![]() Players never know what they’re going to find inside, and building out a collection requires both time and treasure. Magic has traditionally been sold in blind booster packs. “Every Commander deck you have has a different personality” That timing gave rise to what players referred to as “netdecking” - the practice of finding a powerful list of cards online and rebuilding those same decks for yourself. As the competitive scene took shape in the early 1990s, the internet itself was also taking form. “Every Commander deck you have has a different personality,” says Verhey.īut in the early days of Magic, decks weren’t always so expressive. The Commander format embodies the game’s reputation for competition, but also for storytelling. Many Magic players see creating a Commander deck as the ultimate expression of a player’s skill, and of their ability to use their personal collection of cards to its fullest. The player with the last Commander standing wins. That Legendary Creature is designated as the leader of your army, your deck’s eponymous Commander. What truly sets this format apart, however, is the fact that one of those 100 cards must be a Legendary Creature, a type of creature first introduced to the game in 1994. Decks consist of 100 cards, and each of these cards - save for the lands - must be unique. Each one gets 40 life points, and any player can attack any other player on their turn. To start with, it’s a multiplayer mode of play that supports from two to six ( or more) players. The first player to reduce their opponent from 20 life points to zero wins.Ĭommander format is quite a bit different from vanilla Magic. Those spells and creatures can then deal damage. Inside are mana-producing land cards - colored white, blue, black, red, or green - which, when tapped, provide the fuel needed to use other cards for casting spells and bringing creatures to life. Created by mathematician and game designer Richard Garfield, the game is traditionally played as a two-player duel. Nicol Bolas, one of the original Elder Dragons. To answer those questions, we need to travel first to Fairbanks, Alaska - the birthplace of Elder Dragon Highlander, the format that would eventually inspire Commander. Where did Commander come from? Who invented it? And why did it catch on the way it has? To me, that’s really powerful and why it’s become - arguably - the largest format in Magic.”īut Commander itself evolved from another format altogether, and that format’s history goes back even further than 2011, when the publisher officially started selling Commander decks at retail. “Now, no matter who you are, if I ask you to play a game of Magic I have a Commander deck and it plays by the same rules as yours, and we’re ready to go. “Commander has become the kind of de facto casual, social format, and it’s made it really easy,” Verhey continues. “I could have five decks in my bag, and you could have five decks in your bag, but they might all be incompatible. “For a very long time, when I said, ‘Hey let’s play Magic!’ it could mean so many things,” Magic senior designer Gavin Verhey tells me. It’s become the glue that helps to hold the collectible card game’s fandom together. Today, Wizards of the Coast believes that one format, called Commander, is the most popular one of all. Not just the lore the community itself has always been fractured across the game’s different formats or styles of play. Magic: The Gathering has always been a multiverse. ![]()
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