On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of diving into my first games of the Commander variant of Magic: The Gathering, and I must say, it was an exhilarating experience! I’d played some magic back around 2012 to 2014, but never heavily, and I didn’t stick with it. Really, other than having a basic grasp of the core concepts, I was coming at this relatively fresh. As a newcomer to the world of Magic, I was both excited and a bit nervous about what to expect. However, the game turned out to be an absolute blast, and I’m now eagerly looking forward to exploring more, especially with how cool some of the recent decks like D&D, Fallout, and Bloomburrow look.
Commander, for those who might not know, is a unique format of Magic: The Gathering that emphasises multiplayer gameplay and deck-building creativity, or interesting preconstructed decks. I’m probably more interested in the latter, there. Each player starts with a 100-card deck, led by a legendary creature known as the Commander. The goal is to reduce your opponents’ life totals from 40 to zero while navigating a battlefield filled with spells, creatures, and strategic manoeuvres.
From the moment we shuffled our decks and drew our opening hands, I was hooked. The game’s complexity and the endless possibilities for strategy kept me on my toes; with 100 cards all being unique, apart from the basic lands, there’s definitely a lot of different things potentially going on. I loved how each turn brought new challenges and opportunities, making every decision not only crucial, but difficult. Discarding cards becomes very tricky when you know that a discarded card has no more copies in your deck and will not appear again. The camaraderie and friendly competition among players added to the enjoyment, making it a memorable experience. I’m told that this is a major part of it, and one of the main reasons why our local player base prefers Commander
As I look forward to my next games, I’m particularly excited about picking up a couple of decks and, over the coming months, getting a few options available. I’m particularly impressed, visually and thematically, with the new Bloomburrow Commander decks. These decks introduce a fresh plane to Magic players, featuring charming animalfolk. There are four new decks to choose from, each with its own unique theme and strategy:
- Animated Army (Red-Green): Focuses on creating and enhancing creature tokens.
- Family Matters (Blue-Red-White): Emphasises teamwork and synergy.
- Peace Offering (Green-White-Blue): Centers around peaceful interactions and building a strong defense.
- Squirreled Away (Black-Green): Aims to overwhelm opponents with an army of squirrels and tokens.
The themes and mechanics of these decks sound incredibly fun and engaging, and I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
My first game of Commander has opened up a whole new game, full of potential excitement and strategy. I’m eager to dive deeper into the game, learn more about how to build my engine with each of my decks, and explore the vast array of cards and combinations available. The Bloomburrow decks seem like the perfect starting point for my journey, offering a mix of creativity, strategy, and adorable animalfolk, but I’ll likely pick up a second, as well.
If you’re new to Magic: The Gathering or looking to try out Commander, I highly recommend giving it a shot. The game offers endless possibilities for fun and strategic play, and with the new Bloomburrow decks, there’s never been a better time to start. Here’s to many more games and adventures in the world of Magic: the Gathering!
No Rerolls 
Glad to see that you had a good time! The 100-card nature of Commander appeals to me too, as the same deck can play out very differently from game to game, depending on your draw.
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I feel like Commander is a more relaxed format for the game, though there are probably loads of competitive folks in there! Enjoy, but don’t go too far down that rabbit hole!!
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I may have jumped in a bit hard…
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Is that the Ixalan Merfolk deck with the matching playmat? You really jumped all in, then, hey? I think that deck is one of the better ones they’ve released recently, although I think generally there’s more hits than misses these days. They’ve come a long way from the early days of support for the format when the decks were intended more as “template” to upgrade from. Consequently the cards were meant to inspire different strategies and often were at odds with each other when playing straight from the box.
The biggest thing with Commander is the people you are playing with. Sounds like your group could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately the shop I was playing at a decade ago (shudder) approached things far too competitively and it really put me off the format completely. It’s only recently that I’m dipping my toes in — no surprises with Precons only since they’re basically my thing! — and it’s worlds apart from my original experience. The crew at my current shop are experienced players who do like to play powerful cards, just the whole vibe is so much better for whatever reason.
My most recent pick up is the Mrs Bumbleflower deck which I’ve been having a lot of fun with so definitely consider grabbing that one. But as a big fan of “animal fantasy” books as a kid there’s a very good chance that I’ll accidentally end up with all four of them!
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I borrowed the deck and mat from one of the other players! I really liked how the deck worked, though.
I did end up spending quite a bit more than I intended though to grab a few different style decks to try things out.
I think our local group is quite easygoing, and I know them all from our local gaming groups anyways, from playing Warhammer, RPGs and board games. We’re very remote where we are, so it tends to be the same people.
The player I borrowed from used the Bumbleflower deck. It seems really fun! I grabbed the bird one, but I’m keen to work out how to make a deck around Ygra.
I’m trying to get my head around building some inexpensive decks to get me started with how that works. I’ll be posting about thinking through that.
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That would be cool to read if you did, it’s always interesting to get perspective from people just starting out. Especially those coming from other type of gaming backgrounds. I guess you could even say I’m in a similar position myself even though I’ve been playing normal Magic for a long time. Commander can feel like the Chess to “60 Card Casual”s Checkers. The board is the same but the pieces all do completely different things. (Not to mention that Checkers can be extremely strategic too, even in its comparable simplicity!)
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