Stop Casting Your Commander
The format's namesake is warping your deckbuilding.
I know what you’re thinking. “Ben, why would I want to stop casting my commander in Commander? Commander is literally the name of the format! How can you play Commander if you aren’t casting your commander?” Let me tell you, reading your mind is making me sick of the word “commander” — but maybe that’s actually a good thing.
Commander was once a safe haven for everyone to play their favorite janky, high-cost legendary creatures and bad bomb mythics, a brewer’s paradise where anyone could bring anything. In recent years, as Commander has become more popular, it’s no secret that the design of legendary creatures has become more and more focused on creating exciting potential commanders for players to pick up and build a fun deck around. These days, it seems like most straight-to-Commander legends are efficient, streamlined threats that generate a lot of value or pressure the board quickly. Many of these commanders are both an engine and a payoff in a single card, cutting out a lot of the need for support and infrastructure from your main deck. As the “meta,” as much as there is one, is becoming more and more centralized around these powerful and versatile all-in-one commanders, the format is slowly but surely cutting down on turn count.
I’ll cut to the chase. Truthfully, building your deck to be less focused on your commander is a bit of a crackpot theory. While many modern legendary creatures are evaluated to be kill-on-sight — looking at you, Voja — it can be difficult to pin down certain Commanders, and they will end the game quickly if left unchecked. That being said, too many players tend to build their decks to be too dependent on their super-busted card draw engine or board flooder stapled to their command zone.
If your deck is not capable of protecting and preserving your commander on board, this can quickly become an issue if the rest of your deck is unable to function. This is a common theme of several high-volume kindred decks, like Goblins, Dragons, Dinosaurs, and so on. Each of these kindred strategies tend to treat their commander like a keystone that the rest of the deck leans on. Goblins famously run out of steam extremely quickly if Krenko, Mob Boss is removed repeatedly, for example. That’s not to say that a Dinosaur deck won’t stomp you into the dirt just because Pantlaza, Sun-Favored was removed once or twice, but the deck tends to lose a lot of the explosive speed at which it can flood the board without her.
So, what are some practical ways you can actually build your deck to function without your commander? The first and probably easiest method is to build a lot of redundancy into your deck for the effect you want out of your commander. If you’re playing a Neriv, Heart of the Storm burn deck, you have a ton of options in red for damage doublers or even triplers to keep the pain train chugging. Just be careful not to run too much redundancy for your commander. If your deck is filled with too many cards that all play the same role, you will struggle to actually initialize your main strategy. Your Marwyn, the Nurturer Elfball list may start to generate too much mana without many ways to spend it if all of your Elves generate mana without actually having any available ways to smoke all that green.
A second way to help your deck function without your commander in play is to select a strategy that isn’t as linear or focused. Control archetypes, for example, famously run staxy commanders with generic effects that can restrict opponents while they lock down the board and win with a combo or noncombat win condition like Laboratory Maniac or Thassa’s Oracle. These types of decks run a lot of interaction and board wipes, as well as unconditional card draw or tutor effects to dig for a way to close the game out as opposing players are forced to twiddle their thumbs or dig through bulk bins at the store.
One way I like to build my decks to be less reliant on a commander is to build them in reverse order. Instead of seeing a cool commander in a pile of cards and wanting to build it, sometimes I will come up with an uncommon strategy or specific synergy that I want to showcase in a deck. While this particular deck hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, it’s a pretty good example of what I mean.
I started with a concept for an Izzet deck that focused more on combat and goading than on typical archetypes available in that color combination. I wanted to play a lot of the more esoteric clone spells in these colors, specifically Dack’s Duplicate, which would not just clone my opponent’s creatures, but enhance them or make them even more threatening. The deck is adaptive because it can play more to emphasize enters triggers and outvalue opponents with their own creatures, or drop big haymaker clones with improvements and smash face. I decided to use Alora, Merry Thief with an on-theme background to give me a way to “reset” my clones so that I could continue to use valuable enters triggers over and over if I wanted to, reselect a new haymaker to clone for the next turn, or simply “protect” my threatening clones by tucking them back in my hand for safekeeping.
I hope you enjoyed today’s article! Do you have any decks that are more main deck-focused? What methods do you employ to try and pull the focus away from the commander of your deck? Ping me on EDHLAB’s Discord at @shadedfall with your list and we can share ideas for how to continue to innovate in our favorite format!
Continue Improving Your Commander Gameplay
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When Ben Alban-Berth isn't taking awkward promotional selfies and casting Craterhoof Behemoth on empty boards, he plays roguelikes and Dota 2 and promises people that he will finish his novel soon (he won't).
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