Rethinking Tournament cEDH

Playing in a cEDH tournament can be a peak form of The Gathering... or it can be miserable.

On the one hand, players showcase their decks, navigate complicated games, meet new people, hang out with friends, and improve their skills.

On the other hand, players experience rounds that go way over time, opponents who lie (or cheat), aggressive people, exhausting finals matches, draws (intentional or not), resets, homogenous Top 4s, unclear rules, socially exclusive behavior, collusion, and the perennial and structural problem of kingmaking.

Tournament cEDH can be incredibly fun, but it is a young kind of event in Magic's history and could certainly be improved. To that end, please use the following thoughts as a conversation starter with your cEDH communities.

Establishing Goals

Ideally, a cEDH tournament should be a safe, accessible, and well-run event in which the player who wins the most games emerges triumphant.

Tournament success should organically follow playing to win each and every game. In other words, tournament math should be maximally legible and minimally relevant. This standard allows the players who perform most skillfully to maximize their chance of winning the event, not those who play well but also know the math required of calculating Swiss standings.

I'll be clear: when an event involves playing the Swiss ranking subgame, tactically avoiding playing out certain rounds and spiteful or extortionary behavior in order to assure a draw, all players suffer. The game itself suffers. Magic: The Gathering is complex enough; let's keep tournament structures as simple as we can.

Logistical Challenges

cEDH games are complicated affairs. You need four reasonable people to sit down with incredibly complicated machines, extra infrastructure (deck boxes, mats, dice, pen & paper, etc.), and use all that to create a fair and efficient game... while simultaneously charming, misdirecting, sabotaging, and collaborating with each other.

Tournament organizers must also give players adequate time to hydrate and nourish themselves, use the restroom, and take breaks (including time to step away from the crowd and reclaim some privacy) if they want everyone to be on their best behavior and play to the best of their abilities.

In large events, in order to increase the chance of records in Swiss rounds differing meaningfully, you need to fire as many rounds as possible, and you would be a fool to omit the oversight of a team of Judges.

Combine all of these factors and you get one very complex, time-consuming, expensive, and laborious affair. I do not envy TOs! But there are additional challenges to tournament cEDH.

Kingmaking: A Forever Problem

In an interactive multiplayer game with finite resources and one winner, there will always be scenarios in which one player can prevent one opponent from winning but cannot prevent all opponents from winning. We cEDH players like to think that this is a complicated and unique problem, but it isn't. I believe that we should simply accept that this is the case and move on.

What this might mean in practice: in cases in which Players A and B can win and Player C can stop either one, the first player to attempt to win will be less likely to do so. This fact should naturally incentivize all players to wait, progress the game, and thus change the distribution of resources so that the probability of this standoff decreases. Or, more simply: if you can attempt to win and an opponent can stop you, expect them to do so, then sandbag accordingly.

And if you're the player who can stop that first win attempt, you must. Why? Because every additional moment of a game is one in which the distribution of resources could change and/or a player can make a self-defeating mistake.

This aspect of cEDH is inherent to the game. We can't legislate it away. We will be better off if we accept this dissatisfying quality, play reasonably, and move on.

A Proposed Tournament Structure

With all this in mind, I propose the following tournament structure:

Let's imagine a large cEDH tournament that takes place over the course of two days. (Nothing new here!)

• Wins reward 1 point. Draws confer no benefit whatsoever, thus are treated as losses. The only way to substantially increase your chance of winning the tournament is to win games.
• On the first day, players play six 75-minute Swiss rounds. When the round timer expires, games end after 10 minutes or the active player finishes their turn (whichever comes first).
• There are 10-minute breaks between rounds, and each day features a 40-minute catered lunch break. (Incentivizing players to stay in the venue during breaks is clutch.) 
• On the second day, players play three more Swiss rounds. After lunch, there is a cut to Top 4, with players seated according to their standing in the Swiss.
• The final game is played on a 100-minute timer. If no one has won the game when the timer expires and the active player finishes their turn, then the winner is the player with the best Swiss record.
• During the cut to Top 4, tiebreakers are determined by opponent win % (i.e., the player who has beaten opponents with better records will proceed). Team-oriented collusion is punishable with immediate disqualification.

Broken Breakers?

Since tiebreakers are decided by opponent win percentage, you could theoretically improve your standing in the tournament's Swiss rounds by throwing a game to the player in your pod with the best record. This would be relevant in standoffs and other kingmaking contexts.

Maximizing the number of rounds would reduce the advantage of such a play. Alternatively, one could determine tiebreakers randomly, though this ceases to reward players for their skillfulness.

A third option, and a notably silly one, exists. This method would increase the probability of a given Top 4 deck being off-meta (a.k.a. fringe or rogue): tied players would gather with a Judge, shuffle and cut their decks, then Clash with their opponent.

Average mana value typically decreases as a deck's color identity expands, thus lower-color, higher-MV decks would be favored in tiebreakers. This would prioritize meta heterogeneity over player skill. Though a half-hearted recommendation, this hopefully demonstrates that we can imagine numerous ways to break ties and progress a tournament.

Smaller Tournaments

Smaller tournaments, for example those with ≤ 32 players, can be simple and smooth if players accept one fact:

Luck will play a larger role in your success.

Considered from a general probabilistic perspective, since fewer total events (i.e., rounds/games) occur during a small tournament, it is simply the case that variance will be more at play. If players accept this, then a small tournament can go off without a hitch.

Small tournaments should still feature as many rounds as possible so that players can enjoy many games while further differentiating Swiss records, but I encourage TOs of small events to keep it simple: 1 point for a win, 0 points for a draw, tiebreakers decided by opponent win %, cut to Top 4, time everything, and serve a catered lunch.

Next Steps

I've helped organize small tournaments and have played in a few large ones, so I'm no means an expert when it comes to TO issues. It is ultimately up to cEDH players and tournament organizers to experiment, and thus to discover structures that maximize player satisfaction and minimize logistical problems.

We shouldn't treat tournament cEDH as an event constrained by precedent, nor should we settle with problems like resetting resource-rich games or a rising rate of draws.

The Gathering, even with prizes at stake, is what we make it.