Culling the herd is important, even if it is difficult. Commander is a brewer’s paradise. Some of us (me) brew continuously and we (I) end up with too many decks to play them all and give them attention. The solution is pretty obvious, even if it is not fun: cull the herd.
I’m culling the herd myself. I use the term “herd” because I currently have 22 Commander decks and I am planning a few more, so I need to make space in boxes for decks. There is a minimalist philosophy that items should spark joy, and I am using this philosophy for my Commander collection. Each deck that does not spark joy and immediately make me think of all the sweet times playing it will be put to the side.
I have a few goals in mind. I want to cut the unfun decks, I want to have different power levels available to me, and I want to have a decent spread of colors being used. Cutting unfun decks leads directly to me feeling joy while playing, easy peasy. The power level availability matters to me because of the social contract. I don’t need to play Damia, Sage of Stone every single game, even if that deck is capable of winning most games I play. I want everyone in the game to enjoy it, and sometimes everyone wants to cut back and play something that requires less thought and less focus. I don’t need to have someone brand-new to the format play against a powered deck of mine and walk away from Commander; that is not my goal. Finally, I want to spread out my color use. I do not want to have every possible commander for Sultai covered and ignore Boros decks entirely.
Here are the commanders for my decks:
Yes, Dune-Brood Nephilim is not a legal commander. My group was cool with me building it. Social contract at work.
No Joy
This deck is pretty abysmal. This is often made worse by my friends and LGS taking advantage of the deck’s very low power and wrecking me continuously.
Cymede still kicks butt, but I have grown tired of this deck. Its self-imposed converted mana cost limitation is good, but I built the deck a couple of years ago and my group has gotten much better. Plus, like Sensei Golden-Tail, this deck can easily be wrecked and knock me out of a game. I spent two years as the de facto threat in any game, and so my weaker decks tend to be prey for my group because of this.
It’s a Pauper deck and really fun. But it is all commons. When your opponents have Secure the Wastes, Blue Sun’s Zenith, Killing Wave, Roiling Earthquake, and Chord of Calling, it can get hard to keep up. The deck has drifted too far in different directions and just isn’t a lot of fun for me to play. It has too much of a good-stuff vibe, mostly being a collection of powerful blue and black commons.
This is a land destruction deck. I hate it. I built it to teach someone a lesson. I haven’t played it since. I don’t know if I should keep it and bring it out whenever someone is intent on ruining other people’s fun to show them what it’s like, or just scrap it and copy the list so I have it. I’m leaning towards writing down the deck and moving on.
Immediate Joy
This is my deck. I take about six decks each Sunday for Commander at my local shop or when my friends get together for gaming, and Oros, the Avenger is always in my bag. It isn’t even taken out of my Magic bag unless I’m tweaking the deck. This deck has card advantage, control, Voltron, token, and some other strategies open to use. When I’m playing Commander, this deck is the one I am most comfortable with.
Atarka, World Render is less about my joy and more about sharing Commander with new players. This deck is a solid keeper and does its job well.
Sen Triplets is not really my deck; it was made with my cards, but it is my girlfriend’s deck. We went through piles of cards and she pulled aside all the ones that she likes best. We repeated this process to get down to a reasonable pile. From there it was adding some mana rocks and smoothing out the curve. The deck is very fun to play, and more importantly, she loves being able to steal people’s spells and play them herself.
This deck is tons of fun to play. I love drawing cards and Jori En, Ruin Diver gives me a constant stream of cards. I also really appreciate how different my games can be. When this deck was Mizzix of the Izmagnus, every game was the same. The spells that killed my opponents were different, but always a flurry of X spells. Jori En has a few routes to victory and the power level is something can works well in most games. I don’t have to worry about blowing people out of the water with cards they cannot keep up with.
My new X spell deck. Get out Gisela, and then an Earthquake for eight turns into sixteen damage to everyone else and four damage to me. It’s even better if the spells are copied. This deck may not always win, but it is always a clock on the table. No matter what, I always have an influence on the game; even if I lose early, I don’t have to wait long for the next one to start.
This is the “big kids’ table” deck. Most of the the other decks that bring me immediate joy can compete with a table of heavy hitters, but Damia can control a whole table. This is my most powerful deck, even if Oros is my favorite. I really enjoy playing this deck because I can answer pretty much anything and rarely have to worry about a game getting out of control.
This is a terrible, terrible Elder Dragon and a wonderful commander. Ojutai gets in for solid damage with card advantage attached. Where Damia, Sage of Stone is a mean deck, Ojutai is more akin to the fun police. If you are getting out of hand, Ojutai stops the madness.
This deck has old-school style points and is all about explosive plays. I almost want to cut Purphoros, God of the Forge because the deck is more fun when I have to figure out how to win with all the tokens. I’m not there yet, but this deck is sweet to play. I lend this deck often to friends who enjoy the deck’s ability to go from zero to 60. Plus, I got Hazezon from Kyle Carson, whom I met at GenCon. He’s a cool dude.
Sneaky Snakes! I’m not sure how much more I need to add. It’s Snake tribal with the dream of getting Blade of Selves on Hydra Omnivore and attacking with enough mana to target everything.
Not every game is about winning. Sometimes it is about getting a janky commander to captain a ship with crew, a cannon, and stolen booty and posting it all to Twitter. This deck has only won a single game, but the flavor wins in this deck more than make up the difference.
This was built for a budget challenge with my friends. It has a combo which I’m sad about, but once I put some more expensive cards in I can ditch the combo. That, or I keep the budget focus as a further example of my Playing Commander Cheaply concepts. I just need to work in more synergy or move the budget past $50.
This deck started with seventeen cards: Cromat, the five battlemages from Planeshift, Amulet of Vigor, and all ten of the Ravnica bouncelands. From there the deck evolved into a cycles deck using stuff I found fun and ways to use and abuse them. The Emissaries from Invasion work wonders with Erratic Portal to recast them and trigger their kicker again. The Volver cycle gets better with more mana. Tek is just hilarious. Draco is an absurd card that is loads of fun to use. The deck always seems to only have half of what I need to win a game, so I have to work to invent the other half. It is really fun, and while it does powerful things, the deck isn’t actually that powerful because of power creep.
Not Immediate Joy
I just finished this deck, and I will have gotten to play it for the first time yesterday (as of you reading this on Monday). I love the deck on paper, but I haven’t gotten to take it for a spin yet. We will see what happens.
This deck is really fun to play, and I love the games I play with it, but I just don’t get an urge to play this deck a lot. I like that it operates differently from Hazezon Tamar, but I just tend to let this deck sit.
This deck does fun stuff, but it is getting very clunky. The plays with it are wonderful, though, like stealing an opposing Kokusho, the Evening Star to sacrifice it to Greater Good after equipping a Deathrender to windmill-slam Worldspine Wurm onto the table. It doesn’t always happen like this, but this deck can easily make Play of the Game if Commander worked like Overwatch.
This just needs more focus. I want it to be a “get back in there” type of deck, targeting opponents with Congregate and the like. I want to help keep the downtrodden player going. Currently this has a “hand size matters” focus that I stole from Sheldon Menery. I thought that was neat and have been playing a Maro-focused build, but this deck is getting stale for me. However, the deck continues to bring in giggles with Steel of the Godhead, Shield of the Oversoul, and Favor of the Overbeing to turn Phelddagrif into a Voltron Purple Hippo.
This started as a collection of green cards that got cut from other decks. The deck functions very well. Become Immense with Silvos to boop for fourteen is one of my favorite plays; ditto not paying attention to the possible devotion I can generate in the deck and playing Primalcrux and Overwhelming Stampede in the same turn. My problem is that the deck’s straightforward stompy nature is too similar to Atarka, World Render without the evasion.
Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter is one of my oldest decks built after Commander 2011. Only Oros and Phelddagrif predate him. It is a grindy attrition-style deck that destroys the battlefield and wins with a very, very big Vish Kal. I just almost never feel like playing Vish Kal anymore; I have seen everything possible the deck can do.
Moving Forward
The decks that do not spark joy are gone. Boom!
Next are the decks that do not spark immediate joy; The Gitrog Monster is still being tested, so I’m going to exclude it.
Dune-Brood Nephilim can get scrapped; I really want to keep the deck around, but it covers a lot of the same turf as Hazezon Tamar, and I can use some of the pieces to improve Hazezon’s performance without an immediate reward for token production like Purphoros, God of the Forge.
Silvos, Rogue Elemental and Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter are going to to be scrapped. I’ll make sure the decklists are saved, but I think it is time to retire these two.
Yasova Dragonclaw and Phelddagrif are decks I really like, so I want to refocus them. Yasova just needs some tuning to smooth out the deck. Phelddagrif will be rebuilt as the “Get Back in There!” deck to keep the game fun for everyone.
The next step is to go back to my spreadsheet of my deck master list and double-check everything. I cut decks at a few different power levels and I’m reworking two of my mid-power decks.
With these cuts, my color spread looks like this:
White Decks: Seven
Blue Decks: Nine
Black Decks: Seven
Red Decks: Eight
Green Decks: Eight
This is a pretty good color spread. Now, the decks I am currently planning (meaning they are in piles on my table and I am ordering pieces to finish them soon) are Shu Yun, Silent Tempest and Sigarda, Host of Herons. Shu Yun is going to be a Sunforger-focused deck, while Sigarda is a deck of functional reprints so that every card is a pair. Shu Yun is expected to be strong, while Sigarda is not going to be as good despite having a very powerful commander. Sigarda may even turn into Tolsimir Wolfblood.
This plan puts me at nine white decks, ten blue decks, seven black decks, nine red decks, and nine green decks. Since I like to keep my colors close to even, I’m thinking of building decks around the following commanders:
I also want to make a W/B deck, but I’m debating what to build. I may try a Jund deck too. I’m open to suggestions for commanders to try out.
Do you have any experience with culling your herd? How many decks can you keep in your Commander stable? (I’m approaching a Commander ranch, I think.) Do you think the philosophy of sparking joy is a good one, or should I try this culling with a different philosophy informing my decisions?