Commander is a fantastic format; it’s an incredibly wide open format and can be played in a multitude of different ways. From 100 card vintage to 100 card super casual the way you play it all depends on your playgroup. Before you can play however, you have to understand how to build a deck to play! That’s what we’re going to be doing today!
Commander is a singleton format, meaning that you can only have 1 copy of any single card in your deck. The deck building requirements are fairly simple; you have a deck of 100 cards. These 100 cards consist of 99 spells and lands, and your Commander (or General, for you old timers). Your commander is the card that you build around; he leads your army, which means that you can only use cards that fit their color identity. Color identity is a tricky thing, and I explain it on relatively basic terms in the video.
Once you have your commander selected, it’s time to start picking cards to go in the deck. What I’m going to illustrate for you today is how to go about doing that in a simple, but very effective way. Your commander deck will usually play anywhere from 35-38 lands on average, but there are many decks that can utilize 49-55 lands.
7×9 Commander Deck Building
I’m going to teach you a rule, this rule is called the 7×9 rule. It’s actually very easy to understand; in a 60 card deck, you normally pick about 9 cards that you want to have 4 of each (a 4×9), which essentially leaves you with 23 lands. In our case we need to fill 100 slots, so we follow the 7×9 rule, except we don’t have 4 of’s and we need way more than 9 cards.
What the rule has you following then, is that you need to have 9 different categories of cards which will each contain 7 of that cards effect. This allows you to easily build consistency into your deck, even if it’s your first time building. Your commander is contained in one of these categories, and this leaves you with 37 slots left over, which conveniently enough is right where you want to be mana base wise.
Today we’re going to take a look at an Erebos, God of the Dead deck that I’m putting together. I’ve laid out the decklist below by each category, in the video, you’ll see how each card fits into each category.
Erebos, God of the Dead EDH Deck
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