Advice on first EDH deck?
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on July 6, 2016, 11:12 p.m. by vica
Hey! This is my first shot at getting into EDH - before this I've always just used friend's decks/played other formats, but since it's kind of becoming a reccuring thing I figured it was time to buy in. I don't have a bunch of experience in the format, so I'm not 100% what's good and what isn't, but from reading other decklists for my commander of choice and some playtesting, I came up with this. Before I go out and buy most of the cards though, I want to know - are there any improvements to be made, or fixes I can make? The only limitation is my wallet - I forfeited some p decent cards to get it to around $60, and I'd like to keep it there. Any advice is appreciated!
thermonuclearbeanie says... #3
5 colour decks tend to be inherently more expensive due to the mana fixing that you will need. Also when first building decks you may find that you quickly become bored or you don't enjoy it as much as you first thought, it took me about 6 different builds before I settled upon the 2 EDH decks that I now play. I would suggest you build a 1 or 2 colour deck to start and see how you like it, my first deck for example was mono black demons, very affordable as the lands were cheap and the creatures, although strong, weren't crazy powerful and so weren't too expensive either. If you are set on building Scion of the Ur-Dragon then you just need to keep in mind that a budget version of it will be very under-powered and you will have lots of problems with mana, I have a friend who plays Scion of the Ur-Dragon and his deck is worth well over $1000. Hope this helped :)
July 7, 2016 7:17 a.m.
I don't think anyone can give advice on building a Scion EDH to stay within $60. I gave it a look over, you'll find it extremely hard to play for mostly mana reasons; either you won't have what you need or your lands are too slow. Long Live The Queen is my 5 color EDH, that's an example of how lands on 5 color should look. As far as budget I used to run a mono black demon deck with Maralen of the Mornsong as general (to immediately tutor into Liliana of the Dark Realms for land tutors) that came in around $100 at its peak. It ran very smooth and was competitive in a casual setting. Personally, mono-black is my go to for budget, fun, and playability.
July 7, 2016 3:28 p.m.
vica,
Welcome to EDH!
As others have mentioned, the problem with Scion is that your deck is going to either be expensive and extremely competitive, or cheap and extremely non-competitive. Depending on your playgroup, running the cheap version may be just fine. But there's a big risk that you will spend a bunch of time trying to get it together, be totally proud of it ... and then get completely wrecked by someone running an equally inexpensive but much more competitive Commander, leaving you with a very bad taste of the format.
If you're heart is set on running Scion that's totally cool (I run a Rith, the Awakener deck that's frankly very weak, but I just love it to death). I just want to make sure you go into it with eyes wide open. If you want to go that route, here are some thoughts ...
- I recommend starting with Budget Scion of the Ur-Dragon - EDH / Commander and the associated deck tech video, by BudgetMTGDecks.
- Then, the deck search function here on TappedOut (it's the magnifying glass in the upper right) is a great way to see what other people are playing. Here's the search for Budget decks with Scion as the Commander. EDHREC is great too; here's their Scion page.
- When it's time to fiddle with your manabase, nothing's better than manabasecrafter ... plug in a 4-to-5 star rating and whatever price you can stand and you'll find a ton of cards you never even knew existed.
- Also, check out the Pandora's Deckbox articles on Epochalyptik's home page for some really solid deck-building advice.
- I also like The Complete Commander by Bennie Smith at StarCityGames.
My real advice though, which is the same I give to almost everyone starting EDH, is to just grab a pre-con. None of them are optimized (because they all come with three different Commander options), but they're all playable out of the box. You get a decent manabase and a ton of Commander staples, plus by playing the different Commanders you can very quickly get a good feel for the direction you'll want to take your eventual homebrew deck. Plus you'll get to playtest the very different card interactions and politics of multiplayer without a big time/$/emotional investment.
All the Commander 2015 products were surprisingly good out of the box, and with some inexpensive upgrades, the Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Mizzix of the Izmagnus ones were really good.
And either way, here are some resources worth mentioning:
- The Command Zone podcasts and videos are superb. You will probably not find the deck tech ones very helpful (the hosts are pretty spiky, so budget is not much of a consideration) but their level up ones (on politics and ediquitee for example) are great for folks new to multiplayer.
- For some good budget decks and great explanations of the thought process that went into them, I recommend checking out Abe Sargent's Budget Commander series at GatheringMagic and Tomer Abramovici's Budget Commander series at MTGgoldfish.
- I also recommend Jason Alt's 75% deck deck design philosophy to most new players.
Sorry about the wall of text. Thanks for reading this far!
Good luck and good skill!
July 9, 2016 5:56 a.m. Edited.
lizgaa2410 says... #6
Like everyone else said, land is going to be a big problem. One thing to try, maybe instead of the "Vivid" lands, would be the "storage" lands from the Time Spiral block, like Dreadship Reef or Calciform Pool. They're a lot slower than fetch or shock lands, but they also come in every two-color combo and they provide a lot of flexibility on the cheap.
Tribal decks are hard, but they're a ton of fun, kind of like EDH in general. Keep your chin up and good luck!
July 12, 2016 3:39 a.m.
Since I see a lot of good points have been made I think I'll throw in my two cents. There is a benefit to not having a highly competitive deck when playing multiplayer. I have 4 decks and all of them can hold their own competitively. The problem is my play group is casual and budget which means that 95% of the games I play turn into archenemy (the whole table versus one person). That said building a deck almost always takes time. It took me 2 years to build my first EDH deck (Kaalia) before I was happy with the result and that took lord knows how many iterations. I also rigorously tested all of my decks using tappedout and mtgdeckbuilder with friends before buying. You can build budget EDH decks but that usually restricts diversity if you want to be competitive. You can spend a lot of money on your deck but it would be wasted if you didn't know exactly what you were trying to accomplish with it. The best option IMO is to build a deck you really like. Test it with your friends and then commit.
Here's one last note. EDH is the long game in magic. No matter what you choose to do it is still going to cost some money to do it. Honestly, sit down and ask yourself how long you're going to be in the format. The longer you are here the more your deck and strategy will improve and the more fun you will have. Good luck with your build, have fun with your games, and always keep an open ear to what people have to say. The best resource when it comes to EDH is the community.
AlexoBn says... #2
I wouldn't start with five colours dragons...if you don't have a decent amount of fetches, shocks and so on. It would be really hard to get the deck competitive. I would recommend you a 2 coloured decks to start with because you can improve it easier (on budget).
July 7, 2016 1:45 a.m.