Welcome back, Mana Deprived readers! Today I’m going back to my roots and writing about a topic very near and dear to my heart – EDH!… I mean, Commander! Fun fact: A few of you may not know this, but my original Commander article here at MD was actually MD’s very first article about Commander. I did it before it was cool, back when not many people actually knew about Commander, and it was actually a hidden gem. Now, however, due to the new Commander pre-built decks, and the large growth of Commander, every mage and wizard knows about Commander. Today’s article will be the third installment in my series. I’m going to writing about my process of building a Commander deck, and share my newest Commander deck.
When ‘innovation’ means playing 4 maindeck [card]Dismember[/card] as opposed to 3, and people are pre-sideboarding so many cards for the mirror that they don’t even have cards left to sideboard in for the mirror, the format has a problem. In the dark times of Cawblade, where a ‘new’ deck is just the newest permutation of Cawblade, vomited out of the most recent SCG Open, a devoted magician must find entertainment outside of Standard. In these dark times I find myself most deeply infected by the brewer’s bug, the Commander brewer’s bug. I spend hours combing through page after page of Gatherer, looking for hidden gems. I scour every decklist I can feast my eyes on, just for 1 or 2 cards per deck…if I’m lucky. It’s a sickness that consumes me for days at a time. I’ll be casually browsing the internet at 10:00pm one moment, and then the next moment I’ll ‘wake up,’ covered in sweat from my trance, at 4:17am with what seems like a masterpiece, only to see it again the next day and wonder what the hell I was on to make such a pile. It’s a problem.
While in one of these trances, I have a fairly specific process I go through before I get to a first draft of an EDH deck. I know a lot of people will just go and buy a pre-con, and then proceed to add a new card to it every time they trade for a card for their Commander deck, or add cards as they find them looking through binders at card stores, but I think it’s important to have a strong base to your Commander deck before you go crazy trading for stuff. The reason I say is because as you see more and more decklists online, you will find that there are a lot of cards that are must-haves for each general, and you don’t want to go trading for a bunch of stuff you’re just going to cut and then never have a use for. The process of getting a first draft of a new Commander deck consists of getting an idea for a deck, gathering information (finding potential cards for your deck), and refining the decklist in to a first draft.
Getting an Idea for a Deck
Before you start building any decks, you have to have an idea for a deck. That idea could start as something as simple as something you enjoy doing in Magic, or just mimicking a cool deck you’ve seen online or in person. Personally, my favourite thing to do in Magic is to get a ridiculous amount of mana. Because of that, my two main Commander decks are mono brown, [card]Kozilek, Butcher of Truth[/card], and mono green, [card]Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger[/card], and both feature an unhealthy amount of mana ramp. With both of those decks, I knew I just wanted to get as much mana ramp as possible, and then find ways to abuse the huge amount of mana. For Kozilek, finding something abusive to do with my large volume of mana wasn’t very hard, but for Vorinclex, I had to bring all my favourite fatties to the yard.
A great example of starting with an idea for a deck and running with it is my most recent deck centered around [card]Skullbriar, the Walking Grave[/card]. Skullbriar just screams ‘build around me,’ and it’s fairly easy to see which cards will go great with him. When first approaching building a Skullbriar deck my plan was to try and build a deck that is as aggressive as possible, trying to build up Skullbriar in the same way the [card]Zur the Enchanter[/card] decks build up Zur, and I wanted to find cards to add +1/+1 counters to Skullbriar because of his ability to carry those counters from zone to zone.
Gathering Information
The process of gathering information is just trying to find as many cards as possible that have potential for the deck. Once we’ve collected a large list of potential cards, we cut that list down and refine them into a final deck, but we’ll get to that later.
Initial Brainstorming
The initial brainstorming usually starts off at the same time you get an idea for a deck. For each deck, there are going to be cards that come to mind as soon as you know what your deck is trying to do. For example, when initially brainstorming for Skullbriar, the first few cards that come to mind are cards like [card]Strength of the Tajuru[/card], [card]Forgotten Ancient[/card], and [card]Rancor[/card]. Also, there are always going to be the staples that deserve a spot in almost every Commander deck, like [card]Lightning Greaves[/card], [card]Sol Ring[/card]. There are also staples for each color, like [card]Kodama’s Reach[/card] and [card]Cultivate[/card] for green, [card]Future Sight[/card] and [card]Hinder[/card] for blue, and [card]Demonic Tutor[/card] and [card]Vampiric Tutor[/card] for black.
For me, a big part of this initial process includes looking through my collection for potential cards for the deck. Personally, I have a Commander box that contains all of my Commander type cards, for the most part. So whenever I cut cards from a Commander deck, they will go to the Commander box, and whenever I’m looking for inspiration for a new Commander deck, it’s one of the first place I look for inspiration.
Using Gatherer
The Gatherer is a great tool for finding cards to match a theme, or when trying to find specific abilities or interactions. For example, while building my Skullbriar deck, I used the Gatherer and searched “+1/+1 counter,” narrowed the search to only green, black, or colorless cards, and I found some great cards I would have had a hard time finding otherwise such as [card]Fangren Firstborn[/card], [card]Unspeakable Symbol[/card], and [card]Spoils of War[/card]. While searching through the Gatherer, I also searched the keyword “equip” and “unblockable” and found great cards such as [card]Trailblazer’s Boots[/card] and [card]Grafted Wargear[/card]. I’d also recommend searching for specifically multicolor cards on the Gatherer, because sometimes you can find older cards that are quite strong such as [card]Putrify[/card] and [card]Pernicious Deed[/card], that will have unique effects because they are multicolor.
Searching Online Commander decklists
Although some people are against looking through online decklists for ideas, I think it’s essential if you plan on making the best deck you can. It’s such a great resource, so why not use it? I would never copy an entire decklist from online, but it’s great for finding cards you’d never think of that turn out being excellent in certain decks. Usually I’ll find quite a few cards that I got-to-have on my first scan though of some online decklists, and then find a card or two on the next few scans.
My favourite place to look for decklists is this thread on MTG Salvation. It’s a really great database that is updated with new decks regularly. All of the decklists are sorted by color, and then by general. Each decklist link sends you to a person’s thread about their specific deck. This comes in handy, because some of them will continually update their decklists, and a lot of people will give explanations of their decks which will tell you about the different possible combos and interactions.
Refining a Decklist
Once I’m satisfied with the amount of cards that I’ve found for the deck, I start the process of cutting the deck down to size. Personally, I usually find myself with way more than 99 cards that I want to play and have to cut a ton of cards that I like. Generally, I like to have around 40 lands, regardless of how much mana acceleration I have, as a minimum in each of my mana hungry Commander decks. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than missing land drops when playing a game of Commander, and just sitting there doing nothing. For Skullbriar, however, I decided to go with 37 lands because the deck is so aggressive, and I could see myself cutting the lands to even lower than 37 lands.
Aside: I use a program called OneNote to harbour all of the potential cards before I cut it down in to an actual deck. OneNote is a program that came with Microsoft word when I first installed it. OneNote has been extremely useful for getting down all the ideas I have, and then having them extremely accessible, and easily changed. It is great for keeping decklists and ideas for every format, as well as keeping notes for drafts and such. I used OneNote a lot in a number of different classes in university, and found it quite useful for organizing ideas into different sections, lectures, and topics. I would recommend getting OneNote if you are a brewer like me. I’m sure there are a lot of programs that could do a similar job, so the main thing is that documenting decklists, ideas, and such is something I’ve found useful, so I’d recommend it.
Usually if I cut a card, but I still think it has potential, I’ll just move it to the side and keep it there as a potential card in the future. I’ll also put notes next to my decks with different directions I could go if or when applicable. The best thing about refining a Commander decklist is that it’s never really finished. As new sets come out, there are always fresh and exciting new cards to add to a Commander deck, and you can always change a few cards in your Commander deck to try out different themes or strategies.
As promised, here is the deck that I have been referencing, Skullbriar, the Walking Grave!
[deck title=Skullbriar, the Walking Grave – by Francis Toussaint]
[Creatures]
Sylvan Safekeeper
Oonas Blackguard
Bramblewood Paragon
Golgari Guildmage
Vampire Hexmage
Spike Feeder
Firtilid
Eternal Witness
Viridian Shaman
Uktabi Orangutan
Spike Weaver
Forgotten Ancient
Graveborn Muse
Lhurgoyf
Fangren Firstborn
Wickerbough Elder
Skinrender
Spike Breeder
Cytoplast Rootkin
Deity of Scars
Vulturous Zombies
Acidic Slime
Cloudthresher
Triskelion
Doomgape
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
Rancor
Bonesplitter
Vines of the Vastwood
Vendetta
Blade of the Bloodchief
Dismember
Night’s Whisper
Go for the Throat
Swiftfoot Boots
Lightning Greaves
Sylvan Library
Quest for the Gemblades
Canopy Cover
Trailblazers Boots
Golgari Signet
Search for Tomorrow
Cultivate
Kodama’s Reach
Sudden Death
Beast Within
Grafted Wargear
Unspeakable Symbol
Loxodon Warhammer
Sword of Vengeance
Putrefy
Krosan Grip
Whispersilk Cloak
Hunting Triad
Harmonize
Slaughter
Stonewood Invocation
Pestilence
Souls Might
Asceticism
Wound Reflection
Decree of Savagery
Spoils of War
Strength of the Tajuru
[/Spells]
[Lands]
Command Tower
Llanowar Wastes
Tainted Wood
Gilt-Leaf Palace
Golgari Rot Farm
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Vivid Marsh
Vivid Grove
Dryad Arbor
Llanowar Reborn
Mosswart Bridge
Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
Oran-Reef, the Vastwood
Pendlehaven
Tranquil Thicket
Treetop Village
Barren Moor
Cabal Pit
Bojuka Bog
Tectonic Edge
7 Forest
9 Swamp
[/Land]
[/Deck]
Like I said earlier, with this deck I tried to make it aggressive as possible, and tried to push the theme of +1/+1 counters. Another huge aspect of this deck, is that I tried to make it a budget deck, that I could possibly play in casual Commander games, while still being decent against competitive Commander decks. For this deck, my definition of ‘budget’ is that every card is either a common or uncommon OR a rare that costs $1.50 or less. The cards stretch the rule a somewhat are [card]Eternal Witness[/card], [card]Sylvan Library[/card], and [card]Forgotten Ancient[/card], but hey, it’s my deck, so I do what I want.
The main plan with the deck is to get Skullbiar large, suit him up with everything you’ve got, give him trollshroud (cough, Hexproof, cough), make him unblockable, and beat face. If they end up burying him in your deck with [card]Condemn[/card], [card]Hinder[/card], or other such tomfoolery, the plan it to beat down with other large fatties such as [card]Lhurgoyf[/card], [card]Vulturous Zombie[/card], and [card]Doomgape[/card]. There is also a bunch of creature kill and disruption to try and clear the way for Skullbriar.
This is a great deck for people starting out. It’s really cheap to make, and should be a ton of fun to play, without being too unfair (hopefully), so I’d recommend it to anyone starting out, or even if you just want a cool deck on the side. That’s all I’ve got for today. Hopefully you learned something! Thanks for reading, and keep on brewing!
Francis “Franstar” Toussaint