- Decklist
- Deck building restrictions
- Commander bracket
- What does the deck do?
- What does the commander do?
- Ramp
- Card draw
- Discard & graveyard
- Finishers
- Interaction & politics
This article is part 1 of a series about my Phlage Commander deck. Click here to read Part 2 and Part 3.
For those that don't know, I play a rather unhealthy amount of a card game called Magic the Gathering, specifically a format called Commander (also known as "EDH").
Commander is played by building a 99 card deck, headed by a legendary creature known as your "commander". During the game, in addition to the cards in your hand, you always have access to your commander and can cast it at any time.
Once your deck is built, you can find 3 other friends with their own decks
and start bullying battling each other and generally have a great time.
The commander of my favorite and most played Commander deck is this little guy:
This is the first in a series of three articles, here I will cover the general strategies and key cards of my deck. Part 2 of this article series will cover some general commentary on Commander deckbuilding, and Part 3 will cover every individual card of the deck in excruciating detail.
If you don't know what Magic the Gathering or Commander is, this article probably won't make a lot of sense, but you're welcome to keep reading if you want.
Enjoy! š
Decklist
You can view my decklist on Moxfield (note that the Moxfield list may have changed from this article at time of writing).
Visual Spoiler
Commander
Creatures - 40
Sorceries - 11
Instants - 8
Artifacts - 2
Enchantments - 4
Lands - 34 (+3 MDFC)
Text
1 Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury 1 Weathered Wayfarer 1 Cartographer's Hawk 1 Generous Plunderer 1 Humble Defector 1 Magmatic Channeler 1 Plargg, Dean of Chaos // Augusta, Dean of Order 1 PuPu UFO 1 Sand Scout 1 Scholar of New Horizons 1 Strict Proctor 1 Sunset Strikemaster 1 AraƱa, Heart of the Spider 1 Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant 1 Laelia, the Blade Reforged 1 Loran of the Third Path 1 Loyal Retainers 1 Magus of the Wheel 1 Scrawling Crawler 1 Tersa Lightshatter 1 Luminous Broodmoth 1 Master of Ceremonies 1 Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion 1 Ox Drover 1 Palace Jailer 1 Solphim, Mayhem Dominus 1 Witch Enchanter // Witch-Blessed Meadow 1 Aerial Extortionist 1 Archangel Avacyn // Avacyn the Purifier 1 Aurelia, the Law Above 1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk 1 Djeru and Hazoret 1 Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest 1 Ilharg, the Raze-Boar 1 Karlach, Fury of Avernus 1 Lorehold, the Historian 1 Aurelia, the Warleader 1 Etali, Primal Storm 1 Moraug, Fury of Akoum 1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight 1 Velomachus Lorehold 1 Faithless Looting 1 Cathartic Reunion 1 Thrilling Discovery 1 Sundering Eruption // Volcanic Fissure 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Wheel of Misfortune 1 Late to Dinner 1 Song-Mad Treachery // Song-Mad Ruins 1 Tragic Arrogance 1 What Must Be Done 1 Vanquish the Horde 1 Erode 1 Path to Exile 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Bovine Intervention 1 Get Lost 1 Soul Partition 1 Spectacular Tactics 1 Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge 1 Horn of the Mark 1 Pumpkin Bombs 1 Bitter Reunion 1 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // The Reflection of Kiki-Jiki 1 Fall of the First Civilization 1 War of the Last Alliance 1 Arena of Glory 1 Arid Mesa 1 Battlefield Forge 1 Bloodstained Mire 1 Clifftop Retreat 1 Command Tower 1 Elegant Parlor 1 Flagstones of Trokair 1 Flooded Strand 1 Hanweir Battlements 1 Inspiring Vantage 1 Lotus Field 1 Lotus Vale 1 Marsh Flats 2 Mountain 3 Plains 1 Plateau 1 Prismatic Vista 1 Rogue's Passage 1 Rugged Prairie 1 Sacred Foundry 1 Scalding Tarn 1 Scavenger Grounds 1 Slayers' Stronghold 1 Spectator Seating 1 Sunbillow Verge 1 Sundown Pass 1 Sunscorched Divide 1 Turbulent Steppe 1 Windswept Heath 1 Wooded Foothills
Deck building restrictions
While building this deck, I gave myself three restrictions to make the process more interesting:
- No game changers
- I find that game changers often lead to unbalanced and homogenized games, which I don't find fun. I feel like the deck is strong enough that it doesn't need to rely on the strength of game changers to be playable.
- No mana rocks
- Mana rocks (particularly the 2 mana ones) are objectively very strong cards in Commander. However, with this deck I really wanted to explore alternative ramp options, particularly the catch-up land ramp cards that white has access too. These cards were more easy to justify playing after banning mana rocks from my deck.
- Big creatures must be legendary
- All of the 5+ mana win-con creatures must be legendary. Besides being a thematic choice, playing a high density of legendary creatures enables some relatively unique synergies (see Finishers).
Other than these restrictions, my goal is to make the strongest deck possible that's consistently fun to play and to play against, using any cards legal in Commander.
Commander bracket
The Phlage Commander deck aims to play at a mid-to-high bracket 3 level. In an average game, the deck will spend the first ~6 turns setting up and interacting with the table. The deck can begin deploying its game-ending creatures as early as turn 5, allowing it to push for wins in the following turns.
What does the deck do?
At its core, the Phlage deck aims to slow down and control the early game, before pivoting to a beatdown plan that tries to kill its opponents with big creatures.
The deck plays a high quantity of spot removal cards and board wipes to remove your opponents' threats and slow them down. This is particularly effective against greedy decks that try to build big value enginesāa shocking number of Commander decks will fold to a single, well timed removal spell.
Besides interaction, the deck plays plenty of cards to set up for the late game. The deck plays a suite of ramp cards, many of which are creatures that place extra lands into play. It also plays cards lots of burst card drawāincluding some wheel effectsāto quickly filter and find the right cards in every situation.
Once you've accrued enough mana and drawn enough cards, you can start deploying the deck's game-ending threats. These cards are all legendary creatures with big power & toughness, and typically have a strong attack triggers or other synergy around combat.
A key component of the deck are the creatures that give extra combats. Many creatures in the deck (including the commander!) have strong attack triggers. By doubling up on these effects, the deck is capable of outputting lots of damage that ends the game quickly.
The deck is filled with a large number of utility lands that help with the beatdown strategy. These lands can give my creatures haste, or make them unblockable so that they can pierce through a large board of opposing creatures.
What does the commander do?
Ramp
One of the goals of this deck was to explore the land ramp cards available in white, which to my surprise is actually quite good.
The idea was heavily inspired by 5 Levels of Mana Fraud in White by Commander Baumi, I highly recommend giving this video a watch as it really broadened my understanding of what strategies are viable in Commander.
Land ramp creatures
The three main white catch-up land ramp cards in my deck are Cartographer's Hawk, Scholar of New Horizon, and Sand Scout. Each of these cards have the ability to ramp an additional land into play on turn 3, provided you have less lands in play than your opponents.
Note that most of the time your opponents will not have more lands than you at the end of each turn (unless they also play land ramp early, usually only played by green decks), thus the main way to consistently ramp with these creatures is to use their effect before playing your natural land drop for turn.
Cartographer's Hawk and Scholar of New Horizon are the preferrable creatures since they can be played on curve turn 2. Sand Scout normally won't do anything if you play it turn 2 as your opponents usually won't have more than 2 lands in play, thus its instead usually played on turn 3, before playing your land drop for turn.
Note that cards like Loyal Warhound and Knight of the White Orchard did not make the cut as just like Sand Scout, they often become turn 3 plays rather than turn 2, which was just a tad too slow to play on curve.
PuPu UFO is a 2 mana land ramp creature that taps to let you place additional lands into play every turn, the only caveat being that you must have them in hand. PuPu UFO plays nicely with wheel effects, since you can dump your extra lands stuck in hand into play before discarding your hand to a wheel.
Weathered Wayfarer & lotus lands
Weathered Wayfarer is an incredibly powerful creature able to search a land from your library into your hand every turn, provided you keep your land count less than your opponents. It has a great synergy with Flagstones of Trokair and the lotus lands (Lotus Field and Lotus Vale), allowing you to ramp using your lands directly while simultaneously keeping your land count low.
A common play pattern is turn 1 play Weathered Wayfarer, turn 2 search for and play Flagstones of Trokair, turn 3 search for and play Lotus Field, sacrificing Flagstones and the other land, then searching an extra plains into play from the Flagstones trigger (Elegant Parlor is a great target). Thus, by turn 4 you have up to 5 mana available (Lotus Field, plains, & land for turn). This play works even if you only had 1 land in your opening hand!
The Flagstones + lotus land combo can also happen if you naturally draw both lands, or if you draw Weathered Wayfarer and one of the two halves of the combo. This happens more often than you may think!
The lotus lands in general are highly synergistic in the deck. Besides their role in land ramp, they also synergize with Phlage by putting 2 lands into your graveyard to exile for its escape cost.
Lotus Field specifically also synergizes with Strict Proctor, since it counters the triggered ability to sacrifice lands. If you've played Strict Proctor, you can play Lotus Field on turn 3 and counter the triggered ability, thus effectively ramping two mana.
Strict Proctor also synergizes with Phlage since it counters its sacrifice trigger, allowing you to play Phlage for only 3 mana, which is a huge tempo swing. It's also just a strong stax piece in general that can slow down many decks.
Red ramp
Besides land ramp, the deck also plays some red ramp cards.
Sunset Strikemaster is a mana dork that also can act as removal in a pinch. Generous Plunderer and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker (via chapter 1 Goblin Shaman) can generate a treasure token every turn on top of having some very relevant upsides.
Card draw
The Phlage deck plays lots of card draw to dig through the deck and find interaction and finisher creatures. Lots of card draw also incidentally fill the graveyard, which I will cover in the next section.
Note that for this article, "card draw" refers to more than the literal action of drawing cards. Any effect that lets you play cards from your library should be considered card draw, the primary example being impulse draw (i.e. exiling cards that you can play until end of turn).
The bar for a card draw effect in this deck is very highānearly every card draw card in the deck is capable of drawing 2-3 cards immediately or draws at least 1 card every turn.
1-2 mana card draw
The deck plays a suite of 1-2 mana spells that are capable of drawing bursts of cards. These allow you to sculpt your opening hand, ensuring that you hit all land drops and have cards to cast on curve.
Pumpkin Bombs and Humble Defector donate themselves to your opponents after being used, which is quite a fun effect, and can be leverage in a political deal.
Magmatic Channeler, Party Thrasher, and Plargg, Dean of Chaos are repeatable versions of these effects, letting you dig deep into the deck to find what you need. Magmatic Chaneller and Party Thrasher in particular are very good at finding land drops due to the number of cards they let you look at.
3-4 mana card draw
The 3-4 mana slots are also filled with card draw effects. These are typically creatures with respectable power & toughness, and often have additional upsides that help damage your opponents or accrue additional value.
Many of the card draw effects in the deck are linked to attack triggers, which benefit off creatures with extra combat effects.
Laelia, the Blade Reforged and AraƱa, Heart of the Spider provide impulse draw while also being creatures that scale up with +1/+1 counters when attacking. These can easily grow to have 6+ power late game that helps kill beat down opponents down.
Fall of the First Civilization is great a slowing down your opponents when played early. When played on turns 3-5, the third chapter will trigger by turns 5-7. This will stop any opponent dumping their hand into play too quickly; I often point out the third chapter to my opponents when I play this card so that they aren't caught off guard by the board wipe.
The saga also lets you make a friend by gifting cards!
Master of Ceremonies is an absolute beast, giving you an insane amount of value every upkeep. Usually you will be drawing at least 3 cards a turn with this creature around. Despite also giving your opponents free stuff, smart players know that this creature should be killed as soon as possible.
Since Commander games often take multiple hours to finish, you can really only get 1-3 games in an average gaming session. For this deck, I really wanted to minimize the number of non-games I experience due to dead draws.
By playing a high density of card draw, I'm constantly able to keep my hand full, increasing the consistency of the deck and allows for more meaningful decisions to be made throughout the game.
Wheels
Lots of the card draw effects aren't actually card positive. For example, cards like Cathartic Reunion and Thrilling Discovery cost 1 card (the spell itself) + 2 cards to discard, in order to draw 3 cards. Despite getting more looks at cards, you aren't actually increasing the net number of cards you have access to.
Some cards are even card negative. After casting Faithless Looting, you end up with less cards in hand than you started with. Magmatic Chaneller and Party Thrasher can sometimes miss with the exiled cards, causing you to discard a card for no value.
To compensate for going down on cards, this deck plays three wheel cards. Wheel effectsare some of the most powerful card draw effects available in Magic, usually forcing each player to discard their hand and draw 7 cards.
Wheel of Fortune is a classic red staple, forcing all players to wheel unconditionally for the low price of 3 mana.
Magus of the Wheel is a similar effect on a creature body that takes a bit more setup to use, but can also act as a blocker in the midgame.
Wheel of Misfortune is a wheel that requires each player to participate in a minigame involving secretly choosing numbers. This card does have the downside of allowing your opponents to choose 0, which allows them to keep their hand if they don't want to be forced to discard their hand.
The first two wheels synergize with Scrawling Crawler, which domes each of your opponents for 7 life since they're forced to draw the cards. It's not as effective with Wheel of Misfortune since your opponents have the option to not wheel.
Discard & graveyard
It's important to the deck that we play a high density of cards that fill our graveyard, primarily so that Phlage is always able to be cast for its escape cost.
Many of the card draw effects in the deck are in the form of rummaging (discarding then drawing a number of cards), an ability characteristic of red.
Finishers
Interaction & politics
Click here to read Part 2, a deep dive into the concepts of EDH deckbuilding theory, or Part 3, a card-by-card analysis of the Phlage Commander deck.