Commander Deck Building Checklist

A Commander deck building checklist reviews a 100-card decklist against beginner and intermediate ratio guidelines — lands, ramp, card draw, removal, board wipes, protection, and graveyard hate. This tool imports your real decklist and uses card data from Scryfall to count cards in each category, then shows which ratios are healthy, which are low, and what to prioritize. Because most Commander decks fall into similar archetypes regardless of theme, these broad ratios give a useful starting point before fine-tuning.

Most Commander decks are comfortable with 35 to 38 lands, but the right count depends on your average mana value and how much ramp you run. A low-curve deck with 10 or more ramp pieces can run 35 or fewer lands. A high-curve or ramp-light deck usually wants 37 or 38. Missing land drops on turns 1 through 3 is one of the most common causes of losing games that could have been won, so erring toward more lands is usually safer for newer lists.

Aim for 8 to 12 ramp pieces. Mana rocks like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Fellwar Stone work in any color identity. Green decks have access to additional options like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Nature's Lore, which also fetch lands and thin the deck. Fewer than 5 ramp pieces often means you'll fall behind opponents who develop their mana faster. Ramp also smooths out the natural variance of drawing lands early versus drawing spells.

8 to 12 draw pieces is the suggested range for most Commander decks. Card draw engines — cards that generate value over multiple turns like Rhystic Study, Phyrexian Arena, and Sylvan Library — are more efficient than one-shot draw spells. A deck with fewer than 5 draw pieces will often run out of cards by the mid-game and struggle to find answers or threats when it needs them. Card draw is especially important in slower, grindier decks that need to out-value opponents over time.

8 to 12 removal and interaction pieces is a reasonable starting range. Removal includes spot removal like Swords to Plowshares and Go for the Throat, counterspells for blue decks, and targeted exile effects. Interaction lets you answer dangerous permanents and strategies before they take over the game. Fewer than 5 removal pieces can leave you unable to deal with combo pieces, dangerous enchantments, or opponents who build an overwhelming board state.

Most Commander decks benefit from 2 to 4 board wipes. Board wipes like Wrath of God, Damnation, and Blasphemous Act are a reset button when you're behind or when the board has gotten too dangerous for spot removal to handle. Even decks that want to keep a board — token decks, go-wide strategies — often play at least 2 or 3 wipes that they can use strategically. Zero wipes can leave you with no way to reset a game that's gotten out of hand.

At least 1 to 3 graveyard hate pieces is worth including in almost every Commander deck. Graveyard strategies are common at casual and competitive tables — reanimator, Meren, and self-mill lists can rebuild and repeat powerful effects if they're not disrupted. Colorless options like Soul-Guide Lantern, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, and Grafdigger's Cage work in any deck and are cheap to include. Black decks have Bojuka Bog and Nihil Spellbomb; white decks have Rest in Peace; green decks have Scavenging Ooze.

This checklist checks core ratios only. The Commander Deck Audit goes further — it checks bracket pressure, detects cards on the official Commander Game Changers list, analyzes the mana curve, estimates the deck price, and suggests budget alternatives. Both tools share the same import pipeline, so a decklist that works in one works in the other. A common workflow is to use this checklist first to fix the basics, then run the full Deck Audit for a deeper pass.