The Oxbow by Thomas Cole (1836). Ramos, Dragon Engine by Joseph Meehan.

This week I've got another installment of Winning Ways for you. On the first Monday of every month I've been ruminating about the subject of winning games of Commander. I've walked you through convoluted combos. I've explored old favorites like Laboratory Maniac (et al) and a variety of other cards with "win the game" written on them.

Through it all I've felt like I was dancing around some of the soundest advice I could give a struggling EDH player. In the next three installments I'm going to try to remedy that - starting today with one of the most important things in Magic: card draw.

Any well-built deck is going to want to develop a board state, execute and protect its game plan and interfere with other players' attempts to do the same.

Adding ample amounts of card draw into your deck will increase the chances that you'll be able to do a lot of important things. You'll be more likely to hit your land drops. You'll be more likely to have the right answer at the right time to your opponents' annoying attempts to do stuff like wipe the board, win the game, or even just steal or lock down your commander. You'll also be more likely to draw into your win condition and just as importantly, ways to protect your win condition.

With all else being equal, the more cards you draw the more likely you will be to win the game.

Card draw looks different in different colors and in different decks.

Blue is the king of card draw, but every color has some ways to get additional cards into your hand. Green often likes to look at the power of your creatures and sometimes even demands that you sacrifice them. Red often requires you to discard as part of the bargain, sometimes giving you card "selection" but not actually card "advantage." Black is the most likely to cost you life and White is just the worst, often having to rely on shutting down an opponent's extra draw in order to get your precious extra cards. There are lots of colorless options, ranging from some of the most powerful cards to old, overcosted rocks that you pay mana into and tap just to draw a card.

There are lots of content creators out there who have covered this subject in exhaustive detail. I'm not going to try to cover all those options today. I just want to share a story, a deck and a reminder that if you're not prioritizing card draw in your decks - you really should.

A reliable way to make sure you're going to do that is to use a "slot" approach to deck-building. I generally build my decks with 8 "slots" of 8 cards - each devoted to some essential thing that the deck wants to do. In other formats you can run a playset of the same card. In a singleton format you have to run a set of cards that all fulfill the same basic function, so instead of running 4 copies of Harmonize, you might run Harmonize, Greater Good, Beast Whisperer, Return of the Wildspeaker, Garruk, Primal Hunter, Shamanic Revelation, Soul's Majesty and Rishkar's Expertise. Our "slot" is larger because we're playing with 100 cards, not 60.

Sometimes I'll build 8 x 8 but I've also built 9 x 7, 7 x 9 or even 10 x 6 or 6 x 10. The categories I set up don't always stay neat and clean. Sometimes I'll throw in pet cards to fill out a slot I'm struggling with or I'll just have a "fun stuff" slot for all my overflow. There is always a "ramp" slot, and I've learned to always add a "removal" slot and a "draw" slot. From there, it really depends upon the deck and what I'm trying to do, but those three categories are essential. I fill in the cards beyond my base 63 or 64 cards with lands. You can't really have a functioning EDH deck without lands.

My Challenge

One of the ways I managed to get through months of having my local game store shut down earlier this year was by playing Commander with some friends on Tabletop Simulator. I even devoted a column to the topic and I'll invite you to give it a read here.

I was eventually able to get a small group together and we've been playing on a weekly basis for a few months now. We've started planning "theme" weeks where one player thinks up a deck-building challenge and we all have 2 weeks to build a deck for that theme.

A recent challenge one of the guys put forth was to build a Commander deck around a non-legendary creature.

Given that the number of possible options for this theme counts in the thousands, I had a lot to think about.

We generally try to have fun games that last a while. We're not playing pure jank, but we're certainly not playing cEDH either. The temptation to just grab half of a combo and throw it into the Command Zone for a week was real. I've done horrible things to tables with cards like Duskmantle Guildmage and Mindcrank, and in Black I could run all of the best tutors and counterspells, but I decided to resist the urge to play combo.

We also generally don't aim to play high powered decks. That meant that some obvious choices like Craterhoof Behemoth were also off the table. It wouldn't be particularly hard to brew up an Elfball list that would spam out a bunch of creatures and would have my tablemates dreading the now-inevitable Craterhoof alpha strike. It would work well, but I wanted to do something interesting.

I actually built two decks for that week's theme and my first one wasn't focused around card draw at all. It was a deck built around Forgotten Ancient that wound up being just filthy with synergy. Early testing saw both a Mycoloth and a Bloodspore Thrinax team up to create some truly silly boardstates. That deck actually saw play in one game and managed to win, thanks to some very good luck and the aforementioned very good synergy.

My second build was where I turned my attention to the importance of card draw. Actually, that's something of a lie. I turned my attention to the importance of protection, took a sharp left turn and fell into a warm, comfy pile of card draw.

Shimmer Dragon

The first thing I did was search gatherer for non-legendary creatures with the word "hexproof" and "draw" in their text boxes. I've been a huge fan of having hexproof on your commander from playing Narset, Enlightened Master back in the day. I've grown to be a huge fan of card draw from playing lots and lots of Commander. Neither hexproof nor card draw will win games on their own, but with a well-built deck they are incredibly powerful tools to have in your toolbox.

There were four cards that came up in the results. Dream Trawler, Stormsurge Kraken, Striped Riverwinder, and my eventual choice for this deck - Shimmer Dragon.

At six mana and not actually having native hexproof, this flying Dragon presented me with a deck-building puzzle that I was happy to try to solve.

Shimmer Dragon only has hexproof if you control four or more artifacts. I could work with that and was relatively sure I wasn't going to run headlong into a Vandalblast in our TTS game. Shimmer Dragon also lets you tap two untapped artifacts to let you draw a card. That sort of incentive pushed me toward going all-in on artifacts. The more artifacts I have on the field, the greater the chance I'd be able to use them to draw cards. That also meant that I'd lean away from an aggro strategy, as that might involve tapping artifact creatures to attack when I'd rather use them to draw cards.

Myr Tribal

Did you know Myr are one of my favorite tribes of all time?

There have been a lot of great tribes in Magic's history and I've got decks I love built around Goblins, Elves, Dragons and Druids. I'm always down to brainstorm around a new and interesting tribe. Myr have never had a great commander, but when I get a good excuse to build a Myr deck I rarely pass it up.

I'll be the first to admit it. Myr are not exactly a powerful tribe. I decided to run Silver Myr, Alloy Myr and Palladium Myr along withSolemn Simulacrum and Burnished Hart as a part of my ramp package for this deck. Any of these guys that can help me get to six mana will help me draw cards later even if late game mana dorks are usually considered bad draws. With this non-legendary commander on the field, I can tap two artifacts to draw a card and Myr are nothing if not artifacts.

I'm also running a myriad of other Myr. Shimmer Myr will give my artifacts flash, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Myr Enforcer, Myr Galvanizer, Myr Propagator, Myr Retriever and Myr Welder are all in the list, along with the eminently playable Myr Battlesphere. Hovermyr and Brass Squire even join the party. What can I say? I love my Myr.

One of my favorite cards in Myr tribal decks is Myr Incubator. This six-CMC artifact can be tapped for another 6 mana and you get to go through your library, exile as many artifacts as you like and make that many 1/1 Myr artifact creature tokens. I've won a few games with that little trick, at one point even playing it in a Karona, False God Myr tribal build. In a deck with over 40 artifacts, that can take you from no army to a pretty scary army in fairly short order and it can be tutored up with Treasure Mage, which is also in the deck.

Paperweights Everywhere

It's not actually fair to call the rest of my artifacts "paperweights" but this is the kind of deck that could squeeze value out of a do-nothing Darksteel Relic - which is NOT in the deck. I do have some standards. My artifacts have to do something, but if they can do that thing and they don't have to tap in the process, that's even better.

There are lots of artifacts that either don't need to tap, or that can be tapped on the end step of the player to my right until I'm ready to tap them for their actual purpose. These all bring value, but with Shimmer Dragon on the field, each of them also represents half of a card-draw. Over a few turns having a lot of these out will start to add up. I might not be drawing 8-10 cards per turn but I should be able to keep up with my land drops and have a puncher's chance at pulling into the cards I need to do what I want to do.

Shimmer Dragon has hexproof if I've got four or more artifacts and it's a Dragon so it flies. What that means is that we've got every reason to build in some ability to present a threat with our commander. This might not rise to the level of high-powered voltron decks, but an opponent without flyers is going to have to resort to more than just a Swords to Plowshares to stop me from swinging at them for commander damage. If that 5 power Shimmer Dragon has Fireshrieker attached to give it double-strike and a Blackblade Reforged attached to give it +1/+1 for each land you control, there's a good chance someone's going to be dealt lethal commander damage.

The best part of having your Shadowspear or some other equipment attached to Shimmer Dragon is that when it taps to attack - the equipment does not tap with it. Lots of us just stack the cards up and tap them all, but the equipment doesn't actually get tapped - just the equipped creature. What that means is that you can load up Shimmer Dragon with 4 sweet pieces of equipment, attack someone, and then tap those swords and boots and whatever to draw 2 cards! This build was fairly casual, but I could definitely see an all-in Swords build with the best equipment in the game working really well. I mean, it might not have all those cute little Myr, but it could be a fun and fairly strong deck.

The Decklist

I wound up playing this deck in one game on Tabletop Simulator. I was able to get a few early Myr out and was soon tapping them to draw extra cards. It was a few weeks ago but if my memory serves me correctly, I was able to make it through the early game until there were only two players left and then swing with Blackblade Reforged attached for a commander damage kill to win the game. I probably drew 8 to 10 cards over multiple turns from using Shimmer Dragon's ability, so it definitely made a big difference in the game.

At one point early on I had Myr Incubator in hand, but I decided against just playing it, popping it and swinging for an early win. The guys might have been able to stop me if I had tried, but chances were decent that it would have been game. What I did instead is basically say "let me show you this really stupid thing this deck is capable of doing" and before discarding, I showed them Myr Incubator and explained how an all-in artifacts deck can pop off with it. The win would have been anticlimactic and if the attempt failed, I would have been left with an artifacts deck with no artifacts, so I'm glad I decided to go for a longer game.

Shimmer Dragon EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Shimmer Dragon

• Creatures (30)
• 1 Broodstar
• 1 Shimmer Dragon
• 1 Treasure Mage
• 1 Vedalken Archmage
• 1 Vedalken Humiliator
• 1 Alloy Myr
• 1 Brass Squire
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 Foundry Inspector
• 1 Hovermyr
• 1 Karn, Silver Golem
• 1 Kuldotha Forgemaster
• 1 Metalwork Colossus
• 1 Myr Battlesphere
• 1 Myr Enforcer
• 1 Myr Galvanizer
• 1 Myr Propagator
• 1 Myr Retriever
• 1 Myr Welder
• 1 Palladium Myr
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Platinum Angel
• 1 Shimmer Myr
• 1 Silver Myr
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Urza, Lord High Artificer
• 1 Walking Atlas

• Instants (8)
• 1 Aetherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Flusterstorm
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Whir of Invention

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Fabricate

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Frogify
• 1 Rhystic Study

• Artifacts (24)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blinkmoth Urn
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Darksteel Forge
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Fireshrieker
• 1 Genesis Chamber
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Myr Incubator
• 1 Myr Turbine
• 1 Ring of Three Wishes
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spectral Searchlight
• 1 Sword of the Animist
• 1 Tormod's Crypt
• 1 Trailblazer's Boots
• 1 Unwinding Clock
• 1 Whispersilk Cloak
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Hammer of Nazahn
• 1 Shadowspear
• 1 The Immortal Sun

• Lands (35)
• 26 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Darksteel Citadel
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Seat of the Synod

Buy This Deck Export text format

If you wanted to run this list as a regular Commander deck, you might swap out Shimmer Dragon for Padeem, Consul of Innovation. When I put this deck in TappedOut.net, that was the nominal Commander listed for the deck, but for our non-legendary Commander game it was Shimmer Dragon in the Command Zone. The deck doesn't really work the same with Padeem at the helm, as it was specifically built around the card draw ability of Shimmer Dragon.

Final Thoughts

It took me a long time to get used to the idea that card draw was so important you might want to devote 8, 10 or even a dozen cards to it in order for your deck to really work well. When I first got into Magic, card draw felt boring. I wanted to play big, splashy spells or load up my tribal deck with all the members of my chosen tribe that I could get my hands on. I didn't want to bother with a Skullclamp or Mind's Eye and I didn't want to pester my tablemates by constantly asking if they wanted to pay for my Rhystic Study triggers. Boy, was I wrong.

Just because you're running counterspells or removal doesn't mean you will have it in your hand when you need it. Just because you're running a combo wincon doesn't mean you'll pull into all the necessary pieces before someone else manages to close out the game. Just because you're all-in on your favorite tribe doesn't mean you'll be able to rebuild if another player wipes the board and your army is swept into the graveyard.

Card draw can help make good things happen, or at least happen a little more often.

You'll be more likely to have that creature removal when someone swings for lethal with some huge creature. You'll be more likely to pull into that tutor that will help you combo off. You might even be better able to get through a game against a Wrath-heavy deck.

Building decks around non-legendary creatures was a fun and fresh challenge for me and I'm guessing many of you haven't ever tried it.

If you were tasked with building such a deck - what would you build?

The possibilities are endless and I'd love to hear what kinds of crazy decks you'd wind up throwing together. Would you lean into some combo build, play some ridiculous hug card that you normally have to play in the 99, or just run your favorite art of all time as your general just so you can look at it anytime you like? What would your approach to a non-legendary commander challenge look like?

That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!