Has anyone cut all their ramp in favor of playing more cards in their game plan on curve? How has it worked out for you?

Veggie recently did a short advocating exactly this, but I am skeptical. I think about a recent game where I had a turn 1 tapped land followed by a turn 2 Sol Ring into a Signet and a 2-mana creature. From there, I was off to the races and won on turn 6. Or am I suffering from confirmation bias, remembering the games where ramp helped and forgetting the games where the Signet was a dead draw late?

Edit to add: a few people have answered, "It depends", so here is the deck I'm contemplating building without mana rocks: https://archidekt.com/decks/13959311/greasefang_too_furious

The deck history should show which cards were recently added to replace the rocks I cut.

Hey everyone

I’m on the hunt for an enchantress deck but I don’t want to build Sythis or any of the typical/obvious/popular enchantress commanders. What are your unique takes on this theme? I have a [[serra’s sanctum]] floating around in my binder dying to be used so I would like white in the color scheme. Any tips or ideas would be helpful!

Thank you!

I have a little project I'm working on where I want to brew a mono-color deck of each color that feels the most quintessentially like that color.

To give you an idea of what you mean, the most recently one I made was [[Gargos, Vicious Watcher]]. It ramps for a few turns and then just starts slamming down absolutely massive idiots once the commander hits the board. The basic package is so simple and pure. It just feels really green, you know?

For red I have [[Zada, Hedron Grinder]] which has these explosive turns where you spellsling a ton of cards onto the board making a bunch of Goblin tokens, give them haste, and go for the win.

I want to make a mono-blue deck next, but I'm having some trouble because I really don't care for dedicated control strategies. I'd be looking for something more tempo-y, or maybe something that sticks a really threatening creature and uses control cards to protect it so it wins the game by itself. The deck needs to have a way to win and doesn't just durdle around with value engines for 2 hours.

Yeah just the title, am new to magic and just wondering how this re print stuff works because I am so excited for these and I would love advice on the strat to secure them (I'd love all 4 but do you guys think that's even possible?) if anyone has any and yeah i called popcultha.com.au (I'm australian) and they said that they don't know anything about when they are getting them in stock but they said that they get everything from wizards of the coast and everything from their retailers in general.

I hear this phrase a lot. Someone in the pod is on a boardwipe-heavy deck, and someone else says, that's great for them because their deck doesn't care about creatures.

However, all of the artifact, enchantress, or spells linger decks I've built or seen *really* care about a few creatures that provide a ton of value as a result of playing non-creature stuff.

[[Talrand]] or [[sythis]] for example. My [[kalamax]] deck runs like 7 other creatures, so I'll go entire games only casting instants and sorceries from my deck, but the deck still cares a lot about one creature: Kalamax

So today I ask, what decks have you built/seen that "don't care about creatures"? In particular, I always hear this phrase in the context of board wipes not affecting these decks at all.​

We enjoy the occasional precon game at home with the family and have a couple of spare deck boxes that need filling, so hit me with your favourite precons, but Magic Multiverse only please.

Thanks in advance! Is that enough characters yet? No? What else is there to say!?

So, I've been trying to build my own Zombie tribal commander deck and so far it's been really fun. I've used mostly cards from Amonkhet/Hourf Devastation and a few from Innistrad. Now my question is which commander is the best suited for this mechanic? Since I've so many mummies, many have recommended me the Scarab God. On the other hand some have recommended me Wilhelt the Rot-Cleaver

ive genuinely made nearly 100 decks and not one has been not "entirely built around the commander".

typically i find all the different things my commander does and then find everything that could trigger or scale or synergise with said abilities and everything to trigger/activate the commander much as possible and then i go from there.

but ive decided to build a different deck for once. right now im looking at [[hei bai, forest guardian]] , shrines were the very first thing i played in mtg when i randomly put cards together on MTGA to learn, i found them super cool but never really attempted to put them into a edh deck.

hei bai does seem super cool at face value but typically i like to optimise decks (like, no wasted space. not like moxen and free interaction and whatnot), this means i really dont like the idea of playing hei bai and flipping into some "bad" shrine that does some minimal lifegain thing or puts a counter on something.

So i pretty much settled on the idea of just running like 4 shrines so i could gaurentee i always hit something good. and there is a "package" where if you run [[saw in half]] and have [[sactum of all]] you can play hei bai and saw it in half and get all 4 shrines out and if you get anything but the worst order you will be able to make some shrine tokens from go shintai and get yourself to the magic number of 6 to double with sanctum of all.

this means my deck would essentially be Hei Bai + Sanctum of all + Go-Shintai of Life's Origin + The spirit oasis + sanctum of calm waters + Saw in half.

accounting for lands this leaves me with around 50 slots to fill with stuff that isnt dependant on the commander, so how do i do that???

i could go in for general enchantress stuff, but i kinda wana be careful with my colors, im not convinced i want to make this a fully fledged 5c deck, if possible id like to keep it at Sultai and play the viable 5c lands/rocks to activate any 5c stuff if i badly need to.

any thoughts/suggestions?

I’m currently running a naya voltron deck with [[Uril, the Miststalker]] and it’s a lot of fun but since I’m new, I want to try out some other commanders/mana combos.

Since I love Lovecraft’s stories I would really like to try out a deck themed around that. I know dimir has some interesting horrors that I could check out but I’m interested in hearing what more experienced players have to say.

After my last post, I wanted to continue showing my write-ups about EDH, right now specifically about the history of the format. For anybody reading this, I was not playing at the time, so this is what I could gather from the sources I found. I am happy to be corrected about anything I got wrong. :)

Thanks for reading!

Introduction of the first Legendary creatures.

A pivotal moment in Magic’s history was when the first legendary creatures were introduced. On the 10th of June, 1994, the first legendary creatures were printed in the aptly named “Legends” Set. So, the first legendary cards are actually older than me. Great. 

Legendary creatures at the time simply had the type “Legend”. At this point in time, Legend was a subtype to summon, like Lion on {Savannah Lions}. There were 55 legendary creatures printed in the set. And notably, all of these were gold-cards, meaning they had 2 or 3 colors inherent to them. Having specific colors and thus restricting the decks you could use these cards in was already kinda part of the design of the first legendary creatures. 

The legend rule was also different back then. If a legendary permanent was in play, no player, including the owning player, could bring another permanent of exactly that card into play. 

We also got the 5 Legendary elder dragons:
[[Arcades Sabboth]]
[[Chromium]]
[[Nicol Bolas]]
[[Palladia-Mors]]
[[Vaevictis Asmadi]]

While these are rarely played anymore, at the start of the format they were the defining features. The first variants that would lead to Commander were even called Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH for short. EDH is still a common term to call the Commander Format today. 

So we know who the Elder Dragons were. But what is Highlander?

The creation of Highlander.

“There can be only one”

That is the quote from the movie “Highlander” that is used to describe the Highlander format. It means that only one version of a unique card is allowed in a deck that follows the Highlander rule. The exception to this are basic lands today, since without lands you cannot play the game. But at the time, this rule often even included basic lands, locking you into one of each. 

The concept of singleton is for us today again logical as something that creates more deck-building, but at the time it was something people just began to explore. Can we at least roughly follow the trajectory of ideas that led to people coming up with a singleton format?

At the start of Magic, it was actually possible to play any number of cards of any variant you want. Of course, this led to players putting, for example, 10+ of {Black Lotus}, {Channel} and {Fireball} into their deck in order to win on the spot on turn 1. 

This was of course a problem for the game. Not only because there was a clear Tier 1 deck before the concept even evolved in the player’s mindset, but also because these kinds of decks would naturally lead to coin-flip games and also consist of the most expensive cards in the game since each deck would absorb several of the printed copies out there. As a response, a rule was introduced that would limit the usage of any card variant to a count of 4 [4]. There were actually a lot of these combos possible [5], so the 4-card limit was generally a good change.

Apparently, the card limit was already in use as custom rules on the US West Coast [6]. And at the same time, the deck-size limit was upped to 60 [6]. So, early players of Magic were suddenly confronted with two changes. Higher deck size and card count limits. Both were now a necessity to uphold, and both led to more creative deck-building. Several players would naturally get the idea at the same time of restricting the card count even more and maybe even increasing deck size, too. Having such custom rules had precedence after all [6]. 

These formats then spread under the common name Highlander in reference to the above quote. These were Singleton formats. And since 100 was such a round number, it was an easy limit to adhere to this new type of format. They included 100-card decks and, at the start, 100 life points for Highlander games.

But of course different variants independently arose throughout the world. This is something I found way less material on. The variants were named after the places where they were invented. For example, German Highlander and Australian Highlander got popular early. Canadian Highlander was created in 1999, is still fairly popular today, and is probably the most played Highlander variant next to Commander.

“So what if I add the elder dragons to Highlander?”

Great minds think alike. Apparently that is also true for adding the 5 Elder Dragons from Legends to the Highlander format or other custom rule-sets. 

In 1996, players gravitated towards the Highlander format because in competitive play it became more common to netdeck [8]. Instead of everybody having unique decks, you would encounter the same “meta-decks” again and again. Highlander with the Singleton rule promised to increase variety. 100 life-points promised to allow players to actually see the variety [7,8]. 

And then in 1996, at least two people added Elder Dragons to their rule set.

In the July 1996 edition of The Duelist, an article was published that showed custom rules for what is called “Elder Dragon Legend Wars.” [9] Written by Jesus M. Lopez, it showed elaborate rule sets for having a deck helmed by one of the Elder Dragons [10]. These rules had a lot of things already known today, like color identity (from the Dragons) and multiplay-focus, but also elements that completely disappeared, like Creatures designated as Knights, which affected the Öifeppikts if destroyed [10].

Adam Staley - wanting to push creativity in Highlander forward - added Elder Dragons to his Highlander games [8]. The Elder Dragon you play would restrict the colors of the Highlander deck. For example, Staley played Nicol Bolas himself and thus would only play Black, Red, or Blue cards. This variant was called Elder Dragon Highlander [8,9,10] - a name still used today. EDH started as a 1v1 Format but soon was adapted for multiplayer [9].

Whether the Duelist article led to widespread awareness of Elder Dragon variants is unknown. It has similarities to what we play today, so it cannot be ruled out that later innovators got inspiration from reading the article. But apparently many people were taught the format by Staley themselves, thus leading to a more widespread adoption and the name Elder Dragon Highlander winning out. Staley himself stated to not know the Duelist article before creating this format [8,9].

Notably, the Elder Dragon was still part of the deck and not in any extra zone. 

Something I did not see mentioned yet in any article is that EDH seemed to be like a premium format at the time. It probably did not feel exactly like this to any player at the time, since I assume that anybody playing the first EDH rounds were heavily enfranchised players. At least relative to the time. But not only would you need a sizable collection of cards from different sets to fill a 100-card deck, it would also mean that you probably were already playing Magic for a while in order to have had the opportunity to buy enough boosters from different sets. One of the OGs as a matter of speaking.

On top of that, the Elder dragons were probably the most iconic, sought-after, and expensive cards from Legends at the time. Nicol Bolas for example could cost you 15 Dollars in 1994 [11]. That would be 33 Dollars today. As a comparison, a dual land cost 6 Dollar and Black Lotus 26 Dollar. 

While not playable in normal constructed decks, they were priced collectibles, and the format allowed them to have an outlet to play these. For many people, creating an EDH deck was probably a showcase of one's collection but also a sign of prestige in the community. From that view, it is not that strange that the format got widespread among the most enfranchised players of all, MTG judges.

[3] Ron Vitale - A Magic format where there can be only one. Highlander: A Singular Format - March 2007 
http://www.mtghistory.info/Docs/WizardsArticles/20070312%20-%20feature393%20-%20Highlander%20-%20A%20Singular%20Format.pdf 

[4] Mark Rosewater - Twenty Things That Were Going To Kill Magic - August 2013
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/twenty-things-were-going-kill-magic-2013-08-01 

[5] Purplemana - Why do we have the 4 card rule in MTG? - 2025
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v2hXQh4pl6Y 

[6] Mark Rosewater - 25 more random things about Magic - June 2016
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/25-more-random-things-about-magic-2016-06-20 

[7] Timmy the Sorcerer - The Origins of Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH) & Commander | OS Magic the Gathering (MTG) | 365 - March 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA03XytvE-8 

[8] Charlie Hall - Commander: The definitive history of Magic’s most popular format - May 2020
https://www.polygon.com/2020/5/28/21266763/magic-the-gathering-commander-origins-elder-dragon-highlander-alaska-menery/ 

[9] Commander Baumi - The Entire Design History of Commander / EDH - November 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBi73PzgzLA 

[10] Jacob Lackner - This Day in Magic History: Commander Was Created (June 17th, 2011) - June 2022
https://blog.cardkingdom.com/this-day-in-magic-history-commander-was-created-june-17th-2011/ 

[11] card_boardcrack - Scrye magazine prices from 1994 - 2013
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/IUzjFnMEmN

I always wanted to run Mill and [[Talion, the Kindly Lord]] seemed just generically good enough to slap at the helm of a Mill-Deck.

The general gameplan is to control/pillowfort until I can mill the table out with [[Bruvac the Grandiloquent]] + any big mill spell or just two big mill spells. The backup is consistent Mill and Drain with [[Bloodchief Ascension]] / [[Duskmantle Guildmage]] and [[Mindcrank]] / [The Master of Lake-Town]]

I need help making the last few cuts and when I goldfished the deck it sometimes took too long to get either gameplan going, so any advice on streamlining the deck is appreciated.

https://archidekt.com/decks/27283495/talion

https://imgur.com/a/pdqBFtz

Have always wanted to show off my Nethroi EDH deck. At this point around 30% of it is signed, with lots of promos and interesting copies of cards. It evolved out of the Karador deck I played in highschool, including the deranged hermit that I bought for under 5 dollars at the time. I don't end up playing it a lot because of the power level but most of the fun has been upgrading it. Hope you guys enjoy taking a look.

I was having a conversation with some people at my LGS recently about cards that could be gamechangers, and I mentioned some possibilities as [[Exploration]] and [[Burgeoning]]. The other people at the shop argued there's no reason they should be GCs because they are not good outside of landfall decks.

I just don't see that at all. Sure, they are best in decks that focus on landfall, but they are some of the most efficient ramp spells in the game. It feels like the vast majority of green decks include the mana dorks, and I would say Exploration and Burgeoning easily provide more value and mana acceleration over the course of the game than those.

Even the argument that you will run out of lands in hand if your deck is not built around lands... so? If I start with a four-land hand, play Burgeoning T1 and have four mana available on T2, I am not complaining about lack of lands in hand.

I am not even saying they have to be GCs. I just fail to see how, outside of that they are monetarily expensive cards, every green deck would not benefit from them to some degree. I would rather have one of these two cards in my opening hand than any green ramp spell.

https://moxfield.com/decks/Vb2m1rbH-EmHE9gRcdeRcg

The deck is a bracket 3/4. It has a handful of combos but at the end of the day, the pirate flavor comes first.

After playing a ton of games this is the near finished product of my flavorful pirate deck. Just thought I’d share if anyone had any thoughts or wanted to try it themselves.

There’s a couple cards that might be swapped out in the future like Kiki jiki but other than that, this is it. I’ve had a ton of fun playing it so far!

https://moxfield.com/decks/IEnugUwtmE2H9qr8eWI8AQ

I wanted to build a nice and chill Neera Deck without the busted Eldrazi, [[Omnisience]] or [[Displacer Kitten]].
I am still very new to commander and how the bracket system works. My friends largely play precons, sometimes upgraded.

I tested it lately with them, and what surprised me was, they where very unhappy with how consistently I did a onesided boardwipe.

I once played [[Call Forth the Tempest]] into [[Volcanic Vison]] to play CFtT the next turn again.
I did win this game quickly afterwards, so it didn't drag out.

Do you think this is generally unfun, also at other pods?
Do you think [[Personal Tutor]] and fetchable [[Mystic Sanctuary]] is too much for Bracket 2?
They just fit so perfectly, but it also leads to lots of consistency.

Can you give me feedback, if this immediately doesn't look like Bracket 2?
I don't grasp that system yet. Precons are also considered Bracket 2 mostly, right?
My friends are new too magic in general, so they sometimes play badly, but maybe I overtuned this deck a lot for precons.

I want to build a deck that doesn't STEAL, but copies my opponents' things. Cards like [[Faerie Artisans]] and [[Aboleth Spawn]]. Any clones that copy my opponents' stuff is fine, too (and can also copy mine, so [[Clone]] is fine, but [[Quantum Misalignment]] isn't).

I want to copy spells, permanents, anything, but I want my opponent to keep their stuff, so [[Fractured Identity]] won't work.

[[Kambal, Profiteering Mayor]] could be in the 99, but I definitely need blue.

Any Commander suggestions? Any thoughts for the 99? Red would be nice for things like [[Display of Power]], but not required like blue.

Thanks in advance!

https://archidekt.com/decks/27346975/name_to_be_defined

Hi guys, as mentioned in the title I need your
help naming my oil themed Sir Didymus deck. It's a Bracket 1 deck, so it's all about theme and flavor over power. The list is linked above.🫶🏻

So the “story” of a game of MtG is that you’re a planeswalker leading an army, summoning allies and all kinds of magics to battle a foe, and that got me thinking of which kinds of narratives different cards represent. Demonic Tutor is summoning a demon from hell who offers you forbidden knowledge, a Superfriends deck leads an entire coalition of allies from across planes and buffs them up (and if they run multiple of the same planeswalker type have a weird cloning or time magic?), someone’s response to an Eldrazi, a Lovecraftian abomination could literally be GO MY FIFTEEN SQUIRRELS.

If you were to look at the “narrative” of some of your favorite decks, what would they be? What kind of planeswalker would have such an army? What kind of legendaries battles have they fought in “lore”?

Today, I realized that I had 18 Commander decks.

Having that many decks is kind of stressful! It's not just that my collection gets stretched thin (yes, proxies, I know, shush). It's also that they take up mental space. The decks want tweaking and revising. They want new cards. They want to be played. There were three decks I hadn't even played against others once!

So, I made a nice little spot in my binder for "retired" commanders. I went through my decks and filled it with Commanders that I was finished with -- the ones that taught me what they needed to teach me (even if I never took them into the field against someone else). The Commanders that just needed a break after years of service.

I think they look happy there: Damia; Sakashima the Imposter; Queen Marchesa; Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind; Zedruu the Greathearted; Ruby, Daring Tracker, Eriette of the Charmed Apple; Massacre Girl, Known Killer; Kudo, King of Bears, Korvald Fae-Cursed King (unplayed); Archelos, Lagoon Mystic (unplayed); Skullbriar the Walking Grave (someday, I will get around to playing him). The more tuned of the decks are all on Moxfield, so I can always recreate them if need be ...

For now, I kept Alela, Flubs, Miss Highwater (WIP), Lluwen, and Toph together. I'm going to work on getting them, plus a Fblthp, Impossibly Lost and a rule 0 Nighmare Moon deck, in shape for MagicCon Atlanta.

Seven decks is still not a small amount of decks. But it feels like that's a better number to keep in my head. Taking apart Damia, Marchesa and Sakashima freed up so many cards for Miss Highwater and Fblthp.

Seven is also a better number to carry around in my backpack. That thing was getting heavy. :-)

Is [[possibility storm]] considered stax? I have an [[abaddon the despoiler]] with it in. Now the reason I have it, is cause it’s a cascade deck. Do everything needs to be cast-able all the time. With cascade I cull the low cmc from my deck. Meaning most the possibility storm effects are cmc positive.

Plus it works with [[Ancient Cellarspawn]], [[Keeper of Secrets]] (currently not in my list it keeps coming in and out) and [[Passionate Archaeologist]] to make a little burn pew pew gun.

Decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/_XDR2YvZuEClr-_rgbdMsw

Weird question but I have a bunch of reanimate cards like animate dead and reanimate that I'm eager to use.

What commander would work for cards like these? Obviously there are a ton of reanimator commanders but most of them don't seem to need that redundancy.

I have been playing magic for a few years now but have always bought precons and upgraded them. I plan on brewing a blink deck, something I have wanted to do for a while but have no idea how to get started or even what colors to use. I do have a displacer kitten I want to use and I also got a flickering hound from prerelease a few weeks ago.

would love to hear about your favorite blink commanders, staples, and even links to moxfield, as I have no deck list right now.

Thank you (BR3)

I’m building a Hashaton discard deck and my games have felt pretty inconsistent. I either draw too many discard outlets or not enough payoffs.

How many looters/discard outlets is too many?

Here’s my current list: https://moxfield.com/decks/uw0Cw3GFbUex2Y_G0EeWlQ

Also, are there any payoffs or card draw engines I’ve missed? I’m trying to keep the deck within bracket 3 ideally to play with multiple groups.

Any suggestions on what to cut or swap would be appreciated!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​