The 30 Best Deck Ideas in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 19, 2024

Lord Windgrace | Illustration by Bram Sels

One of the joys of Magic comes from diversity. There’s a format for everybody, regardless of the power level and the kind of Magic cards you want to play. This diversity is part of what’s made EDH a cornerstone format.

But sometimes, the well of ideas runs dry, and you aren’t sure where to go next. Today, I’m looking at 30 deckbuilding ideas for Commander and Standard to spice up your brewing, including several deck lists in case you want to try something new but don’t have time to brew yourself.

#30. Phage Playing for Fourth

Format: EDH, casual

This is the memiest of decks that are best to break out at the end of a long play session when everybody wants a good laugh before heading home. The goal is to lose as quickly as possible. You’ll have plenty of fast mana to churn out Phage alongside other game-enders like Leveler and Inverter of Truth. Alongside these auto-lose conditions are cards like Blood Celebrant, Necropotence, and Plunge into Darkness to get your life total to 0 before your opponents know what’s happening.

#29. Rakdos Drain

Format: Standard

This is an aggressive red-black deck leaning on an abundance of cheap burn spells in Standard. In addition to typical mono-red fare like Monastery Swiftspear and Lightning Strike, black gives you access to Okiba Reckoner Raid and Hopeless Nightmare for a ton of direct damage and access to cards like Go for the Throat that kills Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which isn’t something red does without making a two-for-one trade. The biggest drawback is that this is a little slower than straight mono-red, which might hold this deck back.

#28. Vial Smasher-Sakashima Timmy

Format: EDH, Casual-Mid power

This deck’s plan is quite simple: Get out a quick Vial Smasher and make a bunch of copies with Sakashima and other spells like Spark Double and Quantum Misalignment. Once you’ve done that, you need to ramp your head off and cast massive spells like Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, and Time Stretch and let your commander copies burn the table down. This is the Timmy deck for spellslinger players who want to cast massive instants and sorceries instead of creatures like Ghalta, Primal Hunger and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

#27. Leovold No Ban List

Leovold, Emissary of Trest | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Format: EDH, High-Powered

This deck requires a stringent Rule 0 conversation with your playgroup, but part of the fun of having rules is breaking them. This Sultai control deck focuses on resource denial. The primary gameplan is to use all the delicious fast mana you can to power out your commander or Hullbreacher, then start casting Timetwister variants to strip your opponents of resources while your hand remains full. The deck also has a little Reanimate package for a fast Griselbrand and proves why Fastbond deserves its spot on the ban list. This might not be the best deck you could build in a no-ban list pod, but it captures everything I love about Vintage Cube and seems like a reasonable way to defeat players who put all the flashy new combos into their deck.

#26. Ob Nixilis Burn

Format: EDH, casual

Mono-black burn is a pretty interesting deck concept. Ob Nixilis, Unshackled offers a pretty potent source of damage if you can enable it. It doesn’t come down fast enough to punish early fetch lands, but plenty of players draw ramp spells like Cultivate later in the game. You can’t rely on your opponents triggering your commander, so you also get access to some neat tools like Scheming Symmetry and Maralen of the Mornsong to force your opponents to tutor alongside you. Once your commander has softened your opponents, it’s easy to finish things off with mono-black staples like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Exsanguinate.

#25. Queen Marchesa 1v1 Commander

Format: Commander, mid-high power

The idea of this deck is to construct a list meant for 1v1 Commander. This lets you play spells like Hymn to Tourach and Thoughtseize that aren’t good enough in a multiplayer format. As Pauper and Legacy have demonstrated, the monarch is a busted mechanic in 1v1 games.

Leverage that with a control shell, using the monarch to generate card advantage while protecting yourself with some of the most efficient removal spells. Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, and Toxic Deluge are just a few of the tools at your disposal. Once you’ve protected the crown, you can win at your leisure with monarch cards like Court of Ire and Court of Ambition.

#24. The Seventh Doctor + Clara Games

Format: EDH, casual

EDH is a social game at heart, and this deck looks to draw your podmates into the action. The goal is to fill your deck with as many cards that give your opponents options as possible. This includes powerful spells like Tivit, Seller of Secrets, Council's Judgment, and even Expropriate if you want. Cards like Fact or Fiction and Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths help generate card advantage while Gollum, Scheming Guide, Sphinx Ambassador, and Liar's Pendulum capture the heart of this deck’s concept.

#23. Thrasios–Ishai Alt Wins

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

The goal is simple: Win by any means other than getting your opponents’ life totals to 0. The first place to look is counter-doubling effects like Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, and Doubling Season, which are essential to enable Darksteel Reactor, Azor's Elocutors, and Simic Ascendancy. Felidar Sovereign makes alternate wins too easy, but your commanders get in on the action. Ishai doesn’t just work well with the counters package; it’s one of the best partners at doling out lethal commander damage. Thrasios does a lot of work enabling Approach of the Second Sun and Laboratory Maniac wins, though some of those lines may be dicey depending on where you want your power level to fall.

#22. Rashmi Flash Precon

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Format: EDH, casual

The goal with this deck is simple: keep things super casual. You want to emulate the power level of a preconstructed EDH deck, down to cards like Vivien, Champion of the Wilds and Shimmer Myr that are a little out of place, but you can see why they’d be there.

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter was my commander of choice because it was the first commander I ever built. Building around the flash keyword both makes sense with the commander and lets you update the deck every so often with new cards, like Horned Loch-Whale and Hurl into History. This project imposes interesting restrictions that lead to playing cards you wouldn’t normally put in your deck.

#21. Saruman, Master of Time

Format: EDH, mid-high powered

How many turns is too many turns? This deck wants to find out. The goal is to chain as many infinite turns as you can while amassing an army worthy of Mordor. The extra turn spells work with Saruman since they’re often quite expensive. Time Warp, Temporal Mastery, and Time Stretch putting tons of power into play in addition to the advantages of extra turns makes short work of your opponents. It’s best to focus on extra turn spells that don’t exile themselves so you can recur them with effects like Mystic Sanctuary (which enables a bunch of infinite turn combos) and Mizzix's Mastery.

#20. Sultai Descend

Format: Standard

This self-mill deck leans hard on cards from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan to enable it. There’s Urborg Lhurgoyf, Cruel Somnophage, and Souls of the Lost to provide you with tons of cheap power and ways to get permanents into your graveyard. Deathbonnet Sprout also adds power to the board, while Chupacabra Echo ensures your opponents don’t keep creatures around. The Mycotyrant rounds the deck out by letting you go wide and tall at once. I’m forcing my favorite Draft archetype into Standard with this deck but enough 2-mana creatures with 4 or more power should get the job done – assuming Graveyard Trespasser and Lord Skitter, Sewer King don’t unravel this deck.

#19. Mardu Angels

Format: Standard

LCI brought a reprint of Resplendent Angel to Standard, which also happens to have Giada, Font of Hope. Standard doesn’t have all the trappings of Pioneer Angels, but these two cards are pretty formidable. You can go into Mardu for the Standard version of the deck, which allows you to kick Archangel of Wrath and gives you access to the all-important black removal that’s defined Standard for a while. Being Mardu also gives you Bloodtithe Harvester, which is a great curve-filler and magnificent alongside Serra Paragon. Those small interactions, alongside the simple game plan of playing efficient flying threats and removal, give this deck some wings.

#18. Bartolomé-Lurrus Aristocrats

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

Bartolomé del Presidio is one of the commanders from LCI I’m most interested in. Pairing it with a Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a companion opens a ton of interesting ideas. I’m most excited about this pairing with cards like Ichor Wellspring and Servo Schematic. These cards were already great with Bartolomé, but Lurrus recurring them after your commander sacrifices them offers a potent, grindy card advantage engine. And Orzhov decks can certainly grind with their efficient interaction. Toss in Blood Artist, Disciple of the Vault, and a few Voltron pieces, and this could be a terrifyingly powerful deck.

#17. Rakdos Reanimator

Format: Standard

Who doesn’t love a turn 4 Etali, Primal Conqueror? That’s the ideal scenario of this deck, which involves a turn 2 Bloodtithe Harvester into Soulcoil Viper. Of course, you get plenty of redundancy with The Cruelty of Gix offering a slightly slower reanimation option and Bitter Triumph and Cathartic Pyre letting you dump reanimation targets into the graveyard. Getting your targets in the yard at instant speed is vital to avoid the combat-based exile effects in the format. For reanimation targets, you have Atraxa, Grand Unifier, one of the best creatures to cheat into play in any format, and Etali, Primal Conqueror, which offers incredible value.

#16. Tergrid Secret Commander

Format: EDH, mid-power

Tergrid, God of Fright is one of my favorite commanders, but a little hostile to some tables. This deck puts Meren of Clan Nel Toth in the general’s seat instead, regulating Tergrid to the 99. Many of the cards Tergrid loves, like Fleshbag Marauder and Sadistic Hypnotist, work with Meren as well. Finding Tergrid is simple with tools like Chord of Calling and Diabolic Intent at your disposal, and Meren plus Tergrid offers incredible value once you have a Plaguecrafter in your graveyard to reanimate every end step with the puppet tied to Tergrid’s strings.

#15. Ramos All-Doublers

Format: EDH, mid-power

This deck wants to double its value and give it to the next person. The deck starts with counter doublers, like Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider and Doubling Season, putting tons of counters on your commander. Throw in some mana doublers like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, and Mirari's Wake to cause trouble for your opponents. Teferi's Ageless Insight helps keep plenty of cards in your hand while you open Voltron lines with cards like Unnatural Growth and Xenagos, God of Revels. Finally, Strionic Resonator and The Peregrine Dynamo let you double the triggers of other cards like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Door to Nothingness as you see fit.

#14. Boros Discover

Format: Standard

This deck is the result of a few simple chains of logic. Even before various flavors of combo took over Pioneer, I thought discover was a busted mechanic since you get to cast two spells for the price of one. I assembled all the discover cards I thought were good. Geological Appraiser is close to, though not as good Bloodbraid Elf. Trumpeting Carnosaur offers incredible utility, and Quintorius Kand both discovers and gives you a reason to discover. Then, I filled in the gaps with spells I wanted to discover. These include some fantastic Standard staples, like The Wandering Emperor and Wedding Announcement. Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival works well with all these spells coming in from exile, and Virtue of Loyalty helps tie together what quickly became a token-filled midrange deck. It still requires more testing, but I think there’s something here.

#13. Muldrotha Stax

Format: EDH, high-powered

I love a good stax deck, and Muldrotha, the Gravetide grants you some solid options. When you can cast permanents from your graveyard, cards like Bottomless Pit and Cunning Lethemancer have a negligible impact on your game plan while devastating your opponents. You get to take this much further with friendly spells like Mana Vortex, Smokestack, and Pox. I’d round the deck out with some combos as win conditions and fast mana – after all, this deck concept can’t play with casual tables, so you might as well earn the high-powered status.

#12. Marchesa Makes Things Happen

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

Queen Marchesa gets a second round, this time with a multiplayer list. The goal is similar – take and defend the monarchy, but this time, you’re getting into the world of politics by turning the table against one another. In addition to your interaction, you’ll increase your defenses with pillowfort cards like Ghostly Prison and Sphere of Safety. Use cards like Curse of Opulence and Noble Heritage to encourage your opponents to attack each other and force the issue with goad spells like Taunt from the Rampart and Disrupt Decorum. The goal of this deck is to make the game happen, just not to you.

#11. Adrenn-Anara Worldslayer

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

Perhaps the simplest deck concept here, the goal is simple: Get both of your commanders into play with Worldslayer and win. Ardenn lets you circumvent the high equip cost, while Anara keeps your commanders around for an easy victory once you’ve blown up the world. This is simple to set up with equipment tutors like Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory. Plenty of equipment can provide redundant pieces for your commanders. Anara could be replaced with Mithril Coat and Darksteel Plate, while Puresteel Paladin, Sigarda's Aid, and Forge Anew get equipment on creatures without paying mana. All this redundancy makes the deck hard to interact with since there are so many moving parts, and all the equipment opens the door to more traditional Voltron strategies beyond Worldslayer shenanigans.

#10. Shalai and Hallar Power Shifter

Format: EDH, casual-high power

An idea I’ve had for a while is a casual Commander deck with a “sideboard,” 20 or so cards to bring it to jump the power level. Shalai and Hallar seems like the perfect candidate. It has tons of game-ending potential with All Will Be One, The Red Terror, and War Elemental. These self-contained combos can get cut for fairer cards, like Halana and Alena, Partners and Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon. You can bridge the gap with solid creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Professional Face-Breaker, and Sovereign Okinec Ahau that are effective in casual and high-powered decks. This concept allows one deck to keep up with multiple power levels instead of having several decks.

#9. Jodah, Gatherer of Magic

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

One way to make building and playing a Commander deck more interesting is by imposing restrictions upon yourself. Jodah, Archmage Eternal is great at cheating massive threats into play, often huge behemoths like Eldrazi and Praetors. But does that capture the image of an archmage? The restriction I came to is building Jodah with no creatures, focusing on just casting massive instants and sorceries like Enter the Infinite, Rise of the Eldrazi, and Call Forth the Tempest to capture the power of an immortal wizard who has had all the time in the world to learn the greatest, most powerful spells you can learn on Dominaria.

#8. The Sixth Doctor Superfriends

The Sixth Doctor | Illustration by Matt Stewart

Format: EDH, mid-high power

You can never have too many superfriends, or planeswalkers. This deck leverages The Sixth Doctor’s absurd cast trigger to make more copies of planeswalkers than your opponents can keep up with. If your opponents thought one copy of Oko, Thief of Crowns or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria was bad, they’re in for a whole new world of activated abilities. Peri Brown is a fantastic companion, providing mana acceleration and access to white cards, including some of your best planeswalkers and the board wipes necessary to protect them. These planeswalkers are further supported by cards like Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider that double the counters and a bundle of extra turn spells that buy you the time your deck needs to win.

#7. Meria Mana Denial

Format: EDH, high-power

The first thing you notice when reading Meria, Scholar of Antiquity is the resemblance to Urza, Lord High Artificer. This makes cards like Winter Orb and Static Orb spring to mind, but Gruul is quite efficient at denying your opponents' mana. In addition to these combo pieces, Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, and Ruination punish multicolor decks. Collector Ouphe shuts down opposing artifact sources while yours are fine. As these stax pieces slow the game down, Meria provides plenty of card advantage to locate finishers like Cityscape Leveler, Karn, Legacy Reforged, and Portal to Phyrexia, all of which you can easily cast with green’s abundant mana acceleration. The stax elements make this deck hostile to casual tables, but it’s a fun take on Gruul ramp for stronger pods.

#6. Imoti, Companion of Keruga

Format: EDH, casual

Companioning Keruga, the Macrosage imposes a pretty stringent deckbuilding restriction, but you can take some cues from Modern Cascade Footfalls to make this work. Cards with adventures and channel like Brazen Borrower and Twinshot Sniper provide plenty of early interaction while suspending spells like Search for Tomorrow and Rift Sower help you accelerate early. Foretell spells like Ravenform and Alrund's Epiphany help you spend early mana. This deck has crazy late-game power; since all your cards are expensive, they’re all good, and you’re casting two of them a turn. This deck’s late-game power comes at the cost of its early game; it’s not doing much in high-powered, incredibly efficient pods that want to win sooner than turn 6.

#5. Carmen Edicts

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

I’m not sure why I love Fleshbag Marauder so much, but I’m always looking for a commander who lets me play every variation on the effect. Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher, feels like the commander I’ve been searching for. Endlessly recurring edict creatures offer incredible board control while providing additional value from cards like Blood Artist and Midnight Reaper.

Carmen takes this much further by acting as a great finisher. Once you’ve gone through a couple of Fleshbag loops, Carmen is large enough to reanimate whoppers like Archon of Cruelty, Portal to Phyrexia, and Bolas's Citadel. What makes Carmen stand out from other options like Meren of Clan Nel Toth or Savra, Queen of the Golgari is that it feels like it adds more dimension to the deck than just recurring Plaguecrafter every turn.

#4. The War Doctor Voltron

Format: EDH, casual-mid power

The War Doctor offers a unique path to Voltron, which is taking out players with its attack trigger. Thanks to a rules quirk, revealing cards “until” an event, like with cascade and discover, makes each reveal a unique event and can put an absurd number of counters on The War Doctor. To support this, there’s tons of cascade and discover, including Bigger on the Inside, Chimil, the Inner Sun, and The Day of the Doctor. The exiling strategy is further supplemented by cards like Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald and Passionate Archaeologist that reward you for casting spells from exile, even without your commander. A few extra combat spells round the list out. Susan Foreman is a great auxiliary commander. Access to a 2-mana accelerant every game is really powerful, especially with a 4-mana commander. It does a great job supporting the deck without taking focus from the game plan.

#3. Miirym, Copying Wyrm

Format: EDH, mid-high power

Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm is kind of a disgusting value commander. It’s hard to keep up with all those copies, but what if you took it further than extra copies of Old Gnawbone? The goal of this deck is to copy Miirym as many times as possible. With a host of clones like Spark Double and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and token producers like Double Major, Quantum Misalignment, and Irenicus's Vile Duplication, you can flood the board with Miiryms. Once you’ve run out of ways to track your copied commander, you can close the game out by making a million copies of Terror of the Peaks or Goldspan Dragon.

#2. Belbe Stax

Format: EDH, high power

Belbe, Corrupted Observer offers an amazing mana advantage, as long as you build around it. Black has a plethora of 1-drops that damage all your opponents, like Pulse Tracker, Mardu Shadowspear, and Thornbow Archer. Play as many copies of these as possible, with the plan of playing one on the first turn, then playing Belbe turn 2 and making 6 colorless mana. Some of the best ways to spend this are stax pieces. It’s hard for a table to bounce back from cards like God-Pharaoh's Statue, Ward of Bones, or Lodestone Golem on turn 2. Once you’ve forced your opponents to stop playing, you can focus on accelerating into good old-fashioned Eldrazi.

#1. Obliterate Doesn’t Say Planeswalkers

Obliterate | Illustration by Kev Walker

Format: EDH, high power

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to leverage a Jund planeswalkers deck that didn’t just feel like using planeswalkers to fuel sacrifice commanders like Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. I also wanted to solve the issue of winning with planeswalkers in Commander: They’re slow and hard to defend since three players can attack them. This meant an abundance of sweepers like Damnation and Toxic Deluge, but I wanted a more convincing win condition, which led to the realization that Obliterate doesn’t destroy planeswalkers. The deck quickly developed from there. Lord Windgrace is an excellent commander since its -2 brings back lands after you blow up the world. Many of the planeswalkers either generate mana or provide inevitability. Since I’m not hitting up casual tables with mass land destruction, I’ve added fast mana for some explosive draws. The result is currently my most powerful deck, a Jund control list that leaves no trace of its opponents.

Wrap Up

Queen Marchesa | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Sometimes, we need some inspiration to get our creative juices flowing. There are endless combinations of Magic cards, so the choices can become overwhelming. These ideas and deck lists are here to spark your inspiration and send you on a new path with your brewing.

And if you want to snag one and netdeck, feel free! There’s no shame in it. What’s your method for deckbuilding? Which formats do you find the most inspiration in? Let me know in the comments, X/Twitter, or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!