UPDATE: A previous version of this article attributed Lerner's ban from the competitive EDH Discord and subreddit to a document assembled by Nick Hammond when it was, according to Lerner, the latest in a series of attempts to de-platform Lerner. The article has been updated to reflect this information.
In the late 1990s, a group of Magic the Gathering players in Alaska quietly developed their own "format," or game mode, titled Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), which eschewed popular 1v1 dueling in favor of a four-player battle royale featuring hundred-card decks. After a decade as an underground phenomenon in the Magic the Gathering community, Wizards of the Coast would launch its first commercial EDH products in 2011, re-dubbed “Commander” to avoid potential intellectual property contentions.
Apart from its explosive popularity, Commander (or EDH as the format is still commonly known to its competitive community, which refer to themselves 'CEDH') has had a drastic impact on the economics of Magic The Gathering, and its second-hand card market in particular. Given MTG developer Wizard of the Coast’s complex legal relationship with the creation, Commander is still an unofficial format. The competitive side is instead overseen by tournament organizers, forum moderators, and colorful players. Game Rant recently spoke to Jacob “Bad Dog” Lerner, a veteran player in Southern California’s competitive EDH scene, about the format’s history and impact.
Magic the Gathering: From Casual to Competitive
Lerner attributes EDH's popularity to a number of factors, particularly its accessible price point (compared to other MTG formats) and inherently social nature.
"EDH in particular had a more accessible buy-in than other MTG formats, like Legacy, Vintage, or Modern. And the other nice thing about EDH was, it was a multiplayer format, so you could play with your friends. That's how the ball started rolling."
Players primarily played in person during the early days of the Commander format, though it established itself contemporaneously with today's most popular digital forums for Magic the Gathering, subreddit forums and dedicated Discord channels. It surged in popularity when Wizards of the Coast released its first official Commander products, but the game was still viewed as a casual take on MTG's more serious, officially recognized formats. Some early deck crafters, or "brewers" as they are known in the EDH community, tried to push concepts to be as efficient and effective as possible, but organized competitive play was almost nonexistent.
According to Lerner, after Wizards released more Commander products in 2013 and 2014, serious EDH brewers started to become more "militant" with attitudes that scorned casual decks and their players, also called "pilots." In August 2013, the original EDH subreddit underwent a schism and a competitive EDH subreddit was established. Lerner got formally involved in the scene around 2015, and from the beginning, he was a controversial player due to his off-meta choice of a Commander card: Kaalia the Vast.
Given Commander's popularity was built on a more casual appeal, EDH brewers and subreddit moderators codified a strong meta-game and curated card tier lists. Lerner's Kaalia did not fit the mold, and when he started entering tournaments, he said he was met with mockery and derision for his unusual deck choice - which is hardly uncommon in Discords dedicated to multiplayer titles. Lerner chalked up such hostility to being the new kid on the block, but rather than attaining gradual acceptance, he said bad blood began to brew in the upper echelons of competitive EDH.
MTG's Bad Dog Talks Getting Blacklisted From Discord
Lerner went on to become a prominent figure in the competitive EDH subreddit, collaborating with other notable players and pioneering several prominent decks and concepts.Lerner's most impactful contributions from 2017-2019 were as an early adopter and proponent of the "main phase ad nauseam" strategy and pioneering the "Red Protean Hulk" deck concept that served as the basis for Blue Shifted Flash Protean Hulk decks that would later dominate the era.
"I made a lot of friends as well as enemies during that period. But my use of the Kaalia deck always dragged me down, in a way. My whole shtick is that the casual/competitive divide is bad for everybody. In 'real life,' I'm an anthropologist and archeologist, so I see how these silly divides lead to really bad conflicts."
Amid MTG set delays and canceled physical tournaments, things began to reach a boiling point over the COVID-19 pandemic. Online play via independent Magic the Gathering clients like Cockatrice grew in popularity, and private tournaments that used to have a couple dozen players doubled, and then redoubled in size.
During this time, a disruptive new combo called "Flash Hulk" emerged, and players started to claim that it was broken. Lerner decided to do a data-driven, anthropological study of the cards in question using a Cockatrice-hosted tournament then referred to as "Marchesa" (later known as "Marchesa 2020") as his testing bed.
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Despite a number of setbacks, obstacles, and online drama, Lerner completed his study, which showed that while the Flash effect and the Protean Hulk card were powerful, they were not game-breaking. In fact, Lerner's decks performed comparably or favorably to the meta-dominating combo and many other, better-known decks at the time. While these findings were controversial, Lerner asserts this triggered a search for knowledge about what EDH played competitively really looked like. In turn, this helped heal the divide between casual players and expert brewers.
In April 2020, after repeated clashes with moderators of the Competitive EDH subreddit, Lerner was banned from the forum and its associated Discord. Later that year, a moderator under the name of Cocoloco established a new CEDH Discord, titled CEDH Games. According to Lerner, CEDH Games' community grew into one of the most vibrant metas in the community. In November 2020, however, fellow CEDH player, Nick Hammond, became owner of the Marchesa tournament Discord, and began to transform the forum into a CEDH Tournament hosting business titled Monarch Media.
In fall 2021, Hammond, assembled a 59-page document titled "Bad Dog: Systematic Abuse in the Competitive EDH Community." The document contains a multitude of player testimonies accusing Lerner of manipulation and harassment, though he disputes their validity. Lerner asserts that Hammond was the latest in a concerted effort to de-platform him, motivated partially by personal stakes, but also to ingratiate himself with the Reddit mods, and eliminate potential competition in the tournament hosting space. As a result of Hammond's doc, Lerner was banned from over 30 CEDH Discord channels, including the official RC Discord, or Commander's Rules Committee; high-ranking MTG judges recognized by Wizards of the Coast who manage the format's ban list.
Lerner's Recent Expulsion from an MTG Tournament
Lerner has continued to play EDH competitively with other like-minded players, including a group of promising pilots who are a regular presence in public tournaments at a Los Angeles game store, Finch and Sparrow. Yet, at a recent Commander tournament, Lerner's feud with Hammond spilled into real life.
Hammond is currently listed as the director of Monarch Media, a company that organizes and sponsors high-profile, high-stakes competitive EDH tournaments. In early September, Lerner attempted to compete at Monarch's biggest event yet, a tournament held at Frank and Son Collectible Show with an enormous prize pool featuring rare and expensive Magic cards. While Lerner was able to play undetected on the first day, he was ejected from the tournament with a refunded entry fee on the second, formally banned from all future Monarch events.
While it is hardly surprising that a player with a history of incendiary remarks would be ejected from a tournament, Lerner's story paints a troubling portrait of Commander's competitive landscape. It is important to note, the competitive EDH Discord and subreddit have no official relationship to Monarch, and Lerner never broke any official tournament rules, which raises questions about his disqualification's integrity. He feels using personal grudges as grounds for dismissal from supposedly professional tournaments undermines the competitions' good faith.
Though it may just seem like a case of sour grapes and Internet drama, controversial rulings like these have huge repercussions. Post Malone recently issued a Commander challenge with up to $100,000 on the line, and that's just one example of what's on the line with rulings . Despite its unofficial status, Commander is far and away MTG's most popular format, and its influence on trading card games can be likened to what Dungeons & Dragons 5E did for the tabletop RPG hobby as a whole.
Wizards of the Coast is currently powerless to intervene in the tournament space, save for rulings from approved judges and adjustments to the ban list. Given Magic the Gathering's complexity, rulings can be surprisingly subjective. This situation, where tournament organizers seemingly bring bias to bear against individuals or groups, leaves all players in a precarious position. Even iconoclasts and rabble rousers deserve a fair and inclusive platform to compete, something Lerner hopes to fight for.