Best Beginner Budget Commanders for The Most Popular Strategies | Magic the Gathering 

Missed opportunity for Best Beginner Budget Build-Arounds

Hey Mitch, my first commander deck was Talrand and I used your original list. It has changed a lot since then but it remains my favorite deck to play

Shocked you don't have a gruul/mono green stompy deck. Play creatures, turn sideways is pretty simple for new players. Aristocrats and anything that has a shit ton of triggers is a bit too much, in my experience, for newer players. Talrand/ Azorius fliers (Linvala) are a great mention as well.

Ognis is definitely a good option as a commander and is my go-to deck. I jokingly call mine 'get rich or die trying' because it focuses on getting creatures onto the battlefield with Haste to generate lots of future mana that you can use for either bigger creatures or can use to catch opponents by surprise Add sacrifice synergy like Mirkwood Bats, Disciple of the Vault or Reckless Fireweaver and it can get nasty

Ezuri is one of my favorite commanders. I have a few comments about the cards recommended in this though: Be very careful about master biomancer and similar anthem or anthem like effects. If you get one on the battlefield, yes you will have a large jump in power, but it comes at the cost of hamstringing your growth rate. Instead look at wild beast master. It buffs all your creatures, but only when it attacks. This lets you get those enormous token attacks while still having a good way to gain experience. Aside from producing many small creatures, cards you want to look for are ones with powerful abilities that are limited by weak power/toughness. Basically you can filter based on low power, then ask yourself how that card reads if you slap 10 or 30 +1/+1 counters on it. Cards like tree of redemption or viridian joiner are incredible with a ton of counters on them. Cards like mycoloth are able to produce seemingly endless hordes on the battlefield, and by extension give you hundreds of experience counters.

I'm not really a beginner, but I grabbed the "deck" on your TCG link anyway, because I have lots of cards to fit in with those and beef them up a little bit, and I've been wanting to play some of those strategies, anyway. I already have a Simic counter deck with Vorel of the Hull Clade as my commander (based on an idea from Jank Center's channel), and I love it, so I can't wait to try it with a slightly different flavor. Again, I have tons of cards for it, since I bought pretty much everything in Simic that did anything with counters and proliferate, then sorted out what worked best with my Vorel deck. I have lots of leftover options, so I can probably build that deck right away without purchasing any other cards. Thanks for the great ideas!

I have both a Graaz and Dina deck and I love both of them. I believe my Dina deck is a modified version of your list and i caved and got an Exquisite Blood for the infinite lol

For Auras I always like Lightpaws easy for beginners to go find what you need when you need it. And making it mono color makes the land plays really easy.

OG Goreclaw is a great beginner commander. Ramps into big creatures and overruns. Plenty of draw options for having big creatures in green too.

Krenko mob boss is a fantastic pick for a token agro deck. Can be very powerful on a budget too

Great video loved learning about each of these strategies I wish you could explain each of the key words like wheel or aristocrats ECT. Maybe add a glossary in the description or comments. Thanks!

Hey, Mitch Big fan here! I've been following the chanel since 2017-2018 (not sure but it was way back) and the main reason I haven't bought any new decks or your merch is cause I'm a broke college student and struggling to pay my stuff kinda pushes the whole idea of spending money with a card game, even if it is my favourite one by far A couple weeks ago some commander gameplays, mtg muddsta, gameknights and edh at home appeared on my feed so my passion made a resurgence I don't have anyone to play with and can't buy new cards so I developed "my own edh" type of format and have been bugging my little brother to play with me since he understands the basics of mtg The format goes: -each player has a "captain" that stays on a separate zone -all coloured cards share the colours of rhe captain's colour identity -the deck is in singleton (only basic lands can have multiple copies in it) +the catch is that the deck has 60 cards intead of 100 so someone with a lesser collection of cards might be able to build something funny and focused on a strategy might be able to make it work +the game is played in 1v1 since there's less cards on the deck but that could be discussed For the time being I have Karamethra (GW) enchantress/auras misrange deck and a Bruna (WU og one) auras and flyers deck What do you think of this "format"? Have you seen any similar? Would you be willing to do a gameplay video using these rules vs one of your friends? Have a great week, sir 😁✌🏽

One of my favorite cards for commanders like Valduk or others that care about number of equipment attached to it is Bludgeon Brawl, which makes all clues, treasures, etc. into equipment that cost 0 to equip, giving those creatures some free equipment AKA some free elementals in Valduk’s case.

I just built Shirei and love it! I am the "Archenemy" of our play group. Everyone has strong decks but commonly the games turn into a 1v4(big table). So I had wanted to build Shirei since I started magic back in 2006. He just seemed fun. So I wanted to make a pauper deck as a personal challenge and when Shirei became uncommon I saw my chance. What a monster. My wife absolutely hates the deck and refuses to play against it anymore. It is so consistent for a pauper with no search. I was AMAZED how powerful he is. He is now known in our table as another terror. Its even beaten a friends CEDH Najeela. So now I am making a non pauper shell just to see how it feels at full theottle.

I love this! Thank you!

Built a Shirei deck a few months ago and i love playing him, even if getting drained a bunch of life every turn annoys my friends. One problem is how the deck falls apart a little if he gets removed, so my recommendation is to run a bunch of protection, or to add enough draw to make the deck work decently even when he's not around. Some of my favourite cards due to how they work with him include: Transmogrant Altar, Triskelion, Bankrupt in Blood, Mindless Automaton, Tree of Perdition, Flesh Allergy, Eliminate the Competition and last but not least, Invasion of Fiora.

My one friend built a Talrand deck and every card was a penny, it was only instants and sorceries and he wound up beating our $500-600 decks with it 😂

Just note that if you're playing Jetmir, I'd HIGHLY recommend to pack in a whole bunch of board protection. Once it hits the field, players will try to remove him. You're also better off waiting to play him until your boardstate is big.

Nice video surprise something as simple as zombie or elf tribal didn't make the cut. Yes, there are some expensive parts to it.But there's some pretty cheap engines you can build and tribes. to like that.

A lot of consideration given to the new player, but very little consideration given to the stoned player...

Im debating whether to add this juggernaut to my Urza Artificier artifact deck or not. Seems cool tho.

Just got into MTG and looking at starting out with my first Commander…is this fate!?

Ezuri, claw of progress is a bit better than it seems for casual/budget. I've been playing it for years and it seems to just come out of nowhere with a haymaker or 3

Talrand is still my favorite mono blue commander. He shores up one of blues major weaknesses with impressive efficiency.

i have ognis as a rakdos treasure commander its super fun

Nikya of the old ways is great for new players. I gave it to my friend, and told them just just play this and your lands are doubled. Then, cast creatures and go BUUUURRRR. I have that deck around for new players, and they always enjoy it.

My first commander was Admiral Beckett Brass

Mitch is Wort the Raidmother a budget friendly for a beginner? cause most of her pieces are cheap and can be built below $50 and a best way to teach the stack and spellslinging decks in general to a beginner~ it was my first deck and it is actually cheap and below $50 plus it is an underrated commander :>

All around ok choices but I think Arjun is going to be a very bad idea for newbies: It would teach them *eventually* how to build a synergistic and consistent deck it will be a long trial and error process on those colors: Izzet doesn't really has much in the way of cheap and fast ramp and if you have to possibly discard really useful things like lands means you really have to think if you need to use your mana rock now and risk getting mana-screwed without any more lands or ramps to play or if it's ok to play those mana rocks. Plus it will be incredibly difficult for a new player to have responses and interaction when they'll need em the most: they either fill up their decks with really mana intensive interaction spells (Because again: it's not very beginner friendly to suggest to get the cheap/free counters and spend upwards of 500 bucks) or *when* to play them since chances are you can't rely on more than a single interaction so any player with stable or large hand with more than one interaction will usually overcome them. It's just really complicated to dump your hand every time for a newbie it's absolutely not newbie friendly.

I'm not sure Talrand is the best recommandation for a beginner spellslinger deck. I have a Talrand deck myself (precisely because I created it as one my first decks and everyone said "If you want a spellslinger deck, go Talrand"). And man, it's hard to win with it these days even with many upgrades and even against precons (they got beefed up in the last years): * It's mono blue, so it limits the spell selection a lot * It's a 4 mana commander, which is especially hard to cast in mono blue due to limited ramp * It's hard to find good finishers, notably because you're in mono blue I think that, for a spellslinger deck these days, it's preferable to try an Izzet commander. There are plenty available, including budget ones.

ahh ic his talking about cards that go into the deck. had me confused for a sec

Killian, Ink Duelist

i also have valduk hes awesome

Dina was literally my first commander. I don’t have chain of smog shinanigans cause that card is cheesy af. Fun commander though

I’m trying to pick a deck for my gf but she’s never played a card game before and I don’t want to give her something difficult that would discourage her

Raggadragga is literally the easiest deck you can play. Play mana dorks> pump mana dorks>attack with manadorks

I'm not a beginner any more but I still have problems with not being agro enough

My first Commander was Latliss The Dragon Queen

Life gain is so stupid. I built a $500 Dina deck but every time I play it I still die to commander

First commander deck was Gruul werewolves.

I'd always recommend a beginer commander player start with a deck that does one of two things very well, draw cards, or ramp and play big spells. Nothings more fun than either of those things in commander

i thought commanders had to be legendary?

Dina as a beginner commander? She goes infinite without even trying. She is good for beginners if your goal is to be targeted over and over and begin to rely on a card that goes infinite with your commander and learn to tutor it over and over.