An icy wind blustered across the frozen plane as Thrunn, the Last Troll rallied his troops to stand against the relentless assault of Ria Ivor and the Phyrexian knight’s swarm of toxic mites. Close by, a heavily equipped Jor Kadeen had slipped away from the melee and was preparing to travel down a rogue’s passage, past the defenses of Elesh Norn’s annex to deliver a crushing blow to the Praetor’s ambitions…
And that was just round one of my prerelease event.
Vorthos aside, all of this - including the icy winds of Massachusetts in February - really happened in a single game over the weekend, and I’m excited to share with you just how it all came to be.
You may be familiar with a traditional sealed prerelease event: six packs, a promo, some deckbuilding decisions, then 40 cards and a few matches later, you hopefully head home with a few prize packs and a great story about a sweet new card you opened. But my prerelease was something different. It was a multiplayer throwdown where all of Phyrexia’s most legendary stars waged a 100-card war on a battleground known as “Iron Commander.”
Wait - did you say commander?
I sure did, Timmy. But even if Magic’s most popular format hasn’t been your cup of tea, I urge you to read on and hopefully give this type of event a try in the future. Magic players love a good challenge - and building a 100-card sealed deck from scratch in 60 minutes will test, thrill, and reward you.
Okay, so what IS this Iron Commander thing, anyway?
“Iron Commander” is a sealed deck commander tournament where your commander isn’t known until you pull a legendary creature out of a sealed booster pack at the start of the event. Once you have your commander, you then have 60 minutes to build your 100-card deck using the cards in the game store’s bulk bins - just like the contestants on the hit TV show “Iron Chef,” preparing dishes on the fly once they learn the secret ingredient.
I know that building with cards from the bulk bin may make some players wary. However, I offer photographic evidence further down to demonstrate that although those cards may not be the Cyclonic Rifts and Sol Rings you’re used to seeing in commander decks, they can still be synergistic, powerful, and downright game-changing.
At Tiger’s Eye Games in Bellingham, MA, the bulk bins are sorted by color (WUBRG, Multicolored, Artifact, Nonbasic Land) and bagged into random stacks of 100 or so cards, which can include all rarities. To select cards for your deck, you grab a bag, return to your seat, sift through for cards you want that fits your commander’s color identity, then return the bag and swap for a new one; rinse & repeat.
When the clock sounds to end deck construction, you sleeve up and play in pods of four for two to three rounds, each round consisting of one game. Players compete to earn a place in the top four at the end of Swiss via a point system that rewards both “winning” (eliminating other players) and “questing” (being the first in each match to complete unique achievements). For both play and deckbuilding, the official rules and banned list for commander apply, which can be found here.
To celebrate the arrival of Phyrexia: All Will Be One - or “ONE” as Wizards of the Coast has dubbed it - my local game store chose to innovate by combining their monthly Iron Commander event with the ONE prerelease. Each player received a sealed prerelease kit to open and use to identify their commander and include any on-color playables from their sealed pool in their 99!
Allowing the entire sealed pool to be used gave every game I played a distinctly Phyrexian feel. Most decks included strong themes and synergies tied to the ONE mechanics (Toxic/Infect, Oil Counters, For Mirrodin/Living Weapon, etc.). Although this was a “limited” event, Iron Commander is still a singleton format, so no duplicates are allowed…even if you open two copies of a bomb rare in your sealed pool.
To give you an example of the blended Phyrexian theme I observed, I first present my commander, Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold, and her 99 friends:
(Not pictured: 14 swamps, 13 plains)
You can see the full decklist and read each card on TappedOut here.
This deck used the following cards from my prerelease kit:
As you can see, being able to produce Phyrexian mites with toxic while going wide early was a simple plan that fit directly into Ria Ivor’s abilities. Given that the deck could rapidly generate more mites and recur key pieces with Biblioplex Assistant, Gravedigger, and Driver of the Dead (plus The Eternal Wanderer’s +1 ability to blink those ETB triggers), I prioritized seeking out more wrath effects and removal. And, as I implied earlier, the bulk bins delivered in the form of Massacre Girl, Winds of Rath, Deathbringer Regent, Essence Pulse, and more:
The result? A deck that relentlessly produced, sacrificed, and reproduced creatures to overwhelm and poison the enemy. How very Phyrexian, indeed.
A few highlights from my matches included:
Playing Massacre Girl onto a board chock full of my 1/1 mites and my opponents’ creatures to wipe away everything and immediately recast my commander to rebuild the army of mites the following turn. All of my opponents died to poison two turns later.
Using The Eternal Wanderer’s -4 ability to tidy up the board and then casting Vat Emergence to reanimate the 7/6 wurm my Thrunn opponent just had to sacrifice, while also adding a loyalty counter to the Wanderer and adding a poison counter to my Jor Kadeen opponent via proliferate.
Casting White Sun’s Zenith to surprise block my opponent’s commander and keep a bunch of cats to swing in with battle cry on my turn.
For a second example, check out our friend Randy’s deck with commander Melira, the Living Cure.
Randy’s deck honored the tried and true “little kid GW” strategy, but with +1/+1 counters galore and a steady stream of tokens and creatures to wear some bomb equipment in the form of Mace of the Valiant and Sword of Forge and Frontier. In this format, which Randy describes as a “semi-sealed commander cube,” a big board of beefy creatures wearing pants can be a totally viable win condition!
I am happy to report that after experiencing Iron Commander and winning a nail-biter in his final round, Randy enjoyed this unique form of limited so much that he’s looking forward to trying it again. Many thanks to Randy for coming out to the shop on a sub-zero day and for sharing his deck with us.
If you’re looking for a little primer on constructing a functioning commander deck like these, especially in a one-hour window, I recommend using the following guidelines found here. You’ll notice that Randy and I both strayed from the guidelines a bit, but we kept these numbers in mind when it came time to build and make cuts so that we could ensure our decks let us actually play Magic:
1 Commander
35-40 Lands: I recommend 37 to start for consistency, but a landfall commander will want more, and a mana-rock-heavy build may want less.
8-10 Mana ramp effects: This one isn’t a hard rule in the Iron Commander format, as the power level is slightly below constructed. My deck featured only four mana rocks and one mana dork and accelerated just fine, but ramping is generally ubiquitous in commander.
8-12 Card advantage effects: This includes both real and “virtual” card advantage. This is an area where I wanted another card or two for my deck, but with limited build time, I just made sure not to cut any of the reliable draw spells I grabbed out of the bulk bin.
10-12 Removal spells: This includes wrath effects if you can find some. I ensured that my single target removal also boosted my game plan (add a menace counter to my commander, proliferate, flexible in removing multiple permanent types, etc.).
30-35 Cards that enact your game plan: These should support your commander’s synergies. Supporting a specific game plan with ways to win the game in mind is essential!
Now that you’ve seen a sampling of what’s possible in an Iron Commander prerelease, I also want to take a moment to focus on a concept I mentioned earlier - innovation. While Tiger’s Eye Games did not originate the Iron Commander format (and actually credits another store owner for sharing it with them), the store did innovate in a way that was not only fun but genuinely in the spirit of “the Gathering.”
First, they took a successful format at their store (Iron Commander) and made it new by introducing fresh elements to the commander selection and deckbuilding restrictions. Second, the store understood its audience and identified a new way to offer prerelease kits and the camaraderie that traditionally comes with that style of event to its player base.
By staying connected to their players, they identified what would continue to bring those players back into the shop and provided them with opportunities to engage, foster connections and friendships, new playgroups, and sometimes even new relationships (just ask some of our KBG contributors!).
In an era where Wizards of the Coast has prescribed sweeping changes to the game of Magic and how it is played at tournaments and more casual tables, this kind of innovation is something to be nurtured in our communities.
You’ve likely heard before that human beings are creatures of habit, which is undoubtedly positive for the continued growth of the game we love; we want to keep playing it. However, the human mind is also wired to seek out what is new & different so that our lives - and the things we enjoy - don’t stagnate.
At least occasionally, we need to branch out, face new challenges and stray from the routine to keep our skills sharp and invigorate our enjoyment of the game. As we continue to navigate and eventually emerge from a world changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s innovation in the gathering part of this game that will keep our local game stores - and ourselves - thriving.
I sincerely hope you will encourage your own local game store to offer innovative events and formats that broaden your own experiences playing Magic and Gathering with friends. If a shop in your area offers an event like Iron Commander, I strongly suggest you try it out. Even if commander isn’t your format of choice, but you enjoy limited or just the deckbuilding challenge, I promise you will benefit from having played this format and experienced the journey.
To paraphrase Paul, the Tournament Organizer at Tiger’s Eye, Iron Commander is a format that challenges players to get outside of their comfort zone and build something new, unexpected, maybe even powerful, from cards that competitive folks may have thought of as draft chaff, spare parts, or long dead.
With this in mind, the Iron Commander format felt very apropos for the ONE Prerelease. Its ability to breathe new life into old cards reminded me of my favorite Phyrexian card: Exhume.
“Death - an outmoded concept. We sleep, and we change.”
- Sitrik, birth priest
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