How to play Duel Commander by Ecobaronen
Posted on Oct 10, 2024
Hello everyone and welcome to my first article here on MTGO.com. I’m incredibly excited to be featured on the website of my absolute favorite activity about a format that I care deeply about, and I will strive to make the read worth your time.
Andreas ’ecobaronen’ Petersen is a passionate and competitive MTGO player and creator from Denmark with more than 22,000 MTGO matches to his name. You can usually find him playing classic formats like Legacy, Vintage, or drafting Vintage Cube.
Being creative, flexing my brain muscles against other magicians at the tables, digging into Magic’s 30-year history looking for forgotten gems, and curiously browsing new cards during spoiler season are just a handful of reasons why I love Magic and older formats like Legacy, Vintage, and Vintage Cube. I appreciate both the history of the game and the constant innovation at R&D with new releases, but I appreciate the synergy between those two even more – which brings me to today’s topic.
First and foremost, the official website has lots of good information that is useful when getting started. You can start your journey with the basics here:
Origins
It’s no secret that singleton 100-card formats are immensely popular in today’s landscape. Players love the big card pool, the variety, and the space for creativity which is exactly what Duel Commander has to offer. The format has a dedicated committee that looks at data and manages the ban list to ensure format balance, and I have only good things to say about the handling and health of the format. Historically, a lot of great inventions has come out of France, and Duel Commander is near the top of the list for me.
I was very happy when I learned that the French committee and the Magic Online team combined forces to officially bring the format to the client. With the format flourishing so much at the tabletop level, it only makes sense that you can now practice and compete online in Leagues and Challenges as well to hone your craft.
Power Level
Duel Commander is powerful and consistent, but the top has been taken off via bannings. Aside from the original Moxen and Black Lotus, cards like Mox Opal, Mox Amber, Grim Monolith and Mana Vault are banned. This leaves classic cards like Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves the only kind of mana acceleration available in the format. Furthermore, typical combo enablers like Entomb, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Natural Order, and Tinker are not allowed which underlines the philosophy: Duel Commander is meant to be fun, interactive, and have a minimal number of one-sided games.
Check out the full banned and restricted lists of cards here.
To further define the power level of the format, I handpicked five cards that I think are among the most powerful cards legal in the format:
Oko, Thief of Crowns and White Plume Adventurer are great standalone threats that can snowball the game in your advantage in different ways if you’re either ahead on board or at parity. Oko can also neutralize your opponent’s Commander, leaving it in play and thus not letting them recast it from the Command Zone.
Balance and Fury are powerful because the format is very creature-centric, and they can kill quite a number of them for little or no mana investment.
Demonic Tutor is an interesting one because on the surface it seems too powerful for the format, but without the banned cards mentioned above to go get, Demonic Tutor is simply a good way to ensure consistency in Duel Commander, not an overpowered enabler.
Which Deck Should I Play?
I’m happy you asked. With the above information about the philosophy of the format, the banned list in mind and the ruleset in place, Duel Commander decks are relatively simple to categorize with classic descriptions like aggro, midrange, control, and to a lesser degree combo. I will now showcase three great options whether you like putting pressure on the opponent’s life total, exchanging resources throughout the game, or simply trying to answer your opponent’s threats while passing the turn with blue mana up.
Aggro
Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful + Kraum, Ludevic’s Opus
Deckist Link via Moxfield
Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful is a great example of the classic build-around Commander. You prioritize synergy over individual card quality in deckbuilding and you need a critical mass of legendaries for the good boy to be viable. As you can see, there are tons of old legendary lands that you probably haven’t seen before and a lot of newer legendary creatures that help the deck reach its potential. The eager student will notice that this deck is only a Jeskai deck because of Mental Misstep. Duel Commander is full of these details that reward research and creative thinking.
The game plan is pretty straight forward. I have intentionally excluded almost all one-mana creatures from the deck: you can always play your Commander on Turn 1 and you want to curve out with higher-impact cards from there. It’s worth noting is that cards that let you trigger Yoshimaru more than once are at a premium. This includes flickering them with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, or simply creating two legendary permanents with Mable, Heir to Cragflame or Kassandra, Eagle Bearer. With 13 legendary lands and 27 other legendary creatures in the deck, prepare to see your innocent pup grow up fast!
Midrange
Slimefoot and Squee
Decklist Link via Moxfield
This deck is less synergistic and has higher individual card quality than the deck above, but it does include a few engine cards and a small reanimator package which can outlast opponents. When Slimefoot and Squee gets countered, destroyed, or dies in combat, you can choose to let it go the graveyard. If you have a Saproling token around, you bring back the legend itself alongside a big creature – like the landcyclers from The Lord of the Rings – Tales of Middle-earth™ – to overwhelm your opponent.
The game plan of curving a one-mana accelerant into Turn 2 Slimefoot and Squee, backed up by cheap removal and solid pound-for-pound threats, will sound very familiar to Modern Jund players of the last decade. Add a powerful endgame thanks to Birthing Pod and Recurring Nightmare, and this midrange deck is able to compete at both the early and later stages of the game. Channel your inner Reid Duke and start grinding down the opposition!
Control
Atraxa, Grand Unifier
Decklist Link via Moxfield
Last up is a potent four-color control option for players who enjoy letting the game come to them, watch their opponent commit a ton of creatures to the battlefield only to see the disappointment in their eyes when you cast a sweeper like Toxic Deluge or Supreme Verdict.
Atraxa gives you access to four colors – a huge advantage when picking the spells for your deck. There’s less of a downside with cards like Wasteland and Price of Progress being banned, and the quality of mana fixing available is rich – especially after the addition of surveil lands. One of my favorite things about this deck is that it utilizes Dark Ritual and Dream Halls as ways to cast Atraxa two turns ahead of schedule. If you are comfortable using your life total as a resource while playing from behind, and love the feeling of stabilizing and pulling ahead, I think you’ll enjoy playing this deck!
Where to Play
Aside from these tried and tested options, there are tons of different strategies seeing play and even more yet to be explored. I highly suggest checking out 5-0 League lists as inspiration. I think the unrealized potential is my favorite thing about the format, so you can easily branch out and play around and experiment once you’ve become familiar with the basics. And what better place to play the format than in the League on Magic Online? Or what about a longer tournament with top 8 playoff in a Challenge on the weekend? Here’s the schedule:
- Saturday and Sunday at 1 a.m. PT (8:00 UTC)
- Saturday at 9 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC)
- Sunday at 4 p.m. PT (23:00 UTC)
Magic Online Creator Showdown
If you already play the format or simply want to start off by consuming content of it, this upcoming Saturday is the monthly Magic Online Creator Showdown where your favorite creators are playing a different format each month for awesome prizes while broadcasting directly to your living room. Will Hall and yours truly will steer the ship in the commentator booth from 10:30 a.m. PT (17:30 UTC) and we deeply hope to see you there for an exciting day of Duel Commander action, giveaways and all around good times. twitch.tv/magiconline