How to Build an MTG Commander Deck, Step by Step

Build it in this order: pick a commander, write the plan in one sentence, then fill the deck in slots. A Commander deck is exactly 100 cards including the commander (Comprehensive Rules 903.5a), so you have 99 slots to spend. Most decks want roughly 36 to 38 lands, 10 ramp pieces, 10 cards that draw, 8 to 10 pieces of interaction and 2 or 3 board wipes. That leaves 28 to 33 slots for the plan itself, which is the part that makes the deck yours.

Building in that order matters. If you pick the fun cards first you end up with 99 exciting cards and no mana, which is the single most common way a first Commander deck fails. The rest of this guide walks the seven steps, quotes the construction rules you have to obey, and shows you how to check the finished list.

The Commander deck template, slot by slot

This is the starting distribution. Treat it as a budget you are allowed to move money between, not a law.

The arithmetic closes exactly. Take the low end of every range and the fixed slots come to 66, which leaves 33 for the plan. Take the high end and they come to 71, which leaves 28. The ranges overlap because one card often fills two slots at once: a creature that fetches a land is ramp and a creature. Count it once, in whichever column your deck is shortest on.

The rules your 100 cards have to obey

Five deck construction rules, and they are the whole legality check:

• Exactly 100 cards, including the commander (rule 903.5a). Not 99, not 101. The minimum and maximum deck size are both 100.
• Your commander is a legendary card that is a creature card, a Vehicle card, or a Spacecraft card with one or more power and toughness boxes (rule 903.3). Some cards also carry an ability that says they can be your commander, and that ability changes deck construction before the game begins (rule 903.3a).
• One copy of each card, except basic lands (rule 903.5b). Cards with interchangeable names count as the same name for this purpose.
• Colour identity has to fit your commander (rule 903.5c). A card is legal in the deck only if every colour in its colour identity also appears in your commander's colour identity. Colour identity is the colours of the mana symbols in a card's mana cost and rules text, plus anything set by a colour indicator or a characteristic defining ability (rule 903.4). Three things catch people out: reminder text is ignored (rule 903.4c), the back face of a double faced card does count (rule 903.4d), and a land with a basic land type is legal only if every colour of mana it could produce is in your commander's colour identity (rule 903.5d), which is a separate check because such a land usually has no colour identity of its own.
• No sideboard (rule 903.5e). Commander games do not use one.

Which cards are banned is a separate matter, and it is policy rather than rules. The Comprehensive Rules contain no banned list: the word "banned" appears in them exactly once, in rule 113.6n, and only to say that an ability which modifies deck construction "can't affect the format legality of a card, including whether it's banned or restricted". Rule 100.6 points the reader at the tournament rules, which "may limit the use of some cards". So the format's own published list is maintained outside the rules document and changes when the panel that owns it says so. The deck builder's Validation tab reports legality for the whole list, so you do not have to hold either the rules or the current list in your head.

Step 1: pick a commander you actually want to cast

Pick the commander first, because it decides your colours and therefore which 99 cards are even legal. For a first deck, one or two colours is much kinder than three.

• Krenko, Mob Boss, {2}{R}{R}, a 3/3 that taps to create a 1/1 red Goblin token for each Goblin you control. Mono red, one axis, and the deck tells you what to do.
• Talrand, Sky Summoner, {2}{U}{U}, a 2/2 that creates a 2/2 flying Drake whenever you cast an instant or sorcery. Mono blue, and it rewards a deck full of cheap spells.
• Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver, {2}{U}{B}, a 3/3 that makes a 2/2 Zombie with decayed whenever another Zombie you control dies, as long as that Zombie did not itself have decayed, and that at the beginning of your end step lets you sacrifice a Zombie to draw a card. Two colours, two things to do.

A three colour commander such as Isshin, Two Heavens as One, {R}{W}{B}, is a fine deck and a harder first build, because a three colour mana base needs more work than a two colour one. If you are not sure what you want, browse the Commander hub and read what other players build around each one.

Step 2: write the plan in one sentence

Before you add a single card, finish this sentence: "This deck wins by ____." Goblin tokens attacking. Drakes in the air. Zombies trading for cards until the table runs out. Anything concrete.

The sentence is not decoration. It is the test you apply to every card for the rest of the build: does this card advance the plan, protect the plan, or fix the mana? If it does none of the three, it goes back in the box no matter how good it is on its own.

Step 3: lands, before anything fun

Thirty six to thirty eight lands is the range that keeps most decks honest, and 37 is the safest single number. The full reasoning, including what changes between 36, 38 and 40, is in how many lands a Commander deck needs.

Three lands earn a slot in nearly every deck:

• Command Tower taps for one mana of any colour in your commander's colour identity.
• Exotic Orchard taps for a colour that a land an opponent controls could produce, which at a four player table is usually the colour you need.
• Path of Ancestry enters tapped, taps for a colour in your commander's colour identity, and scries 1 when that mana casts a creature spell sharing a creature type with your commander.

Then add fixing and utility: Evolving Wilds and Fabled Passage each sacrifice for a basic land, Myriad Landscape fetches up to two basics that share a land type for {2}, a tap and a sacrifice, and a couple of lands that do something in a long game, such as Reliquary Tower for no maximum hand size or Rogue's Passage to push a creature through. Fill the rest with basics.

Step 4: ten ramp pieces

Ramp is how a five mana commander arrives on turn three. Ten pieces is the normal number, weighted toward things that cost one or two mana.

• Sol Ring, {1}: taps for {C}{C}. The best turn one play in the format.
• Arcane Signet, {2}: taps for a colour in your commander's colour identity.
• Fellwar Stone, {2}: taps for a colour an opponent's land could produce.
• Mind Stone, {2}: taps for {C}, and later sacrifices to draw a card.

Green decks get the better version of this slot, because a land survives the board wipe that kills your artifacts: Rampant Growth and Farseek at {1}{G}, Nature's Lore at {1}{G} for a Forest that enters untapped, and Cultivate or Kodama's Reach at {2}{G} for one basic onto the battlefield and one into hand.

Step 5: ten cards that draw cards

This is the slot new builders cut first and regret fastest. In a singleton deck you cannot rely on drawing a specific card, so you have to draw more cards.

• Night's Whisper, {1}{B}: two cards for 2 life.
• Read the Bones, {2}{B}: scry 2, then two cards for 2 life.
• Harmonize, {2}{G}{G}: three cards.
• Phyrexian Arena, {1}{B}{B}: an extra card every upkeep for 1 life.
• Rhystic Study, {2}{U}: a card whenever an opponent casts a spell and declines to pay {1}.

If your plan involves lots of creatures, the draw slot can do double duty: Beast Whisperer, {2}{G}{G}, draws on each creature spell you cast, and Guardian Project, {3}{G}, draws when a nontoken creature with a new name enters.

Step 6: eight to ten pieces of interaction

Interaction is how you stop losing to something you did not plan for. Spread it across card types so a single answer is not your only answer.

• Swords to Plowshares, {W}: exile a creature, its controller gains life equal to its power. One mana, no conditions.
• Go for the Throat, {1}{B}: destroy a nonartifact creature.
• Beast Within, {2}{G}, and Generous Gift, {2}{W}: destroy any permanent and hand its controller a 3/3 token. The most flexible answers in their colours.
• Chaos Warp, {2}{R}: red's answer to a permanent it otherwise cannot touch.
• Anguished Unmaking, {1}{W}{B}: exile a nonland permanent at instant speed for 3 life.
• Counterspell, {U}{U}: the cheapest way to answer something you have no other answer to.

Then two or three board wipes, because sometimes the problem is the whole table: Blasphemous Act deals 13 damage to each creature and costs {1} less for each creature on the battlefield, and Austere Command, {4}{W}{W}, picks two of four modes so you can wipe around your own board.

Interaction that comes attached to a creature is a bargain in a creature deck. Reclamation Sage, {2}{G}, is a 2/1 that destroys an artifact or enchantment when it enters. Solemn Simulacrum, {4}, fetches a basic land when it enters and draws a card when it dies, which is a ramp slot and a draw slot on one 2/2.

Step 7: the plan, then cut to 99

Now spend the last 28 to 33 slots on the sentence you wrote in step 2. Add every card that advances it, then count. You will be over 100. Everybody is.

Cut in this order, and cut the deck, not the plan:

1. Cards that cost five or more and do not win the game or stop someone else winning.
2. Cards that need another specific card to work. In a 99 card singleton deck, a two card combo is a card that does nothing most games.
3. The third and fourth card that do the same job. Keep the cheapest.
4. Cards you added because they are good, not because they are good here.

Never cut lands, ramp or draw to get to 99. That is the cut that feels clever and loses games.

In what order should you build a deck?

Commander first, plan second, mana base third, then ramp, draw and interaction, then the plan cards, then cut. The reason for that order is that each step constrains the next: the commander fixes your legal card pool, the plan fixes what counts as a good card, and the land and ramp counts fix how many slots the plan actually gets. Building in the reverse order means rebuilding the mana base around a list that was never going to cast it.

Check the list before game night

Open the deck in Brew and use two tabs.

The Validation tab gives you the format legality report for the whole deck, which covers the five construction rules above in one pass.

The Analysis tab shows the numbers you have been budgeting. It renders the total card count, the average mana value, the land count with lands as a percentage of the deck, the deck's total value, and four charts: Mana Curve, Color Distribution, Card Type Breakdown and Rarity Distribution. Read them in this order:

1. Total Cards should say 100 or 99 depending on whether the commander sits in the list. Fix this first.
2. Mana Curve should have most of its mass at two, three and four. A curve that peaks at five wants more lands and more ramp.
3. Card Type Breakdown is where you audit the slot template: count the lands, then the creatures, then everything else.
4. Color Distribution should roughly match your lands. If a third of your mana symbols are one colour, about a third of your coloured sources should produce it.

If you would rather start from a finished list and edit it, Grover can draft the whole 99 from a plain language brief, and the deck builder basics guide is the tour of the editor.

Frequently asked questions

How do I build a Commander deck for beginners?

Pick a one or two colour legendary creature you like, then follow the slot template above in order. Do not try to build a deck that does two things at once on your first attempt, and do not cut below 36 lands. If you want a shortcut, open a public deck in the deck library, copy it, and change ten cards. Changing ten cards in somebody else's list teaches you more than assembling 99 from nothing.

What is a good structure for a Commander deck?

The template in this guide: 1 commander, 36 to 38 lands, 10 ramp, 10 draw, 8 to 10 interaction, 2 to 3 board wipes and 28 to 33 cards on the plan. It is a starting point rather than a rule. Decks with a very low curve can run fewer lands and more ramp; decks that want lands in play for their own sake run more.

Can I make my own Commander deck?

Yes, and that is the normal way to play the format. The only requirements are the construction rules above: exactly 100 cards including a legal commander (rules 903.5a and 903.3), one copy of each card other than basic lands (rule 903.5b), and every card inside your commander's colour identity (rule 903.5c). Nothing requires you to start from a preconstructed deck.

How many creatures should a Commander deck have?

For most decks 25 to 33 in the 99, and how many creatures a Commander deck needs shows how to pick your number from your plan.

Does a Commander deck have a sideboard?

No. Rule 903.5e says Commander games do not use sideboards, so there is no fifteen card board to plan for and nothing to bring in between games.

Is there an AI that builds MTG decks?

Grover, our deck assistant, drafts a full 99 from a description of what you want and then explains the choices, and Tutor scores individual cards against the list you have already built and proposes picks from the Suggestions tab. The walkthrough is in building a Commander deck with the AI assistant.

What is the 75 percent rule?

It is a community idea, not a rule. The Comprehensive Rules say nothing about it. The convention, coined by Jason Alt in 2014, is to build a deck that would beat about three quarters of the decks it sits down against: strong enough to have a real plan, not so strong that it decides every game. It is a useful way to talk about power level with a group. If you want a framework that the format's own panel maintains, the bracket system is described in Commander brackets explained, and it is also policy rather than rules.

Build it, then play it

Pick a commander, write the sentence, fill the slots in order, then read the Analysis tab before you sleeve up. Create a free Mana Grove account to build with the full deck builder, legality checks and deck statistics on every plan, and see plans and pricing if you want more time with Grover, Scry and Tutor. For more guides, start at the Commander hub or browse every article.

Sources

• Comprehensive Rules, effective August 7, 2026, rules 100.6, 113.6n, 903.3, 903.3a, 903.4, 903.4c, 903.4d, 903.5a, 903.5b, 903.5c, 903.5d, 903.5e: https://magic.wizards.com/en/rules. Read on September 16, 2026, from the snapshot our rules engine keeps. The deck size, the commander's card types, colour identity and the absence of a sideboard.
• Jason Alt, "Building a 75% Commander Deck", February 13, 2014. Read on September 16, 2026. The origin of the 75 percent convention; it is published on a card retailer's site, which we do not link.
• Mana Grove card database, MTGJSON build 5.3.0+20260914 of September 14, 2026: the mana costs, mana values, card types, power, toughness, rules text and Commander legality of every card named above.

This article is updated when the Comprehensive Rules change something it states. The date at the top is the last revision.