Pre-Game Commander Lobbies

[MTGO_TonyM]

would like to see a way to chat with other players and get an idea of what kind of decks they're playing before a game starts. Perhaps even be able to preview the commander their deck will be using. This is standard practice when playing in paper at a LGS, and is very necessary because the great deal of variation in power level and deck styles in commander games. People playing casual commander don't want to see a cedh player in their pod, and cedh players don't want casual decks at their pod either.

I know you can create a brief description of the game you want when you create a game, but I don't think this is enough. People's idea of power levels are very subjective. Plus, some people just straight up ignore those descriptions.

Doing this would greatly alleviate the amount of scooping that happens in games, and I believe make the game all around more enjoyable for everyone.

I remember back in the v3 client the chat log was available for people who had joined a game before the queue started. Maybe they could bring that functionality back, although I would imagine it went away because of limitations of the v4 client.

Here's some game descriptions from some of the games in the commander lobby right now. This is what I mean when I say the game descriptions are not enough- too short and too subjective. We've got a jank with no cedh pod, another that's no cedh and no jank, and another that's cedh but... no focused decks?

How can you be sure your deck is "jank" enough for the first pod? Or not janky enough to fit into the second pod? And I don't even understand how a cedh deck with no focus would even work.

We need a way to discuss these things before the games start.

Accidentally merged this into the wrong thread - re-posting this idea for upvotes