First, I want to thank everyone for the kind words and advice from my last article. I'm in a situation that I know almost nothing about, and I'm trying to learn everything that I can. There are several fatherhood books currently piled up against my bed, and I'm disturbed that there are such few books about the topic. Listen, I know that women are the ones carrying the baby and therefore should have a majority of the books, but there are surprisingly few for the fathers. We want to be a part of it, too.

Besides the fact that getting ready for baby is taking up most of my time, I was motivated by my writing to get a few more Commander decks ready. My Magic table in my office is covered with half-decks and old decks that needed to come apart. Picking up of my old ones, I saw which deck I should build next: Baru, Fist of Krosa.

My old, mono-Green deck, which I held in my hands, was built around Verdeloth the Ancient. I had great joy playing it until the Rules Committee banned the piece for the game-winning combo: Channel. Yes, this was banned because the sorcery allowed players to cast the Eldrazi way too early—notably Emrakul. But in the deck with Vedreloth, it was powered for this combo: Channel for most of your life, Cast Vedreloth, paying the mana from Channel for Kicker, gain back that life with Essence Warden, and use the enters-the-battlefield triggers to continuously use Blasting Station. Though the token creatures enter the battlefield at the same time, they all trigger separately. With Blasting Station, you can put them all on the stack and sacrifice each one as they enter the battlefield to untap the Station, which means you can use it like a machine gun. Thanks Mr. Forsythe!

After you kill all your tokens, you then use Blasting Station to sacrifice Verdeloth to start the process all over again. How? Channel has that convenient phrase, "Until end of turn" for the life-into-mana ability, and I would gain the life I lost with Essence Warden. Like any wacky combo deck, it was fun for the opponents the first few times they played against it, but then that excitement quickly disappeared. While the combo wasn't the only objective with the deck—it mainly served as a tribal Saprolings-and-Treefolk deck—my play kept skewing me toward that awesome goal of Blasting Station domination.

When Channel was banned, I just left the deck alone, deciding that I might return to it one day and pull out that forbidden card. With the Highlander Collective, I knew that I wanted a mono-colored Commander from each of the five colors, but I decided to go somewhere else. I wanted to try something different and see what other wackiness I could come up with. Looking at the possible mono-Green candidates, there was nothing that looked exciting, and I eventually settled on Baru.

But he isn’t the choice I’m going with.

Looking at his ability, it's pretty similar to what my Damia, Sage of Stone deck does. I based that one on the G/U/B possibilities of Landfall; whatever would put more lands in play or abuse Landfall goes in that deck. It's a pretty fun theme deck, but Baru has no place in it because I hardly have any Forests to trigger him. The natural thing would be to build another deck that he can abuse. However, it seemed too close to Damia. I would throw in Beacon of Creation to create a ton of tokens with the Forests to trigger Baru. If I have Beacon of Creation in there, I might as well toss in Blasting Station[/card . . .

Damn you, Mr. Forsythe!

Instead, I went somewhere else. I'm not satisfied with my choice because I honestly don't like any of the options that mono-Green has for Commanders (which is ironic, but we'll get to that in a moment). Green Commanders fall into three main categories:

1. Doing something with lands and/or mana
2. Doing something like [card]Overrun
3. A one-of ability that isn’t very exciting

Is part of this Green’s lack-of-excitement ability in the color pie? Yes. But Green doesn’t have to be boring—it just is. Taking a look at the first two categories, we have the option of building around the Commander (which is something I endorse) and leads us to building linear decks.

Building a linear deck is not a bad thing; most of people’s first Commander decks are linear. By linear, I mean having a theme or concept and having most of the cards focus around that theme. It could be a creature type, a keyword, or anything that builds off each other. You see it all the time in competitive Constructed all the time with their respective names: Goblins, Faeries, Affinity, Dredge, Elves, and others. By having a linear theme (something my original mono-Green had), you can have a stronger deck rather than having a deck of just good cards.

One of the most popular examples of a linear deck, especially in the casual world, is Slivers. I hate Slivers. In my opinion, it offers the least amount of customization because you have to have as many Slivers in your deck as possible to make it work properly. It’s not that they’re annoying because they’re so easy to pilot—it just doesn’t seem that anyone put any thought into creating the deck (I know there are outlying cases, but for the most part, this is my opinion).

When you’re building a Baru deck, you want to get as many lands and tokens onto the battlefield as you can so you can use the Overrun effect (Baru fits into both of the first two categories). Azusa wants you to play lands, Ezuri wants to you play Elves, and even Sachi wants you to play Shamans and Snakes (it even does something with mana). I want to build something a bit more unique than just whatever shows up in Gatherer under “themed Green Commander”.

This is a hard thing to do when you’re trying to build a mono-Green deck. While I haven’t gotten into the different types of Commanders (like Voltron-style), Green doesn’t lend itself to great different styles of decks. Sure, you have a pretty powerful one like Kodama of the North Tree that just bashes face, but that’s all you’re doing. “Clear the way, the beater of all things is coming through!” In a one-on-one type of match, it’s not that bad of a strategy (again, it depends on what you’re playing), but if you’re in the more traditional multiplayer setting, this is hardly the best way to go.

After ditching Baru, I was left with a hole in my mono-Green Commanders that I needed to fill. I decided to do something that was both linear and customizable. Well, within the confines that it was customizable enough that I could do something with it that still fit the theme. I kinda wanted to base a deck around him, and this was as good as time as any.

Sure, call me a hypocrite, but this is the best I can do with the options that I’m given. With Reki, I’m extremely linear, though I do have some flexibility that I can play with. Any Legendary colorless or mono-Green cards I can throw in there. Sword of the Chosen makes a great fit, and even if I can’t draw a card from them Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers and Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper are great on theme cards.

Yes, I just spent the last little bit complaining about on-theme and too-linear decks in Green, and I built a deck all around it. Well, there’s a little motive here. Because I’m playing a bunch of Green Commanders, I’ll be able to decide if any of them is good enough for the long haul, and I can make my deck from there. It’s basically a tryout for Commanders. It’s not the best way to handle the situation, but I feel that I can take this deck in different directions depending on what cards I have on the battlefield. Sometimes, it’s smash with Silvos; other times it’s mana-ramp with Refellos (who’s only banned as a Commander).

Now, if I could create my own Green Commander that might shake up the stale linear options, I might submit something like this:

Why use the loveable Evan Erwin as the art? Well, because. Does it look very close to another card we’ve come to grow and hate/love? Yes, but it’s not as though Green hasn’t done something like this before. After all, it would shake up Green’s options for Commander. And having creatures in your deck doesn’t make it linear.

It just makes the deck work.