My FLGS The Hobbit Hole has started a Monday afternoon Commander club. It’s aimed at those at a lose end basically, like those between jobs, students, the retired, on holiday or some other reason.

I found myself at a lose end after taking mum shopping in the morning. So I thought why not?

Three decks found their way into my bag, Trostani, my mono red goblins, and the new death and taxes deck.

Once at The Hobbit Hole 3 other people for whatever reason found themselves at a lose end also, and decided to do some Commanderin’.

The good news from the afternoon of playing luxury cardboard rectangles was I got to play all 3 decks, and long story short they at least got to do their thing (to some extent) but didn’t come close to winning.

My decks weren’t bad decks in my opinion. Well I’ve admitted my death and taxes is a work in progress and needs at least it’s mana base revisiting. But they were out classed. As were the decks of 2 of the other players.

If we use the Command Zone podcasts power rating for decks (see graphic below, and a whole podcast here) which runs on a scale of 1 to 10 for the rest of this post it will help give a point of reference.

So the graphic they did maps like this. It should be noted for reference purposes the precons that WotC sell each year come in on this scale as casual decks and a power ranking of about 4 (in the opinion of The Command Zone presenters, and I wouldn’t disagree with that).

So where do my decks fall on this scale? I would rate my decks between 4 and 6 depending on the deck, so either casual/focused decks.

In yesterday’s 3 games two of us where definitely playing decks between 4 and 6 on the power scale. While one was boarderline between 6/7, and the archenemy player was definitely 8/9 on the power scale with his decks. I’m calling the player with the over powered decks the archenemy because that’s the way the games ended up. One against many.

It should be a testament to the archenemy player that despite the three of us trying to gang up and take him out, he still wiped the floor with us. His decks were way to powerful.

I did try Krenko, Mob Boss as my commander with the goblins. Partly inspired by seeing him used in Bob’s goblin deck as the commander the previous week. I hadn’t really settled on the commander for the deck. So having the chance to try this card out was good. I liked it as the commander. Much better than Squee. Although I do like the idea of using Zo-Zu as the commander also.

Funny enough Treasure Nabber came out in my death and taxes deck but not my goblin deck. Which is when I’d have loved to have used it, as the goblins were up against an artifacts deck. Apparently whispering subliminal messages of “use your sol ring” or “use your artifacts” while Treasure Nabber is out doesn’t brainwash them into using their artifacts. It did slow down the others though because they refused to use their sol rings, or other mana generating artifacts. Sadly it didn’t affect the archenemy.

Island Sanctuary did get a chance to hit the table, sadly not with the other half of the combo. It gave me a couple of turns protection, and was useless once the archenemy got a steel hellkite out.

At the end of the session thinking aloud the archenemy player suggested he might build his next deck and not optimise it as much as he normally does. Luckily I don’t play commander against this player normally. I think this was the first time I had. But to be honest I don’t think I’d play with this guy again, unless he did turn down the level of his decks. It might be “fun” for him. But for me, and I suspect the others it wasn’t much fun for us. The little fun I did get was from my decks getting to do a little of what they were meant to do. Like generate goblin tokens or lots of tokens in general.

I suppose to some extent we didn’t fully establish the social contract and the power levels of decks that everyone was going to be playing. We ruled out mass land destruction, and going infinite. But the power level got missed. So a little blame does rest on the rest of us for the way this session turned out.

I know on a Friday evening the commander sessions are promoted as mildly competitive. That’s fine. I don’t play there on a Friday. For me Commander is a casual game that is meant to be fun.

If the game is with similar powered decks, or one or two are slightly higher on the power level, then the game is going to ebb and flow. And in general the majority will be having fun. But when there is such a big gap between power levels of decks. Then we get something like this session.