How to build a Commander deck in Magic: The Gathering

And you could certainly play the deck like that if you wanted. That said, here’s an example of what I would add in place of a few Mountains. If you get here and you have a very high or very low mana curve, you will have to add or remove lands accordingly. And remember that all of this can be translated to MTGA Historic Brawl. If you’re looking for a tool to keep track of your decks, remember to use Arena Tutor. It’ll help you with some statistics that’ll make your deckbuilding decisions that much easier.

Magic and its cost over the years

The commander also dictates what colours you can use in your deck. If your commander is a Red and White creature, then you can only have Red, White and Colourless cards in your deck. If you have a friend who’s opinion you value on deck building it would be the perfect time to get their input. Pay attention to what is causing you to not achieve your goal and address it. Eventually you will have a deck that is fun to play that you created from scratch. The first and most important part of deck building is to figure out what you want the deck to do.

The Easiest Way To Build A Commander Deck – Quick And Simple Method

That’s why you need to add a mix of spot removal and board wipes to help. Before choosing your commander you might want to know the most common Commander archetypes. Commander is a great format where a lot of players spend time battling each other and having fun with their favorite commanders and brewers. You can see this at your local game store or from your favorite streamers. Different colours will have different removal, so Black and White are going to be able to use cards that destroy and exile. Blue will have to counter spells or put creatures back in their owner’s hands.

When it comes to removal, you want to avoid spells that dish out small quantities of damage, designed to pick off tinier creatures. Instead, include flexible removal that can deal with many different types of threats, as well as board wipes that can devastate your opponents, and help you claw back from the brink of defeat. I find that it’s hard to know where to start when you consider a deck as a single 100-card entity.

Let’s say you know you love dragons but you’re not sure which commander would best suit that love. Well then, you’ve got your theme, so you just need to find a commander. Likewise, sometimes you’ll see a legendary creature you adore but be unsure how to build around them, in that case, you need to find a theme. If the game lasts 10 turns, and half of your nonland cards cost that much mana, you certainly aren’t casting many of them and they’ll just rot in your hand.

But, most of the times these will redirect Instants, Sorceries, and/or Abilities as opposed to permanents. Red has access to a good amount of cards with this effect. Modern Horizons 3 brings a heaping helping of exciting new cards to Modern. Rekindle your love for classic reprints including allied fetch lands and discover new power-packed cards like double-sided Planeswalkers you’re sure to flip for. A player that’s been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses the game.

Commander Deck Building Template

If it’s combat, then is it voltron damage, tokens, battlecruier? Once you have a strategy selected, ensure that you’re adding cards to the deck which actually help move this forwards. As I mentioned above, we simply set 35 lands aside without worrying about what lands. Now is the time to tweak your mana base to accommodate the spells you added. The deck today is simple since it’s only a single color.

Ready to play right out of the box, each deck contains 3 foil Legendary Creature cards. The aforementioned Cabal Therapist is actually a good place to be here, as by the point it’s online, you know exactly what you want to take. No, it’s not actual Cabal Therapy, but because it’s a permanent sacrifice outlet, it’s actually a bit nicer — even if we can only use it once a turn. Ashnod’s Altar is one of the best sacrifice outlets in the game. Culling the Weak also gives us a single boost of mana. Say you’re looking at the finance side of Magic and you suddenly see some action on a card that seems out of the ordinary.

Is it hard to build a Commander deck?

It feels pretty crummy to play your commander and an opponent removes it right away. If you’re one of those folks, by all means add more lands. Again, this How to Build a Command Deck guide and the Commander Deck Building Template are by no means hard rules that must be followed. In order to get the card draw, you need a creature to enter the battlefield under your control whose power is 2 or less. Having a decent amount of card draw will also (hopefully) ensure you are able to not miss any land drops.

We’re probably going to want to go to 5 of these cards that are dedicated to this effect, with others that are ETB triggers on creatures. In this case, we’re talking about Pilfering Imp, Thoughtseize, Duress, and Cabal Therapist, and Thought-Knot Seer. You can look up the card and look to see if any trends are developing, like if any of the newer commanders are starting to use the card. Maybe you’d like to jump on that card before the price jumps up considerably. If no trend appears, you can just assume that the sudden popularity is coming from another format that may have gotten a meta shift with a recent release.

Solve the case of the Murders at Karlov Manor with these brand-new Commander decks, releasing with the set on February 9, 2024. Four new Commander decks (and Collector’s Edition Commander decks) will hit stores when Modern Horizons 3 releases June 14, 2024! Check out all the details and decklists here once they’re previewed. These things matter for some combos, but we may just get to ping our opponents to death before one of them happens. To stop graveyard shenanigans from our opponents, we have a single Bojuka Bog.

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 edh deck a fine job when it comes to looking for cards and deckbuilding. The mana distribution of your deck depends on how many colored sources you run and what your curve looks like. Ideally you want somewhere between 36 to 40 lands in a Commander deck.