One of the beautiful things about a game like Magic, especially in more free-form variants like Commander, is that there are plenty of ways to win. You wanna go the classic route and just (magically) punch people in the face? Great. Want to use some cards that literally say “if X happens, you win the game”? Awesome. You want to make an opponent discard their entire decks and cry about it?… Sure, I guess.
So, what I wanted to do today is walk you through a selection of cards that might work for a particular “archetype” of Commander deck. What do I mean by that? Well, by an archetype, I mean the “vibe” of your deck. If you had to summarise it for a snappy label to stick on your deckbox, what would it be?”
The vibe of today’s deck? Drawing cards.
I’ve got a couple of different win conditions in mind here, and the beauty of working with a deck that’s focusing on drawing cards? You’ll probably end up with them in your hand at some point. Most of the cards we look at today will probably be in blue, since that’s the colour of drawing cards (don’t @ me), but we might get a bit of variety in where we splash sideways.
Lucky 13
One of two cards that inspired this article in the first place (the second being Ms. Marvel from the new Marvel set) is Triskaidekaphile. It’s a two-for-one. First, you’re going to draw a lot of cards, no matter how you build a deck like this. The opposite of drawing cards is discarding them, we don’t want to be doing that, so removing the hand-size limit is a must. There are a fair few cards that do this, and I’d recommend having redundancies in the deck, but the reason we look at Triskaidekaphile is the second line of ability text. Making it to the start of your turn with exactly 13 cards in your hand is an instant win. The fact you have to have this on the field means you’re ripe for getting messed with before your upkeep, so having spells that give it flash, or drawing that 13th card on the end step before your turn (more on those later).
Winning by “Losing”
One of the lose conditions of any game of Magic is trying to draw when you have no cards left in your library. But what if you could change that? Two options for this effect are Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Laboratory Maniac. The Maniac is basically that exact effect on a body. Easily removable, but again, blue is the colour of counter magic. Play our guy in the late game, or ensure you have some “no thanks” cards in hand, and you’re golden.
Planeswalker are a bit of a divisive topic in Commander, and very rife for removal, but if you want to splash into Simic (blue/green) and get some counter doublers to raise it’s loyalty quickly, or just try and sneak it in, Jace’s ultimate is a great way to finish the game, plus his little plus one ability gets rid of opponents cards whilst drawing your own? That’s value!.
Cast and Block
Okay, so we’ve got our win conditions, now for a couple of cards to make sure you can actually pull them off. There’s a myriad of options here, including obvious picks like Counterspell, but I wanted to give you a couple of potential outliers to think about here.
Tidal Barracuda is flash and pseudo protection all in one. You can cast your spells on your opponent’s turns, but they can’t cast on yours. That’s it, no further explanation.
Miscalculation is an interesting counterspell. It isn’t just a flat counter, if an opponent has mana open they can break through, but it’s enough of a hindrance that it’ll probably work 80% of the time. Plus, you can cycle, meaning you can keep that draw engine going and going and going!
I hope these five cards have got your brain buzzing. The beauty of commander is in how fluid deckbuilding can be. I’m pretty sure you could make an insanely good “draw” deck without any of these cards, but I know that mine will be better for their inclusion!