It’s a huge boon when building a new deck, acting as a guideline on what cards you should add to fill out a deck or which cards to cut so you can get down to 99. It’s also a great tool for tuning existing decks, uncovering potential flaws in your deck that you can improve. Even though EDHREC organizes typal and theme pages separately, the layout of these pages is identical. The theme pages on EDHREC encompass decks built for specific strategies or mechanics.
This has been a really basic guide for how to build a commander deck, but I’m not stopping here. Be on the lookout for future articles that will include topics like choosing the right commander for you, becoming a better deckbuilder, and how to tweak your mana base. If you’re interested in building decks on a budget, you can always check out my other series, Brew For Your Buck, here on EDHREC. 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).
This includes its mana cost, activated abilities, mana production, and any other instances of a colored mana symbol. So, if your commander costs only green to cast, but has an activated ability that costs or produces red mana, then that commander’s color identity is both red and green. Once you’ve got your theme, you need to flush out the deck itself. As a general rule of thumb, you want somewhere between 33 and 42 lands in a Commander deck. Lands that generate more than one colour of mana or that have special abilities are always a great shout. Ramp spells are sorceries or instants that help you ramp up your mana base more quickly.
Four-player Commander battles featuring a new theme every week. One of the most useful and interesting features on Archidekt is the Compare Decks tool. This feature allows users to compare any two decks they have access to. This can be fun, just to see how your deck compares to another person’s. It can also be an extremely helpful way to see things you missed. The compare decks tool is available in the top right corner of the deck page.
Can You Put Your Commander in the Graveyard?
A lot of groups find infinite combos annoying, boring, or otherwise unfun to play against. If the majority of the group agrees, decks that rely on infinite combos won’t be allowed anymore. Yes, any time your commander would be sent to the graveyard from anywhere, you get to choose whether you let it actually go into the graveyard or have it go back to the command zone. Most decks have the commander return to the command zone so they can play it again as soon as possible. But there are plenty of graveyard-focused decks that find it advantageous to put their own commanders in the graveyard.
Since I’m making a battlecruiser deck, and sticking to tribal, I avoided any of the standard ramp, via Elves such as Llannowar Elves or Fyndhorn Elves. This also means even if I start out slow, I can do an early board wipe of small creatures to catch up. Commander is a singleton, or highlander (there can be only one) format, so each card in the deck must possess a unique name. This does mean that some cards essentially have duplicates, such as [[Kodama’s Reach]] and and [[Cultivate]]. While these cards texts are identical, because the cards have different names, a commander deck could include 1 of each.
You can also use the Magic Online interface if you have an account if you’re looking for an easier way to build your deck. I know it looks like Excel, but MTGO does a fine job when it comes to looking for cards and deckbuilding. That said, maybe you’re like me and you’re excited about the format but don’t quite know where to start because you have so many doubts about deckbuilding and deck ratios. Don’t worry, today I’m going to cover everything on how to build a Commander deck and the best ways to get started in the format. I’ll guide you through each part of the deckbuilding process and can assure you that we’ll all know how to build a solid deck by the end of this guide.
This pairing also lets you incorporate an Aura theme into your deck. When building an Equipment deck, consider the following important components and try to make sure you don’t have too much of one type of card or too little of another. You can check out EDHREC’s Equipment Theme page for more ideas on how to build an Equipment deck. While many EDH decks will play one or more Equipment cards, it’s very possible and in fact pretty rewarding to build an EDH deck mtg combo with Equipment as the main theme. With that math in mind, if you want your deck to reliably make 4 land drops in the first 4 turns of the game, you should start with lands and tweak from there. Check out the final version this Kykar, Wind’s Fury deck and see the results of one Digital Deckbuilding process.
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There are some simple rocks all at two mana and the cost reducers consist of a Goblin Electromancer, Rowan Scholar of Sparks, and Baral Chief of Compliance. For example, you might have a ramp package for all your mana rocks or a board wipe package. Looking at packages instead of individual cards makes decisions easier when it comes to revising your deck in the future. For the purpose of this guide, I want to build a deck that is mid-power.
Rituals, while often thought to be underwhelming in Commander, can actually be quite powerful in the right deck. Mana-doublers like Caged Sun, Mana Reflection, and High Tide are backbreaking against your opponent. Black can increase black mana with Cabal Coffers, Crypt Ghast and Liliana of the Dark Realms.
Color Identity
I would try to include about eight to twelve cards that fall into the ramp category. You can see what cards that most Elf decks play by going to the typal page for Elves on EDHREC. We see a couple of “lords” (creatures that enhance other creatures of a certain type) like Leaf-Crowned Visionary or more effects that can pump all your creatures, like Overrun.
I’m talking about Lifelink, Flying, Trample, Double Strike, and many more abilities that make attacking creatures more threatening. Each time you equip a creature with more keywords, you get more value out of the mana you invested in casting and activating your equipment. These three cards are very effective at helping you build your “Voltron” threat. Aside from Hammer of Nazahn and Bruenor, there are several other ways in the format to get around Colossus Hammer’s restrictive equip cost, which I’ll get to later. Both Thran Power Suit and Hammer of Nazahn get more powerful the more equipment you play, so let’s dive deeper into the subtype and look at more commonly played weapons in these decks. You don’t need to play a synergistic commander to run Equipment cards in your deck, but I highly recommend you do so to get the most out of your theme.
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. Even if you already know how to play Commander, you might be new and unsure as to how to make your own mark on the format. Here’s what you need to know to build your own Commander deck.