I believe that we mixed our signals last week. Everyone, huddle around.

When I was doing a rant about the lack of options for a Green Commander, I wasn’t saying that Green didn’t have good Commanders. I wanted something that was different than the two main categories that I identified: Lands/Mana and Overrun-like abilities. There are good Commanders with each of those sections, but since I was doing those types of ideas elsewhere in my Highlander Collection, I didn’t just want to do the same thing in Green. The rest of you who threw out ideas, I thank you, but everyone came to the same Commanders and just kinda proved my point: There isn’t much beyond those two groups.

Let’s take a step back and take a look at deck construction as a whole. I think that if we cover some of this basic theory, it might help all of us when it comes to talking about the same thing. It’s another one of those put-everything-into-categories things that humans like to do, but I think it’s worth it for this type of action. Before we delve into the main archetypes, we have some definitions we must agree on (before we get to more definitions that we also have to agree on. Hey, that’s how common language works. If you point at a tree and say, “Tree,” and I say, “Vase”, we can’t communicate). Threats and answers just identify with cards, not with deck archetypes.

Threat

A threat is something that could, and tries to, eventually harm an opponent. It can be a creature, a spell, an enchantment, or whatever. A threat doesn’t mean just a way to deal damage to an opponent, but that’s its most accepted role. Classic threats are Grim Lavamancer, Underworld Dreams, and Urza's Factory.

Answer

An answer is a response to a particular threat to stop it. It removes the threat by destroying, exiling, countering, bouncing, or tucking it (tucking means putting the card into its owner’s library—either shuffled or on the bottom). An answer can also become a threat, such as Acidic Slime. It is also possible for an answer to remove multiple threats, and some of the best answers do just this. Traditional answers are Swords to Plowshares, Wrath of God, Counterspell, Disenchant, and Strip Mine.

There are three major deck archetypes: aggro, control, and combo. Every deck that you build is a variation on these three archetypes, and a deck can have any combination of these. In essence, each deck is built with the cards that embody these ideas. It doesn’t matter who your Commander is, if it’s designed for multiplayer, or how foiled out it is, all your decks fall into these three categories.

Aggro

Short for “aggressive,” the point of this deck is to kill your opponents as quickly as possible, most often through the red zone with creatures and spells directed at the opponent. Aggro decks rely on larger than average creatures for their costs, as well as spells and abilities that help clear the way for the damage to be dealt. It doesn’t matter what the aggro player’s life total is, as long as he kills the opponent first. Aggro decks have more threats than answers, where the answers are targeted removal to help clear the way for the threats to get through. Most Draft decks (besides the wacky Innistrad format), are aggro decks. Common aggro Commanders are Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran, Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Jenara, Asura of War, and Kaalia of the Vast.

Combo

Combo—short for “combination”—decks rely on a series of cards that, when put together, win the game. The combo (series of cards) can be anywhere from two to however many one needs to complete it. Combo decks can generate infinite mana, creatures, card-draw, life, damage, or anything of the sort. It can also lock opponents out from doing whatever the deck owner wishes to do. The combo deck has almost no traditional threats, and it has only answers to prevent its own abstract threats from being destroyed. Common combo Commanders are Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Wort, the Raidmother, Sharuum the Hegemon, and Nin, the Pain Artist.

Control

Control decks act just like how they sound: controlling. The point of a control deck is to outlast all the opponents and win on its own time schedule. By having a larger number of answers than threats, control decks are supposed to take whatever is thrown at them. Traditional control decks used to have few creatures and a ton of spells, but a rise in control-style creatures has resulted in it not being unusual to see creature-heavy control decks. Card advantage is an ideology that most control decks thrive on. Common control Commanders are Numot, the Devastator, Ertai, the Corrupted, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and Gaddock Teeg.

Again, each deck can consist of more than one of each of these archetypes. The one that trips many people up is the combo archetype; a deck can have combos in it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a combo deck. Isochron Scepter plus Orim's Chant is a combo, but that singular pairing doesn’t define the deck. A deck can be aggro-control, combo-control, aggro-combo, or the almighty aggro-combo-control.

One of the best parts of Magic is that you can define your playing experience based on playing any of these three combination of archetypes with the decks you pilot. You want to bash face? Choose aggro. Want to feel like the smartest person in the room? Combo it up.

Your playing style doesn’t always reflect your player psychological profile (Timmy, Johnny, and Spike). While people might think that Timmy is aggro, Johnny is combo, and Spike is control, that’s not always the case, and people can shift around different archetypes will still adhering to their profiles.

Everyone on the same page? I hope so!

What’s so unique about the Commander format is the ever-present Legendary Creature that you can almost always have available to you. Most of the time, you care about the Commander if it’s one you can build around, which makes the deck unique. And since there are a number of different types of Commanders out there, players have been classifying them for the styles of play that they’re known for. And here’s when we get into the issue of mono-Green’s lack of different types of Commanders.

Group Hug/Random

I’m putting these two together since just having one category for one Commander doesn’t make sense. They have similar objectives: creating an environment for all other players. With Group Hug, and its signature Commander Phelddagrif, the goal is to try to give all opponents a fun time by giving a ton of stuff. The deck really doesn’t have a way of winning (besides a possible creature beatdown if it ever comes to that), but that’s not the point. A player chooses a Group Hug deck because he wants everyone to have fun; after all, that’s what Commander is about, right?

With the random deck, it’s just the opposite. Just like Alfred’s immortal words in Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” The Random deck just wants to cause havoc for everyone, trying to make the game less interesting, and screwing up everyone’s game plan. The Random deck doesn’t have a true way of winning either; all it cares about is the experience of playing and having fun; after all, that’s what Commander is about, right?

Mana-Ramping

This is among the oldest styles of deck styles in Magic. With Commander, where everything can cost a whole lot more, it’s a popular play style. Famous Commanders that use this deck type are Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Omnath, Locus of Mana, and Patron of the Moon. Not all Mana-Ramping is just trying to put lands into play (though that’s a great portion of the possibilities), it’s also generating as much mana as possible with cards like Caged Sun and Gauntlet of Power. You tend to see these decks ending up being combo decks with Genesis Wave or other spells and abilities that players can abuse.

Mine!

Mostly mono-Blue, this style of deck tends to steal everything that it can. Empress Galina, Merieke Ri Berit, and Memnarch are all popular Commanders for this type of deck. The goal with this deck is to take everyone else’s fun toys and use them. While it’s among the more fun decks to play, since you have everyone else’s good stuff, it’s among the most annoying to play against. Because the deck is mostly Blue spells, it plays control to prevent opponents from taking back the stuff it stole. It wants to win on the opponents’ stuff, and the pilots pride themselves on doing just that.

Tokens

Commanders that use tokens really abuse them. They either create them (Rhys the Redeemed), or abuse them (Ghave, Guru of Spores). These decks all try to use spells and creatures that require you to have a huge number of creatures on the battlefield to create the largest effect possible. You don’t play Congregate if you only have two creatures on the board, but rather when you have fifty to sixty. Token strategies also rely on a swarm technique: it’s much harder to kill a bunch of creatures than it is to kill one. The token player will pump them all up using an Overrun effect and kill everyone in one big swoop—or use the tokens to sacrifice to various cards to control the game. Common token Commanders are Rhys the Redeemed, Ghave, Guru of Spores, Kemba, Kha Regent, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, and Verdeloth the Ancient.

Stax

Stax is the ultimate version of the control deck. By eliminating the options that players have, it stops them from playing the game. Common Stax Commanders are Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, Gaddock Teeg, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence. Stax (or Prison or Taxing decks), rely on shutting down opponents’ mana by making it harder to cast spells or play the deck players want to. You’ll see plenty of taxing (Ghostly Prison and the like) as well as prevention. Along with Mine! decks, this style tends to be among the most hated decks to play against. It slows down the game to a crawl, and just like control decks, it uses card advantage to go for the win.

Voltron

This is among the most popular styles of deck. Voltron refers to the 80s cartoon of the same name—where a bunch of pieces are joined together to create an all-powerful being. (Or like Power Rangers for you 90s kids. Sorry, I don’t know if there was anything in the 2000s that was like this.) The reason it’s so popular is the advantage that Commanders have in this format: Dealing 21 Commander damage (remember, it’s just combat damage that counts as Commander damage) is one of the keys to this format. Popular Voltron Commanders are The Mimeoplasm, Uril, the Miststalker, and Godo, Bandit Warlord. By beefing up your Commander and protecting it, you have a good shot at winning the game—you can theoretically attack once and kill an opponent.

These are not all the different style of decks that you’ll see, but these are the most common. You can see any range of decks that any causal deck could possibly be, including reanimator, life-gain, bleeding, toolbox, and others. By seeing what kind of deck that you’ve created, you can see what other possible cards might fit into what you’re creating. While a simple search of “gain life” might work for life-gain decks, it’s a little harder to just do a search for “goes with such-and-such Commander.” Maybe one day we’ll get a search engine like that . . . but not really.

When building your deck for the first time, or when you’re reexamining it, it’s good to take a look and see what you’re actually trying to build. You can follow archetypes because they work and because they give you a nice blueprint for how to build what you’re trying to accomplish. There are always variations on these styles, and a mixture of them isn’t a bad idea. Kemba can easily fit into a Voltron/Tokens hybrid deck that can border on Combo.

It’s the fact that you can create your deck the way you want to that makes this format so fun and unique. Even the Commander precons sold last year have the different styles of Commanders that you can shift your deck around with. If you still have one intact, try to see what the deck plays like when you play with the Dragon as the Commander—or the other one that you haven’t tried out yet.

Finding what play-style you enjoy mixed with what type of deck you like to play can be a very fun experience. If you’re a Johnny as I am, you might like to play different styles of decks at different times depending on how you’re feeling. This piece was something I’ve wanted to do for a while. And now that we have some common language when we talk about Commanders, we can expand our dialogue some more. Ready? All right, let’s have some fun.