The Commander’s Chair – Zombie Infestation

The entries are in and a winner has been chosen for The Mimeoplasm’s zombie challenge. Before we get to the winner, I want to cover some ground on zombies in Commander and how to make them good.Whenever you build any Commander deck, you need to choose a path to take for victory. Just making a tribal deck isn’t going to make your deck a force to be rockened with. Before you even start putting the list for your deck together you should have a clear idea of how you want to knock other players out of the game.One of the cards I was really hoping to see decks built around was Rooftop Storm.

The Commander’s Chair – Possibilities of Innistrad

Innistrad has been out for a few weeks now and so far I have seen very few cards from the set that have had an impact on Commander. We are a little too early into the set to have enough flip cards to create a new themed deck. However, if you were a fan of Vampires and Zombies, Innistrad has given us some great new tools to work with.  Today I am going to be reviewing some of the tribal gems from Innistrad.

The Commander’s Chair – The Redemption

Earlier this year I helped a kid at the local store build a Caw-Blade deck. Jace, The Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic were dominating the format and he was having a tough time getting all the pieces together. I was only able to get him the cards he needed with the help of the online community. As a result, my collection got jostled around in a major way. I ended up losing some value, which was both expected and not a big deal. I did benefit in one way; I ended up staring at a Japanese foil Doubling Season.

This card has been sitting in my I-am-never-going-to-trade-these-cards binder for several months without finding a home. I was talking to a good friend of Red Site Wins, Chas Andres, about his highly impressive cube. You all probably know who Chas is. He is one of the big name financial writers over at Channel Fireball. If you do any sort of trading, I suggest reading his articles. He is also the reason many of you are reading this article today. Chas wrote about my experience with the kid and trade sharks in the shop. As a result, our overall readers doubled overnight. Back to the story, Chas and me made a trade in which I received one of the single coolest cards I have ever seen. This week in the mail I received a Japanese foil Tooth and Nail. Hallelujah!!

The Commander’s Chair – Sabbatical

At the end of March I posted my very first article here at Red Site Wins, Searching for Treasure. Five months and over ten thousand unique page views later, I am hanging up my pen for awhile. I will be looking for someone to take over this article series so that loyal readers will not be left without new Commander Content. As the most viewed author for the site, I believe it is my responsibility to provide an explanation for my departure.

The Commander’s Chair – Reaction to an Outsider

Earlier this week I posted an article, co-written by Jason about women in Magic.  The article contained interviews with both of our significant others.  The opinions expressed by the women in this article are solely their opinion and do not reflect opinions of women everywhere.  There are more and more women who enjoy playing Magic.  If you disagree with their opinion, or the opinion of Jason and myself that is your right.  I believe it is always better to have opinions expressed than have opinions censored.

The Commanders Chair – Useless Article

Normally, this would be where I would post some sort of Commander tech and give advice about how to make your deck more suitable for your playgroup. Not today! Today, I am just too freaking excited about the face-off that will be going down in the next few hours.

For those of you who do not know, Luis, I play squadron hawks in EVERY format, Acosta will be facing off against Amanda, if I brew it – they will come, Stevens. You might be asking yourself, “Why are they facing off?” Here is the story;

The More You Know – An Outsider’s Prospective

We have a special treat for you today.  A double interview from to of the costars of Red Cast Wins.  Sean aka SwordtoPlow and Jason.  In this installment they interview their significant others about Magic and why some one would ever dream of not playing it.  Be prepared to have your feelings hurt and your eyes opened.

The Commander’s Chair – Dueling Grounds

During the last episode of Red Cast Wins, there was a scuffle that may or may not have been cut from the recording. The result of the altercation is that Luis and Amanda will be battling for the right to ridicule. There will be 3 formats chosen for the face-off. You can vote on which format will be used here:ttp://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=question&id=130331563721132&qa_ref=qd

Votes will be taken until the end of the week. Right now, it looks like Commander will be one of the formats chosen. It will probably end up that neither of them will be allowed to use a list that I generate. They will be forced to build their own unique Commander list. With that feeling of equality in mind, today I will be giving some advice for playing Commander in a two player setting.

The Commander’s Chair – Pauper to Prince

It has only been a few weeks since I wrote my first article on how to upgrade the Commander precons. After several discussions I noted that there was one serious flaw with the way I was approaching both building and upgrading Commander decks. I have not been taking the price of cards into account. As a result, I have been giving advice that not everyone could follow. When @mikelinnemann suggested that I write an article covering upgrades of Commander decks at different price levels, I went to work.

Today I will be covering $5, $10, $50, $100 and higher cost upgrades to the Commander precons. By covering this I hope to not only show cheap and easy ways to improve your Commander decks, but also to show what makes up the difference between the Commander precons and Commander decks that are ready to take on all comers. For the purposes of this demonstration I will use the Counterpunch precon.

The Commander’s Chair – Forums of Doom

“Yes, there is a spirit of EDH, and that’s not it.” – Sheldon on my article The Voltron Matrix

“Now, I’m going to say this: the SwordsToPlow guy who wrote that blog article sounds, to me, like a DREADFUL person to play with, I would have a very hard time having fun playing against the sort of decks he seems to like to build.” – Thaematurge

Do you feel the love?

Sadly, there are more statements like these I could pull from forums.  After getting into several arguments with people online, I had a realization. The only people who were arguing with me were arguing with me based only on theory. The people who were criticizing me had never played with or against the lists I posted on the site. I think the issue may be that I have not written how I think the deck should be played. Today I will be going over the decks I have completely built and how I go about playing with them.