Casey Laughman: Summer of Commander
I find myself in an interesting position when it comes to Magic this summer.
Normally, summer is a time where I have a lot more flexibility when it comes to tournaments. With my wife being a teacher, summer vacation for her means more free time on the weekends for me as well, so it’s usually not hard to find a tournament every weekend that’s within a reasonable drive. (I don’t travel beyond about a 2-, maybe 3-hour drive from home for tournaments.)
But with PPTQs replacing a healthy chunk of the weekend tournaments that shops within my travel area run, there are fewer options for tournaments if you’re not eligible to play in PPTQs. By winning one very early in the season, I made myself ineligible for further PPTQs, so my choices are basically limited to FNM or tournaments that may not fire because there’s a PPTQ somewhere close.
In thinking about this, I realized that I had inadvertently given myself an opportunity to do something that I had been meaning to do for quite some time: Get into Commander. Not only did I have time to devote to building and tweaking a deck, but the shop closest to me runs Commander every Friday night, so I can hit that, then have my weekends free. So, over the next several weeks, I’ll be writing weekly about my experiences with the deck and the format, walking through changes I’m making as I figure out what works and what doesn’t work, and generally exploring what such a wide-ranging format has to offer.
The first step, of course, was figuring out who to use as my Commander and what deck to build. I’ll be honest: This didn’t take very long, because I couldn’t pass up another excuse to play my second-favorite creature of all time.
Remember me?
(For the record, my favorite creature is Primeval Titan, but apparently he’s banned for “breaking the format” or some such thing. What can I say? I love me some big dumb animals.)
Abzan it is, then, which gave me a few choices for a Commander. But the only thing I love more than big dumb animals is making them bigger and dumber, so it didn’t take me too long to settle on Anafenza, the Foremost. She’s fast, powerful, and can wreck everybody else’s plans by sending creatures into exile. What’s not to like?
She also has the +1/+1 counter theme, so I wanted to build on that. Once again, I scoured the broad history of Magic to end up with a bunch of creatures from a set that’s less than two years old.
The Outlast creatures — I’m granting High Sentinels of Arashin honorary Outlast status — all give bonuses that can quickly get out of hand if you have a way to abuse them. Outlast would be incredibly overpowered if it worked at instant speed or without having to invest the mana, so I started looking for ways to either put counters on creatures without having to Outlast them or for creatures that could naturally abuse the bonuses.
First, ways to add counters without having to use Outlast:
Ajani, Nissa and Incremental Growth are pretty self-explanatory, as are the enchantments. I’m actually running Echoes of the Kin-Tree in place of Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit; I have a feeling I’m going to end up with both. I went with Echoes because it seems potentially more resilient and is a great mana sink in the late game. Daghatar the Adamant and Gladehart Cavalry offer me another way to spread +1/+1 counters around, and Gladehart Cavalry could potentially be a massive source of lifegain.
As for creatures that can naturally abuse bonuses granted by the Outlast creatures, some hydras were an obvious inclusion. Specifically, these three:
I cannot wait to land Managorger Hydra in a multiplayer game. Genesis Hydra is pretty much always good, and is amazing after a board wipe. Kalonian Hydra seems entirely reasonable in a deck devoted to adding counters.
As for other creatures that can abuse Outlast bonuses, these two were natural fits:
I promise this is actually a Commander deck, and not just Abzan aggro. OK, fine. It’s both.
We have counters and ways to abuse counters, but what if we had more counters?
Combine any one — or all — of these with Kalonian Hydra and things start getting out of hand. Doubling Season even combos well with Abzan Ascendancy to flood the field with tokens if somebody pushes a reset button. And, of course, it helps pump planeswalkers nicely.
Our basic theme is in place, but we need to fill out with some more shenanigans. Plus, we haven’t even used Siege Rhino yet. Or even mentioned Ivorytusk Fortress, which loves creatures with +1/+1 counters.
We should probably gain some life somewhere along the way.
We should probably be able to destroy some things with creatures.
Why not re-use those ETB triggers?
Heck, why not re-use everything?
Some overpowered planeswalkers are always fun, too. Especially in a format where you should be able to survive long enough to cast them.
I like Demonic Tutor. I especially like being able to play two Demonic Tutors in a singleton format.
Mana fixing and ramping are always good.
Card advantage is good.
Killing everything is good.
Killing one thing is good.
Add all of those good things up, and you end up with something like this:
And with that, I have a Commander deck. I’m pretty excited to see where it goes, and I hope you’ll follow along as I tinker with it over the next several weeks.
Casey Laughman is the editor of NerdRageGaming.com. Contact him at claughman@gmail.com.
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