Cheshire wants to share his passion of Commander with you, so to do that he is writing a series of articles based on different considerations such as new player guide, guide to deck building and behaviour guidelines that you can use to make you a better member of the community, and a better player. These are THE COMMANDER FILES.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE COMMANDER FILES Cheshire laid down a brief history on EDH/Commander.
Today I wanted to go through some of the best resources for Commander/EDH that you should be aware of. I use these resources a lot when I need to build decks for Commander: the Gathering (CATCH US LIVE, MONTHLY OVER AT TWITCH.TV/DYOSHIITV).
WEBSTITES
EDHREC
I use EDHREC more than I would like to admit. Sometimes you just don’t have the time to research a list of cards that are point perfect for your deck, but EDHREC is here to save the day! They have a massive number of sourced deck lists from the community and all over the web so YOU can have a look at some of the most used cards in any given commander deck. Also, EDHREC has a great set of article writers whom you should check out.
TAPPED OUT
TO is a great deck building tool, not only does it allow you to handily sort your deck be creatures/artifacts/lands etc, it also shows the colour percentages AND has a dummy hand tool so you can test out opening hands! You can also submit your deck list to the community to have them look over it and help make suggestions on cards you may not have even considered. Speaking from experience, they have one of the friendliest communities and I have yet to have someone be a total prick to me, so that’s nice.
MANABASE CRAFTERS
Want to know a way to check what lands are available for your Commander deck? Look no further as Manabase Crafters is exactly what you need! This is a fantastic resource that you should refer to as much as you can to ensure you have weighed up all available land related options. MBC isn’t totally redundant due to EDHREC, but I don’t use it as much BECAUSE of EDGREC.
WOTC GATHERER
Want the bible of Magic the Gathering? You can have it and all at the touch of a screen. Gatherer is WOTCs very own card database that can be used to search up any card ever printed, also you can search via ANY aspect of a card. This means you can search for ALL THE HOMARIDS!
FACEBOOK GROUPS AREN’T ALL TOXIC
Magic The Gathering Commander is just ONE of MANY solid groups with massive communities. I myself have reached out on some of these groups to see if there was any resource I had missed (almost every reply was exactly what I use anyway), but I have seen people post for deck ideas and watched the community not just suggest specific pillar cards,m but also provide custom deck lists etc. Seriously amazing effort by all to assist the community.
PODCASTS/YOUTUBERS
Commanderin’ Podcast
Shivam, Phil and Sean not only provide quality content when going deep on a commander, they have a wide array of guests from time to time who talk all things from community issues to their history in MTG. Shivam (Ghirapurigears) is perhaps the most interesting internet personality you will ever listen to or read. Shivam shot to light for me, after he was on a Loading Ready Run stream talking Kaladesh and the history of some of the themes from the Indian culture inspired set. For me it was such a deep dive on how much I didn’t know about Indian culture,lore and religion and just how much work Wizards put in making sure those overtones were well represented.
Jumbo Commander
Some of the best and most in depth deck guides around are done by this great soul. I’m fairly certain he might actually be the number one Commander deck owner out of all the players I have ever seen, boasting a deck for EVERY occasion. Jumbo knows the ins and outs of pretty much any commander and is a massive knowledge pool.
TOLARIAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE
The Professor is one of the most popular content creators in current MTG. His love for the game is massive and he is also a huge commander player. His deck lists are often extremely in depth on choices and how to play. I strongly suggest you check him out and all his other content as well.
LIVE STREAMS/MATCHES
An interesting thing has happened with the intertubes in the last five years, and I can’t say I’m too down about it. More and more streams/YouTubers and content creators are coming out and playing EDH/Commander. But you’re probably wondering why this is a resource, right? See here’s the thing, Magic: the Gathering isn’t JUST a game, it’s very much a cerebral experience. You should know the basics of war and diplomacy. These streamers and YouTubers can be of AMAZING assistance with this. Watch them play, watch how they all interact with the group they play with.
Loading Ready Run LIVE!
Magic Friday Nights is where it’s all happening. The LRR crew are the very same that bring you the Pre-PreRelease each set, with a wide variety of YouTubers, Streamers and Content Creators. They also produce Friday Night Commander (occasionally), Friday Nights (officially produced for WOTC), live drafts and other content. Not to mention one of the best comedy troupes in the known nerd world.
The Command Zone Podcast/Game Knights
Not always Commander focused, Game Knights is the show that is specifically edited and tailored to be as entertaining as possible. Josh Lee Kwai and Jimmy Wong (The Command Zone Podcast) regularly have interesting guests on and are always SUPER entertaining. They also don’t always play super spikey decks, so it’s a really good experience to see how a less competitive group plays.
Commander the Gathering <SHAMELESS PLUG>
Myself, Dyoshii and guests get together (when Dyoshii ISN’T out of the country on business) and two guests battle it out for fun and profit. Well, just fun really. We don’t play any super combo cheesy decks because we want to experience great and fun plays over super gross turn two combo kills. Support Australian content creators and give us a watch.
Commander VS
You may have heard of star City Games, you may have even seen Jeremy Noell stream some three ticket EDH on Magic Online with myself and other community members, but did you know he also co-hosts an awesome Commander show? It’s all about the plays, the absurd combos and more importantly, having a bunch of fun. Oh, and a points system for things like First Blood.
Jeremy Noell’s 3DH can be found HERE.
That’s it! That’s all I’m writing today as its New Years Eve, and I’m going off to fix my UNSTABLE X deck. Did I miss your fave content creator? Anyone you want to recommend? Drop a link below!
