I don't go to a lot of big Magic events, but every September for the past four years I've made a point of driving out to Rochester, NY to play in the Commander Sealed fundraiser for the Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline. This year was no exception.

Started by Dean Gootee back in 2019, Commander Sealed is a fairly unique experience, in that you don't normally build Commander decks out of a pool of cards from freshly opened booster packs. The whole point of EDH was that you could play with cards from the entire history of Magic. Having a card pool limited to a dozen or so booster packs isn't a great recipe for building a well tuned Commander deck. You build your deck at a table with three other participants, and you are encouraged to trade with each other to help to get the best decks possible, but you're still likely to end up with something that would fall somewhere between brackets one and two.

The fact that everyone else is in the same position helps a lot, but the bottom line is that it's fun. It's a lot of fun. You have to accept that some players will have great pulls and will be able to build much stronger decks. Fortunately, the players who show up for Commander Sealed might be capable and often very good players, but they're not really there to win at all costs.

Many of us go because the event is a fundraiser for LGBTQ charities. The "chaos draft" feel of Commander Sealed is uniquely fun and challenging, and the community that has grown up around this event is delightful. I'd guess that it's a little less spikey and a bit queerer than your average Magic con, and that's fine by me. As a parent of a trans daughter, and as someone with countless LGBTQ people in my extended family and friends, I've been glad to be able to join in the fun every September since 2022.

You can read more about Commander Sealed at https://commandersealed.com/.

The Build Phase

The event kicked off on Saturday at 9 a.m. with a build phase. We all checked our Spice Rack apps for our table numbers and proceeded to meet and greet the folks we'd be building with. Once we were all seated, we were each given a wrapped package of 14 Magic Boosters. For the second year I was lucky enough to be seated with Alan from Mental Misplay. He was a great tablemate, an absolute chad, and even livestreamed his own build without being much of an annoyance or distraction to those around him.

We chatted about our Commander Sealed experiences in past years and about how this year's end of round process might affect our builds until we got the go-ahead to start unwrapping packs and building our decks.

My own packs included one each of Final Fantasy, Kamigawa, New Capenna, March of the Machine, Ravnica Remastered, and Edge of Eternities and two each of Aetherdrift, Baldur's Gate, Innistrad Remastered, and Foundations.

I knew I did not want to be in one color. With such a limited card pool I've never felt like it would be viable unless you just had the luckiest, most synergistic pulls imaginable. I had a whole bunch of mono-colored options but I set them aside and looked at my multicolored legends. The best four included some pretty good options.

Heliod, the Radiant Dawn is a deck I've had in the past that was very powerful, and I had opened an Authority of the Consuls in my card pool. Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied had an awful lot going for it, and I had opened a Nature's Lore and Majestic Genesis I could use. Garland, Knight of Cornelia, and Kotose, the Silent Spider rounded out my options, but I wasn't familiar with either one and hadn't pulled much that leapt out at me as good support in those colors. The former could have been a reliable early blocker that could be returned from the graveyard transformed into Chaos, the Endless, a 5/5 flying Demon. Kotose has abilities that care about having cards with the same name, and in a singleton format that's about as much of a non-starter as you can get.

I was very tempted by Sab-Sunen, but was spooked by the fact that it can't attack or block unless it has an even number of counters on it. I hated the idea of not having ways to manipulate my counters and getting stuck dead on board with a non-blocking indestructible 6/6 unable to save me. Also, I managed to talk myself into the idea that lifegain might be helpful in Commander Sealed.

At the end of the game there would be an emblem everyone would get when time ran out. That emblem, called "Phantasmagore's Goblet" would ensure that matches would wrap up. We'd be unable to gain life. Then on our upkeeps we'd have something resembling a Descent into Avernus experience. We'd put a pride counter on our emblem. Then for each pride counter we would lose 2 life and either create 2 Treasure tokens or create 2 Clue tokens.

I ended up building Heliod on the premise that I might luck into an early Authority of the Consuls to gain me life, and I was familiar with Heliod so I at least knew what I was getting into. Heliod is very powerful, transforming to give you Heliod, the Warped Eclipse, a 4/6 Phyrexian God that lets you cast spells as if they had flash, and discounting all of your spells by 1 mana for each card your opponents have drawn that turn. In a tuned Heliod deck, that's insane. I was hoping in a very, very un-tuned Heliod deck, I might get up to a little nonsense and maybe save a mana here and there by playing spells on my opponents' turns.

My Heliod, the Radiant Dawn list came together with as much lifegain as I could find, and a fair amount of control pieces. I played every aura and spell I could find that would tap, stun, bounce or otherwise interfere with my tablemates' game plans. I also ran what creatures I could find that might present a combat threat, but in my colors I didn't have a lot of threatening options.

My Commander Sealed history started in 2022 with a 0-3 showing. Then I proceeded to go 1-2 and then 2-1 last year with a sweet little Minsc & Boo deck. If the pattern would continue, I'd be going 3-0, but I didn't feel all that hopeful.

The Games

We play games all weekend long, and I've been having a lot of luck lately. I've been well over my "fair share" of 25% for maybe a month and I even managed to go 4-1 in pickup games on Friday night. That didn't fill me with hope, as I've played enough EDH to know that variance swings both ways. I was bound to have an "0-X" day or even week at some point. I was just hoping it wasn't on the day of the Commander Sealed main event!

During my game recounts I'm going to avoid using anyone's name and I'm not going to go into much in the way of details. There were just too many games to go into specific plays and I'd hate to name drop someone who would rather not get name-dropped (apologies to Alan from Mental Misplay, but I'm pretty sure he's fine with having his name included).

It's worth noting that we would all start at 30 life, and we would get that end of game emblem 45 minutes into the round. Slow play and going "in the tank" was something I was going to do my best to avoid, and I think most other participants felt the same way. We needed to keep a decent pace of play.

Round One

As the first round pairings were pushed out through our Spice Rack apps, I heard my name announced over the loudspeaker. I headed to the judge table to find that not only had I left my ratty old playmat at my build table - I also happened to be at the round one table that was selected to play in the Commander Sealed stream's feature match!

I and three other intrepid participants were led over to a separate room where we got our pictures taken, got asked a few questions, and then were seated at a table set up with a bunch of lights and cameras. After making introductions on the stream, we were eventually given the green light to start playing.

I was up against players on Ketramose, the New Dawn, Isshin, Two Heavens as One, and Muldrotha, the Gravetide. All four of our commanders, if fully tuned up, would be a serious threat in any casual game, but we were all building with whatever junk we and our build table buddies opened up out of random booster packs.

The Muldrotha player ended up blowing up first, building a pretty impressive board and clearly having a lot more synergy in their deck than I might have expected. If I remember correctly I got my commander out and lost it immediately to a boardwipe or some sort of removal. I knew lifegain could itself be a game changer in this kind of environment so I held up a Bound by Moonsilver to use on Ketramose if no bigger threat showed up.

I ended up locking down Ketramose for a good portion of the game. Isshin never mounted a serious threat and Muldrotha spent much of the game in the best position. I think the key play of the game was when either the Ketramose or Isshin player played a Githzerai Monk, tapping down everyone's creatures. We ended up going to time and getting the emblem that would keep us from gaining life.

I ended up being in a position to king-make if I wanted to. I considered my options but my life total was low enough that I'd be losing 4 life and then 6 life on my following turn's upkeep, so I was effectively a dead man walking. As I had no way to win at that point, I chose not to interfere with anyone else's plays. They had all been great tablemates and I had no reason to get involved in an endgame I could no longer win.

My high points of the game were silly little things like playing a Clockwork Fox, bouncing it to my hand, playing it again, and then letting it die, to help draw a bunch of cards for everyone - especially me. It didn't feel like my deck did much and I was glad to see Ketramose take the win, as he had been locked out of using his commander for so long and I always like seeing someone overcome adversity to eke out a win.

Round Two

My second game was back in the main hall and left me feeling even less optimistic. I was up against a Koma, World-Eater deck, an Etali, Primal Conqueror deck, and a partners build with Guild Artisan and Faceless One on Red, so the deck was playing in Rakdos (Black/Red) colors.

The Koma player assured us it wasn't the "good" Koma, and we were all more nervous about the Etali deck. When the Etali player played Etali, Primal Storm out of his hand and we realized we were up against a double Etali deck, we were even more nervous. We were all playing such jank that Etali never ate any removal, but also never flopped into anything that broke the game open.

The player who broke the game open was the Koma player, who ended up with something like a dozen 3/3 Koma's Coil creature tokens. That was before he resolved Second Harvest to double his tokens, and it was clear we were all in real trouble. I had an answer in hand, and was hopeful that I'd be able to work with Etali to clear the tokens away.

I played Kairi, the Swirling Sky and asked the Etali player to swing into it. I figured I could use the death trigger to bounce up to 6 mana value worth of permanents, including every single token on the field. Etali had a better idea and used a fight spell to kill Kairi so they could attack into someone else when they went to combat.

That may all sound great, but the Etali player and I had both forgotten the Koma player had a Giant Ankheg in play, and it gave each of his creatures ward 2. I couldn't pay the extra mana, and since the Koma player had just let us proceed with our plays without bringing attention to his Ankheg, it felt clear there wouldn't be any asking for a "rollback" like you might in a super casual game.

In the middle of my first round I had quite literally pointed out to the Muldrotha player that an attack they were about to do would have let me block with Kairi, and I let them reconsider their attacks because I didn't want to be a jerk and spring a "gotcha" moment on them. I hate that stuff, and it's why I prefer casual EDH, so it goes without saying that I was annoyed both by my misplay, and by the Koma player's more spikey approach to the match. I couldn't blame him one bit - we were playing a tournament and he had no obligation to be a nice guy - but it still stuck in my craw.

In the end I was easily rolled over by an army of 3/3 serpent tokens, but the Etali player did have their own kingmaking quandary to deal with. On the turn before the Koma player swung out, the Etali player could have cast a burn spell to just kill the Koma player, who easily had lethal on board for most of us, if not the entire table. For some reason they didn't play to their outs and try to kill the Koma player.

It's possible that afterwards we found out Koma had a counter in hand anyways, but it was a weird moment where it seemed obvious to me that you kill the player with lethal on board even if you might not think you have a way to win. In my own first round I didn't even have that kind of option - I just had a bounce spell that I chose not to use.

One of the things about EDH that is important to remember is that you don't know what's in someone's hand and to some extent you don't really know their experience of the game. What might seem like an obvious play or misplay might not be so obvious to the person who actually has to make the play.

Koma ended up taking the match. It was my least enjoyable game of the day, and was where my hope in my Heliod deck pretty much died.

Round Three

My third game saw me up against a Tajic, Legion's Edge deck, an Inga and Esika deck, and a Lae'zel/Scion of Halaster deck. I was most worried about Inga and Esika for some reason, as I didn't expect Tajic to have enough aggro to get the job done, and I wasn't familiar with Laezev. We've seen an awful lot of legendary creatures released in the past three or four years, and Lae'zel is one I just hadn't seen much of.

I think I mentally checked out a bit when my Kairi play in the previous game went bad, and I don't recall much in the way of details about this third match. Lae'zel ended up taking it, but we went to time, and I think this was the second game in which I never felt like a threat, but at least managed to be the last one to be eliminated. Sometimes that's because you're a hard nut to crack, but sometimes it's just because your deck isn't quite working and you're not a problem that needs to be dealt with. For whatever reason, I think I fell into the latter camp.

The games were all good games, and my tablemates were good company. I can't even blame the Koma player for playing coy and letting us forget about his Giant Ankheg. I have occasional spike tendencies, and in their shoes I might have done the same thing despite the graciousness I showed in the previous round.

The Finals

I didn't make the finals. Going 0-3 isn't going to get you into any finals of anything, but I was able to chat with the head judge Sunday night and got the scoop on which deck ended up winning the whole tournament.

The finals table was made up of a Jon Irenicus, Shattered One deck, an Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths deck, a Krenko, Mob Boss deck, and a Niko, Light of Hope deck. I have to assume they all were 3-0 at that point, though I don't know how the brackets broke down or exactly how many players were actually in at the start of the event.

My understanding is that the Krenko deck almost won, and that it was a very close game with Niko taking it at the end.

Odds and Ends

I ended up playing five pickup games over the remainder of the day on Saturday and losing every single one.

Actually, in the last game, which we had to stop as the hall was closing, I had just played Multani, Maro-Sorcerer, made 50 Saproling tokens with Fungal Sprouting, had a Shamanic Revelation under a Mosswort Bridge, and was sitting on a Return of the Wildspeaker so I'd be swinging with 4/4s on my next turn, but I never got to see if I could make any of that happen. My day ended up at 0-7-1 and it was clear that my long streak of genuinely good luck had come to an end.

I tracked my games over the course of the event, and overall I ended up at 5-10, which is a very healthy 33% and more than my "fair share" so I really can't complain. It would have been nice to have some of my success occur in an actual Commander Sealed match, but that wasn't in the cards this year.

The biggest irony was that the card I pinned my hopes and my deckbuilding choices on, Authority of the Consuls, never actually appeared in a single game. I probably should have built Sab-Sunen and gone for a Simic stompy deck, but I wanted to see if lifegain could get me there. This weekend at least, the answer was a resounding no.

Commander Sealed is a fun and different event, and the weekend's festivities included vendors, artists, a bunch of other side events, and of course all the pickup EDH games you could ever hope for.

For the past two years a buddy of mine from my online Tabletop Simulator playgroup has been coming out to Rochester for Commander Sealed and last year we did the 2HG Chaos Draft and went 3-0. We decided to try it again. We again drafted an aggro deck (piloted by me) and a control/removal deck (piloted by him) and again we went 3-0. It was a blast and I think we may keep this little tradition going every year, or at least until we find a way to lose a match. So far we haven't lost once.

Fourteen Packs and a Dream

While my Commander Sealed deck doesn't feel like something worth sharing, it's actually a great way to understand the kind of list you can wind up with when you are building an EDH deck in this kind of sealed environment. In retrospect I'm sure I could have built a better deck under Sab-Sunen, but this is what I ended up playing. It's not great. It might not even be good, but I was able to flip my commander a bunch of times, save mana on lots of spells, and have some impact on nearly every game I was in.

Sealed Heliod | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Heliod, the Radiant Dawn

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Bola Slinger
• 1 Bruna, the Fading Light
• 1 Clockwork Fox
• 1 Dawnbringer Cleric
• 1 Dazzling Angel
• 1 Felidar Savior
• 1 Gearseeker Serpent
• 1 Gloryheath Lynx
• 1 Guardian Naga
• 1 Halo Hopper
• 1 Healer's Hawk
• 1 Ice Flan
• 1 Kairi, the Swirling Sky
• 1 Lantern Bearer
• 1 Lotusguard Disciple
• 1 Mouth of the Storm
• 1 Nimble Thopterist
• 1 Pilgrim of the Ages
• 1 Spirited Companion
• 1 Starbreach Whale
• 1 Sword Coast Serpent
• 1 Urbis Protector
• 1 Virulent Silencer
• 1 Vnwxt, Verbose Host
• 1 Wild-Field Scarecrow
• 1 Winter Eladrin

• Spells (20)
• 1 Blur
• 1 Bounce Off
• 1 Cut Short
• 1 Emergency Eject
• 1 Fleeting Flight
• 1 Gallant Strike
• 1 Luminous Rebuke
• 1 Majestic Metamorphosis
• 1 Make Your Move
• 1 Refute
• 1 Remand
• 1 Run Out of Town
• 1 Suit Up
• 1 You're Confronted by Robbers
• 1 Your Temple is Under Attack
• 1 Compulsive Research
• 1 Lucky Offering
• 1 Memories Returning
• 1 Slaughter the Strong
• 1 Temporal Cleansing

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Bound by Moonsilver
• 1 Cathar's Call
• 1 Detention Vortex
• 1 Faith Unbroken
• 1 Far Traveler
• 1 Flaming Fist
• 1 Psychic Impetus

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Blitzball
• 1 Illvoi Light Jammer
• 1 Navigation Orb
• 1 Noble's Purse
• 1 Traveler's Amulet

• Lands (40)
• 19 Island
• 19 Plains
• 1 Adventurer's Inn
• 1 Tranquil Cove

Buy This Deck Export text

This is where I usually talk about how you might lower or raise the power level of the decklist I'm sharing. I'm not sure this can get much lower, though I'll note that I did run 40 lands - something I never do.

If you wanted to raise the power level of a Heliod, the Radiant Dawn deck, I would point you to the column I wrote two years ago. I ran that list until this past summer when I swapped Kwain, Itinerant Meddler in for Heliod as the deck was just a little too strong for the groups I was playing with. It's still a fun deck but it wins way fewer games now, which is good when you're playing in casual games and you're genuinely aiming to win your "fair share" of games.

Final Thoughts

Before I sign off I should take a moment to thank Dean Gootee, the event organizer, and all of the fantastic staff who worked hard all weekend long to make everything come together. I thanked some of you in person, but I understand how much work it takes to make a big event happen and your efforts should not go unmentioned.

I'd also like to thank all of the players who shared a table with me. Even the dude who turn two'ed us with a cEDH deck on Sunday. In his defense, wwe urged him to play it (not knowing how fast he'd nail the win) and then we took the opportunity to rib him mercilessly for the next hour or so. He took our joking in stride and it made for some really funny moments before they had to head out. You guys were all awesome tablemates and I hope to play with some of you again next year!

The whole point of Commander Sealed is to raise funds for Trans Lifeline and The Trevor Project. They run an online auction with tons of neat things to bid on. Every year they somehow manage to raise more money for charity, and this year I believe the final total was a whopping $81,700!

While that is indeed impressive, it is important to understand that services supporting LGBTQ youth are under incredible stress in the current political environment. America is a long way from having a society in which young people are adequately supported and are widely accepted if they do not fall into the narrow (cis-het) expectations of many parents and adults.

My own efforts to get my buddies to come along have been somewhat unsuccessful, but it was really nice to have my 2HG Chaos Draft buddy Mike Gallagher along. He's the proud owner of what might have been the first Secret Lair themed deck, which you can read about in my column from a few years ago. I was both surprised and very happy to also see two players from one of the game stores I play at back home. With any luck I'll be able to get more of them to come along next year, as it's just always more fun with friends.

If you have never been to a Magic con or event, I'd encourage you to give it a try. Commander Sealed is at the top of my list, but you might also go to Vegas, Chicago, or any of a number of other Magic Cons and CommanderFests that pop up on the schedule every year.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and if you manage to make it to Commander Sealed 2026 - track me down and hopefully you'll have better luck in your games than I had this year in mine!