Magic Celebration Recap, Commander, and Modern Pauper

Magic Celebration was a success, and free Magic cards were had by all. (And at least one person got two planeswalkers out of it.)  I'll list the people I saw there at the end of this post; if I missed you, or if you went to a shop other than Dogs of War, let me know so we can give you League Points.

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This Saturday will be our first Commander (also knows as EDH) event of the semester.  If you're not familiar with the format, you can find full info here: http://mtgcommander.net/rules.php. The short version is: choose a legendary creature to be your commander and build 100 card deck around it. You're limited to one copy of each card that's not a basic land and you can't have any mana symbols anywhere on your cards that aren't shared by the commander.

If you don't have a deck and aren't able to build one, let us know -- several people have multiple Commander decks and would be happy to share.  It's a really fun and unique format.

As we've done before, we'll have pods of 4-5 people and an achievement sheet to determine winners.  The achievements reward a variety of deck styles and discourage a few seriously unfun things like destroying everyone's lands.  Achievement sheets will be handed out at the event.

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I want to post about the week after that as well, since pretty much everyone will have to build a new deck for it.  Fortunately, that will be easy to do, because all you need is commons!  Pauper is a format where commons are the only cards allowed.  We're restricting it to Modern-legal sets so people don't have to track down old and expensive cards.  That means your cards have to be printed as a common in at least one of the following:

• a core set from 8th Edition or newer; or
• an expansion set from the original Mirrodin or newer.

You can find a complete list of sets here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=judge/resources/sfrmodern.

The normal Modern banned list does not apply, but the following two cards are banned:

• Cloudpost
• Cranial Plating

In addition, cards that were timeshifted in the Time Spiral set (purple expansion symbol) are not allowed unless they were also printed at common in another legal set.  This is to prevent confusion about what counts as common or not.

Here are a few examples. Ask if you have any questions.

• Oblivion Ring was last printed at uncommon in M13, but since it was common in Lorwyn (among other sets) it is legal.
• Rancor was printed at common in Urza's Legacy, but since it has only been printed at uncommon in Modern-legal sets, it is not legal.
• Squire was timeshifted and was a common in The Dark, but is not legal since it wasn't an actual common in a Modern-legal set.

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Okay, finally, the list of names in no particular order:

• Hunter Garrett
• Andew Hunter
• Joe K
• Tyler Deforge
• James Throne
• David Wyland
• Max Kruger
• Chris Pear
• Miles Davis
• Ryan Ripper
• Jonah Molegrito
• Sean Davenport
• Luke Glesner
• Kyle Coleman
• Tom Barringer
• Jared Sork