Category: Decks

Looking for a Commander Deck Building Template! Whether you are new or looking for a fresh take on how to build a commander deck, commander20 has you covered. 

A good commander deck building template has 4 steps

1. Step 1: Choose Your Commander
2. Step 2: Include your ramp, draw, and control
3. Step 3: Put your win-cons in there.
4. Step 4: Shuffle up and play!

But, before we get into the discussion of the commander deck building template, it should be mentioned, that this template is designed to give you a streamlined look at “how-to” build a commander deck. It does not go over the reasons a ton.

The logic is that there is a huge detailed guide linked here, that this entire guide is based on. This has math, examples, and reasoning to defend each part of building a commander deck.

So if you want a full in-depth guide that teaches you the entire logic behind this article, I highly recommend getting the free guide. That said, if you don’t have a lot of time, this will cover the highlights and give you the streamlined Commander Deck Building Template.

Alright, enough of that, lets build a commander deck.

Step 1: How to Choose Your Commander?

The first step to building a commander deck is choosing your commander. 

To choose your commander, the simple answer is to choose a commander that is any legendary creature you like. So if you like Yargle, Glutton of Urborg, then that is your commander, if you like Tymna and Thrasios, then there is your commander.

This is the usual suggestion for new players as, a commander you are passionate about is easy to choose and begin building.

BUT, there is an alternative way to build your commander deck and it is a way I am a firm believer in, function. 

The idea behind this one is that, rather than choosing your commander first, you decide on what your deck wants to do first. Once you do this, you look to find a legendary card that can fufill that desire which then becomes your commander. 

For instance, I love being able to reuse spells to progress my board state, therefore I would look into cards that allow me to recast spells multiple times or get multiple copies. From there I would look at commanders that can do that, where I then stumbled upon Muldrotha. Muldrotha seems to fit the function of my commander so that is who I choose to be my commander.

Either way is a good way to choose your commander and the choice is up to you! If you are looking for inspiration I suggest looking at the most popular commanders of all time which are listed here. From there, we need to decide what should be in our commander deck.

What should be in your commander deck?

There are a few things that are should be included in your commander deck. These are 

1. A commander who is a legendary creature
2. A deck with a total of a 100 cards (including commander)
3. Anything not on the commander ban list

As long as you abide by these 3 rules, then you should be fine no matter who you play with. That said, there is more to building a commander deck than this and there are 4 functions that every commander deck should include. These are:

1. Ramp
2. Draw
3. Control
4. Value

If you can include these 4 functions in your commander deck, then building a commander deck becomes remarkably easy. Now if you have read “The Rule of 20”, then you should know all this and more. That said, let’s briefly go over these and why they are important to building a commander deck.

Ramp

Ramp is simply “anything that nets you more mana”.

This means things like strike it rich which stores 1 mana for later is ramp, just as things like mana rocks such as sol ring, or mana reducers like Goblin Electromancer are all in the category of ramp.

At the time of writing, there are four main versions of ramp

1. Storing mana for later
2. Mana rocks
3. Mana reducers
4. Burst ramp

Draw

If you have no cards in hand, your ramp doesn’t matter. Drawing cards is fundamental to deck building for commander.

While ramping is necessary for consistently casting spells, drawing cards is necessary to consistently play the game.

So what defines card draw? Put simply anything that allows you to see/use more cards. Scrying, tutoring drawing, exile effects, recurring and milling are all common ways that work for card draw and are commonly used.

There are currently 5 common ways to draw cards.

1. Draw
2. Mill
3. Scrying
4. Tutor
5. Casting from outside of hand

Each of these can be used to see, or reuse cards allowing for maximum deck usage.

Control

While ramp allows for consistently casting spells, and drawing allows you to consistently play the game, control is necessary to let your deck operate.

Think of it as the grease in a machine, ramp gives you the power for your deck to work, while drawing allows the machine to operate as it should, the grease is there to make the machine work smoothly.

Control does one of two things; 

1. Protect your board, or
2. Stop other people’s boards.

By correctly utilizing control, you will see your decks consistently perform better, while other decks have a hard time doing their thing. The ratios of each are gone over in more detail in this guide here, but the general rule of thumb is 13/7 or 7/13 depending on your decks goals.

Value

Now if you noticed, assuming 30-32 lands, 1-2 commanders, and 60 other cards, that only leaves 6-9 cards left over for everything else.

These are your “Value” cards. These are cards that don’t necessarily progress your board state but win you the game. Some common examples of this would be Beastmaster Ascension, harmonic prodigy, or Seedborn Muse. These cards are powerful but neither draw, ramp, nor control the board, making them really only useful in winning the game.

Now while some cards are strictly value (like the ones mentioned above) there are some that can win you the game but work in other categories. 2 common examples of this is underworld breach and mizzix mastery.

Both can be a form of card draw in that you get to use the draw function ‘of cast from outside your hand’ but an overloaded mizzix mastery or an underworld breach+brain freeze can be great ways to win the game. Determining which cards bring your deck the most value, is a very important function of actually winning the game. As talked about next.

How To Build A Win Con In The Commander Deck Building Template?

There are 3 ways to win in commander when building an mtg deck.

1. Beats
2. Combo
3. Value

Beats win through beating people to death, usually through a swarm of small or big creatures.

Combo is usually playing an effect that just states you win the game.

While value is winning through an overwhelming amount of board advantage that the other three can’t beat.

When following this commander deck building template, you will need on average at least 3-6 cards dedicated to winning. If you don’t then even if you run the 20 ramp, draw, and control cards, you will end up having a great board state, but you can never end the game. Leaving people unhappy. As such a deck should always be built with at least 1-2 ways to win the game. Failure to do so leads to more losses on your end and a lower overall enjoyment rate with the other players.

That said, how to build a win-con for commander decks?

Simple, put your cards that you want to see win the game as your win cons. 

If you want to win through beats, play cards like blightsteel colossus, then blightsteel is your win con, and the rest of the deck should go to being synergistic or supporting these win cons.

If you want to win through combos, find your favorite combo such as dualcaster + twinflame, and build your deck around doing that.

Then if you want to win by value, just find the cards that will overwhelm your opponents and make it impossible for them to catch up, like consecrated sphinx.

Finding those cards can be a challenge so I recommend looking at actual decks you want to play and see what win-cons those include.

How Many Lands In A Commander Deck?

The final part you need to know for building a commander deck, is how many lands?

A commander deck should have 28+commanders value in land count. 

The reason is explained in this article, but the general reason is that lands are best for casting your commander and ramping, outside of that they have very little function.

Therefore, if you go off that number, your land counts should be what you need fairly consistently to progress your board and play the cards you want.

That said, once you play the deck a few times, feel free to add or subtract lands to the deck depending on personal preferences, but 28+ commanders value is the best starting point for discovering how many lands in a commander deck.

Commander Deck Building Template: Conclusion

There you have an easy-to-follow commander deck building template. With this, you should be able to easily build any deck you want. As long as you abide by this deck-building template, then I am sure you will have your deck do what you want every time.

Of course, if you are looking to become a master deck builder, then I highly recommend “The Rule of 20” it is a great ebook that goes over everything you will ever need for deck building. Making you a master class deck builder that everyone will be jealous of! Be sure to keep an eye out for my next article going over some of the more advanced options that deck building and strategy can have. 

Looking to build a CEDH deck? If so, here is the content you need to do just that! This will go over everything from the spirit behind CEDH, to even providing a template needed to build a CEDH deck. Excited? Let’s begin!

The Spirit behind CEDH

CEDH, otherwise known as Competitive EDH, has only 1 rule. Build the best deck possible with your commander. There is no need for a rule 0 conversation because every deck is supposed to run as optimally as possible.

This means no card, strategy, or tactic is banned. As long as you can make it work at the highest power it is free game. Yes, that also includes land destruction by the way.

While this belief is very freeing for many players, it is also what makes the format “Restrictive” for many. The reason being is the best cards are played, and unfortunately, not every card is the best. This means cards like Teferi’s Protection, Eerie Ultimatum, and even Bala Ged Recovery, very rarely would see play in this environment. That said, just because they are harder to play does not mean they don’t have room. 

The difference is that these cards will underperform against most cards, but there are ways around that, such as specific commanders that have powerful synergy with these cards or building around the specific card and finding a way to win with it. A common example is Anje and Godo who play very unique cards most decks don’t run in order to make their deck work. But both are considered CEDH commanders.

Therefore as long as you come in with the spirit of “I will take this 1 card to the max with no restrictions”, your deck will most likely end up being CEDH or Fringe CEDH (A Power level that can compete against most CEDH decks but usually require more experienced pilots.)

What Makes a Deck CEDH

In short, to build a CEDH deck, it must be optimized, efficient, and have a good win-con to be considered CEDH.

A deck that has one or neither will not be CEDH but Fringe or lower.

But what are efficiency and optimization? 

Efficiency is the ability of your deck to consistently do what it wants.

Optimization is the ability of a card to be the best at what it wants.

In short, Efficiency is how well your deck can consistently do something and optimization is how good your card is compared to similar cards. 

But what are the steps to building a CEDH deck?

Step 1: How Do I Win?

Rather than your commander, the first step to building a CEDH deck is determining, “how do I win?”

There are 3 ways for a deck to win.

1. Beats
2. Combo
3. Value

Beats win through beating people to death, usually through a swarm of small or big creatures. An example of this is Tymna/Kamahl. Whose win con is to stax the board and win with beats. These decks are rare due to how easy they are to disrupt.

Combo is usually playing an effect that just states you win the game. Thassa’s and Consultation are the most popular ones you see. This is the most powerful way to win and is usually what most decks play.

While value is winning through an overwhelming amount of board advantage that the other three can’t beat. From there, you pull the win through a combo or some other effect. Two good examples are Dockside in Korvold which basically wins you the game, or Ad Nausuem strategies.

From there, choose the best commander to match your win-con or deck function and you are good to go!

How Many Win-Cons to Build a CEDH Deck?

A deck usually needs around 2-3 ways to win the game to be effective in closing out games. Failure to do so leads to more losses on your end and a lower overall enjoyment rate with the other players.

That said, how do you build CEDH decks win cons? Simple, put cards that you want to see win the game as your win cons. 

If you want to win through beats, play cards like craterhoof behemoth, and the rest of the deck should go to being synergistic or supporting the win cons.

If you want to win through combos, find your favorite combo such as dualcaster + twinflame, and build your deck around doing that.

Then if you want to win by value, just find the cards that will overwhelm your opponents and make it impossible for them to catch up, as consecrated sphinx does in Kinnan.

Finding the best win condition for your deck can be a challenge so I recommend looking at actual decks you want to play and see what win-cons those include. A good resource for this is the Cedh Database.

Finally, a good rule of thumb, is that each win needs only 1-2 cards to work. The less cards needed to win means less chance for disruption and easier to pull off. So 4-8 cards should be dedicated to winning the game.

Step 2: Make A Deck Efficient

Efficiency has been recorded extensively in my book Rule of 20 as well in the CEDH.Guide Report. In short, there are 4 mechanics that make up every deck, 1) Ramp, 2) Draw, 3) Control, and 4) value. If you are unfamiliar with what these are then I suggest either reading the previously mentioned Rule of 20 or my deck building template. Both give you answers to all of these.

In short though:

1. Ramp is anything that lets you use more mana
2. Draw is anything that lets you see more cards
3. Control is anything that protects your board or disrupts others.
4. Value is anything that helps you win.

Understanding these is vital. The reason why is a failure to understand efficiency means you can never understand optimization. As optimization is the ability of a card to be the best at each of these 4 categories.

Now, a deck’s efficiency needs vary from commander to commander. CEDH.Guide did a great report located here that goes over the statistical average for every deck in the CEDH database, on average they run 18 control, 21 draw, 20 ramp, and 10 value cards. The rest are commanders and lands. 

That said, a simple guide to follow is the Rule of 20, which states that a deck should try to run on average 20 control, 20 draw, and 20 ramp. The rest is value, lands, and commanders. In doing so, you achieve some of the highest efficiency a deck can make before losing its ability to win. Making this the best rule of thumb to follow for consistency.

To summarize, a cedh deck should try to run 20 ramp, 20 control, and 20 draw cards to be consistent. From there, you can cut or add pieces to synergize with your game plan.

Step 3: Make A Deck Optimized

An optimized deck is the most expensive deck… Or so the joke goes. In reality, an optimized card does not need to be expensive, wild growth, tinder wall, and Fire covenant are optimized cards, but aren’t 50+ dollars. In fact, two of them are below 50 cents. 

An optimized card is a card that achieves the best results for what your deck is trying to do. This is a little hard to identify as it is so subjective and is changing with each new set printed, but there are a few common traits to look for.

1. Low Mana value

A card that has a lower mana value is usually the better choice as it is less intensive than a card even one mana higher. Ideally you are looking for 2 CMC or lower.

2. Flexibility

A card that has an increase in flexibility is great. This isn’t necessary more options like mystic confluence has, but rather “lines” that make it better than other options.

A good example is stifle when running final fortune. Stifle on its own is not great due to its limited uses, but a stifle makes it to where you can take an extra turn at instant speed and not lose the game. Increasing its flexibility.

3. Power

This is simply how powerful of an effect the card has. A counterspell against only instants is much less powerful than a card that can counter any spell. This is usually defined by the previous 2 traits, but some cards are just game warping in power, such as smothering tithe or seedborn muse.

So when deciding what the optimized card is, compare that to every card that does a similar function, if a card has lower CMC, more flexible, and higher power then this is an easy upgrade to build a CEDH deck. (A good example is lightning bolt and lightning strike). 

Besides that, getting familiar with more cards is the best way to discover what is optimized. I suggest checking out the CEDH Staple Database. It is filled with optimized cards that most decks want to play. 

Put It All Together And….

You have built a CEDH deck! If you can understand these three steps then you can make any deck CEDH. 

Simply watch more content and play more games if you want to get better. I recommend reading my guide to deck building, or my 2 ebooks Rule of 20, or Commander Better. Both are about becoming better at the game so your decks can always do what you want in any game. Good luck and happy playing!