I hosted a Commander Tournament in my University, providing additional work hours on participants’ academic records

It was never my intention really, I just started saying “yes” to things and It happened.

How

So, back when I was an undergrad in University of Brasília, I started an EDH group on WhatsApp with a few of my friends. I had good intentions, just wanted to play games on lunch breaks. The thing is, I actually never played EDH on my University campus because I had really no time at all. It took me a long time to have the initiative to actually create the group, so when I did it after the Covid pandemic, I was already too busy with my course final thesis (I’m a Computer Engineer).

Some colleagues started playing Magic in the spaces allowed in the UnB (University of Brasília) library. The UnB library has a space for people to play boardgames and tabletop RPGs, eventually everyone got together. The space organizers eventually found my group on WhatsApp, and asked if anyone was interested in holding events during “University Week”.

“University Week” is a week dedicated to various events at UnB, and everyone can participate and have different experiences, as well as get together and learn new things. Some colleagues took charge of a course to teach people how to play Magic, and I ended up being responsible for the Commander tournament.

I figured It would be easy for me to organize the tournament, since I play on EDH tournaments all the time. I don’t have the time to do anything too elaborate due to my job and my master’s degree (I’m not an undergrad anymore, and I could not be more happy about It), but I definitely feel like having the initiative to do justice to my group of Magic peers.

Tournament rules

Once I asked to the playgroup what they wanted, most people realized that playing “casual EDH” would be better, and more noob friendly. The real question was If I was going to settle for a banlist, of ask people to send me their decklist first so I could judge It. Honestly, given how most people reacted, I realized that I was not going to please everyone and It does not matter what I decided, so I decided to do nothing and ask people politely to avoid cEDH staples (as a result, avoiding turn one or two combos). That’s It.

The problem is, for some people, a Mana Crypt is not a big deal, or a 0 CMC counterspell, because these are “just a little better” when compared to Sol Ring and Counterspell. Folks have different opinions on what combos should be playable on a lower powerlevel, or If combos should be played at all. People are too used to tournaments in my local meta, and a couple of guys actually have a very expensive card pool to thinker with. Some people actually learned how to play EDH on tournaments (tournaments that include prizes, giving you an extra reason to play your best).

Since everyone had suggestions on how to proceed and the group of players seemed very interested in making it work and being beginner-friendly, I decided to just tell everyone: “play knowing that maybe your table will be made up of people who learned to play today, or who have been playing for 20 years”.

“Guilherme, what about my Tasigur EDH deck, should I play with It?”

My answer was:

“Given the rules, do whatever floats your boat bro.”

So, rules:

• Proxies are allowed, as long as you cannot manipulate your deck given differences in size and shape of the cards
• 3 rounds, 1 hour each
• Avoid cEDH staples
• The only banlist is the original EDH banlist
• If the round ends and the game is still going, the game ends on 4 turns
• Top 3 players get prizes (special commemorative high quality proxies)

How It went

The University library rented us a huge room downstairs. We could easily fit 200 people there. So, cool beginning.

30~ish players on the first round, most people had to go home by the end of the second round because of the bus line schedule.

There was a delay as some colleagues were training their first commander game there at the time. I put numbers on different tables and managed the tournament using a matchmaking website called Planarforge.

One or two people had problems registering, but otherwise it was smooth sailing. I took my laptop with me and everything went fine in that regard, the website did most of the job keeping track of points. In the first round, 1 person was waiting to play and I couldn’t fit them into a table, but that’s okay. Everyone got a proxy of a Sol Ring for attending.

Folks gathered for the picture of the winners. I’m third from left to right.

During the first round there was concern about whether the games would end in just one hour due to the power level of the decks, but surprisingly, the vast majority of games ended on time. Every round got extra 20 minutes, but whatever. Unfortunately, the winner of the night was some guy with a deck full of staples that was not even a student at UnB, which personally made me and some other folks upset, given that there were people learning to play and everything.

But overall, cool experience. It was also my birthday and people sang happy birthday to me.

:")

Lesson learned

There will be a banlist next time. Still thinking about how It's going to be, but there will be a banlist. One guy had a deck that was not balanced at all given the spirit of the tournament rules, and some other folks where too committed to low power decks, making It impossible to play in just one hour rounds.

If I'm the one organizing the next "casual" tournament, I can see three approaches the banlist:

• A method that leaves no room for questions, algorithm-based banlist given cEDH staples. Get all cEDH staples on a csv file and sort them given objetive simple rules given occurrence on decks or price. This is my favorite option, since I'm a data engineer. I imagine that this would would leave less room for questions like "why this was banned and not that?". Well, the answer is, the choice is purely algorithm-based.
• A small banlist with only the bigger problems seen on last tournament, banning cards like Force of Will and The One Ring.
• Make It a Conquest tournament, with the Conquest banlist.

I don't want to make more complicated house rules to promote certain decks, so, just a banlist is fine. Also, I would like to promote combos next time, and stronger decks. Since proxies are allowed and there would be a banlist, everything else is fine. Some players were extremely purists in the sense of wanting to have simple decks that don’t do much, and eventually end up losing to "focused" or altered precons. So next time, brewing decks should be promoted.

Last lesson: almost half the people dropped the tournament because It was really late and they had to go back home. The bus lines were going to close at the end of the night. So yeah, the tournament should begin at around 18:30h, and not 19:30h.

But overall, It went great. Everyone had a good time and the last round was exciting. Many people will probably come back next year (If we manage to make another tournament) and the community is getting stronger, so making the rules "more mature" is totally a goal.

If you were there, thanks for attending. Means a lot to me.