How to Make a Commander Deck | Magic Arcanum 

Ryan Gomez story time is the sole reason I subbed

14:30 1. Find a 5 color commander 2. Ask players for all cards they hate 3. Put all cards from no.2 into a deck 4. let’s destroy friendship.

Flbthp and 99 islands is op. Super consistent draws, really reliable deck, very cheap too!

One thing I love about commander is how each deck represents a person’s psyche/personality, how s/he wants to express oneself. Even if a person builds a deck for combo win, that speaks for oneself.

False: Commander is NOT 100 cards. *It's Sol Ring,* and 99 other cards.

Having a 99 card deck always seems like you have almost no idea what to actually select at first . It's always so surprising how intimate and important each card in the deck becomes after you've played with it a lot and tuned it.

For people wanting something more "formulaic" when creating their deck, an easy way to approach deck building and assist with breaking the deck down into smaller chunks is to follow these flexible guidelines. ~ 37 lands ~ 10 forms of flexible removal (this includes board wipes try to find 2 , 3, or 4) 1 piece of graveyard hate ~ 10 or more forms of card drawing (focus on cards that have continuous or repeatable effects) 10 - 15 forms of Ramp: this can be a mix of mana rocks, enchantments, and Cultivate effects. Dedicate the remainder to your strategy. I want to point out that sometimes the cards for your strategy may overlap with fulfilling the needs of the above guidelines. If this happens, GREAT! Take advantage of every opportunity you can to maximize the efficiency of your card slots. You only have 99 in your deck to work with, each of them must serve a very valuable purpose. I hope this helps anyone looking to improve or start, or perhaps serve as a method to breakdown the daunting task of creating a new deck. :) Best Regards

2:34 Literally thought he meant Bolas, lol

Also! For anyone who wants other resources for edh check out command zone, jumbocommander, tolarian community college, and command quarters for great deck tech, strategies and insite on commander!

How to play commander: Pick a commander with green in it's color identity. Add ramp. Add ETB creatures/maybe some LTB too. Add card advantage. Add a few disruption pieces. profit. Alternate method: Battlecruiser.edh

"Geared towards a casual play" suffered trauma by some dude that did infinite damage on 4th turn

All the kids that come to the card game club I run at school each year all learn to play Commander. This video is great!

"How do you build a Commander deck?" I honestly just slap 99 cards together and pray it works.

My typical process for building a new commander deck goes like this: (for example) 1. Open a cool legendary in a pack. Preferably one with a triggered ability. (Grand Warlord Radha) 2. Love it and dream of cards that synergize with it. (token makers, expendable creatures, mana sinks) 3. Decide to build a deck. 4. Find cool cards in my binder, then look online for fairly cheap cards that will let me push the synergies to 11. (Broodhatch Nantuko, Moonveil Dragon, etc) 5. S Y N E R G Y ! ! ! 6. Fill the rest of the list with interaction, protection, mana ramp/fixing, redundant effects in case someone hates my commander, and backup plans in case someone hates my strategy. 7. Balance the mana and playtest!

"There's nothing that scares me more than an Oversized Fireproof Arachnid" I love that line

The 9x7 thing reminds me of a blog I saw that used an 8x8 method to sketch up commander decks! I find methods like that really helpful. I've got a huge collection of cards and the amount of options can be kind of overwhelming. I'm really glad you have a video for regular decks, too!

When I'm building a new deck, I usually start with a template of 38 lands, 20 card draw & mana ramp, 10 to 15 removal / counter / interaction cards, and the rest is the on theme good stuff cards.

Easy. Four pillars of a good deck: 1. Card draw 2. Mana ramp 3. Mana curve 4. Win con Tips: put in about 35 lands with ramp spells/artifacts and play mainly 1-4 cmc spells with a few game winning bombs.

Would be cool to see a new person’s deck they came up with and watch someone like you take it apart and “fix” it while providing reasoning. I, personally, have a decent understanding of deckbuilding for commander, but it would be cool to see the actual process from the views of a new player and an experienced player.

I've been considering for a few years now to play commander. This video helped me a lot. Thank you 😁 for those who are wondering I've been thinking of building a deck around either omnath locus of rage or krenko mob boss.

I just recently built a Captain Sisay deck. Lots of fun. It gets nuts when I get Paradox Engine out. I particularly enjoy tutoring for all the peices of Kaldra and forming the "megazord".

By far one of my favorite commanders. Such good tribal synergy.

FINALLY a guide that makes sense for me. I've always struggled with building commander. I LOVE Magic Arcanum!

Obviously best way to make a commander go to scryfall and edhrec look at all the cards and put 100+ in then slowly and sadly remove till you have 100 😭😂 been waiting for this ep for a long time and happy with it keep making great content :))

Commander and story time. You have to lve Ryan and his team!

I love this! When it comes to commander, the deckbuilding just opens up so many possibilities for personalisation, and unless everyone at the table is playing a preconstructed deck or got a list of the internet, no two decks are ever the same, which i love seeing. One of my personal decks i play is a Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck - but every card in it has to be flavourfully justified. So I'm really glad that i recently got access to extra mana ramp with Firemind Vessel and the upcoming Talisman of Creativity (There's a Ral Zarek quote on it. It counts.) because with access to only the Ravnica-based nonbasic lands, the mana has been.... well.... questionable.

Another great video my friend keeps it coming. Nice new face hair too by the way lol

Great stuff as usual, hopefully this will bring even more people to this awesome format. Btw, what's up with that insane 'stache? Was that thing always there? xD

I'm so glad I'm here Ryan Gomez!

Pick commander: Yargle Pick cards: Equipment Other cards: Mana doubles and Mana Rocks Lands: 34 snow swamp *release the frog*

Spider Spawning or Arachnogenesis would be two great ways to make a bunch of spiders, which combos well with Ishkanah's activated ability. Plus, Arachnogenesis gives you a pseudo-fog ability. Just a thought.

I used to try to build the deck around the commander, and that worked great. Then I tried something different: I picked one or two mechanics you rarely ever see used, and build a deck around them, picking the commander after that. I have one deck called Living Plane that never wins. It is more of an environmental hazard to the other players. Helped by Cromat and using the Retrace mechanic and Life From the Loam, it just uses the lands as copies of the key spells, and will occasionally last long enough to end one opponent with either a mass of maggots or commander damage from Cromat itself.

This helps me so much for this format totally new for me ! Thank you a lot.

Yaaaaas I needed this. Trying to build one of my favorite commanders: Slimefoot and could use some advice so I make sure I don't screw up too much lolz

Since a nyx weaver is an enchantment creature, I guess you could say: A nyx in the field is worth two in the grave.

When I build decks, I just find a commander I like, them download the cheapest deck around them from edhrec(as a template), and I just swap in some cards that I actually want to play

I really enjoyed this video. I still haven't made my own deck (I usually just check out ones others make or pre-cons and do modifications). Commander is such a fun format, and taking a night here and there to go to your local game store and make some new friends, play some Commander is just the best thing.

I ended up making a Palladia-Mors, The Ruiner EDH deck after watching this rather entertaining video way too many times, Mr. Gomez enthusiasm reminds me of the old joy of playing tabletop Magic.

Fantastic! You did one more. Now i only hope this becomes a regular series :D

How is the card "Eaten by Spiders" not in this deck?!?!? I know it's not a very good card, but c'mon - THAT FLAVOR

Man so much fun on this THX for the explanation! (Nice mustaches it suit you)

I cant get enough of this content it's way too good for youtube

"I want a sliver commander deck" so step 1 become rich... seem simple enough. Edit: everyone seems to be focused on the "sliver" part but you seem to forget that for a sliver deck to function you need a lot of non sliver key-cards that are expensive on top of a 5 color mana base that is pretty expensive.

I have a friend trying to get into commander, and this video will be perfect for them! Thank you!

I build my deck based on the effect of the deck/commander. Like Omnath Locust of Mana. Food Chain and Eternal Scourge boost that little guy to a big. I add other things like token makers, Avenger of Zendikar, Doubling Season and so on. But my Pride and Joy Tier 1 EDH beater is Skittles. Infect is one mechanic all the Opponents do not enjoy to witness especially when you have a flyer to boot. When you're building also think about Tutors and your Land Cycle. How many lands do you want? Do you want specialty lands, dual lands, shock lands and ext. Sometimes you can have mutliple cards in EDH if its in the text box. Not all EDH decks follow the only 1 card rule.

I never knew origins of EDH. NIce that you added this in there.

Building your first commander deck is best with a friend that’s already in commander. They can probably give you there bulk rare’s, help you find a commander that you might like it or loan you a few of their commander decks. Or you can Buy commander deck at your local lgs or online and start from there but it’s good to know the basics of commander.

I also have a foil Ishkanah stashed away for EDH

Love the explanation :) a good vid to share to new edh players :)

I like to build around tribes or theme the deck around card types or a specific linear goal that the whole deck works toward achieving... Very often I'm the threat at the table, and I still manage to win a fair amount of the time... Even if I dont win, the deck does whatever its thing is... Which i think is impressive enough...

That moment you realize that in the war of the spark Nicol Bolas is basically playing an EDH deck with Liliana as his general.

You guys should do this with other different flavorful commander decks, i think itd be really interesting

Stache is on Point. Good video

I'm actually building a Keranos spell slinger commander deck that utilizes a bunch of red/blue spells that either do multiple effects or do unexpected things like redirect targeted abilities. Because I think the best feeling in magic is when you do something and everyone at the table looks at what you just did with a mix of confusion and mild amusement

Interesting introductory video, I came here because I was like... "How can somebody possibly try to make a good Ishkanah deck? I tried before, it's impossible." Then I came here to watch and saw that you were more geared towards people new to the format and... I think you did a pretty good job at showcasing the format and giving good guidelines on how to make a functional deck~ I don't think this video is very helpful for people that have already been playing the format for a while, but that doesn't seem to have been your intent, so that's not a problem. Really nice video anyways, I came here to watch it while being completely skeptical and had a really nice surprise by seeing the content~

First time watching your channel, subbed right after watching the video. When I pull an interesting legendary creature from my packs, I almost immediately start thinking about how I'd build a fun commander deck around them. I'll usually start budget, spending $25 to $50 while using placeholders, and if I enjoy it enough, then I'll work on upgrading it. I did feel like the rule of 9 was a bit excessive, as I generally like my decks to focus on doing one or two things extremely well, with a few ways to deal with my opponents' stuff without losing the focus of the deck. For example, my Emmara, Soul of the Accord deck focuses on token generation with a life gain subtheme. I do run ramp, draw & targeted removal, but only one Wrath of God, which is in there as an "Oh crap!" button. Also, in every deck I build, I make sure I have one non-combat related win con, so I can get around fog effects and the like.

I have two commander decks. One is a red, white, blue, and black deck built mainly to be a sadistic mofo playing with its food by milling, exiling, pinging, making you discard, and making you sacrifice all while gaining a little bit of life. If you don't scoop out of frustration I'll bring in some big creatures and deliver the killing blow after having toyed with you and exhausted most of your removal/counters. The second deck I just ordered last week. It uses Kaalia Of The Vast as the commander and it centers around ramping up and using angels to gain life and indestructibility, demons to destroy and make you sacrifice, and then along come the dragons to bash your face in. It also runs a few board wipes so I can blow everything off of my opponent's field if needed before swinging in for the kill with a mass of huge indestructible creatures

Also probably the most inportant place to look as you put together your deck is edhrec

The one expection to the color identity is extort, because the black/white case is in the reminder text. It's a fun loophole, that doesn't really make a huge difference

my method for building a commander: "ooh this is nifty effect that could be super over powered if operated right!" finds no cards in existance that can help it. "JENK IT IS!" or also "hey have you ever noticed that there is enough cards to run a tribal [Blank]? i should build a deck that has no solid focus around this tribe." which is why i have my Tribal wincon commander, every piece of it is part of the giant machine of me winning.... my machine usually breaks before i can turn it on...

My first commander deck is in the mail. I got some money for Christmas, so I build and ordered a 50$ Yarok the Desecrated commander deck. Unfortunately, I can’t get ahold of a Craterhoof Behemoth, but I think End-Raze forerunners will work just fine

Rules of Thumb, A History Lesson, & a Deck Tech... well played sir!

I'm making an artifact deck dealing with blue and green, and inside it it'll be able to do a lot of abilities depending on the first draw

thank you! I think this must be the best explaining video about commander! this is perfect to show to my friends who want to jump in commander ^_^

That stache is jankier than the decks I play love ya Ryan

I am totally throwing this deck together, SPIDERS! Already bought my Ishkanah

in my own spider deck(Thantis,The Warweaver) I added instant-traps & fog instants. 🕷

I'm good at building casual and modern decks but I'm really bad at building commander. Thanks for the video!

*Dormoooooomu, I have come to bargain*

My approach is very formulaic at first but my decks are never really final, I find things that can be changed over time and synergies that can be stronger too by adding cards while removing weaker ones. My tip is always consider curve for ramp and land count and the rest shall follow if you keep minding your curve as well! As for big splashy spells decks, I don't play those often but when I do I include a lot of ramp and draw (big ones, as Rishkar's Expertise) and gradual draw for low to the ground commanders, I like doing decks for partners as some commanders are draw engine themselves and let the whole deck shine rather than be the sole celebrity of the deck! That's my take on it at least! :)

Usually I go with a deck theme, for example a cat deck with cats like lions, tigers, leopards and so on or a deck with demons and devils or a deck with red western fire dragons, or a deck with elves, or a deck with merfolk, or a deck with angels, or a deck with dinosaurs, or a deck with whatever I'm in the mood for.

I love building commander decks. I built both of mine and one for my daughter.

More videos like this please

Love your videos. You should do how to build a draft deck

My process for deckbuilding is pretty much just find a strategy I want to play, or a combo I want to win with and then find the best way I can do that. I'll usually hunt down a commander after I find my strategy.

I've really been looking into commander recently, and this video has helped out a tonne! Just one question on the card restrictions, do the cards "Rat Colony" and "Relentless Rats" negate this, as they have an ability that states "You can have any number of X in your deck"? I was looking at potentially making a fun "Patron of Nezumi" deck, and was wondering if I could have a flood of these smaller creatures or if I would need to pick something else. Cheers!

Is there an updated video on this or does this video sound good already? How about telling a stories of the recent/upcoming commander decks?

I typically look at my commanders abilities and go through them one at a time. Erebos, as an example, prevents my opponents from gaining life, needs devotion, can pay life and mana to draw a card, and it’s a 5/7 indestructible creature. I would then add synergize cards to the deck that would work with each bit, like how Alhammarret’s Archive would work with the draw ability and the preventing my opponents from gaining life. Just because THEY can’t gain life, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.

4:41 Just got flashbacks to the time I was living at my old apartments and my mom had a huge-ass lumpy spider hanging outside her window. Tried everything to kill it: smacking with shoes (various), light it on fire, take it down with a hose full-blast, Raid (or something like it). Nothing. We eventually went back to trying to use my neighbors lighter to burn it, although it took us holding the flame directly under the spider for approximately 50 minutes without moving. Fun times.

When making decks my fam uses the fllowing rules. 1. No more then 100 cards 2. 30%-40% need to be lands 3. Add any planswalkers and power cards you want to revolve around. 4. Half of the remaining cards should be creatures. 5. Half of the now remaining cards should be noncreature permanents and the other should be instants and sorceries. 6. This is an optional rule that we like to follow but we prefer to have the artifact to enchantment ratio 1-3 or half-n-half. Instants and sorceries also follow this ratio. The important of these rules is to reduce the odds of getting terrible hands. 7. Add as many of the same cards as possible to increase the likelihood of consistent card appearances. 8. Have good removal and fallback plans. If you don't have a way to deal with a threat then it isn't good enough. Fog is a great fallback as if you can trick your opponent into attacking with everything then you can devastate by completely countering it and attacking them instead. One of my brother's favorite things to say was "Oh that's bad. Gonna have to get rid of that." to give you an idea of the amount of desecration. 9 and 10 are choices. One or the other. Not both. 9 is to follow a theme. In this videos case it's spiders. In my case it's zombies. In my brothers case its elves. Not too complicated but definitely useful. 10 is the opposite. Don't over think it. Just throw in cards you're familiar with and have rellied on. Add your fun cards and don't worry if they don't get broken combos. As long as they aren't useless.

I have 29 lands in my Nekusar deck and it works super well

See I like what your saying, but I tend to build my decks with two win cons and an alt con to help me survive to that point, and then put in multiple ways to get one of those two win cons off, like with azami, I run pick up your library as the main win con, infinite turns as the secondary, and counter spells as the support

Mono green, hydra/ disruptor deck. Got 1 hydra with +1/+1 hydra with 40 lands plus doubling season and 1 card that count all trees including your creatures. It came out around +213/+213 hydra.

we build decks around our own meta, its heavy with stax control and combo, very competitive so much that some play nethervoid and the abyss

NEEED. Cant watch rn but throwin ya LOVE Brotha!!

Tell her to add Conjurers Closet to blink Ishkanah in and out.

I love the ideas for that Ishkanah list! And honestly, I build my decks very similarly to the way you just did, but I choose legendary creatures to build around based on their abilities that I haven't played with yet and sometimes I just look through my collection to see if there are any off the wall legends that I could build with. It's a lot of fun, and especially if you've got the extra resources for multiple decks, but the best part about EDH is that as long as you're with a good pod the resources don't matter. People often let others borrow cards or decks to play with, and there is always room for trading to bump up your power level. Lately I've been goofing off more and competing less because my cEDH list is really good, but most games you will never need to compete that way. Building with collection scraps is a very fun way to get started and budget the list, so I appreciate that structure and organizational method.

Ishkanah was also my first commander :)

Have you done one on brawl? It's coming to arena and I would like to see what kind of deck strats you could talk about.

Yes! Spiders! I was going to do this myself.

"We're just going to have to nuke them all from orbit..." Well Ryan, it's the only way to be sure...

I’m actually working on a lore-focused Chandra deck with Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh at the helm and any card relating to Chandra and her story in the 99.

Conjurer's Closet is a great card for Delirium.

Great video. I still suck at deck building myself. I keep falling into the trap of "big flashy cards". I often get distracted by the big 8/8 creature I could cast, and completely miss over the fact that I could cast 3 little cards that might set up some combo with longer term value. The other main problem I find myself dealing with is card evaluation. Making sure I have enough balance between draw, ramp, creature, win-condition, ETC is one thing, but making sure each card within said categories are viable enough on their own. People tell me to consider a card as a lone top deck draw. If you top deck this card without anything else, can you play it? Is the card viable at all stages of the game? Is its effect worth the cost investment to cast it? So balancing all that is still really hard for me. But I keep playing. Commander is great.

"To unwind from judging tournaments all day" Proof that EDH is a casual format by heart.

My approach: look through thousands of cards on scryfall using tens of searchterms untill I have like twenty folders of cards in my phone with different categories. Cut out as much as possible from that, untill you can't anymore. Than reduce it all to ten or fewer folders by broadening each category, and only keep the best of each of those folders. After that's all done, cut out anything that's too expensive. Leaves me with 70 to 75 cards. Add some lands and then experiment which 60/65 cards work best in your deck. Takes way too much effort but you end up with pretty good budget decks.

best format by far

Built one while on the edge of consciousness And it was pretty good too

I always use edhrec when building buildings a commander deck.

That stache my man, I love it!