Thursday, August 4, 2011

EDH, a.k.a, Commander

A commander deck is comprised of 1 legendary creature as your commander and a 99-card deck. There may be no duplicates of any card in the deck except for basic lands and you may only use a color that is on your commander. For example: Doran, the Siege Tower were you could use black, green and white or Memnarch were you could use only blue because of his blue ability. So now you’ve got your commander (preferably multicolored) and your 99-card singleton deck. On to the game play.

What’s different between this and a normal game? First of all, the legendary creature you picked as your commander resides in a special removed from the game zone known as the command zone where you can summon it at any time for its mana cost. When ever it is destroyed you may place it in the graveyard or back in the command zone. When you put it back in the command zone from play, the next time you cast your commander, it will cost 2 more mana for each time it was destroyed. When commanders deal damage to an opponent they deal normal damage as well as commander damage, if a player is dealt 21 damage by a single commander that player loses the game. Other than that, commanders act like normal creatures, they CAN be shuffled in your library, countered, and brought back to your hand so watch out for spells like hinder. This is a reason why it is good to have a lot of tutoring considering your commander may be placed at the bottom of your library and you may only have 1 copy of a card. Another difference in commander game play is that every player starts of with 40 life so don’t think agro is the way to go. The games seem to last a very long time so a steady paced deck will work the best. Now that you now how to play and have a deck, the fun begins.

Those are the basic rules, so go have fun. Start a commander league with your friends and keep a record on everyone’s commanders. Make sure you don’t play someone with the same commander because the legend rule DOES apply to commanders. Commander games play way different than normal games so don’t be surprised if your first deck doesn’t play the way you want it too. Play test a bunch with your friends and you’ll get the hang of it and edit your deck till its just right.

You can buy a bunch of the pre-constructed decks for COmmander and any other card you wish to buy for a low price at http://www.mtgfanatic.com/!

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