Here’s Exactly How Many Creatures to Put in Your Commander Deck

Last updated on September 1, 2026

Insurrection | Illustration by Jeff Miracola

While every component of Magic is important, creatures are likely the most vital; envisioning a game of Magic played with no cards but creatures is far easier than one without them. The tempo of games is often decided by which creatures are played, and formats are typically defined by their best creatures and the best answers to them.

Because creatures are so important, you’d think every deck wants as many as they could run, but that’s just not true. Your macro archetype, your specific archetype, your synergies and win conditions and answers… many elements of a deck influence how many creatures your specific deck should play, so I’m here to parse out some of the mystery.

How Many Creatures Should You Play in a Commander Deck?

Recruit the Worthy | Illustration by Joe Slucher

Most Commander decks want 20-45 creatures. That’s a very wide range, from a fifth to nearly half your deck; where you settle on the spectrum depends on factors like power level and, most importantly, archetype. In general, aggressive strategies want more creatures than slower ones or combo-centric ones.

What Can Affect How Many Creatures You Want?

Typal

Recommended Creature Count: 30+

Typal decks need high creature counts because typal payoffs and lords work best with a high saturation of creatures. Anthems like Lord of Atlantis and payoffs like Kindred Discovery want as many creatures to carry their benefits as possible. The exceptions are the typal archetypes that go big, like dragons or angels or demons; these develop a few really good threats rather than a wide board of small but synergistic threats.

Combo

Recommended Creature Count: 15-30

This can be tricky because “combo decks” covers an extremely broad swath. If you’re running a creature-based combo deck with stuff like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Heliod, Sun-Crowned, you’ll probably want many creatures so your tutors can find utility creatures like Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar or Grand Abolisher in addition to combo pieces. But a combo deck that rests on noncreature win conditions, or light creature win conditions (think Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation) may want few creatures besides extremely pushed ones like Esper Sentinel and Orcish Bowmasters.

Combo decks also need to factor in their power level; high-power play pushes you away from creatures.

Voltron

Recommended Creature Count: 20-30

For the most part, Voltron decks focus on a small core of creatures designed to support their chosen buff. An aura-based Voltron deck wants cards like Kor Spiritdancer and Heliod's Pilgrim, but few random value creatures. Equipment needs cards like Sram, Senior Edificer, and so on. Since the archetype typically wins by making their commander very large, they keep the creature base tight and synergy-focused.

Aggro

Recommend Creature Count: 30+

Aggro decks are typically creature-heavy, with an emphasis on cheaper creatures. Expect upwards of 30 creatures for this archetype, with the exact count and sizes being up to your respective commander. An aggro deck based on a commander like Arabella, Abandoned Doll wants lots of small, usually cheap creatures. The big exceptions are aggressive decks that fall under the Voltron archetype, which may want higher counts of noncreature spells.

Control

Recommended Creature Count: 20-30

Control decks typically want few creatures, at least for your traditional control deck that keeps the board in check with board wipes. If you rely on Toxic Deluge or Farewell, you want as few creatures as possible to get caught up in that. The creatures you do run should bias towards the impactful—think threats like Hullbreaker Horror. Better, lean on combos.

The main exceptions are sacrifice and flicker decks, which can easily lean into control territory but require lots of creatures. A sacrifice-control deck wants lots of cards like Accursed Marauder to recur and pair with Grave Pact effects. Similarly, flicker decks need creatures to flicker, and will often bias towards threats like Riptide Gearhulk and Ertai Resurrected that interact with your opponents when you flicker them. But apart from these, expect to run few creatures and look to other card types.

Spellslinger

Recommended Creature Count: No more than 25

Spellslinger decks generally want fewer creatures, whether they play big instants and sorceries or choose a storm-style approach. Much like a Voltron deck, you’ll want to restrict your options to a few high-synergy creatures, like Dualcaster Mage, Ral, Monsoon Mage, and Third Path Iconoclast. More than 30 creatures hurts your spellslinger deck even if they synergize with your instants and sorceries—how much does Storm-Kiln Artist matter if you can’t cast enough instants and sorceries to make the magecraft ability matter?

Creatures vs. Token Generators

I typically consider token generators a creature, even if the tokens come from a noncreature source like an instant, sorcery, or planeswalker. In my mind, one Lingering Souls equals one slot dedicated to a creature.

That said, it might not be advisable to make all your creature slots token generators if your deck isn’t built to exploit tokens. In general, token generators are balanced by making multiple weaker creatures as opposed to a typical good creature, so you can run into issues if you have a bunch of 1/1s and nothing to support them. Good ways to support tokens include token doublers, sacrifice outlets, mass pump spells, and Impact Tremors variants. The fewer token synergies you have, the less you want a Shadow Summoning over an actual 2-drop creature, especially if that 2-drop comes with a great ability, like Dark Confidant or Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff.

How Many Creatures Is Too Many?

I’d start getting worried around 50 creatures. Assuming a normal land base of 40 lands, that’s only around 10 slots for noncreature spells, which are valuable and important.

Of course, this is also archetype dependent. A typal deck like elves or aggro deck like Arabella, Abandoned Doll is happy to be around 40 creatures, but a spellslinger deck might be in trouble when pushing 30.

In general, your aggressive, typal, or otherwise creature-dependent archetypes want 45ish creatures, while strategies that don’t depend on creatures need to be very careful and choosy with their creatures and likely want as few as possible.

Can You Play a Creatureless Deck in Commander?

It’s very possible to play a creatureless deck, but you need to consider two important things: How you plan to live, and how you plan to win.

Living is fairly easy. A creatureless deck gets to play board wipes with maximum efficiency since nothing you’ll play dies to them. You can also take advantage of stax pieces like Smoke and Ensnaring Bridge as roadblocks.

Winning can be trickier. One path is creature tokens or animation; for example, an enchantress deck could use cards like Starfield of Nyx and Sigil of the Empty Throne to generate bodies. But a truly creatureless deck would probably fall back on infinite combos that don’t rely on creatures like Bloodchief Ascension + Mindcrank or alternative win conditions like Approach of the Second Sun.

Should Different Brackets Affect Your Creature Count?

Playing at different Brackets or power levels naturally impacts the number of creatures you run, mostly because of how decks rise to the occasion of what their bracket demands.

Lower bracket games rely less on combo win conditions which naturally pushes them to rely more on combat damage for win conditions, thus encouraging more creatures. Since the games are slower, there’s also more time to develop synergies for archetypes like flicker or typal. Decks can have lower creature counts but I’d expect most low Bracket decks to be in 30ish creature range, and probably higher.

Higher-power decks function differently. In Bracket 4 and higher, you’re more free to run efficient combos like Thoracle-Consult or Isochron Scepter loops, so you don’t need to rely on combat damage and the creatures to facilitate that. Since players are running so many efficient wincons, you’re also pressured to play lots of noncreature interaction like Force of Will and other countermagic.

Then there’s the need to play lots of fast mana, almost entirely the purview of artifacts. And many of the best card draw spells like Rhystic Study and The One Ring are noncreatures, too. The pressures of high-power Magic naturally push you towards creature-light strategies, with the creatures making the cut either because they’re essential to your combos or obscenely strong interactive creatures like Opposition Agent and Orcish Bowmasters. There are exceptions like Winota, Joiner of Forces that want to be very creature-heavy, but high-power Commander often correlates with lower creature counts. At the very least, creatures become less necessary as you move away from combat damage as your primary win condition.

Commanding Conclusion

Assemble the Legion | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

Creatures are vital to Magic, but so is understanding how many your deck needs to function. Play too many creatures and you might lack important synergy pieces or even risk creating anti-synergy. But too few creatures could prevent your deck from taking the aggressive stance it needs to win. Understanding which archetypes want more creatures and tuning your list to match is critical to success in Commander.

How many creatures do you run in your EDH decks? Does your favorite archetype want many creatures or just a few? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want more Draftsim, check out our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!