Noob Questions

[Black_Dog]

Hey everyone. Apologies if this isn't the right space for new starter questions but I hoped someone could help. I've played a bit of Magic and am now thinking of trying the Commander format for the first time but I have some questions...

1) Is there an advantage by simply knowing what colour another player will play with? For example if I find someone is going to play a red deck, should that be a sign that I shouldn't play my white deck? Are some colours better countered by others?

2) Why do people buy commander deck packs rather than picking and choosing individual cards to buy from the used market?

3) Do the pre-made commander decks always have the same cards? E.g. if I bought 2 of the same pack would the cards be identical?

4) Do you always have to play commander against 3 other people e.g. it's always a 4 person game?

5) Surely the person with the most money will always win as they will buy the best/most expensive cards to include in their decks?

[pokken]

These answers are all somewhat personal I think!

1) Counterpicking is mostly inappropriate in my opinion; there are definitely bad matchups but they mostly have to do with strategies and commanders more than colors. I will usually put away my enchantress deck if someone is playing Bruna, Light of Alabaster or I'd be inclined not to play a white weenie deck against Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. But for the most part I try to pick what deck to play based on what I perceive the power level of the table is going to be and what I feel like playing.

2) It's really hard to build a functional commander deck and it can be fun to start from a precon that will definitely work, and then tune it, especially for beginners. Most people do build their own decks I think.

3) Yes, precons are identical to other versions of the same precon

4) Nope, I've played 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and one time 11 (do not recommend)

5) Nope, good deck construction can be done on a budget for sure. I have a mono white God-Eternal Oketra deck that us run on a $50 budget (and comes in at $40 or so, $10 of which is the commander!) that took down a table of $8000 or so the other week Money helps, and there is definitely a floor to "strong" decks.

My general rule of thumb is that I find I can create really powerful decks on $4-500 or so that are able to compete with my most expensive decks for the most part (comical $$$)

re: Finance
It's really important to remember with MTG that Magic cards are much more liquid than other hobby equipment. It is really hard to lose more than half or so of the money you put into cards if you buy singles cautiously.

Even over the relatively recent term (cards I bought since Kaladesh) I could probably cash out for more than I put in, though past performance is not indicative of future results etc etc

[WizardMN]

Hey everyone. Apologies if this isn't the right space for new starter questions but I hoped someone could help. I've played a bit of Magic and am now thinking of trying the Commander format for the first time but I have some questions...

1) Is there an advantage by simply knowing what colour another player will play with? For example if I find someone is going to play a red deck, should that be a sign that I shouldn't play my white deck? Are some colours better countered by others?

No. There might be an advantage to knowing what their commander is (not necessarily the colors) but arguably it shouldn't matter since you should have more than one opponent. This is not something worth considering and you should just build, and play, your deck as you want to no matter the colors of the opposition.

In specific, there is not real "anti-color" to each color. Seeing a red deck doesn't automatically mean a white deck is better against it.

2) Why do people buy commander deck packs rather than picking and choosing individual cards to buy from the used market?

It depends. Some people like having a ready made deck out of the package as it is easier on deckbuilding to start from a template. They also may not have the funds to buy too many cards so buying a single deck for $40 gets them into the action with their group right away and they can have fun. Pre-cons can compete just fine even if they don't win quite as often as a homebrew.

And some people enjoy the idea of taking a deck and slowly upgrading it over time. Trying out the "base" and then modifying it as they see fit. There are lots of reasons why pre-cons are good for some people. Especially newer players, though they aren't always limited to novices.

3) Do the pre-made commander decks always have the same cards? E.g. if I bought 2 of the same pack would the cards be identical?

Yes. Every pre-con with the same name/face card(s) will have the exact same decklist. Barring a printing or packaging error.

4) Do you always have to play commander against 3 other people e.g. it's always a 4 person game?

No. You can make your games as big as you want. 3 person pods (including yourself) is typically the minimum and 5 is typically the max. I personally don't like 5+ player pods but they are doable. 4 is simply the sweet spot for most people.

5) Surely the person with the most money will always win as they will buy the best/most expensive cards to include in their decks?

They may be at a higher chance of winning due to mana base more than anything. But there are plenty of ways to build on a budget and the person's deckbuilding prowess and their skill at the game definitely matters over deck cost. I have played with pre-cons against "real" decks and won just fine. On the flip side, I have played with my own decks that tend to be quite expensive and lost to budget decks. More money can shore up certain weaknesses in a deck, but it can't replace skill. Nor can it account for the actual game play where things are going to be varied depending on what the table is doing. You don't need a ton of money to win at Commander. You basically just need to know your deck.

[ISBPathfinder]

1) Generally the best practice is for everyone to pick their decks but not reveal their commanders until decks are chosen. Picking a deck because you saw someone else's commander can be mean and lead to situations where someone reveals they are on a strategy and then someone counter picks a commander based on it. Its why its best to not reveal who you are playing until everyone has picked a deck to play. Beyond that though knowing who someone is playing can be a big deal in what sort of hands you keep in mulligans. Some commanders for instance can be very fast and keeping a hand without interaction for them might be bad. There is information to be gained by what opponents are playing but it generally shouldn't be what you are playing outside of situations where someone's commander actually hard coutners your chosen deck at which point you might ask if you can change decks due to the counter.

2) A few reasons, one of the biggest just being that they are reasonable purchases for the money. Generally a few of them have highly sought after singles in them but sometimes if you want to build one of the commanders the decks themsevles can come with a number of cards you would need. If you don't have a vast collection of cards these decks can come with a number of good reprints as well as give a decent starting point for a lot of players who might be new to the game. Sometimes there is also a $50 card in a $35 precon though too but in that case its usually impossible to find that precon for non inflated prices.

3) Yes outside of some weird quality control issue they are pre constructed decks with the same cards every time.

4) Four player free for all commander tends to be the favorite just from the standpoint of how long the games go as well as the ability to politics. As you have less players at the table combat based decks get buffed due to less total health in opponents and as you add more you tend to favor combo type wincons more. Tables with 5+ players can also take exponentially longer to finish if they are not closed out via a combo.

5) Yes..... and no. Having more money does give you access to some very powerful cards but not every strategy is made strictly better by more expensive cards. There is something to be said about consistency of manabases especially in the early turns when you have more expensive manabases but you also don't have to play 3+ colors in every deck. There is an advantage of money but I wouldn't say it will win you the game nor is it something that can't be overcome. Gaea's Cradle is probably one of the biggest instances of where spending money is hard to compete on a budget just because the budget options are not technically on a land and thus you can't use the same cards to go get it and perform the same. Cradle could go in a lot of strategies too but they are all ultimately green swarm concepts while good it still tends to not be the best thing you can do in the game if looking at a cutthroat competitive standpoint.

[duducrash]

Woth noting that recently commander decks are coming with one extra collector pack.

So the commander deck will have a preconstructed deck of 100 cards, tokens and this collector pack. In this collector pack the cards wont be always the same

[Avacyn Believer]

Good questions!

1) Is there an advantage by simply knowing what colour another player will play with? For example if I find someone is going to play a red deck, should that be a sign that I shouldn't play my white deck? Are some colours better countered by others?

In Commander it's more about the deck archetype, or even the commander, than the colours. Same goes for "countering" I'd say. For example, if you are playing a graveyard focused deck and someone is playing a commander that prevents creatures from dying or lots of graveyard hate, your game experience won't be fun. Colours themselves can give you an idea what kind of cards to expect, but you can build so many different decks in the same colours.

2) Why do people buy commander deck packs rather than picking and choosing individual cards to buy from the used market?

Honestly, it's mostly about convenience I'd say. The precons used to be relatively cheap (£40), and still are but its creeping up (£50+). The decks are also cheaper than if you were going to buy individual cards, and some cards go so high in value they pretty much pay for the other 99. Precons are good to give you an idea how that kind of deck is going to play, and they are constructed reasonably well. It is also a good starting point to upgrade with better cards that you already own or open in boosters.

3) Do the pre-made commander decks always have the same cards? E.g. if I bought 2 of the same pack would the cards be identical?

Yeah, you even get online decklists from Wizards before they come out, so you know what you are buying. Only thing random are booster packs they started to include.

4) Do you always have to play commander against 3 other people e.g. it's always a 4 person game?

Four people is ideal, but you can play Commander 1v1, or with more than four. Though anything more than five and you are better to split into two pods of three. The more people you include the longer the games go on, and it's less fun because sometime you can struggle to maintain awareness of what is going on across the table, and the turns can go for so long that you barely feel like you are playing. I like playing three person games because the games go quick, so you can have more games.

5) Surely the person with the most money will always win as they will buy the best/most expensive cards to include in their decks?

Not at all, which is the beauty of Commander. Some very cheap decks perform really well. You can have all the "best" cards you want, but if you don't build and pilot the deck right, it won't help you win against an optimized deck with an experienced player. I can attest to this personally, my pet deck has cost me nearly £3,000 but I wouldn't say it performs better than some of my £200 decks.

Also consider that Commander is a multiplayer format. If one person has a really good start because they spent a lot of money on the expensive mana rocks and lands, there are three players that will now target them and most likely take that player out of the game.

[DirkGently]

Most of the questions have been answered pretty thoroughly, but I'll add a little nuance to a few points:

4) 4 person is by far the most common, with 3 player being by far the next most common, and 5 player being the most common after that. I think of all the commander games I've played in 14 years, it's probably been 70% 4 player, 20% 3 player, 6% 5 player, 3% 2 player, and 1% 6 player. And most people prefer the 4 person game if given the choice. So people build decks and evaluate cards assuming a 4 player environment for that reason.

5) I get asked this question a lot about magic.

Outside commander, if you haven't played a constructed competitive format, generally the assumption is that nobody is limited by budget. Of course at small local events players probably will be, but as soon as you're talking about a serious tournament, nobody is leaving cards out of their deck for budget reasons. Not strictly relevant to your question, but a lot of people wonder about this when they ask about budget.

In commander, most factors effecting power level are rendered somewhat moot because everyone in the game is (or should be) trying to play a game where everyone is on roughly equal footing. So you can build a very powerful deck - whether by spending a lot of money, taking a proven decklist off the internet, etc - but it won't help you win more often. It'll just mean you play against other people who have powerful decks of a comparable level. Of course, you can "pubstomp" people by intentionally playing a powerful deck at a lower-powered table, but that's frowned upon and might mean they don't want to play with you in the future. So it's good practice to try to match the power level of the table. Having a couple decks, of higher and lower power levels, is often a good idea. Or you can potentially borrow a deck if all your decks are too strong/weak.

On top of that, as a multiplayer format, there's a bit of a balancing factor. If one deck is more powerful than the others, they're probably going to be the target of more removal and attacks from the other players. Even a pretty strong deck is going to have difficulty fighting 3v1 if the power levels of the decks are remotely close. So a deck being slightly stronger isn't typically a big deal or a big advantage. Maybe they pull ahead, but then people target them and they get knocked back down to everyone else's level.

So basically, don't worry too much about the power level of your deck.

But for sake of argument...

As far as whether money can make a deck more powerful, it definitely can, but it definitely doesn't have to. The most powerful decks are expensive, yes, and the cheapest decks are weak, but you can make a pretty damn strong deck for cheap and you can make a terrible deck that still costs a lot of money. Every once in a while I put my 100 most expensive cards together to make a deck. It's worth roughly $50,000 and it's horrendously bad.

If you have an idea for a deck that you really like, you can almost always make it more effective by adding more money to it. A perfect manabase alone for a 3 color deck is going to run easily into the thousands of dollars. But you can make a manabase that works 90% as good for 10% of the price.

As long as you're willing to spend a few hundred, money PROBABLY won't be a major factor in the strength of your deck. There are a few outliers (Gaea's Cradle for example is a very strong, deck-transforming card that costs a lot of money) but generally you can find reasonably-priced replacements for powerful cards that will be almost as good, and in a lot of cases the best cards aren't even that expensive (Sol Ring is the best or second best card in the format, and it only costs a couple bucks and comes in every commander precon).

As long as you're over that threshold, the power level of your deck is probably going to depend a lot more on these factors:

• What is your deck trying to do? An no-holds-barred combo control deck has the potential to be very strong (albeit very boring imo). An "all my cards have pictures of chairs on them" deck probably won't be. A more typical "commander-y" deck, like say dragon tribal, will be somewhere in between.
• How well have you constructed it? Finding the right balance of effects, a good manabase, etc is crucial to making your deck both effective, as well as fun to play. This is the area that I would spend the most time thinking about when you're building your deck, much moreso than the $$$ you're willing to spend.
• How well can you play it? Commander, I would argue, has more room for skill to shine than any other format. In a 1v1 format, if you get stuck on lands and your opponent doesn't, you're probably just done. In commander, thanks to the aforementioned balancing factor and the potential to use and abuse politics, you can do a LOT with very little if you know what you're doing. I've won games where my deck's power level was much much lower than my opponents, games where everyone planned to kill me from the jump, games where I got stuck on 2 lands for 10 turns, games where I drew nothing but land...you'd be amazed how far you can get via skill alone. Go play a lot of games, get familiar with the way games play out, and try to pay attention to how your moves impact the rest of the table and how you might use that influence to accomplish your goals.
  
  A really simple example would be something like Ghostly Prison. In 1v1, your opponent will be slowed down, but they'll eventually pay the tax because they have to attack you, and only you, to win. And when they can't afford it, they'll use those creatures to block you. So it's really not interesting or effective in 1v1. But in multiplayer, if they can't easily afford the tax, there's a good chance they'll attack someone else instead, which means their creatures become someone else's problem - a big advantage for you. Maybe that other player uses their removal to kill those attacking creatures, or takes some blocks that result in creatures dying, effectively killing many creatures controlled by your opponents. A small effect can have big consequences.
  
  Or maybe they'll find ghostly prison annoying and deliberately pay the tax and try to kill you because of it. Who knows!

Anyway, the tl;dr here is that budget can be a factor, but especially in commander I wouldn't worry about it. There are many factors that determine how effective your deck is going to be, and budget isn't even a particularly important part of the equation in most cases.

[Black_Dog]

Thanks so much everyone! This is very insightful and has given me lots to think about.

A final few questions if I may before I jump in.

For info, at the moment, I'd just like to play to have fun and to meet some new people. Not so fussed about winning, (although constantly getting whopped gets wearing after a while). The idea of watching what someone could do with a deck that was themed around "pictures of chairs" sounds funny and very interesting. I saw a squirrel commander yesterday and thought that a small rodent deck would be also be very funny to make and play. I love the analytics and the deck building element a lot and defo won't be copying any internet based deck loadouts.

1) Etiquette. I'm cool with the rules and the general guidance on not being a dick. I think I can manage that. Are there any other unspoken rules about things you should or shouldn't play for example?
2) When I go to my games store for the first time and look for a table to play on, how would you know if your deck is going to be at the right level for the table? A few people mentioned this above. Is there a common points system that people use to rate the power of their decks so they can be evenly matched? Or is it mostly just about playing with people who have been playing a similar about of time to you?
3) It looks like my local games store plays Competitive (cEDH vs EDH). If I go and play there is it time to forget the squirrels and put the focus on the big guns?

[ChazA4]

Thanks so much everyone! This is very insightful and has given me lots to think about.

A final few questions if I may before I jump in.

[...]

1) Etiquette. I'm cool with the rules and the general guidance on not being a dick. I think I can manage that. Are there any other unspoken rules about things you should or shouldn't play for example?
2) When I go to my games store for the first time and look for a table to play on, how would you know if your deck is going to be at the right level for the table? A few people mentioned this above. Is there a common points system that people use to rate the power of their decks so they can be evenly matched? Or is it mostly just about playing with people who have been playing a similar about of time to you?
3) It looks like my local games store plays Competitive (cEDH vs EDH). If I go and play there is it time to forget the squirrels and put the focus on the big guns?

1. That fluctuates from place to place, table to table. Some tables I've played at want a fair, fun experience more than anything, and others are 'let the dice fall where they may'. To clarify, if someone's getting mana screwed, I've seen the table agree to let them tutor for a free land until they can start casting something(usually T5 or later) just as much as I've seen the person end up getting whomped right out because they couldn't do anything.
I do think one big rule that will get you blacklisted real fast if you ignore it is this: don't cast and dash, especially out of spite. By that I mean, don't cast something like Cyclonic Rift overloaded on someone else's turn, and then say, "Oh yeah, and I'm leaving. Bye!" Definite feel bads for good reason there.
2, 3. This is something that will take time and experience to learn. There have been a number of templates/attempts to do a points system similar to what you're referring to, but it still comes back to experience more than any 'points'. You may see some obvious signs(if someone's able to pull out the prime Eldrazi on turn 5 or sooner reliably, consider them outside your range), but most times it's just learning, making mistakes, and pressing forward. If you alert the table that you're playing with a lower level/indeterminate powered deck, that also can prompt the rest of the table to adjust as well, which dovetails into 3.
3. This may be because everyone there knows the rest. Most of the EDH community at large wants new people in the community, particularly in seeing them grow and learn. If you mention that you are not quite up to cEDH level, they may be willing to break out their casual decks so you can join in comfortably(and they may be grateful for the break too).

I think one word can encompass navigating all of these points, and that is 'communication'. EDH is a very social format, and that goes pre and post game as well as in the middle of it. Talk with them, gauge how you feel, and go from there. Best of luck!

[pokken]

1) Etiquette. I'm cool with the rules and the general guidance on not being a dick. I think I can manage that. Are there any other unspoken rules about things you should or shouldn't play for example?
2) When I go to my games store for the first time and look for a table to play on, how would you know if your deck is going to be at the right level for the table? A few people mentioned this above. Is there a common points system that people use to rate the power of their decks so they can be evenly matched? Or is it mostly just about playing with people who have been playing a similar about of time to you?
3) It looks like my local games store plays Competitive (cEDH vs EDH). If I go and play there is it time to forget the squirrels and put the focus on the big guns?

1 - I think this list does a great job of capturing the essence of cards that are not great ideas in casual decks https://edhrec.com/top/salt - It's not *perfect* but it's a good start.
(in general cards on this list that don't mess with other people's stuff are probably not such a big deal; Dockside Extortionist is fine to play IMHO, and Fierce Guardianship is a 1 for 1 counterspell that's fine...no idea why it's on there:P)

But the list captures the general essence I think

2- You talk about it mostly. For me, I have a deck that I consider a strong 6 that I usually play first. It's well rounded, it doesn't have infinite combos, it doesn't stax much, and it doesn't play any super expensive cards except Scrubland. If Breena is too strong, I dial it back the next game.

It's a good idea to have 2-3 decks if you can. As a beginner, having a strong deck, a middle deck, and a precon is a decent approach if you can swing it.

The 1-10 scheme is not perfect but it's good enough. Generally speaking
(1) - trash tier can't win without help
(2) - (3) - wurm tribal
(4) - precons
(5) - typical first newbie deck, upgraded a precon by adding some powerful cards and unfarking the manabase
(6) - getting faster and playing more interaction, maybe infinite combos that are not super efficient, a wild craterhoof appears
(7) - every deck anyone plays at the shop, regardless of how trash it is. but more seriously, this is usually where you see free counterspells, fast mana, fast tutors and decently efficient combos that are disruptable by removal. (e.g. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combos)
(8) - trying a little harder, might play Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation or Underworld Breach combos sometimes. This is usually where Static Orb shows up imho.
(9) - bad cedh decks
(10) - good cedh decks

- this system is totally arbitrary and everyone has different takes on it, but if you remember that once you start playing Thassa's Oracle and Dockside Extortionist /Temur Sabertooth and Underworld Breach combos you're drifting into CEDH, and if you're playing Craterhoof Behemoth and A+B combos (Duskmantle Guildmage / Mindcrank ) you're drifting into high powered casual, you'll be close enough.



3- If your store plays CEDH the first thing to do is to talk to the community and get their stance on proxying. In general, if they aren't proxying, they aren't really playing CEDH since most people simply can't afford to play real CEDH decks. They'll be playing high powered, and that's a different kind of deck (usually slightly lower curves and slower mana, so you want more interaction and usually more creature sweepers).

If your store plays CEDH for real and proxies, you should netdeck and print one out. They are nearly impossible to build correctly yourself and the challenge is mostly in learning to play them. You can make tweaks over time, but you should start from a known good CEDH deck.

IF you want a quick reference for just how expensive CEDH decks get, I put my entire Flash Hulk deck together at one point and it was $13,000 or so. It's a joke. I took it apart and got a proxied version, because I am just not carrying that around

[ISBPathfinder]

1) Etiquette - In general try not to do things that you don't want done to you. Different metas might have some views on some different cards but if a card makes you really mad when it happens to you, maybe consider not playing that card yourself. In general talk to people in your meta and ask some questions on if there are certain cards / types of cards that the meta is trying not to play. In a lot of cases a lot of metas sort of frown on mass land destruction and stasis lockdown situations but for some god knows what reason a lot of them don't care as much about things that outright win the game. I don't know why this is it just kind of is. There are still a lot of metas that frown on infinite combo but you kind of start splitting hairs on this when you get into wincons.

2) When in doubt start with something more casual and just feel it out as time goes on. I generally only go in with the big guns if they give you a reason to think you need to be at that level.

3) With cEDH you should assume the games will conclude by or before turn 6. That isn't to say it always will but don't bring in a deck that can't win quickly and or has a lot of mostly cheap and blue interaction. There is nothing wrong with cEDH but its not the same experience. Most of my grumbling is when people are playing cEDH without saying something about the power level of their deck or playing that at a table with more casual players. The guy with a slightly modified precon doesn't need to play against your cEDH deck. When people go in expecting this situation its fine my complaint is when that isn't the expectation.

[Avacyn Believer]

It's worth roughly $50,000 and it's horrendously bad.

Got a decklist?

A final few questions if I may before I jump in.

Others have covered it quite well. I'll only emphasize that communication is key. Because of my job I have to travel fairly often and find myself playing different groups in my country and overseas. My first pre-game question is always what sort of level do they want to play, and I've never come across anyone who isn't happy to tell you casual/precon/competitive, or whatever. And as others said, if you explain that you are new, people will try to accommodate you so you can join in and have fun. Granted, exceptions exist and you will come across people who just want to win no matter the cost. Just remember, you can always change tables and have fun in a different game.

Also, having a consistent deck over a winning deck is a good attitude to have. I always describe Commander as a drinking game, the point is to have fun participating and having a laugh, not winning.

[NZB2323]

1) counterpicking is mostly frowned upon, but this goes back to rule 0. You should ask the table what power level or what kind of decks they're running. The goal is to have a competitive game where all the decks are on the same level. No one enjoys a game where 1 player pubstomps the other players, including the person winning. I don't know why you'd think white matches up poorly with red considering white has cards like Auriok Champion and Sanctifier en-Vec. A buddy once had a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed that he said he didn't want to play against my Niv-Mizzet, Parun because it was too hard of a counter. I told him to play what his deck, ended up taking 6 for bouncing his commander, and then had to kill a Collector Ouphe so I could play a Dockside Extortionist during my turn and combo off. I'm also okay with people running a deck that's good against discard for my Neheb, the Worthy deck, but that's why I run GY hate in Bojuka Bog, Dauthi Voidwalker, and Rakdos Charm.

2. You can buy a commander deck and then get singled to upgrade it. I bought the Edgar Markov deck for $30 and then upgraded it from singles. I also bought commander decks that had Fierce Guardianship for that card.

3. Premade commander decks come with the same cards.

4. It can be whatever you want. 2, 3, 4, or 5+. If it's 5+ you may have a hard time seeing everyone's board state and waiting for your turn though.

5. The goal is to have a deck that's at the same power level as the table. If you look at the decks I run, they're all a different power level. I start with Tymna the Weaver//Ravos, Soultender. If I win the first game I'll switch to Neheb, the Worthy. If I win again I'll play my Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck that only has commons in the 99 and cost $30. If I lose the first game with cleric tribal I'll play Nymris, Oona's Trickster the next game and if I lose that then I'll play Morophon, the Boundless infinite Kavu combo.

The most expensive deck would only have cards from Alpha and wouldn't be very good. Also having the least powerful/threatening deck can be an advantage because opponents will ignore you and target the player with the most powerful deck.

[Black_Dog]

Hey everyone! I'm back with a couple more noob questions if that's ok. Firstly, as I mentioned before, I'd like to play casual commander. Based on the excellent advice above I created my first deck. From my research I had thought the thing to do was to pick a THEME and a STRATEGY. I picked a theme that appealed (treefolk tribal) and a rough strategy (go large and switch toughness with power). When I was selecting cards for my deck I was super strict, if it didn't fit my THEME it didn't make the cut even if it was a great card that worked well with my strategy. I went to my LGS and played someone with a lot more experience than me which was good but they pulled out a straight artefact deck. Now that seemed to me like a STRATEGY without a theme allowing inclusion of lots of random and powerful cards with no self imposed constraints. I had expected to get my ass kicked but kicked in a clever way e.g. the combination of THEMEs and STRATEGY in unusual combinations. This seemed decidedly less clever and I came away with a feeling of being had e.g. we weren't playing on an even playing field. Have I understood this right or are these unrealistic expectations?

[pokken]

Hey everyone! I'm back with a couple more noob questions if that's ok. Firstly, as I mentioned before, I'd like to play casual commander. Based on the excellent advice above I created my first deck. From my research I had thought the thing to do was to pick a THEME and a STRATEGY. I picked a theme that appealed (treefolk tribal) and a rough strategy (go large and switch toughness with power). When I was selecting cards for my deck I was super strict, if it didn't fit my THEME it didn't make the cut even if it was a great card that worked well with my strategy. I went to my LGS and played someone with a lot more experience than me which was good but they pulled out a straight artefact deck. Now that seemed to me like a STRATEGY without a theme allowing inclusion of lots of random and powerful cards with no self imposed constraints. I had expected to get my ass kicked but kicked in a clever way e.g. the combination of THEMEs and STRATEGY in unusual combinations. This seemed decidedly less clever and I came away with a feeling of being had e.g. we weren't playing on an even playing field. Have I understood this right or are these unrealistic expectations?

Were you playing a 1v1 game? I don't even bother playing 1v1 commander these days, it's just a waste of time.

Most people do not play ironclad theme constraints that I've seen; usually there's like a sort of theme, but people make a lot of concessions.

But I would be really cautious about making any generalizations from a 1v1 game.

[TheGildedGoose]

Extremely unrealistic expectations, unfortunately. That said, I disagree that artifacts aren't a theme. "Artifacts.dec" is just as much of a theme as "Treefolk.dec" but because artifacts are a little more open ended they lend themselves to more powerful and variable strategies than treefolk. You can find likeminded players, but you'll be hard-pressed to find them in pick up games at the gaming store. You'll have to do a little more searching to find modestly powered games based on theme rather than power. I'd be happy to look at your decklist if you have it posted anywhere and give you some pointers.

I'm with @pokken though. If this was a 1v1 game, don't worry too much. In 1v1, if your opponent pulls way ahead, you lose. In multiplayer, you can team up against the archenemy and knock them down a peg or two.

[yeti1069]

Hey everyone! I'm back with a couple more noob questions if that's ok. Firstly, as I mentioned before, I'd like to play casual commander. Based on the excellent advice above I created my first deck. From my research I had thought the thing to do was to pick a THEME and a STRATEGY. I picked a theme that appealed (treefolk tribal) and a rough strategy (go large and switch toughness with power). When I was selecting cards for my deck I was super strict, if it didn't fit my THEME it didn't make the cut even if it was a great card that worked well with my strategy. I went to my LGS and played someone with a lot more experience than me which was good but they pulled out a straight artefact deck. Now that seemed to me like a STRATEGY without a theme allowing inclusion of lots of random and powerful cards with no self imposed constraints. I had expected to get my ass kicked but kicked in a clever way e.g. the combination of THEMEs and STRATEGY in unusual combinations. This seemed decidedly less clever and I came away with a feeling of being had e.g. we weren't playing on an even playing field. Have I understood this right or are these unrealistic expectations?

Everyone is going to build and play different. For some, they'll lean hard into a them, like you have, while others will prefer to eschew theme for strategy (which itself is kind of a theme). That are numerous deck archetypes (such as control, aggro, combo) that don't necessarily play into any theme. Without knowing who you're playing with, it can be hard to judge what you're going to face, and may end up in games with wildly different expectations and power levels among players. It's always good to try and talk out expectations before playing. For you, I'd recommend mentioning that you're pretty new to this, and just getting started. That could help a little.