Building a commander deck

 

Magic has a lot of formats to offer players. For your more competitive minded players you have standard, modern and draft - for your more veteran competitive players legacy and vintage - and for you casual players out there you have commander.



If you haven’t come across commander before, it’s a great casual format with some extra rules in comparison to normal constructed formats. Today I’m going to be taking a look at commander as a whole and taking you through the ways of building a commander deck.

First off, let’s start with those additional rules.

A commander deck must be 100 cards in total, no more, no less.

You may only play one copy of each card in your commander deck except for basic lands.

One of those cards must be a legendary creature (or a planeswalker if it states you can use it as your commander) and acts as your commander.

The colour or colours of your commander dictates what colours you can play in your deck. This doesn’t just mean the colour sit would take to cast your commander but what colours it represents in its text box. For example if you chose Ezuri, Renegade Leader as your commander then you can only play colourless or green cards. If you chose your commander to be Rhys, the Redeemed you could play green, white or black cards as well as colourless as Rhys has a black/white activated ability.

Your commander sits in the command zone rather than your library and you can cast it as if it was in your hand. Each time your commander would change zones you can choose instead to put it back in the command zone. Each time you would cast it it costs 2 additional mana for each time it has been put back in the command zone.

Commander is a multiplayer format so you’re usually going to be playing against two or more opponents, because of this games can often resort to political discussions or partnerships. The last person standing wins so those alliances won’t last but they can help players get further into the game if they have a bad run of draws.

Building a deck

So we know the basics, now we need to find a commander.
There are a lot of legendary creatures out there to choose from ranging from one to five different colours in their mana cost or text box. I have had a single commander deck for a while with Sharuum, the Hegemon as my commander.



It’s very artifact centric for obvious reasons and can be fun or competitive depending on what the situation calls for. As commander is a casual format I usually opt for the fun side of things but when it gets to the nitty gritty the deck can pull out a win.

Some players may choose to go down a more competitive route which is fine but remember, commander being a casual format means that most of the other players in the will be playing for fun. You don’t want to put a target on your back right away by powering out something Winter Orb on turn one.

Recently, I’ve been looking into building more commanders decks, Sharuum is fun and all but playing the same deck over an over loses something after a while.

Commanders I have chosen

Tiana, Ship’s Caretaker 

Tiana is a nice two colour commander that gives you a good focal point: equipment and auras. When making this deck the first thing I looked at was equipment as they tend to be slightly more powerful than auras, they both offer different things but in terms of a good power level equipment wins. Batterskull, all of the Swords (Light and Shadow, Fire and Ice etc) and Umezawa’s Jitte are all obvious contenders that go straight in. Don't worry if you don’t have access to these cards though as there are tonnes of other equipment out there. Auras come next there are a lot of auras in red and white offering general power/toughness buffs, menace, flying, first strike and more so you’re not going to be strapped there either. Some good ones are Holy Mantle and Spirit Mantle as they offer protection from creatures as well as a stat buff. 

So you have you’re equipment and auras, now what about something to put them on.

Most creatures with double strike are a good shout as they tend to be low powered to start with. Double strike is a really powerful mechanic but if you can utilise it well it can provide so much power, Boros Swiftblade, Fencing Ace and Fabled Hero all work well for this type of deck. As this is a naturally aggressive deck I opted to go lower on the non-creature, equipment or aura spells with only Boros Charm, Open the Armory and a couple of removal spells like Path To Exile, Swords to Plowshares and Dispatch. Oblivion Ring and Wrath of God effects are effective choices to keep the board in check, I don’t feel that they’re necessary however in a hyper aggressive deck.

The good thing about an equipment/aura heavy deck is that you can find a lot of utility creatures that run in that theme. Stoneforge Mystic, Stonehewer Giant and Steelshaper Apprentice are good for searching up any equipment while cards like Valduk, Keeper of The Flame, Champion of the Flame and Goblin Gaveleer are all good at carrying equipment and auras.
Lastly, you’re going to want some longevity, this is we’re Sram, Senior Edificer and Puresteel Paladin step in. They both offer card advantage engines and are cheap, if you can find one early enough in the game you won’t have any trouble finding lands, equipment, auras or threats. 

You may opt for some different choices but I went with a very equipment heavy creatures based strategy. The deck aims to gain card advantage thanks to Sram or Puresteel Paladin and then build up a creature like Boros Swiftblade with buffs and utility equipment like Swiftfoot Boots. The base of a Tiana commander deck will always stay the same but it’s a fun way to play, you don’t have to commit a lot of threats to the board but you will be a player that others keep their eyes on. Why not try it out and let me know what you went for.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide and Narset, Enlightened Master 

At the time of writing neither my Narset deck nor my Muldrotha deck are finished. They do both however have a clear outline d what they want to do.

Muldrotha as a commander focuses on your graveyard, letting you play permanents from it. so an easy way to take advantage of that is using cards like Vessel of Nascency and Forbidden Alchemy to fuel your graveyard and use it as an extra resource. Particularly effective cards in a Muldrotha build are Sidisi, Brood Tyrant for more graveyard fuel and a good token generator, Sheoldred to help utilise creatures in all graveyard including yours and Crucible of Worlds for those discarded lands. My Muldrotha build can go wide with tokens and graveyard creatures and aims to generates threats relentlessly to overwhelm my opponent’s. It's a straight forward but effective gameplan that can easily run your opponents out of gas, beware you may get some of them ganging up on you though.

Narset's colours are some of the best. In blue you have great card advantage and permission, read gives you direct damage and distraction and white allows you to hold of the ground with Oblivion Ring and Wrath of God. As with Muldrotha, Narset’s focus is a little wider. She doesn’t focus on your graveyard but does let you utilise your library very well, if this deck is built right you can be hitting four noncreature spells each time Narset attacks.

Because of the noncreature caveat my Narset build has no creatures in it except for the three colour commander. Instead I chose to go heavy in planeswalkers like Huatli, Warrior Poet, Ajani Vengeant, Chandra, Flamecaller, Dovin Baan, Elspeth Tirrel, Elspeth, Sun’s Champion and Gideon of the Trials. The rest of the deck is made up of utility spells like Boros, Azorious, and Izzet Charm, Oblivion Ring effects, a few counterspells, Wrath of God effects and, because I like to have a lot of fun, a little piece of tech in the form of Eye of the Storm. 

A Narset commander deck can go so many different ways depending on what spells you want to play, you have access to so many good ones however that it’s always going to be a deck to watch.

What commander decks have you been brewing? Why not get in touch on twitter at @gcgamingtank and let us know. There are a lot of legendary creatures out there to tinker with and i'm sure you'll find one you like and that you can do some nifty things with. Why not take a look through Gatherer and find your perfect commander.

In the mean time though remember to keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and Updates.