MTG Salvation

Hi.

I currently have 4 commander decks. I a contemplating building one more. But that also sounds very excessive. How many commander decks is to many? Am I gonne play all five decks if I build a fifth?

i know i guy who has over 40, all of varying levels of power. Thing is he had them before the 4-color commanders came out, so he had multiple of the same color. Its only too many if you do not play them all. (at one point i was running 10)

It all depends how often you play EDH and how often you have to loan decks to others for matches. I barely have time to play MTG anymore and I have 4 EDH decks.
It is good to rotate your decks, else tweak them often, for your play group. The fact that I am in the sad state of playing against myself half the time means that I need to switch up decks, especially since two of them rely on nabbing other people's creatures (for completely different reasons).

Now the question you MIGHT be asking is: how important is it to maintain five edh decks (for example: Do I really need 5 Mana Crypts for each of my five decks if I don't play them all the time)? That answer is no. When you have the amount of a card that you are using in a deck, ESPECIALLY in casual, it is more than justifiable to make proxies/placeholders for the rest of your decks using that amount.

Is it good to have more than one EDH deck? Definitely. You also have to consider yourself: are you getting frustrated with your deck because you are getting bored with it? Did you learn of a combo that synergizes really well with your current deck in two headed giant but is not the colors of your current commander? Did you out of the blue wake up and realise that you really miss playing with a deck that hasn't had much game time recently?

It all really depends on your inner, game group, budget, and storage situation.

But each deck comes with a cost. Either finacialy (I don't ahve any Mana Crypts in my deck) but often you want to tune them, or make them get to a point where you are happy with them. That is often a cost in time. And that can be a lot to invest if I do not end up playing it. Xenagos is not that much played at the moment, even though it is fun. Jeleva rarly sees play due to her powerlevel. (And the games goes on for ever!)

As many as you can carry easily and have sleeves for: I have four. Five is probably too many, but I've never desired to build a fifth deck.

As many as you can transport? I have stopped at 4... but i also transport standard and modern decks.
If you have a good way to carry large numbers of decks or can actually leave home without some of them (D:) then you just keep going.

Build as many as to your heart's content if you enjoy the deckbuilding process, I know I personally do. Also if financial issues are in your way, consider making budget decks that you can upgrade later at your whim.

The question should be more like; How many commander decks can you actively maintain?

Some people build a deck to reach a specific function, and once they are happy with it, either sit it aside or scrap it for value cards so they can work on their next project.

The trick with running multiple EDH decks (when you start worrying about having too many), is when it comes to maintaining all of the decks simultaneously. Keeping up on actually "completing" the deck to what you want it to be, optimizing, updating with new cards, etc. The more decks you have, the more difficult that becomes.

Optimizing multiple decks is also very financially straining. For example, are you interested in making a competitive deck? Does that mean you need a mana crypt? Wouldn't that cause your play-group to eventually become more competitive due to the nature of your expensive mana crypt inclusion? Would you not then feel like your other decks need a mana crypt also? That one single card can make a huge difference in a decks performance. There are many single high-value cards like mana crypt that, when putting in all of your EDH decks, can really destroy your wallet.


If you are wanting to have a deck of every color, or a deck that fulfills the common deck-archtypes, and you have the resources to build it, then go for it. If by making another deck, your current 4x EDH decks may fall behind in optimization/power/completion, then you may not want to start a 5'th project.




I personally own far too many EDH decks. Past the normal 8x EDH decks I carry around (1x of every color combination of Grixis + 1x mystery deck), I have 9x in storage that don't see hardly any play (deck-turned-collection or became too financially valuable, an older deck/general with an outdated concept, something too weak due to power-creep that I don't like to see loose, or something nostalgic). I also keep 2x (budget) decks on my desk at work, and 3x decks are always kept at my apartment (used for roll-playing, have some theme or restriction).

When I realized how many I owned (22x), and that I kept building/stripping/building/re-building/etc, I decided to keep my collection at this exact # of decks. I like the grixis colors (hate green/white), so in my main 8x decks, I just keep a deck active per each possible color combination. The mystery deck is a green/white one, that I maintain simply to own a deck to pile in green/white valuable cards I trade for (and sadly while I hate the colors, it has become one of my stronger decks).

I may eventually fiddle with the two I keep at work, or the 3x theme/roll-playing decks, but those are not very significant in value, so I'm not too worried about them. The 9x "retired" decks will always be kept.

Provided that you get to play with them, make as many as you want to. I normally keep about 4 built at any one time and multiple other piles of could be cards for the future.

There are never too many

Sygg, River Guide voltron control
Teysa, Orzhov Scion sac engines
Selenia, Dark Angel suicide combo
Omnath, Locus of Rage landfall combo
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed Voltron & recursion
Hakim, Loreweaver Mono Blue Voltron Wizard tribal
Teferi, Temporal Archmage Mono Blue ramp & control
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder Wheels
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice tokens & counters galore
Akiri, Line-Slinger & Silas Renn, Seeker Adept Voltron & Artifact combo shenanigans
The Mimeoplasm Self discard & sac/dredge combo ft. Amonkhet discard triggers
Saskia The Unyielding big bomb creatures
Lazav, Dimir Mastermind Mill & control
Scion of the Ur-Dragon Dragon & Eldrazi tribal ft. Conspiracy shenanigans

And some more I'm sure I'm forgetting. These are all the ones I play with on a regular basis.


Star EDH (monocolored deck builds to kill your enemy colors represented on the color wheel)

Blind Seer Color and land type text changing to abuse the other star deck's color hosers to your advantage.

This deck was made for me as an xmas gift by a friend in my playgroup. 5 of us drew random names and colors then built eachother a monocolor Star deck. We revealed who had built for who when we sat down and took turns trying all the colors out in an all day thing, it was a blast.

Pauper EDH (my playgroup does this as well as Star)
Kyren Legate Voltron
Laccolith Whelp Voltron
Stromkirk Captain Vampire tribal

Personally, I rarely get to actually play nowadays, but I enjoy to tinker around with my decks. Have 5 put together at the moment and this number will probably grow further over time.

I have 5 EDH Decks at the moment. But i am going to be dismantling one pretty soon, as it was a gimmick deck that does not work in my playgroup anymore.

I do however have 2 more decks in the works. One is designed and roughly tweaked, i just need to buy the cards. The other is still in the design stages.


I only get to play 1 night a week, but i love the building process and the research that goes behind it. So i will continue to build tweak and modify decks until i run out of money or space.

I think it really is up to you. I like to have lots of different options, I am just starting to build commander decks and I rarely get to play at all, but I do have a competitive Vintage, competitive Legacy, and then about 4 casual decks using the Vintage ban list and working through a couple Commander decks right now. I like to have a bunch of different flavors of decks that I can play with and have options regardless of who I might get to play with.

- Matt

I will say, having over 20 decks makes it hard for people to meta-game you.

I have 20 decks and could probably build a lot more as I still have 3 of the 2014 commander decks unopened (Blue, Black & Green) and 4 of the 2016 decks still unopened (only opened Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis). I enjoy building decks with different themes.

I'm not sure about the exact number, but I feel like I reached it a while ago. I've got sixteen decks at or near completion, with a seventeenth in the works. (I swap copies of certain higher-value cards between decks. I use a few proxies of cards I own, such as Prophet of Kruphix for Seedborn Muse and Jeweled Bird for Sensei's Divining Top.) I keep telling myself I'll stop. The next thing I know, I get another deck idea and start brewing.

Sage advice: Turn back before it's too late.

I used to carry 24 decks with me every commander night and pick a new one to play each game. Then I bought 2,000 matching sleeves and made a Commander "Cube" where I can rebuild decks from a list whenever I want without having to maintain actual separate decks. Now I carry four of them with me each week and switch it up whenever I feel like playing something different. It also had the advantage of letting me unload a bunch of valuable duplicates.

I would get so stunningly bored playing the same four or five decks week after week, month after month. I like the challenge of deck building, and I like variety of play style. I've built somewhere around 50 Commander decks, and I have more on the way.

Short answer: there's no such thing as too many.

For carrying decks to a store, I would say five is a good amount to consider taking with you. For at home or at least at a friends place, however many you honestly feel like having. I often have three active decks at a time that I frequently scrap for parts in order to build something else that I feel like playing.

I'm working towards one deck in each color combination (5x mono-color, 10x dual-color, 10x tri-color, 5x 4-color, 1x 5-color, 1x colorless, 32 total). I'm currently only missing Bant, Esper, 4C nonblack, and 4C nonred, and I'm working on designing my Esper list.

Once I finish with my 32, I've got some ideas for new decks in a color identity I've already got that are different from what I have. For example, my Grixis deck is Thraximundar stax, but I also kinda want Mishra uncounterable artifacts. My mono-color decks form a cycle of commanders that each cost 1MM and have base P/T of 2/2, but a while ago I got the idea for getting some Scooby Doo alters -- Isamaru as Scooby, Batterskull as the Mystery Machine, Stonehewer Giant as Fred, Sword of X and Y as various flavors of Scooby Snack™, etc.

I have 13 playable decks, which for me is too many, but I can't bring myself to take any of them apart. Not to mention precons that are sleeved for some of the newer players in one of my metas. As for bringing decks to a game night, i'd say 3-5. Depending on how many people, you may only get a couple of games in so having a bunch of decks for maybe 3-4 games may not be ideal. I usually pack 4 - 1 new/experimental, 2 casual/medium, and 1 tuned deck.

I have, at a guess, 18 decks. Some of them are pretty well tuned, and some are casual level.

I guess it depends on your goals; for myself, I'd like to have a deck for every occasion - I have combo ghave, durdly braids, a couple decks almost anyone could pick up and play, some are unpredictable and chaotic, others are more control based, some are reanimator themed, some are ETB, you get the idea.

For myself, with what is now a limited budget, my aim is to make the decks I have as good as I can without spending any further money on them; I'm hopefully buying a house soon, so cardboard sort of pales in comparison. Thinking this way kind of came from looking at my folder and spares boxes and seeing how many reasonable cards were not being used - so now I'm harder on myself - if I can't use it, lose it. The ideal for me now is to not build any further than I have, refine the decks as best I can, and strip back my collection to its bare bones otherwise.

I think though, if you're just building to theorycraft and not to actually play, or if it doesn't fill a perceived niche, then you have too many decks. That's a different number for everyone though.

I'm currently sitting at 9 Decks and if it weren't for the lack of unplayed commanders in my playgroup - i'm stubborn on that - and deck ideas i'd have several more. I enjoy swapping decks and themes several times each game day a lot.

Maintaining them is a lot easier than i thought. Each of the last 2-3 sets contained about 10 cards or so that i wanted for any of the decks, which is totally fine and not too much of a struggle to keep up with.

Since i'm not brewing anything new at the moment i'm working on finishing the others and it's going well. I can't see myself dismantling any of them, exception would be if i want to swap commanders with similar deck tech.
____________________

I mountain bike as well and there's this saying that applies to MTG as well:

"The perfect number of Bikes/Decks is X. Where X is Y-1, with Y being the number of Bikes/Decks that are enough for your partner to leave you."

Keep brewing!

There are currently 690 legendary creatures legal for commander. So 691 is too many.

I currently have 11 decks.
I also have 1 deck that I am close to finalizing.
I have 3-5 decks that I'm passively working towards building (I try to pick up cards for the decks, but I haven't really worked on a list)
I have 2 Tiny leader decks I would like to turn into commander decks (and one tiny leader I will scrap).

I usually carry 5-6 commander decks with me when I go to drafts or pre-release. I have some friends who bring their decks and we play between games. Often, after the event, I will lend some decks to a couple of people and we'll have a multiplayer game.

When I go specifically for commander, I bring all of my decks.

People are talking about the limit on how many decks you can maintain. I build decks low-budget to see how much I like them and how good they can be. When there is potential, I put money into making them more powerful. If not, I keep them lower-power. It is important to me to have a range of power so that I can play with the person who bought a pre-con and added some Standard cards, and so that I can play with the people with turn 3 combo decks.

I personally hate having proxies (strongly dislike the aesthetic in my deck), so I have spent a lot of money on duplicates of expensive cards. However, I am fine with people playing with proxies, except when there are prizes on the line. Then I get irritated by people proxying things like Tabernacle of Pendrall Vale and Gaea's Cradle. I would say not to proxy anything you couldn't take out of deck A and put into deck B.

I have a lot of decks because I want every game of magic to be different. I don't like playing the same decks over and over again. I also enjoy building decks just as much as playing them. That's why I always have some projects I'm working on.

We all enjoy playing Magic for different reasons, so it is ultimately up to you to figure out how many decks is too many. Even when I was playing kitchen table magic with my cousin, I had over 20 decks. When I played Standard, I would have 3-6 decks per year. I really like making decks. And I will not stop because of some perception that I have too many.

Quote from Karmanality »

There are currently 690 legendary creatures legal for commander. So 691 is too many.

magiccards.info says 680 while Gatherer says 700, and both of those searches are including the 15 nonlegendary Kamigawa creatures that flip to become legendary (Gatherer includes both sides in the search results, for some reason, while magiccards.info only includes the legendary side). Neither search is including the 5 planeswalker-commanders, either.