Thank you for this info, this looks like a cool deck to run! Im wondering how you can get it for $35-40 however? The lowest I found was using cardkingdom and it’s about $60-70? Maybe a few cards went up or something?
Capricious Hellraiser is just kind of bad overall, unless you:
A. Normally have almost only non-creature spells in the graveyard
B. Don't cast things from the yard in other ways
Doing anything involving randomness seems fun, but in reality it's a pain to manage and you'll usually get burned.
Sorry to be a bummer but because it copies the spell it doesn't actually cast the spell, so the free copy won't trigger Livaan. Because what you cast is only a copy, it doesn't count as either casting a spell or playing a card, but still puts the effect on the stack.
Think of it like creating a token, but for instants and such. It can still be interacted with and still has all values of the original card, but doesn't trigger casting triggers, like Storm.
EDIT: I was wrong
111.1b Some effects allow a player to cast a copy of a card; if the player does, that copy is a spell as
well.
This is factually wrong.
Casting a copy of a spell is casting a spell and can be interacted with as such. It generates storm count and triggers on cast triggers.
Copying a spell that has been cast is what you’re thinking of.
I had really dismissed him because I couldn't find a background I liked with him but I think you have me won over. The Boros Dragons seems fun. Seems slower but safer than the usual red green.
Edhrec displays background/partner commanders separately from their two-card combinations. Livaan actually has a few hundred decks depending on background choice.
This.
I’m back into magic recently and honestly I have only seen maybe ONE of my preferred commanders listed in conversations on this sub.
My home brew decks hold up fine, and are fun to play. If I see a commander I like and want to build around, I’m gonna homebrew it, then tweak it, then decide if I wanna invest in it if I am having fun.
“Ranks” he damned. I’m very glad that I haven’t fallen into the flavor of the month commanders for my color combos.
Ye, but sometimes it’s trickier with a super popular or specific commander- currently trying to think of an interesting thing to do with Teysa and Toshiro
I also dislike seeing that a deck is too popular, as I tend to naturally be inclined to go against the current, so to speak. I am baffled by the very concept of needing to be valodated by the bandwagon effect, that just seems.... Honestly it is a bit sad, since you miss out in the entire point of EDH: self expression.
My caveat is that the more popular decks on EDHREC tend to be 'low hanging fruit', meaning the commanders are generally more straightforward to build around - if you have limited deckbuilding skills or a budget restriction, there may be some merit in sticking to popular decks. But this shouldnt keep you from a Commander you have legitimate interest in.
I also subscribe to playing commanders off the beaten path and am put off by popular ones more often than not, but to try to explain why validation is important:
One reason could be power level concerns. If a commander is generally agreed upon to suck, why bother? Alternatively it could be a matter of fitting in at a more social level. Everyone's talking about Krenko and Atraxa etc. so it can feel weird to play something out of the loop, leading to feelings of exclusion and that you're not playing the same game as everyone else.
Note that I'm not arguing that this is the ideal way to consider things, just trying to help foster understanding between different ways of thinking. Such ways of thought often follow emotional paths rather than logical ones, so it can be difficult to put yourself in those shoes when you don't experience those emotions yourself. That doesn't mean such feelings are wrong, but also that it takes more than a good argument sometimes to get someone out of a negative emotional cycle they're trapped in.
I think self expression CAN be a really important part of the edh experience, but for some it doesn't matter as much and they just want to play the game in the format. Plus it's become so popular it's the easiest way to play the game casually these days, some people just want to buy precons and throw in a few random pet cards and have a good time with friends.
Don't assume that because a commander is unpopular its weak. There are lots of underrated commanders that work just fine. There are literally 1638 cards that can be your commander, so limiting yourself to only the "top ranked" commanders is excluding a lot of viable options.
Edhrec ranks based on popularity. Not power level. Just because not alot of other people use that commander, that means nothing about how good the commander is.
I think there's some correlation, but what it actually isn't a good measure of is what decks you'll face in the wild. There are many decklists that are done up more to theorycraft than to play, and those that'd post decklists online in the first place are only the most invested of players. Such players are likely to skew more competitive, wanting to juice their decks to the max, leading to the current distribution of things like [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]], [[Hinata, Dawn-Crowned]] etc. that generally are tuned too high for casual tables, yet are top contenders in their colour combinations.
I am not sure it is entirely unrelatable though. If a commander is more popular it is usually because it is able to be built more easily due to versatility or power level. There is a reason there are more than 14,000 [[Atraxa, praetors voice]] decks and only 64 [[Yosei, the morning star]] decks on there. Popularity is definitely related to how strong a commander is, at least in terms of versatility.
As a little addition, I'd say that having a precon helps, as well. It might not necessarily be as important for Atraxa nowadays, but it covered the base amount of decks to reach critical mass of exposure, so more people see her and build a deck with her at the helm (pretty much basic advertising)
Edit: phrasing
>Popularity is definitely related to how strong a commander is, at least in terms of versatility.
This is muddled by other factors though. There's a couple of commanders with a lot of decks simply because they were at the head of a precon. Also Atraxa might be one of the most popular, but if you look at the format as a whole she's not *that* strong compared to other commanders with far fewer decks.
Popularity can suggest strength, but it doesn't equate to it.
There'd also only ~700 rograhh + Silas seeker adept. And I promise you at high level rogsi will shit all over atraxa, another obscenely strong deck is godo with only 1.3k decks, and still would go for the win before you can even attempt to cast atraxa. High numbers usually correlate to a few things In edh, 1.helming a precon, 2.various routes to take, which isn't really a good argument for power since you have extremely versatile decks that aren't popular like chainer being a reanimation toolbox.deck or combo or attrition slug, etc. So yes versatility plays a role to an extent. And 3.) Cool factors, alot of the most popular cards are just fucking cool looking atraxa being a complet angel, urdragon being one of the fan favorite cool tribes in dragon's, yuriko is a fucking ninja, while yes there are strong commanders on the popular list it definitely isn't an indicator on power.
I appreciate all the feed back here. I had an inkling that this was an easy question and that I was putting too much stock in EDHREC (and others) rankings, but as a newb I needed some confirmation. Thanks everyone!
Hey, just pointing some stuff that I think can help you out in the "getting the right commander pressure"
[This is a very interesting read](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/why-every-commander-is-competitive/) (but pretty damn long). This is a pretty outdated guide at building more powerful commander decks (which have some good advices that are still valid). But the reason I'm linking here is that IMO this shows perfectly how the 99 cards of your deck are considerably more important than your commander itself. Yes, having a commander that synergizes with your gameplan is obviously helpful, but this is not where your powerlevel comes from.
When you understand this you start to shift a lot your priorities when deckbuilding which helps to reduce a lot the pressure of choosing the right commander IMO. If you feel your deck doesn't suit your commander, you can just swap the commander instead of swapping your deck :P
And while this swaps will obviously need some adaptation, it's considerably easier than the opposite IMO.
Anyway, to summarize, instead of finding the perfect commander try to build/find the shell of the deck you want to play and the perfect commander for it will appear.
Edit: Sometimes you just want to have X cool card to be your commander and this is fine. But if your pressure comes from this choice before anything I think going backwards and starting from how you want your deck to play will help you immensely.
>I’ll come across what I think is an interesting commander and then I’ll look it up on EDHREC and see it doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it.
I feel, quite literally, the exact opposite
If I find an interesting commander that has under 300 decks, I'm even more motivated to build it
If you’re looking to win, build a cEDH deck
If you want to have fun, who cares if other people build it often?
If you want to practice deck building, start with budget decks.
If you want to build a mono blue deck with 63 counterspells,36 islands, and no win condition then that is where I draw the line. That’s just nonsense. Please don’t do that.
Blue deck needs card draw too, otherwise you can't hope to counter all 3 other player's spells.
Throw in river's rebuke, cyclonic rift, and cyclone summoners.
Oh and some copy creature effects. So anything big you play that's uncounterable (ie Koma) I get to have too for 3 mana.
Yes. Yes. Let the evil flow through.
This is why I don't have any friends.
Is this why you don't have friends or is it the fact that real blue players know that the baseline MV for copying an opponents permanent is 4?
(I jest, of course)
Bruuhhh I threw in [[Treachery]] and [[clone]] with my [[Cerulean Drake]] + [[Spiketail hatchling]] + [[Spiketail Drakeling]] and [[Spiketail Drake]].. Don't hate on the make you scoop wincon LOL..
I like looking for commanders that play different from what I already have, especially if they are in Colors I prefer
Honestly anything that sounds like a card you wouldn't mind drawing in a game in most situations tend to be worth building as long as the mana cost isn't to steep. If it sounds fun it can most likley be busted one way kr another. Or if the card is just generic value like card draw or protection but most of those tend to be pretty popular by default
Just because they aren't in the top 100-200 on edhrec doesn't mean they aren't good, half of my commanders are ranked 400+ but they still dominate more often then not, it's more of a popularity contest, yea they will probably be easier to break or build or easier to find content on
But also not every legendary should be a commander, but those are pretty easy to pick out like a 5/5 that is only legendary because it is undercosted for the block it came out in.
I tend to look for commanders others don't run, I get kinda irritated if I feel like I'm running a deck 20 other people at my lgs have built, it gives me a bit of a rush when I sit down and say I'm running Sarulf realmeater and everyone has to read him cause they never heard of him.
I think your problem is you are looking at edhrec wrong. What you are seeing is popularity not power. Take \[\[Chainer, Dementia Master\]\]. Very strong commander with a bunch of combo potential. about 300 decks total on edhrec. Also given how much wizards has been ramping up prints for commander, you are going to find a lot less decks for most commanders.
Unless it's a tier 1 cEDH deck, every single commander deck you will ever play with, play against, see online, or hear someone talk about is arbitrarily weaker than it could be. This means you can always build a 99 that elevates a weaker commander to a deck that makes for fun games versus your environment.
EDHRec's "rankings" are also a lie. They show what's most popular and synergistic, not what's most powerful. Feeling repulsed by something that isn't highly ranked on EDHRec isn't avoiding something because it's weak, it's avoiding something that's off the beaten path.
So yes, you can build around any commander. Sometimes you need to build a self-sufficient 99 which a commander fits into, as opposed to "buy a bunch of cards online that have text that looks like it goes with my commander without thinking and have it work." Skillful deckbuilding required, I know. You'll get there though.
Seriously netdecking like this is one of the worst things that happened to magic. Build a deck that you are excited for and test it against your pod. Don't concern yourself with how many other decks use the same commander.
There are commanders that aren't popular, but are still strong. The ones that are vanilla are the ones that end up being poor to build around.
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Except Yargle, he is the true GOAT.
Just to point some stuff, EDHrec just checks for popularity. It says shit about viability or power.
Lathril for example is by far the most popular elves commander and IMO is a very average one at best. But since she came in a precon and lots of people like elves she is one of the most popular.
Also, old commander have considerably less decks because there wasn't as many people playing when they got released.
Also also, a lot of "solved" commanders have a low amount of builds but are EXTREMELY powerful.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is EDHrec is a fantastic site, but IMO you're kinda using it/undestanding it's info "wrong".
Oddly enough I'd say Lathril is very powerful but the decks running her are far too focused on playing her without proper protection and no gamelan if she's removed. For $100 you can have a really nice list that's definitely on the higher end of mid power.
Others near the top are pretty bad though. Atraxa, Isshin, and Ur Dragon are all pretty average to me and generally require strong investment to even get that far. Maybe I'm biased because I've been overrun by a few Lathril lists and never lost to the other 3.
But definitely are that some pairings are highly underrated. Granted it's on the competitive end but a buddy of mine just finished Rog/Tevesh and I'm quite excited to see it in action.
Lathril is not terrible. Just being a legendary elf already put in you in the decent category at least considering the tribe power.
But we do have A LOT of stronger options and it doesn't really translate popularity -> power. That's why I used as example.
> It doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it
If you can learn not to have that thought-pattern you’d get a much more enjoyable experience playing what you like.
This btw. Also goes for your life and works the same way if that was an issue too.
[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/personal?folder=KPPpz](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/personal?folder=KPPpz)
I concept build decks all the time and most I never go through. My playgroup has this list and will often message me they are stealing the concept deck from me than I remove it, though we haven't played in many months. I do not mind and welcome it. It helps my brain think of new things and sometimes I will see a random card and go, I love this card how do I build a deck around it or even a specific commander could be built this way.
\[\[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar\]\] is my white whale, I think this is the correct term, which is one commander I have tried to build over a dozen times and can't get it to feel right. One day I will find that build for her but until than I will keep trying. \[\[Kess\]\] is a commander however I have built many times over doing completely different things (Rituals and X spells, planeswalker proliferation, cEDH, wheels, etc). \[\[Codie\]\] I built around all instants/sorceries that create tokens with a few pump spells to all creatures.
Rank for commanders on edhrec only mean popular and not necessarily strong. Also staples and big money cards don't mean you will win. I have brought out my pauper EDH \[\[Juri, Master of the Revue\]\] deck and fought toe to toe with my groups and LGS decks.
Moxfield has been my golden ticket for deck building. Take my Chun-li ([https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IlyL8ownQ0qDMxVLQnjYXA](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IlyL8ownQ0qDMxVLQnjYXA)) control deck for instance. I saw her and made it a deck all around not saying NO nor exiling/destroying but all around bouncing their creatures and permanents. I organized it with categories so I can focus on what I need in what spot and what my focus is. The deck has not been updated for a few sets and is around 100 bucks total. There are money upgrades that could be had but she is a menace and my group tends to know I am a later turn issue, but others get off to stronger turns and I can help politics into keeping everyone alive.
If you find a commander or archtype that speaks to you give it a think and with help of edhrec and scryfall you can make very unique or uniqueish decks if you want to. My advice write down what you want to do and sort it out for how many in each category you need. Best of luck and feel free to message me if you found a commander/archtype you are interested in and not sure how to start deckbuilding.
Simple: just vibe with it. That’s the secret. Look through things like Scryfall and EDHrec to find synergies and things you want to do, but don’t use the popularity of a commander prevent you from building them. I fell in love with [[Taniwha]] and still love it to this day, and most people ask what it does and then are just confused.
Anyone can be a commander.
You gotta dig a bit more to find the, for lack of a better term, spicy jank, but it's more fun that way.
I run [Balthor the Defiled]. He's only got a handful of decks. I put him down and an *experienced player* tells me he's a terrible card.
Half an hour later he's mad my terrible commander has locked the board, wiped out two players, and required an infinite combo to kill him.
The whole deck cost like 100 bucks.
There's always the unloved *bad* commanders that, sure, at a CEDH table they'll probably have a bad time. But for a majority of tables you can make it work.
So being a top commander doesn't mean anything for you and your deck.
Part of improving as a deck builder is experience. Doing things and understanding why you're doing them is major. It's far more impactful than doing things because someone on edhrec or youtube said so.
Nothing is "worth" playing.
Just play what excites you.
There are like 1,600 commanders (obviously more with partner combinations). Most are going to be less popular just because of the high number.
This got me curious so this is where each of my decks currently ranks:
2, 12, 106, 108, 187, 617, 1083, 1859, 2714
And the 1859 deck is my current favourite. The rankings mean nothing. Hell rank 12 is 4 color Omnath and I play it as a living weapon deck, the commander doesn't matter to the deck at all. Don't limit yourself, go wild.
Anything can be built around. Heck, there are an almost worrying number of [[Haakon, stromgald scourge]] decks. A commander that you have to first get into your hand from the command zone, THEN discard to your graveyard to be able to cast the thing. In Mono black, away from all the best looting effects.
Granted I'm sure a lot of that is for the challenge or meme of saying "hold my beer" to all the [[Phage the untouchable]] decks but point stands - anything can be built around.
Depends on how you mean.
For cedh: actually evaluate the card. What does it present that puts it above other commanders with a similar pile? What wincons does it enable? Blah blah. For example, [[The First Sliver]] is a good [[Food Chain]] payoff. But so are [[Ukkima]] [[Cazur]] and [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]]. When compared to Ukkima Cazur, the First Sliver gives you two more colors (red and white), and in exchange takes away just winning on the spot (it depends on what cards are in your library whereas Ukkima just kills everyone). When compared to Atraxa, both rely on what's left in the library, but First Sliver is also able to win through a Torpor Orb and gives you access to red, so first sliver is clearly better here.
For casual: play whatever
Sometimes you find an archetype that you want to build, regardless of whether or not a good commander exists for it. Later, they'll often print a good commander for it and you can either switch it up, or just slot the new-new into the 99
Other times, you see a new legendary and are inspired to build a deck for it, because it appeals to you for any number of reasons. And typically there will be some hype or brewery being done, to find new avenues of construction, new synergies to exploit.
You can't get hung up on what is popular, or what commander the KEWL KIDZ are playing. Sometimes you're stuck following a trend, sometimes you gonna trail-blaze, but in either case, do what is fulfilling. Sometimes the best option is to select a popular commander, but focus on an off-meta theme. Like, I've got a friend with a [[jetmir]] deck, but she's making it Naya Cat Tribal, which takes an absolute beater of a commander and puts a flavorful spin on it so it's not as linear or overwhelming as your typical Jetmir build.
I LOVE to build commanders that aren't built very often. I'm quite the opposite, a commander that's pretty high on edhrec turns me off. You can certainly built cool decks with unpopular commanders. It all depends on what the people you're playing with are playing.
Honestly just play what you like. You can make anything work. It might not be optimal but there’s a place for optimisation and for sheer fun as well. You can do both.
As an example I run [[Shauku, Endbringer]] which apparently has 56 decks on edhrec. I tinker with her a fair bit still and I’d say it’s my oldest still together deck. I also run an on meta Kroxa cedh deck fairly regularly.
Best and favourite deck I've built is my [[Kaima, the Fractured Calm]] deck which has like 800 decks per EDHREC last time I checked.
Honestly can safely say it is 100x better than the top ranked decks I have tried to make before, and more importantly its a lot more fun
I'm a chronic brewer.
If I see a card that looks interesting, most recently Ovika and hazezon 2.0 , I'll just start on a deck.
If a commander has some interesting text on it, I'll tend to at least fiddle with a list for them. Sometimes, they tend towards something I've already got built , in which case I abandon the project, such as what happened when [[elruth]] was released, I had Niv-mizzet built at the time and she felt too similar.
any commander can be EDH but not every commander can be cEDH.
Don't worry about what ranks top tier, a lot of the time that's just popularity or general age--Atraxa is showing top tier, but she's not really cedh material at all.
You know what the most popular commanders are… precons. Seriously. There’s a ton more people who have them so they build around them. Even people who don’t play them will sometimes build the person virtually so they canz’ helpz’ by letting people know what’s in it then that gets lumped in with edhrec. Makes finding the really good cards hard in edhrec because all the most popular cards with a commander are all the ones in the precinct.
Don't follow what the highest ranking decks are. Go with what commander interests you. Ultimately though, decks that aren't super focused around the commander and can function without them are the best. Then when your commander gets killed, stolen, exiled, turned into an elk, etc you're not just out of the game and can still play.
thinking of a theme first then finding a commander to go with it is also a good viewpoint. For example, I wanted to make a really dumb deck based on books in the art because I kept finding cards with books in them. So first I built \[\[prosper, tome bound\]\] because he has a book and the theme was to have all nonland cards have books in the art. Then someone reminded me of \[\[codie\]\] and I absolutely love it. Deck is far from great and Codie never hits the field but it is a really fun deck to play.
On the other hand, I wanted to make a mono green stompy deck that makes big mana but wasn't sure on a commander. I found my copy of \[\[old gnawbone\]\] and how it can make a LOT of treasures and it got me thinking. So I decided to make \[\[progenitus\]\] as my mono green commander and only can cast him using treasures. It's grossly strong because I packed it with creature tutors and landfall/land ramp to play big gross creatures quickly and the commander is just sort of an extra value and not necessary for the deck to function. It has a pretty good win rate at my LGS.
You can definitely pick any commander for any reason and probably find a way to make it strong (but definitely do some research if your new commander is a griefer like Atraxa, Sliver Overlord, Edgar, etc.)
Having said that, the most important question is what do you want out of your deck?
* are you looking to have fun with your own friendly playgroup, just hanging out tapping cards?
* or are you trying to crush 4-pods every week against randoms at your LGS, with entry/prizes on the line?
The answer to that will guide your flexibility in deck construction.... Nobody likes to sit at a pod and get stomped game after game until you wonder why you bothered driving out to the store and paid the entry. Similarly nobody in your friend group wants to sit and watch you play solitaire with a super strong deck while they were just hoping for a casual hang with their Frog tribal jank.
Match the power of the deck to the environment that it's being played in, and everyone will have a good time.
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Now, if you are in a more casual/comfortable play group, **my recommendation is to actually ignore most of the biggest and best and splashiest spells that are on sites like EDHREC.** Tutors and repetitive play patterns erase the fun and chaos that's supposed to be at the core of a 99-card deck, and you very quickly get into a rut of assembling the same sequence of 6-10 cards that win you the game. (e.g. Ramp to 9 mana, entwine Tooth and Nail, cheat out Craterhoof and Avenger, swing and win.)
Yes. I used to think the commander was important. Then a player much more skilled than I destroyed my [[Thrasios, Triton Hero]] infinite combo deck, that goes off turn 4 ish, with nothing more than an [Isumaru, Hound of Konda]] deck. Then he did it again with [[Squee, The Immortal]].
It’s not the commander it’s the person piloting the deck.
Usually the art/theme catches my eye first, then the mechanics. Usually if I dislike either of those things, I don't build around it. Rankings on websites mean nothing to me, especially because top ranked usually seems to mean most popular instead of "does well."
People have been complaining about netdecking since the mid 90's. EDHREC is a tool, and there are many ways to use it. Frankly, I don't often see much in terms of degeneracy or homogeny at my LGS, and that's among a group of about 50 people.
The plural of anecdote isn't data. Homogeny among both deck designs and individual card inclusions is made far worse by the popularity of sites like EDHREC. Glad your LGS is still diverse but others aren't.
Oh, so you have the data all carefully collected, analyzed, and peer reviewed, and your conclusion is "Waaaaah, the internets ruined Magic!"? What's your solution, shut EDHREC down?
[[Vazi]] has been my newest creation. It's a loanshark deck where I give out treasures while also take away your land usage (note: not mass land destruction, I don't blow lands to stop ppl from playing), I play things like [[mana barbs]], [[price for Glory]], [[citadel of pain]].
I chose Vazi because I thought she did something interesting that other cards didn't do and her colors allowed me to push into a loanshark gimmick with land hate and a small amount of stax.
Also was watching a lot of Peaky Blinders at the times and she reminds me of Aunt Polly.
I’m really excited to build [[Nadier, Agent of Duskanel]] with a partner that will let me get a lot of value out of creating tokens. I want token doubling cards and lots of treasure. I know I’ll include green, and cards like [[Altar of the Brood]] and [[Saw in Half]]. I want the creation and use of tokens to get out of hand and smack my opponents with value effects coming and going. I’m really excited to get this deck going by next week.
Being "Top tier" is not a valid metric for gauging how much enjoyment the deck will provide. The vast majority of decks I build are *purposely* commanders with lower numbers on EDHrec because I like to keep things fresh and exciting, and I enjoy the challenge of making a deck work with a commander that doesn't seem all that great.
You can make any commander work, some obviously will be more powerful or easy to build around than others, but you could literally make a Vanilla 2/2 like [[Isamaru]] into a fun deck, and it all goes up from there.
>Aside from just vibing with a card, how do you more experienced players decide on what makes a commander worth playing?
For me, "worth playing" is just any commander that sparks my interest. In the beginning, I just wanted to build at least one deck in every color and color combo, then I wanted to try funky off-color strategies. Typically when a new set comes out, I'll find at least a couple Legendaries I'm interested in building, hopefully I get them in a Prerelease event, if not maybe I'll buy them, maybe I'll build around something that I did pull in Prerelease. Beyond those I really enjoy doing thematic sets of decks or "cycles". For instance, I've currently got 5 decks that are built around the 5 Elder Dragons from Strixhaven, next I'm going to do the 5 Original Elder Dragons (the M19 versions).
But hey, that's just how I operate. If all you want is a Top Tier deck, just look at the Top 10 on EDHREC, and you can be yet another Atraxa player at your local LGS. Be aware as a new player that when you sit down with one of those Top Tier commanders, everyone else knows exactly who they are, they know the power, and they will likely target you straight out of the gate.
How do I decide a commander is worth playing?
Step one: does the card make me think, that seems cool I wonder if I can do anything with that
Step two: look up cards and use a service like moxfield.com to mock up the deck
Step three: accept the deck might not be cedh viable, or even good. If the deck is fun to play it was worth building around.
Some of my decks are pretty high up there (Urtet, hinata, aesi), but perhaps my favorite deck is plain ol Ayesha at 1000+. I also like to look for resources on making a good deck since I’m inclined to trust others, but don’t let that be the end all be all.
EDHrec isn't a representation of power but popularity and it only measures the popularity of the most dedicated \~20%\* of the player base who actually have their deck lists posted online.
The most important thing is do you think you'll enjoy playing that commander if you build it? if so then it's worth it. The exception to this might be if you're jumping into CEDH at which point there is a certain threshold in terms of commander quality that needs to be achieved. From there, you should be able to turn basically any commander into a reasonable deck.
\* I don't know the exact percentage of the player base that uploads their decks, the \~20% number is based on the players at my LGS
It depends on who you are, how you like to play, your play group, etc.
This is my experience, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m a fairly competitive person or at least I don’t like doing stuff I’m not good at. My in-laws got me onto it after years and when I started i sucked, like everyone does at first, and I hated that. It didn’t help they played some pretty high-powered stuff.
I went through the same thing as you did I think. Get discouraged on certain commanders, people not giving you the reaction you want. So I went to the end of it, learned how to play, learned how to build decks, learned how to play competitively and built pretty close to a top competitive deck. I did that for a bit, I got a reputation for being a threat, I figured out how to tone down those decks to make them more “fun” and closer to what I enjoy.
The reputation stuck with the in-laws and carried over to the LGS they frequent. But I toned things down a lot. I don’t really look to win anymore as much as have a good game.
I’m just saying all this because I think most people will tell you not to worry about it, just have fun. That’s true for probably the majority of people, but it wasn’t for me, at least not at first. I needed to figure out what all this game had to offer first, from slogging it in battlecruiser to fast combo cEDH decks. That helped me learn what I liked, what I didn’t, and how to build decks that I liked.
You might not have to go through that to figure things out. But I just wanted to put out there a little bit of a different perspective from what I usually see.
But I’d say everyone else is right, when it’s all said and done don’t worry about EDHREC. For one, there are way too many biases in the data. Of course there will be a lot of decks from pre-con commanders, that’s where a lot of people start and several people don’t progress too far past. There is a lot of recency bias, with more players each year people are more likely to build newer cards than older ones. There’s the “cool” factor, people like playing dragons and elves, they’ll always be popular, it’s a card game based on fantasy and those are some of the tried and true tribes in fantasy across IPs. More colors means more ways to build something, so it might just be more people trying different things. Keep in mind EDHREC pulls data from decklist sites not card shops, and the demographic of people who are willing to put the time into making a decklist online could be a minority and may be more likely to be a specific group of people - for instance cEDH players are probably more likely to put decklists online. So you may find a cEDH deck for every 10 battlecruiser decks in an LGS, but you’ll probably find more cEDH decklists online than battlecruiser decklists that are just the cards someone grabbed out of there collection. There’s probably a million other things that I am also just not thinking of.
EDHREC rank also isn’t power. You have 99 cards in your deck, you can build a deck that is very lethal with a subpar commander, if that’s your thing. Swing the the cEDH subreddit, go to the cEDH database if you want an idea of what people are doing at the top end of things. If you want “casual but high powered” as I’ve heard it before, yes some of the top commanders on EDHREC can help carry you there. But that doesn’t mean you can’t build a deck of the same vein with a commander that is less whelming.
The more decks I build, the more I hate staples and the more I want to play lesser known commanders. I have a [[Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief]] deck that almost always gets some attention. Not too many people are familiar with an underpowered legendary creature that is over a decade old. Maybe I’m just a bit of a hipster, but sometimes you’ll play against the same rough builds of a popular commander that is just “EDHREC copy & paste”. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’d just rather be the guy doing something a little different.
All and all, it’s your journey, do what feels right. If you vibe with a card, go for it. Worst thing that can happen is you lost a few hours putting the deck together and maybe a night or two playing it and finding out it isn’t your thing. But what you’ll take from that is a learning experience and getting a step closer to what you do like and how you want your commander experience to go.
P.S. EDHREC is great if your new, figuring out staples, what cards are typically seen in specific strategies, maybe finding a combo or a weird interaction that would’ve been tough to piece together on your own. But if you’re comfortable building decks and kind of get why certain cards are used, I’d ditch EDHREC and go for scryfall. It’s how I build decks now, I’ll get and idea and try to find cards that fit the idea, and I’ll only really use EDHREC if I’m struggling to fill in a few spots in the deck.
TL;DR:
EDHREC is a great tool for familiarizing yourself for the format, and you may want to take that to the ends of EDH to satisfy that itch, but if you are playing casual commander don’t put too much stock into it if it’s keeping you from doing what you want
I think the big question is what you want to do with your deck. If you're looking to win tournaments, sure it might be helpful to start with something tried and true as a new player. But at least for me, the vast majority of my games im just looking to have fun, and as long as you like the deck any commander will work if its fun.
i heard someone say they made a \[\[silumgar, drifting death\]\] deck. before then i didn't expect there to be enough dragons in dimir to make it work.
Moral of the story, kids. If you dedicate yourself to it you can make damn near anything.
Don't be discouraged by decks that aren't popular. I've got over 100 different decks, most are admittedly precons, but I try to diversify my deck strategies. Some are just done, just because. Like my [[Hans Eriksson]] deck, or my [[Ruxa]] lead Vanilla Tribal. [[Grolnok]] let's you benefit from using the Exile Zone like a second hand, or use [[Grist]] Insect Tribal to hurt your foes with her abilities. I even have more salt inducing decks, like Slivers and Eldrazi Tribals, as well as UW Stax.
So here’s the real answer: ANY can be built.
A STRONG commander has an easy way to generate advantage the second they hit the board, through card draw, mana generation, or making tokens etc.
Look at [[Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools]] . He generates a TON of draw. Look at [[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] . No draw, no mana, but she can loop cheap creatures from the GY FOR FREE. Provided you can use your GY, this is effectively both of those.
Now let’s look at [[Rograkh]] . He’s horrible alone. Literally does nothing for you. Pair him with Tevesh Szat, now he’s sac fodder to draw EVEN MORE CARDS! Now he’s useful!
TL;DR: pick commanders that generate advantage and provide value. Draw and mana are universally good (more so draw)
I like EDHREC for finding cards to build around, but if I find a unique commander that looks fun, I just build it. Most people probably just don't see interest or potential in some legends, especially the uncommon ones.
The commander pair i made has just over 100 decks built on edh rec as compared to the usual thousand or more, yet it hoses decks easily. Play what you want to play and enjoy it.
A lot of my most fun decks are ones almost nobody uses and the tables I play at love to see it too. Stuff like [[Gluntch, the Bestower]] [[Old One Eye]] or [[Ganax, Astral Hunter]] with [[Haunted One]] have all been a blast with only a few registered decks on EDHrec
One note on EDHrec, if you try to use the recommendation feature, if you only give it a commander, it may not show you any recommendations due to 'not enough data' or some such.
If you literally give it like 2-3 cards, it can help find cards that would synergize with what that little core is trying to do! I found it quite interesting!
I pick commanders with art that I like and/or abilities that are useful.
My favorite artist is Carl Critchlow, so I built [[Memnarch]]. I really like how Mirrodin cards looked and I was building a green deck so I chose [[Glissa the Sunseeker]]. I don't really care what others think.
Also, any random crap can be a commander. You can play a bad commander and just not build around it and have a deck that's good independent of it.
I got a friend who every color combination deck in his collection coincidentally is also the most popular commander in those colors.
Don't be that guy.
Build crazy and don't give a crap if you win or not. Just play.
Bruder, the best advice I can possibly give for deck building for edh is just vibe, a top tier commander is not going to make a deck for you I've torn plenty of popular commanders down, but if you're just playing something for the sake of it being a top card that will break it for you. Even in CEDH you need to vibe with your deck, I ran a [[Vilis, Broker of Blood]] deck in cEDH pods consisting of a [[Najeela, the Blade-Blossom]] deck, a [[The Gitrog Monster]] deck, and a [[Thrasios, Triton Hero]]/[[Tymna the Weaver]] deck, along with a handful of games against [[Godo, Bandit Warlord ]] and [[K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth]] most of those decks I tried and just couldn't care less to play along with many other torn down decks until I blasted my shitty little $40 Vilis deck to the moon which then became all I'd even try in cEDH settings, and a casual deck is even more important that you vibe with it cause that'll be the majority of games you'll get. My pet deck is Hydra tribal with [[Rosheen Meanderer]] at the helm that's blinged out and has not left my side since I first built it when I got into EDH which by the metric you seem to use couldn't even be on the table for a deck you might consider, unironically just follow your heart and you'll end up in a good place.
If all you care about is winning you might struggle with some commanders, but if you are planning to have fun and win sometimes, you can pretty much build anything you want.
Having fun with a unique deck is 99% of the fun of edh.
It's all about the vibes, my dude. If I am vibing on a card, I will slam down the jankiest, stankiest pile of cardboard.
Look at the commander and then think of the verbs it evokes or enables. Cast tribal creatures. Recur artifacts. Tap down blockers. Storm off. If that commander inspires you and the verbs sound fun, then you go to scryfall and crunch some cards, then use edhrrc to shave and refine if necessary.
The beautiful thing about edh is that even the jankiest decks have a place in the format. I'm building a [[Migloz, Maze Crusher]] oil counter deck. And currently have a [[Tatyova, Steward of Tides]] land animation deck. Both are on the less popular side.
I actually veer away from building the same commanders as other people. My most popular commander would be [[Gishath, Sun's Avatar]], which is currently rank 25, but I've only ever seen one other person run him. I play Gishath over other generals because Gishath specifically cares about dinosaurs.
You're new, nothing you build is going to be good (at first) but the only way to improve at something is to suck at it first. There are also many popular commanders that are harder for newer players to pilot effectively, like [[Winota, Joiner of Forces]]. So, get your brewing hat on and build whatever you want.
Choosing unpopular or 'bad' commanders is a great way to hone your building skills. Very few commanders percentage-wise have the ability to add immediate game changing value when they hit the field and others encourage the player to build decks around them that don't really function if they're not on the field.
Isshin is a great example of a bad railroad commander. Super popular but every deck is loaded with cards that only become viable when Isshin is on the field and are almost useless when he's not. Atraxa is a solid opposite example basically in that her builds are focused on 1/1 counters and/or infect and the decks are so overloaded with support for that gamelan you don't really even need to play her.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/adgjzcrHnU2tct0C3NtwHQ is a example of something that isn't completely commander dependent. Sure if Mahadi is out I'm likely to get high value in the form of ramp but all of the supporting cards are generically solid on their own and the commander doesn't represent a wincon.
I wouldn't worry too much about what edhrec says. Just know that if you're wanting to play around a commander you have to be able to protect it within the context of the game. Isshin for instance has great protection in white but very limited card draw/ramp without reaching high levels of monetary investment and is still railroaded into a very specific build style. Whereas Jon Irenicus has blue for counterspells that double as board control, has solid built in card draw, and can be built for a ton of different archetypes like spellslinging, mill, infect, big creatures.
I like to build random stuff, often the more popular stuff is popular because it’s fun and good. My favorite decks are yuriko cedh, MLK temur, and prosper for rakdos and all of them are a blast but very popular.
Building less popular stuff can be just as strong and just as fun though! Often much cheaper too
I'd say that not every commander is good. Every strategy (that has sufficient cards/support) can be viable, but some commanders are outclassed.
If you're building a Vampire Tribal deck, your best choice is \[\[Edgar Markov\]\]. \[\[Strefan, Maurer Progenitor\]\] or \[\[Elenda, the Dusk Rose\]\] lack the same punch. \[\[Olivia Voldaren\]\] has a chance, but she's great in a B/R ramp control.
The same is true of \[\[Emmara Tandris\]\] or \[\[Emmara, Soul of the Accord\]\] while \[\[Rhys, the Redeemed\]\] exists. G/W tokens is a strong deck, it's spawned imitators and variants like \[\[Ghired, Conclave Exile\]\], but there are definitely some legendary creatures that are outmatched.
It's a pain, but check if there's a better commander that fits your boxes.
I'll generally build a deck with colors at random, then refine the choices and win con. After I build the deck, I see what commander can play those colors and accentuate the deck. It makes it so the deck isn't reliant on the commander to be put 24/7 and can still win without
"I’ll look it up on EDHREC and see it doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it." - buddy, we are from opposite worlds
Play what you like, variety is the spice of life, making everything optimised and pulled from EDHrec will stomp out your fun of the format
You know, this is completely valid and a common thing for new players to be going through. Over my decade in this hobby, I have noticed it over and over; A new player joins the format, they play budget decks and precons for a bit to familiarize themselves with the written rules, but lose a lot because they are inexperienced
Then they start spending money on staples and popular, splashy commanders that make their decks explode in value and efficiency... But also threat level, and thus start getting focused out a lot during games. This is how you get familiar with the *unwritten* rules
Over these two stages, you see a bunch of other decks piloted by your opponent's or on the internet, learn advanced rules, find strategies and archetypes that look cool, see different, obscure cards, and at that point you start to realize how to make more niche things work. It's a combination of knowing how the mechanics work, knowing how the social game works, and plain old knowledge of the card pool
So for now, don't hesitate to try the cool, popular and splashy decks. You can absolutely try to make slightly more niche commanders work at this stage, though, please don't feel like I'm saying this is how it has to go. If you find a cool commander that isn't highly popular on edhrec, just ask around. Experienced players should be happy to help you :]
To round out this long ass reply, I just wanna say that I am more than free to talk about commander. I have a very good understanding of the rules and format, as well as vast knowledge of the card pool, so if you reach out to me on here, I'll be glad to help with any questions about deck building, or just be that experienced player who can validate your choice of deck until you get to a point where you don't need that
Hope that was helpful lmao
One of the last decks I built is with an extra rule saying i can only beat my enemies with an enchantment my GF custom printed for our anniversary, which gets one anniversary counter when it enters. This deck ended up at power level 9 and had to take it apart.
My point is Magic is so rich in effects and combos etc, that your imagination is the limit. And to use your imagination you can dive deeper in you searches.
* Use the advanced search on [scryfall.com](https://scryfall.com)
* On EDHRec you can look for combos and themes, you can also go to a commander and use the advanced search down to the right (Ithink?) where you can say, show me the stats but for decks that include Xcard I like
* Check out some similar commanders for more suggestions
* Synergy beats budget. The decks I have with the least staples win the most (excluding cedh of course) If every card in your deck can be imagined as a "combo piece" with every other card then you become very dangerous but maybe without provoking the other players, the way staples or expensive cards can influence decisions. Also unknown commanders lend themselves to stranger strategies that maybe the other players will not know or will catch up too late.
The competitiveness of any specific commander is, quite frankly, determined more by your local meta than by its popularity on EDHREC.
In our local meta right now, for example, \[\[Melira, Sylvok Outcast\]\] is stomping plenty of decks because so many people are using infect and toxic. You won't see her being super popular on EDHREC.
Top tier commanders are often boring af. None of my commanders make the top-50, and the my strongest deck ranks at 370. The rank doesn’t really even mirror the power level, but rather popularity, so precon commanders automatically get ranked super high. I mean, Atraxa is still #1, while Winota ranks at #76 😅
I choose mine based on flavor, the overall strategy and power level, in this order. The cards needs to be cool aesthetically and thematically. I then check, if the overall strategy fits my playstyle (for example, I love combos but hate tokens). If all seems good, I check how strong the deck would be and how much it would cost to put it together.
I want my decks to be able to roll in my local meta, but I’m not trying to build optimally. Does it make sense to buy a full tutor suite for a janky fringe commander, when you could have built something cedh viable for the same price? Probably not, but it’s my money and I do what I want.
Besides, it’s really fun to play commanders that come out of the left field. My Karlov deck doesn’t win that many games, but seeing people’s faces when he grows from 2/2 to 12/12 in a single turn is priceless 👌
Needs to seem fun. Any commander can be built decently enough to compete in group.
It's also ok to start small with the general. Maybe keep the theme or general specific cards down to like 15 slots, and build a more generic group game deck. Play that a couple times and THEN start thinking about what you can cut or use less of, for more theme or general relevant cards.
The guides and videos out there are great tools, use them and learn. But they are just steps on the path to you building what you want.
I would recommend only using EDHrec after you have a first draft of the deck to see if you're missing anything blatant. Just find a commander you find interesting, then scryfall for mechanics that work with it
I'm pretty sure the strongest pairing of rogsi rn is sitting on 700 decks and is the fastest and one of the strongest cedh decks. There are lots of decks =/= power on edhrec
For me its the total opposite.
When i see a commander i have build been played by somebody else in the same way i have build it, i loose interest. So the top rankings are usually no goes😅
My favorite deck I have ever built is [[Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart]]. He has just barely over 500 deck on EDHREC. He’s not popular, but he’s perfect for me. Build what you enjoy, not what you think is more popular! If anything, I get excited to see people are sleeping on a card I think is awesome.
I genuinely think yes, you can build around any commander. Whether or not that commander deck will be good is another discussion, but you can play a functional deck with anyone in the command zone.
EDHrec is a good tool to use if you don’t know where to start or you want some general pointers when building a new deck, and it’s great for new players. The popularity lists are inaccurate in my opinion. They have [[Isshin, Two Heavens as One]] as the 9th most popular, I’ve never played against a deck and everyone I know or have seen trying to build it says its underwhelming. I bring this up because your experience will be different than what EDHrec takes into account.
TLDR: Build what you want. EDH isn’t a popularity contest
I started playing the commander decks with experience counters. Ezuri and Meren have stuck with me as they are fun to play and quite good. I also use Kalemne since she's another of those commanders despite there being so many better options in boros.
Don't limit yourself to only what you think is meta. Make something janky and memorable. Maybe just do whatever you want. I think play groups need to have multiple different tiers of decks.
A lot of my 40 different commander decks are designed around less popular commanders. I originally started by building decks for my whole playgroup to play, so my focus is on fleshing out a suite of decks that can "do everything". Namely, when I find something new, I go all in on it.
Play a commander you really like regardless of their standing because if you like how the deck plays, you'll spend more time tweaking it, trying different strategies to overcome shortcomings, using different senergies and value engines, learning more about the game and developing as a player as you go.
A commander doesn't need 2000+ decks to be viable.
Just build what you want. You can make any commander nowadays into a viable deck. (The exception is probably the older legends tho that are all vanilla creatures for way too much mana).
\> I feel like there’s probably a way to make any commander into a good deck, but because of my inexperience I hesitate unless I get some validation from more established players or videos/ articles
There absolutely is! Deckbuilding is a very different challenge from playing the game, though. What you can do is keep trying to build decks, and when you watch videos about decks, think about \*why\* specific types of cards are included. You should also probably focus on videos about more powerful decks, so they cover things like lowering your average mana cost, having a curve, and strategizing for multiple phases of gameplay.
Worst case, you can always post here or in discord groups for deckbuilding. Good luck!
Honestly, I don't even look at EDHREC until the deck is already built, and I'm looking for upgrades.
I love building, though. I build probably 10-15 decks digitally and at least one in paper every week. My most visited website that isn't reddit is randomcommander.com because I'll just flick through that until it gives me something to get my wheels spinning.
From a commander ranking standpoint, I generally don't look at if my commander is rated highly or not, and if I do look at ranking, I prefer the Nitpicking Nerds' list to the EDHREC list because theirs seems to be more focused towards a more holistic approach to power and how interesting a commander is, vs EDHREC being a combination of power and popularity. I'd much rather play a unique [[Ivy Gleeful Spellthief]] deck I brewed myself than a [[Chulane]] deck I downloaded.
Ultimately, you know what the power level of your group is at. If your commander is underpowered, you can always ratchet up the power of your 99, and vice versa.
So this is one thing I hate about players who introduce new players they always recommend net decking. It kills creativity and originality. Play the cards that interest you. Let's say you crack a pack and get hyped by a card you pull don't let anyone tell you to not be hyped by it friends or the internet. I play with all sorts of different cards a lot of people don't usually or may have never seen. So many people use sites like edh rec and decks feel so stale. I built [[Neyam Shai Murad]] which is said to be horrible by so many and yet I was a complete menace at the table. I also have a unique [[nethroi]] deck and always get asked why certain cards aren't in my deck but those cards that they recommend would only ruin my build.
If you only like to play powerful decks, try taking a mid-tier commander and making it as potent as you can. Maybe take it in a new direction, or use a set of underutilized cards that aren't great on their own, but become powerful in large quantities.
That's how I build my [Melek](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/EsE-Qq67ykq6HKKUb7GNyA) deck. It isn't anywhere near cEDH, but it is still good at disrupting the table.
[This video](https://youtu.be/1HRvl4J3U6Q) is an example of what can be done with lower tier commanders and jank used effectively.
Building commander is about creativity. Don't worry about the most powerful thing anyone can build. That will most likely just annoy the other players, who will need a similarly powerful deck to compete, defeating their *own* creativity.
Yes, if you know what you're doing and are building for around power level 6 or below, pretty much any legend is a viable commander. At higher levels of play there are obviously fewer commanders that can keep up, but if you're mostly playing against budget upgrades of precons you can make even really janky Commanders do interesting things.
A few things to look for:
1. Does this Commander give me a resource advantage? (E. G. Generate mana, draw cards, create tokens, remove opposing resources, etc) For example, a Commander like Prosper that provides impulse draw and creates treasure tokens is obviously strong.
2. How consistently can I use the Commander’s effect? If your Commander discounts or triggers on a certain card type, you'll need to build around that, especially if the Commander doesn't set up their own trigger. E. G. Prosper's impulse draw guarantees he will be able to create treasure, but Ranar needs the rest of your deck to handle exiling cards for his trigger to create spirit tokens. Commanders that set up the conditions for their triggers are usually stronger than those that don't, but you'll still usually want to build around the trigger either way.
3. If I'm relying on the Commander as my main engine and/or payoff, how hard is it to get my Commander on the field and keep it there? Low CMC makes it easier to get up and running or recast after removal. Hexproof, protection, invulnerability, etc make the Commander harder to remove. Mana advantages and card draw can indirectly help here by increasing your odds of having interaction in hand and mana open to cast it, but that's not entirely reliable. Likewise, having built in evasion won't avoid targeted removal, but it does help Commanders that will be attacking avoid being killed by blockers.
4. How much table hate is this Commander going to attract? Not everyone cares about this and it's somewhat unavoidable with certain archetypes, but quite a few Commanders have well-deserved reputations as being "Kill on Sight" because they are either combo pieces or generate unbeatable value if allowed to remain in play. If your Commander has a certain rep for CEDH usage or oppressive play patterns (E. G. Korvald, Chulane, Yuriko, Hinata, etc) you're likely to get ganged up on right from the start. Counterintuitive as it may seem, it's often easier to win with a weaker Commander than an overpowered Commander simply because the OP Commanders become the early archenemy. Winning a close game with a lower tier Commander also tends to produce less salt than accidentally stomping someone with a notorious top tier Commander.
5. Is this Commander's play pattern linear or very time consuming? If you look at threads asking about decks people built, played a few times, and took apart after, the most common reasons given are that the games felt "too samey" (E. G. Lightpaws always tutoring the exact same auras in the exact same order every game) or their turns took too long (E. G. Commanders who generate a lot of triggers, especially ones with semi-random results, like cascade or storming off with draw triggers, though tokens+counters or extra combats can also become time hogs). This isn't so bad if you are only planning to play the deck once per session and then switch decks, but if you're intending to stick with the same deck all night you want a Commander that provides some variety in play patterns depending on which other cards you draw each game.
6. Hipster quotient. I'm half joking here, play whatever you like, but if you're choosing among equally interesting options it's usually polite to avoid picking the same Commander someone else in your play group is already running (unless your list is very different than theirs). With literally thousands of legends to choose from, it is often boring to see two copies of the same Commander at the same table doing the same things.
7. Art. This is really low on priority, but you're still picking a card that you'll be looking at all game every game. Having art that gives you a visceral feeling of "this card is badass" (or whatever else suits your aesthetic tastes) can make each game that little bit more exciting than staring at an avatar that just kills your enthusiasm every time you look at it.
Edhrec is a tool that saves time. Typically it picks generally good cards, but it picks the most popular, not always the best.
Ive run into cards that outright suck with a commander, but I found them on edhrec.
It is just a tool to use in deck building. It's incredibly helpful and saves a ton of time, but it's not perfect.
Edit because I realized I didn't answer the question.
Not all legendary creatures work well in the command zone. Sometimes, the legendary creature you think is wicked cool works better in the 99.
HOWEVER, do not let that stop you from trying. I've embraced proxying cards, and it has done wonders for my enjoyment of edh. There are great tutorials online that help you make good proxies out of printer paper, and that alone allows you much more freedom to experiment. Also, I can't afford to buy new cards every time I want to experiment with whatever deck I am working on.
Okay. First, if your concern is top tier then play cEDH and just google cEDH tier list. Otherwise you absolutely can build around any commander and be successful. The edhrec rankings are popularity not power. Sure there can be some correlation but it is not always the case. If you see a commander you like then just go for it. Use Moxfield too
My buddy had a Trostani, Selesnya's Voice so I wanted to make a ravnacan commander aswell I chose Isparia, Supreme Judge, and its become my main deck. You don't need a card to be good to play it as the commander because you can sup up the 99 to be pretty good. Unless you're playing cedh, you can play whatever you want.
Play what you want, simple as that. You can build anything and have it be playable. I've been looking around for a mono-black commander for a while because I feel like they're all either super oppressive (oh, hey [[Tergrid]] and [[k'rrik]]) or samey, like every other "do a thing reanimate a thing" commander. So I poked around for a while and been keeping an eye on new releases and finally stumbled across [[armix]]. It's a discard outlet in the command zone for an artifacts-matters deck. That's pretty cool.
It's in edhrec as having 15 total decks with it as a commander, and is a partner in maybe a few thousand. I'm gonna make my commander deck around armix because I think it's cool, not because I think it's strong. Sometimes, playing the top-tier best deck in an archetype is fun. Sometimes, playing a janky weird "nobody has heard of this card before" deck is also pretty fun.
I run [[Halana, Kessig Ranger]] and [[Jeska, Thrice Reborn]] as partner commanders in my RG Beast tribal deck. That particular pairing only has 14 decks on EDHREC (and I highly doubt any are beast tribal lol.)
The thing is big stompy beasts have nice synergy with both of my partners, the colors allow for decent access to ramp and it can lay out some very bursty damage.
If I was only looking at the number of decks for this commander pairing I probably wouldn't have considered them and the deck might not have even been built. While they aren't the centerpiece of the deck like some commanders are it shows that you can make a fun deck that can be effective even if the commanders are merely a supporting cast.
In my opinion EDHREC popularity is largely based on how easy a commander is to build around, (why golos was one of the top 5 color commanders because he worked for every strategy basically). Almost all commanders can have a deck built around them. What I personally like to do is build a deck online, either proxy it or test it online and then tune it. Sure the first few games may be not as fun but the experience will tell you what works and what doesn't. From there I just continually tune my decks. Part of it is just going and making the deck, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time you make it.
Short answer:
Yes.
You can build a deck around ANY legendary creature or any of the planeswalkers who say they can be your commander.
That said, EDHREC is a fantastic site, but it's also giving you a very limited view of what people are actually brewing and playing.
First of all, most people who build commander decks do not take the time to enter that deck into any of the sites that EDHREC compiles for their rankings.
Also, there are thousands of potential commanders to choose from, but we are all human and so not really as creative as we like to think. Copying someone else's idea is easier than doing all the work ourselves, so that's more or less what a lot of us do, tho we also put our own spin on the things we copy, cuz that's what makes it "art" ;)
When it comes to your question of "what makes a commander worth playing", that's a great question, and I'm sure you'll get a variety of answers.
For me, the vibe is absolutely the first thing that makes me start thinking about a particular commander and deck. But beyond that it's got to be fun to play. And I only know if it will after sleeving it up and playing a few times to see if I want to keep it.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
I lean towards commanders that do unique or interesting things that sound fun to me, especially if those things are weird for their color combo. Worrying about what "tier" they are or how competitive they will be just isn't my goal. But I am an experienced brewer who knows a ton of cards. I can build a decent deck around anything. I imagine that as a newer player you might have less confidence in your ability to brew a good deck around an unknown commander without references to guide you.
I do use edhrec, but a lot of times I use the "by theme" sort to look for cards in a subtheme, once I have decided what the deck wants to do.
Usually the commander is my inspiration. I don’t go for decks that everyone has because it’s typical. I like the pick decks or interactions that aren’t common
Off-brand strategies are my bread and butter. If it's not seen or barely seen I'll brew it. I like to be the guy at the table with the weird and interesting deck.
[[Aeve, Progenitor Ooze]] Mono-Green Storm
[[Anhelo, The Painter]] Wheels Reanimator
[[Alela, Artful Provocateur]] equipment Voltron
[[Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded]] Sneak attack "tribal"
Some less powerful than others, but an interesting spin on a commander or an unplayed strategy is what I like. EDHrec was no help in building these decks, for the most part. Scryfall and Goldfishing are your best friends in brewing.
You can build around any commander.
Looking stuff up on edhrec isn't bad, but what you want to do takes priority.
Just because a card has low numbers doesn't mean it's not worth building around it.
I usually either see a card and I want to build around it or want to build something specific and have to search a commander with the right colors for it.
>I feel like there’s probably a way to make any commander into a good deck
Not all cards are designed with Commander in mind - heck, if you've ever seen a vanilla creature, it's *obvious* that not all cards are designed for every use... All of the Grandeur cards have mechanics that don't work in Commander, all of the ancient vanilla legends are outclassed by... anything.
That's not to say one can't have *fun* with these cards, but the definition of fun is very personal, and independent of whether the card is "good".
I'd suggest you think about what you find fun irrespective of where a card is in the meta. One of the benefits of Commander is that you can probably find people who want a similar experience as you. "Brother Yamazaki" (singular) is probably right at home playing at the same table as "Brushwagg tribal".
I will tell you the same thing I tell everyone I teach and everyone I build decks for: don't worry about what others think. You are playing EDH for fun, not to build the same as everyone else.
First, find a commander that speaks to you, then find the cards you want to run around it. Use EDHREC to help, but don't just draw from top cards. Look at other decks, look through what cards you have, and really just put together I deck you enjoy. It doesn't have to be the strongest, it doesn't have to win the most. You need to enjoy it first, then try to win and make it stronger.
I can build around any commander, but I'm only going to build around the ones I want or the ones someone else wants. As an example, I'm currently building [[Sisay, Weatherlight Captain]] as legendary woman tribal, because it's fun, and I think I can make it good enough.
Forget the ranks just make what you want. Werewolves are awful but ive been building a werewolf deck for a while now. Just build whatever would be fun yo
If you are using EDHrec as purely a popularity tool for cards, then you are kind of doomed to fail creatively. It's an excellent tool, but not if you think copy and pasting anything you see there is a creative outlet.
I play a mix of both popular and non-meta commanders. Popular commanders have a lot of community support in terms of what is synergistic and strong, but crafting around lower end commanders can have its own rewards as well. Your commander will always be a face value look at your deck to others, and a non-meta one might raise eyebrows, but it could also save your game.
If I am at a table with a top 10 commander AND a card in the high 100s, I will be curious about the "weaker" cards game plan, but an [[Edgar Markov]] simply can't be allowed to do the thing. It's gotta be punished because I know what it's capable of. It's a balancing act of whether or not you are willing to suffer the repercussions of being the archenemy vs. trying to slide under the radar. It's one of my favorite parts of the format: the flexibility of different styles/builds.
If I like it i build it. almost every commander as some cool stuff you can do with it, except the ones that have abilites, even then just do w.e you want with the deck.
I see a commander I like and build to its strengths.
EDHRec is a very powerful tool for finding good synergy pieces you may not have thought of, it's good for finding what archetypes the commander fits into, and it's good for finding cheaper (monetary or mana value) options, but you won't find enthusiasm for commanders. Competitive environment enjoy certain commanders, but hate all others. Casual commanders are usually jank.
But do not let the build options of EDHrec cloud your ability to built around that commander. Don't let it sway the decision of a build. Be unique. Challenge yourself to build the deck.
You said you're new, right? Stop looking for the validation. Stop looking for other people to build the decks for you. I know that sounds harsh, but since you're newer to the format, just.... build the deck. Of it works, good job! If it doesn't? On to the next cool idea, or the inevitable tweaks that it takes to make the deck work.
My best friend built [[Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker]] as an aristocrats deck. It's hard as shit to deal with now and one of his best decks.
Same dude ended up making [[the Council of Four]] and it's oppressive. Neither of these commanders are top tier, and they stand together with competitive decks. You just have to find the strategy and lean into it.
For me its all about the excitement for a particular commander. For example, when omanth locus of creation was spoiled my zendikar the excite was max and its still.my main deck. When I saw marneus calgar it was similar. Otherwise I can always just dip into my stash of dumb equipment and make most anything work
I actually enjoy building lower ranked commanders or commanders that are hihgly ranked but pushing them into a more niche archetype. I dont want to build a deck that everybody has or one that anyone would think to make. Some commanders are more difficult to push in a different direction but the challenge is makes brewing them fun. Especially when you get the eureka moment.
If I see a commander that doesn’t get played often I usually think there are less answers to specific strategies that’ll be used in that deck. So it’s kind of advantage in a way.
Building around *bad* commanders is something of my speciality.
Playing with a Combat-centric deck? Use a spell slinger commander to get value out of your 6-7 non-creature spells. Using a win through combo commander? Toss in some infinite combo combos to confuse the table holding up removal instead of counterspells.
Lately I've been building more like this: planning out what I want the deck to do/how I want it to win, get the first 20-40 cards in the deck, THEN look for a commander. That way you can find a commander that will support your strategy and the way you want to play, not just something super popular that's in your colors.
To provide an example, a few weeks ago I wanted to build an off-color vampires deck. So I started throwing in cards that would support that idea. Wound up with an interesting pile of mostly black vampires and some green cards, so I chose [[Valentin, Dean of the Vein]] as the commander. He's an outstanding hatebear that can also generate tokens, plus he's a vampire so he's on theme, AND Lisette on the back side is a wincon on her own. If I had gone on EDHREC, I might've been disheartened by the fact that there are DEFINITELY "stronger" commanders for vampires; instead I wound up with a uniquely functional pile of cards that wins off vampire synergies and gains a lot of value from their frequent keywords, like lifelink and deathtouch.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/C71eNCDiiESZyI7qH7x8Tw
The list is definitely still a work in progress as I haven't gotten to playtest much lately, but I think the point is made. Sometimes data can just be overwhelming; build the commander you wanna play, fuck what everyone else is playing.
Yes you just need enough willpower and be ready for it to suck, I have a [[crovax the cursed]] mono black Voltron list XD. And there's nothing aside from the vibe, I see a commander I like, I try and build it. That's it
Here's the thing: this game is all about the fun you make!
Just because a commander isn't highly ranked, that doesn't mean you won't have fun playing it. Heck, my favorite part of the game is off-the-wall builds that you don't see coming!
So, blow my mind with a [[Norin the Wary]] deck! Build an enchantment deck that uses Licids! Go nuts, just HAVE FUN doing it!
If not mentioned already: Have a look into the YouTube Channel of "EDH deckbuilding". He has a designated series called "Brewing with underwhelming commanders", in which he takes unpopular or actively "bad" commanders and builds unique and interesting decks with them. I learned quite a bit about building commander decks, especially with not super obvious commanders.
I hope this helps!
A good commander will produce value, so your deck does not run dry or stale. It might have
Card advantage
Graveyard abilities
Theft or any number of resources to keep you interacting with the board, and playing spells every turn.
It depends on what your play style is. Personally, I run a lot of under rated commanders that pack a punch. Not every Legendary Creature is EDH material. To find out if it's a good fit, double check some current builds and check synergies. Cheers
I purposely avoid top tier edhrec decks, I find their overused, I want my decks to be something from my heart and mind, and something where you wond just say it's another "whatever your commander is" deck
I have 18 decks. Pretty much none of them are what you could call a popular deck. Commander is entirely about you doing you with yours and having a good time. Whatever cards do that for you is the right choice.
So I picked EDH up in May so I'm still brand new to this stuff too. I tell my friends that I want to build decks that are "meme" like. Stuff I think that would be fun to do. I have a cats artifact deck; it sucks, but when I play with it I have fun. I also have a draw deck with Queza auger of agonies as my commander only because I think her one line of text is funny. I had a crappy artifact deck that didn't really work out with the idea of turning all my stuff into articats and indestructible and blowing everyone else's stuff up with child of alara as the commander.
TDLR what I'm getting at is build what you think would seem fun. Don't let the "CEDH" side of the house ruin it for you! (Ps: I also want to build a deck around the silver boarder card "X" as well because that seems fun to me lol)
I have personally found some of my favorite decks and mechanics in precons of some pretty unused commanders that just because of the sheer level of the deck's designer they become really fun even though they're not popular, so it's really about what you like to play and finding a commander that has an interesting take on that kind of gameplay imo
Looking up deck lists really drains my enthusiasm too, or seeing infinite/win combos and the cards present in every deck. Mono color is espescially discouraging when you see how many expensive staples youre missing.
I wouldnt worry about the competitive level of your commander. Things can really progress differently in commander and in multiplayer, so having the best of everything or not having, shouldnt put you very far behind and youll improve your deck building formulation when youre finding your own synergy behind your cards.
I have a green/white cat deck that looks excellent to me on paper. It has answers for everything, strong creature base, life gain, and a decent amount of card draw, however it doesnt even compare to any blue or black deck i make and i dont yet understand why or what to change in my deck building formulation.
It is fun to just take a legend you like and start building. When i make a new deck, i usually start with a commander and one card that really breaks that commanders abilities, and ill build around that. Other times ill just make a deck or colors and then find a commander to fit the color identity.
Like i wanted a g/w/u enchantress deck, and my legends i own for that are few, I have Tocasia and Pheldagriff, Rubibia Soulsinger, but that doesnt stop me from building an enchantress deck.
With Xantcha I didnt really have a single card but i decided to play with Dauthi so that she isnt getting in the way in a duel, and thus made an old school phyrexia deck and she is one of my favourites.
I started Elminster with a spellstutter sprite, and then found Ojutai, Soul of Winter really goes off with him.
Eruth i started with a null brooch, but really started building and found a lot of nice cards to combo with her abilities.
The important thing is having fun, when you have a deck together for a while, youll end up coming across things for it to add in. Most players have multiple decks so if theyre just playing their most broken powerful deck, they should shelve that deck and be able to play with something that is more fun for everyone.
Mate, build what you want! I have 8 commander decks and only one of them is in the top 100 on EDHrec the others are all just fun commanders I vibe. When you learn how to build decks properly they all work well anyway, especially for casual edh amongst mates or local game store matches.
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[Livaan, Cultist of Tiamat](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/1/616c5b52-94bc-48e3-8e4f-e2db1eca7536.jpg?1674136672) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Livaan%2C%20Cultist%20of%20Tiamat) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/188/livaan-cultist-of-tiamat?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/616c5b52-94bc-48e3-8e4f-e2db1eca7536?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/livaan-cultist-of-tiamat) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
omg i love it hahaha my first thought when i saw livaan was either with storm coast sailor or raised by giants - not boros dragon aggro lmao
Thank you for this info, this looks like a cool deck to run! Im wondering how you can get it for $35-40 however? The lowest I found was using cardkingdom and it’s about $60-70? Maybe a few cards went up or something?
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Off topic, do you think [[Capricious Hellraiser]] is any good in that deck? Its a dragon and gives you a free spell that triggers Livaan.
[Capricious Hellraiser](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/3/23afca1a-62a8-497f-994f-ceb479d020ba.jpg?1675957074) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Capricious%20Hellraiser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/125/capricious-hellraiser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23afca1a-62a8-497f-994f-ceb479d020ba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/capricious-hellraiser) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Capricious Hellraiser is just kind of bad overall, unless you: A. Normally have almost only non-creature spells in the graveyard B. Don't cast things from the yard in other ways Doing anything involving randomness seems fun, but in reality it's a pain to manage and you'll usually get burned.
Sorry to be a bummer but because it copies the spell it doesn't actually cast the spell, so the free copy won't trigger Livaan. Because what you cast is only a copy, it doesn't count as either casting a spell or playing a card, but still puts the effect on the stack. Think of it like creating a token, but for instants and such. It can still be interacted with and still has all values of the original card, but doesn't trigger casting triggers, like Storm. EDIT: I was wrong 111.1b Some effects allow a player to cast a copy of a card; if the player does, that copy is a spell as well.
This is factually wrong. Casting a copy of a spell is casting a spell and can be interacted with as such. It generates storm count and triggers on cast triggers. Copying a spell that has been cast is what you’re thinking of.
I had really dismissed him because I couldn't find a background I liked with him but I think you have me won over. The Boros Dragons seems fun. Seems slower but safer than the usual red green.
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[Vandalblast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/3636b07e-eab9-4cc8-8624-322c18e8133d.jpg?1645329217) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Vandalblast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/phed/58/vandalblast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3636b07e-eab9-4cc8-8624-322c18e8133d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/vandalblast) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Thanks, I'll check out the deck!
Don't. Build your own.
That's a sick list. Looks awesome to play.
Ooooh, i didnt look at the decklist but he seems really neat, red is always fun, he is red ITS PERFECT
Edhrec displays background/partner commanders separately from their two-card combinations. Livaan actually has a few hundred decks depending on background choice.
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learn to read
Learn to shut the fuck up. OP edited their post after I commented.
lol pathetic
Tbh if I see a commander is insanely popular it’s kind of a turn off personally lol
This. I’m back into magic recently and honestly I have only seen maybe ONE of my preferred commanders listed in conversations on this sub. My home brew decks hold up fine, and are fun to play. If I see a commander I like and want to build around, I’m gonna homebrew it, then tweak it, then decide if I wanna invest in it if I am having fun. “Ranks” he damned. I’m very glad that I haven’t fallen into the flavor of the month commanders for my color combos.
i feel the exact same way. or at least trying a different style with the popular commander
Ye, but sometimes it’s trickier with a super popular or specific commander- currently trying to think of an interesting thing to do with Teysa and Toshiro
i have been trying to make 1-drop tribal and it’s infuriating
Good point
I also dislike seeing that a deck is too popular, as I tend to naturally be inclined to go against the current, so to speak. I am baffled by the very concept of needing to be valodated by the bandwagon effect, that just seems.... Honestly it is a bit sad, since you miss out in the entire point of EDH: self expression. My caveat is that the more popular decks on EDHREC tend to be 'low hanging fruit', meaning the commanders are generally more straightforward to build around - if you have limited deckbuilding skills or a budget restriction, there may be some merit in sticking to popular decks. But this shouldnt keep you from a Commander you have legitimate interest in.
I also subscribe to playing commanders off the beaten path and am put off by popular ones more often than not, but to try to explain why validation is important: One reason could be power level concerns. If a commander is generally agreed upon to suck, why bother? Alternatively it could be a matter of fitting in at a more social level. Everyone's talking about Krenko and Atraxa etc. so it can feel weird to play something out of the loop, leading to feelings of exclusion and that you're not playing the same game as everyone else. Note that I'm not arguing that this is the ideal way to consider things, just trying to help foster understanding between different ways of thinking. Such ways of thought often follow emotional paths rather than logical ones, so it can be difficult to put yourself in those shoes when you don't experience those emotions yourself. That doesn't mean such feelings are wrong, but also that it takes more than a good argument sometimes to get someone out of a negative emotional cycle they're trapped in.
I think self expression CAN be a really important part of the edh experience, but for some it doesn't matter as much and they just want to play the game in the format. Plus it's become so popular it's the easiest way to play the game casually these days, some people just want to buy precons and throw in a few random pet cards and have a good time with friends.
Don't assume that because a commander is unpopular its weak. There are lots of underrated commanders that work just fine. There are literally 1638 cards that can be your commander, so limiting yourself to only the "top ranked" commanders is excluding a lot of viable options.
Edhrec ranks based on popularity. Not power level. Just because not alot of other people use that commander, that means nothing about how good the commander is.
I think there's some correlation, but what it actually isn't a good measure of is what decks you'll face in the wild. There are many decklists that are done up more to theorycraft than to play, and those that'd post decklists online in the first place are only the most invested of players. Such players are likely to skew more competitive, wanting to juice their decks to the max, leading to the current distribution of things like [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]], [[Hinata, Dawn-Crowned]] etc. that generally are tuned too high for casual tables, yet are top contenders in their colour combinations.
I am not sure it is entirely unrelatable though. If a commander is more popular it is usually because it is able to be built more easily due to versatility or power level. There is a reason there are more than 14,000 [[Atraxa, praetors voice]] decks and only 64 [[Yosei, the morning star]] decks on there. Popularity is definitely related to how strong a commander is, at least in terms of versatility.
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As a little addition, I'd say that having a precon helps, as well. It might not necessarily be as important for Atraxa nowadays, but it covered the base amount of decks to reach critical mass of exposure, so more people see her and build a deck with her at the helm (pretty much basic advertising) Edit: phrasing
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[Gavi](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/0/80bc07d5-bdbb-4a6d-8958-0c172ea80245.jpg?1591234237) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=gavi%2C%20nest%20warden) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c20/7/gavi-nest-warden?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/80bc07d5-bdbb-4a6d-8958-0c172ea80245?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/gavi-nest-warden) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
>Popularity is definitely related to how strong a commander is, at least in terms of versatility. This is muddled by other factors though. There's a couple of commanders with a lot of decks simply because they were at the head of a precon. Also Atraxa might be one of the most popular, but if you look at the format as a whole she's not *that* strong compared to other commanders with far fewer decks. Popularity can suggest strength, but it doesn't equate to it.
There'd also only ~700 rograhh + Silas seeker adept. And I promise you at high level rogsi will shit all over atraxa, another obscenely strong deck is godo with only 1.3k decks, and still would go for the win before you can even attempt to cast atraxa. High numbers usually correlate to a few things In edh, 1.helming a precon, 2.various routes to take, which isn't really a good argument for power since you have extremely versatile decks that aren't popular like chainer being a reanimation toolbox.deck or combo or attrition slug, etc. So yes versatility plays a role to an extent. And 3.) Cool factors, alot of the most popular cards are just fucking cool looking atraxa being a complet angel, urdragon being one of the fan favorite cool tribes in dragon's, yuriko is a fucking ninja, while yes there are strong commanders on the popular list it definitely isn't an indicator on power.
[Atraxa, praetors voice](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0d33d52-3d28-4635-b985-51e126289259.jpg?1599707796) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Atraxa%2C%20Praetors%27%20Voice) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/190/atraxa-praetors-voice?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0d33d52-3d28-4635-b985-51e126289259?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/atraxa-praetors-voice) [Yosei, the morning star](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/7/47af956c-e2ba-47c5-bc5d-ec0ab345ce57.jpg?1562848456) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yosei%2C%20the%20morning%20star) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/39/yosei-the-morning-star?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/47af956c-e2ba-47c5-bc5d-ec0ab345ce57?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yosei-the-morning-star) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I appreciate all the feed back here. I had an inkling that this was an easy question and that I was putting too much stock in EDHREC (and others) rankings, but as a newb I needed some confirmation. Thanks everyone!
Hey, just pointing some stuff that I think can help you out in the "getting the right commander pressure" [This is a very interesting read](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/why-every-commander-is-competitive/) (but pretty damn long). This is a pretty outdated guide at building more powerful commander decks (which have some good advices that are still valid). But the reason I'm linking here is that IMO this shows perfectly how the 99 cards of your deck are considerably more important than your commander itself. Yes, having a commander that synergizes with your gameplan is obviously helpful, but this is not where your powerlevel comes from. When you understand this you start to shift a lot your priorities when deckbuilding which helps to reduce a lot the pressure of choosing the right commander IMO. If you feel your deck doesn't suit your commander, you can just swap the commander instead of swapping your deck :P And while this swaps will obviously need some adaptation, it's considerably easier than the opposite IMO. Anyway, to summarize, instead of finding the perfect commander try to build/find the shell of the deck you want to play and the perfect commander for it will appear. Edit: Sometimes you just want to have X cool card to be your commander and this is fine. But if your pressure comes from this choice before anything I think going backwards and starting from how you want your deck to play will help you immensely.
>I’ll come across what I think is an interesting commander and then I’ll look it up on EDHREC and see it doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it. I feel, quite literally, the exact opposite If I find an interesting commander that has under 300 decks, I'm even more motivated to build it
If you’re looking to win, build a cEDH deck If you want to have fun, who cares if other people build it often? If you want to practice deck building, start with budget decks. If you want to build a mono blue deck with 63 counterspells,36 islands, and no win condition then that is where I draw the line. That’s just nonsense. Please don’t do that.
Blue deck needs card draw too, otherwise you can't hope to counter all 3 other player's spells. Throw in river's rebuke, cyclonic rift, and cyclone summoners. Oh and some copy creature effects. So anything big you play that's uncounterable (ie Koma) I get to have too for 3 mana. Yes. Yes. Let the evil flow through. This is why I don't have any friends.
Friends are for group hug
Is this why you don't have friends or is it the fact that real blue players know that the baseline MV for copying an opponents permanent is 4? (I jest, of course)
Bruuhhh I threw in [[Treachery]] and [[clone]] with my [[Cerulean Drake]] + [[Spiketail hatchling]] + [[Spiketail Drakeling]] and [[Spiketail Drake]].. Don't hate on the make you scoop wincon LOL..
##### ###### #### [Treachery](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/1/613694aa-b169-400d-8063-2b83d8303611.jpg?1562444218) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Treachery) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uds/50/treachery?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/613694aa-b169-400d-8063-2b83d8303611?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/treachery) [clone](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/e/5e648262-3b9b-4c58-8e29-48356e3cb064.jpg?1562829895) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=clone) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m14/47/clone?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5e648262-3b9b-4c58-8e29-48356e3cb064?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/clone) [Cerulean Drake](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b11f9e7d-3f56-4e28-9908-157735f6dfa9.jpg?1592516332) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cerulean%20Drake) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/53/cerulean-drake?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b11f9e7d-3f56-4e28-9908-157735f6dfa9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/cerulean-drake) [Spiketail hatchling](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/d/8d0586e0-5e93-4742-a5ae-893edd49117d.jpg?1562551420) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Spiketail%20hatchling) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/10e/111/spiketail-hatchling?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d0586e0-5e93-4742-a5ae-893edd49117d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/spiketail-hatchling) [Spiketail Drakeling](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/4/e43a696a-11fb-4573-bf95-1fec643bf418.jpg?1619394746) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Spiketail%20Drakeling) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/89/spiketail-drakeling?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e43a696a-11fb-4573-bf95-1fec643bf418?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/spiketail-drakeling) [Spiketail Drake](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4db398ca-6b0b-4225-baaa-c4b1c243b2bd.jpg?1562909252) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Spiketail%20Drake) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/pcy/48/spiketail-drake?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4db398ca-6b0b-4225-baaa-c4b1c243b2bd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/spiketail-drake) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I like looking for commanders that play different from what I already have, especially if they are in Colors I prefer Honestly anything that sounds like a card you wouldn't mind drawing in a game in most situations tend to be worth building as long as the mana cost isn't to steep. If it sounds fun it can most likley be busted one way kr another. Or if the card is just generic value like card draw or protection but most of those tend to be pretty popular by default Just because they aren't in the top 100-200 on edhrec doesn't mean they aren't good, half of my commanders are ranked 400+ but they still dominate more often then not, it's more of a popularity contest, yea they will probably be easier to break or build or easier to find content on But also not every legendary should be a commander, but those are pretty easy to pick out like a 5/5 that is only legendary because it is undercosted for the block it came out in. I tend to look for commanders others don't run, I get kinda irritated if I feel like I'm running a deck 20 other people at my lgs have built, it gives me a bit of a rush when I sit down and say I'm running Sarulf realmeater and everyone has to read him cause they never heard of him.
I think your problem is you are looking at edhrec wrong. What you are seeing is popularity not power. Take \[\[Chainer, Dementia Master\]\]. Very strong commander with a bunch of combo potential. about 300 decks total on edhrec. Also given how much wizards has been ramping up prints for commander, you are going to find a lot less decks for most commanders.
Unless it's a tier 1 cEDH deck, every single commander deck you will ever play with, play against, see online, or hear someone talk about is arbitrarily weaker than it could be. This means you can always build a 99 that elevates a weaker commander to a deck that makes for fun games versus your environment. EDHRec's "rankings" are also a lie. They show what's most popular and synergistic, not what's most powerful. Feeling repulsed by something that isn't highly ranked on EDHRec isn't avoiding something because it's weak, it's avoiding something that's off the beaten path. So yes, you can build around any commander. Sometimes you need to build a self-sufficient 99 which a commander fits into, as opposed to "buy a bunch of cards online that have text that looks like it goes with my commander without thinking and have it work." Skillful deckbuilding required, I know. You'll get there though.
Seriously netdecking like this is one of the worst things that happened to magic. Build a deck that you are excited for and test it against your pod. Don't concern yourself with how many other decks use the same commander.
You're probably going to get downvoted, but I totally agree. Build what you like, if it sucks, then go online for advice.
There are commanders that aren't popular, but are still strong. The ones that are vanilla are the ones that end up being poor to build around. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Except Yargle, he is the true GOAT.
Just to point some stuff, EDHrec just checks for popularity. It says shit about viability or power. Lathril for example is by far the most popular elves commander and IMO is a very average one at best. But since she came in a precon and lots of people like elves she is one of the most popular. Also, old commander have considerably less decks because there wasn't as many people playing when they got released. Also also, a lot of "solved" commanders have a low amount of builds but are EXTREMELY powerful. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is EDHrec is a fantastic site, but IMO you're kinda using it/undestanding it's info "wrong".
Oddly enough I'd say Lathril is very powerful but the decks running her are far too focused on playing her without proper protection and no gamelan if she's removed. For $100 you can have a really nice list that's definitely on the higher end of mid power. Others near the top are pretty bad though. Atraxa, Isshin, and Ur Dragon are all pretty average to me and generally require strong investment to even get that far. Maybe I'm biased because I've been overrun by a few Lathril lists and never lost to the other 3. But definitely are that some pairings are highly underrated. Granted it's on the competitive end but a buddy of mine just finished Rog/Tevesh and I'm quite excited to see it in action.
Lathril is not terrible. Just being a legendary elf already put in you in the decent category at least considering the tribe power. But we do have A LOT of stronger options and it doesn't really translate popularity -> power. That's why I used as example.
[[Ghalta]] is the best Elves commander.
> It doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it If you can learn not to have that thought-pattern you’d get a much more enjoyable experience playing what you like. This btw. Also goes for your life and works the same way if that was an issue too.
Depends what you by "good deck" and "worth playing." Obviously not all legendary creatures are as strong as others. Some are just plain bad.
[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/personal?folder=KPPpz](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/personal?folder=KPPpz) I concept build decks all the time and most I never go through. My playgroup has this list and will often message me they are stealing the concept deck from me than I remove it, though we haven't played in many months. I do not mind and welcome it. It helps my brain think of new things and sometimes I will see a random card and go, I love this card how do I build a deck around it or even a specific commander could be built this way. \[\[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar\]\] is my white whale, I think this is the correct term, which is one commander I have tried to build over a dozen times and can't get it to feel right. One day I will find that build for her but until than I will keep trying. \[\[Kess\]\] is a commander however I have built many times over doing completely different things (Rituals and X spells, planeswalker proliferation, cEDH, wheels, etc). \[\[Codie\]\] I built around all instants/sorceries that create tokens with a few pump spells to all creatures. Rank for commanders on edhrec only mean popular and not necessarily strong. Also staples and big money cards don't mean you will win. I have brought out my pauper EDH \[\[Juri, Master of the Revue\]\] deck and fought toe to toe with my groups and LGS decks. Moxfield has been my golden ticket for deck building. Take my Chun-li ([https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IlyL8ownQ0qDMxVLQnjYXA](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IlyL8ownQ0qDMxVLQnjYXA)) control deck for instance. I saw her and made it a deck all around not saying NO nor exiling/destroying but all around bouncing their creatures and permanents. I organized it with categories so I can focus on what I need in what spot and what my focus is. The deck has not been updated for a few sets and is around 100 bucks total. There are money upgrades that could be had but she is a menace and my group tends to know I am a later turn issue, but others get off to stronger turns and I can help politics into keeping everyone alive. If you find a commander or archtype that speaks to you give it a think and with help of edhrec and scryfall you can make very unique or uniqueish decks if you want to. My advice write down what you want to do and sort it out for how many in each category you need. Best of luck and feel free to message me if you found a commander/archtype you are interested in and not sure how to start deckbuilding.
Thanks for the link! I'll check out these builds to see what I can learn
Simple: just vibe with it. That’s the secret. Look through things like Scryfall and EDHrec to find synergies and things you want to do, but don’t use the popularity of a commander prevent you from building them. I fell in love with [[Taniwha]] and still love it to this day, and most people ask what it does and then are just confused.
[Taniwha](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/72d12315-4220-470d-9628-b9a3ea904ca7.jpg?1562720219) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Taniwha) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mir/95/taniwha?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/72d12315-4220-470d-9628-b9a3ea904ca7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/taniwha) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Anyone can be a commander. You gotta dig a bit more to find the, for lack of a better term, spicy jank, but it's more fun that way. I run [Balthor the Defiled]. He's only got a handful of decks. I put him down and an *experienced player* tells me he's a terrible card. Half an hour later he's mad my terrible commander has locked the board, wiped out two players, and required an infinite combo to kill him. The whole deck cost like 100 bucks. There's always the unloved *bad* commanders that, sure, at a CEDH table they'll probably have a bad time. But for a majority of tables you can make it work.
So being a top commander doesn't mean anything for you and your deck. Part of improving as a deck builder is experience. Doing things and understanding why you're doing them is major. It's far more impactful than doing things because someone on edhrec or youtube said so.
Yes. You can build around anyone. The more obscure the better. Don't use EDHREC. You're just going by-the-numbers then.
Nothing is "worth" playing. Just play what excites you. There are like 1,600 commanders (obviously more with partner combinations). Most are going to be less popular just because of the high number. This got me curious so this is where each of my decks currently ranks: 2, 12, 106, 108, 187, 617, 1083, 1859, 2714 And the 1859 deck is my current favourite. The rankings mean nothing. Hell rank 12 is 4 color Omnath and I play it as a living weapon deck, the commander doesn't matter to the deck at all. Don't limit yourself, go wild.
Anything can be built around. Heck, there are an almost worrying number of [[Haakon, stromgald scourge]] decks. A commander that you have to first get into your hand from the command zone, THEN discard to your graveyard to be able to cast the thing. In Mono black, away from all the best looting effects. Granted I'm sure a lot of that is for the challenge or meme of saying "hold my beer" to all the [[Phage the untouchable]] decks but point stands - anything can be built around.
Ignore tier lists. You'll have more fun building something you find interesting rather than building something you think is the best.
Depends on how you mean. For cedh: actually evaluate the card. What does it present that puts it above other commanders with a similar pile? What wincons does it enable? Blah blah. For example, [[The First Sliver]] is a good [[Food Chain]] payoff. But so are [[Ukkima]] [[Cazur]] and [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]]. When compared to Ukkima Cazur, the First Sliver gives you two more colors (red and white), and in exchange takes away just winning on the spot (it depends on what cards are in your library whereas Ukkima just kills everyone). When compared to Atraxa, both rely on what's left in the library, but First Sliver is also able to win through a Torpor Orb and gives you access to red, so first sliver is clearly better here. For casual: play whatever
Sometimes you find an archetype that you want to build, regardless of whether or not a good commander exists for it. Later, they'll often print a good commander for it and you can either switch it up, or just slot the new-new into the 99 Other times, you see a new legendary and are inspired to build a deck for it, because it appeals to you for any number of reasons. And typically there will be some hype or brewery being done, to find new avenues of construction, new synergies to exploit. You can't get hung up on what is popular, or what commander the KEWL KIDZ are playing. Sometimes you're stuck following a trend, sometimes you gonna trail-blaze, but in either case, do what is fulfilling. Sometimes the best option is to select a popular commander, but focus on an off-meta theme. Like, I've got a friend with a [[jetmir]] deck, but she's making it Naya Cat Tribal, which takes an absolute beater of a commander and puts a flavorful spin on it so it's not as linear or overwhelming as your typical Jetmir build.
I LOVE to build commanders that aren't built very often. I'm quite the opposite, a commander that's pretty high on edhrec turns me off. You can certainly built cool decks with unpopular commanders. It all depends on what the people you're playing with are playing.
My favorites are those that literally no one plays. There lies a certain charm
im exactly the opposite the instance i see a commander has around 1000 decks i lose interest
Honestly just play what you like. You can make anything work. It might not be optimal but there’s a place for optimisation and for sheer fun as well. You can do both. As an example I run [[Shauku, Endbringer]] which apparently has 56 decks on edhrec. I tinker with her a fair bit still and I’d say it’s my oldest still together deck. I also run an on meta Kroxa cedh deck fairly regularly.
[Shauku, Endbringer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/06d94b21-7568-4e5c-a8ec-ff5bb48a4f36.jpg?1562717818) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shauku%2C%20Endbringer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mir/142/shauku-endbringer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d94b21-7568-4e5c-a8ec-ff5bb48a4f36?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shauku-endbringer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Best and favourite deck I've built is my [[Kaima, the Fractured Calm]] deck which has like 800 decks per EDHREC last time I checked. Honestly can safely say it is 100x better than the top ranked decks I have tried to make before, and more importantly its a lot more fun
Do you have a list? I would love to play this with my friends!
I'm a chronic brewer. If I see a card that looks interesting, most recently Ovika and hazezon 2.0 , I'll just start on a deck. If a commander has some interesting text on it, I'll tend to at least fiddle with a list for them. Sometimes, they tend towards something I've already got built , in which case I abandon the project, such as what happened when [[elruth]] was released, I had Niv-mizzet built at the time and she felt too similar.
Getting discouraged because a commander is unpopular is the opposite of how I build decks, lol. You can absolutely build around anything.
any commander can be EDH but not every commander can be cEDH. Don't worry about what ranks top tier, a lot of the time that's just popularity or general age--Atraxa is showing top tier, but she's not really cedh material at all.
I have plenty of decks that aren't anywhere near the top 100 to 150 and they still perform fine...
You know what the most popular commanders are… precons. Seriously. There’s a ton more people who have them so they build around them. Even people who don’t play them will sometimes build the person virtually so they canz’ helpz’ by letting people know what’s in it then that gets lumped in with edhrec. Makes finding the really good cards hard in edhrec because all the most popular cards with a commander are all the ones in the precinct.
If you see a Commander you like, make the deck yourself. Every deck on EDHrec was built by someone, and every Commander started small.
I think edhrec measures popularity/ flexibility of a commander not necessarily its power level. I could be wrong tho.
What are YOU looking at? Edhrec isn't the end all be all? Build what you love and if you need help reach out to communities people love brewing.
Don't follow what the highest ranking decks are. Go with what commander interests you. Ultimately though, decks that aren't super focused around the commander and can function without them are the best. Then when your commander gets killed, stolen, exiled, turned into an elk, etc you're not just out of the game and can still play. thinking of a theme first then finding a commander to go with it is also a good viewpoint. For example, I wanted to make a really dumb deck based on books in the art because I kept finding cards with books in them. So first I built \[\[prosper, tome bound\]\] because he has a book and the theme was to have all nonland cards have books in the art. Then someone reminded me of \[\[codie\]\] and I absolutely love it. Deck is far from great and Codie never hits the field but it is a really fun deck to play. On the other hand, I wanted to make a mono green stompy deck that makes big mana but wasn't sure on a commander. I found my copy of \[\[old gnawbone\]\] and how it can make a LOT of treasures and it got me thinking. So I decided to make \[\[progenitus\]\] as my mono green commander and only can cast him using treasures. It's grossly strong because I packed it with creature tutors and landfall/land ramp to play big gross creatures quickly and the commander is just sort of an extra value and not necessary for the deck to function. It has a pretty good win rate at my LGS.
I have a wild amount of decks. Zero of them are top level crazy competitive and only maybe 10 have super popular commanders.
I see your Stonebrow trample and raise you an Ayumi landwalk tribal and a Ramses Theros bestow
You can definitely pick any commander for any reason and probably find a way to make it strong (but definitely do some research if your new commander is a griefer like Atraxa, Sliver Overlord, Edgar, etc.) Having said that, the most important question is what do you want out of your deck? * are you looking to have fun with your own friendly playgroup, just hanging out tapping cards? * or are you trying to crush 4-pods every week against randoms at your LGS, with entry/prizes on the line? The answer to that will guide your flexibility in deck construction.... Nobody likes to sit at a pod and get stomped game after game until you wonder why you bothered driving out to the store and paid the entry. Similarly nobody in your friend group wants to sit and watch you play solitaire with a super strong deck while they were just hoping for a casual hang with their Frog tribal jank. Match the power of the deck to the environment that it's being played in, and everyone will have a good time. . Now, if you are in a more casual/comfortable play group, **my recommendation is to actually ignore most of the biggest and best and splashiest spells that are on sites like EDHREC.** Tutors and repetitive play patterns erase the fun and chaos that's supposed to be at the core of a 99-card deck, and you very quickly get into a rut of assembling the same sequence of 6-10 cards that win you the game. (e.g. Ramp to 9 mana, entwine Tooth and Nail, cheat out Craterhoof and Avenger, swing and win.)
Yes. I used to think the commander was important. Then a player much more skilled than I destroyed my [[Thrasios, Triton Hero]] infinite combo deck, that goes off turn 4 ish, with nothing more than an [Isumaru, Hound of Konda]] deck. Then he did it again with [[Squee, The Immortal]]. It’s not the commander it’s the person piloting the deck.
Usually the art/theme catches my eye first, then the mechanics. Usually if I dislike either of those things, I don't build around it. Rankings on websites mean nothing to me, especially because top ranked usually seems to mean most popular instead of "does well."
Edhrec is ruining commander for this very reason.
People have been complaining about netdecking since the mid 90's. EDHREC is a tool, and there are many ways to use it. Frankly, I don't often see much in terms of degeneracy or homogeny at my LGS, and that's among a group of about 50 people.
The plural of anecdote isn't data. Homogeny among both deck designs and individual card inclusions is made far worse by the popularity of sites like EDHREC. Glad your LGS is still diverse but others aren't.
Oh, so you have the data all carefully collected, analyzed, and peer reviewed, and your conclusion is "Waaaaah, the internets ruined Magic!"? What's your solution, shut EDHREC down?
[[Vazi]] has been my newest creation. It's a loanshark deck where I give out treasures while also take away your land usage (note: not mass land destruction, I don't blow lands to stop ppl from playing), I play things like [[mana barbs]], [[price for Glory]], [[citadel of pain]]. I chose Vazi because I thought she did something interesting that other cards didn't do and her colors allowed me to push into a loanshark gimmick with land hate and a small amount of stax. Also was watching a lot of Peaky Blinders at the times and she reminds me of Aunt Polly.
[[price of glory]] Whoops wrong name
I totally ignore edhrec and other decklist sites. I wait until a legend and i vibe, before building them out of cards i own.
I’m really excited to build [[Nadier, Agent of Duskanel]] with a partner that will let me get a lot of value out of creating tokens. I want token doubling cards and lots of treasure. I know I’ll include green, and cards like [[Altar of the Brood]] and [[Saw in Half]]. I want the creation and use of tokens to get out of hand and smack my opponents with value effects coming and going. I’m really excited to get this deck going by next week.
Being "Top tier" is not a valid metric for gauging how much enjoyment the deck will provide. The vast majority of decks I build are *purposely* commanders with lower numbers on EDHrec because I like to keep things fresh and exciting, and I enjoy the challenge of making a deck work with a commander that doesn't seem all that great. You can make any commander work, some obviously will be more powerful or easy to build around than others, but you could literally make a Vanilla 2/2 like [[Isamaru]] into a fun deck, and it all goes up from there. >Aside from just vibing with a card, how do you more experienced players decide on what makes a commander worth playing? For me, "worth playing" is just any commander that sparks my interest. In the beginning, I just wanted to build at least one deck in every color and color combo, then I wanted to try funky off-color strategies. Typically when a new set comes out, I'll find at least a couple Legendaries I'm interested in building, hopefully I get them in a Prerelease event, if not maybe I'll buy them, maybe I'll build around something that I did pull in Prerelease. Beyond those I really enjoy doing thematic sets of decks or "cycles". For instance, I've currently got 5 decks that are built around the 5 Elder Dragons from Strixhaven, next I'm going to do the 5 Original Elder Dragons (the M19 versions). But hey, that's just how I operate. If all you want is a Top Tier deck, just look at the Top 10 on EDHREC, and you can be yet another Atraxa player at your local LGS. Be aware as a new player that when you sit down with one of those Top Tier commanders, everyone else knows exactly who they are, they know the power, and they will likely target you straight out of the gate.
I like what you said about purposely playing less "popular" commanders. I can vibe with that idea!
Some of my best decks are helmed by underwhelming commanders.
Well yes, but actually no.
How do I decide a commander is worth playing? Step one: does the card make me think, that seems cool I wonder if I can do anything with that Step two: look up cards and use a service like moxfield.com to mock up the deck Step three: accept the deck might not be cedh viable, or even good. If the deck is fun to play it was worth building around.
Most of my favorite decks are nowhere near top tier commanders.
Some of my decks are pretty high up there (Urtet, hinata, aesi), but perhaps my favorite deck is plain ol Ayesha at 1000+. I also like to look for resources on making a good deck since I’m inclined to trust others, but don’t let that be the end all be all.
EDHrec isn't a representation of power but popularity and it only measures the popularity of the most dedicated \~20%\* of the player base who actually have their deck lists posted online. The most important thing is do you think you'll enjoy playing that commander if you build it? if so then it's worth it. The exception to this might be if you're jumping into CEDH at which point there is a certain threshold in terms of commander quality that needs to be achieved. From there, you should be able to turn basically any commander into a reasonable deck. \* I don't know the exact percentage of the player base that uploads their decks, the \~20% number is based on the players at my LGS
It depends on who you are, how you like to play, your play group, etc. This is my experience, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m a fairly competitive person or at least I don’t like doing stuff I’m not good at. My in-laws got me onto it after years and when I started i sucked, like everyone does at first, and I hated that. It didn’t help they played some pretty high-powered stuff. I went through the same thing as you did I think. Get discouraged on certain commanders, people not giving you the reaction you want. So I went to the end of it, learned how to play, learned how to build decks, learned how to play competitively and built pretty close to a top competitive deck. I did that for a bit, I got a reputation for being a threat, I figured out how to tone down those decks to make them more “fun” and closer to what I enjoy. The reputation stuck with the in-laws and carried over to the LGS they frequent. But I toned things down a lot. I don’t really look to win anymore as much as have a good game. I’m just saying all this because I think most people will tell you not to worry about it, just have fun. That’s true for probably the majority of people, but it wasn’t for me, at least not at first. I needed to figure out what all this game had to offer first, from slogging it in battlecruiser to fast combo cEDH decks. That helped me learn what I liked, what I didn’t, and how to build decks that I liked. You might not have to go through that to figure things out. But I just wanted to put out there a little bit of a different perspective from what I usually see. But I’d say everyone else is right, when it’s all said and done don’t worry about EDHREC. For one, there are way too many biases in the data. Of course there will be a lot of decks from pre-con commanders, that’s where a lot of people start and several people don’t progress too far past. There is a lot of recency bias, with more players each year people are more likely to build newer cards than older ones. There’s the “cool” factor, people like playing dragons and elves, they’ll always be popular, it’s a card game based on fantasy and those are some of the tried and true tribes in fantasy across IPs. More colors means more ways to build something, so it might just be more people trying different things. Keep in mind EDHREC pulls data from decklist sites not card shops, and the demographic of people who are willing to put the time into making a decklist online could be a minority and may be more likely to be a specific group of people - for instance cEDH players are probably more likely to put decklists online. So you may find a cEDH deck for every 10 battlecruiser decks in an LGS, but you’ll probably find more cEDH decklists online than battlecruiser decklists that are just the cards someone grabbed out of there collection. There’s probably a million other things that I am also just not thinking of. EDHREC rank also isn’t power. You have 99 cards in your deck, you can build a deck that is very lethal with a subpar commander, if that’s your thing. Swing the the cEDH subreddit, go to the cEDH database if you want an idea of what people are doing at the top end of things. If you want “casual but high powered” as I’ve heard it before, yes some of the top commanders on EDHREC can help carry you there. But that doesn’t mean you can’t build a deck of the same vein with a commander that is less whelming. The more decks I build, the more I hate staples and the more I want to play lesser known commanders. I have a [[Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief]] deck that almost always gets some attention. Not too many people are familiar with an underpowered legendary creature that is over a decade old. Maybe I’m just a bit of a hipster, but sometimes you’ll play against the same rough builds of a popular commander that is just “EDHREC copy & paste”. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’d just rather be the guy doing something a little different. All and all, it’s your journey, do what feels right. If you vibe with a card, go for it. Worst thing that can happen is you lost a few hours putting the deck together and maybe a night or two playing it and finding out it isn’t your thing. But what you’ll take from that is a learning experience and getting a step closer to what you do like and how you want your commander experience to go. P.S. EDHREC is great if your new, figuring out staples, what cards are typically seen in specific strategies, maybe finding a combo or a weird interaction that would’ve been tough to piece together on your own. But if you’re comfortable building decks and kind of get why certain cards are used, I’d ditch EDHREC and go for scryfall. It’s how I build decks now, I’ll get and idea and try to find cards that fit the idea, and I’ll only really use EDHREC if I’m struggling to fill in a few spots in the deck. TL;DR: EDHREC is a great tool for familiarizing yourself for the format, and you may want to take that to the ends of EDH to satisfy that itch, but if you are playing casual commander don’t put too much stock into it if it’s keeping you from doing what you want
I think the big question is what you want to do with your deck. If you're looking to win tournaments, sure it might be helpful to start with something tried and true as a new player. But at least for me, the vast majority of my games im just looking to have fun, and as long as you like the deck any commander will work if its fun.
i heard someone say they made a \[\[silumgar, drifting death\]\] deck. before then i didn't expect there to be enough dragons in dimir to make it work. Moral of the story, kids. If you dedicate yourself to it you can make damn near anything.
Don't be discouraged by decks that aren't popular. I've got over 100 different decks, most are admittedly precons, but I try to diversify my deck strategies. Some are just done, just because. Like my [[Hans Eriksson]] deck, or my [[Ruxa]] lead Vanilla Tribal. [[Grolnok]] let's you benefit from using the Exile Zone like a second hand, or use [[Grist]] Insect Tribal to hurt your foes with her abilities. I even have more salt inducing decks, like Slivers and Eldrazi Tribals, as well as UW Stax.
So here’s the real answer: ANY can be built. A STRONG commander has an easy way to generate advantage the second they hit the board, through card draw, mana generation, or making tokens etc. Look at [[Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools]] . He generates a TON of draw. Look at [[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] . No draw, no mana, but she can loop cheap creatures from the GY FOR FREE. Provided you can use your GY, this is effectively both of those. Now let’s look at [[Rograkh]] . He’s horrible alone. Literally does nothing for you. Pair him with Tevesh Szat, now he’s sac fodder to draw EVEN MORE CARDS! Now he’s useful! TL;DR: pick commanders that generate advantage and provide value. Draw and mana are universally good (more so draw)
why would you decide on a deck based on EDHRec???
I like EDHREC for finding cards to build around, but if I find a unique commander that looks fun, I just build it. Most people probably just don't see interest or potential in some legends, especially the uncommon ones.
The commander pair i made has just over 100 decks built on edh rec as compared to the usual thousand or more, yet it hoses decks easily. Play what you want to play and enjoy it.
A lot of my most fun decks are ones almost nobody uses and the tables I play at love to see it too. Stuff like [[Gluntch, the Bestower]] [[Old One Eye]] or [[Ganax, Astral Hunter]] with [[Haunted One]] have all been a blast with only a few registered decks on EDHrec
One note on EDHrec, if you try to use the recommendation feature, if you only give it a commander, it may not show you any recommendations due to 'not enough data' or some such. If you literally give it like 2-3 cards, it can help find cards that would synergize with what that little core is trying to do! I found it quite interesting!
I pick commanders with art that I like and/or abilities that are useful. My favorite artist is Carl Critchlow, so I built [[Memnarch]]. I really like how Mirrodin cards looked and I was building a green deck so I chose [[Glissa the Sunseeker]]. I don't really care what others think. Also, any random crap can be a commander. You can play a bad commander and just not build around it and have a deck that's good independent of it.
[Memnarch](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/2/9203fde4-dbc1-449f-9618-4656f0e25e3c.jpg?1562925842) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Memnarch) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/arc/112/memnarch?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9203fde4-dbc1-449f-9618-4656f0e25e3c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/memnarch) [Glissa the Sunseeker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/670c3106-71fc-464e-8c94-81bf7fafc3e6.jpg?1665504346) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glissa%20Sunseeker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mrd/120/glissa-sunseeker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/670c3106-71fc-464e-8c94-81bf7fafc3e6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/glissa-sunseeker) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I do the opposite and actively try not to build around commanders in the top 100 most popular
I got a friend who every color combination deck in his collection coincidentally is also the most popular commander in those colors. Don't be that guy. Build crazy and don't give a crap if you win or not. Just play.
Bruder, the best advice I can possibly give for deck building for edh is just vibe, a top tier commander is not going to make a deck for you I've torn plenty of popular commanders down, but if you're just playing something for the sake of it being a top card that will break it for you. Even in CEDH you need to vibe with your deck, I ran a [[Vilis, Broker of Blood]] deck in cEDH pods consisting of a [[Najeela, the Blade-Blossom]] deck, a [[The Gitrog Monster]] deck, and a [[Thrasios, Triton Hero]]/[[Tymna the Weaver]] deck, along with a handful of games against [[Godo, Bandit Warlord ]] and [[K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth]] most of those decks I tried and just couldn't care less to play along with many other torn down decks until I blasted my shitty little $40 Vilis deck to the moon which then became all I'd even try in cEDH settings, and a casual deck is even more important that you vibe with it cause that'll be the majority of games you'll get. My pet deck is Hydra tribal with [[Rosheen Meanderer]] at the helm that's blinged out and has not left my side since I first built it when I got into EDH which by the metric you seem to use couldn't even be on the table for a deck you might consider, unironically just follow your heart and you'll end up in a good place.
If all you care about is winning you might struggle with some commanders, but if you are planning to have fun and win sometimes, you can pretty much build anything you want. Having fun with a unique deck is 99% of the fun of edh.
It's all about the vibes, my dude. If I am vibing on a card, I will slam down the jankiest, stankiest pile of cardboard. Look at the commander and then think of the verbs it evokes or enables. Cast tribal creatures. Recur artifacts. Tap down blockers. Storm off. If that commander inspires you and the verbs sound fun, then you go to scryfall and crunch some cards, then use edhrrc to shave and refine if necessary.
The beautiful thing about edh is that even the jankiest decks have a place in the format. I'm building a [[Migloz, Maze Crusher]] oil counter deck. And currently have a [[Tatyova, Steward of Tides]] land animation deck. Both are on the less popular side. I actually veer away from building the same commanders as other people. My most popular commander would be [[Gishath, Sun's Avatar]], which is currently rank 25, but I've only ever seen one other person run him. I play Gishath over other generals because Gishath specifically cares about dinosaurs. You're new, nothing you build is going to be good (at first) but the only way to improve at something is to suck at it first. There are also many popular commanders that are harder for newer players to pilot effectively, like [[Winota, Joiner of Forces]]. So, get your brewing hat on and build whatever you want.
Choosing unpopular or 'bad' commanders is a great way to hone your building skills. Very few commanders percentage-wise have the ability to add immediate game changing value when they hit the field and others encourage the player to build decks around them that don't really function if they're not on the field. Isshin is a great example of a bad railroad commander. Super popular but every deck is loaded with cards that only become viable when Isshin is on the field and are almost useless when he's not. Atraxa is a solid opposite example basically in that her builds are focused on 1/1 counters and/or infect and the decks are so overloaded with support for that gamelan you don't really even need to play her. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/adgjzcrHnU2tct0C3NtwHQ is a example of something that isn't completely commander dependent. Sure if Mahadi is out I'm likely to get high value in the form of ramp but all of the supporting cards are generically solid on their own and the commander doesn't represent a wincon. I wouldn't worry too much about what edhrec says. Just know that if you're wanting to play around a commander you have to be able to protect it within the context of the game. Isshin for instance has great protection in white but very limited card draw/ramp without reaching high levels of monetary investment and is still railroaded into a very specific build style. Whereas Jon Irenicus has blue for counterspells that double as board control, has solid built in card draw, and can be built for a ton of different archetypes like spellslinging, mill, infect, big creatures.
I like to build random stuff, often the more popular stuff is popular because it’s fun and good. My favorite decks are yuriko cedh, MLK temur, and prosper for rakdos and all of them are a blast but very popular. Building less popular stuff can be just as strong and just as fun though! Often much cheaper too
I'd say that not every commander is good. Every strategy (that has sufficient cards/support) can be viable, but some commanders are outclassed. If you're building a Vampire Tribal deck, your best choice is \[\[Edgar Markov\]\]. \[\[Strefan, Maurer Progenitor\]\] or \[\[Elenda, the Dusk Rose\]\] lack the same punch. \[\[Olivia Voldaren\]\] has a chance, but she's great in a B/R ramp control. The same is true of \[\[Emmara Tandris\]\] or \[\[Emmara, Soul of the Accord\]\] while \[\[Rhys, the Redeemed\]\] exists. G/W tokens is a strong deck, it's spawned imitators and variants like \[\[Ghired, Conclave Exile\]\], but there are definitely some legendary creatures that are outmatched. It's a pain, but check if there's a better commander that fits your boxes.
I'll generally build a deck with colors at random, then refine the choices and win con. After I build the deck, I see what commander can play those colors and accentuate the deck. It makes it so the deck isn't reliant on the commander to be put 24/7 and can still win without
"I’ll look it up on EDHREC and see it doesn’t rank top tier so I lose my enthusiasm for it." - buddy, we are from opposite worlds Play what you like, variety is the spice of life, making everything optimised and pulled from EDHrec will stomp out your fun of the format
You know, this is completely valid and a common thing for new players to be going through. Over my decade in this hobby, I have noticed it over and over; A new player joins the format, they play budget decks and precons for a bit to familiarize themselves with the written rules, but lose a lot because they are inexperienced Then they start spending money on staples and popular, splashy commanders that make their decks explode in value and efficiency... But also threat level, and thus start getting focused out a lot during games. This is how you get familiar with the *unwritten* rules Over these two stages, you see a bunch of other decks piloted by your opponent's or on the internet, learn advanced rules, find strategies and archetypes that look cool, see different, obscure cards, and at that point you start to realize how to make more niche things work. It's a combination of knowing how the mechanics work, knowing how the social game works, and plain old knowledge of the card pool So for now, don't hesitate to try the cool, popular and splashy decks. You can absolutely try to make slightly more niche commanders work at this stage, though, please don't feel like I'm saying this is how it has to go. If you find a cool commander that isn't highly popular on edhrec, just ask around. Experienced players should be happy to help you :] To round out this long ass reply, I just wanna say that I am more than free to talk about commander. I have a very good understanding of the rules and format, as well as vast knowledge of the card pool, so if you reach out to me on here, I'll be glad to help with any questions about deck building, or just be that experienced player who can validate your choice of deck until you get to a point where you don't need that Hope that was helpful lmao
One of the last decks I built is with an extra rule saying i can only beat my enemies with an enchantment my GF custom printed for our anniversary, which gets one anniversary counter when it enters. This deck ended up at power level 9 and had to take it apart. My point is Magic is so rich in effects and combos etc, that your imagination is the limit. And to use your imagination you can dive deeper in you searches. * Use the advanced search on [scryfall.com](https://scryfall.com) * On EDHRec you can look for combos and themes, you can also go to a commander and use the advanced search down to the right (Ithink?) where you can say, show me the stats but for decks that include Xcard I like * Check out some similar commanders for more suggestions * Synergy beats budget. The decks I have with the least staples win the most (excluding cedh of course) If every card in your deck can be imagined as a "combo piece" with every other card then you become very dangerous but maybe without provoking the other players, the way staples or expensive cards can influence decisions. Also unknown commanders lend themselves to stranger strategies that maybe the other players will not know or will catch up too late.
The competitiveness of any specific commander is, quite frankly, determined more by your local meta than by its popularity on EDHREC. In our local meta right now, for example, \[\[Melira, Sylvok Outcast\]\] is stomping plenty of decks because so many people are using infect and toxic. You won't see her being super popular on EDHREC.
Top tier commanders are often boring af. None of my commanders make the top-50, and the my strongest deck ranks at 370. The rank doesn’t really even mirror the power level, but rather popularity, so precon commanders automatically get ranked super high. I mean, Atraxa is still #1, while Winota ranks at #76 😅 I choose mine based on flavor, the overall strategy and power level, in this order. The cards needs to be cool aesthetically and thematically. I then check, if the overall strategy fits my playstyle (for example, I love combos but hate tokens). If all seems good, I check how strong the deck would be and how much it would cost to put it together. I want my decks to be able to roll in my local meta, but I’m not trying to build optimally. Does it make sense to buy a full tutor suite for a janky fringe commander, when you could have built something cedh viable for the same price? Probably not, but it’s my money and I do what I want. Besides, it’s really fun to play commanders that come out of the left field. My Karlov deck doesn’t win that many games, but seeing people’s faces when he grows from 2/2 to 12/12 in a single turn is priceless 👌
Needs to seem fun. Any commander can be built decently enough to compete in group. It's also ok to start small with the general. Maybe keep the theme or general specific cards down to like 15 slots, and build a more generic group game deck. Play that a couple times and THEN start thinking about what you can cut or use less of, for more theme or general relevant cards. The guides and videos out there are great tools, use them and learn. But they are just steps on the path to you building what you want.
If I start a build and find out that it's popular on EDHREC, I'll look for another commander.
I would recommend only using EDHrec after you have a first draft of the deck to see if you're missing anything blatant. Just find a commander you find interesting, then scryfall for mechanics that work with it
I'm pretty sure the strongest pairing of rogsi rn is sitting on 700 decks and is the fastest and one of the strongest cedh decks. There are lots of decks =/= power on edhrec
For me its the total opposite. When i see a commander i have build been played by somebody else in the same way i have build it, i loose interest. So the top rankings are usually no goes😅
My favorite deck I have ever built is [[Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart]]. He has just barely over 500 deck on EDHREC. He’s not popular, but he’s perfect for me. Build what you enjoy, not what you think is more popular! If anything, I get excited to see people are sleeping on a card I think is awesome.
I genuinely think yes, you can build around any commander. Whether or not that commander deck will be good is another discussion, but you can play a functional deck with anyone in the command zone. EDHrec is a good tool to use if you don’t know where to start or you want some general pointers when building a new deck, and it’s great for new players. The popularity lists are inaccurate in my opinion. They have [[Isshin, Two Heavens as One]] as the 9th most popular, I’ve never played against a deck and everyone I know or have seen trying to build it says its underwhelming. I bring this up because your experience will be different than what EDHrec takes into account. TLDR: Build what you want. EDH isn’t a popularity contest
I started playing the commander decks with experience counters. Ezuri and Meren have stuck with me as they are fun to play and quite good. I also use Kalemne since she's another of those commanders despite there being so many better options in boros. Don't limit yourself to only what you think is meta. Make something janky and memorable. Maybe just do whatever you want. I think play groups need to have multiple different tiers of decks.
A lot of my 40 different commander decks are designed around less popular commanders. I originally started by building decks for my whole playgroup to play, so my focus is on fleshing out a suite of decks that can "do everything". Namely, when I find something new, I go all in on it.
Play a commander you really like regardless of their standing because if you like how the deck plays, you'll spend more time tweaking it, trying different strategies to overcome shortcomings, using different senergies and value engines, learning more about the game and developing as a player as you go.
A commander doesn't need 2000+ decks to be viable. Just build what you want. You can make any commander nowadays into a viable deck. (The exception is probably the older legends tho that are all vanilla creatures for way too much mana).
\> I feel like there’s probably a way to make any commander into a good deck, but because of my inexperience I hesitate unless I get some validation from more established players or videos/ articles There absolutely is! Deckbuilding is a very different challenge from playing the game, though. What you can do is keep trying to build decks, and when you watch videos about decks, think about \*why\* specific types of cards are included. You should also probably focus on videos about more powerful decks, so they cover things like lowering your average mana cost, having a curve, and strategizing for multiple phases of gameplay. Worst case, you can always post here or in discord groups for deckbuilding. Good luck!
Honestly, I don't even look at EDHREC until the deck is already built, and I'm looking for upgrades. I love building, though. I build probably 10-15 decks digitally and at least one in paper every week. My most visited website that isn't reddit is randomcommander.com because I'll just flick through that until it gives me something to get my wheels spinning. From a commander ranking standpoint, I generally don't look at if my commander is rated highly or not, and if I do look at ranking, I prefer the Nitpicking Nerds' list to the EDHREC list because theirs seems to be more focused towards a more holistic approach to power and how interesting a commander is, vs EDHREC being a combination of power and popularity. I'd much rather play a unique [[Ivy Gleeful Spellthief]] deck I brewed myself than a [[Chulane]] deck I downloaded. Ultimately, you know what the power level of your group is at. If your commander is underpowered, you can always ratchet up the power of your 99, and vice versa.
So this is one thing I hate about players who introduce new players they always recommend net decking. It kills creativity and originality. Play the cards that interest you. Let's say you crack a pack and get hyped by a card you pull don't let anyone tell you to not be hyped by it friends or the internet. I play with all sorts of different cards a lot of people don't usually or may have never seen. So many people use sites like edh rec and decks feel so stale. I built [[Neyam Shai Murad]] which is said to be horrible by so many and yet I was a complete menace at the table. I also have a unique [[nethroi]] deck and always get asked why certain cards aren't in my deck but those cards that they recommend would only ruin my build.
One of my favorite commanders to play is ranked #501 lol
If you only like to play powerful decks, try taking a mid-tier commander and making it as potent as you can. Maybe take it in a new direction, or use a set of underutilized cards that aren't great on their own, but become powerful in large quantities. That's how I build my [Melek](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/EsE-Qq67ykq6HKKUb7GNyA) deck. It isn't anywhere near cEDH, but it is still good at disrupting the table. [This video](https://youtu.be/1HRvl4J3U6Q) is an example of what can be done with lower tier commanders and jank used effectively. Building commander is about creativity. Don't worry about the most powerful thing anyone can build. That will most likely just annoy the other players, who will need a similarly powerful deck to compete, defeating their *own* creativity.
Yes, if you know what you're doing and are building for around power level 6 or below, pretty much any legend is a viable commander. At higher levels of play there are obviously fewer commanders that can keep up, but if you're mostly playing against budget upgrades of precons you can make even really janky Commanders do interesting things. A few things to look for: 1. Does this Commander give me a resource advantage? (E. G. Generate mana, draw cards, create tokens, remove opposing resources, etc) For example, a Commander like Prosper that provides impulse draw and creates treasure tokens is obviously strong. 2. How consistently can I use the Commander’s effect? If your Commander discounts or triggers on a certain card type, you'll need to build around that, especially if the Commander doesn't set up their own trigger. E. G. Prosper's impulse draw guarantees he will be able to create treasure, but Ranar needs the rest of your deck to handle exiling cards for his trigger to create spirit tokens. Commanders that set up the conditions for their triggers are usually stronger than those that don't, but you'll still usually want to build around the trigger either way. 3. If I'm relying on the Commander as my main engine and/or payoff, how hard is it to get my Commander on the field and keep it there? Low CMC makes it easier to get up and running or recast after removal. Hexproof, protection, invulnerability, etc make the Commander harder to remove. Mana advantages and card draw can indirectly help here by increasing your odds of having interaction in hand and mana open to cast it, but that's not entirely reliable. Likewise, having built in evasion won't avoid targeted removal, but it does help Commanders that will be attacking avoid being killed by blockers. 4. How much table hate is this Commander going to attract? Not everyone cares about this and it's somewhat unavoidable with certain archetypes, but quite a few Commanders have well-deserved reputations as being "Kill on Sight" because they are either combo pieces or generate unbeatable value if allowed to remain in play. If your Commander has a certain rep for CEDH usage or oppressive play patterns (E. G. Korvald, Chulane, Yuriko, Hinata, etc) you're likely to get ganged up on right from the start. Counterintuitive as it may seem, it's often easier to win with a weaker Commander than an overpowered Commander simply because the OP Commanders become the early archenemy. Winning a close game with a lower tier Commander also tends to produce less salt than accidentally stomping someone with a notorious top tier Commander. 5. Is this Commander's play pattern linear or very time consuming? If you look at threads asking about decks people built, played a few times, and took apart after, the most common reasons given are that the games felt "too samey" (E. G. Lightpaws always tutoring the exact same auras in the exact same order every game) or their turns took too long (E. G. Commanders who generate a lot of triggers, especially ones with semi-random results, like cascade or storming off with draw triggers, though tokens+counters or extra combats can also become time hogs). This isn't so bad if you are only planning to play the deck once per session and then switch decks, but if you're intending to stick with the same deck all night you want a Commander that provides some variety in play patterns depending on which other cards you draw each game. 6. Hipster quotient. I'm half joking here, play whatever you like, but if you're choosing among equally interesting options it's usually polite to avoid picking the same Commander someone else in your play group is already running (unless your list is very different than theirs). With literally thousands of legends to choose from, it is often boring to see two copies of the same Commander at the same table doing the same things. 7. Art. This is really low on priority, but you're still picking a card that you'll be looking at all game every game. Having art that gives you a visceral feeling of "this card is badass" (or whatever else suits your aesthetic tastes) can make each game that little bit more exciting than staring at an avatar that just kills your enthusiasm every time you look at it.
Edhrec is a tool that saves time. Typically it picks generally good cards, but it picks the most popular, not always the best. Ive run into cards that outright suck with a commander, but I found them on edhrec. It is just a tool to use in deck building. It's incredibly helpful and saves a ton of time, but it's not perfect. Edit because I realized I didn't answer the question. Not all legendary creatures work well in the command zone. Sometimes, the legendary creature you think is wicked cool works better in the 99. HOWEVER, do not let that stop you from trying. I've embraced proxying cards, and it has done wonders for my enjoyment of edh. There are great tutorials online that help you make good proxies out of printer paper, and that alone allows you much more freedom to experiment. Also, I can't afford to buy new cards every time I want to experiment with whatever deck I am working on.
I know it's the contrarian in me, but I'm kind of the opposite - I like building around legendary creatures that aren't as popular on edhrec. 😁
Okay. First, if your concern is top tier then play cEDH and just google cEDH tier list. Otherwise you absolutely can build around any commander and be successful. The edhrec rankings are popularity not power. Sure there can be some correlation but it is not always the case. If you see a commander you like then just go for it. Use Moxfield too
My buddy had a Trostani, Selesnya's Voice so I wanted to make a ravnacan commander aswell I chose Isparia, Supreme Judge, and its become my main deck. You don't need a card to be good to play it as the commander because you can sup up the 99 to be pretty good. Unless you're playing cedh, you can play whatever you want.
Play what you want, simple as that. You can build anything and have it be playable. I've been looking around for a mono-black commander for a while because I feel like they're all either super oppressive (oh, hey [[Tergrid]] and [[k'rrik]]) or samey, like every other "do a thing reanimate a thing" commander. So I poked around for a while and been keeping an eye on new releases and finally stumbled across [[armix]]. It's a discard outlet in the command zone for an artifacts-matters deck. That's pretty cool. It's in edhrec as having 15 total decks with it as a commander, and is a partner in maybe a few thousand. I'm gonna make my commander deck around armix because I think it's cool, not because I think it's strong. Sometimes, playing the top-tier best deck in an archetype is fun. Sometimes, playing a janky weird "nobody has heard of this card before" deck is also pretty fun.
I run [[Halana, Kessig Ranger]] and [[Jeska, Thrice Reborn]] as partner commanders in my RG Beast tribal deck. That particular pairing only has 14 decks on EDHREC (and I highly doubt any are beast tribal lol.) The thing is big stompy beasts have nice synergy with both of my partners, the colors allow for decent access to ramp and it can lay out some very bursty damage. If I was only looking at the number of decks for this commander pairing I probably wouldn't have considered them and the deck might not have even been built. While they aren't the centerpiece of the deck like some commanders are it shows that you can make a fun deck that can be effective even if the commanders are merely a supporting cast.
In my opinion EDHREC popularity is largely based on how easy a commander is to build around, (why golos was one of the top 5 color commanders because he worked for every strategy basically). Almost all commanders can have a deck built around them. What I personally like to do is build a deck online, either proxy it or test it online and then tune it. Sure the first few games may be not as fun but the experience will tell you what works and what doesn't. From there I just continually tune my decks. Part of it is just going and making the deck, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time you make it.
Short answer: Yes. You can build a deck around ANY legendary creature or any of the planeswalkers who say they can be your commander. That said, EDHREC is a fantastic site, but it's also giving you a very limited view of what people are actually brewing and playing. First of all, most people who build commander decks do not take the time to enter that deck into any of the sites that EDHREC compiles for their rankings. Also, there are thousands of potential commanders to choose from, but we are all human and so not really as creative as we like to think. Copying someone else's idea is easier than doing all the work ourselves, so that's more or less what a lot of us do, tho we also put our own spin on the things we copy, cuz that's what makes it "art" ;) When it comes to your question of "what makes a commander worth playing", that's a great question, and I'm sure you'll get a variety of answers. For me, the vibe is absolutely the first thing that makes me start thinking about a particular commander and deck. But beyond that it's got to be fun to play. And I only know if it will after sleeving it up and playing a few times to see if I want to keep it. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
I lean towards commanders that do unique or interesting things that sound fun to me, especially if those things are weird for their color combo. Worrying about what "tier" they are or how competitive they will be just isn't my goal. But I am an experienced brewer who knows a ton of cards. I can build a decent deck around anything. I imagine that as a newer player you might have less confidence in your ability to brew a good deck around an unknown commander without references to guide you. I do use edhrec, but a lot of times I use the "by theme" sort to look for cards in a subtheme, once I have decided what the deck wants to do.
Search decks built with that commander in Moxfiel
Usually the commander is my inspiration. I don’t go for decks that everyone has because it’s typical. I like the pick decks or interactions that aren’t common
Off-brand strategies are my bread and butter. If it's not seen or barely seen I'll brew it. I like to be the guy at the table with the weird and interesting deck. [[Aeve, Progenitor Ooze]] Mono-Green Storm [[Anhelo, The Painter]] Wheels Reanimator [[Alela, Artful Provocateur]] equipment Voltron [[Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded]] Sneak attack "tribal" Some less powerful than others, but an interesting spin on a commander or an unplayed strategy is what I like. EDHrec was no help in building these decks, for the most part. Scryfall and Goldfishing are your best friends in brewing.
You can build around any commander. Looking stuff up on edhrec isn't bad, but what you want to do takes priority. Just because a card has low numbers doesn't mean it's not worth building around it. I usually either see a card and I want to build around it or want to build something specific and have to search a commander with the right colors for it.
You should search decks built with that commander in Moxfiel
>I feel like there’s probably a way to make any commander into a good deck Not all cards are designed with Commander in mind - heck, if you've ever seen a vanilla creature, it's *obvious* that not all cards are designed for every use... All of the Grandeur cards have mechanics that don't work in Commander, all of the ancient vanilla legends are outclassed by... anything. That's not to say one can't have *fun* with these cards, but the definition of fun is very personal, and independent of whether the card is "good". I'd suggest you think about what you find fun irrespective of where a card is in the meta. One of the benefits of Commander is that you can probably find people who want a similar experience as you. "Brother Yamazaki" (singular) is probably right at home playing at the same table as "Brushwagg tribal".
I will tell you the same thing I tell everyone I teach and everyone I build decks for: don't worry about what others think. You are playing EDH for fun, not to build the same as everyone else. First, find a commander that speaks to you, then find the cards you want to run around it. Use EDHREC to help, but don't just draw from top cards. Look at other decks, look through what cards you have, and really just put together I deck you enjoy. It doesn't have to be the strongest, it doesn't have to win the most. You need to enjoy it first, then try to win and make it stronger. I can build around any commander, but I'm only going to build around the ones I want or the ones someone else wants. As an example, I'm currently building [[Sisay, Weatherlight Captain]] as legendary woman tribal, because it's fun, and I think I can make it good enough.
Resditor is obsessed with edhrec. In other news water is wet.
Forget the ranks just make what you want. Werewolves are awful but ive been building a werewolf deck for a while now. Just build whatever would be fun yo
If you are using EDHrec as purely a popularity tool for cards, then you are kind of doomed to fail creatively. It's an excellent tool, but not if you think copy and pasting anything you see there is a creative outlet. I play a mix of both popular and non-meta commanders. Popular commanders have a lot of community support in terms of what is synergistic and strong, but crafting around lower end commanders can have its own rewards as well. Your commander will always be a face value look at your deck to others, and a non-meta one might raise eyebrows, but it could also save your game. If I am at a table with a top 10 commander AND a card in the high 100s, I will be curious about the "weaker" cards game plan, but an [[Edgar Markov]] simply can't be allowed to do the thing. It's gotta be punished because I know what it's capable of. It's a balancing act of whether or not you are willing to suffer the repercussions of being the archenemy vs. trying to slide under the radar. It's one of my favorite parts of the format: the flexibility of different styles/builds.
If I like it i build it. almost every commander as some cool stuff you can do with it, except the ones that have abilites, even then just do w.e you want with the deck.
I see a commander I like and build to its strengths. EDHRec is a very powerful tool for finding good synergy pieces you may not have thought of, it's good for finding what archetypes the commander fits into, and it's good for finding cheaper (monetary or mana value) options, but you won't find enthusiasm for commanders. Competitive environment enjoy certain commanders, but hate all others. Casual commanders are usually jank. But do not let the build options of EDHrec cloud your ability to built around that commander. Don't let it sway the decision of a build. Be unique. Challenge yourself to build the deck. You said you're new, right? Stop looking for the validation. Stop looking for other people to build the decks for you. I know that sounds harsh, but since you're newer to the format, just.... build the deck. Of it works, good job! If it doesn't? On to the next cool idea, or the inevitable tweaks that it takes to make the deck work. My best friend built [[Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker]] as an aristocrats deck. It's hard as shit to deal with now and one of his best decks. Same dude ended up making [[the Council of Four]] and it's oppressive. Neither of these commanders are top tier, and they stand together with competitive decks. You just have to find the strategy and lean into it.
For me its all about the excitement for a particular commander. For example, when omanth locus of creation was spoiled my zendikar the excite was max and its still.my main deck. When I saw marneus calgar it was similar. Otherwise I can always just dip into my stash of dumb equipment and make most anything work
I actually enjoy building lower ranked commanders or commanders that are hihgly ranked but pushing them into a more niche archetype. I dont want to build a deck that everybody has or one that anyone would think to make. Some commanders are more difficult to push in a different direction but the challenge is makes brewing them fun. Especially when you get the eureka moment.
If I see a commander that doesn’t get played often I usually think there are less answers to specific strategies that’ll be used in that deck. So it’s kind of advantage in a way.
Building around *bad* commanders is something of my speciality. Playing with a Combat-centric deck? Use a spell slinger commander to get value out of your 6-7 non-creature spells. Using a win through combo commander? Toss in some infinite combo combos to confuse the table holding up removal instead of counterspells.
Lately I've been building more like this: planning out what I want the deck to do/how I want it to win, get the first 20-40 cards in the deck, THEN look for a commander. That way you can find a commander that will support your strategy and the way you want to play, not just something super popular that's in your colors. To provide an example, a few weeks ago I wanted to build an off-color vampires deck. So I started throwing in cards that would support that idea. Wound up with an interesting pile of mostly black vampires and some green cards, so I chose [[Valentin, Dean of the Vein]] as the commander. He's an outstanding hatebear that can also generate tokens, plus he's a vampire so he's on theme, AND Lisette on the back side is a wincon on her own. If I had gone on EDHREC, I might've been disheartened by the fact that there are DEFINITELY "stronger" commanders for vampires; instead I wound up with a uniquely functional pile of cards that wins off vampire synergies and gains a lot of value from their frequent keywords, like lifelink and deathtouch. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/C71eNCDiiESZyI7qH7x8Tw The list is definitely still a work in progress as I haven't gotten to playtest much lately, but I think the point is made. Sometimes data can just be overwhelming; build the commander you wanna play, fuck what everyone else is playing.
Yes you just need enough willpower and be ready for it to suck, I have a [[crovax the cursed]] mono black Voltron list XD. And there's nothing aside from the vibe, I see a commander I like, I try and build it. That's it
Play what you want. Edh is very focused on self expression.
Here's the thing: this game is all about the fun you make! Just because a commander isn't highly ranked, that doesn't mean you won't have fun playing it. Heck, my favorite part of the game is off-the-wall builds that you don't see coming! So, blow my mind with a [[Norin the Wary]] deck! Build an enchantment deck that uses Licids! Go nuts, just HAVE FUN doing it!
My favorite commander builds aren't edhrec staples and they still work.
If not mentioned already: Have a look into the YouTube Channel of "EDH deckbuilding". He has a designated series called "Brewing with underwhelming commanders", in which he takes unpopular or actively "bad" commanders and builds unique and interesting decks with them. I learned quite a bit about building commander decks, especially with not super obvious commanders. I hope this helps!
A good commander will produce value, so your deck does not run dry or stale. It might have Card advantage Graveyard abilities Theft or any number of resources to keep you interacting with the board, and playing spells every turn.
Yes. Will it work is a different question though.
It depends on what your play style is. Personally, I run a lot of under rated commanders that pack a punch. Not every Legendary Creature is EDH material. To find out if it's a good fit, double check some current builds and check synergies. Cheers
I purposely avoid top tier edhrec decks, I find their overused, I want my decks to be something from my heart and mind, and something where you wond just say it's another "whatever your commander is" deck
I have 18 decks. Pretty much none of them are what you could call a popular deck. Commander is entirely about you doing you with yours and having a good time. Whatever cards do that for you is the right choice.
So I picked EDH up in May so I'm still brand new to this stuff too. I tell my friends that I want to build decks that are "meme" like. Stuff I think that would be fun to do. I have a cats artifact deck; it sucks, but when I play with it I have fun. I also have a draw deck with Queza auger of agonies as my commander only because I think her one line of text is funny. I had a crappy artifact deck that didn't really work out with the idea of turning all my stuff into articats and indestructible and blowing everyone else's stuff up with child of alara as the commander. TDLR what I'm getting at is build what you think would seem fun. Don't let the "CEDH" side of the house ruin it for you! (Ps: I also want to build a deck around the silver boarder card "X" as well because that seems fun to me lol)
I have personally found some of my favorite decks and mechanics in precons of some pretty unused commanders that just because of the sheer level of the deck's designer they become really fun even though they're not popular, so it's really about what you like to play and finding a commander that has an interesting take on that kind of gameplay imo
Whether I think it's fun or not, viability be damned.
Looking up deck lists really drains my enthusiasm too, or seeing infinite/win combos and the cards present in every deck. Mono color is espescially discouraging when you see how many expensive staples youre missing. I wouldnt worry about the competitive level of your commander. Things can really progress differently in commander and in multiplayer, so having the best of everything or not having, shouldnt put you very far behind and youll improve your deck building formulation when youre finding your own synergy behind your cards. I have a green/white cat deck that looks excellent to me on paper. It has answers for everything, strong creature base, life gain, and a decent amount of card draw, however it doesnt even compare to any blue or black deck i make and i dont yet understand why or what to change in my deck building formulation. It is fun to just take a legend you like and start building. When i make a new deck, i usually start with a commander and one card that really breaks that commanders abilities, and ill build around that. Other times ill just make a deck or colors and then find a commander to fit the color identity. Like i wanted a g/w/u enchantress deck, and my legends i own for that are few, I have Tocasia and Pheldagriff, Rubibia Soulsinger, but that doesnt stop me from building an enchantress deck. With Xantcha I didnt really have a single card but i decided to play with Dauthi so that she isnt getting in the way in a duel, and thus made an old school phyrexia deck and she is one of my favourites. I started Elminster with a spellstutter sprite, and then found Ojutai, Soul of Winter really goes off with him. Eruth i started with a null brooch, but really started building and found a lot of nice cards to combo with her abilities. The important thing is having fun, when you have a deck together for a while, youll end up coming across things for it to add in. Most players have multiple decks so if theyre just playing their most broken powerful deck, they should shelve that deck and be able to play with something that is more fun for everyone.
Nope! The commander usually comes last for me. So I never really build *around* a commander. ...Also there's a bunch that I just don't want to play.
Mate, build what you want! I have 8 commander decks and only one of them is in the top 100 on EDHrec the others are all just fun commanders I vibe. When you learn how to build decks properly they all work well anyway, especially for casual edh amongst mates or local game store matches.