Commander is the most popular format in Magic: The Gathering, and for good reason. It's social, creative, and endlessly customisable. But one perennial challenge at the table is calibrating power level.
You sit down with three strangers, everyone says "I'm playing a 6 or 7", and somehow one person is goldfishing a turn-four win with Thassa's Oracle and Tainted Pact while another is casting Sol Ring as their big play. Sound familiar? This is the bracket conversation problem, and it has frustrated Commander players for as long as the format has existed.
The reason this conversation fails so consistently is that the 1-10 power scale has no external reference point. A player's 7 is relative to the decks they have played against, the local meta they come from, and their own subjective sense of what "strong" feels like. Two players can both say 7 and be a full bracket apart in actual power level.
Why We Built EDHcheck
We wanted a tool that gives a fast, objective snapshot of a deck's power level. Not vibes, not "how does it feel to play against" — concrete, reproducible metrics grounded in the official WotC bracket framework.
When Wizards of the Coast introduced the official bracket system in 2025, they provided a shared vocabulary for Commander pods. But the bracket system only works as well as each player's ability to accurately assess their own deck against the criteria. Most players have a rough sense of whether their deck is casual or tuned, but have no reliable way to verify whether it contains a Game Changer they forgot about, or whether their combo density qualifies for Bracket 4.
EDHcheck solves this by doing the verification automatically. Paste your decklist or import from Moxfield or Archidekt, and within three to five seconds you have an objective analysis that matches your deck against the WotC bracket criteria card by card.
What EDHcheck Evaluates
The criteria EDHcheck checks for every deck:
Official WotC Game Changers — the roughly 24 cards WotC designates as requiring acknowledgment in Bracket 3 and above. These include Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Rhystic Study, Necropotence, Thassa's Oracle, Fierce Guardianship, and approximately 15 others. EDHcheck flags every Game Changer in your list and counts the total, which determines your minimum bracket.
Fast mana beyond Sol Ring — Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Dark Ritual, Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and other acceleration that enables turn-one or turn-two explosive development. These are counted separately from Sol Ring because Sol Ring is bracket-neutral while the others push toward Bracket 3 or 4.
Extra turns — any card granting additional turns. One extra-turn spell is acceptable at Bracket 3; more than one or chaining extra-turn effects pushes into Bracket 4 territory.
Mass land denial — Armageddon effects and other mass land destruction. These are listed as an automatic Bracket 3 qualifier in WotC's framework because of the high disruption to the game's social contract.
Infinite combos — via Commander Spellbook's live database, which tracks over 10,000 known combo packages. EDHcheck queries this database against your specific 99 to identify combos present in your list. This is the most technically complex part of the analysis and the part most players cannot reliably self-assess.
Tutor density — both named tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, etc.) and oracle-text detection for cards that search your library for other cards. High tutor density increases combo reliability and is a major driver of Bracket 4 classification.
Power score — a composite 1-10 score weighted toward the metrics that most determine game impact: Game Changers, combo presence, tutor density, and fast mana. This score is what you can share as a quick shorthand when someone asks "what are you playing?"
How the Analysis Works
Paste your decklist (or a Moxfield, Archidekt, or TappedOut URL) and EDHcheck will:
- Fetch all card data from Scryfall's API in batches of 75
- Cross-reference against curated card lists for combos, tutors, fast mana, stax pieces, and MLD
- Query Commander Spellbook for live combo detection in your specific 99
- Calculate a 1–10 Power Score and assign a WotC Bracket (B1–B5)
- Return a full breakdown with flagged cards, mana curve, type distribution, and format legality check
The whole pipeline takes 3–5 seconds for a full 100-card deck. The result is a shareable analysis you can screenshot and show at any table to back up your bracket declaration.
The Bracket System Reference
WotC introduced official brackets in 2025 to give Commander players a shared language for power level conversations. EDHcheck implements the exact criteria:
| Bracket | Name | Key Markers |
|---|---|---|
| B1 | Exhibition | No fast mana, no tutors, casual-only |
| B2 | Core | Sol Ring OK, 1 extra turn OK |
| B3 | Upgraded | Game Changers acknowledged, some tutors |
| B4 | Optimized | Multiple GCs, early combos |
| B5 | cEDH | 5+ GCs, fast combo, optimized mana |
The bracket is the ceiling, not the average. One Thassa's Oracle plus Demonic Consultation package makes a deck B4 regardless of how casual the other 98 cards are. EDHcheck applies this logic correctly — a single Game Changer moves a deck from B2 to at least B3, and the presence of an early-game combo (capable of winning by turn four) is an automatic B4 qualifier.
The Deck Builder
Beyond analysis, EDHcheck includes a full Commander deck builder where you can construct a new deck from scratch or import and modify an existing list. The builder shows your bracket analysis in real time — as you add or remove cards, the bracket updates live. This makes it possible to test specific changes before committing to them.
Common use cases for the builder: testing whether adding a Game Changer changes your bracket from 3 to 4, building a new list from scratch with a specific bracket target in mind, or verifying that a list you're considering purchasing or trading into lands where the community thinks it does.
What's Coming Next
EDHcheck is actively developed. On the roadmap:
Deck Comparison — load up to 4 decks and compare bracket spread, speed scores, and combo presence before you sit down. This would let a pod of four players compare all their decks simultaneously and identify mismatches before a game starts.
Social Play mode — share a lobby link, everyone submits their decklist, and the table sees a combined power distribution. This is designed for organized play at local game stores and conventions where pre-game alignment takes too long.
Price analysis — market price from TCGPlayer and Scryfall for budget building guidance. See what your upgrade path costs before you buy, and identify the highest-impact upgrades within a specific budget.
Paste your first list at edhcheck.com and see where your deck lands — or build a deck from scratch in the deck builder and analyze it in one click. For a deeper explanation of each bracket, read Understanding the WotC Bracket System. For what your power score components mean and how to use them in table talk, see how to read your EDHcheck power score correctly.