Joe's Top 5 EDH Tips

Despite being Magic's most popular format, Commander can be overwhelming to get into. 100 cards, all but the basic lands have to be different, they all have to be the same colour as your commander, and you can use almost any card from the game's 30-year history? Where do you even begin?!

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to make your first Commander deck work right out the gate. Here are five of the best deck-building tips for Commander.

In Magic, "ramp" means finding ways to put more down more than one mana source each turn. It can be through land ramping spells like Rampant Growth (where the term "Ramp" comes from) and Cultivate, from Artifacts like Sol Ring or Arcane Signet, or from creature "mana dorks" like Llanowar Elves or Llanowar Tribe.

It may not be the most exciting part of your deck, but having at least some ramp is absolutely vital. What that looks like differs depending on your commander's colours: green is fantastic at ramp, and white is getting better thanks to recent additions to the game like Archaeomancer's Map, while black and red struggle a bit and need more artifacts to bolster them up.

Building off of the last point, one of the first things new players to Magic realise is that lands are actually really exciting. Pulling a rare and powerful land in a booster pack can be a let-down for a newbie, but a big win for a veteran looking to build their next Commander deck.

Lots of Commanders have multiple colours in their colour identity, and so finding ways to have access to more than one colour per land is crucial. While you could splash out on the ultra-expensive Dual Lands, even more reasonably-priced ones like Shock Lands, Fetch Lands and Bounce Lands can dramatically improve your deck. And don't forget the format's staple lands like Myriad Landscape and Command Tower!

New lands are being added to Magic all the time. In Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow, we were introduced to 'slow lands' that enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more other basic lands, and in Kaldheim, we got dual snow lands that can be easily searched thanks to their land types. Always keep an eye out for new lands that can work well for you, as they are the backbone of any good Commander deck.

When making a Commander deck, it's easy to get tunnel-vision and focus purely on what you want your deck to do. Maybe you're making a Lord Windgrace deck and want to play lots of lands, or a Niv Mizzet, Parun deck and want to draw cards instead. However, if you devote every card in your deck to this, you're going to have difficulty with the three other players also at the table.

"Interaction" is a broad term, but it simply means anything that can slow or stop your opponents from becoming a threat. Counterspells like… well… Counterspell, removal like Path to Exile or Murder, and boardwipes like Cyclonic Rift or Wrath of God are well worth fitting in to your deck, just incase anybody else gets too big for their boots.

There is a lot of debate about how much interaction you should have in a deck, and it does depend on what you're playing. For example, my Kwain, Itinerant Meddler deck lets other people draw cards, and so needs to run a lot of counterspells (10) to keep them in check. On the other hand, my Wulfgar of Icewind Dale deck just wants to smash in combat, and so has fewer counterspells and more creature removal to get blockers out of my way.

It's always a good idea to have a rough idea of how you want to bring the game to a close. In a perfect world where everything you did went right, how do you want to win? Is it through combat? Maybe try adding in a Triumph of the Hordes. Is it through a combo like Enter the Infinite and Thassa's Oracle? Maybe you want to make an Approach of the Second Sun deck?

Identifying your win conditions helps in the building process, because then you can put in supporting cards like tutors that can search your deck for your combo pieces, or big creatures like Craterhoof Behemoth to make everything more stompy in combat.

It also makes you a better player, as knowing which cards you go digging for and when you can win with them is vital to success. Players tend to call this "knowing your lines of play" – in my Kwain deck, I know if I'm at 16 mana and have a Narset's Reversal in my hand, that I can win in a single turn with Approach of the Second Sun. On the other hand, if the Approach is in my hand on turn one, playing it too early will put a target on my back and likely get me knocked out first.

At the end of the day, Commander is a format all about self-expression. It can be tempting to go online and search for the "best Commanders" and think anything out of the top ten wouldn't be worth your time. However, that sometimes isn't the most fun way to play.

Sometimes, a Commander will appeal to you because of what it does, and you'll get a fully-formed idea of how to build a deck for them straight away. Sometimes you'll see a character you love the look of, but not quite know where to take it, and that's absolutely fine. Some of the most fun and memorable decks come from this, like my Archelos, Lagoon Mystic deck that avoids the usual enters-tapped strategy of Archelos decks and is instead a surprise Mutate-themed one!

One of Commander's biggest strengths is how everyone brings something weird and wonderful to the table, so don't think for a second that playing anything less than the statistic "best" makes you a bad player with a bad deck.