Oh Yeah!

I’ve got plans for 21 different Commander decks.

Sure, not all of them are built yet, but one of my favorite parts of the Commander format is building and retooling decks. I’ve put together plenty of decks only to tear them apart later (maybe I should be doing this on MTGO).

Exploring how decks change between sets is something that’s fascinating and I don’t see on many Commander sites (Let me know if I’m wrong). I’m looking to do something different with my decks and track what the changes are. I think we can learn a lot from ourselves and the format if we chronicle the metamorphosis of our Commander decks.

Each of my Commander decks has a different version number, starting with 1.0 for the first set I work at catalog on them; i.e, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 1.0 was started in Battle for Zendikar. Since this is a new process, most of the decks will be versions 1.0, I have several built from Battle for Zendikar and Commander 2015 that are versions 1.0. With so many decks, it makes it awkward to constantly work on the same ones over. So to make things fair between the decks, every time a new set is released I put them in a random order and I’ll work on them as I can. Except this time I chose my Ulamog deck because of the complete turnover of the deck.

(Instead of linking every single card here, I suggest you use browser extensions if you want to see what the cards are if you’re unfamiliar with them. The website AutocardAnywhere.com has links to the most popular browsers.) Continue reading

First, breaking news from the Rules Committee.

There are a few changes to the rules. First, they’re adopting the “Vancouver” Mulligan but suggests that in your playgroup you can do what you want. I’ve always liked Partial Paris, but this is an okay move.

Second, Prophet of Kruphix is banned. Either you love it or hate it, but it’s getting the axe.

Third, decks can now produce any color of mana. Before, if you had something like City of Brass, you could only produce colors that your Commander was. Now, it can produce any of the five colors (Colorless is not a color). You can’t stick a Mystic Monastery in your Brion Stoutarm deck since it has the Blue mana symbol; this rule doesn’t change. It’s for only fringe cases that this mattered.

Now, onto the Commander review. I’m going to be taking a look at the seven new Legendary Creatures in Oath of the Gatewatch. Not every Legendary Creature is worthy of piloting their own 99 card deck. Some of these creatures will form their own decks and be seen on tables all over the multiverse. Others, well, they’ll sit in trade binders collecting dust waiting for that one player who wants to do something different.

Let’s go in collector’s number order.

Kozilek, the Great Distortion – 8CC
Legendary Creature – Eldrazi
When you cast ~this~, if you have fewer than seven cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
Meanace
Discard a card with converted mana cost X: Counter target spell with converted mana cost X.
12/12

It’s only fitting that the headlining card in the set starts us off. Kozilek has the fancy new Colorless mana symbol in its casting cost. Confused about what it is? I’ll let human giant Matt Tabak explain. Kozilek joins a select few number of true legal colorless Commanders (Karn, Silver Golem; Kozilek, Butcher of Truth; Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre).

Since we can only use colorless cards in our decks, this lowers the number of available cards by quite a bit. Most artifacts and lands are colorless (as long as they don’t have colored man symbols like the Khans of Tarkir Banners) so they can fit in here. There are very few sorceries and instants that are colorless, so most of the cards have to be played during your turn. Kozilek here changes all of that. Now, after filling your hand after casting him, you can hope to guard your board with protection you never had before. Plus all the new toys in Oath of the Gatewatch can really open up a playstyle other than lockdown the board.

I had a Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger that I built after Battle for Zendikar, but him as a Commander never really felt right. Swinging with him does change games but I wasn’t satisfied with him leading my team. I feel as if I can switch in Kozilek into the deck and it makes it that much better. Kozilek can act as a tempo card (12/12 menace for 10) or a control card (countering spells) which makes it just that much easier to shift your strategy around depending on the game.

Verdict: Commander worthy
Cute combo: Mindless Automaton a turn before he’s cast. Continue reading

Collecting stuff is pretty much an common theme when it comes to hobbies. In fact, CCG means collectable card games. I was raised on collecting baseball cards, and I’m not totally afraid to admit that I have played Pokemon once or twice (Only the old school Red/Blue on the original Gameboy). We, as humans, want to collect things.

But the funny thing about collectable card games is that they are games as well. You play games. Having a stack of baseball cards does nothing, as you can look at them through the plastic pages in your binder, but there’s nothing really that you can do with them. Magic, being a game, means that you can collect and play them at the same time. You can fill your decks with treasures that you open or trade for. That’s part of Magic’s appeal, you can do both.

Yesterday WotC released the newest From the Vault series where it’s all Legends. By having all 15 special foiled cards be Legends, we can use them to build our decks around. This naturally would be amazing for Commander since we love to pimp out our decks as much as possible. Personally, I’m not going to open my box.

This is a huge disappointment to me. I’m not trying to short the market by having fewer copies of the product around, I just don’t see the value in opening them up. I really wanted to play with these cards too, so it’s not like I’m trying to jump on a bandwagon here. With reasons I get into in my next GatheringMagic piece, I just don’t see this as a good meshing between the concepts. Not because I only have one of those Commanders in my Highlander Collective (We’ll get to that in September), but because I feel that WotC didn’t take full advantage of the situation.

The product was created to help bring back high level collecting to Magic. I’ve got some weird things in my Magic collection: unopened Mirrodin Besieged Faction packs, the old Duelist abacas counter, a print copy of The Sideboard from the Summer of 1998 and about 100 copies of Madrush Cyclops. Looks like I’ll be adding an unopened From the Vault: Legends, still in its white protective box, to that collection.

I wanted to have it to complete my collection of my FtV purchases. It’s not going anywhere. Right now it has the same play value as my Baseball cards.

None.