Building a Commander deck can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be overwhelming with so many options to choose from. That’s where a Commander deck building template comes in handy. A template can provide a helpful framework for organizing your ideas and ensuring that you have a balanced and effective deck.
Of course, every deck is unique, and you may need to make adjustments to the template to fit your specific strategy. But starting with a basic template can make the process of building or evaluating your deck much easier and more manageable.
Table of Contents
The Template
From our own experience we recommend somewhere between the following quantities as good starting points:
- Ramp: 10-15
- Card draw: 10-15
- Interaction: 10-15
- Lands: 33-40
Needless to say there is no perfect preset number since there are so many factors to consider when building a deck. Not to mention that a Commander deck is an expression of creativity, personality, play style and so on.
One thing is certain however: running less or more of something will have an effect on the consistency of our deck. To shortly exemplify, if we put 15 ramp spells in our deck, there is a 78.4% chance that we will have ramp in our hand by turn 2. If we cut back to 10 ramp spells, this chance drops to 62.9%. These probabilities are estimated without using mulligan, using this calculator.
How much ramp?
Ramp spells include everything from mana dorks to artifact ramp and more, which let us accelerate to a certain spell or board state. The question we should always ask when deciding on our ramp package is: what are we trying to ramp into?
If a crucial component of our game plan is to cast our 4CMC Commander by turn 3, we want to have a ramp spell in our hand by turn 2 the latest. Running 15 ramp spells gives us around 78.4% to hit this, which is great. Keep in mind that in this case we need to run 2CMC ramp for it to work. We can apply this to not just our commander. Say we have some key 5 drops in our deck that need to come out early, we can start building our ramp towards that goal.
Of course we could raise our ramp quantities past 15 to increase our odds even more. This however might make our hand flood with ramp in the mid or late game, so we should always be careful and find a good balance. And don’t forget that there are many decks where 10 ramp spells is more than enough, for instance a very low mana curve aggro deck.
To summarize, as long as we understand what our deck wants to ramp towards (or doesn’t), we can adjust our ramp to that and evaluate those ideas after seeing it in action. This Commander deck building template is just here to give us a rough outline to start with and help us understand the implications of running more or less ramp.
How much card draw?
Being a singleton format, drawing one card per turn in EDH is just not enough. Every deck needs card draw in order to find answers and wincons and not run out of steam. Card draw should ultimately prevent us from having an empty hand before the game ends.
From a conceptual perspective, our mana curve can give us some hints on how much we should be able to draw. In a low curve deck where we are casting a lot of spells per turn, we need to offset this with enough draw in order to refill our hand. Oppositely, if our strategy is casting a big mana bomb every other turn, there is a small chance we will run out of cards soon so we don’t need as much draw.
Since we can’t always determine everything in the draft stage of our deck, running 10 card draw spells is a great starting point as most Commander deck building templates will tell you. From there it’s a good idea to playtest and see how your deck performs (see this article for playtest ideas). If we find ourselves in a soul-crushing top-deck situation every game, it’s clear we need to adjust and start running more draw.
How many lands?
As any Commander deck building template will recommend, 37 lands is a good sweet spot to start out with. Now if we have a very low mana curve with low-cost spells we can lower our land count, in order to not run out of juice. If the opposite is true we can up our land count. And obviously, deck strategies that use a landfall mechanic profit from running high numbers of lands.
Another way of looking at your land count is to start with 41 lands and subtract one land for every 3 to 4 ramp spells you are running. For example, you would end up with 37 lands and 10 ramp spells. If I apply this to most decks in my playgroup, this method comes very close to the actual land quantities and seems like a great starting point. The method was proposed by Frank Karsten in this article.
If you’re wondering how many or what color sources you should run in your land base check out this tool. And a last note on decks that run more colors: you don’t necessarily need more lands, but building a 5-color deck can be a different beast. Check out our guide for building or smoothing out your 5-color mana base.
How much interaction?
If you’re just starting out with EDH, running 10 removal spells is a fine starting point, check out our article for the best ones.
The reason why we run interaction is to slow down our opponent’s game plan and hopefully keep them from winning before we do. But here’s the deal, how much we want to interfere with our opponents’ scheme is very dependent on our own preference, meta, past experiences and so forth.
Maybe we just love an EDH game where a lot of interaction happens because we like the shocking response from our playgroup. Or if our recent EDH experience has made us salty from getting beaten over and over again by go-wide token decks, maybe we want to start running more board wipes. Or if we really enjoy the creative aspect of building a deck, including a bunch of removal staples doesn’t really fit that goal.
Interaction will most definitely help us close out games and take out our opponents. We want to have the right answers to stop our opponent from spiraling out of control, but we don’t want to have so much interaction in our hand that we’re forced to take out some third-rate threat and become the most unpopular player at the table. And don’t forget that our opponents will run removal too, which let us develop our own game plan while someone else takes care of the biggest threats. Again, finding the right balance that fits your preference is key here.
A word on tutors
Including tutors in your Commander deck can greatly increase the consistency of your strategy. Tutors act as wild cards, allowing you to search your deck for a specific card that you need at the moment. This can be incredibly powerful in ensuring that you can execute your strategy efficiently and effectively.
However, it’s worth noting that not everyone enjoys running a high number of tutors in their deck. Some players prefer a more unpredictable or varied game experience, and find that running too many tutors takes away from the excitement of the game.
Ultimately, the decision to include tutors in your deck comes down to your personal preference and playstyle. If you want to execute your strategy more consistently and have an overall stronger deck, running more tutors can be a good choice. However, if you prefer a more varied and unpredictable game experience, you may want to limit the number of tutors in your deck.
Closing Remarks
Aside from ramp, draw, interaction, and lands, the rest of your deck will be made up of cards that enable the main strategy of your deck. This can include win conditions like Craterhoof Behemoth or Insurrection or a combo piece like Ashnod’s Altar.
It’s important to note that these main strategy cards can indeed function as multiple roles within your deck. For example, a creature-based deck can include creatures that have “draw on enter the battlefield” effects like Mulldrifter or Elvish Visionary to not only support the main strategy of the deck, but also provide card advantage and potentially ramp or removal as well.
Finally, it’s important to remember that the best deck for you is one that you enjoy playing. While it’s important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of different card choices, ultimately, you should choose cards that you enjoy playing with and that align with your personal playstyle.
After putting together a deck that feels right to you, it’s important to playtest it before committing to it. This ensures that the deck functions as intended and helps identify any weaknesses that may need to be addressed. Check out this article for some helpful tips on how to playtest your deck effectively.
