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20 Commanders We Recommend For Magic: The Gathering Newcomers

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While what laying out your mana curve is a great starting point, I suggest one more thing before starting to play. The term I’m going to use is “turn mapping” where we lay things out not strictly by mana value, but by what turn we expect to play that card. Chatterfang’s mana value is three, so most of the time (there are always edge cases) he will be your turn three play, assuming you’re making your land drops every turn. Once you’ve got your first draft of the deck, I suggest you lay it out in stacks organized by mana value.

No Secondary Commander

Soul-Guide Lantern is a suberb example of a graveyard-hate card that you can use to draw a card if it’s not useful that particular game. Fortunately, there are many ways to ramp in almost every type of deck. Creatures that make mana (mana dorks), artifacts that make mana (mana rocks), Rampant Growth-type effects, “rituals” like Dark Ritual, cards that make Treasure tokens; the list goes on and on. The Mutant Menace deck is stretched around several different themes – from milling to +1/+1 counters to reanimation. And yet it doesn’t feel unfocused, partly because of the engine that is the Wise Mothman, which really works to tie the deck together. Able to swiftly build up a board of beefy creatures, ping opponents with burn damage, or take to the skies and kill with a few good hits with a commander, this deck has all sorts of roads to victory.

Additionally, whenever Oloro’s controller gains life (something they will be doing each turn regardless), they can pay one mana to draw a card. Like Edgar Markov, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is a commander that benefits its controller even when it isn’t in play. Causing its controller to gain two life at the beginning of its controller’s upkeep, regardless of whether or not it’s in play, Oloro is a consistent means of ensuring its controller will always have a stable life total. Until next time, enjoy Magic, and have a lot of fun with your new Commander deck.

Which Is the Best Starter Commander Deck for Beginners?

The more mana you have, the more you can do with the rest of your cards. And if you have more mana than your opponents, then the bigger edge you’ll have over them. One of my biggest deckbuilding level-ups was when I started by adding my wincons first instead of last, then built the rest of the deck towards them. At the end of the day, when you’re getting a free, massive dinosaur every turn it’s hard not to win games.

Mana Acceleration (A.K.A Ramp)

That being said, I would probably steer you away from Surrak Eldrazi, between the basically 4c budget manabase () and the inherent hate players have for eldrazi, it might be an idea to table for now. Brian played Magic intermittently between 2003 and 2017 when he fully embraced his love for Commander. Finding ways mtg card to maximize the value of each piece of cardboard in the deck is one of his favorite things to explore, especially if it involves putting lands in the graveyard! Outside of Magic, Brian works as a consultant in the marine industry, turning his passion for boats and ships into a career. Including the right number of cards from the different categories will be important to how your deck functions, and looking at your general game plan by mapping out your turns can help you envision your path to victory. Using Heroic Intervention again, maybe you want to make sure you have the mana available to play it on turn six, when your Squirrel token machine is humming right along.

Another way to use EDHREC to help you find your wincons is to go to your commander’s page. It’s important to include enough cards that can end the game, or at least push your deck’s primary strategy forward so that you’ll reliably have access to these cards. For example, a common win condition in an Elf deck is Craterhoof Behemoth. If it’s your only wincon, you might go an entire game without seeing it. Vampiric Bloodlust is an EDH deck running the ever-popular Aristocrats strategy. It’s a very expensive deck right now, thanks to Edgar’s price, and the inclusion of format all-star Teferi’s Protection.

Having around 36 land cards is standard for a Commander deck. You’ll want to figure out the mana curve of your deck is; that is to say how many cards of each mana value your deck has. This will help you decide how many land cards you need to put your plans in motion. It’s okay that Return of the Wildspeaker costs five mana because you’ll get the most use out of it later in the game, with a large creature on the battlefield and only a few cards (if any) left in your hand.

The other 26 creatures are Zombies, and will take advantage of various payoffs your deck has to offer. You have a bunch of strong Zombie tribal cards, for example Liliana’s Mastery, Cemetery Reaper, and Gravespawn Sovereign. These are just a few of them, and you’ll certainly find even more hidden synergies when you actually play with this precon. “Hate” cards are another type of card that combat a specific archetype.

Meanwhile, Isperia, Supreme Judge doesn’t initially speak, hey this is a fliers matters deck, but the title of the deck should clear up some confusion — First Flight. This is a fliers matter deck and playing it makes it very clear that this deck really cares about having lots of fliers and utilizing them to soar to victory. Beginners should easily be able to pick up these decks, pilot them, and have a blast doing so.

Artifact decks are a popular strategy that can really be hurt by something like Manglehorn. I usually play decks that focus on the graveyard (another popular strategy), so Rest in Peace gives me nightmares. The best way to do that is increasing the number of cards you can play in a game. Some would call this “card advantage” or just straight up “card draw” but I think the concept is a lot more nuanced than that. I like the term “velocity” because it evokes a feeling of speeding through your deck, and there are different ways to do that.

Party Time

One of the ways to alleviate some of the issues you may have in adapting to this environment is choosing the correct deck. You can choose one that plays to your strengths, one that will teach you something about Magic or the cEDH metagame, or you can just try to keep your head above water. One of the strongest options players have when seeking to build a quick and aggressive Commander deck is the vampire-tribal commander Edgar Markov.

You also want to be in control of the game – it should play out in a way that you imagine, and without too much randomness. Although the decks are cheaper, and have fewer valuable cards than the more expensive versions, that doesn’t mean that they don’t contain good cards. You’ll find many powerful cards such as Blasphemous Act, Army of the Damned, True Conviction, and many more. Naturally, Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are also included in each Starter Commander deck. There’s really been quite a few preconstructed Commander products this year.

How to build a Commander deck in Magic: The Gathering

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Multicolor cards offer access to a broader range of spells and abilities. But they need careful mana management and can be more challenging to play. The first step in building a Commander deck is to consider its color identity. And its color identity determines the colors of spells and abilities. They help build a cohesive and effective deck that can compete with other decks. In our Commander deck guide, we’ll also show you the basics of building a deck in this format.

Aggro-Combo

For example, Splinter Twin and Pestermite make a great combo. Over the course of the game, they’ll gain incremental advantages. Then, when the control player has full control over the opponent, they’ll start playing threats of their own and winning the game that way. For most formats, there is no maximum limit on the number of cards you can have in your deck. However, the more cards you have in your deck, the lower the chances of you drawing your best cards. For more on the number of cards in different formats, see How Many Cards in an MTG deck?

And, thanks to commander combos the handy screens of Magic Online (a little more on this later) here’s what the stats for this deck look like. For now, pay particular attention to that mana curve area on the lower left. Control-Combo is a control deck with a combo finisher that it can spring quickly if need be. A notable subtype of Control-Combo is “prison,” which institutes control through resource denial (usually via a combo).

Of course, you could always just try searching for certain keywords that fit your idea on a site like Scryfall, too. According to our own Arena Tutor, the Standard decks with the highest win rates on Arena are Boros Convoke. Gleeful Demolition is one of the best tradeoffs for an early artifact token. Knight-Errant of Eos is a big curve topper for that rarely needs five lands, and Nurturing Pixie is an example of how a trickery spell still helps apply pressure. Leyline of Resonance is banned in Best-of-One Standard formats on Arena. Resonance can be played in traditional matches, Limited and paper.

This seven-mana enchantment makes it so whenever an opponent casts their first spell of the turn they have to exile the top card of your deck. Then – and this is where it gets good – you can cast that spell if it’s a nonland card. With Standard being so popular on MTG Arena, lots of streamers play it. As such, their personal communities often have Standard discussions. Especially as a way of discussing decks or showing Arena gameplay from their channels.

Step 2: Choosing Your Color(s)

There’re Commander deck breakdown tips for choosing the legendary right card. One of the most popular ways to play is the Commander MTG format. In fact, there is no right answer when it comes to building MTG decks!

What should a MTG deck consist of?

Now you’ll be in the trend of the latest events of lands and monsters in a Commander deck. Last but not least, if you’re playing a midrange deck, focus on a few key cards like [c]Goldspan[/c] and [c]Wrenn and Seven[/c]. These key cards need to be powerful enough to make a high impact on the game.

How many land cards does a Magic: The Gathering deck need?

Some example deck names are “mono-blue Eye of the Storm combo”, “extended green/blue aggro-control deck”, and “Rakdos vampires”. The third large portion of a deck is usually used to either shield oneself from attempts by the opponent to halt the game plan or cards that do so to the opponent. Supplementary decks, or side decks, are separated card decks that may be played in casual games to enhance the gaming experience.

Control decks usually have at least two colors, sometimes three. Blue is the most popular control color because all counterspells are blue. Control decks also need spells to remove the opponent’s creatures, so white, black, and red are all excellent colors to go alongside blue. Standard is the main seasonal competitive format in MTG, using the most recent set releases with the older ones rotating out each fall. While there is no maximum deck size, so long as players are still able to shuffle it without help, the minimum number of cards that each deck must have is 60.

The fatties in the deck are designed to mop up whatever is left of your opponent after they have spent their resources on dealing with the rest of your creatures. Standard follows all the normal rules for a one-on-one Constructed format. Your deck should consist of a main deck with at least 60 cards in it (let’s be honest, it should be exactly 60 cards with about lands) and a sideboard of up to 15 cards. Across those 75 cards, you can’t use more than four copies of the same unique card, except basic lands. When playing a best-of-three match, you have the opportunity to switch cards between your main and side to improve difficult matchups for the next games.

The right mana base is essential in having a tournament-winning deck. It’s often tricky to get the mana right in decks that are more than one color. There’s a lot to think about when constructing a mana base. Reaver Drone can slowly kill us unless we have another colorless creature in play, and Ghostfire Blade becomes much stronger if all of our creatures are colorless. We may be tempted to include a more aggressive one-drop like Bloodsoaked Champion in our deck, but it’s better synergy to have only colorless creatures to make our colorless-matters cards better. I just count the mana symbols on cards to help give me a rough idea.

In general, most midrange decks run about 20 to 25 creatures and 10 to 15 spells. Instead of trying to finish the game as quickly as possible, a control player will spend most of their time taking care of their opponent’s threats. A general convention is to play lands, and spells, but there is wide variance in this aspect. This causes the important cards to be drawn on a more regular basis, and helps the deck to be more reliable. Eternal formats follow the basic Constructed format rules for deck construction, but expands the available cards to include virtually all published Magic sets.

To accomplish this, they run lots of cards with low mana costs. Also, almost every card in an aggro deck will help you deal damage to your opponent. As I said early on, this article is just to get you started. Throw something together from your collection, then play the heck out of it.