Why do I play Oros?

"What does he do?"

I love that question. I'd have to love the question to want to play with a deck like this because that's all I ever hear, but I especially love it when people point at Oros and ask it. "Not a lot," I'll usually respond, "He can Sunlance everything for 2W when he deals combat damage to a player."

"Seems pretty bad."

Actually, Oros is far and away the best commander for this deck. I say that with full knowledge that Kaalia of the Vast and Tariel, Reckoner of Souls are, in fact, options for playing WBR. Oros is not the most powerful commander - he's not even powerful at all. He doesn't have any special abilities outside of Flying, you have to pay for his ability when he actually connects (and lack of Trample hurts those odds), and when you pull the effect off, you can't even hurt white creatures or kill things with toughness 4 or more. Everyone who has said he's bad is pretty much spot on. Oros is a bad creature, which is actually why I say he is the best commander for the deck - being a bad commander and a good creature are, in fact, two different things!

Go Tuck Yourself!

A hot debate raging between Commander playgroups regards a certain type of effect nicknamed "tucking". Tucking is the act of placing a card into the library (not usually on top, as it's hardly "tucked away" then). It's a highly effective tactic to use on cards you don't want to see again, because if a card is on the bottom of the library, it's as good as gone - cards deep in the library are often much harder to access than cards in the graveyard or the command zone. The commonly used rules for Commander found on the official rules committee website only allow a commander to be moved to the command zone if it is placed in the graveyard or exiled - tucking the commander actually does not allow you to move it there, so tuck effects can severely cripple decks that rely heavily on the commander to win. Of course, you can always modify the rules in your own playgroup if you feel this hinders the fun too greatly, but be careful if you intend to play Commander with players outside your group! The committee's official rules are widely accepted and your opponents might not agree with the change as there are some very solid arguments to be made for allowing tuck effects to function properly.

In case you can't read English, this
is a Japanese tuck effect.

Before I get into the arguments, it might be helpful to get a list down of the most common tuck effects. These are the cards you are most likely to run into if you are worried - or the ones you should consider if you are looking to add some!

• Condemn
• Oblation
• Hinder
• Proteus Staff
• Spell Crumple
• Spin into Myth
• Chaos Warp
• Warp World

Some of these have recently been reprinted in the Commander preconstructed decks, and Chaos Warp and Spell Crumple are actually new cards made specifically for the format. So though it doesn't mean a whole lot, it does show that the people in charge of building the precons were aware of and supportive of the existence of tuck effects.

The biggest issue facing tuck cards is that many players dislike when they are prevented from doing something. This is the same reason that land destruction cards and counterspells are currently at a low in power level and/or population - a certain group of players just can't stand when they can't do something. They would mind casting their Commander again and again when it gets hit with destroy effects, but when you Spell Crumple it, it's like you gained an emblem that says, "Timmy Everynerd can't cast his commander". I can certainly understand the frustration, but I feel Timmy should consider his options before getting upset. I have a simple acronym for dealing with problems in Commander (or any casual format): CAR.

• Change: Change your deck so that you don't lose to one type of effect. If losing your commander kills you, change your commander or change the deck so it can stand on its own.
• Adapt: Modify your deck with cards that deal with the effects that are good against it. Against tuck effects, try including more search effects or protective spells.
• Reshuffle: Lose the game, shuffle up, and play again. It's a 100 card format, so even with all the tutors in the world your opponent won't always have the tuck spell, and if all he or she is doing is trying to tuck your commander, use that knowledge to modify how you play to try to win the next game. The great thing about casual formats is that nothing is ever on the line - you can always shuffle up and try again.

Now, of course, the argument from Timmy's side is: Why should I change my deck to deal with your unfair effects? As I stressed in my post on competitive-casual playing, someone  has to change their deck at some point if two players are going to get along and play nice. If both refuse to do so, the only option is to find a new playgroup. So either you have to take the tuck effects out of your deck to play with him, or he's got to find a way around them. So who is right? Let's look at the effects of both options. (The option to modify the rules for tucking commanders so that they may be put into the command zone has roughly the same effect as simply taking the tuck effects out of your deck for the purpose of this discussion.)

Not so enchanting when he's on
the opposite side of the table.

If tuck effects are removed...

Without tuck effects, Timmy is certainly free to cast and recast his commander as much as he pleases. However, Spike McPhearson to your right is playing Zur the Enchanter, and he also is free to recast Zur as much as he wants - until he wins. Anyone playing notoriously powerful commander decks will enjoy the freedom of not having to force their deck to work for them when their commander gets Hindered or Chaos Warped. So while Timmy gets to have fun casting his commander, your chances of winning against Spike are much lower now. So use CAR, right? Well, Adapt is out - Timmy won't play if we modify the deck to deal with Zur permanently. So we can either Reshuffle and try again - which against a "Tier 1" commander deck tends to feel pretty hopeless, but if winning doesn't matter and you just want to cast spells, maybe that's for you. Last, we can Change the deck - but the problem isn't spells that deal with our deck, it's the opponent's deck winning by playing solitaire. So can we play a deck that wins faster? I guess we're playing a Tier 1 deck now too!

If Timmy changes his deck...

Now Timmy's added Time of Need, Planar Portal, and Worldly Tutor to his deck. If we Spell Crumple his commander, he has a few ways to search it out. If we're playing with Spike too, we can still deal with Zur or Azami or whoever he's playing today. Nobody had to change decks, Timmy simply added a few already good cards to his deck so he can always cast Silvos when he really wants to. And he really, really wants to.

Interestingly enough, though, if we were playing with Timmy and Spike from the beginning, it's very likely that Timmy would've never dealt with the Spell Crumple at all because all eyes were watching Zur. Multiplayer formats already have a built in mechanism to deal with "unfair" effects, and it's effect is magnified in Commander where you only have one of each card in your deck. That mechanism is threat level - Zur was so much more threatening than Silvos that, if we even drew Spell Crumple, we'd be saving it to hit Zur unless Timmy played an entwined Tooth and Nail or something equally or more threatening. Since we've only got one Spell Crumple, as soon as we hit Zur with it, Timmy can let down his guard a bit because that's one tuck effect already gone. What it comes down to is this - unless you are playing a commander that needs tucking to exist to balance him, tucking probably won't affect you anyway! 

Tucking shouldn't be such a nuisance if your playgroup knows what they are doing. You can play a less powerful commander and worry about it less, or you can play a more powerful commander and deal with it. And as a side benefit, the existence of checks to powerful commanders means we keep the banned list smaller, because with no way to permanently deal with Zur and Azami they could go the way of Rofellos, leaving many players with useless Commander decks. So keep this in mind next time your commander gets Spell Crumpled (or Scrumpled, as I prefer to say), and never forget that you can always shuffle up and play again.

Until next time,
Day 2 Dan

The Competitive-Casual Commander Player

Many of you should be familiar with Sheldon Menery. Sheldon is the face of the Commander rules committee - essentially the format's Mark Rosewater, in the sense that he speaks for the committee and takes the flak for the committee regardless of what he has or hasn't contributed to their decisions. Though I've been at several events with him, I still haven't had the pleasure of meeting him and taking him on in a game of our favorite format, and I think in the future I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that's an experience I can have.

That said, Sheldon and I are on nearly polar opposites regarding how a game of Commander should be run.

Sheldon is very much focused on the "fun" of the group. He encourages allowing players to play their spells, resolve their creatures, and not mess with others in a way which would preclude them from playing their decks the way that they want to. Now, in the abstract, this seems rather reasonable. However, though I have nothing against Sheldon himself, I think the idea doesn't actually conserve fun for all players.

The hidden goal of
Menery-style Commander games.

Let's start by looking at the basics of Magic - two players sit down to play a game, the goal of which is to determine a winner. This essentially entails one or more of the following:

• Playing your cards until you win.
• Playing cards that prevent your opponent from winning, buying you time to win.
• Playing cards that prevent your opponent's cards from preventing you from winning.

However, in the Menery-style of Commander, the second option is essentially taken away. Players are discouraged from preventing their opponents from playing their cards, which the players are (usually) playing because they help them win the game. With that option gone, our third option is also cut out, because you have no longer have anything to protect against. In the abstract, we are left with 2-5 players playing solitaire games until one of them attacks enough to kill someone, as instant combo-kills are also discouraged, especially fast ones that prevent other players from taking turns. Of course, attacking leaves you open, so with nobody preventing each other from casting spells, it's easy to get a mucked up board and let the game stall out for a long time (which seems to be encouraged - if players are discouraged from ending the game quickly, the game defaults to "long and grinding" every time), and it may as well just be a draw because winning fast is just too penalized.

Of course, this is all a bit exaggerated. Sheldon himself in his most recent StarCityGames article mentions that cards that destroy or punish nonbasic lands are necessary protection, so clearly interaction isn't completely discouraged. I'm sure there are a good number of other interaction cards he encourages using or plays himself - such as Draining Whelk, which he mentioned in another anecdote from his recent article. Specifically, he had  Twincasted an entwined Tooth and Nail, and opted not to put onto the battlefield a Draining Whelk with the audience being relatively split on whether or not to do it. The Draining Whelk, of course, would have countered the Tooth and Nail he had "stolen" and become massive, and prevented his opponent from getting some potentially game winning cards. Why would he not do that? There are many two card combos that would have taken control of the game for that player - Mephidross Vampire and Triskelion, Kiki-Jiki and Pestermite, Realm Razer and Avenger of Zendikar (a personal favorite), etc. However, this is where the distinction in playstyles becomes very apparent - my guess is that Sheldon had assumed the player wasn't going to search for a backbreaking combo. Sheldon sits down and assumes everyone else plays like he does, which is perfectly fine if that's truly how your playgroup is. But that's not how every playgroup is!

Dream wrecking since 1994.

I belong to a playgroup of what I would call Competitive-Casual Commander players. In this playgroup, entwined Tooth and Nails are cast in an attempt to outright win the game. Mimeoplasms are always 10+ power Skithiryxes. Time Stretch is a card you prepare for, not complain about. Sure, playing your deck is fun, and I think everyone should build decks that are fun to play. However, the thought behind Menery-style Commander games is that if you play cards that stop other people from playing their deck, you are reducing the overall fun. But aren't you stopping someone from playing their deck in either case? Unless everyone builds decks exactly the same - which boils ultimately to the aforementioned lack of interaction - someone is getting cut off from playing the deck how they want. Sheldon recommends a points system that punishes powerful combos and plays that stop other players. In a Competitive-Casual playgroup, this should never be necessary. These playgroups play more like a normal Magic format - if your deck is weak, then it's weak. Your options are to fix it, or play against different opponents. It's not a heartless Survival of the Fittest metagame, though - we all have decks that are weaker, but there is a built in balance of power in multiplayer formats. The weaker decks get interacted with less, giving them more time to build up power. If you sit down in our playgroup with Tor Wauki, and the other players have Teneb the Harvester, The Mimeoplasm, and Jhoira of the Ghitu, guess who gets targeted first? Hint: It's not you.

Yes, games can end quickly and brutally. Yes, creatures don't last long on the board. Sometimes you get hit with a Sundering Titan and it hurts. Sometimes you are playing Sedris, the Traitor King and someone started with a Leyline of the Void. But you don't whine and complain - you answer it! And if you can't, you might lose this game and then fix the deck so you can! It's Magic. That's how it works. That's how you do it in Standard, Extended, Modern, Overextended, Pauper, Legacy, Vintage, and Limited, and that's how we do it here.

What benefit is there to forcing players to adapt to a metagame rather than pandering to bad plays? When you Twincast a Tooth and Nail, you get the Draining Whelk almost every time. The plays are huge and game winning, and the stories are just as good as any other Commander game. But often the games take less time - so you can shuffle up and play again. I'd rather play four games of Magic in 4 hours than one. We play Competitive-Casual - our games are competitive, and we are trying to win at all times. But we're still having fun doing it. To our playgroup, it is fun to try to make the most powerful plays. I know not all groups are like this, and everyone still has their own preferences - I personally dislike Bitter Ordeal wins with Sharuum and would try to do crazier things if I had the deck. But we don't complain when someone combo kills, because winning and losing are both part of the Magic. We love to win, and losing sometimes makes the wins feel that much better. We still Embrace the Chaos, but we also Embrace the Game.

I hope this has provided some insight into how playgroups like mine operate. Please use the comments below with any questions or criticism. The worst that could happen is that I would have more material to use for a future post!

Until next time,
Day 2 Dan