Too soon. Yeah hopefully you dodged the MOTO commander legends experience. The reality of designing a way to play commander with draft packs is complicated but fear not there is a way to enjoy a commander like experience from draft packs.

The first step in creating a fun pack opening commander experience is accessing your draft pack pool. Here are things to consider when doing such. I will be using Zendikar the most recent set as a primo example for this archetype.

A. Enough commanders

Most sets don’t have/support a sufficient number of legendary cards to support commander playability, fortunately Zendikar does. Specifically set and collectors packs can really enable this by having higher drops of which is what I believe will possibly make the set stand out over time from a commander draft and cube experience. Zendikar has 17 potential commanders and 20 if you include planes-walkers as commanders depending on how cool your group is with that. That may seem like a very limited amount in a 280 card set when you don’t consider the rate at rare and mythic they can drop.

B. How many packs

Anywhere Fromm 6 to 9 packs should be used in commander sealed this can be assessed via the rate of legendary pulls you imagine getting. The fun part about this is integrating old packs into a draft for spicy pulls and nostalgic flare. I would also suggest you don’t stray too far from set synergy so no chaos packs unless you have thought it well out. Again commander is about synergy. So adding a double master pack to say a Kaladesh set pool would be fine for artifact synergy.

NOTE C & D are largely solved outside of draft pack selection and will be addressed in the minutia of what a Sealed Bid game looks like.

C. Mana fixing and ramp

Yeah simply put ramp and fixing are key aspects of any commander deck and essential for quicker gameplay when life totals start as high as they do.

D. Threats or Swings

This is probably the most important and most difficult to solve for when considering limited environments for commander play. Draft packs rarely have very swingy cards in them they are built this way on purpose. Part of what makes commander so great is the diversity of strategy the relative secret aspect of always having to consider what some one has behind their hand especially when your pool of cards is over 20,000 unique cards wizards has printed to date. With a limited set most of this is discovered and worked out very early and board states can become quickly clogged up. If Mexican bleed-offs (I would say standoffs but standoffs at least end in a bang) are your kinda thing, I would advise banging your head against a wall before submitting you to a commander legends commander draft.

Anyhow lets jump into the beautiful art of sealed and bid pools.

Here is a brief outline

1. Determine pre-made pools bring 10 bombs & 10 mana fixers
2. Divvy out bidding tokens and determine starting position
3. Open and assess cards from packs
4. Assess and bid for Legendaries
5. Organize bid vs deck pools
6. Begin bidding
7. Deck construction and gameplay

Before we dive in to the individual steps let me explain bid pools a bit. Bid pools are simply stacks of face down cards. At the beginning of a bid (note there will be 30 bids total) the top card of six piles will be turned over (note the various piles will be described later). Each player will take a number of bidding tokens (this could be poker chips dice or maybe just shiny things you have lying around) places them so they are hidden from other players (my pref is under a red solo cup) and then reveals them simultaneously. Players who bid the highest get first pick in the case of ties the player who is in position (I advise having a king of the bid token to pass around to keep track of this) gets to pick one of the six revealed cards and add them to his or her deck. When they do so the player whose pile they took the card from receives all of the bid tokens they bid for that card. Yeah if you’ve ever been part of a bidding war as a sublime they are actually quite fun as a mini resource management game in and of themselves. Anyhow hopefully that provides enough context as we move forward with

1. Determine pre-made pools bring 10 bombs and 10 mana fixers

Let us solve D from the examples above. Each player will look at the set of possible commanders that the pack pool you have provided will have and then each player will bring 10 bombs and 10 mana fixers that will make up two of the bid piles. I would suggest sleeving each of these cards in a different color than your opponent to help determine the owner of the card at time of bidding. Yeah this is probably the biggest fix for any commander draft experience because cards that can have a serious impact on the tempo of the game can be brought in and add serious synergy that commander decks need.

2. Divvy out bidding tokens

A recommended amount is 10 to keep things simple.

3. Open and assess cards from packs

Uh yeah open your packs. Separate any legendaries, you may choose to keep one as your commander. If you do forgo the next step.

4. Bid for legendaries

Give each player who participates 5 extra bidding tokens. Yeah you get a slight advantage if you don’t get a commander you are happy with.

5. Bidding

(see Before we dive in)

What happens when you bid for your own card the person to your immediate left gets all of the bidding tokens. Luckyyyy!

6. Deck construction and gameplay

Commander

Singleton

I advise 30 life total to speed things up a little bit

60 card decks to provide better access to bombs or swings

Make it fun have a prize maybe a primo nostalgia pack or a collectors pack. But yeah make this thing fun.

Yeah that might be a bit to wrap your mind around at first and it is meant for a longer evening with a group of friends but if you are looking for a randomized commander experience some deck construction and some bidding fun this is an awesome way to enjoy pack opening.