The newest Commander I've built around in terms of print date is Jirinia Kudro. My interest in Commander's dropped off hard since then, and I can't say that I've felt really compelled to build new decks.

Of the seven options for the decks I'll keep around, five of them are because the decks are built around unique requirements or strategies and a lot of discovery went into card selection and making the deck feel good. Feeling like I'm doing something besides choosing a Generic Two Card Combo and the Generically Powerful Cards that are the top on EDHRec. Feeling as though I was doing something different was what drew me to commander.

The creature would have Shroud, so you could not target it with another Equip ability. Any Equipment already attached to the creature would not become unattached.

Color me surprised that there's no five-color commander in this set just to let someone try to challenge mode a draft.

Gond's Gate. It's a Gate. It makes Gates you control enter untapped. It taps for colorless or any color a Gate you control could produce.

The tingle tells me that all my draft chaff speculative buyouts are increasing value by the second.

The more that I think about, the more that The Initiative just seems... odd. Venture cards from AFR will help you complete The Undercity, but none of them allow you to enter The Undercity. The Initiative will let you complete the AFR dungeons, but anything that makes you Take The Initiative or just still having it at your upkeep without entering a different dungeon will force you into The Undercity.

Mostly it's just that your decision on which dungeon you want to select are being forced. Commander Legends already had a little insert talking about how to draft the set and use the Prismatic Piper, so it seems to me like they could have put in a paragraph saying "In this draft format, the only dungeon is The Undercity. But in a normal Commander game, you can venture into any dungeon you choose."

All that being said, I'd be willing to try Commander games with a house rule that the first person to deal combat damage takes The Initiative and gets it going into the game. But that's just because I tend to like games with combat more than just sitting around waiting for someone to find their two card combo.

Maze's End is moderately expensive but there's no time like the present to start speculatively buying out Plaza of Harmony, Guild Summit, District Guide, and Circuitous Route!

If we're having a Gate theme then I guess I need to order the Maze's End I was thinking about getting for a cube sooner rather than later.

I'm gonna be real for a second.

The mentality that Magic the Gathering must provide a financial return bothers me. Previously it was the individuals who would talk about the poor EV of an event and disparage actually playing the game in any capacity. Now it's the mindset that the worth of Magic as a game and of individual cards is first and foremost that they are assets that are always supposed to increase in value and thus that having high prices and low supply of the best, most desirable game pieces is a feature and not a bug. That makes me more afraid for the future of the game, that it will survive as a game I can love rather than a soulless, price-inflated collector asset. I'm more afraid of that than a future where The Great Henge only costs 20 bucks and the best Modern decks only cost 500 bucks.

At least Orks get their own secret lair drop.

If the rest of the GW collabs are okay to discuss here, I have a growing wishlist for the Blood Bowl secret lair drop:

• All cards are silver bordered.
• Jim and Bob have Commentary Team, like Friends Forever from the Stranger Things lair.
• A creature with Secret Weapon or an equipment (Chainsaw) or Vehicle (DEATHROLLER) that replicates the effect. If the creature leaves the battlefield, it's exiled and can't leave exile for the rest of the game. Or the Command Zone if it's your commander. I guess they could make Hack Enslash a card.
• A "roll a die and see what happens spell" like Goblin Tutor called Kick-Off Event.

I'm putting on my Sickos shirt and pressing myself against WotC's window, looking at the Wrenn and Six reprint and going, "Yes... ha ha ha... yes!"

But I am in favor of massive reprints of Modern Horizon 1 and 2 cards so that the price of entry into the format is not prohibitive.

Whether you need the removal in Lightning Bolt depends on what you're playing against. In general I think most Sliver decks are just Slivers and lands.

Yes, as long as you name "Sliver" with Secluded Courtyard and Unclaimed Territory, you can tap them for mana of any color in order to cast a Sliver.

It's a few bucks, but more option is Realmwalker to let you cast Slivers off the top of your library.

I'll echo the comments on focusing on the 2-drop Slivers that buff your team. Megantic Sliver is probably too expensive and slow. Shock should probably be upgraded to Lightning Bolt or Dead / Gone. I don't think Giant Grown and Channel the Suns will do enough.

Unclaimed Territory and Secluded Courtyard would be relatively cheap additions to the manabase that make casting all your Slivers easier. Phantasmal Image can be another one of any Sliver you want.

Unless you are playing wanting to play something like 4C Money Pile in Modern, rental services will probably be cheaper and let you experiment more easily. You can also rent while saving to buy.

As far as the meta goes, a store's weekly Modern event will have more budget decks, un-updated lists, and pet decks than a major tournament would. But if your store has "Grinders" who actively follow format news, you'll still see the major decks of a format often winning. And the upper half of a major paper tournament will look like MTGO challenge results with a few minor differences. It's more likely to be changes in the flex slots of decks than seeing radically different archetypes.