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Building Four Top Commander Decks in the Magic Online Commander Workshop

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Back in June, I did a pretty lengthy write-up talking about the Magic Online exclusive release of the Commander Workshop product and made five cool Commander lists out of it. The project seemed extremely fun, as it provided minor restrictions by playing with a somewhat small card pool while simultaneously giving you access to a tremendous amount of cards. It's right there on the box, after all: 2000 cards including 300+ cards. Combine that with all of the upgrades the New Player Kit brand new accounts get access to, and you have a fairly capable pool of cards despite the limiting factor of size.

I found myself impressed with the high quality the decks could provide. Heck, I was even able to build a version of my own personal favorite Commander deck with Sharuum the Hegemon that proved quite close to how my list looks in paper. That's a pretty admirable feat on its own, and it made me really want to do even more with this small pile of decent cards and see how far it can be taken. Given that, I really wanted to make even more decks and talk about them here - especially now that I've recently been accepted as a Magic Online content creator.

This time, I've put together four more great lists for decks you can make with the Commander Workshop product. Previously, I tried focusing on a variety of different playstyles to find unique and interesting things you can do. Sharuum was a personal thing, Kaalia of the Vast had just shown up in Modern Horizons 3, Skullbriar plays better online than in paper, etc. This time, I'm opting for something a little more simplistic: focusing on some of the most popular commanders around! All four of these are currently listed within the top 100 commanders as per EDHREC.com and are all found within the combined pool of Commander Workshop and the MTGO New Player Kit (find all the details about it here).

This not only gives you a means by which to play some of the most popular commanders around online for cheap, but also provides a cool starting point if you want to build them in paper. Maybe they aren't exact one-to-one lists of where you'd like to end up long term, but they can provide a great place to start at a bit more of an affordable level before you can go ahead and flesh it out. We're going to kick things right off with a particularly big one as well: the most popular commander around!

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

Artraxa Counters | Commander | Paige Smith

Card Display


To kick things off, it felt obligatory that I had to work on a deck for the most popular Commander of them all: Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. When working with Atraxa, there typically tend to be three primary ways to build her: planeswalkers (aka Superfriends), poison counters, and +1/+1 counters. This is because these three strategies tend to make up the best ways to build a proliferate deck, as they all involve counters that you can build onto in a meaningful way. Some lists may also go for more of an energy route, but without access to Red, you lose a lot of the utility such a playstyle provides.

Naturally, the first area I wanted to focus on here was the planeswalkers aspect. While working on my first Commander Workshop article, I ended up somewhat unintentionally making two separate +1/+1 counters matter decks. Additionally, it felt like while you could certainly do some poison-related things fine enough, most of the cards that dish out poison counters that you have access to are rather underwhelming. Think French vanilla creatures whose only defining feature is that they have infect, toxic, or poisonous. It doesn't make for the greatest gameplay.

Planeswalkers, however, offer a very different angle to play in general that often feels fun and engaging for any table. The only issue here is that there just aren't that many planeswalkers that are all that playable to begin with, and there's some pretty notable exclusions as well. In the non-Red colors, there are only 35 planeswalkers you have access to with both the New Player Kit and Commander Workshops. The client shows you 37, but two are actually Magic Origins flip walkers represented by both sides as individual cards. Many of these are quite good, with cards like Elspeth, Sun's Champion; Garruk, Primal Hunter; and Liliana, Dreadhorde General all being solid standouts.

Garruk, Primal Hunter
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
As Foretold

The main issue is how many of these end up being actually useful for this particular deck, though. For example, one of these available planeswalkers is Calix, Destiny's Hand - a card that cares about enchantments and is therefore irrelevant to this deck. Similar is the situation with the two Tezzeret cards that are accessible here (Tezzeret the Seeker and Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge) due to the lack of an overarching artifact theme. Others still are just broadly hard to use well, such as Dovin, Hand of Control, or are too expensive for ho-hum effects such as Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted or Vraska, Swarm's Eminence.

What surprised me most, though, was what wasn't here. Now, I'm not about to suggest this collection of cards should feature powerhouses like Oko, Thief of Crowns; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; or Teferi, Time Raveler; but it could've stood to add a couple more walkers with broad appeal. When working on this list, I found myself going through it several times looking for a copy of Garruk Wildspeaker, and was continually surprised when it wasn't here. It's a super cheap card on MTGO and is reasonable in paper as well, all while being a powerful staple. Popular options like Tamiyo, Field Researcher; Ajani, the Greathearted; and Venser, the Sojourner are all further examples of walkers that are fairly cheap, massively popular, and absent here.

To make up for this, I did end up putting a secondary batch of +1/+1 counter cards in this list. This both includes providing cards that dish out tons of those counters like Luminarch Aspirant and Master Biomancer, as well as cards the give you boons for having those counters like Abzan Falconer. Many of these boost not just the creatures with these abilities, but also the many tokens your planeswalkers churn out, providing a reasonably symbiotic playstyle between the two aspects. Oh, and those counters do work great with the couple of powerful poison creatures I slipped in as well - namely Phyrexian Swarmlord and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon.

Arcades, the Strategist

Arcades Walls | Commander | Paige Smith

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In stark contrast to how I was able to build Atraxa, putting together Arcades felt like an absolute breeze. Arcades takes advantage of one of the most underutilized mechanics in the entirety of Magic and puts it to good use: defender. Defender usually appears on walls, creatures with no power and high toughness, and often just mediocre draft chaff commons and uncommons that are utterly worthless in most scenarios. Playing an Arcades deck, however, is anything but "most scenarios."

Having Arcades at the helm makes all of your creatures with defender able to attack and deal damage with their toughness rather than their power. Suddenly, those two-mana 0/4s are all two-mana 4/4s for all intents and purposes and many have additional effects as well or else go even bigger. For example, put down a Wall of Denial and for a meager three-mana, you'll have an 8/8 flier that none of your opponents can interact with! Fortified Rampart is essentially a two-mana 6/6, and Riptide Turtle is a two-mana 5/5 that can be flashed into play whenever you'd like! Oh, and you can also cast cards like Tower Defense and Bar the Door for what essentially amounts to dirt cheap Overrun effects. If it wasn't clear before why this is so powerful, I'd hope it would be now.

Many of these creatures aren't just huge bodies either. If that's all they were, playing an Arcades deck might feel somewhat boring. Both Axebane Guardian and Overgrown Battlement provide unbelievable amounts of mana to keep the ball rolling, especially as you draw more creatures off of your Arcades. Speaking of card draw, both Wall of Omens and Wall of Blossoms cantrip alone as you play them, while Wall of Mulch can help you dig for answers in sticky situations. Hornet Nest gives you plenty of tokens if it's blocked and Mnemonic Wall gets you back any spell you need. And speaking of getting exactly what you need, Shield-Wall Sentinel provides you a perfect tutor that isn't intrusive enough to make people loathe that you're tutoring for something.

Wall of Denial
Axebane Guardian
Slaughter the Strong

Most of the other effects here cards that help benefit your strategy even if they aren't defenders themselves. Dusk // Dawn and Slaughter the Strong are both really powerful effects that take advantage of the fact that you're playing with a bunch of creatures with low power. Mentor of the Meek is another great example of this and both it and Beast Whisperer provide excellent card draw engines. I almost considered putting in Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura for infinite mana considerations with Axebane Guardian, but found there weren't a lot of good mana sinks for it. While there may not be such great uses for continuously untapping, Inga and Esika as well as Brave the Sands provide excellent ways of granting vigilance.

This is another deck that you could stand to pick up a few additional pieces, and thankfully with this one, you can do so way more easily than Atraxa. Planeswalkers are always going to have a bit of a price tag associated with them, but walls? Not so much. The biggest one you pretty much have to grab here is Wingmantle Chaplain. Thankfully this was uncommon in the incredible Dominaria United and is quite readily available. You can probably even just find someone who will give you one for free, and it'll take an already potent deck like this into the stratosphere. Some other great and accessible options include Wall of Junk, Tree of Redemption, Jungle Barrier, Doorkeeper, and Rigo, Streetwise Mentor.

Last of all, I really want to emphasize just how cheap this deck is to put together in general. With the Commander Workshop package on MTGO, you get all of this already, so it's not much to worry about. In paper, though, when you exclude the mana base this deck is about as cheap as it gets. The overwhelming majority of cards in the deck are effectively bulk chaff that people will probably just give you for free, never mind paying to acquire them. It's one of the big factors as to why Arcades is so popular to this day and provides a great and easy deck to play with right out of the box.

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Sythis, Harvest's Hand

Sythis Enchantress | Commander | Paige Smith

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Contrary to some of the decks among this batch, this one was almost a little too easy to put together. Whereas putting together Atraxa felt much tougher than usual due to some aspects of the card pool being a little underwhelming, this is where all of the stops get pulled out. Seriously, if you ever wanted to build a fully tricked out Enchantress-style deck, you're going to be extremely hard pressed to do much better than this. It's also an excellent example as to why playing on Magic Online can sometimes yield more effective results than in paper.

I mean, just look at the list of cards here. In your basic Commander Workshop package, you gain access to normally pricey powerhouses like Sylvan Library, Smothering Tithe, Doubling Season and its lesser variants, and more. About the only thing it feels like you're lacking is probably Enchantress staples like Serra's Sanctum and Solitary Confinement, but for what you get here, it's going to be pretty hard to beat. There's no shortage of powerful enchantments to take advantage of while controlling what your opponents are able to do as well.

Sylvan Library
Setessan Champion
Oblivion Ring

In fact, there are so many strong effects that it's almost hard for me to even slot in any non-enchantment cards here. This extends to cards that care about enchantments, such as Mesa Enchantress or Setessan Champion. I've slipped a few in here, namely some cheap removal, but even that almost begs the question of "why?" This card pool is full to bursting of Oblivion Ring-style removal enchantments, half a dozen mana acceleration enchantments, and even artifact and enchantment hate in the form of both Seal of Cleansing and Seal of Primordium. It's unbelievably easy to stay on theme here without relying on other effects, so embrace it and just go all-in.

The best part is that this is one where I really had to make some cuts and drop out some cards to make the list feel very cohesive. As such, this is a prime example of effectively building a top shelf Enchantress deck how you want to without shelling out too much in paper. At the same time, though, it provides you with a means of trying the deck out and then if you enjoy it, you can work toward putting it together in paper as well.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Muldrotha Recursion | Commander | Paige Smith

Card Display


Last but not least, I wanted to tackle Muldrotha, the Gravetide. I've played a decent amount of Muldrotha in the past, namely having used her a bit in the early periods of Brawl on MTG Arena and it's so much fun churning through cards in your graveyard. Best of all is that unlike most of these decks that have some sort of limiting factor to them in how they can be built, playing Muldrotha feels like you're simply spoiled for choice in what you can do.

The name of the game here is just playing cards. Oftentimes, they're going to head to the graveyard, especially if they're creatures or planeswalkers. If you're playing Muldrotha, though, who cares? Just bring them back and replay them! This gives you tremendous amounts of versatility in what you can play and how you build your deck. Naturally, you can - and should - take advantage of cards that like going to the graveyard like, say, Executioner's Capsule or Sakura-Tribe Elder. Even if you don't, just playing something like a good value creature that you're happy if it sticks around is fine because if an opponent wants to pick it off, you just bring it back no problem!

Sakura-Tribe Elder
Glen Elendra Archmage
Seal of Doom

Something like a Grave Titan or Avenger of Zendikar gets picked off? Bring it back for more absurd value! You get this from creatures that die for their value (Mulldrifter, Glen Elendra Archmage, Bone Shredder) as well as a handful of non-creatures that also have ways to hit the graveyard. Sagas, Seal of Doom and Seal of Primordium, and Commander's Sphere are good examples here. Even planeswalker cards, which are prone to dying very easily in games of Commander, are far better in a deck like this thanks to how easy it is to bring them back.

A lot of this list is very inspired by stuff I like doing in Cubes and even that I did in that Brawl list on Arena. What's great about Muldrotha are these are just my preferences in terms of card selection. However, with so many great cards for you to pull from within the client, it's easy to make it entirely your own - much like how you can with all of the lists in this article.


I hope this provided you with some stellar insight into how deep you can go with building decks using the MTGO Commander Workshop! It's seriously one of the most fun ways to construct decks that I've found in some time and really pushes creativity through its more restrictive elements. Best of all, despite having made nine whole decks, I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what you can do with this set of cards. That's just how deep this is! If you want to try your hand at putting together some lists, you can get on Magic Online and check it out right now! It's one of the best values around and is a great way to get yourself playing the game's most popular format in a fairly affordable way. Who knows, maybe it'll even inspire you to try something cool and new that you love, and perhaps it'll even translate into your next paper Commander list as well!

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

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