How Do EDH Deckbuilding Strategies Change Over Time?

If you own a Commander deck, chances are you've made some changes to it over time. This could be as simple as upgrading your basic lands to all be your favorite full art variant, or as complex as tearing down the whole deck and starting from scratch. If you've ever tinkered with your decks, whether that's aesthetic tinkering or functional tinkering, I'd like to invite you to take a look at one of my EDH decks and read about how and why I changed it.

Untap, Upkeep, Draw

My journey began where most Magic players' journeys do nowadays: with a preconstructed Commander deck. In my case, it was the Witherbloom Witchcraft precon from Commander 2021. This deck broadly focused on life gain and life loss as themes, with its face commander, Willowdusk, Essence Seer

First Main Phase

My first goal was to make the deck more consistent, and I started by swapping to the "backup" commander for this precon. I was running Dina, Soul Steeper

With a new A + B combo, the first cards I added to this deck were tutors. A few of the budget tutor options went in, including Dig Up

This felt fun for a good while... until it didn't. The deck had the same gameplay loop every single time: tutor for and play one of several overlapping combos, then win the game shortly thereafter. It felt boring; I had unintentionally removed the enjoyable play patterns from the deck in pursuit of winning games.

Combat Step

To revive the fun parts of the deck, I began changing it again. I wanted to keep its original gain-and-drain strategy while maintaining the capability to win games. Aristocrats is a tried-and-true strategy, so I began cutting the recently added combo cards to make room for some new additions. These included great cards like Blood Artist

In theory, this version of the deck was great. With Dina, Soul Steeper

Second Main Phase

I was having more fun with the aristocrats theme, but I noticed that there were other commanders who would be much better suited to lead the deck in its newest form. I tried out Beledros Witherbloom

After a few more months of tinkering, I had about 45 creatures in the deck. Nearly all of the best cards in the deck were creatures, from drain ramp pieces, like Steve

The only problem was that, in my pursuit of making the deck as powerful as possible, I had added some pretty oppressive creatures in. Every variant of Fleshbag Marauder

After taking those creatures out and replacing them with fun graveyard synergy pieces, like Splinterfright

End Step

This deck has seen many themes, commanders, and cards. It was an underwhelming precon and a boring combo deck before finally becoming a deck I enjoyed playing. It changed for the first time because I wanted to win more games. I liked the way that winning games of Magic felt, but didn't quite understand that I enjoyed "earning" those victories over time. When I played this as a combo list, focused on winning through a one-card instant win with my commander, the joy of the game was gone. This, I think, is one of the most important lessons I learned from this list's many iterations: every Magic player finds joy in something different.

All that said, here's the current decklist:

Cleanup Step

Using Archidekt's deck comparison tool, I was able to see that only 17% of the cards from the original Witherbloom Witchcraft precon remain in the current list, and they're all lands. This deck is unrecognizable when compared to its precon predecessor, and I like it that way. I think the changes I made are good ones, and I think it's fitting that the first EDH deck I ever played is also the one I've modified the most.

As I build decks now, I take all of these lessons into consideration. I typically want to build decks that I'd term an 8 out of 10 on the power scale, which is where I think a lot of EDH players want their decks to fall too, but, having learned all these lessons, I ensure that I'm building decks that are fun for me and my opponents alike. The definition of "fun" of course varies from player to player and playgroup to playgroup, and I think tinkering with your decklists as often as possible can help you discover your personal definition of a fun game of Commander.

Do you have any precons you've changed this much? Any decks that you've poured similar amounts of time and thought into? I'd love to hear, let me know in the comments!