One General to Rule them All: An EDH Blog

Commander Cube Version 1.2.03942

Ok, you caught me, the last five digits on the current Commander Cube version number are kinda BS, but I do have a point to make.

Teneb, the Harvester
I love this guy, I really do, but sometimes doing something else is even more fun.

Last Tuesday (Candy has already told some of the awesome stories of the games), I tried something new the the Cube that I think added a lot to the draft. In all previous drafts, I haven’t kept an accurate count, but it’s probably somewhere around 10 separate drafts at this point, we had drafted a pack of 7 generals before starting the main draft of seven 15-card packs. This time time I decided to implement an idea that has been kicking around in my head since before the first draft: having 16-card packs that each included exactly one multicolored legendary creature for use as a commander.

I hadn’t tried this in the past because some of my comrades were a little skeptical of the idea and thought that it would increase the difficulty a little too much. By this time, however, I felt that enough of us were comfortable enough with drafting the cube that I had some room to experiment.

The biggest reason for the change is that I felt that drafting generals first felt a little contrived to me, and made it far too easy to simply force a general that was appealing. Additionally, this method gave each drafter to see exactly half of the generals in the pool (28 of 56) giving that process and uncomfortable level of consistency from my perspective. The reason I started to become uncomfortable with that is because a lot of the fun of drafting the cube comes from the variance and randomness that I loved from when I started playing EDH; when it was raw and undefined format.

By moving the prospective generals into the packs, carefully tucking one into each so that everyone had equal opportunity to select a general, brought even more chaos and fun into the draft. The bigger effect was that it made drafting much more challenging, and challenging in a good way. It made it feel much more like a real draft (and by real draft I mean an standard three pack draft of sealed product). My personal experience was that my deck grew and changed as the draft progressed. I picked up the copy of [card]Rith, the Awakener[/card] in pack one, but also found some very nice black/white and black/green cards. WBG tap-out control decks with a heavy reanimation theme are where I am most comfortable and happy in the EDH world, so I thought it apt to keep that line of play open. So, for the next three packs or so I picked almost exclusively white and green cards, even picking up a white green general somewhere in the middle of the draft.

My-my-my-my (U can't touch this) music hits me so hard Makes me say,"oh my lord thank you for blessing me With a mind to rhyme and two hyped feet"

I didn’t see my [card]Teneb, the Harvester[/card] until pack six or seven, but they that time I was fairly settled into a decent looking Rith tokens deck. I was pretty happy with it until I spotted a very late [card]Uril, the Miststalker[/card] (pick two of pack five or six, if my memory serves me correctly). Anyways, it fit my colors and I was able to adapt into a very powerful Uril beat down deck with an amazing tokens backup plan. The significance of this is that if I had drafted those three generals in the way in which we had drafted previously, it is very likely that I would have probably ended up drafting my go to move of WBG reanimator-control. Now, you see, I may have had a better shot at winning a game or two (I lost both the games I played with Uril) with a Teneb deck because I’m more experienced building and playing that sort of deck (not to mention that I think it might just be a better archetype than Uril beatdown), I had more fun drafting and playing with Uril.

Even though I didn’t win, I came dangerously close in a few instances, and I had a tremendous amount of fun; mostly because of the change to version 1.2 (generals in packs) and because, if you didn’t already know, losing is fun. (I do intend to write an article about that in the near future.)

 

Until further notice, all future cube drafts with be conducting with 16-card packs, each containing exactly one multicolored legendary creature. (Unless, of course, everyone else thought it was awful and in every way worse than how it was previously done.)

 

As per usual, comments and questions welcome.

 

-Sam

samwise

5 responses to “Commander Cube Version 1.2.03942”

  1. I really liked the new way of getting your general. For myself, I didn’t know what general I was going to go with. Primeval Titan was in my first pack, and I thought “GODDAMMIT I finally open P-Tits on a night I’m determined not to play green, well shit, guess I’m in green after all,” so I was drafting green goodstuff with a splash of red. And then in pack 2 or 3 or so, somebody passed me Intet, and I thought oooo, I’ve been meaning to try Intet, so I started drafting lots of fatties (dragons and such) and blue card draw. And then pack 5 came around, and freaking Animar was in it, and I thought, no, I’m going to be virtuous, I’m going to pass it on because she can be horribly broken, but she came all the way back around to me again and at that point I decided it was a sign. And I liked the process; it felt more organic than all the previous times I’d drafted, when I more-or-less arbitrarily picked a general and said “OK, now try and draft these colors.”

    By the way, you’re right: losing can be a lot of fun, if they’re with the right people, and with the right plays. I’m not a big fan of losing the same way every time to any particular player, and I’m not a big fan of losing when I feel like I never had a chance to interact, but if I lose big after everyone at the table has pulled crazy moves, and the winner wasn’t clear from the beginning, I’m pretty happy with the game and my loss.

  2. One thing that this method of drafting really does is push you away from goodstuff generals and towards more niche strategies. If you’re getting passed things like [card]Illusions of Grandeur[/card] and [card]Paradox Haze[/card], then there’s a very good chance you can start forcing a sick [card]Zedruu the Greathearted[/card] deck, safe in the knowledge that no one else is going to want her. Provided, of course, nobody is hatedrafting. I’ll admit, part of me wanted to take Animar when it came around to me, just so I wouldn’t have to face it. Because let’s be honest, Animar is easily as powerful as Zur, without the requirement of playing lots of crappy little enchantments. It turns a goodstuff deck into an insane combo machine.