I’ve been playing Commander since 2012, and have played every color combination imaginable. I’ve been in the trenches with mono-colors before more modern designs shored up their weaknesses (and gotten color pie breaks that would make a player from the 90s swoon) and played quite a few 5-color legends that bored me to death. Rest in piss, Golos.  One of the more interesting challenges to me is building a deck at the appropriate color combination necessary for the deck building goals, while not compromising on the amount of colors, adding too many, or imposing limitations to bring more fulfillment in the game play novelty. But what I’m aiming to talk about today is: how many colors do you need to run in a commander deck? My name is Cole, aka TheBloodricGuy (aka, Johnny Mardu, the radioshow host that I sometimes play over on the Hero’s Blade Vibe Check podcast with my friend, Empress Quinn). I’m a Commander player who champions hoop jumping and niche strategies, and getting yo...

What do you do with your cards when they don't have a home in a commander deck? Make a new format variant out of them! (well ok, you don't make a revolutionary format from scratch, you steal take inspiration from the paths trodden before) My name's Cole, I've been a content creator for Commander and EDH for the last 3 or so years. I was introduced to Magic when I was about 6 or 7 years old, read the earliest Magic novels at 10, and officially started playing in 2011 with Innistrad. I've done two podcasts, the Uncommon Commander and the recently started Hero's Blade Vibe Check podcasts (that's available in many places!) One of my biggest grievances as Commander player is that 100 cards never seems to be enough for my decks. 36-41% of the deck is dedicated to a combination of a commander(s) and lands. That leaves you with approximately 60~ cards to mess around with, cut, fiddle with, and optimize, depending on your intent and level of investment. For people wh...

Magic's becoming a monster of a game, franchise, and corporate beast that's growing and changing beyond comprehension. And further within that scope, Commander is always a contentious hot button topic due to its more lofty, somewhat ambiguous, and vibes focused goals. Opinions both online and offline span across the entirety of the format and game, and while you can find amicable discussions among friends and collaborators, you'll find the sheer difference from an enfranchised player vs a disconnected one to be head-spinning. Thus, people look for some sort of structure that's concrete and easy to follow to make this disconnect less disorienting. But what else can you do beyond the format's mission statements and ban list? My name's Cole, I'm a host of the Hero's Blade Vibe Check Podcast and the former host of Uncommon Commander. Playing commander since 2012 or so has given me a lot of perspective and opinions on Magic, but mostly (exclusively) on Comman...