Commander archetypes explained: the main strategies and how they win

Commander players describe decks by their archetype: the broad strategy a deck uses to win. "It's a Golgari aristocrats deck" tells you more in four words than a full card list. Knowing the archetypes helps you in two ways: it gives your own deck a clear plan, and it tells you what an opponent's deck is about to do so you can stop it.

For each archetype below you'll find how it wins, what it's made of, how it loses, what to watch for from across the table, and a few commanders that lead it.

Tokens (go-wide)

How it wins: by making a lot of creature tokens, then making them all bigger at once and attacking with everything. A dozen 1/1s don't look scary until an anthem effect turns them into 3/3s.

What it plays: token makers, token doublers, anthems (effects that pump all your creatures) and a finisher that pumps the whole team for one big attack. Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession double your tokens; Intangible Virtue pumps them; Beastmaster Ascension and Craterhoof Behemoth turn a wide board into a lethal attack. Impact Tremors deals 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature enters under your control.

How it loses: board wipes. A token deck pours its whole hand onto the battlefield, and one Wrath of God or Blasphemous Act can leave it with nothing. Good token decks hold back a repeatable token maker to rebuild.

Playing against it: save your board wipe for just before the big attack, not the moment the first tokens appear.

Commanders: Krenko, Mob Boss; Rhys the Redeemed; Chatterfang, Squirrel General.

Voltron

How it wins: by suiting up one creature, usually the commander, with Equipment and Auras and hitting people with it. Any player who takes 21 combat damage from a single commander over the game loses, so a big, evasive commander can knock out a player in two or three hits even when they have plenty of life.

What it plays: protection, Equipment, Auras and cards that make them cheaper or draw cards. Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves give haste and protect from targeted removal; Sword of Fire and Ice adds damage and card draw; Puresteel Paladin and Sigarda's Aid make Equipment faster.

How it loses: it puts all its eggs in one basket. Sacrifice effects (edicts) get around hexproof and shroud, a single chump blocker each turn slows it down, and every time the commander is removed, recasting it costs two more mana. Auras are lost when the creature leaves; Equipment stays behind.

Playing against it: keep a creature back to block, hold on to edicts and exile effects for the voltron creature, and keep track of commander damage. A player at 30 life can still be one hit from losing to commander damage.

Commanders: Uril, the Miststalker; Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice; Wyleth, Soul of Steel; Rafiq of the Many.

Aristocrats (sacrifice)

How it wins: by sacrificing its own creatures for value and draining opponents a little at a time with each death. The name comes from an early-2010s Standard deck built around Falkenrath Aristocrat and Cartel Aristocrat.

What it plays: three pieces. Fodder (tokens and creatures that come back or leave value behind), sacrifice outlets (free ways to sacrifice, like Viscera Seer and Ashnod's Altar), and payoffs that trigger on death, such as Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat and Pitiless Plunderer. Grave Pact punishes opponents every time one of your creatures dies.

How it loses: it needs all three pieces. Remove the payoffs and the deck is just sacrificing its own board. Graveyard-hate effects such as Rest in Peace are a hard counter: creatures that would go to the graveyard are exiled instead, so they never "die" and death triggers don't happen.

Playing against it: kill the payoffs (Blood Artist and friends) before the fodder; tokens are easy to replace, payoffs aren't. Answer sacrifice outlets with instant-speed removal while they're tapped out, because once a sac outlet is on the field, your removal on their other creatures just gives them a trigger.

Commanders: Teysa Karlov; Judith, the Scourge Diva; Korvold, Fae-Cursed King.

Spellslinger

How it wins: by casting lots of instants and sorceries, with permanents that reward each spell. The deck gets more out of every cheap spell than anyone else, then finishes with damage, an army of tokens, or a big spell copied several times.

What it plays: cheap card selection and draw (Ponder, Preordain, Opt), counterspells and instant-speed removal, and payoffs such as Young Pyromancer (tokens), Guttersnipe (damage) and Archmage Emeritus (cards).

How it loses: it has few creatures, so it can struggle to block and to pressure opponents early. If the payoff creatures die, the deck's spells are just spells. Effects that limit spells per turn, such as Rule of Law, cut it off badly.

Playing against it: remove the payoff creatures when you can and expect a counterspell when they leave mana open. Bait it with a less important spell first.

Commanders: Talrand, Sky Summoner; Mizzix of the Izmagnus; Niv-Mizzet, Parun.

+1/+1 counters

How it wins: by growing its creatures bigger than anything else on the board, then attacking. Counter doublers turn small bonuses into huge ones.

What it plays: creatures that enter with or add counters, effects that add extra counters, and ways to proliferate (add one more of each kind of counter already there). Hardened Scales, Corpsejack Menace and Doubling Season multiply counters; Walking Ballista uses them as ammunition; Rishkar, Peema Renegade turns countered creatures into mana makers.

How it loses: board wipes and bounce (returning permanents to hand) reset all those counters at once. Exile removal on the one huge creature undoes several turns of work.

Playing against it: the counter doublers are the engine; destroy them early. Killing the biggest creature helps, but a doubler left on the field will build the next one quickly.

Commanders: Atraxa, Praetors' Voice; Ezuri, Claw of Progress; Pir, Imaginative Rascal with Toothy, Imaginary Friend.

Landfall and lands matter

How it wins: by playing more lands than normal and getting a reward for each one. Landfall is the keyword on many of these cards: it triggers whenever a land enters under your control.

What it plays: ramp and extra land drops, lands that sacrifice themselves to fetch another land (Evolving Wilds gives two landfall triggers), ways to replay lands from the graveyard (Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator), and payoffs such as Lotus Cobra, Scute Swarm and Avenger of Zendikar.

How it loses: it often spends its early turns ramping instead of affecting the board, so fast aggression can catch it. Its payoffs are usually creatures, which die to wipes.

Playing against it: don't let the payoffs sit on the field; Avenger of Zendikar with a few more land drops will be a huge army. Graveyard hate stops it from replaying lands.

Commanders: Tatyova, Benthic Druid; Omnath, Locus of Rage; Lord Windgrace (a planeswalker that says it can be your commander).

Reanimator and graveyard

How it wins: by putting big creatures into its own graveyard cheaply and bringing them back without paying their full cost, or by treating the graveyard as a second hand it can cast from over and over.

What it plays: ways to fill the graveyard (Buried Alive, Entomb, Stitcher's Supplier), ways to bring cards back (Animate Dead, Reanimate, Eternal Witness), and big creatures worth bringing back.

How it loses: graveyard hate. Bojuka Bog exiles a player's graveyard; Rest in Peace shuts the whole strategy off. A well-timed graveyard exile in response to a reanimation spell wastes the spell entirely.

Playing against it: if you have graveyard removal, hold it until it matters, ideally in response to the spell that would bring a creature back. Watch the graveyard size: a reanimator player with seven creatures in the yard is loaded.

Commanders: Meren of Clan Nel Toth; Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Muldrotha, the Gravetide.

Artifacts

How it wins: by flooding the board with cheap artifacts and getting value from each one: tokens, card draw, damage or a big payoff.

What it plays: cheap artifacts that replace themselves (Ichor Wellspring), cost reducers (Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector), artifact token makers (Whirler Rogue, Thopter Spy Network), and payoffs such as Reckless Fireweaver.

How it loses: artifact wipes. Vandalblast cast for its overload cost destroys every artifact its caster doesn't control, and Austere Command can choose artifacts as one of its two modes.

Playing against it: save artifact removal for the engines and the cost reducers rather than individual tokens, and keep an artifact wipe for when they've overcommitted.

Commanders: Sai, Master Thopterist; Breya, Etherium Shaper; Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain.

Enchantress

How it wins: by casting enchantments and drawing a card for each one, building a pile of enchantments that slowly protect it and win.

What it plays: enchantress cards that draw on enchantment casts (Enchantress's Presence, Argothian Enchantress, Setessan Champion, Eidolon of Blossoms), enchantments that slow attackers (Ghostly Prison, Propaganda), and payoffs such as Sanctum Weaver for mana or Hallowed Haunting for tokens.

How it loses: enchantment wipes, and slowness. The deck often spends early turns drawing cards rather than building a board, giving opponents time to catch up.

Playing against it: remove the draw engines early; enchantress decks without them run out of gas. Keep enchantment removal for the pieces that stop you attacking.

Commanders: Sythis, Harvest's Hand; Tuvasa the Sunlit; Zur the Enchanter.

Group hug and politics

How it wins: group hug gives everyone resources: extra cards, extra lands, extra mana. Played well, it aims to make allies, stay out of the crosshairs while others fight, and then win in a way the table didn't see coming. Politics decks lean on deals, votes and shared effects to steer the game.

What it plays: symmetrical effects like Howling Mine, Kami of the Crescent Moon and Rites of Flourishing (everyone draws more), voting cards such as Council's Judgment, and "tempting offers" such as Tempt with Discovery, which reward you more for every opponent who accepts. Many group hug decks quietly include a few cards that punish opponents for drawing.

How it loses: it gives opponents resources, and someone can use them to win first.

Playing against it: enjoy the cards, but don't treat "harmless" as "not a threat"; watch for the turn the gifts get turned against the table. Our guide to threat assessment and politics covers how to read these tables.

Commanders: Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis; Phelddagrif; Selvala, Explorer Returned. Queen Marchesa uses the monarch, a political mechanic where the monarch draws a card at the beginning of their end step and loses the title to any player whose creature deals them combat damage.

Tribal (typal)

How it wins: by playing lots of creatures that share a creature type, like Elves, Goblins, Vampires or Dragons, and using cards that reward the shared type. Wizards now calls the card type "Kindred", and many players call these decks "typal", but "tribal" is still common.

What it plays: lords (creatures that pump others of their type, like Goblin Chieftain and Elvish Archdruid), type-matters support such as Herald's Horn, Vanquisher's Banner and Kindred Discovery, and Coat of Arms, which pumps every creature for each other creature that shares a type with it (including your opponents').

How it loses: the same way any creature deck does: board wipes. Lords also tend to be small, so they die to cheap removal and the team shrinks.

Playing against it: kill the lords and the commander, then wipe if needed.

Commanders: Edgar Markov (Vampires); Lathril, Blade of the Elves (Elves); The Ur-Dragon (Dragons); Krenko, Mob Boss (Goblins). Edgar Markov and The Ur-Dragon have eminence, abilities that work even while they're still in the command zone.

Combo

How it wins: by putting together two or more cards that create an infinite or game-ending loop. Some combos win on the spot; others make infinite mana or damage.

What it plays: the combo pieces, ways to find them (tutors and card draw), and protection. A few well-known examples:

• Exquisite Blood plus Sanguine Bond: any life loss or life gain sets off a loop that drains every opponent.
• Heliod, Sun-Crowned plus Walking Ballista: give Ballista lifelink with Heliod, then each ping gains life, which puts another counter on Ballista, which pings again.
• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker plus Zealous Conscripts: the Conscripts copy untaps Kiki-Jiki, which makes another copy, for infinite hasty attackers.

How it loses: removal at the right moment, counterspells, and disruption to its tutors and card draw.

Playing against it: learn the well-known combos so you can spot the pieces, and save instant-speed removal for when they try to assemble. The stack and priority explains how to respond at the right moment.

Commanders: Heliod, Sun-Crowned; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; Niv-Mizzet, Parun (with Curiosity, every card drawn deals damage and draws another).

Infinite combos are a bracket question. Two-card infinite combos aren't expected in brackets 1 and 2, and in bracket 3 they shouldn't come together early. See Commander brackets explained and talk about it before the game.

Stax

How it wins: by locking the game down with permanents that restrict everyone, then winning slowly while opponents can't do much. The name comes from the old card Smokestack.

What it plays: taxes and restrictions such as Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (noncreature spells cost more), Rule of Law (one spell per turn), Winter Orb (lands barely untap) and Ghostly Prison (attacks cost mana). The deck is built so its own cards break or ignore the restrictions.

How it loses: artifact and enchantment removal, and the table uniting against it.

Playing against it: kill the lock pieces early and cheaply. Prioritize the one that hurts your deck most; a Rule of Law hurts a spellslinger far more than a creature deck.

Commanders: Lavinia, Azorius Renegade; Kambal, Consul of Allocation; Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.

At casual tables, heavy stax is usually unwelcome. Locking players out of their turns isn't fun for most people, and severe effects like mass land destruction are generally reserved for the higher brackets. If you want to play stax, say so before the game; the pre-game conversation is the place for it.

How to pick your archetype

Start with the feeling you enjoy most:

• Big combat turns: tokens, voltron, tribal or +1/+1 counters.
• Steady value and engines: aristocrats, landfall, artifacts, enchantress or reanimator.
• Playing on other people's turns: spellslinger or control-leaning decks.
• Winning in one move: combo.
• Social and political games: group hug.

Then look at your playgroup. A table full of board wipes is hard on tokens and voltron; a table with no graveyard hate is great for reanimator. How to choose a commander helps you match a commander to the archetype.

Mixing archetypes

Most good decks blend two archetypes. Tokens and aristocrats work together naturally: tokens are perfect sacrifice fodder. Landfall and +1/+1 counters share Simic colors and support each other. Reanimator decks often play sacrifice outlets to put their own creatures in the graveyard.

The rule is to keep a main plan and add a second one only where cards serve both. Two half-built plans lose to one finished one. Fill the essentials first (lands, ramp, card draw and removal, as in Building your first Commander deck), then spend the rest of your slots on your plan. On Podtable, the deck builder's Need tab lists the cards you still have to get, and Test hand shows whether your opening hands actually set up your strategy.

Next: pick a commander for your archetype in How to choose a commander, learn threat assessment and politics, or try your deck in the free online game.