Help creating a commander deck
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on May 13, 2025, 7:31 p.m. by Angelsprout
Hi, I'm looking to build a deck with Felothar, Dawn of the Azban focused on +1/+1 counters and tokens. I bought the Tarkir booster box, the Foundations bundle, and the 2023 starter kit. If you could help me a bit with the cards and how to play it, that would be great. I'm new to the game — I learned how to play last summer at my cousin's house, we played all summer and just got back into it about a month ago. I'm still pretty inexperienced, but I can play decently, and I'd really like to build my first Commander deck.
FormOverFunction says... #3
Super glad to see you here Angelsprout! This site has a TON of sharp people with a lot of valuable insight. I’m also here (lol). I don’t have the cards you referred to memorized, but here are some basic ideas I’d recommend. You get to put a counter on each creature you control, so making more creatures seems smart. White is good at making soldiers, green is good at making sapporlings (aka sprouts!), and black makes zombies. Not an exclusive list, but a good spot to start. You have to sacrifice permanents to trigger, so permanents that aren’t creatures will be ideal. Again: tokens may be the way to go for this. There are a lot of clues in green and some treasures in black. Sacrificing a token creature might still be worthwhile, though. I’m a sucker for enchantments, so I always recommend something from that category. Maybe something that gives your creatures “evasion” (makes them harder to block or otherwise deal with). Maybe something like Dense Canopy. Let us know how things go, and what picks you make! I’d love to hear how it goes and give more follow-up input!
May 14, 2025 1:20 p.m.
Hi Angelsprout, welcome to the game! Starting out with Commander will be a little tough in the beginning because it is a format that benefits a lot from having a large collection but cards don't rotate out like they do in Standard so you get longer use out of the cards that you buy. Your deck will improve over time as you slowly pick up new cards for it. The commander that you are starting with also has black and green, which I think are the best colours to start off with in Commander because a lot of the good cards in those colours that you'll want can be used in lots of other decks, so I think that you are off to a good start! The game has lots of support cards for +1/+1 counter and sacrifice strategies too.
Honestly, it's a little hard to help with the deck when we don't know all the cards you have at this point. My suggestion would be to watch a few youtube videos on building commander decks so that you understand the sorts of cards that a commander deck needs. After that, try to make a list of your own and post it with a link to it in this thread. It doesn't matter how good or bad the starting deck list is. Just having a starting point of some sort will make it a lot easier for everyone to make suggestions to help you build the best deck with the cards that you have, and maybe even offer some budget options for cards you could buy to quickly upgrade for cheap.
If you search "The Command Zone, Commander Deck Building Template for the New Era" on youtube, that video will give you a good starting point.
The video "Felothar, Dawn of the Abzan EDH Deck Tech" by New Horizons MTG will also give you a good idea of the sorts of cards you would want in a Felothar deck. It doesn't matter if you have the cards that are suggested in the video, just do your best to put in similar sorts of cards from your collection into your deck list and people here can help you work out options from there.
Since we at least know the cards in the 2023 Starter Kit, I think that Dusk Legion Duelist, Siege Veteran, Storm the Seedcore, Boon-Bringer Valkyrie, Silverback Elder, In the Trenches, Cooped Up, and Broken Wings would all work as decent cards to include from the start.
May 14, 2025 10:56 p.m.
Sorry, I meant to type: "It doesn't matter if you don't have the cards that are suggested in the video, just do your best to put in similar sorts of cards from your collection into your deck list and people here can help you work out options from there."
May 14, 2025 11:05 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
Angelsprout, it is always good to see players building new decks, so, for this idea, I suggest that you use cards that generate tokens or reanimate creatures, so that you may continue to feed Felothar's ability, and some cards that I would recommend are Golgari Germination, Golgari Guildmage, Twilight Drover, Ghave, Guru of Spores, Bitterblossom, and Black Market Connections, but there are many more cards that could be used in such a deck, so I recommend that you check EDHREC.com for further information, as that website is an excellent resource for the EDH/commander format.
legendofa says... #2
Welcome to the club, Angelsprout!
If you're just starting, then your collection's going to be pretty small. It's not at all unusual for a first Commander deck to be a pile of random cards in the right colors, and it sounds like you have a focus in mind with Felothar, Dawn of the Abzan.
I'm going to assume you know the deck building rules and basic tips for Commander--if you have any questions, there are lots of people here willing to help out. My first question is, how much money are you willing to spend? It gets expensive fast. $50 will get you a functional but pretty basic deck (nothing wrong with that), $300 gives you some room to build it up, customize it, and make it your own, but if you want to put together a high-end deck, it's going to cost at least a couple thousand. Unless you have money to burn, I strongly recommend starting with what you have, build a deck out of the cards on hand, and develop it as you expand your collection, whether that's buying single cards, boosters, boxes, or whatever you can borrow or trade from your cousin.
Once you get a feel for how Felothar works, start building in the direction you want to go. Look for cards that create tokens and spread +1/+1 counters. Look around TappedOut and other deck building sites for examples of what a developed Felothar deck could look like. Here's a list of TappedOut's decks to get you started (scroll past the search section to see the decks). Card databases like Scryfall are also a great tool.
My philosophy is to build the deck you want to play. Above all, it's about having fun. Don't worry too much if you can't or don't want to pay for that perfect card--there's almost always a good-enough option for smaller budgets. Pull together a basic deck, try it against your cousin, visit your local game store, and keep working on it until it's where you want it to be.
May 13, 2025 8:14 p.m. Edited.