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INTRODUCTION:  HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

I've had people ask me before about my deckbuilding process for Commander.  I may not be the greatest deckbuilder in the world, but most of my decks are successful enough (I tried making a deck around Seshiro the Anointed once that was a horrible failure) that I feel comfortable presenting them to you guys, and fun enough that I like playing with them, even the older ones.  And to me, that's what is important.

Sometimes you just can't control all the ideas!

But to people that are just starting off in the format, or just starting off in Magic in general, creating a Commander or EDH deck can be very daunting.  The card pool is huge, and there's a ton of stuff out there that you probably have never heard about or seen before.  Therefore, I am going to show you how I go about creating a decklist in a sort of step by step process.  The decklist isn't going to be overly complicated, as this is really just an exercise for newer players.  But with that said, maybe you can get some ideas that might be able to help you out.  So let's get started!

STEP 1:  WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?

The first question I usually ask myself is:  What do I want to do with my new deck?  At the most basic, you have a few choices.  You can either build a good stuff deck, or you can build around a specific Commander.  You can also build a theme deck that hopefully has some synergy as well.  In order to keep things simple today, I am going to pick a mono-colored legend to build around.  If you are just starting off and feel overwhelmed by the possibilities provided by the format, this is a good way to go to limit things and keep you focused.  So which mono-colored legend are we going to build around today?

That's right, good old Horobi.  He's not commonly played but he has a pretty potent ability.  Basically, with him out none of the creatures on the board are safe as they can be destroyed by targeting.  But that includes him as well.  Fortunately, mono-black has good ways of making a ton of mana, which is necessary as you can expect Horobi to die on multiple occasions and you will have to keep paying more each time you play him.

So looking at Horobi, it appears that there are 2 themes that we want to make sure we have in order to build around him.  First, we want to have some indestructible creatures.  Indestructible creatures are not affected by Horobi's ability, and as such, they are free to hang out on the playing field with impunity.  The second theme is we want to be able to target creatures.  Repeatable targeting is great, and being able to target multiple creatures at the same time is even better.  How do we find the cards that fit this theme?

STEP 2:  GATHERER IS YOUR FRIEND

That's right, you need to familiarize yourself with Gatherer.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, click HERE.  That will take you to the front page of Gatherer.  However, we are going to be doing some specific searching, and I think you should use the advanced search option.  First, we are going to look for our indestructible creatures.  By searching for Black creatures with indestructible in the text for the Commander format, we get the following 3 creatures:

While the Myojin is great, Sapling isn't legal with our Commander, and the Lich is situational.  Next, let's look up the colorless creatures that are indestructible playable in Commander.  (Note:  Don't limit yourself to artifact creatures, as with Eldrazi around you may miss some stuff).  Here's what came up on Gatherer with our new search:

Obviously some of these guys are better than others.  I don't think the Myr or the Juggernaut will make the cut, but the others are possibilities.  However with that said, that's not really a whole lot of indestructible guys.  I wonder if there are any artifacts that grant indestructibility.  As a matter of fact there are a few, but only 3 look promising:

The Monument will make all your creatures indestructible, but requires a sacrifice each turn.  That seems like a pretty hefty price but may be workable.  The Shield and TWWT grant indestructibility.  We can also look at artifacts that grant shroud, so that your creatures can't be targeted when Horobi is in play:

However, you have to use almost all of these pieces of equipment before Horobi comes into play.  Otherwise, equipping a creature will just kill it.  Do we want such limiting cards?  Well, let's include them for right now.  I always like being over-inclusive in the beginning, then cutting cards in the end.  Here is what we have so far: 

 

Like I said, the Lich and the non-creature artifacts are all maybes right now, but I'd rather include them for the moment.

Now comes the tougher part:  Cards that target.  Gatherer can help you out with this though.  First, let's search for Black Enchantments that target.  These will be repeatable, which is helpful with this deck.  However, this brings up 49 results, and such stuff like Blowfly Infestation, which doesn't help me at all.  So I refine my search,  looking for "Target creature" in the text.  Make sure that you use quotes, or else you will still get a large number.  Even limiting it like this, we get 23 hits.  However, sorting through them, there are a couple that seem interesting:

Each of these is repeatable, but have high costs associated with them, other than Dauthi Embrace.  Next, I look up Black sorceries that have the words "target creatures" as I want to be able to hit multiple creatures with my single spells.  Of the cards that come up, 2 catch my eye:

Both can come in handy, and Profane Command is just an overall useful card.  I do another search for "target creatures" this time looking for artifacts, when I find this gem:

This is pretty sweet when you have Horobi out.  It's repeatable and can hit any number of target creatures.  Awesome.  Finally, I search for Black creatures with "target creatures" in the text:

Both of these guys look like fun.  I know from experience that Black has a lot of creatures that can target for good effect, so I change my search to "target creature."  However, this brings up over 150 results.  In order to narrow it down, I make a requirement that the cards be rares.  This still brings up 64 creatures, but I will show you the highlights:

Some of these are just good in general, while others require Horobi to make them better. We aren't always going to have Horobi out, so we are going to try and stick with the ones that can hold their own.  So after a decent amount of Gatherer searching, I came up with the following targeting cards:

 

Again, not all of these guys are going to make the cut.  I already hacked Witch's Mist because of the tapping requirement, and I have a feeling Consumptive Goo may not make the cut either.  But we will leave that for later.  Let's mash everything together and see what we have so far:

 

So we have 33 theme related cards, but I can already see some things that don't fit.  Hecatomb and Eldrazi Monument require sacrifices that I don't think we will be able to keep up with.  The equipment are all dead cards when we have Horobi out, so I think I am going to have to cut down on some of those.  And some of the creatures that target are just weak.  I will keep all of these in mind for future cuts.

The point of this section is to show you that Gatherer can help you a ton when you are building a deck.  How else would I have been able to find a card like Nefashu?  Through Gatherer, you can find interesting cards that you have never heard of.  And that's always fun.

STEP 3: WHAT ARE YOUR COLOR'S STRENGTHS?

So we have to fill out the deck with other good cards to make it work smoothly.  The easiest way to do this is by thinking about the strengths of the colors that you are playing with.  Black is good at a couple of different things.  Off the top of my head, these are card draw, creature control, recursion, creating huge amounts of mana, and tutoring.  Let's take these one at a time.

For card draw, there are a couple of cards that I like to play with:

All of these are worthy of consideration.  Necropotence can be a double edged sword, but it is usually worth it, especially if you are digging for something in particular.  And I really enjoy casting an entwined Promise of Power.  Next up is creature control:

I know there are more, but those are off the top of my head.  Decree of Pain is nice because it is card draw as well.  Next, we have recursion:

I included the artifact recursion because it looks like we are going to have a bunch of artifacts we will want to re-use.  Xiahou Dun is cheap as heck, and with something like Profane Command you can loop them both over and over.  Next we have the cards that make a ton of mana, especially if we are going to be playing as many big spells as I think we are.

The Kite isn't strictly accel, but I think that it works great in decks with lots of basics for making sure that you don't miss a land drop.  And no mono-Black deck is complete without a Coffers.  Finally, we have the tutoring that Black is well known for:

The Map is obviously to get Coffers.  I think that covers most of the commonly used Tutors online, although there are others.  Seeing Vess, there is one other planeswalker that I think we will want to include:

Playing Sorin may make some people upset, but I have never used him, and think he might be worth a shot.  His life gain ability may come in handy more often than the 10 life re-set.

That's a lot of good cards right there.  Just looking over the list, I know I'm not going to use Vampiric Tutor because I don't own one.  I also don't think Midnight Banshee will work due to the large amount of artifact creatures I'm using.  I also don't know if I'm going to have enough creatures to run Oversold Cemetery.  We will see what the deck looks like in the end.

Honestly, this process is much simpler when you are using only one color.  If you are playing 3 colors, you are going to have a tougher time with this.  But you will probably also have more cards that meet your theme, and will want to use more of those, while using a few other special cards or answers.

STEP 4:  WHAT ARE YOUR DECK'S WEAKNESSES?

This is an especially important question to ask when playing with mono-colored decks.  Black has been known to have weaknesses against artifacts and enchantments.  Red can't handle enchantments.  Green has a tough time with creatures.  White has answers to everything, and Blue can just take what they want.  But for the other 3 colors, there are a couple of cards that are just plain useful:

Not every deck needs these, but they are pretty darn handy.  I think all of these are useful in a mono-black deck.

However, when considering other multi-colored decks, you are going to want to have answers to artifacts, enchantments, graveyard abuse, etc.  That means including stuff like Return to Dust, Trygon Predator, and Withered Wretch (which probably deserves a spot in this deck as well).  You are also going to want to make sure that you have some form of card advantage, whether it is draw, recursion or something else.  The thing to keep in mind that other people are going to be playing cards, and you should be somewhat prepared.  You can't be ready for every eventuality, but you should at least have some answers.

STEP 5:  WHAT ELSE?

When considering the last cards to possibly include in my deck (other than lands), I like to scan my collection for Rares and Mythics, as well as other recent cards from newer sets, to see if there is some interesting stuff that I would like to play with.  I just open my collection and filter for Rare Black and Colorless cards, and do the same thing for Mythics, then recent Uncommons.  By doing this, you can sometimes find some interesting stuff.

I'm sure not all of these are going to fit, but I thought I might as well try them out and see.  Because Black can make a large amount of mana, maybe the large Eldrazi are worth it?  Emrakul has a limited form of protection, but he is kind of a big douche bag card to most people.  We will see.

So let's take a look at what we have for the non-theme related cards:

 

This is also the time where you can try and include those interactions that you wanted.  Did you want to use extra attack steps?  More tokens?  Vigor and Pestilence?  Want to play with that cool new card just for the heck of it?  Here is where you make sure that it happens.

I admit, after looking at this, it's almost a list of Black's greatest hits.  Just looking it over, we are dealing with a lot of life loss for effects, so I think I may need Corrupt as a possible inclusion as well.  However, we already have 57 non-land cards here, and not all of these are going to make the cut.

STEP 6:  MAKING CUTS

So let's mash the theme cards and non-theme cards together, just to see what we have.

 

There are a bunch of cards that need to be cut here.  As a matter of fact, we want to cut down the non-lands to as close as 60 as possible, because we are not running any real form of acceleration.  So we are at 90 non-land cards, and as such, 30 need to go.  Usually what I do is just a quick pass through each card type to see what I don't like or just doesn't fit.

Just passing through the Artifacts, I don't think that Cloak and Dagger, Eldrazi Monument, General's Kabuto, Shield of Kaldra and That Which Was Taken are going to make the cut.  The all use utility once Horobi is out, and the deck just isn't made for the Monument.  I think that the Greaves and the Cloak are good enough to survive.  So that's 5 cards down, 25 to go.

For the Enchantments, I'm going to get rid of Hecatomb, Oversold Cemetery, Planeswalker's Scorn and Unspeakable Symbol.  I don't think we are going to want to sac our creatures for Hecatomb.  I've tried the Planeswalker cards in the past, and they don't really do very well.  And the life lost to the Symbol is hard to recover.  So 4 more down, 21 to go.

For the Instants, I can do without Necrologia.  20 to go.

For the Sorceries, I'm getting rid of Ashes to Ashes, Beseech the Queen, Imperial Seal, Sign in Blood and Syphon Mind.  I think that I have enough in the way of tutors and card draw to go without these cards.  5 more down, 15 to go.

Creatures are tough to get rid of, mainly because I love them all.  But there's a lot of stuff that costs a pretty high amount.  So I'm going to get rid of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Midnight Banshee, Unliving Psychopath, Bounty Hunter, Consumptive Goo, Darksteel Gargoyle, Guul Draz Assassin and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.  Some of these just seem sub-par, and the others just cost too much.  That's 8 more cards that I got rid of, we now have 7 left to go.  So now, our decklist looks like this:

 

Almost there, I want to get rid of at least 6 cards, and hopefully 7.  What I usually do at this point is pull up the stats in the deck editor, to see how things look.  Here is what it looks like for this deck currently:

Now, usually I have a big peak in a couple of spots that I want to smooth down.  But in this deck, there isn't a specific spot that really needs working on.  However, because I do need to make some cuts, I figure one of the 8 cost cards, then some of the 6 and 5 costs.  So after thinking about it, I decide to cut Repay in Kind, Visara the Dreadful and Reiver Demon.  I figure I'm also going to cut Kagemaro because he will kill my indestructible guys when I use him.  I'm going to cut Mutilate for the same reason.  Finally, I'm going to cut Ink-Eyes, because most of my creatures cost a bunch and I won't want to re-cast them.  This puts me at 61 non-land cards.  I think that I can live with that right now.

STEP 7:  LANDS

Finally, I just go through all my lands and pull out any non-basics that I think may be helpful.

 

Of these, I think Bojuka Bog, Deserted Temple, Miren and Mikokoro are shoe in's.  They are all useful.  Petrified Field is good for getting back your Coffers once it gets destroyed (and it usually does).  Shizo and Urborg are great because they are colorless ways of targeting creatures.  With Horobi out you can target and kill Akroma, Angel of Wrath using either of these lands, which is pretty sweet.  Temple of the False God can help accel, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth will make everything a Swamp.  And Volrath's Stronghold goes into just about every Black deck to help with recursion.

I'm not sure about Crypt of Agadeem, but it's worth a shot.  Barren Moor is fine, as the late game cycling can come in handy.  I don't like sacing my lands, so the Lake won't make the cut.  I usually pick either Ghost Quarter or Strip Mine, and this time I think I will go with Ghost Quarter.  Mystifying Maze takes a lot of mana, so I'm not going to use it.  And Eye of Ugin doesn't produce mana, so I'm going to avoid it right now.  Fill in the rest with basics, and you have yourself a deck!

 

Since we are using Extraplanar Lens in the deck, it is usually better to use Snow basics.  Feel free to add them if you have enough.  After doing this I realized that I hadn't included Horobi in the actual decklist, so I shoved it in there, and cut another land.  So now I have my 100 card deck, ready for battle.  What do I do now?

STEP 8:  PLAYTEST

That's right, you gotta take your deck out to the field of battle and see how it does.  Do you have enough land?  Do you need some accel, like Phyrexian Totem, Mind Stone or Worn Powerstone?  Are there enough life gain effects to off-set the life loss you are going to be suffering?  Are you packing too much stuff that costs over 6 mana?  Does Kiku, Night's Flower not do enough when you don't have Horobi in play?  What other cards are underperforming?  Do you need more defense when people get annoyed with Horobi?  Do you want more access to the creatures in your opponents' graveyards that keep getting killed off by including Animate Dead and Necromancy?  What about something like Mimic Vat?  Are there enough cheap bombs to make Yawgmoth's Will worthwhile?  Hopefully you will be able to answer most of these questions by playing a few games with the deck, and make the appropriate changes. 

I am not going to show you guys the changes that I would make to this deck, as I am probably going to return to write a whole article about it down the line at some point.  But feel free to give suggestions or comments, or even to play the deck yourself.

CONCLUSION

Most decklists are never really "finished."  With each new set, there are new potential cards to be added.  So don't worry if you are constantly making changes to the deck.   That's part of the fun.  Just to recap:

Step 1:  What are you trying to do?  What is your theme?  Are you building around your Commander, or do you have something else in mind?
Step 2:  Gatherer is your friend.  Don't be afraid to search for stuff that can help you and your theme.
Step 3:  What are the strengths of your colors?  Make sure to use them to your advantage.
Step 4:  What are you deck's weaknesses?  Does your deck fold to Condemn, enchantments or Counterspell?  Do you need draw?  Figure out your answers.
Step 5:  What else?  Don't be afraid to put in some newer card, lesser known stuff, or just favorites.
Step 6:  Making cuts.  Keep your curve in mind, since you want to be able to interact early on.
Step 7:  Add lands.  Typically I try to go no lower than 38.
Step 8:  Playtest.  This is the fun part!  Test out what works, and what doesn't.  Don't be afraid to make changes.

So there you go.  I'm hoping that this guide gave you some ideas on how to approach deckbuilding.  If you have any additional tips or tricks, feel free to point them out in the comments. 

ADDENDUM:  CHANGES ARE COMING!

So Wizards recently posted a big announcement HERE about this format we all love.  (If you didn't love the format, you probably wouldn't be reading this.)  To summarize the announcement, EDH is now going to be officially known as Commander.  Wizards is jumping on the Commander bandwagon by providing 5 new preconstructed Commander decks in June 2011, which will include 51(!) brand new cards.  One of the cards is the following:

So obviously these are going to be cards that are created with multiplayer, and specifically Commander, in mind.  In addition, each of the decks will be based upon wedge colors, which currently have very few legal legends to build around.  Each of these decks will have brand new Commanders, with the spoiled one being this guy:

Not bad, right?  Built in recursion.  Not too overpowered but fun to build around. I assume the other 4 legends are going to be similar in power level.  Anyways, Wizards is going to continue to allow the EDH/Commander Rules committee to handle the banned list and keep up with the health of the format.  However, the most important part of the article for us online players is this quote:

Magic: The Gathering Commander will be available on Magic Online.
And to support it, we are tightening the online Commander rules to more closely match the paper rules.

What does this mean?  Currently there is one major way that online Commander differs from its paper counterpart:  Your decks can contain cards that have mana symbols in their text that don't match the commander the deck is using.  This means that online, you can play Bojuka Bog in any deck, and use Bringer of the Red Dawn in your mono-Red deck.  You can't do this when playing with pants. 

So Wizards is likely going to be cleaning up the programming to have MTGO match the paper game.  This way you cannot use Jungle Shrine or Izzet Boilerworks in your Stonebrow deck.  At least that's my guess.  I don't know when they will make these changes (likely shortly before these precon decks come out online but maybe even sooner) but you should be prepared for these changes, even if they haven't officially been announced yet.

I think that these changes and additional focus on the format by Wizards are good things.  They are infusing new cards into the mix that are specifically created for Commander.  Wizards is also giving new legends to build around with their viability as commanders in mind.  Wizards has admitted in the past that cards have been included in regular sets just so they can be used in Commander (Argentum Armor was mentioned in a recent Mark Rosewater article as a card created by Ken Nagle to be included in his Godo, Bandit Warlord deck) and I am hoping that they will be creating additional high powered stuff just for us Commander players.  And hopefully some of the bugs that occur in Commander games will receive higher priority!  I'm sure there will be people that don't like the name change, but there's nothing to prevent people at the kitchen table from still calling it EDH.

You can be sure that when the precon decklists are spoiled, I will go over the new cards.  I'm pretty excited about this, actually, and I'm guessing other people have already started building their Karador decks.  Good times.

I hope you guys enjoyed the article.  Thanks for reading!  Until next week.

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com

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