Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds by John Constable (1825).

Emmara, Soul of the Accord by Mark Winters.

Over the past year in the NexGen Comics Commander League we decided to do something a little different from previous years. We had 11 players choose themes for months during 2018. We skipped January just to give players some time to prepare decks for our first "theme" month.

The theme bonus started out pretty simple. In our system you can earn a point for each time you cast your commander out of the command zone, up to a maximum of three points. We call them "Tubthumping" points. It's a reference to the old Chumbawamba song that has the line "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down." For the majority of 2018 the theme bonus was just an extra point for each "Tubthumping" point you earn. For a four week month with two games played each Saturday that meant that you could earn a maximum of additional 24 points if you were on theme.

Adding monthly themes was a small change but in many ways it was also a big change for our league. For the first time we were actively encouraging creative deck-building by encouraging players to not just build with competitiveness in mind. The themes could be pretty much anything, but had to be identifiable simply by looking at your commander. I wasn't going to allow anything that would require deck checks. Today's column is a look back at this experiment.

Was it successful? Did it give players enough incentive to build creative decks around each month's theme or was it something of a trap, luring deck-builders away from competitive strategies and compromising their ability to compete for the top spot each month?

As we go through each month, think about what decks you would have played to either be on theme or to try to gain a strategic advantage against players that happened to be on theme.

January - No Theme

The first month of 2018 didn't have a theme but it's worth mentioning regardless. We have a lot of fairly competitive players in our league. One particular player was so frequently able to win games if given even the slightest bit of breathing room that it had become a running joke that the league motto should be to kill him first. This player had never actually won a month, but I had told him again and again that if he set his mind to it and showed up every Saturday I was certain he could put that notch on his belt.

In January this player finally won his month. He narrowly beat out Jared, our resident Bruna player. It was a rare three Saturday month, as there was a prerelease on one of the days we'd normally have played. I played my Narset, Enlightened Master deck and was able to win two games, but in the losses I did poorly enough that I wound up in third place.

Early in January I started to line up themes for the next few months, and players began planning out their strategies for when we'd start playing for theme points. I was excited to start playing on theme, but also somewhat wary of whether or not that would compromise a player's ability to vie for the top spot each month.

February - Hybrid Mana

Our first month of themes was commanders with hybrid mana symbols either in their casting cost or in their text box. This was the month in which Bryan Li and his Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck set new records for points in a day and points in a month. I played a Rhys the Redeemed deck and wound up in third place. The second place player was the player who chose the theme, playing a Wort, the Raidmother deck.

My Rhys the Redeemed deck was able to steal one win over the course of the month but all in all it wasn't a great showing. The top three players were on theme and I even beat out Jared, but only because he missed a week of play. Even if my own games weren't great, it did feel like players were enjoying and taking advantage of our new theme point category.

March - "Each Player"

Players tended to pick themes that they had decks for, and March was no exception. The theme was commanders with the words "each player" somewhere in their text boxes. A Phelddagrif player chose this theme and I decided to go with Ashling the Pilgrim for the month. Ashling's activated ability does damage to each player at the table, along with each creature. Because Ashling will often kill herself and force you to recast her, she made it easy to load up on tubthumping and theme points.

I've got a history of playing Mono-Red decks, and this particular build started out as a Purphoros, God of the Forge deck which morphed into a Zada, Hedron Grinder deck and then spent a short time as a Squee, Goblin Nabob deck. This incarnation was still a pretty good deck and over the month I was able to win two games and be competitive enough to end up with the top point total by a slim one point margin.

March's league games saw a Heartless Hidetsugu deck, an Etali, Primal Storm and a few other decks that were on theme, over and above my Ashling deck. The Phelddagrif player was also on theme, but only played a few games with us.

March happened to be the month where math proved to be a bit of a challenge for me. On the last day I counted up the points and found myself in a tie with the second place player, but when I got home and put the numbers into Google Sheets I discovered that the correct total put me in first place by a point.

April - GLOW

One of our top players chose "GLOW" for April. "GLOW" is the name of a netflix series about a women's wrestling show and we decided that it meant your commander had to be a female humanoid. We were fairly flexible on this, but lady Dragons, Centaurs, and other non-biped monstrosities would not qualify.

I played Oona, Queen of the Fae for the first two weeks of April and won a few games. My Oona deck wasn't built around infinite mana, but around trying to polymorph my 1/1 faerie rogues to cheat Eldrazi into play. The ultimate goal was to play Spawnsire of Ulamog and pay 20 mana to cheat a 10 card sideboard of Eldrazi, including a few Eldrazi Titans, into play. I was able to do that twice, though in one of the games they all entered tapped and the table was able to kill me before I could untap.

We had to skip the third week of play due to a prerelease and on the fourth week I decided to play my new Marwyn, the Nurturer deck. I knew she was good, but I didn't realize what I had on my hands and was able to crush two tables in pretty short time. I entered the last week of play nine points down on the player who I had beat out the previous month by a single point, and I was able to win the month, again by a single point.

I don't think "GLOW" gave us particularly interesting games but I enjoyed playing Oona and Marwyn and lots of other players were making a point to play on theme.

May - 5/c

The theme for May was five color decks. I wound up playing my Ramos, Dragon Engine deck. I had played a version of Ramos the previous year and won a month, but this build was reworked with some different wincons and turned out to not be nearly as good.

I was able to win a game with the Enchanted Evening and Aura Thief combo, but overall the month was not a great one for me. I was coming off of two consecutive winning months and I do believe that it's not good for one player to dominate play in any meta. I was happy to see the player I had beaten out for two straight months finally win a month.

I think there were a few other five color decks, but this month it didn't feel like the theme was particularly relevant. The more competitive a meta gets, the harder it is to play five colors and be able to keep up. It's just easier to have mana issues in five colors and the faster decks will get out ahead or just outright win a little too quickly.

June - Attack/Damage Triggers

The player who chose our theme for June went with commanders who have attack or damage triggers. Looking back over my old blog posts, I was reminded that I built and played a Virtus the Veiled / Gorm the Great partners deck, my Narset, Enlightened Master deck and a new Rith, the Awakener deck I had just built.

I missed two of our weekends that month. My decks didn't perform particularly well, and I was starting to suspect that being on theme might be a bit of a trap. The previous month's winner was also able to win June, making it the second time a player won two straight months. Strangely enough, this would become a trend for the rest of the year.

July - Graveyard

My kid chose the theme for July and went with commanders that have the word "graveyard" in their text boxes.

This was a little contentious as Wizards has changed their templating over the years and some commanders that might have qualified were not actually eligible. I decided to give our players free reign over their choice of themes, even if it was really narrow or really broad in scope. This was a case where I could have decreed that oracle text would have to be included but instead I chose to let the theme stand.

I played a variety of decks for the month, including The Mimeoplasm and Muldrotha, the Gravetide. My Mimeoplasm deck was able to win using Hermit Druid but my Mudrotha list was still a really janky casual build. I think I played a few other graveyard decks, including Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and Lazav, Dimir Mastermind. I probably played my Anafenza, the Foremost deck at least once, but switching around that much isn't a recipe for success.

One of our longstanding players, the guy who had won the top point total for 2017, was able to win the month, ending the previous month winner's two month run.

August - Flying

Jared, our Bruna player, chose the theme for August and went with commanders who have the flying keyword. He actually wasn't able to play with us at all that month. I played Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign and Lathliss, Dragon Queen for the month. I won a game with Yennett, but neither deck was particularly competitive. While I was able to finish the month in third place, I had missed a week of play and was pretty far out of the running.

Flying was an OK theme, but again, it didn't feel like it inspired particularly interesting games. I didn't notice any players running anti-flying tech or doing anything particularly clever, but it's possible I missed it. I don't play in every game and when I miss a week of play that makes it even harder to get a feel for everything that happened during a month.

September - Planeswakers

The theme for September was an odd one. It was planeswalkers, but the person who chose the theme decided that they wanted to include both planeswalkers who are legal commanders and also legendary creatures who at some point in their lore would become planeswalkers.

Narset, Enlightened Master is a legendary creature who at one point in her story becomes a planeswalker, so by our rules she was on theme. I decided to play her for the month as she was something of a guilty pleasure. She is miserable to play against when the deck is working well, but she's miserable for me to play when the deck isn't working.

I was able to start off the month with a 2 win day and tied for first place with Jared DeSousa. I was thrilled. I had an excuse to play my favorite deck and she was firing on all cylinders. I then had four straight Narset games that were so bad that I often never even got to resolve my commander.

In the last week I played my reworked Muldortha, the Gravetide deck and my Xantcha, Sleeper Agent deck. Muldrotha won with Hermit Druid, but this marked the end of an era for me. I pulled apart my Narset deck.

The month was won by another local judge who was playing Aminatou, the Fateshifter. He played a strong control game and most of his games went for over an hour. Some players were definitely going for the theme points this month, though plenty of players were just playing their usual decks. It turns out that not everyone is heavily into deck-building. Players with a few strong decks seem to be less likely to build a theme deck just to play on theme for a month.

October - Gods

The player choosing the theme for October picked Gods. Specifically, they picked any legendary creature who has the creature type "god" but also included Karona, False God, Nicol Bolas who is practically a god and O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami. Apparently O-Kagachi is a god in Kamigawa. I said I would let players choose themes and not override their decisions and this was an example of a narrow but fairly interesting theme.

I played Purphoros, God of the Forge, Karona, False God, and O-Kagachi. My Purphoros deck was pretty decent but when a table knows to kill you first, it's not always easy to burn your opponents out with ETB triggers before you get murdered. My Karona, the False God deck was a Myr tribal build with a janky Retraction Helix combo that I only got to work once in a casual game. The deck could also win by cracking Myr Incubator on an end step and then by casting Karona and pumping the shiny new Myr army for an alpha strike. I had pulled that off at least once as well, but the deck didn't do much in the league games I played it in. My O-Kagachi deck was a Maze's End deck with a ton of boardwipes and again, it had won some casual games but nothing really seemed to click for me that month.

After going 0-6 in my first three weeks of play, with each of my three decks losing twice, I decided to give up on theme and play my latest rebuild of Muldrotha. The deck was now running Food Chain and I liked its chance of winning a game. I try pretty hard to win at least one game each month in league play. I got my win but was left feeling like playing "on theme" had become something of a trap. Over the previous few years the power of decks in our league had gradually been growing and I feared we were at a point where the only way to successfully compete for the top spot would be to play competitive decks and abandon theme entirely. I would soon prove myself wrong, but the idea that playing "on theme" was a trap was spreading.

Every month our players have the option to have the league vote on league scoresheet changes. At the end of October a rule change was voted in that gave an extra 5 points to players just for being on theme. I was concerned that this was too much of an adjustment, but the guys voted the change in so I figured we'd play with the 5 point theme bonus for a month and vote it down if it seemed to be a problem.

November - Premodern Card Frames

I actually chose the theme for November and I decided to go with commanders in premodern card frames. This month was a really interesting test for the monthly themes because most players wouldn't even consider playing an older commander if they were going to try to be competitive and win the month.

We wound up seeing a number of old commanders, but not as many as I'd have liked. There are lots of premodern legendary creatures, but many of them don't really stand up to the power level of modern Commanders. I played Multani, Maro-Sorcerer and Rith, the Awakener. Each of these decks is capable of both going wide and going tall, but neither is what I would consider a spectacularly competitive deck.

Our meta is semi-competitive, so there's usually room for decks that can't win fast to still have a chance. I chose to play these two decks equally, using Rith at three player tables, as Multani cares a bit more about the number of opponents I have than Rith does. It took some careful play, but I was able to win the month by a wide enough margin that I would have won even if we hadn't added an extra point bonus for being on theme.

What that means is that the 5 point theme bonus wasn't necessary for me to win November. We did vote on dropping the extra theme bonus from 5 points down to 3 points. That vote failed, so the 5 point bonus would remain on our scoresheet for the final month of 2018.

December - Dominaria

The last month of the year had a theme of commanders from Dominaria. What that meant is that we were not only able to pick commanders from the Dominaria set, we also could play any legendary creature whose origin was the plane of Dominaria. While that's not easy to tell by looking at the card, I found a list online of Dominaria legendaries and we went with that.

I played my reworked Muldrotha, the Gravetide and Marwyn, the Nurturer decks, every week giving each deck one game. I started out slow, and after two weeks I had pretty much given up any hope of winning the month. The top player was playing a very fast Krark-Clan Ironworks combo deck that was reliably winning by turn five. My Marwyn deck won a game early on, but my Muldrotha deck stumbled out of the gate despite the fact that I had tweaked it and really thought it was one of my better decks.

Weeks three and four were a different matter entirely. Both of my decks started to really hit on all cylinders and I won four straight league games to close out the month. I still should have wound up in second place, but the KCI player had been stubbornly playing fast mana rocks and taking penalty points again and again over the course of the month. I beat him by three points, but he should have won by a lot if he had been playing with our point system in mind.

A lot of players were playing on theme, but many of them probably hadn't built decks specifically for playing in our league.

Takeaways

It was a strange year in some ways. We had five players win two consecutive months after the first two months of play. I had managed to win four months in total, which is both impressive and a side-effect of the fact that I'm nearly always present. When you run the league and you're always there you have a certain advantage, but I also build and play well enough that I'm not a pushover. I think I may drop my power levels down in 2019, though I'll probably still try to win a month somewhere along the way.

The theme experiment seems to have been a success. The number of players who chose to play on theme each month wasn't overwhelming but it was noticeable. Those of us who enjoy deck-building definitely tried to play on theme, and those who don't brew much were happy to be able to play their regular decks.

The theme bonus of +1 point for each "tubthumping" point and an additional 5 points just for being on theme is a pretty big incentive and I hope we stick with it for all of 2019. At least half of the months were won by players piloting decks that were on theme.

The nature of our system is such that your league points will be higher if you combo off or win in a way that gives you the most of a wide variety of categories. You can get a point for having the most cards in hand (over 8), the highest life total (over 40), the highest power and toughness creature, the most creatures, artifacts, enchantments and planeswalkers. Doing all that will usually set you up to win the game anyways, but winning without doing most of those things will result in fewer points and will make it harder to compete for the month's top total.

Adding theme points will probably make it easier to compete against decks that are built to blow up and get all those point categories, but those decks are probably winning games anyways, so I think it's unlikely we'll see theme decks win any months in 2019 without also having to win games and be somewhat competitive.

Final Thoughts

One of my favorite things about Commander is brewing up new decks. I tend to lean away from competitive strategies because they often seem to resort to the same old wincons. That means I seem to brew up lots of decks that are good but not great, along with the occasional stinker and the occasional really strong deck.

My favorite thing about this past year was the ability to brew up new decks with an upcoming month's theme in mind. It gave me something to look forward to, and when I was able to pilot some of those decks to win months it felt fantastic. I'm especially proud of my November performance, and will probably always treasure my Multani, Maro-Sorceror build.

If you've gotten this far, I have to ask if you've been thinking about what you would have built for any of these monthly themes. Do you have any spicy decks that would have fit perfectly into any of the months I've recounted? Are there decks you would have brewed up with the excuse of a particular theme as your incentive?

Next week I think I may be recounting my top 10 header artworks of 2018.

I'm going to have a busy week next week. I've got a set of Commander League spreadsheets to set up for 2019 and that takes time. I'm also going to be creating a little web app that will let me split up my league's player pool into randomized tables for round one and round two of play each week. It's going to allow for players to include preferences for never being at 3 player or 5 player tables, as we've actually had some players not play with us because of strong feelings about being placed into 3 or 5 player pods. They'll be able to veto one or the other but not both.

I know that sounds strange, but it's a free league and my incentive is to grow our little commander community as much as possible, so I think it's worth trying out. All this coding and spreadsheet work means I'm going to be a little short on time for writing, so an art review will both be a fun topic and a slightly easier column to write.

That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you back here in 2019!