You'd think with Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur's Gate coming out this week I'd be diving headfirst into the myriad of Commander related products and legends, right? Well, you'd be wrong! I've been focusing a little too much on recent stuff and want to take a step back and tackle some older legends for a change. It's been a couple months since I last talked about some good old Classic Commander and I think it's high time to get right back into it, and this time I'm doing it with one of the truly classic commanders: Doran, the Siege Tower.

It's really hard to overstate just how cool and how popular Doran was back in the day as a commander. He's still beloved today - the 6th most popular Abzan legend on EDHRec.com, even - but at the time he really was something else. Three color legends were much rarer back then with often dull, boring effects and there were virtually none whatsoever in wedge colors outside the Planar Chaos dragons - hence their inclusion in Commander 2011. What's more, Doran offered a truly unique ability in being able to deal damage with toughness. We've seen that effect a lot since but at the time, this was basically the only way to do it!

As such, Doran ended up being a seminal commander in those early years of the Commander format. It was hard to go to a Commander night with a bunch of friends and not see him at some point or another. There was just always someone around who had a copy. The deck is easy to build, simple to play, and exceptionally fun, so the popularity is completely unsurprising. A lot of decks now, even, use choices that wouldn't have been abnormal during the Classic Commander period of New Phyrexia backward too. What's great about this is it actually makes for a surprisingly budget friendly option!

Before I get into the ins and outs, however, let's take a look at a list!

Classic Doran | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Doran, the Siege Tower

• Creatures (42)
• 1 Ancient Spider
• 1 Angelic Arbiter
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Black Poplar Shaman
• 1 Blessed Orator
• 1 Bosk Banneret
• 1 Dauntless Dourbark
• 1 Deadwood Treefolk
• 1 Everbark Shaman
• 1 Faceless Butcher
• 1 Fendeep Summoner
• 1 Grizzled Leotau
• 1 Guiltfeeder
• 1 Heartwood Storyteller
• 1 Hedron-Field Purists
• 1 Herald of Leshrac
• 1 Indomitable Ancients
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Kabira Vindicator
• 1 Leaf-Crowned Elder
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Magnigoth Treefolk
• 1 Necroskitter
• 1 Nemata, Grove Guardian
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Oathsworn Giant
• 1 Ohran Viper
• 1 Ondu Giant
• 1 Order of Whiteclay
• 1 Overgrown Battlement
• 1 Sapling of Colfenor
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Thorntooth Witch
• 1 Timber Protector
• 1 Treefolk Harbinger
• 1 Unstoppable Ash
• 1 Utopia Tree
• 1 Verdeloth, the Ancient
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 1 Wickerbough Elder
• 1 Woodwraith Corrupter
• 1 Yavimaya Ancients

• Instants (4)
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Reach of Branches
• 1 Solidarity
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Vindicate

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Leyline of Vitality
• 1 Lignify
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Primal Rage
• 1 Spidersilk Armor

• Lands (37)
• 3 Plains
• 3 Swamp
• 7 Forest
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Forbidding Watchtower
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Murmuring Bosk
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Springjack Pasture
• 1 Tainted Field
• 1 Tainted Wood
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Treetop Village
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Vivid Marsh
• 1 Vivid Meadow
• 1 Wooded Bastion

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As I started to build this deck, I quickly realized that there are plenty of excellent options that are surprisingly cheap. I make most of my decks through Magic Online sorted by rarity and by the time I got roughly halfway through the rares, I decided to cut most of the higher dollar cards in favor of cheaper options. Linvala, Keeper of Silence; Demonic Tutor, Seedborn Muse, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite all make great options but they aren't necessarily essentials. I left a few choices in - Phyrexian Arena is notably great for this time period where Abzan didn't have the best card draw options - but mostly I ended up bringing the price down quite a bit.

The problem with doing this, however, was it started making cuts somewhat hard. Doran's a strange kind of deck in that you can have some downright awful cards end up really good. No one typically cares about cards like Kami of Old Stone, Yotian Soldier, or Jareth, Leonine Titan. In a deck like this, however, they really get to shine by being very good rates for the value you get out of them. Kami of Old Stone especially turns into a 7/7 for 4 mana with no downside. What's not to love about that?

There were tons more great options too. Perimeter Captain works when you can easily add more walls to the deck like Wall of Roots, Wall of Nets, and Wall of Blossoms. There's also the likes of Lesser Werewolf, Graceful Antelope, Kjeldoran Home Guard, The Wretched, Molder Slug - all of these cards provide a very unique effect that would play tremendously well in a deck like this. There's even affordable staple cards like Myr Battlesphere, Avenger of Zendikar, and Reya Dawnbringer that I cut just to have a deck that looks a little bit more unique. In truth, I could have built several versions and they'd still fit within that budgetary limit, so if you don't like my list, there're plenty of different ways you can go with the deck.

What I did end up with, however, is a really sweet deck. I tried to include a bunch of different treefolk cards as they fit Doran quite well and often had large disparities between power and toughness. You don't need to do this, I just thought it was the most natural fit. In fact, of all the treefolk I had in my initial list, only two got cut in the end: Argothian Treefolk and Orchard Warden. Argothian Treefolk is obvious because it's kind of dull, but Orchard Warden I waffled on a lot and only took it out because I liked the other 6-drops more.

From there I went and added in other creatures with low power but high toughness - preferably with cool effects. Some were simple options like Grizzled Leotau, which in a deck like this is basically a two-mana 5/5. Cards like Hedron-Field Purists, Order of Whiteclay, and Blessed Orator may seem dull for your average deck, but here they're solid support effects on actually decent sized bodies. Woodwraith Corrupter and Guiltfeeder were two of the cooler choices here. I can't even remember the last time I saw the Corrupter used anywhere besides Ravnica limited, but here it fits like a glove. So too does Guiltfeeder - a slight oddity that I remembered being wildly cool as a kid when it came out in Judgment and rarely shows up now from time to time.

Beyond that, there's just a lot of the usual support cards you might expect. Diabolic Tutor is here to keep with the budget theme, but is an easy swap. There's lots of ramp too to get to the bigger cards in the deck, including Awakening Zone which actually makes a lot of weenie aggressive creatures. Spidersilk Armor and Leyline of Vitality help with general buff abilities, but if you want a real big boost to your toughness, try Solidarity. The barely playable in limited common turns into an Overrun of monstrous proportions in a Doran deck and it makes for a very clean way to take out your opponents and end the game.

The only thing I didn't go really budget-friendly on for this deck was the lands, and that's largely because you're talking about three color wedge decks in the earlier days of the game. Back then, you'd get every other set releasing with allied color lands but no enemy color ones. Nowadays that's quite different and Wizards tries to maintain balance quite a bit, but here we have to compromise a bit. If you don't want to shell out tons of cash, though, there's always going to be good budget options at your disposal - even if it's just with some basic lands to avoid Ravnica bounce land overload or something.

Regardless of how you build it, though, Doran is an excellent Classic Commander deck that can be played on a budget very easily. What's more, it's a list you could take to a modern Commander table as well and still have a great time without any upgrades. There's a reason Doran, the Siege Tower stands the test of time as one of the most iconic commanders of the format and it shows. No matter how you play it, you're sure to have an excellent time with the deck at your next Commander night.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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