Originally known as Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH, Commander is a casual multiplayer format that supports 4 players with 100 card decks. Each player starts at 40 life, and each player's deck is headed by a legendary creature designated as that deck's commander. The format has become very popular in recent years, with the release of official pre-con Commander decks and full Commander sets like Commander Legends.
Although commander is a relative newcomer in terms of Magic the Gathering formats, it stands as one of the most popular! Commander is a highly social format that involves four players and a surprising amount of politics and negotiation! The great thing about commander is the table generally decides the level of competitiveness, from a super casual game to a really competitive one! If you're looking to get into Commander, you can start off with one of the awesome pre-constructed decks. All of these pre-cons have been selected for their beginner-friendly builds and level of fun! If you have 3 friends that also want to play, you can also pick these up to have your own awesome game of commander!
With each deck, we will also lay out which cards to add that will give you the best upgrade for the smallest amount of money.
Commander follows the regular magic rules with a few exceptions:
- The game has four players, each trying to come out on top
- Each of the players starts with 40 life instead of the regular 20
- Each player has a special commander card and a deck containing exactly 99 cards
Each Commander Deck includes the following:
- 1 Premium card
- 99 Regular cards
- 10 Double Sided Tokens
- 1 information insert
- 1 life tracker
Coven Counters
{{widget type="Magefan\ProductWidget\Block\Widget\Product\Block" product_id="product/141600" display_image="1" display_reviews="0" display_price="1" display_add_to_cart="1" display_description="3" description_text="Bring together a myriad of humans and throw a festival for your coven! As the Harvesttide Sovereign, Leinore has the ability to gift your creatures +1/+1 counters as you see fit. Use this ability to turn on the coven mechanic for Leinore and her guests so you can reap those bounties turn after turn—drawing cards and buffing your allies long into the night. As hope grows among your revelers, watch it fade from your opponents’ eye."display_read_more="0"custom_template="Magefan_ProductWidget::blog.phtml"}}Bring together a myriad of humans and throw a festival for your coven! As the Harvesttide Sovereign, Leinore has the ability to gift your creatures +1/+1 counters as you see fit.
Great cards to add to Coven Counters include:
- Karn's Bastion Proliferate is a great addition to any counter deck, so Karn's Bastion is a must have!
- Hamza, Guardian of Arashin Hamza adds a lot of value and makes your mana go so much further!
- Animation Module This plays so well into the Coven ability whilst providing a ton of extra counters.
- Cathars’ Crusade It's pretty obvious why you would want to add this card to the deck, even more counters!!
Spirit Squadron
{{widget type="Magefan\ProductWidget\Block\Widget\Product\Block" product_id="product/147704" display_image="1" display_reviews="0" display_price="1" display_add_to_cart="1" display_description="3" description_text="Overwhelm your opponent with a myriad of Spirit tokens!"display_read_more="0"custom_template="Magefan_ProductWidget::blog.phtml"}}Fill the skies with a tireless cloud of vengeful Spirits. Released with Crimson Vow, this deck lets you flood your opponent with a ton of tokens!
Great cards to add to Spirit Squadron include:
- Guardian of Faith This is a great addition that protects your non-token creatures from boardwipes.
- Spirit of the Labyrinth Commander can get crazy fast. Since Milicent doesn't rely as much on draw effects, Spirit of the Labyrinth slows down your opponents whilst you can ramp up with your spirit army!
- Sephara, Sky’s Blade Spirit Squadron has a ton of flyers in it, so it only makes sense to slip Sephara in to make them indestructible.
- Selfless Spirit This helps in protecting your spirit tokens and works great once you've ramped up.
Upgrades Unleashed
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Great cards to add to Upgrades Unleashed include:
- Wild Growth This is an aura that helps you build up a bit more mana, which is definitely useful if you want to keep pace with faster EDH decks.
- Bloodforged Battle-Axe If you're only going to add one card to this deck, it's this!! It can copy itself and modify multiple creatures!
- Sword of Truth and Justice Another great piece of equipment to add is the Sword of Truth and Justice. The proliferate ability will quickly get out of hand!
- Kodama of the West Tree Another must have in this deck is Kodama! It provides a great level of ramp and also gives all your modified creatures Trample.
Exit from Exile
{{widget type="Magefan\ProductWidget\Block\Widget\Product\Block" product_id="product/168947" display_image="1" display_reviews="0" display_price="1" display_add_to_cart="1" display_description="3" description_text="Swarm your opponent with a pack of wolves by using a ton of effects that aloow you to play cards from exile!"display_read_more="0"custom_template="Magefan_ProductWidget::blog.phtml"}}Exit from Exile was released alongside the awesome D&D Commander Legends crossover set and is a super fun pre-con to play! The deck focuses on playing cards from exile and whilst it is enjoyable to play straight from the box, there are some easy improvements that will increase that enjoyment.
Great cards to add to Exit from Exile include:
- Commune with Lava Arguably this is the perfect card to include in the deck, and we recon that the designers of the deck has missed a trick in not including it.
- Containment Construct Another easy inclusion, Containment Construct gels really well with the commander.
- Urabrask, Heretic Praetor We have been obsessed with Phyrexians lately (can you blame us?) and we think that Urabrask would make an epic addition to Exit from Exile! It gives you yet another card that you can play from exile!
- Hollowhenge Overlord With this simple addition you can double your wolf pack every turn! What's not to love!?
Urza's Iron Alliance
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Great cards to add to Urza's Iron Alliance include:
- Mirrodin Besieged Mirrodin Besieged gives you the option to recycle some of those precious Artifacts in your graveyard and can also be used for an alternate win condition!
- Scrap Trawler This adds even more recursion to the deck, which is sorely needed. It helps make better use of artifacts you'd rather not have filling up your graveyard!
- Research Thief This adds a bit more draw to the deck and speed things up a bit!
- Thoughtcast Another great bit of draw that really takes advantage of using Artifacts.
Check out more information on these awesome decks in the related products below. Alternatively, you can check out all of our Magic products by clicking on the button below.
