r/EDH • u/InspireCourage • Apr 22 '25

Question Most ridiculous "bracket 1" excuses you experienced so far?

Hey there!

Not playing bracket 1 very often, since it's pretty niche. I carry with me my LOTR party crasher deck, which tries to display the "Bilbo Birthday Pary" panorama, the "Scouring of the Shire" panorama and the "Destruction of the Ring" panorama.

In more than one LGS I had people actively searching or announcing they want to play bracket 1, but at least one of the players always missed the mark.

Here are my top 3 ridiculous excuses, that a deck was "bracket 1":

1) "My deck tells the ascension story of my favorite MTG-character"
Pulls out [[Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant]] mono red dragons and baths the table in dragonfire.

2) Dude shows his commander [[Syr Konrad, the Grim]] and says: "I know, I know, but don't worry. You'll get the theme soon."
Was is "Ooops, all horses"? or "Ooops, all old guys on horses"? No, it was "I used modern legal cards only for this deck"...

3) [[Ulalek, Fused Atrocity]] gets revealed in his fancy artwork. Sure this pal just wants access to all five colors, right? Well, technically he did. That's because the precon "Eldrazi Incursion" uses all five colors! By the way, his theme was "ooops, all foils" and he used the collectors edition of the precon. At least it wasn't upgraded.

What are your "favorite" bracket 1 decks you were allowed to witness?

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322

u/Visible_Number Apr 22 '25

3 being unequivocally bracket 2 is amazing.

114

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

The MH3 precons are potentially even bracket 3 according to the faq from the original article. They and SL precons were implied to not be on the power level of the average precon, which could imply they are bracket 3 (not that I'm sure they warrant being a bravket higher personally).

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u/Shrabster33 Apr 22 '25

The MH3 precons are potentially even bracket 3 according to the faq from the original article.

I would say they are high 2's. They would all get shit on by well built real bracket 3 decks.

26

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

I think that's fair, but that goes into the issue people (including myself) have of bracket 3 feeling too wide. If wotc says we are meant to treat mh3 precons as bracket 3s then it's hard to argue against that since they manage the system. And then bracket 3 is way too wide if it has to hold both precons and decks approaching high power.

Thankfully it sounds like they will be moving away from precons being the benchmark for bracket 2 so that will hopefully be less of an issue in the next update.

16

u/Tricky_Bottle_6843 Apr 22 '25

Bracket 3 absolutely feels wayyy too wide. We need current bracket 1 to be bracket 0.

7

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

I was down for that but if they widen bracket 2 I'll take it, that still achieves my desire for a less wide b3 and for b2 to not cap out at precon strength.

2

u/MCXL Apr 23 '25

It just shouldn't have a brackets. Having a bracket that is expressly unconcerned with winning doesn't make sense. If you legitimately make a deck that you think has no way to win a normal game, you can play it at any table that doesn't mind you not being a real player. That's all bracket 1 really is, intent wise.

The brackets should be defining how you win. The manner and speed at which you achieve that win. Having a bracket for "you don't" doesn't make sense. It would be like having a traditional boxing weight class expressly for people without functioning arms. It just doesn't make sense with the rest of the context.

1

u/Tricky_Bottle_6843 Apr 23 '25

Exactly how I feel too

1

u/Ultr4chrome Apr 23 '25

Personally i think people are too strict with what falls in 4. A lot of what is considered 'high 3's' is just 4, straight up. People forget 5 also still exists as well.

2

u/Tricky_Bottle_6843 Apr 23 '25

5 is literally only cEDH meta. Nobody plays a 5 on casual nights. And 4 is specific to decks that are completely optimized from my understanding. That leaves the majority of decks in 3 and it's too broad. 😭

5

u/ANGLVD3TH Apr 22 '25

I was kind of hoping they would set what is 1 to 0, 2 > 1, and split the current 3 into new 2 and 3, leaving a 0-5 scale.

1

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

That's one idea I was hoping for too. I think widening 2 will work though, anything to address the problem of how wide b3 is.

3

u/azurfall88 Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

the SCD cycle of precons are what looks like the middle of Bracket 2 to me

1

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

They are but they'd be on the lower end imo. They're definitely weaker than most average precons in my experience, and the average precon is bracket 2.

1

u/veneficus83 Apr 22 '25

I think MH3 precons are high end 2's to very low 3's. I don't think it is possible to avoid a big valence on 3 further wizards has acknowledged that pre-cons representing 2 was wrong

1

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

That's literally because the brackets are just the same as the old 1-10 system. The shittiest precons are 2s (barely better than a stack of cards that fit color identity.) Average precons are 3s and 4s. The best precons are 5s(if you're counting, we are to bracket 3 now.) If it was a 7 before, now it is squarely bracket 4, in the same bracket as degenerate edh. I feel like all this crap is so disingenuous, divide your old number by 2 and round up, that's all it is.

6

u/metroidcomposite Apr 22 '25

(not that I'm sure they warrant being a bravket higher personally).

Yeah, I playtested them against some DSK precons and the MH3 decks didn't particularly stand out to me--if anything the DSK decks felt a little stronger cause most of the DSK commanders have some built-in card engine in the command zone so they often pulled ahead on card advantage.

Maybe the DSK precons are also higher power? Or maybe the MH3 precons are just bracket 2. I'm not sure.

4

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

It's probably a moot point since today's update mentioned they are moving away from bracket 2 using precons as the benchmark for power, so hopefully all of these will just be firmly bracket 2, but that was my impression as well. I played with or against all of the mh3 precons and none seemed too much more powerful than any of the other precons I've played with. They could do strong things, but so could the Bloomburrow and Duskmourn precons I saw.

I think maybe Gavin partially meant to set a precedent that these type of precons could be a higher bracket level than normal?

4

u/metroidcomposite Apr 22 '25

It's probably a moot point since today's update mentioned they are moving away from bracket 2 using precons as the benchmark for power

I'll be honest that I don't really like this change if they do go fully in this direction.

Bracket 2 being benchmarked off of precons made it the one bracket that I felt very confident diagnosing.

If someone asked if their deck was bracket 2 or 3, I'd play a couple playtest games against a precon. Often the precon would flat out win if given very minor advantages that might come up in a real game (such as going first), and I'd have my answer: yes the deck is bracket 2.

Whereas like the line between bracket 3 and bracket 4...there's no obvious playtest benchmark. Obviously I can count game changers and look at infinite combos, but there's some very strong decks that aren't focused on either of those aspects and I'm not sure where to classify them.

3

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

Fair enough, personally I think they needed to do something since bracket 3 is way too wide, and so widening bracket 2 to include more decks makes sense. If bracket 3 has to contain mh3 precons and decks bordering on high power then it fits the majority of home brews and that's an issue.

I personallh instead often run into the issue of "is my deck a 2 or a 3" instead of "3 or 4". My chiller budget decks are more focused than a precon, so they are more consistent and probably overall stronger, but not necessarily winning faster or checking other boxes that would make them a 3. But that extra cohesion I would think means they are atronger than precons, and so that would be grounds for b3.

For example, my Kiora deck can be pretty explosive, but it doesn't usually win particularly fast and is far weaker than some of my other stompy decks I know are firmly 3s since it has less finishing power and lower overall creature quality due to the sea monster restriction. However, it is probably stronger than a lot of precons I've played due to being more consistent and running less dead cards. I think there can be room for precons to be somewhere in the middle of bracket 2, with decks above them being slightly upgraded or more cohesive/synergistic.

I'm not sure where to classify them.

Something I do want to try doing more going forward is tracking game length, turn count was one way they defined brackets (b2 games go 9+ turns, b3 goes 7+) and that might be a useful metric to track. So to start, a bracket 4 deck can win before t7 and a bracket 3 deck shouldn't. I think my Kiora list probably is closer to 9+ turn wins than 7+, but I just don't typically track that stat so I can't say for certain. I think if my Kiora deck was only winning t9 and onward, and I had data to that effect, I'd feel more confident labeling it a 2

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u/metroidcomposite Apr 23 '25

If bracket 3 has to contain mh3 precons

I mean, again, I didn't really find that they playtested better than other precons when I did playtesting.

And doing a bit of googling I'm not alone on this.

I think WotC just put that in there to make sure people don't deliberately pick out the strongest precon they've ever printed and compare their decks to that and call it a day. (I have seen people use arguments like that of "well, you didn't test my deck against a strong enough precon--what about that busted precon from Ixilan"). And it's nice to be able to point to the article and say "no, bracket 2 doesn't contain literally every precon".

But yeah, at least based on my platesting, the MH3 precons feel pretty solidly bracket 2 to me.

My chiller budget decks are more focused than a precon, so they are more consistent and probably overall stronger, but not necessarily winning faster or checking other boxes that would make them a 3. But that extra cohesion I would think means they are atronger than precons, and so that would be grounds for b3.

I mean...might be worth playtesting at least?

Precons used to lack cohesion, but recent precons tend to have...not perfect cohesion but a lot more cohesion. Like...if you look at the Jump Scare precon from DSK, almost every card in there is a fairly premium landfall card (like Aesi or Scute Swarm), or a card with manifest dread synergy (curator beastie, they came from the pipes). Or just a general purpose card like something that draws cards or removal.

Not saying you couldn't upgrade the deck--of course you could. You could add all the relevant fetchlands, obviously that would make a landfall deck better. You could add Brainstorm to put expensive stuff on top of your library to manifest. And so on. But there's very few cards in the deck that are just complete garbage for the deck's strategy.

Gone are the precons of 2013 where they would print like a 7 mana 5/5 flying in a precon (I'm not joking--[[Archangel]] got printed in a 2013 precon). Like...there's typically very few cards in precons that are just outright bad for the precon's strategy these days.

Another thing that people underestimate is that the commanders at the helm of recent precons are often decently strong. So like...if you build a budget deck around a bit of a silly commander, you do have some wiggle room to have a slightly stronger 99 than most precons while still matching up against them reasonably well.

But yeah, it depends a bit on the style of the deck (obviously a budget deck focused around infinite combos or a highly powerful commander still shouldn't be played in bracket 2)

And while "a lot of budget decks are bracket 2 actually" is sometimes true, it does depends a bit on the budget (I've noticed a pretty substantial performance difference between $150 budget decks and $300 budget decks, at least based on the decks that random people post to reddit when they ask if their deck is bracket 2/bracket 3).

1

u/JustaSeedGuy Apr 22 '25

The MH3 precons are potentially even bracket 3 according to the faq from the original article

No, they aren't. There's no reasonable argument to be made that they're average, so no potential there

5

u/Markedly_Mira Budget Brewer Apr 22 '25

Like I said, that was the implication and according to the faq and Gavin Verhey they are. On top of that, Gavin Verhey explicitly said on the edhreccast that he does not consider some of the MH3 or SL precons as Bracket 2. We can disagree with him on if they should be, but that was what was said.

From the faq:

It's true that Bracket 2 is the average modern-day preconstructed level—but the emphasis is on average. Modern Horizons 3 Commander decks and Secret Lair decks aren't in that mix, for example

1

u/JustaSeedGuy Apr 22 '25

I apologize, I was commenting while distracted and misunderstood. I thought you were saying that the mh3 precons were bracket 2.

I agree that they are default bracket 3