Best Commanders for Beginners | 740

Howdy Dorks, I'm Obeka, Splitter of Seconds! Warmer seasons are coming in quicker than a ride hook. Come back! Meaning it's high time to get back into fighting shape. Now good health takes upkeep, but lucky for you, up keeps my expertise. So if you're looking to eat better and save time, you ought to do what I do. Jump on the Factor Train! Choo choo dummies! Head to FactorMeals.com slash Command 50 off and use code Command 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until November 27, That's FactorMeals.com slash Command 50 off. See website for more details. Greetings, humans. You have entered the Command Zone. Your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander. Enjoy your stay. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Command Zone Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Weeks. I'm the weirdo Jimmy Wong. Nah, you're the cure the- Weird is cool. Weird is cool. You're right. Never mind. You're the weirdo Jimmy Wong. Cringe is also cool, kids. Still pretty cool. All the Gen Zers out there. Have you seen the meme of the cow is standing on the beach and it says to be cringe is to be free or something like that? I think about that cow all the time. I love that statement, but I haven't seen the cow and I want to be that cow now. Alright, well we're all gonna have visions of the cow. Very nice. So today's episode we are talking about commanders and specifically commanders that are very good. If you're at the beginning of your commander journey or you're trying to build a deck for somebody who is just starting out in magic. Yeah, teaching new players is a big part of the game. It's how everyone pretty much comes into the game. It's the real mentor or someone, the friend, the family member, a brother or sister that's like, hey, you want to play some magical gathering? Let me give you a hundred-pound-pound card. Look, and if you haven't said no yet, you should because it's expensive in here. Don't do it! Run! I'm just kidding. It's great. The water is fine. So if you're teaching somebody, if you're building a deck for them, we recommend you watch this episode. But also we did an episode about how to teach magic. The gathering, that was episode 646. Go check that out. We talk a lot about different techniques that you can use to be a good teacher and help get players to the point where they will actually keep playing, which is the ultimate goal. But if you are new to magic and you're just looking for a commander that suits you when you're just starting out, hopefully this episode can help you as well. Yeah, especially if you're building a new deck from scratch. That's a big one. Obviously, pre-cons, pre-constructed decks are out there as well. But we're going to talk about what makes a good beginner commander. Doesn't mean you're bad, by the way. Just means you're new to the format and it's a way for you to ease into it and still have fun. Yeah, and commander can get really complicated really fast. So what you want is a deck that is legible and that helps you make decisions and doesn't overwhelm you. And is fun. Yeah. And is powerful. So let's talk about a few things. I think the first one that a lot of people think of is one or two colors. Yeah, don't stretch yourself thin. I remember the first time I played, I tried to start with a three-color deck and I immediately went, oh no, I have no idea what I'm doing. Why can't I cast any of my spells? Why did I put necro potents in here? I can't cast it ever. I just never get to the end of my hand. When you're playing, like a lot of new players, because I've taught a fair number of new players, the most overwhelming thing is the decisions. You have all these cards in your hand. You have lands you could play. You could play them in different orders. You could cast the spells at different times. And some of the spells are modal. So you just have all of this abundance of decisions and you don't have a lot of information to feel like you're making an educated decision. So limiting the mana base to one or two colors just means that you can basically play whatever land is in your hand and you're probably going to be okay. It just eliminates some of the consequences of decision making that you don't necessarily have the background to support. Yeah, there's going to be a fair amount of take backsies when you play commander for the first time. Like, oh shoot, I should have actually played this land first because it came in tapped, etc. Playing a deck with less colors reduces that amount of fatigue and amount of having to be like, oh shoot, I messed up. Just because you just don't have as many mana peps to play with and you don't have to worry so much about like, oh, did I sequence my lands correctly? And I think for a lot of people too, just understanding the casting costs on the top right of the corner and adding it all up in your hand, making sure you have enough mana to do stuff can be a little bit complicated when you get too many colors. So yeah, keep it simple, one to two colors. Two colors I think is actually the perfect sweet spot. One color, mono color can actually seem a little boring sometimes for new players because it's like, oh, I only get access to one color. But yeah, one to two colors for your first commander. Yeah, the next thing is you should have a clear strategy that is written on the commander. There's a lot of commanders that tell you exactly what kind of deck they want and these are perfect for new players. They're ones that say, okay, you're going to do this and I'm going to give you that. And it makes it very clear when you're making decisions, like what order you need to cast things in, what types of cards and spells and, you know, creature types or whatever that you need to prioritize because your commander has the strategy written on it. Yeah, in entertainment we call it the log line. It's like, this is the, what the whole thing's about. You read the commander, you go, got it. I want to be about dragons. Oh, this is about making a lunch, a little goblins, et cetera. So the easier it is to understand just on the first reading of it means it's a good beginner commander as well. Yeah, like I think there's, I've seen examples where people say that like Galta is a good example for a good new beginner commander. And Galta is really cool card and you can build a pretty basic deck around it, but Galta itself doesn't say anything on it other than I'm a 12-12. So I would rather have a monogreen commander that says specifically what the deck is on it because then you're reading the commander and you already have a lot of information and context to read the rest of the 99 cards in. Yeah, and that's the basics of commander from a very simple perspective, which is you have your commander, you're going to play it, and every card in your deck wants that commander to be on the battlefield. Right. So if it's carrying the load of, this is what it's about on the card itself, it makes it a lot easier to understand for both the player and also the players around the table. Because also I would say when you're a new player and you're entering into a new play group, hopefully other people in the play group are around the similar experience level and not saying that everyone's at absolute beginner level, but the simpler it can be, the easier it is as well for that first game. Yeah. The next one is it should have some kind of value engine that can do some or maybe even all of the work for you. A powerful commander that helps you stay in the game by following simple instructions is going to give you the power to keep up with your friends who might be more experienced than you or have a more tuned deck. Or more, yeah, a more expensive deck, a more powerful deck, that kind of thing. You just having a value engine in the command zone gives you a lot of gas to keep up and feel like you're participating in the game meaningfully. Yeah. And the nice thing about this too is that you're trying to enter in at what we call a reasonable power level. There are some commanders that are must answer threats where it's a real feel bad. If you're building a deck or playing a deck in a new fashion, and the moment you play your commander, it just gets deleted off the battlefield by someone else. So, commanders that are have that value engine, they're arriving to the battlefield and they're saying, hey, we're here, we're going to do our stuff, but we're not so powerful that we immediately must get destroyed. It's great because it means it sticks around and is also able to do the stuff. Yeah, I remember playing at a game store again, somebody who was playing with their partner and they said that this was her first deck ever. Oh, cool. And he was like, I built this deck for her, so this is her first deck. She's still learning. And the commander was Joda. Oh, right. The Joda. It's like, uh-oh. And you're like, and on her first time she cast Joda and then he removed it right away. And I was shocked because I'd never seen Joda in play at that point. It was, this was years ago. But it was one of those things where I was like, well, why would you give her that commander if you knew that you had to remove it right away? The moment it came down. Like, that's so rude. Well, it's a must answer threat. Yeah, and it's one of those things where it is a powerful value engine, I understand. But also Joda's the kind of threat that players cannot leave on the board or they lose the game automatically. So it's a balance. It's also one of those commanders that requires a lot of mapping. And it's not great as a good beginner commander because I call it like invisible text. Something that says add plus five, plus five to everything or plus X, plus X. It's not on the card. It's floating midair and in your brain. And you have to relay that information. So those types of commanders also aren't great for beginner commanders. So we're looking for again, like simple to read, simple to understand, reasonably powerful, but not so busted that everyone needs to kill it on site. The next thing I really look for when I'm building a deck for new players is room to upgrade and grow into it. So you want a deck that is going to be something they can engage with, get excited about and buy cards to add to it. And I think that that, like that's a very exciting part of owning a deck and making it yours is being able to make modifications. So I don't think you want a deck that is so powerful that there's nowhere to go from there because you want them to be able to feel like they're customizing and picking out cards and growing into the deck a little bit more. Yeah, or if you're the person building the deck, one of the most exciting things about going to a pre-release or opening a booster pack is seeing a card in there and then going, wow, that actually fits really well with this commander. So I'll actually say a lot of good beginner commanders are typically not always more recent in magic card design because they happen to sort of be more, I'd say, they sort of fit into a larger category of cards and cards can go into that deck better as well. Sure. The other thing I want to mention is like, this is a lot of boxes. The commander you picked doesn't have to check all of these boxes, but it should check a couple. And the most important box to check is that they like it. The person you're building a deck for gets excited by this card. They like the art, they like the character, they like the effect. And you can get that by asking them just sort of basic questions in terms of like, what excites you more? Do you like big things or do you like a lot of things? Like that's a very basic question that they should have the context to be able to answer. It's like, would you rather something like cute and fun or would you like something like burly and violent? Those are very different vibes that you can follow and give them something that feels customized that fit how they want to engage with the game. Yeah, another good direction to look as well is like, what are your preferences in other games? So if you played MMOs like War of the Warcraft, were you the tank or were you the sorcerer? Or were you the healer or were you the mage? And finding, understanding where that vibe is coming from is great. We also introduce them into a game and understand, okay, this is the starting point where we want to go. Here's the broad category or color of magic that this sort of fits into. And then let's find something in that world that matches your playstyle and your vibe. Yeah. And I want you to keep in mind that the ultimate goal when you're building a deck for somebody else or when you're building a deck for yourself is to feel good enough that you can play again. You want to be excited about playing it. You want that repetition because it's not about the first time you play. It's about the second time and the third time and the fourth time. Is that how you become a better magic player? It's not going to happen overnight. Yeah. And I'd say a lot of people that build their first commander decks still have a version of that deck or something that calls back to that deck in their collection still. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll talk about that at the end of the episode as well. Yeah. We've got a couple of decks that I don't know. My first decks are still in my collection to some extent. Yeah, same here. Okay. We're going to talk about a lot of cool cards today. We're going to talk about coming some commanders that we hope you get excited about. If you want to support the show while you're shopping, you can go to cardkingdom.com slash command. They've got a ton of cards all in one place, a great place to go if you just received a decklist or if you found a decklist online or you just finished building yours. You can paste it into their advanced deck building tool. It'll tell you all of the cards they have in stock and the versions and the foiling and the price and the condition that they have in stock. You can pick the one that you want and hit buy and get playing. Card Kingdom has a ton of cards all in one place, so it makes it really, really easy to shop and you don't have to do a bunch of extra work to get those cards on your door step. So you can support the show if you use our affiliate link at cardkingdom.com slash command. And then head on over to ultrapro.com slash command because once you build that deck, you're going to need to sleeve it up in some cool looking sleeves, whether it's the apex sleeves with their awesome amazing designs or their mana eight line with the very sleek looking color symbols. If you're building that mono colored deck, ultrapro.com slash command has all of the game accessory needs to make your collection look really cool and feel great too with the shuffling. Oh man, teaching a new player to shuffle. That's a whole episode in and of itself, but it's way easier when you got good sleeves to do it with. 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Rachelle, the female sheep. I saw it, I'd be you, Ewing. You, Ewing. Ew. Ew. All right. Okay. Let's move on. So we're going to talk about a lot of different categories that you could consider commanders and give you some examples of some commanders that you could follow. If there's any that spark joy, great. Hopefully it works out. But we're going to start with the monocolored commanders. Yeah. Again, there's a lot of decisions to make in commanders. So eliminating choices in the mana base and eliminating land choices when you're playing make magic just less overwhelming and make your decisions less important. So you just see a plains, play a plains. That's it. I know I have a plains to play every single turn and I know which ones those are. And boy, it makes a deck much more affordable, I might add. Especially for your first deck. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got some examples of some monocolored commanders here. I picked ones that I thought sort of fit as many of the checklists as possible and are popular commanders and pretty powerful. So the white one I picked was Giada Font of Hope. And I actually have this deck. Yeah. It's so much fun. It is one in the white, two, two, flying vigilance, angel. Each other angel you control enters with an additional one, one counter on it. For each angel you already control. And of course it taps to add white, spend this mana only to cast an angel spell. This, my friends, is an angel deck. Yeah, it says angel twice. You know it's about angels. She's an angel. Actually three times. Three times. There you go. So the big thing about Giada is you read the card and you're like, okay, this is an angel deck. It's full of angels. Here's my angel commander. Angels are expensive. So we've given you a little bit of ramp to make sure that you can cast those angels on time. And they're going to get better and better as the game goes on. Bigger and bigger. Easy. And Giada also has vigilance so you can learn about attacking and then tapping in your second phase. A little sequencing questions. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, I think Giada is great. And she's a really popular commander. So it's one that we know that a lot of people have grabbed onto. It's actually a deck I built literally because they had a secret layer for it. And then I transformed the deck into a deck that I can give to new players or friends that aren't as familiar with magic because it's very simple to play. It's very fun to play. And boy, angels are pretty powerful. There. Yeah. The blue one I thought we'd go with for this episode is Talrand Sky Summoner. Oh, you didn't choose like Memnarch or something. Didn't. Didn't go with that. There's a lot of blue commanders that are extremely confusing to pilot. I think Talrand is a great example of what blue is good at. Yeah. And it says exactly what you, it wants you to do on it. It's too blue blue for a legendary creature, Merfolk Wizard. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, create a 2-2 blue drake creature with flying. Yeah. This is a classic just cast a bunch of spells in blue. Now people normally look at Talrand and some of them might go, oh wait, this is a control deck. Actually, no, Talrand can be really anything you want to do. Yeah. With just the coolest blue instances of sorceries. Cast cantrips, cast draw spells, cast bounce spells, cast blink spells. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. And that's a great thing about Talrand is it gives you board presence in blue, which is not always super easy to get. And it gives you, teaches you the power of flying and tells you exactly what it wants you to do, which is just cast stuff. Yeah. And the power of instance. Yeah, that too. Sorceries are cool too. Don't leave them behind. Yeah. Talrand's great. It's a very simple commander. Again, creating flyers, very similar to Giada actually or Giada, have you ever pronounce it? Is that you just create stuff that flies in the air and you can do the thing that wins games, which is attack. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, attacking and having creatures is the best strategy for new players and having, because it's very clear why creatures are good. There's stuff on the battlefield. They do damage to your opponents. They take people out. And they can block. And they can block. So they serve a lot of purposes in the game and they are pretty easy to pilot, especially with something like Talrand, where it doesn't really matter what you cast when, it still gives you the same amount of power. The black one was very tricky, I'll be honest. Yeah. Black monoblock commanders are some of the most powerful commanders in Magic. Extremely complicated. Yeah. Extremely complicated and oftentimes just busted. And even this one has an infinite combo attached to one single card right out the gate. But I do like your choice here. I picked Vito Thorn of the Dusk Rose. It's Vito time. So this is two and a Blackbird Legendary creature vampire cleric. Whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life. And then he has an activated ability that gives all your creatures life link. So this is a life gain deck. You're trying to gain life and your opponents are trying to lose life. Well, they're not trying. Well, you're trying to have them lose it. Yeah, exactly. But this is a very clear log line that's just, I'm going to gain as much life as I can and that's how I kill people. And occasionally you will use your commander's activated ability to do so, but most likely you're putting in cards that just gain you life. And trust me, there are plenty of cards in Black that do exactly that. And life gain is a very popular new player strategy because having a lot of life feels really powerful. You feel very safe. It's actually really relevant in today's commander meta as well, because life is just so very powerful as games get faster and faster too. Yeah. Vito's a powerful commander. And I think that's actually really important when you're building a deck for a new player or you're building a deck for yourself is starting with a commander that can support you because you need a little help. And Vito's the kind of commander that can support basically any life gain type cards. Yeah. And the cool thing about this too is that with Mono Black, there's a lot of directions you can go here. You can go into the, I'm going to gain a lot of life and then spend that life to do stuff. Or I'm going to sacrifice all my creatures to an Aristocrat strategy, which is also a pretty popular new player strategy. Actually just a popular strategy in general. Yeah. So I do like Vito a lot. It does open up a lot of things. New player alert. People will ask you, do you have an infinite combo in here? And you can just tell them yes or no. Because there is one card specifically that does go quite infinite with Vito. All right. Let's talk about the red one. This one was a little tricky too, but I went with the classic. Oh yes. This is one of my favorite cards of all time is Crenko Mobus. Two red red for a 3-3, a legendary goblin warrior. And you can tap Crenko to create X-1-1 red goblin creature tokens where X is the number of goblins you control. Super simple line here where it's just make a ton of goblins, make even more goblins. And then make so many more goblins. I know this breaks the rule a little bit of a kill on site commander, but I think Crenko is not as powerful as he used to be. Or man, he is tough as well. And he doesn't tap until the next turn. Turn after, yeah. But also I think if you're a new player or you're building a deck for a new player, you're not going to make the type of Crenko deck that just combos off on the spot. You're making a Crenko deck that plays a lot of goblins, uses Anthem effects to attack with a lot of goblins. So I would consider Crenko a very reasonable commander to start with as a beginner, and it has a lot of room to upgrade. People love their Crenko decks. Goblins are a beloved archetype with a lot of personality. And they always make new cool goblins. Yes. And it's notable that so far three basically commanders that we've talked about are Typal commanders. Yeah, that's true. So if Crenko cares about goblins, Giada cares about angels, and Vito can often care about vampires because vampires gain a lot of life. That's true. As they sock your blood. So it's nice because your cards all play very well with each other, and every goblin card synergizes with the other goblin card because they give them plus one, plus one, or they give them other keywords, or they allow you to do X, Y, and Z. So Crenko is nice in that way too, is that you can always take a goblin deck apart and use those pieces in another goblin strategy somewhere else. There's lots of two-color goblins that are really fun and powerful as well. So it's nice that Crenko is there just to be, he is the mob boss. He's just kind of the boss. He's the guy. He's the guy. He's the dude. The final one for green is one that I picked for very, very beginners. It's Ruxa Patient Professor. Ah, yes. So the flavor's great, but it's too green green for a legendary creature, Bear Druid. When Ruxa enters the battlefield or attacks return target creature card with no abilities from your graveyard to your hand. Creatures you control with no abilities get plus one, plus one, and you may have creatures you control with no abilities assign their combat damage as though they weren't blocked. So this is a lot. This is Recursion in a commander. This is an Anthem effect and it's Evasion. And the, how the deck plays is very, very simple. You play creatures, you attack with them. We say often that commander is a difficult format to learn in because there's so much going on. And when you're just trying to learn the basics of combat, it can be overwhelming. But a deck like Ruxa is a great starter deck that says like, okay, I'm still learning what creatures are. I'm still learning what sorceries are. I just need to like have a deck that functions and Ruxa is pretty powerful. It's a lot of evasive power very early. Yeah. When you're killing someone with a vanilla 4-4, it's going to feel bad for them. They're going to have to figure something out. They're great for you. Yeah. I actually built a Ruxa deck a while ago that I'll put the list in the show notes of like a beginner Ruxa deck that's about $100 that I'd need to just buy and have at my house to teach people. It's definitely one of those, I mean, you know, magic's done this in the past where they do like starter kits where it's just five mono colored decks and Ruxa really fits well into that category of just like, it's a cool card that makes old cards, especially like really classic magic cards too. Someone loves old magic art. Like a Ruxa deck can really sort of scratch that itch. Yeah. All right. The next category of commanders we're going to talk about is commanders with a step by step play pattern. Ah, do this then do that. Commanders that make it very clear what to do when and it again helps make some of those decisions for you when you're like, okay, I know my commander wants me to have this on the battlefield. So I'm going to do this first and then I'll play my commander. It should be very obvious with a new player's commander what order you're doing things in. Right. Yeah. Some like a spell slinger deck or whatever. Those types of decks are very complicated. They involve a lot of sequencing. You want to do this before that. You want to hold this man up there. These commanders are pretty simple on their face because it says on the card usually when these things are met, these requirements are met, you're cooking. Yeah. Jetmere Nexus of Rebels is a very strong example of a commander that it buffs all your creatures. When it comes in, it makes all of them bigger, which means you need to have a lot of creatures on the battlefield when Jetmere enters the battlefield. And the more creatures you have, the more powerful you get. Yeah. So Jetmere is very, it makes a very clean line of decisions. It's what do I do first, make a lot of creatures. What do I do then play Jetmere and make them big? And how do I win? Swing with the big things. Turn them sideways. Hit them with the well. They all have vigilance, so don't even turn them. And double strike. Yeah. And trample. Ah! Jetmere will do a lot of the work for you as long as you have creatures on the battlefield. Yeah. Jetmere is a three-colored commander. But it's definitely in terms of what we're talking about here, which is just like, this is the game plan. This is how you win. It's all written pretty much on the card. Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon is another great commander. It's one, a red and a white for a legendary creature, human soldier. Whenever you attack with one or more non-nome creatures, put a plus one counter on Anim, and then create X11 colorless gnome artifact creature tokens that are tapped and attacking, where X is the number of plus one counters on Anim Pakal. This one has a very different play pattern. It says, get my commander in play early, and then get plus one, plus one counters onto Anim. So when I attack, I make a lot of little things. Yeah. Yeah. Addaline is a similar commander in the same world, monowite version of that, which is just attack, make a bunch of stuff, addaline is huge, protect her. I think when you first start playing magic, for instance, if you taught someone on arena, you'll notice that the game isn't having you try to lightning bolt them in the face, or do some mill thing to get all the cards out of the library to have them die to not drive the card in the library, right? It wants you to swing your creatures sideways, or in arena's case, 45 degrees tilted, and kill them with just regular combat. And that's, again, one of the reasons why a lot of these commanders that we're talking about today are all just about combat. Because at the end of the day, it's funny, for those that have been watching the show for a long time, Josh Lequie, who's famously known for never going to combat and never attacking, has kind of come full circle in his commander journey to now playing games where he's just constantly winning by just attacking. And it just sort of hearkens to the fact that at the end of the day, magic really boils down to turning creatures sideways and then swinging with them. There's lots of cool, fun things you can do as you get more advanced with the game and fun, cool, interesting ways to make yourself feel clever and awesome as you defeat them in other sideways. But really ultimately, you want to swing creatures and you want to kill people. And that's the best place to start when it comes to building a new commander deck or being sort of a beginner in the format. All right, we're going to talk about some of the ideal strategies that to shoot for with a beginner commander. Some very popular strategies, some very easy to understand strategies to play and to build. But in the meantime, leave a comment below with the commander that you started with, whether it was a good one to start with or maybe it wasn't the best one to start with. Maybe you started with Memnarch, I don't know. Oh boy. But let us know. 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We are talking about beginner commander decks, whether you're building one for a friend, or a loved one, or a stranger, random, or you're a beginner yourself, trying to compile a new deck and trying to choose the commander that fits. So let's talk about some other aspects about what goes into building a good commander deck for beginners. First up, clear strategy. Oh yeah! So it's kind of similar to step-by-step play pattern. Similar, but the step-by-step is like what do I do when? Strategy is like how am I winning? What does it want me to do? What is in this deck? You should be able to read the commander and get an idea for what the rest of the deck looks like without reading all 99 cards. And that's exactly what I mean we talked about before where it's just like you should be able to read the text box on the commander and say okay I understand what we're doing here. Got it. This is what this mini game is. You should be able to answer the questions what does my commander want me to do and what do I get for doing it? How do I benefit and win this game? So one of the most popular strategies still amongst both new and experienced players is typo. So these are cards that care about certain types of cards, whether it's artifacts, creature types, etc. First up is a big one, a new one called Ureni of the Unwritten. Big time dragon commander, this is four green, blue, and red. So a seven mana commander for a seven seven spirit dragon with flying and trample and says whenever Ureni enters or attacks look at the top eight cards of your library. You may put a dragon creature card from among them on the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. I don't know what this deck's about. Yeah, dragons. Big dragons, brilliant huge creature having it enter and attack and then boom slamming more cool big creatures on the battlefield that have dragon in their subtype. Yeah I mean when you read this deck you get a very clear idea for what you're doing is you need to get this big thing into play, you need to play a lot of dragons in your deck and this will help you put dragons onto the battlefield. Go go go. Go go go. And dragons are a very popular creature type for new players, they're very exciting, they're very powerful, that kind of thing. And there are a lot of very good dragon commanders. What I like about Ureni is it is the simplest of them. Like Ur Dragon everybody looks at and is like well obviously it should be Ur Dragon but you have to build a five color mana base and it has this cost reduction on it that isn't super clear how to use and especially effectively when you're building because it's not as simple as just put all the dragons into your deck. Where Ureni is much closer to play half ramp half dragons that's the deck. Yep get Urni out and boy oh boy power and stuff is coming. Power and toughness. Absolutely. And flying, usually flying. And it works right away. When it hits the battlefield you get a second dragon and then you're off to the races so one removal spell isn't necessarily going to blow up your spot. Yeah exactly yeah it happens when it enters especially with these bigger commanders you really don't want to play a big commander that sits there and does nothing until the next turn. Yeah and in the meantime you're ramping so you can cast the dragons from your hand anyway. Yeah I just find that Ureni is a lot easier to pilot and a lot easier to understand where the deck is going. Similarly I wanted a commander for dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are another really popular creature type and again it's three colors because they don't tend to build to make powerful type of commanders with fewer than three colors. Yeah. Especially for dinosaurs and dragons for some reason they're all three or more. There are two mana dragon ones they're just not the ones people are as excited to play when they're new. Gishath Sun's Avatar was the one I picked for dinosaurs. This one is eight mana five red green white so it's definitely playing a lot of ramp and whenever it deals combat damage to a player reveal that many cards from the top of your library put any number of dinosaurs cards from among them onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. All the dinosaurs you see they go onto the battlefield. And a nice thing about Gishath it doesn't happen when it enters but it does have haste so it will be able to attack immediately and then do the thing. Yeah I mean new players really love dinosaurs if they're the kind of player that Not just new players Rachel. A lot of players love dinosaurs. Child and everyone. Dinosaurs are very cool. I've been watching the documentary the dinosaurs with Morgan Freeman. Yeah yeah it's not a documentary. I've been watching the drama of dinosaurs. Narrated by God himself. But Gishath is great because it's very clear what we're doing. We're getting Gishath into play we're attacking with Gishath. He'll give you a load of dinosaurs you can take it from there. Get a load of that. She'll give it to give you I don't remember if Gishath is a mama or a daddy. It could be. But it's this kind of deck is very easy to play very exciting to play and you get to spin the wheel and reveal a ton of stuff have a huge board. So I find Gishath to be a really great new player commander. I think the reason that it's three colors is because they just want you to have more access to more dinosaurs. If they could make a five color dinosaur commander they would and they probably will. I'm sure they will. Yeah not yet but I'm sure they will. Yeah so yeah Gishath great in terms of just again cool big scary creatures that will. The nice thing too about this one in building a sort of a beginner commander deck is that you might think oh beginner commander deck it's not going to do anything. It's not going to hurt. This will do something. This will do stuff it will hurt and people will have to answer the threats and you'll feel pretty cool when those dinosaurs come swinging. Yeah it's hard to not be involved in a game when you get to ramp and cast dinosaurs and cheat them a whole bunch off the top. Yeah a slightly different flavor of dinosaur well of dinosaurs. He is old of typal commanders and of typal strategies is Edgar Markov. Edgar Markov also three colors but one of the most straightforward typal commanders that they've ever made because he is eminence. You don't even have to get him onto the battlefield. Whenever you cast another vampire spell if Edgar Markov is in the command zone or on the battlefield he never is. Create a one one black vampire creature token. Wow. He has other text it doesn't matter. The main thing is cast a lot of vampires get a lot of vampires. So this is the other side of the spectrum. We said you can ask them if you're interested in having a lot of things or big things. Edgar Markov is the a lot of things side of the spectrum. Yeah and every single time you cast a vampire in your deck which would be chock full of them you're making more. You're going to have a board presence it's going to be very hard to kill you because you're going to have tons of blockers all the time. Oftentimes you have life link on those vampires or evasion like flying. Yeah Edgar very powerful card was just reprinted finally. So it's a bit harder to get for newer players if you're not looking to spend that much on the commander itself. But Edgar in terms of like being just the vampire commander is definitely the one. Yeah and I want to say cards like Edgar and Cranko to make the point that it's like it's okay if they're powerful. It's good if they're powerful because it means that they're playing the game and participating in a way that doesn't necessarily revolve around a ton of different decision making. Yeah unfortunately Edgar never has to be on the battlefield for his effect his best effect to go off. Absolutely you just keep getting more vampires so this is a cool one and vampires are a very compelling type for a lot of players. And they make lots of new vampires so again you'll always have cool new toys to play with. The final one I wanted to talk about is rats. It's Meronarar. Oh yeah. Narar. Narar. Narar. Narar. Three black black for a legendary creature. Rat rogue all rats have fear. Great line of text. Great line of text yeah. Then tap sacrifice a rat but X11 black rat creature tokens into play where X is the number of rats you control. Okay. It's very similar to Cranko. This gives you a very similar energy where it's like make a lot of rats and then double the number of rats I have. What I like about this commander is it gives you a very clear strategy of just like okay I'm going to play a lot of stuff and I'm not afraid of sacrificing because I know it's going to get me a ton of value. And it gives you a little bit of a different flavor where I am generally shy away from sacrifice decks for new players because they require a lot of pieces. Meronar has so many of the pieces all on themselves. Yeah. Brats. People of rats. We'll be saying rats when you crush them with Meronarar. Okay. There are a couple of challenges to type old decks if you're a new player or if you're building for a new player they can be difficult to upgrade or grow into not all type have a ton of options. Rats a little less so. Yeah rats definitely don't. Vampires definitely can. Dinosaurs especially they don't get cards that frequently so once you have a decent Gishot deck it's hard to sort of grow into it. Dragons however. Always get new stuff so that should have plenty of new toys. It can feel a little repetitive. You're doing very similar things. You're playing a lot of very similar cards. If you're into that thing great but if they're not this is going to feel like a big whiff. Yeah. And that's sort of the final challenge is they have to be really into this type. Yeah. Or what the type does. Right. Yeah but like if you give somebody a dinosaur deck and they're like oh I like bunny it's like it's not gonna it's not gonna ring true for them it's not gonna be one that they immediately attached to you want them to really match with the type and be excited about that. Yeah it could just be instead of an experience and like oh cool I like what it means to cheat creatures out like a strategy versus the type. And you can find other decks that fit that. Like the next category we're talking about which is Stompy decks. Yeah. Creature forward decks that are all about beating face with cool big creatures not necessarily of one type. Yeah I mean this is a super straightforward strategy it's just like I play big stuff and I hit you with them and it feels good to have big powerful cards on the battlefield. Oh yeah. And it also is immediately intuitive. I understand why it's good to have a lot of things that cost a lot of mana on the battlefield. Yeah with big numbers on them. And also it's cool. Yeah oh it's super cool. It's cool to have a lot of things have a lot of dice have a lot of expensive cards on the battlefield. Trample just trampling over people. Yeah. Key words. I mean this first commander I think is a great example of a mono green commander it's Gorkla Terror of Calcy's Moth. Yeah yeah I was actually going to say this would be another great mono color commander for the first serve category we talked about. It's perfect. Gorkla is great three in the green four three. Creature spells you cast a power four greater cost two less to cast and this southern text will never Gorkla attacks each creature with power four greater gets plus one plus one the gains trample until end of turn. So it's the whole strategy is right there. You want to cast big creatures they're going to cost less when Gorkla is there and the more Gorkla itself attacks oh boy they're all going to get huge or bigger and gain trample. Trample. Also trample. Trample. That's an even better. Trample vigilance or bigger. Man the power creep these days. Power creeper. Gorkla is great and is a super clear commander that can build a very really exciting deck. That is great top grade. There's tons of new powerful green creatures that if you're excited about you can slam into this deck. Another one I wanted to mention of course is Kahlia of the Vast. This is one red white black for a legendary creature human cleric. Whenever Kahlia attacks an opponent you may put an angel demon or dragon creature card from your hand onto the battlefield tapped and attacking that opponent. Wow angels demons and dragons these are three of the most commonly printed creature subtypes in magic. And I know you're you're saying Rachel you said no kill on sight commanders. Yeah this one is definitely a bit kill on sight. It is it is. But fortunately there are ways around that by giving it shroud. Sure but the thing with Kahlia is that Kahlia is a proven beloved commander for new players and players alike. True. Like I I think of Kahlia as one of the great starter commanders ever. It's just you get her vibe so quickly you you're like I get to get big things into play and all I need to do is cast my commander and she'll help me with that. Yeah that is really compelling. It's really exciting and you get to be on the front foot of the game. So I think Kahlia despite a little bit of deficiency where your opponent is going to try and kill Kahlia. She's still really sweet and people really like building her and her play pattern is very understandable. Yeah and you get to play some of the coolest scariest most amazing creatures from Magix history and you can choose your flavor which is really fun. You can have an angel themed deck or a more demon themed deck or more dragon themed deck. Yeah. If you're cool like me dragons or the way they go. Or angels. Or angels like me. Well not as many cool dragons in red white and black but yeah angels angels and demons lots of options to choose from there. The final one I wanted to mention is a little bit different. It flips a strategy on its head. It's Arcades the strategist. Yeah. This is one green white blue for legendary creature elder dragon. Whenever a creature with defender enters the battlefield under your control draw a card and then each creature you control with defender assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power and can attack as though it didn't have defender. Cool. So this takes things that are typically kind of small and not very useful gives you cards for them and make sure they hit like a truck. Yeah. It does all of the things you want it to do. It's very easy to deck build. If it has defender on it you can put it into the deck and Arcades will take care of the rest. Yeah and you get to play some really cool weird classic cards from Magic's history that typically are just not played ever in commander so you get a little fun novelty factor there. Great budget commander Arcades. Oh totally. Yeah. Yeah and it's just it's just like the classic defender commander of all of them pretty much. Yeah. It's a little bit less straightforward in terms of like immediately understanding the strategy but they'll catch on fast. It's I play walls and turn the walls into into monsters. And really importantly it builds the card draw onto the commander which not all the commanders we're talking about have that and that's really great for newer players just to be able to just stay in the game by drawing more cards. Yeah. So I really like these as big terrifying commanders that can make sure that you always feel like you have a presence. I wanted to mention one more here that I forgot to write down but it's Xenagos. Ah God of Rebels. Yes two colors in this case and this is the stompy commander in red and green. The exemplifies gruel which is the colors red and green I think the best. Yeah I mean it gives your stuff haste it doubles their power. It means that once you have Xenagos on on the battlefield everything you cast from there on out is getting shot out of a cannon. Yeah and the nice thing about Xenagos too is that it's a god so it's indestructible so it's really hard for your opponents to interact with a lot of times. Xenagos perfect stompy commander and very easy to understand. Yeah not surprisingly I have two of those decks built I have an Xenagos deck and I have a Cali deck. Super powerful really fun commanders. Well I don't have a Cali deck anymore but yeah it was one of the first commanders I built because she's awesome when I first saw her I was like I want that on my battlefield. Yeah the challenge is for a stompy deck is you can draw a lot of hate you will have the biggest baddest stuff on the battlefield so you will likely eat some amount of removal. That's what it means to be cool you know. Check it out I'm the coolest person at the table fine take care of my stuff it just makes me feel more cool. Yeah I mean if you're the kind of player that wants to be the problem that wants to rush out to the to the races I think stompy is a great strategy for you it's really exciting you get to play some of the most powerful creatures in the game and you know that at least when you died you lived. Yeah to your fullest. And if you did the math you had the most power on the battlefield by far. That's usually the case. All right the next overarching strategy that we're going to talk about is tokens. So we talked about having big things now we're going to talk about having a lot of things because that also is a very clear strategy when you have a bunch of stuff on the board surely I can win. Surely we've all seen the bugs life. Or a bunch of small things overwhelm the big things because there are too many small things for them to deal with. Yeah so it's cool to just have a lot of cardboard on your table a lot of rectangles or a lot of big dice showing that you have 30 of a something and they're all plus five plus five and they're huge and the nice cherry on top is that oftentimes it's cute. Yeah a little mice little squirrels that are just murdering your opponent. There's so many token strategy commanders that are adorable and fun and so they have a really clear vibe for the right type of player. Yeah so let's start with oh I guess we should mention we did do a whole episode on token commanders and some of the best token commanders if you want to check those out there's full deck lists there's full deck lists for those that's episode 683 so if tokens fit your vibe go check that one out and you can get some deck lists including a deck list for this first one which is one of the best token commanders of all time. Of all time it's Cheddar Fang Squirrel General two and green for a three three with forest walk so it can't be blocked by any opponent that controls a forest. It says if one or more tokens will be created under control those tokens plus that many one one green squirrel creature tokens are created instead so if you're making a creature token a clue token a treasure token you get an additional squirrel on top of it and then you can pay Black Mana so there's a two color commander to sacrifice X squirrels and give a creature plus X minus X until end of turn so oftentimes this is removable but sometimes you can also buff up your commander by a little bit or other creatures even your opponent's creatures if you're going to get cheeky yeah squirrely with it absolutely if you want to get squirrely with it Cheddar Fang's a hilarious commander and you means you get to play a lot of squirrels there's a lot of terrifying there's a lot of really good squirrel synergies which make your deck very very powerful and pretty straightforward the you can build a deck around sacrificing stuff I think if you're a new player you probably want to focus on just having a lot of squirrels yeah making a lot of tokens and thus making a lot of squirrels yeah if you're making a bunch of treasure tokens or clue tokens you're also building in cardron ramp into your deck and you're being rewarded with squirrels at the same time okay the next one I wanted to mention was a favorite for me it's Shroovus Sproutsire hilarious name great art two and a green for a legendary creature sapperling the only non-token sapperling the more you know it's a one one with trample and whenever a sapperling you control deals combat damage to a player create that many one one green sapperling creature tokens so Shroovus himself is a sapperling that can start the sapperling train rolling but anthem effects are really good to make all of your sapperlings bigger and then when they hit they make more sapperlings yeah Shroovus is a one one with trample so that means the game designers want you to make Shroovus real big so you can add equipment to him you can do pump spells you can do plus one plus encounters lots of different things that green can do to make Shroovus massive himself or swing out with like 15 one ones and only five or you know eight of them connect and boom you got even more sapperlings don't care about the ones that died super snowbally very explosive with the right hand Shroovus is really fun and funny to play sapperlings are very unique to magic and have a silly little sort of quirky vibe to him yeah especially Shroovus look at him look at him he's a goofy look at his hat look at his hat look at his hat look at his hat look at his hat I'm obsessed uh finally I think one of the most popular token commanders out there is Rin in seri inseparable dog cat cat dog who doesn't love a dog cat who doesn't love a dog cat one red green white a lot of niah today yeah for a four four dog cat whenever you cast a dog spell make a one one green cat whenever you cast a cat spell make a one one white dog and then it has an activated ability red green white tap Rin and seri deals damage to any target equal to the number of dogs you control and you gain life equal to the number of cats you control yeah so your dogs make cats your cats make dog and then Rin and seri rewards you for having both by killing things and giving you life gain yeah things like players yeah Rin and seri is just a super super popular commander it can be really adorable you can put a lot of like fun neat like cute cards in magic history and just make a deck that's super functional yeah Rin and seri is great I've seen tons of Rin and seri builds there was a dogs and cats uh secret order commander deck that got a lot of people into it as well yeah Rin and seri was the commander yeah yeah they don't print as many dogs and cats but when they do they're usually pretty impactful and they have great flavor to them they've been printing more and more they know this is a creature type that people are excited about so they've been showing up a little bit in like in the bulk of new sets so you will get more as it comes out especially cats they're a little bit more hesitant to print dogs um first for whatever reason well you don't want to kill a dog that's sad yeah that's right uh there are some permanent hex proof on all the dogs right yeah I can't dare you to get my dog unblockable indestructible hex proof come on there are some challenges for token decks uh they can be a little difficult to play especially with uh against board wipes because it requires you to put a lot of stuff onto the battlefield really fast you can get completely wrecked by a spell that destroys all the cart the creatures on the battlefield yeah sometimes it's also tough to keep up with all the accounting and making all the card tokens making sure that you have the right ones representing them correctly especially when you start adding buffs and all that yeah but for someone that likes managing that sort of board state it can be really fun too that's why I really like a commander like shroofus that's just going to make a ton of sapperlings yeah you're going to have one type and you want a ton of them um but also making a ton of little things sometimes you can feel like your board just isn't keeping up if you have like five one ones and somebody else has three six sixes with trample you can feel really really far behind even though you have more stuff on the battlefield so it is does mean you have to put together a lot of things and a way to make them all bigger um but you do get the joy of having a ton of stuff on the battlefield which is always a good time yep do love it okay the next category is value engines that's right yeah a beginner can have a value engine deck this is for the player that likes to have more resources than everyone always be flush with cards and mana and just helping you impact the game in terms of just being a formidable force of value yeah having a commander that gives you reliable card draw is going to make sure that you are participating in the game especially when you're still figuring stuff out especially if it's like a passive uh draw engine that just sort of happens regardless of what you're doing but even like if you have a commander that just has some amount of card draw on it if it doesn't impact the game itself it's still fine because it means you have the tools to keep up uh if something were to happen like a board rifle we talked about before yeah um yeah you always have the tools that you need to execute your plan yeah and value often means that you have more mana than everyone else as well you're ramping or you're doing something that allows you to just get to those cool big things earlier and faster and also if you get board wiped or if you like to recover quickly value decks are very good at doing that yeah uh one of my favorite new player value engines is bonnie paul clear cutter you built this for your mom i did how fun it's so cute and it's really good it's three green blue blue for a giant scout she's a six five with reach when bonnie paul enters the battlefield create bow a legendary blue ox creature token with this creature's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control a huge cow one a ton of lands in the battlefield and whenever you attack draw a card and then you may put a land card from your hand or graveyard onto the battlefield we draw a card attack not just bonnie super easy to get that draw an extra land and you get a big cow because of it so it says i'm gonna give you mana i'm gonna give you cards and here's a way to pay off all the mana and cards you have a huge cow that will kill your opponents and it's so cute the token is great yeah so it's got cards mana all the threat in a single card green and blue by the way for new players is are the classic two colors for just straight value because you've got card draw tacked onto it and you've got mana ramp yeah those are the two things to just sort of generate the most value out of everyone else on the table okay the next one i wanted to mention was valgavoth harrower of souls yeah this card is great i'm glad i haven't seen more of it against me because it's terrifying so scary anyways two black grad for a legendary creature elder demon he's got flying and ward two well excuse me ward pay two life and whenever an opponent loses life for the first time during each of their turns but a plus and plus encounter on valgavoth and draw a card yeah so obviously you're going to attack players with this flyer to make them lose life players will use fetch lands do all sorts of different things to have them lose life and you'll be able to draw cards from it and make valgoth even bigger yeah and the deck wants to have stuff in it that just damages your opponents on their turn and it'll reward you with cards and a big scary flyer yeah a lot of black red decks are more about sort of like throwing little bits of damage at people pinging them uh valgavoth is a more typical or sort of more classic black red you should just kill things do things with damage hurt people and it's an elder demon with really cool art so you get that whole sort of gothic horror theme to it as well i think valgavoth is a very fun new commander that is great to upgrade and it will give you a lot of power down the line yeah very cool this next one's a lot of fun it's elevir of the wild court we're going for another two color commander here it's two green and white for a four four human knight whenever elevir enters the battlefield or attacks create a virtuous roll token attached to another charted creature you control so if the creature doesn't have a roll on it this is basically a little enchantment token that goes on and it says enchantment creature gets plus one plus one for each enchantment you control so it's going to get bigger and bigger if you have a lot of enchantments because the second part of elevir says whenever an enchantment creature you control deals combat damage to a player draw a card this is great this gives you the enchantments you need and it gives you the card draw you need from the enchantments you have so the only thing you need to do is provide creatures that can deal combat damage yeah that want to hold enchantments so green's great with tramplers white is great for flyers and so you're going to be able to get in with damage draw a bunch of cards and just have a lot of threats going on as well yeah and if they're enchantment creatures even better because it makes elevir enchantments work better yeah they get bigger and bigger elevir is a very powerful commander that is a payoff for something that she enables and plus she's threat all on her own because you could enchant elevir i believe yes you can another target creature never mind no no whenever an enchantment creature you control oh she can enchant herself she can enchant herself but you will be playing auras and all sorts of cool things you can enchant her with other stuff yeah and i know a lot of new players for me when i first saw spirit man so be put onto a creature i was astounded i cannot believe this card existed i couldn't believe what it did i thought it was the most broken thing in the world it's cool yeah it's cool protection yeah so aura enchantment decks are also i think really fun for new players as well because it lets you suit up a creature and vulture on it up and you can do it across your board for a lot of different threats yeah elevir is super fun so those are the commanders we're going to talk about today that was kind of a lot of different options hopefully one of them sparked some amount of interest for you but we're going to take one quick second to just talk about where to start so if you're not sure what commander is right for you at this point or you're not sure what commander to build for your friend start with a pre-con pre-cons are great especially the ones i've been printed in more recent years i wouldn't say i would say avoid the pre-cons from like 2016 2015 those are a little clunkier and also harder to get yeah they're powerful they're cohesive they do work and they don't require any sort of upgrading and they often have the traits that we described so a lot of the commanders that we did talk about were pre-con commanders elevir was of the wild court valgavoth was a face pre-con commander uh calia was too i believe calia was too but not for a very good one urany of the unwritten uh those those are all like pre-con level type of commanders that are just great out of the box and will give you a great starting point yeah or rin and seri was a secret letter commander so was giada right uh that's true yeah you could buy the the pre-con that you could there's the list that you can use as well yeah yeah but keep in mind that they're just relatively affordable and they're usually easy to get your hands on if you're not sure which one is good for a new commander go to a game store and ask the person working at the at the store because they will often have opinions on what are good ones what are good for new players which are the more complicated ones because there is a lot of variance when it comes to pre-cons but generally they're a great place to start yeah and i would say again revisit your own gaming history and ask what are the habits and the play styles that i like to do most often you'll i would say look to like rpgs if you ever played those yeah or if you play other card games as well like slay the spire or any of those types you'll understand the sort of play pattern you like what's the most satisfying do you like flicking a ton of cards at someone and throwing a bunch of shives like in slay the spire or you're trying to build a huge buffed up ironclad guy that is dealing all their damage with their block status or whatever right so those are different play styles and those will help you understand when you look at a card that kind of reminds me of when i played a sorcerer in this game and i love that and if you're trying to get somebody into it ask them questions i wouldn't say like do you want to play blue or red like that doesn't mean anything to them a question that i asked is is the one that i already mentioned do you like big stuff or a lot of stuff and then i said do you like like between these vibes which do you like and one of them was wizards and merfolk or wizards and fairies i think is what i said and then i said angels and humans demons and and vampires dragons and goblins you know giving them just the vibes of each color to be like what pictures would you be excited to have yeah because that's if you're starting from scratch if you're starting with somebody that hasn't played a lot of cards before give them a stack of cards that they at least want to look at yeah like they're at least like oh look at this silly guy he's got like like goblin snowman or whatever yeah i don't know what you're giving your friend but another interesting thing is have they watched content or you play a game because oftentimes there's a real this is magical thing about magic which is like the card that is meant for you will find its way to you somehow like you'll you'll see it on the video you'll open it in the pack and you're like holy moly this is this is it and so if that magical moment has happened for someone that's also a great place to start as in why were you attracted to this thing what brought you excitement or joy when this card appeared in your in your life you know okay well we've talked about a lot of good options to start with but we're going to talk about the commanders that jimmy and i started with the very originals the original that got us into this format in just a few minutes but first if you want to pick up any of those cards head on over to cardkingdom.com slash command that's our affiliate link for card kingdom they are a retailer they have physical locations in washington and oregon one of the most beautiful game stores i've ever been in but they also have an amazing inventory online and a great service if you want to build a deck from scratch they have an advanced deck builder tool so let's say you got a deck list and you want to just copy and paste it in or you built your deck list on architect or another website you can just copy and paste it there it'll show you all the different versions of the cards and the different qualities so you can pick and choose if you're going for a more budget option or you want to bling out your first deck i'd recommend more budget if you're building your first deck for the first time and you can get all the cards in one convenient package to your doorstep and you're supporting the show and our podcast and our episodes of game nights and extra turns while you're at it so go to cardkingdom.com slash command for all your magic card needs and once those cards are in your hand you're going to need to protect them keep them safe keep them organized go to ultra pro dot com slash command to get the binders deck boxes sleeves play mats you need to be a well accessorized magic player if you've got a vibe that you're after or if the person you're building this deck for does get them a deck box get them a play mat and make sure especially if they're new that you get them high quality sleeves with a good shuffle feel apex is a very very good sleeve they slip together really easy so you know they're not going to be doing battle with some cheap sleeves that don't shuffle very well yeah and come out with new apex designs all the time and it's on ultra pro dot com slash command yeah absolutely all right let's talk about our first commanders yeah back at the beginning yeah so one of my first commanders was collie of the vast i was playing a dear friend craig blanchett and he busted out his collie deck which was very tuned and very scary and i was just like oh my gosh what did you just do what is happening why is that a8 flying and killing me right now and i just thought it was so cool and it also introduced me to equipment for the first time like suiting collie up with a sword so that she had more protection and was just doing tons of damage herself repeated combat steps was another thing you saw with collie so just a lot of things that like really attracted me to the game initially was all built in that commander so i built my own collie and of course i had these old magic cards of mine that were demons and dragons and angels so i could put you know even the freaking sara angel was in my deck at one point that rule one of my first cards i ever opened when i played magic when i was a little kid i love them and then another commander that i built that i still have today is marchesa the black thorn black thorn the black rose marchesa the black rose i think so yes black rose uh this was like my first like combo-y kind of deck where i like saw a cool mechanic where i was like oh i can make use of this in an interesting way by stealing my opponent's creatures getting a one-man counter to them and then sacrificing them to keep them forever oh yeah so for me that was like very complicated commander to play yeah very complicated and it's been one that i've taken apart and rebuilt over and over again over the years to put it more in the theme of stealing stuff or more in the theme of value right there's lots of different ways i've gone about it but it that harkened back to my first level of just like stealing other people's stuff and then keeping it which is something i keep doing in all my commander games yes my now forever thank you thank you uh my first two commanders were pre-con upgrades from the command zone oh well speaking of by the way we have tons of pre-con upgrades on the channel for every pre-con pretty much ever yeah you can always search for those such a good way to start especially like when i started it was during one of these these are 2017 2017 yeah so c18 was was the first set that i started playing commander those pre-cons were fine but they weren't like super tuned or anything so the upgrade was great and made sure my deck was like competitive with my friends but i built a lord wind grace which there was a great upgrade for i bought a strip mine good investment for that deck that card is great and um i didn't really know the loaded it's a history of strip mine before but did you do it a couple of times i got one uh oh that's i mean i was only i only thought of it as like a ghost quarter like a way to remove a land i didn't think of it as like remove all the lands the other one i built was and the other upgrade from that series was broodoclat teleporter engineer really popular commander really popular commander complicated i just don't understand the broodoclat works half the time but also so fun the idea of making a lot of token copies of like one really sick thing uh was very exciting or goofy thing and it was it was such a battle cruiser deck that uh i definitely lost with it a lot but it was really fun to like okay if i can get a tap and it's going to be awesome yeah similar to what my machete deck was doing i think yeah for sure so those are my first two that i like that that i owned and they just came from the channel i just saw the pre-con upgrade guides and went out and bought those decks and then the 10 cards that go with that wow and that you know rachel as a fan of the channel i know wow yeah i taught every i taught my entire playgroup to play commander because we were playing like 60 card sort of nothing multiplayer yeah and we were just getting wrecked all the time by the guys that had like their collections yeah you know i'm googling like 60 card life gain right deck like that doesn't exist some standard list from like a million years ago that i'm like has four serif soldiers yeah and you're like this is never has never existed that's so funny but commander was a great place for us to all to come together and i found out about that because of this channel very cool what about the last commander you still have it i still have it pet deck this is um this is the one that i still have at city c brood tyrant that was also built because of the bdm episode from this channel ah that's right bdm he's a classic soul type player yeah so i started with bdm's um spider spawning list and that's grown and changed a lot it's been rebuilt a couple of times uh and i recently cut spider spawning from it i know don't tell brian damien marshal i know that was like don't let him i decided that i just wanted it to make zombie token so i cut everything that didn't make a zombie so i could just like don't have to have a two dozen kinds of tokens for this right right oh it was a hold on location yep bdm just shed a tear he doesn't know why but a tear just went down i'm sorry bdm but i'm still doing it but he doesn't know why he's just like why did i start crying all of a sudden what happened but is very cool commander and is a great example of like okay i'm gonna mill myself to make zombies i understand step one mill step two make a lot of stuff yeah and you've got some really cool altars in there isn't my artist proofs yeah so there's yeah it's that's the best part about those like beginner decks you stick with you you can upgrade them in ways that really make them feel eternal yeah or you take them apart because all your friends hate getting strip mines so much yeah but that's never too easy dine to zombies is not as oppressive yeah uh big thanks to our amazing team here at the command zone who make these podcast episodes possible and deal with my shenanigans korea the cruise josh diaj john shanard grove gladi jamie block jordan pridney jake boss pecky bale eric lam manson lung josh murphy evan limberg sam walldo and of course josh lee quizle thanks for watching everybody that's his rapper name oh no that was so good oh no these papers are doomed bye