If you’re looking to make your way into your local game store and face off against players you’ve never met before, then you’d be wise to look into Commander. It’s not as elegant or refined as some of the more serious formats, but that’s the beauty of it. So, here’s what you need to know about Commander, and how you can get into it.
Whether one format is better than the other is up to the discretion of the Magic player. Many players want to play Draft because they believe that they’ll have a better handle on deckbuilding than in Sealed. Sure, you can think independently without other players chiming into the deck building process like in Draft, but Sealed doesn’t offer the same variety in the card pool like Draft does. Players have different opinions about which Limited format is harder or more skill-testing.
Head over to Draftsim’s Discord to discuss Draft and Sealed tactics with other players online while you practice with the Draftsim simulator. Join Spikes Academy to receive a premium experience in learning how to play Limited formats better. MTG Hall of Famer and Pro Tour Champion Ben Stark will walk you through how to perform the best in these popular Limited formats so you’re always on top of your game. These strategies are based on how much control you have over the cards you select for your Limited decks. Legacy decks cost a few thousand US dollars while Vintage can reach five-digit deck prices.
Competitive MTGA Play Modes
The tutors were had for around $20 to $30, and foil Commanders were easy pickings from any online website. My foil Rofellos was my most expensive purchase at $12, while Azami, Lady of Scrolls ran me about $3 for the first copy and up to $8 for my last copies. Picking a commander here is generally a matter of finding the legendary creature that best showcases your chosen aesthetic. Again, you might be tempted to pick a random five-color commander to be as inclusive as possible when deck building, but in this case I find that staying disciplined leads to a more satisfying outcome. There’s an elegance that occurs when 100 cards all work together to showcase something beautiful. Almost half of my Commander decks focus on either a major character (Chandra, Urza, Nicol Bolas . . .) or a major faction (House Dimir, the Mardu Horde, the Church of Avacyn . . .) from Magic’s lore.
What Is the Easiest Way Of Getting Into Commander?
Find a Legendary creature you like the look of, and ram together 99 more cards that share colours with it. There is a second group that is also influential in the format, known as the Commander Advisory Group. These players tend to be more well-known in the community, often being content creators, judges, and competitive players.
It’s a 4-mana 4/4 with haste and trample and is a planeswalker with 4 starting loyalty that snowballs in one turn if not removed. For a much more abusive combo, Cadaverous Bloom allows you to turn your creature search spell into extremely large quantities of mana. Well, that ends up being a five-cost enchantment with another three-cost creature spell to get massive, but not unlimited, mana.
If it is killed and returned to the Command Zone, the next time you cast it you’d have to pay six mana total. This is known as “Commander Tax” and the additional mana can be played with any color of mana. Or in other words, the cards in your deck may not contain any mana symbols outside of those colors, regardless of where they appear on the card. As an example, someone playing Teneb, the Harvester could not have Fire Diamond in their deck, since it contains Red.
There are multiple factors that contribute to the topic, but ultimately the key to distinguishing between the two play styles is the players’ attitude toward the game. Whether you prefer a more relaxed and fun-oriented experience or a highly competitive and strategic one, Magic offers something for everyone. Color identity is a property of cards in the Commander format and its variants (e.g. Brawl). It expands the concept of a card’s color beyond the mana cost to all elements of the card.
Limited is in some ways an even playing field for players, though it is quite subject to the random luck of what comes in each pack. Limited in all its forms is very different from the Constructed formats, as part of the skill of playing Limited is in the construction of a deck under the specific constraints of the format. In Limited, card evaluation is the most important skill a player can bring to the table. Draft and Sealed usually have some sort of buy-in in order to play, but they let players keep the cards they draft. Many players choose to build their own Cube, tailored to their own preferences.
Why is Commander so popular?
Color identity meta mtg forms one of the key deck construction rules for Commander formats as players are not allowed to use any card whose color identity is not included in the color identity of their commander. Modern has fetchlands (lands like Flooded Strand that sacrifice to search up lands with a particular basic land type), which gives it some of the best mana fixing without the original Alpha dual lands. In general Modern does not play cards that cost five or more mana unless they contribute to a near game-winning advantage. At the best of times, Modern has the most diversity of any Magic format.
They may be willing to make suboptimal decisions or play less powerful cards if it keeps the game exciting and engaging for all players involved. Casual games may have house rules or extra restrictions, like banning certain cards or limiting the number of powerful cards that can be included in a deck. Competitive games follow a standardized set of rules with no additional restrictions or changes. Both formats let you do an auto-build to see how the simulators put the cards together. You can sort your card pool by color, mana value, rarity, or card rating.
Note that, unless specified on the card, Planeswalkers cannot be valid Commanders. They are Legendary, but they’re not Legendary Creatures, and so don’t apply. The one exception to this rule is Grist, the Hunger Tide – the card doesn’t say it can be your Commander, but it does say it’s a creature anywhere other than the battlefield, which includes the Command zone. The height should be adjusted according to what kind of deck you are showing, decks without sideboard don’t require much height while Commander decks take up a lot of vertical space. If you do not define enough length, a scrollbar will be automatically added. Each of the formats listed below is non-rotating and is usually constructed and features multiple opponents.