is that my list will wander away from Pongo's most excellent Ad Nauseam build, but you never know.

The Proxy Problem

At the start of our cEDH league the goal was to create a no-proxy environment where folks could play high powered and cEDH decks. The problem that came up was that too many cEDH players aren't willing or able to play without using proxies. I have long been resistant to proxy-use, especially in an EDH league or EDH tournament setting, but things change.

It didn't help that Wizards of the Coast has made some decisions in recent years that have angered the community to the point where more and more players are aggressively pro-proxy as a way to "stick it" to a company that tried to sell us 60 random proxies (non-tournament legal cards) for $1,000.

It also didn't help that the COVID pandemic saw a very sizable portion of the player base get used to playing online in environments where there was no real pushback toward the use of proxied cards. In fact, the rise of cEDH in recent years may go hand in hand with the rise of proxy use.

Whatever my opinion is on pretending you are using cards in your deck that you don't actually have, the reality is that in cEDH proxies are here to stay. If nothing else, it opens up the top end of our format to everyone.

My takeaway around proxies is a simple one. If I had to choose between having more players participating, or having a requirement that everyone be playing actual Magic cards, it makes more sense to have more players. In this context we are trying to get this little cEDH league up and running and develop a real playerbase on Monday nights. On a grander scale, what matters for cEDH is that people are able to engage in this exciting "top end" of our format.

I'm still not thrilled to see proxies in casual play. I feel like everyone should have the same in-game rules and that extends to certain things outside of the game like deck-building restrictions. In a vacuum, if player A builds only with real cards they own and player B proxies cards, that is on some level unfair. One might easily argue that a thousand other factors contribute to making that build process favor one player over another. That is a compelling argument, but I still can't quite get past the feeling that I want to build with real Magic cards and play against other players who are also not using proxies.

Moving our cEDH league to be proxy friendly meant allowing up to 15 proxies, which must be legible / readable so we know what they are supposed to be. I've actually gone and ordered proxied dual lands, as those will let me move my few OG duals back to the decks they were in before I started tuning up my Najeela list. I'm excited to be able to do that, and I'll also feel a little less vulnerable about having so many expensive cards sleeved up and in the same deck.

Final Thoughts

So far, I have played maybe a dozen games with this tuned-up Najeela list. I haven't yet cast an Ad Nauseam, though the goal of the deck is to cast one on an end step to set me up to go for a win on my turn. I have also not yet drawn into or tutored for my Gilded Drake, though that was a pretty major investment in getting this deck set up. My two wins were in combat using Druid's Repository, but my best start was a turn two Hermit Druid that got stopped by a Deflecting Swat. I've misplayed more times than I'd like to admit, but I've also had moments where I've come up with the right spell at the right time and I've even won a few games.

This might sound like a description of any EDH experience, but all of this nonsense has been happening within the first three or four turns. It's possible one of my wins came after turn four, but my point is just that cEDH is a disturbingly fast game. Sure, stax can throw a spanner into the works and slow things down to a crawl, but in general these decks are looking to win before a "normal" deck would even get going. The only way to end up with a fair and fun cEDH game is to have everyone at the table playing equally capable decks.

I'm hesitant to say that I'm a convert to cEDH. I still love longer games that give more time for decks to do stuff without having to play fast mana and interact quite so early in the game. I also want to learn and experience every facet of this format and that certainly includes cEDH. High powered combo can feel like cEDH, but when you play enough games you learn that the leap from a power level "8" to a "10" is a pretty huge one.

If today's column has any glaring oversights or misunderstandings of cEDH, please remember that I'm still very much learning. My conclusions are just my own and may not match the way more experienced cEDH deck-builders and players look at the format.

If you're in the Southern NH or Northern MA area of New England (USA) and you'd like to come join us for cEDH, we play at NexGen Comics in Pelham, NH on Monday nights at 7pm. As of this writing we've expanded to allow up to 15 proxies in a deck. We play 2 rounds, awarding 2 points per win and a half point per draw.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week.