What is Magic the Gathering Commander?
Commander is a 4-person 100 card deck singleton format of the Magic the Gathering trading card game. Which means that you can only have one of each card in a hundred card deck excluding basic lands. In a commander deck, you will have your commander and 99 other cards.
Who was my commander
I attempted to built a Merfolk and Ally tribal with various cards I got from Lorewyn Eclipsed and Avatar the Last Airbender cards I had. It was a bit underpowered compared to my friends decks, but still enjoyed messing around with Magic. Overall it was a fun experience that I enjoyed immensely
What did I learn?
I learned that I’m not as good at deckbuilding as I initially thought. There’s so many cool mechanics like initiative, cascade, and station. I learned how to identify the card rarity without the internet and what accessories to buy.
- How to protect your cards?
- Sleeves
- I got a set of red dragon shield sleeves that had a nice shuffle feel and got to see what the matte finish felt like with a design because my friend had a set of sleeves with beautiful artwork that had a stickier shuffle feel.
- Penny Sleeves
- I found out what penny sleeves are and finally realized I could protect my tokens too.
- Penny sleeves are these transparent sleeves that cost a penny per sleeve.
- Sleeves
- How to identify card rarity? Each card has a set symbol showing what set the card is from and a letter in the bottom left. The color of the symbol and the letter shows the rarity of that card.
| Set Symbol | Lower Left Inital | |
| Common | Black/Clear | C |
| Uncommon | Silver | U |
| Rare | Gold | R |
| Mythic Rare | Red | M |
What accessories to get?
- Dice
- Counters
- You can use them to keep track of counters whether that be +1/+1, -1/-1, how much of a resource you have like tokens or other counters. Dice proved to be extremely necessary for tracking what was happening.
- I used my friends really cool handmade dicethroughout the night and found out just how useful dice are to have when keeping track of everything. Here’s one of the dice we used and the link to KenziesCauldron if you want to pick up a set for yourself.
- Counters
- Playmat
- I bought this really cute playmat at Just Press Play Lancaster after some considerations after seeing my friend’s really cute squirrel playmat.
- Shoebox & Deck boxes
- I bought a shoe box, 2 deck boxes, and the Squirrel Precon at the local game shop near me friend the next day.
- InfiniTokens/Dry Erase Tokens
I really enjoyed playing commander and really think you should give it a try if your able.