Commanders by Power Level [EDH Tier List]

This list seeks to categorize all multiplayer Commanders in adherence with the PlayEDH Discord power level distinctions. Below, you'll find definitions for each power level.

For High Power and above, we recommend checking the Decklist Database or Commander Library for sample lists.

For Casual and Mid Power decks, we recommend using EDHREC to find deck-specific staples, strategies, and sample decklists.

While some colour combinations in EDH have mostly Commander-independent builds, e.g. you can take an optimized Zur list, replace Zur the Enchanter with Halfdane and the deck would still be quite strong; we chose to only list those builds together with their most optimal choice of Commander for the sake of clarity. Other Commanders in those color combinations were evaluated entirely by their own synergies.

Titans

The Commanders in this category have proven themselves as consistently competitive, even over several shifts in the meta. Playing any of these decks into a competitive environment should yield solid results.

Exemplary

Exemplary commanders are powerful decks with obvious forward-facing strengths. They set themselves apart from Competitive commanders in consistency of gameplan or have powerful niches in the metagame that make them strategically compelling picks into certain types of opposing decks.

Competitive

Competitive EDH decks are designed with one principle in mind: No compromises. This principle is made up of several facets that will be explained now:

No significant budgetary restrictions - Even if you can't afford some of the high-end cards that see frequent play in cEDH, proxying those to bring your deck to full power is a very good thing to do. Don't let yourself or others be held back by what they are able to spend on cardboard. Mindset - Having the right mindset is one of the most important things when it comes to cEDH. Competitive players want to find the best builds and play them as well as possible. When you go into a game, every decision you make should be made with the intent of winning that game: no spite plays, no nonsense politics, proper threat assessment. An ideal competitive player wants to make the correct decision at every point in the game, and competitive players should strive to reach that ideal. Powerful strategies - Some strategies are better than others, and cEDH is interested in the best of them. While it's hard to define how good a strategy must be to be competitively viable, the other facets should help along with the 'Primary' tab of the decklist database linked above. Consistency - A competitive deck isn't just sometimes good. It doesn't matter whether your deck can win on turn 1 or 2, it doesn't matter that it can go Mishra's Workshop into Trinisphere turn 1, what really matters is what it can do consistently. So when judging whether your own deck is competitive, ask yourself the question: "What can it do consistently?", and then ask yourself: "Is that powerful enough for cEDH?" The "Turn 3" rule - cEDH has become a lot faster since its inception. Right now, the critical turn on which you need to be able to either consistently threaten a win or an insurmountable advantage or have the means to stop others from winning, be it through interaction spells or static effects, is turn 3. If your deck isn't consistently relevant by turn 3, it's not competitive. No intentionally suboptimal choices - Let's get this out of the way: even suboptimal decks can win in cEDH, so being able to win a game in a pod with cEDH decks does not automatically make a deck competitive. As noted earlier, the cEDH mindset is about trying to make optimal choices. Pet cards don't have a place here. This does not mean that everyone should only be playing the same proven decks over and over, but choosing to hamstring yourself when clearly stronger options exist does not fall within the scope of competitive EDH.

Fringe Competitive

Decks at this level can compete viably at competitive tables, but either exert some suboptimality that puts them behind other choices or take an angle on the game that might not be as clearly effective as other strategies.

High Power

Decks at this level are strong, but can't quite compete consistently at the cEDH level. They usually fall into one of these four categories:

A. Budget cEDH Decks - budget versions of cEDH decks often need to make compromises. This means that they're going to be a bit slower and less consistent than their budgetless counterparts. You can find examples of budget cEDH decks here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LabManiacs/comments/63y1qx/budget_deck_series_collection/

B. Fully tuned decks whose strategy isn't quite powerful enough for cEDH - not every fully tuned deck can be competitive, no matter how much time you put into it. A powerful strategy is one of the facets that make decks competitive.

C. Decks that used to be competitive, but have fallen by the wayside as cEDH evolved - With rules changes, banlist updates, new cards being released, and people getting better at the game, the landscape of cEDH continues to evolve. Unfortunately, this also means that some decks that used to be good just aren't up to par anymore.

D. Worse versions of existing Competitive decks - Another facet of what makes a deck competitive is not choosing to play something that's consistently going to perform worse than another build with the same strategy. Actively choosing to play something that's worse is not competitive, even if the chosen deck is still powerful.

Mid Power

Mid Power is where players start going into games with the intention to win and decks start being tuned towards consistency. They start incorporating tutors to have more frequent access to their key cards. You should expect strong value engines and big mana payoffs, and your deck is expected to interact with what your opponents are trying to do - spot removal, counterspells, and Wrath effects are all very common. Decks that are built after a theme in this power level are often highly synergistic with that theme. Even combo decks should be expected in Mid Power. While these combos and combo decks won't have the same speed, power, compactness, or consistency as the ones found in High Power and above, they present another incentive to dedicate a portion of your Mid Power deck to being interactive. The key turns at this power level tend to range from six to eight.

Casual

In the context of this list, the Casual category is reserved for Commanders that don't provide a mechanical reason to play them - some are vanilla creatures, others are entirely unusable without significant workarounds.