Author Topic: Magic: The Gathering-Commander  (Read 1970 times)

commandercool

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Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« on: August 22, 2015, 11:13:43 PM »
I know at least a handful of MoTK-ers play Magic, but does anyone else play the Commander format? For those who aren't familiar, Commander is a format designed specifically for casual group play. You can use any cards ever printed outside of a small ban list, but only one of each card (except for basic land, which you can have multiple copies of), and decks have to be exactly 100 cards. But the star of the format is the titular commander, which is a legendary creature that you can summon at any time as though it was in your hand. There are a few other minor rules differences, but mostly it's about big, varied decks built around the commanders and four or five player free-for-alls. I enjoy it a lot more than normal Magic, and my participation and investment in Magic at any given time depends on whether I have a good Commander group at that time. Right now I do, so I've been playing a lot of it and building a lot of decks.

Does anyone else play? What commanders do you use? How casual or competitive is your group?

I have six decks right now: Mayael The Anime Anima, Vorel Of The Hull Clade, Skullbriar The Walking Grave, Nekusar The Mindrazer, Alesha, Who Smiles At Death, and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician in order of level of refinement.

My group has been on a slow spiral into casual-ness, with agreed-upon extra rules like no infinite combos, no heavy land destruction, and soft bans on game-warping utility cards like Skullclamp, Divining Top, and Sol Ring.

So much of the reason I made this thread is because this thing just happened to me and I wanted to tell this story on this site but couldn't find a better place for it: I have a custom-printed Mayael card for my Mayael deck with Keine art. An opponent killed Mayael with Beast Within, which was amazing because I have a stack of custom beast tokens with Sukusuku Hakutaku art. Those things were independent of each other, but they came together in a beautiful way earlier. :D
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2015, 11:40:04 PM »
>Mayael Keine art

SHOW

I play commander and I ran a Melek, Izzet Paragon deck but I dismantled that because my friends urged me to go modern instead.

I'm curious as to what cards you run on your Mayael because I plan to make one of my own.


Thanks to GreenVirus for the Siggy.
My TF2 Backpack of DOOM

commandercool

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Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2015, 12:20:10 AM »
I can post a list if you want, but it basically breaks down into five categories. Keep in mind that everything I say here is in the context of my specific group and my tendency to want to build my decks heavily around my commanders, as opposed to running goodstuff with a utility commander.

-Land. Duh.
-Huge creatures. 28 of them in my case. If you can need a utility effect and it's available on a big creature, go with the creature version even if it's a lot less efficient. That means as much creature-based mana fixing (Krosan Tusker, Eternal Dragon), removal, and disruption as you can manage. Play as many as you possibly can, because investing six mana into a Mayael activation and getting nothing can be back-breaking.
-Utility cards. The kinds of things you would run in any deck. Removal, mana fixing, tutors. Don't run card draw, because you ideally won't be playing many cards out of your hand once you get rolling, and drawing a big creature is often a dead draw.
-Ways to protect Mayael. Equipment, auras, Ghostway. She dies extremely easily and every time you have to recast her you're de facto increasing the cost of every additional card she gives you.
-Cards with specific Mayael synergy (Awakening, Noxious Revival, Illusionist's Bracers) that don't fit into any other category. If you're willing to make the investment (and so far I haven't been) Sylvan Library is incredible with her because it means you'll never accidentally get a creature stuck in your hand again and can filter for removal and land while ensuring your Mayael activates almost always hit.

Mayael honestly is not good. She's too fragile and her effect is fairly weak outside of synergies that let her use it repeatedly. You're paying nine mana to get your first creature, and you usually don't get to pick it, and it might not even work. But if you can get her set up without getting blown away every time she enters play you get creatures that don't cost cards and at instant speed, plus occasional craziness like tutoring for a silver bullet and then dropping it straight into play. She's fairly bad, but I love her. Getting those synergies running is fun, and I like never knowing exactly what you're going to get.

As for pictures, I'm always worried about showing off my Touhou Magic stuff in public because it's edited together out of art that I don't own and don't have explicit permission to use. I don't know precisely where copyright and manners fall on that kind of thing, but it feels sketchy.

What I can show off are the sleeves I use on the deck in question. I bought these (as well as a set of Sanae sleeves and a set of Tenshi sleeves) at a reputable online game store last year. Sometimes you can still buy sleeves from this line around, but they tend to go for much more than I paid for them now. Sorry for the poor image quality, I took this with my phone.


I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2015, 04:19:21 AM »
hmm

regarding mayael, the only reason why i want to run her is because her base art is goddamn amazing and I wanted to user her for commander :v

if there were places where I can buy touhou sleeves here in the philippines I'd buy them, but sadly touhou isn't really that popular here so there's not much. (though i did get myself a touhou life counter that I use for magic. I'll take a picture of that if you wanna see it)


Thanks to GreenVirus for the Siggy.
My TF2 Backpack of DOOM

commandercool

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Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2015, 04:38:21 AM »
regarding mayael, the only reason why i want to run her is because her base art is goddamn amazing and I wanted to user her for commander :v

She's not unplayable by any means, just be prepared for shenanigans since she requires you to build around her a little and if she flounders getting off the ground you can really get messed up.

if there were places where I can buy touhou sleeves here in the philippines I'd buy them, but sadly touhou isn't really that popular here so there's not much. (though i did get myself a touhou life counter that I use for magic. I'll take a picture of that if you wanna see it)

It's not really that popular in the US either, I think I got pretty lucky that that store stocked them. I ordered a bunch and now they're out of stock, so it was a short window of opportunity. I've never seen them anywhere else or in any different styles for less than like $20 a packet on Ebay.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2015, 05:18:00 AM »
I'm still fairly new to the game, but I've seen people play the format at one of the hobby shops at me and I love the concept. Thinking of building around monogreen or G/B elf tribal, using Ezuri or Nath as my commander. Making a hydra deck based around Polukranos also sounds interesting but there would be a lot of synergy issues there

commandercool

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Re: Magic: The Gathering-Commander
« Reply #6 on: August 24, 2015, 05:26:15 AM »
If you want a hydra-based deck consider Vorel. My Vorel deck is fairly hydra-heavy, and he works great with them. In my opinion blue/green is among the most difficult color pairs to build because they have some shared weaknesses (no easy access to board wipes or creature removal), but those can be mitigated with artifacts and the limited options for them that each of those colors does get.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.