The Commander 2017 precon decks all had commanders with the eminence ability. This was a static ability that was active as long as that creature was either on the battlefield or in your command zone. It was eminence that got Edgar Markov banned in the Duel Commander format.
This style allows you to draw a first hand of 10 cards and then select three to shuffle back into your library. There are no official rules regarding who goes first in Commander. Most groups have each player roll a die and whoever gets the highest number is either forced to go first or gets to choose if they want to start.
Other Ways to Play
Don’t use one unlucky play session as evidence to add or remove lands. “Curve” refers to the number of spells of each mana value you have in your deck. Interestingly enough, when you plot the info on a bar graph, you can usually trace a line that tells you how your deck will behave. The commander damage rule can be simply taken out of the game.
Once you’ve decided on your wincons, everything else should build towards playing those cards. 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.
Including a hate card or two, especially if you play against the same strategy a lot, might be worth running in your list. Just make sure the card isn’t completely dead if you’re not facing that archetype. 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. “Hate” cards are another type of card that combat a specific archetype.
There are plenty of decks where sacrificing a creature to Phyrexian Tower benefits you both by giving you mana and by allowing you to cash in on death triggers. Having a sacrifice outlet that doesn’t cost mana is also always a good addition for an aristocrats deck. As you can tell from this list, all the best lands are non-basic ones. That means Wasteland can blow up some of your opponents’ best tools at no extra cost. I’m working on a deck that requires a lot of specific land so I just wanted to to use command tower but from what I heard there’s a cap.
If it’s your only wincon, you might go an entire game without seeing it. When you start building a deck, I suggest opening up your commander’s page here on EDHREC, and firing up the Archidekt deckbuilding tool before anything else. Both have a ton of great features that help simplify deck building, and I’ll be referencing them below and in future articles. Keep in mind that the optimal number of lands for a Commander deck is usually between 33 to 40, depending on your deck’s specific needs and strategy.
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If not then you may run in to the same problem I did where I found myself needing more land later in the game. Not all colors in Magic have great ways to find lands, so having a colorless option like Myriad Landscape is a really nice addition for Commander. When a Commander creature dies, its owner has the choice to either have it go to the graveyard or put it into the command zone. This choice is made as a state-based action before any other player receives priority to cast spells or activate abilities. If the Commander goes to the graveyard, it can be brought back to the battlefield through normal means like reanimation effects.
Aside from true duals, shock lands like Steam Vents or Godless Shrine are the best dual lands you can run. They have the basic land mtg decks types so they can be fetched, and they can enter untapped basically any time you need. In Commander especially, losing 2 life really isn’t all that big a deal. The bond land cycle (including Training Center) is handy for any multiplayer format since they will usually come in untapped.
War Room is a good source of card draw for decks with colors that might not naturally have other good options. The fewer colors in your deck, the better this card ends up being because you won’t have to pay as much life. Any dual land that can enter untapped on a regular basis is a pretty good option for mana fixing in Commander. Check lands like Sunpetal Grove or Rootbound Crag have a decent chance of entering untapped, especially in 2-color decks.
Many decks differ significantly in how many cards are needed in each category or the mana curve. A spellslinging deck will run less creatures, a lands heavy deck will run more lands, and higher power playgroups tend towards lower mana value decks in general. This has been a really basic guide for how to build a commander deck, but I’m not stopping here.
How many legendary creatures can I have in a commander deck?
Draw engines and cantrips are super common in a lot of decks in Commander. You have a chance to draw lands when you draw cards, and you might draw a lot of lands if you’re drawing a lot of cards and have a lot of lands in your deck. Decks like this play fewer lands since they only need a few for the whole deck to work like a well-oiled machine. Just like opposing ends of a spectrum, the reasons you’d play lower land counts vs. higher ones are basically the reverse. Decks that rarely see the mana value of their spells go above 3-4 pack lands more towards the range.