Magic: The Gathering is an incredibly complex game at times, with multiple layers of rules. Over time, players have managed to bend these rules to create entirely new ways to play with the same cards. These different rule sets are known as Formats within the community.
Odds are if you’re reading this, you’re familiar with how to play Magic, but getting into new formats can be difficult as it entirely disrupts how one knows to play the game.
By far the most popular format among the community is Commander. With a larger and more relaxed card pool, it allows for immense creativity when constructing a deck.
What Is Commander?
For those who are unfamiliar, Commander is a multiplayer oriented format that allows you to build a deck of 100 cards centered around one central card: your commander
A player’s commander is often a legendary creature that defines their strategy. There are some core rule changes as well that heavily impact the feel of the game:
- First and Foremost – commander is a SINGLETON format, which means that you can only run one copy of each nonbasic card.
- You get a larger deck, as opposed to most other formats having a minimum of 60, commander has you build a 100 card deck, this includes your commander
- Your deck also has to contain cards that match your commander’s color identity
- Starting life total is 40, allowing for longer and more interactive games
- There is an entirely new zone called the ‘command zone’
- You can cast your commander from the command zone, everytime it were to leave the battlefield, you can have it return to the command zone instead now costing an additional two generic mana to cast
- Finally – There is something called commander damage, if a player were to take 21 damage from the same commander, they lose the game regardless of life total
Because of its singleton nature and larger deck size, Commander is less about hyper-consistency and more about synergy, value, and expression.
Step 1: Choose Your Commander & Set Your Strategy
Your commander is the heart of your deck. The commander you choose can influence the game before it even begins. It dictates your game plan, what you’re going to do within a game. When you’re looking for a commander, think about things like:
- What colors do I want to play? (This is important, your colors can limit or expand your access to a particular kind of effect)
- Do I want to play aggressively? What about combo oriented decks? Can I make a value engine? What kind of cards will I need access to?
- How powerful is my intended playgroup? (Casual decks tend to… well… fail horribly against competitive decks, which is why the bracket system is often referenced)
For example, a particular color tends to provide a certain effect:
- A green-blue commander may focus on ramp and card draw.
- A black-red commander might emphasize sacrifice and aggression.
- A five-color commander could enable complex synergy decks.
I’ve found my Commander, where do I start?
Your chosen commander dictates several things important to constructing a deck:
- Your deck’s color identity
- Available card pool
- Strategy & Game Plan
- Table perception (some commanders draw more attention!)
- Color Identity: Red, Blue, & Black
- Available Card Pool: Red, Blue, Black, & Colorless Cards
- Strategy: Life gain & Potent Combats
- Table Perception: Not too threatening, but can easily become the target if Life Total gets too high
Step 2: Understand Color Identity
Commander uses color identity, which is important as it not only dictates your available card pool but also many cards interact with each other based on color identity. Identifiers of color identity include:
- Mana symbols in a card’s casting cost
- Mana symbols in its rules text (mana symbols in reminder text DO NOT COUNT)
If your commander is blue and green, your deck can only contain blue, green, and colorless cards. Unfortunately, no off-color splashes are allowed
Each color represents different main strengths, strategies, recurring effects:
- White – Removal, Protection, Board Wipes, & Life Gain
- Blue – Card draw, Counterspells, & Control/ Counter-Play
- Black – Recursion, Sacrifice, Tutors, & Life Drain
- Red – Damage, Impulse draw, Explosive turns, & Burn
- Green – Ramp, Large creatures, & Land synergy
Choosing more colors increases flexibility…but also makes your mana base more complex, requiring more cards to ‘fix’ your mana base in any given game. Without the right colors of mana, you can’t cast the spells you need to. So let’s go ahead and get into the structure of your deck and look at a few examples of synergies and interactions between cards.
Step 3: Establish Your Game Plan
Before adding cards, clarify your strategy. Do you want to attack with big creatures? What about swinging in with tons of small creatures? Maybe you want to buff your commander up to god-like levels and one-shot your opponent. If any of these sound like you I recommend exploring decks that use a Voltron or Token strategy.
1. Voltron
Focus on suiting up your commander with a bunch of unique equipment and auras to allow them to break through and deal lethal damage to an opponent’s face.
2. Tokens
Generate armies in the blink of an eye that can go wide around the opponent’s defenses. If Death by a thousand cuts is interesting to you, check out some token strategies.
Maybe attacking with your creatures is too difficult, they have too many blockers or they’re creature is so big it can safely block your giant commander. This is where synergy focused decks come in, focusing on using the abilities of creatures to create a string of plays eventually leading to a flashy finishing blow.
3. Aristocrats
Rather than attack with creatures, you sacrifice your own creatures for extra value to bring your opponents down.
4. Combo
Assemble specific interactions between cards that can easily win games.
Moving away from high power, flashy plays, control strategies offer slower, more calculated plays that stall the game out.
5. Control
Slow the game down and answer threats, win through inevitability.
6. Goodstuff / Value
More ambiguous commanders or decks that profit off of individual interactions between specific cards. Doesn’t require complexity but a clear direction is essential. Typically through win conditions of specific cards
This is an example of synergy between cards. Synergy isn’t always necessarily lethal, sometimes it’s something more passive that generates you increased value over time.
Using the above cards for example:
- Yurlok causes unspent mana to deal damage to you when it leaves your mana pool.
- Horizon stone causes unspent mana to become colorless instead, meaning I don’t lose the mana, so I don’t take damage from my own commander.
- My commander also taps for a colorless to get one black, one red, one green mana/ three mana total.
- Instill Energy, Patriar’s Seal, and Thousand-Year Elixir all allow me to untap my commander for cheap or free.
- My commander repeatedly activating generates me and my opponents a ton of mana, when the phase ends and mana pools empty, they take damage and I do not.
This is an example of synergy because of how all the cards can interact with each other, granting you an impactful advantage over your opponents. It’s interactions like these that you want to find to fit your deck.
Step 4: The Commander Deck Skeleton
There exists a template that many players go by when making their first deck. While this isn’t a strict outline for how your deck should look, it’s a great guideline for giving you a consistent deck from scratch.
- 37–40 lands
- THIS IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN CHEAP OUT ON! If you don’t draw enough lands to cast spells in your hand, you can’t play the game. You need to stay somewhere on this line (depending on strategy) so that you draw lands when you need them. Not only that, but having a good balance will prevent your hand from being flooded by lands.
- 8–10 ramp spells
- Ramping ahead of your opponents by playing spells that give you access to more mana than you would normally have. Ramping quickly can easily get you a win by playing powerful spells while your opponents are still trying to cast their commanders
- 8–12 card draw sources
- Your cards are your resources. If you only draw one per turn, not many new spells enter your hand. Eventually, you’ll run dry and pray you draw something good off the top. That’s why having spells to draw you more cards is a necessity
- 10–12 interaction spells
- Interaction spells are things that hinder your opponent’s game plan and protect you from their interaction
- 1–3 board wipes
- Board Wipes are your ‘get out of jail free’ cards; they reset the board so that you can wipe away overambitious opponents
- 25–35 synergy or theme cards
- These are cards that directly synergize with your commander or your general game plan
Step 5: Win Conditions
Commander games can grind to a halt if no one at the table has a way to finish off a game. Decks should contain at least 2-3 ways to end off a game. A good rule of thumb is that if you have your entire deck in your hand, you should be able to win with it.
- Big Combat/Commander Damage (21 Rule)
- Infinite combos
- Drain effects
- Overwhelming board presence
- Alternate win conditions
Don’t Forget Politics
The MOST important part of commander is that it’s a multiplayer format! Engage with your other players, make deals, band together to take down a threat. At the end of the day, Magic is a social game, so don’t underestimate the power of the other.
You should be prepared for:
- Threat perception
- Table alliances
- Timing of big plays
- Defending your board
Sometimes, it’s best to hold back until you’re sure. If you overcommit to the board and play too many high-value cards and your opponent wipes the board, you’re left at square one. Using a counter-spell on a lower impact spell only for them to play something much more problematic.
Timing is important
The Philosophy of Commander
Commander is about making cool decks and pitting them against each other. Have Fun!
- Expression
- Creativity
- Social experience
- Big memorable moments
It’s not just about winning (while that is most of it) it’s also about the twists and turns throughout the game.
Some of my most memorable and beloved decks are niche interactions between cards I personally found, or extremely powerful combinations of cards that are extremely potent or lethal. my all time favorite kind of deck is a combo-centric deck. Something that lets me cast half my deck before my opponent gets down their fifth land.
Final Thoughts
Commander gives players access to so many cards that basically no two games of commander are alike. It blends strategy, creativity, and personality into a stack of cards. When you play with a group of friends long enough, you can recognize their deck based on how it’s built and the cards used. Maybe you want to use an all time favorite card of yours thats… not the best but is fun nonetheless, well you can. there’s a playgroup for every style of play.
Start with commander that you love. Something you think would be fun to do, whether it’s making fifty dragons or casting fifty spells.
P.S.
If you enjoyed the blog… thank you! And if you’re interested in more content, you can check my personal socials or the social media pages for the University of Alabama’s UA Twitch class.
Personal:
UA Twitch:
