How many colors should I have?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on March 12, 2014, 7:32 a.m. by Indigoindigo
I'm thinking about building a casual, really budget commander deck to play with friends. I've thought about 3-color, but 4-color would be interesting as well.
Question: Is there enough good really budget lands (< $2) to support 4 or 3 colors in a commander deck? Or should I stick to 2 colors when I'm on a strict budget?
Indigoindigo says... #3
How about 4? Doable or a bit too hard?
Btw, thanks a lot for your guides, they will be great help when building :)
March 12, 2014 7:53 a.m.
You can't really go 4 colors. There are no 4 color legendary creatures.
Three is manageable on a budget in a casual atmosphere. Five colors can be done, but you need to focus a little on green to ramp into your missing color pieces to keep pace with the other decks.
Competitive is a different ball of wax and you'd need a budget for that one.
March 12, 2014 7:55 a.m.
Indigoindigo says... #5
How big a budget would you recommend to make it competitive (3 colors)?
March 12, 2014 9:07 a.m.
That depends on your playgroup, in the group I play with you could make a competitive deck at $150, but it wouldn't win all that often. But really $200 is where the truly competitive decks sit at. But if people wanted to, that could easily bump to $300-400 just by adding more of the higher dual lands and building in some of the more common infinite loops that are used in EDH and other power cards that we skip.
March 12, 2014 9:14 a.m.
I mean if you pulled out all the stops money-wise, that's
3 Original dual lands @ ~$80 each (some more some are less, depends on the colors).
3 Shocklands @ ~$8 each
1 Command Tower @ ~$1
3 Checklands @ ~$2
That's a very rough estimate of around $271 for lands only. There are other land choices you can add based on the color choices on whether they are a shard or a wedge.
For the rest of the deck it all depends on what is needed. But you can get very, very pricey for a deck. For a true price, go nuts and include whatever when you make a deck on this site. Each deck has a total cost number in the right hand side that indicates what it would cost you if you bought the deck.
March 12, 2014 9:20 a.m.
Oletorpedo says... #8
My suggestion is to buy one of the premade Commander decks from "commander 13". Good, playable three-colour EDH decks with all the dual lands you'll need on a budget deck.
March 12, 2014 9:37 a.m.
Magiclover318 says... #9
Yeah buy one of the Premade commander decks, I bought the Naya one and use Mayael the Anima , with her you put out a lot of huge and very powerful creatures really fast, sometimes T4.
Those creatures really are expensive though like Avacyn, Angel of Hope Craterhoof Behemoth and others.
March 12, 2014 9:45 a.m.
Oletorpedo says... #10
The decks are also great for building a "new" deck with. Each deck has two or three directions in them. Like the Esper one has a lifegain theme, and an artifact-theme. If you like artifacts, you buy more cards to compliment that aspect of the deck, and so forth.
March 12, 2014 10 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #11
Since I have a bit of time (class is slow), I'll go into some theory.
The optimal land base for a tricolor EDH deck is the 3-3-9 split: 3 ABUR duals, 3 shock lands, and 9 fetch lands. That gives you the widest range of options and the most consistency, and you can build the rest of your land base around this core.
The problem with 3-3-9 lineups is that they're expensive. In budget EDH, you won't have access to the ABUR duals or the fetches. You might have shocks, depending on how many colors you have and how much you consider your budget to be.
You still have many options, though.
- Check lands (Glacial Fortress )
- Pain lands (Adarkar Wastes )
- Ravnica Karoos (Azorius Chancery )
- Vivid lands (Vivid Meadow )
- Shard lands (Arcane Sanctum )
- Other (City of Brass , Command Tower , Rupture Spire , Transguild Promenade )
The biggest problem for budget tricolor EDH decks is tap lands. You don't want too many ETB-tapped lands like Vivids and Karoos because they set you back a turn. Balance between color fixing and tempo is more important than pure color fixing.
March 12, 2014 10:15 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #12
Also, the C13 decks are in varying states of playability. You can easily homebrew a deck for the same price and get better functionality (and more satisfaction) out of it.
March 12, 2014 10:16 a.m.
Indigoindigo says... #13
Oletorpedo, Magiclover318: My idea is to base the deck around the C13 bant deck with Roon of the Hidden Realm
, but there's probably a lot of cards that don't fit into the deck I want to make. So 50/50, maybe.
Epochalyptic: Is ramp like Elvish Mystic
, Llanowar Elves
, Kiora's Follower
and Voyaging Satyr
enough to justify a few more lands that come into play tapped?
March 12, 2014 12:43 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #14
Generally speaking, you don't want to run mana dorks like those. They're inefficient in EDH because they're so vulnerable to sweepers. Go with artifact ramp instead.
To answer the underlying question: You can effectively scale your ratio of normal to ETB-tapped lands with the amount of ramp you get from other sources, but there is a theoretical/practical limit to the number of lands you can afford to have ETB tapped. I recommend not going above five or six ETB-tapped lands if you can help it.
March 12, 2014 12:47 p.m.
apt142 using a 5 color general, you can run 4 colors, excluding the 5th is you so choose, afaik, no where is it written, you must use all 5 colors.
March 12, 2014 12:57 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #16
@gufymike: While that's technically true, it's exceedingly rare (at least in my experience) for someone to build a five-color deck only to exclude one of the colors.
The general assumption when discussing the number of colors in an EDH deck is that the player intends to use all of the included colors.
March 12, 2014 1:14 p.m.
Epochalyptik t'is true, because sometimes you don't want to give up the extra. But if you go into the mindset, I want to use these colors and do this with the deck, you have the option available to you to use 4 colors. That was the point of bringing it up, because most people will think 'a general provides x colors, must use x colors'.
March 12, 2014 2:23 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #18
Fair point. It does limit the relevance of your general, though, which is not always optimal.
March 12, 2014 2:49 p.m.
I'm not saying you should run Sharuum the Hegemon with a mono-U deck (replacing say Memnarch ), just that there is another way of thinking that can be used to attain the things you want.
March 12, 2014 2:52 p.m.
Epochalyptik I have a 5 color Commander deck that has no black in it. There is multi colored mana sources to allow the commander to be cast, but that is it. Partially out of budget concerns, but mostly because nothing black really fit in with the theme of the deck.
March 15, 2014 10:57 p.m.
NotSoLuckyLydia says... #21
If you really did wanna use a 5 color general for a 4 color deck, you might want to use Reaper King , because it could still be cast, but he generally draws some brutal hate early on, because people don't like having EVERY permanent exploded.
March 16, 2014 2:20 a.m.
Indigoindigo says... #22
This is my first attempt at a commander deck, a bant-deck with Roon as a commander. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a look and give some short feedback :)
March 19, 2014 4:14 p.m.
eldritchkraken says... #23
I would like to add that while there are no 4-color legendary creatures, you can still use the four-color Nephilims (Dune-Brood Nephilim , Glint-Eye Nephilim , Ink-Treader Nephilim , Witch-Maw Nephilim , and Yore-Tiller Nephilim ). If you're building the deck for casual play then it really shouldn't matter much.
March 24, 2014 5:12 p.m.
derKochXXL says... #24
Mono coloured! Just trolling. I would stay in 3 colours. It depends on your game plan, but I have a feeling a 4 colour Commander might be too unfocused. But please proof me wrong. Maybe it's just my mono love speaking.
Epochalyptik says... #2
You can do tricolor on a budget, but I wouldn't go to five colors. You won't have access to some of the more powerful duals, but the deck will be functional.
March 12, 2014 7:35 a.m.