Commander guides
MTG Commander guides that show their math
The written side of the site: long-form answers to the Commander questions that don't reduce to a single number, plus the analysis pages that back them up. Where a guide quotes a number, that number is computed rather than repeated. Where the sample behind it is thin, the page says so instead of rounding the doubt away.
- Free, no account
- Every figure computed
- Thin samples flagged
Eight guides
Pick a question
Five deckbuilding counts, the win rate question, the Game Changers list and what our precon guides swap.
-
How much ramp should a Commander deck run?
The stock 10 to 12 is right for exactly one kind of deck. How your commander's cost sets a deadline and your curve sets the count, with the exact odds of what 8, 10, 12 or 14 pieces actually deliver.
Read the guide → -
How much interaction does a Commander deck need?
The count that changes most by bracket. How often a given number of counterspells and protection pieces is in your hand on the turn your games are decided, and why what a miss costs moves the number further than the clock does.
Read the guide → -
How much removal should a Commander deck run?
Three opponents, not a bigger deck, set the count. Why matching a 60-card deck's coverage would take about 40 removal spells, how many board wipes your plan needs, and why cheap answers get a count of their own.
Read the guide → -
How much card draw does a Commander deck need?
A draw engine is worth the turns left after it lands, so the count is about finding one early. The odds for each engine count, and how many cheap cantrips it takes to pay for one cut land.
Read the guide → -
How many creatures should a Commander deck run?
There is no single number: the count follows what your creatures are for. Ranges for typal, combat, tokens, voltron and spellslinger decks, and why the pod's board wipes set the floor.
Read the guide → -
What's a good win rate in Commander?
In a four-player pod, 25% is average by definition, not a disappointing result. How far a real win rate swings over twenty games, what a sustained 30% is worth, and how many games it takes before yours is evidence of anything.
Read the guide → -
MTG Game Changers list
All 53 cards on the official Game Changers list, grouped by color identity, with the bracket rules that come attached. That includes what a single one of them does to the bracket your deck can honestly claim.
See the list → -
What our precon upgrade guides cut and add most
Every swap our precon upgrade guides recommend, counted card by card: the cards they cut most, the cards they add most, the staples none of them cut, and where the guides disagree with each other.
See the counts →
Choosing
Which one answers your question?
Here is the honest routing, including the cases where the answer lives somewhere else on the site:
- “How much ramp does my deck want?” Read how much ramp should a Commander deck run. The number follows your commander's cost and your curve, and the guide shows exactly what each package size buys. If your question is whether rocks let you cut lands, that is its own page.
- “How many counterspells, removal spells, draw spells or creatures?” Each has its own page with the odds worked out: interaction, which changes most by bracket, removal, card draw (including whether draw lets you cut a land) and creatures.
- “Am I actually winning enough?” Read what's a good win rate in Commander. The bar is lower than most players assume, and the number of games needed to clear it convincingly is much higher.
- “Will this card move my deck up a bracket?” The Game Changers list has the cards and the rules. If you want a specific decklist read rather than the reasoning, the bracket checker counts them for you.
- “What should I cut from my precon?” Find your deck on the precon index: its upgrade guide argues every swap from the list in the box. To see which cards our guides cut and add across every deck at once, read what our precon upgrade guides cut and add most.
- “How many sources of this color do I need?” That is mana math, and it lives in the tools section: a calculator, a decklist audit, and written guides by color count and deck type.
- “Is this deck or product worth the money?” The analysis pages below price real products at the exact printings in the box, refreshed nightly.
- “How does this commander actually perform?” That is the commander pages, one per commander, built from games real pods logged rather than from decklists people uploaded.
- “What should I build around this commander?” If the site has written a build for it, the Commander deck builds page lists it: a 100-card core list plus the swaps that take it down to a budget or up to bracket 4.
- “When does the next set come out?” The upcoming Magic sets calendar lists every set with a confirmed release date, and the full set list goes back to 1993, each set linked to its cards.
The method
How these guides are written
Every figure is computed, not quoted. The win rate guide runs the same arithmetic as the baseline under the stats on this site's deck and commander pages, so the guide and the app can never contradict each other about what an even share of the wins would be. The ramp, interaction, removal, card draw and creature guides take their odds from the same hypergeometric engine as every mana calculator in the tools section. The Game Changers list is read from live card data rather than typed out, which is why the count on this page, on the list itself and in the bracket checker always agree.
Where a number is missing it is left out rather than estimated. A stat with only a handful of games behind it carries that caveat on its face, and a price the site doesn't have is blank rather than zero. That is a deliberate choice, and it is why these pages sometimes have visible gaps where a tidier site would show a confident-looking figure.
FAQ
What is the difference between a guide and a tool on this site?
A tool takes something you give it (a decklist, a deck size, a pip count) and hands back a number. A guide takes a question that has no single-number answer and works through it, showing the arithmetic on the way. They point at each other on purpose: most guides finish at a tool, and most tools link the guide that explains what their number actually means at a table.
Do I need an account to read these guides?
No. Every guide is an ordinary page and nothing on it is gated or metered. An account only matters for the parts of the site that store your own data: the game log, deck builder, collection tracker and your personal stats. Those are free too.
Are these guides based on real games or on theory?
Both, and each page says which. The win rate guide is probability, computed by the same code that prints the baseline on this site's deck and commander pages, so a figure you read in the guide and a figure you read on a deck page cannot disagree. The Game Changers page reports the official list as Wizards maintains it, re-read from live card data every week. Neither is a summary of anyone's opinion about what wins.
How often are these guides updated?
The parts that can change are refreshed on a schedule. The Game Changers list is re-checked against live card data weekly, so a revision from Wizards appears here without anyone editing the page, and the card counts quoted across the site move together. Probability does not go out of date, so the win rate guide's figures stand. Its prose is edited when something on the site changes what it should say.