A Beginner's Guide to cEDH
If you're reading this article, then you are likely taking the first necessary steps to begin down the path of building, and successfully piloting a cEDH deck! Congratulations! cEDH is a wonderful extension of Commander that leverages the fun, multiplayer features of the traditional Commander format, while simultaneously encouraging, and rewarding competitive deck building, tight plays, and skilled politicking.
Obviously, deckbuilding, gameplay precision, and politicking are three separate skill sets, so for the purpose of today's article, we will focus on what novice or aspiring cEDH players can do to build a deck fit for competitive play, which is a necessary condition for also building up one's own skill set in navigating the cEDH meta, and subsequently becoming more comfortable with when and how to politick effectively. Let's dive in!
Step 1: Pick a Commander
While this may seem like an obvious first step, it is, in fact, the most consequential decision you will make when building for cEDH, rather than high-power casual Commander. When picking a Commander for cEDH, ideally, you want your Commander to do at least one of three things:
- Generate card advantage
- Generate mana ramp
- Possess combo potential
Fellow Commander's Herald writer Jake FitzSimons wrote a great piece detailing these essential characteristics that's well worth the read for the nitty gritty details on this alone. For example, a Commander like Nadu, Winged Wisdom, as controversial as he may be, generates both card advantage and mana ramp. Partner Commanders Tymna, the Weaver, and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus both draw you cards. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, and Sisay, Weatherlight Captain both possess immense combo potential.
I could go on, but Commanders like the ones mentioned set themselves apart from, say, Tergrid, God of Fright, and Zhulodok, Void Gorger, which are powerful Commanders, but not competitive Commanders (although, perhaps the tides are changing for Zhulodok).
Tergrid, while potent, relies heavily on cards like Syphon Mind, and Memory Jar that synergize with her static ability to win games, but on her own, Tergrid neither generates card advantage, nor mana advantage, and doesn't enable any single explicit combo that outright wins the game. Zhulodok, Void Gorger synergizes well with high-cost colorless spells, but doesn't on its own generate mana, nor enable a game-ending combo.
These examples, while only a handful, help to delineate high-power Commanders from competitive Commanders. To a certain extent, high-power Commanders are often too Commander-centric, which means your deck relies on your Commander being in play to advance towards a win. Oftentimes, but not always, most cEDH decks can function without their Commanders in play to generate wins. Tymna/Kraum (arguably the most accessible meta deck), for example, doesn't need either of its Commanders in play to win-the deck can easily access Underworld Breach win lines, or Thassa's Oracle win lines regardless of whether Tymna and/or Kraum are drawing you cards.
If you are unsure of where to start on this front, consider checking out EDH Top 16, which aggregates deck data from tournaments promoted through the TopDeck.gg platform. This data more-or-less represents the meta or competitive landscape of the cEDH format. I would highly recommend browsing a few lists to get a feel for what decks are out there, as they may help in informing the decision regarding which Commander you settle on!
Other considerations when picking a Commander include the access to the color pie that Commander or pair of Commanders gets you. Tymna/Kraum (again, the most popular deck in the format by the numbers) gets you access to every color sans green! Blue for card draw and interaction, white for Silence effects, black for tutors, and red for... Well... Underworld Breach, Gamble, and Deflecting Swat.
Locking yourself out of certain colors, especially blue, is risky in a highly interactive, and fast-paced format like cEDH. When players start "going for it" and capitalize on a window to win the game, it's up to the other three players at the table to collaborate in order to survive another turn. If only one of those three players are in the blue part of the color pie, it becomes increasingly less likely that the player going for it will be stopped.
Even decks that try to go for wins as early as possible like Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh partnered with Silas Renn, Seeker Adept which capitalize on the synergies that Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh enables still need Silas Renn to have access to both black and blue, so that the average pilot has access to necessary tutors like Demonic Tutor, and Imperial Seal, as well as card draw engines like Rhystic Study, and Mystic Remora.
Ultimately, when building your first cEDH deck, take note of the opportunity cost associated with the Commander you pick. Ask yourself what you give up by having a Commander that doesn't have blue, or perhaps has access to blue, and white, but not black, nor green. Commanders with high color pie opportunity costs like Tayam, Luminous Enigma, for example, are probably not the best starting points, but perhaps are opportunities to explore at a later point in your cEDH career if you want to challenge yourself!
Step 2: Identify the Essential Cards for Your Deck
cEDH is a format defined by optimized deckbuilding and precise patterns of play, thus the cards that comprise your 99 (or 98 in the case of partner Commanders) have to be meaningful, and thoughtfully curated. Card quality matters immensely in cEDH-a good rule of thumb is to build in such a way to minimize the presence of potentially dead cards (more on this later).
This is actually less daunting than you'd think. The vast, vast majority of cEDH-viable Commanders (including lower-tier, fringe Commanders) have dedicated Discord servers with hundreds-to-thousands of participants actively theorycrafting and tuning the deck in question. Finding the community associated with the Commander you picked in Step 1 is the next logical step for building your deck optimally.
Prior to the recent banned list, and as an anecdote, when I decided I was all-in on Nadu, Winged Wisdom (may he rest in peace), one of the first places I looked early on for deck lists, and tips on deckbuilding was the Nadu Discord Server. Most cEDH Discord servers have some common elements: decklist channels for folks looking for feedback on their lists, as well as pinned lists of top-performing players piloting the Commander in question, and channels for game discussion, mulligans, and threads for discussing potentially new cards, and techs for the base deck.
In these dedicated communities, data is also widely available and disseminated for prospective players that can assist in deckbuilding. For example, in the Nadu Discord Server, user Janxsta has compiled a list of the cards represented in over 80% of all Top-4 Nadu cEDH decklists. If you were a hypothetical new Nadu player, then this list effectively tells you 75-80 cards that are mandatory to include in your deck, leaving the remaining 20-25 cards as flex slots to use at your discretion.
Herein lies the problem (well, more like conundrum): while 75-80% of your deck may be largely predetermined or optimized, most cEDH decks have creative room to be built in ways that fulfill different forms and functions. For example, Nadu can be built like a pure turbo deck (fewer pieces of interaction with the goal to win earlier), or a midrange deck (packing more pieces of interaction and winning later in the game). Many decks utilize flex slots to lean more heavily on a particular play pattern, which in cEDH can be boiled down to a few broad categories: midrange, turbo, stax, and tempo.
Midrange decks like to use early turns to generate card advantage and slow down the game, setting up for wins later in the game (turns 5-6). Turbo decks aim to mulligan heavily and sculpt a hand that can win ideally no later than turn 3. Stax decks rely on permanents to slow the game down and turn off explicit play patterns, or make playing the game of Magic cumbersome for opponents to the point where in a long game of attrition a win can be achieved through a combo of some variety. Finally, tempo decks rely on converting individual game pieces into synergies that can be capitalized on at a later time or feed into a particular critical line of play at some later point.
When building your deck for the first time, consider utilizing your flex slots to favor the play pattern you are most comfortable with. In your personal history of playing the game of Magic, ask yourself if you like control-style strategies or aggro-style strategies. If you prefer control, then building a more midrange cEDH deck with your Commander(s) is probably the way to go. If you love aggro decks, then leaning more heavily into turbo play patterns will likely appeal to you more. As you grow more comfortable and experienced piloting your deck, you can always pivot to play patterns that best counteract the meta you are immersing yourself in locally, regionally, or within your play group.
A final tip in this section: assess whether your cEDH deck is more Commander-centric or Commander-agnostic. If your deck leans more towards Commander-agnostic, you'll find that your average card quality is significantly higher, though your Commander(s) will enable fewer synergies or possess less combo potential. Again, take Tymna/Kraum: these Commanders draw you cards, and get you access to four colors of the color pie; however, they do not synergize with any particular combo, or single card in your deck-they just draw you cards.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, take Nadu, Winged Wisdom, which generates you a ton of card advantage and ramp by simply targeting your creatures while he's in play; as such, Nadu relies heavily on cards that synergize with the "granted ability" Nadu provides, which means most Nadu decks play cards like Shuko, Umbral Mantle, Sea Kings' Blessing, and Sylvan Paradise, which generate immense value if Nadu is in play, but are functionally useless if Nadu is not in play.
While being Commander-centric is a perfectly reasonable approach to building for cEDH, it comes with a cost: card quality. Building to be Commander-agnostic limits the utility and combo potential of your Commander(s), but maximizes card quality. Keep this in mind when you build, and regardless of whether you lean more heavily into your Commander to win, always build to maximize card quality within the constraints of your flex slots and Commander's color identity.
Step 3: Goldfish, Goldfish, and then Goldfish Some More
At this point, you've picked a Commander, probably joined a Discord server or two, and have brewed your dream list in Moxfield or Archidekt. Now, it's time to get comfortable with how the deck actually plays. This first step involves the act of goldfishing or the act of practicing and playing your deck without an opponent. Draw seven cards, and practice mulliganing. Is your opening seven worth keeping? If not, ask yourself "why not?" Mulliganing is an art as much as it is a skill, and getting familiar with the permutations and combinations of hands you can randomly start the game with is imperative for successful outcomes in tournament play. Ask yourself what types of cards you need to have in your hand: a land or two, a mana rock, a way to draw cards, and some interaction, for example.
In reality, when you are mulliganing, you aren't doing so for specific cards, you are doing so for a specific combination of card types or categories of cards that advance your gameplan, while preserving your ability to stop your opponents from advancing theirs. The beauty of this is that you can practice mulliganing hundreds of hands in a very short time period, especially with the "restart" option in Moxfield.
Once you get familiar with what distinguishes keepable from unkeepable hands, start playing your hands out. Practice sequencing plays in a way that gets you to your win condition most-efficiently. Keep track of how many turns it takes you to get to a win, and how many cards you see from your deck to do so. Once you get more comfortable with this, pretend your opponents are countering or interacting with you to practice utilizing your counter spells or other forms of interaction.
Once you get used to this, then add some randomness: pretend your Mystic Remora was Mental Misstepped, or pretend an opponent used a Wheel of Fortune or Timetwister after your first turn. Much like learning the basics of an instrument, and then adding complexity to how you play that instrument, learn the basics of goldfishing your deck, and then add some variety.
As simple as this step sounds, and as redundant as some of these actions may seem, that is entirely the point. Goldfishing is like shadowboxing. It's a safe opportunity to get familiar with the inner workings of your deck without actually having to physically play against any opponents. That way when you finally sit down and play against real, tangible individuals, you are comfortable and confident in how to play your deck, which is crucial for having positive play experiences in pods, and with others.
Step 4: Play Some Games!
This final step is obvious: go get out there and grind some pods with your deck! It may be intimidating to play your cEDH deck for the first time, especially against seasoned format players, but you'll come to find that the cEDH community is incredibly inviting, friendly, and excited to see you at their tables! As a small meta within the broader Commander format, growth in cEDH can only come about through inclusivity, and the willingness to be inviting and warm to new players-personally, I believe the growth that this format has seen in the past two years makes this point largely self-evident.
As a cultural norm, cEDH tournaments are proxy-friendly, meaning that the cost of playing the game isn't a non-starter for participating in the format! Because cEDH is still fundamentally Commander, the social element of the game is at its best when individuals value tight play patterns. Ask your opponents: "is this a point where I should interact?" Don't be afraid to utilize your voice at the table if it leads to more precise plays and higher-quality game outcomes.
This type of vocalization is welcomed in the cEDH community and will help you grow as a player as well. Ideally, a good round of cEDH is one where players have minimal regrets in the plays they've made, and the points they've chosen to interact. Losing in cEDH is often an incredibly valuable learning experience that can be fun, especially when all players are playing as optimally as they can. As you soon will learn, winning in cEDH is hard, especially if you are last in turn order (this is a topic that in and of itself could be an article on its own), so the only way to grow and hone in on your skill, and learn which changes to make on the margin to your deck is through playing games, and practicing.
If your local tournament scene isn't too big on cEDH, consider joining Spelltable, and playing games remotely with others in a similar boat as you. In the cEDH community, TopDeck.gg has become the main software provider for tournament promotion and tournament reporting. Check their website for cEDH events hosted by game stores near you (or farther from you if you like to travel).
If you have a comfortable radius you are willing to drive for events, let TopDeck.gg point you in the direction of game stores nearby that are hosting events! And while you are there, meet some new players, and find opportunities for establishing playgroups. Many locales have dedicated regional Discord Servers or FaceBook pages. As a Pennsylvania resident, I find myself playing cEDH a surprising amount with New Jersey players, especially at game stores in the eastern part of the state.
Unsurprisingly, New Jersey has a cEDH Discord Server that has enabled me to play on Spelltable with folks I've met at tournaments and even like-minded individuals I hope to meet in the future. Having access to these regional Discord communities gives you opportunities to play remotely when tournaments are few and far between, while fostering a sense of community and growth in the format's player base.
A Small Note On Format Governance
Over the duration of writing this piece, a lot has unfolded within the Commander format more broadly speaking, most significant of which is the transition of format governance from the Rules Committee to Wizards of the Coast. Whether this was the natural course that the format was heading or not, the circumstances that led us to this change cast a dark cloud over the player base and community leaders.
While it's not clear whether or not WotC's will be a net public good to the format, at the outset it would seem that their aims are twofold: stabilize the format, and anchor format expectations (as per the clear indication that no further cards will be added to the ever-contentious banned list), and improve the rule zero conversation locally. The second aim of WotC on this note is interesting as they've proposed a bracket system for allowing players to effectively quantify the power level of their deck based on the density of high-powered cards played in it. As one could imagine, the average cEDH deck likely finds itself being in the highest bracket in terms of power level.
These early communications notwithstanding, the transition from the Commander RC to WotC will likely have minimal impact on the cEDH format, and the state of tournament play in the immediate future. It will be months, if not close to a year, before WotC's vision of the format and the scope of its goals become clear, and even so, cEDH players and brewers will always be outliers relative to casual Commander players. As such, I would stress that the incentives, player base, and general characteristics of the cEDH community will not change much simply because ownership of the banned list falls under a different set of personnel.
In terms of some commentary on the recent banned list: expect it to stand as the current banned list for the foreseeable future. Play and build with the expectations that we will no longer have access to Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Nadu, Winged Wisdom, nor Dockside Extortionist. While this is a bit of a shake up, it actually lowers the barrier to entry for prospective cEDH players considerably and has already had a visible effect on slowing down the format, which will be appealing to new entrants looking to transition out of casual gameplay to a competitive meta.
Some Final Thoughts on cEDH
Realistically, each of the four simple steps I outlined in this article could be entire articles unto themselves, and, in some cases, already are! These steps emulate how I personally, and other players I've had the pleasure of meeting, and grinding tournaments with, have found themselves falling in love with the cEDH format, and logically progressing from a deck concept to physically playing said deck. I hope this guide, too, helps you find your home in the cEDH format!
