Friday Nights: Politics
Graham, Paul, Alex, Kathleen, and Jer play a commander game at Graham and Kathleen's apartment; when Jer takes control of the game, the others are forced to join the "Alex Initiative" to dethrone him. Meanwhile, James and Cam attempt to construct a cube.
Synopsis
The episode opens with Alex soliciting Graham to join the "Alex Initiative" for that night's commander game, in attempt to gather a group of allies to guarantee victory. Graham refuses his offer, and Alex then asks James to join. James, too, refuses, saying that he is not playing that night, instead opting to construct a cube with some of his old cards.
Graham, Kathleen, Alex, Paul, and Jer sit down to begin their commander game, slightly frustrated by the small size of the table. As with the previous commander game in In Command, they begin with a roll call of their decks.
- Jer is playing a deck called "Now You See Me, Now You Don't", and is once again intentionally vague about its meaning.
- Kathleen is playing a faerie-themed deck that she calls "Doodooloodoodoo..." (an attempt to sing the song "Flight of the Bumblebee").
- Alex's deck is called "Mountain Men", referring to his commander's ability to make "Mountain" cards into creatures.
- Paul and Graham both bought the same preconstructed deck, both on the basis of the fact that the commander is a "Bird Wizard".
Jer's deck quickly reveals the meaning of its name when, for various reasons, none of his exceedingly powerful creatures can be targeted by spells or abilities. The other four players begin to gang up on him, and Alex capitalizes on the alliances to further promote the "Alex Initiative". While initially reluctant, Graham, Kathleen, and Paul realize that they have to unify under Alex to defeat Jer. However, Jer continues to have a consistently lucky draw, resisting some of their most effective attacks. At the conclusion of the video, he uses a Planeswalker ability to restart the entire game, leaving the ultimate conclusion unknown. When the pizza Graham orders for the group arrives, he and Kathleen pull out a retractable lief in the table, to the frustration of the others who found the small size of the play space irritating.
Meanwhile, Cam joins James at the latter's house to begin constructing a cube. Not wanting to spend a lot of money or time acquiring new cards, James has resolved to build a "pauper cube" of exclusively "Common" cards. However, as their discussion progresses, the idea evolves into a "backdraft" cube, created from the most worthless possible cards assembled in such a manner so that it is difficult to build a cohesive deck at all. In order to fetch a card needed to complete it, James eventually ventures into the Moonbase (which is being fumigated for an unknown but apparently horrific reason).
