We're living in a very, very strange time. Time has seemingly lost all meaning. The last three or four weeks have felt like decades. Many if not most of us are spending nearly all our time at home, and that's led to a lot more Magic for plenty of us.

We're also living in a time when some of the things we used to take for granted simply aren't there anymore. In the Before Times, I could drive seven whole minutes to one of several local game stores and grab whatever singles I needed for a new or upgraded Commander deck. Now, though, not so much. Some of the larger Magic sellers are still up and running - including this very website! - but others are powered down. Local game stores are shuttered all over the world.

And let's not forget that tens of millions of people are out of work for the foreseeable future - including this very writer. It's suddenly much, much harder to get our hands on the cards we'd like to use in our decks.

It'd be easy to view this new, bizarre normal as a bummer. But we're not gonna do that. Lucky for you, I'm a relentless optimist.

Now is a very exciting time to be a Commander player. And chances are you already have everything you need.

Good Fences Make Good Brewers

I'll concede up front that not everyone has a sizable collection of Magic cards lying around. Of course they don't. But assuming you have any cards - from binders full of high-dollar treasures to boxes stuffed with chaff - you can build new decks. Right now.

Funny that our isolation coincides with the unveiling of a new Magic mechanic. Companion forces us to build our decks in very specific ways, paying attention to things like converted mana costs and card types. Some players will instantly shy away from the notion of being boxed in with restrictions like those. I prefer to look at it as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved.

And so it goes for building Commander decks relying solely on the cards we already have in our possession. If you don't have that Cyclonic Rift or Enlightened Tutor and can't readily get access to one, it just means you need to use something else.

I'm sure some of you immediately thought something to the effect of, "That's no fun, my deck won't be as good as it should be." Says who? Who decides how "good" a deck is? You do! What does "good" mean? Whatever you want it to mean!

So when someone challenged me to build something I'd never built before - a Mono-Red Commander deck - that sounded pretty good to me. I knew I wouldn't be able to go out and buy the most optimal cards possible for the deck. I didn't care. I had a puzzle to solve and man, oh man, do I love puzzles.

I had very few Mono-Red legendary creatures in my possession and Feldon of the Third Path was by far the most intriguing to me. See, not only had I never build a Mono-Red deck before, I'd also never built a deck predicated on graveyard shenanigans. For whatever reason I instinctively tremble at the thought of intentionally putting things into my graveyard, but now I'm forced to see the graveyard for what it really is - a resource, just like the library, the hand and my life total. Feldon wants me to get creatures into the yard so he can copy them. And Feldon is, frankly, a super creepy dude so I'm just gonna do what he says, all right?

Feldon Commander | Commander | Dave Kosin

• Commander (1)
• 1 Feldon of the Third Path

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Anje's Ravager
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Crashing Drawbridge
• 1 Dockside Extortionist
• 1 Dreamshaper Shaman
• 1 Enthralling Victor
• 1 Filigree Familiar
• 1 Goblin Assault Team
• 1 Heart-Piercer Manticore
• 1 Ilharg, the Raze-Boar
• 1 Keldon Raider
• 1 Magus of the Wheel
• 1 Merchant of the Vale
• 1 Metalwork Colossus
• 1 Meteor Golem
• 1 Outrage Shaman
• 1 Palladium Myr
• 1 Pathrazer of Ulamog
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Preyseizer Dragon
• 1 Siege-Gang Commander
• 1 Warchief Giant
• 1 Reckless Fireweaver
• 1 Scuttling Doom Engine
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum

• Instants (7)
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Electrodominance
• 1 Fateful Showdown
• 1 Fling
• 1 Shock
• 1 Thrill of Possibility

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Banefire
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Ghired's Belligerence
• 1 Hate Mirage
• 1 Lava Coil
• 1 Saheeli's Directive
• 1 Star of Extinction
• 1 Thud
• 1 Tormenting Voice

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Impact Tremors
• 1 Warstorm Surge

• Artifacts (19)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Claws of Gix
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Golem Foundry
• 1 Grimoire of the Dead
• 1 Inspiring Statuary
• 1 Key to the City
• 1 Magewright's Stone
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Prototype Portal
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Soul Foundry
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Umbral Mantle
• 1 Wanderer's Twig
• 1 Witch's Oven
• 1 Worn Powerstone

• Lands (37)
• 34 Mountain
• 1 Dwarven Mine
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Looming Spires

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Forgiving the Sins of Omission

Right off the bat I'll admit there are quite a few cards "missing" from this deck - everything from Sundial of the Infinite (to end my turns before my Feldon-created tokens get sacrificed) to Zealous Conscripts (to steal my opponents' creatures over and over again) to Spawn of Thraxes (to slap my opponents about the face and head every time Feldon copies him).

I'm all right with it. I have to be - I don't have any other choice.

This is the first and perhaps most difficult obstacle to overcome when building a deck using only the cards you have on hand. Tell yourself, as many times as necessary, not to get caught up in the cards you wish you could have. Instead, focus on finding inventive (and very satisfying!) ways to make the most of what you do have.

For example - I can't imagine an optimized version of a Feldon deck running Umbral Mantle. There are far, far better ways to untap Feldon in order to use his ability more than once per turn - Thousand-Year Elixir quickly springs to mind. And man, how good would Rings of Brighthearth be in this deck, right?

Well, too bad. I don't have either of those cards, and I can't get them right now, so Umbral Mantle is gonna have to shoulder that burden. The same goes for Crashing Drawbridge - there are far superior haste enablers out there, but they're out there and not in here, so the drawbridge stays.

And I'm excited about all that! One of my favorite things about Commander is having the opportunity to use cards a lot of people may have never heard of, or hadn't thought about in years. Nothing beats a good "What does THAT card do?" moment in a Commander game.

That's the true joy to be found in constructing decks using only what you have on hand. We get to create all sorts of unexpectedly awesome moments. We get to discover interactions and possibilities we never would have considered because, for many of us, our instinct is to jump right to the best available options and toss them right into the deck. We get to be pioneers - pardon the pun - in our format, charting new and unexpected courses.

How amazing is that?

To Boldly Stay

During this strange time in all of our lives we're starting to realize how many things we took for granted. The ease of acquiring Magic cards for our decks and collections definitely ranks high on that list for me. But as a relentless optimist I choose not to lament losing that convenience; rather, I'm leaning into it, and I hope you do as well.

Round up your friends. Jump on a video chat together, lay out all your legendaries and help each other pick one around which to build. Help get each other excited about working with colors and strategies and mechanics you'd normally avoid. Dig out your chaff boxes and squeal with joy when you find a random uncommon from years and years ago that would slot perfectly into the deck - and which you'd never have considered otherwise.

I'll take it a step further. As noted above, we can still buy singles from various places. Just... don't. Not this time. Take on the challenge of staying inside the box. Look at cards you didn't know you'd ever owned and imagine what they could do. Draw lines you wouldn't have drawn, create combos no one's ever seen. Resist the temptation to be salty about the state of things and reignite your creative fires instead. One of the best things about Commander is the ability - actually, the privilege - to use cards from every Magic set and product ever made. In any given game and with any given deck we have the opportunity to make plays no one's ever made before. Each turn has the potential to create history.

Look. It's a heavy time. There are very real, very scary things happening and we can't control them. Humans don't do well when we're in situations we can't control. I decided long ago that when things are out of control, the best thing I can do for myself is to control what I can. Right now, I can't control the fact that I don't have the luxury of loading up a cart and grabbing every single card I could possibly want for that Feldon deck, or any other deck.

That doesn't mean I can't keep building decks and having fun in the format I love. It doesn't have to stop me and my friends from creating wonderful new memories together. All it means is more of those amazing "what is THAT card" moments, more satisfaction from drawing lines no one would have ever drawn before, and more wisdom to use in the future when things are back to normal.

Staying inside the box made me a better deck-builder. I'm challenging you to give it a try and see what happens.

(Then, when you can, come back to CoolStuffInc and buy some singles.)

Dave is a Commander player currently residing in Reno, NV. When he's not badly misplaying his decks, he works as a personal trainer. You can bother him on Twitter @daviekumd and check out his Twitch channel at twitch.tv/mooks311 .