5 Rules For Commander Deckbuilding

[Music] and welcome back to edhdeck building i am your host demo and these are my five rules for commander deck building the main purpose of this channel since its inception was helping players build decks in commander that's why it's called edh deck building i get a lot of questions a lot of times from players about what should they do here or there stuff they should do in their deck i've done a lot of series recently like my staples series talking about the cards that i put in all my decks i've done a lot of videos about the strategies of how i build decks of course i have my underwhelming commander series and a lot of other series where i actually build decks so you guys can see how i do it and i have my gameplay videos where you guys can actually see me play my decks against my patrons but i thought i would make an actual comprehensive list of some of the rules that i follow for myself when building decks that may differ from other people obviously i mean this is the way i do it so i'm starting out at the beginning at rule number one because anyone who's watched this channel a lot will already know what the most important rule for me in deck building is which is don't make yourself a target this is a four player format or more i guess but it's a multiplayer format right in a two-player format making yourself a target doesn't matter because you are the only target right it's just you and one other person they're coming after you they're gonna destroy all your stuff it doesn't matter whether you make yourself a target or not you can do the nastiest stuff ever and it doesn't matter because it's just you and that other person in a multiplayer format that's the biggest difference i find is the multiplayer aspect and not making yourself a target is really really important and of course that begins with your commander for me when i first got into this format the very first deck that i made and i think i've talked about this on my channel before was narset enlightened master that's right this was the first commander deck i ever made the reason why is because i actually tried narset out in modern i was playing a lot of modern at the time i was just starting to get interested in commander i thought narset had just a fantastic ability of being able to exile the top four cards your library until end of turn you may cast non-creature cards exiled this way without paying their mana cost i'm like man that is really really good of course it cost six mana so in modern it was really really hard to get up there and get it going but i thought that would make a really interesting commander deck and more so you could actually make your entire deck non-creature spells you just don't have any creatures at all i thought that was a really interesting idea of course commander players were way ahead of me on that one and of course they were doing a lot of other stuff as well that i hadn't thought of which typically people do with narset decks like taking extra turns taking extra combats and basically playing solitaire which of course everyone hates now i didn't know this obviously right so i show up with my narset deck i start playing and right out of the gate because my opponents can see what commander i'm playing right and again that's another important aspect of the format is everyone knows the commander you're playing i was immediately a target right out of the gate everyone was going after me i didn't get it why why am i a target what's going on i didn't realize there was this really annoying narset deck out there with all the extra turns and extra combats that people hated playing against so it didn't really matter what i was doing in my deck the fact that i showed up with a narset deck that alone made me a target and i lost every game i played now of course if i had been doing the more powerful version of the narset deck i might have done a lot better nevertheless it wasn't just about becoming a target strategically it was also it just didn't feel good you know for me i don't know about you guys but having a 3v1 game isn't very fun and that's not really what the format is supposed to be so it begins and ends with your commander right playing really powerful or even really popular commanders can make you a target right out of the gate i don't find that that's a particularly good strategy to have obviously there are people out there they're going to want to play commanders like this no matter what if you're having a high-powered game that's fine if you have a high-powered play group that's fine obviously a lot of these things can be worked out if you have a play group and if you're playing sort of a jankier theme with your narset deck or with your corvall deck this won't be as much of an issue becoming a target also is affected by the cards you are playing and i've talked about this at length as well where there are just certain cards that i will not play because i find that they make you a target right out of the gate so a first turn manikrip for example is just gonna make you a target i don't really think it even matters what you're doing in your deck a lot of players if they see you play a manic crypt on turn one are going to assume you're playing a really powerful fast deck and you're going to become a target immediately your mana crypt and probably a lot of other stuff that you are playing are going to become a magnet for your opponent's removal which is in my opinion a double whammy because not only are you losing your stuff but it frees your other opponents up to not have their stuff removed right because everyone's using their removal on you playing cards like rustic study and smothering tithe right those are cards that are just really hated in the format by a lot of people and even if you play that card you draw or get some treasure tokens off of it and then it gets removed it still sort of syncs in with people that you had that card in your deck right it goes into the psychology of the whole thing there really is a lot of nuances here where people will remember that you had a heuristic study or a smothering tithe and it will affect them going on throughout the game right i talked about this with cyclonic rift where i stopped putting that card in all my decks even though it's a fantastic answer to pretty much everything i stopped playing it because just casting that cyclonic rift is enough to make you a target for the rest of the game even though it's a fantastic card and it only is just a one-time thing it annoys your opponent so much and people hate that card so much that for the rest of the game you can end up being a target i even talked about how in my tashana deck i used to have a cyclonic rift and i had a guy attacking me right out of the gate and i wasn't sure why tashana is not a particularly powerful commander however he said you're playing blue which means you have cyclonic rift in your deck i mean that's how bent out of shape people get about cyclonic rift now am i saying you should avoid all good cards just so that you don't become a target no not necessarily there are just certain cards in the format we all know what they are that are going to draw other players higher and they are going to go after you for that reason so it's always a delicate balance between is what i'm getting from this card worth the fact that it's probably going to make me the arch enemy in the game if you're gonna win the game right away like if you're gonna cyclonic rift and then you untap on your turn and win the game then i guess it's totally worth it right if you're gonna cast an armageddon and destroy everyone else's lands and then you pretty much have the game one after that then i guess it doesn't really matter that you cast it right but it is a delicate balance you cast a rest in peace your opponent that's playing the graveyard deck is absolutely gonna hate you but it might actually be worth it if they have a really powerful graveyard deck you need to play it to keep them from winning right so you do have to play around with this it depends who you're playing with what your play groups like a lot of these things but at the end of the day the most important thing here is we're in a multiplayer format and making yourself a target so that everyone is concentrating on you is just not a great strategy and that's where i start with all of my deck building getting the number two play more removal i say it all the time removal wins games and of course removal doesn't actually win you the game what removal does more than anything is it stops your opponents from winning the game right you have to have answers to what your opponents are doing i find that people don't play nearly enough removal in their decks you do come across the guy once in a while that plays too much removal and it's just non-stop board wipes and removing everything you play and constantly killing your commander so your deck can't go anywhere that's not fun either again though you do have three opponents so your removal needs to be spread out amongst them there also is the issue where if you rely too heavily on removal you can get blown out right so if you're not really caring what your opponents are doing because you're just going to cast a board wipe anyway and then your opponent casted to fairies protection or heroic intervention uh-oh now your plan has been entirely screwed and the i rely entirely on removal strategy is not gonna work there right it's gonna cost you the game again it's a delicate balance you do need to have answers for what your opponents are doing and like i say all the time i always love the removal that hits everything like generous gift and beast within those are my two favorite removal spells in the format anguished on making is also fantastic assassin's trophy right stuff that is gonna hit everything because you never know what your opponents are doing is it gonna be an enchantment that is screwing you is it going to be an artifact that is helping your opponent win the game do they have a land like a glacial chasm that is keeping you from doing them any damage that can completely shut off a lot of decks right so being able to hit any target is really really important when it comes to removal and you gotta make sure you have enough doesn't matter what your deck is doing if your opponent can completely shut you down with an enchantment or a land that you can't get off the table actually had a guy comment on one of my videos recently that feed the swarm is not an auto include for him in his black decks because it's just a not great removal spell and if you're playing a mono black deck you should concentrate on what black does really well and not worry about the things that it doesn't do well interesting strategy i completely disagree though because again if your opponent has that one enchantment on the battlefield that is completely shutting you off like say a rest in peace again you're in a graveyard deck what are you gonna do you're just gonna pack up and go home right and in particular in black because black has tutors just having that one option to get an enchantment off the table can be really really important you'll eventually draw into it or you can go tutor for it get it off the table so that you can start going at it again having those options index having answers to what your opponents might be doing is incredibly important make sure you put enough removal in your deck in a similar theme getting to number three is graveyard and land hate and of course graveyard hate sort of goes without question you absolutely have to have graveyard hate in your deck or the marin deck the kes deck muldrotha there's lots of really powerful popular graveyard commanders in the format they will just completely take over the game if you can't answer what's in their graveyard you're gonna have to win the game really really fast before they completely take over and in particular in land form right i always always put up a jukabog in my black decks if any deck has black in it it's gonna get a bajuka bog and if it doesn't have black it's going to get a scavenger grounds i have like 15 copies of both of those cards because it's an absolute auto include for me it's only one option it's always great to have at least two and of course if you got your guy in your play group who has one of those powerful graveyard decks you probably want to throw a couple more in there as well you just again have to have at least one option this is a 99 singleton format so your chances of getting the cards you want aren't always fantastic but at least you have that option to sort of get out of the situation you're in the same goes for land hate and i'm not talking about the armageddons and the decree of annihilations and stuff like that mass land destruction as we all know is frowned upon in the format however i do like cards like wave of vitriol and from the ashes which are gonna hate on the non-basic lands again you're gonna come across people that are gonna hate cards like that i think they're pretty good they do give you the option to go get basic lands out of your deck more importantly though targeted land hate and again getting back to the removal thing you look at the generous gifts and the beast within's they're gonna hit lands as well so you've already got that option on the table for yourself having it in land form is also really really important right ghost quarter wasteland strip mine whatever the case may be you gotta have at least one of those in a mono colored deck because a mono color deck will allow for more colorless land options i always run two of those because again you might not get into it your opponent is gonna have that maze of if they're gonna have that cabal coffers they're gonna have that gaia's cradle there's some really really powerful lands in the format that will either again shut you down stop you from what you're doing or they will let your opponent completely take over the game if you can't get their land off the table having targeted land hate is incredibly important to commander deck you gotta have at least one or two options in your commander decks getting to number four and this is the lands all right and i haven't really talked about specifically lands on my channel that much i've had a lot of people ask me about putting lands in decks and i make decks obviously on my channel a lot of people say hey i don't think you have enough here's my rule for putting lands in decks and i know people are going to disagree with it but this is what i do and it works for me 34 lands that's what i put in a commander deck unless it has green and then i only put 33 right and obviously green is fantastic at ramping so you need less lands 33 lands in a green deck and in a non-green deck i put 34 i never put more than 34. sometimes i will add mdfc lands and of course the mdfc lands are some spell or creature on the front and then on the back are a land i usually do a two for one there so i have two mdfc lands for every one land that i take out so if i add in that baligid recovery and that county ambush that's two mdfc lands that i'm putting in i will take out one actual land out of my deck so now i'm down to 32 in a green deck i know people will think that's crazy but that's what i do and it seems to work out for me in a lens deck that's obviously not the case right if you're playing a landfall deck obviously you're going to want more of that there's always going to be specific reasons why these rules won't apply but i don't have a landfall deck so all the decks that i make that is the rule that i am following and it works out for me i just really don't like drawing lands off the top of my library later in the game i know people want to make a land drop turn four turn five i've heard people say on turn six oh man i didn't make a land drop this turn i'm like so you need to make a land drop on every single turn up to turn six or every single turn for the entire game i don't think you do for me six mana is enough to cast probably my entire deck again i don't like going really really fast out of the gate with my decks getting back to rule one i find that just makes you a target in a casual game you can take it slow and if six mana can cast everything or almost everything in your deck then having six mana by like turn six or seven should be pretty good again you're gonna have ramp you're gonna have mana rocks and getting into that i think people put too many mana rocks in their deck as well in a green deck for me and i've talked about this with my patrons a lot when i'm doing my deck doctors in a green deck i put arcane signet and used to put a soul ring but i don't play soul ring anymore in my green decks that's it i don't think you should be putting any more mana rocks in your green decks because ramping like actual ramping getting lands out of your deck and putting them into play is way better than mana rocks again land destruction is frowned upon in the format so having an actual land into play is always going to beat out having a mana rock because mana rocks will just die to some removal bane of progress whatever your opponents might have that's just going to destroy all the mana rocks in play actual land ramp always trumps mana rocks for me so in a green deck because it does land ramp so well and white's starting to get up there too i'm always going to lean towards the land ramp over the mana rock so i'm going to put almost no mana rocks at all in my green decks and even in non-green decks i think people play mana rocks way way too much i mean you're just taking space up in your deck guys later in the game drawing an arcane signal off the top of your library is essentially useless you want gas you want something that's going to do something right you want car draw removal or something that's going to help you win the game later on you're not going to want an arcane cigna putting all those mana rocks and lands in your deck is taking up space for something that could be very valuable for you later in the game or even early in the game are you going to take a swords to plowshares or nature's claim out of your deck to put in a mana rock the mana rock's going to maybe help you get out of the gate a little faster but those two spells are also really fantastic early in the game right again getting back to the removal thing stopping what your opponents are doing is just as important as getting going whatever you're doing so i would say overall people put too much ramp and mana rocks in their deck and probably too much lands as well and getting to my last rule number five is i'm gonna call it versatility or maybe don't be too obvious okay so as we all know you're building around your commander and it's probably likely your opponents are gonna know what you're doing however if they don't know what you're doing it can be a huge advantage for you right if you show up to a table and you have a very obvious commander all your opponents are gonna know what you're doing and they're going to know how to shut down what you're doing very easily right your opponents don't really know what you're doing in your deck it's going to be difficult for them to react it's going to be difficult for them to save that removal or counterspell because they don't know what you're going to do next it's going to keep them guessing that's a really important aspect of playing a multiplayer game again and again it plays into the whole underwhelming commander thing where if i play a commander i mean i show up to tables and people have never even seen my commander before they're like what is that how the heck could they possibly know what my deck is doing if they've never actually seen that commander before right if they've seen that commander a thousand times before they might know exactly what you're doing although again you can play that popular commander but do something completely different you don't have to be doing what everyone else is doing with that deck so again that will help you as well if you really want to play those popular commanders i think the best way to go about it is to play that commander but with a completely different strategy so that your opponents don't know what to expect keeping your opponents guessing in this game is really really important so like i talked about in my last 10 deck ideas right you're playing that attracts a deck but you're not doing super friends you're not doing in fact you're actually doing a voltron strategy that would be an interesting strategy for an atraxa deck i think maybe you're playing that feather the redeem deck but you're actually doing a blink strategy which i think works really really well with feather by the way because of course blink spells are targeting your own creatures so you get them back all the time everyone likes to do a voltron strategy with feather but you can target your other creatures right feathers ability works with all your creatures not just with feather i think a blink strategy is a really interesting one there so even if you do want to play that really popular powerful commander you can do a different strategy that your opponents will not be expecting and it will throw them for a loop right they won't know how to react necessarily but also the versatility is really important here and you know again this goes into how i build decks i don't like to go all in on the one strategy just i'm super focused i'm doing one very specific thing and if it doesn't work out then i just sit here spinning my wheels and my deck doesn't do anything if you're all in on that strategy and your opponents are figured out what you're doing or they know what you're doing it's going to be very easy for them to stop you from what you're doing right this plays into the commander thing as well yes you should be building around your commander when you build a commander deck but you should try to avoid what i call monolith commanders okay so those are commanders that you absolutely need them on the table in order for your deck to do anything because again your opponents will very quickly figure out they can just kill your commander and then you're just going to be sitting there doing nothing for the whole game because you need your commander in order to do anything talked about this with obeca very interesting commander no question i played against an obeca deck very early on when it first came out and i knew my opponent was going to need the obeca in order for their deck to do anything so as soon as it came out i just killed it before they could use it they had to wait a couple turns before they could play it again and i just killed it again and guess what they literally did nothing the entire game i know that doesn't sound like fun i'm such a meanie i know but i knew they were going to be doing some busted things with it taking extra turns and that kind of stuff and i knew that i could just kill their commander and their deck would do nothing right your lock the scorch thrashed i talked about again this is a commander that a lot of people were excited about fun interesting i knew it would fall off in popularity though and the reason why is because it has the mana burn ability and that ability literally exists on no other card but your lock so you don't have any backups at least with rebecca you have a backup in sundial the infinite and some other stuff with your lock you have no backup so if your your lock is not on the table the deck does literal nothing and a lot of people play sort of those huggy effects where you're giving your opponents extra mana so all they have to do is just get your your lock off the table and then essentially you're just playing a really bad hug deck right not saying it's not a fun interesting commander it certainly is the only problem is it is a monolith commander and if your your lock isn't on the table your deck is really really going to struggle so that is another thing to try to watch for when you're building your commander decks and the commanders that you are choosing so that is it that is all my five sort of essential rules for deck building in commander the stuff that i like to follow giving some advice here for some new commander players i know it would have been nice to have something like this when i first started playing commander i essentially just watched a ton of games that's how i started out i would recommend that to people as well if you're getting into the commander format go out there and watch just a whole bunch of games i got some on my channel there's a lot of other great ones like game nights from command zone and there is the commander versus guys as well i watched a ton of their videos before i even made my first commander deck i watched a ton of gameplay videos so that i could get a feel for what was going on it is very very different than any other format so that is important to sort of give a feel for what's going on and hopefully a video like this will help you as well but let me know in the comments if you have any rules for deck building for yourself stuff that you absolutely stick by maybe the amount of lands that you put in a deck i know people who think i'm crazy for only putting 34 but that's what i do nevertheless that is it for today and thanks for tuning in [Music] you

Channel: EDH Deckbuilding

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Id: pMs4LbCvx3Q

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 07 2022