{"ops":[{"insert":"Started my Magic Journey in 1997 with a 5th edition Tournament Pack.\nI will always remember the how it felt to pore over those cards, not understanding anything on them but falling in love with the Art and the emotion depicted.\nI still remember the rares I opened, "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Leviathan"}},{"insert":", "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Winter Orb"}},{"insert":" and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Dancing Scimitar"}},{"insert":".\n\nAfter a journey through Standard and learning on MTG:IE I eventually joined the MTG judge scene helping out a LGS around the time "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Arcbound Ravager"}},{"insert":" was king and "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Umezawa's Jitte"}},{"insert":" was in starter decks.\n\nFast forward a few years, the LGS closed. Magic fell off in my area and I moved away; leaving the judge program behind me. After a break for 3 or so years I rediscovered Magic with Tarkir and struggled through a difficult standard format with the local audience divided between various formats. This all changed in 2014 for me.\n\nAfter playing Magic for the better part of 17 years, I didn't truly fall in love with the game until 2014 with the Commander release that year. I got the "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Daretti, Scrap Savant"}},{"insert":" precon after some discussions with others and gave Commander a real go. 12 months later I had essentially given up on 60 card formats, and become the local Commander enthusiast, I run limited tournaments as a TO helping out the LGS and always encouraged people to give Commander a try after the events. The store quickly became commander heavy and this encouraged some 'Spike'-y players to get involved and started strangling the fun out of what had developed. There wasn't enough regular players to keep a casual and competitive group and once again there was a divide.\n\nAlong came Covid, another closed LGS and we had moved again. This time I had no interest in building a community and I just wanted to play some fun MTG games with my mates and like-minded people. We started a regular at-home Commander group, there were 4 of us with 20+ years experience but we wanted some more players but as we introduced new players the years experience quickly became an issue.\n\nAfter a few nights discussion we decided we would run our commander games with a few caveats so everyone was on the same page:\nNo 2 player games, it's just better if you don't deck build for it."},{"attributes":{"list":"bullet"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"No Tutoring outside of lands or tutors with a limited scope and/or innocuous (agreed upon) targets."},{"attributes":{"list":"bullet"},"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"color":"#202124"},"insert":"Decks cannot contain 2 cards that can create an infinite loop with each other; 3+ cards is fine."},{"attributes":{"list":"bullet"},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"\nWe were ok with powerful sweeping plays, fast mana would often rise the ire of the group, stax pieces were ok as long as it wasn't too repetitive, and you could close the game (maybe change deck style for the next game though). Newer players could get precons and while they would rarely win they would still be involved in the game and could actually influence plays.\n\nWe still try to get to a Draft or Pre-release when we can but Magic to me is now our slightly dialed down version of Commander where battlecruiser games are common and winning 1 in 4 games is a pretty good effort. When I deck build I probably spend too much time working out optimum plays but my decks are built knowing my opponents wont be tutoring combos, that going bigger is best and rushing out the gate is going to get you ganged up on.\n\nP.S - I still have my "},{"insert":{"card-link":"Daretti, Scrap Savant"}},{"insert":" deck and its quite a mean contender these days.\n\n"}]}