I was among the architects and driving forces behind a Commander league in Iowa City when I lived there, and I’m always among the first to bring my decks out at my new local hangout in Austin. I have about ten fully built decks, seven of which I actively play, and I have dismantled and redistributed nearly as many. I reflexively hold onto single copies of cards when I sell large stacks at Grands Prix—because you never know what use you’ll come up with for that Giant Adephage.

I’ve loved Commander so much I still reflexively call it EDH. I probably will till the day they pry my white-bordered, Portuguese Mana Crypt from my cold, dead hand (somehow way cooler than the foil judge copy I have as well).

So, to take a break from serious things such as Modern Masters, Las Vegas, M14, and the Hall of Fame, I’m going to run through my current commanders and the philosophies and synergies behind those decks.

By the way, I love that I live in a world where those count as serious things.

I won’t have full decklists here because you really don’t need to know that all of my white decks start out with, “one Sol Ring, one Mana Crypt, one Flagstones of Trokair, one Hallowed Burial, and one (textless foil) Wrath of God.” That’s not interesting. Interesting is Doubling Season with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. Interesting is Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind with Mindmoil. Interesting is Arbiter of Knollridge.

Rubinia Soulsinger

It started out as a cards-I-love kind of deck—Gifts Ungiven, Reveillark, Eternal Witness, original-flavor Garruk, Braingeyser, Mana Reflection, Mulldrifter, Tidings, Cryptic Command, and so on and so on.

It started out very much as a broken Gifts Ungiven deck. It had Fastbond, Zuran Orb, Strip Mine, Crucible of Worlds, and Armageddon. It sported my favorite card that isn’t Gifts Ungiven of all time in Cataclysm. I had Reveillark combo. I could protect myself with Glacial Chasm and Solitary Confinement. Life from the Loam and cycling lands tied everything together.

Then, Gifts Ungiven (and to a lesser extent Fastbond) was banned, and my world came crashing down. I might have cried for days.

But I picked myself up and took out the combos. It was a fairer deck that way anyway. I tried to focus more on actually casting Rubinia, stealing creatures, and sacrificing them to things such as Greater Good and Miren, the Moaning Well. I continued pampering the deck with Legends copies of Sylvan Library and Antiquities Strip Mine, foil textless Cryptic Command, and the best Revised dual lands money could buy.

Suddenly, I found myself always, always, always having Mana Reflection and Grim Monolith in play together. And with Braingeyser, Mind Spring, and Stroke of Genius (hey, I love drawing cards) all in my deck, I would win simply by turtling up and killing the entire table in one X-draw-spell-fueled turn.

It was glorious, but it wasn’t terribly fun.

Then, they printed Omniscience, and everything went to pot.

First, Academy Rector into Omniscience became the focus of the deck. I added more ways to find Rector, Wargate became the third- or fourth-best card in my deck (it probably was already pretty close . . . seriously, have you read this card?), and every game seemed to end with Omniscience into vomiting my deck onto the table. I was having a blast.

The problem is that no one else was.

I found myself apologizing outwardly while squealing like a child inside. I was playing solitaire, but no one else enjoyed it. So, while I lovingly cultivated my monstrosity and only brought it out when threatened, I wasn’t able to play with all of these sweet cards as much as I wanted to.

Then, I opened a foil Doubling Season in Modern Masters, and Rubinia was given new purpose.

At least that was the idea. Then, I played a game with it and broke the table in half when I drew Time Stretch with a Tamiyo emblem. Oops.

That’s where the deck is right now. It’s not nearly as broken as the days of Omniscience or Fastbond with Orb, and Cataclysm goes in and out of the deck, but it is—and will remain—my pet deck.

• Glacial Chasm
• Sylvan Library
• Krosan Verge
• Mana Reflection
• Braingeyser
• Fact or Fiction
• Garruk Wildspeaker
• Miren, the Moaning Well
• Arbiter of Knollridge
• Wargate
• Vedalken Orrery
• Solitary Confinement
• Honden of Seeing Winds

Azami, Lady of Scrolls

It’s pretty much exactly what you would imagine. The deck hasn’t changed much over the years—except for becoming slightly more foiled now and then (recent addition: foil Dismiss). I’ve cut down on the counterspells and increased the number of multiplayer-oriented cards since the deck was originally designed for a one-on-one EDH tournament way back in the day.

Still, there are some sweet cards in the deck that not many people see coming:

• Inundate
• Legacy's Allure
• Sun Droplet
• Deranged Assistant (mana, and a Wizard!)
• Echo Mage
• Ertai, Wizard Adept (a personal favorite . . . sadly, it predates foils)
• Fallowsage (what’s better than tapping to draw a card? Tapping to draw two cards!)
• Meishin, the Mind Cage
• Serendib Sorcerer

Dakkon Blackblade

We have Relic of Progenitus and Identity Crisis for graveyard decks, a million Wraths for creature decks, and Aven Mindcensor and Mindlock Orb for, well, everyone. Ignore the Demonic Tutor and Diabolic Revelations in the corner.

For a while, this was my dumping ground for sweet cards that didn’t make Rubinia (this remains one of only two black Commander decks I have), but eventually, it became my premier fair deck.

The deck has several hidden gems in it that aren’t played nearly enough. One is Necropotence, which is inexplicably horribly busted, never feared, and rarely played. I prefer to combine mine with Arbiter of Knollridge.

I do have Cabal Coffers with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in the deck, but I can’t really do anything broken with them except cast a bunch of spells. Magister Sphinx and Sorin Markov have bounced in and out of the deck as a check on more powerful decks, but Sphinx I’ve taken out, and Sorin’s life-setting ability rarely is used unless someone gets frisky. He’s mostly there to play life-gainer and Mindslaver.

And, for the record, Dakkon himself wins games all the time. The deck stretches games long, and eventually, Dakkon is big enough to kill in one or two hits. He’s such an unassuming commander that no one really ever sees it coming.

Animar, Soul of Elements

Not much to say about this one. I built it because I had a Japanese copy of Animar (I picked up all five Commander precons in Japan when I did coverage for Grand Prix Yokohama last year), and the deck seemed sweet. It certainly is, but it can be kind of repetitive. It’s very good at making infinite everything, but it just doesn’t function very well without actual Animar. At least it lets me put my copy of Palinchron to good use.

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary

Or you can cast Primal Surge.

That one was kind of fun. It’s a bit of one-card combo that I can’t search for and costs 10 mana, but it almost always wins the game when cast. I had to reshape the deck a bit to make it work, but it has absolutely been worth it. I lose some sweet spells, but I gain the ability to accidentally win in a deck that mostly could only play a grindy game.

Granted, there were some deck gymnastics that had to take place to get this to work. For one, I’d deck myself after casting this thanks to the plethora of card-drawing creatures in the deck. So, in went Platinum Angel.

Of course, Platinum Angel could just die, so now I have to make sure I have something like Asceticism out there, which I probably want anyway.

Finally, I need to actually be able to attack people for enough, which means Craterhoof Behemoth and Avenger of Zendikar tag-teaming to pump the crap out of my team.

Barring that, the deck just does what it does, gaining advantage with every creature it casts. Sometimes, that’s not big enough for some Commander games. For those games, there’s Primal Surge.

Numot, the Devastator

The deck is very much on-theme. It plays Armageddon and Wildfire and Detritivore and, of course, Cataclysm.

It’s almost entirely sweepers, card-draw, mana, and ways to blow up lands en masse. I’ve toned it down a little (I’m not dipping into Ravages of War, for example), and some cards have no purpose beyond the fact that I love them (Lightning Angel), but the deck embraces a taxing theme to great effect.

I run, for example, Rhystic Study (which is too annoying for me to auto-include everywhere), Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, Magus of the Tabernacle, and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I am able to run a few planeswalkers here, too, since the deck makes it harder to attack and keep creatures on the table.

I don’t break this one out unless I feel like Cataclysming or Armageddoning people out of the game. Basically, I have to be feeling pretty mean that day.

The Mimeoplasm

It’s a pretty straightforward reanimator deck with the relevant Praetors and other giant monsters. The highlights are pretty much Greater Good and mass reanimation spells.

I’m purposefully avoiding Magic 2014 cards for the rest of this article, but Rise of the Dark Realms just screams The Mimeoplasm. I already have Living Death and Twilight's Call in this deck, and Rise of the Dark Realms is probably the most obvious inclusion of any M14 card into any of my Commander decks. Grim Return probably wants a spot as well.

Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind

No Curiosity or Ophidian Eye here—just good, old-fashioned infinite copies of draw-sevens.

How’s that, you ask?

Time Spiral plus a bunch of copy spells (like Fork and Twincast) usually is enough. Add in Psychosis Crawler, and it’s almost certainly enough. But the real trick is casting Time Spiral plus Nivix Guildmage and then leaving the original on the stack while copies continuously give you enough mana to activate Guildmage.

That one’s a little tricky to both set up and protect, but Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir goes a long way. And it’s so, so much cooler than just casting Curiosity on Niv-Mizzet.

As backups, it has a bunch of other draw-sevens to deal damage in spurts. I’ve always loved Diminishing Returns, and this deck lets me play it with aplomb. And ever since Niv-Mizzet was first printed, I’ve been pairing it with Mindmoil. Add in a dash of Vedalken Orrery, and go nuts.

Things I Think I’m Thinking

• I will be playing Dark Prophecy excessively.
• Modern is quickly becoming my favorite format, but I’m starting to wish they’d ban Birthing Pod and Deathrite Shaman. I don’t think they’re overpowered, and I generally don’t like bannings, but I think they’d further open up the format.
• I kind of wish I had pulled a Finkel and only voted for two or three people on my Hall of Fame ballot. I’m all for the Hall being more exclusive rather than more inclusive.
• Why are there no bands out there with Magic-themed names. I mean, most of the names of the Commanders I’ve listed in this article would make fantastic band names. The Firemind? Who wouldn’t pay to see that?
• I enjoy Duels of the Planeswalkers, but why in the world am I unlocking cards after twenty duels that are worse than cards I unlocked after my second duel?