Because they’re well rounded, they have maximum flexibility in what they can sideboard, and yet are difficult for opponents to attack. In general, the more extreme your strategy (suicidal aggro, control decks that lack proactive game plans, and linear strategies), the easier you will be to sideboard against. Each deck’s mana curve will be different, but it’s important to work towards one that suits yours.
From there, it’s a simple matter of playing a powerful creature or planeswalker to finish off the game. Well, you start by playing cheap creatures like Delver of Secrets and [c]Dragon’s Rage Channeler[/c], which can cause some serious problems if they aren’t removed. Then, you protect them by countering your opponent’s removal spells with [c]Counterspell[/c]s, [c]Force of Negations[/c], and the like. Depending on the format, the number of creatures in a burn deck can vary. Typically, Standard burn decks will have more creatures than Modern or Legacy burn decks, since there are fewer playable burn spells available.
White Weenie is another one of those beginner-friendly deck archetypes that are easy to pick up and learn. Affinity got its name from the “affinity for artifacts” mechanic, which reduces the cost of cards based on the number of artifacts you control. The idea is to play a bunch of cheap artifacts like [c]Memnite[/c] and [c]Ornithopter[/c], then to play affinity cards like [c]Thought Monitor[/c] for very low mana costs.
Spam Those Elves
You can see the curve peaking up at the 2- and 3-mana points before trailing off as the mana values increase. The higher the mana cost of your curve’s peak, the less consistent your deck will be. Your mana curve is one of the most important aspects of your deck.
Understanding deck archetypes is essential for deckbuilding and just playing Magic. You’ll have a deeper understanding of how to pilot your decks better and pressure your opponent’s weak points once you understand how archetypes work and why they play the cards they do. The tools available to an archetype will change more between formats than the ideas of the deck. Combo decks are a bit of an exception to this rule because they’re often hyper-specific, but most of the decks on our spectrum play out similarly. This is part of why it’s so important to understand the basic deck archetypes.
Trading one card for two or more (Sign in Blood) is a classic example of velocity, but like we said with ramp, it’s dependent on your deck and commander. These both help your large board of Elves reliably attack for lethal damage and win you the game. The big problem with Stax is that it drags a game down to a crawl. A game that would’ve lasted an hour without Stax can easily become three or four with it, as players desperately fumble for any resources they can. The perfect game for a Stax player is one where nothing happens, and nothing keeps happening until everyone else has conceded.
The strongest color combination for your Elf deck is going to be adding a splash of black to your stuff. More often than not these decks are your traditional mono-green Elf strategies while splashing black for a few specific cards. These decks end with Ezuri, Renegade Leader, who for five mana gives your Elves +3/+3 and trample. Since you don’t have to tap Ezuri to use this ability, you can dump all your extra mana into it, giving your Elves upwards of +9/+9 or more, and then take out your opponents in a single attack. Any time a creature does come into play under your control, you get to either add three green mana, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, or scry two and then draw a card.
This has been a really basic guide for how to build a commander deck, but I’m not stopping here. Be on the lookout for future articles that will include topics like choosing the right commander for you, becoming a better deckbuilder, and how to tweak your mana base. If you’re interested in building decks on a budget, you can always check out my other series, Brew For Your Buck, here on EDHREC. “Hate” cards are another type of card that combat a specific archetype. Artifact decks are a popular strategy that can really be hurt by something like Manglehorn.
All in Elf decks tend to follow a singular strategy, play Elf creatures and lord or anthem effects until you reach critical mass and then swarm over your opponents in a single turn. If the game lasts 10 turns, and half of your nonland cards cost that much mana, you certainly aren’t casting many of them and they’ll just rot in your hand. Every deck should have a mission statement—some kind of game plan that guides your deck-building decisions.
A Deck with Raw Power
This legendary creature’s proliferate mtg combo ability works especially well with planeswalkers, as you can put extra loyalty counters on each of them at the end of every turn. I also want to emphasize that in Commander, most decks are unique and can’t really be put into broad categories. This section is just to give you an idea of how Commander archetypes may differ from other archetypes. As one final point, the number of a cards in your deck should generally be decided by how often you want to see said card. If a card is truly integral to how your deck functions, it needs to be a full playset. But if you don’t want to be seeing it in every matchup, you can cut it down to a single copy.
Players who purchase any introductory product as part of a Magic Academy event will receive this borderless copy of Darksteel Colossus while supplies last. Deckbuilding is an ongoing process, so you should never assume that the first pile you put together is perfect and always look for new ways to improve it. For a sample decklist we’re looking at a Standard “white weenie” deck that took MTGO user il_matagatto to the Top 16 of a recent Standard Challenge event.
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They’re often referred to as 5-color green, using green as a central color for mana fixing and most of their spells while splashing bombs and removal from other colors. Aggro-control decks depend on a combination of cheap, instant-speed interaction and threats that can get played around those spells. The typical weakness of a creature deck with a bunch of countermagic is that it conflicts with your mana. If you cast a creature spell on your turn, you can’t hold up mana for your counters. But if you hold up countermagic, you can’t meaningfully impact the board. Compare that to a mono-white midrange list in Standard, and you can see the difference.
When Magic first began, the rules dictated a 40-card deck, and there was no restriction for the number of copies of each card.[1][2] Constructed and Limited had the same deck size. In Commander, you are probably running Lathril, Blade of the Elves. When she hits another player in combat, you make that many Elf tokens. Then you can tap Lathril and ten other untapped Elves you control to make each opponent lose ten life and you gain ten life. A rather new entry into the Elvish possibilities of deck design, this color combination is more likely to be found in Commander, with the release of the special Galadriel, Light of Valinor. This three-color legendary creature does a lot, with an ability that triggers for the first three creatures that enter the battlefield under your control each turn.