My wife loves to tell the story of how we got our two cats.

She, being a cat person, had been begging me for about a year after we started living together. I, being allergic to cats, kept saying no. One day, she heard on the radio about a “Catapolooza” event at the local Humane Society, where if you adopted one you got the second for free. She had always wanted two cats, as they would play and interact with each other when we were gone all day at work.

Finally, I broke down and said if I found a cat I liked, we could adopt a couple of cats (I would then be taking medicine for my allergies). We went down there and found the place was pretty full. The building was filled with separate rooms that were in turn filled with cats. Going from room to room, we looked and tried to interact with the cats. Cats, being cats, ignored us or walked away when we approached.

As we were getting closer and closer to the last room, we saw couples and families holding their new cats looking all happy with their choices (I really doubt that people would be unhappy to come to that place since they were looking for cats, but I could be convinced that I was the only one there who wasn’t having fun). It was looking like at this point that we wouldn’t find two, let alone one, and I was becoming more relaxed.

In one of the last rooms we entered, there was a table and pair of chairs, and since we had been on our feet for a while, I sat down. No sooner had I than a black cat jumped on my lap and started purring loudly. It surprised me and made my wife squeal with joy, and she commanded me to pet it. I did, and it just purred more loudly. My wife was instantly sold on the cat since it liked me (and would interact with me in ways other than walking away), and started to scour the room for another cat because she wanted one who was in the same room.

The cat chose me. I didn’t do anything—he literately fell into my lap. From what I gather, black cats are some of the most unloved cats out there, what with the combination of bad luck and their association with witches. Plus, he had stitches on his side from where we were told that we was in a fight with another cat. All of these reasons suggested we should avoid him like everyone else did.

But we walked out of the Humane Society with him and another cat my wife had chosen. She liked how the cat was quiet, and would be a good counter to the active and loving cat who had jumped into my lap. That’s how Mac Daddy and Harriet came to live with us.

This is a complete analogy to how players get their Commanders.

There’s a rule I heard somewhere: If you open a foil Legend in one of your packs, you have to build a deck using that Commander. I got several shout-outs on Twitter this week when people were opening their New Phyrexia packs, telling me that they opened a foil Legend. Other players rang in that they need to build a Commander deck now based on that Legend.

The foil Legend fell into their lap through random chance—another player passing up that pack to choose another pack instead. It’s as if the foil Commander sat around waiting for their hands to free it from that pack. Funny how life works that way.

During my opening of New Phyrexia, I was fortunate enough to open two foil Commanders. As if fate were laughing at me for not writing the best review, they were a Japanese and an English Jor Kadeen. Well, it looks like I have to build at least one Jor Kadeen deck. But it wasn’t the first time I’ve opened a foil Commander. My Rafiq and Karrthus deck were built because I opened them up in draft or packs.

The other and most common way of getting a Commander is by choosing it. By not leaving it up to fate, you can decide what you want in a deck. There are two ways to choose your Commander: what it does, and its colors. Most people choose the former way, wanting to build around the Commander, but the other way isn’t that uncommon.

Choosing your Commander is all about what you want to do with the deck. Most of the time, I choose a deck based on what the Commander does. My Kemba deck is based around equipment; my Grand Arbiter decks based on control and slowing down my opponents from doing broken things; my Brion Stoutarm deck is all about gaining life and flinging creatures at opponents. Each of these decks is based firmly around my Commander, and if a card doesn’t meet up with that theme, I really have to like it to consider it in the deck.

I do have other decks that are based around colors. I know that some people think that’s against the flavor of the format, and I can see that argument. Sometimes, you just want to play a combination of cards and don’t care who your Commander is. I wanted to put together a Landfall deck that uses the combination of Trade Routes, Scapeshift, Ob Nixilis, and Rampaging Baloths. At the moment, I only have one option: Vorosh, the Hunter. I hope that one of the new Commanders in the new product will give me an opportunity to choose a “right” Commander for the deck.

When a player comes up to me and says he wants to build a Commander deck but doesn’t know who he should pick, I always ask a couple of questions. Yes, this does feel like one of those Cosmo quizzes. With these three questions, it’s easy to narrow down a list of potential Commanders for you to choose.

1. What kind of decks do you like to play?

2. What do you want to do with the deck?

3. How different do you want to be?

What kind of decks do you like to play? If you have a favorite deck, you might want to try a similar deck for Commander. You like to make tokens? Try a Commander that thrives off many creatures in play. How about decks that create a huge combo and kill everyone at once? There’s a couple Commanders that are good with that, too.

It’s easy to find out what a player wants to do depending on his player profile—Spike, Johnny, or Timmy. Spike likes to play to win, and will play the best cards no matter what, Johnny likes to win in his own way and will play wacky combo cards, and Timmy likes the big effects and wants to play splashy spells. With Commander being a natural Johnny/Timmy format, I don’t always use the player profiles to identify what Commander a player should use, but rather look at what kind of decks he likes to play.

What do you want to do with the deck? Different players want to do different things depending on their play style. Say this guy wants to play with Dragons and smash face; that tells me I want to recommend a Commander that helps facilitate with that. A person who wants to lock everything down wants to look at other Commanders.

There’s cards in every color for every type of deck you want to play. Some of them are quite as good or efficient as cards from the appropriate color, but it’s quite possible to construct a combo deck in Red or token beatdown in Blue. By thinking outside the box and getting creative, you can do almost anything you want.

How different do you want to be? A majority of Commanders people play are from the past several blocks. They’re easier to acquire, and they tend to be a little more powerful than the Legends of old. Everyone wants to be a little different (maybe it’s the hipster aspect we discussed last week), but it does get a little tiresome to see the same Commanders over and over again.

They’re chosen because they’re good and they accomplish something, but if someone was looking for something a little different and to explore some aspects of Commander you don’t see very often, some of the older ones are great for that. If you want a White/Blue Commander and want someone different, Rasputin Dreamweaver can fit that role. Want a Black token deck? Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder can be a fun and abusive Commander to mess around with.

When you play a Commander for a long time, it becomes part of your identity; you’re defined by this piece of cardboard. But how you come across this is not as important as one might think. You might go through a hundred decks and Commanders before you finally find one that fits you. Who knows, you might have an interesting story to tell about how you found your favorite Commander!