After years of deeming, it ‘too nerdy’ for even me (someone who passionately plays Dungeons and Dragons), I have recently gotten into the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. I’ve always loved card games and have spent a lot of time, shuffling and drawing cards. So, this isn’t my first experience with card games, but something feels different with this one. It has consumed me unlike any other game. Even though I have only just breached the surface of this game, I can’t wait to get deeper into it.
I’d played YuGiOh on and off through-out high school but building decks had always felt quite inaccessible. Your deck had to be competitive. For it to be competitive, you had to buy the new cards and so on and so forth. The problem I had with YGO was that I couldn’t just play the deck I wanted, I had to play a current and expensive deck. The need to keep up and the inherent decay of card games became very exhausting and caused me to distance myself from them for quite a time.
The commander format of MTG revitalized my love for card games. The rules of the format are unique for a TCG. Decks have 100 cards, massive for any card game (standard yugioh and magic decks have 40 and 60 cards respectively). The highlander rule applies to deckbuilding also, there can only be one copy of any given card. Restrictions like this aren’t anything new for card games but the thing that makes commander stand out is the commander itself. One of the 100 cards in the deck is declared as your commander. During the game you can access this card at any time, there is no need to draw the card from
the deck. From a design standpoint this is a stroke of genius. Deck themes and archetypes become very clear for the people building decks and the people playing against them.
What I love about it the most, is that it allows you to fulfil every possible fantasy you could have for any given card. There is a true sense of freedom in play and expression in deckbuilding. This fantasy I talk about is something that I really hated about cards games for a long time. My favourite cards that I thought were amazing, would torture me as I never got to display the full potential of the card. But the commander format ensures that I get to enjoy and experience the card that I have tailored my deck around. Deckbuilding is a truly beautiful thing in commander, I have found relatively simple and straightforward. In places where the decision making in other card games would be paralyzing, In Commander, the identity of the deck almost makes all the decisions for you. The choices usually come down to price or how you personally want the deck to function. Ultimately decks boil down to the player who created them. For MTG players, commander decks are how they express their love for the game.
Runo Stromkirk and Krothuss, the first commander deck I built for myself. The deck plays around getting value out of Krothuss' ability that doubles certain creatures.
So I implore whoever may be reading to give commander a chance, it’s far more accessible than other card game format, being as cheap as you want it to be. With Magic’s extensive card library allowing for any kind of strategy or theme you could think of. I’ve found that the only thing stopping you is how much of yourself you are willing to put into the game. There’s a way for anyone to find their voice in the MTG community.
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