Commander

I'm pretty excited to see the brackets! I think there are a lot of unrealistic expectations going around about how effective they will be, leading to a lot of unnecessary negativity. But I guess that's just a normal reaction to changes in hobby spaces. Most people that get upset probably didn't read the article and just looked at the brackets and Game Changers list to find things to complain about. Also it's just a beta! Anyway, in my eyes it just has to be better than what we currently have and that's not too hard. Also it won't replace the pre-game talk. It's supposed to complement it.

I quite like the 5 brackets. They represent the different deck types, that I see most often, well enough. Of course there is still the possibility for vastly varying power levels within these, if you only consider what you're not allowed to play instead of adhering to the bracket's "spirit". There will still be people that consider their weird but high-synergy deck to be bracket 1 or 2, because it adheres to the rules, but at least I don't have to worry about facing cards from the Game Changers list. There will always be a way for bad actors to spoil everyone's fun if they really try, but that's another issue I think. We'll see if the brackets communicate their power level well enough for more balanced games.

I really like the idea of the Game Changers list. Way better than having a list for each bracket. It's also great to have a half-way step before bans, which will allow for unbans of various cards that are fine in higher power games. I like that I can look at that list and get a feel what I can expect to see and what not in the different brackets. It's a really elegant solution! It does look a little short, though. I expected to see Burgeoning, Necropotence, Farewell and more on that list.

All in all I'm excited to adjust my decks to fit into the different brackets to see if it actually works out. Commander is such a great game if everybody is roughly playing on the same level and you have some idea of what you can expect to see. Over the last years this most often happened when my pod brought their cEDH adjacent, high power decks. Anything less than that had way more power level inconsistencies. Which felt especially worse, because the games took way longer. Hopefully this is a step to fix this!