Did You Build Your Casual Commander Deck Wrong?
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to get meaningful advice about a Commander deck you are brewing? At first I thought it was just information overload. It’s hard to quickly process and give feedback on a 100-card singleton decklist just due to the sheer volume of cards and all their possible interactions. You have probably spent hours pouring over various resources while designing your deck.
How is someone—in two minutes—supposed to reasonably scan that list and truly improve the deck at a fundamental level? I thought people were giving me what I perceived to be “bad deck-building advice” because they just fundamentally couldn’t process the information presented quickly and efficiently. Now I think it’s from something much more psychologically interesting.
I posted my Delina, Wild Mage decklist in the Luxury Suite channel on the PlayEDH Discord server, asking for feedback and cards that I might have overlooked. The target power level was casual Commander (we’ll loop back to what this means later).
Editor’s note: Luxury Suite is the lounge channel for PlayEDH Patrons above a certain tier.
I was immediately hit with suggestions from Patrons to add Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon. I would never add these to a casual Commander deck. The cards are undoubtedly powerful, but are they actually doing anything to make for a fun game?
Let the record show that I have probably cast more Blood Moons than most people on this planet. I LOVE stax gameplay, hatebears, and their brethren. Chalice of the Void, Blood Moon, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben…these cards are my lifeblood in 60-card Constructed formats like Legacy. In a four-player casual game though, I never want to be the person who throws down a card that singularly reduces a player’s expected win rate to close to zero, especially one that can come down for only three mana
Commander deck-building is much more than just building a synergistic whole and playing the best interaction or hate cards in your colors; it is also the opportunity to cultivate the play experience that you enjoy. That experience is WILDLY different depending on where and how you play Commander, and I’d like to highlight two very different (and equally valid!) approaches to deckbuilding and desired gameplay experience today.
I want to start with my own perspective as a content creator. I frequently get invited as a guest to events like CommandFests and MagicCons, and a huge percentage of the games I play are streamed to audiences. The remaining games tend to be played with random fans of my channel or guests of an event. When people sit down to play a game with me, I want them to have a good time, and I want their deck to have a chance to “do its thing” during the game. Enjoyment and memorable experiences are the most important things to me.
Blood Moon makes for a boring game of Magic in many ways. “Oops, you wanted to play a sick 5-color The Ur-Dragon deck? Not today, pal! You’re not casting any more spells!” That’s not the experience that I’m looking to cultivate as a stream guest or someone looking to make memories with fans. I don’t want to stop my opponent from “doing the thing.” I want to win THROUGH my opponent doing their thing.
I want my opponent to make their commander have 60 power and then see if I can cobble together a way to win despite that. I want my opponent to assemble a sick engine that draws 10 cards a turn, so I can try to sneak out a win at the last possible minute. For me, from the perspective of someone who wants a notable narrative or memorable match, that is peak casual Magic. Accordingly, I tend to play few pieces of spot removal, minimal free interaction, and I don’t run tutors to find my interaction when I’m in a pinch.
Let’s now contrast the experience I am seeking with the experience of someone looking to jam games at Mid Power on the PlayEDH Discord server. Here’s the description of Mid Power from the home page of the website that you’re on now:
“Mid decks are often focused around a specific wincon, and a way to find that wincon. Efficient ramp and interaction, strong mana bases and fixing, and powerful individual card quality are all present here. Early turns spent developing a board, or leaving interaction open are common. While you will usually not be required to prevent players from winning in early turns, expect your opponents to be developing towards their focused wins, so having the ability to stop that win, or apply pressure so the table collectively can manage itself is important. Your decks need to be able to do those things.”
Based on the bolded sections here, the play experience they are looking to cultivate is wildly different from my own ideal game. I want crazy things to happen; they want to stop the crazy things from happening in the first place. I want to throw haymakers back and forth; they want a more interactive game. Both approaches are equally valid.
Let’s loop back to advice about deckbuilding now. I think it’s so hard to get good advice—not due to the difficulty of processing information—but because people looking at a decklist aren’t going to innately understand what your ideal game looks like at a glance. Gauging raw power level and cards that can go in it, that’s easy to do! Understanding the ideal play experience someone wants…you can’t do that with a decklist. Honestly, it might even be hard for you to articulate your ideal Commander experience, even if you tried!
So now I ask you, “Did you build your casual Commander deck wrong?” Are you building your deck in a way that actually leads to the gameplay experience you want to have? I ask this as a person who has messed this up many times. I think many of the decks that I “didn’t vibe with” weren’t cultivated for the gameplay experience I wanted; I played those decks two or three times and then scrapped them.
I think power level is always at the forefront of everyone’s mind when building Commander decks, but I’ve fully shifted away from that. For those of you who’ve had the “My deck is a 7” conversation enough times, you’ve probably learned that perceived power level isn’t necessarily the most important thing to finding one of those golden games of Commander. Instead of the raw power level, I’m actively thinking about the gameplay experience I want to cultivate when deckbuilding.
I think the PlayEDH Discord does a great job of matching power levels and setting good expectations for the nature of a game, but what if you’re off to a MagicCon for games with strangers? How do you build a deck that is going to lead to a good play experience for everyone involved? How do you realistically build for those golden games of Commander where everyone has a great time? I can’t tell you what you want from a game of Commander, but here are the things that I try to do to make my random casual games fun:
1. Give People Choices, Don’t Take Them Away
If cards like Blood Moon that take away choices aren’t fun, then perhaps cards that give players extra choices are fun! That’s how logic works, right? In my Xantcha, Sleeper Agent politics deck, I love cards like Descent into Avernus and Rite of the Raging Storm that actually give my opponents more resources. While these cards dish out a ton of damage, they do so in a way that keeps everyone in the game and gives them options. Similarly, I quite like cards like Death Kiss that incentivize opponents for playing the game your way, but don’t fully force them to do so.
2. Solve and Create Puzzles
The first draft of my Preston, the Vanisher combo deck was full of protection cards like Silence, Grand Abolisher, and Ranger-Captain of Eos. After a few games of rolling casual tables, I cut them all. I realized I wanted to see what happened when people stopped me. I wanted to cobble together increasingly more janky combo lines after being disrupted. I wanted to solve the puzzle. The games weren’t really fun for others when I just did a simple thing that won the game.
For similar reasons, I’ve cut cards that just singularly win the game on the spot when cast (e.g. Insurrection) and instead have opted to play more things that need to make it around the table once to really pop off. Give your opponents a puzzle to solve. Give them a turn to answer something crazy like a Tree of Perdition or Master of Cruelties that will have a massive impact on a game.
3. Play the Seven-Drop
When I look at average mana value distributions for Commander decks (that is, how many cards at each mana cost are in a deck), I usually see a large number of one, two, and three drops, and then a massive plummet in the curve after that. If you’re trying to optimize your chances of winning a game, that’s probably correct. cEDH curves, for example, are incredibly low to the ground. As you’ve figured out by now though, if you want to focus on gameplay experience rather than power, that might not actually be ideal. My curves are much more flat. I love playing crazy cards like Fevered Suspicion or Captive Audience that have people say, “Oh no, I’m in danger!” They make for memorable games. Not every deck needs to be optimized with a sleek curve. In fact, most decks aren’t.
4. Write a Description of Your Deck
If desired gameplay experience is more important than power level for finding a good game of Commander, then you need to make sure you can articulate what your gameplan is and what your deck seeks to do succinctly. This allows other people to select a deck that will match your desired gameplay experience. Here’s an example using two of my decks that were mentioned earlier in the article:
“Xantcha, Sleeper Agent- Medium Power Casual: This deck seeks to get opponents to deal damage to each other. It has a large amount of mana ramp, but despite that, isn't particularly strong. It plays well at any table. It isn't good at defeating a table of players, but is relatively good at stealing wins by picking off the last surviving opponent.”
“Preston, the Vanisher- Medium-High Power Casual: This deck seeks to repeatedly blink creatures with enter the battlefield triggers, especially those that give lands, draw cards, or take the initiative. The deck will likely combo off as the game goes long, but combo lines are often convoluted and require many pieces. The deck plays well at the higher end of medium power, but does not keep up with optimized high power casual decks.”
I’m a teacher by trade, so let’s wrap this article up with a little summary of the main points!
People won’t understand your desired gameplay experience by glancing at your decklist.
When deckbuilding, consider both the gameplay experience you want to cultivate and the power level.
Make sure the cards you play are contributing to your desired experience.
Write a short description of your deck so you can better match decks with other players.
That’s all I’ve got for you today, but if you want to follow up on the article, feel free to reach out or yell at me via Twitter! You can also find more of my work on my website or my YouTube channel.
We at PlayEDH would like to thank Phil for taking the time to join us. We’re hoping that this is only the first of many exciting articles written by guest contributors. Is there someone that you’d like us to work with? Let us know on Twitter! Join our automated, curated, webcam EDH pods on our Discord. Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free by our amazing Patreon supporters.
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