Trade Power for Joy with Bracket 1 Commander | 732

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But you can let me know if you want to see the other brackets. Where we talk about the extremes of the casual bracket system. And today we're talking about bracket one. We did another episode with Joe Johnson where we talk about bracket four. That's the that's the gassy end of things. That's when that's when it's no holds barred. Today we're holding some bars. We're holding all the bars. Yeah, we're locked in Rachel. You guys are stuck in here with me. Absolutely. You're going to you're going to deal with my garbage today. You want to see some suboptimal plays because you're about to. I'm going to cast a four man a sorcery speed removal spell. You're going to like it. And I'm going to make you look at the picture. For those who don't know you somehow introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Olivia Gobert-Hicks. I am one of the co-hosts on Commander at Home in Elder Dragon. Hi, Jinx. Rachel and I have served on Commander's Community Leadership for many moons now. In many iterations. Yeah. We're now both members of the format panel and I'm just happy to be here. I'm so glad that you could do this. I could think of no one else who should do the bracket one episode. Because you are familiar with this level of deck building, which is just. Extremely. What hundred cards can I put in a stack that make me smile? I mean, I feel like my very first deck that I built by myself was indeed the origination for bracket one because it was like, well, all of these colors are in. Who was it? Yeah, all of these colors are in proche. So as long as all the colors match, I'm good. Right? It's fine. If there was no synergy, it's just like, well, okay, this one only has blackpips. So that can go in. And this one only has those two colors. Yeah, that's what it was. You know, you just like. It was a great way to learn. Absolutely. I mean, this bracket is a testament to Commander can be what you want it to be. Right. And it doesn't have to have that pressure of like, I'm here to improve my skills or get better at my hobby. Or that kind of thing. But it can be at the same time. Right? Like it's all the mindset you approach it with. You know, I was going to come in here with the absolutely nuclear molten metal fresh from the earth take of like bracket one is commander. Like none of this matters. We're here for a good time and the iterations of, you know, power or competitiveness that we want to add to it later or where we really need the lines of delineation. But like the point is to do dumb stuff and play with the things that you can't elsewhere or that don't make sense elsewhere or that aren't optimized or best of or whatever. This is the sandbox. Yeah. So bracket one is like, I think the true distillation of like, no, just have a good time. Do dumb stuff. Yeah. Check it out and see where you want to go from there. I think as commander became more popular and became more players only way to play magic, they jumped into commander and immediately were like, well, I want to improve. I want to get better at commander and develop my skills. And like any hobby, you try and get better and better at it. And that means that commander as a format got sort of better and better and the skill part of it became a much bigger part of it than the like, I'm building with cards that I love or that I'm interested in. And that's still very much a part of commander and I, and it still exists in other brackets. But I think bracket one is a sort of pillar that says, no, I'm going to play with these bad cards and here's why. And I'm here to make you laugh or I'm here to tell a story or I'm here to like celebrate a thing that I like a lot. Exactly. Yeah. Bracket one is just building around a theme, building with heavier restriction, building to make a deck that's funnier or more interesting than it is good. And it can still be good. It can still be good. Yeah. It can have a good time and a hair brain time. Absolutely. So. It's fine if it isn't good, you know. I think the goal of this, these two episodes was to talk about the fringes a little bit and convince players to consider moving up or moving down. So I want to start with sort of the most basic of questions, which is why play bracket one? Like why should I be thinking about it? Yeah. If the question is to me, it's because you can do anything here. Oh yeah. Bracket one is truly a playground. It is a, you know what, I think it'd be funny to make X, Y or Z happen and then you make it happen. Is it good? Who knows? But. But nobody has to care. Not if it is sick. Check out this, check out the sweet synergy you've discovered or this really, you know, different way of approaching or playing. And that's kind of like the whole premise here. It was meant to be the social kickback. I'm here to have a good time with my friends. Like yeah, winning is cool and can definitely be a part of it. And that is where that like drive to improve. And especially as new players have come in, have come from. But you know, the format was always like, it was built and intended as a respite from the hyper competitive, when it all costs mindset. And instead like there is this entire world of, you know, lore mechanics and gameplay that these designers have made. And we should be able to have a place to explore all of it and see how it can work together or maybe not work and just, you know, no stress explore that space. And I think that that's kind of like the distillation for Bracket one. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of really great things to point to in this bracket. I think it's possible to achieve things in this bracket that are impossible to achieve elsewhere. Like you've talked about your deck that put the all of all of the cards in the library into the command zone. Yes. I saw this thing on Reddit like a few years ago. It's this big long chain of like 17 steps or something. It's how to get your entire library into your command zone. I believe it's using leadership vacuum. Yes, it is the leadership vacuum. It was yeah, who was it? It was Vadrock, I think. It's white, blue, red. He's Jess guy from Vadrock. Yeah, sure. From... There's also Vadrick, by the way. Yes, that's what, okay. But I think he's Vadrock. He is Vadrock. But you basically mutate your entire deck onto a managed to go through a bunch of other triggers, take everything else off the stack, let one final leadership vacuum resolve with like a narcissist reversal. So it goes and then gets mutated on. Everything is in the command zone. Your entire deck has become part of a mutated part of the creature. Returns to the command zone and you die in your next draw step. Nobody kills you first. Yeah, you're like, there's no board. There's no board. It's not good. It's not a good plan. No. But what a thing to achieve. I did. What a weird thing. I managed it. I had a cheat sheet to make sure I did skippity steps, but I did it on camera once and I took the deck apart and it was like, but I've put my entire deck in the command zone. And I think that's a great example of what bracket one can do. And when you're playing at this level where you expect to do like a quadruple backflip into like a spinny thing, like this is not a good combat strategy. You did a summer song. But it's like, well, no, it's like, I feel like this is like a crazy series of flips that like they do in Kung Fu movies, but you never do in an actual fight. Of course not. You know, because you get killed. But it's awesome. It looks so sick. Like that's how I think of bracket one is very much like, watch me do this thing. Like it's like, look what I could do. You do this like crazy thing and everybody else is like, K, I'll hit you for the two. Yeah. That's fair. That's totally fair. I didn't. And that's very much what like bracket one allows. Like I have a record one deck. I'm going to be talking about it this entire episode. This is my little pony deck that now has rainbow dash in the command zone. And there's alternate win con with, with the ponies where every pony wins the game. Right. And you have to control all of the my little pony cards and then pay a Wooberg activation and then everyone draws. So it's pony relic. It's literally. It's like a Polish relic. So fun. But, but not, but you don't win. Yeah. You, everyone wins every pony and everyone's a pony in this game. And I have accomplished it one time. Amazing. And it requires like to say whether like captain like powerful stuff to get it done. But when you do it, you're like, so many people. So one of the things we talk about like has become a thing in my circle is not having a win con, but a success condition. Like I have done the thing I set out to do. I may not win the game. Maybe second is what I'm gunning for. Who knows? But having a success condition. And for a lot of people, like one of the things we talk about all the time, well, I got to meld Bracela. So really like it doesn't matter when I did this game. I put the two giant angels together and swung them. I did. I did the thing. Right. Exactly. That's the energy we want going into bracket one. And there's a lot of like benefits to that. I think when you build a deck that's designed to do something that really excites you, the deck becomes really special. It becomes really personal. It becomes a thing that you want to customize and grow. It's not a deck list that you go to EDA track and you see other decks like it because it's this mess that you have committed to. And you're like, yeah, but it's full of like foil bulk. You guys have no idea. It's like the shiniest crap deck you've ever seen. Building the Omen Kaelin unironically running a Dan Dan. It's like, no, but that cruise my boat. Yeah. What do you mean? You're like, well, there's a picture of a boat in it. Obviously it's necessary. The fish is driving the boat. What were the other terrible cars you run at? Lupine prototype and like a Ventress Gargoyle. Like why would you run these? Well, they're really good at driving cars. Yeah. They don't look like it, but they are great at driving cars. And that's like much else. But I think, yeah, you get a deck that's more special to you. That's more customized to you. You get one that you feel instantly emotionally connected with because you put a lot of work into building these. I would say that bracket one decks are like more challenging to build because there's the tools aren't as good. There's a lot of tools that help you make a deck that is more powerful. There's not as many tools to make a deck more interesting or more flavorful or funnier. There's not like... You're putting yourself at kind of a disadvantage in principle by saying like, okay, well, maybe I'm giving myself these really strange restrictions. Like I have a Saskia deck that could be absolutely S tier, way more powerful, but I refuse to run anything but Femm creatures. Like they need to be lady or lady adjacent. So it's like, yeah, combat celebrant would be incredible. You're totally right. Nope. Until the day that they print a lady combat celebrant. Yeah, I got a pass. That's the other side of bracket one that I love is when new art comes out, you're excited about it because you're like, oh my gosh, they printed a pony island. I can put this one in my deck. There's an island with a horse on it and they're like, it's $15. You're like, I need two. It's not enough. I can't argue with what I need. Does it make sense? No. Did I care? Did I ask for it to make sense? Nope. This is just, we got a thing and I'm sticking with it and I'm going for it. The pony deck demands, I almost said blood. Money. It does. Blood. Yeah, financial blood. Sure. I would also say gameplay is just simpler. It's easier to follow. Everybody's taking fewer game actions. So like you get more time to talk. You're like, I play a horse and they're like, does anything matter? And you're like, not really. Go ahead. Well, six creatures. This will get bigger. But like that's it. You're like, well. Also, there can be a certain joy in watching someone assemble like the Rube Goldberg machine of just like, how does this even? And you take eight actions to make a token. Did you need to do it that way? Nope, but I did. But I did. But look, that was cool. You've never seen that happen before though. And honestly, there's a lot that can be learned from those because you can't see these weird nation interactions that maybe have a place in something you've got. Or you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting to build around. Oh, I never thought of it like your Norn deck with the stickers. Oh, God, that decks a menace. It is. But it's just like, I mean, I would say it's spirit of bracket one because it's so unhinged. And I love it. The energy of bracket, a bracket Noren, a bracket one is like doing something that's so hard for a reason that is small because it is cool. And my Norn deck is trying to get a sticker onto a creature that really, really doesn't want a sticker put on it. But once you do, it's really good. And Noren's a powerful commander because it can trigger a lot of things for free. So it has the Noren stuff. But the side quest of like, I got to catch this little coward and sticker him is a really fun side quest. And it's definitely a thing I prioritize over doing something good. If I can get a sticker on Noren or I can kill a player, I'm going to put a sticker on Noren. Absolutely. And I think so much of that, so much of bracket one too, to kind of jump to your next point, I think the entire bracket system holistically should be looked at as my deck and myself. Like, what is my intent? Am I playing bracket four, but I have a bracket two deck? Because you can be competitive, focused on winning and have a deck that doesn't reflect that I'm using air quotes for those listening. So you can come in and be very competitive and everything and have like a thematic deck that's kind of leaning towards a goofy story tell or something. It's totally possible to have maybe incongruent bracket physical, here's what my deck would fit into and here's the way I'm playing it and approaching it mentally. And I think that that's kind of a way that you can have decks that aren't bracket one and play them like they are. Like, okay, well, yeah, I could do this, but this is funnier. This is cooler. This would have a better experience for the rest of the table. So you don't, there is a way to approach it that is much more your mental intent than it is strictly what is contained within the 100 cards. I think that's true. Yeah, the other thing I want to mention because I think a lot of people miss this is bracket one's a great place to play rule zero. So if you want to play silverboarder cards, yes, this is full of them. If you want to play, like play test cards from the Gavin's unknown event at Magicon, that's a good, this is a good place to do it. If you want to bend the legality, if you want to pair partners together. Everyone is a great place to do it. I would say with the justification that you have to have a reason. Yes. You have to have a reason why you're playing these silverboarder cards and it has to add to the enjoyment of the table at large and not add to the power level of your deck. It is there to make your deck more nuanced, more interesting, funnier, to adhere to a theme, something like that. Then rather than like, oh, I paired these two commanders together because it would be good together. Sure. Like I put them together because they're brother and sister. I put them together because this is like a meme from the internet. Right. The Hans and Safi decks that are totally. Absolutely. There was somebody you need. But you need that reason and you need to be able to justify it with the theme of the deck. There was someone that I played against, Ali, who had Elbrus the binding blade. The knife was the commander. It was incredible. It was just this big stupid equipment deck and it's like, okay, well, I'm going to cast my knife from the commands. Yes. Flipping Elbrus is the whole thing. You know what? Yeah, you are. That rules. You know, you can use Ozalith as a demir and just has it like, that's the commander is this large rock. And it's one of those things where like you get to play with that. You just need to justify it by making it cool and making it enjoyable for the table. Bracket one is there to delight and surprise and make your friends laugh and play cards that people have never seen before. Absolutely. I think it's the big thing is like, black bracket one is a performance and an invitation to perform. Yeah. So that's the big thing to keep in mind. We're going to be talking about a lot of really cool decks today. I found some cool versions on the internet that we're going to talk about. So if you want to pick up any cards while supporting this show that you're watching, you can go to cardkingdom.com slash command. They've got a ton of cards all in one place and you know that you're not going to spend all day buying cards. If you found a bracket one list that you're obsessed with, you can copy the deck list, you can paste it directly into card kingdom. It'll show you all of the versions all in one place and you can get the right foiling, the right condition, all the tokens you want. All in one page. Click, click, click, click, click and hit buy and you're done. And you know what's going to show up safely and soundly on your doorstep with a little sticker and a token for your trouble. 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Let's see what these yahoo's are thinking about. If it's not, this is going to be a wacky episode. So we're going to start at the beginning with what is bracket one? And we're going to go through this column and just talk about what bracket one looks like, what we mean by the words that are in the bracket system. Starting with this title. So bracket one is what a lot of people call it, but it is labeled exhibition, which I think is a great word for show off your stuff. It's the showmanship one. Show your thing. You're here to perform. You're here to show your cards. You're here to like put on a show that no one's seen before. Is an entertainment bracket. Yes, I think that's an entertainment bracket. Is a great way to think about exhibition or bracket one. And it builds around like showing off rarely seen ideas is I think a big part of this and like trying to make the table be like, whoa, what? I've never seen that before and they're going to remember your deck is I think a big goal. And I think that's a great way to think about exhibition. The first thing is the decks are restricted by their theme or goal. And I don't want to be like, like the theme or goal is kind of a vague idea, but I want it to, I want to be very clear. It needs some cohesion to it. Yeah. Like the theme or your goal, I think should not improve your deck mechanically. These, these should not be like, Oh, my decks theme is plus one counters. Right. So if you build a round that improves your deck, this theme or goal should be like, I'm a mono white happily ever after deck, which is an alternate wind condition that requires five colors of permanence. Yes. We're like, that is hard to do. This card is watch me try. But like this deck is going to try to do it. Yeah. With a handicap, you know. So it's one of those things that like you are trying to hold yourself back. This is a rain. This is a challenge. This is a hoop. Yes. Um, so yeah, this means the deck builder practices restraint. You cut stuff that doesn't fit the theme. You cut staples that do not serve the goal. I just built Baldur's gate three and there's no arcane signet nor power soul ring in the way they be in the game. They're not in the game. So they're not in the deck. That's it. Sorry. Yeah. It sucks to be me, I guess. And you figure it out. You're like, it's fine. You just play a bunch of other low cost mid things that just are going to have to get you there. And if they don't, then that's fine. You get to show off all your stuff. Exactly. Um, so the biggest thing here is, oh, the theme is also not usually mechanical. It can be like there you're doing like I'm doing skeleton type. But that's not a very supported thing. Same as clerics. Yeah. It's fun to do the under supported ones. Yeah. Clerics is getting more and more support lately. So it like once you get to the point where wizards is printing stuff to improve your theme, you're probably tipping into bracket two. But if you're doing something that you're like, my goal is some ridiculous, like put all my stuff in the command zone or my goal is to make everypony win the game or my goal is to mutate onto a non-creature permanent and give it life link. I don't know. Right. I don't know what you're doing out there. Those kind of things, I think is where you start looking at. Brashmere was a hell of a card. We didn't ask if we could, but if we should, that quote. You know what I mean. I know what you mean. I can't just like, you can say it. I don't know it. We didn't ask if we could. We wondered so hard if we could that we didn't ask if we should. Yeah. Sure. That's the vibe of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the vibe. It's bracket one. Vibes only. We're fine. So I want to talk about some examples of themes that actually restrict because these are so fun. Absolutely. So this is my pony deck. The restriction for this deck is every card except for lands, someday lands, but they don't have enough lands with horses on them. Has a picture of a horse on it. Every single one. It's there somewhere. I try not to have the horses being ridden. Ideally, there's a few cards. This is standalone horse. This is horse. This is the character, not the guy on the horse. There's a few. Horse is the main character. Main character. Got it. And there's a few cards where the horse is being ridden. There's a few, but most of them are like, it's a board wipe and has a horse on it or whatever. Or it's like Cathar's Crusade has a whole bunch of horses on it. There's many horses. They're all being ridden, which I don't love. But it has a lot of horses on it. We have standards here. Yeah. We're not about this. The ultimate goal is to remove all the people from the horses. We're not there yet. Okay. Well, no, there you go. So that actually makes it make sense. Yeah. The horses are finally angry enough to cast their riders off. Because, yeah, it's about the ponies. It's not about the people. So I didn't want to play a bunch of knights. Anyway, so there's self-imposed restrictions, but this is all pictures of ponies. I thought of a deck for a while ago that was Oops, All Mansers. I saw this when you sent the outline last night. I was like, oh no. There's so many Mansers. I kind of want to build it now. It's just like, what does Oops, All Mansers look like? I don't know what it does. It's a lot of wizards, but they all kind of do different stuff. Well, wizards like each other, and they see wizard play wizard. Like there'll be something. So it's like, you just draw into more Mansers. You've heard of them. You've seen many Mansers. I've met a lot of Mansers. There's a Nethomansers. There's Sangra Mansers. There's Ophiel Mansers. There's Ophiel Mansers. My baby, my beloved. They're out of your Manson. There's a lot of Manson. And they all Mans in different ways. But I think it's a really… Do the views of the Mans get in there? Totally. Yes, 100%. We're absolutely kicking. Guys, this is how you build a bracket one deck. I don't know what this deck looks like, but it really made me laugh the day I thought of it. I can just imagine you coming up the… What the hell is this type of thing? And I was like, how many Mansers are there really? And there's a lot. There's like 45. No, there was more. There was like 80 Mansers. That's a deck right there. That's a deck right there. That's a deck you have to make cuts to. Like that's built already. Hold me closer, tiny Manser. It's happening. Oh man. Thank you. I just like being around clever people. I'm not one of them. This is just splendid. A bracket one deck that you've talked about a number of times is the Duel of the Fates deck. Yep. Can you tell us about that one? I can. So there's a bunch of… You're all familiar with, and if you're not, just familiarize yourself because it's an excellent piece of orchestral music. Duel of the Fates from Star Wars Episode 1 has some very catchy and easy to recognize motifs. One that happens to be five syllables or… Like Sliver Overlord does? Yeah. And then the other one is Nine, which is the main melody. Turns out there's enough magic cards that fit that to build a deck out of them. So what I did was listen to the song and I would look at cards and be like, okay, this fits here. So I have… Well, because… Okay. In the beginning… You like wrote it out with magic cards? I did. That's so fun. So Sliver Overlord is big single and double orchestral notes. So it starts with a one, then a one, two. So I'm like, cool. Plains, island, mountain, swamp, we're good. We got the lands. Sliver Overlord is… That gives me five colors. That's the commander. There's not a single other Sliver in the deck. Nope, but it's Sliver Overlord. We are there for the Wuburg. We are there to get everything else out on the board. So it also came up with lurking predators, all of the lands. Sea Scythe-Dedal. You start hearing them and you hear five syllables. Okay, put that on the list. It's so fun. The coolest thing about this is there's no way to find this. You can't Google this. So what we did was this got crowdsourced more or less with my chat audience when I was streaming this over commander and we just kept making the lurking predator sea-scythe-dedal whatever. And then people would come back and be like, oh, this one fits, this one fits, this one fits. Some of them you have to get a little creative on pronunciation and how you like put emphasis on things. Then once we started getting to it, I was like, okay, well guys, what if we make the whole song and it's not just, and we go for the nine. And so then we started finding, oh my gosh, I have the list. I got to pull it up while you're talking your next one. We're definitely going to put the link in the description. But like there are some secret layer cards that have ones. There are a bunch of legendary creatures that have long titles. There are exactly nine syllables. So we haven't released it, but we ended up because I'm obviously singing to the music which is extremely copyrighted because Star Wars. But I put the deck in order that I can just play out a card as that part of the music is coming up and got it for like a full minute and a half before I was like, okay, my hands are too tired. But that rules. It's insane. Have you released this as a video? Do it like a little short? We need to, but we have to mute it basically. You just be like, hey, pull up this, press start in three, two, one. So good. It's unhanged. So good. I don't know if the right sequence of cards comes out. Maybe something can happen, but mostly the table is singing along and hearing it. That's the whole point. Yeah, that's it. And then they get annoyed with me and take me out first. So everybody wins. That's fine. They get a victory. I played the thing. There's a great moment in a shuffle up and play that happened lately. Recently, it was, Brian David Gilbert played a pondering the orb deck and the entire deck is full of people looking at things or orbs. So it's like, like everything has a sphere in it and most of them are guys looking at it. And it's hilarious. If you look at the deck list, it's really, really fun and he sold it so well. Go watch that episode and check out that deck list. It's really fun. I also put out a call for deck lists for people to send them, send me their deck lists on Blue Sky Next. And first of all, it was amazing. There were so many cool deck lists. I'll post a link to the threads in the show notes. There's going to be a lot of links in the show notes for this one. But like a community of skeleton gamers broke out. I need you all to know when she sent me the notes last night for me to like review before we do this because obviously we have to work off and out because we will. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be here all day. Just reading a community of skeleton players broke out. It was like the Mansers deck. The Mansers. Immediately tied together. It was like so many people were like, wait, I haven't seen this for my skeleton deck. I also have a deck that's only pictures of skeletons and they were like, we are the same. And we're like finding cards for each other and showing their commanders. Skeletonships. It was so beautiful. Love, love, love. They were like, I haven't even seen that. It was very cool. Where was my cold, dead heart? Yeah, just like my cold skeleton heart. Yeah. Tauna MTG posted their list where every card needed to be bald. So we're talking every card, not lands because there's not people on them, but like instant sorceries, creatures, bald. I love it. It's so good. It was so funny. So that link will be in the show notes as well. Marcos posted their list themed around how the Grinch stole Christmas. Fantastic. Using the green guy from Spider-Man. Jackal. Yes. Who's like fuzzy and green. So he's the commander. Oh, I love this. This one spoke to me so hard. This is Rhystic Studies. This was the mantra. Bearanate drops. Oh, I loved this. So this was Sugar Boy posted their list where all of the spells in the deck are eight mana. They're eight drops. Oh, I'm building it. I'm building it. It's so cool. I'm building it. So there's like stuff that cycles for cheaper than eight and there's like split cards that are cheaper than eight. So you can like do something. And a cost. But we're talking about like no rocks, no like the deck is designed to be. I'm building this so I get home. The curve is a tower of eight drops. That's so sick. It doesn't work. I don't know. I don't care. But it's so. It's all eight drops. What a cool idea. I did just build another extremely aggressively, I was about to say tier one, bracket one deck. It is Dave Matthews Band on tour. Yeah. So I got the Wandering Minstrel, ModFly did an altar of the full band on it for me. So now I have all the towns are the tour dates. There are every single card is tied to a song tied to an experience is obscuring Hayes all of the smoke that's at a concert on the pit. Like absolutely. Yep. There's three visits for the three day stints at certain shows. Musicians. I mean, you have to. It's a Dave Matthews Mandex. So of course, insufferable balladiers in there. I see you haters. It doesn't matter to me. But it was so much fun to be like, okay, it has to be music. And I have to know as a dedicated like brain decayed fan of this band, how I can make these ties. Like I played Baleful Strex and I was like, why did I put this in here? And it's like, because there's a song called Black and Bluebird, you absolute clown. I was like, oh yeah. Yeah. That's what that one is. I'm so freaking smart. I'm so good at this. Duh. And like playing it out is like, okay, I'm here in the game. Like I can't just be attacked and like deleted from the scene, but I'm not really. Yeah. Like I'm not really competitive or like a threat here, but I'm going to tell you about how much I love going on tour with this band. But you're going to have to listen to me talk. You are. Yeah. I mean, I know to keep it back. I know I'm the only one interested in it like this, but check it out. And so it was this ended up being like this really cool, fun love letter to like something that means so much to me has been such a big part of my life. And now I'm throwing it violently with force into the other thing that is now a big, huge part of my life that I love so much. But here's the thing is like when you find another magic playing David, Dave Matthews band. Oh yeah. And we exist. Yes. There is crossover. When you find this person, you're like, I'm sure you would. I got away. They found we've, we, when Brian and I go to the gorge because he comes with me now that I did go do my annual pills. We had fans of the show just come up and be like, Oh, so glad to see her. I'm so happy. You're here. You understand? We have like legitimate people that we met. We text now we coordinate when we're going to hang out at the show. That's so great. That's so cool. And that's born of two things crossing over. And I think that's a huge part of Bracken one is being able to express something that you're passionate about. Tell a story with a stack of cards. It's less about playing the game necessarily and more about being like, do you want to see what I made? Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. And it's like 99 pictures of horses. The enthusiasm is so fun and infectious because it's like it can give you like a sense of an actual just levity to everything. It's like, Hey, you know what? We are here for a good time. The stakes could never be lower. Absolutely. I'm here to show you my horse collection. It's going to be sick. Are you ready to see my little ponies? Yeah. Because you're going to, you're going to see them all. This lunch box, we're going to go through this lunch box after. I'm so excited. There's toys in here is a whole thing. It's ridiculous. It's a little hairbrush. I don't have a hairbrush. I only got plastic ones because I knew I wouldn't take care of them and they'd be like crazy snarl Barbie hair. Anyway, the next one is players expect rules around cards or commander legality to be flexible if all players agree. That's a huge thing. So you can't be like, I'm going to rule zero, my grizzle brand and my decks like good black cards. That's not bracket one, obviously. Although you know, you can try that. Maybe your playgroup's into it. Hey, listen, if your playgroup's down, that's truly the only bar you have to clear. If all players agree, it solves all manner of things. Have the time of your life. No one's going to stop you. Yeah. I mean, this is a recent addition to the brackets. I like these decks are so restricted by theme. They're so restricted by story that you don't really need the rules of the format. They're restricting themselves. They're holding themselves down. So if you have like a cool thing that you can do a silver border card, a play test card, something else that you just want to show off like, I don't know, if you figure out how to mechanically use a Yu-Gi-Oh! card in a cool way, go nuts. I don't know what you're doing out there. The tutor does specifically say magic, doesn't it? Yeah. If you roll with a Sharpie on a pack of something else. Do that. I don't know. That sounds sick. People do Sharpie cubes all the time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because they're restricted in other ways, you don't necessarily have to worry about legality as a strict sense. So I would say that the main rule that you need to answer to in bracket one is the rule of cool. Does everyone at the table like it? Does it make everyone's experience better? Does it sell the theme more? Does it get a bigger laugh? Those are the rule of cool. Can I do this? Should I do this? Can be answered by what other people think it's cool. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Next. Can you imagine bracket one? Check out my sweet stack theme. You're like, no. No, I don't actually. I'm going to go over here. That's not what we're talking about. And you know it's not what we're talking about. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So the next one is players expect decks to prioritize a goal, theme or idea over power. Your goal is to optimize for joy. Your goal is to optimize for less. Not victory. Many decks will like consume themselves with curve. We just put out a great episode on mana curve if you're trying to make your decks mechanically better or like I'm trying to maximize synergy. I'm going to try and do other things. This is like, okay, if I have these two cards on the table, it's going to, I can do like my impression of boom har playing magic. You know, like that's literally how me and Dan started a podcast. When I started the, the commander's fear, it started because me and my buddy were just doing impressions of boom har playing magic. Like I'm going to move my dang old undab stuff and I'm going to, this guy's just going off over there. I want everyone on audience to understand. I'm just sitting here with my mouth slightly agape, just looking at absolute awe, admiration and adulation of Rachel Weeks right now because I have something that not a lot of people have and that is the good fortune to be graced with the presence of this person. Like I've told, I've said time and memorial like back when Sheldon would be like, what do you think about Rachel Weeks? I would say I want to be her when I grow up. That's like, I can't with you. It was like, that's how our friend just started. At least our boom har impression. What? Cause we thought boom har playing magic was like a really funny thing. I love it. So here's, this is bracket one right now. She's cracking herself up telling me about it. Like just this harrow brain joke she had with her friends where the joy becomes infectious and just sharing it is like another act of friendship in and of itself. And you're just building to optimize for that. Like that's the kind of thing you're trying to get to. You're trying to get people to go, whoa, I've never seen that before or whoa, I never thought of that before or remember it. Bracket one is, did you know life's pretty cool actually? Check out this kick flip. Actually this ain't so serious. What if this was fun again? The next expectation is players expect win conditions to be highly thematic or substandard. So this is one where it's like, well, my whole deck is this, but it wins with a crater hoof is kind of like, well, you cheaped out on your theme because you wanted a victory. And most of the time the expectation in a bracket one deck is going to be, well, if you built a unicorn deck, you're going to win the game with a freaking unicorn. And if you don't, I'm going to be mad about it. Mine was squirrels at the fountain. I had my attracts to squirrels with halo fountain was I think the soul win con because I don't think I put anything to pump the squirrels. You just had a lot of one ones. And if you attack with them, there's likely not 15 to attack. Right, yeah. Right, you're like, ta-da. But that's, you're trying to make a picture, you're trying to tell a story with one of those things. Like I, for an example for this one, so the pony decks win condition is storm herd, which just makes a whole bunch of ponies. As long as you haven't taken a lot of damage, which I do. But it recently got moonshaker cavalry. True. And I specifically use the really expensive printing because all the horses have their skin on. There's like a ghost version that's much prettier than the one that's all skeletons. I try and keep the horses skins on despite magic's best effort to only give me ponies that are on fire or have no skin. I mean, they are cool skeleton horses. Yeah, but they're not ponies, dude. I know. I'm not, I'm not taking that away from you. So sad. Give me, just give me a regular, all the cats have their skin on. That's true. We keep getting cute little kitties and puppies and none of them are on fire. Yeah, I guess you're right. The overwhelming majority of animals are not on fire. You're simply bones. I will give you that. And horses are, well, mainly bones over fire. Horses are over represented in the bone only. It's very hard. I'm so frustrated. I was like cowboy world. Cowboy world is going to have so many sick horses. No, they are all very angry. They're all on fire or a snake. Yes. Why? Why cost the cronco? But really, I could have just been an apple lusa having the time of my life in the desert, but instead, I'm made of acid and scales. Yeah, I miss you so much. I wish I could hang out more than work allows for. Too busy, dude. God lord. The orb-bondering deck was a brought to the second sun because it's a big orb coming over this side. That's so sick. That's like the only approach to the second sun when I'm happy about. I love that. Dan Van had them with them on a way happily ever after deck. It's impossible. I have never seen him win with it, but he does try and it's very cool. I'm just thinking about staring at the sun because you have to ponder that. I'm pondering this orb just rotting your eye sockets. Oh no. Oh my gosh. The section is so long. It's okay. Then players expect gameplay to be an opportunity to show off their creations. A player may stop to show off the art on the card, explain why it's perfect, etc. So we're here to see your cool stuff and I'm going to participate in... Absolutely. I'm going to be as much performer as I am audience. Exactly. And now I need everybody to know, I trust all of you guys are capable of keeping track of at least four life totals and commander damage, much to Ben Brode's chagrin. You know how to manage four board states and everything. I also know that you can say, I'm going to play this card and pass the turn and while you're drawing, I'm going to tell you the quick story about it. You don't have to hear this and be like, every game has to be six hours and everyone's going to talk my ear off. It's like, no, we're all people. You can keep jamming and just be like, hey, so here's why I'm playing this really quick. And then there it is. And the game continues to pace. And you get to enjoy your little thing. Everybody wins. No one doesn't have to be this long tedious. Everybody signed up for my one woman show. It's still the communal experience of like, we have an hour. You're going to see what it's like to have been an eight year old girl in 1992. And then we're going to go about our day. That's fine. I'm going to play with ponies. You're going to see my little ponies. There's going to be rainbows. And if you're like, what does that card do? You're going to be like, well, it's a removal spell with a picture of a horse. Correct. And it's going to cost me five minutes to do something. We're going to have a great time. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. Yeah. Okay. Then players expect to play at least nine turns before anyone wins or loses. I do want to do a reminder that on the bracket system, this is not on turn nine. We expect the game to end. This is I don't expect to die until after turn nine. This is like, if I died in the first nine turns, I would be surprised. What did I, oh, okay. You know where it's like, okay, well, that really wasn't what I was capable of doing. Sure. And then it turns to be like, okay, I'm going to cast storm herd and make like 12 horses. I have established a presence. We've extrapolated on the theme. Yeah. Maybe it's time. Okay. So everyone needs a window that's big enough to show off a decent amount of what they came to do or to try their thing that requires 20 mana or to like try and do the impossible. And that requires patience and that requires a longer game. And again, land pass is a valid turn. That doesn't take long. Don't see nine turns. Be like, it's so slow. It's going to take forever. No, it's not. No, it's not. I'm not going to do 20 things. I'm going to do, I'm going to cast two. We're all playing thematic decks here. I'm going to catch two one twos with flying and a pass. That's what I'm going to do. Deck restrictions. So this is again, like before where we're talking about your restricted by theme. You set your own restrictions to make this deck worse, which means that the imposed restrictions of the bracket system are a little loosey goosey. It's the typical restrictions of bracket two. No game changers, no mass land denial, no extra turns, no two card combos, game enders locks or infinites. But if there's like, if you're a deck where every, like everything's built around coin flipping, you can play the coin flipping extra turn or whatever. Like that you can play the coin flipping tutor. Does that exist? I don't know. It might. Maybe. So you get this opportunity to place stuff that is on the theme and could actually give your deck something. If you have the reason to justify it. If you have the, you're like, okay, my whole deck is like tornadoes. So I'm going to play Cyclonic Rift. Cause there's a tornado on it. Cause there's a tornado on it. And maybe you'll just play Cyclonic Rift and don't overload it. That's fine. It's a bounce ball. Sure. That's cool. It's very much like everybody chill out. I'm going to play one extra turn. I'm not going to chain it. And everybody knows that like the intention of this bracket is to show off cards and to let your opponents show off cards to witness cards, witness cool things. So restricting the cards your opponents can play that they get the opportunity to show off is against the spirit of the bracket. Yes. This bracket has a lot of like the spirit, the vibes, the intent here. Because yes, like again, Sheldon couldn't say it enough. Yes. This format is broken. We have so much accessible to us with power and being able to just spiral out of control with two cards and be done. But that's not the point. And we know we can do that. So the point is we are aware that all of this exists. And because we know it, we don't need to explore it because we know it's there. So we're going to take the pivot. We're going to operate in good faith and assume that everybody else is doing the same because that's how we're going to have a good time. And you're going to check out some wild stuff that maybe you've never seen before. You look cool, baby. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to do weird stuff. Maybe it's cool. Well, no, it's going to be cool. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's just really that one corner case where it works and you're like, what the hell did I just see? I cannot believe I did it. And then you have a story forever. Yeah. You get to tweet it. You get to share with friends, that kind of thing. All right. That's a lot. If you're enjoying this episode, go check out the Bracket 4 episode with Joe Zetanafon. It's about the other extreme. Okay. So we're talking about what Bracket 1 is and it's got a lot of different side quests. So we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. 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Architect ARCHIDEKT.com slash command zone. Welcome back everybody. We're talking about bracket one and we're going to roll our shoulders back. Oh yeah, I'm so shrimp dude. Everybody's shrimp these days because we're doing this. You shrimp? Like this. We're going to de-shrimp. Take a second. Put that neck back. Open it. You ever take a shrimp and scratch them out? Oh my god. I bet it feels good. I mean he's dead. But you know what I mean. Yeah. But you know what?哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 a lot. It's in your brain. It's in your brain. It's a big mindset difference, I think. I would say the biggest difference between one and two is what the heck are we doing here? Bracket two is like, I'm here to build a deck that does a thing to win the game. Bracket one is. Commitment to the bit. You wrote that and it was like, yes, that's it. That's it. My entire goal is to do a bit and make it the coolest bit you've seen. That's it. And if it wins the game, sick. Whoa, can't believe that happened. You guys have no idea this is the first one I'm chalking up in the W column. Yeah. Yeah, it's your entire goal is to sell a story, sell a joke, sell a theme, something like that. Your commitment to the bit. So I would say like Bracket one can be anything from pre-cons to home brews. It can be, they have some amount of mechanical restrictions in terms of like, they don't win the game really fast, stay away from game changers. Those 2011 pre-cons really do feel like Bracket one. Yeah. My restriction is I only pull apart and have to like build something else into. My restriction is only guards from 2011 or earlier. They only put out one commander set a year. When we had commander Christmas and that's all we got. Simpler times. Simpler times. So yeah, there's some like mechanical restrictions on Bracket two, but Bracket one is like, your primary goal mechanically is like to not die so you can keep doing the cool thing. That is you don't want to incidentally die because that will stop the cool train. Right. Bracket two has like intentional resilience. Yes. I'm trying to do something well. I'm trying to. My job is to be here until the end. Right. I am actually trying to win again. The last point of life is all that matters. As long as I've got one, I'm in. Right. And that, yeah, that's when you're playing Bracket one, you're just like, I was still here. I get to play this stupid enchantment that doesn't do anything. I'm with no creatures on my board. Let's go. But it's going to be weird. I do want to say the biggest similarity between Bracket one and Bracket two is the shape of the game. Yeah. They both are going to be like a very slow build towards victory and then whoever has the most stuff generally is going to win the game eventually. So, and they're incremental, right? Where they're going to get battle cruiser. Yeah. You're going to see it coming from a mile away. You're going to hear the soldiers marching to your door. You're going to hear the hoof beats. You're going to hear the wing flaps. It's incremental. You're not going to lose. So, as a result, Bracket one and two can actually play together just fine. As long as the people playing Bracket two are fine with you being on some garbage. The line is a bit more nebulous here, right? Like it's much more muddled. It is total, and again, because there's so much mindset to it too, there's plenty of themed decks where it's like, dang, this kind of rips. Like I can do something. And if you play with the intention of like, okay, well, I'm at a higher bracket. It isn't just exhibition for them. Tight. I can adjust my play accordingly. Whether I have the tools there or not is maybe another thing into itself, but I can play at the level that they're playing at. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think the differences is what you think about when you're building the deck. And in the game, they're kind of similar. All right, so let's talk about how to build Bracket one. Cause I do think that this is a question that I get a lot, which is like, so you have all these funny ideas. How do you actually think about that? How do you get your cool ideas? And the answer is just sort of like, mining the stuff that makes you laugh, right? It is. We've discussed it. It's like sometimes you just get the fixation on something like, I'm building horses and no one can stop me. It's like, tight, no one's gonna stop you. Go for it. Yep. And we were never gonna. Under no circumstance were we gonna involve ourselves at all in this endeavor. So go for it. But yeah, there's something that comes up as funny. If you have an interaction in a game with like two cards and you're like, man, this was too much or like this always ends up being something wild, how can I like, you know, incentivize that happening again? Are there other ways to make similar things happen? Like where it can be, you know, maybe one of your themes is voting. Sure. You're not gonna get anything super amazing out of it unless you kind of make the, build for it. But if all you do is vote and never pass anything, it's like, yeah, my deck is Congress. Check this out. Welcome to Congress. It's a nightmare here. Don't we all hate this? But you can at least have a good laugh over it. Yeah. All that being said, it's, you know, you can pull so many things as inspiration from other stuff. You can see a commander and just be like, dang, this looks, dang, this looks sick. Looks fun. I want it. Yeah, it looks fun. Thank you. Get so used to cursing on your show. You gotta drop back into respectability. Yeah. There's just a lot of things you can draw from. So like, it can be an idea. You know, the second I mentioned to people who are also very, you know, music-brained that I made a deck after my favorite band, the immediate response has been, oh, I could do that for my band. It's like, yes, you should, you should. Absolutely can't. Absolutely do that. Can we do a battle of the bands? Right. Because that's awesome. How cool, that's what I'm saying. There's a pod. Find out which music's best. Because you just battled it out. On magic. Yeah. What are we doing here? Like, that's incredible. That's cool and fun. And it's like, it's become so immediately personal and you just, you get so much out of it because you're getting to kind of express something that's cool to you. You get to share it with people that you care about or even, you know, just bring people in a new thing if that is something that like, oh yeah, I know that band. I like them too. And oh, that's really cool seeing that come together as a deck. But it also can make you a better player because here you are now trying to find things that fit. Researching cards. Look at stuff. Yeah, you're gonna start researching cards. You're gonna use Scryfall. You're gonna learn the syntax but help on, you know, that Rachel hopefully described to you in an entire video that you should check out because it's a really great way to learn Scryfall because that is the best tool. I love that video. I love EDA Trek. They're sponsors for both of us. But oh my God, Scryfall, you guys. It's so powerful. Scryfall for stuff like this is knowing what you need and figuring out how Scryfall works to give you what you need because there's probably a way. Something we haven't mentioned yet is Scryfall has an art tagger. This is a crowdsourced thing that they've done. So players have gone in and tagged cards as like art horse, art bald, art. Ladies looking left. Ladies looking left, art hat. Like art cheese. Fire, cheese, food. All of these exist on there and you can go on and search for keywords and it'll show up in the art. It's not perfect, it's crowdsourced. It's never going to be but it's a great starting place. Like if you're in the skeleton community, art skeleton. Go nuts. So you type in art colon and then a keyword that you're looking for. If you're not sure what keywords to start with, start with a card that you know works. So start with like, I have a Dwarven pony. Definitely has a horse on it. You can go to Dwarven pony, you go to scroll to the bottom and it says Scryfall tags or something like that. Click that button. It'll show you all of the art tags. It'll show you all the mechanical tags. So you can click on the art tags and it'll be like, oh, horse in picture. Click on horse, all the horse cards come up. It's crazy, it's so cool. You should definitely check it out. And you need to be clear. This is not chilling, this is not sponsored. Like this is a tool to help you play magic and have more fun with it. So you should know about it and let it help you and make you better in all of the ways that you can be in this game. Because knowing what to look for, how to look for it and finding cool stuff that maybe nobody's seen is going to help make your decks feel cool and novel. Even if they, no matter what bracket they are, right? Like having something that just works and nobody expected, oh man, nothing feels better. Nothing feels more. It gives you a lot more agency in the deck building process, a lot more intentionality, which I think is really cool. Which circles back to bracket one. When you're doing your unhinged brain stuff. Yeah. So yeah, start with a theme that makes you laugh. Like a card, that's awesome. Start with a personal passion, like a band or an artist or an animal. Start with a character you love. Maybe you're a big Shondra head or Ugin. And you're like, I'm going to build all this stuff that Ugin likes. That's cool. Eugene is going to have a place in my home. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Ugin's really powerful. He's really good. But like, you know, if you have to play all the cards with Ugin in the name, that's kind of a lot of garbage. Yeah. Start with a joke that you think is really funny. Where you're like, you know what? My idea is going to be like Dan Sheehan did a deck. I don't know if the deck list exists anymore, but it was themed around the thing, the movie The Thing. And it was, it was Rinn and Sarri. But it was full of Eldrazi. Well, what was it Brian just did? He did the regalia and said it was the Eldrazi exploring the multiverse. Yeah, like Eldrazi road trip. Eldrazi two different lands and the Eldrazi. That's fun. In the car. That's the point. Does it make your deck better? No, but it makes it more of a laugh. But it was unhinged and the delight to play against because of course it's Brian. That deck's sweet. And he's still doing very well. It's still very powerful. Yeah. It's still powerful, but you, so see how you can take that joy and that impetus and drive of bracket one and apply it elsewhere. You can make cool themed powerful decks and like take it to. You totally can. So explore this space. Yeah. It will only benefit you. Yeah. And keep in mind that like we said, bracket one, bracket two can really blur. Yes. In terms of what the games look like. So you can take a bracket one deck and play it in bracket two games and be like, oh, I'm a little disadvantaged because of a self-imposed restriction. But I do have a place where I can actually play this. That's where you're gonna get real creative. I would say this less often starts with like a commander. Sometimes it does. It depends on if they have something just kind of like, I've never seen this before. I think the best way to start with a commander and kind of go bracket one is to see something that is not supported within those colors. So you have, you know, any number of things. I can't pull it straight from my brain because the coffee hasn't hit yet. Don't worry about it. Esper Landfall. Sure. So you get deck and black played. And how the heck do you make this work out? I don't know. Ask Murph. You can find a deck list or you can challenge yourself and see what kind of things you can make happen with that. Because of course there's gonna be, you know, like Landfall cards here and there, but like explore that space. And it's going to expand your horizons, both with cards, with mechanics, and how you can make things work, see interactions. And again, that does nothing but benefit you. And I would start from a really strong core idea. Start with the restriction before you start looking at cards. Because if you start without the restriction, you build the deck and then you have to cut cards. And that's like painful to be like, I'm making the deck so much worse. So what you'd have to start with is like, okay, it's gonna be all pictures of horses. And I won't even consider cards that don't have a picture of horses. Nope, sorry. And if it has a rider on it, I will consider it strongly. It's in the maybe pile. It's a maybe. It has to earn it. Who was it? Jim and his brother had a great strategy that he was telling me about of just like keeping things not the same and kind of again, having to explore the deck building aspect of, hey, here's what you wanna do, build the deck. Hey, cool. Build it with none of those cards. Yeah. All of the staples that immediately come to mind. Throw them out. Yep, try again. Do it without those. Pretty cool. Do it with only five of them. Like force yourself to expand the horizon, see where it is and see what else is out there outside of the top recommendations. Like there's what almost 30,000 unique cards. And more every day. Friends. You'll find it. It exists, I promise. That'd be weird. Might have a weird restriction, but go for it. Yeah, and keep in mind like bad decks make the deck fun and interesting, like a big part of bracket one. There is a four mana sorcery speed removal spell in here called guild. And it turns it into gold. It turns it into gold. It's four mana exile target creature and you get a gold. Cause you turn that creature into gold. And it is a gold Pegasus. It sure is. And it's like the most pony removal spell that exists. That card will never leave this deck. Because it's the purest form of pony removal. And it's terrible. It's half your turn. There's not much ramp in this deck. But the fact that it is so purely on theme is one that I found because I was in pursuit of the theme rather than in being in pursuit of building a deck with a horse as a commander. Yeah. Okay. Like you were saying, bad cards make the deck fun. Oh right. So you mentioned your pony's a guild. So I had, I built Merkle. And it was all based on like two interactions, which was such a terrible idea. And that's why it was so much fun when I pulled it off. It is just all the good fun enchantment creatures. You eat them. They come back as enchantments. Right. Well, the creatures get exiled when they come back as enchantments. For real. So I used one of the more broken cards in the game, Isochron Scepter, which is immediate eye roll, great dramatic reversal. We're all so tired of it. No, you put it with pull from eternity. And you take that creature out of exile and you put it right back in that graveyard where you could reanimate it. Like magic intended. All right. Exile who? Here's the busted card doing one thing. Okay-ish, I guess. Yeah. I mean, Noren uses Kiki-jiki to copy a sticker creature. Like, and I play Kiki-jiki and I'm like, don't freak out. That's why we're saying commit to the bit. That's where you can play busted stuff. And the creatures like, no, no, no, no, guys, you don't understand. Hey, the worst I will copy is the solums in Malakram. I swear. You have no idea how locked in I am on this. Again, with my Attraxa enchantress deck, assuredly not an exhibition deck in any capacity. Very powerful. But here we are. It's just in Trantris Triggers. The whole point is for me to deck myself before anybody can take me out. Attraxa's there for colors. So when I play, bring Attraxa out and just like, hey guys, but really not like that. Like I'm going to pillow for myself. You cannot touch me. And I'm going to see if I can get to the bottom of this before you make my life full of Ptero. I will kill none of you. Yeah. I'm racing you to my death. I'm trying to beat you to killing me. And the success condition is of course that I have, you know, things like Starfield of Nyx, Opalescent. So like, I can't turn all my enchantments into creatures. I won't. But I'm going to let you know like, I could have done the thing, but I'm going to do this thing. But I didn't. I'm going to kill me. I'm the problem. Yeah. And I'm going to get rid of her right now. I'm the problem. I'm going to get rid of her right now. My goal is to be the problem and the problem for myself. And the solution. Yeah. I'm going to just. I love that. I would also say like, if it takes a long time to build, that's OK. I think like taking, we're so used to going on the internet and being like, I found the whole list. I built it in two hours. Something really cool about Bracket One is you're, I'm still finding cards with ponies on them. Where I was like, they printed a sudden edict with a unicorn on it or it's a pegasus. Oh, yeah. But it's this like pink pegasus on it. And I was like, what? Why did I not? It's a secret layer. I've never seen it. I'm up and up. People tag me in pony pictures. I find them. OK. But you can be going through scrypho. You can be going through a bulk box or you can be looking in a case. And you can see a card. They're like, is that a pony? That. Is that what I need? I think there's a pony in there. I think this is it. Yeah. And you're like, I can. I'm going to buy that. Does anybody have a quarter? You can still discover things in the way that you used to be able to where you don't have the tools to answer all of your questions. You're still going to be surprised. You're still going to see a card across the table from you and somebody else's unrelated deck and be like, holy crap, that has a horse on it. And they're like, yeah. And you're like, that's important to me. I also think that having thematic like bracket one S-decks like this gives you another lens to look at new cards from. And when new sets come out, maybe there's something that just aggressively not powerful or just does not work with anything like why did you print this? And it's like, because it's going in my duel of the fate step, don't you understand? It's like, it just opens so many ways of looking at things and interacting and like being in this space. This is so true. When Lord of the Rings was coming out, I was like, there are going to be two horses. Bill and Shadow. I know there's going to be. And months before this set came out, I was like, there are ponies coming. And I don't know what they're going to do. I could just see it by my side. You just like slowly pulling up the edge of the desk or clenching your hands on it. Nobody else is excited to see this. But I'm bringing them. And they're like, what are you? I'm so excited to see what Gandalf does. And you're like, no. Shadow fax is coming. Show them the meaning of haste. That was the greatest flavor text maybe of all time. It was so good. And it's really bad in the deck. But it's there. It doesn't matter. Because it's some of the best pony art that they've come out with in the last couple years. Because it has its skin on. I'm going to commission you with skinned horses. Please. And horses with skin for tokens. Please, God, stop taking the horses skin off. All right. I just can't emphasize enough. If you're listening to this and not watching this, there's a lot of communication that's happening non-verbally at all points. Oh my god. Yeah, watch the videos. They're good. If you want to get another perspective, it behooves you to watch us become more and more unhinged. I just don't even know. What could each other and let the wavelengths happen? I don't even know where we are in this outline. I want to be very certain. There's a certain kind of girl magic happening right now, and I'm very into it. We're going to be here all day, and you guys are going to be patient. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go in the comments, and you're going to say, hey, thanks editors. They have so much to dig. I'm so sorry. OK, let's talk about the man of base. Look, there's only half a page. We're doing great. We're doing great. We're great. So different people have different restrictions based on the man of base. I would say you want a functional man of base so you can show off your ponies. But if you can make a man of base inside of your restriction, that's even cooler. I'm in the place where if there's a land with a horse on it, it's in the deck. Correct. For sure. There's no question. But there aren't many lands with horses on it. So I play other lands. But if you're playing a restriction where it's like, everything needs a picture of a moon in it or whatever, then your lands should try and put a moon in all your lands. The nighttime. Yeah. Like you're trying to match the vibe, as much as you physically, as much as you possibly can. Remember, the goal is commit to the bit. The intention is the bit. Yes. OK. Let's talk about gameplay because this is de-emphasized in this bracket for sure. And it can be hard to find. It feels like it's kind of de-emphasized everywhere. And I get why. If I may, for a moment, we have a lot of players that have come in recently. And by recently, I mean single digits of years. Yeah. If not low single digits. I mean, we're talking about universes beyond influx players. Exactly. A lot of players. So I have tried to expound on this elsewhere. But these players, especially for those of us who may be longer in this format, more entrenched, or have seen the changes as things have moved on in time, is that this format came in as their on-ramp. This is how they learn. And so many times, when you play games with your friends, you win. That's what you're going for. That is part of the goal. That is part of the calculus of interacting with your friends in that setting is that you're trying to win. Or at least trying to be good. So there is absolutely a drive and impetus, a desire to get better, to be better, to find the most optimized things. And it's strange because while this format has been welcoming people and it's kind of not lost it, but it's de-emphasized the, hey, you don't have to do that here. Because this is the way a lot of people interact with Magic now. It is the primary way a lot of people interact with Magic now. And because of that, it's totally reasonable for that nuance to have been lost. It's very hard to convey. It is not like there's an easy way to do it because the stuff that we have to put out needs to stay interesting, needs to have a pace to it that is not molasses in January. So there's a lot of factors contributing to the kind of like stepping back of like, OK, well, yeah, you can play theme, but check out the sitcom. Nobody's wrong here. I need to be very clear. It just makes sense that it's harder to find the stuff when so many people's on-ramp approach and knowledge of it is based on a more competitive angle. Not that that's necessarily the mindset, but that's what you do in games. Trying to end it. I want to be the one that comes out on top. So having these meandering thematic, what are we doing here is kind of a strange disservice to learning the game if you have to interact in other ways. So, long story short, it can be harder to find this. It is worthwhile, like Rachel is going to suggest on the outline here, having theme nights, challenging yourself with deck building, even boxing leagues. All of these are great ways to like expand, kind of pull back, still be able to have a way to explore this that isn't just focused on, hey, thanks for the great game. I'm so excited to have won. And on to the next one. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts about this and I'm trying to distill them. We're in an interesting place because there are so many new players and I think there's a very common arc for players where you start playing and you're bad at the game. You're like, I'm losing all the time and I feel like any game that I play, I just get wrecked and I'm going to learn, I'm going to grow and I'm going to like figure out how to win. And I think it's one of those things where you're like, yes, that makes sense. And they learn and learn and learn and they get to the most powerful end and either stay there because they found their place and they're super happy or they're like, okay, now I know how to do this. Now I figured out how to be powerful. I'm going to walk things back. I'm going to challenge myself. I'm going to make the hoop higher. I'm going to like strength training kind of thing where I'm going to start playing lower bracket stuff. I'm going to start challenging myself with more difficult wing conditions, that kind of thing. I'm in a real mill era. I built two mill decks. Where did you go? I don't, and it's because of me. I had a very aggressive mill era. Yeah, now I hate it. Yeah, you know, and it's because I was like, that's a hoop I haven't jumped through before. And I think learning that that arc is like, happens and is natural. And we're in this part where a lot of new players are developing their skills. And I think it's important to develop your skills in magic. I think a lot of people look at this channel and say that this channel is directly responsible for the format speeding up. But I think what we do is give people what they're interested in and we make people confident to make their own decisions when they're deck building. I want everybody to be making educated and confident decisions when you follow the rules and build with heuristics or you decide to break it. Because I build a lot. I build really well. I've really developed this skill. I also built this. And that's something else that's a different kind of thing. And that's why I can jokingly say all the time, if you're like, you need to be running this many lands, I'm like, no, you don't. You can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. And I'm here to give you heuristics and help you feel educated when you make a decision. So when you decide that you're like, nah, I'm going to play 30 lands, you at least know why you're doing that. Absolutely. And you know the consequences of possibly doing that. Absolutely. Yeah. So it is an educational channel so you can feel empowered to make the decision, to make the kind of deck that you want to play and that you are excited to play. And that might be bracket one, which means throw a lot of that out the window. Who cares? But it's good to have the knowledge of it, right? Like you want to have the foundation to be like, OK, now that I know the rules, here's how I bend them. Here's how I ignore them in a way that is not going to be so detrimental to my gameplay or to the experience of other people at the table with me that we're all miserable and I wish I hadn't done this. But instead, I'm like, check this out. Yeah. Whoa. Whoa. So I would say when it comes to bracket one gameplay, it is difficult to find. But we are going to get to the point where more people are interested in bracket one. I think Universal's Beyond has opened a lot of interest and to be like, I want my entire deck to be Final Fantasy. I want my entire deck to be Avatar. And that kind of stuff is very bracket one-minded. Yes, effectively. Magic makes it very easy for you to play all the staples because they reskin all the staples to match every Universal's Beyond. So I would say most of those tend to live at the power level of a bracket two. But they can live next to bracket one just fine. They can play together just fine. You're like, my stack of all Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cards can play with ponies and it's good. Like, we're hanging. And I will probably lose to turtles. But that's OK. That's not what I came here to do. I came here to look at these ponies. I came here to show you this amazing horse collection. Yeah. But the gameplay is slow. You have to have patience for silliness. You want to be there to hang out. You want to be like, that's what the people who want to play a bracket one game are there to do is to be there for two hours and be like, whoa, what is that? Cool. All right. And wander off the table for a second. Yeah, exactly. It's also low pressure. Yeah. Where it's just like, yeah, you can take Tixie Baxie. Yeah, you can like, I'm not going to kill you if you make a mistake. I'm not going to eliminate a player before the game's over. That kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So I wanted to close this question by, well, I guess I have two questions for you. So let's start with this one. How do you find that bracket one decks change the social vibe at the table? I would say you're often the one playing the bracket one in a bit of a whirlpool. Sure. Where you're like, I'm playing boats next to Brian Kibler. And it's a tricky thing. But how does that being in that seat change the vibe of the table? I mean, it's not like what I'm going out to do. It's not my big noble calling. It's just how I like playing. It's like, I will run powerful stuff. And I often will say, and I pilot it badly. Because honestly, sometimes it's like, it's not that I don't care about the game. It's not winning or perfect play is not my primary goal nor focus. And because of that, it can change the dynamics in as much as it makes it more important that everybody's kind of on the same page. Like Brian knows, I am not going to be playing the way he would play. When I'll ask him, hey, do you mind looking at these cards or looking over the stack list, and he'll pull out like 20? And be like, all of these aren't that good, and don't do what you want. But when they do, it's better than anything else. So 18 will stay in, and I'll hear you out on these two. And we have very different focuses on how we build decks, which we definitely could probably fill a couple of podcasts on our very different philosophical approaches to building decks in the first place. But I think that it just kind of lowers, like you said, it lowers the pressure, it lowers the temperature. It is also very important that you know your pod and you read the room. If you're going there, everybody's kind of like, you know, you can tell. The vibe's a little crunched, we're burnt out and everything. Please don't come in with the most high energy, high, I need everybody to pay attention, you're all gonna get an attraction, and you all have like six triggers that I'm giving you. Hey friends, love you mean it, not right now. It does, if you are the only bracket one, I say that you still have agency at that table, and you still need to know like, hey, everybody else is playing something more powerful than mine, maybe that's not exactly their headspace, but like I can't take it as a personal attack if you know something's gonna come after me and I just don't have an answer for it. You're playing magic. Or exactly, you are still playing magic, the gathering. And additionally, you can adjust your mindset too, that like my deck is a bracket one, it is a little bit goofy, I can always not make the goofiest play, and do something that will keep me in the game. Like there's, I would say that being an only bracket one deck means you have probably a bit more of an obligation to be socially aware of what's happening at the table, and how everybody else is interacting at the table. But if it's a bracket one pod, God bless. Oh yeah, go nuts. Just go nuts, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big part of like, why my decks still run board wipes, why I still have removal spells. Like I still wanna participate in the game, I still wanna be like, I don't wanna be sitting in the corner and not impacting anything, and being like, look at this, look at that, look at this. I still wanna be able to play magic, I still wanna be able to be like, you know what, pony deck to the rescue, four mana sorcery speed removal. Check out that gold piece. Get rid of that really expensive card. Thank you. That's cool, it's not gold. Didn't think I'd have the answer to do, but it did. On my turn, for four mana. And for four mana, and I will do nothing else, let's turn pass. You're the hero of the story for the minute. But I get to do it, yeah, I still interact with it. So like being able to participate in the game is a big part of it, and I do think like you add something to the table that is like, oh, we all get permission to do something a little dumber, we all get to goof around a little bit more. But yeah, keeping in mind something we've talked about on this channel is there's a difference between a PC deck and an NPC deck. Yeah. I would say an NPC deck is, comes to the table but knows they're not gonna be like, what everybody talks about from that game. Right. And a player character deck, the pony deck is there to be like, hi. I'm the main character of this time. I'm fine. And you're gonna hear from me, and knowing when that's, you're like, I've been the player character of the evening, I'm going to tone it down. I'm gonna let somebody else shine in this moment. I think is a big thing to learn about game night, where you're like, okay, I have some decks that are the center of attention, and some decks when I've won a game, and I need to just like sit back and be fine. And I think that, you know, the other thing to consider, and it feels silly to have all these caveats, but we just, it's more that we just wanna be clear. Like so much of this is meant for play with new people, with a fresh pod, with people you haven't interacted with a lot, or this is the first time you're sitting down with them. All of this is guardrails to make sure everybody can walk away, being like, that was an overall positive experience. Once you've all established a rapport, once you've made friends with people, guys, the rules don't have to matter. It's all up to you. None of us are gonna come kick down your door and be like, I'm sorry, that pony has a rider? That's not gonna happen. We're not gonna do that. I would like to report to the bracket police. Yes. Police? And you're like, no. The time we did the enforcement thing on April Fool's and people thought we were serious. Anyway, but you know, all of this to say, we're giving you all this information because, again, like Rachel just mentioned, this is educational. We want you to have a bunch of information and tools in your arsenal to make the best experience for you and the people you're playing with. Again, it's a social game. We're not playing by ourselves with three adversaries. We are with people we have to interact with at the table. Commander loves making a deal and making, giving you reason to interact with somebody else for a way that may be only positive for you in that moment and may be detrimental down the line. It lets you have so much more than just the cards on the board. And because of that, we're giving you tools to streamline that, make you have a good time. But once we get to the point where this is my established thing, go wild, have the time of your lives, do what you want, we love you having fun. And we're just trying to give you more tools to make having fun easier. Yeah. All right, let's move on to misconceptions about this practice because I think there's a lot of them. What do you think is the biggest misconception for you? That it's just piolo cards that sucks. Bad cards. Yes. Bad bad? Nothing but bad cards. People think of like 100 random cards that I've put in a pile and I haven't thought about. The colors match, yeah. Like, and I think this bracket, excuse me, is extremely intentional in terms of how a deck is built. It's much more thoughtful than it would lead on. Yeah. I think that the lack of intent towards an absolute dominating win is misconstrued for an inability to play. Yeah. There's absolutely decks that function here. This isn't going to be a super, super powerful deck. It's not going to do crazy over the top things necessarily. But it is here to play magic, participate in the game. It should have removal spells and board wipes. It should make the table more fun to be at. But also, you're a commander deck and need to behave as one. So it's not just like, it's not just like, nobody has these decks of just stack of bad cards. And you're like, yeah, that's not what bracket one is. Nobody's saying that. And like, first of all, people do. But that's not necessarily what bracket one is necessarily. It's very intentional. It just has a different goal. Yeah. So this is where Soul Talisman might take over a soul ring. Yeah. Why are you playing that? Don't worry about it. I can. Go stack. Legal card. I think another one is like, every type of deck is a bracket one. No, incorrect. You're like, my thing is elves. Actively incorrect. I would like to introduce you to some scion of the Ur Dragon. My theme is dragons. Yeah. It's bracket one. Super bracket one. That's somebody bringing Brian's deck up to me and being like, see, it's dragons. It's thematic. It's one. It's like, this is the meanest. No. Stop saying, no. That's not real. Type old decks with synergy that's supported from Wizards of the Coast. Not theme one. They're not. They're not bracket one. They're mechanical decks. They're decks that you play a lot of dragons and you play the dragons that are good with dragons. Energy that is supported by Wizards to make a functional and powerful deck. You're probably bracket two. You might be bracket three, especially Ur Dragons are probably bracket three. So it's like, if the theme, if the chosen theme, is improving your deck, is adding something to your deck, it is likely not a bracket one theme. Great for you. But it's not bracket one. My theme is doomsday. You're like, that's a win condition. That's like, that's a plan to win the game. So just think about it, like you're putting some kind of box that makes your deck harder to achieve. And being like, well, I'm only using elves in this deck. Yeah, Lathral exists, friends. It doesn't make your deck harder. It doesn't make it harder to do anything. It makes it much easier. In fact, elves are very powerful. And you know that. So you have play elf. Yeah. So I know there's like, well, cats are a less supported archetype or dogs are a less supported archetype. And you're like, yeah, this line is wishy-washy. I would say cats are very powerful. But if you're like, well, I'm only doing like house cats. Like no lions, no Johnny, like muscly, like human cats. Fair, good restriction. Honestly, cats have the problem that horses have, where like horses never have skin and cats are never cats. They're always like, man, cats. You're like, inside cat. You're like, no, you're not. Look at my six pack. You're like, why am I uncomfortable looking at this cat? Do you go to the vet? Or do you have a doctor? Paws are fingers. I don't know. So it's, you're trying to make your deck worse. You're trying to make it more difficult for you to achieve victory, not easier. Yeah. Or at least more unhinged. Yeah. Bacon. Listen, again, two card combo. Yeah, OK. Eight card combo. How did you manage this? I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. Wow, you did it. OK, so that's the next one. How about just no one plays bracket one? Be the change you wish to see. Yeah. It's so simple. Yes, bracket one is the least populated bracket, for sure. Best one. But it's awesome. And it's one of those things where it's like, people do build this. I put out a thing where I was like, hey, send me your bracket one deck. I got hundreds of responses. I probably have 300 decklists sitting on Twitter and X right now that are people being creative and building a deck that is trying to do something weird and dumb. And then a few people who think monocolor decks is bracket one. That's not accurate. That's a monocolor deck. That's a monocolor deck that blues very good color. It's fine. So it's just there are people. And if you want to play bracket one, you should build bracket one. And then there will be more bracket one players for you to play with. Yeah. And again, the theme nights can't emphasize that one enough. Yeah. Hey, bring your weird little guys. All creatures can only be two foot tall. Imagineable. So tiny bones, fibletip, rocket off. Let's go. That's really funny. Only shorties? Only shorties. Short kings only. Yeah. Mention it. There's so many weird things that you can go for. And then just see how am I supposed to make this work and do it. And then figure it out. Then you have a crazy thematic deck. Maybe it is a little bit more powerful than bracket one. But when you play it with the intent of just like, oh, damn. This is just fun. It can just be fun. Yeah. All right. I want to move on to a big question that I get asked a lot. When the bracket system was designed and when we've gone through a series of revisions, a lot of people will come and look at the bracket system and say, do we even need bracket one? No one plays it. So Olivia, does the bracket system need bracket one? Yes. Yeah. Why? Because it feels weird to quantify anything by the lowest power level otherwise of it's a deck that plays and you try to win. There is, again, as I've belabored this podcast, there is this place where this is the sandbox where you get to try anything. And I think it is important since we have so many delineations of different power levels of like aggressiveness of deck, of cohesion of deck, removed from intent. It does make sense to have it very plainly laid out. It's fine to play bad cards and there's a place for you explicitly to do that. You're not wrong. It's cool. It's good. It is unhinged and something new and you don't get to do that anywhere else in magic. Yeah. It does need to have a space. I would argue that Commander is the space in its entirety and that the brackets are actually not needed for one because one is Commander and that brackets two through four and CDH are needed to delineate approaches to how to play the game outside of that. Sure. It's a magma hot take. Roast me in the comments. I probably won't read them. Love you bunches. But I just think that like Commander is always intended to be the sandbox, the place that you can play with weird stuff. It does work. It doesn't work cool. We know you can do powerful stuff. You can do powerful stuff. And I think that the most important thing that we're getting out of brackets is actually how to delineate. Hey, now that we are playing with powerful stuff and this is a very easily broken thing, how do we not break it? How do we approach it where we can all come in, break it similarly and not feel like we're just getting, you know, ruffle stomped? I think we learned a lot from CDH because CDH was a small community. It was a small thing that got a name and got people supporting it and got developed a meta and like built itself out of creators that felt passionately about it. And I think that starts from a name. And something about bracket one that I think needs to exist is if we don't make space for decks that are bracket one, they won't grow. Yep. I'm nodding. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, it's like if you have five flower beds and each one is the bracket, we know that there's the fewest flowers in CDH. We know there's the fewest flowers in bracket one. But if we just eliminate the flower bed for bracket one and expect them to try and grow in bracket two, they're not going to because they're not as powerful because they're trying to do something different. So we are trying to build out a space where it is explicitly good and cool and we want you to do something different and weird and hard. And I mean, I would argue that, you know, getting rid of the flower bed for number one, for bracket one would put us back in the spot that made commander happen in the first place, which was a respite from playing best of. It's always going to be this. It's always got to be winning. Here are your staples. These are the cards you always put in these decks. And just that competitive drive like commander was made as a step back from competition. It was made for honestly bracket one of being, but what if I play something from visions and Theros together? What if they kiss? What happened? Yeah. You know, like this was the place to find those weird interactions to play the pet cards that didn't have homes anywhere else. So like it's so important that they explicitly have a home here. This is the home of all those things that don't make it in other spots. Like that's the premise here. And like, how are you supposed to find people who are doing this if you're like, hey, I want to play something that's like not on the brackets. Yeah. Like that's so much harder than saying I'm trying to play bracket one. I know there's not a lot of bracket one players, but I can put out this call. I can put up the bat signal for my bat bracket one. Actually, bats are supported now. Oh yeah, that's true. They are. But that's okay. Bats are still pretty bad. You got one set. You can live in bracket one. You can hang out with this. So it is small. It might stay small, but at least there's a place for it where we know that there's some amount of interest for it. And if we want this place to grow, if we want more players to find that, we have to make sure they have room. So I think bracket one is exceptionally important. I could not agree more. Even if it is small. Yep. Okay. Let's end up with some bracket one rules to live by. I want to be like, so this is a new section that I added this morning, but I wanted to just do an overview because I think we've covered a lot of stuff. So these are just like short things to keep in mind when you're building bracket one or when you're trying to play it. And the first one I think is your theme or goal should make your deck mechanically worse. The thing you're trying to do is not a good thing. Yeah. It's trying to play with only pictures of horses. That's not going to make for a good deck. But that's not going to make your deck better. I'm trying to do a five color wind condition in only one color. That is going to be very challenging. Yes. But we've got a place for you. I'm into it. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I see your adherence to the goal or the theme is more important than functionality. I'd argue I'd do that with every deck no matter what bracket. And that's probably why Brian wants to tear his very long luscious hair out with me. Well, that's why you're here. Exactly. I know it's meant as a compliment, but I'm just trying to... Yeah. I think it's really important that, again, the commitment to the bit is so crucial with this. Not to say that my Omen keel deck is a one. It's not. But having things like intruder alarm, which is solely there, not for anybody else, but to let me untap my creature so I can untap my boat so I can tap them again later if I need a blocker. It's not actually to make it better. It's for me to hold on and hope that maybe I'll be able to do something. Because if I get wiped, I just have a bunch of pilotless boats, and then what do I do? Right? That's like, yeah, you just have a marina. Yeah, exactly. And I'm wasteful. There's so many things that you can do with powerful cards that don't necessarily have a powerful effect or a less powerful one than might otherwise be anticipated. Don't be afraid of playing those. Just make sure that it's not something that's rocketing you to the moon. Like, ha ha, once I get this card, now it's actually bracket four. And instead it's like, why are you playing that? That's so dangerous. Hang on, six cards from now, it could make sense. This descent into awareness is only fun for all of us. That card is actually amazing. You should read it in the middle of the red. It's so great. Yeah, I think just being like, at the end of the day, if your deck doesn't work, that's fine, as long as it's cool. Yes. Embrace, imperfect cards. They're your friends. If you're like, oh man, I really wish they would print the perfect, they printed deadly rollick with a unicorn on it. They did. It also has Deadpool on it. But ignore Deadpool, there's a very prominent pony on it. And I was like, oh, I'm not taking Gild out. Right. And I did make space for deadly rollick, but it's one of those things where I'm like, where I was like, almost disappointed that they gave me like one of the best removal spells in the format for the pony deck. And it gets in, it makes the deck more functional, but it also like. Yeah, don't be afraid to say something that's objectively better for the deck and be like, yeah, well, I gotta take, no you don't. No you don't. It's fine. Can you put stuff that makes you laugh? You should. Put the objectively better card in a deck that's objectively better. Yeah. Don't worry about it. Optimize for joy. Yes. Optimize for whimsy, optimize for humor. I, it will make your games more fun. It will make you happy when you flip through the deck. Yep. Have a story for your cards. Like, I remember when I played this and this happened and we all had a great time. Like, that's nice. I played my pony deck against a buddy's Uro deck. Yeah, it was, it was not a good idea. But I did it. I did it and it was fine. And he attacked me with an Ulamog. The pony deck he did. He came at me. Yes. How rude. And I ended up taking a picture of a dwarven pony blocking an Ulamog next to like a little, my little pony toy. And it was such a great magic moment for me that I like, I'll never forget that game. I love that. Right? Where you're like, okay, well, this Ulamog is just going to gobble up this little tiny woodland pony. And that's sad. And I want that to be on your conscience. It needs to be memorialized. I took a picture and I tweeted it years ago. I'll see if I can find it. I don't know. It may have been a story, but it's a moment that I've never seen before and I'll never see again. There was a game I played with Jim. I think it was when I was streaming and sounds getting real low. I'm about to try to end it out. I have two dead cards in my hand. And one of them is a Hallow, which is just white for prevent all damage caused by target spell. Gain that much life. And my buddy went out with that blasphemous act. And there was no better moment than like this. This card that is so situationally mediocre is going to. It's incredible right now. I don't remember what happened for the rest of the game. I probably died even with 128 life from Commander in Average. Who cares? When I just got to sit there, smile, let everybody go through. I like to respond and just smash. What is this card? It's like, don't worry about it. It works. The important is really good right now. It's got a cat on it. You're like, how long? Cat person, but it's fine. Long as that been in your hand. Since the beginning, we were at the end of the game. I have never cast this. This is my first time having it leave my hand. And never again shall it see the battlefield. Nope. But this one instant. But I will remember. This one time. So every time Hallower of Blasphemy's stat comes up, just bling the little twinkle to my eye. Because I remember that one time I gained 128 life instead. Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. I got it. I was playing with my brother and he cast some removal spell that was from, it was like a single black for, I think it's a sorcery, might be an instant, but it's like Exile target colorless creature. Sure. And we were like, man, we got to figure out something to kill this academy manufacturer. And we were talking at the table, we're like, we're just going to get overwhelmed with this academy manufacturer. And he untapped and cast this card. And we were like, what is this card? Who would play this? And it just magically was exactly the card. And we were like, okay, you should not have this in your deck. However. But right now it's very good. Again, I don't want you to take the wrong lesson. This is not a broken card. This is very bad. This is, but one situation. This is the actual corner case for this card. But I'm so glad it's here. That's it, right? That was great. That was good corner cases. Yeah, it was great. It could happen. And I would also say make opportunities to play it. Yes. I don't do this enough. This is like one of my favorite decks in the entire world. And I play it maybe twice a year. So we got to fix that. I know, because it's like, I, because I don't be like, I want to play ponies. Can you bring something that can play against ponies? And my pod will. But when you're going to a game night, you average to the middle. You're going to bring like your threes. You're going to bring your twos, because that's what most people play. Okay. Next time you're on commander, I'll bring the ponies. I'll bring ponies. I'll bring Dave Matthews Band of Bees. I'll bring, oh my gosh. A sword. Let's do it. Okay. Let's do ponies versus Dave Matthews Band. It's a date, Rachel. I love it. But yeah, make space for it, because it's sick. You can do it. You could be the one who makes bracket one popular. I mean, that's the thing. You're nor in the wary deck. Yeah. Again, one of my favorite games to have actually played, I cannot stand attraction. Stickers make me want to punch everything in the throat. And I had the best time playing against it. But. Because it's just, I'm watching Rachel trying to pin the tail on an unsticky donkey. And he's like, no. Stop it. I don't want to. He's afraid of the adhesive. It's tough. Listen, I understand. As someone with sensitive skin who sometimes has a reaction. All right. We're going to talk about our bracket one decks in just a few minutes. I'm going to open this case and show you. It's really mostly because that's why I built the deck. I would have brought my other ones. I know. I should have told you. No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. But if we intrigued you and you were looking to build your first bracket one deck or your second or third. You can support the show by going to cardkingdom.com slash command. Card Kingdom has a ton of cards all in one place, which is why I like it. Especially when I'm building a new deck and I know I need to buy like 30 cards. I don't want to be chasing envelopes through the mail. I want them all in one pile showing up so I can get playing. Get them sleeved up. Get them going. And I like that you can get all of the versions that you want on one page. Genuinely, I don't have time to go through all of the different versions on all of the different sites. The card kingdom makes it very, very easy to get all the cards you want in one place. And you can support the show if you use our affiliate link over at cardkingdom.com slash command. And while you're using affiliate links, you got to go to ultrapro.com slash command to get all the accessories. You need a deck box to match your bracket one deck. You need art sleeves to match your bracket one deck. You need the right play mat. Amitment to the bit is the most important part. And having the right accessories goes a very long way. So you can get everything that you're looking for at Ultra Pro. Especially if you've got need like Fallout stuff or if you need Final Fantasy stuff, you're building around those worlds. They have a ton of really, really cool stuff. Plus, if you're into customization, you can get the new patchcraft deck boxes and binders. Those are the ones with you can put like Velcro patches on there. Super cool. All right, ultrapro.com slash command. All right, let us open the pony vault. Before we open, can I make one little pitch? Yes. Hey guys, please support the show on Patreon because Rachel is one of the absolute treasures of our community. I'm going to make you so mad at me for saying nice things at length about you, but I'm going to do it. This is one of the best people and resources and just like human beings we have here. I cannot emphasize enough how cool it is to be able to call Rachel a friend, how amazing it is to like have seen you start playing magic and now become the absolute powerhouse that you are. Please support her. Please support the show. Keep watching. Do the playlist since Rachel started and just put it on repeat. Play it forever. We want to reward all the good behavior. You are a treasure to the community. I'm so glad we get to work together and try to keep the formats like safe and solid. We'll look. I can't say enough good stuff about her and I'm just going to make sure all of you know it. If you didn't already and if you didn't, what the hell? Rachel's great. The community is a much better world because there's a lot more women in it and it started because women like Olivia and cosplayers held it down for us for a really long time. So I like we're at the point where there's more women than there's ever been. There's more and more every day. Magikons are incredible. I'm like welling up. They're printing my little pony cards and that's for us, baby. You guys can have your teenage mutant ninja turtles. Enjoy Warhammer Forty. Well, that is kind of cool. There's a lot of women in Warhammer Forty. Yeah. For everywhere. Anyway. But like. The Lisa Frank of it all. But they made ponies for me. So I just want to say thank you to everybody who held it down for a really long time and you've been the sword and shield for us casuals for many years. So. Giant man. I know. All right, let's look at some horses. Yeah, let's look at horses. Okay. First of all, I bought this on eBay. I bought this on eBay because I was like I have too many accessories. It needs its own case. This sorry for the audio. Okay. So oh my god, I'm inside. Inside there are little pony boys. Aren't they so cute? They're a hair too tall to stand in the box, which I hate. But here they are because there is a card that requires that you have toys. Yes, there is. Oh, she's really top. Howdy. It's the bangs. That's how I feel when my hair is blown out. This is so mid 90s coded. It's it's incredible. There's a couple of very serious bang moments going on. So this is this is deck box. It has many pictures of forces on it. And naturally that's the secret layer box that is full of dice and tokens. And I seriously feel like I'm a kid right now. It's like, oh my god, can I see your pony collection? I want to see your pony collection. It's so fun. So one of the cards requires a moon board. That's nightmare moon. Of course she needs a moon board, which means I needed six extra cards that have both ponies and moons. And there are enough. Rachel, I'm dying. I definitely was like distinguished conjure. Excellent secret moon in there and and like and secret pony and the pony's not being ridden. Moon is really in there. I know you got it sometimes you got it. You wanted this. I have a lot and I was like, you know, I love that art. That has the two things. I don't understand how I made like, but I the deck list is in will be in the show notes, but it is a blinged to the teeth. It is full of horses. I have the princess buttercup version of say because she is writing a momentous stallion. Yes. Or maybe just a horse. I don't know. Maybe it's a mare. Oh, I don't know. I don't know this horse. Personally, familiar with the horse. Yeah. Here's this deadly relic with the dead bull. I mean, you have to. I have to unicorn is clearly signed on in this case, but like clearly he's the move is the feature of this. Right. I need to get an altar as butter. Just like paint out. Oh yeah, they printed. So it's not in the episode because in Final Fantasy, they printed a unicorn that has removal on it. And when I when I we were playing the pre cons, yeah, and I saw him play it. I like got up and ran around the room. I was like, they put a little pro that has removal on it and it's pretty. And it's skin is on to really check. Are you actually a horse girl or okay. So I really was when I was a kid. I was really into it. I swear to God for show and tell. I brought in a book of horse poetry to like show and tell and like read a book of horse poetry. No, this is right. Ride horses. No, I was not allowed. But I wanted to very much. So I was just like a distant suburban fan of horses. I'm your alternate, right? Yeah. I had horses, but was not horse girl because they just lived on our lands. And instead of learning how to ride a bike, I learned how to tack a horse. Sure. Yeah. As one does. So I would go to school with like hay in my hair unbeknownst to me, of course, because I had to feed them in the morning for you. But there was no equestrian anything. Well, there's no glamor in it for you. We had no that we did not have the money for that. No, these were like, beaps, basically rescue horses. We just had the land and someone was like, hey, can we keep them here? And I'm just like, yeah, I get it. I get it. Hey, with the horse. Yeah. This is an interesting part of our shared history. We have not delved into it. So this is so funny to me. Bizarre. I am like so nearby being a horse girl. And I was like, I'm horse girl adjacent and I couldn't fully develop this because I lived in the suburb of Chicago. I was rural Northern California. That was not a thing that my family did or could afford. So I just had the one and would occasionally ride the backwards or over to my neighbor's house. And that's so cool though. In the other passenger, I just hang out with my friend. That's like a book. It was kind of sick. That's like, I was pretty sick, but. Oh yeah, I play the vampire forests because. Oh, I love that they all have the person's name on them too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So funny. I play the vampire forest because he's standing on a carriage. And though it's being pulled by horses. There are two visible horses. Technically there are horses in it. It is a more prominent vampire. I would like to. I can discern hooves. I would like to replace this one honestly. But it's a horse and it has horses on and rules are rules. They're on the bottom left or right. This is also, no, no, no, I just mean hide and see it because I didn't get the princess there. Princess bride. Yeah. This deck also has a very cool card that was given to me. Oh my God. I know. I know. I know. When I see crested sun mare from the secret layer that is full aggressive. This was actually my binder in the fifth grade. All I can think of is you. This card makes me think of you every time crested. So, okay. So there's one, you might have it. There's one card that's very special in here. The nominal triumph choice. Oh yeah. I tried to make the mana base as sparkly as possible because there aren't horses. Do you not have the foils for these? I don't know. I have some next. Okay. All right. I'm going to have to do that. It needs to be shiny. I do want to mention that there is a riding the dealer horse in here. I did a pack it up where I opened a riding the dealer horse from a P3K pack. And I opened garbage packs. That's a P3K? Yeah. I opened like really, really well. And then I opened this card and I was like, oh my God. This is like one of my pony grails. Like it's $300. I'm not going to buy it. Like it's ridiculous. Seriously? It's like a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah. For a pack fresh riding the dealer horse. And I was like, well, there's, you know, I'm going to play it. I'm going to do it. We're going to live the meme. And I didn't win. So I didn't get all the cards. Ben Bateman did. And he gave me the riding the dealer horse. And because he knew I had the pony deck and it was so now it's like in a place of honor where I can give a pony horsemanship. Oh my God. I love that so much. So that like there's a guy riding the horse. I know, I know, but it's a good story. So it'll stay. And here's the other thing. Again, all of this cleans back to story with friend. Friend knows something means something to you. Hey, I found this. Hey, I won this. Hey, whatever. One more piece of meaning into something that is so thoughtful because that's what Breca one is. It's very thoughtful. Come into the bit. Come into the bit. All right. Uh, thank you so much for watching this episode. We also say have to say thank you to our amazing team here at the command zone who edited this episode. Thank you to Karina Cruz, Josh Diaz, John Schneider, Garov Galati, Jamie Block, Jordan Bridge and Jake Boss, Becky Bell, Eric Lem, Manson Lung, Josh Murphy, Evan Limburg or Sam Waldo, Josh Lee Kwi and of course, Jimmy Wong. Thanks for watching this roller coaster of bracket one. We're here to help. Go look at ponies on the internet. It's great. Bye.