How To Be New - Lessons From My First Commander Night

Overwhelmed Apprentice

by Jason Rainville

Welcome to our new series: How To Be New. My name is Roman, and I started playing Commander for the first time last October after a years-long hot and cold affair with Magic: The Gathering.

I got a ton of advice from a lot of different sources when starting my Commander journey, but not all of it was great. So I decided to document my most formative Commander experiences, wring any bits of wisdom I could from them, and pass those lessons on to you.

Whether you're Commander-curious, another EDH neophyte, or a veteran trying to remember what it felt like to be new, welcome in.

Let me start off by putting the most important information first: If you're thinking about getting a deck together and going to your Friendly Local Game Store's Commander Night, do it. It is the most fun you can have with a bunch of scraps of painted cardboard.

You really don't get a sense for the artistic expression possible in Magic until you get to see the breadth of decks at a Commander Night and how they match up to the people who are playing them. It's sort of like how people tend to look like their dogs, except with goblins and buff albino lions.

The folks at Commander Night are also generally welcoming to new players, and they are more than happy to help you out with your deck. I, for example, walked up to my first table with a fistful of 100 cards in one hand and 100 freshly bought sleeves featuring the Pokémon Gen 9 starters in the other. And bless them, all three other players pitched in to help me sleeve my deck. Even the Stax player (more on him later).

However, I did come to find out that there are things you can do, both at the table and away from it, to ensure that your first Commander Night is as wonderful as possible. So if you're considering going to your first Commander Night, please take some of these lessons I learned at mine:

1. Don't Be Late

This one I'm honestly going to blame on American Airlines, who delayed my wife's flight by six hours to leave right during the heart of EDH Night. By the time I got there and picked up the last few singles I'd ordered for my deck, as well as the aforementioned sleeves featuring Quaxly et al., the night was already halfway through.

It turns out that typically people will create a four-person pod at the beginning of the event and play games within that pod throughout the night, swapping in and out decks after each round. Although stragglers who arrive late will form pods amongst themselves, I'd recommend arriving early enough to your first Commander Night to put yourself within the throng of people looking to form initial play groups. This will help you more easily assimilate into the crowd and ease the social anxiety which naturally comes when trying to do an unfamiliar thing with unfamiliar people.

Luckily for me, I was able to find a couple of people I knew from some other events I'd attended. And as fate would have it, they had an open seat at their table. This brings me to my second lesson:

2. When Someone Says "Power Level Doesn't Matter," That is a Lie

I sat down at the table with two people I knew from some staff parties at this store which I had been gratefully invited to by a friend when they needed to fill out numbers. At those parties we would usually mess around and play some goofy Magic with each other. But something I'd forgotten is that when it came time to play, we always divided ourselves between the "kids table" and the "adults table." These two were always firmly at the adults table.

I was about to find out why.

When I asked, as I'd been taught to do by various MtG YouTube personalities, what the power level of peoples' decks were, I was told "Oh, nobody actually cares about that in real life Commander. You just play what you have." I, though surprised, tried to shrug off my perceived cultural snafu and got back to giving my Solemn Simulacrum

Several turns later, when one of my acquaintances had achieved some combo by which he'd stolen every creature on the field and sacrificed them to turn them into spirit copies of themselves which could not die (a combo I honestly hope I never come to understand), I began to doubt the truth of his earlier statement.

Something I noticed is that there were flags at many tables with the words "Competitive" or "Casual" written on them. I'd find out through later Commander Nights that these flags are immensely helpful for curating the kind of experience you're hoping to have. By taking one of these flags and setting them at your table when forming your pod (another point for arriving early), you can help to form a group of people who want to have a similar experience to you.

Hopefully your FLGS has some similar system. At the very least, you can simulate it by having a conversation with the people who come to sit at your table about what deck (or decks) you have and generally what they're aiming to do. This is called a "Rule Zero" conversation, and though not necessarily a formal part of the Commander process, it's an extremely useful tool to help you get the most out of your first Commander Night.

3. Commander is a Social Game

Luckily, in my opening hand I'd hit my Sol Ring

Then the player to my left played a card called Energy Flux

He was the first player eliminated from our game.

He taught me an important lesson. No matter how much he protested that my acquaintance (infinite spirit copy guy, who of course did eventually win the game) was the true threat here, we mercilessly drummed him out of the game. And the reason was simple: We wanted to play Magic. And his deck was built around us not getting to play Magic.

I learned through him that Commander is a social game, and you have to consider the social ramifications of your actions. A 1v1v1v1 is a lot more fun than a sudden 3v1. So consider spreading damage around the table, helping with removal of big threats, and other things that will keep the game friendly between yourself and at least the majority of the table. Or else you'll find yourself quickly stamped out by two Boros () decks and a mono-green player.

Speaking of that mono-green player, he mostly seemed to take lengthy, indecipherable turns during which lands and creatures would enter and leave the battlefield in equal measure. He wasn't the best at describing what he was casting or what his spells did, but at the end of it usually nothing else on the table had been affected at all, so I didn't worry too much. Which leads me to my next point:

4. Leave the Mono-Green Player To Do Whatever They're Doing

Ok, your mileage on this may vary. It worked out fine for me in this game, but another time I looked up to suddenly find 70-something Elves staring at me from across the battlefield. So, you know, take this one with a grain of salt.

Overall, I didn't win at my first Commander Night, but I did have an excellent time. After our game, the other players in my pod took a look through my deck (at my request) and suggested some swaps or upgrades I could look into. It was a welcoming time, and I have been back for a few more Commander Nights since. So please, do give it a shot if you're on the fence. And tell them The Jolly Balloon Man sent you.