Hey y’all! This post is born from some conversations we have been having around the store, and what we have seen with attendance at our Commander events.

Our first two official Commander events drew 11 and 12 players respectively…the second two were 3 and 4. Quite the drop.

The main issue based on folks we talked to is the power differential between our average player and the couple of Competitive EDH decks that showed up. This past weekend the entire tournament was over within 12-14 turns…all 3 games combined (4-5 turns per game).

For most players, that is not fun. Most of this is my fault. I never expected competitive decks to show up for a $5 event, especially as the games around our tables day in and day out are at what I’d call the ‘casual’+ power level. (IE. Precons with a couple of upgrades, or home brews made mostly of recent sets, with a few folks some stronger decks…but no real early combo-finishes among them)

So what do we do about this?

It’s a tricky question…I don’t care for subjective ‘don’t do this’ kinds of rules…such as ‘no infinite combos’. Why? Because I think at our tables some off-the-wall 4 card combo on turn 15 is cool with everyone. The challenge is when a game is ended with a tutor to a 2-card combo on turn 3. Since we’ve opened, I’ve always stressed that I’d rather have folks duking it out with cool creatures and big spells than locks or 10 tutors to a combo…not because those don’t have their place, but because those games tend to be far less social, less diplomatic and, dare I say it, less fun for the majority of folks in our store.

I heard the comment this weekend that ‘well, its a tournament, people want to win.’ And while technically true, I think what it misses is that I think even folks ‘looking to win’ would rather have 12 people in an event than 3, if only because more players means a bigger prize pool. More than being focused on winning (specifically speaking of a casual type even), what we want to see is folks having fun. That’s always been the point of the store, and always will be.

One thought is we say our regular $5 tournaments are ‘casual level’ tournaments. Basically this would mean ‘pre-con strength decks with some upgrades’ to ‘moderate strength’ that can be handled by multiple folks at a table working together. Higher entry-cost tournaments with bigger prize pools would be tailored to let folks break out the ‘bigger guns’.

Our goal is to have a whole range of events; however it’s always good to have a baseline. I think our earlier numbers (10-12 folks) run comfortably, offer a decent prize-pool for a low price, and let folks get together to sling some cards, which is really what we’re going for.

As we’ve mentioned to many of our regulars, we’re also fine offering higher-power/higher-priced events with much higher level prize pools (a $40 event depending on attendance could have a $500-600 prize pool with maybe a $200-$300 first place card that could slot nicely into many decks)

My preferred solution (and the one we’re going to try first), even though it may not be our final one, is to have each event be a deck-building challenge. One of the tougher parts of this is getting everyone informed early enough to give folks time to build appropriate decks. The second, less certain element is figuring out how many of our casual folks have collections large enough to handle a variety of challenges.

To test and see what folks think, for our next Commander event on March 5 (Jay will be in charge per usual, I’ll be out of town that weekend) the deck rules are: Tribal Non-Blue Decks (With at least 2/3 of the non-land cards being creatures of the chosen tribe). Several of the pre-con decks fit this bill (vampires, werewolves, etc) out of the box.

Please, please, please let us know what you think. A healthy Magic scene is very important to the ongoing health of the store, and we’re willing to direct resources to making a fun and vibrant scene for the majority of players.