Commander & EDH Power Level
"Power level" is the old 1-10 community scale; WotC Brackets are the official 1-5 system. Here's how they map - and what 348,278 tracked games actually say about whether they predict winning.
Each with a full decklist and 5+ tracked games.
Win rate vs an equally-random deck in the same pods, with 95% CIs.
Casual Commander games logged on Playgroup. No deckbuilder has this.
What is a Commander deck's power level?
EDH power level, also called a Commander deck's level, is the community's informal 1-10 rating of how strong a deck is; Wizards of the Coast's official Commander Brackets (1-5) - Exhibition, Core, Upgraded, Optimized, and cEDH - are its concrete replacement. Across 348,278 tracked games, decks running 1-3 Game Changers win about 12-15% more often than an average deck in the same pods. As a rough EDH power level chart: power 1-4 maps to Brackets 1-2, power 5-7 to Bracket 3, power 8-9 to Bracket 4, and power 10 to Bracket 5. The number of Game Changers in a deck is one of the main things that sets its bracket.
Do decks with more Game Changers win more?
Game Changer count is one of the things that sets a deck's bracket. Across 29,629 tracked decks (full decklist, 5+ games) and 348,278 games, here is win rate by Game Changer count - normalized for pod size so bigger and smaller pods compare fairly. +12% means decks in that group win 12% more often than an average deck in the same pods. (These are correlations across the decks we track, not all of Commander - see the method note below.)
The takeaway: decks running Game Changers win meaningfully more than average, but with diminishing returns - decks with none are roughly average, and decks with 4+ don't clearly beat decks with 1-3. Adding Game Changers moves a deck up a bracket faster than it moves its win rate.
Reading this honestly
Sample. 29,629 decks with a full decklist and 5+ logged games, out of roughly 625k decks. The decklist is the bottleneck, and tracked decks skew toward engaged players - read this as the decks we track, not all of Commander.
Today's list, all history. We apply the current Game Changers list across every tracked game. The official list changes over time and most of these games predate the bracket system, so this measures these specific cards' association with winning, not the bracket system over time.
Count, not bracket. Game Changer count is only one of several bracket criteria - tutors, extra turns, mass land denial, and two-card combos count too - so it approximates a bracket rather than equalling one.
Correlation. Win rate is normalized by pod size and shown with 95% confidence intervals; the 4+ group is a smaller sample. These are associations, not proof that the cards cause wins.
The label is a guess. Your results are not.
A bracket is the number you assign your own deck before it has played a game, and it behaves like one. In our tracked games it explains only about 2-3% of the spread in results, and roughly one deck in four performs like it belongs somewhere else. Players ranking their own decks get the order right about 60% of the time.
What does predict a deck is what it has already done. Splitting each deck's games in half and predicting the second half from the first, a deck's own earlier record beats its declared bracket by roughly fifteen to twenty times. About twenty recorded games is where the results start saying more than the label.
That is the case for playing your deck and measuring it rather than rating it. Every game on Playgroup records the result, so a deck accumulates its own record instead of keeping the number you gave it on day one.
Power level vs Brackets vs Game Changers
Rough map: power 1-4 ≈ Bracket 1-2, power 5-7 ≈ Bracket 3, power 8-9 ≈ Bracket 4, power 10 ≈ Bracket 5 (cEDH). See the Game Changers list and the official Commander Brackets announcement . The list itself lives on Scryfall (is:gamechanger) .
Judging your Commander deck's bracket by hand
The fastest answer is our EDH power level calculator : it reads your deck against the official criteria (Game Changers, two-card combos, mass land denial, extra turns) and returns a bracket in seconds. To size it up by hand, work down the criteria below; the highest bracket any single answer triggers is your deck's bracket.
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1
Count your Game Changers. 0 means Bracket 1-2, one to three means Bracket 3, and four or more means Bracket 4-5. This is the quickest read - check your list against the Game Changers list .
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2
Look for two-card infinite combos. Any reliable two-card combo that wins on its own pushes you to Bracket 4+. Brackets 1-3 avoid early-game infinite combos.
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3
Check for mass land denial and heavy stax. Strategies that lock opponents out of the game are Bracket 4-5 only.
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4
Count your tutors and extra-turn spells. A few are fine in any bracket; stacking them to assemble a win fast signals a higher one.
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5
Ask what turn you usually win. Roughly: Bracket 1 around turn 9 or later, Bracket 2 around turn 8, Bracket 3 around turn 6, Bracket 4 around turn 4, and Bracket 5 faster still.
Those criteria estimate your bracket from how the deck is built. To learn how it actually plays, its real win rate and how fast it closes games, track your games on Playgroup .
Power Level FAQ
Is EDH power level accurate?
What is a Commander deck's power level?
How does the 1-10 power level map to the new Brackets?
Do decks with more Game Changers win more?
How do I judge my Commander deck's bracket by hand?
How accurate is a self-declared Commander bracket?
What predicts a deck's power level better than its bracket?
Can a website measure my deck's real power level?
A static calculator only sees how your deck is built. To learn how it actually plays - its real win rate and matchups - track your games on Playgroup.