Commander Deck Building

With the new year, I'm focusing on building decks (vs. collecting cards). Two weeks ago, a writer at coolstuffinc had an article for beginners on making commander decks (the 100-card singleton format with a commander). You can read the article in its entirety here; today, I focus on his first two points.

1. Include 40 lands
• This makes sense; it holds to the 60% spells/40% land formula recommended for 60-card decks. It sounds like a lot, but especially if you're running multiple colors, it's probably necessary.
2. Include mana ramp and card draw
• Mana ramp are spells and abilities that increase your access to mana, generally through spells (like Rampant Growth, below) that enable you to search for and/or play more lands on your turn.
• Card draw is just that- spells and abilities that enable you to draw cards. Like Concentrate below.

The author recommends 8-10 slots for mana ramp, and 10-12 slots for card draw. These could be single-focus cards like the above, or cards who feature mana ramp or card draw as one of their abilities.

This tip in particular was a good reminder for me. My commander decks frequently lack this- I overly focus on my theme of choice and don't include enough of these types of things (or removal, for that matter, which the author also talks about as 'interaction' in his third tip). And I find myself hitting the wall where I either lack the lands I need to play the spells I have in-hand, or have the lands but lack any cards to play. 

Simplifying, let's say Commander decks should have:

• 40 land cards
• 10 mana ramp-related cards
• 10 card draw-related cards
• 5 removal cards
• 1 commander

Voila- you have two-thirds of your deck right there.

Similarly, the below template (found in the 'Budget Magic' Facebook group) is helpful aid:

Happy brewing!