Two years ago, on December 13, 2022, I was invited to the local game store by some friends. I'd played Magic years before, falling out before Commander caught on, but my pals said it was fun and I should check it out. Fast forward to now, and I play Commander with the gang every Tuesday in that same store, even reconnecting with some old friends from my first Magic tenure. Commander's fun, y'all, and today we're going to talk about building your first deck.
Commander is, for those unaware, a 100-card format where every card in Magic: The Gathering's illustrious history – save for a specifically curated list of banned cards – is legal for use in your decks. There are two elements unique to Commander, however, that you need to consider:
- First, this is a singleton format, which means that outside of basic land cards, only one copy of a card is allowed in your deck.
- Second, one of your 100 cards must be your commander, and it sits in a designated area called the command zone. This card must be a legendary creature, and the other 99 cards in your deck can only contain the same color/colors as your commander.
- Example: If you're building an Olivia, Crimson Bride deck, the rest of your cards must be either red, black, red/black multicolored, or colorless.
Also, this guide is specifically for constructing a Commander deck from scratch, for those that are so inclined. If you'd prefer to take a simpler route, there are multiple pre-constructed Commander decks available for immediate, out-of-the-box play with all sorts of different themes. We'd suggest Animated Army from Bloomburrow, Miracle Worker from Duskmourn, or Most Wanted from Outlaws At Thunder Junction to get you started.
Finally, for the purposes of this exercise, while we're not going to break the bank, we're also not going to go in with a super-limited budget. The goal is to explore the wealth of cards available to us, but we will go with cheaper options when we can.
With those caveats in mind, let's get started on building your first deck.
Step One: Choose a commander
Yes, this seems incredibly obvious, but the first step in building a deck for Commander is choosing which legendary creature is going to be the star of the show. Perhaps it's a card you like from a pack you pulled, or it's a character from another IP that's come to Magic via Universes Beyond and that you're a fan of – like my first Commander ever, Negan, the Cold-Blooded.
However, as much as I love my Negan deck to this day, making him my first-ever commander came with an extra hurdle: Building a three-color deck is a challenge that new players, particularly players new to Magic in general, might find intimidating, as the card pool is vast to say the least.
A mono- or two-colored deck is our recommendation for a first-time builder, and for the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to go with two colors. Meet your example Commander: Lathril, Blade of the Elves.
- Lathril, Blade of the Elves (Legendary Creature - Elf Noble)
- Costs two generic, one black, and one green mana to cast
- Menace (This creature can only be blocked by two or more creatures.)
- Whenever Lathril, Blade of the Elves deals combat damage to a player, create that many 1/1 green Elf Warrior creature tokens.
- Tap Lathril and tap ten untapped Elves you control: Each opponent loses 10 life and you gain 10 life.
Lathril is a black/green legendary elf that provides a great learning experience for first time players. She has a keyword in Menace, which can teach how the different keywords interact with the game state. She has a triggered and activated ability, so she can teach the difference between the two. Finally, she creates tokens, which factor into almost every game of Commander, so the new player can build knowledge there as well. She makes perfect sense.
Step Two: Mana base
Now that we have the commander – and more importantly, we know what colors we're working with – it's time to consider our resource base; let's talk about lands.
First off, there are three cards that are considered essential for Commander players, so much so that they appeared in the recent Foundations Starter Collection specifically for players that want to try Commander. As this is a deck for new players, we'll include them here as well. Those cards are:
All three of these work toward your mana base, so we'll include them here. Next, there is some discussion about how many lands you'll need for a commander deck, and each deck works in different ways. The Negan deck I mentioned earlier currently sits at 35 lands, while another of my decks, helmed by Zangief, the Red Cyclone, has 38 lands.
Each deck is different, and you'll learn how to plan your mana base as you go. For this deck, I'm going to play 36 lands, including the aforementioned Command Tower, as some of the creatures and artifacts we'll include later on (or have already included in Sol Ring and Arcane Signet) will also be able to produce mana for us.
Since we're building a two-color deck, we have access to multiple lands that produce one mana of either color for our mana base. Cards like Overgrown Tomb, Deathcap Glade and Underground Mortuary are great examples, but they can be on the pricier side. We're going to include some cheaper options, but if you can afford to level up your lands with these two, go for it.
The dual lands we'll include are as follows:
- Woodland Cemetery
- Llanowar Wastes
- Necroblossom Snarl
- Tainted Wood
- Temple of Malady
- Blooming Marsh
- Strangled Cemetery
- Undergrowth Stadium (okay, maybe one pricey land)
Next, we'll include lands where you have to pay a cost up front, but you get access to either more mana than you paid, or you'll be able to filter to the colors you need. Those lands look like this:
After that, we'll look at "utility lands," or lands that do more than just add mana to your mana pool. Effects include making creatures unblockable with Rogue's Passage, eliminating maximum hand size requirements with Reliquary Tower, or damaging opponents with Festering Gulch.
Finally, let's add a few lands that will help us search for the basic lands we'll add at the end. Those include:
Including the Command Tower, we're at 18 lands right now. The rest will be basic Swamps and Forests, but how many of these will depend on the rest of the cards in our deck.
Step Three: Creatures!
As Lathril is an Elf who has an ability that requires other Elves, you can probably guess where we're going in this section. Call this deck The North Pole, because there are elves everywhere!
The first four creatures we're including are the same card in three variations. All four cost one green mana to enter the game, and they all produce a single mana by themselves, though one of them is slightly different:
The first three produce one green mana each, while Elves of Deep Shadow instead produces a black mana (and deals one damage to you, but in a game of Commander where you start with 40 life, that's manageable).
Next, we're going to add some creatures that can build your board up quickly, either through searching for specific cards or generating more tokens alongside Lathril's abilities. Those creatures are as follows:
From there, we're going to focus on creatures that focus on the number of Elves you'll have in play. They'll either increase the power of your board, or deal damage based on the number of Elves you have on the battlefield. Some of these may also add mana to your mana pool or create more tokens as well:
- Imperious Perfect
- Shaman of the Pack
- Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen
- Abomination of Llanowar
- Elvish Archdruid
- Timberwatch Elf
- Sylvan Messenger
- Priest of Titania
Up next is a group of support creatures that, aside from being bodies on the board, offer a bit more to your game plan, like removing obstacles from opponents' boards. Reclamation Sage, for example, nukes an artifact or enchantment of your choice as soon as you cast it, while Poison-Tip Archer slowly chips at each opponent's health as creatures die.
- Reclamation Sage
- Ruthless Winnower
- Poison-Tip Archer
- Skemfar Shadowsage
- Rhys the Exiled
- Deathrite Shaman
- Elvish Visionary
Our next step is to spice things up with an interesting little combo piece: Tyvar, the Bellicose. Whenever you tap a creature you have for mana, Tyvar will power that creature up based on how much mana was produced. Pair that with Wirewood Channeler, which produces one mana for every Elf you control, or previously added cards like Elvish Archdruid or Priest of Titania, and those mana producers could become beefy in a hurry.
Our final creature slots are going to be dedicated to some of the heaviest hitters in the deck, and alternatively, the most pricey. Each one is worthy of a slot, if you have the budget to add them:
- Dionus, Elvish Archdruid
- Whenever an Elf is tapped during your turn, be it for mana or for attacking, it immediately untaps and gets stronger. This could turn your board into a problem in a hurry.
- Craterhoof Behemoth
- This is an infamous one-card game-ender, especially with a sizable board state.
- Wolverine Riders
- Token generation and life-gain for every entering creature? Yes please.
- Seedborn Muse
- Being able to untap all of your creatures during each opponent's turn is a power that cannot be understated.
- Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
- Giving all of the token you'll generate the ability to tap for mana is extremely powerful…then pair it with the Tvyar combo or Dionus and, wow.
In all, that's 30 creatures not including your commander. A nice round number, wouldn't you say?
Step Four: Instants And Sorceries
This part of the deck-building process is where you'll start to focus on reacting to other players, rather than just your gameplan. You'll need removal spells, as well as spells to protect your board, if your deck is going to perform the way you want it to.
Let's start with removal spells, as there are some auto-inclusions right off the bat:
Next, we'll look at some "ramp" spells, or spells that will let you search for library for lands and place them either into your hand or onto the battlefield:
Now, these two spells make use of paying X as a cost – X life in one case, X mana in the other – and having that mana do some real damage, either to the board or to your opponents directly:
Finally, a trio of spells that plays back into your go-wide Elf token strategy, as they can buff your board into the stratosphere for a turn, potentially winning you the game:
That leaves us with 15 instant and sorcery spells, and it brings us to our final category.
Step Five: Nonland permanents
It's time to look at enchantments and artifacts!
First up are artifacts, and earlier we spoke about Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, so those are taken care of. There are a few more mana rocks to consider, such as:
- Golgari Signet
- Talisman of Resilience
- Patchwork Banner (this one comes in at more than $6.00, fair warning)
The non-mana artifacts for this deck are all going to be expensive, but all of these warrant inclusion for the ability to draw a bunch of cards, protect your creatures, or power up your board with a single card drop:
Finally, we have enchantments, or cards that remain on the battlefield and offer a specific effect for as long as they're active. Some, like Elderfang Venom, can swing a game's momentum in your favor in an instant, while others keep a constant flow of cards coming into your hand.
- Elderfang Venom
- Elven Chorus
- Beastmaster Ascension
- Prowess of the Fair
- Doubling Season (expensive!)
- Cultist of the Absolute
- Alpha Authority
- This last one is an Aura, which attaches to a specific creature and affects only that creature rather than the whole board.
Step Six: Wrapping it up
Now that we have all but the basic lands accounted for, let's see how our deck looks in order to figure out how many of those basics we need:
The cards listed above total 20 black mana symbols and 55 green mana symbols – with those totals taken from the green, black, and multicolored cards. That's a total of 75 mana symbols with distinct colors, with the ratios being 27 percent for black and 73 percent for green.
If we apply those percentages to the 18 basic lands we said we were going to add at the end of Step Two: Mana Base, that means we're adding five Swamps and 13 Forests to complete the mana base.
And with that, the 100-card deck is done! As you've seen through this walkthrough, there are some elements that need to be considered for every deck:
- Making sure you have enough mana of the colors you're running
- Accounting for your opponents and making sure you run card to deal with their threats
- Having enough cards to draw you extra cards that you're not stranded with nothing to play
We were specifically building an Elf deck here, but these principles apply to any commander you can think of. Choose your commander, build that mana base, and then off you go!
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