Those whose partners play commander: how is that working out for you?

[DirkGently]

Kinda curious. I've had partners draft, but there's not nearly as much opportunity to interact during a tournament.

[Dragonlover]

Fine, they've been playing for about 14 years now and the occasional ADHD related brain freeze aside, no issues. Their other partner also plays, which is handy as between the three of us we tend to open whatever we need for any given set between us.

Dragonlover

[DirkGently]

Dang, was hoping for more than one response xD

I guess I'm wondering mostly how it works in terms of playing (accidental collusion? or are you at each others' throats? the few times I played commander with my ex, she was very "he always wins so we need to kill him ASAP" to the rest of the table lmao) and in terms of collecting (do you share your collections? have there been issues with ownership of cards?). Do you spend much time talking about magic? I like the idea of having someone to throw ideas around with, talk about spoilers, etc, but I also feel like finding someone on the same wavelength is pretty needle-in-a-haystack-ish.

[Dragonlover]

Oh the collections merged pretty damn fast. I worked for a singles seller for years, so we stayed pretty grounded in the "it's just cardboard" mentality. Anything not currently actively sleeved is fair game.

We don't spend loads of time talking about Magic - mainly during spoiler season if there's a card that crops up for one of our decks. I've spoken a bit on here about their various memory issues, one of the side effects is a casual conversation about something as complex as Magic is hard because they can't remember what anything does.

My wife epitomises the Spike archetype. There is no accidental collusion, they're out for blood from turn 1. If they're colluding, it's in the open to take out an obvious threat. We also have a well established playgroup, so it's been a long time since they've played against some random.at an LGS where collusion in the negative sense could occur.

Dragonlover

[Avacyn Believer]

The closest I got to this experience was teaching my mate's wife how to play when we were a player short, in hindsight Commander might have not been the best introduction to Magic Once she got the basics and we stopped helping her I haven't noticed any collusion between them but I am curious how that would develop if we played more often with her

[Hawk]

I was too self-conscious to share my love of Magic with the handful of girlfriends I had, even when they asked, and one of many ways I knew my then-girlfriend and now-wife was "the one" was that I felt free to share playing with her and I think she enjoys playing more than I do.

In terms of your questions:
Collusion: Definitely a thing I worry about and can see that's messy and complicated because we near-exclusively play with family which makes the dynamics even messier. It's worth having some pre and post game discussion about it, is the best advice I'd give you after 11 years.
Collecting: My wife did not have a pre-existing collection. Technically she "owns" a few cards like a Revised Demonic Tutor a college friend gifted specifically to her or a few cards I've bought her as gifts (like the Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist from the Secret Lair drop), but 11 years of marriage we just consider it "our" collection. My wife has negative infinity interest in collecting cards, understanding our collection, or building and maintaining decks, and entrusts all of that to me. She is a good sport about talking spoilers with me but it doesn't interest her. She gets more excited to talk about new decks, but more in the conceptual phase and the finishing touches phases with the bulk of the work being on me.
Playing: There was a brief stretch when we were long distance where she'd play Magic without me, even going to a few prereleases by herself in Chicago while I was still in Idaho, but she has generally found the MtG community not super welcoming without her boyfriend/fiance/husband there to hang out with and keep weirdos away. She will go to a prerelease with me but even there encourages me to go with other friends these days as she prefers Commander near-exclusively and particularly hates Draft. If we're going to play at an LGS she prefers Commander where we're in the same pod or a 2HG Prerelease event where we can be a "perfect team" - I can do all the building which she hates and is bad at, and she can be the hyper-competitive super player she is and keep me from indulging in too much durdling and nonsense when we could win instead.

TL;DR - It's awesome to have a partner who plays Magic, and if it's important enough to your identity that you post on this forum I'd share it even with partners who don't play...and you may just not find a partner who's exactly on the same wavelength, and that's okay too.

[3drinks]

I read this as the partners mechanic and was about to talk about something with Vial Smasher. I'm glad I'm terribly mistaken lmfao.

[PrimevalCommander]

My wife will not play magic with me. I am a very competitive and strategic person. She is carefree, non-competitive, and anti-strategy, so she has the wisdom to foresee that playing this game together would not yield any beneficial outcomes to our relationship. She is just not a strategy gamer, she likes games of chance, and low complexity board games, which is fine.

[materpillar]

My wife has no interest in learning Magic The Gathering. Although, admittedly I haven't really tried particularly hard to get her to learn. To be honest, I think there are just much better games than MtG so we play those instead. I more play MtG to have something in common with my brother and to keep in touch with some high school friends. Magic is a very good game, but there are better games that cost $60 for the entire game.

[Henlock]

My wife kind of puts up with Magic, but I remember a funny incident. Once, she googled opinions from girlfriends and wives and the first account she read seemed to back her feeling about Magic, until she got to the plot twist of this woman finally accepting to learn how to play Magic and saying it was a great choice that had made the relationship better XD

My son does play, but that it's quite a different. I imagine that we can hate each other more strongly and keep track of ownership more consistently than it would happen between partners.