Hey, do you play Magic: The Gathering, Commander format?

I’m trying to get a game going. There is gonna be four of us. Four at least, I hope! We’ll have another one, if you play. Four people is where it’s good, I think. I don’t like one-v-one. And three players means you have to really enforce a no-bullying rule, so people don’t get killed early.

Don’t worry about not having a deck. I have seven. They’re all here in my bag. It’s a special bag designed just for decks of Magic cards. You could probably put other games in there but I don’t think I’ll ever play another game again because Magic is so good!

You can play my Memnarch deck. Do you know about Memnarch? Not a lot of people know about him. Not like I do. Are you familiar with the plot line of the Mirrodin block at all?

That’s no problem. Let me explain.

Basically, Mirrodin is this big planet made of metal; that’s why artefacts are pretty much their theme. A lot of people think my Memnarch deck is an artefact-only deck, but it isn’t. In my opinion, artefact-only decks don’t usually work. Unless you have some super expensive artefacts in the deck – but I don’t. We have a $50 card-value-limit rule in our play group.

The draft format for Mirrodin was so bad though. Everyone would just pick the best card in every pack so there was no strategy to it. I never draft because I don’t like passing away cards from a pack that I open. I feel like as soon as I open a pack the cards are mine, you know? But yeah that’s what people have told me about Mirrodin block draft. I might add some Mirrodin cards to my cube, too.

Do you play cube at all? I’ve heard good things about it. But I don’t wanna have to pay so much for my sleeves. And all the sleeves have to be the same colour, ideally. That’s boring. You’ll notice if – sorry, let me open my bag and show you – see all my Commander decks have different sleeves? It makes them personal, I think.

I’ve got red for my goblin deck, black for my rat deck, anime-girl ones for my Captain Sisay deck – because she’s a girl – and the deck you’ll be using has silver ones. Memnarch was made of silver. That’s how it looks in his art.

Anyway, right. So Karn – you know Karn, right? – oh, well Karn was this Golem who like, broke free of slavery I think? I’m not sure if all Golems are slaves. I’ll have to ask Adam later. Do you know Adam? He plays here probably three times a week. You should see his collection of snake cards. He’s got almost every snake card printed in the game! At first it was creature snakes only, but then it became any card with snakes on the art. I think he’s only missing a couple. He’s gonna start getting foils soon!

Do you like foils? I’m trying to pimp all my Commander decks to be all-foils. Have you played an all-foil deck before? It’s really good, I think. I like setting my decks apart from other decks. It’s not gonna be too expensive to foil these decks I don’t think, because I don’t have, like, ‘popular’ cards in them. I don’t net-deck my Commander decks. They’re all home made, not-copied decks.

Do you net deck? I don’t think it’s good for the game, really. There is this YouTuber guy who Adam showed me who does a lot of videos about how people who net-deck actually damage magic overall, and talk about how it hurts the economy and stuff. I can link them to you.

Do you have Facebook? I’ll add you. That’s okay, you can use my phone to accept it. I’ll also add you to our Commander group. It’s not very big, but that’s good because it’s just Magic purists. We don’t just add anyone, so you’ll get some good insight into how we play the format. We have a sticky with all our special rules we use to help make the game fun. We are also working on a 8-player variant, but haven’t had a chance to test it yet.

So yeah, Karn got sentience and then took The Mirari which was this old artefact from Phyrexia, and he used to to make Memnarch. The Mirari is actually a really cool card. Have you seen it? It’s in the Memnarch deck. Here, have a look through, I’ll bet you’ll see some really fun stuff, and other stuff you never would have thought of trying.

If I’m being honest, though, Adam helped me make this deck. It’s still a home made, not-copied deck, because Adam doesn’t net-deck either. But he has some really good ideas and has a really natural way of picking good things.

Did you see the latest Pro Tour? Adam built that winning deck probably four months before it was seeing wide-spread play. It’s like the fourth time he has done it and predicted what the good cards for Standard would be. He doesn’t post online though because he doesn’t want to contribute to the zeitgeist. Forums and people sharing ideas ruin the game, we think.

Magic is a game of wits and intelligence. Our decks should be like that, I think. It would be my creation versus your creation. That’s why I like Commander so much, it really is the best format!

Oh, you’re going to the bathroom? Sure. Well I’m gonna set up over there. I’ll lay out the Memnarch deck for you and I’ll take you through all the combos. There are so many. You won’t remember them all.

By the way, did I tell you about this combo I’m thinking of doing for a Modern deck?

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