I was vaguely aware that “dead heat” was a term from horseracing, and I wanted to pick a title that had to do with heat because I want this to be the third installment in my “Commander Heat Index” series, and I thought a pun title would make this article more palatable—a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. I’m realizing that if I’d thought of this sooner, I could make this entire article be a bunch of graveyard-based transgressions like “casting Living End” or something. I can’t think of enough, and would you really have appreciated the theme that much? I think what we like most about this series is reading about things we see in our own playgroups and thinking, “Freaking Ben is always doing that! This should have been an 11/10!” Besides, when I’m not a slave to a theme, I am able to incorporate your suggestions, and I know you like when I do that. I’m not going to, you know, not make stupid pun titles. Deal with it.

Remember how this works? If not, I’d read the first two installments of this series, which are sure to end up enshrined in the Library of Congress so alien visitors to our ruined planet millennia from now can get a glimpse into how we treated each other when we played casual variants of our children’s card games. Basically, the format here is that I talk about various things you can do in a game of Commander and then I talk about how much “heat” that’s likely to bring down on you—then, you disagree with me in the comments, which I welcome. Ready?

Transgression: Casting Doubling Season

Commander Heat Index Score: 5/10

Notes: I didn’t know how severe to go here. I think this is a relatively benign thing that is just one of many tools in my box of evil tools in the decks in which I play it. It’s a lot better than Primal Vigor in general, but in a lot of my decks, it’s not that different. However, other people engage in some evil shenanigans with this card. Gathering Magic writer Mark Wischkaemper says when someone plays Doubling Season, he automatically assumes that person is up to no good. I guess my heat score is an average of me getting eye-rolls when I play it and other groups telling me they kill this card on sight so hard that they sometimes exterminate the entire player because killing his or her board state feels insufficient. This card is all about intentionality, but if people don’t know your intentions, don’t be surprised if you are moidered.

Transgression: Casting Sheoldred, Whispering One

Commander Heat Index Score: 7/10

Notes: This is a kill-on-sight card and with good reason. This makes Magic no fun, and the prerelease promo ensures cheap copies of this will be available for a long time to come. This feels bad to play against, and while most things your opponents do you can ignore, this forces you to change your plans, cast different creatures, waste removal, or curse the heavens for forcing you to live in such a cruel reality where your life is cushy enough that you can sit around playing card games with your friends but punishing enough that you have to deal with a stupid The Abyss on feet. The only reason this is a 7 is that . . . 

Transgression: Sheoldred, Whispering One Is Your Commander

 . . . is worse and earns an 8/10.

Transgression: Casting Food Chain

Commander Heat Index Score: 9/10

Notes: Maybe it’s just my group, but this card can’t stick around. I loop Maelstrom Wanderer with this, only paying commander tax to replay Wanderer and generate a bunch of cascades in a single turn. You can go infinite with Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and Food Chain. This card is dumb, and it’s never used to make brownies for the whole group. Mostly, it’s used to murder people by giving you access to as much mana as you need with some degenerate two-card combo. This card will get you killed, but sometimes, they agree to kill you too late because you’ve already killed the three other people because you’re cheating with a cheaty card for cheaters.

Transgression: Putting Lightning Greaves on Your Summoning-Sick Eldrazi

Commander Heat Index Score: 6.5/10

Notes: I was just going to say, “Cast an Eldrazi,” but someone suggested this exact scenario: Playing an Eldrazi then suiting up that turn with Greaves. And it was so specific that I remembered weeks later and still get a chuckle out of it. I guess I’m tacking on a 0.5 for booting up, but honestly, if you’re casting Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth (no one becomes upset when you boot up a Spawnsire of Ulamog, I imagine), you’re doing worse to people than merely attacking right away, although having to be annihilated right away feels bad. If you could threaten everyone at once with this play, the number would be objectively higher, although it’s clearly higher to some people than it is to me.

Transgression: Anything Involving Palinchron

Commander Heat Index Score: 8/10

Notes: People may be confused about what you plan to do with Palinchron and how you plan to generate infinite mana or gain a bunch of triggers off Warstorm Surge or whatever garbage you’re planning on perpetrating on the group. If they catch a whiff of this card before the rest of the combo is in place, you should brace yourself for a murderin’.

Transgression: Grand Arbiter Augustin IV Is Your Commander

How That Will Be Interpreted: “You’re a monster.”

Commander Heat Index Score: 8/10

Notes: You’re a monster; that first guy was right.

Transgression: Anything Involving Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Commander Heat Index Score: 6/10

Notes: It really depends on what you do, but people are going to brace themselves for an Armageddon or Wrath of God or some other noise that probably won’t win you the game but may make the game super-annoying. Does 6/10 seem low? What if I told you that you add the score of whatever you do next to that 6? We said casting Armageddon was an 11/10, so if you ’Geddon with Avacyn out, it’s a 17/10. That’s a lot of heat—so much heat, in fact, that you may use it to give yourself a nice tan and cackle maniacally because what are they even going to do to you? They have no lands.

Transgression: Blood Moon

Commander Heat Index Score: 9/10

Notes: People don’t like when you mess with their mana. This also shuts off their utility lands, which is also really annoying. Watching a guy pitch a mitt full of gas because your Blood Moon just turned his Reliquary Tower into a Mountain might be funny, but he’s not going to forget what you did. I hope you have a plan for dealing with the rest of the table. This isn’t as bad as Armageddon, but I feel that it’s over the lynch mob’s let’s-kill-this-sucker threshold, so degrees of murderability hardly matter at that point.

Transgression: Vedalken Shacklin’

Commander Heat Index Score: 7/10

Notes: For whatever reason, Vedalken Shackles get up hackles. Casting Mind Control on a creature and serving some beats with it is accepted as the cost of doing bidness. Cast a Bribery? Someone grumbles, but mostly because you targeted him or her and not the other player whom you know has Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and the player wants that out so you can deal with it now rather than later. Cast a repeatable way to yoink monsters? You’re a monster yourself. Having Merieke Ri Berit as your commander brings exactly as much heat as you luck-sack drawing into this card that forces you to commit heavily to blue and draw a card that is one of ninety-nine, but I have played a lot of games with a lot of groups, and they all hate Shackles. Maybe it reminds them of how annoying Blue Moon was in Modern for a tournament and a half. Who knows? What I do know is that this card gets people feeling heated, so you better wear sunscreen.

Did I miss your pet transgression? Leave it in the comments! I realize this series is heavily skewed toward my personal experience and me taking people’s word for it when they tell me things, but that’s what I think is great about this series—if you disagree, you will become passionate about something that happens in your group. We’re slingin’ heat over here, and that gets people excited about this silly card game of ours. Maybe reminding you of something your playgroup mate does will get you building with murdering him or her in mind or inspire you to send him or her a trash-talk message on Facebook or inspire you to make an entirely new deck.

I don’t know; I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. What I will say is that this series is as much fun to write as it is to read, and while I have listed a lot of the common transgressions, I have by no means listed them all. Maybe next installment will include a few that aren’t directly related to a card, per se, but are related to habits at the table. Who knows? If I can give these stupid pun titles, I can regulate the content within, right? Hit me with suggestions, and I’ll be back with another one of these in a few weeks. Thanks for reading!