Building Your Commander

Building your commander deck is one of the most fun parts of the format.However looking through the various options for you to use, or even break, your commander can be a difficult task as well. More because of the fact of what you need or want to use for this deck, what kind of win conditions are going to help you the most? How much mana ramp will you need to properly use this deck? How much of one thing is too much for your deck? We will be discussing this in detail, and at the end of this article I will also provide links to websites that can also assist in your deckbuilding.

Ramp and Lands

Let us start with one of the more important parts of the deck, your mana base. This being your way of casting spells is going to take up a third of your deck, if not a little more. We will start at 34 lands and work from there for our example. First, we should look at our commander's colors. Single colored and 5-color are arguably the hardest mana bases for commander, seeing as a large number of utility lands are multi-colored in the single color case, and for 5-color there is a tendency of not being able to get all of your colors. If you are running single colored deck, you will probably be looking at 28-30 basic lands and the rest being utility lands. For 5-color, unless you are running all of the original dual lands and shock lands, you are probably looking at around 3-5 basics of each type.

The other part of this, being ramp, is a little more difficult than just the land base itself. Let’s define ramp. Ramp is any form of mana accelerant either artifacts that produce mana (known as mana rocks), creatures who produce, or let you find mana (Mana dorks), or spells that let you search for mana (ramp spells). What makes this difficult is the colors that you are playing. There is a decent amount of mana rocks no matter what color you are, however, spells and creatures will be scarce outside of white and green. Green has the most search for land spells in the game, followed by white having enchantments and some creatures that allow them the land search. Red has more unconventional mana accelerants, such as Seething Song and Desperate Ritual, which give you mana one time, or things such as Infernal Plunge, and Skirk Prospector which give you mana at the cost of your creatures. Black and blue have arguably the lowest amount of ramp, where black gets dark ritual and a few “search for swamp” cards, and blue having the most cards with the affinity mechanic.

There are also some non-ramp options to get your higher cost spells cast faster. If you are in a tribal deck you have cards that reduce your specific creature types, such as Heralds Horn, and Urza’s Incubator. The medallions for specific colors is another option, in the form of Emerald, Pearl, Sapphire, Jet, and Ruby Medallion or the Monuments from Amonkhet block, being potentially better than the medallions since they can provide auxiliary effects outside of mana reduction.

Some of your best options for mana accelerant, no matter what colors you are, would be Sol Ring, Thran Dynamo, Commander’s Sphere and Armillary Sphere. If price isn’t a concern, better options are Mana Vault and Mana Crypt.

Win Conditions

Win conditions are any and all things that can assist the quick win for your deck, either with a combo (being infinite or not) or just one or two cards that push you right over the top. This is a bit less complex than the ramp issue, because of our commander archetypes and assessment we can properly choose a few cards that can get your commander pushing through that 21 damage or swarming the board quicker than your opponent can cast their board removal.

We will start with the commander damage plan, these commanders are usually put under the “Voltron” archetype, based on stacking one creature high and getting them in either unblocked or with trample. Some of the most important parts of these are your artifacts and enchantments. Overall, you can get the artifacts such as the Mirrodin Swords (Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Feast and Famine, etc.) and stack your commander high with protection from x two colors per sword and getting auxiliary effects from dealing damage to the opposing player. Other useful and important cards, even if you aren’t playing this style, are cards such as Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves which both give your creature haste, and either Hexproof or Shroud respectively. Based on your colors though, we have plenty of enchantments to look at such as White giving lifelink, green or red giving trample and haste, blue being predominantly a flying color, and black giving deathtouch and a mechanic called Intimidate or Fear, which forces the opposing player to only be able to block with artifact creatures or same color creatures.

Next, we will discuss the swarm plan. There are several ways to accomplish this, most of them being tribal. One of the main things that we will look at (Mostly for Elf tribal and Goblin tribal) is the Thousand-Year Elixir. This artifact allows creatures to activate abilities as soon as they come into play. With it we can cast Krenko (a red goblin commander) and tap him immediately without having to have Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves on field, and getting to double our goblins immediately. On the other side for this we have our elf tribal commanders, who will most of the time be accelerating our mana, when they are not making a creature of ours as big as the number of elves we control. Thousand-Year Elixir coupled with Illusionist bracers can very easily and very quickly overwhelm the board and, if your creatures have haste, quickly demolish your opponents. The other options for the swarm plan are things such as Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives, and Doubling Season effects, doubling our tokens. Endless Ranks of the Dead and Liliana the Last Hope, which together can quadruple our zombie count in a turn by themselves, and the artifact Eldrazi Monument which gives our creatures indestructible and flying at the cost of sacrificing a creature, which is not that difficult given our token generation.

Our final conventional win plan is spell-slinging and mill. I am coupling these two for a few reasons, one is because they play few creatures that will be interacting with your opponent in ways other than defending or attacking, and because they are predominantly cast based decks. These decks will rely more on combos than the other two decks. The spellslinger decks will play as many mana reduction creatures and artifacts as they can, and play as many copy target spell cards as they can as well, potentially working with the storm mechanic. Mill, on the other hand, will be working specifically on putting the opponent’s cards from their deck into their graveyard. There are a few ways of doing this between enchantments that force opponents to mill when they cast spells or attack, or creatures you control tapping or attacking that will force them to mill a large portion of cards, but with such a large toughness that unless the creature has deathtouch they won’t die if they are blocked. A final way to do this is with the creature Phenax, God of Deception. Who gives all of your creatures the ability to tap to make a target player mill for their toughness, and paired with Thousand-Year Elixir it can be quick and devastating. Being capable of doing this at any time and either removing the cards that were placed on top by the opponents scry or tutor, or forcing something to the top of their deck and then forcing them to mill said card.

Our final section will be on something a bit more fun, unconventional win conditions. There are over 20 different cards that have been printed and are legal to play in commander that have an alternative win condition. Some include Mortal Combat which lets you win the game if you have 20 or more creatures in your graveyard, Felidar Sovereign which wins you the game if you have 40 or more life, and Lab Maniac which lets you win the game instead of losing if you have no cards left in your deck. Just remember to not go overboard with these, trying to win by alternate means is fun, but forcing too many will distract you from the overall deck building.

How Much is too Much?

Now even though we discussed a lot of great things to have in your deck, we need to address a big potential problem, how much is too much. This question is pointed in many directions, between it being a how much is too much for your mana curve, and how much is too much for certain cards and mechanics. Your deck should always run land and ramp, if available, but you should have a max of around 42 combined of the two. This is because in late game drawing more ramp spells can become redundant. Granted, it can thin your deck, but if you are looking at a board state of twenty-something elves to your three creatures, you’ll definitely want to be seeing something else at that point.

Even though win conditions are an important point of deckbuilding, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with them. Keep your sights on two or three good choice win conditions, but make your deck able to function without those cards. If you build an entire deck around something like Maze’s End, and have nothing as a backup plan, it could just as easily get turned into a mountain or exiled and you would be stuck there with no other way to win. It’s better to have a deck that, it’d be nice if you could swing in with Marit Lage but you have other things that can end the game if he gets exiled or put back into your hand!

Remember to be mindful of things such as counterspells and drawing spells as well, drawing and countering are amazing, keeping your opponent from casting a wrath at the right time, or drawing cards to dig for your win condition is great, but unless your commander is specifically built to draw cards and deal damage because of you drawing, you would want to keep your draw spells down to something around 5-8 and same with your counterspells.

Deck Help Resources

This should be enough of a guideline to help properly build your deck around. However, there are a large number of resources that players can use to assist in the deckbuilding process. Some of my favorite are EDHRec, because they not only give a percentage basis of cards use and synergy to your commander but they also make very insightful posts for commander players daily. Manabasecrafter, which, while it won’t tell you exact numbers of cards to use, can give you some lands that you may not have thought of before for your colors. The 8x8 Theory on Tumblr, because they give a very interesting mathematical approach to creating a commander deck and using this method can definitely give some inspiration for your deck and what it is supposed to do. Random Commander Generator, which can assist your choice of commander if you are stuck and don’t have a preference of who you build. Finally Tappedout or Archidekt, both are great decklist websites and they can provide you a good framework of what other people are using, and in some cases can give you ideas of cards that you wouldn’t naturally think of or sometimes cards that you have never heard of, and that is always a fun experience.

Choosing Your Commander

Commander, the format of chaos and fun. There are so many ways to play and build commander and if you find something you like you can definitely get hooked on this format. However, picking your commander is always a topic that comes up, whether new or veterened, that often sparks debate and conversation. We will be digging into this, this guide will direct players to a commander better suited for them.

Basics of Commander

Whether coming from standard, draft, or modern we have all cracked packs and gotten cards that don’t make any headway in modern or standard. Commander is most likely where this card will shine!

Starting off, let’s look at a current standard set Dominaria. There was something very specific about this set, the packs guaranteed legends. Legendary cards, namely creatures, are the backbone of commander. They will base what your entire deck is when it comes to color, and what you need to look at while building the deck. Your commander is defined by its color identity, which are any colors present on the card that are not in reminder text, such as the Extort mechanic. For example, Danitha Capashen, Paragon would be a mono-white commander.

Whereas Alesha, Who Smiles at Death would be Red, Black, and White.

Secondarily, we have three outstanding things about commander that are different than any other format. One is the deck itself, we are building a 100 card deck, 99 cards plus our commander. Number two, unless the card states otherwise, or it is a basic land you can only have a single copy of a card per commander deck. So Alesha can have as many Shadowborn Apostle, or Relentless Rats but can only have one Mortify.

And third, is the fact that commander has an alternate win condition built into the format called commander damage. Commander damage is any combat damage the commander deals to a single player tallied up, and if one commander deals 21 damage to you, you lose the game.

Last but not least, we have a few things to look at when finishing up a deck concept which are your mana curve, and your win conditions. If we have a lower curve(<4 majority) we want our land base to be around 32-34 plus things such as sol ring, swiftfoot boots, and our mana rocks and other ramp. If we have a high curve(5+ majority) we want our rocks, sol ring, swiftfoot boots, and somewhere between 35-38 lands. This will make it more likely for you to be capable of casting your high-cost cards and, with the lower end make it so you aren’t hitting too many lands which aren’t providing you more benefit.

Win cons are a bit more of a harder nut to crack, because different archetypes and commanders will want different win cons. For example, going back to Alesha and Danitha, Alesha wants creatures in the grave that she can cheat out and deal extra damage with, so she would be a more aggressive and graveyard-based deck, where Danitha has things that interact specifically with Auras and Equipment, so she wants to be stacked high with artifacts and enchantments to deal as much damage as possible.

Archetypes, Player Types, and You

How do we choose our commander though? How do we know what kind of deck we are building? Well, we start with what kind of decks you naturally play and build from there. Tappedout.net, and mtgTop8 both give archetypes such as aggro, control, and combo which can be used to categorize your deck. Aggro means that you are playing a deck where you are trying to get in and end the game as quick as possible. Control is, as its name would suggest, controlling whether it is controlling the board, your opponent’s hand, or their capability to play. A combo deck is a deck where cards directly interact with each other because of your deck type, or because of the way they are worded.

Now, the next issue is your player type, which are Johnny, Spike, and Timmy. People who are Spikes are the most competitive of the player types, looking for cards that are quick, and effective to quickly win the game. A Johnny likes to build complex and creative decks, a lot of the time choosing elaborate but inefficient win conditions, enjoying finding the niche cards and finding ways to break them. Finally, Timmy players like big casting costs, big creatures, and just love to play for fun.

Now that we have discussed basic deck archetypes and player types, we need to look at you as a player. What do you define yourself as? If you are currently playing something like a mono-green stompy deck in standard, you might be categorized as a Timmy, and enjoy a commander like Marwyn, The Nurturer or Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Their deck types and deck lists generate a large amount of mana to cast very large creatures and there are a lot of ways to build around them.

If you are playing in modern playing jeskai control, or playing something like the teferi deck in standard, you would want to look at a commander such as Oloro, Ageless Ascetic or Kambal, Consul of Allocation. These commanders may be a bit out of your colors, but they are known as stax generals, which give taxing effects or are great leaders that help prevent your opponents from playing the way they expect, or want to play.

Finally, are you playing something like Izzet Pheonix, Storm, or Dredge in modern or standard? There are great commanders for these as well! Such as Kess, Dissident Mage, Melek, Izzet Paragon, and Muldrotha, the Gravetide. All big combo decks, between a Past in Flames on one creature, an extra copy, and graveyard interaction each excel in their areas and are decent starting points for these types of decks.

What if Nothing Feels Right?

Now even with our dissection of the archetypes and some analysis of player types, there is a possibility that you don’t like the commander you choose at first. This happens to everyone at some point or another, so don’t be discouraged! The first step is addressing the issue that you have with your current deck. One of the first things you can do is look at the cards that you want to use. By all means, they could be the entire reason you built this deck, such as you pulling Talrand, Sky Summoner, and Thousand Year Storm and building a deck entirely around them. Maybe you really wanted to cast Krenko’s Command a lot of times and get a bunch of 2/2 flying drakes. However, picking Melek, Izzet Paragon isn’t working the way you’d hoped. Getting the extra casts are nice, but getting tokens that can’t attack and, that are so weak isn’t going far in your playgroup. A simple switch of commander could be all you need. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer was released in the Commander 2018 decks. Not only can Brudiclad make all other tokens you are making in your deck into the 2/2 drakes, but also allows you to swing out with tokens because he gives them haste!

It isn’t always that easy though, you could have just built a deck around Wort, the Raidmother and ended up hating the way it played. It has the aspects that you enjoy, such as heavy ramp and spell-slinging, but that’s all it has. What are your options? You can go with the same ramp power, and keep your colors mostly the same, changing to Jund (Red, Green, Black) or Naya (Red, Green, White) and hone the ramp into big things, or hone the ramp into cheating cards into play ( Mayel the Aria, for Naya and Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire for Jund respectively). With the minor change of adding white or black, and changing a few card slots around you will have a better payoff for your quick mana accumulation. Your second option is to change the deck into something better suited for spellslinger, which could entail completely changing your mana base from red green to something like red blue, blue black, blue green, or a combination of those to be more capable as a spell-slinging deck. This not only means changing your commander, but changing more slots for cards from the new color addition to better hone spell slinging.

In conclusion, commander is a vast format that gives a lot more room to work with cards that would not normally be useful to the standard or modern player. This format is a great area to experiment with new ideas and play a deck that can be more properly channeled into something that you enjoy thoroughly. Keep an eye out for next week’s article because I will be diving into deckbuilding and techniques for commander!

Building Your Commander

Commanders the bad, the good, the weird.

Today I am going to discuss some of my favorite commanders, least favorite and some that I think are under utilized or they under-perform. Note, these are of the commanders that I have played with or played against, not a definitive list, just my opinion.

The Good

1. Nekusar, the Mindrazer

This is one of my favorite commanders, does everything that I enjoy. Lets me draw a lot, hurts my opponents for drawing, and has plenty of hand and deck manipulation. A runner up for this place would be Kess, Dissedent Mage, the storm mechanic is strong with her and it is fun but not as fun as Nekusar.

2. Korlash, Heir to the Blackblade

This is my main zombie commander, notably not the only one but my favorite of the rotatable choices in the deck. It is a commander that comes out cheap, gains a lot of traction because of the mono black swamp synergy, the zombie synergy and at worst he can push himself through for commander damage and at best he is one of many zombies getting many buffs and extra things because of cards like Conspiracy and the numerous lords in the deck

3. Sydri, Galvanic Genius

This was a very hard choice, some things that attributed to this being my last choice for best is the length of time and continual fun and consistency of this deck, because even with incorrect color mana I can still play out my hand and do more things than with other decks. A hard counter to this however is the decks that have hard across the board -x/-x auras because Sydri as a 2/2 is extremely vulnerable early on. My honorable mentions would be Kambal as my absolute favorite stax commander and Mimeoplasm because of his versatility and how fun his gameplay is

The Bad

1. Kaalia, the Vast

Kaalia is a great commander, she's absolutely terrible when it comes to trying to have fun in commander, nothing feels worse than taking 10 minutes to set up a game of 4 player commander to get killed turn 3 by a Kaalia into a Master of Cruelties, or getting absolutely locked out of the game playing a mono color deck or even two color deck and getting Iona'd on turn 4 having that player name your color or naming the only things you can play in your hand currently, locking out your commander in most cases (unless its a commander such as Tasigur, or Najeela where their color identity is in their abilities) and then sitting there watching people play, or not play based on the tables colors.

2. Jhoira, of the Ghitu

If you ever want a commander who gets hated off the table harder than any other play Jhoira. It never seems to matter what deck archetype you play her as she just ends up drawing so much hate towards her that if anyone plays pretty much anything but green you aren't going to play magic. Understandably though, nobody likes getting an eldrazi dropped on them with cast triggers and etc. for 2 mana, especially when they end up not having to wait the 4 turns and cast things such as fury charm and clockspinning to remove counters and pop the big creature faster.

3. Teferi or Memnarch

This is another argument like Kaalia with Iona, but at least these take a few more turns and get some sort of counterplay. Memnarch is usually built into an artifact subtype and makes it so the player using him can take anything that they want from any person between Mycosynth Lattice, and Liquimetal Coat. Teferi Pool combo saw a little bit of attention because of MTGGoldfish, but it was in commander for a much longer period of time before that, and if Teferi isn't kept off the board unless you have counterbalance on the field already there is no way to deal with it. Especially since the teferi player is playing something along the lines of oops all spells and is using everyone elses spells as win cons and or decking themselves for a Lab Maniac win.

The Sad

1. Karona, the False god

There is no creature I wish played better than Karona the False god. She is the most tribal commander ever printed, especially since she is 5c, she has access to Conspiracy and Arcane Adaptation letting her be able to name any creature type and having all of them get +2 on both sides which on paper sounds like it should be devastating but the clause of having to pass her along makes her just that much worse. I still wish there could be a deck list for her that had great tribal and some way to not give her away on end step.

2. Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder

Of all the commanders on this post, this is the one that I played and wished for something to make his cascade more important and relevant, however it always seemed like he ended up being a swing twice and win the game commander because your best and most optimal cards for him are double strike cards and unblockable cards which just so happens to make it 20 commander damage with absolutely 0 buffs to him but with so many things that make cascade worth it(sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Fire and Ice) it quickly stacks up to 28 and 36 if both swords are on him and it feels like the cascade is just flavor text for a creature meant to be a voltron commander, and if it didn't feel like it would hinder him as much as it would I'd try and put cards in to give him -X in the front but then if he doesn't have unblockable he doesn't go far at all and the cascade is made useless again.

3. Wort, the Raidmother

This one is super my opinion, seeing as I know people can play her and enjoy her but there was just a large part of me that felt so disappointed when I figured out that conspire was a one time deal per spell. There was a certain spellslinger vibe that it hit when I thought I could cast something and tap all my tokens and double the effect a lot of times, but going down to one it might as well just be put into a better color combination and play things like Fork, Dualcast, Twincast, Replicate and etc. cast the spell twice cards.

I hope everyone liked this small article that I have written, and I plan to write more. I know not a lot of people will agree with me on Disappointing and Bad commanders, but please be respectful and remember it is my opinion and how the gameplay feels in an overall fun level. I will also link below my Twitch, Facebook and Decklists for the decks of the list that I have played and haven't archived on Tappedout

Mimeoplasm | Kess | Korlash | Kambal | Sydri

Facebook | Twitch