Volodex, Commander Companion App

The volodex is a CLI companion app to discover new creatures for your Volo, Guide to Monsters Commander deck. It helps you discover and find creatures whose types are not currently in your decklist.

Table of contents

• Prerequisites
• Getting Started
• Usage
• Caching

Note

This code was written specifically to solve my unique requirements, use cases and workflows. It may not follow the most optimal practices or be universally applicable.

If you find the code useful for your purposes, feel free to use or modify it as needed. However, I cannot guarantee its suitability for any use case other than my own. Use at your own discretion! 😊

Prerequisites

Before using the volodex, you will need:

• python >= 3.x

Dependencies

The volodex uses the following python packages:

• click
• more-itertools
• requests
• mtg-parser
• textual
• tqdm

You don't need to manually install them, this is done when executing ./install.sh.

Cards database is fetched from the mtgjson.com api.

Getting Started

Install the app

Create the virtual environment and install the dependencies:

$ ./install.sh

Setup the card database

Download the card database from mtgjson.com and filter it:

$ ./volodex.sh download
$ ./volodex.sh update

See also Caching.

Launch the application

Launch the cli volodex application:

$ ./volodex.sh run [DECKLIST_URL]

If the volodex is launched with a decklist, creature types will be filtered to only show the ones that are not already included in the deck.

If the volodex is launched with no argument, all creatures elligible for a Volo, Guide to Monsters Commander deck will be listed.

The volodex relies on mtg-parser for parsing decklists and thus, supports the same deck building websites.

Usage

Interface

The volodex user interface is composed of several panels.

1. Filters (top panel): Allows you to filter cards that contain specific words (eg. draw, token, enters, etc.). Press enter to validate and update the available creatures.
2. Creature types (left panel): Lists available creature types and the number of creatures for this type. If a creature has multiple types, its counted several times.
3. Creatures (center panel): Lists the creatures and their mana value for the selected type. Several "add-ons" can be displayed at the end of the creature name:
   • '+' this creature has multiple sub-types
   • '*' this creature is legendary
4. Creature details (right panel): Displays basic information for the selected creature (name, mana value, type, power/toughness, oracle text).
5. Debug (bottom panel): Will probably be removed at some point. Displays basic debugging information.

Features and Commands

Here's a list of the different interactions:

• tab: Cycle through panels
• q: Quit the volodex
• a: Toggle sorting of creature types between alphabetical order and number of creatures in the type.
• c: Toggle sorting of creatures between mana value and popularity (EDHRec Rank).
• v: Opens the scryfall page for the selected creature in your browser.

Note

Apart from tab, the other interactions cannot be done while the focus is on the Filter panel.

Caching

The volodex creates two local cache files.

• ./AtomicCards.json.xz is fetched from mtgjson.com when running the ./volodex.sh download command. This file contains the list of all mtg cards.
• ./volodex.json is created/updated when running the ./volodex.sh update command. This file only contains the relevant cards for a Volo, Guide to Monsters Commander deck.