Commander Cube: Drafting with Other People

The original purpose for putting together the Commander Cube was so that I could quickly build different Commander decks to keep things interesting. The Commander Cube would be the cards I liked for the purposes of building decks, and not for the more typical purpose of a cube, which is to use as a limited card pool for drafting or playing sealed with other people.

Drafting the Commander Cube with other people, in a limited environment, is wildly different than using the Commander Cube to build Commander decks for myself to put up against the world.

Seems obvious, right?

Well, it is and it isn't.

Magic, as a game, leans heavily on the color pie to keep things consistent. The idea that each color does only some things well is what makes the game interesting on some level. In limited, red gets in there with quick attacks. But, if you are putting your Commander deck up against the world, the number of decks that can supporting a haste two-power one-drop is severely limited.



Krenko can do it, but probably doesn't want to.

In a limited environment, like draft or sealed, a red deck that builds around a low-curve of small creatures is practically a given. Look at just about any block and scroll through the red creatures. You will see a lot of small creatures at common or uncommon rarities, and a few big dragons at the top end. That's the deck. Swarming, speed, and burn with a big flying beater to bomb the game out if it goes long. Red can be a lot of things, but that right there is what red is at its heart.



Black can play this game too, but usually has more of a suicidal bend to it. No burn, but cards that trade life for value fill out the deck with some way to wipe the board for advantage. Black can also play a more controlling deck, which leads me to another color.



Blue has tempo plays with countering spells and bouncing permanents. It can swarm with creatures, too, but usually gets its advantage from a well-placed spell at a pivotal moment. It can play similar to black where it locks up the game with card advantage spells and then drops a big creature to close things out.



White can swarm with creatures, but things build on themselves in this color. Creatures and enchantments will make the army grow in size or abilities. White stands together and brings in a big Angel to win the day.



Green has small creatures and big creatures to fill up the board, usually with better creatures at each point in the curve than the others colors have, especially in the mid-range size.

These general descriptions do not hold when taken out of a limited environment. In the larger world of Commander games, things get really big really fast. Games often skip the first three or four turns where a normal game of Magic might have give and take. Instead, there's lots of ramping, casting incremental value cards, or landing huge spells for value.



You also have access to a predetermined deck, as opposed to something you just drafted and threw together. So, in that case, you can put together very specialized synergies. Combinations of cards that you couldn't count on drafting together are not a problem to put together in a deck that you built specifically for the purpose of putting those cards together.



It also means that commitment to a single color is almost never going to work out unless you get really lucky with the cards you pull. Cards with three or even four mana symbols of a single color become almost unplayable in a limited environment. And color-fixing is even more important so that you don't randomly lose to having a handful of the wrong spells to go with your lands.

So, if you want to draft a Commander cube in a limited environment vs. using the Commander cube to build decks for yourself against the world, the cards that go into the cube are going to be completely different.

Yeah, that makes sense.

What does that mean for the Commander Cube, then? Well, since we have been drafting it as a group, it means that most of the colors need significant changes to make that work. Games were ending in an unsatisfying way, where whoever got the ramp and bombs first ended up winning.

I started making changes, but depending on when you read this, I might not have gotten everything updated yet. You can take a look at the progress here.



So, how do you play Commander in a limited environment?

Here's how it works:

1) Deal out two of the three-color legendary creatures to each player.

Each player selects one of these two creatures to be their commander, but doesn't make the final selection until deckbuilding, later.

2) Draft three or four 15 card packs, as normal. Or, deal out six or eight 15 card packs for sealed.

3) Build 50 card decks, but follow the color identity rule like you would in a normal Commander game.

This is where you select your commander. If you ended up with a two-color or one-color legendary creature, you can use it as your commander instead of one of the three-color legendary creatures you were dealt in step 1.

4) Play a multiplayer game, but with the following changes:

*Players must have exactly 50 cards in their deck, including their Commander.
*Players start with 30 life.
*Players lose if they take 16 damage from any one Commander.

You can do free-for-all, where everyone can attack anyone, or you can use one of the variations where attacks can only be made to the left or the right. You can even duel instead of multiplayer if that's your thing. It depends on how much time you have available and how close you want it to be to a normal game of Commander.

Kozilek Commander: Colorless Developments In Oath of the Gatewatch

Colorless and Generic mana are two different things now. Here we go.

See that "diamond" symbol in the mana cost? That's the new colorless mana symbol. It means that you MUST use colorless mana to cast the spell. This is different than the generic mana costs shown by numbers in circles. For those costs, you can use any color of mana OR colorless mana to meet the requirement. Easy, right?

We'll see.

I really (really) dig the Eldrazi. They are bad ass. It's so flavorful what the Eldrazi are doing, existing between the planes. Consuming manifestations of reality. Laying waste. Great stuff there. And now, with the official Oath of the Gatewatch spoilers coming out, we are getting a good look at the truly colorless Eldrazi.



But what's really shaking things up, in my mind at least, is the introduction of a new Basic Land called Wastes.



This is foundational stuff here. A new basic land after all these years? Sign me up.

With the introduction of Wastes, it means that we can finally put together a fully colorless Commander deck that does not rely on a hodge-podge of non-basic lands to work. We can stick 30 Wastes plus 10 or so utility lands in the deck and call it a day.

Wooptie doo?



Hell yes, wooptie doo. Because Wastes is a basic land, we can start to use the good search and ramp cards that the other decks have had access to from the beginning. Sad Robot? Wayfarer's Bauble? Yes and yes. Armillary Sphere and Extraplanar Lens? Go for it.



It also means that the mana base is more stable. Ruination doesn't ruin our day. Back to Basics doesn't lock us out. Price of Progress doesn't bomb us back to the stone age. It's like we are playing a real deck.

Plus, it's a massive flavor win. Wastes are cool. Playing a colorless deck with Kozilek at the helm and casting him with a bunch of lands that represent all of the colored mana drained from the world? Oh, yes.

With all that said, it's a little weird to be introducing colorless mana now. Will players adjust? Almost certainly. But, it's confusing. You see, they are changing the way all of the old cards that produce colorless mana look. That Sol Ring you've been using for 20 years? Well, it actually produces colorless mana. That's two diamond symbols. So, keep that in mind.

I see some serious work for artists that do altered cards in the future.

Not Giving Up on Commander Cube

I spent all that time sleeving up the Commander Cube and then I gave up.

Of course, I can still use the Commander Cube to easily build myself new Commander decks. Nothing lost there. But when we actually tried to draft the thing, it was disheartening. The reasons it didn't work are obvious in retrospect.

Oh hindsight, thou art twenty twenty.

Here's what I learned:

Up first, unless your friends and drafting partners are very familiar with Magic, passing foreign and textless cards around the table will ruin your experience.



I'm that guy that can recognize thousands of cards by sight. I like this game. I play it a lot. Not everyone is like this. In fact, most people are not like this. So, while a textless Disenchant looks cool and is an iconic card that "everyone knows," remembering if it is an Instant or Sorcery off the top of your head when it gets passed to you in a draft is not a reasonable expectation for all players.

It may be tough to accept, but some of the people you play with might not have ever cast Disenchant. It last appeared in cardboard in Time Spiral, circa 2006. That's almost 10 years ago.

Oh God, I'm old.

Up next, there are lots of ways to tweak the drafting rules to make them quicker and more friendly. Not everyone wants to dedicate 3+ hours to drafting and playing. We have fun using a "pack war" or mini-master format, where cards are dealt out from the cube and the game starts. More cards are added between rounds.

This makes it easier for newer players to get started since they don't have to make deckbuilding decisions until they get a chance to see at least some of the cards in action in a real game first. It also means that the time you would have spent drafting, you spend playing.

For a more Commander experience, deal out 30 face-down cards to each player. Then, give out 4 of each basic land for a total of 20 lands. That makes a 50 card deck with at least 20 lands. Next, deal out a couple of legendary creatures to each player and let them pick one to act as their Commander. It's a half-size deck, so cut the life total in half, too.

After the first game, deal out another 30 cards to each player and rebuild decks. This time, enforce the color-identity rule. Now, players will know at least some of the cards to expect, but with some surprises from the newly dealt out cards.



Surprise!

Another thing I learned is that is it much easier to evaluate cards for the cube if you pick a strict number of total cards and stick to it. After I chopped out all of the foreign and textless cards, I was able to stick to a 360 card total. The most people I would play this format with is 4, so 360 cards is enough for everyone to get 6 "packs" of 15 cards if we wanted to play a traditional sealed deck format.



If you have a well-tuned Commander deck, don't make cards from that deck part of your cube. There's a good chance that you are running cards that work really well in the context of that particular deck, but that don't play nice with the cube's card pool. Again, this seems obvious in retrospect, but there are cards that we consider "good" in Commander that are only good in combination with one particular card or strategy.



For example, compare Necropotence to Read the Bones. Necropotence is a very powerful Magic card. It ruined an entire tournament cycle for a lot of players because it was so good that you either played it or played against it. But, it requires a heavy commitment to black to even cast, which is not always easy to achieve in a limited environment. Read the Bones doesn't have the raw power level of Necropotence, but it is much easier to cast in combination with colors besides black, draws cards, and even gives you some library manipulation in the process.



Speaking of drawing cards and library manipulation, you want to run a lot of these effects. Drawing cards covers a multitude of sins, and library manipulation has a similar effect of fixing terrible draw sequences that knock players out of a game. Because of the singleton nature of the format Commander is random. That's cool. Not drawing lands is not cool, though. If you can give players more ways to draw cards, loot cards, or rearrange cards, it lessens the randomness.



With that said, take the tutors out of your cube. Tutors require a shuffle, which is time-consuming. They also severely lessen the randomness, to the point that the game becomes about getting to and casting the tutor. Look at it this way, the guy who gets his tutor first gets to find the best card in a limited card pool. Because the card pool is limited, and there is a high degree of randomness to the decks already, one tutored card can entirely dominate the rest of the game.

Finally, find editions of cards where the wording has been corrected. Newer players may not understand that the printing of the card is different from the official Oracle text. This can be confusing and may take time away from actually playing the game while you have to look stuff up. Take a look at the original printing for the Impulse vs. the corrected version of Impulse.



See that last line, "Shuffle your library afterwards."? That's not supposed to be there. This is clear in the reprinted version on the right, but the original printing contains the error.

Another example of this is when the older wording on the card didn't make much sense. They are much better at designing cards now, but we still have access to old cards that do cool things. Try to find a reprint. Take a look at Animate Dead old vs. new.



Oh geez. That card still doesn't make any sense!

Maybe just use Reanimate instead. :)

Losing Big at GP Seattle-Tacoma

After years of playing Magic, Commander is my go-to format. I play a couple of games per month, so a more casual-friendly format still gives me the chance to play without getting rolled over. Or, at least, when I do get rolled over, it's on turn 10 and it's epic.

But! Once every couple of years, I get the chance to play some big time Magic. This weekend, I was at GP Seattle-Tacoma with Ben and Drew.

Road trip!

As I type this, they are finishing up round 15 on day 2, looking to see who will make it to the top 8. As you may have guessed, I'm not in that group. I spent day 2 getting some cards signed for my Commander deck. Thanks Christopher Rush and Brian Snoddy!



I had a couple of months to plan for this GP, but played maybe 15 games of Legacy, total. The deck I should have played was Delver, but since I had limited time to practice, I went with Reanimator. At it's heart, it is a combo deck that sometimes just wins. Plus, it gave me a chance to play Griselbrand, which is something that I can't do in Commander anymore.

<cries>



Oh, and the promo card for the GP was alternate art, foil Griselbrand. If he ever comes back to Commander, I'm ready.

We drove up on Friday. It was a couple of hours from where I live, so we got started early and made it in time to play in the mini-master tournament. Three free packs later, I had opened a Bring to Light and not much else.



But hey, free cards, amiright?

After that, we ate at a vegan place up the hill that Drew had been to before. Then, we went back to the hotel to get some rest.

Our room was next to the elevators, so we got to keep tabs on the comings and goings - all night.

Saturday rolled around and we walked over to the convention hall for the players meeting and to listen carefully to the judges. We joined 2000 other Legacy players, hoping to play our way to victory, as we opened a cool double-sided Delver of Secrets playmat to get started.



My rounds went like this:



Round 1
Opponent: Aaron
Deck: Maverick(?)

Aaron beat me 2 games in a row. Game 1, I kept a hand with 2 Brainstorms, 1 Ponder, and 1 Exhume. He played Chalice of the Void on 1 off a land and a Mox Diamond. This is terrible for me as a large portion of my deck has a converted mana cost of 1.

Take note here, people. If your deck can support an Chailce for 1, it's tough for a lot of decks in the format to play against.

Anyway, I couldn't do much of anything with the Chalice shutting down a big chunk of my deck, so I discarded Inkwell Leviathan to hand size and eventually cast Exhume to get it out.

Things were looking okay until he turned his Knight of the Reliquary into a huge beater and took over the game. He was able to block the Inkwell one turn, attack into it the next turn, and then kill me the turn after.

In game 2, I kept a no land hand with a Lotus Petal, Duress, Force of Will, and a blue card to pitch. I ended up Forcing an early Chalice on 1 again, but didn't draw land to capitalize on the opening.

Not a good start.



Round 2
Opponent: Carter
Deck: Infect

I lost two games against this guy, too. In game 1, he cast Glistener Elf on turn 1, double Invigorate on turn 2 to put me at 9 poison counters, then finished me off on turn 3. In game 2, he Forced my Exhume for Blazing Archon and poisoned me to death with a couple of Inkwell Nexus, Vines of the Vastwood, and Berserk.

At least it was quick.



Round 3
Opponent: Sean
Deck: Enchantress

I won two games against this deck, but it was total luck. He had main deck Karakas and Rest in Peace! I had a lucky Force for a turn 2 Rest in Peace in game 1. Inkwell Leviathan did it's thing.

In game 2, I kept an Inkwell on the draw to discard to handsize, then landed a turn 2 Exhume off a land and a Lotus Petal. This was risky because I was totally exposed to a turn 2 Rest in Peace on his turn, but he didn't have it.

Better lucky than good.



Round 4
Opponent: Conner
Deck: Grixis Tezzerator

I lost two games against this guy, but they were long back and forth fights. This was the best Magic I played all day. In game 1, he landed a turn 1 Chalice for 1 off a land and a Mox Diamond (sound familiar?), then had a Force for my turn 2 Exhume, and a Force for my turn 3 Animate Dead. I was out of cards and ended up drawing into and hard-casting a Grave Titan into his Ensnaring Bridge. He played his hand out as much as possible, but I got a few turns of attacking with zombie tokens in before he killed the zombies and locked me out of the game.

In game 2, he landed another early Chalice for 1 and an Ensnaring Bridge. I drew a Force the turn after he cast the Bridge.



Round 5
Opponent: Ed
Deck: RUG Delver

He flipped 2x Delvers early and had enough countermagic to stop me from reanimating Elesh Norn. This happened two games in a row, with him catching an Exhume for Elesh Norn with a Spell Snare of all things.



Round 6
Opponent: Michael
Deck: Aluren Combo w/ Imperial Recruiter

In won both of these games. This was the only match all day where my deck did what it was supposed to do. I had all the pieces I needed for a quick Griselbrand in both games and was able to overwhelm my opponent with the flying, card-drawing, demon.

At this point, I was hungry so I dropped.

Pizza time.

Traditionally, this is the part of the report where I offer up some "props and slops." Here we go.

Props
*Drew and Ben for rounding out the totally-appropriately-named "Team Tiger."
*Hotel Murano for having a William Morris original on the 25th floor.
*My opponent Sean for driving down from Canada with an Enchantress deck that he clearly loved playing.

Slops
*Hotel Murano for building a hotel with rooms next to the elevators.
*My Round 6 opponent, Michael, for being salty. Sometimes, you gotta just let people have their own bad day, I guess.

What I Learned
*Bring ear plugs
*Bring good food, like vegetables, as snacks
*Look at the list of artists that are going to be there, so that you don't miss out on the chance to get nearly half of your Commander deck signed all at once!
*Practice

If you get a chance to go to a GP or any other large Magic event, do it!