Yesterday I was jamming cEDH games with some fellow Magic enthusiasts at my LGS. Two of the players in the pod I'd never met before and they were brand new to the store.

After introducing myself to them both I struck up a casual "so how'd you get into Magic?" discussion. Both of them shared that they'd seen Playing with Power gameplay on YouTube and it inspired them to tryout MTG.

Neither one of them had ever played EDH in any kind of a casual capacity, they are exclusively cEDH players. To some of you that might not seem strange at all but I remember a time when cEDH was the red-headed stepchild of the Commander format.

There was a time when cEDH content was insanely niche. Content creators like The Labratory Maniacs were some of the few people even pushing cEDH online and commanders like Narset or Rafiq were the "boogeymen" of the format.

I thought it was really cool that cEDH has become popular enough online to attract people who have never played MTG before. Trying to find cEDH games in years past was a struggle and at times it felt like building powerful Commander decks was some kind of violation of the spirit of the format.

It's remarkable how far EDH has come over the years and watching cEDH grow alongside it, and become more widely accepted, has been a neat experience.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk 😂