How to Determine Your Deck’s Power Level I The Command Zone 295 I Magic: the Gathering EDH

you have entered the your destination Highlander [Music] I was almost about to go into space gym but fortunately I got the power came in the way first and we did that without alright how's it going everybody you were watching slash listening system and zone podcast I'm your host Jimmy Wang how was it it's Josh leak why we are here yeah so what a couple weeks ago now we did our question time giveaway contest for the aftermath and last and playmats and now that bunch of stuff diol yeah and in order to enter the contest everybody out there had to send us a question in the email we got over 3,000 emails have you ever seen an image that just says one thing it was amazing to see the response was awesome so thank you all for doing that so obviously that's a lot of questions and it's gonna take us a while to go through them all our plan is to kind of chip away at it yeah over the next well number of months but for the block of marble yeah but as we start to go through it we have noticed some patterns already which is great because you everybody out there is feeding us some topic ideas and one of the things that stood out to us is a question that's getting asked a lot or a topic that's getting broached a lot not everybody's asking the exact same question but something around this topic and you know we always we always advocate like a quick conversation before everybody sits down for the for the commander game of like hey on a power scale of 1 to 10 10 being the highest what's everybody's deck at and hopefully everyone answers correctly so then everyone can then go into a game and just make sure that there's no one deck that's going to end the game really quickly or well someone that doesn't really play the game because of the way their decks built but it's a very confusing thing because it's all relative my 10 could be different than Josh and your six is probably different than mine - yes so we get a ton of questions just like how do I rank my deck how do I determine what the power level is and we've always said it's more art than science but we're gonna try and put a little more science into it today to give everybody a little bit more context so maybe they're not so nervous about you know ranking their deck and maybe they can get be a little more accurate yep it's gonna be a fun one and if you want to you know power up your deck or power down your deck well you gotta buy cards and the way to do that is by going to card Kingdom comm slash command zone that's our affiliate link we see it every single time so you probably are sick and tired of saying it but don't worry it still works and it still supports the show and you get to buy the cards you want with great shipping yeah you're gonna buy magic cards anyway just use that affiliate link when you do and you really are supporting all of our content also another way to support everything we do is by purchasing stuff from our other sponsor which is ultra pro and we've been talking a lot lately about their 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an Instagram now too so go check it out Facebook's you yeah the coin is really awesome I guess where the mouth that's true boy all right let's go to the main topic here which is how to gauge the power level of your deck do you want to explain the 1 to 10 ranking system really quickly simple it's very simple one is my deck is basically not a deck it doesn't really do much but this 100 cards put together and 10 is my deck is going to combo I'll on turn 3 or 4 or have so much interaction in it that it can shut you out of the game while generating infinite advantage whatever it is my deck is very lethal so if you imagine that as a dull blade a not even a butter knife is a 1 by the way yeah how are you gonna cause I'm gonna swing you have to turn it around or use the side it's not great and then 10 is like a master level samurai sword yeah folded steel 2500 times yeah it slices through anything the middle out of those we got some cleavers we got some you know what we'll talk about that in a second so I people get really nervous about this they ask us all the time I'd say like 10 percent of the questions out of the 3000 so far that well haven't got through all threes out 3000 but I have been about grading your deck ranking it and I think a lot of people just worry they have a small play group or whom they only play at one LGS they don't have the context scythe that they think is necessary to even know like is my deck a six is it an eight in my play group it might be an eight but then I might go out into the wide world of commander and find out that that's really a five and they get worried that they're not ranking their decks correctly and so this episode is kind of to give you more confidence so you have a little bit more context I want to give a couple disclaimers here there's gonna be a few in this episode yeah so so relative it is more art than science I said that already but really the important part I think of this whole process that we've always advocated like have that conversation at the start of game is the conversation yeah right like just taking that step of being like hey everybody's trying at least to level the playing field at the start that's good now sometimes you're gonna mismatch the power levels a little bit also I don't think like if I say hey I'm playing a six the spectators not that everyone else plays a6 right the expectation is that nobody plays a10 and nobody plays a1 you're not trying to match exact power levels what you're trying to do is get in a reasonable ballpark so that nobody just gets completely stomped but if somebody's like hey I've got a 4 a 6 and a 4 can be in the same pod together if everybody else is playing a 4 and you're playing a 6 they're gonna know it they should know it maybe they'll come after you first yeah yeah I was just thinking about this on a deeper level which is like the way you represent yourself at the table is a very large part of what makes Commander fun because you're going into an hour and a half to two hours a 3-hour - who knows how many are possibly not three-hour yeah and you don't want to lose and waste that time and commander players and magic players are all about value and also we're in the format where I don't think it's like tech to hide the secrets of your deck unless you want to do something that's a fun surprise whatever it is but being honest about your decks power level I think is always going to create a much better environment yeah I mean of course we also advocate you telling the truth about the ranking of your deck and not purposefully I'll just call it lying you know yeah about it however it can be I mean listen there is something to be said for people that like the scales are gonna be slightly different for everybody that's just the reality of the situation because there's no way to put your deck on you know feed it into a computer and it's gonna spit out exactly your deck as a 7 point 2 out of 10 and even if you are being completely honest and you just happens that your rating is different someone else it doesn't make that person wrong it's just literally relative to them right so try and be honest again we're gonna roll through all this stuff I do want to say also if there are bad actors meaning people that are gonna be deceitful on purpose about this there's not a lot this system can do kit took him bat that that we also can't combat the fact that hey somebody could run 98 cards in their deck or two copies of a certain card or whatever like if somebody wants to cheat is a casual format it's gonna be tough you will know if you play with that person enough that something's going on there as something fishing yeah and in which case you should you should I don't know talk to that person or tackle tackle that situation the same way you would kind of if you think that they're not running out of cards or cheating in some other way if it's a pattern of behavior but you know we're not gonna be able set up a system that just makes it so people can't cheat that part of it like like no one ever is going to say their deck seven when it's really any like yeah that's it's just not it's not possible for us to set that system so okay over a year ago now we did an episode it was number 217 called how to power up your decks and this was one of DJ's first episodes filling in for you Jimmy when you went to New Zealand and that is a related topic to this one so two things here one we're gonna refer to it a little bit and two you should go watch that video after this one's over it is great if you love DJ so DJ separated the numbers into essentially small sections I just basically said spoon - samurai knife but this is a much better version of that so DJ's numbers are as follows if your deck is jank it's gonna be a 1 to a 2 on power level if it's casual it's a 3 to a 4 if it's focused it's a 5 to a 6 if it's optimized great word by the way 7 2 & 8 & if its competitive it's a 9 @ to a 10 but what do all those words and numbers mean Jimmy I don't know use a dictionary Josh what does the number 1 mean interesting so we're gonna go through each of these categories each of these number rankings and we're gonna list some attributes and aspects yeah that each of them might have now that doesn't mean every deck has to have all the attributes has to check all the boxes in each of these categories but these are some things they're gonna be common to that category we think mm-hmm Renne even yeah yeah and we also want I also want to say and this gets this gets forgotten a lot which is ironic when we talk about magic but all of this is disregarding player skill yeah that's very true I mean Melissa datura could spank me with a casual 3 the foredeck easily just crush me right any of them any of the pros probably could they're definitely gonna play it you know it's gonna punch above its weight a little bit when a better players playing it then a worse now can a 4 on the power scale be to 10 straight up you know that's gonna be very very difficult no matter how good a player you are but none of this is talking about how good you are as a player it's just the deck itself and you should be able to move the numbers a little with your player skill never forget that okay jenk the number one category which is a 1 to 2 on our power level scale we're not trying to be mean or or descending towards any of the decks in the 1/2 job category this that these decks do emerge from the world in a few ways though and one of them is like you said sometimes like my first commander deck was a1 to a2 straight up it just had cards I thought were cool and it didn't work at all I actually bet your deck was higher on the power level scale than that because I think janky decks are actually underpowered on purpose okay so I think a jenk deck is like a all my creatures have hats on the class or all the cards are miscut we saw that when it was yeah parties one was awesome they have some weird strategy or some other thing my deck is a Lord of the Rings deck and everything has to have something to do with Lord of the Rings and the altar is to match that and all that yeah and so they're making decisions for their decks that are based on factors other than winning they're trying to tell a story they're trying to do something goofy a lot of these decks are one two twos it doesn't mean the person doesn't know how to build a better deck that's more powerful I'm gonna say better sometimes when I mean more powerful I apologize for that interchangeable yeah a lot of times these decks don't even really have a real wind con like oh I play with a guy Bradley Rose who follow us on twitter and interacts with those two a lot and he has a deck and the whole deck is actually you supposed to guess the theme your opponents are supposed to guess the theme of the deck and like every card you plays you're like studying it trying to gain over the the struggle lines to the other cards got out and figure out what the heck's going on that decks not very good but that's not what Bradley is trying to do yeah he's not trying to win the game of commander he's doing a different thing and that's where the one two twos fall I think yeah Jack Jenkins really only have a chance of winning if somehow they are the lucky thing that's standing in the crumbling building and they're just standing at the end of need to just like sort of kick something to finish it off I mean Jake decks might play like a crowd were match is a really bad card except for it is a sixth floor and at some point in a game it might be possible that like hey swinging with my six more actually killed somebody that can't happen so Jake decks don't have like no ability to win but they're very low and they're not really trying to win so that's like a one two only they're pretty rare especially if someone's bringing something to eat earn them in oh yeah this isn't I mean a tournament they're all gonna be nines intense right you they should be yeah this is all about like casual magic at a GP we just sit down a play or at in your play group or whatever you know I think you're a little bit right about Jake because I bet a like eight-year-old player could build a much better deck than one do it to power what a powerful yeah yeah almost better card honestly if you just took like Yorick and just threw a bunch of cards into it that's better than Jennifer you're better than a 1 or 2 you almost have to try to hit one or two but what if my deck I first built had zero ramp and was just so bad then it probably falls into the next category Jimmy well that's right because when I first start playing this game I was a casual player 3 to 4 I was not making a podcast near full time Josh definitely small time so casual cards are casual decks are basically the decks that let's say you were just sitting around and you have six boxes of random cards and rares from the last three sets you just throw the cards that match the color of the general kind of like the architect that Joshua said although Jarek by itself may increase the power level of the deck and usually it's not too much that involved yeah I'd say this is like your first deck yeah this is like you just learned about commander or hey some people invited you to play tonight and you usually play limited or standard it but they're playing commander so you just throw some yeah our yeah yeah and you're just like they're the right color is it's generally - there's some creatures and some stuff and here we go we're gonna have fun usually they have pretty bad mana curves as far as like a lot of high CMC stuff low synergy maybe just a lot of singularly decent cards yeah anything we always talk about just no ramp or card draw or not enough of either like maybe they have the one soul ring they had but didn't realize that you kind of gotta get a little more than that yeah they're not being like I got exactly 10 rampant in draw they're like a couple of cygnus soul ring something else that's fine divination whatever blocks yeah loose energy a lot of time I already said that low interaction is what I meant yeah so a lot of like lower powered decks just don't have the ability at all to interact with your opponent's decks and what they're doing and so you see that and casual 3 or 4 decks bringing the wrong weapon to a fight yeah we came with a club but everyone's got guns oh yeah this is shaky mana bases maybe a little bit so that's definitely true because one of the things that I'd say takes the most time that really gets into the next category is you have to sit down count all the pips out be like when do I need what lands and that's that can be the game that sometimes as I have clearly demonstrated the faster that can be the game sure though she's not drawing the right lands or having a bad mana base yeah just having a the wrong percentages you've got way more red Manor than you have percentage-wise red cards in your deck not thinking about that kind of stuff a lot of these casual decks or decks have fallen to the 3 & 4 category are just trying to pull off hard strategies or strategy they're tough to pull off like I put down goat tribal right which is like if you build a goat tribal deck you could build the most powerful version of a goat tribal deck but go tribal is just not a very supported strategy in the history of magic and so that deck is unlikely to ever no matter what you do put in all the mana crypts and guy's cradles you want and it's still not going to be a ten out of ten it can only get to a certain level not all strategies are created equal so hard to pull off strategy might just be something that's kind of a little bit you know it's might even be like it's got one foot in jank as far as like the general interests that got you to build this casual deck for sure yeah it's like it's a deck it's go tribal and I'm still trying to win games of magic you know it's not like all miscut cards or something like that but at the same time I know that like dragon tribal would just be straight-up more powerful but I think it's funny to do go tribal so it's a three or four on that even some like designers people that work at watch oh yeah stuff this is kind of where they'd love to live in their spare time which definitely gives a lot of credit to just how much fun commander can be because you can live in this world and have a blast playing this game well and also like I think it makes sense from a game if you're a game designer like one of the things about the game that you like is not beating your opponents but showing off the fact that like you're making connections that nobody is making yeah and so designing your deck you know they end up in like an opinion for what yeah machine yeah oh yeah this is a great point to the early pre cons we're not focused at all now the more recent ones out of the box have focus have synergy have great interaction but the early ones were like sometimes just an amar plus to other commanders and all three of the decks are kind of in there yeah with your own the first like three years of pre cons I would call them like threes or fours mm-hmm in in this casual category because yeah they were like one third of three different decks shuffled together you know not so fun to play against each other as a result they were definitely not super super power powerful because they're so unfocused the early days of our format yeah I also think a lot of times the the the decks in this category the threes and fours they suffer from a lack of a win cons sometimes peep then just get all the way to like how do I win it Sam I'm building go travel haha it's gonna be funny but there's not like the final blow that what is my Czech trying to build to that's gonna eventually win the game they're like I'll tack with some goats eventually and that probably ate it done well it's also the kind of deck like I would build which is just like I've an insurrection in here it's like well you can't that's not your win con Nick your win con need to be something you build up to right insurrection relies on a lot of things to be happening at the table to work so that's casual basically okay that's we'll move on to the next section which is focused and and then the casual decks do you think you have only a couple says yeah yeah like too broadly yeah I have like two because I would say even like say the pre cons from this year which we're going to talk about in a second are already stronger than threes and fours yeah so it's difficult these days to have a super casual deck if it's not on purpose I have like one just in case you run into those people who are like you know maybe they're like eight years old they're they're they're very young and new deck builders because I think you know like Jack Landis who is we used to talk about all the time who's older than eight now sorry jack I'm still very good at magic and getting better every time I say but if he builds a deck it's gonna be way above a three or four so even even then like it's hard to need a three or four but you do run to sometimes and sometimes people just have wacky decks and you want them to play those and you want to see them yeah Bradley Rose has his you're gonna guess my beam beam deck then I want one bad deck quote-unquote bad sorry to be able to put a game can happen right yeah cuz I don't want to be like well all I got is sevens and eight sorry you're just you're in trouble Bradley and I'll say this much I've tried that a lot which is just like okay you guys are all at fours and fives I have a seven but I'm gonna try and play it like a five it it's you just end up sitting there being like well I guess I could just put these cards in my deck because I'm not gonna it's just a fun experience yeah so if you have a casual deck and you want to run it with casual decks that's what we suggest but in this next category this is probably the most flexible out of all of them and is I would say where the vast majority of commander decks actually lie yeah I'd say six and seven so we've been working this in the next yeah we're at five and six here this is focused and it's interesting we call it focus because what we say about the pre cons from the early years they're just unfun focused ram low scatterbrains yeah so focused decks at five and six this is where you're starting to come together as a deck these decks have focus plans and they basically know what they want to do and how they're gonna win not necessarily win the same way but like I'm gonna pump all my creatures I'm gonna attack or I'm gonna sacrifice all my creatures over and over and that's gonna attrition out my opponent sir I've got the tools to do so yeah there are still room for some clinical bad cards in decks like these sometimes for reasons of nostalgia this is my favorite card and I just wanted to play it or this is a really fun card does it synergize perfectly with what my deck wants to do no but I've always wanted to play it and every time I play it I get a laughs oh yeah fives and sixes can have some amount of those cards but they do generally have higher synergy than the ones twos threes and fours they are trying for their cards to work together as you know to build up to something greater than the whole yeah and I would say the synergy is probably the more important part because it means that in I would say again the majority of decks out there right now are really focused hyper focused around what the commander does yeah so if you're putting synergy into your deck then you are focusing on what you need to really interact with your key card or how are you gonna bridge out from there so focus decks that in a while interaction is also the other thing whereas like I now understand I need to protect my general or I need to get rid of that one so you're just generally also thinking more about what your game plan is not that the casual decks and the junk Tech's don't do that but when your deck that's focused I think it's also the point where you want your deck to be able to win I think if you're a play playing like three to a four you don't go into a game with the expectation of like I'm gonna take this thing down you're like I want to do some cool stuff yeah but yeah five and sixes have start to that sort of like desire I say I think within the design yeah I like what you said there - I believe focused decks fives and sixes they start to have more interaction they are worried about being able to stop what their opponents are doing sometimes yeah I think board laps is like the basic level of like yep you should put this in your deck focus decks start to have decent mana curves maybe not ironclad really worrying like oh I should take out a three drop so I can put in another two drop like some of the higher tiers that we're gonna talk about in a minute are very focused on that but in general they are worried about mana curve they will cut some of the higher CMC stuff to just be more efficient earlier in the game they're worried about some stuff like that definitely running less tutors yeah like running less basically like get-out-of-jail-free cards is what I like to call tutors it's just like it's the card that you know you can find something to help you out and if you don't have that then your deck loses a lot of power not just if I'd say focus decks still probably will run one to two to three in that area three is probably even on the higher side so she's not something you can consistently rely on to bring you wins and a lot of times that's on purpose right a lot of people don't like commander decks that sort of play out this same every time you play them and tutors are ways to go always guarantee you find certain cards and the very very very powerful decks will usually win in the exact same way every single time which some people like and some people don't like we're not here to sort of judge what which is which is more fun for you but less tutors in general in fives and sixes is something you see a lot fives and sixes have better manner bases but often are still sort of suboptimal having quite an iron doubt all the kinks and also maybe for budgetary reasons maybe not they don't necessarily have every shock and fetch that they need they don't have you know the perfect mana base as it when we're not talking about dual lands although those are awesome but just even within what is more obtainable for most players sometimes they'll be some little holes with like yeah you really could use an arid Mesa in there yeah and you'll see in general that this trend follows the for the land bases what's being reprinted in standard yeah you're gonna see a lot more shock lands right now you're gonna see the distant cons of turkey or fetch land still and then you can almost gauge when the player enter the game if they're just playing from histories and years of it when they're when their lands basically start entering their decks because they often are the most expensive part of the deck and then again in fives and sixes in focus decks it might just be because they mean they might be five and a six and out of seven or eight because they've chosen to follow or go after our ward I would consider a weaker strategy and again reliable to win the game so yeah when we say weaker I don't mean to be disparaging about it I just mean like looking at it outside unbiased it is just less powerful than some of the other strategies so every knife samurai sword yeah so one who's really good at cutting butter though so Voltron strategies mill strategies group-hug strategies not that those can't be fun and can't win games they certainly can but in general they're not as powerful as some of the other strategies so that may be holding the deck into a five and a six on the power scale because again not all strategies are created equal you might be playing Boros it's very hard for a Boros deck to push up into the nines intense it's just the way that it is because they haven't created the cards to give people the tools to really get their on the competitive side so yeah and if you play and so in the reason that these are also in general weekers because they are other decks that are popular that just counter it straight up yeah like a stasis deck versus boltron is very difficult to get around or on aristocrats deck with great packs and stuff ya know a little strategy can just be completely hosed by like a new Lumina kozelichki yeah a deck like exactly it just becomes very very tough I wanted to say that the recent pre-con so we're talking like the last three years or ever since c16 I'd say those are mostly fives I'd say these days they're making the pre cons a lot more powerful than they used to they probably started out as threes so now we're creeping up it's like a 5.56 um I hope they don't go any higher because it doesn't leave you a ton of places to go cuz a lot of players don't even want to build a deck ever that's a 9 or above so I think if you started a 6 then you only got two little notches to go yeah but I would say like this year's almost all the decks are right at about a 5 or maybe like a 4 and a half for the for the what was the one that I thought was the weakest the onion oh yeah yeah heck yeah yeah even though the card is great and that deck is actually still pretty good yeah ok so we are going to continue we've got optimized which are 7/8 competitive's 9s and tends to go a lot more discussion - yeah oh yeah and some other well yeah looking at the notes there's quite a bit to go so stay tuned but we're gonna take a quick break and here a message from our sponsors everyone this week's episode is brought to you in part by audible one of the top leading digital providers of audiobooks that's right audible is the best way for you to consume and learn from over 100,000 titles the service is super simple your first month is 100% free and you get to listen to an audiobook immediately so right now I've been enjoying 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recommendation again that's audible.com slash command or text the word command to five hundred five hundred to get started so a little while back we had a promotional call out for me on these and Jimmy you got pretty excited yes because I legitimately love them and I've been wearing them for literal years me undies I swear and and I'm just so glad that we actually got sponsor to it's perfect all this was news to me which I guess makes sense because you know underwear is not something people talk about a lot yeah but it was really fun because after we did the spot obviously everyone had to talk about me undies for a little bit and it turns out there were other people in the office that are like yes I wear them they're great yeah and that's what I was gonna say after hearing y'all sing the praises so much of me undies I felt like I kind of had to try it out myself and and you were totally right they're super super soft I tried out just one pair and then basically immediately signed up for the membership service which means I'm gonna get new undies delivered to my door every single month that's comfort and convenience I told you they're awesome and right now me undies he's running a promotion for all of our listeners all I gotta do is go to me uneasy calm slash command and first-time purchasers get 15% off and free shipping plus they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee policy so it's basically no risk again go to me undies dot-com slash command trust us you won't regret it alright okay moving on now it's time to get laser focus Josh and when you get laser focused you become optimized so now we are getting into decks that are I would consider just you could call them powerful these are sevens and eight yeah you know in a way like I'm not trying to say like if you have a focus deck you're only gonna win five or six tab of ten times in the game but I think once you get towards the higher level that's sort of the idea is that you're making a deck that wants to win seven or eight two out of ten times if it's really on the higher level it's very very hard by the way but it's like your intention going into it knowing that you have a very low chance comparatively it's not like a 50/50 split I mean I would say a seven and eight they can have a chance to win against any deck so you can bring tens to the table and it's listen they won't be advantage there'll be disadvantage for sure but they have a chance in those games whereas below that tens might just be too powerful for most sixes to handle right like no matter what almost happens short of like all your other opponents going after each other and you just sit there nobody pays attention to you and then you finish them off at the end but like in general yeah in general the the power level does matter your play skill can't overcome a certain number of tier difference yeah and a huge marker of what makes the decks from seven to ten good is their ability to create a quick and good board state that can win the game or just create advantage very efficiently and so that means very efficient manicures we're talking I mean the ones to three drop slots are healthy and they are filled with ramp as well and things that are gonna help the mana curve so that they can ramp or just get to what they need or draw what they need into this is where the decks very often play multiple things in the first couple of turns where is it five sixes and definitely lowers often that's just like land pass lamp a slam pass right you know you're getting to turn three before anything happens very rare with seven eights they're they're very efficient manicures they're just faster decks there's less or no room for what we call the bad cards in the focus category the card that's just there for a nostalgia or fun it's very hard to have an eight for sure that has more than a card or two that falls in that category yeah you can fit in one or two that's fun but in general it's gonna deep power your deck too much you have a bunch of like stuff that doesn't synergize with everything else and it's just like a cool card I like yeah it's like take one ramp card out versus that and if you again play like a hundred games with this deck that ramp card is going to help you out an insane amount more than the Jain card is so that actually it's a larger chunk of value than you might realize 7/8 have optimal mana bases there they've really paid attention to exactly the colors percentage-wise of every card in their deck made sure that all of their lands and other mana producing sources are in cahoots with what those percentages are they have also thought about things like how many that might come into play tapped I want a lot to come into play untapped they're worried about things like playing my fourth LAN comes into play tap they don't want to do that at all yeah and those decks also generally their land synergize with their deck too so in your Tim deck you have untap errs and you have things to make your land super powered so that's a mana base that also has that in mind like sometimes I can do XY and Z with my mana base and if that happens I have my you know I have my cards that can transmute yeah a little area west and get out of there and to do something else so speaking of tutors more tutors obviously and the best tutor is usually was so we're talking demonic tutor is probably the hallmark of any seven or eight deck if you are playing black and don't have that card in there I wouldn't I would be like I'm interested to see why you think this is 7th and 8th I think it could still be it would depend on all the other cards in your deck but in general like you're gonna have the mystic tutors then language whatever colors you're in you're gonna have the really good tutors yeah and cards that are arguably these 7 to 10 power levels cards of those colors tutors are so powerful because they put multiple copies of your best cards in your deck and make sure that you can find the stuff when you need it so I think number of tutors and how good those tutors are is a pretty good indication of how powerful your deck is tons of synergy in the sevens and eights really high interaction most sevens and eights are frequently able to reach out and stop what's going on from their opponent they're you know they don't have unlimited amount of that stuff but very rarely will just like one move win the game right it's a seven and eight they can stop one or two they can parry a couple blows then they might run out of resources not have enough card draw something could happen where you can overcome it but you're rarely gonna be like I play this creature it just sticks around for four rotations of the table and I went off of it again seven ornate often times these decks will also build in their synergy the ability to interact really well so you have your cards that you can either a flicker I didn't speed and have them do something like the data aviator sort of effects or you have counters on the stick writings like that and tutors play into this too when you're playing more tutors the tutor allows you to go find an answer if that's what you need or went on if that's what you need and so that kind of plays into it and we've we've covered this in most of the other categories but it holds true here sevens and eights are usually playing the more powerful strategies so they're not playing the strategies that are naturally weaker like we said vulture on middle group hug that kind of stuff is just harder to pull off at a very high power you know optimized x7 dates are playing value based stuff attrition based stuff meirin's and so I got big mana Dex Dex are trying to cheat out huge crazy things very very early this is stasis cards that stop other players from trying to affect you at all yeah that's stacks I would even I would put that in probably nines and tens too but but those type of decks the very powerful strategies are just naturally easier to build as a seven or eight because even a bad version of a really vet high value based attrition deck it's probably gonna be better than you know a lot of Voltron decks let's say just and I say better by mean more powerful it doesn't mean better sorry well I mean you take to Voltron a Voltron deck and a just again the Ark is such a good and Jarek deck you build them with the same man and bases power level and all that stuff the Arctic will just generally win yeah that matches longer yeah yeah not all commanders colors strategies are created equal that's just the facts of the matter here yeah I really like this next one and it's one I didn't really think about about sevens and eights but the social contract is definitely still adhered to and we're talking about the plays that make your opponent's very salty so Armageddon blowing up everyone's lands or locking everyone out of the game so they can't do anything or consistently casting something on turn three that wins you the game instant win cons yeah comm tutoring for your combo piece on turn four sevens and eights usually aren't built to do those type of things and that's kind of the biggest difference I would say between a seven eight and a nine ten is what the pilot and the deck builder will allow their deck to do not that they couldn't just put in the second part of the combo they just choose not to because they want to adhere to the social contract they want to open themselves up to playing against five sixes and maybe even like fours with their sevens and eights by not having like super huge blowout potential really early yeah now they may still have the potential in their neck they may just draw it into it but it's not again what the deck is built to do yeah it's not trying to get there as fast as possible right now and this is where we start hitting what I would consider to be the most powerful possible point for many commanders and strategies so like a Voltron deck I keep going I'm sorry you guys know I have a thing about Voltron and I have one Voltron deck and I'm so angry yeah I have two Voltron decks funny and they're and they're fun and I like them but the truth of the matter is that it's very difficult to even build a Voltron deck that is an eight yeah it just is there a strategy unless you have some other wind Khan hidden in there but the Voltron link on itself is just too vulnerable a lot of times to it and not just win one against one person but the whole table take down the game right yeah because it is easy to combat that because everybody's ready for creatures attacking you yeah so that what I'm saying here is that you're starting to hit at 7th and 8th for a lot of decks that's just as powerful as it can get yeah so imagine if a video you are like boxing out there I think that's always punching above your weight what that means is the Voltron deck may its existence may be like a 5 or 6 on the power level in terms of compares and everything else but it can pack a punch but that punch isn't going to be big as another type of strategy and it may punch all the way to 1/8 if it really masters it and a fish makes it trains the best you know whatever you want comparison you want to make but it doesn't necessarily a tenth right like that's I don't I don't think of altering deck really can ever hit 9 or 10 it can and if you look at the tier list from people from see-eth you'll see that there's just no Voltron there's no there's no group hug up there either there's a lot of times that's just if you're if you've chosen that strategy the highest you can get our 7s and H which is fine that's where a lot of us Jimmy and I that's where we like to play to we purposely don't really go into the the next category here which we're going to talk about in a second what was I gonna say here oh so my example was a maxed out SRAM mm-hmm a ceramic built as good as this Ram deck can be built with the most powerful cards that can ever go in a SRAM deck a mono light deck might be like a seven or an eight somewhere in there and then somebody else might build a mode row the deck which would be considered like in you know a mediocre version of Moldova which also might be a seven or eight and that's just the way that it goes because Muldrow tha's just a more powerful commander than Stram I'm sorry and access to three colors all do very good things in commander as opposed to one that we all Ament about and like we keep bringing up yarek I think it's actually almost difficult you have to try hard to me you have to purposely try and like get rid of cards up more than anything else yeah to make York like a five yeah it's just hard to do York just by its very nature is going to be a six or seven most of the time if you're just putting in cards that say when this creature enters the battlefield X okay good old paint harmonica on effect oh it's time we've got the end of our training it's like at the end of like Avatar The Last Airbender spoiler alert he is avatar blasts they're literally about him sorry I mean if you couldn't guess what the end result of that show is then I don't know I mean that's why I watched it I cook for that man so yeah we are at full avatar level with this last category of competitive 9s the tens so yeah this is the tip-top it's the tip-top it's what we like to usually call see-eth or competitive EDH so these decks are using only the most powerful commanders and strategies like I said there's no Voltron decks up there there's no mil vex up there in the nines and tens we're talking combo almost all of them are combo or have a compact sand combo aspect yeah norm and he's in a way combo yeah and stacks I think stacks is the non combo strategy that can make it up there there's some maybe what you broadly call control which usually have stacks elements in there yeah I was also gonna say another card to talk about in terms of interaction in general is how good is your counter spell yes because once you get into the force of world territories it obviously is in the competitive realm so yeah although I'm gonna talk about we're gonna talk about that a little I don't know you can have a force of will in a in a five or six we'll talk about that in a second but they're more likely to be played in the nines and tens so the competitive players have chosen the most powerful strategies on purpose because they know which ones are the good ones and they're just trying to win and they have hyper efficient and laser focused decks that are trying to do the thing that's going to win as fast as possible one of the things we see often in competitive decks is like lower land counts super high ramp counts so like 30 lands 25 ramp cards they're playing the Moxa's and the legal boxes and the mana vaults and the manic crypts and the everything that costs one or two mana that can give you more man as fast as possible because they're gonna try and win super early yeah and in general the only time you'll see very high at cards or if they can be cheated out through some sort of effect or if there is a way to like like if it's an ex propria to get nine mana and while these decks might be able to get there by turn three or four yeah these decks are just designed to execute wind condition as fast as possible and in general see-eth decks 9s and 10s they ignore the social contract track they don't they don't care about it and that's known among the competitive players no one's getting mad if you do Armageddon or if you yeah if you stasis lock everybody that's what's expected we're all just trying to win the game yeah and it I would say CDH has its own social contract that is I bet a lot more bare-bones if you had to write it out which is just like play courteously is probably on there instead of don't try and blow people's lands yeah they're not worried if I what I'm doing stops other players from playing that's what everybody signed up for yeah just trying to win not all commanders and strategies can't even become a competitive deck you can't just take any legendary creature from the history of magic and say I'm gonna make this into a nine or a ten some can't ever get there very few I think can ever reach ten a lot can reach nine like any five color deck can reach nine out of ten probably some a lot of them can go into the ten category just because we can build it equi thout the commander with five colors yes exactly you can have wind Khan's and everything else and enough tutors too to just have the same shell of 99 cards with any five color deck that will be like maybe a nine out of ten yeah I mean competitive is easy to explain right like it's really easy it's basically like you want to win as fast as possible as efficiently as possible and you want to stop other players from doing it yeah if all of these decks are like your your samurai sword and again when two samurai fought or like you know they would try and kill each other as fast as possible with the cleanest cut single cut it was like there was a part of the art and I guess culture of it so if you're a competitive deck you're basically trying to sit there and see can I who's gonna draw faster or who's gonna make the crucial parry and then slice right and you're doing this with three players are on the table so I understand the thrill of it yet I still have no interest I mean it can't be fun I don't like it all the time but I came here and there I do like you I'm all in the club of let me borrow that deck and see what I can do I've done that a few times now and it's fun to just sort of unload yeah and people love it and they're not they like to do it all the time and that's great as long as everybody knows what they're getting into right so I wanted to notice something so we're done going through the categories that's one through ten but you probably still have some questions and we're gonna try and cover them and cover them here yeah if not send an email with the words question time if that's the huh yeah just because we're not giving away anything away you can still ask us questions yeah it's a good way to know it's a question by the way so let's talk about something we did not mention when going through all the categories well you kind of touched on it Jimmy so maybe we're gonna have a slight difference of opinion but that's something we did not mention was specific cards so I don't think this is about specific cards I hear people say weird stuff like he said his deck was a seven but then he opened up with underground sea and manna crypt mm-hmm that doesn't mean anything just because somebody play's a manna crypt in their deck doesn't automatically bump their deck to an eight on the power scale sure they could have just opened it and draft it doesn't even have to do with that to me not all commanders colors and strategies are created equal so sometimes they're playing goat tribal and the only way that their goat tribal can even be a five or six on the power level is by putting manna Crips and things in it because they're just trying to be like hey I want my go travel deck to at least be able to hang with most decks right so this is an underpowered strategy I'm gonna put guys cradle and manna crypt in there but that doesn't make it an 8 out of 10 it makes it a six out of ten yeah I think the the way that I see it is that I think a natural instinct of a lot of Magic players is to just if you're building if you can only build let's say three decks you're just gonna put your best cards into those decks even if the rest of the shell around it might not work so that I do often see like the hey wow that nice underground scene nice Moxon not my oh the legal Moxon's or whatever it is and you go oh how powerful really is your deck and you quickly find out that it's just a few shiny nuggets amongst a pile that may not net be as strong as those cards indicate I mean if you're playing a Voltron deck and you put mana crypt out there I understand right you're just trying to push it up to this to a seven or an eight somehow and that totally makes sense to me and if you said hey my decks an eight and you play a mana crypt I'm not gonna say like oh it's competitive all of a sudden yeah I think the only thing is I would say you are allowed to be at least a little wary if someone starts playing high power level and again I think the thing that one of the big key differentiators here is also like high cost level cards because it I think I think what the players assume is that it also says something about the player that they are willing to invest some out into this to have these cards on the table for whatever reason and maybe it's not always a personal story of like oh I got this for my brother or I inherited this card and then this card I got traded I trade a bunch for so it's very interesting I think honestly the conversation does make a big difference and if you are that player that has those like three or four like whoa whoa whoa dang wait what power level is your deck cards you should probably also learn that it will help to clarify that because this first impression is hard to beat sometimes even if you can sit there and like logic your way through it with the other players yeah and I think like listen you're allowed to be wary or think whatever you want what anybody does anything like nobody can tell you not to think like oh that's a mana crypt and it's it's you know he lied to us but I don't think that that's actually a fair most of the time I would disagree that like you see a mana crypt and you just automatically bump his or her deck up two rungs in your in your mind a lot of times I don't think maybe how few rungs that would give it like a point three - I hear people be like you said it was a seven then he played mana crypt you know see dat players you know seven definitely plays mana crib - that might be the other thing too is that players don't have like like you said you can't put it into a computer and get an average so a mana crypt actually has a variability it can be in a like Josh said a jank tech - all the way up to a ten I do you think are much much more likely to see it in the vast majority of like the seven - eight - nine - ten decks yeah maybe 7/8 I would agree but I think they're also super serious about your jank which I again applaud you for but those decks I think just are scarcer in nature I think there are players that do build like we said Wizards of the coast people I talked about Bradley and his declares the theme or whatever yeah that are very invested players they listen to all the content and they buy a lot of cards but they're just purposely not pushing their power levels up into the realms that we're talking about 9s and 10s and so they might have force of will in a deck that is actually a seven or an eight the force of wheel doesn't make your deck of nine or ten just by itself you know it takes a lot of different cards working all towards the same goal to push you there so well yeah maybe looking at the opposite helps - which you really here like if you you're high power there's the deck doesn't have a man encrypt it doesn't drop it - level yeah that's something I think I see a lot to which people going I they pull out their ears of deck and everybody goes oh no no it's underpowered or uh it's like an eight it's not a ten and what in mind they're like yeah my orzo deck doesn't have a mana crypt listen lack of mana crypt also does not push down your deck by two numbers right just because your deck doesn't have a mana crypt doesn't mean it's an eight all of a sudden that's just not how that works it may be helpful to when you do look at your deck and tried to accurately determine its power level just be as honest with yourself as possible because if you're also you're near as a player like it isn't that mana crypt it's just got a bunch of other one drop rocks and stuff it's like all right yeah yeah exactly I mean a lot of it depends on what the commander is what the decks trying to do an individual cards too one two three four even that you can think of that you wish you had that you don't don't actually increase or decrease the power of your deck by that much yeah it wouldn't push it from a seven two and eight it's not about three or four cards it might be if it's two turfs that's the one thing I would say the difference between two tutors and seven tutors is big and some ramp yeah like flash like ramp like mana crypt again we keep saying it but it is a zero cost card that gives you a ton of value but you have to draw it yeah so yeah any one card that you just have to draw for it to do its thing is gonna only bump your power level by so much okay let's talk about a useful quantifiable metrics here so a lot of what we're talking about is you've got to do all these calculations in your head and it's a little bit this yeah which is again it's gonna be more art than science so you're always you have to do that a little but maybe we can help you out a little bit here paint with care so the question I think to ask here that will give you sort of a good guesstimate of what your decks power level is or least good starting point is what turn can the deck consistently threaten to win yes not win outright but threaten to win so it's usually like the punch is wound up it's ready to deliver and you may not see it necessarily but the deck is able to do that if nobody arrives well yeah yeah yeah the two words that are really important are consistent so it's not like with the nut draw with the best possible draw my deck can win on turn two sometimes it doesn't make your deck and 9 out of 10 or 10 out of 10 its ohh most games my deck on turn 3 is ready to win ok now you're a your nine or ten right threaten is like you said just the ability not actually doing it doesn't have to do with whether you're fighting through a removal or anything like that yeah and we're also not talking about just the God hand so you have to get these exact seven cards in the next two cards in your library need to be X and you know like we're not talking about those either and this this what we're about to say doesn't necessarily work for every single power level or type of strategy but it'll work for a lot so in general well we'll see if you agree I wrote this down so it seems right 10 out of tens can win the game anywhere from turn 4 or before they threatened to win mm-hmm so they can just have a turn 1 turn that shows up and you look at the Hulk there is there are there are 3 things there that may go infinite kind of thing but in general they're consistent like by turn 4 most of the time if I'm uninterrupted my deck is in a position where can win the game nines are more like turn five or six yeah I would even say maybe 4 to 6 because it's hard to sum over that whole turn yeah there's a especially because we've already grouped the 9s and the tens together as con quote competitive I think 9 and 10 differences might just be like actually do you think the difference between a 9 and a 10 is the same as between the seven and an eight probably like a 7s and 8's are fairly close and one has a good chance to beat the other like there and I think 9s and 10s are the same where it's like definitely like they're slightly disadvantaged but it's not by so much because a lot of the you know musics isn't built at its top it's probably like a nine great and definitely not as powerful as the most powerful here's a deck but can it be dinner is a deck sometimes yeah for sure yeah yeah yeah for sure so yeah and I would say yeah okay fine four to six maybe is a nine out of ten it's alright somewhere in there eights are somewhere between turns seven and nine uninterrupted they could probably win the game or end the game sevens are somewhere return between turn ten and twelve probably and that's where we see most games on like game nights and extra turns and things end is somewhere around turn eleven twelve ten and we don't mean like the game actually ends at that point necessarily sometimes it's the game's wrapped up at that point yeah there's gonna be one 1/2 more rotations at the table but the gameís essentially ended right we know who's going to win and there's almost nothing that can happen yeah you know like the amaz game with Yorick where it was like it took him two more turns but he had wrapped up that game yeah with the ran yeah yeah I think one of the things that confuses a lot of players when they say like my decks and eight is that they don't realize that that does mean that you can win by turn nine yeah right so like you can consistently again threaten to win so it's not just like sometimes I drew all my rocks is like no you did your deck was built to make sure you could ramp that out at that point and then if you're at a six power level or below you can probably win you know most games you're set up I like turn 13 plus mmm like on average not that sometimes you don't get a good draw and you can win on turn 11 it's just your average case is 13 plus and I think like after turn 13 it kind of becomes pointless to track it right because most decks given that amount of time with no interruption can win even the jank decks can just cast enough you know yeah Genki creatures or whatever to still muster up a win around turn 14 yeah the only difference would be after turned 13 I would say the decks that are nine and ten actually seven through tens have a much higher chance of winning sooner than the other decks because they'll have the resilience the card draw the advantage the synergy the setups that all the other things that make them what they are and I would say that stacks decks and control decks can be 9s and 10s without being able to win on those turns cuz tactics and maybe a stacks decks you could say this same sort of thing we said with the other ones which is the turn they win is actually four or five turns after the game actually ends or before the game actually ends so maybe we created the lock or whatever is yeah maybe they lock the table out on turn five or six and then they actually win way down the line I think what they also do is they make like the other you know a ten out of ten deck is playing a stack stack and it makes that deck not win on turn 3 but threaten to win on turn six and now all of a sudden the stacks that can win because it just pushed their ability to win early down the line yeah I like slotted itself into the assembly line before it got there yeah so it doesn't this this idea doesn't really work with stacks and control decks as well but that's I think a good starting point so let's go over one more time if your power level 10 turns one to four power level nine turns four to six power level eight turns seven to nine power level seven turns ten to twelve and power level six or below somewhere after turned thirteen is when you probably can distantly threatened to win notice the vast majority of decks I'd say 80 I'm just making it I would say 80 I was gonna say 80 80 75 80 percent of all decks sit between 6 & 8 on the power scale yeah that's just what you see out in the wild the most yeah and in general that's waiting to encounter at gp's conventions magic fests sorry another big important thing again we are not talking about your ability to play or politic but I will say your ability to politic it starts to affect the power level of your deck overall and being a bit of a wind chance your wind changes are the power the wind chance starting at around 7 s and sixes because at that point you're able to move the game enough maybe with your words whereas I think the tens and the nines there's no politicking yeah yeah it's kill or be killed in a lot of situations like say 7/8 politics matters but 9 & 10 they just don't politic much a competitive decks they do a little sometimes but he's pretty fun to watch too I'm sure yeah but in general like you can't politic that much when they're just like no but I win now what if you gave me one turn the proposition you can't give any 9 or 10 an extra turn they're very likely to win on that yeah exactly a huge percent another factor I would consider now when ranking the decks is how fragile / resilient the deck is so I might dock a deck some points if like you just know I build this deck I'm gonna play it but if one board wipe happens in this game it's over yeah my decks basically done well that's the thing that's likely to happen in a lot of games so if my deck can threaten to win on turn seven to nine which would make it an eight on the power scale but one board wipe makes it almost impossible to win then I wouldn't call that decanate yeah or from the bevy of answers and colors that are available to find them the ways to beat this deck just happen to be higher in disregard one more boy whatever it is and that's why again Voltron sorry to keep to poo and all over it this is one creature and I'll eat it effects I steal it Oh No so that's where the arts and science comes in it's like you take your thing you look at what turn it can probably consistently threaten to win on you look at the other factors you say my decks somewhere around a seven or an eight you look at the resilience factor and then let me just say the smart thing to do here is to understand that you're human and there's a tendency to want to underrate your deck to slightly misrepresent it even if you're an honest person and so I would get I would never go into a room if I was like yeah I'm reppin the strongest deck at the table come at me like that's not a good idea to start the game I would say in general people undershoot what their decks power level is rather than overshoot it rarely will a person say their decks innate if it's really a seven but often people will say their deck says six if it's really a seven yeah and this can happen subconsciously like you could just think about your deck like well I don't win that much so this has influenced my decision about what I actually think this deck is that and also you know all the weaknesses of your deck well I might just remove my commander or well they just blow up my mana rack well then the whole thing falls apart and but you know opponents don't know all those things so they're unlikely to always do those things so that's rad you don't don't tell them if they don't know well definitely don't tell them but I would also say when you're ranking your deck in your mind if you're anyway on the fence at all just bump it up a little bit represent it in the other way and you can feel good when you win games where I thought my deck was a six but I said it was a seven and then I still won that game so that's what feels way better than I thought my deck was a seven but I said it was a six and I still won that guy got him yeah I couldn't see it coming yeah all right some closing thoughts here remember the scaling system is not meant to put all decks in any giving it game at the same power level we're not trying to equalize exactly so you don't want to have all sevens yeah necessarily that'd be great but you don't that's not the goal of it the goal is just to not have a nine against a four in the same pod use your time efficiently use it to the best and do it in a way that you think is going to engender the best playing experience for yourself and if that so happens to include everyone else at the table then I hope everyone has a blast I hope we have big laughs and big plays and all that stuff yeah don't pubstomp but also be aware that you don't want to get pump stomped and that's really what he's trying to do it yeah not trying to make it exactly even just close yeah and don't be afraid to get people a break if they mess up I've messed up before I've done the thing where I overate my power like this is definitely an 8 I play I'm like oh my gosh what is this 10 drop doing in my hand so people will make mistakes we're all human and it's just one of those things too that it takes time like anything else to practice the sort of understand these facts even though she's saying and here Josh and I are still very liable to make a mistake about the power of the level or the act for something that we haven't foreseen before so don't feel bad and don't make others feel bad either yeah I like that you know don't judge people too harshly based especially based on like one game yeah so this is the kind of thing like especially after GP Vegas or online we hear but I went to this store I played it GP and the guy said it's a seven then he played a manic rip and then he killed us all involved it's one game he could've got the nut draw you don't even know just give people a break don't judge them too harshly now that being said if it's a pattern of behavior that you notice over a long period of time that's a different thing it consistently threatened to under-represent the power level of their deck you mean well if it consistently actually do it yeah exactly but in other but otherwise you know give people the benefit of the doubt one game doesn't give you enough data points to really be able to judge much yeah exactly all right that's gonna wrap it up I think for our discussion here there's a lot to digest and it is the the tip of the iceberg I think when it comes to this sort of stuff because again as magic develops more cars are gonna come out more things are gonna happen more changes are going to happen to the format bandless and all that stuff there are always gonna be shifts and so this discussion is not over yet so that is our question to you on the end step here or not the ends I'm sorry to the listeners what we talked to the listeners not to the end step the end step is an inanimate thing in the steps in a minute yeah so let us know what you think are your own power level rankings if there's anything we've forgotten or if you have a drastically different way of ranking them which I would be interested to see maybe someone has like a letter grading system that'd be good good to know yeah if you have any other quantifiable ways that you kind of decide what the power ranking is that can help other people out comments are always a great place for that now if you want to pick up any cards to either power up or power down at your decks the best place to go is card Kingdom comm slash command so and use that affiliate link when you're ordering your magic product singles anything at all you really are helping this show game nights extra turns all of our content you really are gonna buy magic cards no matter what we say or do we know that so you do - yeah we're just like you so you may as well while you're getting the magic cards you want simultaneously support all the contents the content that you watch I'm gonna get a foil craw worm so I can play it and happy yeah but it's really nice in crawl room somehow I found a slide I would say that one of great ways people ask us that's related to this people ask us how do I power down my decks my decks are too powerful one of the best ways take the tutors out yeah and then you got to replace those with other cars the card Kingdom Comstock commands Oh easy and if you want to play your very powerful deck on a play mat that indicates how powerful it is like this awesome Lilliana and stuff ultra pro has been making play mats from magic art for many many years now they are the top of the line when it comes to it as well as other products that help store at your cards singles you got sleeves they got top loaders they got all sorts of ways to display your cards as well so make sure you also pick as multiple product when you're at card Kingdom or at your local game store or at your big-box retailer it's all there and lastly don't forget our Kickstarter there's only a couple of weeks left is going on right now it's to help us make some much-needed upgrades around the office so that we can continue to make game nights better make more episodes of extra turns there's a gag reel for game nights that hmm we've hit that stretch goal already so you are going to see it at some point but we've got more stretch goals and awesome rewards Kickstarter link is in the show notes so make sure to click on that and help us support all of our content and thank you all so much that have already donated or for our patrons as well we cannot thank you enough again the reason that this is all existing thanks to your support speaking of I think we need some more storage around here all right now it's time for the end step where we talk about something cool outside the world of magic so my brother turned me on to this series recently have you watched it I've heard about that I've see some trailers and it looks pretty cool the VFX look fun - yes so YouTube as it turns out and lo am I to sing the praises of YouTube but here we go they do have some original content yep Tube originals yeah as an original name and they have YouTube red also which is a subscription-based service similar to Netflix or something else which is one of the reason they're doing original content so that people sign up for that stuff so there's a show called impulse which is by Doug Liman I believe who is the person that did a lot of stuff but the one that matters here is a movie called jumper jumper so he's got a show in it's on YouTube the good thing is you can make perfect sense now that I've seen the trailer keep going yeah you can watch the first season of impulse for free you don't need YouTube red so that's the great thing about it here and then if you want to watch season 2 which I haven't started yet but I hear is better than season 1 you do have to sign up for YouTube red but they have a free 30-day trial so you could watch it and then just cancel it or whatever you want to do anyway impulse Delta Day the commands own podcast puts content up on YouTube red or YouTube red originals you will not see us necessarily declaring support for it yeah I'm definitely not saying to sign up for YouTube red but your first season and the second one for free with the 30-day trial this is not sponsored obviously because there's also just how you use the internet people ok how many memberships I've cancelled when I'm like I you know it was it was fun while it lasted Hulu like I don't know I just joined the thing to get the one thing and now I'm gone that's pretty normal yeah it's trust me you don't feel bad in fact the business actually relies on that as part of the income as well so impulse is a show about a girl who sort of starts to realize that she has some superpowers and it's mostly like teleportation and some telekinesis stuff and which is very similar to the movie jumper that's not just some casual stuff Josh that's your superpowers superpowers yeah I thought you're like I can bend a spoon she's not in the matrix actually she might be I have no idea but it's it's it's well done it's high production value uh acting in the writing is professional and it is a fun watch and you know since all of our TVs are smart TVs now he's just watching YouTube the same as Netflix on your TV like I kind of got into it we binge like half of the first season just the other night so I just want to say then yeah we enjoyed it so far what's the girls power level in one to ten she's learning so she doesn't even know how to control most of it so kind of like yeah just like three to four then maybe with the potential to ten I'm assuming I mean I'm assuming there's a side plot storyline that that you kind of get touches of that just kind of gives you I think to flesh out the world and the possibilities of like a person who has similar powers to hers and knows how to use them is out there cool but you don't really know much about them so Tyler the hero killer I don't think it's Tyler that's an old reference okay yeah all right impulse on YouTube we were round around about how YouTube works I hope you got it anyway well I'm gonna check it out now cuz I did like jumper a lot I it was fun jumper is one of those wish fulfillment movies like listen it's not great the acting is pretty bad what's the name from he's just you know listen I'm sure he's a nice guy but he's not the greatest actor and but it was like oh I want to be able to do that yep that looks like fun yeah so impulse has that same same sort of thing going on you well I do love I also love those stories where someone starts off with powers can't handle them and learns to control them because that's a very satisfying lauric and we're mad at the story and we're I'm addicted that kind of thing - yeah we're in that time period I think you know not to get into the color blue around Scorsese and all the rest of it but we're in that time period right now where we're sort of exploring superhero movies in a lot of different angles and one of the ways is like oh but not in the Marvel movie sense how would a superhero with super powers a person like how would that actually work in the real the real world yeah yeah how would that manifest and what would happen around that person and that this kind of explores some of those things which I do find interesting yeah me too all right another thing that we find very interesting because there are a lot of interesting capping interesting things happening in and around their format is our sister Paula cast the Masters of modern you can find them on twitter at the mmm cast it's Ben Bateman Alex Kessler I switched the reason then it's a and B it's so easy right it works I also never know what they say Jimmy Josh and Josh or Jimmy because like they're both Jays sometimes like that it's always Jimmy and then Josh it just makes it easy I just like Josh Julia has a good ring to it - you know there's balance in the way you know which of us was responding to you because if it says Jimmy Josh I typed it if it's Josh I'm you typed it that's pretty nice anyway they talk about all things modern in the modern format pioneers also know they just got announced recently and it's going to shake things up in terms of how cars actually get passed into modern so I think that's maybe an interesting discussion that they're gonna have there's a lot to talk about in modern in general and if modern horizons was a success we may see more like that in the future if you want to get into modern anyone turn your commander deck into a modern deck also very easy check out these guys check out their podcast at the mmm cast you can also find them right next to us on collective duct company all right our editing graphics and logistics team is Craig Blanchett ashlynn Rose Alfred s taka Terry Robertson Josh Murphy Jake boss and Sam Waldo it's our family that's right and then her uncle is Geoffrey Palmer I'm card animation easy uncle yeah he doesn't live with us but you can find him at Twitter at 20 G he does awesome animations obviously in the front and end of our show as well as the set behind us thanks chef all right everybody and thank you out there or for listening and we'll see you next time peace [Music] [Music] thank you for your attention for further enquiries send an email to command cast at rocketjump calm or ask us on Twitter at jf1 and at Josh Lacroix see you later earlier creating [Laughter]

Channel: The Command Zone

Views: 348,237

Keywords: video game high school, ted wong, vghs, wong, jfwong, jimmy, magic, the, gathering, mtg, magic the gathering, strategy, game, trading card game, deck, tactics, commander, general, elder, dragon, highlander, politics, josh, lee, kwai, cards, Card Game (Game Genre), negotiations, command, zone, podcast, the command zone, edh rules, mana, mana bases, Game Knights, GameKnights, gameplay, power, level, commandfest, magicfest, arena, brawl, oathbreaker, casual, cedh, competitive, optimized, jank, focused

Id: mgGm_74Lc9M

Length: 67min 32sec (4052 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019