Hello all you magic-playin fools out there! Today we are going to start a series of articles focusing on building your first Commander/ EDH deck. This format is a style of constructed magic, formerly called Elder-Dragon Highlander (EDH), now known as commander. I still call it EDH cause I’m old-enough school, but to be proper we will go by the official terms from here on out. This style started out as a casual format, but since it is so much fun and so many people enjoy it, there are Commander tourneys starting to pop up here and there. Wizards of the Coast has even recognized this and is now producing cards specifically for this format. You’ve probably heard of this format before, but if you haven’t or if you want to give it a shot (and I totally recommend doing so), check out the office page here and read on!

You can check out all the rules in that last link, but for a quick rundown of the differences from normal constructed, I have composed neat bullet points for good happy success.

Deck Construction rules:

• You must choose one Commander (formally known as a general). It must be a legendary creature, and the legendary rule still applies (so don’t build an Adun Oakenshield deck if your friend already has an Adun Oakenshield deck, cause once they are both out, they are immediately both dead).
• Including the commander, your deck must have 100 cards, none of which may have the same name, except basic lands, and none of them may include a color that is not represented in your commander. So if you pick Doran, The Siege Tower for a commander, you cannot put counterspell in your deck. You may only put in cards that include white, black and/or green mana symbols. You may use artifacts and lands as long as they do not contain red or blue mana symbols.
• See the official site for cards banned from Commander. Obviously, in casual circles, you can throw banned lists out the window, however, these cards are banned for a reason. If your goal is to have a good time, these cards may get in the way of that.

Rules of Play:

• Start off by placing your commander in the Command Zone, I like to call it the command center cause it reminds me of Die Hard. This is a spot on the table where nothing else is going to go. Make sure you clean this spot thoroughly because commanders like tidy centers. Your life total starts at 40 and you draw 7 cards.
• You can put your commander onto the battlefield by paying his casting cost when he is in this zone. He can’t be targeted in this zone, think of it as a type of exiled. Once he’s in play, normal rules apply. If he would be put in the graveyard or exiled, you have the option of instead putting him in the command zone. He costs 2 colorless mana more to cast for each time after the first that he was put in the command zone. I like to use “+2″ counters to keep track of this. So if your commander’s casting cost is WW, the first time you play him from the command zone, he costs WW. The second time you play him from the command zone it’s 2WW. Then 4WW and so on.
• If you chose to let him go to the graveyard or exile, he will not get a +2 counter, but you lose the option of whisking him away to the command zone until he would enter the graveyard or get exiled again. Strategy note: I can’t think of a scenario where you’d want to let him go to exile. However, if you have a way of reanimating a creature, say like animate dead, or something that triggers when your guys hit the G-yard, like say a Butcher of Malakir, you can trigger that Butch and avoid the +2 counter by letting your commander go to the graveyard. Just be careful, you don’t want an opponent casting a rise from the grave and ganking your commander!
• You lose when your life drops to, or below, 0. You also lose if you take 21 or more points of combat damage from 1 particular commander. This is called commander damage and you might want to have a piece of paper handy to keep track of how much “commander damage” your commander has done to each opponent. 10 and 11 points of combat damage from two different commanders don’t kill you, and you can’t ping someone with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind 21 times to kill them by commander damage, because it has to be combat damage.

There you have the rules for the purposes of this article, we can now look at how to start building. I’ve covered almost everything, but I urge you to check out the official rules, or to have them handy when you start playing. Now when cards are printed with certain rules in mind, and then are used with a set if different rules, some of the cards gain or lose value (by value I mean power relative to casting cost). Once you have an understanding of the rules, you’ll start to pick out some of these cards. Below are some examples of these implications and things to consider. This series will continue with 3 more articles about this, outlined below:

1. Your commander is by far your most important card in the deck, as he will be used probably every game, can keep coming back, and determines the colors that your other cards can be. Due to the “commander damage” rule, commanders with evasion abilities (flying, trample, haste, unblockable, intimidate, etc) have greater value in Commander than in normal constructed. The next article will be all about selecting a good commander.
2. The 99 other cards each suffer a loss in value, generally speaking, due to their lack of reliability, though there are some exceptions. The next article will take a look at the non-commander cards in the deck and we will complete our commander deck based around the commander chosen previously.
3. In any multiplayer games, it is important to consider the “politics” of your card choices. This article will take a look at various commanders, cards and entire decks with the focus of multiplayer politics, since a lot of Commander is played in groups. we’ll also wrap up the series.

That’s it for now, hope you’ll tune in next time!

-Anthony “advancing an art form and depantsing a fart storm” JS