How many Commander decks is too many?

It's a rhetorical question, really - we all know there's no such thing (a recent guest on my podcast has over 800 built paper decks).

But it's something I always stress myself out about, especially since I really like to grind a deck and tweak and optimize it before moving onto something new. I've pretty much averaged one new Commander a deck year for the last four or five years, and that's now left with me with too many decks to fit into an easy carrying case.

So I've thought about dismantling one. The problem is, I don't strictly need to. I don't need the cards in a deck for anything else, I don't necessarily need to sell any of them, so why not keep it together? Maybe I should update a deck instead of building a new one?

That led me to my Sharuum the Hegemon deck. I built it back when EDH was a newer thing and Sharuum was one of the most broken things you could do.

2011 EDH

That's the classic Sharuum combo. Because copying a legendary creature invokes the dreaded legend rule, you have to choose which of your two legendary Sharuums to keep in play and which to send to your graveyard. Crucially, this rule applies before triggers go on the stack.

So, you play Sharuum with an artifact clone effect in your graveyard, return it and copy Sharuum. Send the copy back to the graveyard via the legend rule, then put your Sharuum trigger on the stack and choose a target. Because the Phyrexian Metamorph is already back in the graveyard thanks to the legend rule, it's actually a legal target for its own trigger. That allows you to loop into play infinitely, and win via Bitter Ordeal or Blood Artists triggers.

The deck won the same way every time, and that's pretty much all Sharuum did. It's 6 mana for a powerful effect, but after casting Sharuum once (or twice if you're lucky) you're pretty much playing without a commander for the rest of the game. Your cards either comboed, or did little to nothing with not much in between.

What did I do?

Added another combo, so sometimes I won with a different combo finish aided by Sharuum.

What else?

Oh, more combos. And all artifact combos that work with my commander! Neat!

Except, not. In practice the games always came down to me trying to string together extra turns and tutors to combo, and it wasn't very fun for anyone else. I tried to compensate for this by adding more "fair" cards like Thopter Spy Network and Trading Post, but all that really did was meant my deck durdled even more while on its way to a boring combo finish.

So Sharuum needed changes.

Or did it?

Looking through the deck, I realized there were no changes I could make that were going to meaningfully change the deck. I could pull some or all of the combos, but then why am I playing an extremely generic advantage engine in a commander that costs six mana? In this economy? No, Sharuum was built to combo in a specific way.

The problem is that it just wasn't very fun. You either have a combo machine, a goodstuff artifact deck with all the riches in the world to choose from, and the only real choice you have to make is exactly how degenerate to make your deck.

In other words, it's very 2011 Commander.

2021 Commander

When I think over the most recent decks I've built, my favorite by far is my Archelos, Lagoon Mystic brew. It has a funky Commander that leads to some weird cards doing cool stuff, and it allows me to explore a whole subsection of cards that come into play tapped and would be looked over in any other deck except for Archelos.

Another recent favorite is one a friend of mine built: a Uvilda, Dean of Perfection // Nassari, Dean of Expression deck that was all about casting spells from exile and playing lots of niche cards that interacted in that way or allowed you to steal spells from opponents. Another neat brew with a bunch of lesser-known cards that are only at their best in that particular Nassari deck. Same with Inniaz, the Gale Force, another newer build in my group. And my old-school Mayael the Anima Naya deck is very dear to me and is a much more enjoyable deck to update and play thanks to the 5-power restriction.

A common thread may stand out to you, and I think it's what has driven Commander to the incredible heights it's seeing today. We've always known that casual play drives Magic, but it's so huge right now that Wizards has completely upended how they think about playing Magictogether and is likely to double down on CommandFests in the future, at the expense of professional, competitive play.

But if every commander in 2021 were like Sharuum the Hegemon or Zur the Enchanter or Thraximundar or Isamaru, Hound of Konda or Jhoira of the Ghitu or the other handful of universally feared commanders of 2011, then I don't think we'd be having any "years of Commander."

Lean Into Your Theme

This has become my go-to advice for people getting into Commander. "Hey, what colors do you like playing?" is a great starting point, but the old Mark Rosewater idiom about how "restrictions breed creativity" is very much true - the more your deck does something unique very well, the more varied and enjoyable I've found games to be.

And Wizards has given us a ton of great looks in this space. In 2011 Commander, "theme" usually either meant "bad tribal" or "broken combos," but with the current crop of commanders Wizards is putting out, every deck comes with a unique theme - or multiple ones. Now when someone plays Ooze or Centaur Tribal at the table, you know their deck is probably going to play some interesting cards you've never seen or have forgotten about, and not "interesting" in the sense of "oh, I didn't know about this random 3/3 for 4 mana that was printed in 1996 and happens to match your creature type." Instead, it's cards like this.

I'll take commanders like Lynde over the mistakes that were the Brawl decks: generically giga-powerful bombs like Chulane, Teller of Tales - whose theme is "all your goodstuffs are more goodstuff" - or the ever-present mistake that is Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. If you think about it, that cycle of commanders are the Arcane Signets of the precons - too powerful to ignore but boring and homogenous in practice. A bunch of Sharuums.

Let's go back to the Archelos deck I mentioned earlier.

Archelos EDH | Commander | Corbin Hosler

• Commander (1)
• 1 Archelos, Lagoon Mystic

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Apex Devastator
• 1 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Elvish Reclaimer
• 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Opposition Agent
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Risen Reef
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Sepulchral Primordial
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero
• 1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• 1 Wood Elves

• Instants (11)
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chord of Calling
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Fierce Guardianship
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Mana Drain
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Swan Song

• Sorceries (17)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Explore
• 1 Expropriate
• 1 Hour of Promise
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reshape the Earth
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Sea Gate Restoration
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Torment of Hailfire
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Villainous Wealth

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Mind's Dilation
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
• 1 Shark Typhoon
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Search for Azcanta

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Amulet of Vigor
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Honor-Worn Shaku
• 1 Orb of Dreams
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Smuggler's Copter
• 1 The Omenkeel

• Lands (36)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Bayou
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dark Depths
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Field of the Dead
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Lotus Field
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Zagoth Triome
• 1 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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A weird restriction on my commander leads to a bunch of cool interactions. I've never seen a Smuggler's Copter cast in Commander and I never thought I'd be doing so either, but it works so perfectly with Archelos that it's actually just a unique add. Ben Doolittle does an entire series about building around commanders with drawbacks, because that's often how we come up with our favorite brews, like this Turtle.

That's what has kept Commander fresh and fun for me despite playing weekly for years at this point, and it's really influenced how I've approached building decks! I haven't made a final decision on what to do with Sharuum. Should I try to revamp the deck, or should I dismantle it entirely not because I need to but because I want to and start a new Commander deck if I get the urge? I'm leaning toward the latter, but we'll see.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler