Planeswalking – Commander

It’s been four months since I came back to playing Magic and now that I’ll fully back into my stride I’m getting all cocky and trying new things, I’ve attempted some experimental deck construction, entered several booster draft tournaments, I’ve even looked into studying for judge exams. While I had varying degrees of success with those endeavors there was one game type I’ve wanted to try for a while but could never get my head around building a deck for it.

I am of course talking about Commander.

Legend has it that back in the olden days tournament judges developed the game of Elder Dragon Highlander, more commonly called EHD and later renamed to Commander as an officially sanctioned game type. The game requires deck of 100 cards with, basic lands aside, each card being unique. See why it’s called Highlander now? You don’t? Oh. Anyway, one of your cards need to be a legendary creature that will serve as your commander, all other cards is your deck must match your commanders colour identity. If this all seems a little confusing, fear not, it is quite confusing and that’s kind of the point. Commander is about fun and politics.

The deck size and unique card ruling adds a huge amount of randomness to the game, especially when played with multiple opponents. Even the most focused of Commander decks can’t pull the same combos over and over as the likelihood of the required cards being drawn in multiple game is very low. The real issue for newcomers is that while building a legal deck isn’t at all difficult, building one that stands even the remotest chance of winning is. Wizards of the Coast have released pre-constructed decks several times and this year has seen the release of 5 new decks, each following an allied three colour theme. It was with these new pre-constructed decks that I jumped into the world of Commander.

I ended up going to the White/Blue/Black ‘Eternal Bargain’ and the Green/White/Blue ‘Evasive Maneuvers’ decks. The first thing I noticed while thumbing my way through the decks in Starbucks was the amount of non-basic land that’s included. With a 100 card deck I would have expected around 40 lands with a few of them being of the super exciting non-basic variety but I was pleasantly surprised to find that nearly half the included lands are non-basic. With the rules allowing just about any printed card to be used in Commander it seems the deck designers took this as an opportunity to include a ton of dual, triple & utility lands in each deck.

Once my land obsession had passed I got onto working my way through the spells and confusion kicked in, I had expected a theme to present itself, I guessed it would be vague as it would be spread across 60 or so spells but nothing was jumping out at me. The same was true of the second deck. There was only one thing for it, to play.

I put a shout on Facebook for my fellow players to descend upon Geek Retreat and they responded. What followed was a huge cacophony of a games that lasted hours, until well after closing time. As I played each of my decks gradually relieved it’s secrets, combos that I simply couldn’t see by poring over the decks while sipping a latte. Evasive Maneuvers offers a multitude of way to untap and reuse your resources while Eternal Bargain floods your opponents with cards drawn through small life gains. These decks were not thrown together but beautifully crafted for the purpose of chaos and fun. As the evening went on there was drama, intrigue and just before we were booted out someone drew Primal Surge and cast 60+ creatures all at once. It was chaos and I loved it. I’ve played many more games of Commanders since then and have been thoroughly enjoying it, just make sure you set aside enough time, these matches run long.

Commander is a format that focuses on fun above all other things and the 2013 decks are, without question, the best way to experience it for the first time, they retail for around £25 and while stocks might be short following the initial run they are due to be reprinted in the new year so get your orders/pre-order in now.