Hello everyone.

Pickup Commander is a custom Commander format that I've been working on for a while, and now feel ready to present to you for initial feedback. It's an alternative to WotC's official bracketing system which is intended to provide the necessary structure for Fun and Fair Magic at Commander tables with (semi)random players, as well as help players (regardless of familiarity) to match up their decks. The format's name is derived from 'pickup football' and is meant to evoke the spirit of a format that anyone can just 'pick up' and start playing without running into major issues of skill or experience. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my efforts, and I look forward to reading some of your thoughts.

The Pillars

Pickup Commander consists of two major pillars: an extensive 1) Banlist and three 2) Brackets. The format's banlist is extensive, and is designed to set up an ecosystem that evokes the type of Fun and Fair Magic that just about anyone can enjoy and understand when they sit down to play Commander. The banlist is directed specifically towards 'untrusted' play with people you don't know (well), and is geared towards creating an experience that is enjoyable without relying on the opportunity, ability and intention of other players to help create that experience. The format's brackets are a conversational tool intended to try and help players match up their decks at a table. They are geared towards players with a shared desire for every player at the table to enjoy themselves, and cannot reckon with players who don't have the opportunity, ability ánd intention to use that system properly. If someone wants to deceive you and pubstomp, the brackets will not save you from a frustrating experience. They will, however, help you determine if a player was being deceptive, so you can avoid matching up with them again.

Alongside its two major pillars, Pickup Commander relies heavily on Rule Zero conversations. For sitting down with randoms, all players involved should adhere to the banlist and brackets by default, BUT players are always allowed to affirmatively argue their case if they want to diverge from those default barriers, following the spirit of Rule Zero. Banlists and Brackets can be very powerful tools for any pod, but they're far less important for trusted play, where there's a social contract and rapport present that helps structure the ways in which players build and pilot their decks: you should always feel free to play however you want, given everyone else involved can make an informed decision to agree to it.

The Banlist

Pickup Commander uses an extensive banlist because problem players in the format are problem players precisely because they lack the opportunity, ability or intention to adhere to the 'spirit' of whatever type of play a table is looking for overall. For this reason, a rigid and specific banlist is preferable over loose guidelines that require interpretation. Whenever a player believes that a card they want to play does NOT violate the spirit of whatever bracket their table wants to play at, they may simply argue their case following Rule Zero. In the absence of that conversation though, players of this format may not include cards in their decks that fall under the following categories:

• Reserved List: If WotC does not want to reprint a card, players should not have to recon with its inclusion in the format. Cards that are played in the format should be available to all players, and while proxying is helping to alleviate this issue, a banlist should still reckon with it.
• WotC Banlist: All cards that are currently on WotC's banlist are also banned in Pickup Commander. Remember you can always deviate from any banlist using Rule Zero.
• Game Changers: Pickup Commander does not use a game changers list and these cards are simply problematic too often to leave the decision of their inclusion up to random players.
• Superstaples: Certain cards just make their way into just about any deck their legal in. Some of these are problematic because of their relative power level (Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Command Tower), but mostly they're just really repetitive in ways that harm deck diversity. Please don't downvote this entire post just for this paragraph okay? Let's talk about if this should even be a criterium in the comments.
• Free Spells: Spells should probably be expected to just cost mana when playing Pickup Commander. Looking at an opponent's board and seeing they're 'tapped out' should be a safe reason to think they won't be able to respond to your actions (from their hand). Stuff like Fierce Guardianship and Force of Negation don't break the format, but they don't fit the spirit of pickup Magic.
• Fast Mana: Similarly to free spells, fast mana should be kept out of the format because of how severely they warp the pace of play. There's the previously mentioned Sol Ring, but even stuff like Mox Opal and Mox Amber accelerate the format in ways that keep creating problems.
• Fetchlands: Finally, no fetchlands. Not because they're mana fixing, but because they think decks, fill graveyards and enhance landfall strategies; all without even fitting with the existing color identity rules. Leave these up to the Rule Zero high-power tables.
• <Your Suggestions Here>: I haven't put in the work to write out the actual list of cards; what do you think should be on there, based on what this post argues?

The Brackets

I like brackets when they're used as conversational tools for anyone matching up decks at a table. Unlike the banlist though, brackets are somewhat nebulous; it's hard to pin down exactly where a deck ends up. Instead of looking at decks' play patterns in the way WotC has attempted, I've opted for an approach that emphasizes the turns at which a deck enters a new phase, given it's allowed to mostly do its own thing without being disrupted.

Rather than five brackets, I've opted for only three. I believe WotC's Bracket 1 is unnecessary because all those decks care about is showcasing and/or doing their Thing; which all fit into Bracket 2 just fine. WotC's Bracket 5 is unnecessary as well because all those decks fit into Bracket 4 just fine as long as all players involved mention that they're trying to play the strongest decks possible, and any meta considerations only come into play for dedicated play groups who don't need a separate bracket to track those. So, three brackets.

I don't have official names for them yet, so I'm currently going by 1) Setting Up, 2) Paying Off and 3) Finishing Off. These names indicate the range of turns within which a deck is either setting up their strategy, starting to pay off their strategy and hit the game-ending (critical mass/unstoppable) stage of their strategy respectively. The goal for bracketing is to match up decks that have similar enough play patterns that all players feel like they're able to keep up, affect the game and have a shot at winning it without it being a total fluke, nor guaranteed. So each bracket is based roughly on three numerical ranges of turns that a deck can be expected to set up, pay off and finish off when left to its own devices throughout. Based on my testing so far, I think the brackets should look something like this.

Brackets x Turns	Setting Up	Paying Off	Finishing Off
Bracket 1	Turns 3 - 7	Turns 8 - 10	Turn 11+
Bracket 2	Turns 2 - 5	Turns 6 - 8	Turn 9+
Bracket 3	Turns 1 - 3	Turns 3 - 7	Turn 7+

Numerous decks will not fit into any of these brackets perfectly, which is why you have to treat them like a conversational tool and use some common sense. Eg having a longer Setup time is not as problematic as having an especially quick Finisher for instance. Generally, these brackets should be designed in such a way that it's easier to figure out which decks play well together so everyone is able to contribute to the match's outcome and/or have a good time.

Obviously there's a lot more to be done to really make this approach pop, but I'm reasonably happy with it so far. What do you think of it? How do you think it could be improved? Do you even think this type of approach makes sense? I hope to read all about it in the comments.

More specifically, what’s the first thing you’re changing that you don’t have to think twice about? The rule that you think everyone would appreciate and there’s no tradeoff to making it a better game.

TLDR; we’re wiping the rules of EDH and you get to rewrite them. What’s your obvious change?

I started out thinking foils were cool. But for a while now whenever I happen to get a foil version of anything I'm just sad it wasn't a regular version. It just looks dark and less saturated and I know it's gonna become a pringle...

Fellow heretics,

You don't háve to ramp: you have free will. Ramp (ie doing things that effectively give you access to more mana than you would by just playing a land each turn) is often Good, but you can simply choose not to partake. Still, leaving it out often Feels Bad because it can leave you feeling behind on mana and not as able to make power plays when compared to players who áre ramping. So, how can you ditch ramp in your decks and make it feel fine?

Before going into a little step-by-step guide, what kinds of ramp are out there? I distinguish between Ritual, Dork, Rock & Land ramp. 1) Rituals give you a non-persistent burst of mana, 2) Dorks are 1-mana creatures that give you a mana each turn, 3) Rocks are (usually) 2-mana artifacts that give you 1+ mana each turn and 4) Lands are just effects that let you get more lands into play than you would normally be able to. For the purposes of this guide, I'm assuming you're always able to play your normal land for turn.

Step 1: Why Are You Ramping

Before anything else, you have to ask yourself what you're 'ramping into'. If you ramp one mana on turn 1 (T1), what worthwhile thing are you able to do on T2 that merits spending a deck slot on a card that's only likely to be véry strong when played ón T1 specifically? What 3-mana play is worth that investment? For example, do you have a Commander that costs >2 mana and réally needs to come down at the absolute earliest opportunity? If not, your question might be answered right here: you can just curve out normally and play something else in the early turns. Always remember that ramp is at its most valuable when played early because otherwise it doesn't have enough turns in the match to pay back the investment and justify really poor topdecks in the midgame.

Step 2: Timing Your Ramp

So, you're interested in ramping. When do you want to do it exactly? Rituals are very powerful because they allow you a lot of freedom on this front; which also means I'm not going to be discussing them here. Instead I'll be focusing on the persistent forms of ramp.

If you really want to do something with three mana ASAP, you'll want to ramp on T1 so you can have 2 lands + 1 ramp = 3 mana on T2. If you're not running colors that have access to T1 sources of mana (ie your deck's not green), you're not ramping; your journey ends here. If you've got that green however, this is the moment to decide if you want to spend the 12-16 slots necessary to reliably do it.

If you really want to do something with four mana ASAP, you'll want to do the same as before, or ramp on T2 so you can have 3 lands + 1 ramp = 4 mana on T3. If you're in green you're probably getting an additional land (because lands are comparatively hard to disrupt compared to the alternatives) on T2, and otherwise getting a two mana rock. Unlike dorks, rocks can't usually do anything other than ramp, so that four mana play coming down a turn early had better be worth it.

The ramp timing has been relatively simple so far, but it gets pretty difficult if you want to speed up 5 mana plays because you'll need to ramp twice to get it live on T3, which means pairing a Dork with second source of ramp. If you're thát committed to making expensive (5+ mana) plays ASAHP, you'll probably need 16-20 cheap sources of ramp. This can be easily worth it but probably a poison pill for the non-ramp enjoyers. It's up to you.

Step 3: Ramping Instead Of...

So at this point you should have an impression of whether you're interested in ramping at all, and if you have a deck that can time its ramp in a way that makes it worth the inclusion. Let's zoom further into the opportunity cost of ramping. Basically you have to ask yourself if there are other things you could be doing than ramping that would further your game plan even more, especially when you factor in the fact that those other options are likely to be more valuable than ramp as a match progresses. Most decks that ramp at all are interested in ramping once, and maybe twice at the most. Anything beyond that quickly becomes a liability, especially if your deck isn't especially good at drawing a lot of cards to smooth over the risk of drawing ramp when you really needed to draw something to spend mana on.

However, there's a similar consideration that goes in the óther direction: does your deck even have anything good to instead of ramping? It's very possible that you're running a deck that's more interested in playing more expensive spells, so while it might be possible to curve normally, you might end up making sub-optimal plays in the early turns, most commonly by not spending most of the mana you have available to you in the early turns. There are certainly cases where just getting more mana to set up a variety of plays is vastly superior to just durdling around the first three turns of a match. For players who don't like to ramp, this might be the consideration that puts them off of playing that deck entirely.

And that should about cover it! Ramp is very powerful in Magic, but it's also become less crucial as time has gone on. Nowadays, just running the 38-42 lands needed to reliably hit each turn's land drop without actively working for it is sufficient for many common decks to simply run well, and save over 10% of your deck's slots for the stuff you're actually enthusiastic about playing.

So, will you be ramping? And what considerations did I miss?

Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just wanna go apeshit?

Got a burning rage deep within your soul? Perhaps you've been countered for the eleven billionth time. Aggro is ruining your win streak on Arena. Your friend keeps complaining about being targeted whenever they play a stax deck and you're just sick of it. There's some guy at your LGS who never showers. Standard is dying at your LGS and it's upsetting. Or maybe you just feel like Universes Beyond will KILL MAGIC.

Whatever is eating away at your heart, unleash it here!

(Please refrain from insulting other users even if you think their gripes are silly. This is a safe place to vent. Memetic responses are welcome provided you're not degrading anyone.)