With CommandFest Online coming June 6, Gavin Verhey uses today’s edition of Good Morning Magic to teach you how he builds a Commander deck.
Verhey goes over the five main steps to building a Commander deck and gives examples of cards for each step based off a new deck he builds based around Rielle, the Everwise from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.
Step 1: Choose a Commander. This is your heart and soul of the deck and shows you what roads to go down while building the deck.
Step 2: Find your synergy cards. This is where you get to find niche cards that you don’t normally play in other formats that work with your Commander.
Step 3: Find what’s missing. After finding your synergy cards, make sure you have some amount of cards to fulfill these five effects: card draw, mana ramp, targeted removal, sweepers, and threats.
Step 4: Build your mana base. Like always, you want plenty of lands and Verhey recommends at least 39-40 so that you can play a land every turn.
Step 5: Re-evaluate everything. This is where you look at all the cards and make tough choices of narrowing down your deck. Verhey goes over some helpful ratios for making sure your deck has all of its bases covered.
Verhey wraps things up with a link to the final decklist for the Rielle deck.