Commander Magic Deck Of The Week: Friends Forever Playing D&D Updated!

I’ve talked about my Magic origin story before, and how my early love of Dungeons & Dragons led me to loving Magic: The Gathering, which has been a massive part of my creative and recreational life for the past 30 years. You can read about that below, leading off my deep dive on Drizzt Do’Urden.

Commander Deep Dive: Drizzt Do’Urden

The Magic sets that were drawn directly from D&D – Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate – were my equivalent to peanut butter and chocolate jammed together in gaming deliciousness. Layer in my fandom for Stranger Things on Netflix, in part because D&D plays a hugely flavorful role with the main characters, and once the Stranger Things Secret Lair arrived at my door, I mashed all those fandoms together in a Commander deck I called Friends Forever Playing D&D, featuring Eleven, the Mage and Mike, the Dungeon Master as my commanders.

The Adventure Continues

Originally, I had all of the cards from Stranger Things Secret Lair in the deck, but over time, as I had to make hard cuts to add more D&D flavor, I ended up cutting Chief Jim Hopper and Max, the Daredevil from the deck, ostensibly because neither of those characters played D&D in the TV show. Purists will note that Eleven is never shown playing D&D either, but she is referred to as the gang’s “Mage” in the show, and so I tell myself that surely Mike showed Eleven how to play D&D off-camera in the early seasons. Plus, Eleven and Mike together allow me all five colors in the deck’s color identity, which lets me jam any card that fits in with my theme.

Eleven is a sweet little card-drawing engine when she attacks, though as a 3/5 she can quickly get outclassed by bigger creatures later in a typical game of Commander. Which is where Mike, the Dungeon Master comes in!  Mike’s activated ability can bring back to the battlefield a card in a graveyard that was put there this turn, so if Eleven dies while attacking, Mike can yoink her back.  Mike’s ability is also just awesome protection for your best creature from an untimely death in combat or at the hands of some destroy effect.

Friends Forever Playing D&D

Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Mike were all D&D players from the very first episode of Stranger Things. Hawkins National Laboratory remains in the deck for now, though it doesn’t exactly help with the five-color manabase, so perhaps I should cut it?

I’ve had this deck together for a few years, and was grateful to have the opportunity to play it with Sheldon Menery and the Rules Committee on their stream a while back. I’ve made a few tweaks in the time since, and most recently made adjustments to add cards I nabbed from one of the Dungeons & Dragons 50th Anniversary Secret Lairs, so I thought it would be an excellent time to showcase the current decklist!

New D&D Secret Lair Cards

To my mind, the coolest flavor from the D&D sets were the module-style lands and the rulebook-style creature cards, so these drops with iconic D&D artwork from the ages just make me so happy. I’m not at all happy with how Wizards of the Coast (WotC) delivers Secret Lairs these days with limited pre-printed quantities that create a feeding frenzy when orders are open, often paired with rapid sellouts. Fortunately, I was able to jump on D&D Beyond and get this ordered, since they had some available there.

I particularly love the AD&D Player’s Handbook art on Faithless Looting, and the actual cover art from the Core 5th Edition Monster Manual for Monster Manual. It’s nice to have another cool Dragon to add to the deck in Goldspan Dragon, as well as an actual on-flavor battlefield sweeper in Fell the Mighty.

Previous D&D Secret Lair Cards

I’ve got a couple of cards from the previous D&D Secret Lair based on the old Saturday Morning D&D cartoon. They aren’t the most efficient cards, and I don’t like the double color pips on two of them in a five-color deck, but the flavor is on point!

Classes

One of the first things you do when you sit down to play D&D is pick your character’s class, so I’ve made room for a few of the iconic D&D Classes. Barbarian Class is amazing with the dice-rolling cards, and the other three Classes are just solid Magic rectangles.

Dice Rolling

Rolling dice is a fantastic part of the D&D experience, so I’ve squeezed in a few of them into the deck. Bag of Tricks, Treasure Chest, and The Deck of Many Things are iconic items from the D&D game, and they tickle me being sweet Magic cards.

Pixie Guide is another card alongside Barbarian Class that can help to ensure the odds are ever in your favor. And who wouldn’t want to roll that d20 when connecting with Ancient Silver Dragon? Especially with Eleven on the battlefield!  It’s a bit of a non-bo with The Deck of Many Things, but hopefully I won’t have both of them on the battlefield at the same time!

Dragons Adventures

Dragons put one of the D’s in D&D, so I’m running a fair number of them in the deck. The Dragons with Adventures attached help provide some cheaper spell options while having Dragons you can cast later.

Other Dragons

These are the other Dragons I’m running, along with Acolyte of Bahamut to help discount the cost to cast them – definitely needed for Ancient Silver Dragon!  Dragonborn Champion provides a nice bit of bonus card drawing.

Venture into the Dungeon

Dungeons put the other D in D&D, so I’m peppering in some cards that make use of the delve into the dungeon mechanic. Nadaar, Selfless Paladin both is a Dragon and moves through dungeons!

Initiative

As much as I loved the first iteration of the dungeon mechanic, the initiative is even better because Undercity is such a sweet dungeon. Of course the downside is that opponents can take the initiative and then start cruising through Undercity themselves, but that just makes the game more interactive and fun. There’s even another Dragon here with Stirring Bard!

Dungeons Matter

To support the dungeon mechanics, I’m running Dungeon Delver and Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker to get even more loot out of the dungeons, and who doesn’t love loot?

Vecna!

I had these two flavorful artifacts of Vecna in the deck even before the previous season of Stranger Things introduced the new “big bad” that our young crew appropriately nicknamed “Vecna.” On a side note, I recently picked up the new D&D epic adventure book Vecna: Eve of Ruin and can’t wait to read through it!

Other D&D Flavor

The silver-bordered Sword of Dungeons & Dragons makes this a Rule 0 deck, since the card is technically not legal for Commander, but I’ve never had anyone object to it. I mean, how can I not run a card that explicitly says “Dungeons & Dragons” right there in the name?  Plus, it offers up some more dice rolling! Mimic is a classic D&D creature that I remember being terrified of and loving from my earliest days of D&D, so I had to put one in here; in a pinch, sacrificing it for any color mana can be clutch to casting something in my five-color deck.  I’ve got the module-style versions of Dungeon Descent and Evolving Wilds here because they look so cool.

Other Removal/Interaction

I did still try to squeeze in some basic meat and potatoes cards that any decent Commander deck needs; thankfully, You Find a Cursed Idol is on flavor!

Mana Ramp/Fixing

Krosan Verge, Nature’s Lore, and Three Visits are excellent for fixing my colors in addition to ramping my mana, with all of them able to search up crucial Triomes.  Blighted Woodland is great at snagging two basic lands for color-fixing too.

Since I have a ton of lands that enter tapped, I was happy to recently add a Spelunking to the mix.

The Deck

Okay, here’s the full decklist in all its weird and wonderful glory!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What Commander decks have you built that pay homage to your favorite fandom outside of Magic?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.  

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy. 

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