To start, I think a coin flip decides who goes first, and the game begins with each player drawing five cards
I can give you real information, stories, and advice on the vast majority of cards out there
Using extra ink to move your characters to Motunui before sacrificing them in a challenge is also a great strategy, since every one of your characters that's banished there will move to your inkwell instead of your discard pile
If youre playing a commander like Lathril, Blade of the Elves and youre already running the aforementioned Thousand-Year Elixir in order to benefit from tap abilities right away, you might consider adding this planeswalker for redundancy
According to EDHREC.com, a full 18% of Commander decks registered there run it (88,947 as of the writing of this article, which actually seems underplayed to me...) which is a big chunk
You may choose to put the card into your hand rather than onto the battlefield even if an opponent controls more lands than you