How i build a deck, step 1: throw something together on edhrec, step 2: i show my friend whos been playing for 15+ years, he is disgusted then fixes it. Step 3: Done
Haha same. Build deck then tweak with edhrec. Get my ass handed to me by my much more veteran friends in our weekly match, then take notes of what they'd adjust.
😂😂 i feel like everyone has that friend that has the magic touch. That 1 friend that just knows how to streamline your idea after you have a rough "draft" varient
a couple weeks ago my bf and I tried something and had a blast- we pulled up an online random movie picker and built commander decks based on the movies we picked! I got "Tall Girl" and built a rainbow superfriends deck comprised entirely of tall women. My boyfriend got the movie "Edward Scissorhands" and built a sword-of deck that equips every single sword to his commander named Edgar. we both spent a few hours building what turned out to be super powerful decks and had an incredibly fun couple of games. 10/10 experience I would highly recommend doing this with friends!
Great points here! I think each method has pitfalls. The first method, sideways has more in common with bottom up than top down. This is because both are heavily centered around a foundation of a theme and the commander is an afterthought. However, the theme in bottom up is based around the game and the theme in "sideways" building is based on flavor and fun, rather than the actual game. I would agree it is inherently weaker, but it's possible to make a great deck. The biggest pitfalls with bottom up are picking a weak theme, which might as well be "sideways" deck building or picking a random commander just because you like them and they help the colors. To me, the point of commander is having a Commander, so top down really makes sense as the preferred method, but one must make sure the deck plays without the commander. My scarecrows deck plays like table police when my commander is out, but functions as 5 color artifact combos without the Reaper King and it is perfectly fun and serviceable. But I agree it is nice to see more bottom up building, especially for people who are way too salty.
Top down or bottom up.... is it too much to ask for both? Select a Commander, make a decision about which theme works best with that commander. Then build 99 cards bottum-up on that theme in those colours. If you want some additional commander synergy just take a second pass through the 99 & see if there are any cards that could be cut in favour of something more synergistic: you'll have a much more critical eye when you actively have to cut a card to push extra commander synergy into the deck.
I've been doing this lately, I find a commander that I like, then build a deck bottom up to suit. I stay away from common themes. Eg I built a breya deck, I focused on a blink and direct damage theme. It plays well with or without breya, but built with breya in mind.
I think this method had been my most successful overall. The strategy is, find a commander I zen with, then work out a theme that that commander can assist, THEN build that. I do use top down sometimes but Yea those do seem to whiff more often.
This is the best of both methods imo, sure you could get more unique decks bottom up but there's a chance there aren't commanders you like for your decks theme, even if there's synergy.
This is what I typically do. Find a commander in colors I want, see what I want to do with it, and then build a deck that runs along the same/similar themes to that idea. I've never really understood the idea of only doing one or the other since I just do both lol
Bottom up might result in a more effective deck, but it also results in the most common version of the theme you've chosen, and the commander you pick will often end up barely related to the rest of the deck. At that point, you're not really playing "commander", you're just playing 99 card singleton with a bonus card. Yes, Distorting Wake is bad even in a Hinata deck, but it feels much more like a Hinata card than the alternative multibounce options do, and in turn makes it feel more like you're playing with/against a "Hinata deck", as opposed to a standard WUR deck that happens to sometimes have Hinata out. The goal of any game is to have fun, and unless you're the kind of person who just enjoys winning, the most fun you're going to have is going to come from finding the right balance point between commander-centric synergy, broader thematic/subthematic synergy, and basic power level. The strongest possible deck is rarely the most fun possible deck. The right power level is the power level that allows you to win a reasonable proportion of the time while sacrificing the minimum deck identity.
I hadn't played for over 20 years and just got back into Magic last summer and started playing EDH. I have some decks I basically net decked, but trying to brew my own now so i found this very helpful. Thanks!
I’m right there with you buddy, I quit around Urzas Saga and just now got back in with the release of the Clue themed set. Imagine my shock when NOBODY in my local card shop had a 60 card duel deck and they all had these ginormous 100 card decks and you can only have 1 of each card? Seems like a marketing ploy to sell more cards.
that is is gonna be a shock when you realize most players don't even have a 60 card deck anymore. EDH was made by players though which is pretty sweet!@@rootfish2671
Ha, I'm over halfway through making a Rule 0 metal deck! All the cards have names of metal bands/metal songs or a metal reference. I got Tezzeret, Master of Metal as the commander, then cards such as Deicide, Suffocation, Killswitch, Iron Maiden, Roots, Puppet Master, all the cards with Slayer in the title, Lord of the Pit and all creatures with Embalm. Cos they make White Zombies 🤘
Bottom-up construction is something I've done a tiny bit of in the past, but moreso just to find a commander to play with. However, a few months ago I watched that Salubrious Snail video about making midrange decks, and it's kind of like a bottom-up deck design philosophy. The gist is that you look at your commander not as a card to build around but rather a card that will always be in your opening hand, using that to help cover any weakness your deck might have. Using this strategy, I made an Elfball deck online that can jam out a ton of mana pretty easily, but since they're all Elves, they tend to be pretty cheap and there aren't that many outlets. The commander I chose to fix that problem? Zacama. Had I looked at Zacama first and tried to build down from there, I don't think Elf Tribal would have been my first thought. It may not have even occurred to me. But it made for a cool concept!
I appreciate the consistency of bottom up design, but I'm rarely inspired to build a new deck until I see a commander that I jive with enough to take the time to build. I'm willing to accept the feast or famine gameplay, but I do try to ensure there are still ways to win even if my commander becomes unavailable.
Ive taken a blend as of recent with my deck building. My last deck was built with the idea “i want to make a companion deck that utilizes partner commanders, thus i can say i have a 3 commander commander deck”. From there, i took that idea, and came to the conclusion that i want my deck to generate a ton of mana, that way I could cast my companion whenever i desired. This lead me to use one of the green companions, and ultimantly i felt keruga to be the most fun pick for the deck. Theme in mind, rather than looking for deck pieces, i went looking for commanders, and stumbled upon erinis and a blue background. Thus, my simic self mill/ landfall deck all in service of my hippo overlord was born. And the deck is so bonkers good. Underplayed commanders mean you can monilith the commander a bit, since no one is going to remove a commander who has done nothing for 4 turns when a prosper deck is across the table… but my deck is so crazy that by turn 7 i tend to run out of basic lands in my deck (all 19)
I had a skeleton deck where I made everyone weak by humility and -1-1 everything, basically forcing everyone down to my level of power and slowly throwing literally piles of bones at people just to make them get back up/regenerate and win. It won more often than I ever expected it to.
Yes, but sometimes that's just the risk I am willing to take. Part of the fun of running different commanders is getting the opportunity to run cards that are generally bad in other decks. Like, there's probably numerous better artifact/enchantment destruction spells I could be running over Seal of Primordium in my Muldrotha deck, but it's really cool to get good value out of a random card I had that I would have otherwise never used. It does suck that my deck's power level takes a hit whenever the commander isn't out, but that's why I've got to treat it like is something worth keeping out. If my commander's getting pinged off the table so many times that I can't summon it anymore, then it's clearly my fault for not playing in a way that allows me to protect what I consider a important part of my strategy.
Bottom up design is exactly why I sit on deck ideas for years. Currently I am waiting on a synergistic commander that lets me play cards from your library. I'd like to be in grixis so I have access to more cards that do this thing, but a good commander for it was printed in dimir, so I'm basically considering options.
I've honestly done a bit of all three (mostly the latter two). Top down works really well for commanders that essentially BEG to be the crux of the deck and just by design are essentially needed to make the deck function just by what they do (Prosper for example, or Tawnos Solemn Survivor) but it's almost a requirement that a lot more of the deck is going to need to consist of a solid protection suite to keep your commander alive or reduce the impact of the tax (flicker/blinks, fake your death effects in black, hexproof/indestructible effects, command beacon/netherborn altar effects, etc). The bottom up tends to be a lot more self sufficient but also tend to be a bit more vague and nebulous in terms of optimal ways to pilot the deck, which can be a bit of a downside for newer players or if you want an extremely streamlined play pattern.
While I definitely agree that bottom up decks are more consistent, as I’ve been making more of those style decks recently, I also find they lack that “wow” factor specifically unique to commander decks. Your deck does a thing well and it does it great, that’s cool. But so is seeing some random draft shaft card that does nothing on its own suddenly win somebody the game because the group was focused on other scarier threats then their commander at the table.
I don’t think that wow factor is unique to top down design. When I say bottom up is more consistent it means it’s less feast or famine. Urza can be designed top down and have zero wow factor
I'd argue that that's just something you can implement in the deck after the fact? Whereas if you do it top down you might cram the deck with too many of those effects vs if you had to remove other functional cards to fit in the unique cards
@@Ultinuc I can agree with that point and is something I tend to do with my bottom up decks. I think mainly what I was focused on is something I find myself seeing more and more is commander decks that have nothing to do with the commander and just run as many staples in the colors they choose as they can when there are so many interesting legendary creatures to build around in this format. Now of course there is complications like if the colors you want to go in don't inherently support your strategy or if you are trying to go for a more hidden commander deck but even then there tend to be ways to have your commander do something meaningful if you ever get to casting them or have sneaky hidden synergy of their own.
Sorta also a Top Down design, but starting at a different point is when you build around a secret Commander in the 99. Usually a card that isn't allowed to be in the Command Zone normally and then you chose cards around that and how to get your secret commander into play reliably and keep it there.
I think that top-down works, so long as you are willing to dedicate slots to commander protection. I run a Niv deck, and that can be rough because people see him hit the board, and you usually dont get to untap before he's gone. However, he is the engine that drives that deck. So, to make sure he stays on the board, I have a good 6-7 slots dedicated to just cards that will keep him on the there, and i dont play him until i get a card in hand that i can use for protection. I have an anhelo deck that runs similarly, although tbf in that case, Anhelo just makes my big scary spells bigger and scarier, so its less crucial that he hits the board, and he doesnt have the same infamy as Niv. Keeping in mind the way people perceive certain cards and commanders, even when deckbuilding, is really important, and i think it can make a top-down style work.
This has been exactly my experience with Vorinclex, MR. I’m running Boots, Greaves, Commander’s Plate (A very kind LGS owner threw it in with a 200+$ order when I mentioned I wanted one but couldn’t justify the expense), Tamiyo’s, Heroic Intervention, Snakeskin Veil, Silkguard (Kamigawa Strive that also Hexproofs everything Modified, and protects Equips/Auras), and Smuggler’s Surprise. My deck will function just fine if he goes, but I know he’s KoS and have to plan for the enmity of the entire table.
Container built, I have three things I want to do. Play instants, draw cards and punch people, so I build each container with cards that do that well and pick a commander that fits with all 3, like Bria
I mean one thing about top down building is that it really lets you build with weird random cards you won’t see anywhere else which in my opinion is a good thing because you get to use a lot more unique stuff and it’s fun to do that and you can’t really see anywhere else
Excellent video! I saw this recently with my brother building a deck that could synergize with some favorite enchantments of his: Death's Presence, Feed the Pack, and Gutter Grime. He ended up picking Skullbriar as the commander not as a voltron but as value town for those synergies in a recursion-heavy deck. Bottom-up building makes for some cool concepts that actually work in gameplay! You explained the concept very well.
this video helped me out a ton with one of my recent decks! I was doing top to bottom, but playtesting was going awful, so I recently rebuilt it bottom to top and now its more consistent and honestly better.
My bottom up commander was The Tenth Doctor and Susan Foreman. I wanted to do big mana and cascade so I went with Temur. Susan Foreman gave me a reliable mana dork on turn 2 which means every turn 3 I would have 4 mana. So I did the only logical thing...I put in every functional reprint of Explosive Vegetation (15ish) I could find. That gave me, with 3 lands and a EV a progressive turn 2, 3, and finally turn 4 with The Tenth Doctor and an attack from Susan Foreman to trigger his first effect. I do not care if she survives combat, just gets the trigger. From turn 5 onward I would have a base 5+ mana for big spells, The Tenth Doctor trigger from any attacks I could make, and getting into the battlecruiser style of commander 3 or even 4 turns ahead of most tables. Not to mention doing so CONSISTENTLY. Legit my favorite deck in years, pilots like a dream. Best of all it is random enough from cascade that the first 3 turns being basically a flow chart doesn't even impact how fun it is and how varied games get.
I actually use a top->down and back method. I usually have a theme/concept based around a commander AND a concept, allow myself to 'overbuild' it with too many subthemes and "oh this looks cool" type cards then go back and ask how the deck would win, what it's engines are, how does each subtheme contribute/work with everything else and then slim it down based on that. To give an example, I built a Lord of the Nazgul deck with a changeling package. So included stuff like maskwood nexus and black market connections to make more changelings along with some copy effects to get the wraith payoff. I then realized I had a decent group of faerie/flash relevant payoffs and that there were some good token generation/on enemy turn effects in faerie tribal, so I went back through the deck and added isochron scepter, focused less on sorceries and more on instants, added in more cards with flash and some cheap faerie payoffs and leaned into the slow drain and value generation aspect over 'just making a ton of wraiths and trying to make them 9/9s' side. The deck functions much better than it's original version, is fairly unique and has alternate win options if the commander dies because I still have tribal payoffs that aren't just 'make wraiths'
I don't think I've ever built a deck that was commander first until very recently. I built a Kardur deck because I found Eater of Days, and the idea of just, jamming Kardur, then dropping eater of days and leaving the table for a couple rounds made me laugh so hard that I built it. Did a demon subtheme, and now I have a demon deck that makes me overwhelmingly happy and pulls off some nasty Shenans, and my commander functions mostly as a "the board is getting weird, why don't you all fight about it" card. It's almost a teferi's protection if you time it right.
Usually i build a deck around what a commander DOES, like my preators voice atraxa deck, I wanted to build a counters deck (not infect lol), so I added cards that focus on counters and added cards that helped the deck do that, with atraxa just being the cherry on top, blostering what I wanted to do, knowing she would help me extra
This was great insight - I was so focused on glorifying my Commander that I forget the other 99 cards are on the main stage most of the time! Thanks :)
Can confirm my favorite decks to play are bottom up designs. Jund Stompy with Ziatora, Bant Merfolk with Falco Spara, and Rakdos Enchantress with Mogis are all decks where my commander is not the main focus but help the gameplan
One major pitfall with bottom-up deck building is the lack of a commander-specific color identity from the outset. This often leads to 4 and 5-color decks that are even more reliant on Treasure tokens than on their commander. Regardless of how you feel about Treasures, token-hate is starting to give graveyard-hate a run for its money.
I love your take and really wish more commander players were like this. I feel like the over abundance of busted precon commanders have turned everyone into top down players that get bent out of shape when you remove their kill on sight commanders that their decks NEED in play. Very refreshing to see other people with a similar viewpoint to me.
Yeah, but I'm too cheap to build from scratch. And I'd never make a good enough deck without something to get started with. So I'm precon all the way, baby!
When I build a deck, I also like to find other cards that do roughly what the commander does, as a back up. Like I built a necrobloom deck and used field of the dead, zopandrel+ unnatural growth, etc etc.
This is EXACTLY what i wanted. I just started to build a deck to play with some buddies after being out for a while. I really wanted the deck to function without the commander. I settled on OTJ's olivia pre-con and upgraded it. I enjoy the outlaw theme and when in doubt i cam still slam them sideways for a kill or do something like revel in riches for a win.
My favourite deck is an angel life gain deck which was built bottom-up. When I got into commander, I knew I wanted to build an angel lifegain + reanimator deck, since this has been my mainplaystyle in other formats. It started out as an orzhov deck, then went pure white and is back to orzhov again. It went through 6 commanders allready. It is like that band that keeps looking for the perfect member. Right now it is the new sorin. And since it is full of angels, it is called Sorins Power Puff Girls.
My process of deck building always looks like this. 1. Randomly stumble opon a commander and thinking "Lol you are whacky, let's be friends" 2. Search cards from top to bottom for commander synergy 3. Building from bottom to top. Basically "best of both worlds"
This is why I prefer pantlanza over gishath, because pantlaza just helps the engine going faster, but the deck absolutely does not need pantlaza in play for it to go crazy. Whereas gishath is built in a certain way where you are trying to ramp him out asap, if someone removes him then well, gg.
Kinda makes me think of how I built an Extus, Oriq Overlord deck around the idea of using Zada, Hedron Grinder to exploit magecraft. Had I not started with that idea, things like Krenko, Mob Boss, Traitor's Clutch, and Fungal Infection would've never crossed my mind, even if more blatant combo pieces like Leonin Lightscribe, Sedgemoor Witch, and Storm-Kiln Artist would've. As an extra note, Extus helps me get combo pieces into play easier on top of just being a magecraft commander and thus getting helped by Zada.
My method is: 1) Select commander 2) Determine the win condition 3) Add a suite of draw, ramp, and removal in my colors that either synergize with my commander, play into my win condition, or are too good to pass up 4) Decide 3-4 things the deck needs to be able to do in order to satisfy its win condition, and add a suite of cards that do that for each thing 5) Add a suite of "fun cards," cards that just synergize extremely well with the commander but don't fall into another category, pet cards I never leave home without, or fun, bombastic cards that do cool things. 6) Add lands. I usually shoot for an even split of basics, mana fixing, and utility lands. I do not have the budget for fast mana bases.
Ive tried all of these attempts, and tbh, ive had fun with them all! My sideways deck is my kykar second sun deck, top down is my momir vig bioVisionary deck and bottom up was my sisay shrines deck. Theyre my signature decks!
I now understand whether the difference between the functionality of my "vanifar" deck, which I very much designed bottom up, and my "kethis" deck which is just a legendary pile that takes advantage of kethis specifically
I would just like to add that you shouldn't be afraid to change things up if a particular deck either doesn't live up to your expectations or just gets boring after a while. I have a Rielle, the Everwise deck that originally started with Arjun, the Shifting Flame. The deck has gone through several iterations (chaos, wheels, spellslinger, combo, etc.) until I finally found what worked for me and the way I like to play. Many commanders are flexible enough to be used in a handful of different playstyles, and if you like a specific commander, don't tunnel vision with them into a single playstyle. Switch it up.
Nice video ! Personnally I have my own way of making my commander decks. It's not optimal but it gives a lot of punch. And I'll give the name of the sledge strategy juste because it's fun. You start as a top down commander (you go down the hill with your sludge) when you build it, you take your commander then you put every cards that work with it in your deck. Then you select your cards so that you get around 63-64 nonland (generally with around 10 ramp, 10 draws, 2-3 boardwipe that all work with the commander). Every good cards that were cut are put aside. Then you start doing bottom up (you take your sludge to the top), by taking every cards you've put in the deck and think "does this work with another card in the deck, like at least 2 or 3, if my commander wasn't there". Then once you're finished cutting cards, you do the top down all over again (with less cards to add of course) Edit : if there is not enough cards that work with each other, the method doesn't work and you're commander is too useful for the strategy. In this case I put a lot of protection for my commander or ways to get it back since he's that much of the center of the strategy
Step 1. Make a list of every card that's ever been printed that fits the gameplan / theme and can go in the deck. 2. Cull that down over several passes until there's only ~50 left. 3. Add some more removal / ramp / etc to smooth it out.
I sometimes use the bottom up method, but I usually find myself doing the top down method while keeping away from a lot of the effects that rely on my commander. I will add some of the payoff is great, but not too many. A good ideology while building is add cards that are good on their own and great with your commander out.
My favourite decks are goofy tribal decks that always start by going on scryfall to just search up that goofy theme, so this really resonated with how I brew
i am very casual, but my method usually is a balance between top down and bottom up. the commander is kept in mind, but the commander is there to set the theme for the deck, rather than rely on him. a lot of the time, i fall into combo decks like Niv-Mizzet draw combos or like when I started building for Mahadi and found stuff like Supernatural Stamina and Feign Death giving infinite sac capability on a single creature. but- i'm seeing other value as well in things like Arahbo decks wanting cat tribal or Morska simply enabling and benefiting from more of a draw value deck than an explosive draw your entire deck deck like Niv-Mizzet.
i almost always design top down, and usually just run at least 10 cards to protect my commander in one way or another, whether its reanimation, return to hand, etc. something like Snap is basically a protection spell for your commander, as well as being just generally a good option
I think bottom up is good, but people might already have a commander in mind, so this is what I would do. I would choose a commander and build something around it, then I would add cards that can help get to the main strategy of the deck, and finally I would add in the lands and ramp cards. This is similar to the top down strategy, but it could end up with a better structure.
For a while now I've been building decks from the top-down or a mix of top-down and bottom-up, either going for the same tribe the commander have or the theme it provides.
I actually told my roommate this last night. He built a Rakdos, Lord of Riots demon sub theme deck. His problem became if Rakdos wasn't on the board, all of his creatures became too expensive to cast without the cost reduction from Rakdos. I suggested his next steps for the deck should be adjusting the deck in such a way that it's still playable without Rakdos on the board.
I play Rakdos, There's a few pay x cards that synergize well with him, but without lower cost cards to support him, he can feel pretty bad to play. My favorite tactic is using cards that hurt me and everyone else equally. Spiteful visions, roiling vortex, sire of insanity, havoc festival, heartless hidetsugu, spear spewer. It's like holding everyone hostage but then telling them I point the gun at myself sometimes.
Me and my friends personally do something of a toptobottomup design u could say. We find the commander that seems interesting to us and we want to build around first. Then after having a commander selected we can focus on actual theme of the deck that would work with the said commander. Once the theme is established its bottomup design from there (but no risk of running random ahh commander)
The deck I'm working on right now exists because I said to myself "The best creature, Mayhem Devil, isn't legendary. How do I build a Mayhem Devil deck?" Not sure which of these methods that counts as, but *Juri, Judge and Executioner* has quickly become a pet deck.
Funny you mentioned mardu goad. I wanted to do that and realized a lot of the goad commanders goad off of attack triggers, and that goading opponents is a way to trigger "when any player attacks" triggers. So I built the deck and put isshin into the command zone. The deck does fine without him but he makes it twice as good when in play. This also meant I could run cards like bitterthorn for ramp as they synergized with both my game plan by attacking and my commander who doubles it.
I opened a Hinata in the prerelease and I built the deck and played it exactly one time and put it away forever. I don't know how I would rebuild it, but it was definitely a learning experience for me.
A deck i really want to play around with is the Infinite Armory- equipment artifacts and cards that synergize off having equipment or allow you to get the armory out.
Alternate method. The layering method. You find a theme and idea around a kinda sideways method. You then go top down on it to help tune it. Maybe even include some play testing. Then bottom up it. If you do it properly you can also use also use other tools to figure out draw rates for combos and other consistency based things as well as mana requirements and best methods of color splits. Using this method for a kinda unusual and fringe marchese the black rose deck. Idea is control but not typical grixis control. And based around rogues and a few party cards despite not being the best mechanic as far as party goes. Goblins and fae mixed in. And some support from out side creatures. Idea is try and have a wide array of buffers and ways to generate counters. And making use of flicker blur phase and sac outlets for enter the battlefield effects. Gonna be doing a bunch of stealing with some cards. But also heavy mill and copying spells and making use of grave retrieval. Idea is a bit of a hyper control and combo deck. But based around an aggro form of control and controlling multiple aspects of the game. Krenko combos for goblin tokens. Simmalacrum combos for land ramp heavy. Demonic tutor and the creature version along with goblin recruiter and some other tutors for cool set up combos. Sengir for making use of skirk prospector and palishak mons sac outlet damage combos with krenko. Like 10 goblins and a dirty combo. Lots of legendary creatures. But a bit of a competitive level fringe deck. Some popular and commonly used cards but in a bit of a fringe aspect. Few interesting combos. But a lot of mill and exile. Ability to steal lands and table wipe by turn 8 on perfect opening hand. But also built to handle long game and not going for the most perfect uber win fast plays. Fae trickery on like a horror movie and old school medieval fairy tales type vibes. Bringing some goblins and vampires and horrors. But alot of fae are rogues and same with goblins. Easy to buff them with counters and also reduce casting costs. Same on the instants and sorceries side. And alot of anti human theme cards that add alot of additional support. But add in sengir and I have a giant big bad based off sacrificing combos with token creatures and stuff that'll come back. Smaller creatures makes the whole dethrone thing easier and let's you get rolling early game. But dead eye and a known untap artifact equipment combo piece with a few pieces makes for a gnarly combo. Krenko makes goblins you sac goblins for red and other colors. You desd eye and untap but can tutor out loads of cards or use many many spells you tutor out in a turn. Or ramp every land left in your deck tapped onto the field. Fast lands slow lands and others. You can tune it down to where you have a higher likelihood of getting those onto the field untapped. And use alot of other good untapped lands and shock lands. Shock lands and gain lands don't fully balance out but you wanna have less life points early on. Side sideways thoughts went into the deck. But then top down and bottom up to make it work properly. Think the old fae stuff and d&d type fae stuff. Mixed with the whole Ralph from Simpsons uh oh I'm in trouble. And a series of unfortunate events. Meets Lovecraft a lil bit. And hellboy with the tooth faeries. You will be swarmed. You will be tricked and manipulated. And you won't know how bsd it is till it's too late generally. And strong enough to hold it's own. But designed to gain steady advantage and ramp. And also be able to target various areas of opponents weaknesses and handle them decently well via a control deck philosophy. Methods of goading other players creatures and punishment for not being able to fully stop the decks movements due to counters and trickery. And seemingly small fry just annoying. Keeps people off your back. You appear to be a relatively creature side weak fae control deck in grixis colors. Or a swarm deck built not the best. But it synergizes well. And some of the stuff is meant to be held back. Example. Token swarm of 1 1 goblins with some counters. Bit scary but small fry when you see them using it as partial resources for mana ramp and not going infinite. But add pashalik mons and bam damage. Add the combo pieces for krenko. And hobgoblin bandit and sengir and it's a no matter what almost table wipe or board wipe and direct attack while you maintain everything. Enough spell counters set up and yeah. Mill let's you make strong use of pyschic intrusion. Copy a spellcounter. Now any mana and repeated usage. Which also works with cycling counters. Zombie decks are the only potential real issue or uber fast decks. And if you appear small threat assessment is a thing.
Think it's worth mentioning as an extension of bottom up design - you can further refine your cards by picking a strategy as well. Like if you're building auras you can go for an aggro strategy with lots of pumps and keywords, or a more midrange strategy with lots of repeatable auras (rancor etc) to trigger enchantresses over and over. Great vid!
My first custom commander deck ( a solid 7) was somehow all of these at once. I went in knowing I wanted to do wolf tribal, and knowing Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves was going to be my commander as I drew him years prior and always wanted to use him in a deck, but I also had a bunch of specific cards I wanted to use. The deck ended up being a Token Wolf Tribal, where I make a ton of wolves, pump them up, and murder everyone. It also have my favorite infinite combo in all of magic
Funny you mentioned Goad, bottom up ended up being how I designed my Eisika Goad deck and it’s a powerhouse that really surprises people and also never casts her Prismatic Bridge side for once
Basically you described why blue farm is such a strong cedh deck. It is a strong 98 card pile that is supported by tymna and kraum. Basically you can build anything in sans green around tymna kraum and the deck won't brick
I design bottom up bottom up I start with a general theme, find a legend that I want to work with said theme, build a deck of it's colors, look if the legend still makes sense, and repeat, till I'm satisfied
I know it was just an example, but if you're talking about Mardu Goad, Mathas, Fiend Seeker seems like a pretty obvious commander to consider giving you card draw and some group-huggish good will that will make it a lot easier to keep your commander in play and do the thing you're trying to do, with tangential synergy of your bounty counters making the creatures you goad more desirable to block effectively.
I love decks like hinata because they allow unplayable cards to have homes and become used. The more diversity and interesting cards seeing play the better in my opinion.
honestly building both ways are the way to go i think. the deck is just more interesting. i understand not all commanders will work like this. but when u do, you get the commander you like and the cards you like. its how i developed a dragonlord ojutai control/theft deck that can play somewhat voltron. like no one expects ojutai to just start cloning a serra's emissary.
i made a sea monster deck with arixmethes as the general, It is both thematic and powerful. Was a sideways and top down design as my local playgroup do not play much land destruction. It is my most fun deck to play currently even if it lacks in some departments.
One of my favorite ways to build decks is a 'secret tribal' deck. Basically I try figuring out what a tribe is 'good at' and then choose commanders who I think can compliment that theme. One of my favorites is my Reyhan/Alena Hydra Deck. Basically I dump my mana into X spells for Hydras, which will enter with huge power that'll give me mana off of Alena. Right now I'm trying to figure out a partner build using Tormod for a Skeleton Deck. Great video btw!
Top down building works fine if the payoff of the commander is something that already wins the game. If you’re a Karametra deck and the deck is a pile of the most terrifying green/white creatures ever printer. You don’t need your commander to win even with every card in the deck being selected with Karametra in mind.
I try to "approch the middle" rather than waiting for a solid theme or building around a commander, I take a few similar themes that could even coexist and a few commander options that support one or more of my themes/ goals for the deck. I then see which cards I already own and use that to narrow down my theme and commander options. Usually my approach somewhat resembles a bottom up build but just a different way to do it. I've also noticed building around the commander entirely can cause problems, my Niv Mizzet Parun spellslinger tends to be pretty quiet until it suddenly detonates and everyone dies through (surprisingly) non infinite combos. meanwhile my Oloro deck which just uses the commander as free insurance to play slower/ more controlling is a fairly well rounded deck with a little extra health and card draw then it would otherwise have had.
Bottom to top is a great way for newbies to construct better decks. I agree. I have a 5C "Detectives tribal" with Ramos as the Commander. He is a good card by itself, and the fact that he can remove counters to give you mana to use the clues or other things is amazing.
One of my favourite bottom-up designed decks was I wanted to make a Gruul deck that made heavy use of extra combats and damage multipliers. I could have gone for a typical gruul value engine commander, but I decided to go with Anzrag the Quake Mole, and have a slight Voltron subtheme. Once my board is set up, I could swing anzrag at someone with a ton of weak creatures, whilst sending the main board at an empty enemy, and because of Anzrag's ability being a one-time "get as many combats as your opponents have creatures to block anzrag" ability, he really helped the deck
I do an evolving deck. The more I play, more cards I am introduced to. As such, my deck will constantly change styles. For example, I used Jodah the unifier tokens like godlin makers, egg counters, and more for making the board wider as scraps as my main bodies get bigger. However I change a few cards an did domain Johan. Later that's to the spoiler for them 40k series, I got cascade from my legendary cascade, putting usually 3 creatures from 1 spell. However my last build was Praetors using the world break tree. Since I run 5 colors, getting to 11 mana was a bit easier.
I kinda do both? I start either from a theme (bu) or commander (td) that I like. Then the deck goes around several iterations. This can be done simply by asking myself "how my deck will function without the commander" and doing deck test without the commander (td) or, looking at the cards that sinergize well with the commander (bu)
My issue with building bottom up is it always feels like I'm just making another "goodstuff" deck and just looking for a goodstuff commander to wrap it up. Ironically there are so many solid goodstuff commanders that you could hit it from either end. You had Delney there for a bit, you could end up with a Delney deck either going top down or bottom up. The thing is, I live for commanders that truly change how the game is played, making cards you'd never see become amazing. My favorite commanders are Shirei, Ghyrson Starn, Magus Lucia Kane, and Be'lakor. The former two especially utilize cards you'd never see anywhere else and you would never ever consider when making bottom up lists. I like running unique cards that are boosted by weird synergies and the only way to do that is top down. Yes, it's more fragile, but playing Lightning Coils in my Shirei deck and everyone going, "I've never seen that card before" is the biggest deck building draw for me. Otherwise I'd just run something like Loot with a broad goodstuff build behind him as a generic draw engine.
Honestly I've been a primarily top down deck builder, and I find that sometimes it's just necessary. Like if I wanted to build a burn deck, throwing a ton of burn spells in before picking your commander would probably just mean cutting a lot of them once you did decide on your commander. The archetype only really has a few options in commander, and there's a good amount of variation between them. Imodane wants high damage single target spells that target creatures, where something like Ojer Axonil wants low damage, low cost effects that damage players. This might just be a quirk of the archetype, but I really feel like knowing what commander you'll be building around would help in such a case. I think both top down and bottom up have their use cases, but the former is more prone to monolith commanders, as they've been referred to recently. I'm admittedly rather guilty of this myself, so I see avoiding it as a huge advantage of bottom up.
died a little bit inside when i first ran into this video bc i was watching your content while goldfishing my Hinata deck. thankfully i have at least minimised the 'deck doesn't work without commander in play issue' by building Hinata as an aura voltron deck, with an emphasis on making her hard to remove.
there are plenty of cases where bottom up wont work unless you can have a commander that is for it. i.e. graveyard reanimator/casting you practically always will need a very consistent way to get the cards out. If the cards you need for that are in your deck then theyll probably end up "permanently" in your graveyard
Top down has the weakness that your commander is centric and all the weaknesses that come along with that. Bottom Up has the weakness that your commander isn't as synergy heavy and so it will never be as rawly powerful as a deck built around it's commander that just doesn't have it's plan disrupted. Sideways won't build you a good deck, but it will be unique and probably will be a good time at the table. I particularly like restrictions like time/border etc. The strongest way to build a deck is often to identify a fundamental problem with a strategy you enjoy, and then choose a commander that is the solution to that problem, then include a small number of cards that work alright without your commander, but are high synergy. So, bottom up, then top down to finish. A good example of this is the progression of Najeela in cEDH. It started out very top down with lots of single card combo enablers like Nature's Will, Druid's Repository, Bear Umbra etc, and now it's a 5c midrange stax deck which only plays 2 najeela synergy cards. It arrived there because Najeela solves the natural weakness of the 5c midrange Stax deck, which is not having a good path to winning in the mid game. For me, I combined all three methods when I wanted to build a clue deck. It started with sideways construction when I added basically all the cards that said "investigate" on them. Then bottom-uply, I decided that Esper made the most sense for the deck, and I added my interaction suite, tutors etc. Then top-downly, I decided on Marneus Calgar as the commander because of how he works with Investigate x times, and then added in some cards that go well with him, like Lotho, Corrupt Sheriff, and Revel in Riches.
I got a bunch of bloomburrow cards and had my heart set on making a red/white mouse deck with Mabel as the commander. Since I only used bloomburrow cards and had all the cards organized by color and creature type the deck pretty much built itself. The mice seem to work like a Boros batallion deck for the most part with the cheap summon costs and how their abilities can stack to buff each other up. Threw in some red lizards, red otters and white birds and rabbits once I ran out of mice. I haven’t tested the deck yet but I already have ideas for upgrades.
I sort of did the bottom-up method accidentally. My Omnath Locus of Rage landfall deck, I recently moved him into the 99 and switched Mina and Denn, Wildborn from the 99 to the commander. The deck seems to flow much smoother as the deck is full of landfall payoffs that don't need Omnath, but Mina and Denn help ramp me into.
How i build a deck, step 1: throw something together on edhrec, step 2: i show my friend whos been playing for 15+ years, he is disgusted then fixes it. Step 3: Done
Kinda me lol
Haha same. Build deck then tweak with edhrec. Get my ass handed to me by my much more veteran friends in our weekly match, then take notes of what they'd adjust.
Really funny seeing this pov lol, I’m the vet who gets handed the edhrec pile, and my friends always say that this is their plan XD
😂😂 i feel like everyone has that friend that has the magic touch. That 1 friend that just knows how to streamline your idea after you have a rough "draft" varient
Lol
a couple weeks ago my bf and I tried something and had a blast- we pulled up an online random movie picker and built commander decks based on the movies we picked! I got "Tall Girl" and built a rainbow superfriends deck comprised entirely of tall women. My boyfriend got the movie "Edward Scissorhands" and built a sword-of deck that equips every single sword to his commander named Edgar. we both spent a few hours building what turned out to be super powerful decks and had an incredibly fun couple of games. 10/10 experience I would highly recommend doing this with friends!
Oh man tall girl what a film
please can i get decklists 🙏
@@thetrinketmage truly a movie of all time
Great points here! I think each method has pitfalls. The first method, sideways has more in common with bottom up than top down. This is because both are heavily centered around a foundation of a theme and the commander is an afterthought. However, the theme in bottom up is based around the game and the theme in "sideways" building is based on flavor and fun, rather than the actual game. I would agree it is inherently weaker, but it's possible to make a great deck. The biggest pitfalls with bottom up are picking a weak theme, which might as well be "sideways" deck building or picking a random commander just because you like them and they help the colors. To me, the point of commander is having a Commander, so top down really makes sense as the preferred method, but one must make sure the deck plays without the commander. My scarecrows deck plays like table police when my commander is out, but functions as 5 color artifact combos without the Reaper King and it is perfectly fun and serviceable. But I agree it is nice to see more bottom up building, especially for people who are way too salty.
me
Top down or bottom up.... is it too much to ask for both?
Select a Commander, make a decision about which theme works best with that commander. Then build 99 cards bottum-up on that theme in those colours.
If you want some additional commander synergy just take a second pass through the 99 & see if there are any cards that could be cut in favour of something more synergistic: you'll have a much more critical eye when you actively have to cut a card to push extra commander synergy into the deck.
I've been doing this lately, I find a commander that I like, then build a deck bottom up to suit. I stay away from common themes. Eg I built a breya deck, I focused on a blink and direct damage theme. It plays well with or without breya, but built with breya in mind.
I think this method had been my most successful overall. The strategy is, find a commander I zen with, then work out a theme that that commander can assist, THEN build that. I do use top down sometimes but Yea those do seem to whiff more often.
I just made a comment about doing exactly this! Plan on doing it a lot in future!
This is the best of both methods imo, sure you could get more unique decks bottom up but there's a chance there aren't commanders you like for your decks theme, even if there's synergy.
This is what I typically do. Find a commander in colors I want, see what I want to do with it, and then build a deck that runs along the same/similar themes to that idea. I've never really understood the idea of only doing one or the other since I just do both lol
Bottom up might result in a more effective deck, but it also results in the most common version of the theme you've chosen, and the commander you pick will often end up barely related to the rest of the deck. At that point, you're not really playing "commander", you're just playing 99 card singleton with a bonus card. Yes, Distorting Wake is bad even in a Hinata deck, but it feels much more like a Hinata card than the alternative multibounce options do, and in turn makes it feel more like you're playing with/against a "Hinata deck", as opposed to a standard WUR deck that happens to sometimes have Hinata out. The goal of any game is to have fun, and unless you're the kind of person who just enjoys winning, the most fun you're going to have is going to come from finding the right balance point between commander-centric synergy, broader thematic/subthematic synergy, and basic power level. The strongest possible deck is rarely the most fun possible deck. The right power level is the power level that allows you to win a reasonable proportion of the time while sacrificing the minimum deck identity.
I hadn't played for over 20 years and just got back into Magic last summer and started playing EDH. I have some decks I basically net decked, but trying to brew my own now so i found this very helpful. Thanks!
Good luck with your deck building and welcome back to the game! Stay tuned I’ve got lots more deck building advice coming up!
I was in the same boat just over a year ago - left around Onslaught. It's a good time, and there's a lot of exciting discovery out there.
Net deck. Now there's a term I haven't heard in... years.
I’m right there with you buddy, I quit around Urzas Saga and just now got back in with the release of the Clue themed set. Imagine my shock when NOBODY in my local card shop had a 60 card duel deck and they all had these ginormous 100 card decks and you can only have 1 of each card? Seems like a marketing ploy to sell more cards.
that is is gonna be a shock when you realize most players don't even have a 60 card deck anymore. EDH was made by players though which is pretty sweet!@@rootfish2671
Ha, I'm over halfway through making a Rule 0 metal deck! All the cards have names of metal bands/metal songs or a metal reference.
I got Tezzeret, Master of Metal as the commander, then cards such as Deicide, Suffocation, Killswitch, Iron Maiden, Roots, Puppet Master, all the cards with Slayer in the title, Lord of the Pit and all creatures with Embalm. Cos they make White Zombies 🤘
Tezzeret master of metal is perfect for that!
So many creatures in magic look like GWAR characters
Bottom-up construction is something I've done a tiny bit of in the past, but moreso just to find a commander to play with. However, a few months ago I watched that Salubrious Snail video about making midrange decks, and it's kind of like a bottom-up deck design philosophy. The gist is that you look at your commander not as a card to build around but rather a card that will always be in your opening hand, using that to help cover any weakness your deck might have. Using this strategy, I made an Elfball deck online that can jam out a ton of mana pretty easily, but since they're all Elves, they tend to be pretty cheap and there aren't that many outlets. The commander I chose to fix that problem? Zacama. Had I looked at Zacama first and tried to build down from there, I don't think Elf Tribal would have been my first thought. It may not have even occurred to me. But it made for a cool concept!
Flavorwise you got a tribe of elves worshipping Zacama, like the Naya elves worshipping gargantua.
Salubrious snail mentioned 🗣🗣
I love it when you come accross a video that perfectly explains the problems you've been having in deck building! Great vid :)
I appreciate the consistency of bottom up design, but I'm rarely inspired to build a new deck until I see a commander that I jive with enough to take the time to build. I'm willing to accept the feast or famine gameplay, but I do try to ensure there are still ways to win even if my commander becomes unavailable.
Also the new avatar looks good. It kinda reminds me of the style of commander stickers I get on Etsy for all my deck boxes from MegaChibiTheGatherin
Definitely the same here
This is actually really solid advice. Great vid.
Thanks!
Love the skitarii look of the new avatar, great video as always!
I adore the fact that your character is a little purple skitarii!
I like the the new avatar and also, building bottom up decks! It makes for a more interesting deckbuilding process, for one thing.
Ive taken a blend as of recent with my deck building. My last deck was built with the idea “i want to make a companion deck that utilizes partner commanders, thus i can say i have a 3 commander commander deck”. From there, i took that idea, and came to the conclusion that i want my deck to generate a ton of mana, that way I could cast my companion whenever i desired. This lead me to use one of the green companions, and ultimantly i felt keruga to be the most fun pick for the deck. Theme in mind, rather than looking for deck pieces, i went looking for commanders, and stumbled upon erinis and a blue background. Thus, my simic self mill/ landfall deck all in service of my hippo overlord was born. And the deck is so bonkers good. Underplayed commanders mean you can monilith the commander a bit, since no one is going to remove a commander who has done nothing for 4 turns when a prosper deck is across the table… but my deck is so crazy that by turn 7 i tend to run out of basic lands in my deck (all 19)
step 1: 100 basic lands 20 of each color. step 2: replace one with sliver overlord. step 3: ??? step 4: win every time
step 1: 99 mountains, step 2: Ashling, step 3: get forgotten mid game, step 4: uhhhhh, ka-boom?
@@itslilith2106 scam win speedrun
I had a skeleton deck where I made everyone weak by humility and -1-1 everything, basically forcing everyone down to my level of power and slowly throwing literally piles of bones at people just to make them get back up/regenerate and win. It won more often than I ever expected it to.
Yes, but sometimes that's just the risk I am willing to take. Part of the fun of running different commanders is getting the opportunity to run cards that are generally bad in other decks. Like, there's probably numerous better artifact/enchantment destruction spells I could be running over Seal of Primordium in my Muldrotha deck, but it's really cool to get good value out of a random card I had that I would have otherwise never used. It does suck that my deck's power level takes a hit whenever the commander isn't out, but that's why I've got to treat it like is something worth keeping out. If my commander's getting pinged off the table so many times that I can't summon it anymore, then it's clearly my fault for not playing in a way that allows me to protect what I consider a important part of my strategy.
Bottom up design is exactly why I sit on deck ideas for years.
Currently I am waiting on a synergistic commander that lets me play cards from your library. I'd like to be in grixis so I have access to more cards that do this thing, but a good commander for it was printed in dimir, so I'm basically considering options.
This is a pretty nice video. And I do like the sprites, I came here pretty much because I spotted the skitarii.
I've honestly done a bit of all three (mostly the latter two). Top down works really well for commanders that essentially BEG to be the crux of the deck and just by design are essentially needed to make the deck function just by what they do (Prosper for example, or Tawnos Solemn Survivor) but it's almost a requirement that a lot more of the deck is going to need to consist of a solid protection suite to keep your commander alive or reduce the impact of the tax (flicker/blinks, fake your death effects in black, hexproof/indestructible effects, command beacon/netherborn altar effects, etc). The bottom up tends to be a lot more self sufficient but also tend to be a bit more vague and nebulous in terms of optimal ways to pilot the deck, which can be a bit of a downside for newer players or if you want an extremely streamlined play pattern.
Great video. Will be sharing this to multiple people.
While I definitely agree that bottom up decks are more consistent, as I’ve been making more of those style decks recently, I also find they lack that “wow” factor specifically unique to commander decks. Your deck does a thing well and it does it great, that’s cool. But so is seeing some random draft shaft card that does nothing on its own suddenly win somebody the game because the group was focused on other scarier threats then their commander at the table.
I don’t think that wow factor is unique to top down design. When I say bottom up is more consistent it means it’s less feast or famine. Urza can be designed top down and have zero wow factor
I'd argue that that's just something you can implement in the deck after the fact? Whereas if you do it top down you might cram the deck with too many of those effects vs if you had to remove other functional cards to fit in the unique cards
@@Ultinuc I can agree with that point and is something I tend to do with my bottom up decks.
I think mainly what I was focused on is something I find myself seeing more and more is commander decks that have nothing to do with the commander and just run as many staples in the colors they choose as they can when there are so many interesting legendary creatures to build around in this format.
Now of course there is complications like if the colors you want to go in don't inherently support your strategy or if you are trying to go for a more hidden commander deck but even then there tend to be ways to have your commander do something meaningful if you ever get to casting them or have sneaky hidden synergy of their own.
Sorta also a Top Down design, but starting at a different point is when you build around a secret Commander in the 99. Usually a card that isn't allowed to be in the Command Zone normally and then you chose cards around that and how to get your secret commander into play reliably and keep it there.
I love secret commanders! I’ve made a few decks with them watch my Tawnos deck tech to see one
my favorite hidden commander is the enchantment wild pair
I think that top-down works, so long as you are willing to dedicate slots to commander protection. I run a Niv deck, and that can be rough because people see him hit the board, and you usually dont get to untap before he's gone. However, he is the engine that drives that deck. So, to make sure he stays on the board, I have a good 6-7 slots dedicated to just cards that will keep him on the there, and i dont play him until i get a card in hand that i can use for protection. I have an anhelo deck that runs similarly, although tbf in that case, Anhelo just makes my big scary spells bigger and scarier, so its less crucial that he hits the board, and he doesnt have the same infamy as Niv. Keeping in mind the way people perceive certain cards and commanders, even when deckbuilding, is really important, and i think it can make a top-down style work.
This has been exactly my experience with Vorinclex, MR.
I’m running Boots, Greaves, Commander’s Plate (A very kind LGS owner threw it in with a 200+$ order when I mentioned I wanted one but couldn’t justify the expense), Tamiyo’s, Heroic Intervention, Snakeskin Veil, Silkguard (Kamigawa Strive that also Hexproofs everything Modified, and protects Equips/Auras), and Smuggler’s Surprise.
My deck will function just fine if he goes, but I know he’s KoS and have to plan for the enmity of the entire table.
Container built, I have three things I want to do. Play instants, draw cards and punch people, so I build each container with cards that do that well and pick a commander that fits with all 3, like Bria
I prefer top-up deck design. It's where you pick Derevi as your commander, build entirely around her, and never get punished for it.
I mean one thing about top down building is that it really lets you build with weird random cards you won’t see anywhere else which in my opinion is a good thing because you get to use a lot more unique stuff and it’s fun to do that and you can’t really see anywhere else
I sort of agree but you can do the same with bottom up. I’m not arguing for goodstuff decks
@@thetrinketmageand this is where you differ from every other video I've seen talking about building decks bottom up
Excellent video! I saw this recently with my brother building a deck that could synergize with some favorite enchantments of his: Death's Presence, Feed the Pack, and Gutter Grime. He ended up picking Skullbriar as the commander not as a voltron but as value town for those synergies in a recursion-heavy deck. Bottom-up building makes for some cool concepts that actually work in gameplay! You explained the concept very well.
this video helped me out a ton with one of my recent decks! I was doing top to bottom, but playtesting was going awful, so I recently rebuilt it bottom to top and now its more consistent and honestly better.
My bottom up commander was The Tenth Doctor and Susan Foreman. I wanted to do big mana and cascade so I went with Temur. Susan Foreman gave me a reliable mana dork on turn 2 which means every turn 3 I would have 4 mana. So I did the only logical thing...I put in every functional reprint of Explosive Vegetation (15ish) I could find. That gave me, with 3 lands and a EV a progressive turn 2, 3, and finally turn 4 with The Tenth Doctor and an attack from Susan Foreman to trigger his first effect. I do not care if she survives combat, just gets the trigger. From turn 5 onward I would have a base 5+ mana for big spells, The Tenth Doctor trigger from any attacks I could make, and getting into the battlecruiser style of commander 3 or even 4 turns ahead of most tables. Not to mention doing so CONSISTENTLY. Legit my favorite deck in years, pilots like a dream. Best of all it is random enough from cascade that the first 3 turns being basically a flow chart doesn't even impact how fun it is and how varied games get.
I actually use a top->down and back method. I usually have a theme/concept based around a commander AND a concept, allow myself to 'overbuild' it with too many subthemes and "oh this looks cool" type cards then go back and ask how the deck would win, what it's engines are, how does each subtheme contribute/work with everything else and then slim it down based on that.
To give an example, I built a Lord of the Nazgul deck with a changeling package. So included stuff like maskwood nexus and black market connections to make more changelings along with some copy effects to get the wraith payoff. I then realized I had a decent group of faerie/flash relevant payoffs and that there were some good token generation/on enemy turn effects in faerie tribal, so I went back through the deck and added isochron scepter, focused less on sorceries and more on instants, added in more cards with flash and some cheap faerie payoffs and leaned into the slow drain and value generation aspect over 'just making a ton of wraiths and trying to make them 9/9s' side. The deck functions much better than it's original version, is fairly unique and has alternate win options if the commander dies because I still have tribal payoffs that aren't just 'make wraiths'
I actually really love building decks from the side they can be so much fun added bonus it could also become a bodem up built deck as well
I don't think I've ever built a deck that was commander first until very recently. I built a Kardur deck because I found Eater of Days, and the idea of just, jamming Kardur, then dropping eater of days and leaving the table for a couple rounds made me laugh so hard that I built it.
Did a demon subtheme, and now I have a demon deck that makes me overwhelmingly happy and pulls off some nasty Shenans, and my commander functions mostly as a "the board is getting weird, why don't you all fight about it" card. It's almost a teferi's protection if you time it right.
Hilarious, do you have a decklist?
Usually i build a deck around what a commander DOES, like my preators voice atraxa deck, I wanted to build a counters deck (not infect lol), so I added cards that focus on counters and added cards that helped the deck do that, with atraxa just being the cherry on top, blostering what I wanted to do, knowing she would help me extra
This was great insight - I was so focused on glorifying my Commander that I forget the other 99 cards are on the main stage most of the time! Thanks :)
Bottom up, that’s the way I like to…. Uh… build commander decks
Can confirm my favorite decks to play are bottom up designs. Jund Stompy with Ziatora, Bant Merfolk with Falco Spara, and Rakdos Enchantress with Mogis are all decks where my commander is not the main focus but help the gameplan
One major pitfall with bottom-up deck building is the lack of a commander-specific color identity from the outset. This often leads to 4 and 5-color decks that are even more reliant on Treasure tokens than on their commander. Regardless of how you feel about Treasures, token-hate is starting to give graveyard-hate a run for its money.
I love your take and really wish more commander players were like this. I feel like the over abundance of busted precon commanders have turned everyone into top down players that get bent out of shape when you remove their kill on sight commanders that their decks NEED in play. Very refreshing to see other people with a similar viewpoint to me.
Yeah, but I'm too cheap to build from scratch. And I'd never make a good enough deck without something to get started with. So I'm precon all the way, baby!
When I build a deck, I also like to find other cards that do roughly what the commander does, as a back up. Like I built a necrobloom deck and used field of the dead, zopandrel+ unnatural growth, etc etc.
I'm hearing a lot of words and I don't understand any of them. :)
I never thought about it like this. Very helpful video, thank you.
This is EXACTLY what i wanted. I just started to build a deck to play with some buddies after being out for a while. I really wanted the deck to function without the commander.
I settled on OTJ's olivia pre-con and upgraded it. I enjoy the outlaw theme and when in doubt i cam still slam them sideways for a kill or do something like revel in riches for a win.
My favourite deck is an angel life gain deck which was built bottom-up. When I got into commander, I knew I wanted to build an angel lifegain + reanimator deck, since this has been my mainplaystyle in other formats. It started out as an orzhov deck, then went pure white and is back to orzhov again. It went through 6 commanders allready. It is like that band that keeps looking for the perfect member. Right now it is the new sorin. And since it is full of angels, it is called Sorins Power Puff Girls.
Just wanted to say I love the art! Your friend did a great job
My process of deck building always looks like this.
1. Randomly stumble opon a commander and thinking "Lol you are whacky, let's be friends"
2. Search cards from top to bottom for commander synergy
3. Building from bottom to top.
Basically "best of both worlds"
This is why I prefer pantlanza over gishath, because pantlaza just helps the engine going faster, but the deck absolutely does not need pantlaza in play for it to go crazy. Whereas gishath is built in a certain way where you are trying to ramp him out asap, if someone removes him then well, gg.
I love your new avatar! Also, Great video! I find myself doing bottom-up deck more often now with my local commander league.
Kinda makes me think of how I built an Extus, Oriq Overlord deck around the idea of using Zada, Hedron Grinder to exploit magecraft. Had I not started with that idea, things like Krenko, Mob Boss, Traitor's Clutch, and Fungal Infection would've never crossed my mind, even if more blatant combo pieces like Leonin Lightscribe, Sedgemoor Witch, and Storm-Kiln Artist would've. As an extra note, Extus helps me get combo pieces into play easier on top of just being a magecraft commander and thus getting helped by Zada.
I just want to cast Cruel Ultimatum, Villainous Wealth, and Maelstrom Nexus
my buddy made a tasigur deck that was able to keep recurring villainous wealth. so yeah.
My method is:
1) Select commander
2) Determine the win condition
3) Add a suite of draw, ramp, and removal in my colors that either synergize with my commander, play into my win condition, or are too good to pass up
4) Decide 3-4 things the deck needs to be able to do in order to satisfy its win condition, and add a suite of cards that do that for each thing
5) Add a suite of "fun cards," cards that just synergize extremely well with the commander but don't fall into another category, pet cards I never leave home without, or fun, bombastic cards that do cool things.
6) Add lands. I usually shoot for an even split of basics, mana fixing, and utility lands. I do not have the budget for fast mana bases.
Ive tried all of these attempts, and tbh, ive had fun with them all! My sideways deck is my kykar second sun deck, top down is my momir vig bioVisionary deck and bottom up was my sisay shrines deck. Theyre my signature decks!
aye, new avatar looking clean man! great upload as always
“Just for the colors” is so boring tho. Most of the time I’ve seen them as just goodstuff staple color piles.
To be fair that's none of the styles mentioned in the video. Bottom up deck design starts with a theme, and "good stuff" isn't a theme
I now understand whether the difference between the functionality of my "vanifar" deck, which I very much designed bottom up, and my "kethis" deck which is just a legendary pile that takes advantage of kethis specifically
I would just like to add that you shouldn't be afraid to change things up if a particular deck either doesn't live up to your expectations or just gets boring after a while. I have a Rielle, the Everwise deck that originally started with Arjun, the Shifting Flame. The deck has gone through several iterations (chaos, wheels, spellslinger, combo, etc.) until I finally found what worked for me and the way I like to play.
Many commanders are flexible enough to be used in a handful of different playstyles, and if you like a specific commander, don't tunnel vision with them into a single playstyle. Switch it up.
Nice video ! Personnally I have my own way of making my commander decks. It's not optimal but it gives a lot of punch. And I'll give the name of the sledge strategy juste because it's fun.
You start as a top down commander (you go down the hill with your sludge) when you build it, you take your commander then you put every cards that work with it in your deck. Then you select your cards so that you get around 63-64 nonland (generally with around 10 ramp, 10 draws, 2-3 boardwipe that all work with the commander).
Every good cards that were cut are put aside.
Then you start doing bottom up (you take your sludge to the top), by taking every cards you've put in the deck and think "does this work with another card in the deck, like at least 2 or 3, if my commander wasn't there".
Then once you're finished cutting cards, you do the top down all over again (with less cards to add of course)
Edit : if there is not enough cards that work with each other, the method doesn't work and you're commander is too useful for the strategy. In this case I put a lot of protection for my commander or ways to get it back since he's that much of the center of the strategy
Step 1. Make a list of every card that's ever been printed that fits the gameplan / theme and can go in the deck.
2. Cull that down over several passes until there's only ~50 left.
3. Add some more removal / ramp / etc to smooth it out.
I sometimes use the bottom up method, but I usually find myself doing the top down method while keeping away from a lot of the effects that rely on my commander. I will add some of the payoff is great, but not too many. A good ideology while building is add cards that are good on their own and great with your commander out.
I generally build one of two types of decks:
1. What works with the cards I have?
2. Buy a pre-con and modify it.
My favourite decks are goofy tribal decks that always start by going on scryfall to just search up that goofy theme, so this really resonated with how I brew
i am very casual, but my method usually is a balance between top down and bottom up. the commander is kept in mind, but the commander is there to set the theme for the deck, rather than rely on him. a lot of the time, i fall into combo decks like Niv-Mizzet draw combos or like when I started building for Mahadi and found stuff like Supernatural Stamina and Feign Death giving infinite sac capability on a single creature. but- i'm seeing other value as well in things like Arahbo decks wanting cat tribal or Morska simply enabling and benefiting from more of a draw value deck than an explosive draw your entire deck deck like Niv-Mizzet.
i almost always design top down, and usually just run at least 10 cards to protect my commander in one way or another, whether its reanimation, return to hand, etc. something like Snap is basically a protection spell for your commander, as well as being just generally a good option
I think bottom up is good, but people might already have a commander in mind, so this is what I would do. I would choose a commander and build something around it, then I would add cards that can help get to the main strategy of the deck, and finally I would add in the lands and ramp cards. This is similar to the top down strategy, but it could end up with a better structure.
4th method is Netdecking and 5th is upgrading precons with better versions of the lands and the premium versions of spells.
For a while now I've been building decks from the top-down or a mix of top-down and bottom-up, either going for the same tribe the commander have or the theme it provides.
I actually told my roommate this last night. He built a Rakdos, Lord of Riots demon sub theme deck. His problem became if Rakdos wasn't on the board, all of his creatures became too expensive to cast without the cost reduction from Rakdos. I suggested his next steps for the deck should be adjusting the deck in such a way that it's still playable without Rakdos on the board.
I play Rakdos, There's a few pay x cards that synergize well with him, but without lower cost cards to support him, he can feel pretty bad to play.
My favorite tactic is using cards that hurt me and everyone else equally. Spiteful visions, roiling vortex, sire of insanity, havoc festival, heartless hidetsugu, spear spewer. It's like holding everyone hostage but then telling them I point the gun at myself sometimes.
Me and my friends personally do something of a toptobottomup design u could say. We find the commander that seems interesting to us and we want to build around first. Then after having a commander selected we can focus on actual theme of the deck that would work with the said commander. Once the theme is established its bottomup design from there (but no risk of running random ahh commander)
The deck I'm working on right now exists because I said to myself "The best creature, Mayhem Devil, isn't legendary. How do I build a Mayhem Devil deck?" Not sure which of these methods that counts as, but *Juri, Judge and Executioner* has quickly become a pet deck.
Funny you mentioned mardu goad. I wanted to do that and realized a lot of the goad commanders goad off of attack triggers, and that goading opponents is a way to trigger "when any player attacks" triggers. So I built the deck and put isshin into the command zone. The deck does fine without him but he makes it twice as good when in play. This also meant I could run cards like bitterthorn for ramp as they synergized with both my game plan by attacking and my commander who doubles it.
I opened a Hinata in the prerelease and I built the deck and played it exactly one time and put it away forever. I don't know how I would rebuild it, but it was definitely a learning experience for me.
Playing more protection or counterspells can help keep the commander around for longer
A deck i really want to play around with is the Infinite Armory- equipment artifacts and cards that synergize off having equipment or allow you to get the armory out.
Alternate method. The layering method.
You find a theme and idea around a kinda sideways method. You then go top down on it to help tune it. Maybe even include some play testing.
Then bottom up it. If you do it properly you can also use also use other tools to figure out draw rates for combos and other consistency based things as well as mana requirements and best methods of color splits.
Using this method for a kinda unusual and fringe marchese the black rose deck.
Idea is control but not typical grixis control. And based around rogues and a few party cards despite not being the best mechanic as far as party goes.
Goblins and fae mixed in. And some support from out side creatures.
Idea is try and have a wide array of buffers and ways to generate counters. And making use of flicker blur phase and sac outlets for enter the battlefield effects.
Gonna be doing a bunch of stealing with some cards. But also heavy mill and copying spells and making use of grave retrieval.
Idea is a bit of a hyper control and combo deck. But based around an aggro form of control and controlling multiple aspects of the game. Krenko combos for goblin tokens. Simmalacrum combos for land ramp heavy. Demonic tutor and the creature version along with goblin recruiter and some other tutors for cool set up combos.
Sengir for making use of skirk prospector and palishak mons sac outlet damage combos with krenko. Like 10 goblins and a dirty combo.
Lots of legendary creatures. But a bit of a competitive level fringe deck. Some popular and commonly used cards but in a bit of a fringe aspect.
Few interesting combos. But a lot of mill and exile. Ability to steal lands and table wipe by turn 8 on perfect opening hand. But also built to handle long game and not going for the most perfect uber win fast plays.
Fae trickery on like a horror movie and old school medieval fairy tales type vibes. Bringing some goblins and vampires and horrors.
But alot of fae are rogues and same with goblins. Easy to buff them with counters and also reduce casting costs. Same on the instants and sorceries side. And alot of anti human theme cards that add alot of additional support.
But add in sengir and I have a giant big bad based off sacrificing combos with token creatures and stuff that'll come back.
Smaller creatures makes the whole dethrone thing easier and let's you get rolling early game.
But dead eye and a known untap artifact equipment combo piece with a few pieces makes for a gnarly combo. Krenko makes goblins you sac goblins for red and other colors. You desd eye and untap but can tutor out loads of cards or use many many spells you tutor out in a turn. Or ramp every land left in your deck tapped onto the field.
Fast lands slow lands and others. You can tune it down to where you have a higher likelihood of getting those onto the field untapped. And use alot of other good untapped lands and shock lands.
Shock lands and gain lands don't fully balance out but you wanna have less life points early on.
Side sideways thoughts went into the deck. But then top down and bottom up to make it work properly.
Think the old fae stuff and d&d type fae stuff. Mixed with the whole Ralph from Simpsons uh oh I'm in trouble. And a series of unfortunate events. Meets Lovecraft a lil bit. And hellboy with the tooth faeries.
You will be swarmed. You will be tricked and manipulated. And you won't know how bsd it is till it's too late generally. And strong enough to hold it's own.
But designed to gain steady advantage and ramp. And also be able to target various areas of opponents weaknesses and handle them decently well via a control deck philosophy.
Methods of goading other players creatures and punishment for not being able to fully stop the decks movements due to counters and trickery. And seemingly small fry just annoying. Keeps people off your back.
You appear to be a relatively creature side weak fae control deck in grixis colors. Or a swarm deck built not the best.
But it synergizes well. And some of the stuff is meant to be held back. Example.
Token swarm of 1 1 goblins with some counters. Bit scary but small fry when you see them using it as partial resources for mana ramp and not going infinite.
But add pashalik mons and bam damage. Add the combo pieces for krenko. And hobgoblin bandit and sengir and it's a no matter what almost table wipe or board wipe and direct attack while you maintain everything. Enough spell counters set up and yeah.
Mill let's you make strong use of pyschic intrusion. Copy a spellcounter. Now any mana and repeated usage. Which also works with cycling counters. Zombie decks are the only potential real issue or uber fast decks. And if you appear small threat assessment is a thing.
Think it's worth mentioning as an extension of bottom up design - you can further refine your cards by picking a strategy as well. Like if you're building auras you can go for an aggro strategy with lots of pumps and keywords, or a more midrange strategy with lots of repeatable auras (rancor etc) to trigger enchantresses over and over. Great vid!
My first custom commander deck ( a solid 7) was somehow all of these at once. I went in knowing I wanted to do wolf tribal, and knowing Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves was going to be my commander as I drew him years prior and always wanted to use him in a deck, but I also had a bunch of specific cards I wanted to use. The deck ended up being a Token Wolf Tribal, where I make a ton of wolves, pump them up, and murder everyone. It also have my favorite infinite combo in all of magic
Funny you mentioned Goad, bottom up ended up being how I designed my Eisika Goad deck and it’s a powerhouse that really surprises people and also never casts her Prismatic Bridge side for once
Basically you described why blue farm is such a strong cedh deck. It is a strong 98 card pile that is supported by tymna and kraum. Basically you can build anything in sans green around tymna kraum and the deck won't brick
I design bottom up bottom up
I start with a general theme, find a legend that I want to work with said theme, build a deck of it's colors, look if the legend still makes sense, and repeat, till I'm satisfied
I love this strategy also
I know it was just an example, but if you're talking about Mardu Goad, Mathas, Fiend Seeker seems like a pretty obvious commander to consider giving you card draw and some group-huggish good will that will make it a lot easier to keep your commander in play and do the thing you're trying to do, with tangential synergy of your bounty counters making the creatures you goad more desirable to block effectively.
I just don’t like Marhas that much… I agree it has synergy but I think the other options I gave are more interesting and stronger!
I love decks like hinata because they allow unplayable cards to have homes and become used. The more diversity and interesting cards seeing play the better in my opinion.
I choose an effect.
Then i see what i have, legend wise.
Then i just hodgepodge whatever i can.
honestly building both ways are the way to go i think. the deck is just more interesting. i understand not all commanders will work like this. but when u do, you get the commander you like and the cards you like. its how i developed a dragonlord ojutai control/theft deck that can play somewhat voltron. like no one expects ojutai to just start cloning a serra's emissary.
i made a sea monster deck with arixmethes as the general, It is both thematic and powerful. Was a sideways and top down design as my local playgroup do not play much land destruction. It is my most fun deck to play currently even if it lacks in some departments.
One of my favorite ways to build decks is a 'secret tribal' deck. Basically I try figuring out what a tribe is 'good at' and then choose commanders who I think can compliment that theme. One of my favorites is my Reyhan/Alena Hydra Deck. Basically I dump my mana into X spells for Hydras, which will enter with huge power that'll give me mana off of Alena. Right now I'm trying to figure out a partner build using Tormod for a Skeleton Deck. Great video btw!
Top down building works fine if the payoff of the commander is something that already wins the game. If you’re a Karametra deck and the deck is a pile of the most terrifying green/white creatures ever printer. You don’t need your commander to win even with every card in the deck being selected with Karametra in mind.
I try to "approch the middle" rather than waiting for a solid theme or building around a commander, I take a few similar themes that could even coexist and a few commander options that support one or more of my themes/ goals for the deck. I then see which cards I already own and use that to narrow down my theme and commander options. Usually my approach somewhat resembles a bottom up build but just a different way to do it. I've also noticed building around the commander entirely can cause problems, my Niv Mizzet Parun spellslinger tends to be pretty quiet until it suddenly detonates and everyone dies through (surprisingly) non infinite combos. meanwhile my Oloro deck which just uses the commander as free insurance to play slower/ more controlling is a fairly well rounded deck with a little extra health and card draw then it would otherwise have had.
Bottom to top is a great way for newbies to construct better decks. I agree. I have a 5C "Detectives tribal" with Ramos as the Commander. He is a good card by itself, and the fact that he can remove counters to give you mana to use the clues or other things is amazing.
One of my favourite bottom-up designed decks was I wanted to make a Gruul deck that made heavy use of extra combats and damage multipliers. I could have gone for a typical gruul value engine commander, but I decided to go with Anzrag the Quake Mole, and have a slight Voltron subtheme. Once my board is set up, I could swing anzrag at someone with a ton of weak creatures, whilst sending the main board at an empty enemy, and because of Anzrag's ability being a one-time "get as many combats as your opponents have creatures to block anzrag" ability, he really helped the deck
I do an evolving deck. The more I play, more cards I am introduced to. As such, my deck will constantly change styles. For example, I used Jodah the unifier tokens like godlin makers, egg counters, and more for making the board wider as scraps as my main bodies get bigger. However I change a few cards an did domain Johan. Later that's to the spoiler for them 40k series, I got cascade from my legendary cascade, putting usually 3 creatures from 1 spell. However my last build was Praetors using the world break tree. Since I run 5 colors, getting to 11 mana was a bit easier.
lmao I just looked up “partner” and balled from there, now I’m just wrapping up a Tana/Akroma deck, which hypothetically should be pretty solid
I kinda do both? I start either from a theme (bu) or commander (td) that I like. Then the deck goes around several iterations. This can be done simply by asking myself "how my deck will function without the commander" and doing deck test without the commander (td) or, looking at the cards that sinergize well with the commander (bu)
My issue with building bottom up is it always feels like I'm just making another "goodstuff" deck and just looking for a goodstuff commander to wrap it up. Ironically there are so many solid goodstuff commanders that you could hit it from either end. You had Delney there for a bit, you could end up with a Delney deck either going top down or bottom up. The thing is, I live for commanders that truly change how the game is played, making cards you'd never see become amazing. My favorite commanders are Shirei, Ghyrson Starn, Magus Lucia Kane, and Be'lakor. The former two especially utilize cards you'd never see anywhere else and you would never ever consider when making bottom up lists. I like running unique cards that are boosted by weird synergies and the only way to do that is top down. Yes, it's more fragile, but playing Lightning Coils in my Shirei deck and everyone going, "I've never seen that card before" is the biggest deck building draw for me. Otherwise I'd just run something like Loot with a broad goodstuff build behind him as a generic draw engine.
I have a mono white Heliod Sun-Crowned deck where over 60% of the nonlands have Sun in the name or on the art. And it's GOOD
Honestly I've been a primarily top down deck builder, and I find that sometimes it's just necessary. Like if I wanted to build a burn deck, throwing a ton of burn spells in before picking your commander would probably just mean cutting a lot of them once you did decide on your commander. The archetype only really has a few options in commander, and there's a good amount of variation between them. Imodane wants high damage single target spells that target creatures, where something like Ojer Axonil wants low damage, low cost effects that damage players. This might just be a quirk of the archetype, but I really feel like knowing what commander you'll be building around would help in such a case. I think both top down and bottom up have their use cases, but the former is more prone to monolith commanders, as they've been referred to recently. I'm admittedly rather guilty of this myself, so I see avoiding it as a huge advantage of bottom up.
died a little bit inside when i first ran into this video bc i was watching your content while goldfishing my Hinata deck. thankfully i have at least minimised the 'deck doesn't work without commander in play issue' by building Hinata as an aura voltron deck, with an emphasis on making her hard to remove.
there are plenty of cases where bottom up wont work unless you can have a commander that is for it. i.e. graveyard reanimator/casting you practically always will need a very consistent way to get the cards out. If the cards you need for that are in your deck then theyll probably end up "permanently" in your graveyard
Top down has the weakness that your commander is centric and all the weaknesses that come along with that.
Bottom Up has the weakness that your commander isn't as synergy heavy and so it will never be as rawly powerful as a deck built around it's commander that just doesn't have it's plan disrupted.
Sideways won't build you a good deck, but it will be unique and probably will be a good time at the table. I particularly like restrictions like time/border etc.
The strongest way to build a deck is often to identify a fundamental problem with a strategy you enjoy, and then choose a commander that is the solution to that problem, then include a small number of cards that work alright without your commander, but are high synergy. So, bottom up, then top down to finish.
A good example of this is the progression of Najeela in cEDH.
It started out very top down with lots of single card combo enablers like Nature's Will, Druid's Repository, Bear Umbra etc, and now it's a 5c midrange stax deck which only plays 2 najeela synergy cards. It arrived there because Najeela solves the natural weakness of the 5c midrange Stax deck, which is not having a good path to winning in the mid game.
For me, I combined all three methods when I wanted to build a clue deck.
It started with sideways construction when I added basically all the cards that said "investigate" on them.
Then bottom-uply, I decided that Esper made the most sense for the deck, and I added my interaction suite, tutors etc.
Then top-downly, I decided on Marneus Calgar as the commander because of how he works with Investigate x times, and then added in some cards that go well with him, like Lotho, Corrupt Sheriff, and Revel in Riches.
I got a bunch of bloomburrow cards and had my heart set on making a red/white mouse deck with Mabel as the commander. Since I only used bloomburrow cards and had all the cards organized by color and creature type the deck pretty much built itself. The mice seem to work like a Boros batallion deck for the most part with the cheap summon costs and how their abilities can stack to buff each other up. Threw in some red lizards, red otters and white birds and rabbits once I ran out of mice. I haven’t tested the deck yet but I already have ideas for upgrades.
I sort of did the bottom-up method accidentally. My Omnath Locus of Rage landfall deck, I recently moved him into the 99 and switched Mina and Denn, Wildborn from the 99 to the commander. The deck seems to flow much smoother as the deck is full of landfall payoffs that don't need Omnath, but Mina and Denn help ramp me into.
Mina and Denn is one of my favorite commanders ever! I made a video about my list it’s in my deck techs playlist
@@thetrinketmage hey would you ever do a deck critique?
@@bretts3046 I’m thinking of opening a patreon and having that as a perk. Is that something you would like to see?
@@thetrinketmage yeah 100% I would do it.