Dear god what is this format
Commander decks have 100 cards. One of those cards is your commander. Your commander is a legendary creature with a color identity. Your commander’s color identity is determined by the colors of mana required to cast the card as well as any other mana symbols on it.
You only need black mana to cast Yargle, so its color identity is black. Kenrith has a mana symbol for each color, so his color identity includes all five colors.
There are some Planeswalker cards with text that says [card name] can be your commander.
If you have two commanders with the ‘partner’ ability, then the rest of your deck will consist of 98 cards.
Each spell in your deck must fit within the color identity of your commander or be colorless. Yargle is limited to black spells, while Kenrith can use any card with any combination of colors on it. Every commander can use artifacts, so long as there are no color symbols on them that don’t match their identity. (All non-land cards are spells.)
Each land in your deck follows the same rules, more or less. Lands that can produce any color are allowed so long as the mana symbols that appear on the actual card fit the identity of your commander.
Mana Confluence has no mana symbols on it, so you can play it in any deck. A Basic Island has a blue mana symbol on it, so you can play it in your Kenrith deck, but not your Yargle deck.
Your 100-card deck consists of 99 cards in the deck itself and your commander, which sits next to it in it’s own special zone: the command zone. You can cast it as if it were a card in your hand at any time in which you would normally be able to cast the card. If it dies, is exiled, gets shuffled into your library, or put back into your hand, you may put it back in the command zone as a replacement effect.
A commander that dies would enter the graveyard (therefore activating effects that say “when a creature dies…”), and then you would have the choice to return it to the command zone. Any other effect that would cause your commander to change zones would send it straight to the command zone if you want it to. (There are fringe cases in which it may be more beneficial for your commander to remain exiled, and you are free to let that happen). Every time your commander re-enters the command zone, you’ll have to pay an additional two mana of any color to cast it again. This is known as the command tax.
In addition to the color identity deck building rules, the rest of your 99 card deck cannot have any duplicate cards except for basic lands.
However, you can play seven Seven Dwarves in your deck as well as any number of Shadowborn Apostles. If a card ever says you can do an unusual thing, you can generally assume that you are allowed to do the thing.
However, you do not have a sideboard of any kind. Cards that reference cards “outside the game” do not work, although your friends will probably let you play them if your deck is cool. Welcome to Commander!
You have 40 life to start the game instead of 20. If somebody’s commander deals 21 damage to you over the course of a game, you’re dead. This is known as Commander Damage. Infect still kills you if you have 10 poison counters.
Commander is best played with four players, although you can get by with three. Two player games are usually boring if your deck isn’t specifically built for it and five is too many. Again, five is too many. Trust me on this.
The Command Tax
The command tax is a rule specific to the commander format with a lot of unique interactions, so even though it was mentioned above, I’m expanding on it here.
As previously mentioned, your commander changing zones (moving from the battlefield to your hand, deck, graveyard, and exile) gives you the option of putting it directly into the command zone instead of putting it anywhere else. The one exception: if your commander dies and would go to the graveyard, it would hit the graveyard before going back to the command zone.
Any instance of ‘dies’ on a card refers to the creature going to the graveyard. Elenda’s second ability works because she enters the graveyard when she dies before the player has the option to put her back in the command zone. After that, she costs 2 more mana to cast for each time she re-entered the command zone.
Effects that reduce the converted mana cost of a card apply to the command tax. You can cast Emry for one blue mana and Karador for one black+green+white no matter how steep the command tax is if you have enough artifacts on the field/creatures in the graveyard to compensate for it.
Derevi and Yuriko’s abilities dodge the command tax altogether because they are activated abilities. In other words, you’re not casting them when you use those abilities, you’re just sneaking them onto the battlefield through other means. The key words here are “put … onto the battlefield”. This line of text typically means the card isn’t being cast, and therefore the spell doesn’t go on the stack (but the ability does!).
There are so many cards and I need an adult to tell me where to start
The endless supply of cards is the fun part! But if you need a starting place, I have a few sub-sections here about various ways for you to look at cards and gather information.
Preconstructed decks: These are a decent foundation to start with. Many of them are underpowered by design in order to get your foot in the door to spend more money on cards. You can update the deck as you go instead of needing to come up with an entire list from scratch. Do not pay an inflated price on any of these because of one specific overpowered card spiking the price of the entire deck. You can get more out of your money.
EDHRec.com: You’ll quickly realize which cards are the must-haves, but don’t build entire decks with this. The cards listed on here are used the most, but might not be the best for your particular deck.
For example, every legendary creature with green in it’s color identity is going to have the same generically powerful cards on its page. Compare The Gitrog Monster and Muldrotha, the Gravetide’s pages and you’ll see some overlap with cards like Acidic Slime, Eternal Witness, and Sakura Tribe Elder. Yes, these cards are good and you should probably play them in your green decks, but I would caution you against filling your deck with utility cards that don’t advance any specific gameplan or win condition. Even if you don’t have a gameplan (this is always an option), you’ll still be bored if all you can do is loop Sakura-Tribe Elder over and over when you could have been doing something more interesting.
The decklists listed on the right can be useful, but keep in mind that some of them are built based on the main page’s recommendations.
Years-old decklists you found on Google: These are a mixed bag, which is what you want. Old lists are good for finding niche cards from sets printed in Magic’s earlier days before cards were designed with Commander in mind. If you feel too overwhelmed to look through all the old cards yourself, then consider old decklists a “Greatest Hits” album for those sets.
Youtube videos and other written guides: These can be fun if you care to know why people picked the specific cards they play.
$ How much money am I spending $
You should expect to spend a minimum $50 to build a functioning, somewhat competitive list. And I don’t mean competitive in the “I have to win” sense, but in the “my deck won’t get pulverized every game” sense.
You can build some decks for $10-20, while the absolute best decks can potentially cost thousands, but $50 should comfortably get you into the format.
Here’s where I’m getting the $50 price tag: Birthing Pod is currently sitting at $18 because it’s a sweet card that can power a deck by itself. It’s only been printed in one set, so it’s price has been steadily rising without new copies entering the market. If you’re willing to fork out the $18 for Birthing Pod, you can spend the other $32 filling out the rest of your deck.
You could also play Prime Speaker Vannifar, a legendary creature that shares a color with Birthing Pod and costs $3.00. Her ability is the same as Birthing Pod, so you can build around all the cool interactions with Pod without spending the money. And while you’re at it, go ahead and buy yourself a Coiling Oracle for 25 cents. Activate Vannifar, sacrifice your Coiling Oracle, and search your library for a Fierce Empath (25 cents) and use that effect to get your favorite big dumb monster in your deck and put it in your hand. Look at that! The deck is doing things!
And this is only an example. The point is that some of the must-haves in a lot of decks or archetypes will run you a few dollars, but that doesn’t mean you should expect to spend that much on each individual card. Basic lands cost almost nothing. Most deck building websites (tappedout, archidekt, mtggoldfish, moxfield, etc) will calculate how much your deck will cost (typically using prices aggregated from tcgplayer), with a price beneath each card as you hover over it.
Please consider buying things at your local game store before shopping online.
Deck archetypes
You don’t need to abide by any of these, but if you’re still feeling lost as to how exactly this deck of yours is supposed to come together, here are some of the more popular deck archetypes for inspiration:
Aggro: Winning quickly through quickly establishing threats that kill your opponents before they have a chance to set up their defenses. If you take this route, your deck needs to be incredibly fast. Remember that your opponents start with a combined 120 life.
Torbran powers up any damage dealt by all of your red sources (creatures, instants, sorceries, etc).
Midrange: A slower deck that gains incremental advantages over time while also dealing with other threats. I would consider this a “safe” archetype given how card advantage is a valuable concept in all Magic formats. Midrange decks cast a pretty wide net as to what they will use. Planeswalkers are one example of a card that can threaten opponents with a huge ultimate ability while also gaining small advantages over time. Other cards might just be incredibly efficient and versatile for their mana cost.
Control: Slowing the down the game long enough for your late-game threats to out-value everyone else’s stuff. A sub-sub-section of this would be “stax”, which aims to deny your opponents from having any resources at all. Pure control decks are challenging to pilot because your opponents will have had a lot of time to set up their threats as the game goes on, resulting in complex and chaotic board states.
“Stax” decks can lock your opponents out of doing pretty much anything, but be warned that they’re wildly unpopular in many playgroups. I’m not telling you not to play it, but this is a fair warning that you might experience some backlash. (I don’t want to sound like I have an anti-stax bias. I mean, yes, I hate it, but the point is I don’t want you to spend the money on cards without knowing what you’re getting yourself into.)
Combo: Assembling specific cards that will automatically win the game. Some decks are built to do this quick and early. Some decks might play the control strategy until they can cobble their pieces together. Some decks might not have any central strategy to assemble their combo, but just have the cards thrown in as a way to end games that take too long.
Combo decks are also controversial in some playgroups if they end the game too quickly, leaving other players without opportunity to actually play the game.
Voltron: Beefing up one creature with enchantments and equipment (and sometimes other effects) to bludgeon your opponents to death. Pretty straightforward.
Group hug: Playing cards that help out other players, sometimes with the intent of keeping people alive for as long as possible. Other times, these are control decks that aim to keep everything from spiraling out of control before your win conditions are online.
Pillow fort: Enclosing yourself behind effects that make it difficult for your opponents to attack you or interact with your things. Sometimes the best win condition is simply not dying while your opponents maul each other.
Spellslinger: Decks that revolve around casting lots of instants and sorceries. Most of these archetypes aren’t confined to any specific colors, but spellslinger decks typically use at least red, blue, or Izzet (red and blue) as base colors.
Tribal: Playing creatures of the same type. That’s it. That’s the deck.
Some creature types are much more supported than others - Goblins, Elves, Zombies, etc.
Deck construction
Before I get into specifics, this part is extremely open ended and probably the single biggest reason the format is as popular as it is. Believe me when I say this: you can run with any idea in this format and make it work. But let’s say you built a deck and it isn’t performing as well as you’d like it to. Maybe you’d like to fine-tune it a little bit for the sake of stability.
One concept that I take absolutely no credit for is the 8x8 theory, which may or may not have originated on this tumblr page.
The 8x8 Theory is a mathematical approach to deckbuilding for the EDH/Commander format. You start with your commander and 35 land slots, choose 8 different kinds of effects you would like to see played in your deck, and then pick 8 individual cards for each of those effects, yielding a clean total of 64 spells.
The 8x8 Theory is not meant to be a set of rules each EDH decklist should follow, but rather an initial jumping-off point at the beginning of the deckbuilding process. Following the 8x8 Theory will not make your deck extremely competitive or incredibly powerful. The purpose of the 8x8 Theory is to give you a rough idea of building a deck with consistency in mind. Once you have 8 cards in each of your 8 packages, you should consider your decklist a rough draft. From there, you should feel free to switch things around: maybe one category will have 6 cards and another has 9. The 8x8 Theory merely presents guidelines that are malleable to whatever the deckbuilder desires for their deck.
The “core four” categories on the page are listed as card draw, mana ramp, targeted removal, and personal favorites. Some other categories I would consider would be:
Mana fixing: this is slightly different from ramp because fixing your mana isn’t the same as accelerating (or ramping) your mana.
Tutor effects: Cards that search your deck for cards. Some would say these add consistency, others would argue these effects streamline decks and therefore make them less spontaneous and fun. If you’re playing a combo deck, you’ll probably need some of these.
Back-up plan/redundancy: If I’m building a deck that’s heavily dependent on the commander staying alive on the battlefield for the deck to function, I might consider adding some other similar effects in case my commander gets removed or disabled in some way. If my deck doesn’t revolve around my commander, but still needs a specific effect, I might run several instances of that effect to make sure I draw one.
Recursion: cards that let you re-use things in your graveyard. Useful if you’re purposefully filling your graveyard to have access to as many cards as possible, or if certain cards are so important to your gameplan you need a way to get them back if they’re destroyed.
Threat Assessment
I’m going to blow up your thing there because I don’t like it
Threat assessment is your ability to identify which cards are the most threatening to yourself as well as the state of the game. This is a touchy subject for multiple reasons:
- It turns the knowledge gap between new players and veterans into a contentious subject, sometimes causing frustrated players to blame the threat assessment of others for their loss.
- Some players interpret “that card threatens me” as “that card is threatening to the whole table”, which spurs arguments.
Let’s compare two cards.
Which of these do you expect to have a higher impact on the game? Seedborn Muse, which allows your opponent to untap every land, creature, and artifact they control on each player’s turn, or Impervious Greatwurm, which has 16 power and Indestructible?
Maybe you’re not all that spooked by a 2/4 that untaps lands and mana dorks, but think of it this way: Seedborn Muse gives your opponents access to at least 15 more mana when it’s played, and even more as the game goes on. Remember, it says to untap on each other player’s untap step. That’s three untap steps in between each of their turns. Most of it can only be used on instant speed spells and effects on your opponents’ turns, but guess what? A deck with Seedborn Muse is probably equipped to use it optimally. Meanwhile, the Wurm doesn’t even have trample. You can block it with anything. Or not block it at all! You have a lot of life total to work with. But that Seedborn Muse is going to churn out value on every turn.
Threat assessment is extremely subjective. Maybe you’re fine with leaving Seedborn Muse alive as your opponent turns themselves into a lightning rod for removal while you accumulate resources. Maybe you’ve caught on that your opponent’s deck - outside of the Seedborn Muse - isn’t very good.
Lands
Let’s say you had an artifact or enchantment that cost 0 mana to cast. It taps for one colorless mana and has an activated ability to buff your creatures. You’d definitely run a card like that for 0 mana, right?
That’s how I view non-basic lands with useful abilities. 0 mana investments that do things are always going to be good. Just be careful with how many colorless mana sources are in your deck. If you’re running a lot of these, you might not include them in your land count at all to make sure you have enough colored mana sources.
There are a ton of multicolored lands that help fix your mana to help you cast spells in your multicolored decks. Don’t get spooked when some of them have drawbacks such as paying life to activate them or for them to enter the battlefield untapped.
If your options in any given turn come down to ‘pay 2 life so I can play my spell’ or ‘don’t pay life, play my spell later’, just pay the life. Get used to using your life total as a part of your pool of resources instead of something to protect at all costs.
Your Deck’s Power Level
Each player’s perception of power level will vary based on what cards they think are good, but this isn’t as subjective as you might think. Understanding your deck’s power level is important if you want to play fun games. One competitive deck at a table with three casual decks will make for miserable games.
There isn’t really a unified rating system for power levels, but I think your best best is using the following categories: casual, mid-powered, high powered, and competitive (known as CEDH). From there, you can explain as much or as little as you feel like to describe how powerful your deck is.
This deck is pretty casual. It’s mostly jank I had sitting in my binder from the past few years of prerelease events.
This is a competitive list, although I haven’t bought every card yet so I’m running a couple budget replacements until I get them.
You won’t always get it right, but matching power levels with your opponents will make everybody’s life better. I personally think the sweet spot is a table with four high-powered lists because that’s where you find the most game variance and replayability. Casual games take forever, and while I like CEDH, most players (including myself) aren’t willing to spend the money to completely buy in.
So how do you determine the power level of your deck? Generally, I would say that the more closely your deck resembles a full competitive decklist the more competitive it is. And beyond that, if it uses a lot of the same cards as a competitive list, your deck is probably competitive even if the whole list is mostly different.
Most competitive decks will run extremely powerful mana rocks like Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, and Mox Opal. If you have no budget restrictions and buy these right away, you’re jumping straight into the highest of high-powered play, if not competitive.
Other format staples that increase power level through greater consistency would be tutor effects such as Spellseeker and Demonic Tutor. Cards that specifically put your win conditions into your hand are generally going to be better than generic draw spells.
Some folks like to rate the power level of their deck on a scale from 1-10, with 1 being ‘terrible’ and 10 being ‘CEDH’. I would advise you against this system because every non-competitive deck tends to get lumped into the 7-8 range which defeats the purpose of the numerical rating scale. I’ve never seen anyone describe their deck as a 1, 2, or a 3 either, which essentially makes it a 4-10 scale. In other words, useless.
Tl;dr
Acquire legendary creature. Pick any assortment of 58-64 cards of the same colors (includes colorless artifacts). Add appropriate lands. Play commander.
Links
Click here for the banned list
https://edhrec.com/ - best way to find deck staples
https://scryfall.com/ - best card search engine
https://www.moxfield.com/ - current favorite site to upload my decks/view others
https://delverlab.com/ - smartphone app to scan cards, check their prices, and organize lists
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news - check card prices and how they’ve changed over time, card prices organized by set, and lots more stuff
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/ - card/deck discussion, links to more subreddits, links to Discords
Reddit thread on the various online deck builders (moxfield, tappedout, etc)