Commander

“Commander” is a fan-made multi-player format.

So what is it all about?

Magic: The Gathering Commander consists of five different 100-card singular decks. To continue the tradition of oversized cards that are associated with the MTG multi-player releases, each deck includes three premium oversized legendary commander cards; these premium cards can be used in conjunction with the regular versions of the cards (which can be found within the deck).

In the sense of an Eternal format, the new cards are “legal”, (that’s vintage and legacy), but they are not legal in regards to Standard, Extended or Block Constructed.

There are three “wedge” colours to the Commander decks, with a corresponding new commander to each. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “Wedge” is a term used for three colour combinations consisting of an allied pair and a shared enemy. Said combinations have been distressfully short-supplied on legendary creatures, therefore each deck contains the corresponding Planar Chaos Dragon (for example, Intet, the Dreamer), as well as two completely new legendary commanders in the specified colours; plus oversized foil versions of all three.

So how does the game-play work?

In all honesty there isn’t a lot I can pass comment or judgement on as I have only played once, with one commander game. Nonetheless I shall continue.

Four decks were used within our game; and a new player was thrown into the mix. My uncle Mark was armed with “Political Puppets”,

Kev had “Devour for Power”

and Lee (our newest recruit who has only been playing MTG for a week but had made an exceptional deck that proved a challenge) had “Heavenly Inferno”.

I had “Mirror Mastery”.

It was a slow game merely because we spent a lot of the time familiarising ourselves with our new cards, but inevitably the game-play will speed up the more we use the decks.

Kev was the only player who didn’t manage to get his commander “The Mimeoplasm” out of the command zone.

This was the death of him as he put “Dreamborn Muse” into play.

This would ordinarily have been fine if he could have incorporated “The Mimeoplasm” into the game-play, but things did not pan out how we would have hoped; as such we didn’t like the idea of losing all of our cards before really getting our teeth into the game, and so the alliance was silently made and we picked on him one by one until he was gone.

Lee was the next to go, this was the result of Mark taking control of his commander - “Kaalia of the Vast” -stunting what we all assumed was the winning deck.

Naturally we thought this as every time damage was dealt to us via “Kaalia of the Vast” Lee would earn a dragon or angel, whom were sent flying towards us and we had no means of defence. But with his commander gone, he simply did not have the mana to pull through when he drew “Avatar of Slaughter” and instinctively I counteracted this move.

Once I had taken Lee out of the game, I played “Chain Reaction” levelling the playing field; for a short space of time this worked in my favour as Mark had built quite an army, whereas I had not...

I then made a mistake when playing “Baloth Woodcrasher”,

I was meant to leave an “Irland” and a “Firest” in order to perform a copy-cat move with my Commander “Riku of Two Reflections” but I messed up, and as a result Mark stole my Commander from my grasp, and from that point I just couldn’t draw any creatures, which eventually led to my demise.

All in all it was a challenging game, which I thoroughly enjoyed and I’m looking forward to playing it again, as I’m sure the others are.

Additional notes:

I cover all of my decks with Ultra Pro covers and use the deck boxes accordingly; as such I purchased the special Commander deck boxes which admittedly look really cool! BUT I soon realised they have a design flaw. The lid, if closed all the way, bends the cards in the box. So definitely beware of this, close gently and stop just as the Velcro grips.

I also tried the new matt card sleeves. I must say I am not impressed; they make the cards look foggy (Kev thought his eyesight was getting worse!). They do however stop the light reflecting off the cards when they are laid on the table which is a bonus, so I feel it is a case of whether you want to put up with foggy cards or having to tilt the cards to avoid a glare from your light source. I myself will put up with the glare, and not only because the older sleeves are cheaper!