Okay, let's back up a bit.
I'll assume you know how to play Magic. Maybe you've just been to a pre-release or two, built up a couple of decks of your favourite cards, and you have fun games in your kitchen with a couple of friends. Or, perhaps, you're a seasoned competitive player with that one highly tuned Modern deck that makes everyone swear at whenever you rock up at FNM.
Either way, this format is for you. If you're the former then Commander is a brilliant opportunity for you to discover as many new and exciting cards as possible, smash them all together into one epic deck, and turn your kitchen table into your own little circus... and if you're the latter, Commander is the perfect opportunity for you to cherry pick your favourite powerhouse cards from over the year, carefully tune it, and then make an entirely new group of people swear even more loudly.
Quickly as possible - because quite frankly the best place to read the rules is on the site of the creators of the format - Commander is a singleton format. Your deck contains 100 cards, can only have one copy of a card (except for basic lands - you can have multiples of those), and is spearheaded by your Commander, which is a legendary creature.
So you've read the rules (if you haven't, I'll wait a while, it's fine) and decided you want to build a deck. So here's the question:
Where to start?
From where I sit - upon my very uncomfortable and rather wobbly throne of 19 decks and counting - there are two ways to go about it: Top-Down, and Bottom-up.
I should point out that neither way is better than the other. They are just different, and produce different decks.
Top Down
The Top Down approach is where you begin with an idea or theme and then build the deck around that one cohesive idea. This makes a deck that while it may not necessarily be extremely strong is very flavourful and lots of fun... though if you are like me and like tweaking decks a lot, it eventually becomes extremely strong and very flavourful.
My first Top Down deck was Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund. Big stompy Jund dragons. It started out with a very simple thought: I want to build dragons.
It actually started with a much simpler thought: someone suggested Karrthus as my commander, I looked at him, and agreed very rapidly. This is what is known as a build-around-me Commander: the one card tells you exactly what the deck should contain and you just build it.
That said, the build process that followed was less simple. I pulled up a list of all the dragons in Magic and began cherry picking all of the good ones. This was back during Scars of Mirrodin era, so I had access to all the Jund dragons from Alara block, but none of the new ones from Khans of Tarkir block. Even so it was a lengthy list and took quite a long amount of time.
I'll go over evaluating good and bad cards in another article, but suffice to say when I was finished I had a very dragonny 100 card deck that smashed into people's faces very quickly. I've stuck with Karrthus ever since I built him and, while the card pool has changed quite a bit over the years (Atarka, World Render, how I love thee) the deck remains the same at the core: still about Dragons.
Top Down doesn't necessarily have to start with a single card, I should point out. I've built decks around other themes - tokens, +1/+1 counters, sacrifice effects, and even Elves - where the pile of cards I wanted to put into the deck came first, and then I had to go searching for a suitable Commander in the right colours that also fit the theme.
Either way, with a Top Down approach, the theme is key, whether it be one card or many that is your starting point.
My first Top Down deck was Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund. Big stompy Jund dragons. It started out with a very simple thought: I want to build dragons.
It actually started with a much simpler thought: someone suggested Karrthus as my commander, I looked at him, and agreed very rapidly. This is what is known as a build-around-me Commander: the one card tells you exactly what the deck should contain and you just build it.
That said, the build process that followed was less simple. I pulled up a list of all the dragons in Magic and began cherry picking all of the good ones. This was back during Scars of Mirrodin era, so I had access to all the Jund dragons from Alara block, but none of the new ones from Khans of Tarkir block. Even so it was a lengthy list and took quite a long amount of time.
I'll go over evaluating good and bad cards in another article, but suffice to say when I was finished I had a very dragonny 100 card deck that smashed into people's faces very quickly. I've stuck with Karrthus ever since I built him and, while the card pool has changed quite a bit over the years (Atarka, World Render, how I love thee) the deck remains the same at the core: still about Dragons.
Top Down doesn't necessarily have to start with a single card, I should point out. I've built decks around other themes - tokens, +1/+1 counters, sacrifice effects, and even Elves - where the pile of cards I wanted to put into the deck came first, and then I had to go searching for a suitable Commander in the right colours that also fit the theme.
Either way, with a Top Down approach, the theme is key, whether it be one card or many that is your starting point.
Bottom Up
The Bottom Up approach comes from the other angle: rather than starting with an idea and then building a pile of cards, you start with a pile of cards and then try and make them work together. This often makes a strong deck - after all, you're playing some cards that are very strong individually - with the flip of throwing flavour to the wind.
Incidentally, if you are a Cube player, this is a place you might want to start. Cubes tend to contain the best cards from over the years, so throwing together a Commander deck from a list of Cube-worthy staples is not a bad place to begin.
My first Bottom Up deck was, I'm ashamed to say, spearheaded by Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. This too was back in Scars of Mirrodin era, and I had been learning to play Standard with a Blue/White Control deck. If you have ever heard of "Caw Blade" I think you can see where this is going.
After winning a little in Standard (going 2-2 at FNM was my best at the time, I will admit) I decided that the cards were good, I liked playing them, and if I was going to play Commander I should play my favourite cards. Baneslayer Angel, Day of Judgment, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Rite of Replication, Sword of Body and Mind... all strong effects, all standard playable. However once I piled up all my Standard cards I will still only about 25-deep, so I had to dig through the annals of history and find even more.
Pulling together a pile of strong cards tends to build itself a little more easily than going by theme, in that a pile of strong cards will not necessarily be of the same type or effect. A Top Down deck can easily end up being entirely creatures before you realise that a draw spell might be a good idea. This meant that my Augustin deck was quicker to assemble than Karrthus was, even though I didn't have a specific aim other than "that looks good, I'll play that".
Once the deck was ready I went hunting for a legendary. I should point out that Augustin worked with the deck, making it a Bottom Up deck that started edging towards a theme: I ran Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, Rhystic Study and several of those Augustin-style tax effects. I had a number of gold cards from Alara and Lorwyn blocks, making his cost reduction doubly effective.
This doesn't have to be the case. I know of someone who made a Red/White/Black deck with multiple tax/stasis/lockdown effects that ran Oros, the Avenger as its Commander purely because that was the only legend in those colours that he owned. I know of someone who built "5-Colour Good Stuff" - a common Bottom Up deck made by smashing all the good cards ever together - that ran Progenitus just because.
Regardless, Bottom Up is about putting all those good cards together that you've wanted to play together and running with it.
Next Week
So you've got a starting point, but what do you put in your deck? What shape should it be? How many lands? How many spells? There is no right or wrong answer but I'll guide you.
Yours,
Commander Vimes
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