Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Back in February of 2019, West Coast Sports Cards in Federal Way, Washington began organizing test runs for a new weekly casual commander event, which would become the West Coast Commander League. The league officially opened in March and while participation has been inconsistent, it’s looking like we should have strong turnout going into 2020. In 2019, the League met 42 times. I was the most active participant, playing in 39 of those. I also hold the record for most points in a calendar month and for most points in a single game, and briefly held the record for most points earned in a day, but lost it just two weeks later.
Early on, I had the notion of writing an article with statistics for the West Coast Commander League. I thought it might be fun to see which commanders were most popular, which ones averaged best on point gains, etc. Alas, too many people were lax in filling out their point sheets, and the data is far too incomplete to work with. So I came up with something even better. I may not have good data for the league as a whole, but I do have complete records of every single deck I played. So I can present a statistical breakdown of much of my casual commander deck usage for 2019. As a bonus, I’ll throw in my decks for the three “South Sound Magic” events of 2019. The rules for those are a bit different from the rules for the West Coast Commander League, but I’m going to count them anyway.
Some preliminary information…
3/3: SSM: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain “Captain Lady” (This was a Brawl Event)
3/10: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious M.R.B.”
3/17: DNP (I didn't play this week)
3/24: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious M.R.B.”
3/31: Phelddagrif “Epic”
4/7: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain “By Your Powers Combined, I am Captain Jhoira”
4/14: Savra, Queen of the Golgari “If You Wanna Fight That’s Fine With Me”
4/21: Olivia Voldaren “Haters Gonna Hate”
4/28: Ramses Overdark “Is It Dark In Here Or Is It Just Me?”
5/5: God-Eternal Oketra “The End of Eternity”
5/12: Teferi, Temporal Archmage “Slow CVT”
5/19: God-Eternal Oketra “The End of Eternity”
5/26: Nicol Bolas, the Ravager “Hastily Constructed Bolas WCCL Deck”
6/2: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious MRB”
6/9: Thrasios, Triton Hero & Vial Smasher the Fierce “Bonus Spite”
6/16: Boris Devilboon “Little Friends”
6/23: Rubinia Soulsinger “Notice of Proposed Land Use Action”
6/30: SSM: Godo, Bandit Warlord “I Can Count To Eleven” (This was a Budget EDH Event)
7/7: Pashalik Mons “Goblin Lives Matter”
7/14: Reyhan, Last of the Abzan & Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix “Bearadise Lost”
7/21: Livonya Silone “Please Sir, Play a Legendary Land”
7/28: The Mimeoplasm “Splice World”
8/4: Ur-Drago “Not to be confused with The Ur-Dragon”
8/11: Progenitus “Uncle Stephen’s Tub-’o-Lard”
8/18: Gabriel Angelfire “Gabriel Voltron”
8/25: Ghired, Conclave Exile “Primal Genesis”
9/1: Gwendlyn Di Corci “Waste Not and Gwenny D Had to Regulate”
9/8: Atla Palani, Nest Tender “Breaking a Few Eggs”
9/15: Volrath, the Shapestealer “Volrath’s Too Many Themes”
9/22: Rasputin Dreamweaver “Loomsday Device”
9/29: Prerelease: ELD (After discussion with the organizer, we did not hold a League meetup on this day due to schedule conflict with the prerelease)
10/6: Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale “Knights’ Charge with Good Cards (also bad cards)”
10/13: Kenrith, the Returned King “King’s Feast”
10/20: Sir Shandlar of Eberyn “Eberyn’s Finest Omelettes”
10/27: SSM: Rasputin Dreamweaver “Hit 1975 Single by Gary Wright” (This was a Budget 'Chaos' Event, in which I built a deck for someone else to use)
11/3: Yarok, the Desecrated “Ever Eat a Pine Tree”
11/10: Palladia-Mors “Needs Mor Beatdown”
11/17: Sunastian Falconer “Sunastian’s Magic Ramp”
11/24: Arcades Sabboth “Bant From the Loam”
12/1: Stangg “Stangg’s Brothers and Sisters”
12/8: Prime Speaker Vannifar “We Are Vannifar’s Elves”
12/15: Barktooth Warbeard “Not-So-Mysterious Santa”
12/22: Chulane, Teller of Tales “Caribou Tribal”
12/29: Gosta Dirk “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!”
That adds up to 41 Commander decks and 1 Brawl deck, for a grand total of 4,160 card slots. And I used 1,360 unique Magic cards across these events. While 1,360 seemed like a lot before I did the math, I know that the size is a bit deceptive: I used many of the same staples repeatedly, so the number could have been much higher.
Since it’s obvious and easy thing, let’s quickly go over color identity. Historically, the 32 possible color combinations have not been balanced for commander options, so I don’t know how meaningful this is. For instance, I’ll readily admit a bias toward blue/black/green or “Sultai” as one of my favorites for any Magic format, but it used to get no legendary creatures at all and I even used “Partner” commanders to access the color combination at one point. I’m not nearly as fond of white/blue/green or “Bant.” But it has some nice choices among the original 55 legends. In the end, I used those two color identities equally in this dataset. I do think that for 2020 I’ll keep this in mind and try to employ some of the color identities that I neglected in 2019. We’ll see…
WUG: 4
UBG: 4
WU: 3
BR: 3
RG: 3
WUB: 3
WRG: 3
W: 2
R: 2
WG: 2
UB: 2
UR: 2
UBR: 2
WUBRG: 2
U: 1
UG: 1
BG: 1
WBR: 1
UBRG: 1
B: 0
G: 0
WB: 0
WR: 0
WUR: 0
WBG: 0
URG: 0
BRG: 0
WUBR: 0
WUBG: 0
WURG: 0
WBRG: 0
Colorless: 0
Total: 42
More telling, I think, than the color identities of my decks are the card choices themselves. So let’s look at lands…
Basic lands
Island: 122
Plains: 117
Mountain: 86
Swamp: 82
Snow-Covered Forest: 72
Snow-Covered Mountain: 68
Snow-Covered Island: 65
Forest: 50
Snow-Covered Plains: 39
Snow-Covered Swamp: 36
Wastes: 2
Early on, I had the notion of writing an article with statistics for the West Coast Commander League. I thought it might be fun to see which commanders were most popular, which ones averaged best on point gains, etc. Alas, too many people were lax in filling out their point sheets, and the data is far too incomplete to work with. So I came up with something even better. I may not have good data for the league as a whole, but I do have complete records of every single deck I played. So I can present a statistical breakdown of much of my casual commander deck usage for 2019. As a bonus, I’ll throw in my decks for the three “South Sound Magic” events of 2019. The rules for those are a bit different from the rules for the West Coast Commander League, but I’m going to count them anyway.
Some preliminary information…
- I didn’t establish my policy of playing a different deck every week until midway through the year. So I played Merieke Ri Berit three times (two of those with an identical list and a third time later on with an updated version). I played God-Eternal Oketra twice (but the lists were not completely identical).
- South Sound Magic, formerly known as Magic of Browns Point, held three events in the same venue, on the same day of the week, at the same time that the West Coast Commander League was normally scheduled to operate. The first two times, I played in their events and skipped out on the League. The third time, the whole League shut down for the South Sound Magic event. I’m including my South Sound Magic (abbreviated below as SSM) decks in my statistics. Their first event was a Brawl event, the second was a $200 Budget Commander event, and the third was a $150 Budget “Chaos” event in which players were randomly assigned decks built by each other. For two of those events, I did use a commander I’d also use in the League, but the lists were highly divergent in those cases.
- The League shut down for the Throne of Eldraine prerelease. I was happy with this as my default had been to attend prereleases on Sundays, but the League was running on Sundays too.
- I did skip a single League meetup for non-Magic reasons, and I’ve marked that as “DNP” for “Did Not Play.”
- In June I began a silly effort to get the League to include every single one of the 55 original legendary creatures. The League organizer liked this so much that, starting in August, he made it part of our points system. Another player started building his decks with these commanders even more frequently than I did and almost caught up to me in this bizarre challenge, despite my head-start. He’ll likely surpass me in 2020. Anyway, you’ll see a lot of bad commanders from Legends and this is why.
- For the release of the Commander 2019 precons, everyone in the league played an unmodified precon. I chose the “Primal Genesis” deck.
- I thought of trying to note the points for the individual months or weeks, but it seemed too cumbersome. I can provide such information if you’re curious, but I won’t include it in this article.
3/3: SSM: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain “Captain Lady” (This was a Brawl Event)
3/10: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious M.R.B.”
3/17: DNP (I didn't play this week)
3/24: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious M.R.B.”
3/31: Phelddagrif “Epic”
4/7: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain “By Your Powers Combined, I am Captain Jhoira”
4/14: Savra, Queen of the Golgari “If You Wanna Fight That’s Fine With Me”
4/21: Olivia Voldaren “Haters Gonna Hate”
4/28: Ramses Overdark “Is It Dark In Here Or Is It Just Me?”
5/5: God-Eternal Oketra “The End of Eternity”
5/12: Teferi, Temporal Archmage “Slow CVT”
5/19: God-Eternal Oketra “The End of Eternity”
5/26: Nicol Bolas, the Ravager “Hastily Constructed Bolas WCCL Deck”
6/2: Merieke Ri Berit “The Notorious MRB”
6/9: Thrasios, Triton Hero & Vial Smasher the Fierce “Bonus Spite”
6/16: Boris Devilboon “Little Friends”
6/23: Rubinia Soulsinger “Notice of Proposed Land Use Action”
6/30: SSM: Godo, Bandit Warlord “I Can Count To Eleven” (This was a Budget EDH Event)
7/7: Pashalik Mons “Goblin Lives Matter”
7/14: Reyhan, Last of the Abzan & Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix “Bearadise Lost”
7/21: Livonya Silone “Please Sir, Play a Legendary Land”
7/28: The Mimeoplasm “Splice World”
8/4: Ur-Drago “Not to be confused with The Ur-Dragon”
8/11: Progenitus “Uncle Stephen’s Tub-’o-Lard”
8/18: Gabriel Angelfire “Gabriel Voltron”
8/25: Ghired, Conclave Exile “Primal Genesis”
9/1: Gwendlyn Di Corci “Waste Not and Gwenny D Had to Regulate”
9/8: Atla Palani, Nest Tender “Breaking a Few Eggs”
9/15: Volrath, the Shapestealer “Volrath’s Too Many Themes”
9/22: Rasputin Dreamweaver “Loomsday Device”
9/29: Prerelease: ELD (After discussion with the organizer, we did not hold a League meetup on this day due to schedule conflict with the prerelease)
10/6: Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale “Knights’ Charge with Good Cards (also bad cards)”
10/13: Kenrith, the Returned King “King’s Feast”
10/20: Sir Shandlar of Eberyn “Eberyn’s Finest Omelettes”
10/27: SSM: Rasputin Dreamweaver “Hit 1975 Single by Gary Wright” (This was a Budget 'Chaos' Event, in which I built a deck for someone else to use)
11/3: Yarok, the Desecrated “Ever Eat a Pine Tree”
11/10: Palladia-Mors “Needs Mor Beatdown”
11/17: Sunastian Falconer “Sunastian’s Magic Ramp”
11/24: Arcades Sabboth “Bant From the Loam”
12/1: Stangg “Stangg’s Brothers and Sisters”
12/8: Prime Speaker Vannifar “We Are Vannifar’s Elves”
12/15: Barktooth Warbeard “Not-So-Mysterious Santa”
12/22: Chulane, Teller of Tales “Caribou Tribal”
12/29: Gosta Dirk “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!”
That adds up to 41 Commander decks and 1 Brawl deck, for a grand total of 4,160 card slots. And I used 1,360 unique Magic cards across these events. While 1,360 seemed like a lot before I did the math, I know that the size is a bit deceptive: I used many of the same staples repeatedly, so the number could have been much higher.
Since it’s obvious and easy thing, let’s quickly go over color identity. Historically, the 32 possible color combinations have not been balanced for commander options, so I don’t know how meaningful this is. For instance, I’ll readily admit a bias toward blue/black/green or “Sultai” as one of my favorites for any Magic format, but it used to get no legendary creatures at all and I even used “Partner” commanders to access the color combination at one point. I’m not nearly as fond of white/blue/green or “Bant.” But it has some nice choices among the original 55 legends. In the end, I used those two color identities equally in this dataset. I do think that for 2020 I’ll keep this in mind and try to employ some of the color identities that I neglected in 2019. We’ll see…
WUG: 4
UBG: 4
WU: 3
BR: 3
RG: 3
WUB: 3
WRG: 3
W: 2
R: 2
WG: 2
UB: 2
UR: 2
UBR: 2
WUBRG: 2
U: 1
UG: 1
BG: 1
WBR: 1
UBRG: 1
B: 0
G: 0
WB: 0
WR: 0
WUR: 0
WBG: 0
URG: 0
BRG: 0
WUBR: 0
WUBG: 0
WURG: 0
WBRG: 0
Colorless: 0
Total: 42
More telling, I think, than the color identities of my decks are the card choices themselves. So let’s look at lands…
Basic lands
Island: 122
Plains: 117
Mountain: 86
Swamp: 82
Snow-Covered Forest: 72
Snow-Covered Mountain: 68
Snow-Covered Island: 65
Forest: 50
Snow-Covered Plains: 39
Snow-Covered Swamp: 36
Wastes: 2