Step Two: Put Your Commander in That Box

Posted on May 11, 2012

There are downs and ups as a Magic writer.

The downs are that you have to create content. Now, creating content is an awesome feeling, and I completely encourage everyone to do it. However, it does mean that you do have to find time to write (or record video or podcast) instead of playing Magic. Or building decks. Or anything else you can do with Magic besides writing. Of course, there are other things that go on in your life than Magic: a job, a significant other, other hobbies, school, or even getting ready for a baby. All of these things and more can make the writing portion more difficult because when you do have time you can devote to Magic, you want to play, don’t you?

When you do decide to write something, you want to be proud of what you put out there as it has your name on it. Smashing your fingers into a keyboard and hoping it sounds all right doesn’t work when you write for one of the major Magic sites. It also shouldn’t fly when it comes to your own blog. Sometimes, articles really write themselves; other times, you keep rewriting the same words over and over in different patterns to make the thoughts in your head make sense when you see them on the screen. Those pieces sometimes start in one direction and evolve into something different.

Now, this isn’t an excuse for me—far from it. It’s something that one should always have in his or her head whenever trying something like this. Writers always get the idea in their heads that the next piece will be the great one and spend more time thinking and bragging about what it is instead of writing it. Family Guy has this idea covered pretty well on separate occasions.

It’s the idea of being a writer that makes some of us want to write. More would-be writers spend time daydreaming than actually writing; however, make sure you have something to say instead of just writing whatever down. No one really wants to hear you babble on about nothing. I’ve thrown away plenty of pieces because after I get part-way through, I go, “Who cares?” If I don’t care about what I’m writing, why should my readers? And there will be times where you’ll go back and reread what you’ve written and feel embarrassed that you put it out there.

But when you do write, oh, the places you’ll go. Through writing and tweeting about Magic, I’ve been able to do some very cool things. I’ve met Mark Rosewater and Aaron Forsythe and Ken Nagle and Dave Guskin and Zac Hill and various other people in Wizards R&D. I’ve been able to do quick interviews and discussion about Magic with them at PAX and other events. I’ve gotten a preview card for the Commander set last year. I was invited to see the new Card Kingdom store before it even opened (CoolStuffInc is in Orlando; Card Kingdom is in Seattle. When I make it down to Orlando, I’ll check out CSI). I get paid by this very site to write about Commander; well, most of the time it’s about Commander. And I’m just a normal guy who happens to love Magic. I’ve never won a PTQ or Top 8ed anything. Sure, I’ve won a few FNM’s, but I’m a casual player—whatever that means.

If you want to write, write. Start your own blog. Submit stuff to places like GatheringMagic. The community is always hungry for more writers. And if you can feed it, you can go far. Just ask our old editor Trick or our current editor Adam.

One of the things that I’ve been asked several times is to review products. I’m a real Magic swag fan, so it should come as no surprise. I’ve done some reviewing before—I tweeted photos about the Red Monkey Designs Planeswalker Bag that I currently use. And I don’t like to give reviews stars or a rating. What I feel that a review should do is tell you what the product is, what to expect, and whether I would end up using it. I use that bag even though I would love a handle to be at the top of the bag so it’s easier to grab, but that’s a nitpicky thing.

So, I received a product in the mail asking me to review it. Due to FCC regulations, whenever a blogger gets asked to review something, he or she has to state what was received in return (payment, a lifetime backstage pass to A-ha concerts), and all I got was this singular product. It’s right up my alley. Why?

It’s a deck box for Commander decks. It’s by Fantasy Flight Games. And CoolStuffInc is selling them.

You’ve seen several of these types of boxes before, and I’m sure that you have several for yourselves. In fact, here are several others I bought compared with this FFG deck box:

On the left is the Ultra Pro Commander deck box that looks oblongish because it’s made to fit oversized cards in them (Like Planechase cards, but what I can gather from the Helvault issue is that no one likes oversized cards, which is a shame). On the right is the Ultra Pro Magic Mana Flip Box that has a front cover that is magnetized. When you look at these Ultra Pro boxes compared to the FFG box, you notice something:

The FFG box is rather slimming. You can fit it inside a Fat Pack box.

They all hold the same number of cards, but FFG’s design is much more slimming and still protects the deck nicely. It’s made from a hard plastic that’s going to hold up for normal wear and tear. If baby has been born before writing this review, we would’ve done the baby test (drooling, teething, throwing across the room), but it looks like it will hold up that torture. I’ve dropped it on the ground, and it still survived intact and protected the deck.

If you notice the little gray box on the bottom, you’ll see that it’s more than just decoration, it’s a separate compartment for tokens and/or dice. Oh, and it’s detachable as well.

If I had to have one big knock on the deck box, it would be this detachable dice and/or token compartment. I love the concept and all the space it gives (picture in a moment); it’s just that that compartment can be hard to open. It makes sense: Since the dice box is upside-down where it connects to the deck box, you don’t want it to spring open and lose all of your tokens and dice everywhere. You notice that this is important when I carried the deck box in my card bag for a week or so, and it was all kept intact without spilling all over the place. It’s necessary; I just wish it was a little easier to open.

How big is that dice box?

That tells you about how much the box can hold, which is quite a bit actually. If you’re playing a Commander game, you’ll need tokens, and this allows you to customize about how many tokens and/or dice you need for each deck.

The other really awesome feature about this deck box is the front. There’s a removable clear plastic cover. This allows you to put a copy of you Commander (Or whatever card you want) on the front to signify which deck it is.

Obviously, if you have a nice, altered Commander, you can show it off in there as well without worrying about shuffling it in sleeves all of the time. Note: The front cover fits a card perfectly, so it won’t jostle around. It also won’t fit a sleeved card in the front, so be warned.

As you can see inside, it fits one hundred cards perfectly. This also means that it cannot fit one hundred double-sleeved cards (but to fair, neither of the other two deck boxes I have can either). You have a little wiggle room for a few card tokens, but it’s mostly pretty snug in there so the cards don’t move around much. In case you are wondering (or you didn’t click on the links), the deck boxes come in five colors, and if you think about it, you know which ones they are (white, blue, black, red, and green).

The big question: Is this something I see myself using? Yes. I’ve been toting around my Zedruu deck in it for the past several weeks, and I’m very happy with the design of the deck box. It’s light, it’ll keep my cards and tokens in order, and it’ll protect the cards. Plus, the fact that I can be creative and put my Commander on the front makes it easy to pick out when I’m grabbing them from my shelf or making sure that I have the right box on the table when I’m playing with friends. I’ve shown the FFG deck box to some other Commander players at my LGS and they seem pretty impressed by it as well. A week or two later after I showed it around, the LGS started carrying them in stock.

Coincidence? Maybe.

The downsides of the difficultly of the dice-and/or-token box being opened and the lack of storage for double-sleeved cards aren’t enough to stop me from buying more of them. I have only one deck double-sleeved, and the dice-and/or-token compartment actually holds the dice and/or tokens in there, so that’s good.

And CoolStuffInc is selling them.

Yes, I’ll end up buying more of these—maybe, just maybe, one for each of my Commander decks. But that quite a few decks if you remember.

But maybe you don’t.

See, one of the other things about writing is that people remember when you mess up. They hold you accountable, and they should. Last year, I started a project called the Highlander Collective, in which I would chronicle how the decks that I played would evolve over time. I’ve done a horrible job doing this. And I want to correct my error.

This project was started with the best intentions, but whenever I wanted to revisit it, something else came in the way. Now I would like to focus on it for a while if that’s okay with you guys. I’ll break one of my cardinal rules—no deck lists—and we’ll see how decks can change their focus over time. It was the Ruhan experiment that I did that really made me want to get back on track with this.

That is, if you are interested.

With Avacyn Restored just out and Planechase 2 around the corner, taking a look at the decks and seeing what direction they should go in should be a nice exercise. But it’s not just about what I want to do with the decks, it’s about what I can do to help you with your decks. (No, I’m not doing a deck workshop.) With the Ruhan experiment, it really brought to light that everyone does have different ideas about what Commander is and how to build around it. Sometimes, you do need that spark of what other people have done to get you started with your new deck. Maybe it’s a combo that you never noticed before or a card that works perfectly with the strategy that you’re going after.

Plus, I do believe that I owe that Nicol Bolas deck as well.

Next time, we’ll revisit the Highlander Collective, what its mission is, and where we go from here. If, at any time, what I’m writing doesn’t interest you, let me know. After all, I’m an ordinary guy who writes about Magic, not some mind reader. If you want me to do more reviews, let me know, too, since that is a void that’s out there.

And in order to get your appetite going for the Highlander Collective, here’s my Avacyn Restored updated Sygg, River Cutthroat deck with some new additions.