Many Magic: the Gathering
players ask the question: How do I build my
first Commander deck? Wizards of the Coast
releases preconstructed decks to help newer players begin
playing Commander right away, which, as I've always said,
is a great place to begin. You might have already started with
one of these decks, and, if you’re completely new to the format, I’d recommend picking one of them up. They are affordable, and complete, and allow you to do what I
want you to be able to do: sit down and play! If, though, you’re wanting
to try something fresh, or you’ve played a lot of
Magic in other formats and want to get your brewing hat on, building a new deck from scratch
might be for you. So, if you are ready to harness
the Fires of Invention, you’re going to need some pointers on how best to utilise that creativity. Even if Commander is a casual format, there are still things to be aware of when it comes to deckbuilding. From the number of lands to include, the number of removal cards, you’ll need to be aware
of the general look and feel of a Commander deck so that you can sit down confidently with your new deck to enjoy a game. There’s nothing worse than
your deck just crashing to a halt, and though that will invariably
happen from time to time due to the random nature of the game, there are things that we can
consider during deckbuilding that will reduce the
chances of that ocurring. Throughout this video, I’ll be your guide through the ins and outs of the process. Guide is a good way to put it, actually; the information I’ll be sharing with you about ‘numbers’ is just that: guidance, not rules. These statististics work as a framework for you to build around, and, depending on who you
choose as your Commander, and the deck that you wish to construct, they can and do change. Let’s begin with the Deck Outline! A Commander deck can easily be broken down into the following categories: Lands, Ramp, Draw, Removal, Board Wipe, Synergy. Lands are the bread and butter of any deck, and are probably the
most important thing to get right. Too many lands, and you’ll often
sit there with nothing to cast. Not enough, and you’ll have
a hand full of spells and no way to cast them. It’s generally accepted that the starting point for lands is 37-38. Again, this is a very basic template I'm offering here, and If you’re a deck that uses
landfall, for example, or big mana, you may want more; if your curve is super low, and you’re playing with a lot of expensive mana rocks, it might be less. Keep in mind that any land that doesn’t tap for mana,
like Maze of Ith, should really be counted as a spell and not a land. One common misconception is that you can ‘shave off’ lands for each mana rock or ramp source you’re including. Hitting your land drop every turn is still crucial to having a good game, and if you do go too low, you can find yourself stuck
missing land drops despite having all of the
mana rocks in the world. While it is true that ramp is important and can help, it’s more of an accelerant. Ramp is another pillar of deckbuilding. You should generally run 10+
ramp sources in your deck. Ramp allows you to cast
spells ahead of curve, and race ahead of the competition. Depending on your deck,
it can take the form of being spell-based, like Cultivate, or it might be the form of creatures also known as ‘mana dorks’,
like Llanowar Elves. Perhaps your ramp will be
in the form of artifacts like Commander’s Sphere,
or even on enchantments like Wolfwillow Haven. Ramp can also help to
negate missed land drops, but as I said before:
this is a bonus, and not the goal. Card Draw is the next pillar. Like with Ramp, you should aim
for at least 10 cards that draw you cards. Drawing cards is one of the
best things to do in Magic, and you should always be keen
to draw more cards. Where possible, go for repeatable draw like Guardian Project, or bursts of draw like Blue Sun’s Zenith. While Wall of Blossoms
does draw you a card, you generally want a little
more bang for your buck. Removal is our interaction. We need to be able to answer threats, and we need to be confident we’ll have answers frequently enough. 6-8 single-target removal spells is a good starting point. Some of those may be for
artifacts and enchantments, like Return to Dust, while
others will be for creatures, like Go for the Throat. You’ll need a balance, and where possible, try and get either versatility or value: Anguished Unmaking is flexible and hits most things, while Volcanic Offering can
hit up to four targets with some careful politicking. Board Wipes are for when
single-target removal isn’t enough! There will be games where things look dire, and you’ll be happy to topdeck
one of these blanket answers. A minimum of 5 is a good number to aim for with board wipes, and like with single-target removal, these should either be flexible
like Austere Command, asymmetrical like Winds of Abandon, or give us something back
for taking a turn off, like the card draw on Decree of Pain. Synergy is the backbone of your deck. It’s the main game plan. This is generally 30 or so cards. Are you playing an enchantress deck? Your enchantments will
generally fall into here. If you’re in a combat focused deck, you’ll find your creatures and your
extra combat spells here as well. Any kind of recursion, or protection, such as Sevinne’s Reclamation or Heroic Intervention will generally fall in here, too. Now, you might notice that creatures are missing from this breakdown. Well, that’s because generally
creatures either fall mostly into the Synergy section (especially if they’re tribal!), or, as often as possible, they want to be the cards that are actively ramping you, drawing you cards, or dealing with your opponent’s threats. Whilst it’s fun to run some ‘beatstick’ creatures like Akroma, Angel of Wrath, we want most of our
creatures to have a utility or effect beyond just smashing face. Noxious Gearhulk, for example, in an artifact deck can be removal, and also trigger things
that care about artifacts, as well as being a
very good attacking body. Generally, in a Commander deck, you are going to be running
upwards of 25 creatures, and if your strategy revolves around them, such as in a tribal deck, or one that wants to win the game
through combat damage, that number would be closer to 30-35. Creature count is probably one of the
more fluid statistics, though, as spellslinger decks can often run 10 or fewer creatures. It’s really dependent on your deck, so stick with Synergy
as the better indicator of your overall game plan. So, we have our stat breakdown of what our deck should look like, but there’s one important thing to decide: Who is our Commander? Picking a Commander
will always be a process that is unique to you. It might be that you like a certain tribe, like Merfolk (and who
can blame you if you do?) or you might like to play with +1/+1 counters, and need a Commander that facilitates that. Picking your first Commander usually comes down to one of two reasons: either picking something that
your current collection supports, or being drawn toward a certain character or style of gameplay that you simply have to have a go at. So, give it some thought! It's not going to be as easy as just opening up a booster pack and (oh, speaking of which) getting a Legendary, right? Well, for fun, let's... Ohohohohoho! Hohoho, well, actually, WOW! Yeah, Purphoros? Purphoros? Okay, let's build Purphoros! New Purphoros is a super exciting card! He’s an indestructible red
enchantment God for starters. And that ability that puts huge creatures into play for just three mana, it’s like Sneak Attack on a Commander! Although those creatures are
sacrificed at the end of the turn, he gives them haste, so they’ll be
sure to make an impact. But in answering one question (Which Commander should I be using?) we've opened up the door to many more! How many creatures should we
be running in this deck? Should any of them be artifacts? Which cards are best suited to help Purphoros as a commander? What kind of removal should I run? Should any of it be on my creatures? There’s a lot to consider here. It can be a little daunting
to build an entire deck all on your own, so... where do you start? Luckily, there are several
amazing resources online to help make the process of
building your very first deck a whole lot easier. You’ll be able to find
cool cards that you can use with your new commander with ease using these tools. For this video, we’re going to start by using EDHREC, one of the most popular
deckbuilding tools online, to help us get through
the deckbuilding process and ensure that we don’t end up... EDH ‘wrecked’. EDH Recommendations EDHREC, as many know it, is short for “EDH recommendations,” and it compiles data online to help make
recommendations and suggestions for cards you might like to play in your Commander decks. Many Magic: The Gathering players like to post their decks online, to share their decklists with other people. If we’re building
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded we could go spend a ton of time rifling through decklists online, to see what other players are
playing in their Purphoros deck. However, EDHREC saves us time, because it gathers information from all of those Purphoros decks from all over the internet
in one convenient place, and shows us the cards that appear most frequently amongst those decklists. This helps clue us in on what other people
are doing with Purphoros, which can signal to us that these cards work really well with his abilities. Some players may worry
that this type of tool will cause their decks to
become too ‘samey’ (homogenous with one another) that perhaps EDHREC is doing all the thinking in deckbuilding for them, and that running all the same cards everyone else is running might make their deck less special. But nothing could be
further from the truth. EDHREC is just a tool; like any other, and its goal isn’t to tell you what cards you must run, but rather to provide
cards for consideration. You are still building your own deck, you are still making the final decisions, and EDHREC is just a tool to aid you in this process. Like any tool, it's going to come down to how you use it. And, as a tool, it is
one of the most effective for you, as someone building a brand-new Commander deck. Let’s get building our deck. Upon navigating to the page for Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded, a bounty of information is made available to help us forge a plan. For instance, out of over three hundred Purphoros decklists online, 83% of them are playing Feldon of the Third Path, and 69% of them are playing Ilharg the Raze-Boar, which also help cheat
big creatures into play, giving Purphoros some extra help. If you’re new to magic, or new to this style of deck, you might not have known about these cards, and it turns out they are very good includes here. What about the actual creatures Purphoros wants to put into play? EDHREC reveals that over 70% of players are using creatures like Drakuseth, Maw of Flame, which does copious damage to his enemies, and cards like Dragon Mage and Etali, Primal Storm, which helps him resupply by giving him tons of cards. These cards tick multiple boxes for us in the context of our deck breakdown they’re Synergy cards we want to cheat into play with our Commander’s ability, but also cards that fulfill Removal and Card Draw. It’s no surprise that these powerful cards end up the most played, and we’re happy to take note. These picks were from
the “High Synergy” section, which means these cards are more unique to Purphoros, compared to other decks. There’s also his Top Cards section, which shows other popular cards that lots of other Red decks are using. Here we see Commander staples, such as the ever-popular Chaos Warp, or Meteor Golem, both of which are used by over 70% of Purphoros players to help red deal with enchantments, a permanent type red usually struggles to get rid of. We’ll be happy to take those to fill out our Removal section. Most importantly, though, we find some important synergies here that make Purphoros even more exciting than he already is, including Sundial of the Infinite and Conjurer’s Closet. These can be used to avoid Purphoros’s downside of sacrificing the creatures he puts into play. Conjurer’s Closet can
exile the creature and return it to the battlefield, which means it doesn’t have
to be sacrificed at all, and Sundial can be used in response to the end-of-turn trigger, ending the turn before he has
to sacrifice a creature, so you can keep it permanently. We can scroll through Purphoros’s
page to see the most popular cards from his deck, as well as his
most popular creatures, instants, sorceries, artifacts, lands, picking our favorites as we go. Buried Ruin is a land
played in 26% of decks, and is a great way to
get back any artifact creatures we sneak into play with Purphoros. It’s always good to include
utility lands in our manabase, and Buried Ruin is a Land
I’m pretty excited to include. If we hover over any card
and click the “+” sign, EDHREC will keep track of that card for you with a clipboard at the
bottom of the screen, so you can remember all the cards you like, and export that list later. Nice! Let's look at some of the
other useful features that can help you find good cards
for your deck on EDHREC. For example, if you just want a
snapshot of a deck really quickly, and don’t want to scroll through
dozens and dozens of cards, you can go to the top of Purphoros’s page and use the “Average Deck” button. EDHREC will compile the most popular cards from each card type and provide a full decklist
that uses those cards, giving you a fast way of
hammering out a deck filled with the cards the
community has agreed work really well with him as commander. Alternatively, let’s say
you know for certain that you want to play
the card Utvara Hellkite, a Dragon that creates even more Dragons, in your Purphoros deck. 45% of Purphoros decks
include Utvara Hellkite which means 55% of players
aren’t running it. EDHREC has an Advanced Filters section, which you can use to help tailor the recommendations more closely with your preferred cards. Using these filters
will show you information from just the Purphoros decklists
that include Utvara Hellkite, so if you really like Dragons, and you're looking to build a
Dragon-based Purphoros deck, this can help you find more of them for Purphoros to put into play. It also helps us refine our other picks. Dragon’s Hoard is a nice option for Ramp that can also help with Card Draw. Now, it’s only played in
17% of Purphoros decks, but when we look at decks
that run more dragons, the card is more commonly used. You can also use these
filters to show lists that exclude certain cards
you’re sure you don’t want to play, to help find better recommendations from decks that line up
with your preferences. It’s all about refining the results to ensure you end up with
the best data possible. Of course, Magic cards can be expensive. Over half of Purphoros' decks
include the card Balefire Dragon, which costs at least twice as
much money as Purphoros himself! If we’re on a budget, and
don’t want to break the bank just to build a new Commander deck, EDHREC has us covered. At the top of each commander’s page is a set of Budget Filters
called “Cheap” and “Expensive”. Clicking on “Expensive” will show
only the information from the Top 10% of Purphoros decks
that cost the most money. Clicking on “Cheap” shows us
only information from the Top 10% of Purphoros decks that cost the least amount of money. Magic can be a very expensive hobby, so these are invaluable tools for players who want to build
a powerful deck on a budget, and want to find great cards
that don’t cost a ton of money, while still maintaining powerful
synergy with their commander. For instance, Where Ancients Tread shows up in 42% of these Budget decks, mirroring another powerful enchantment
we saw on Purphoros’s page, Warstorm Surge. Both of these can help Purphoros
deal even more damage even without those
super-expensive creatures. Using the Budget filter also
reveals a high popularity for cards like Chaos Maw
and Bloodfire Colossus, which can deal damage
to all other creatures. These are perfect for Purphoros
to keep the board clear of tiny tokens that would
chump block his mighty beasts, and keep small armies
from attacking him back! You don’t need to spend fifteen dollars for a Balefire Dragon to deal
six damage to some creatures. Bloodfire Colossus can deal six damage too, and it only costs a quarter! Cards like these can help to
fulfill our Boardwipes category, alongside more traditional
sorcery-based wraths like the fifty-cent Chain Reaction, played in 25% of Purphoros decks. If you’re looking for ideas
for your commander, and you see that people are playing them with a lot of expensive cards, don’t fret. Budget options always exist
to make that commander a ton of fun even without the pricey cards, and tools like these budget filters
can be invaluable at helping you find great synergies without breaking the bank. Oh, and if you want to use
that Average Deck feature on this budget page,
it will curate the list to exclude the super expensive
cards for you, too! There’s one more useful feature
we should look at before we finish up, and that’s the Recent Decks feature. EDHREC doesn’t just compile the data from the decklists it finds online, it actually saves all those lists, too. That way, if we want to go looking
not just through collections of data, but through specific decklists,
we can do so! On the top right-hand side of
each commander’s page, we’ll see recent content that
includes those commanders, such as articles or YouTube videos
that involve this commander, and right below that, the Recent Decks tab. Clicking on the “More Decks”
button beneath this section takes us to a page that lists
all the Purphoros decks in the whole database! You can click on the
‘view decklist’ button, it will take you to the right decklist, so you can zoom in
on specific players’ lists to see what they’re up to
with this commander. Rather than googling over and over
for Purphoros decks, we can sift through them right here
in one convenient place. The list here shows the basic breakdown of each card type within the decklist. So if you want to organize it by
the number of creatures the deck contains, or by the number of lands, or by price, or only see decks that commit
to a certain tribe or theme, you can use these filters to help out. The tips and tricks
I’ve brought to you today are the same ones the folks at EDHREC like to use when
they’re building new decks. Whether it’s filtering for decks
that include specific cards, paying attention to budget, or just checking out other decklists to take the hassle out of deckbuilding, it can make the whole process a lot easier. I’ll link all of these
resources in the notes, including a sample decklist
for the budget Purphoros that we built together today,
which was compiled using the same techniques and
features discussed in this video, with no individual card worth over $10. Let’s see how the deck compares
to our Breakdown from earlier. 37 lands 11 removal 12 draw 11 ramp 5 board wipes 42 synergy As you can see, we’ve more than
satisfied the guidelines. If you add up the total
you’ll find that it’s actually 128, which is more than the
amount of cards in our deck. Though we only have 100 cards, we have multiple cards that
both feed into our Synergy-- cheating big, dangerous creatures into play and taking advantage of them-- and also our other categories. Dragon Mage and Runehorn Hellkite both draw us cards, but they also both hit for a strong 5 damage
in the air, for instance, and Myriad Landscape is both a Land and a way to Ramp. At this stage, you're going to
want to streamline your list, choosing which cards to keep
and which cards to cut. If you'd like more information
about streamlining, how to know which cards to keep
and which to cut, you can watch my video on that here. This video sought to leave you
armed with the knowledge of how to breakdown the
specific roles of cards in your deck, and provide you with an introduction to some of the most useful tools
to help you build it. Using that knowledge, you’ve been able
to build a perfectly playable Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded Commander deck. But, you can apply these techniques
you've learned today to any commander, god or otherwise. Ready for the next step? Check out my more advanced guide here, or just peruse my playlist
of Commander content, including deck techs, gameplay strategy, and other Commander guides
I have compiled over the years. That's linked here
and also in the video description. Either way, I hope very much this video
has been of some help to you! And, if so, the biggest help
you can give me in return is just by passing it along to a friend; maybe hitting that Subscribe button, or leaving a comment! Let me know in the comments below whether you found this video helpful and what future videos you'd like to see. English subtitles by
Meg Fornazari (@kozistranslator) Many Magic: The Gathering players
ask the question, Is it worth it to buy a Commander
preconstructed deck? The year is 2020 and,
though we may be far apart, Magic: The Gathering
product releases are not! This year's Commander decks
are tied to the plane of Ikoria with commanders and mechanics,
and even a wide selection of cards, being from the monstrous plane. And Wizards of the Coast has also increased from the usual 4 Commander
decks to a selection of 5, but has quality increased along with it? What about reprint value? Or, the value of all these new cards? Last, but not least, just how fun are these decks to play? And, which one is my top pick? Let's take a look!
