Shaping Roils, One Step At A Time
Commander Celebration is coming to Grand Prix Atlanta! Bennie Smith combines Commander excitement with Battle for Zendikar hype in today’s insane land-loving decklist!
AuthorBennie Smith
Bennie Smith began playing Magic in 1994 and started writing about it shortly after. A Virginia State Champion, he enjoys few things better than winning at tournaments with home brews. Commander is one of those things. He loved the format so much he literally wrote the book on it: The Complete Commander.
Grinding Hedrons With Zada
Zada, Hedron Grinder is one of the most exciting and explosive red legends to hit the Commander scene in a while! See what Bennie has planned for the latest Goblin in all her hedron-grinding glory!
The Last Days Of Standard
Bennie Smith recounts his recent Standard exploits by looking at the many flavors of Hangarback Walker decks he’s tried out recently, and he looks forward to Battle for Zendikar Standard by starting to draft new decks off of the few spoiled cards seen so far!
Kytheon, Hero Of Commander
The five Magic Origins flip-Planeswalkers are all pretty exciting for Commander, and today Bennie explores a color he’d normally shy away from — mono-white — to build around Kytheon, Hero of Akros.
Sweet Oblivion
The first Battle for Zendikar spoilers have started to trickle in, and Bennie Smith is already excited for some of the new mechanics and cards we can expect to see as the Eldrazi return to haunt Standard once again!
Funk Soul Hoarder
Kothophed, Soul Hoarder is not supposed to be a warm and cuddly hug deck, and Bennie Smith takes that fact to heart as he builds a cruel and heartless Commander deck to match his new demonic overlord!
The Rush Of Rogue
Bennie is usually a Commander kind of guy, and occasionally he touches Standard when there’s an event coming up – but Modern? What’s he got to do for that? Play a couple of popular Commanders and pull of some sweet, unexpected shenanigans – that’s what!
Artificer Flavoring
Magic Origins has quite a few interesting legendary creatures to build around for Commander, and Bennie puts Ma and Pa Nalaar to work in this off-the-wall combo machine full of interesting and unexpected outcomes!
Origins Cards That Have My Attention
With Week One of Magic Origins Standard firing off this weekend at #SCGCHI, Bennie has been brewing decks and will be watching carefully as the metagame develops so he can be prepared for #SCGRICH next weekend!
Seer And Sage
Bennie was bound to love Nissa, Deepwood Sage at first sight, so much to the surprise of absolutely no one he’s hoping to crack her at the Magic Origins Prerelease this weekend and put her at the helm of this brand-new Commander deck!
Originality
We now know everything there is to know about Magic Origins, so it’s time for Bennie to start brewing with all the odd and quirky cards the set has to offer.
When I Get That Feeling, I Need Heretical Healing
Bennie is all for Liliana, Heretical Healer, and to show his devotion to his favorite Defiant Necromancer he’s building around her in both Standard and Commander!
Double The Weird Fun
Bennie is not very Izzet at heart – he bleeds Golgari, through and through – but a snazzy full-art copy of Melek, Izzet Paragon has him walking the planes in Ral Zarek’s footsteps with his latest Commander deck!
Bad Beets
Modern is a pretty unforgiving format to begin with, but receiving bad advice makes things even harder than it needs to be. Bennie has a bunch of new decks he’s interested in, and a few bad-beat stories as well…
An Epic Derevi Commander Deck!
The word “epic” gets thrown around a little too much these days. Bennie Smith is taking it much more literally! See the crazy Commander deck he’s drawn up that takes full epic advantage of Derevi!