WE STILL DON’T GET BRACKET 4

It’s just suped up bracket three. Leave us in peace lol. I don’t wanna have to win with thoracle or breach everytime.

Bracket 4 is for people who don’t want to worry about the bracket system but are smart enough to not play “cedh”

To me, it probably boils down to making the deck the most optimized it can for that specific commander. For example, an Alela deck isn’t cEDH because the commander is bad. But if I make a deck optimizing it to its top potential, it’s too strong to sit at bracket 3

bracket 4 is for people who want to play cEDH, but don't want to play with THE PEOPLE who play cEDH.

Bracket 3 and 4 are for people who know what theyre doing but care more about having fun and playing what they want.

"your commander is strong, and you optimized your deck around it, why not throw that all away and play thoracleslop with the rest of us?"

The basketball analogy doesn't make too much sense. Its more like B4 and cEDH are the equivalent to tuned street racing cars and Nascar/F1 racing. Nascar you have pure efficiency/speed. B4 you'll have more "flavor" like a street car would have "style"

maybe both formats are fake and people should be on 60 card if they want to play a competitive format 🤷

Bracket 4 isn’t fringe cedh for most pods, it’s just commander decks that are better than bracket 3s running strats that aren’t Cedh. Bracket 4 decks play combos like Kogla, E Wit, Extra turn spell not meta strats. heres my bracket 4 list for an example.

I understand that the difference between low tier cedh and bracket 4 is weird but the best explanation I heard was from maldhound, bracket means you try to win with your commander in a certain way and try to do whatever you can to accomplish that as fast as possible. *

Optimized strategy to play with a commander’s ability vs Optimized strategy to win. Bracket 4 plays optimized synergies, and winning is a symptom. CeDH plays optimized win cons, and synergy CAN be a symptom.

Hear me out, Bracket 4 is just Bracket 3 but without the soft bans where no one is allowed to bitch thay I played Wet Moon in my mono blue merfolk deck because I have islandwalk effects.

The way I see it. You can make a strong combo deck in bracket 4 that does whatever wierd commander-centric combo engine or synergy you want. but when you put oracle/consult in your Yarok deck or led/freeze/breach in your Ghyrson Starn deck. its (bad) cedh.

What a dumbass take

"my deck is too strong for bracket 3"

I'm not surprised you guys don't get it, but I do agree with your premise that brackets 4 and 5 are indistinguishable and therefor lack any real distinction beyond "this deck is better".

I think the distinction on cedh vs bracket 4 is very nebulous and I should be allowed to call my deck a cedh deck because that is its intended purpose. Even though I play a “technically” bracket 4 deck because my commander is not in the metagame. It is built FOR CEDH.

Because I like wincons outside of the usual cEDH thoracle/breach wins/etc, and b4 is "expected to play at least 4 turns" while cEDH I've seen people win on turn 0, that doesn't happen in B4

Tbh I always thought B4 was for the retired cEDH decks.

I still don't understand the difference between 4 and 5. 5 just means you have this niche little pool of cards you HAVE to include. I guess? But like if you're optimizing your deck fully, you'd be playing those ANYWAY if they were good into what you'd play against.

My decks are mostly bracket 4 because I want to blow up all your lands and they won’t let me do it in bracket 3.

I keep hearing that people want to split brackets and make more, and I just think that leads to “out of ten” measurements again where everyone is a 7. I think 3 tiers are all that’s needed: Without game changers, with some amount of game changers, and cEDH with no restrictions.

I think this is the dumbest part of interacting with strangers for commander. The bracket system is just so widely interpreted it's annoying.

Or maybe im just too poor for cedh?

Wait the fact you just said, "it's like your playing cedh but just not meta and optimized", that is the point of bracket 4. It is like fringe cedh and powerful without playing the meta game and playing metas. Doesn't make it a bad deck, just open your view

Bracket 4 is just decks that could be bracket 5 with jeweled lotus unbanning.

The problem is that the fringe commander dosent stand a chance in cedh. My neheb the eternal deck is a powerhouse because of how optimized it is but it pales in comparison to proper cedh

So my squirrel girl deck can win turn 3-4 and gets it around 20% if opening hand is good. No game changers no land denials the only bracket 4 to it is wins fast otherwise as others said it’s a 2. I rather do the level system again

How I'd fix Commander brackets: 1. Three tiers: casual / tuned / competitive. cEDH is a pregame flag, not a bracket. 2. Define tiers by countable stuff: goldfish turn, combo count, fast mana. No vibes appeals. 3. Replace the Game Changers list with points. Rhystic Study and Drannith Magistrate aren't the same problem. Simple at the bottom, math at the top, where the arguments actually happen.

It does indeed make no sense 😆 bracket system needs a solid rework. Like its got good bones I think, but everything needs restructured ground up.

I cant play a fully optimised Belakor or Ur Dragon deck in CEDH Bracket 4 point is to build your favourite commander without restrictions, at a high power level

My entire playgroup only plays B3 and B4 but mostly it's B4. It's fun, we dont use proxies. If we wanted to have any B5 games we'd all need proxies.