5 Ways to Cut Cards Easier in Commander

We all love brewing new decks, but sometimes the process can be less fun when you can’t seem to make the cuts you need to make. Here are 5 ways to cut cards easier when you’re building a new Commander deck.

HOW TO CUT CARDS IN A COMMANDER DECK

Commander can feel like a boundless and easy experience compared to brewing for 60 card formats. 100 cards feels like so many, but when you get down to it… it’s not as many as you’d think. When you account for 36 lands or so, your Commander, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Command Tower… you only have about 58-60 slots left to choose cards for. 

As is often the case, it can be easy to end up with way over 60 nonland cards in contention for your deck, and I myself often end up with as many as 90 or even 100 in the first part of my brewing process (that I’ve dubbed the Commander Moodboard). 

But how to make those cuts? Here are five tips that serve me well. 

SET YOURSELF A BUDGET

I’ve not brewed with a budget often, but when I have? It’s allowed me to be far less precious with what cards to include, and far more willing to experiment with cards that might be 2nd or even 3rd choice behind “staples”. As an aside – I find the idea of “staples” to be a bit contentious, and advocate for moving away from them when building certain decks.

When you have a budget, you’re able to easily cut out a huge swathe of cards – usually the ones you have played a lot – in favor of more interesting budget picks. I entered a deckbuilding Secret Santa this year, and the deck I built for my Secret Santa recipient (which I can’t share yet, for obvious reasons) came together surprisingly quickly once I settled on a theme. I just needed to lock in, and then stick to the budget. If you’re in decision paralysis, then this is one method that can really help you make cuts quickly.

PLAY CARDS YOU DON’T PLAY IN OTHER DECKS

Speaking of setting a budget, one thing it pushes you to do is to play cards that you don’t normally play. If you’re always leaning on more powerful “staples”, you can find them eating up a great many deck slots in your build. If you’d rather not opt for a budget, then another method to play those underplayed cards is to pull out all of the cards you’re interested in running, and then cut the “most powerful” or “most played” options first. 

This method can help you to really question what you want out of a specific card; what role it plays, what it offers your deck, and any specific downsides there are to running it over other choices. When you don’t rely on that well-trodden heuristic of “this is a staple, therefore it’s good”, it’ll level up your deckbuilding significantly. 

CHOOSE PET CARDS OVER STAPLES

Hand in hand with playing cards you don’t usually play is to choose pet cards for your brews. While yes, certain cards will be optimal, your list might end up quite pedestrian and uninteresting without the spice of a few pet cards to make games more interesting.

The beauty of pet cards is that they are quite often unexpected. Commander has gotten to the point where lists are vaguely predictable, due to the inexpensive cost of acquiring certain reprints, and the overwhelming power of certain “staple” cards.

Volcanic Torrent isn’t in many Nahiri, Forged in Fury decks. I run it because when you do peel free equipment off the top, you can build your storm count high enough for it to be a one-sided wipe with upside a lot of the time. It’s worth the gamble. Likewise, is every game I play with my Syr Gwyn deck going to be one that ends with a Chance for Glory? Not at all, but because I run Sunforger, I play it as a cheap way to “go again” and try to finish a game before someone draws removal or combos off. 

BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT YOUR PICKS

When you’re sitting with a pile of cards, it pays to be intentional about your picks. I have a super fun Henzie deck, and it’s set up to be a Turn 3 Henzie – so no 1-mana dorks for the T2 play. The meta it plays in can be quite an aggressive one, and I often have people trying to get me on the crack back.

For that reason, I’ve chosen to play some cards that aren’t as universal in all Henzie builds, in order to supplement the lifegain from Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Kokusho, the Evening Star. It helps me to stay in the game, and I’ve chosen to run these over other similar cards that perform those roles.

With a reprint in Foundations, I recently built Giada, Font of Hope. As a mono-white typal deck, it really enjoys Pyre of Heroes. Cards like Pyre of Heroes really allow you to focus your build when considering what to play and what to cut. I opted for Giver of Runes, so Stoneforge Mystic and Skyclave Apparition made the cut for the Kor typing. The addition of Auriok Champion at two also lets me go to Human or Cleric at 3, with both routes able to find me Angels. 

Two Steel Blades & The Wings of Freedom On Our Backs is on Moxfield, if you fancy a peak.

So, to summarize: your cards should synergize first and foremost, so consider if the synergistic pick, or meta pick, is better than the “staple”.

ONLY BREW WITH WHAT’S AT HOME

My final tip today is to only brew with what’s at home. It can be super tempting to order a bunch of singles the moment you have an idea for a deck, but who knows if you’ll actually need all of those cards? It’s better to brew with what you have, and maybe order a couple of anchor cards that you can see yourself playing in multiple decks, if you order things at all during this stage of brewing.

This style of brewing helps you bake in synergies, and it helps you make cuts for the initial draft. Remember, the initial draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s far better to playtest your rough draft first, getting in some solid reps, and figure out what exactly is missing from the deck. You’ll learn way more than trying to build the deck perfectly the first time.

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Making cuts can be a really tough process. You have to be a little ruthless with it though, so hopefully the tips shared today can help you be more precise at shaving off those extra cards.