Summary
The list of things you’ll need to play, with sections describing each below:
- cEDH Deck
- Dice
- Tokens/Whiteboard Tokens
- Notepad
cEDH Deck
You’ve chosen what you want to play, you’ve taken a look at the Decklist Database or EDHTop16 and you’ve decided on something that looks fun/interesting/good to play/masochistic. What happens next? You need to get your cards together!
Well, the first good bit of news is that although cEDH decks are typically quite expensive, ranging from $1000 to $10,000, the cEDH community is fully aware that not all players have that level of disposable income, and are very welcoming of the use of playtest cards.
A playtest card as defined by WotC is “A playtest card is most commonly a basic land with the name of a different card written on it with a marker. Playtest cards aren’t trying to be reproductions of real Magic cards; they don’t have official art and they wouldn’t pass even as the real thing under the most cursory glance.” However to the cEDH community, we tend to have a more nuanced definition in order to allow us to have competitive play with these cards.
To the cEDH community, a playtest card does use one of the official arts for one of the printings, and would try to match the card stock of an existing Magic card, however it would in every other way not be an authentic Magic card. This can include the usage of a playtest overlay, a non-real set symbol, a completely non-authentic card back, or all of these. This ensures that we’re respecting the ownership of the original cards, but allowing ourselves to play with cards that are recognisable in a quick competitive environment.
This becomes doubly important when playing cEDH online, where SpellTable uses Computer Vision to recognise cards in play and provide the text to players.
So if you want to procure playtest cards there are a few popular services/companies like MakePlayingCards or PrintingProxies, but we’ll cover those services in a review separately!
Dice
Dice do it ALL! From counting amount of mana, counting the number of tokens, representing hand size, they really are super versatile. But, not all dice are created equal when to comes to playing via webcam.
You’re going to want dice that are larger than normal, with clear numbers on the faces, and of a bright colour. Players don’t consider that their normal dice won’t be suitable, but it’s worth making sure you’re properly equipped!
Tokens/Whiteboard Tokens
Tokens are an integral part of the cEDH experience. Treasures, clues, Gilded Drakes, birds, copies, storm triggers, they really do it all. It’s useful to have some of the core tokens available to you, and they’re reasonably cheap either as WotC cards, or from custom illustrators.
For everything that becomes unwieldy to keep a token of, Whiteboard tokens are the absolute best. There are a few branded options you can look at, like Infinitokens, however whether they offer any advantages over the non-branded versions remains to be seen.
Notepad
Keeping track of key information in the game (like revealed cards from Counterbalance), or noting decision points to visit at a later date can be super useful, and make you a better competitor. I’d highly recommend a notepad!