It may be safe to say that I have a problem.

I recall saying something similar at the beginning of a post within the last couple of years, but as I remember it I was speaking of my Steam library at the time. It seems the problem has metamorphosed into something else — yet the end result is the same: An Empty Wallet.

What started off as an innocuous hobby has xenomorphed its way into a devious creation capable of devouring all of my time and spare cash. It’s true, I’ve spent a bit of coin on these bits of paper and accessories over this run, but I have also felt excitement, pleasure and that competitive spirit come back around and that’s not something I can say has been the case with gaming the past year or so. It’s not as if I’m forsaking my other hobbies, I’ve just found my mind coming back around to Magic every day, the same way I used to daydream about playing my favorite MMO while working shitty jobs years ago. Just like I would do back then, when I wasn’t playing the game I was thinking about it, and sometimes that lead to thinking about new strategies and in this case it leads me to deck building and theory crafting which happens to be a rather enjoyable aspect of the pastime. What started with one preconstructed deck has ballooned, and well… see for yourself:

That’s my list of decks over on MTG Goldfish. It appears that I started playing Commander in April of this year, but I know that I started at least one month prior to that. As such, the Daxos deck was my first precon, and I turned my standard Zombie deck into a commander deck with Gisa & Geralf at the helm (until Scarab God released and I slotted him in), and I actually purchased the Saskia precon as well prior to signing up for this website’s service. April was when the signup would have occurred and I entered those decklists into the system for my own tracking purposes. It wouldn’t be long though before I started brewing like crazy.

Angels & Demons was helmed by Tariel until I got my hands on Kaalia from the Commander Anthology. I brewed Molimo and Temmet on the same day and ended up buying both of those decks outright because they were more budget friendly. Sramtron was also a budget buy because I owned quite a few of the cards, but I actually brewed him and sat on it for a while because I also brewed Reaper King and was far more excited for it at the time. I built Sram right before Hour of Devastation released, and after it did, I put together Locust God. His is still my most recent creation, so I actually only have 8 completed and playable EDH decks. I’d have two more as well but I dismantled Saskia a long time ago, and Freyalise (which I also got out of the Anthology) was put into Molimo and though I do have the deck sitting aside and playable with Ezuri leading it, I’m just not that into Elves. So we’ll say I have 8 and leave it at that.

But wait, you say. There are clearly 12 decks up there, and you only mentioned 8. What are the others? Well, that’s where my problem lies. I get so into the deckbuilding aspect that I just start brewing when I get a cool idea and next thing I know I have another deck ready to be bought and paid for. There also isn’t the new Vampire precon I want to buy next on here, so you can see just how far ahead of myself I’ve gotten! With that said, Vampires are my next project and will be the most cost effective, because the precon is $35 and I might spend another $20 on singles to upgrade it a bit. The set itself looks pretty strong as it is packaged.

So what about the other decks man? As I was saying, I love the deckbuilding aspects of Magic, so I have been prebuilding ideas on MTG Goldfish so that I have them for reference and can pour through my collection to see which cards I already have. I do purposely try and pick commanders that might utilize things I already have to reduce costs, and that has been doing the trick. Some off-meta picks can help as well. For example, I was hoping that one of the decks for Commander 2017 might be Cleric tribal. There are so many, why wouldn’t you? Well it ended up being Wizards instead, so I went ahead and built my own Cleric tribal deck. I then found that a great subtheme is using as many Extort cards as possible, because it’s an Orzhov mechanic and is on quite a few Cleric cards. Boom. Deck is done man. It also turns out that Clerics are relatively inexpensive so that deck can be built on a budget. Ditto the Werewolf deck, which I talked about very recently. I have 50% of those cards already and the rest are cheap.

The only really big investment I will have to make is on Oloro. He’s not expensive himself, but I’m lacking most of the cards and it’s gonna cost a bit. However I have been slowly gathering cards as time has gone on, so eventually I’ll be able to bite the bullet and finish it off. I literally just built the Spartan deck tonight on a whim, mainly because I own a copy of Assemble the Legion and wanted to build a deck around it. Turns out that Boros Soliders are quite powerful, and the comander Tajic is gonna be fun killing people off with. I’ve found that being able to conceive these ideas and then build them later has made it less of an issue when it comes to buying the cards. If I build them over time I will still get to use them, and I won’t dump quite as much money on them all at once. I just wonder when it will all come to an end? I don’t see myself not wanting to brew, and each new set will bring new legendary creatures for new possibilities. I suppose it will then be time to start keeping staples in a binder and pull out what I need between games. Either way, I’m finding more things to write about due to this hobby, and I fully intend to dive into other decks that I’ve built that I haven’t showcased yet in the column. Be on the lookout for those.

Do you find yourself constantly dreaming up new deck ideas? Are you content keeping them on paper or do you feel the need to play them immediately?