By Ed Fortune
Pre-built Commander Decks are easily the fastest way to get into Magic the Gathering, especially if you’re familiar with the game enough to know what ‘tapping’ or ‘lands’ are but haven’t played in ages. Commander is a format that can be played casually with friends, perhaps over drinks and snacks. (Some of you may be horrified to hear that over at STARBURST Towers, we sometimes adjourn to the Fab Café TV & Movie theme bar to have a swift drink and put out sticky hands all other the precious, precious cards, but we do use deck sleeves; we aren’t monsters.)
As always, these things have a storyline, and in The Brother’s War, it’s a sort of prequel/time-travel affair in which we learn the story of Mishra and Ursa, two powerful brothers who centuries past waged one on each other for power. Alas, this all ties in to the origins of the hideous Phyrexians, a hegemonising swarm of magical metal flesh monsters that infect and control things until everything becomes them.
Mishra’s Burnished Banner set includes 100 commander cards, a Mishra, an Eminanet One Commander card, ten token cards, a life wheel (for tracking your hit points), and a rules reference card. It’s a blue, black, and red deck, which means it’s good at slowing down opponents, recovering from damage and packing a punch.
The pre-constructed deck is focused on turning things that aren’t creatures into stuff that can do damage. Typically, a Magic deck will be throwing goblins, skeletons, and all sorts of stuff at your enemy. In this deck, Mishra himself has this special power that turns stuff like anvils into war machines. The deck itself is stuffed with all sorts of attack artefacts and cool effects; you won’t be short of mana for most of the game, and you’ll be firing out also all sorts of cool effects throughout. It requires some familiarity with the game, but if you know the basics, this is a fun deck to refine your play style.
