This past weekend, we held the TopDeck Invitational at Breach the Bay. This is the third Invitational we’ve run, and the largest Championship Series we’ve run yet, blowing past last year’s numbers. We’re running the Pro Tour of Commander, MTG’s most popular format, ourselves, and we’re not done yet. The nice part of running a grassroots “organized play” system is that we only tailor to organizers and players, not a product calendar or investors.

This week, we talk about the running the whole thing.

Let’s get into it.

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Founder Zain on three years of the Championship Series — the airplane sketch, the 2025 season he admits he phoned in, the survey that nearly ended it, and why he's still running a Pro Tour for a format he quit.

By Zain Nayer

Three years ago, the TopDeck Championship Series was 740 events with 73 organizers and 6,192 players. This year, the Series ran 5,430 events across 375 cities and seven countries, had 37,534 players, and had 219 organizers signed on. Roughly one in every eight events on TopDeck was a Series event.

The TopDeck Championship Series is a wild success, beyond anything I could have imagined. Today I want to talk about my own journey building it.

Back in 2023, when we were still called Eminence Gaming, we were coming off a slew of big events in cEDH. The format had everything except structure. There were thousands of dedicated players, stores were running weekly events (Commander is the biggest format, after all), and there were a handful of major tournaments (mostly run by us) occurring every year. What it did not have was an overarching narrative. You could win the biggest cEDH event in your region and, the following weekend, be exactly as anonymous as you were before. There was no record. There was no season. There was nothing to be building toward.

As a player and TO myself, feeling responsible for the growth of the format, I was thinking of ways to really take it to the next level. Most other games and formats have an organized play structure. cEDH isn't a recognized format by WotC, many players, and even the Rules Committee at times, so we have to do everything grassroots. We didn't have any of this stuff.

I was flying on vacation when I came up with the first concept of the 2024 TopDeck Championship Series, modeled after the now defunct Smash World Tour. I wanted an overarching narrative season where players could compete in larger events, rank up on a leaderboard, and duke it out so we could find out the best cEDH players of the year.

I came up with a multi-tier format where a player could start and compete at a local level, building up to larger events they'd travel to. Instead of me solely running it, it'd be a community effort alongside the stores who use TopDeck, where we'd build the scene across the nation. It'd give players a reason to show up to locals every week, to travel and plan larger trips to big events, driving up attendance for everyone. I wanted to give everyone a reason to play the game. I wanted to give organizers a reason to run cEDH and benefit.

Modeling off the Smash World Tour, we made 4 tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Back then we were still running events, so Platinum was events we would run ourselves. This would all obviously culminate in a final showdown at the Invitational where we could crown the best player of the year.

I'd say we've done a pretty good job at this, with the 2024 Invitational being one of the most hype events I've ever personally had the pleasure of putting on and attending. We were able to hold a 64 man event alongside a 256 player Open and really just celebrate the format. Since then we've held two more invitationals (plus a mid-season invitational this season).

Every year players heavily care about their points on the leaderboard, attending events so they can rank up and mark their place in the format's history amongst the best. Organizers are always asking how to join as the series has become synonymous with cEDH itself. Very early on it became clear to me that this wasn't an experiment, it was a real thing that everyone loved.

The first season had 740 events, running from November 2023 to August 2024. 73 organizers signed on and ran these events, with 6,192 players participating. At the time, I didn't even know if there was more than 5,000 cEDH players in the world. I felt incredible tailwinds at the end of season with the first ever TopDeck Invitational, alongside a 256 person Open event.

Despite the massive waves in the format subsequent months later (more on that later), we came back to run 2025. By Spring of 2025 we were averaging 90 events per month being part of the series. Then March had 135 events, April had 186, and May hit 293. We didn't (and still don't) have any marketing efforts, organizers were signing on because they saw the value of the series, and players were demanding it. It started to become a mainstay of the format.

In 2025 we hit 2,027 events, 12,668 players, and we had 126 organizers signed on. cEDH was growing, despite the worst ban list in history, despite the uncertainty.

This year, we had 5,430 events, 37,534 players, and 219 organizers. We made the series easier to join and definitely reaped the benefits. The scene is growing like never before.

I've heard from many players what the series means to them, and I've had many stores tell me how much they appreciate the series and how it's allowed them to grow a brand new scene where they thought they had nothing. It's something I am very proud of.

Here's some cool data on the growth of the Series. I know how much you cEDH players love data.

Building a series isn't simple. I had to figure out what was valuable for players as well as stores. I had to figure out a way to make things matter. Being a player myself, I built things according to what I would like to see.

Some questions we had to answer:

Winning or Consistency?

If first place is worth a lot more than second, you reward who can close the game. If the curve is flatter, you're just rewarding showing up and doing well repeatedly. In cEDH, a game is often decided by three other people's incentives, so weighing too heavily on the final winner leads to poor incentives. We ended up settling somewhere in the middle, so wins were still sweet but you still were rewarded adequately in points for showing up and placing decently. In 2026, we even started passing out auto-qualifications if you won or topped a large event.

One great weekend vs a great year.

I landed on a "great year." I wanted to reward the grinders who were consistently going to every event they could get their hands on. If you're a core player and you're doing decent, I wanted to see you at the Invitational. I didn't want to go overboard though, so I capped how much of each tier you could earn from. However, I needed to balance players wanting to continue to compete even if they were maxed out. That's why we take your best results, and also cascade other results down to lower tiers if you cap out. I'd say I'm pretty satisfied with how this all turned out.

Participation or Skill?

In Season One, Bronze events paid points down to 16th place. That was a deliberate choice to make locals inclusive. It also meant 3,611 people were "ranked" in Season One, most of whom had shown up once. In Season Two we cut Bronze to pay nothing below 4th, and the number of scoring players fell to 2,813 even though we ran more than twice as many events. The Series looked like it shrank. It had actually doubled. The decisions around Bronze would eventually create another problem: Bronzeathons. More on those later.

How to connect locals to regional travel

It was important to me that players attend their locals to start earning points, and not just spam the biggest events to get in. On the flipside, I wanted to make sure large events were worth attending as well and players couldn't just stay home and hope to qualify. The points system tries to reflect this best. I've heard from players that they love seeing non-locals appear for some of the bigger events like Silver or Gold to earn points. To me that's the best indicator that the Series is doing what I want, driving attendance and bringing players to events that otherwise wouldn't come.

As the series has grown and expanded, I've definitely run into some difficult decisions.

Tier System

Five tiers with attendance minimums, and a partner fee attached to the higher ones. Points are basically a currency, and the tier system is the only control on how much of it gets printed. Without minimums, every event claims to be a major. Every threshold you set excludes someone who was five players short. It's just something we have to enforce. It feels weird being a central bank for this.

Making Bronze free

Bronze became free with a software subscription for the 2026 season, capped at four events per organizer per month.  Stores that couldn't reliably hit 30 players were being shut out entirely, which contradicted the whole point of the Series. Bronze went from 1,382 events to 4,819. The Series roughly tripled in a single year and became far more geographically spread. We had to devalue Bronze at the same time — a Bronze win went from 70 points to 45 — because seven times as many Bronze events at the old rate was money printing, and local grinding would have become the dominant qualification strategy.

Diamond Tier

The mythical Diamond tier looks like it barely exists. Last season we had five events that reached this status, and this year only seven. We used to run events ourselves that would sell out in minutes, and these were designed with that in mind. With TopDeck leaving the event organizing space, the number of Diamond events just didn't pan out to be what we were hoping they'd end up at. This year we added automatic invites if you won one of these. Despite that, the format remains more focused on regional Gold-Platinum events rather than huge majors.

Not organizing events anymore

Speaking of, we had initially thought we were going to run events in 2025. The decision to not to was abrupt, and contributed to why that season felt lower quality than the other two. I wouldn't consider running events again at this point, especially now that we have a better handle on how to run this Series and keep it feeling great for everyone. Running the events ourselves felt like we were competing with our own customer, which just isn't a place I want to be.

I can't say everything has been perfect when running the TopDeck Series over the years.

Bronzeathons

As I mentioned earlier, "Bronzeathons" were an issue. The purpose of Bronze tier was so that players would attend locals and earn points to hopefully make a difference in qualifying for the Invitational. What ended up happening was players and organizers gaming the system, running as many bronze events as they could the week before points cutoff to try and pad their stats into the Invitational. In 2025 I implemented some automated checks to try and catch fraud, but it was not enough. This season, we capped organizers to be able to run only four bronze events a month. We also reduced the points Bronze events gave. A four-event monthly cap is the closest thing we have to a rate hike.

Points cutoff

This year we ran the Mid-Season Showdown. I made the mistake of making the points cutoff too close to the event itself. I'd even go so far as to say the messaging around the event was quite poor, so it wasn't as hype as it could have been. We now try to have information well in advance so this doesn't happen again.

Leaderboard prizing

This is something I'm constantly looking to improve on. In 2024 we gave out rubber mats for the Invitational, but they weren't quite special. Same in 2025, with a long time friend in GoldSaberTooth doing the artwork for us. We had heard complaints that qualifying and getting into the invitational didn't feel special enough despite these mats. This year, we partnered up with Phil Stone and Yggdrasil Materias to make some very special and awesome two player cloth mats for everyone who qualified. We even handed out special editions for top 10 on the leaderboard, and the top cut itself, just to make grinding and winning just a bit sweeter. Reception has been tremendous on this, and it's something I will look to continue for future events.

Audits

I'd like to trust that everything is clean when running the Series, but unfortunately there's some amount of fraud that occurs. Whether that be artificially inflating events, false advertising, or general non-competitive practices by some TO's, there's a lot to watch out for. This is something I am actively working on and improving. The audits have gotten better and more timely, and rectifying situations is not chaotic anymore.

65 players

When invites go out for the Invitational, we give you a few days to decide if you can make it or not. If you decline the invite or the deadline passes, we pass down the invite to the next player on the leaderboard. In 2025, some of you may remember my decision to allow a player who had initially declined their spot back in the event. This led to unasked for 3 person pods, and poor messaging in general. It was a good learning moment for me, I'm running a professional series at this point, essentially the Pro Tour of Commander. I will never make a mistake like this again. This year we made an even number at 80, which also addressed the ever growing size of the series itself.

There’s one more growing pain that I think needs its own section.

Candidly, the 2025 season was not my best work. Fresh off the bans and related controversies that came with them at the end of 2024, I was burnt out. I had quit the format (and haven’t touched it since), and was feeling generally detached from the entire scene that year. Without being an active player, and being so far from anything happening in cEDH, it was difficult to find a good direction to take the series. We had already committed to it prior, so I was feeling a bit forced into running the whole thing. Combined with uncertainty on how the RC would hammer down on the format again, I was phoning it in. 

You could see the quality slip through the season, culminating in an Invitational event that just didn’t feel as special as it should have. I’m a person who wants to put out quality, and after discussing with organizers and players on everything that went wrong, I think we did a much better job with the 2026 season. I thank everyone for trusting TopDeck to run another one, despite a dip in quality. 

You might remember going into 2026, we ran a survey asking if you wanted to see the Series continue.

We had already exited tournament organizing, the 2025 season was operationally messy, and I just wasn't sure if I was dragging the corpse of something once great around. I wasn't sure if people even wanted to play in the Series or be a part of it, and they were just going through the motions.

To be frank, I had also quit the format, and the negativity from the prior year was starting to get to me. I wasn't sure who I was doing this for anymore, and the hate was really dragging me down.

There were also uncertainties. Neither TopDeck or cEDH is recognized by Wizards of the Coast and the Rules Committee. The people who control our format could throw things into chaos at a whim, as they had the year prior with bans specifically targeting our format. It's a crazy position to be in, where the people who arbitrate your format don't know the first thing about it or the scene around it. In a regular organized play situation, the ruling body monitors health signals and fixes issues they see. We've been told we're on our own and that they will never cater to us. It's why things like the draw problem, the fourth seat issue, and Rhystic Study still pervade the format with no solutions in sight.

The survey was helpful. 82.4% of both players and organizers wanted the Series to continue. Speaking to organizers at this time, I received a lot of positive feedback on how it was the sole reason cEDH was one of the top events at their store week after week. I learned about how motivated players were to qualify and prove themselves, and just how much it mattered to everyone in the scene.

The existence of some loud haters wasn't going to stop me from doing a great thing, and thus the 2026 Season happened and was bigger than ever.

The Series has become something people organize their year around. It's a cornerstone of the format, I'd go so far as to say TopDeck is the home of all Competitive Commander.

It’s been a long three years! From designing the Series in an airplane to experiencing some burnout to getting feedback from everyone who enjoys it, there’s been a lot to learn.

Every incentive will be optimized

I think Bronzeathons are the clearest example of this. When you design a system, expect it to be exploited. Which means when you’re designing it, you want people exploiting it exactly how you want them to. You want people to optimize in a direction you want them to reach. I want players traveling to get the most points, attending events they otherwise wouldn’t.

There is no perfect points system, just what you want to reward

I don’t think a points system that caters to everyone exists, personally. There is no neutral points system. Every system makes a choice about what kind of player it wants to identify. My definition of merit is the player who travels, grinds, and performs well over the course of the year. I want to reward the grinders who are actually showing up, the fiends who need to be in every event winning. 

Once people organize their year around something, you have a different responsibility to them

I think to summarize my lesson from the 2025 season, once people are planning around something you’ve built, you no longer get to treat it casually. Stores were relying on the Series to pack events every month. Players were planning their travel, lives, and obligations around being able to grind points. You have to take it seriously. 

Organizers are the backbone. They have to win

Organizers are the ones who actually run the events for the Series. Every event that rewards points is from a third party organizer. They are the people I owe the most, and so helping boost attendance for them, getting people out to their events, and just helping them out when they need anything is my utmost concern. The Series only exists because hundreds of independent organizers believe participating is worth it. I have to keep working hard so their belief isn’t unfounded. 

I don’t have to be the audience anymore

I had originally built the Series for people like myself. I quit cEDH in 2024. That didn’t mean I suddenly got to run the Series poorly. Getting extensive feedback from players, either directly or from friends who are still playing is important. I’m always keeping my ear to the ground at this point because even though I’m not personally involved with what’s going on, I have a responsibility to this community to keep running this Series as best I can. 

The TopDeck Championship Series will continue for 2027. The organizer signups will be going up Thursday, August 27th, and events starting this weekend will count towards the leaderboard. If you signup later, events within the season will still count as we retroactively apply tiering.

After three years of lessons, we don’t believe the structure needs to be reinvented again. We're running the same playbook as this year, same tiers, points, and more. We're going to use the Mid-Season Showdown as good ground to determine the volume of the Series and adjust the invitational size accordingly. I was happy with an 80 player event this time around, and feedback was positive. We're looking to maintain or expand that depending on how many players participate.

I love that so many organizers have been able to thrive with the TopDeck Championship Series. It brings me great joy that so many players have made friends they otherwise wouldn’t have, met so many people, and that we are able to bring together so many people with our tournaments. Running the Series is a lot of work and stress, but I’d do it again every time.

If you have any questions or suggestions, the TopDeck Discord is the best place for that! 

I'm very excited to see who wins the next one.

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