9 Critical Tips for Building a Better Commander Deck

Last updated on May 26, 2025

Patient Rebuilding | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Commander is the format for homebrewed decks. There’s nothing wrong with netdecking, but Commander players often build their own. As a more socially-forward format compared to competitive formats like Modern and Legacy, EDH is the place to let your creativity as a player shine.

But maybe your brew isn’t doing what you want. You’re not fast enough, or your deck is just a bad match for the tables you’re playing. You’ve picked out your commander, but you still need to refine the 99. I’ve got tips to help with just that.

As a quick caveat, these tips aren’t meant for cEDH so much as casual and high-powered casual decks. cEDH has its own rules of engagement and deckbuilding that are outside the scope of this article.

With that out of the way, let's get to it!

Tip #1: What Bracket Do You Want Your Deck to Be?

Apex of Power | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

The first thing to consider when tuning or brewing your EDH deck is the power level you want it to be. The fairly recent Bracket system the Commander Format Panel introduced provides an excellent guideline for how your deck ought to function, and the Game Changer list indicates the kind of cards that can tip your deck towards higher power levels.

Building your deck with the Bracket system—or another power leveling system if your friend group or LGS prefers—makes games much more even, as you’re unlikely to roll up to a random table and get stomped by a cEDH deck, or stomp a different pod with your highly tuned, high-power deck.

I find the Bracket system highly useful for initiating Rule 0 conversations and getting a better sense of what everybody wants to play, especially considering that EDH deckbuilding sites like Moxfield and Archidekt automatically assign an estimated Bracket based on the cards in your deck.

Understanding the power level your friends want to play at simplifies the deckbuilding process as it allows you to come closer to the ballpark of the “perfect” deck, though perfection in Commander doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest possible deck; it means the deck you and your friends enjoy playing with and against the most.

Tip #2: Don’t Rely on Just Your Commander

Hylda of the Icy Crown | Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

This one might be a contentious tip, but hear me out. Your deck is and should often be built around your commander, but being built around your commander is wholly different than relying on them.

A deck built around its commander uses its themes as a guideline for a powerful deck. For example, you could choose Veyran, Voice of Duality as your commander and build a spellslinger deck around it that uses its ability to get tons of value out of cards that care about casting instants and sorceries. In that deck, those other cards are the win conditions. Veyran is a valuable tool, but the deck can win without it.

On the other hand, a tap-creatures deck with Hylda of the Icy Crown is far more reliant on its commander; though the archetype has many powerful enablers like Sleep and Opposition, Hylda is essentially the only payoff for the archetype. Sure, cards like Verity Circle and Borrowing 100,000 Arrows draw a bunch of cards, but you really need those Elementals.

The weakness of a deck reliant on its commander is simple: It needs the commander in play, or it won’t win. Your opponents have a clear path to victory: Remove the offending commander and take you out.

There are a few ways to avoid relying on your commander. The first is to have other win conditions in the deck and use your commander as an enhancement. For the Veyran example, Veyran complements cards like Archmage Emeritus and Niv-Mizzet, Parun, making them incredibly strong. But these pieces are already strong on their own; Veyran is a piece of a greater whole.

Another way is to build redundancy into your deck so that your commander isn’t the only version of the effect that makes your commander so strong. For example, if you build a deck around Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines that focuses on ETB abilities, add Panharmonicon as a redundant version of the effect. Now you can use either card to make your abilities trigger an extra time, adding a layer of resiliency and consistency to your deck that wouldn’t be there if you just relied on Elesh Norn.

If you are relying on your commander, you need ways to protect it. Countermagic is an easy include. Cards like Lightning Greaves, Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Slip Out the Back, and Malakir Rebirth keep your commander safe so that your opponent doesn’t just remove it. Effects like Command Beacon are also helpful if it’s removed a few times.

Tip #3: Build Around Your Commander’s Desires

Every commander desires something from their 99, and these desires are often what give you your deck’s themes.

Let’s use The Gitrog Monster as an example. As a card, Gitrog cares about getting lands into the graveyard so you can draw cards. Self-mill cards like Wrenn and Seven and cards that let you sacrifice lands like Crop Rotation and Zuran Orb work well with Gitrog.

Once you’ve established that you want cards in your graveyard, you can further extend those desires. Cards like Crucible of Worlds and Splendid Reclamation get way better if you’re filling your graveyard, and cards like Titania, Protector of Argoth benefit when you sacrifice lands.

You could go further to keep brewing, but this gives a solid foundation for the concept. Matching your commander’s desires is important to make the most of them. The Gitrog Monster is a fantastic commander with the cards above. But it wouldn’t shine nearly as much if you try to helm a green-black elves or Golgari () aristocrats strategy with it.

Many commanders like The Gitrog Monster give you tips about what they want, usually by calling out specific card types, zone, or game actions—other similarly simple commanders include Isshin, Two Heavens as One, who demands attack triggers, and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, which needs some sort of counter to proliferate. But even generally powerful commanders have desires you can build around to make them more effective.

Take Aragorn, the Uniter. It only asks you to cast spells, and it gives various boons for doing so. But you can make it better by including multicolor spells so that every individual spell gets multiple triggers; that’s not necessary, and the card says nothing about multicolored permanents, but that choice takes the general and makes it even more powerful.

This is also a great stage to consider anti-synergies, which you should avoid at all cost; just as a commander’s text tells you what it wants, it tells you the effects that you shouldn’t include. Arabella, Abandoned Doll wants lots of small creatures, which suggests adding cards like Secure the Wastes and Song of Totentanz that make lots of tokens. And once you have tokens, anthems are a no-brainer, right? Except boosting the power of your creatures makes Arabella worse.

Tip #4: Focus on Your Core Strategy

I try to build my commander decks around a singular theme or strategy that’s built to maximize my commander’s strategy. This is like the above tip, with the critical difference that this is how you translate your commander’s desires to a win.

Let’s revisit Veyran, Voice of Duality. Veyran’s desires are pretty straightforward, right? You want to build a spellslinger deck that casts a bunch of instants and sorceries for value. But what kind of value?

My Veyran EDH deck focuses on tokens as the source of its value. I’m looking to get double triggers from cards like Young Pyromancer, Docent of Perfection, and Shark Typhoon to overwhelm my opponents on the board. This is critically different from trying to use Veyran to pilot a storm deck that probably uses it to get extra triggers from effects like Birgi, God of Storytelling and Storm-Kiln Artist, making combo'ing off easier. Both of those would be different from a burn-style deck trying to double effects like Guttersnipe.

All three outlined strategies fall under the spellslinger umbrella, though each requires specific cards. There is overlap; Storm-Kiln Artist is great in all three strategies. The purpose of focusing on your theme is to cut the cards that aren’t. For example, Balmor, Battlemage Captain goes great in the token version but does virtually nothing in the others.

Building around your core strategy makes the deck stronger and more consistent. If you don’t have a particular angle you want to take your deck, you may want to test a few strategies and see what comes out as the theme you want to keep building around. Focusing on your core strategy also helps inform the kinds of cards you need in your deck.

Note that this doesn’t mean a deck can’t support multiple themes; let’s consider Caesar, Legion's Emperor. It’s pretty obvious from the textbox demanding sacrifices that this wants to be an aggressive aristocrats deck. But that doesn’t mean you can’t slip in a subtle soldier typal theme with cards like Daru Warchief and Myrel, Shield of Argive, or try to leverage Isshin, Two Heavens as One by including additional creatures with attack triggers.

Decks can absolutely do multiple things; some commanders, like Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn, reference multiple strategies. But there should always be one core strategy, and your subthemes should complement it; a soldier subtheme fits beautifully with Caesar because soldier support focuses on token production, which an aristocrats deck naturally wants for sacrifice fodder.

Tip #5: Sort Your Cards by Function, Not Type

Kodama of the West Tree | Illustration by Daarken

Players often lay out their deck grouped by card type. Let’s say you have 30 creatures, 20 instants, 20 sorceries, 10 planeswalkers, and 40 lands. But what are they doing? What’s their function in the deck?

To break it down further, let’s see what your instants are doing, rather than how many instants you're playing. Are all 20 of them counterspells? That’s more countermagic than the average Commander deck needs. If there’s a type of card you need more of, countermagic can be the first thing to go. Or maybe there’s no countermagic here, just card draw. Similarly, you can shave some card draw for countermagic, and so on.

Spreading your Commander deck across the table based on function is a great way to work on some of the above tips. Let’s say you’ve decided once and for all that Veyran is a storm deck and lay it out in piles. Your ramp pieces go in one pile, card draw in another, and so on until you find a few stray cards that don’t fit with any group. These cards often fall outside your theme.

This also exposes any holes in your deck construction. If there’s too much countermagic, too little ramp, too many big threats and not enough ways to survive long enough to play them… maybe your commander needs a critical mass of a card effect you thought you had, but didn’t. Maybe you weren’t getting mana screwed because you were unlucky, but because you only added 30 lands. These slip-ups become more apparent when you lay your deck out like this.

What your commander contributes also affects how many of each effect you need; if you have a commander like Baylen, the Haymaker that provides card advantage, you can get away with slightly less card advantage in the 99 then you’d need with a commander like Mr. House, President and CEO that lacks built-in card advantage—a concept that should not be interpreted as “my Baylen deck doesn’t need any other card draw.” It just might want 10 pieces of card draw instead of 15.

Tip #6: Look for Cards That Fill Multiple Functions

This can help elevate your deck’s consistency a lot. Finding cards that fulfill multiple roles in your deck makes the deck more flexible because more of your cards give you more options.

Let’s use Prismari Command as an example. At any point in the game, this card is: artifact removal, creature removal, card selection, a discard outlet, ramp, and color fixing. Similarly, Titan of Industry is a top-end card, artifact and enchantment removal, a token producer, a protective spell, and a source of lifegain.

Your decks might not care about all these modes, but they offer invaluable flexibility. Prismari Command is basically never a dead card, and that’s what you want. Cards that fill multiple roles help your deck function smoothly by giving you more options at different points in the game.

That said, a lot of your cards only serve one function. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and is inevitable to some degree. If your cards serve one purpose, make sure they’re very good at it. For example, Vandalblast is an EDH staple for good reason. It only does one thing, destroying artifacts, but it does it exceptionally well and is still flexible. It deals with the turn-1 Sol Ring but also devastates players on turn 10 when you overload it.

My favorite cards that fill multiple functions are modal double-faced cards, which are lands that also function as spells. For example, Shatterskull Smashing is both late-game removal and the land drop you need to play Ragavan on turn 1. Bridgeworks Battle kills your opponent’s commander on turn 5 while ensuring you can cast Three Visits on turn 2.

Tip #7: Run Better Interaction

Grasp of Fate | Illustration by Tomasz Jedruszek

Most of the people I play Commander with are newer to the game, and the most common flaw I find in their decks by a wide margin is a lack of removal and interaction. You can’t play Commander without running interaction.

Your cool thing almost always loses to the person doing their cool thing with a counterspell. It’s also a great way to make your deck stronger. Turning a few clunky cards into interactive pieces can elevate a Commander deck to the next level.

When adding interaction to your Commander deck, consider three things: diversity, efficiency, and relevancy.

A diverse suite of interaction is important because you’re inevitably going to face an array of threats. You want removal to hit the major card types. Most Commander decks are creature-forward, so spells like Doom Blade and Infernal Grasp are generally good. You also need to answer artifacts, planeswalkers, enchantments, and occasionally even lands like Cabal Coffers. This is a great spot to look for cards that fill multiple roles like Feed the Swarm, which deals with creatures and enchantments. You can also file spells that protect your creatures in this slot because it interacts with your opponent’s interaction, like Tamiyo's Safekeeping.

Efficiency is tied to cost. Swords to Plowshares is one of the best removal spells ever printed because it permanently removes a creature at instant speed for a single mana. This is far better than something like Blessed Light, even if the latter hits more permanent types. You generally want the cheapest removal possible. That said, flexibility is something worth paying more for. Prismari Command is a less efficient way to remove an early mana dork or rock than Burst Lightning or Shatter, but it does so much more.

Your removal suite should also include cards that hit multiple targets at once. Commander is a multiplayer format after all; trading one-for-one against three players is a losing battle. While some hyper efficient, single-target interaction like countermagic and Swords to Plowshares is useful, you should also invest in cards like Grasp of Fate, Soul Shatter, and Convert to Slime to keep ahead on cards while putting your opponents behind on the board.

Finally, consider your removal’s relevancy to your deck and how it works with your core themes. An enchantress deck built around Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and enchantment creatures is much happier playing enchantment-based removal like Oblivion Ring. Likewise, Bone Splinters probably isn’t worth running unless you’re an aristocrats deck that benefits from sacrificing a creature.

Relevancy goes double for board wipes. Frankly, I think board wipes aren’t good in Commander from a player’s perspective. They’re very good at stopping you from losing the game, but terrible at ending it. Staying alive isn’t worth it at a certain point. I’d rather die in a game that takes an hour and a half and shuffle up for another round rather than sit through a four-hour slugfest where every player casts Wrath of God as soon as somebody gets ahead.

If you run wraths in your Commander deck, try to make them finishers instead of stallers, which often means you want them to be on theme with your commander. If you’re playing an Urza, Chief Artificer deck that primarily wins with a board of artifact creatures, Phyrexian Scriptures and Organic Extinction are great finishers because they leave your board mostly untouched while destroying everything else.

Tip #8: Your EDH Deck Needs More Lands and Ramp

Remember that quip about getting mana screwed because you’re not running enough lands? It happens all the time. Hitting your land drop is one of the most powerful things you can do in Magic. There’s a reason landfall strategies are so powerful.

I generally run around 40 lands, if not more, with 3-5 of them being modal double-faced cards or landcyclers—either literal, à la Generous Ent, or adjacent, like Bushwhack—to keep my land count and spell count high.

Ramp is also really important, and the two are intertwined. Ramping lets you play the game faster than your opponents. If you play a Gruul Signet on turn 2, you’re basically playing a turn ahead of an opponent who doesn’t play a Signet. Ramp is the easiest way to get ahead in Commander.

You might think that incorporating ramp with a high land count means your deck has too many mana sources. You have a lot, but not too many. If you cut lands in favor of ramp, your deck suffers because ramp only works if you hit your land drops.

In the above example you’re only a turn ahead if you make your third land drop, giving you access to 4 mana on turn 3. If you miss your third land drop, you'll have 3 mana on turn 3. You’re no longer ahead, you're just on par. Not only that, but your opponent also gains an advantage because you spent your second turn playing a Signet to keep pace with the game. If they played something like Magda, Brazen Outlaw to develop their board, then they’re ahead. And if your Signet gets destroyed, it puts you a mana behind. In other words, ramp should complement your normal land drops, not replace them.

As with all these other categories, consider what your commander wants when picking your ramp. Kalamax, the Stormsire copies instants, so Harrow becomes far more appealing than it is in Kogla, the Titan Ape. You also need to remember that some commanders are more reliant on artifact ramp, especially those without green.

You should also include utility lands. Cards like Boseiju, Who Endures, Arena of Glory, and Cori Mountain Monastery fulfill a similar role to MDFCs in that they provide a land with an additional or alternative mode so that you still have a way to spend your mana, even if you draw a bunch of lands.

Tip #9: Your Commander Deck Needs More Eldrazi

Kozilek, the Broken Reality | Illustration by Brent Hollowell

This is a tip a friend gave as I started to get into Commander. I mostly played Draft, and a lot of those concepts don’t translate well to Commander. It’s a bigger, slower format and my earlier decks were often missing Eldrazi.

Not literally; my friend wasn’t telling me to add Ulamog, the Defiler and Emrakul, the World Anew to my Rashmi, Eternities Crafter deck. He was encouraging me to add significant top-end cards that could finish the game.

Commander is full of finishers. They’re not always big; Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation win just as effectively as Craterhoof Behemoth. The important part is having these finishers and having several. If you’re reliant on Craterhoof to end the game, what will you do if an opponent has a counterspell? Are you even running a green deck that Craterhoof reliably ends the game with?

This is really the culmination of all the other tips. Why do you need these ways to end the game? Because everything else we’ve looked at focuses on this final point. You’ve got interaction to stop your opponents from winning and to protect these Eldrazi. You’ve focused your deck around a singular theme to put yourself in a position to play it, increased your land and ramp counts to reliably cast your win condition, and cast it faster than your opponents. Because you aren’t reliant on one win condition, your opponents need more than a single spell to disrupt your gameplan.

The metaphorical Eldrazi is the final piece to build a better Commander deck. Value doesn’t win games; massive spaghetti monsters do. Your deck won’t close out the game if it's all ramp and interaction and neat ideas. It just durdles around until one of your opponents shows you their Eldrazi.

Commanding Conclusion

Piece It Together | Illustration by Peter Polach

Commander is the format to let your skills and desires as a deckbuilder shine. The purpose of the format is to do cool and flashy things instead of always doing the most powerful or correct thing, and that subjectivity to deckbuilding is what makes the format great. These tips are equally as subjective; you might find they don’t mesh well with how you play Commander, and that’s fine.

These tips come from my experiences, from what I’ve learned going from playing Limited for years to a format that’s wildly different. It’s a culmination of what my friends have taught me and what I’ve learned teaching the format to others.

What did you think of these tips? What lessons have you learned when building Commander decks? Let me know in the comments below, or join the discussion over in the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe!