One great part of moving to MTGO has been the ability to play a lot more games in the same amount of time I spent driving, waiting for a table to open up, shuffling, and all the other "stuff" that goes along with playing Commander in person with semi-strangers. Who else loves it when someone yells, "judge!" in the middle of a turn?
I am a big fan of my mono-Blue Eldrazi and Artifacts decks called, Gods, Robots, and Monsters. It started as a Braids, Conjurer Adept deck, but now Thada or sometimes Thassa takes her squishy place. I was trying to figure out what to build on MTGO and realized that even though my collection isn't identical between the real world and the virtual world, it was similar enough to basically build the Thada deck.
Although there are some big differences in individual card choices, the structure of the deck is the same with cards that play the same roles in almost every slot. In fact, having a different card pool to work with made the deck building experience interesting. I came up short in a few areas, but after some searching found suitable replacements that wouldn't break the bank.
I added $5 worth of bot credits and tried to fill in everything that I was missing. It helped considerably that Thada was $0.30. Thassa was out of my price range, clocking in at over $6 by her lonesome. But, I was lucky enough to have a Sensei's Diving Top from before it was a thing. That, along with Crystal Ball and Darksteel Pendant filled in for a few cards I was missing. The other big difference is that the ramp, card draw, and even creatures for my online deck ended up looking different than the cardboard version.
This is where things get weird.
The specific creatures don't matter too much. Anything big and with a cool effect is enough to get the job done. So while I don't have the bomber brothers of Ulamog and Kozilek in my MTGO version of the deck like I do in real life, Stormtide Leviathan and Tromokratis are still darn scary. And totally affordable at $0.05 each.
Quick aside to talk about price differences. I was surprised to find that Palinchron, a card I've been looking for in cardboard for a long time, was $0.05 online and readily available. This was true of several other cards where picking them up for my MTGO deck is no big deal. Many of the staples commanded higher prices, though. Again, I was lucky to have Tezzeret the Seeker from back in the day in my MTGO collection, a card that I still haven't picked up in cardboard.
Anyway, I'm to the point where the overall mix of cards in the deck is what matters now. It's not really about the cards themselves, but the balance of the different types of cards in the deck that makes the difference. For me at least, finding that right mix comes with played the deck - a lot. Something I couldn't do in real life. Moving to MTGO gave me the opportunity to quickly test a different mix of cards.
Did I need more card drawing? More ramp? Less lands?
Switching a handful of cards out between games is simple online. And playing more games in less time also makes all the difference when you only have so much time to throw at testing. Some things that seem to work on paper and may even work from time to time in an actual game become clear that they really don't work all that well when you play several games in a row.
The deck doesn't really go to 11. It actually goes to 12. The biggest spell is the deck is It That Betrays at 12 mana. It's relatively easy to ramp into 12 mana if no one interferes. Plus, there are also several ways to cast things for free.
But what I realized by playing more games in a row is that the deck can go even bigger. It really can. And it probably should. Somewhere around turn 10, everyone has been playing for about 20-25 minutes each. There's a timer in MTGO, so you can watch it. That means that turn 10 is about an hour and a half total, give or take.
An hour and a half is about right for a pick-up game of Commander.
If you have a lot more time available, then you will have time to play two games. Otherwise, one game is about the length of a movie. So, build your deck to do its thing by turn 10. Do this, and you're doing everyone a favor. On turn 10, take a big turn and try to win.
If you don't play on MTGO and want to see how things works, put an extra die by yourself and tick it up every turn. Watch what happens as you play and get to turn 10. Unless there's some rules question that comes up and drags the game out while everyone argues, you'll be about an hour and a half into the game and hoping that someone has the guts to try to end it.
It's not really about comboing off, though that is certainly one option. It's about making your turn 10 into the biggest turn you can. Casting a Big Genesis Wave, Craterhoof into an army of guys, Rise of the Dark Realms, back-to-back Army of the Damned, all that stuff is big and splashy, and can end the game quickly without a combo.
In other words, cheating Jin-Gitaxis into play on turn 3 and making him stick behind a wall of counterspells probably isn't a good time. But! Casting Jin-Gitaxis on turn 10 when everyone else has already run out of gas seems perfectly reasonable. Is it a coincidence that Jin is 10 mana? Maybe not.
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