3DH: cEDH's Future?

cEDH is stagnant, but we can improve it with a simple change: three player games.

Let's start by detailing cEDH's worst qualities:

1. One-card engines like Rhystic Study dominate games and create repetitive play patterns.

2. Playing the social game ("yapping") slows things down and frustrates players.

3. ≥3-color blue midrange decks dominate tournaments.

4. Many tournament games end in a draw because players have too many resources for any one player to pull ahead (even in final matches).

5. Games produce awkward kingmaking scenarios in which players can stop one opponent but not another, thus determining who wins arbitrarily.

6. Four player cEDH requires 70 – 80 minutes per game in order to produce more wins than draws. Flash enablers incentivize players to win at the last possible opportunity, which often makes a game's final turn extend past time limits. These factors limit the amount of rounds that can fire per day. In most (small and midsize) tournaments, players can make the cut by winning once or twice then drawing the rest of their games. All these qualities can make tournament play feel stressful and arbitrary.

7. Your probability of winning declines sharply if you are not on the play.

Many cEDH players and tournament organizers have speculated about how to mitigate or eliminate these problems—and some have actually tried. Some solutions include potential bans, alternate point structures for tournaments, or allowing deadlocked games to restart.

But let's assess an option that hasn't been widely considered. What if cEDH were a 3 player game?

Here is how 3 player cEDH, or 3DH, would address the format's worst qualities:

1. In 3DH, homogenizing one-card engines that generate huge output for little input are worse: Rhystic Study triggers less, Smothering Tithe makes fewer Treasures, and fairer but still homogenizing cards like Tymna, the Weaver do less work. (The list goes on and on.)

2. 3DH has fewer minds to change, less arguing, and simpler puzzles during the 2v1 (or 1v2). And charismatic players can't marshal as many resources by talking.

3. 3DH means there is less interaction to beat while going for a win. Though high-color blue decks will always be favored in a singleton combo format, low-color proactive decks more often win before one-card engines hit the field. Turbo decks of all colors become stronger—but stax decks, who now need to shut down fewer strategies and combos, might also eat into midrange's dominance. (It is hard to imagine another change that would simultaneously strengthen turbo and stax.)

4. 3DH features fewer plans, game actions, triggered abilities, and responses. Even resource-rich games have a higher probability of seeing more turns, thus increasing the number of windows in which one player can win.

5. Though kingmaking is fundamental to multiplayer games (without intergame consequences), 3DH creates clearer divisions between the player trying to win and the team united against that player. 3DH also allows more time for coordinating plans and plays.

6. 3DH tournaments could feature more pods and shorter games, and thus fire more rounds. This would increase the power of skillfulness and decrease the power of variance. Wins would accordingly be more beneficial during Swiss rounds, thus 3DH tournaments would better incentive players to win as many matches as you can (thereby causing fewer draws). Tournaments could cut to Top 3, with only two untimed semifinals rounds required to fill out the final match. In other words, tournaments would be easier to organize and more competitively satisfying.

7. Going second, third, or fourth is less harmful because fewer one-card engines like Esper Sentinel and Mystic Remora come down before your turn.

A knock-on positive effect of 3DH is that games would be easier to organize in general. For example: if you have four players, you can play "classic" cEDH; if you have five, you have a 3DH pod and a 1v1 match of Canlander or Dandân; if you have six, you've got classic cEDH and 1v1, or two pods of 3DH.

But let's be intellectually honest and imagine potential negative effects of 3DH, along with some responses:

• 3DH would "split the format." While format coherence is important, format quality is existential. And despite the catchy title, 3DH is basically cEDH, just down a player; 3 player cEDH pods happen all the time for various reasons, but have until now been deemed suboptimal. What if the optimal structure for complex multiplayer singleton has been right in front of us? Plus, 3DH is by nature more accessible since it would allow more and smaller groups to form and play regularly.

• 3DH wouldn't feel like cEDH. In 3DH, the messy dynamics of Commander would be tamped down. I can argue that 3DH doesn't eliminate the essence of Commander (multiplayer singleton Magic with social play), but groups might determine that 3DH feels like a fundamentally different game in practice. I haven't found this to be true in the 3 player cEDH games I've played over the years, but communities in conversation would be the best arbiters.

• 3DH would make metas worse. 3DH would theoretically diversify metas by weakening cEDH's most powerful cards, but the increase in rounds per tournament (and thus the reduction of variance) could have a converse effect—further homogenizing the group of top-performing decks. But if metas narrow because the underlying game is more competitively satisfying and enjoyable, that should be a price we are willing to pay.

• 3DH would make turbo dominant. 3DH strengthens cEDH's fastest and most efficient one-card engine: Necropotence. 3DH games feature fewer counterspells and less on-board life total pressure (assuming similar metas and deckbuilding philosophies, which perhaps are large assumptions). But a proportionate reduction in life totals and damage thresholds (4 players to 3 players → 30 life and 15 commander damage) mitigates this strength. This change might also make both aggro and finite (yet powerful) combos and synergies more viable.

• 3DH would make collusion worse. Current tournament structures produce games in which some players are incentivized to win and others to draw. We could imagine a 3DH game late in a tournament's Swiss rounds in which two players can make the cut if they draw, but the third player needs to win. This would enable 2 vs. 1 bullying. And then there's the possibility that two friends are podded up with a stranger, thus raising the possibility of collusion and bribery. Hopefully an increase in the amount of rounds and pods per tournament would reduce the frequency of such situations, but we would need data (or some good mathematical modeling) to know more.

• 3DH would worsen the game's coolest card: Etali, Primal Conqueror. (Conversely, 3DH would strengthen the game's coolest deck: Turbo Fool.) Much to consider…🤔

To put my money where my mouth is, I've been jamming 3DH games with my local playgroup for the last few weeks. My impressions thus far can be summarized like this: 3DH is a less dynamic but more humane experience. Games are snappier, less ambiguous, and cEDH's negative qualities are much less conspicuous.

To sum up: cEDH's core problems are time-consuming and repetitive play patterns and metas alongside logistical challenges for organizing satisfying tournaments. 3 player cEDH, or 3DH, could be a potent fix.

As always, experimentation is the way forward. I invite you to play some 3DH and share your experiences.