My Favourite Deck

To build a commander deck you first choose a legendary creature as your "Commander" and then choose 99 other cards. Ideally you want to build your deck around the abilities and strategy the commander enables, while ensuring all cards in the deck share the same colour identity. In commander decks you can only have one copy of each card, excluding basic lands. Also keep in mind that you will be playing against multiple opponents, so consider strategies that can adapt to different situations.

Next you need to think about what core cards to chose that help with Ramp (cards that generate mana), Interaction (removal spells to deal with your opponents), Card Draw and Win Conditions. Think about your mana curve, so that you are not going round after round without playing any cards. Then chose your land cards, you want at least a third of your deck to be land. And you want a good mix of basic lands and utility land cards. Basic lands are good as they can be pulled from your deck with other cards. And utility lands give you other abilities; chose ones that work well with your commander. Finally playtest your deck and make improvements where necessary.

I have always been a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, so when I started playing magic and found out they had themed decks from the series I knew I had to have one! I started off with two Lord of the Rings starter decks, and then asked my friends to help me make a Commander Deck with extra cards, as that was the format I learned Magic in. The deck was based around food tokens but was quite weak as I just didn't have the right cards. In November 2024 I finally decided to take apart that original deck and redo it completely.

I still wanted it to be predominantly Lord of the Rings themed and based on food tokens because it would then still remind me fondly of my first deck, but it needed something extra. I did some research and decided on the additional theme of lifegain. I chose Frodo and Sam as my partner commanders and went from there. At one point I had over 130 cards that I thought would be good in this deck, and that was before I had chosen any land cards! But I finally whittled it down after some trial and error games and helpful suggestions from fellow players. Let me know your favourite game formats and what decks you have built!