Like a bored student with a packet of math worksheets, I’m fiddling with the staples. The cards that at one point in my understanding of deck construction, were not only advisable, but integral to allowing my strategy to function. Given their tendency toward being colourless, thereby fitting in every deck list, artifacts are the most common card type found in this category, and none more so than mana rocks and protection pieces.

There’s nothing quite like a creature hitting the field, only to be answered before you can think to the turn ahead. Destroy, Exile, Bounce or a temporary phasing. There are many ways to answer a threat. Moving away from blue and its archive of counterspells playing with the stack, the remaining colours contend with the battlefield. You can rid yourself of a threat if you play the proper cards at the proper time, unless your opponent has considered safeguards.

Playing Magic in the mid-aughts meant the protection pieces in my decks were unique to their given strategy or omitted altogether with a prayer that I could overwhelm my opponent before they crippled my gameplan. Creature protection had been in the game for years, with shroud, indestructible and regeneration acting as various forms of protection, though they were each saddled with a drawback. Then came the all important Swiftfoot boots in M12.

The pair of galoshes are far from the only playable card kicking around the third set in the revamped core imitative. Nearly a hundred first printings debuted, with several living beyond bulk boxes. The big kahuna of the lot is, of course, Grand Abolisher. Reading contemporaneous accounts, this card was pretty hyped by outlets like Starcity Games, remarking on the practicality of a creature that can save your board from an immediate response. I was tempted to return to my beloved clones and see how copy effects had evolved since Alpha, but no card has shifted how I think about protection pieces and the necessity of a card quite like Swiftfoot boots.

While technically not the first instance of hexproof within the game, M12 brought the effect in as a keyword, indicating its continued prevalence and foreshadowing its incorporation in future set design.  Returning to the game in 2022, like many players, I had to catch up on the norms of Commander-centric play. My last deck was a grindy Orzhov allies deck crafted at the outset of Battle for Zendikar. I didn’t yet understand that Commander had evolved beyond battlecruiser kitchen table Magic.

One of the first pieces of advice I got, after being introduced to the absurd power of Arcane Signet, was to pick myself up a pair of boots. Have an extra mana on hand when casting your commander and, if the timing is right, save it from most interaction until an untimely edict or board wipe. Thanks to an infusion in the general supply by Brothers’ War — and a late stock-up in Foundations — I’ve never been hurting for a pair of Swiftfoot to throw into my deck. In short, they became a reliable staple in my deckbuilding process.

I doubt I am the only player robotically throwing in a pair of Swiftfoot Boots when they begin brainstorming a new list. There is a reason why, despite their uncommon rarity and constant reprints, the boots still command a couple of bucks if you’re looking to pick up a pair. Hexproof for your most valuable creature — often your Commander — and haste out a meaningful attack trigger one turn earlier. Wipes still exist, but saving yourself from targeted removal is nothing to disregard. But check online to see the conversation on Swiftfoot boots oscillate between being a vital piece in a player’s toolbox and an overrated trap for new players.

As it’s usually the case, the reality sits somewhere in the middle. There are better, more situational methods of protection that fall outside the first line of inclusions on EDHREC. Then there are the edge cases and whataboutisms to set the boots up as three mana and a card slot wasted in your deck. All of this, including my own personal experiences playing in a reliable pod and at my LGS are anecdata. Depending on what side of the argument you fall on, there are plenty of instances where Swiftfoot boots would either be the most reliable piece on your board or not worth the cardboard its printed on.

But do we create decks to be formulaic, impenetrable machines?

With an unlimited budget and time, I doubt I could produce a deck that plans for every contingency or outcome — I’m a teacher and Magic player, not Sherlock Holmes. Often in card evaluation, especially after a card has hit a certain level of ubiquity, the conversation shifts to picking apart everything wrong with a card. Whether it can be destroyed, bounced, costs too much or is in any feasible way not first in its class, it’s deemed trash. In a game influenced by power creep, it’s natural for these conversations to happen, but ‘good enough’ still has its place in decks. This doesn’t mean, though they need to go in every deck.

The trouble with staples is that they can quickly become crutches in deck design. Commander has become more competitive in comparison to its roots as an ambling format for nigh-unplayable cards. What we risk falling into though, when feeling pressured to play a streamlined and faultless deck, is an overreliance on the same dependable handful of cards rather than letting our creativity take over.

 There was a time in late 2023, where my brewing hit a fervent mechanized pace. I was playing nearly every week and inspired by the decks at my LGS, synapses alight with possible commanders to bring next week. I had adopted Moxfield as my workshop, spending the early hours of the morning while my girlfriend slept to craft another deck to add to the growing collection; pretty soon, though, similarities between them began to arise.

Repeat a task enough times and a rhythm begins to form. Faced with an empty page or deck list, I would habitually add the same base package of cards to form the foundation for any given commander. If you’re at all familiar with the handful of cards rolled out by WOTC with every Secret Lair announcement you can probably guess the initial slate of inclusions: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Command Tower, the relevant talismans and Swiftfoot Boots — or Lightning Greaves if I’m feeling luxurious. Between my land base and ‘necessary’ staples, decks began to build themselves. The fun of brewing, finding the cards that fit a particular niche strategy or gameplan, was replace with a rote sense of fitting the same pieces together in a puzzle I had done before.

In current card design, Wizards is all too happy to print and sell easy to solve gameplans and self-contained engines. For a certain strand of player, either the competitively minded or one picking up the rules and intricacies of the game, it is important to have options available to lessen the mental load of shuffling up for a game of Magic — but this shouldn’t be the only viable way to play.

I’ll never toss every copy of Swiftfoot Boots from my decks, a cardboard Luddite railing against ubiquitous pieces of optimization, but I have recentered my thinking about cards I used to think of as staples. Brewing is one of my favourite aspects of the game, and I rob myself of that joy in the face of a frictionless gameplan when I become too dependent on the same collection of cards. I’ll spend the hours stewing over every piece I put in a deck rather than selecting a commander relying on generic staples to fill out the rest.