How to build a Commander deck in Magic: The Gathering
Clout of Dominus is basically free at one mana as the spirit Kykar creates will be sufficient to recoup the cost of playing it. Misdirection, Narset’s Reversal, and Silence are all great ways of stopping our opponents’ interaction and allow us to have some peace and quiet to cast our spells. Commander deck, The Motherlode is an energy generator, solid sized creature, and has the ability to take care of disruptive non-basic lands. When it does that, it also removes makes that players non-flyers unable to block until end of turn, opening up that opponent for an alpha strike. I try to build my commander decks around a singular theme or strategy that’s built to maximize my commander’s strategy. This is like the above tip, with the critical difference that this is how you translate your commander’s desires to a win.
You could build the deck around just one, but a mixture of a few will make your deck stand up better against different commander players. Your deck could be built around a key mechanic like doing damage to a player whenever one of your creatures deals combat damage. Or your deck could make interesting use of the exile mechanic to remove and return creatures to play for bonuses such as creating flying creature tokens like the Phantom Premonition deck does. I think this Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar deck is in the graveyard combo section where you use your commander and its synergies to create board presence while abusing the graveyard to reuse your spells. This is a reference to the ’80s animated television series where five giant cats team up to form a super robot known as “Voltron” to defeat villains.
Ideally you want somewhere between 36 to 40 lands in a Commander deck. You can also look for cycle lands to make sure you don’t flood, and some MDFCs that can serve either as their front side spell or as a land. Luckily Rakdos has the best removal spells of all the color combos, so you just need to pick between 10 to 15.
This is why I suggest we don’t focus on individual cards, rather on individual packages. If you sit down with a fine-tuned, well-made deck and I’ve just got a pile of 100 cards I randomly pulled out of a drawer, you’ll probably win but it won’t be that fun. You can put Doubling Season in this spot too, but Aether Refinery is a lot cheaper moneywise, and does what you’re wanting, while providing an energy outlet for big tokens.
Choosing your commander is the most important part of where to start, since your commander will lead you where you want to end up most of the time. It seems counter-intuitive, but restricting what you can play by establishing rules (to follow or break) actually makes it so the players have an increased opportunity for creativity. I’m going to use this as my first opportunity to plug a personal belief of mine.
Tip #3: Build Around Your Commander’s Desires
If a player has been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of a game, that player loses the game. That may influence which commander you choose and the strategy you choose for your deck. A card’s color identity refers to which colored mana symbols appear on it. For example, [c]Kess, Dissident Mage[/c]’s color identity is blue-black-red, because its mana cost consists of those three colors. [c]Kenrith, the Returned King[/c]’s color identity is actually all five colors, even though it only requires white mana to be cast. This is because it has five activated abilities, each one costing a different color.
And make sure to look for some rocks or enchantments that can replace themselves in the late game, like Mind Stone. Balthor the Defiled, Karador, Ghost Chieftain, and Chainer, Nightmare Adept are the best commanders that fit into these decks. Sliver Queen, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, and General Tazri are examples of commanders that fall into this category. As you may expect, tribal decks rely on synergies between creatures of the same type and their “lords” to make them bigger. There are plenty of combos in the format, but the commanders that stand by being combo engines are Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, and Arcum Dagsson. If you find that your deck gets stuck without enough things to do or draws into more draw spells, adjust this number accordingly.
Tip #8: Your EDH Deck Needs More Lands and Ramp
In Magic, a tutor is a card that allows you to search your library for another card and either put it in your hand or at the top of your library. Moreover, apart from the optimal ratios and all the math, I would like to discuss some different categories like synergy and flavor. Because of this you need to know what kind of deck you want to build. As you will see with the last two, they overlap into other packages. Baral provides card selection and Rowan lets us deal damage.
An updated deck-building template for Commander – notes from The Command Zone’s recent podcast.
[c]Cyclonic Rift[/c], on the other hand, hardly ever gets played in two-player games of Magic, but it’s one of the best cards in Commander. One last thing to consider when you are building your deck is any special rules your playgroup likes to follow. Games can be great if everyone enjoys them and discussing what your friends like or hate is crucial to get the best playing experience. If you would like some guidance on casual house rules that may provide a better player experience you can read my article about casual playgroup rules. Last but not least, let’s see what my final list looks like after all that work!
A 9 or 10 is always stronger than a 6, but it might not be better when you’re actually playing with your friends. Understanding the power level you want to play gives you a strong baseline for the meta mtg cards you can and can’t include, like deciding the colors you want to play. But a lower-powered deck will ramp with cards like Cultivate, Harrow, and Hour of Promise.
However, it is important to remember that lands are not the only ways to ramp into higher costed spells. One of the things that makes Commander a unique deck-building challenge is that you need to figure out how to balance the things that are fun with the things that are necessary. My golden rule about it is to try to find cards that meet both requirements.
You’ve focused your deck around a singular theme to put yourself in a position to play it, increased your land and ramp counts to reliably cast your win condition, and cast it faster than your opponents. Because you aren’t reliant on one win condition, your opponents need more than a single spell to disrupt your gameplan. If you run wraths in your Commander deck, try to make them finishers instead of stallers, which often means you want them to be on theme with your commander. To break it down further, let’s see what your instants are doing, rather than how many instants you’re playing. That’s more countermagic than the average Commander deck needs. If there’s a type of card you need more of, countermagic can be the first thing to go.