I showed off some of my spreadsheet in my previous post and some people on Twitter were looking for it. So I tinkered around with what I had and added some new things. So I’m happy to announce v1.0 of said spreadsheet.

Notes:

• I used Office 2013 to make this spreadsheet due to Conditional Formatting, Formulas and Notes that I don’t know how much of it will work in older versions.
• Because the way this is constructed, it can be used for Tiny Leaders as well. I guess if you don’t mind writing the same card over and over again, then it can be used for any format if you want. There are up to 50 lines for each card type so it can work for most competitive decks as well.
• Can be used with mono-color, dual-color or tri-color decks. No four or five color decks at the moment.

Commander Decklist Template

In the spreadsheet I give you the basic template and a copy of my v0.9 of my Brion Stoutarm sheet as an example. There were some changes to the 1.0 version that I just didn’t clean up for the Brion version. The key here is to make the spreadsheet as automated and useful as possible. There are still things I want to do in here (Such as sort each color’s card type by CMC), but I wanted to get the basic functional spreadsheet out. I have notes attached to certain cells and those apply for all the logical cells, please read them so it makes understanding the sheet easier. It’s not completely user friendly, a problem I have when I design spreadsheets for myself, but I’ll be working towards a more elegant presentation.

The first screen that you see is the basic decklist, and where the info is presented, NOT where you start typing. If you scroll to the right, you can see the different categories of cards where you fill in the information. The other screen will populate automatically with the info that you put it. Since this isn’t hooked up to a database, you have to fill in the information properly (it’s your fault if you mess up). If you continue scrolling to the right, you see a bunch of extra information to make the whole sheet work. Since I’m still working around in Excel, I’m sure this could be better executed, but at the moment that’s what you get.

I have put in the note for the CMC where I found that formula: vorketh on the MTGCommander.net forum. Pretty awesome to have found it which makes this page a bit smaller.

There are some things that I want to do with future versions of this spreadsheet:

• Keep track of changes from set to set.
• More detailed information about the colors in your deck such has the P/T, CMC of each card type, Mana symbols.
• More land information (what type of color the land produces/how much mana it produces)

If you’re looking for a different type of spreadsheet, General Damage Control has one of their own which is nice if you’re looking for more category oriented sheet (Draw/Kill/Combo Pieces, etc). Since I am not really looking to do with this set up, I am passing that link to you if you prefer that for organizing your deck.

So download the template, explore it, wreck it, and change it to fit your needs. Follow the notes and you can operate this pretty easily. Take pieces of this and use it on your own spreadsheet, that’s perfectly okay as that’s part of what I did here. If you have any questions or comments, you can comment down below contact me on Twitter (@MTGColorPie), or email me (mtgcolorpie @ gmail)

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If you’re curious about the whole “99 Problems” issue, I would direct you to my MTGCP post and Sean’s post describing the situation (To be fair to both sides). If you’re looking to comment about that, please keep it in one of those two areas, anything left on here will be heavily moded. This thing could go on forever if we let it, but my wife looked at me this week and made one simple observation:

“It doesn’t look like you’re having fun with your ‘hobby’.”

And she’s right, I wasn’t.

Writing about Magic isn’t a full time job for me, hence why posts on here and MTGColorPie.com come at random times. I’ve now got a weekly series on Commander over at GatheringMagic if you want a normal weekly column. As anyone who has ever met me, or possibly even read some of my work, knows I’m not really normal. I write parodies of movies and put them as Magic characters/personalities; Aaron Forsythe has told me that it’s a little odd to see a fictional version of himself and tried to explain it to other people.

But this isn’t a blog about writings, or anything like that. This is a Commander blog, so let’s talk about Commander.

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A card that makes Pegasi? Count me in!

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When I was opening up my Commander product boxes and getting out the new yummy cards, I noticed something disturbing on the back of the Counterpunch deck box.

Each of the decks have a blurb on the back of the box that quickly explains the format and what you can do with the deck. This is normal marketing stuff that you see with everything. But, one of the great things about Magic is that you can actually use the product to sell. If people aren’t seeing awesomeness with the large foil Commanders on the front, they can see what else might be in the deck by looking at the back. Let me set it up for you if you haven’t paid attention or haven’t picked up your Commander product yet.

On the right side there are seven cards from the deck. They all share a pattern: You’ve got all three wedge Commanders, the new enemy colored Commander, Sol Ring, and a new card and a reprint that only exclusive to this deck. The five you can’t change, nor should you, but I have to question the choices for the other two cards.

Now, seeing how you almost can’t find these anywhere at the moment, this argument almost becomes a moot point. After all, this is a product that could be packaged in a plain white box and people would still buy this in droves. This product is still going to be on the shelves a year from now like Planechase and Archenemy before that. Maybe some players who haven’t played in years are looking at what these cards do, or someone just getting started in Commander.

I would have to believe that Wizards did market research for this product and what I could be saying could be against all evidence. But even with the Johnny/Spike/Timmy model, there are some strange choices here. I’m going to look at each of them from the standpoint of selling the product. The obvious rule I should say is that I have to use existing cards from the deck, I can’t add or change those at all.

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