<a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Lorehold, the Historian|sos|284" href="#" target="_blank">Lorehold, the Historian</a> | art by<a href="https://raymondswanland.com/"> Raymond Swanland</a>
<a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/changelog-replacing-synergy-with-lift-on-edhrecs-card-pages">On October 1, 2026</a>, EDHREC debuted Lift on <a href="https://edhrec.com/commanders">/commanders</a> and <a href="https://edhrec.com/tags">/tags</a> pages, after getting them on /cards pages back in December.
<h2>Meet the EDHREC development team behind Lift</h2>
We checked in with a segment of<a href="https://spacecowmedia.com/about"> EDHREC's development team</a> to see how they integrated lift into the /commanders and /tags pages for this new feature rollout, as well as their individual takeaways for what this means for EDHREC's users.
<h3>Keattz, EDHREC Co-founder and Lead Software Engineer</h3>
Alongside <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/edhrec-founder-don-miner-to-speak-at-mv-con-2025">our CEO Donald Miner</a>, Keattz helped build up the bulk of EDHREC in its early days to the website you see today.
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-194720" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2.png" alt="keattz of edhrec" width="800" height="800" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2.png 800w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2-300x300.png 300w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2-150x150.png 150w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/keattz2-768x768.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></a>
Synergy scores have been on EDHREC as long as EDHREC has existed. What's it like pulling out a number that's been on the page that long?
Given how long it’s been there, I expect this change will shock some users. People are used to it being there, even if they weren’t using it for much. But the main sentiment was that it was confusing, especially when not-particularly-synergistic staples were marked as “high synergy.”
Once you spend some time with Lift, I think you’ll find it better for most tasks, or at least equal. For example it is way better at finding hidden gems (Synergy weighed popularity too heavily). And you can still use it to weed out staples — it’s just the scale is centered around 1, instead of 0.
We've seen many changes in features to the site in the last year, including implementing Lift to replace Synergy. When you look at EDHREC in 2027, what does it look like for users?
2026 was primarily a year of rebuilding. We rebuilt our data pipeline for big data, and cleaned up years of tech debt along the way. We’ve also been grinding away at some beefy UI improvements, more details on that soon.
In 2027, you can expect a faster cadence of new feature releases. Our dev team is bigger and better than ever. With our rebuilding phase complete, we’ll finally be able to release some long-awaited features that were held up by our old tech infrastructure.
<h3>Julia Maddalena, Data Scientist</h3>
Our "Duchess of Data" Julia is the mastermind<a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/from-synergy-to-lift-the-math-behind-edhrecs-new-era"> behind the switch from Synergy to Lift back in December</a>, creating the original writeup and assisting our developers with its continued implementation, as well as<a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/author/juliam"> assistant co-writer for the weekly Fire and Ice series</a>.
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-194719" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-1024x755.jpg" alt="julia maddalena of edhrec" width="1024" height="755" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-1024x755.jpg 1024w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-300x221.jpg 300w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-768x566.jpg 768w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-1536x1133.jpg 1536w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/SCMBeachHeadshots-01-2048x1510.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Your original article pointed out that commander-card synergy wasn't nearly as broken as card-card synergy; the two metrics mostly agreed on direction. So why was it worth replacing anyway?
Even though generally speaking, negative synergy commander-card pairs have lift &lt; 1 and positive synergy pairs have lift &gt; 1, the magnitude changes which cards get surfaced at the top. As Keattz mentioned, synergy surfaced popular cards, whereas lift surfaces “hidden gems” or card pairings that are unique to that commander regardless of their baseline popularity. Furthermore, it is difficult to defend synergy mathematically, and it improves the user experience to maintain similar metrics between /commander and /cards pages. 
What made /commander and /tags pages the hard version of this problem? 
Commander pages are more complex under the hood because of the ability to filter on brackets, budgets, and tags. The calculations for lift must be done for every combination of these, which as you can imagine, requires a lot of compute power. However, we believed this was worth the investment so that users can see cards that are specific to the deck type that they are interested in. 
What's one thing you want users to know about this change that they probably don't?
Synergy served up a different set of popular cards than the “top cards” section, whereas lift is showing niche cards that appear with this commander at a dramatically higher rate than with other commanders in general. When you first land on a commander page, you may see high lift cards that are not relevant to the deck theme you are building, but that is easily changed by selecting the deck tags, for example, that are relevant to you. 
<h3>Kaz, Data Engineer</h3>
Kaz is a data and database engineer for EDHREC, having been with us for the last three years to help process and dig through chunks of our database to help us ship new and improved features.
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-194727" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM-934x1024.png" alt="" width="934" height="1024" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM-934x1024.png 934w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM-274x300.png 274w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM-768x842.png 768w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NGC7293-2004-Helix-Nebula-Wikipedia-10-09-2026_10_45_AM.png 1022w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 934px) 100vw, 934px" /></a>
/cards pages were released with lift in December of last year, what took so long to get it over to /commander, /tags and /combos?
Compute. Our Postgres instance can handle a lot, but what we were starting to ask of it in terms of compute was getting out of hand. We have been very busy behind the scenes moving our data pipelines into AWS and using the big data technologies there to crunch the data faster and more efficiently. 
Every filter combination on a commander page is its own slice of the data pie. What is the most rewarding part of being able to finally parse the data?
The filters are a great way to slice and dice the data we have. Don’t want to see all those bracket 4 and 5 decks? Pick a bracket from 2 or 3. Want to see decks made with only a specific tag under a commander? Pick a tag filter. Want to get complex and require a certain number of creatures or instants? Use the advanced filters! The most rewarding part is enabling users by giving them flexibility to see the slice of data they want. 
<h3>Synergizing With the New Lift</h3>
Of course, there were other staff members who helped directly or indirectly in shaping what Lift looks like on commander and tags pages, and we’d like to shout them all out as well for their awesome work in wrangling the data and details. And, we hope you’re excited to see what this new implementation of Lift brings to your EDHREC experience! And of course, stay tuned for even more insights into the folks working on EDHREC's newest features!

An Interview with the EDHREC Dev Team on Lift Scores

<a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Cultivate|M21|317" href="#" target="_blank">Cultivate</a> | Art by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/billcreative/?hl=en">Billy Christian</a>
Last week, <a href="https://spacecowmedia.com/">Space Cow Media</a>, EDHREC's parent company, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7498402831784361985">celebrated our partnership</a> with <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/improving-the-gathering-with-women-in-magic">Women+ in Magic</a> for Women's Equality Day (Aug. 26), while also shining a spotlight on some of the staff working to bring you the tools and content from EDHREC, <a href="https://archidekt.com/">Archidekt</a>, and <a href="https://www.cardsphere.com/">Cardsphere</a>.
Today, we're asking that same staff and our partners at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/women_in_magic/?hl=en">Women+ in Magic</a> even more about how they interact with the game during their day-to-day, and what makes them want to support Magic and its diverse community of players.
<h3>Lize Korpershoek and Myrna Hendrickx of Women+ in Magic</h3>
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-192171" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize.png" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize.png 1080w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize-240x300.png 240w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize-819x1024.png 819w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/myrnalize-768x960.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" /></a>
<h3>Lize</h3>
I’m Lize, she/her, a documentary filmmaker from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, who you may know as mtg.Lize. I first saw my friends play Magic in 2019, and the moment I saw Vampire and Zombie cards fly over that table, I was HOOKED.
I wasn’t going to leave that cafe before I knew how to play this game. Jump to 2026: most days I’ll get a game in, watch Magic YouTube content and/or yap about it in our Women+ in Magic (WIM) Discord server. No hobby has ever grabbed me like this one: It’s brought me so many friends, a distraction when I need it, and a ridiculous amount of joy.
<h3>Myrna</h3>
Hi! My name is Myrna, but you can find me on the internet as Arty Myr! I’m an Event Marketer from Arnhem, The Netherlands. 
One of my best friends introduced me to Magic at the end of 2022 and I fell in love with the game and have been playing ever since. My favorite way to play MTG is Commander, from casual to cEDH. My current favorite decks are: <a href="https://archidekt.com/decks/19996158/norman_fleem_osborn_green_goblin_lootielootie">Fleem</a>, <a href="https://archidekt.com/decks/16544601/etali">Etali</a>, <a href="https://archidekt.com/decks/18526497/ob_nixilis_cedh">Ob Nixilis</a> and <a href="https://archidekt.com/decks/24120900/megatron_pew_pew">Megatron</a>. 
<h3>Emily Hann</h3>
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-192172" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily.png" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily.png 1080w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily-240x300.png 240w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily-819x1024.png 819w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/emily-768x960.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" /></a>
Emily is a Software Engineer at SCM, primarily working on Cardsphere for the past few years. She started on the team back in October of 2021, working on the frontend side of EDHREC and FABREC, before moving to do full stack for Cardsphere, which she adores.
What got you into Magic, and what keeps you coming back? (If you don’t play: What is something you’ve learned and/or your favorite thing you’ve seen or experienced related to Magic in your time with SCM?)
Two of my friends, Alex and Andy, were already Commander players, and during a particularly grueling review session for a college class, they suggested we take a break and visit a local card shop to pick up some precons. They taught me how to play, and I’ve been playing and brewing up decks ever since. I love the community it naturally creates, and how kind everyone tends to be.
What’s the best part about working on Cardsphere?
I get to work on tools for a hobby I already love — every day. This company is filled with kind and talented people who are all getting to work on the things we love — and it shows at every level with a depth of care and understanding that I’ve not witnessed elsewhere. My coworkers are my friends (I miss them when I go on vacation) — and Cardsphere is a website I genuinely love using and want to see succeed. I delight in coming up with new ideas and little optimizations.
What’s one thing you want users to know that they probably don’t?
How much we strive to involve ourselves in the community — we’re all active in our community Discords, and keep an eye out for up-and-coming content creators that would be a good fit to sponsor or just support!
<h3>Julia Maddalena</h3>
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-192173 size-full" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia.png" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia.png 1080w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia-240x300.png 240w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia-819x1024.png 819w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/julia-768x960.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" /></a>
Julia is SCM’s sole data scientist and is affectionately referred to as the Duchess of Data. She works on creating new data-oriented features for the website (such as hot cards, commander popularity over time, and <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/from-synergy-to-lift-the-math-behind-edhrecs-new-era">lift scores</a>), as well as <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/author/juliam">data-informed contributions to content</a>. She helps the team and the community at large understand trends that we observe in our data that can help them make the game better. 
What got you into Magic, and what keeps you coming back? (If you don’t play: What is something you’ve learned and/or your favorite thing about Magic in your time with SCM?)
I am in awe of how complex the game has become (31K+ cards and 3.3K+ commanders!), and of the community that is intelligent enough to make sense of it all. I have great respect for the Magic community and how they support each other and stand for things they believe in because of how much they love the game. 
What’s the best part about working on EDHREC?
Working as a data scientist on EDHREC’s developer team has been really rewarding, as the team is full of extremely bright and motivated people. Everyone communicates thoughtfully, and I have always felt supported in my role. Beyond the dev team, folks in the greater SCM community are so kind and caring and willing to help each other out, and it makes for a very safe and rewarding work environment.
What’s one thing you want users to know that they probably don’t?
I want users to know how much effort and intention goes into making EDHREC the site that it is. We are constantly striving to improve upon existing features and expand beyond them, and we take feedback from the community seriously! What we have built is far from simple, and if people could truly understand the complexity of the decisions that we have to make every day, they might better understand why things are the way they are on the site and beyond. 
<h3>Lauren Shillinger</h3>
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-192174" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren.png" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren.png 1080w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren-240x300.png 240w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren-819x1024.png 819w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/lauren-768x960.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" /></a>
Lauren is the Executive Admin and Community Engagement Manager at Space Cow Media. She plans and coordinates all SCM travel, conference logistics and corporate retreats. Her role also covers our corporate giving/charitable donations for the community. She is also on the marketing team which includes aspects of our SCM swag, social media engagement, and <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/tag/community-corner">Community Corner</a> work. 
What got you into Magic, and what keeps you coming back? (If you don’t play: What is something you’ve learned and/or your favorite thing about Magic in your time with SCM?)
This job got me into Magic and it has been such an amazing experience all around! I have absolutely loved getting to create my deck and play the game, learn the history of MTG, meet so many new people in the industry, and the card art is AWESOME! I also love the nostalgic card releases…my first set was from “The Princess Bride.” Not to mention I have the support of a phenomenal team of co-workers at SCM who teach me something new about the game every single day. 
What’s the best part about working at Space Cow Media?
Getting to engage and work with so many amazing MTG community partners and organizations that are doing such meaningful work in the community. Creating such a welcoming environment and an inclusive space for all who want to play MTG. It is so nice to see how many users/community members love the game and how they provide so many ways for others to engage and join in!
What’s one thing you want users to know that they probably don’t?
To be able to be part of what we do at Space Cow Media and see how we are putting the magic in paying it forward is so rewarding, and allows us to be a part of the community in a different way. Sometimes this is through our <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/tag/communitycorner">Community Corner articles</a>, making charitable donations, sending swag to an event, participating in unique opportunities…the options are endless and so unique. I can see firsthand how we are helping the community and making a positive impact! 
<h3>Morgan Sanchez</h3>
<a href="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-192175" src="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan.png" alt="" width="1080" height="1350" srcset="https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan.png 1080w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan-240x300.png 240w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan-819x1024.png 819w, https://cloudflare.edhrec.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/morgan-768x960.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" /></a>
Morgan is VP of Marketing Operations at Space Cow Media. She first started on the team back in 2023 as an assistant blog copyeditor on EDHREC, moving to editor-in-chief, content operations, and finally marketing.
What got you into Magic, and what keeps you coming back? (If you don’t play: What is something you’ve learned and/or your favorite thing about Magic in your time with SCM?)
I first played Magic when I was eight years old at my school's daycare, called Adventure Club. I loved the old border card art (Blastoderm and Mirari were so OP to my eight-year-old brain) and foils for Odyssey and 7th Edition, and loved the creatures in general. I started playing Commander in about 2013 with my Oloro deck and have been an Esper girlie ever since! I also have a 75% complete foil collection of the Odyssey set! I just need a few of the bigger money cards like <a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Tainted Pact|ODY|164" href="#" target="_blank">Tainted Pact</a> and <a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Entomb|ODY|132" href="#" target="_blank">Entomb</a> (yikes!).
What’s the best part about working at Space Cow Media?
Being able to see our work have an impact, on socials and in real life. When people see an EDHREC shirt at cons the first thing they ask is “Do you work there?” and I’m able to tell them we’re a real team of players who are members of the community and interact with it in so many different ways. And we always want feedback! One of my personal favorite things is when people who enjoy our articles email us asking to pass along kudos to the author. This is a real source of dopamine for me after all these years even though my colleague and friend <a href="https://edhrec.com/articles/author/nick-wolf/">Nick Wolf</a> handles the day-to-day content arm nowadays.
What’s one thing you want users to know that they probably don’t?
Just how much cross-property product communication we have. A majority of our time is spent balancing the priority development of our sites and what would be best for our users based on the data we see. We want our tools to appeal to the cEDH player looking for Bracket 5 recs just as much as the newbie who needs help making a really cool deck from the new Hobbit cards.
<hr />
For more about the who's who in making Space Cow Media tick, you can find more details <a href="https://spacecowmedia.com/about">on our company website</a>.

developer

An Interview with the EDHREC Dev Team on Lift Scores

See Who's Helping Build Magic's Tools and Its Diverse Spaces