I’ve been testing the decks that I have built for Commander, but plain vanilla Commander game after game can get repetitive for some. So I have used a couple of things from other parts of the MtG Universe/Products to spice things up a little.

The first up bit of spice we used was the Planechase cards that came out I want to say around 2012. Now I’m not interested in the decks that they did. I wanted the Planechase cards themselves and the special dice that were done for them. Luckily over a year ago I picked up the full set of these cards (or I believe that is the case) from Magic Madhouse. I want to say I got the dice from them also, but my poor memory is also saying eBay for them. But I’m pretty sure it was Magic Madhouse. Either way I have the dice to go with the cards.

They are are not normal dice btw. Oh no. They are still 6 sided, but only 2 sides have anything on them. As the photo on the left shows. If you roll the Planechase symbol (that circular one that looks a bit ying/yang) then you get the Planechase part of the card, if you roll the Planeswalker side you planeswalk to a new plane and Planechase card.

So how do you use the Planechase cards in the game of Commander? We used a single common deck. Once we have established who the first player is, the first player at the start of their go turns over the top of the deck. If the Planes part of the card specifies a You, we have that refer to the person who has just done the planeswalk, and they get the benefit/penalty. Otherwise it applies to everyone. On a players go, whenever a player can cast a sorcery they can also roll the Planechase die. The first roll is free each turn, but from then on the cost to roll the die goes up by 1 mana. So a second roll would cost the player a single mana, a third roll 2 mana and so on.

We have found that playing with the Planechase cards a fun experience. The suspense of seeing what planes we are going to and how it changes up the game play was exciting. We did hit one that was a board wipe!

Our next bit of spice is a recent one from the tail end of 2017, Explorers of Ixalan (EoI). Now the nice thing about this is that you can (or could) just pick up the game side, ie the tiles, for around £11. When EoI is setup things look more boardgamie.

You can claim one tile each turn, the number on the tile is the mana cost to claim the tile. You are also able to reserve a tile until your next turn (there is a token for this). Sadly the 3 cost tiles can’t be claimed until there are no 1 cost tiles touching it. And the same for the 6 cost tiles in the middle. These when claimed can have an instant effect on the game, or they could be a quest that stays with you until the condition is true. Or the final tile type is a site that gives you an on going ability for the game.

I’d played the initial game with Dale last year when I first got it. It was a nice variation to MtG for 2 players. It worked really well with 4 players in Commander.

The nice things about these 2 bits of spice is that they give players something to do with spare mana, or the mana they have if they are not drawing and lands.

Our final bit of spice is the archenemy cards from the Archenemy Nicol Bolas set from 2017 I think? This gives you 20 archenemy scheme cards you can use in a 1 against 2/3 players. It is possible to pick up just the archenemy scheme cards, otherwise you will be forced to pay out £35 roughly to get them. But you do get 4 decks worth of cards you can cannibalise for deckbuilding and the rather cool life tracker that came with the Commander Anthology. I’d love to have the archenemy scheme cards from the original archenemy release, I think that these are different to the Nicol Bolas ones. However getting these seems rather elusive and expensive. Which is a shame. WotC should reprint these separately in a single pack for people to play with. I don’t care about the MtG decks that came with the scheme cards. Keep that value out there, just get the scheme cards into players hands. Give players a choice of multiplayer formats. I know one thing if I could get them I’d be using them with my students. Not just in Commander games but in regular deck games also.

The game I played using these the card draw just wasn’t with us against the archenemy. Which meant we were killed off rather quickly. However despite this brief use of the scheme cards, the students still wanted to play another game using them. So that should tell you something about how much fun this format of the game is.

I’m sure that there are other ways to spice up a game of Commander. I think there was even an episode of The Command Zone about this very thing way way back, or last year. But these from my experience have been fun and changed things up a little.