There’s been some talk recently in the Commander community about card choice for everyone’s favorite 100-card format. When it comes to a format like Commander, players have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from when building their decks, but there are some cards that see play more often than not. These cards are the format staples, cards that general consensus says are auto-includes in any deck that can run them. For Commander, this includes cards like Sol Ring, Solemn Simulacrum, Cyclonic Rift, Chaos Warp, Sylvan Library, Cryptic Command . . .  the list goes on. These are the cards that are just too powerful or versatile to ignore when building your 100-card singleton deck. Or, that’s the conventional wisdom anyway. Recently, there have been a couple of big voices calling for Commander players to move away from some of these staples in favor of lesser known alternatives or more customized options for your deck’s strategy.

Adam Styborski: Five Commander Cards to Stop Playing in Every Single Deck

Jimmy Wong, Josh Lee-Kwai, and The Magic Man Sam: Straying From Staples with TheMagicManSam

Above are two links to some content that goes over the arguments in more detail than I can cover in an introduction, so go check out the content from Adam and The Command Zone for a more nuanced look at what we’re talking about here. (Yes, I realize I’m giving you homework, but this stuff is quality so it won’t really feel like it. Go support other Magic content creators!)

I love the sentiment. Let me start by saying that. I can definitely appreciate the idea that people should try and make more interesting card choices in their Commander deck-building process. Magic is a truly massive game, with thousands of moving pieces, so it would be a shame to ignore all the hidden gems waiting for you in favor of playing the same universally powerful cards in every deck. I get it, and I try to incorporate it to some extent in my deck-building process. Things like playing Dark Salvation as a removal spell in my Gisa and Geralf Zombies list are a good example of the straying from staples line of thinking. Get creative.

It’s a great sentiment, and I do honestly believe Commander is more fun when we do truly unique and unexpected things. However, there are some potential issues with suggesting people should drop some of the most powerful cards in the format in favor of less powerful but more interesting or flavorful options (depending on how you approach deck-building).

1: People love Playing with Power

This is as close to a universal truth for Magic as it gets. Due to the number of ways in which Magic players enjoy and experience the game, universal truths are hard to come by. This gets pretty close, though. People like doing things that make them feel powerful. They like affecting the boardstate. They like to present threats that feel like they have to be answered urgently. Powerful spells let people feel powerful. This argument doesn’t necessarily apply to stuff like Solemn Simulacrum or Chaos Warp. Good, solid answers and utility are kind of in their own category and they serve the purpose of shoring up weaknesses a color or colors might otherwise have. This more applies to things like Craterhoof Behemoth in Green (#hoofem) or Cyclonic Rift in Blue. These cards are clearly powerful, and will often result in whoever cast them winning the game. Of course people want to play these spells.

The problem really comes in when you ask people to actively not play these very powerful and versatile cards. I can really only speak for myself, but I know that choosing not to play Cyclonic Rift in a Blue deck just feels wrong. It feels like you’re worsening your chances of winning to try and do something that is ultimately less powerful. I don’t really have the space to dive into complex dichotomy of playing to win vs. playing to have fun (though I plan to visit it in the future). There are plenty of arguments to be made that sacrificing win percentage shouldn’t matter in Commander, but winning is fun and staples do a good job of helping you get there.

2: If I Don’t Play Them, Other People will just Beat me with Them

This is a argument I’ve seen a lot of in response to the straying from staples idea. And, it definitely has merit. Even if you should decide to begin cutting staples from your decks to make room for more varied and specialized cards, there is no such guarantee that other players will. The argument goes that if you choose to not play Sol Ring, you’ll still have to face it down across the table. Why should you give up that edge when your opponents won’t? You can make all the arguments you want about how Sol Ring isn’t as good as people think it is and that it’s no better than drawing a basic land in the late game; that doesn’t change the fact that it enables some absurdly powerful starts that can be very difficult (insurmountable in some cases) to come back from. If your play group can agree to play without these powerful format staples, more power to you. House rules are valid and important for a primarily casual format. However, straying from outside your circle and playing with people from other metas (playgroups are basically metas for Commander) could result in some clashes in ideology.

Point being, this is really only a problem if you care about potentially giving up an edge against people who choose to play staples. If you aren’t in it solely for the win, this can still result in fun and interesting games of Commander. That is unless your opponents are oppressively beating you down with a deck full of just the most powerful format staples known to Commander.

There are plenty of other angles to look at this from, but I want to close out this foray into the Commander staples discussion by talking about what I see as the middle ground. Jimmy, Josh, and Sam get at this in their discussion, but I feel it is worth expounding on here. I believe it’s possible to make creative deck-building decisions without totally sacrificing power. This may involve leaving some staples on the bench in favor of other more specialized version of the card. For example: Playing Skullwinder instead of Eternal Witness because you’re building a snake tribal deck. You still get the effect but get to play a card that doesn’t get played as often. Another example: Playing Sakura-Tribe Elder instead of Wood Elves in your Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck because it gives you a sacrifice trigger to generate an experience counter. I know both of those examples are Green, but they work to illustrate the point really well. There are so many cards in the game now that you should be able to find the effect you want in a form that synergizes well with your deck’s strategy. Oreskos Explorer instead of Tithe to ramp in a Flicker Deck.

This has run a little longer than usual, huh? So what do you think? To staple or not to staple? Should Commander players think twice before auto-including powerful format staples in all their decks? Should they forgo the staples in favor of more unique deck-building? Or are we looking at something in between? Keep the discussion going and I look forward to seeing what you all think. This was a bit of a departure from the previous entries, but I plan to do more topic based articles like this in the future, so stay tuned!

Robert Burrows