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