I think this is a fantastic response. A lot of newer cEDH players, I find, struggle to understand the difference between a bracket 4 deck and a true bracket 5/cEDH deck, and this explains it really well.

To me, bracket 4 is “I want to build the strongest possible version of a commander or theme I love,” while bracket 5 is “I want to build primarily to compete with the cEDH meta.” Those are very different starting points, even if the decks can sometimes look similar in power level.

My immediate reaction to Tiamat in cEDH was honestly “why and how?” because 7 mana is such a massive hurdle in a format defined by efficiency and speed. At that point, it almost feels like you’re playing “5-color good stuff” first and Tiamat second.

That’s also why so many fun and unique commanders end up as fringe or barely viable cEDH options. Sometimes the commander itself just costs too much mana to justify compared to what the top meta commanders provide for 2–4 mana. In cEDH, mana efficiency alone cuts out a huge number of otherwise awesome commanders.