I think people approach this conversation wrong. I don’t ask for a power level. I ask what the deck does, how far out can win and how consistent. If you win turn 4 every game then I know what to play against that. I found that’s kinda the best way to have this conversation.

I just recently got into MTG and was given the Dihada BWR commander precon about three months ago and fell in love with how Mardu plays. I just built a Kaalia deck and had it ran through the power level calculator and was surprised it came out as a PL 8. I also have a PL 5 eldrazi deck that essentially coin flips between not doing too much or infinite mana combo's out to drawing my entire deck and the Necron precon that came out to be a PL5, very consistent with low power cards with some spice here and there.

You got the difference between tier 1 and 2 cedh decks wrong. Tier 1 plays thasa's Oracle.

in this classification most my decks are 6 or 7 as none of them cost over 50 bucks, but i consistently win against most decks i encounter with staple cards that you would consider level 8. My elf deck is quite budget and i never play it as i can easily win on turn 6. I even built a rakdos tokens that was supposed to be low power level but ended up taking out 4 cards (that value only 2 dollar total) so it wouldn't be too strong (having once won in a table of 5 with 2 cEDH players by turn 5 or 6, all for under 35euro) CONCLUSION (*tldr): talking about how fast you can win and how your opponents can react to you usually plays better in this Rule 0 conversation.

I usually prefer play with power 7 or 8 decks, 9 & 10 just tend to not be fun since they tend to tutor the same win strategies on repeat to win. I usually don’t do precon since I like deck building which I can pour weeks worth of thought into. My personal and perhaps favorite decks are Darien, king of Kjeldor deck: take pain to make tokens featuring self damage outlets and 1 life creature ETB triggers to gain pseudo-indestructibility and fuel infinite combos and life-based win cons. A solid 7/10 just due to the mana it takes to get Darien out and keep him there. My Karn deck which makes infinite mana to be able to cast tons of big artifacts, tutor for combo pieces, and basically says “I play the entire deck for my turn”. An easy 8/10 because of the near-limitless combo versatility and the mana to play it. Arcades the strategist, a simple and straightforward deck that fields defender creatures and uses their low mana value and high toughness to quickly amass a pretty intimidating mid game force though really has no combos and can only win by damaging out opponents. A nice 5/10 for its fairness to newer players.

I find that the number scale leaves too much open to interpretation. One player's 6 may be another player's 8, and so on, and it leads to all kinds of bad blood. The main thing that we seek when we have the pre-game talk is to establish what sort of game we want and to make sure that all decks are somewhat close to each other, and I don't think that the 1-10 scale does a good enough job of giving everyone at the table a sufficient picture of what sort of game it will be. Case and point in janky combo decks, that people might think are trash, until they go off out of nowhere, or expecting a long game but one guy has brought his ultra-voltron or infect deck and just proceeds to aggro out at least one player. A better metric to achieve a common understanding of how the game will shape up, in my opinion, is the average turn a deck takes to threaten a win. It's easy, with little ambiguity, and efficiently describes what sort of game it will be: Fast, or grindy, or something in between. Another relevant metric is the number of non-land tutors you run, and if you play infinite combos or not. The first is more relevant if the second is above 0, as people will know to watch out when you tutor for something, and they will know that when you play a spell that's commonly a combo piece, they have to go to red alert, whereas that same combo piece in a deck with no combo potential will just be a value thing, and not as worrying. A tertiary factor that might be worth mentioning is if you play in a way that's very disruptive. Common tropes under this heading is lots of removal, board wipes and/or counterspells, lots of stax effects, lots of steal effects, lots of goad effects, and so on. Basically, any kind of effect that affects a player's agency over the game and/or makes it difficult to play normally. I think most of us have at least a vague notion of what cards people in general likes less, and how many of a certain type of card that constitutes an amount worth mentioning. So: Average win turn while goldfishing, number of tutors and infinite combos, and if you run any commonly salt-inducing cards. Efficiently covers what sort of game you'll expect to play, with a minimum of ambiguity.

I play Lord of the Nazgûl in wraith tribal Dimir. But the deck actually wins most games using Doomsday/Thasa’s Oracle/Mind Rake lol I like having the one combo in there that can win me the game if I draw it. Plus- if I get it and choose not to play it because of the pod I feel way less salty for getting a loss.

I could've sworn I saw a while back some website where one can insert their decklist and it would give a power level estimation. Of course, as you say, it's subjective, but perhaps something to build on?

I've seen way too many people take turors are a clear indicator of power level, when its really only the case when talking about combo decks.

I like the way “I hate your deck” has there pre chat. Oh and convert go blue. What’s the “worse thing” your deck wants to do? Smash face? Combo out asap? Also if there is “fast mana” tutors? I think answering any of the above will give you a good idea of where the deck in question will stand! Also making pre game chat more common! I tried to start the convo off in a new pod and they looked at me like I was crazy lol and I didn’t get much feed back from them either. Talk it out folks!

So i'm pretty new to magic and i got hyped by the WH40K editions tyranid's deck i like to play it and his +1/+1 mechanic. On which power level do you put my tyranid deck? I optimized it a bit but i wanted to know for the basic deck. So where do you put it?🙂

Where can I go to find out what level my krenko mob boss deck is sitting at?

Good video. Nice and concise. Many are 30 mins-1.5 hours... wth?

You should do a deck building video with your brother!

I have a hard time looking at cEDH being in the tiers at all. cEDH decks are in a realm of their own and can almost be considered a different format. In some cases ive seen cEDH decks fall to power 6 or seven because they are built to compete at an extremely fast tempo and sometimes arent equipped to deal with much lower power level decks interaction. Salt aside decks like optimized tergrid are easily considered power level 9 or 10 but due to the misconceptions that casual players have about cEDH, they consider it to be a cEDH deck, when in truth its just too powerful for casual play but too slow to compete in cEDH. Not saying there arent exceptions because ive seen tergrid decks succeed in both formats. This being said i dont support any cEDH deck being played in a casual game of commander because it can result in extremely unfun and unbalanced play for everyone involved (unless of course thats how your playgroup rolls). My point being i feel like cEDH should not be considered any casual power level since its basically a different format.

I bought the “ Food and Friends “ pre con and rebuilt it adding 7 tutors, 15 removals, 3 ways to double my tokens added Academy Manufacturer for tne treasures and more draw, speaking of draw I added 11 ways to draw I turned it into an 8 it’s fun ( I added Chatterfang for obvious reasons ) killing with squirrels is fun maybe I should add Triumph of the horde I did keep Sam and Frodo as the commanders

Great video :) where can I find the graphic?:)

do you have a grey knight dread knight in the background ??

I honestly feel this is one of the most impossible things to gage when it comes to EDH. There are honestly a bunch of "secretly OP" commanders too that fly under the radar of most new players. Power level is honestly a derivative of wincon yet not always. "Combat damage is my wincon" sounds slow until you realize you're up agains Kaalia or Godo. Honestly, i use precons as a metric for what a "6" should be or feel like and prefer to hover around that level myself. Too low and to have jank (fun in its own right but usually only with friends) too high snd you run into the streamlined consistency of power decks which honestly just exist to tutor out the same cards everyone else is trying to get, creating a lack of character and too much uniformity in play style.

I see some Grey Knights in the background 😎

My first deck was Krenko and he is sitting at a comfy 8 rn. Cant wait to name my first born child "Krenko, Mob Boss"

There's no dollar amount tied to power level, higher power decks tend to be more expensive. My strongest deck is a budget Locust God deck. You're right that how fast a deck can consistently win is a good indicator of power level. If your decks are winning around turn 6 you're probably playing a higher powered deck than you think. Your rakdos tokens sound interesting.. I'd love to see a deck list for that!

Good to know I accidentally brought a power level 9 deck (I proxied everything, including the lands, since my proxies were paper and not cardboard) to a power level 4 table, where I was then provided a power level 1 deck to play at the next game. I did not have fun lol. I find the most fun in building decks, rather than playing them, so I find it really hard to make lower power level decks unless I am sticking hard to a theme like in my bear tribal deck, and given that I cannot afford to buy those decks, I usually just play on MTGO using mana traders. Its also hard to make decks on a budget because the official card search engine provided by wizards doesn't include prices. Thinking on it now, I should probably use edhrec to help me build lol.

I've got a power level el 8 knight deck; I've been told it's to over powerful and my reply to that is I can't find a win until turn 5. CEDH wins by turn 2 the most 🙄 I know becausenive faced power level 10s and didn't get a turn

Fetch Land reprints distort the conversation a lot. Power level 1-4 = approximately $10x level. Power level 5-7 = approximately $15x level and is very easy to have as a 2nd deck you build but much more challenging to have a level 7 deck your first deck. It's really unlikely to be the case that anyone's first deck is level 7. And it's likely to be too rushed cheating themselves out of learning to play at least a 5 deck competently first. Anyone who's played for years can probably take a level 1 deck and Garfield the guy that tries to buy a level 7 deck his very first day playing Magic. (Reference to Richard Garfield doing just that to a kid in a store in the old days, back when Lord of the Pit was a chase rare for the cool art.) Fetch land in exact particular throw that hot take out of distortion because they're basically 0 mana tutors and they're stupid good and if you're willing to blow the whole budget at level 4 or 5 just grabbing Fetch Lands on reprint then your level 6 or 7 deck is going to be worth more than 7x$15. Probably by a lot. And it's gonna be a little broken too because a Dual Land that's also a Tutor is just....really silly. Fetch Lands are busted. The $ should be reversed og Duals vs Fetches and in a more normal unwarped world it would be. They shouldn't make more Fetches but they have to. 7x$15 = 70+35 = 105. $45 of that could be 3 cards. Base rate $1/card avg x 97 cards = $97. $152. 5% shipping $159. You're getting a beast. Maybe your base rate is 75 cents. 75x97...$72.75+45 = $118.xx $120. That's $15 more than it probably would be without Lands that appreciate in value over time after a drop. Its not insignificant. In fact by my calculations it's literally a whole level. Level 8 should be assumed to be the $20x level point because people are going to be packing Fetch Lands. Definitely. $160. Which basically means the difference between level 7 and level 8 is "add 3 Fetch Lands or 2 Fetch Lands and one Tutor". I'd argue that the numbers tell the story it can be demonstrated if you begin skeptical of my theory.

And here I thought my decks were 6-7. Turns out they're at power level 2 o_0

I have a pet card, that was just pointed out to me recently....Voidslime. I didn't realize until recently, but all of my Commander's have UG, and all include voidslime.

I'd rather ask the turn in which the deck wins consistently during goldfishing

I've been told by some my prosper deck, is isn't a 7 but a nine. But I think it's just salty players, yes the deck has all the staples for prosper but I don't run fetchlands or tutors

I feel like based on this scale a recent deck i made would fall around 7 but truly a 5. I think this scale is off.

Hm... you read the table. Stay crunchy.

I feel like an unaltered pre-con is a 4/5. A pure synergy deck with upgraded includes is like a 6/7 And a focused multi killer is like a 8/9. Now If your deck is nothing but layered win cons, staples, and tutors you’re at a 10 and playing a super optimized cedh list.

I guess I’m 7, but I don’t feel like it. I think I’m closer to 6

My decks are very strong, I can’t help it 😢

We all know we're just gonna say our deck is a 7 at the end of the day :)

All decks are 7s lol

Everything is a 7