Yes, that's right! You can build sixty-card decks from Commander cards as well!

Now, I do think that Commander-only cards are lazy designing, inelegant, and poor for Magic generally. A card like Command Tower might be powerful (and I don't shy from using it), but it was a blunt instrument for helping Commander mana bases in a poor way. You could have designed other ways to help any deck make mana without forcing it to be a Commander-only card.

I think cards like that can help create a bias against them in sixty-card world. But don't worry! There are a lot of great cards for your decks in here. So let's build a quartet of decks that were inspired by the latest batch of fun from Commander (2014 Edition)!

Ah yeah, Reef Worm.

I've Got Worms ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Avatar of Will
• 2 Fog Bank
• 4 Chasm Skulker
• 4 Paragon of Gathering Mists
• 4 Reef Worm
• 2 Jalira, Master Polymorphist

• Spells (16)
• 4 Dismiss
• 2 Flow of Ideas
• 4 Dire Undercurrents
• 4 Homarid Spawning Bed
• 2 Helm of Possession

• Lands (26)
• 24 Island
• 2 High Market

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When I saw Reef Worm, I loved the design. The Fish comes out to eat the Worm, the Whale the Fish, and the Kraken the Whale. (Maybe they eat the corpses after you've killed them.) It’s like that song in which the cat eats the bird that eats the spider that eats the fly. I knew that it would be a fun card to design around, and luckily, we have a few decent cards in blue to play around with. And that includes Homarid Spawning Bed, which can churn out tokens for your benefit.

Meanwhile, we've added Dire Undercurrents to the deck. Every time one of these blue creatures hits the board, including these tokens, you are going to draw yourself a nice little card for your trouble. Another great choice is Avatar of Will, who has the potential to be played for a cheap cost, giving you a lot more Camarids.

In addition to those cards, in leaps Chasm Skulker. If it built up some from card-draw, its sacrifice can make a veritable plethora of 1/1 creatures, some Camarids, and other Squids. Don't forget that we can pump the whole team with Paragon of Gathering Mists. That gives us some useful pumpage. (You could toss in other stuff, such as Caged Sun.)

Jalira, Master Polymorphist can sacrifice a creature (including a token) to put something from your deck right into play. Then, you can sacrifice that creature to make more tokens and keep this thing going. Helm of Possession can sacrifice a creature to steal another. Then, you can sacrifice the stolen creature (if blue to Spawning Bed, but otherwise to Jalira or High Market).

Now just add in some Fog Banks for protection, a smattering of additional card-draw and countering, and the random High Markets, and you have a deck.

Now that we've done that Jalira stuff, what's next in the queue?

Daretti's Scrap Service ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (14)
• 4 Goblin Welder
• 1 Platinum Angel
• 2 Arcbound Crusher
• 2 Steel Wall
• 4 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Bosh, Iron Golem

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Daretti, Scrap Savant

• Spells (20)
• 1 Panic Spellbomb
• 3 Shrapnel Blast
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 4 Scrap Mastery
• 1 Darksteel Forge
• 3 Ichor Wellspring
• 3 Mycosynth Wellspring
• 1 Mindslaver

• Lands (24)
• 20 Mountain
• 4 Buried Ruin

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I love Living Death. My iconic deck, Abe's Deck of Happiness and Joy is now a three-thousand-plus-card Highlander deck for casual play. It began, long ago, as a Standard deck that was played in tournaments and built around Living Death and Sneak Attack (I would Sneak out beaters and then bring them all back for permanent pleasure).

So let's investigate and see what we have, shall we? Just as the Commander deck runs Daretti and Goblin Welder as adjuncts to this strategy, I also tossed them in. That gives us ten cards in the deck that plays with sending artifacts to the bin while bringing others back out again.

In my "Top Ten One-Drops of All Time" article, I called Goblin Welder the fifth-best 1-drop in the history of Magic for casual play. I love that we are seeing another print run of this amazing guy!

Some of the tricks from Daretti's deck are here for us to make use of (Wellsprings, Solemn Simulacrum). They work quite well! You can also spend a red mana when you sacrifice Panic Spellbomb to draw a card (no matter whether you sac it to itself or to Goblin Welder).

I also added a few big artifacts to cheat into play. Darksteel Forge is the obvious addition, but Bosh, Iron Golem, Platinum Angel, and Mindslaver are all sufficient. Be afraid of a Mindslaver being used again and again!

Faithless Looting is a solid adjunct to the deck. It can help set up a powerful graveyard, and if you discard one to a Looting (or Daretti's +2 ability), you can just flash it back.

So after having such a fun artifact deck built around Living Death . . . Scrap Mastery . . . what comes next?

Gisa and Geralf ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (24)
• 2 Chasm Skulker
• 2 Mulldrifter
• 2 Reef Worm
• 2 Soul of Ravnica
• 4 Black Cat
• 4 Shriekmaw
• 2 Solemn Simulacrum
• 3 Ghoulcaller Gisa
• 3 Stitcher Geralf

• Spells (10)
• 2 Fated Return
• 4 Bitter Revelation
• 4 Dictate of Erebos

• Lands (26)
• 9 Island
• 9 Swamp
• 4 Dismal Backwater
• 4 Temple of Deceit

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Gisa and Geralf work quite well together. One makes a big ol' Zombie, and the other splits said Zombie into a bunch of Zombies. The horde groweth.

Solemn Simulacrum, which wanted to die in Daretti's Scrap Service deck above, is also willing to die for the cause here.

And with this core assembled, it's easy to flesh it out. Black Cat has always been a great 2-drop because people don't want to attack into it, a la Typhoid Rats and friends. But you can also sacrifice it for a discard. Shriekmaw and Mulldrifter are great ways to add some card-draw or removal to the deck. Bitter Revelation does that as well. Soul of Ravnica gives you a bigger, flying threat or a graveyard-card-drawing opportunity.

Just flesh things out with Dictate of Erebos and Fated Return, and call it a day!

By the way, did you know that every one of these cards is either Standard-legal or printed in Commander (2014 Edition)? I thought it would be fun to just harness easily-acquirable stuff.

One more deck. Alons-y!

Bouncy Bouncy! ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Mulldrifter
• 4 Aether Adept
• 4 Fog Bank
• 4 Merfolk Wayfinder
• 4 Scourge of Fleets

• Spells (16)
• 2 Fact or Fiction
• 2 Aether Gale
• 4 Cyclonic Rift
• 4 Quicksilver Fountain
• 4 Vedalken Shackles

• Lands (26)
• 26 Island

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I really like the potential of Hex printed as Aether Gale. It's easy to have all six targets to make this work when it can bounce artifacts, enchantments, and Planeswalkers in addition to creatures.

Now, we're not abusive with it. I'm not including a bunch of counters in the deck to counter bounced threats. In fact, to avoid that very temptation, you'll note that we run precisely zero counterspells.

Instead, we have fun stuff like Fog Bank for defense, Aether Adept for additional early tempo, and Merfolk Wayfinder for grabbing lands. We're not even clearing the way for beats that I cheated in or anything. Other than Scourge of Fleets, our remaining creatures are 2/2, 2/2, 0/2 Wall, and, umm . . . 1/1. I'm much more likely to finish a game with the Shackles.

Anyway, take a look at the fun Quicksilver Fountain, which is also a fun tempo card against folks. I know that you all have always secretly liked playing blue, and we want more Islands to be able to do it.

And this gives our decks today a fun, tempo-centric entry to add to all of the sacrificing in the other decks.

Yay tempo!

I hope that you found one of these four decks to speak to you. Maybe you've seen a different angle of attack of these cards in a non-Commander context. Let me know what you thought!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent