I Don't Understand Commander

[Thomas David Baker]

OK, so there's a lot of Commander at TGC these days and my decks are in the US.
So I'm putting something together to play.
But every deck I try leads me to these problems:

1. If I put in all the best cards in my Commander's colors my deck will have almost no identity whatsoever.
2. If I pick a good general and play synergetic cards my deck will be completely known when I sit down.
3. If I play suboptimal cards everyone else will play Sol Ring and Mana Crypt and Coalition Relic and the best cards in their general's colors and I will just be sitting there with a weak deck doing not very much.

Given all that do you think I should make:

A. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, infinite sac with Blasting Station, Triskelion, Persist creatures, sweepers and comes into play dudes.
B. UR Random. Chance Encounter, Krark's Thumb, Scrambleverse, Confusion in the ranks many other stupid cards. Very very few Commander staples. Possibly hilarious, possibly annoying. Definitely bad.
C. Teneb, the Harvester based around setting up a Life from the Loam engine and maybe Astral Slide.

Or something else?

Some questions for experienced Commanderers:

i. How many answers do I need like Oblivion Ring, Putrefy, Mortify, etc. Will I just not have any fun if I don't have these things and try and stay away from the staples?
ii. How may sweepers do I need?
iii. Any advice on manabase? How many sources of a color do I need, etc.? Any rules of thumb?

[Crispin Bateman]

There are two kinds of commander decks - those that are designed to win, and those that are fun for all involved. If you play a deck designed to win, expect to get a game in every now and then and then find people don't want to play with you. If you make a deck fun for all involved, expect to enjoy the format and not win all the time.

Anyone making decks and thinking 'engine' is going to end up not enjoying the format in the long run, because ultimately it is about interaction with the other people and the fun had therein, not about showing what a great combo deck you can put together and go off while everyone sits about twiddling their thumbs and wishing you'd just fuck off. :)

Just my 2p.

In answer to your points then, B sounds like the more fun deck, lol.

i - you want a few, but don't overdose.

ii - a couple, maybe three. More than that and it becomes long winded and oppressive for everyone else.

iii - Depends a lot on your commander, really. Mana is fairly easy to come by in commander, but you don't want to miss early land drops as everything happens at 6+ mana. I run a simple 40 land base with a couple of obvious accelerators (coalition relic, sol ring, darksteel ingot) which works fine in my 5 colour deck. 

[Dan Barrett]

I find the format similarly weird - it doesn't solve the "problem", but I found that building a good deck for a bad general (Bosh) makes for fair games in which I am doing something at least a bit interesting and original.

Also, don't play against Nathan, as all his cards are foil, and you never win.

[Thomas David Baker]

Thanks guys.

I took Crispin's advice (kinda) and bought 60ish cards for the UR deck online (total cost: 8 tix), combined it with those I already owned and filled in with placeholders for the expensive (Gamble, Volcanic Island) or unavailable cards.

I played a 4 player game.  I came second.  The first two knocked out players left the game rather than play on (the first actively because he hated my deck, the second I'm not so sure).  The remaining guy crushed me easily with Time Stretch + Cabal Coffers and some other cards (does it really matter which?)

Despite players leaving in a huff I did giggle to myself quite a bit.  And I think things like Confusion in the ranks are at least a little bit less annoying in paper than on modo?   Then again something like Radiate will be way easier on Modo.  I will gather more experimental evidence before deciding the deck is too annoying to build IRL.

[Kieran Symington]

Your deck is either going to be annoying or hilarious to play against. Get the proxy maker going and bring it the next time your at TGC so we can all hate on you.

[Thom Richardson]

kieran, it sounds like the next step on from your Norin deck...

[Thomas David Baker]

Total number of opponents: 5

Total number of ragequits: 3

One guy quite liked it this time.

[Thomas David Baker]

Mayael the Anima player no. of creatures: 15

Rhys the Redeemed player no. creatures: 8

Me: 1 (Creepy Doll)

Radiate on your Path to Exile on my Creepy Doll: priceless.

[Thomas David Baker]

Total number of opponents: 11

Total number of ragequits: 4 (before Storm Cauldron could even resolve, this time)

Number of opponents who went hell-for-leather trying to kill me: 1

Not sure there's any sense in proxying this up although I wonder to what extent the annoyingness of the modo interface is at fault.  All that f8-ing and f6-ing.

[Nathan Gotlib]

storm cauldron is such an evil card : p

and i have to disagree with dan, i am fun to play against, i do lose quite often and its not my fault people dont play interactive cards!!!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Tom I think you have to look to strike a balance.  You can either take this approach and go for the 100% Kieran deck (read randomness/hilarity/losing), or the 100% Nathan deck (read Spike/synergy/robust/redundancy) but personally I think it's whilst you can fit in a few Kieran effects, it's better to focus on cards that you enjoy playing.  Like Crispin said, avoid engines (although I HAVE just put together an elfball EDH for something a bit different!) but beyond that my most enjoyable EDH games are the ones where I play cards like [card]Avatar of Woe[/card], [card]Captain Sisay[/card] and [card]Omnibian[/card] that have a particular Kitchen Table resonance for me.  It flicks a switch that makes the game feel like it did when I started casually 10 or so years ago.

I personally believe that Teneb is your best bet from the list above.  His colours are permanent-heavy, and a gy strategy is always a strong bet in commander.  Not so sure about an Astral Slide engine, although in this case the engine itself somewhat lends itself to finding the engine piece, you don't want to be building around a particular non-general card. Plus you'll have no shortage of targets in other peoples graveyards by turn 7 without having to worry if you've cycled that [card]Krosan Tusker[/card] yet or not.

If you want to build your run-of-the-mill commander deck, then a good rule of thumb would be 40 lands, 20 on colour staples, 10 cards that synergise particularly with your commander and 30 cards that you love then just let it evolve from there.

EDIT: I've left the [card] tags in because I can't remember how to link cards, someone tell me!

[Thomas David Baker]

(It's <a class="card">Name Here</a> ... I should really add some js or something to pick up [card], though ...)

So once I have this deck, do I try to win, or not?  When I make Teneb, equip with Lightning Greaves, swing, and someone's Jin-Gitaxias is sitting in their graveyard, should I take Mulldrifter instead?  I was listening to Sheldon Menery and he said the format was broken by nature so people that are impressed with themselves for breaking it are being silly.  That makes a lot of sense but I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be doing.  Making a bunch of big creatures but not ganging up on anyone and then getting them all Wrathed away a few times and then the person that has the most creatures the time when no one has a Wrath wins?

I do hate those Sol Ring-Armillary Sphere-Darksteel Ingot early turns.  Can we just start with five lands in play?

[Kieran Symington]

The one thing I've learned about Commander is that if you're being obnoxious then everyone is meant to gang up and kill you. Therefore, you really need to play effects that are good but not too good or everyone's removal will come at you and you'll end up with nothing. Problem is, when you know who has the best deck, they get killed all the time, so they make their deck a bit worse. Then someone else is the one getting killed all the time. Eventually, everyone ends up playing either super-powerful decks or 99 basic land.