Context and Methods

Back in February I wrote a proposal on how to use Gartner’s Magic Quadrant to map out a player’s Commander decks. The goal was to identify the links between one person’s fun and the appreciation the rest of the playgroup had for certain decks.

While the initial approach was but an interesting first take on the subject, most of the analysis was envisioned as a single-player perspective, with the idea of understanding if certain patterns could be identified. One thing that quickly jumped to mind was the possibility to enrich this analysis with a larger sample size.

Instead of just focusing on a single player, I wanted to see if the principle could be applied to an entire playgroup and what could be derived from such an analysis. The Commander Magic Quadrant (CMQ), after all, is envisioned as a resource for measurement of fun among members of a playgroup, so it just felt natural to build on this idea and see how many additional perspectives could be collected.

I was fortunate enough to recruit seven volunteers from my own playgroup and we organized a two-step evaluation, building on the principles of the original CMQ:

1. First, each player ranked their decks in terms of personal enjoyment
2. Then, each player ranked everyone else’s deck based on perceived fun when playing against them; since we had access to 40 decks, each player assigned a score of 40 to their favourite deck and proceeded with a descending ranking; quite intuitively, players voted for all decks but their own and the ones they did not have a chance to play against

With no way to quantify fun through a universal management, the two steps were translated into a ranking system along two axes:

1. Personal enjoyment dictated the horizontal distribution of decks; since not all players had an equal roster of Commander decks, we simply agreed on a linear distribution, with equidistant decks along the X axis for each player
2. Average scores of other players’ decks formed a single vertical ranking; since the 40-to-0 ranking was largely arbitrary, we distributed the decks, again with equidistant decks along the Y axis

To theorize players’ profiles and see if any pattern was perceivable, we kept track of deck’s ownership with a single letter per player. In the following paragraphs, I will be referring to the members of our playgroup, myself included, with the assigned letters.

The result of this analysis is summarized in the following CMQ.

Having access to eight players and forty decks, the result is quite dense and, on first glance, chaotic. Fortunately enough, we soon identified some interesting phenomena in the decks’ distribution.

A playgroup’s CMQ Areas

First and foremost, six out of the eight players had their personal favourite deck in the top right corner. Not only that, but two players actually had two decks and one player had three. All these decks were scoring high both in terms of personal enjoyment and playgroup’s appreciation.

Knowing both the players and the decks’ positioning, it became evident that these decks hold a special role in our own metagame, as each of these serves the implicit purpose of being the signature deck of the player. I will start with the two most interesting ones, though each of them presents a very notable case study:

1. B is probably the most political player in our playgroup; he thrives in negotiations and he often takes a defensive stance within games; his non-aggressive nature means that he is rarely perceived as carrier of a negative experience for the group, hence three of his five decks ranked in the Masterpiece area
2. F plays Black every time he can and both his Masterpiece decks feature a very strong Black component: his Xiahou Dun, the One Eyed deck is all about Graveyard recursion, while his Scarab God deck goes all in on the reanimation strategy; this deckbuilding practice is how he approaches almost every aspect of Magic, so it would really come as a surprise to see him pilot a Naya deck of sort

It is interesting to note how these signature decks seem to be separated by all the others, with an implicit line parting these beloved decks from the rest of the bunch.

The bottom quadrants of the CMQ, and especially the Aggressor area, feature a number of very powerful and very disliked decks. As the name suggests, each of these decks is infused with a strongly proactive strategy, either in the form of reliable and non-interactive beatdown decks, or dedicated combo decks.

Here we have R’s Kozilek, Butcher of Truth deck and G’s Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre deck, R’s Saskia, the Unyielding Infect deck and M’s Rashmi, Eternities Crafter combo deck, which is all about generating infinite Mana with Deadeye Navigator and Palinchron.

While strategies here may vary quite significantly, the common denominators are the usage of non-political strategies, the resilience to countermeasures and the usage of destructive methods that rarely lend themselves to interactive games. Much like the signature decks, these aggressive decks also appear to be separated from the rest of the sample by an empty zone, where we can trace a potential border.

The mid sections of the CMQ include a number of different decks. The left portion seems to feature many non-oppressive decks, most of which do not feature combos or non-interactive strategies. These decks tend to be moderately appreciated, thanks to their relative openness to interactive and political games. On the other hand, they bear very little resemblance to the players’ signature decks, often ending up as the polar opposite of what each player really loves doing.

If M is renown in the playgroup for his creative, powerful and explosive builds, his Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder / Tymna, the Weaver Aggro deck runs the risk of feeling too linear and straightforward. If C is known to be a value-oriented player, helming a consistent and reliable Glissa, the Traitor deck and often indulging in Artifact-based strategies, his Jori En, Ruin Diver deck suffers from the lack of a similarly consistent engine and it is nowhere near the explosive potential of his Mayael, the Anima deck.

Outside of this zone of decks feeling atypical for the players helming them, we meet a sort of “neutral zone”. These decks are not radical enough to fall under any of the identified areas and end up in the middle of the CMQ, bearing characteristics of some areas, but without fully embracing them. Here we find G’s Emmara, Soul of the Accord deck, part Aggro deck, part Combo deck. Not far from that we meet M’s Avacyn, Angel of Hope deck, which falls in the middle of the vertical axis due to very mixed receptions from the playgroup.

The best players

If Commander is all about the overall level of fun shared among players, a first approach to a playgroup can be taken by looking at the player with the highest average scores among all their decks.

I already mentioned how B is among the most political players in our playgroup and how C is renowned for his non-oppressive value-based decks. What is interesting is that, despite having very different playstyles and preferred colour combinations, they display very similar patterns in their decks’ preferences and reception.

B truly embodies the concept of White-Blue decks, bringing an implicit idea of fairness and justice in all his decks. If you take into consideration the fact that nowadays he rarely plays his Edgar Markov deck, all his other decks fair above average and most of them feature very similar colour combinations. If Rakdos is the colour combination of lust, violence and brutality, he is as far from that as one can be, often preferring reactive strategies to oppressive builds. A true testament to his political prowess comes with the fact that the two most appreciated decks of the entire playgroup belong to him.

A very different approach is what drives C in his deckbuilding efforts. We occasionally joke about how his three preferred decks, Glissa the Traitor, Mayael, the Anima and Saheeli, the Gifted follow a similar play pattern of establishing a small board presence in the early game, only to surprise the playgroup with a large, often colourless threat. The lack of oppressive combos and game locks makes sure that, despite these explosive plays, he is rarely perceived as a hardcore Spike, according to Magic’s personality traits.

The Spikes and the Johnny

Speaking of Spikes, M, P and, to a lesser extent, V display a similar distribution to the Spike Curve theorized in the first article on the CMQ. Aside for one exception, each of these players seem to prefer decks that tend to be less liked by the rest of the playgroup, while they tend to appreciate much less the decks that are more thoroughly enjoyed by the rest of players.

While this is nothing to be blamed for, their rankings appear to simply be a manifestation of their Spike tendencies. When personal enjoyment is skewed ever so slightly in favour of victory, the result is an inverse correlation between opponents’ enjoyment and personal accomplishment.

P appears to be the most constant player in this, as his descending trend is almost perfectly linear, with just a small ascending bit on his Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck. Ironically, P is also the most erratic member of the playgroup, sometimes sacrificing deck consistency or in-game politics in the name of personal enjoyment. The results are strategies that veer between the hyper aggressive and the weird build-around.

M, on the other hand, displays a more varied take, with fluctuating trends and a significant peak in his Jodah, Archmage Eternal deck. Among the entire playgroup, he is the one who mostly enjoys playing around and breaking the rules of the format. Rarely does he play a linear and aggressive deck, opting instead for cheating Mana costs with Jodah, Archmage Eternal, destroying the entirety of his opponents’ boards with Avacyn, Angel of Hope, or playing off his opponents’ hand with Sen Triplets. This is where his Johnny nature emerges the most, as he is not interested in simply winning a game with a non-interactive combo. He wants to break the implicit rules of the game, to win with something he perceives as his own creation.

V displays a similar descending trend, although the fact that he only currently plays two different decks strongly limits the number of trends that can be theorized.

Nevertheless, the common factor of these three players is that their decks largely end up being perceived as quite aggressive and imposing, at the cost of the playgroup’s fun. Therefore, the majority of their decks fall below the playgroup’s average.

The twins

The truly unexpected finding was the similarity between two players’ patterns. Before going in the details, I’d like to preface the graph with some notable elements:

1. Both players currently own eight Commander decks: one colourless deck, two mono-coloured deck, three two-colour decks, one four-colour deck and one five-colour deck
2. Both players built an Eldrazi-centred deck, which is among the least-enjoyed decks within the rest of the playgroup
3. Their signature decks are both two-colour decks; both are strongly Commander-centric, as the entire deck is built around the Legendary Creature at the helm
4. Their second favourite decks are also strongly Commander-centric and they both feature a relatively low Creature count
5. Despite a very different composition, their third favourite decks are both Tribal or mostly Tribal; both these decks are relatively disliked by the playgroup; the same applies for their seventh favourite deck
6. Their fourth favourite decks are exclusively or primarily White and Green; both these decks received average scores among the rest of the players
7. Their fifth favourite decks are both four-coloured; they are both built around a Commander 2016 Legendary Creature and not a pair of Partners; they are vaguely disliked by the playgroup, due to their usage of hardly interactive strategies
8. Their sixth favourite decks are two-coloured; these share similarities to their signature decks, with an overlap of one of the respective colours; these decks are fairly appreciated by the playgroup
9. Their least favourite decks are both mono-Red; these two mono-Red decks are both chaotic in nature and not necessarily competitive

Oddly enough, the two players tend to have a fairly different playstyle, with G preferring proactive strategies and R often approaching games with a more reactive behaviour. During games, G usually likes to be perceived as a potential game-breaking threat, holding the table hostage under the promise of an incoming, usually Infect-based, assault. R, on the other hand, tends to play more conservatively, often holding onto key cards in his hand and manipulating players into exhausting their own resources, instead of being the proactive force propelling a game.

Moreover, their individual evaluations of the playgroup’s decks are rarely similar, proving that they also tend to seek different play experiences from the rest of the playgroup. If one likes aggressive and fast-paced games, the other tends to seek a completely different method of board management.

Nevertheless, their placements on the CMQ are oddly similar.

How this is possible is truly beyond my understanding and I must confess a part of me is sincerely scared. I am currently blaming a mixture of randomness and cross-contamination of the two players, who may have evolved into having similar preferences, despite coming from completely different mindsets and backgrounds.

More data needed

Two players were able to submit only a handful of decks, due to currently having a fairly limited roster of options. One of them, F, is a veteran of the format, having played similar decks for the past few years. The other, V, is a relative newcomer to the playgroup and, although his decks’ placement seem to suggest a Spike trend, his sample size appears to be too small to clearly determine a trend.

It is worth mentioning, however, how F places himself in what really looks like a proto-Tablemate Curve, as we described it before. There seems to in fact be a direct correlation between his enjoyment and the playgroup’s appreciation for his decks. While this is not necessarily due to a complete commitment to the playgroup’s experience as the key aspect of his gaming approach, it is also worth mentioning that he has proven time and time again to be fairly adverse to straight up combo decks, of which his Gitrog Monster deck is a close approximation. And, as a result, it also is the deck he seems to enjoy the least.

It is worth mentioning that F is currently tuning a new Judit, the Scourge Diva deck, so we may be soon adding new data points to this analysis.

Variance

There was one final aspect I wanted to look at, as Kyle Carson gave me an extremely good idea when I first wrote about the CMQ back in February. All these analysis, especially on the vertical axis, have been performed in terms of evaluation of average scores. The higher the average score, the higher the appreciation of a deck within the playgroup.

Averages, however, only paint a part of the full picture. An analysis of the standard deviation associated to each deck could help expanding on the analysis, providing insights on how mixed or polarized a deck’s reception is.

In order to focus solely on consolidated numbers, we looked only at the decks that received five or more votes from the rest of the playgroup. Each of these decks was resized on the CMQ based on its standard deviation, so as to provide a quick overview of the relative variance between receptions of different decks.

First and foremost, it is interesting to note how the standard deviation of some decks drastically overshadows the one for others. R’s Grimgrin, Corpse-Born deck has a standard deviation of 2.16, while M’s Sen Triplets deck scored an impressive 11.21. The decks were evaluated six and five times, respectively. Similarly, B’s Ephara, God of the Polis deck reported a standard deviation of 2.77 among five received votes, while G’s Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca deck recorded a 11.10 standard deviation among six votes.

While listing all the decks would probably be lengthy and not necessarily useful, it is interesting to note how the two players with the largest standard deviations are M and G. Despite the two players having a fairly different profile of decks’ averages, their decks received the most mixed receptions. In fact, the five decks with the highest standard deviations belong to the two of them. On top of Sen Triplets and Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca, the two are responsible for introducing the playgroup to Rashmi, Eternities Crafter, Jodah, Archmage Eternal and Zozu, the Punisher.

The common factor of these two players seems to lie more in their in-game approach: both players are fairly proactive and aggressive in their playstyle, despite their different approach to the very concept of proactiveness. If G is more focused on frontal assaults and displays of power, M prefers a less linear plan, usually exploring routes that do not necessarily take him towards all-out attacks. To put it simply, I don’t think I have ever seen M swing with three different Creatures in a single combat phase, while to G that would probably feel like a fairly unimpressive feat.

A different representation of the decks’ variance comes with the visualization of minimum and maximum scores achieved by each deck. The results are quite interesting, as they highlight how some decks were ranked simultaneously among the top and the bottom by different players.

Among the most interesting examples, the already mentioned Sen Triplets deck piloted by M was ranked at the top by V and at the absolute bottom by G. While it is certainly not the only example of the intrinsically subjective nature or fun and enjoyment, its variance is the most notable in the entire sample.

Conclusions

This analysis was made possible only by the collaboration of all the participating players. I am sure there is a number of additional analyses that could be performed, as well as perspectives to address. Nevertheless, I must confess I feel this is a good batch of results for a first comparative analysis within our playgroup.

Of course, I strongly recommend trying this yourself and see what you can derive from your playgroup’s analysis. Of course, it takes a lot of collaboration and effort, but the results are certainly interesting. And, at worst, you will have a better understanding of what your playgroup likes the most, so you can confidently pick the best deck to take to your local game store.

Before we close, I want to thank all the friends taking part in this effort. You can find some of them on Twitter, in case you want to ask about their decks and play stiles. In strictly alphabetical order: Marco “B”, Marco “C”, Luigi “G”, and Francesco “P” are all on Twitter. And a special shoutout to Kyle Carson for inspiring the standard deviation analysis.

What is a Magic Quadrant and how magical is it?

A Magic Quadrant is a graphical tool introduced by Gartner Inc. to easily communicate the state of the art of a market sector, usually mapping top-trending companies based on their vision and capability of execution. Many leading make their mission to strive for the prized title of Leader, which is only awarded to the companies that can effectively balance an innovative and compelling vision with a practical and tangible execution strategy.

The result is an easily-readable two-by-two matrix, with the Leaders in the top-right corner and the Niche Player in the bottom-left. As Magic Quadrants are periodically re-issued, investors are strongly encouraged to keep an eye on significant movements between one Magic Quadrant and the next. An improvement of a company’s vision or the worsening in its execution capability may lead to significant shifts in the composition of power within a specific market.

I will gladly spare you the details of how Gartner Inc. performs its analyses, how companies are assessed and how much effort is put into what looks like a very simple chart. It’s a very interesting read if you have some hours to spare. What really sells Magic Quadrants, to me, is how incredibly polished and readable the final product is. Just a peak at any Magic Quadrant provides a very synthetic and clear view at an entire market sector, pinpointing true innovators, followers and everything in between.

Magic Quadrants have then been often revisited, and even bastardized, to map more than companies. Products, concepts and even vague principles have often been diagrammed on different axes, as the very idea of a two-by-two matrix is both easy to convey and helpful in solidifying strategies and innovations. I myself have been guilty of abusing this graphical tool to present proposals, analyse critical choices and, yes, even debate restaurant options with my friends. The truth is, once you get used to it, it really is an amazing resource.

Recently I had this idea of applying the concept to my roster of Commander decks, to help myself framing my deckbuilding choices and maybe understand what to bring at my local game store, at the next Grand Prix or at my friends’ kitchen table.

Adapting the Magic Quadrant for Commander

Commander is a format primarily devoted to fun. While it is nowhere near a non-competitive format, its multiplayer nature, its intrinsic randomness and the existing of the long-discussed Social Contract make it way more devoted to fun and enjoyment, rather than competition. To put things into perspective: many Commander playgroups promote a spirit of collaboration in deckbuilding and deck selection, as it is often customary to ask the whole table what they’d rather see played. On the other hand, I have never seen anyone approaching a Legacy Tournament asking their opponents what would be funnier to see at the table.

The strive for shared fun, of course, is not the only criterion determining the quality of the overall Commander experience.  While making sure you are playing something funny for your opponents is certainly important, shuffling a deck you enjoy yourself is also crucial. In a perfect Commander world, we’d all play decks we truly enjoy and we’d only battle against decks we love seeing on the other side of the table.

There is probably at least a dozen additional perspectives to tackle when discussing Commander and I am sure many of them would be amazing subjects for future discussions, but let’s start from the very core of the format: fun. Fun for the player piloting the deck, as well as fun for the rest of the table. In other words: how consistently can each player define a vision they can enjoy for their deck? And how consistently does it impact on the rest of the playgroup?

In a way, this is not too different from Gartner Inc.’s perspective: a horizontal axis devoted to clarity of vision, which is in and on itself a relatively individual point of view, and a vertical axis focused on how this vision impacts the surrounding environment, in terms of execution and repercussion on the rest of the playgroup. Only this time, instead of whole companies, we can look at individual Commander decks within a player’s roster of available decks.

What I ended up with is the following two-by-two matrix.

Much like Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant, we end up with a two-by-two matrix, aimed at mapping Commander decks within four areas:

1. Masterpieces are the best of the breed; decks that are both funny for the piloting player and for the rest of the playgroup; they are always a welcome sight at the table and they embody the playgroup’s understanding of what Commander truly is; these can be the culmination of a process in which the whole playgroup learns to understand and respect everyone within it
2. Aggressors can be the joy of their owner, but a pain for the rest of the tables; decks that are extremely competitive, or include many of the most frowned upon cards in the format can easily end in this category; when these decks show up at the table, they are often met with groans and complains, with their pilot grinning in evil content
3. Entertainers are loved by the table, but are not equally enjoyed by player piloting them; either these decks are extremely non-competitive, or they are simply closer to the playgroup’s expectations, rather than their deck builder’s; they could have been built this way on purpose, or they can be a meeting point skewed in favour of the playgroup’s preferences
4. Roughs are the most challenging decks to analyse; they may have been poorly conceived from the start, or maybe they are failed experiments, or they simply lost their charm over time, becoming way more repetitive than expected; another option is simply that, while being still good and playable, they are not as good and beloved as the other decks in the playgroup

Before we move forward, one thing must be mentioned. The Commander Magic Quadrant (CMQ) is not a Cartesian Coordinate System. Its axes do not necessarily go from zero to a maximum possible number, nor usually include negative values. Practically, this means that the centre of the CMQ is not some kind of perfect balance, nor the bottom left corner represents the absolute zero.

The best way to approach the CMQ is to view each item mapped in its areas based on the relative positions between one another. The positioning of each item is therefore not absolute, but can help understanding, within one or more player’s deck roster, how each fare against the others.

Let’s get in the details of this CMQ and understand how to approach it and what its main takeaways can be.

How can one measure fun?

Long story short: fun is unmeasurable. You could try and quantify the amount of endorphin and other substances released by your body when you have fun, but I’m not a doctor and, really, this is way out of my league. What you can do, is separately tackle each of the perspectives we discussed, not trying to measure them, but simply ranking the decks you are trying to map. In other words:

1. Fun for me: try and rank your decks based purely on your personal enjoyment when you play them; forget your opponents, your win rate, the amount of money spent building it, the type of decks; write them down and, based purely on the amount of fun you usually have playing them, try and list them for the funniest to the least entertaining for you to play
2. Fur for my opponents: what is your playgroup’s reaction when you bring a certain deck to the table? Do they groan or cheer? Do they smile or complain? Talk to your playgroup and ask them to rank your decks based on how much they enjoy playing against them

Once you have ranked all your decks based on your and your friends’ enjoyment, try and place them in the graph. Funniest for you go to the right, funniest for your playgroup on the top. Again, do not think absolutes, here, but try and distribute all your decks evenly along the two axes. Personally, this is what I ended up with, when I tried distributing my decks.

What really drew my attention, here, is the outliers that place themselves far from the centre of the CMQ. While some of these decks are relatively easy to understand, some may require a bit more context:

1. My Diaochan, Artful Beauty deck is a pretty straightforward Wacky Chaos Commander deck, with a dense Red Planeswalker subtheme; it is one of the most welcome decks in my playgroup, as it is almost incapable of winning and it always provide some nice twist to traditional games; it fares very low in my personal enjoyment scale as many of its games are just auto-piloted by a number of random effects and the end result is kind of lacklustre
2. My Kozilek, Butcher of Truth deck is almost the polar opposite: it’s a powerful one trick pony that plays amazingly, but it can be extremely oppressive to play against; meeting a hasty Eldrazi Titan on turn 3 is everything but a funny experience for my opponents and the sheer density of Mana Rocks usually means the deck’s plan feels very consistent and reliable – which is good for me, but not great for the players on the receiving end of an Annihilation 4 trigger
3. The top positions are split between my Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and my Borborygmos Enraged decks; the two decks have been tuned after years of games and their playstyle is usually perceived as very non-oppressive, relying on anything but game breaking locks and hardly interactive combo
4. The worst offenders are probably Saskia, the Unyielding and The Locust God; they are both extremely linear in their strategies, but turn out to be less consistent than Kozilek, while still being perceived as pretty non-interactive; the former can potentially take out a player within the first turns of the game, while the latter wins more via a single explosive turn, rather than after a long and well-fought battle

The easier takeaway from this exercise is that I can easily cherry pick what to bring at my local game store, balancing good and interactive games with the occasional nonsense we all need sometimes. This is a great starting point, but we’re barely scratching the surface.

So what is fun?

One thing that immediately comes to mind looking at this matrix is how much one person’s fun can relate to everyone else’s at the table. While the amount of available data is not sufficient to really plot a quantitative correlation, it is indeed possible to theorize some patterns based on one person’s character. In a way, we could easily diagram two perfect extremes in a Commander player’s personality.

To some players, fun is a zero-sum game. The amount of fun they are having is inversely proportional to the amount of fun everyone else is having. If they win, they usually do so by performing something extremely unfair within the game. Joy, to them, is an exclusively individual perspective and the fact that the opponents are having fun can actually be a detriment to their own enjoyment. To some extent, this is an extreme version of Spike from Magic’s personality traits. If they win and everyone else loses, they are happy. Any other scenario results in their discontent. Push it even further and they look like psychopaths who thrive in everyone else’s unease.

On the complete opposite of the spectrum, you have the perfect tablemate. This player’s fun is directly proportional to the amount of fun the whole table is having. Victory is irrelevant, with their only goal being the maximization of the enjoyment within the entire table. Think of these players as Group Hug players pushed to the extreme, to a point where everything they do is make sure everyone else is having fun. Winning a game is so low of a priority to them, that they genuinely never care about the outcome of a game. Again, the extremization of this profile is some kind of selflessness-devoted zealot who only aims at entertaining everyone.

Based on the way one may have plotted their own Commander decks on the CMQ, it is possible to theorize the personality of a player and their approach to the game. The more they approach the Spike curve, the more likely they are to adhere to the idea of a “pure” Spike player, hellbent on winning the game with complete disregard for the opponents’ entertainment. On the other side, the more players approach the Tablemate curve, the more likely they are to move towards a goal of maximized fun for the whole table, disregarding victory as a crucial factor in their own appreciation for the game.

Of course, every player is their own person and it is very likely that perfect adherence to a specific curve is never really achieved, unless the data available is extremely limited, skewing the plotting as a result.

What else there is?

Bridging outside of a single person’s Commander deck roster, two perspectives can be further analysed. First and foremost, comparing individual player’s CMQ can generate interesting comparison between members of a single playgroup, with some being more inclined to individual fun and others more prone to shared entertainment.

With some patience and a lot of effort by everyone involved, another perspective that can be approached is a collective effort within the whole playgroup to rank the entire roster of available Commander decks each player can bring to the table. Based on the size of your playgroup, this can really be a true feat of organizational skills and debate moderation, with the end result being a single shared vertical axis for the entire playgroup. As a result, instead of looking at individual placements of each deck, one could trace the average location of each player roster on the shared CMQ, tracing relative players’ profile and mindsets towards the format and the rest of their teammates.

I may be trying this out for a future update on the subject, so stay tuned if you’re interested.

One additional perspective that can be tackled, going back to an individual’s point of view and driving inspiration from Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant, is a periodical re-assessment of a person’s CMQ. Our personal appreciation of our own Commander decks can really change over time, with new cards being released, new deckbuilding choices to explore and sometimes complete overhauls of existing strategies. While other constructed formats tend to focus on just fine tuning existing strategies, Commander has a way broader mindset and can really lead players to massive reinventions of existing decks or fanatic pursues of new approaches to revamp consolidated decks. I would personally like to revisit my own CMQ over time, especially to see If I managed to improve on the decks I have the least fine playing with and, on the other hand, If I can turn my more oppressive decks into better experiences for my playgroup. Should these be the only results, I’d say we’d already be on a great path of self-improvement.