A Rough Sequence of Events

The rise and fall of the Commander Cube

Down the rabbit hole...

Let's get this out of the way: Drafting the Commander Cube is, well, not going to work for me.

Here's why.

My 20-year-old self would have played the hell out of that cube. Of course, my 20-year-old self was already playing Magic all night.

What is that glowing ball of fire in the sky?



The me of today, though? Not so much.

It's not that I don't have the desire. I don't have the opportunity.

To make the Commander Cube experience work, you are looking at hours of drafting, deckbuilding, and playing. You have to have a group of people who are already reasonably experienced with both drafting and Commander. And, unless you do a full card-by-card draft, you end up with something that feels more like limited draft than Commander draft.

In other words, that's a lot of "ifs" to line up along with a lot of hours in a row.

Using the Commander Cube for individual deckbuilding instead of drafting is still a good idea. It means that you can spice up your own Commander experience by quickly building new decks in different combinations. The key is to have a good mix of cards, already in matching sleeves.

If you play a lot of Commander, setting your cards up this way is totally worth it. Heck, most of us already have a big ol' box of cards set aside for Commander, so it's reasonably easy to get a bunch of matching sleeves and go to town.

But, here's the thing.

Almost any deck you run into can be roughly assigned to a specific role at the table. You've got your aggro, combo, control paradigm to work with, along with all the fun variations like combo-control, mid-range, theme decks, and silly stuff. The actual cards used to fulfill these roles doesn't matter so much. Magic, in a lot of ways, is the same game it was 20 years ago, but with different pictures and variations on the central themes.



There's nothing wrong with this. It gives the players lots of ways to experience the game, but with a strong thematic consistency and design backbone holding it up. New cards come out all the time, but for the most part, we know what we are getting.

Play what you like.

It's the same advice I gave myself years ago and the same advice I'd give to anyone playing now. Unless you are super-competitive, playing what you like is the way to go. And, in general, Commander is not about being super-competitive.

I like five-color control. It brings everything together.

It can also suck to play against.

You know what's cool? Commander has developed so much in the past few years, that my original apprehension for playing 5c control has mostly gone away. The decks I face now are faster, with more tools, and have better lines of play. It's more of a challenge to play against these decks, but it doesn't have the same soul-crushing, unfun match ups that it did in years past.

In other words, if I am going to play one game of Commander every couple of weeks, it might as well be with a deck I like. And, good news, the deck I like to play has become relatively weaker as the rest of the decks have become stronger over the past few years.

That's a good thing.

Commander Removal: Spot Removal for Creatures

Commander is a big format. We have access to almost every card ever printed. Do you know what that means?

To hell with the color pie.

The color pie is a brilliant piece of game design. Ideally, it means that each color in Magic has things that it does well and things that it does poorly. These restrictions make deckbuilding more interesting because we, as players, have to make tradeoffs. But, the color pie concept wasn't always applied consistently. Plus, with so many cards in print, we can pick out a few spells in each color that do what we want even if the color shouldn't be able to do it.

Let's take a look at spot removal for creatures in Commander.

Here are the rules:

1) Instant speed is better than sorcery speed

I want to hold removal for when I am being attacked, or to kill something just before I untap.

2) Lower mana cost is better than higher mana cost

To follow rule number 1, I will need to leave mana open. I want to leave the least amount open so that I can spend the rest of it efficiently on moving my plan forward.

3) Exiling creatures is better than destroying them

Creatures have a nasty habit of coming back in this format. I don't want that.

4) Less casting restrictions is better

There are plenty of removal spells with restrictions on what I can and can't target. That's no fun.

5) Four spells in each color gets the job done

I mean, if you are playing a mono-color deck, four spot removal spells for creatures is probably enough. Don't forget that you will have sweepers plus general removal too. If you are playing more than one color, you can mix and match removal spells to increase the count.



White



Swords, Path, Oust, Condemn

Swords to Plowshares is the gold standard for spot creature removal. It exiles the creature for a single white mana at instant speed, with a negligible drawback. Path to Exile is a close second, also exiling the creature for a single white mana, with a slightly worse drawback.

Oust, although not instant speed, is still only a single white mana and puts the creature into the library. It's not quite exile, but it gets rid of indestructible creatures all the same. While Condemn is technically instant speed, it has a hefty timing restriction. But, like the other spells in this group, it is a single white mana that gets rid of the creature.


Green



Plummet, Beast Within, Crushing Vines, Brittle Effigy

Green is bad at getting rid of creatures directly, even with the entire history of Magic and color pie screw ups. Plummet knocks out a flying creature, no fuss no muss. Beast Within gets rid of just about anything, leaving behind a 3/3. A vanilla 3/3 can often be ignored in this format. Crushing Vines costs slightly more than Plummet for the same function, but has an additional mode tacked on.

I'm going to cheat a little and stick Brittle Effigy in with green. If you absolutely need to get rid of a creature in mono-green, you're going to need all the help you can get.


Red



Aftershock, Cinder Cloud, Fissure, Lava Flow

Red typically lights stuff on fire, including creatures. It has flexible burn spells like Lightning Bolt that aren't super useful in this format. It also has flexible burn spells with X casting costs, like Fireball, that are more useful, but aren't what I am looking for here.

With that said, Red does have access to spells that will outright destroy a creature. But, expect to pay more mana to get the job done.



Black



Murder, Hero's Downfall, Murderous Cut, Devour in Shadow

Murder, and it's rare brother, Hero's Downfall, are three mana death machines. Murderous Cut, with a little planning, is the one mana version of Murder thanks to the power of delve. Devour in Shadow is probably the next best option.

But, if the color black is good at anything, it's spot removal for creatures. This is the color that has the most options. And if you don't mind some restrictions on what you can target, check out these four spells.



Doom Blade, Ultimate Price, Go for the Throat, Slaughter Pact

There are gaps in the coverage on all of these spells, but for a couple of mana you will almost always be able to find a target.



Ashes to Ashes, Reckless Spite, Wicked Pact, Malicious Affliction

Or, you can take this in a different direction. For about the same cost at the first set of spells, but with the restrictions of the second set of spells, how about getting rid of two creatures at a time instead?

With a few exceptions, the color black doesn't exile creatures. But, what it does do, is give them negative toughness, which is a great way to handle indestructible creatures.



Tragic Slip, Ulcerate, Grasp of Darkness, Dismember

Give 'em the Slip, but only after something else has already died. That'll teach 'em. Ulcerate and Grasp of Darkness will both take care of something small. Dismember will take care of something a little larger, and can be cast with colorless mana if you are willing to pay the life to get the job done.



Blue



Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Reality Shift, Curse of the Swine

Pongify and Rapid Hybridization are functionally equivalent. They destroy a creature at instant speed, but leave behind a 3/3. Reality Shift exiles a creature and leaves behind a 2/2 that might - just maybe - turn into a proper creature at some point. Or, it might just be a land. Who knows? All I know is that I took care of an immediate problem at instant speed for the low, low price of two mana.

I am going to cheat a little by putting Curse of the Swine on this list. Think of it as a three mana spell that exiles one creature at instant speed and leaves behind a 2/2. That's a pretty good deal, especially when you consider our options in the other colors. But! It gets better. Curse of the Swine has upside. You can target more than one creature with it at the same time.

In other words, even though the color black has a lot of options for getting rid of creatures, the color blue probably competes with the color white for the best overall set of spot creature removal spells in the format. Surprise, surprise.