The TRICK YOU NEED, What I learned building 1000 commander decks – Transcript

00:00What does someone who's been paid to make a thousand Commander decks learn? Well, like the famous Thomas Edison, they learn 999 ways on how not to build a Commander deck. So today, I'm giving you my instant reaction to finishing my 1000th Commander deck. Then after analyzing my first deck and my 1000th deck, I realized the three major things that have changed about how I build them to make my patrons happy who pay me to build these for them on Patreon. And the thing that separates me from anyone else

00:27who has a overly verbose amount of magic decks, I built every single one of these decks in paper with real cards. And I did all that by not spending a bunch of money, but I genuinely got to sit down and play with these things. And oh my gosh, now whenever I look at any Commander deck ever that anyone sends me, I see these three things and they are always wrong. And these are things you can't just teach. Like they're things that genuinely take so much time to understand and it's going to be different for everyone, but I'm really hoping I can communicate this to you.

00:55But if by the end of the video, you already knew these three things, I hope you're getting paid to make your decks. But judging by the comments on most of my videos, I doubt it. Now, as I said, I'm not rich, but I still made all of these in paper. I had to make an insane system to collect cards and organize them and it took me over 400 hours of engineering with two of my closest friends. We made a system that organized every single deck I ever had using an app so I never have to own more than one

01:21copy of a magic card. Literally, I sold all my extra Soul Rings, all my extra fetches, shocklands, staples, everything. I only need one of each and I can still keep all of my decks. So if that interests you and you want to save money, my project comes out next Monday on Kickstarter. Please go follow it.

01:37Seriously, go in the description. This took us ages. But let's get into the lessons. Lesson number one. Over 400 of my submissions asked me to make bracket three lists that are powerful but don't use popular spells or staples. That means they want bracket three, they want it to be really good, but they barely even want me to include Soul Ring, let alone a game changer. And they want it to be extremely unique, whether that be the theme or the cards used that are

02:03strong yet not staples. So many people believe this means you have to go out and search a unique commander that has very specific cards that make it totally cracked that no one would know of. A prime example of this is the card Tiamat. It uses a card called Dream Halls, which combos with it. Barely anyone knows what Dream Halls is. It's extremely powerful with Tiamat and it makes it feel strong without using staples and it feels unique. And while that's true and almost every commander does have something special like that

02:30you can find, that's not filling your whole deck. The real secret to making a commander deck way stronger without using all these things that I see no one do is something called skipping the third card. The 1,000th deck that I made for someone was a Dr. Doom upgraded precon. They gave me $200 to upgrade the Doom precon and try to make something that was better yet not filled with a bunch of staples. They didn't want to see $200 get pumped into your Rhystic

02:57Study. Now, Dr. Doom, King of Latveria, says that at the beginning of combat on your turn, target villain you control gains menace until end of turn and it connives. The regular play pattern is that you cast your Doom, you give Dr.

03:10Doom connive, then you discard a villain from your hand and then you reanimate it. Or discard cards that you want in your graveyard such as Past in Flames. And then, as a result, everyone ends up playing this deck and running into the same exact problem. I need a ton of reanimation cards and I need a ton of villains, which leaves me almost no amount of cards for interaction and a very slim amount for mana production.

03:35And oh my gosh, what about the fun cards or the enchantments or more lands? What do I do? At the end of the day, you needed Dr. Doom, a villain to discard, and a reanimation spell. It's time to start skipping the third card and stop being so dang reliant on your commander.

03:50What you actually wanted was the Green Goblin. The Green Goblin says, "Spells you cast from your graveyard cost two less to cast and each nonland card in your graveyard has mayhem." That means you can now discard any card from your hand. It doesn't need to just be a villain. And now those cards cost two less to cast and can be cast from your graveyard. So many people go into a commander deck and figure out a way to abuse the commander's main mechanic and

04:17then they build all their cards around it. They build a strategy. And aiming for a strategy makes you disregard almost completely a so many cards that are strategy completely on their own. Now many people refer to cards like this as the secret commander. But in my opinion, there's cards that are not creatures, mostly not even legendary, that can have this same effect. The idea is that it's now if this card is on your battlefield with your commander, your

04:43strategy has either changed, become more broad, more optimal, or has taken it in a completely new direction. And as a result, it's harder to lock out your game plan or be destroyed by someone, even board wiped from people because of your new found flexibility via what most people like to call secret commanders.

05:01But I don't have a word for these cards, but I put them in every dang deck. And the way to catch yourself is that once you think of a third card that you need within something, try to take a step back and find more cards that do what you want by the second card. And often time these cards are going to be higher in mana value. But the fact is now instead of having two cards in your list, you just have this one. So you now

05:27have more space for what you should have had in the first place in order to get around to playing your big mana spells. I can afford to play this four mana creature in my list instead of two, like a one mana reanimate spell and a two mana villain, because I can now replace that extra card I'm no longer running with interaction to slow my opponents down or a mana rock to speed my plan up.

05:52So if you feel like you're running out of room for the basics in your deck, good mana production and good interaction and good card draw, this is where you need to look. You need to look for the third card. But it would kind of be insane as if I made 1,000 Commander decks and I didn't get a chance to figure out how to perfect the mana curve. And boy, did I find an insane secret. So, I'll start with some new

06:19found basics that I figured out about mana production that I'm kind of shocked isn't more normalized and I feel like after this video, it's going to be everywhere cuz everyone's going to know it. If your Commander five CMC, you should be playing cards that give you mana on turn one so that you can cast a ramp spell on turn two that costs three mana. Now, obviously, green has the highest access to this, but trust me when I say this, every other color does

06:46too. If you have a five mana Commander, let's say I cast Blood Pet on turn one. On turn two, I play another land and I'm able to cast a three mana ramp spell on turn two. I'll say Basalt Monolith. That means on turn three, even without a land drop, I now have five mana to cast my Commander. And if you're in green, this is so easy. Turn one mana dork, turn two three mana ramp spell like Cultivate.

07:12That means turn three five mana. Now, that's just good math and all, but the real secret I found to perfecting the mana curve and if your Commander is three CMC, then you need to cut any three CMC card from your deck that isn't as important as your Commander because in the end of the day, when turn three rolls around and you want to cast either a Command Sphere or you want to cast Najeela, I'd hope you'd be casting

07:37Najeela. And then, it's now turn four. Do you want to cast the Command Sphere or do you want to cast the Grim Hireling in your hand? Because now you have access to cast your four mana spells, which should be better than your three mana spells because you should have wanted to cast your Commander. So, unless the three mana spell is insanely good like Jessica's Will, you should be casting your Commander. So, cut any three CMC spell in a deck with a three CMC Commander that isn't as good as your

08:04Commander or is important or is like not a win con. Clearly, keep in a win con if it's the same CMC. And on that same math, do not include two mana ramp in a three CMC commander deck. No Najeela list ever should be running any two CMC mana rocks at all. There's no point. Run exclusively one CMC mana ramp, which you're in five colors in that deck, so you should have plenty, and two mana cards that support the deck really well.

08:31Like Voice of Victory, two mana creature that makes the strategy insanely better and protects you. So that way you can go one drop past two drop to play an important piece like Voice of Victory, and then turn three your commander. Or turn one mana dork, turn two commander.

08:46That is infinitely better than turn one nothing, turn two mana rock. But that is a massive thing I see in every deck. Please check the curve of your mana production. You shouldn't have two CMC and three CMC ramp spells. You should always skip. It should be one to three to five or two to four to six and avoid your commander CMC at all costs unless it's an amazing card. Now, obviously this took a lot of cards to test.

09:12Luckily, because of the Prism system that I mentioned earlier, remember, link in the description, I was able to actually afford all these cards cuz when I sold all my extras from Prism, I had a service like Card Conduit to sell it to. I took every extra card that I had and sold it to Card Conduit very easily. All I had to do was send them the list of my cards. They gave me an estimation on its value. I liked the value, it was great.

09:35I boxed it all up, sent it to them, and I got thousands of dollars back from So if you want the easiest way to get money for your cards, go to Card Conduit, my link in my description, and use code Defcat to get 10% off the processing fees. Thank you again to Card Conduit for sponsoring this chan- This third secret was something I was thinking, honestly, I should keep for myself. But if I truly want to be an amazing deck builder, I really shouldn't have to pull back any of my secrets because who can

10:01really perform as best as I? If I can tell everyone my secrets and now I'm not the premier deck builder, then I should have never been the premier deck builder to begin with. Now, so many people have attempted this strategy I'm about to talk about and done a terrible job and you know its name. They call it building a commander deck backwards. That's where you start with the win con and end with the commander. Now, this strategy is still wrong and I disagree with it.

10:25Something I ask the people that ask me to make them decks is what is your favorite mechanic to do? For example, I love surveil. The process of deciding to put a card and leave it on top library or put it into the graveyard is one of my favorite parts of the game in general. The problem is so many people figure out their favorite mechanic and then they realize I'm just going to maximize on that mechanic and do as much as that mechanic as possible and now the

10:51deck's boring. So, how did I make reverse landfall, the deck that wins by putting lands back in your hand? It was a process that I like to call using a card wrong. Now, this entire idea was inspired by someone and I want to shout them out. They're a a group called Critical EDH. Specifically, they made a deck called Wrong Side. It was meant to utilize what was at the time the most powerful strategy in all of competitive

11:17commander called Rograkh Silas or Rog Sai, where you built a deck with the lowest CMC possible to win the game with the card called Ad Nauseam. Ad Nauseam has you lose life based on the CMC of the card that is drawn during the process of the resolution of the card.

11:34So, you want the lowest CMC possible to draw as many cards. But, instead these people put in massive eight, nine, 10 mana spells cuz they leverage something different and unique about the commander. This gives you the element of surprise in a game which we all know how valuable it is. It makes people not know how to counter your strategy. It catches people off guard. It makes the deck more fun and it opens up opportunities to use nuts o cards like commandeer. This