So how do you manage and maintain your Commander collection? Do you keep a large collection or do you just juggle a few decks at a time. I recently started collecting again after sending my kids 8 Commander decks. Working from the remnants of what I have left, some cards I'll likely never replace, like Snapcaster, Elesh Norn, Emrakul, etc, but its been fun starting from scratch again.
My approach this time is to keep a strict singleton collection. No multiple copies at all so that I'm forced to explore functional reprints and fringe cards to achieve consistency across multiple decks. So that means a lot of utility commons and uncommons. Gatherer is my new best friend. So I've been gathering for about 6 months now buying singles. In fact, the girlfriend and I are waiting on a package right now. Should arrive sometime Wednesday. Here's a few that I'm really looking forward to getting:
I took an old Axis & Allies game box and converted it into a storage box with Tyvek tape and strips of vinyl siding. Total Trailer Park Boys. Works great, though this order will force me to make room elsewhere till I come up with something better.
Ive been making more decks recently but thankfully they are each different enough to not have overlapping card requirements save for non basic lands. As for storing them, I have some bigger deck boxes and a fat pack box. I can chop and change which decks are where so that its easy to take the deck I want.
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EDH BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern: RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
I usually keep mine in the fat pack boxes until I get better storage. Sleeved of course. I keep a googledrive document for edits which I share amongst a few close trading partners I work with. I just do one deck at time. Sure its slower but allows me to concentrate.
I store my decks in BCW 200-count boxes. They can fit a deck double-sleeved with room for a few tokens, or even fit a deck triple-sleeved. Since they're entirely white cardboard, a Sharpie makes it easy to mark which box is which.
I store my decks in BCW 200-count boxes. They can fit a deck double-sleeved with room for a few tokens, or even fit a deck triple-sleeved. Since they're entirely white cardboard, a Sharpie makes it easy to mark which box is which.
Interesting. I intend to DS my entire collection. Right now I'm juggling sleeves which I hate. Eventually I'm going to have to invest in a larger box. I haven't priced the large storage boxes but I may just end up making my own.
Semi-singleton (also covers legacy/modern) collection all in the same sleeves. I have a shelving system with some drawers that I keep everything in and build 2-3 decks at a time. Have a decent carrying case that holds several decks, a few tokens, and some dice. The occasional times where there's an overlapping card between decks I note it on an index card that I keep in the case. I track the collection on a google docs spreadsheet so I can pull it up on my phone as needed.
I usually pick up foils of everything I want out of new sets, which typically runs under the cost of a box unless there's a chase standard card in that list. At this point I have enough in there to build most of what I want to, with occasional niche card pickups (grabbed a Rainbow Efreet and a couple other potential cards for Mairsil, the Pretender, for example). Still spend more than I should on cardboard, but a lot less than I would if I were trying to maintain every deck I build simultaneously. Most recent commander purchase was the Mairsil stuff and a few cards I was missing for a planned build of Licia, Sanguine Tribune, notably Exquisite Blood and Balefire Liege.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
I share a wider collection with my wife. We each have rare folders, but staple commons/uncommons are in 2 MTG gift boxes. I'd like to whittle down further, but we look for different things in terms of what we each want to keep.
In terms of my dedicated folder, I try to keep to singles of money cards. And if I run out of space in my folder, I cull. Same goes for existing decks. I have too many at present, and have recently reassessed how many I 'need'. Got rid of Atarka, World Render, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Queen Marchesa.
Mostly proxies in colored/themed deckboxes, packed with two 1,000-count longboxes of staple cards and cardstock commons in a big blue duffel-bag on wheels. Typically have ~25 decks with me in that, any not in the travel rotation stay in an old copper-foiled cassette tower I refurbished for deck storage and display.
Most cards I have a single copy of, but some stuff low Top and Solar Ring I have multiples of (I bought a bunch of Tops, when they were dirt cheap, Rings were acquired over my 20 some odd years of playing). I keep my staples in a small box that holds 500 or so cards. The rest of my collection is in 6 binders and 6 5 row boxes. I keep my decks in a fat pack box, except my stax deck, it is in one of those fancy dragon scale boxes.
I dont keep a collection together for just commander so i organize a bit differently. Been playing since 97 or so and play a lot of legacy as well. Having tons of old cards (full playsets of ABUR duals, painlands and 7 of 10 fetchlands) makes mana bases a lot easier when i put commander decks together. I have mostly playsets of a lot of cards to the point where i can put together nearly any top tier legacy deck and have played 13-14 different ones over the last few years (delver, stoneblade, show and tell and blood moon variants along with MUD, nic fit and various combo variations as well).
Most of my collection i tend to oversort as i have 3 inch binders filled to nearly overflowing for every color split into 1 for creatures and 1 for spells (10 total) with similar sized ones for nonbasic lands, artifacts/colorless, and gold cards also (so 13 total). I have all those alphabetized and then have a 5,000 count box of oberflow dor things i have more than 4 of and random other stuff that isnt worth much like some basics and tokens. Plus a few thousand cards laying around kn sleeves that go in and out of various legacy, modern, and commander decks depending on what im in the mood to play or metagame for.
Took tons of time to set up but makes it incredibly easy to pick a commander and then flip through binders of relevant colors to pull out one ofs for a commander deck. Does make for a bit of a headache periodically to de-sleeve and re-binder stuff to keep the sorted piles or odd new stuff i pick up from time to time easily findable when it is needed.
Not the easiest system to manage but us what ive been used to for over a decade.
This is useful info. Just outgrew my current box. 3000+ singles, all playable,.. The mana curve of my collection hovers between 3-4 lol. Originally intended on making a giant Cube with cards going all the way back to Legends but then I discovered Commander so I shuttled a bunch of decks off to the kids. But now I'm gathering at a sick pace. I also happen to be a carpenter so I'm seriously considering making a custom box. If I do, I'll document for sure. I'll keep it simple... And hopefully light. What kind of features should I consider?
Managing the Collection
I'm trimming down my collection considerably. I'm aiming for something like what Weebo does, though I don't need to be prepared for any other formats aside from EDH.
Probably also going to have no more than 2-4 decks built at a time, depending on the color overlap. So there are some lands and artifacts I'll keep more than one of (1234 etc.), and a handful of ubiquitous colored cards that I'll probably keep two (123 etc.), but everything else is going down to singleton. Someday it might be entirely singleton, but not yet.
I manage decklists on Deckbox and try to keep inventory up-to-date there, as well as my wishlist. However, once I'm done with this purge of duplicates and bulk I'm going to have to delete the inventory and record it anew.
Recent Acquisitions
I definitely still get new cards, but I'm forming better rules. I no longer buy packaged product like booster boxes or Commander precons — only singles. I don't care for foils unless that happens to be cheaper (e.g., XHD judge's foil) or there's alternate art I like a lot more than the regular art. Any cards I want from research or from new sets I add to the wishlist, but I only go ahead and order ones that I can use immediately in existing lists or if I'm likely to use it pretty soon in a work-in-progress deck. The rest of the cards I'm interested in from a new set hang out in the list for later.
I also use a credit card for most of my everyday purchases that accumulates points. Every month I accrue $25-35 worth in points and then use that to order the pricier cards on my wishlist. Last one I purchased like that was Tawnos's Coffin.
I use boxes and sections to categorize my cards. There are staples such as Swords to Plowshares that I know if I cannot find it in the collection it must be in a deck with white mana.
I went the other way around, I consolidated all the playstyles I wanted to play into 8 decks (along with a carefully planned color-balance) so that I wouldn't need to maintain an EDH Collection. I decided to take this path because EDH certainly wasn't helping with the ever-growing overall MTG collection I wanted to trim down and on top of that I liked the format (as the "premier" casual non-rotating format) so much that I knew it was going to be my vanity project of foil cards (being singleton and rarely subject to changes helped a lot), I couldn't afford to be stuck a endless cycle of deck construction if that was my eventual goal.
It was a long and tedious progress no doubt, even with the benefit of a few years' experience with the format it still took me a few months back then to finally get the structure and themes of the 8 decks down. Even after that I was tasked with trying to find the perfect balance of making the deck both viable in competitive and not overkill in casual while sticking to the theme/flavor (because I'm quite the Vorthos on top of everything)... something that's still a ongoing progress since it started 2 years ago (granted I don't play a lot though...)
Add in the foil-procurement process and we have a very slow train here. I initially tried to do this process with cards I already have, but considering the playgroup I usually play with are rather competitive and in order to trim my collection, I was purely going to "Buy foils only" so that I didn't have to go through a potentially long process of buying a nonfoil and having to offload later, but the decks simply couldn't keep up, so I had to resort to proxies (and by that I meant the playtest-like ones, not the good ones since I said I didn't want to go through the offloading process).
Luckily for me no one in my LGS minds (I don't play in any competitions of any sort, just a weekend player at best), especially after communication (they have a vague outline of my plans and know of the "Buy Foils Only" part and reasoning). So, while the proxies do annoy myself a little, it's a lot less agonizing then being unable to "catch up" in actual games I play since I know the overall plan for the format is so slow, plus it frees up "sub-par" (for my deck specifically) cards for my trade binders so that it could potentially expedite the entire process.
I paid quite the heavy (non-financial) price for a really slow process, but benefits have yielded, I can "safely" trade/sell off cards of value without worrying whether I need the card at all for the format later and these cards can potentially make people more willing to part with their foils I actually know I want.
The closest thing I have to an "EDH collection" are probably the foils that could potentially find their way to my decks I already have, but comparatively to the overall collection at large, it's not a lot. Perhaps in the end the financial cost isn't really reduced (I am after foils after all), but I've probably saved a lot of "turnover" effort that may cost me some financially as well with this plan, along with a lack of need for a EDH collection at-large.
3-4K cards in blue ultra pros, unused cards stored in a holiday box. 9 decks stored in 3 black tower boxes, and a random two row box that fits 6 decks plus tokens.
Sorted by mono-color, allied or enemy multicolored, artifacts and lands. I enjoy sifting through a section when deck building/noodling so no further refined sorting is needed.
It's worked great on a budget (cheap sleeves). I also went for a singleton collection to push my deck building, with two exceptions - Sol Ring and Command Tower.
I've got roughly 5K+ singleton cards all sleeved in black non-matte dragonshields, separated into BCWs by color identity and then by usefulness into the small box of generically good cards and the big box of niche cards (no sense sifting past flying men for every deck when I probably only want it for edric). Multicolor is sorted into its exact colors, but without the niche distinction since there's at most 100 cards or so for a given combo. Lands are separated with a divider in the front of each non-niche box, and in front of the other cards in the multicolor boxes.
When I want to build a deck, I just pull out the appropriate colors, diving into the niche boxes if I feel like it, or if I know there's a particular card I want. Then I disassemble before building another one...or at least that's the theory. In practice I usually feel like making more decks than I feel like putting away, so things can get a bit messy. It's still probably the cleanest way to be able to build any deck with any commander with literally any card I could ever want, without having to buy any duplicates.
3-4K cards in blue ultra pros, unused cards stored in a holiday box. 9 decks stored in 3 black tower boxes, and a random two row box that fits 6 decks plus tokens.
Sorted by mono-color, allied or enemy multicolored, artifacts and lands. I enjoy sifting through a section when deck building/noodling so no further refined sorting is needed.
It's worked great on a budget (cheap sleeves). I also went for a singleton collection to push my deck building, with two exceptions - Sol Ring and Command Tower.
Did the same thing. Sorted mono, dividing creature spells and rest. Subdivided rest into four categories: Sorceries/Aura/Enchantments/Instants. Subcategorized further by mana cost which is subdivided by rarity. All the guilds separate with the 3+ colors all gobbed together. Devoid. Split Cards. Mana Rocks. Artifacts. Artifact Creatures. Equipment. All subcategorized. No doubles. Eventually I will start picking up doubles and triples but only if there is different art. Now its mostly just simple upkeep. Building a deck is a joy.
I have a very small collection of a binder of nondescript rares I used to have in decks. The other commons and uncommons are the same. I only have cards that used to be in decks. I give away most of my C/UC cards frequently to keep cards manageable. I stopped buying boxes at Alliances and have only bought singles for decks I create since. I stopped trading in stores because I found only a small few who would trade and they were only sharks who wanted me to rape myself for their collections of staples. I keep about 15 total 60-65 card decks, and I have four edh decks. I've toyed with the notion of buying boosters again since a friend moved back into state who is fun to trade with. He buys boosters, so we would have plenty to share back and forth. Hmm...
My approach this time is to keep a strict singleton collection. No multiple copies at all so that I'm forced to explore functional reprints and fringe cards to achieve consistency across multiple decks. So that means a lot of utility commons and uncommons. Gatherer is my new best friend. So I've been gathering for about 6 months now buying singles. In fact, the girlfriend and I are waiting on a package right now. Should arrive sometime Wednesday. Here's a few that I'm really looking forward to getting:
Zurgo Helmsmasher- May run him with vampires if I go full battle mode.
Tariel, Reckoner of Souls- Same as above
Riftmarked Knight- Just love this card.
Restoration Angel
Oros, the Avenger
Mardu Ascendancy- Gonna play test a vampire/goblin build
Dismember- Glad to have it back
Butcher of the Horde- Fifty cents!!!
Breya, Etherium Shaper- Woot
Benalish Commander
Angel of Serenity- Glad to have it back
Ankle Shanker- A maybe for aggressive vampire/goblin build
Zur the Enchanter
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder- woot
Thraximundar
Skeletal Vampire- Glad to have it again
Shattergang Brothers
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
Prince of Thralls
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
Ghave, Guru of Spores
Ertai, the Corrupted- Haven't used this card in years
Damnable Pact- I like black draw that targets
Mostly though I purchased utility stuff like I said. Maybe make a Cube someday.
So how do you manage your stash? What recent purchases have you made? Were they worth it? Just bored and curious.
Cheers
BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern:
RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
I keep track of my decklists with Magic Assistant.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Interesting. I intend to DS my entire collection. Right now I'm juggling sleeves which I hate. Eventually I'm going to have to invest in a larger box. I haven't priced the large storage boxes but I may just end up making my own.
I usually pick up foils of everything I want out of new sets, which typically runs under the cost of a box unless there's a chase standard card in that list. At this point I have enough in there to build most of what I want to, with occasional niche card pickups (grabbed a Rainbow Efreet and a couple other potential cards for Mairsil, the Pretender, for example). Still spend more than I should on cardboard, but a lot less than I would if I were trying to maintain every deck I build simultaneously. Most recent commander purchase was the Mairsil stuff and a few cards I was missing for a planned build of Licia, Sanguine Tribune, notably Exquisite Blood and Balefire Liege.
In terms of my dedicated folder, I try to keep to singles of money cards. And if I run out of space in my folder, I cull. Same goes for existing decks. I have too many at present, and have recently reassessed how many I 'need'. Got rid of Atarka, World Render, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Queen Marchesa.
Most Used (of many dozens) EDH Decks:
Brago, King Eternal - Stax
Grenzo, Dungeon Warden - Aggro Combo
Wort, the Raidmother - Spellslinger Swarm Control
Animar, Soul of Elements - Tempo Combo
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder - Spellslinger
Exodia the Forbidden One:
Oona, Queen of the Fae - Combowins.dec
amazingly epic sig courtesy of DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Planes.
Most of my collection i tend to oversort as i have 3 inch binders filled to nearly overflowing for every color split into 1 for creatures and 1 for spells (10 total) with similar sized ones for nonbasic lands, artifacts/colorless, and gold cards also (so 13 total). I have all those alphabetized and then have a 5,000 count box of oberflow dor things i have more than 4 of and random other stuff that isnt worth much like some basics and tokens. Plus a few thousand cards laying around kn sleeves that go in and out of various legacy, modern, and commander decks depending on what im in the mood to play or metagame for.
Took tons of time to set up but makes it incredibly easy to pick a commander and then flip through binders of relevant colors to pull out one ofs for a commander deck. Does make for a bit of a headache periodically to de-sleeve and re-binder stuff to keep the sorted piles or odd new stuff i pick up from time to time easily findable when it is needed.
Not the easiest system to manage but us what ive been used to for over a decade.
I'm trimming down my collection considerably. I'm aiming for something like what Weebo does, though I don't need to be prepared for any other formats aside from EDH.
Probably also going to have no more than 2-4 decks built at a time, depending on the color overlap. So there are some lands and artifacts I'll keep more than one of (1 2 3 4 etc.), and a handful of ubiquitous colored cards that I'll probably keep two (1 2 3 etc.), but everything else is going down to singleton. Someday it might be entirely singleton, but not yet.
I manage decklists on Deckbox and try to keep inventory up-to-date there, as well as my wishlist. However, once I'm done with this purge of duplicates and bulk I'm going to have to delete the inventory and record it anew.
Recent Acquisitions
I definitely still get new cards, but I'm forming better rules. I no longer buy packaged product like booster boxes or Commander precons — only singles. I don't care for foils unless that happens to be cheaper (e.g., XHD judge's foil) or there's alternate art I like a lot more than the regular art. Any cards I want from research or from new sets I add to the wishlist, but I only go ahead and order ones that I can use immediately in existing lists or if I'm likely to use it pretty soon in a work-in-progress deck. The rest of the cards I'm interested in from a new set hang out in the list for later.
I also use a credit card for most of my everyday purchases that accumulates points. Every month I accrue $25-35 worth in points and then use that to order the pricier cards on my wishlist. Last one I purchased like that was Tawnos's Coffin.
I also recently got: a couple signets to start completing that set; Priest of Gix and Cabal Ritual for a mono-black combo; Concordant Crossroads, Dosan the Falling Leaf, and Benefactor's Draught for an upcoming Jolrael build; and Vizier of the Menagerie to test in place of Outpost Siege in Ruric Thar.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
It was a long and tedious progress no doubt, even with the benefit of a few years' experience with the format it still took me a few months back then to finally get the structure and themes of the 8 decks down. Even after that I was tasked with trying to find the perfect balance of making the deck both viable in competitive and not overkill in casual while sticking to the theme/flavor (because I'm quite the Vorthos on top of everything)... something that's still a ongoing progress since it started 2 years ago (granted I don't play a lot though...)
Add in the foil-procurement process and we have a very slow train here. I initially tried to do this process with cards I already have, but considering the playgroup I usually play with are rather competitive and in order to trim my collection, I was purely going to "Buy foils only" so that I didn't have to go through a potentially long process of buying a nonfoil and having to offload later, but the decks simply couldn't keep up, so I had to resort to proxies (and by that I meant the playtest-like ones, not the good ones since I said I didn't want to go through the offloading process).
Luckily for me no one in my LGS minds (I don't play in any competitions of any sort, just a weekend player at best), especially after communication (they have a vague outline of my plans and know of the "Buy Foils Only" part and reasoning). So, while the proxies do annoy myself a little, it's a lot less agonizing then being unable to "catch up" in actual games I play since I know the overall plan for the format is so slow, plus it frees up "sub-par" (for my deck specifically) cards for my trade binders so that it could potentially expedite the entire process.
I paid quite the heavy (non-financial) price for a really slow process, but benefits have yielded, I can "safely" trade/sell off cards of value without worrying whether I need the card at all for the format later and these cards can potentially make people more willing to part with their foils I actually know I want.
The closest thing I have to an "EDH collection" are probably the foils that could potentially find their way to my decks I already have, but comparatively to the overall collection at large, it's not a lot. Perhaps in the end the financial cost isn't really reduced (I am after foils after all), but I've probably saved a lot of "turnover" effort that may cost me some financially as well with this plan, along with a lack of need for a EDH collection at-large.
Sorted by mono-color, allied or enemy multicolored, artifacts and lands. I enjoy sifting through a section when deck building/noodling so no further refined sorting is needed.
It's worked great on a budget (cheap sleeves). I also went for a singleton collection to push my deck building, with two exceptions - Sol Ring and Command Tower.
Sydri's Magical Castle WUB
Chainer, Dementia Master: "Bring out your dead!" BBB
Riku Because Copying Decimate URG
Xira Arien, Jund StaxBRG
The Sylvan-Primordial-PlasmBUG
Trostani ComboGW
Vizkopa Guildmage - Peasant VariantBW
When I want to build a deck, I just pull out the appropriate colors, diving into the niche boxes if I feel like it, or if I know there's a particular card I want. Then I disassemble before building another one...or at least that's the theory. In practice I usually feel like making more decks than I feel like putting away, so things can get a bit messy. It's still probably the cleanest way to be able to build any deck with any commander with literally any card I could ever want, without having to buy any duplicates.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Did the same thing. Sorted mono, dividing creature spells and rest. Subdivided rest into four categories: Sorceries/Aura/Enchantments/Instants. Subcategorized further by mana cost which is subdivided by rarity. All the guilds separate with the 3+ colors all gobbed together. Devoid. Split Cards. Mana Rocks. Artifacts. Artifact Creatures. Equipment. All subcategorized. No doubles. Eventually I will start picking up doubles and triples but only if there is different art. Now its mostly just simple upkeep. Building a deck is a joy.