Deckbuilding Necessities?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on May 29, 2022, 6:01 a.m. by DrukenReaps
So I think for the most part people agree that EDH decks need mana ramp, card draw, removal, and a path to victory. At least in basic terms most successful decks will have all of those. I'm curious though in more specifics are there things you think you should always include?
I don't do this myself, though I know I need to, but including land destruction in every deck feels pretty much needed. Not really mass land destruction or just land destruction for the sake of land destruction but something to get rid of those Reliquary Towers, Rogue's Passages, or Maze's Ends. Those being just at the casual end of things. There are others at the more expensive and even competitive end of things like Gaea's Cradle.
All that to say I think the vast majority of players would benefit from running Ghost Quarter and maybe 1 or 2 of his friends in almost every deck.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
Thought Vessel / Reliquary Tower because discarding to hand size sucks
May 29, 2022 6:39 a.m.
TheoryCrafter says... #5
If I can I'll add in at least one alternate win card. In part if a game stalls out you still have a way to win.
Another thing you should have are board wipes to level the playing field if you fall behind. Especially ones that allow you to exile everything to get around cards that give your opponents' permanents both hexproof and indestructible.
Functional reprints are an another must that helps get you around the one card rule.
May 29, 2022 9:28 a.m.
I think each function is deck specific and there is no function that needs to be in every deck
Selfmill/reanimater doesn't need card draw
A tuned deck with average 2cmc or less doesn't need ramp
Pillowfort/hug doesnt need removal
However, I will concede that there are some that a person should put in all of there decks if it's a key function for their playstyle, or if it is necessary for their meta
In your play group spot land removal maybe necessary in every deck or TypicalTimmy may like playing with a big fist full of awnsers so unlimited hand size would necessary in all of his decks
May 29, 2022 9:39 a.m.
golgarigirl says... #7
I usually default to custom sorting my decks by what the deck needs/how it functions. General 'essential' categories I have are:
Advantage: Card advantage and filtering, anything that generates velocity. This can include things like self-mill in decks that use it.
Ramp: I put cost reduction in here too, but anything that allows me to have more than my turn-count in mana.
Removal: Sometimes I separate out mass removal, but this includes everything that could eliminate a threat. This includes graveyard removal etc. I sometimes even put the rare protective spell in here. But that's mostly because I'm lazy...methodology is that it 'removes' an opponent's answer.
Creatures: Sometimes I break this category into others if the creatures all have etb's or suit specific purpose. Sometimes I just need dudes.
Recursion/Zone: Some decks want more than just graveyard recursion (they want discard/mill/etc), but most decks benefit from a few pieces of recursion.
Other: Sometimes I just have an 'other' category as a catch-all for things that don't fit into the essential categories. Some have specific 'other' categories. Some of my decks need help getting into the red zone, so that deck has a specific combat-enabling section. My treasure deck has a section dedicated to treasure generation since it's so important. And my Wild Pair deck sorts my creatures by P+T, so I know my tutor targets based on what I cast, and make sure if I make a cut, I'm not crippling the tutor power for another creature.
Kinda funny I don't usually consider a win-con a separate category while most other people do. I guess as long as I do my due dilligence with the other categories, for me it usually falls into place. I like massive synergy engines so that makes sense.
May 29, 2022 10:53 a.m. Edited.
griffstick says... #8
I feel with every time I build a deck that includes blue I have to have Cyclonic Rift
Red Blasphemous Act
White Esper Sentinel
Black Demonic Tutor
Green Llanowar Elves
May 29, 2022 11:28 a.m. Edited.
DrukenReaps says... #9
RambIe I very much disagree with "Selfmill/reanimater doesn't need card draw. A tuned deck with average 2cmc or less doesn't need ramp. Pillowfort/hug doesn't need removal"
I'll point to my own Tayam, Luminous Enigma for a moment, far from competitive I'll note. The deck however matches up quite nicely with Selfmill/reanimater and has an average cmc of 3. I can say without a doubt if there was no draw or ramp it wouldn't perform nearly as well as it currently does. Taking a look at your decks I'm not convinced you believe what you typed either. All of your decks I looked at have each of those basic categories I mentioned.
I would be interested in seeing a deck that performs roughly the same when 1 or more of card draw, ramp, or removal are eliminated from it. I'm happy to be wrong in this. I will say my definitions of these things are not particularly strict and would agree that having self mill lessens the need for card draw. Low CMC decks don't want as much ramp. I'll stand by every deck should run more removal forever though, maybe that's just me lol.
May 29, 2022 2:41 p.m.
TypicalTimmy: While I understand the merit of your comment, I don't agree with the statement that cost reduction is better than ramp. Yes, cost reduction is good but there are lots of times where ramp is just better.
The main issues with cost reduction are:
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It's very targetted. Most of the time it only affects a colour, or a card type (or even just a specific creature type). This means that while it helps some cards in your deck, it also doesn't help a large handful, unlike traditional ramp.
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Most of the time it doesn't help with hard costs. Reducing the generic cost is nice, but a lot of places where decks get stuck is paying for hard costs, which most cost reducers don't help with at all. This is exacerbated when a deck is 3+ colours.
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It does nothing for cheap costed spells. If I'm running a lot of one cost spells, or two cmc completely hard costed spells (think something like Dovin's Veto) then a piece of mana ramp will do just as much as a cost reducer, or in some cases much more.
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A lot of decks are only playiing one or two spells a turn. If this is the case then reducing one spell by one mana is the same as playing one ramp piece. Don'ty get me wrong, there are decks where the storm count is high and in those decks I fully endorse running cost reducers, but there are a lot of battlecruiser style decks where a ramp spell would have done just as much.
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The better cost reducers are expensive and generally few and far between. You're looking at 3+ mana for the more flexible ones, where you want your ramp spells to be coming down generally between one and two mana. And even at three mana, cards like Cultivate get you two coloured sources of mana, which then feeds back into my earlier point.
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Cost reducers will become more high value targets than ramp pieces. While you can destroy a mana rock in the same way, an Urza's Incubator will pull a lot more aggression against it than a Chromatic Lantern. And the loss of the incubator will generally much more negatively affect the deck than the lost of a single ramp piece.
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A lot of players will only run a few cost reducers in place of the correct amount of ramp. "this does more so I don't have to run as much ramp" is a pretty common deck building attitude that I see (especially in sliver decks - seriously, sliver decks are some of the most unimaginative decks out there) as they expect that something like their Urza's Incubator will be all they need for ramp. But this reduces the overall ramp the deck has which in turn ends up making it slower overall. And I understand that this is a shortcoming of the player, not the cost reducer but I'm still listing it here as it's pretty common.
Don't get me wrong, ther are lots of places where cost reducers do some serious legwork, however it's important to actually assess what the deck is trying to achieve and understanding the pros and cons of each rather than just apply a blanket rule of X > Y.
It's also worth mentioning the decks where they do the most legowrk, the cost reducer is treated more as a combo piece rather than a mana rock substitute, for example with Elsha of the Infinite + Sensei's Divining Top + Helm of Awakening.
May 30, 2022 12:33 a.m. Edited.
@DrukenReaps
It's OK if you disagree, everyone having a unique style of building/playing is one of the best parts of edh. Ive never been a fan of the hivemind found in 60 card formats. So i don't really want everyone to view things the way i do and I don't want to change your mind
If your just looking for some examples for inspiration I would suggest looking for some old Meren of Clan Nel Toth decks they were highly competitive decks that specialize in self sacrifice creatures with dredge & reanimate combos were accidentally drawing a reanimate target could ruin a game.
As for not needing ramp that could be any deck if you run your cmc to low you create an issue known as "running out of gas" or "top deck hero" were you consistently blow out your hand and the deck fizzles out. Anyone who has experienced this will testify the last thing there deck needs is ramp.
TypicalTimmy says... #2
Cost reduction.
An Arcane Signet in a mono-green deck will get you when you tap it. You net 1 mana per turn. Conversely, an Emerald Medallion will reduce all of your green spells by . If you cast 3 green spells in a single turn, you effectively "netted" mana for free.
Same thing with spells such as Oketra's Monument in a white deck, which are known for playing heavy amounts of creatures. Or Urza's Incubator in a tribal deck. Or Cloud Key in perhaps a Voltron or Enchantress deck, or a spellslinger deck.
Cost reduction will always get you far, far FAR more mana out of it than you paid to get into it.
May 29, 2022 6:08 a.m.