Recently, I'd had a bad day. It was the day after my birthday, which hadn't gone as I'd hoped, and I was scheduled to play Commander with my friends that night. I wrote an e-mail requesting that we Battlecruise. I was stunned when most of them had no idea what that meant.

I've been playing Magic: The Gathering for a long time. I bought my first cards in 1994. I've taken breaks but have been involved with the game for most of that time, and re-entered seriously in 2008. Most of my friends are much newer to the game than that, and they've really only been involved with EDH since the precons existed.

That's fine, but there are genuine complaints about how the game has changed for those of us who remember the "good old days." Commander is more competitive. Players claim to want to just have fun, but they build discard strategies and denial strategies which are reliably unfun for the table (I'm sorry, but that Mothman deck from Fallout sucks to play against). WoTC claims to want the default to be Bracket 2, but the precons and the cards they print clearly aimed at Commander aren't goofy and fun, they're mean and divisive, with winning the clear goal no matter how it happens. I can't remember the last time I sat down at a table where there wasn't at least one player who had built their deck the way one builds for a tournament: winning, regardless of how.

Adam Styborski, who's still around in the Magicsphere, once said something to me which has lasted, which I will paraphrase here: building for Commander takes the normally internal process of building a deck (optimization for winning without concern for the other players) and makes it external (optimization for fun for the table and other players). That is hard, and it varies from player to player. Some players don't mind discarding cards. Others hate Wrath of God effects. Some want the challenge of a hard-fought win. Some have limited funds and don't want to proxy.

Brackets attempt to fix this issue, but one of the ways that has come up for me to solve this is PreDH. If you know what that is, skip ahead, but if it's new, read the next paragraph.

PreDH is a singleton format which shares its rules with Commander... except it limits its card pool to cards printed in New Phyrexia (from 2011) and earlier. The cutoff is the set right before the first set of preconstructed Commander decks, which effectively marks the point at which Wizards started making cards specifically for the Commander market. It aims to create lower-powered, nostalgic games where older Commanders (who aren't broken in half) can see actual play.

If you're wondering, PreDH leans toward Battlecruiser Magic much more naturally than modern Commander. (Battlecruiser Magic comes from the video game StarCraft - Battlecruisers are big, slow, and kind of clunky but really cool, which is a lot like old EDH.) So, I'm going to spend a few weeks looking at some PreDH builds. I'm also going to encourage you to have at least one deck in your stable which meets these requirements - and when you build it, don't go for optimization! Go for fun. Play goofy cards. Don't worry about winning. Worry about hanging out with your friends, having some pizza or a tasty beverage, and making some kooky plays that leave everyone laughing.

Let's start with a Legend I opened up the first prerelease I did for Shards of Alara.

The Naya shard () had a 5-power-matters theme; lots of Creatures with power 5 or greater. Mayael, the elf, allows you to dig through some of your Library and hunt out those Creatures, then play them for free. While created without EDH in mind, this makes for a perfect Commander. She's three colors, cheap to cast, and has a powerful ability with a neat theme. Shards block leaves us with a number of good options, but there are some great big Creatures from previous and later sets as well. Let's see what we can throw together.

Mayael the Anima | PreDH | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Mayael the Anima

• Creatures (33)
• 1 Ant Queen
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Baneslayer Angel
• 1 Beacon Behemoth
• 1 Blazing Archon
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Bull Cerodon
• 1 Cliffrunner Behemoth
• 1 Deus of Calamity
• 1 Druid of the Anima
• 1 Drumhunter
• 1 Flameblast Dragon
• 1 Godsire
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Knotvine Mystic
• 1 Magus of the Arena
• 1 Meglonoth
• 1 Mosstodon
• 1 Mycoid Shepherd
• 1 Nacatl Hunt-Pride
• 1 Paleoloth
• 1 Rakeclaw Gargantuan
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
• 1 Spellbreaker Behemoth
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Tornado Elemental
• 1 Vagrant Plowbeasts
• 1 Vigor
• 1 Woodfall Primus
• 1 Woolly Thoctar
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine

• Instants (3)
• 1 Congregation at Dawn
• 1 Naya Charm
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Akroma's Vengeance
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Decimate
• 1 Explosive Vegetation
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Hull Breach
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Skyshroud Claim
• 1 Titanic Ultimatum
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Fires of Yavimaya
• 1 Lurking Predators
• 1 Mayael's Aria
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Mirri's Guile
• 1 Utopia Sprawl
• 1 Where Ancients Tread
• 1 Wild Growth

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Mind's Eye
• 1 Jayemdae Tome
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top

• Lands (40)
• 12 Forest
• 6 Mountain
• 6 Plains
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Contested Cliffs
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Naya Panorama
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
• 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

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A quick aside before we jump in: one of the things I have from my earliest days of playing the game is a "learn to play Magic" kit. It includes two preconstructed (40? 60? Can't remember) decks. The idea is you stack the top of each deck and play the first few turns guided by a set of instructions, then continue the game without them and see how it works out. One of the decks has a Craw Wurm!

Additionally, the kit includes instructions on how to build a deck of your very own. Its recommendation is 20 Creatures, 20 spells, and 20 Lands. I read this now and my jaw just hits the floor - it really was the wild west back then, wasn't it? We had no idea what optimal mana management was.

The same was true - and mostly remains true - for Commander. I still see decks with 32, 34 Lands. Casual decks with lots of 5- and 6-drops! If my pounding on 40 Lands as the baseline for every casual Commander deck isn't enough to convince you, please go read this article and let the math speak for itself. Back then, we did our best with mana bases and ran 32 Lands all the time. We know better now, just like we know we don't build 60-card decks with 20/20/20.

So, we've got 40 Lands and plenty of ramp to make sure we can activate Mayael right on time, if not early. The ramp back then was wild, and we had a lot fewer options, so we have a mix of spells here. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach, along with Rampant Growth, all existed. Explosive Vegetation and Farseek, too, and Skyshroud Claim (which was a lot less good back then, when there were a lot fewer Forest-labeled dual lands). That's not enough, though, so we've also got some dorks to help us out. Bloom Tender and Druid of the Anima both work well (Bloom Tender will often tap for ), and Knotvine Mystic is quite strong, especially given its Power and Toughness. I also like Drumhunter and feel it's reliably underused in Commander, but its mana ability is actually relevant, if not the real purpose. Mirari's Wake helps make our Creatures even more threatening, and it doubles up mana nicely for us. Utopia Sprawl helps us fix a little and is cheap; Wild Growth is close but a decent second.

Card draw was also a lot more limited back then. Rummaging wasn't really a thing for Red, and cards that drew based on Creature size were just starting. White had basically nothing. So, we do our best. Harmonize and Drumhunter both draw cards directly. Jayemdae Tome and Mind's Eye let us turn mana into cards. Sensei's Divining Top and Mirri's Guile both help with smoothing. Mayael herself is hugely helpful, since activating her will, most turns, give us an extra Creature. We did our best!

The nice thing is, what we have should scare the pants off the table. We have a bunch of huge Creatures, many of which we'll flip into off Mayael every turn, leading to a massive board state we can often rebuild quickly with all our mana. I ran most of the Shards-based Creatures which lean into her ability, most of which were synergistic. Rakeclaw Gargantuan, Spearbreaker Behemoth, Mosstodon, and Mycoid Shepherd all help each other out. Meglonoth is a fun one. I've always loved Godsire. Wooly Thoctar is just great value. But there are other good ones as well from outside Shards block, like Rampaging Baloths, Steel Hellkite, Tornado Elemental, Blazing Archon, Deus of Calamity... they're all big, scary, and fun as heck.

Magus of the Arena should do a decent job of keeping our opponents' Creature counts down. Where Ancients Tread is pricey, but a nice way to wrench some extra value out of all our big stuff, and removal was a lot less... efficient back then, so lots of decks will struggle to remove strong Enchantments like these ones. Naya Charm is surprisingly versatile, and Decimate will almost always have enough targets to be very powerful. Akroma's Vengeance and Wrath of God help reset the board should we need it. Steel Hellkite and Tornado Elemental are surprisingly strong in this format; it used to be Steel Hellkite was in every single deck people built!

I like Fires of Yavimaya here. The Haste is valuable, as is the sacrifice effect in a pinch. Temember you can use it defensively too, potentially saving a a Creature from a Mutilate! But the real dream is Titanic Ultimatum, which is an Overrun on tiger blood. That will end a game really quickly in the right context, and even without a win it can swing it so brutally it's basically inevitable you'll win. Finally, Congregation at Dawn is a nice way to ensure you get the Creature you want on your next Mayael activation.

This deck will play like a herd of buffalo: slow, a little clunky, but definitely dangerous enough to keep your eye on. That's perfect for this more relaxed, casual format.

Thanks for reading.