(Wall of Fortune | Art by Tom Babbey)

All That Glitters Isn't Gold

Commander is, in theory, a format with 100-card decks, one of which is a legendary creature designated as the commander. In practice, it is a format of 100 cards, plus dice for rolling or representing counters, coins for flipping, sleeves to protect your cards or obscure the back of double-faced cards, and tokens (either a wide variety and number of specific tokens, or a healthy supply of Infinitokens).

I was struck by the urge to build a deck that contained and used exactly 100 rectangular pieces of cardboard, with no additional game pieces or accoutrements. Such a deck might play a little faster, feel less fiddly, or be easier to transport, but mostly I just wanted to see how different things look in a world without accessories.

This being the "Magic Data Science" column, I of course went to the data!

First, I attempted to identify every card that required or implied the existence of a non-card game piece:

• Any card referring to tokens: Treasure, Clue, Powerstone, Creature, copy, or otherwise
• Any card referring to counters: +1/+1, -1/-1, loyalty, ability, shield, or any of the myriad hyper-specific counters
• Any card referring to dice or coins
• Any card requiring you to make a note or secretly choose
• Any card referring to dungeons/venture, initiative, day/night, the monarch, etc
• I also excluded any double-faced cards, in a maximalist effort to eliminate any need for supplies other than just cards
• Finally, I excluded any Un/acorn cards and digital-only cards, because, obviously

All together, this comes to about 6,128 excluded cards. Out of the 25,000ish unique cards in existence, that's actually a smaller proportion than I would have guessed!

The next, most obvious step for me was to look at which commanders run the fewest accessory cards, and which run the most.

Least-Accessorized Commanders

Among commanders with a reasonable number of EDHREC decks to their name, these are the ones who run the lowest proportion of "accessory" cards, and the highest proportion of lone rectangle cards.

There are basically four categories here: Slivers, Auras, Throwbacks, and Others:

• 5 of the 13 least-accessorized commanders are five-color Sliver Lords, and their decks are pretty similar: lots of Slivers, lead by the ramp/fixing Gemhide Sliver and Manaweft Sliver, and some very generically popular rocks and lands. The First Sliver and Sliver Queen want to go a little wider, which is reflected in their accessories: Sliver Hive and Brood Sliver.
• Uril, the Miststalker and Bruna, Light of Alabaster are powered by Auras. Instead of adding power/abilities through counters, they use other pieces of cardboard. Their power buffs are more likely to come from static +1/+1 abilities (Sage's Reverie, All That Glitters) than from +1/+1 counters (Setessan Champion, Starfield Mystic, Hero of Iroas).
• Then there are some throwbacks, like Dromar, the Banisher, Blind Seer, Nebuchadnezzar, or Merieke Ri Berit. These are all various levels of obscure, although I always enjoy commanders that let you use otherwise homeless cards, like Tidal Visionary.
• Rafiq of the Many just runs a lot of creatures who exalt each other. Its accessories are pretty much all just format staples.
• Arcades, the Strategist is the canonical defender deck that just runs a ton of defenders for card advantage and mana efficiency.
• For the sake of interest, the next 13 least-accessorized commanders are: The Beamtown Bullies, Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Volrath the Fallen, Kaalia of the Vast, Yurlok of Scorch Thrash, Araumi of the Dead Tide, Zurgo Helmsmasher, Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, Iname, Death Aspect, Phage the Untouchable, Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign, Phenax, God of Deception, and Circu, Dimir Lobotomist.

Most Decked-Out Commanders

These are the commanders whose EDHREC decks are composed of the largest proportion of accessory cards - that is, those that produce tokens, counters, and so on.

These can also be binned into a small number of categories: Counter Variety, +1/+1 Counters, and Dice-Rollers:

• Perrie, the Pulverizer, Denry Klin, Editor in Chief, Vorel of the Hull Clade, and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider aren't focused exclusively on +1/+1 counters, but reward having a variety of counter types on any specific creature, across all of your creatures, or inclusive of your planeswalkers. Kodama of the West Tree falls into this category, but is also open to other types of modifications.
• Roalesk, Apex Hybrid, Hamza, Guardian of Arashin, Mowu, Loyal Companion, and Daghatar the Adamant all really want you to pile as many +1/+1 counters as possible on your creatures and then Proliferate them, ramp off of them, increment them, or move them around.
• Farideh, Devil's Chosen just wants you to roll dice (which sounds a little tedious), and Wyll, Blade of Frontiers lives at the intersection of dice-rolling and counter-putting.
• Chisei, Heart of Oceans is in a category of its own, and actually seems pretty sweet. In a world of Proliferating counters, Chisei only wants to remove them. This opens the door for lots of cards that don't see a lot of play elsewhere, mainly those with Cumulative upkeep or counters that count down, like Thing in the Ice.
• The next most-accessorized decks are: Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Kros, Defense Contractor, Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager, Zegana, Utopian Speaker, Thelon of Havenwood, Kalain, Reclusive Painter, Tanazir Quandrix, Alharu, Solemn Ritualist, The Scorpion God, Adrix and Nev, Twincasters, Bennie Bracks, Zoologist, Skullbriar, the Walking Grave, Shaile, Dean of Radiance. Here we finally see the token-centric commanders we might have expected, lead by Kalain (which is a Treasure token/+1 counter hybrid), Adrix and Nev, and Bennie Bracks.

Variety: The Spice of Life?

I've always liked +1/+1 counters, going wide with tokens, and even Superfriends decks, but I thought that focusing on bare cardboard alone might lead to a more essential Magic experience. Though after doing this exercise, I'm fairly convinced that the "essential Magic experience" is a theoretical construct - impossible to define and not worth chasing. And, to the extent it relies on de-accessorizing your decks, not particularly compelling.

So, as compelling as it can be to build with restrictions, I'm not going to shy away from decks that require large stacks of tokens, boxes of dice, or literal dollars' worth of pennies. If you're going to spend literal hours playing a game, you might as well accessorize!

Thoughts? Questions? Critiques? Suggestions?

Let me hear them! I'm curious about the practical aspects of accessory-heavy decks: do you have the right tokens for your deck? How many of each do you bring? Or do you use dry-erase tokens as an outlet for your artistic expression? Do you use dice for +1/+1 counters, or something more bespoke? Have you ever built a deck that really leaned into a truly massive number of tokens or counters? I'd love to see the lists and hear about your experiences! As always, if you aren’t already, please follow me on Twitter.

MtGDS

MtGDS (AKA Magic Data Science) is pretty new to the game, but is trying to understand it as best he can through data. He loves making graphs and finding new ways to measure things. You can read his non-Commander articles at http://mtgds.wordpress.com, and he's worth a follow on Twitter @MtG_DS.