Why Commander?

• Posted on 6 August 2020
• By Cade
• Posted in Cade, Commander, Magic: the Gathering, Strategy
• 0

Cade talks about his time playing Magic and why he likes Commander more than other formats, discussing a lit bit of game theory while he does.

I mostly just play Commander, which is absolutely not what I did in high school and before—I liked having fun in the casual setting, but I liked winning. My collection existed to improve The Deck, and The Deck was the five-color combination of all my coolest cards that had a reasonable, small chance of success when I sat down at a Friday Night Magic event. I was playing Palace Guard (with the cool M11 flavor text) against things Primeval Titan and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, but I was having fun.

I had a pretty loose grasp of what determined formats then. I was playing against someone on Burn when I was probably in middle school, maybe before, and I was a turn away from losing, but I had a nice Armageddon in The Deck, and I slapped that delicious piece of cardboard.

“Uh, Judge,” my opponent called, and the bald man who ran the store started running over. “That would be a good play, but I don’t think that card’s legal in this format.”

I didn’t say anything mostly because I totally forgot to check if anything was illegal before I went to play Magic at the game-store that night. I mostly wanted to be around adults who also enjoyed the game, and I didn’t care if I lost.

The store’s owner came and rifled through my deck, which was around eighty cards, and told me I could play out the rest of the tournament if I took out the illegal cards, and I had enough left to have a playable sixty cards, but he also told me that if I wanted, then he would give me some advice on deckbuilding.

Well, my parents were coming when the tournament was supposed to end, and I wanted the advice more than the experience of the few more games that I would lose, so I went up to the counter.

My little brother Michael went with me to hear how someone thought my decks could be improved, and that man demolished me. Michael laughs about it at any family gathering where Magic comes up, and I laugh too when I think about the differences in how I build decks now. I learned about mana curve that night, why people care about expensive lands, and a lot more. I had two copies of Primeval Titan in my deck that night because they could get me any lands I needed, and I loved Birds of Paradise, though I only had one. The store owner let me trade away some of the nice, older copies of a few cards in my neck for cheaper versions of the same thing and a lot else—he gave me all the tools for a really good mono-green deck that curves out to Engulfing Slagwurm, and it’s really neat. I still have that deck, though it’s been almost ten years since I got my first real lecture on deckbuilding.

I’ve learned a lot more about Magic since then—how to build competitive Modern decks, but that skill is no longer useful, and now how to build Commander decks. I like any format, but Commander gives me the most space for cards, and the games have the most variability, the most power, and the most exciting feeling of competition I’ve felt in Magic games since I was playing armies of vanilla creatures on the carpet of my best friend’s basement in elementary school, or when I was doing things with tokens and trying to calculate the damage I could triple with Collective Blessing against Michael when we were a little older and I knew that Selesnya was my favorite guild on Ravnica. Commander lets you play the big nonsense cards, and in Commander you might even win with them.

The thing that gets me excited about Magic is not what excites a lot of people about the game. I’m a competent and intermediately-skilled player, and my status as a judge is about to expire, but I was one once—I have an understanding of the rules, and I’ve played enough to understand that I want to win, but everyone does, so I’m happy with the balance of losing and winning that I make. If I want to win, then I pull out my five-color deck, and if I want to mesh with people playing less powerful decks, then I pull out something that just wants to do something simple, like a deck that wants to generate tokens and attack until I can’t attack anymore. I understand the need to make sacrifices for the playgroup, and I have a few decks at different power levels, but I like to play Magic well.

This game has a comprehensive set of rules, but we mostly abstract information about it because of what we do as players. We play the game and teach other people about it by using cards and explaining them when people don’t understand. I sit down to play a game and I know how all of my cards work—I draw a card at the start of each turn and my job as the player is to use whatever random configuration of cards I have in my hand so I can generate more advantage than the other players and win. Everyone I play with knows how the cards in their deck works, and we have the same concerns as any other playgroup: we all want to have fun, we hate sitting and watching other people play, and we hate sitting and watching people shuffle even more.

Well, we all have fun by trying to win, and we’ve put a lot of interaction in our decks so we can have a good chance of taking over the game. We know the cards in our decks, and one of my favorite things is hearing the start of a game—

“Polluted Delta into Breeding Pool for Birds of Paradise,” I say, “and if no one is going to Mental Misstep, then pass.” I pick up my deck and start looking as the girl to my left says, “Bloodstained Mire for Steam Vents, then Mystic Remora?” she asks, and the dude opposite me groans but nods. “Pass turn.”

The three of us are all going to try our best, but he told us before we started that he was keeping something risky. “Oh,” he says, smiling as he draws, “never punished. Okay, Lotus Petal, then Command Tower. Bloom Tender?”

No one says anything, so he gives the turn back to me, but I’m still searching for Breeding Pool, and the owner of the damn Mystic Remora is searching too. We know what we need to keep our decks running—the same is true if I’m using Birthing Pod or Sliver Overlord. The deck is finite, and I only change things up occasionally, so I mostly know what’s good in a particular instance. Every deck I own is pretty streamlined, like a toolbox—in my five color list, then I have creatures like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive that help me make the tokens Najeela, the Bladeblossom generates evasive while cards like Edric, Spymaster of Trest makes them really effective, and Ohran Frostfang does both. The deck wins by building up an army of low-powered creatures, and everything inside is either interaction or intended to capitalize on the deck’s central focus, like Cryptolith Rite or even Unified Will, though that last one hardly counts.

I’m not playing Divine Visitation, though that would make the tokens bigger and would synergize with the Shaman of the Wild Hunt that I’ve been testing lately, but I make the decision that five mana for an enchantment I don’t need is too much. If I’m making a lot of tokens, then it’s not that much more important to have three more power and fly, though the evasion would be nice. The system of cards that I built functions enough without Divine Visitation. I care a lot more about things like Dark Dabbling, Lazotep Plating, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, or Teferi’s Protection.

I lose games all the time no matter what deck I’m playing. This game is random, but Commander lets me build a system of cards that’s bigger than any other format, but it also lets me play a collection of individually powerful cards to make powerful groups of cards and a powerful deck.

I’ve found that one way to increase the power level of your deck is to learn about the rules. I started winning a lot more games when I could understand both why I was right when someone tried to call me out, but also could correctly tell other people when they were wrong. I try for maximal competence when I’m with my playgroup and having competitive fun, but when I’m having fun with people that have a bunch of different decks at varying power levels, then I let rules infractions slide and don’t interrupt people when their cards don’t do exactly what they want them to, but it doesn’t really bother anyone if they get a little extra advantage, and someone can correct them later. There’s no rules enforcement at the casual level except what players say is okay, and in my experience almost no one feels the need to cheat, so we can all be pretty nice to each other when something goes wrong. I can’t count the number of times when I’ve played Temporal Manipulation or Nexus of Fate, done a bunch of cool stuff, and forgotten that I had a second turn. My playgroup reminds me, and they don’t have to, but we all want to see each other do cool things. We all want each other to be happy, and sometimes the little infraction isn’t worth correction, like if someone gained two extra life two turns ago and you just realized—it probably won’t matter.

My favorite Commander deck is a lot like the one that the store owner told me needed a lot of work when I was younger—it’s five color and mostly made up of the most powerful cards I own. It’s my favorite deck, and I get to have the most fun with it because it can do the most, so it requires the most mental energy if I’m going to remember all of my triggers and what I’m tutoring for. I’ve spent about ten years refining it, and I know what I like to play.

I guess you could say Commander is where my interest in Magic went to retire, because every new set deepens the cool stuff that I can do, and the decks that I have are generally all the same archetypes that I’ve always liked playing, but now I can do it with way more cards. There’s nothing else in Magic like Commander—we can play things like Force of Will, but they banned Biorhythm. Maybe Paradox Engine deserved it, but I still wish I could still run it—I love the decks I have, though.

The game is great, and I can play it at decks containing cards at different levels of power, and I can enforce the rules of the game gently when it’s casual, like I’m playing with my little siblings or with strangers, correcting and trying to explain simply because their knowledge of the rules probably isn’t as comprehensive as mine, but everyone I play with consistently is just like me. We know the rules, we know our decks, and we’re going to try and win.

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