Playing Magic competitively at a tournament and casually at a Magic night at your house are two very different experiences. Different ways of thinking are required, different cards and strategies shine, and more. And the casual world tends to be ruled by Commander. When I go to a local card store, the basic options for me to play against are people who have a Modern, Legacy, or Standard deck they use for tournaments, or a Commander deck. There are very few 60 card casual decks that I run into anymore. For many people today, Commander = casual.

But like Magic itself, Commander is different for different people . . . 

When I say “Commander”, what do you think of?

Pedal to the Metal!

And this is one great way to play the game! These are where you often see those tricked out Commander decks. The perfect Kaalia of the Vast deck with the all of the mana fixings, plush with the cash for dual lands, mana rocks, cards like Demonic Tutor, Lightning Greaves, and everything you would expect from the Kaalia Machine.

You have another player with that perfect Oloro, Ageless Ascetic deck. You don’t have to worry about people ruining your day with countering or dealing with your Commander until you have taken control. Drop your Oloro, and win in a turn or two. Instant win with Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood. Blow everybody up! You get it.

You may have a third with Leovold, Emissary of Trest or another with a combo deck that wins in just a few turns, like the Ad Nauseam Mono-Black deck that wins with a giant storm count on the 3rd or 4th turn or with a big Exsanguinate. (Ad Nauseam into a bunch of free mana rocks, use Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and more, Sol Ring type stuff. Draw your deck. Play Skirge Familiar as a way to discard cards for mana for the Exsanguinate, or build up that storm count for Tendrils of Agony — use a tutoring Commander like Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Maralen of the Moonsong to jumpstart it)

Your needs and decks are going to look very different. They goldfish tables extremely quickly. They are well-honed, oiled machines that operate at peak efficiency. The cards they use may be very different. Cards like Force of Will are considerably better here than elsewhere. The decks often look like 100 card Legacy decks. And that’s fine. You can easily win that way, and you have fun! And no card is shunned. Armageddon is powerful too. Combo that wins fast. A deck that smashes with a Commander and reliably kills in two hits with Commander damage.

The Big ‘Uns

You want to smash things. You want big spells and big creatures. Besides, big stuff is both fun and effective. You see that Wrath of God, Living Death, and Eureka are all a lot of fun.

The sort of decks you are drawn to are the ones that can enable the bigger spells and creatures. The obvious example is that ramp deck. You use Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Sol Ring, whatever works to get to a point where you can play your haymakers quickly. Nothing is out of line — Time Stretch? Crush of Worms? Urza's Rage? Simic Sky Swallower? You have got this! You could also have that awesome Eldrazi ramp deck with the lands like Temple of the False God, Eye of Ugin, and Eldrazi Temple alongside big Eldrazi!

And there are a variety of angles to run this. One great way is reanimation! You play some stuff to get big giant beats in your graveyard reliably, then you Animate Dead or Zombify or Extract from Darkness them back onto the battlefield. You get that big giant Spirit of the Night, Inkwell Leviathan, or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger getting all frisky.

A classic control deck that has big guns, and big spells qualifies. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with cleaning house with a Phyrexian Rebirth that leaves you your very own beater, right? Steal their Verdant Force with Confiscate and then swing. Use Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker to gain control of the battlefield very quickly. Nothing wrong with that!

You can also cheat more expensive cards. Use Tooth and Nail, Galvanoth, Elvish Piper, or Quicksilver Amulet. Do you have a cheap Green Commander that can be sacrificed by itself? Then toss a Pattern of Rebirth on it and sacrifice it immediately to get that awesome target. (How about Saffi Eriksdotter, as a good example?).

Cheating big stuff works just as well as ramping does and those work just as well as a control deck hiding behind Fog Bank and Maze of Ith until the big control spells come online. You are about fun and guns!

Synergetic Synergies

One archetype synergy is the fast aggro deck that pumps it’s creature to make them major threats at the kitchen table. A Black/White deck that blows out tokens and runs pumpers like Glorious Anthem, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and Lingering Souls. The beatdowns will commence shortly! Most token decks don’t just run a few token makers and move on. They have tricks and treats that make their forces much more powerful. Collective Blessing in a Selesyna token deck or Swell of Courage are good examples. Craterhoof Behemoth? You’ve got this!

Another highly interactive and synergetic creature deck is the tribal deck. Slivers? Elves? Allies? Dragons? A powerful synergy that can be exploited by tribal enablers as well as creatures that help out to whole team, such as Imperious Perfect, Goblin Rabblemaster or Predatory Sliver. The key tribes in Magic have so many lords and leaders that they often seem like Slivers if you just include one of every Lord of the Undead, Zombie Master, Zombie Trailblazer, Diregraf Captain, Undead Warchief, Corpse Harvester, Death Baron, Cemetery Reaper, and Risen Executioner. And most tribes play very differently

You also find Commander decks with game winning combos but split up across a bunch of different pieces. You may have all four of the stations from Fifth Dawn — Blasting Station, Grinding Station, Summoning Station, and Salvaging Station or some difficult-to-assemble engine that resembles a piece of art more than anything else. You win the game with some random card that no one saw coming, like Anthem of Rakdos.

There is subservience to mechanics in this style of deck. There are people that are very loyal to the mechanics of their leader, and will run mechanics on theme when others are better. I ran into someone once who had a Skullbriar, the Walking Grave deck round +1/+1 counters. And he wanted every single support card to give counters, even if they were sorceries or cost a bajillion mana. He wanted to run a Plummet effect to destroy target creature with flying. He would rather run the 5 mana Pinion Feast, with bolster, even though the bolster never gave his leader counters by the time he played it, over a fast 2 mana instant, or even a 5 mana creature like Stingerfling Spider. He needed that mechanical synergy. A creature token deck that would rather run Gloomwidow's Feast as 4 mana Plummet, even though it will rarely produce a 1/2 Spider token is another good example.

Flavor Fidelity

I’ll give you a quick example of a deck I wrote online once. I’m trying to build it right now in real life. It’s built around Vela the Night-Clad. The goal of this deck is to use Ninjas and creatures with shadow to slip past your defenses and get in a bunch of triggers from their hits. The support cards that both work with Vela, and suit this theme are very welcome — like Shadowmage Infiltrator, who evokes shadows, Fiend of the Shadows or Ashling, the Exterminator. I run shadow cards, like Dauthi Cutthroat, Dauthi Trapper, Dauthi Embrace, and Dauthi Ghoul. Ninja of the Deep Hours. And then I run support cards that fit the theme, even if they are worse than other options. Creature kill? No Murder! Devour in Shadow. That is a deck that is Flavor First.

There are countless other examples. Are you running a famous legendary creature, like Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir or Teferi, Temporal Archmage as your leader? Great! Obviously you’ll find space for Teferi's Isle and Teferi's Response. Don’t touch my lands! I’m not saying you have to run Teferi's Curse or Teferi's Drake, but isn’t there something to be said for Teferi's Puzzle Box or Teferi's Veil? Similarly, you may want to look out for cool cards that quote your leader. Teferi for Impulse or Ovinize or Wash Out. And you can find good support cards there. Ovinize is fine as a decent, wonky, Blue removal spell for creatures, and Wash Out is not bad as a weaker, controllable mass bounce spell. What about spells with the art of your leader instead? You get the idea.

You can have a mechanical concept that hits flavor too. Take me! I didn’t run Breya, Etherium Shaper, Subterranean Tremors or Overseer of the Damned in my pro-flying deck, because making ground tokens was oddly out of flavor, even those cards all worked perfectly. I allowed the mechanical synergy of those cards to be replaced by the mechanical flavor of the deck. Shoot, I swapped over a card like Skyship Weatherlight for Demonic Tutor because, well, it’s flying sort of tutor, even though it wasn’t truly in my mechanical toolshed. Mechanics can be flavor too.

Another sort of deck I don’t see much anymore is an extreme theme one. I am going to include it in this subsection, but a deck made of cards with titles that are lyrics of songs, so you can sing your deck, or a deck where all of the cards are meant to show life in a Medieval castle are good examples of extreme themes that put flavor first. I once built some Commander decks around a Zoo and Aquarium! I once built a set of decks around famous movie quotes, one of which was “Dogs and Casts, Living Together, Mass Hysteria!” from Ghostbusters. So I ran the R/G deck around Hounds, Cats, and the Mass Hysteria card. There’s a lot of opportunity for that in Magic and Commander outside of the normal tournament tables.

For me, I have multiple Commander decks. Like 10 or so. So I have a few different decks. But as a general rule, I find my decks tend toward one of two archetypes:

Nether Shadow Commander; Equinaut; Diaochan’s Control; Fumiko’s Fun; Vhati’s Control, Edric Aggro, — “Synergetic Synergies”

Oros Control; Five Color Planeswalker; Omnath’s Wildfire — “The Big ‘Uns”

Alphabet Archangel Avacyn — “Flavor Fidelity” (Every card begins with “A”).

Most of my decks are either extreme mechanical synergy, or big giant plays. My Five Color Planeswalker deck wants to drop the big fat ‘walkers along with stuff like The Chain Veil to win. My Oros Control plays only the best, biggest fatties like Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Avatar of Woe, and so forth. I’m working on two decks in real life right now — a Surrak Dragonclaw deck that has a Beast tribal theme and built around the Nayahigh power theme, and then Vela the Night-Clad flavor and mechanic deck. The first is a synergetic aggro deck and the latter a sort of flavor/synergy combo.

So I’m a synergy and mechanics first, big style points second, flavor third kind of Commander player, deck-builder, and Magic writer. That’s my DNA.

What’s yours? When I say Commander, what do you think of? Do you just have one deck? Do you use Commander to show off a pimped collection? Do you try to win first and fast? Do you just play with a Commander pre-con? DO you have 50 different Commander decks and then roll to see which one you will play randomly?

What is Commander to you?