DCC 1/23/14: EDH (Commander) theme talk!

Elder Dragon Highlander, also known as Commander, also known as EDH, also known as Nobody-better-choose-Teferi-as-their-General; this is the format for casual fun combined with personal preference in Magic: the Gathering. Your deck is one hundred unique cards (aside from the repetition of basic lands). You assign an identity to your deck. You pick a leader for your deck. You may even identify with your General; heck, most of us pick Generals we relate to or find so particularly neat that we want to build an entire deck based around them.

So, without a doubt, the most common theme for an EDH (we'll use "EDH" because it's the shortest of the names to type for this format, though taking this parenthesized sentence to explain this goal will likely take more words of type than it would have taken if we spelled out "Elder Dragon Highlander" every single time... and look, there we just used "Elder Dragon Highlander" instead of "EDH" like we said we were going to; twice now. What has become of us? Okay, back on track. Do you remember where we left off?) deck is one pertaining to a flavor or play-style dictated by the General itself. That's rather multi-faceted, however!

Creature Type Theme

Often related to the General's creature type, I would say that by far the most common two examples of this theme in EDH are: Dragons and Slivers. Dragons often sees three color groups: Mono-red (keepin' it oldschool), Jund (KARRTHUS RARRR), and all five colors (Ur-Dragon gets Urverybody). Slivers? Almost always all five colors; your only legendary slivers are five colors themselves: Sliver Queen, Sliver Overlord, and Sliver Legion. There are several more creature-type themes out there, and there probably exists an EDH deck based around almost every creature type. We had a gentleman come into the shop recently asking for nothing but insect cards! There are even some new and excellent cards coming out for cats.

All-Foil Theme

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but worth mentioning! There are several out there who love their EDH deck (or foils) so much that they try to foil out the entire thing! It is important to note the pure aesthetics of this game. It is a very integral part that is sometimes under the radar, but it can be far more pertinent when playing casually with decks crafted in a very personal way. For example, I am particularly fond of the old Magic card face/boarder, and I also happen to love foils, and thus, I have multiple EDH decks that are both entirely foil and entirely old card face/boarder. 

So, what are some themes that you in particular have come upon, and perhaps built around? Feel free to use the comments section, we would love to hear your thoughts! :-)

For those of you who are looking to get into EDH: We at Curio are happy to help! We love helping folks put together their EDH decks and we are also experienced EDH players ourselves. 

And don't forget: starting on Saturday, February 8th, we will begin our weekly Saturday Commander Clashes at 2PM & 6PM! For those of you who missed the DCC detailing what those will be, check our DCC for 1/16/14!

-CC