You will need enough mana, card draw, and answers to ensure you can actually play. These categories will actually take up 50% (or more) of the cards in your deck. We’re talking about [c]Wrath of God[/c], [c]Merciless Eviction[/c], [c]Cyclonic Rift[/c], and other such cards. Oftentimes, there will be dozens of creatures, artifacts, and enchantments on the battlefield.
Every Commander deck should include lots of multicolor lands, along with typical utility lands like Rogue’s Passage, Reliquary Tower, Thespian’s Stage and more. Our Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck’s core engine cards cost an average of five mana. Our deck wants to cast them as quickly as possible so we can start advancing our game plan. The purpose of ramp is to let you cast your important spells a turn earlier than normal. A Rampant Growth cast on turn 2 or 3 means we can cast The Gitrog Monster on turn 4 instead of 5, assuming we hit our first 4 land drops (don’t skimp on lands!).
These are commanders that have unique abilities which you’ll want to take advantage of by building your deck around them. Creatures like [c]Yisan, the Wandered Barn[/c] and [c]Urza, Lord High Artificer[/c] are two great combo commanders. Once you’ve got your first draft of the deck, I suggest you lay it out in stacks organized by mana value. By the way, Archidekt has a feature that allows you to do just that! You may realize that you added a bunch of cool cards to the deck, but you didn’t realize they were all 6+ mana to cast. “Hate” cards are another type of card that combat a specific archetype.
Point-removal spells like Swords to Plowshares and wraths, also known as board wipes (named for Wrath of God) are what I’d consider to be offensive interaction. Yu-Gi-Oh is an expansive game, and some of its best decks are based on other famous media. Utility lands are always valuable to have and tons of mana for the late game is also valued. The nature of land bases hasn’t changed for Brawl compared to its Commander predecessor in that respect. Fixing and ramp are commander deck terms used for cards or effects that make it easier to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to lands.
Artifact decks are a popular strategy that can really be hurt by something like Manglehorn. I usually play decks that focus on the graveyard (another popular strategy), so Rest in Peace gives me nightmares. You also want to ensure you have the right number of color sources to cast your spells. Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice might be your four-drop commander, but without a lot of different sources of her colors, turn four is a pipe dream. One great reason to use Archidekt is that it can help you figure this out.
How to Choose the Best Lands & Spells in Commander
That may influence which commander you choose and the strategy you choose for your deck. Brian played Magic intermittently between 2003 and 2017 when he fully embraced his love for Commander. Finding ways to maximize the value of each piece of cardboard in the deck is one of his favorite things to explore, especially if it involves putting lands in the graveyard! Outside of Magic, Brian works as a consultant in the marine industry, turning his passion for boats and ships into a career.
That doesn’t sound like a big difference at first glance, but getting your engine online a turn faster can often have an enormous snowball effect in Commander. A good goal for our Muldrotha deck is to consistently cast a ramp spell in the first 3 turns of each game. Without mulligans, you’ll need 14 ramp cards in your deck to have an 80% chance of casting at least one in the first 3 turns of the game. That’s not amazing, but adding our free mulligan increases those odds. You can bump those odds up to 90% by running 20 ramp cards but that also increases the risk of flooding out.
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When building your Commander deck, pay attention to the mana curve. The mana curve represents the distribution of cards based on their mana value (formerly converted mana cost). Look to have a mix of low, medium, and high-cost cards to ensure a balance of early, mid, and late-game plays. Analyzing your mana curve helps you find the optimal balance between lands and spells, which in turn increases your deck’s consistency. When building a Commander deck, it’s crucial to decide the right number of lands to include.
Step 1: Choose Your Commander
I hope this quick read has been of interest to you, and that it helps as a base to understand what kind of Commander decks exist and provides a starting point on how to build your own EDH deck. This was a fun experience and I can’t wait to rent my new Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar deck on Magic Online. Luckily Rakdos has the best removal spells of all the color combos, so you just need to pick between 10 to 15. As the name suggests, reanimator decks rely on graveyard synergies and are built around bringing one (or a lot of) creatures to the battlefield. Now that you’ve got your interaction and a rough idea for your land base, you’re left with around half your deck left to fill out. If you have multiple permanents that discount artifacts, the effects will stack.
Now that you have all your potential cards picked out you need to start assembling your deck. The tricky part comes in narrowing your card pool down to what you can afford versus the purpose of each card inside the deck. If you search “food” on ScryFall it’ll show you the cards that contain the word, and you can also specify some other properties like identity.
Maybe you’re just window shopping for a commander from the most recent set. You might be starting from scratch or starting from a preconstructed product. Either way, EDHREC provides intuitive menus and popularity rankings to help you find the leader for your next 100-card pile.
If your deck plays all the most popular cards, then that deck will probably be expensive. Once again, I suggest you playtest your deck a few times and notice if you often have too much or too little mana. Playtesting is always the best way to find the best balance of cards. If you really enjoy particular abilities like vigilance or hexproof, then why not build a deck around a combination of them?