Building a Magic: The Gathering Commander Deck

This post is a little bit of a stretch from my usual content, which ideally has something to do with storytelling of some kind (even if it’s a LOT of D&D), but I’ve recently gotten back into Magic: The Gathering.

I started playing Magic back in college with some friends. At first I borrowed one of my friend’s decks and then I eventually started to buy my own pre-constructed (pre-con) deck and card packs. I remember when the Commander format was introduced for play– and it did not surprise me to find that it was the most popular one still played today.

I got out for a number of reasons. I went to a “modern” tournament and lost in turn 2 or 3 because my opponent spent $500 on cards. I graduated college and stopped seeing my Magic friends on a regular basis. I got married. I traveled the world; Magic cards aren’t a necessity when you are packing your life into a suitcase, a carry-on, and a backpack.

But within the last couple of years I’ve been drawn back in. One of my friends loves Magic– so I bought a deck to play with him. Then I bought one from New Capena because I really liked the concept and art style. Then the new Lord of the Rings set came out and ALL BETS WERE OFF. This also coincided with me living in the Boston area, where my main social outing of the week was getting out to go play Magic at my local gaming store. And here I am: a Magic player again.

So, what goes into a Commander deck? I’ve read a lot of different opinions from around the internet, but this is what works for me:

A Commander Deck Breakdown

1. Your Commander must be a legendary creature. The colors of mana required to run that creature are the only colors permitted in your deck.
2. The rest of your deck must be 99 cards exactly. You can have any number of basic lands. You can only have 1 copy of any card that is not a basic land.
3. LANDS. You should have 30-40 lands. I recommend running with 32-34 and with as few basic lands as possible (for most decks).
4. RAMP. You should have roughly 10 “ramp” cards. I’ll explain more about these later.
5. DRAW/SCRY. You should have roughly 10 cards which help you to draw or scry (or surveil if you have a deck which has effects bringing cards from the graveyard).
6. EMERGENCY. You should have 2-5 cards specifically in your deck to deal with “emergencies.”
7. Between your Commander, Lands, Ramp, Draw/Scry, and Emergency cards, you should have about 60 cards.
8. The remaining 40-ish cards should be about the mechanic which your deck is built around.

Commander

Choosing a Commander is the first and vital step to building your deck because the entire deck depends on your commander. This can, at least, be that your commander is a legendary creature with the right color combination– but ideally it has specific effects which you can build your deck around.

Lands

Lands are what your deck is powered by. The less ramp you have and the fewer multicolor lands you have, the more important it is to run with more lands. Remember: nonbasic lands can only have one copy in your commander deck.

When I tore apart all my decks to restructure them, I made sure all decks had a minimum of 30 basic lands before I started to add lands to get to 34; at that point I started to take out basic lands to replace them with multicolored lands or lands which had abilities– like the cave cards from Ixalan, which allow you to pay mana and sacrifice it to play a card from your deck for free, but generally operate as monocolored mana that comes in tapped. For some, I did this until I only had 3-5 basic lands of each type and then started to add until I got to 40 lands before I started to take out basic lands again.

For my Landfall deck, I added a few basic lands back in and it runs at 43.

(An easy way to get several multicolor lands is to buy the starter decks– which come with multiple copies of some lands which you can divide between your decks.)

Ramp

For me, Ramp is defined as a card which does one of the following three things:

• Taps for mana
• Searches for lands
• Plays cards or summon allies for free

If a card does one of these things, it’s very helpful to have in your deck. The bigger the rest of your spells are (like in my dragons deck) and/or the more colors in your commander deck (like my 4-color Aragorn deck), the more important ramp is. Sometimes, ramp is included in the Mechanic, but you should make sure you have somewhere between 8-12 ramp cards.

Draw/Scry

The ability to draw and/or scry can often make the difference between having what you need in your hand and not. As such, it’s very helpful to have about 10 cards which do at least one of these things– and it’s even better if the card does both! While helpful, I would say 10 is a MAXIMUM, not a range like ramp. If push comes to shove, it’s better to have ramp and emergency cards than draw cards if you find yourself needing to short one of these categories.

Surveil (looking at the top card and either returning it to your deck or discarding it to the graveyard) can also be counted in this category if you have ways to bring back cards from the graveyard or a mechanic which uses your graveyard in some way.

Emergency

I consider an emergency anything which looks like it’s distinctly going to lose you the game if you don’t do it. The most common of these is a spell which destroys all creatures, but having cards which give protection from all damage, untapping all your creatures, or do mass damage (a lot of swarms depend on 1/1 creatures) can also be very useful. If you have no reach or flying, you might want 1-2 cards which deal with fliers; you might also consider counterspells worth putting in this category as they’re best used on big threats. You should have 2-5 of these cards (but don’t feel bad if you include some of them in your Mechanic count because it’s absolutely worth being prepared).

Mechanic

The rest of your deck, about 40 cards, should be devoted to whatever mechanic you are preparing to run, likely optimizing your chosen commander. This can be something like cards which have Landfall and more ramp (like my Landfall deck) or any card which is a Faerie creature or has to do with Faeries (like my Faerie deck).

Example: Aragorn, The Uniter

My example for how this all comes together is my Aragorn, The Uniter deck.

I bought the Eowyn deck, which includes a version of Aragorn which is also 3-colors (red, white, blue). It was very human-centric– but I felt like it was really two decks pretending to be one. I did a little research and saw that there was a card called Aragorn, The Uniter and called my local shops until I found one with a copy. (I don’t usually buy singles, but this felt worth it– possibly because of my love of LOTR and because this deck wouldn’t work without him).

His colors allow me to include every color except black– and his abilities revolve around spells being cast and giving different effects. This tells me that I need MULTICOLOR cards; as many as make sense.

36 Lands: 2 Plains, 2 Islands, 3 Mountains, 3 Forests, Throne of the High City (monarch), Command Tower, Evolving Wilds, Prismari Campus, Captivating Cave, Krosan Verge, Temple of Epiphany, Ash Barrens, The Grey Havens, Exotic Orchard, Rejuvenating Springs, Hidden Volcano, Forgotten Monument, Swiftwater Cliffs, Shire Terrace, Crystal Grotto, Greypelt Refuge, Terramorphic Expanse, Furycalm Snarl, Prairie Stream, Volatile Fault, Blossoming Sands, Field of Ruin, Clifftop Retreat, Thriving Isle, and Brushland all give a good amount of color variability, land search, scry, and monarch (which is an ability I built the deck on).

17 Ramp: Sometimes, when the stars align, your ramp cards or your other categories will work well with your core mechanic. The led me to add:

• Shadowfax, Lord of Horses (play creature for free when attacks)
• Birds of Paradise (tap for any color mana)
• Return from the Wilds (choose 2: search for basic land, create 1/1 human, or create food)
• Arcane Signet (tap for any commander color)
• Wild Cantor (sacrifice for any color)
• Sol Ring (tap for 2 colorless mana)
• Fellwar Stone (tap for any enemy color, great for Aragorn’s 4 color combo)
• Verge Rangers (play land from the top of my library if behind on mana)
• Elvish Piper (pay a green and tap to play a creature from my hand)
• Wayfarer’s Bauble (pay 2 and sacrifice for a basic land)
• Chromatic Lantern (lands have tap for any color, taps for any color)
• Ruby, Daring Tracker (taps for red or green, has other abilities)
• Gimli of the Glittering Caves (creates treasure when dealing combat damage to player, has other abilities and is GIMLI)
• Bilbo, Retired Adventurer (creatures treasure when dealing combat damage to player, ring tempts when enters or exits the battlefield, is BILBO)
• Weathered Wayfarer (pay 1 white and tap to search for a land if behind on mana)
• Commander’s Sphere (tap for any color)
• Spelunking (draw, put land from hand to battlefield, lands don’t come in tapped– so helpful for running multicolored and including caves which give 4 life gain if played from hand)

11 Scry/Draw: I put 10 cards which scry or draw (or bring specific cards into my hand).

• Legolas Greenleaf (draw when deals combat damage to player, reach, other abilities, is LEGOLAS)
• Doors of Durin (whenever I attack, scry 2 and reveal top card; if it’s a creature it is summoned tapped and attacking for free. It gains trample if I control an dwarf and hexproof if I control an elf)
• Mirror of Galadriel (scry and draw)
• Arwen’s Gift (scry and draw)
• Denethor (scry, monarch)
• Opt (scry and draw)
• Birthday Escape (draw and ring tempt)
• Eowyn, Shieldmaiden (draw and summon humans)
• Archivist of Gondor (monarch, monarch draws more cards at end step)
• Brazen Upstart (3-color, when dies I get to look at top five of my library, reveal a creature card, and pull it to my hand; the rest go to the bottom of my library)
• Gandalf, Friend of the Shire (cast sorceries as if they had flash, whenever the ring tempts and I don’t choose to make Gandalf the ringbearer, draw a card)

8 Emergency: While I included the typical emergency cards I mentioned before, I’m also including some temporary exile cards here as well, which pair well with blockers.

• Gilraen, Dunedain Protector (tap to exile creature, creature comes back at next end step with vigilance and lifelink counters)
• Champions of Minas Tirith (monarch, at the beginning of combat on opponent’s turns, they must pay pay mana or can’t attack me)
• Pippin, Guard of the Citadel (tap to protect a creature from a card type)
• Slip on the Ring (exile creature and bring it back, ring tempt)
• Bombadil’s Song (hexproof creature, ring tempt)
• Legolas, Counter of Kills (when I scry for the first time per turn while he is tapped, untap him; reach; other ability; is LEGOLAS)
• Fell the Mighty (destroy all creatures with power greater than target creature’s power)
• Unbreakable Formation (creatures I control become indestructible until end of turn)

27 Mechanic/Flavor: Coming from the Eowyn pre-con, I decided that the cards I wanted to follow Aragorn would specifically either bring in the monarch mechanic (since Aragorn is king!) or tempt with the ring. Besides that, I added cards which are named ARAGORN, STRIDER, GIMLI, LEGOLAS, or ARWEN. I also sought to create some more swarm.

• Strider, Ranger of the North
• Rangers of Ithilien
• Aragorn, Company Commander
• Friendly Rivalry
• Stalwarts of Osgiliath
• Aragorn, King of Gondor
• Gimli, Counter of Kills
• Sylvan Offering
• Faramir, Steward of Gondor
• Fealty to the Realm
• Eomer, King of Rohan
• Court of Ire
• Gimli’s Fury
• Arwen, Mortal Queen
• Archon of Coronation
• Frodo Baggins
• Samwise the Stouthearted
• Crown of Gondor
• Siege Veteran
• Forth Eorlingas!
• Arwen, Weaver of Hope
• Call for Unity
• Dunedain Rangers
• Gimli, Mournful Avenger
• Aragorn and Arwen, Wed
• Palace Jailer
• Oath of Eorl

And that’s the breakdown of how I make decks– and specifically how I made my Aragorn, the Uniter deck. While I’m sure it’s not up to snuff for some “optimizers,” it is fun and makes me happy whenever I play it.