I’ve been playing Commander since August of this year. After months of watching games from channels like Tolarian Community College, I can finally see why it's such a popular card game. If you’ve been wanting to try Magic the Gathering (MTG) and Commander for the longest time, let me convince you to try with my own experience so far.

If you’re not familiar with card games, Commander can be interpreted as a board game where 4 players use their 100-card deck to fight and be the last one standing. Each deck has a Commander: a Legendary Creature you can summon from the board. This serves as your deck’s theme, play style, and what colored mana you’ll use whether its red, blue, black, green, white, or a combination of any of them.. 

It’s a very simple description of a game that’s well-known for its complex interactions, wacky combos, and endless pools of cards but its a start. How you wanna play the game is decided by how you build your deck.

Do you want to build a deck of your favorite fantasy race, RPG class, or maybe even both? There’s an Elf Rouge deck that’s waiting for you! 

Do you want to make an army of bunnies, lizards, zombies, or flying rocks? Look into cards that can create tokens of different things and multiply them! 

Do you like the idea of hitting your friends with a UNO Reverse or Skip card every turn? Play a deck with blue in it! 

There are also a pre-constructed decks or precons that can cost around 2,500 to 4,000 that has certain themes like using cards in the graveyard, giving your opponents cards and tokens, or forcing them to attack each other. If you’re a fan of Fallout, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer 4000, or Doctor Who, there are official Commander decks of these beloved media.

Now, it’s a steep price to start playing, but the format is proxy-friendly—meaning you can use unofficial cards or even a piece of paper with the card’s name. 

My most played commander is Edward Kenway, a Mythic Rare from the Assassin’s Creed set that cost about 800 pesos on release. I printed my own proxy of it with an artwork of Captain Marvelous or the “pirate power ranger.” If you feel like you need some expensive cards and have some spare printer ink, feel free to make some of your own cards.

However, the best part of Commander, as cheesy as it sounds, is to spend time with your friends, partners, and family or meeting new people. It’s a remarkable bonding activity to untangle a list of spells happening at the same turn, hit your friends with an unblockable pirate ship, or just talk about the endless decks you can all can make.

Though, don’t get me wrong. The game is hard, but finding what you want to do in the game, figuring how you want to achieve it, then seeing it on the board are just some examples of the joys you can experience playing this endlessly interesting game.

So if you have a friend or two and you’ve been wanting to experience the hype for the longest while, build a deck or buy a precon to get started. Looking for some more people to play with? Come to The Office | Roll Play and we can show you the ropes.