Mini games - the best commander?

[Chromaticus]

One of my favorite elements of magic is the game within the game that you can create with engines and synergies.

It's a style of play that I've identified in a few brewers on the forums here - and I believe may even be inherent to the type of person who likes to be on magic forums in the first place, versus netdecking a list and calling it a day.

My recent thought experiment is about extracting as much of this engine joy as possible from a single deck.

The mini games I have in mind are as follows:

Ultimate a planeswalker
Complete a Dungeon (ideally the undercity)
Become the monarch
Defeat a battle
Become fully temped by the ring.
Cosmic Intervention land package, (be up on lands after playing Lotus Field)
Not interested in this personally, but doing all this without creatures would be an incredible accomplishment.

I have a few commanders in mind —

Queen Marchesa - gets the monarchy online, a lot of groundwork is already done with the akido concept
Aminatou, the Fateshifter - works well with blinking the various enter or leave the battlefield venture, tempt, and monarch permanents, enables Planeswalker strategies.
Plargg, Dean of Chaos // Augusta, Dean of Order - baiting @DirkGently to this thread. I also just think that it could be sweet in assembling these mini-games in a random order.

Thoughts on other commanders this would work well with, or other fun mini games you enjoy?

[DirkGently]

I do like mini-game cards generally - a lot that you forgot are the quest cards from zendikar and the flip lands from ixalan - definitely more of a minigame than playing a card that makes you the monarch lol.

That said completing the minigame is only relevant insofar as doing so helps me win the game. Winning the game is always first priority (when making game moves).

[pokken]

I read this title and I was like....which commanders create a different sub-game within the game. I've found the Slicer, Hired Muscle // Slicer, High-Speed Antagonist deck I built to play mostly like a different game of magic where everyone's running from the sword-covered car.

With Ephara, God of the Polis I have a kinda unthought minigame of drawing a card in each upkeep from Ephara, which is tougher than you'd think.

With Tivit, Seller of Secrets my goal is to put as many copies of Tivit out as I can, I'd consider 3 a win.

With Breena, the Demagogue, every time someone explicitly chooses not to attack to avoid growing Breena, I win

[materpillar]

My recent thought experiment is about extracting as much of this engine joy as possible from a single deck.

The mini games I have in mind are as follows:

Ultimate a planeswalker
Complete a Dungeon (ideally the undercity)
Become the monarch
Defeat a battle
Become fully temped by the ring.
Cosmic Intervention land package, (be up on lands after playing Lotus Field)
Not interested in this personally, but doing all this without creatures would be an incredible accomplishment.

May I direct you to your newest favorite deck @Dragonlover's golos

I'm personally a lot happier sticking to 1 rather difficult mini-game per deck and going hard in it instead of a lot of easier to accomplish one's. Your current goals are too all over the place to really suggest anything specific that isn't generic goodstuffs.

I've got

• Tivadar of Thorn kill as many goblins as possible
• Progenitus mill myself out (non-combo)
• Yurlok of Scorch Thrash kill people with their own stuff
• The Ur-Dragon say as many creature types as possible
• Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge in deckbuilding make the curve as bad as possible

[yeti1069]

One of my favorite elements of magic is the game within the game that you can create with engines and synergies.

It's a style of play that I've identified in a few brewers on the forums here - and I believe may even be inherent to the type of person who likes to be on magic forums in the first place, versus netdecking a list and calling it a day.

My recent thought experiment is about extracting as much of this engine joy as possible from a single deck.

The mini games I have in mind are as follows:

Ultimate a planeswalker
Complete a Dungeon (ideally the undercity)
Become the monarch
Defeat a battle
Become fully temped by the ring.
Cosmic Intervention land package, (be up on lands after playing Lotus Field)
Not interested in this personally, but doing all this without creatures would be an incredible accomplishment.

I have a few commanders in mind —

Queen Marchesa - gets the monarchy online, a lot of groundwork is already done with the akido concept
Aminatou, the Fateshifter - works well with blinking the various enter or leave the battlefield venture, tempt, and monarch permanents, enables Planeswalker strategies.
Plargg, Dean of Chaos // Augusta, Dean of Order - baiting @DirkGently to this thread. I also just think that it could be sweet in assembling these mini-games in a random order.

Thoughts on other commanders this would work well with, or other fun mini games you enjoy?

I think this is all pretty doable in Sefris. Gollum, Patient Plotter would be an ok card there for the ring and as a recursive engine piece.
Plenty of monarch cards that could fit if that's what you want.
A few battles that make sense there.
Cosmic Intervention has big payoffs in a deck that wants its own creatures to die with some regularity and has big ETB effects.
It also can be playing enough control elements and fatties that protecting a planeswalker is doable. I run Teferi, Master of Time.

[Dragonlover]

I was going to post wincons, but materpillar beat me to it. Up to date decklist is here: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/eJG5QO0I2EejSgwS4rvYhw

I say a good mini game is something you have to kinda double down on, so it becomes less a minigame and more the reason for the deck existing. Come up with something utterly deranged, and commit to it. I saw a deck the other day that causes the effects of Shahrazad using entirely legal cards, which looked utterly bonkers. Or there's tstorm's Zedruu, which is all 4 card combos and looks like a blast, but the starting point was 'only 4 card combos allowed' and the deck grew from there. I know a guy who's entire raison d'etre is godawful tribal decks, including mono-red Lizards and Simic 'things that get whelmed by Whelming Wave but shouldn't', which is full of Fish, Whales etc.

Building a deck to complete all your minigames in the first post wouldn't be hard, but they're just 'playing Magic' type things. Go deeper, find the effects that you really want to make work. That's why my Glissa deck exists, I love face down creatures and think Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer is boring. Sadly it's lost a lot of morphs, but the games where I just had a smorgasbord of 2/2's that could be anything were great. Hell, thats why I built wincons, because I wanted to see how many you could get into one deck and the answer so far is at least 22, I don't think they printed any since Ramses, Assassin Lord.

Dragonlover

[Chromaticus]

The quests and flips are good ones — I have all the possible flip lands in a lands deck, even just connecting with a Dowsing Dagger // Lost Vale scratches the itch. I badly want to flip Azor's Gateway // Sanctum of the Sun and go off.

Alternate win conditions have never been my thing. I like mill when it happens incidentally at the end of a drawn out game in cube, but not really something I care to build around.

I recently (last couple days) put together a list based off your Tribal Tribal deck @materpillar - so I look forwards to the lines in that deck.

@yeti1069 - I have a sefris deck that is pretty close. It was actually the deck that awakened me to this concept. I found that basically every time I completed a dungeon, I felt like I was winning. Gollum, Patient Plotter is a cool one to look at for that deck.

[yeti1069]

The quests and flips are good ones — I have all the possible flip lands in a lands deck, even just connecting with a Dowsing Dagger // Lost Vale scratches the itch. I badly want to flip Azor's Gateway // Sanctum of the Sun and go off.

Alternate win conditions have never been my thing. I like mill when it happens incidentally at the end of a drawn out game in cube, but not really something I care to build around.

I recently (last couple days) put together a list based off your Tribal Tribal deck @materpillar - so I look forwards to the lines in that deck.

@yeti1069 - I have a sefris deck that is pretty close. It was actually the deck that awakened me to this concept. I found that basically every time I completed a dungeon, I felt like I was winning. Gollum, Patient Plotter is a cool one to look at for that deck.

I thought you did, but maybe weren't looking at it to fulfill these needs.

I like big boards (and I cannot lie), and complex interactions with a lot to keep track of, or having the option for well-timed plays.

[Hermes_]

I read this title and I was like....which commanders create a different sub-game within the game. I've found the Slicer, Hired Muscle // Slicer, High-Speed Antagonist deck I built to play mostly like a different game of magic where everyone's running from the sword-covered car.

I'm tempted to put him in my RW voltron deck from my Zeddru deck lol

[RxPhantom]

I've been toying with the idea of making a deck with the goal of assembling as many 'sets' as possible. The best example of this idea is Crown of Empires, Throne of Empires, and Scepter of Empires. It seems like it could be fun, albeit weak. I've brought it up here before, but maybe I should get off my ass and build it.

[Chromaticus]

On the note of collecting all three: Assembling Kaldra was a big bucket list item that I eventually ticked off the list. Don't love that they made the easy button of Kaldra Compleat :p

I'm really liking the concept of a heavy combat Queen Marchesa deck that is really good at defending walkers, the monarchy, and the initiative, while simultaneously able to get through in combat to win battles and take back the initiative and the monarchy.

Path of Mettle // Metzali, Tower of Triumph is for sure getting in.
Invasion of Fiora // Marchesa, Resolute Monarch thematically appropriate.
White Plume Adventurer and Seasoned Dungeoneer for the initiative.
What quest cards could be fulfilled in a deck like this?

[Ruiner]

I've got a Rilsa Rael, Kingpin deck that easily does the Undercity/Dungeon aspect and can get Monarch. If the dungeon part is crucial I'd probably pick a dungeon oriented commander, because all of the other stuff isn't that hard to wedge into that sort of deck. Rilsa can't play Cosmic Intervention so maybe Sefris of the Hidden Ways would be ideal.

[darrenhabib]

I'm really liking the concept of a heavy combat Queen Marchesa deck that is really good at defending walkers, the monarchy, and the initiative, while simultaneously able to get through in combat to win battles and take back the initiative and the monarchy.

I can give you hints on the planeswalker side.
Teyo, Geometric Tactician goes nice with directing attacks for better monarch/initiative defense.
Dihada, Binder of Wills is a super solid option in Mardu.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant & Elspeth, Sun's Champion creature tokens for attacking and defending and their ults are worth trying to go for.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General & Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools are good.

I'm a big "lands" player, that is often I like to assemble some sort of combination of lands that benefit me and you did already mention land package in original post.
My favorite card in all of Magic Weathered Wayfarer has done a lot of work for this type of plan over-the-ages.
So for example a small combo is Glacial Chasm + Nesting Grounds which means you only lose 2 life each turn. Glacial Chasm goes great with keeping the monarch/initiative indefinitely.

Sunforger presents a number of mini games that you could try to assemble.
But here is my ultimate one, an indefinite Teferi's Protection loop.
It involves Mistveil Plains x 2 + Pull from Eternity.
Getting a double up on the Mistveil Plains can be done with say Thespian's Stage, Vesuva or Deserted Temple.
Then you put both the Pull from Eternity and Teferi's Protection onto the bottom of your library and then use Sunforger twice.
This is mana intensive on it's own, so in all likelihood need other enablers, but let's say for example you also acquire Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to fulfill your mana needs.
Anyway you can see why I suggested this because it's a big sub game that you can play to assemble a lands package + Sunforger, but the cost to your 99 is actually relatively innocuous.
You'd probably be playing Teferi's Protection and Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is always tempting.
You could easily play one of the Thespian's Stage/Vesuva/Deserted Temple to double up on Cabal Coffers as well as the Mistveil Plains.
Sunforger will almost certainly have targets. So only Pull from Eternity is the specialized card for this sub game. Don't get me wrong pulling this off is really hard, maybe you'll get 1 in 10 games where you assemble it, but that's the point.
So yeah I call this Weathered Wayfarer sub game where you slowly keep accumulating the lands to pull this off.

[darrenhabib]

I don't know if you've played with Attractions or Stickers yet, but this is another larger sub games that you can add to the deck with very little to the 99.
In fact you could just add "Lifetime" Pass Holder and Park Bleater.

Now what your specific goal(s) are can take different paths, but obviously the first one is to actually get an Attraction and then to successfully visit it!
But more long term goals is to assemble a particular combo with them. I'd need to wait to see what your list is looking like before I'd suggest any, but be guaranteed that I can come up with something spicy for you.

Also Stickers are even more of a sub game within a sub game due to the nature of picking 3 at random at the start of the game.
There are combos with different Stickers, for example one gives Undying and another gives Persist and with a sac outlet that is infinite.
However you are not guaranteed to get both of these in a game. So you can make a list of things to achieve but you might only get this opportunity once in blue moon, which is great to mileage out of your achievement list.
There are Stickers that naturally go with your plan in general for example "Urza's Dark Cannonball" has Shadow for getting back the monarch/initiative and also a 7/4 stat which you could give to Queen Marchesa for a 3 turn clock an opponent.
Once again it's going to depend on what your deck looks like, but there are a number of goals that could be thought up.
Another example is that you might want to assemble the ultimate in "can't remove" permanent, that has Hexproof and Indestructible. Or Protection from even mana values and Protection from odd mana values and Indestructible.

Will adding "Lifetime" Pass Holder and Park Bleater to the deck make it more winning? No, invariably you'd probably win more games if they are something else, and often they probably won't do anything, but they do open up a whole new world to sub games and most of the fun is in building the deck with these.
Anyway if you are interested in this idea then I can help you with a Attraction and Sticker configuration and goals at a later date.
Although it can be cyclic in that your choices can effect what you might want in your 99.
For example you are more incentivized to have Kardur, Doomscourge in your deck if you have Haunted House|76589 and Tunnel of Love|76755 and also "Eldrazi Guacamole Tightrope" sticker with "You may cast this card from your graveyard by paying 2 life in addition to paying its other costs." (and say a sac outlet like Phyrexian Tower) and "Eternal Acrobat Toast" with "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, exile target creature you control, then return it to the battlefield under it owner's control.".

[Chromaticus]

I'm game for some stickers, attractions, and perhaps even contraptions. I don't know how the mechanics work though. Do you pre-assemble the attractions / stickers that are in your pool, and then choose at random among those when you get a sticker or open an attraction?

[darrenhabib]

I'm game for some stickers, attractions, and perhaps even contraptions. I don't know how the mechanics work though. Do you pre-assemble the attractions / stickers that are in your pool, and then choose at random among those when you get a sticker or open an attraction?

Contraptions are not legal unfortunately
Yes you make decks/piles minimum of 10 singleton Attractions and Stickers.
Stickers at the start of game you choose 3 at random. So at the start of the game you'll know if a particular sub game is achievable or not.
Attractions are a deck that you shuffle and take the top card and put into play when you open one. At the start of your main phase you roll a six-sided die to see if your roll matches numbers on the Attractions for triggering abilities.

Merry-Go-Round|76594 is great for getting monarch/initiative back.
Bumper Cars|76734 can make for awkward blocks with deathtouch tokens.
Tunnel of Love|76755 goes nice with Queen Marchesa etb or deathtouch to kill a creature.
Hall of Mirrors|76227 has the most potential to create crazy plays.

With the Stickers I think a goal to get a planeswalker to ultimate would be to have "Protection from even mana values" and "Protection from odd mana values" stickers on a planeswalker, which means that creatures attacking it wouldn't do damage and also can't be targeted.

With the "Become fully temped by the ring.", Frodo, Sauron's Bane goes nice with elements that make things unblockable and will help towards being fully tempted. Here are some sticker abilities.

• Shadow
• {1}: Target creature can't block this creature this turn.
• Whenever this creature attacks, tap each creature an opponent controls with the same power and/or same toughness as this creature.
• Protection from even mana values
• Protection from odd mana values

Also there is a sticker that has Provoke, which combines nicely with deathtouch or The Ring 3rd ability which is "Whenever your Ring-bearer becomes blocked by a creature, that creature's controller sacrifices it at the end of combat."

I have noticed that your goals; Complete a Dungeon, Become the monarch, initiative, Become fully temped by the ring, all involve needing to be represented by a game state token of some kind.
That's why I suggested attractions and stickers because they represent an element that is not initially in the game that can be brought in.
But I'm also assuming that the "Ultimate a planeswalker" is because either consciously or subconsciously want an emblem that represents a permanent game state change? With this in mind planeswalkers with emblems are probably more desirable.
Rowan Kenrith abilities are all relevant to the deck imo.
Ajani Steadfast is a nice support planeswalker.

The only other game mechanic that represents a permanent game state change that I could think of is the day/night cycle.
It's not totally clear what you'd want to do here, but for example Brutal Cathar transforming into a werewolf and back again could be a goal.

Oh yeah just to simplify the Cosmic Intervention game plan, this is where you can use Sunforger + Mistveil Plains to keep recurring it. This is obviously the more likely mini game you can achieve in protecting planeswalkers, rather than the elaborate one with recurring Teferi's Protection.
This is where I'd add Clever Concealment as you can phase out your planeswalkers, heading them towards ultimate's.
Speaking of ults Karn Liberated "Restart the game" is the way to literally play a sub game within a game. If you use the [+4] on yourself to exile say a nasty planeswalker, starting a new game with it in play feels good man.

[Chromaticus]

You are spot on in your assessment - I want all of those elements that enter from outside the game.

Sunforger package is definitely happening. I played this in 60 card casual, but never commander somehow.

I realize that I cannot do every everything in one deck, but I also like the idea of Otharri, Suns' Glory experience counters ticking up while this all happens.

[darrenhabib]

There is the "City's Blessing", Twilight Prophet and Vona's Hunger being the best I could find in Mardu.

Energy is another player resource. Aetherworks Marvel being the best I think for a mini game.