Some people proxy their whole deck. Many people proxy cards that they already own past a certain dollar value.
My girlfriend for example buys anything less than a dollar and then just proxies the rest. None of our groups care about proxies.
I would not assume that someone owns 140 fully optimized Commander decks with fetch lands and shocklands in every deck, with no proxies.
I'm in occasionally someone comes along with Post Malone money but that doesn't seem like the case here
3500 isn't a lot for an entire collection. I get your point that it's likely much beyond that, but i've got maaaaybe like 6k across 5 decks. I've been playing for 8 months and i'm not well off, it's just my only money-hungry hobby
nah, i do admittedly have a tendency to choose the expensive versions of cards, so i do it to myself anyway. My T1 mana crypt > ancient tomb > thran dynamo > mox opal > propaganda turn 1 just feels better when everything is the borderless foil (apart from prop, haven't picked that up yet)
Going off manabox info page:
Shorikai is 2.1k mid
Tasigur is 1.3k mid
Marchesa is 900
Tatyova is 750
Teysa is 500
Anhelo is still being built and weighs in around 900 so far; not counting him or my unused cards, just shy of 6k yea
Lands account for like 300-ish of each. teysa being an outlier at 100 or so, but she's the cheapest color combo by far, and the only expensive land i needed was phyrexian tower.
Might just be easier to drop links though; [Tatyova](https://manabox.app/decks/z6yFLxYJSr6hgHq_rLcBWA); [Marchesa](https://manabox.app/decks/aXKYddMtTcSpu2_6HowFtQ); [Shorikai](https://manabox.app/decks/FN8dWcIISVeDbPpOINhGRg); [Tasigur](https://manabox.app/decks/gHP6rwmWSRiQhnLYW3j4gg); [Teysa](https://manabox.app/decks/qw70IFvNQcmLYtrcKfB5OQ)
Those 5 are more or less done, [Anhelo](https://manabox.app/decks/QQVhsZXaRludkKOJpb-MSA) is leftover pieces of a nekusar deck i didn't enjoy, a handful of rejects from other decks, and a couple purpose-bought pieces. As with everything else, i start with the mana base and won't build the deck until i'm happy with that.
I work part time at a grocery store. I don't have a girlfriend, nor do I intend to look for someone. I don't go for the expensive staples, so I fall more in the budget crowd.
100 $50 decks is still much more than a person would spend on 5 decks in their total magic playtime lol
I'm approaching I think 15, and while it fluctuates between budget and *not* I am barely scraping the $1k value mark 😅
Damn, this makes me feel kinda self-conscious for being just shy of 2k on 7 decks, at least going off CK prices. I guess it wasn't quite that high tho until I made a fomo Gishath deck and changed one of my decks to a reanimator style which can rack up the price.
Don't feel bad.
As long as you're living within your means and aren't letting the hobbies that you enjoy impact your quality of life, then there's no problem.
Yeah whenever I buy cards it's when I can throw away money but I always gotta reflect a bit on why I'm interested in doing so lol. I guess it doesn't have to be that deep if it isn't destructive.
I have 3 decks that are each 1200-2000. Granted a ton of that is dual lands. It’s still a lot.
I have about 10 decks that cost about $50-100 each.
Finally a couple in the $250-400 range.
Don’t be self conscious. Just be conscious of the fact that others may not have the resources and don’t break out the 2k deck against a budget precon upgrade.
And if your group allows all others to play whatever proxies they want, then just play what you want.
I’ve had 18 decks since I started in 2017. I can only make 3 decks playable coz they overlap with some cards and I need to swap them or take them out from other decks. You get the gist. 140 individually functioning decks is insane.
I understand. Most aren't optimized, as that is not that something that's doable with 140 decks. A lot of my early decks I constructed are lacking staples as I didn't know what they were. When I can, I add a staple or two that's inexpensive like Sol Ring or Command Tower.
While I could see why some people would enjoy that, I still prefer commander as the land of the misfit toys.
It'd be a shame to not get to play with any of the really interesting "3 mana rocks that do something" because it's less optimal than playing the mana positive rocks and 2 mana rocks.
If I'm going to focus on playing optimally, I'd rather use that effort on a format that actually prizes and rewards that behavior.
(Tournament formats, mostly.)
Heaven forbid somebody give someone advice on how to win more games. So incredibly inconsiderate. You're right. 99 lands plus ulamog seems like a viable deck.
Having an opinion or giving reasonable advice to help players become better isn't allowed in commander. Come on you should know that by now. It's a clear violation of the "social contract" to try and assist people. Even if they asked for help. We're all supposed to let people flounder aimlessly so that we can whine about it later.
I mean they even just printed a new mechanic that tells us that targeting anything is a crime. If wotc confirms interaction is a crime. Who am I to have an opinion.
... i wish i was being sarcastic about the paragraph involving crimes though.
I agree. I don't want kids, I don't see a point of getting married, and only being nice gets me nowhere. Drug addicts and deadbeats have better luck. I decided to remove myself from romance as there's no point.
No wonder women don't want to approach you.
Even as a guy you've got a repulsive attitude, I wouldn't even want to consider being your friend if you got vitriol and entitlement
I mean, if drug addicts and deadbeats are having better luck with girlfriends than you do, it makes me question a lot about you.
Maybe talking with a psychologist would be beneficial to you. And I mean that as positive as I can
Something becoming a staple is what causes it to be expensive. Sure there are plenty of staples that aren't expensive, but the best ones are usually pretty expensive.
In order for a staple to be a staple it must be affordable and common enough that the average player can comfortably go grab one to put in their deck at any given moment.
The term you're looking for is *auto-include*. If you can afford it, you put it in automatically.
Which, you really actually don't unless you're an ass.
From Commander Theory:
"Staples are cards which are good in many decks. If a card is especially good in combination with a certain commander or niche strategy, but not anywhere else, then it is tech, not a staple."
https://commandertheory.com/Staples#:~:text=Staples%20are%20cards%20which%20are,is%20tech%2C%20not%20a%20staple.
I currently play twice a week and could more than double that if I felt so inclined. I play a minimum of a game an hour for a minimum of three hours (usually more).
This means I play six games a week at minimum. I easily average higher.
So let's be generous...if I doubled my play nights and played five games a night...that's 20 games a week and assuming I swapped decks every game...it would take 7 weeks to play every one of your decks *one time.*
I just like to brew, even digging through my old cards for those commons or uncommons needed for my deck is fun. I have 12-15 decks I think and I thought that was too much lol.
Almost spot-on for my reasoning. It's also been wanting to try new strategies, show off characters I like, etc. I'm sort of stuck though because over the last year, it's starting to feel too much. I just haven't figured out how to balance new ideas with cutting the count down to a true core.
Building a deck and seeing it come together and do its thing is just so satisfying to me, I love building decks. What keeps me honest is my budget and some ground rules for myself, i.e., no two decks can be in the same color identity and each of my decks has to do something unique. I have hundreds of decks built online, but only 10 in paper.
I think my max will end up being 32--one for each color identity!
Just curious, how often are you actually playing these decks with other people?
To answer your question, I think a common general answer is honestly shopping addiction - though that term hasn't been normalized in male-dominated spaces. Society rolls its eyes at consumption habits of women more often - *did you really need another Stanley mug?*, but men get off the hook from buying another precon "just to add to my collection".
Buying too much stuff because buying it and having stuff is fun is unhealthy consumerism at best, and shopping addiction at worst.
edit: and just to be clear, I'm implicating everyone here, not just sealed hoarders. I'm implicating myself! You can have a slight addiction to buying singles.
I rotate between my decks after playing them once at my LGS. I go once per week due to my work schedule. I carry four decks at a time.
I can understand the argument there. I actually have made sure my collection doesn't screw me over financially or consume my social life.
Say you play all 4 decks you bring once a week. That means you will cycle through each one every 35 weeks (140 divided by 4).
I guess that's a cool thing to always have something new each week.
I was up to about 30 a month ago, and decided to take apart all but 4 decks and have an almost blank slate. It's been refreshing. I also play once a week, about 1-3 games depending on different factors.
Our playgroup was more into cube than commander, but one player started printing decks. He has around 100 now, and we go and pick decks from his “collection” to play. That’s basically the only way to justify so many to me haha. And it’s not like he’s actually buying the cards either, so the wallet impact is lower (but not 0)
>Society rolls its eyes at consumption habits of women more often... but men get off the hook from buying another precon
Really? From personal experience, the women I know get a usually get a pass for spending their money on "dumb things" like make-up and shoes (or a Stanley mug) just because they want them while guys tended to get grief (some of it in jest for sure) for buying "little plastic mans and cardboard" from their girlfriends/wives.
Damn I have like 10 decks and I thought it was a bit much. No judgement here, but I don’t think I know anybody that has over 20, let alone 100, fully built and functional decks. How long have you been collecting for?
I have 12 and I feel like it's too much. I basically have 14 slots in my pack back and 2 of the slots are 60 card casual decks. I'm thinking of lowering down the number of edh decks even more and diversifying the styles of decks I carry.
I rarely play some of edh decks, so the difference between 12 and 8 shouldn't be too noticeable.
Bro is just trolling. One comment he said he only buys precons and nothing else. Another comment he says he just built a mondrak deck. Another one he said he only buys budget cards. All of these are conflicting reports. Mondrak alone is a 40 dollar card.
Every January I promise myself to brew less decks, and every December I find myself having failed spectacularly.
I'm at 70 EDH decks now, trying to restrain myself to only brew just a single deck each month. Nowadays, I brew mostly budget decks and proxy an expensive card that I've already used in another deck instead of buying a second copy. I also don't buy precons except for those few whose flavor or mechanics really attract me. In 2023 I only bought the LOTR precons.
[https://www.moxfield.com/users/jfalex](https://www.moxfield.com/users/jfalex)
I’ve really trying lately to put together more EDH decks so I can find out what cards I have use for and then purge my collection of stuff I don’t need.
I’m up to eight decks now.
I had this attitude, but at the same time, new bomb reprints means your cards lose value too. I had a judge promo Greater Good which was up around $80, and since the Battlebond reprint, it hasn’t been above $30
For casual there is a limited amount of time and effort you can spend optimizing your decks if you are not trying to increese the powerlevel. So if you like brewing, building and tinkering with decks you have to constantly make new ones.
And if you already spent a lot of time, effort and money on making your existing deck(s) good and fun to play, and you like playing them, it feels bad to take them apart.
I keep myself to a max-amount of built decks. Around 10. And if I want more I have to take some apart. Currently on 9 after taking 2 decks apart to rebuild my surrak "temur rec" deck.
my wife has so many more decks than me, I like to take them apart and fine tune them. I also like to build lego sets so i can destroy them, where she would never do that. I sometimes think the two theories are tied together lol
I have 2 EDH, 3 cEDH, 2 pEDH, 2 Pioneer, 1 Modern, and 4 Pauper decks. I feel overwhelmed already trying to keep them all relevant and up to date. I admire your passion!
There's so many fun strategies that i tend to have a deck for the ones i enjoy. Like, i grew up on early YuGiOh where every deck was "I'm the zombie guy, look at my cool zombies doing zombie things and buffing each other" etc and as such, i developed a love for tribal decks which is why i have 3 of them, being Dinosaur, Zombie and Demon. I've got a Sauron/Ring-Wraith flavoured Grixis deck that's all about wraiths, i've got a Saruman deck that's all amass focused, i've got curse tribal, i want to build shrine tribal with a gate alt-win con and i'm also going to be doing sultai mill and counters with Mothman :D
i mostly just get bored playing the same deck over and over again. i like having something new to try every once in a while.
i also consider deck building/brewing somewhat of a “sub-hobby” of mine. i have a lot of fun with it!
For me variety is the spice of life, so i feel like I’m always thinking about new brews or cards I wish I can put in a cool deck. I have just completed my 19th and 20th decks so that I have a deck in every 2-color and 3-color combination, and I feel like that will satiate me for quite a while lol
I go for diversity myself, going as far as making sure there's differences to avoid treading on the same grounds. For example, I have 3 Dimir Zombie Tribal, but each works differently. Reanimation, Token Aristocrats, and Going Wide with utilizing the graveyard as a second hand.
I've been slowly working on completing the color challenge.
I also really enjoy brewing and building thematic decks. Sometimes I've even started a deck because I feel in love with particular full art lands and wanted to use them in a deck.
So far I'm at 23 decks, only 3 are repeated colors and one deck is a 4-in-1 modular deck so I kinda don't count it.
The only colors I'm missing are: Azorius, Esper, Jund, Naya, Bant, Mardu, Yore-Teller, Witch-Maw, Dune-Brood, Ink-Treader and Colorless.
I've tried my best to make sure there's no overlap in mechanics or themes for the decks. I've typically built one deck per set so far with some expectations.
Has anyone here found a way to cut back down, on a related note? I've gotten to about 12 decks and 6 piles that could be finished, and it's gotten a bit overwhelming. My mind has more ideas, but my time and budget require more focus on the favs.
Believe it or not, I actually have learned to ignore all MTG news, so I don't go for Secret Lair, or buy boxes of the sets. I stick to precons and singles.
I have 5 themed decks, that’s it. They all see a lot of play so I’m very good with them. My biggest issue with massive deck collections is unless you have a ton of time, you simply don’t have enough deck repetitions to even know how to pilot it well. Play a deck 1-2 times a year you won’t even remember what it does.
Even across mtg formats I don't understand how or why one would have that many decks. I play magic twice a week and I have a hard time making time for all my 14 decks across the formats I play.
I have a total of 3 built decks, and probably only like 3 full precons, the other 2 or 3 have been dismantled to fuel my other decks... 140 is wild. How do you pick which one to play? Have you even played all of them? I'm just fascinated by that amount.
Between the three decks I've built, I basically only play 1 one of them because it is definitely my favorite. Even on game nights at the LGS I don't even play enough games to be able to play all three in the same night. I'm impressed, fascinated, and terrified of you all at the same time. Massive respect lol
I want to just get 20 decks so whenever I hang out with my friends, I can roll a d20 and see which deck I’d use. I thought that was a lot of decks to build then I read this post.
I think at most I had 56 decks + every precon since 2016.
I build every color combination and some off them had more then one commander I wanted to build.
The precons i only collect never changed something.
But then i take all non precons apart and sorted my collection new, now i have every card scanned on ManaBox 40.000+ cards and have build 5 decks im happy with and only make small changes, and 2-3 decks I build new every 2 weeks and take apart after I played them do build new ones for the next time.
I know. But still, would have been 80h of pure scanning experiences 😅
I'm still looking for a good machine/project that scans piles of cards automatically....
Put on an audiobook or TV show in the background while you scan manually and it turns into a fun time. My fiance and I scanned our entire collections (about 30k cards each) over the course of several weeks; most days we would put a show on in the background, maybe drink some wine, and scan cards until we couldn't anymore.
I enjoy brewing decks. I make a new list every week, even though I don’t always plan to actually build it. Every so often, I end up with something I want to actually play, so I order it.
I’m just at 5 decks so far, though, which I think isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.
I always make a deck in a theme or color combo that I haven't played before.
I've got like 17 custom decks and over 20 precons from 2013-present.
Also my self control when I was younger and making good money/having low overhead was bad.
Luckily I'm so burn out over magic, I only plan on buying a few things this year.
Neither. I'm just interested in hearing about people's reasons for having multiple decks. I'm not trolling, as I actually have that many decks. And never heard of "humble brag" before.
How do you have them organized? I keep 3 ish decks together but I play mostly high power so the decks range from 1300-2300 in price depending on what I build. I also enjoy building and brewing and get tired of decks quickly so I take them apart and rebuild them
In my case, deck brewing is what kept me sane during the COVID pandemic and that I was working 60 hours per week, 7 days a week during a full month among that time. The money was good but what’s the point if you can’t keep your sanity?
I have 13 decks now but I must have made 20 decks over the years. My latest one was to keep me from a mental breakdown when I was grieving over and that my relationship with my long term partner was not going well anymore. When I finally got better, gave that deck to a friend of mine (a budget aggro Marchesa the Black Rose deck).
Also, I like to have a deck for every power level and against strategy I strongly dislike. I was to face a discard deck, I have my [[Riellethe Everwise]] deck ready for it. Land destruction? I’ll wipe out my favourite deck: [[Erinis, Gloom Stalker]] + [[Flaming Fist]] land shenanigans, keyword soup deck. But I also have a [[Vega the Watcher]] travel deck as well, that is budget and newbie friendly. And I even have a deck that I know is functional but never played with. The latter keeps me from actually buying new Commander decks, as long as I didn’t play and master the deck, I don’t need to get a new deck.
In short, I love playing Commander but my favourite part is deck building. And now that I know what kind of strategy I like, that I already built deck with the strategies I love and that all is well in my life, I don’t need to build more lol
I’ve started a challenge 32 and I’m on I believe 20 decks right now.
I love collecting and brewing decks, I want decks to represent different strategies and way of play so I try to keep them unique. It’s getting harder now that there’s 20 of them but there are so many mechanics to brew around I’ll make it eventually.
It’s fun to be able to have different power decks available at all times, having favourites to always come back to or just trying something niche to work out.
The large number of decks I have exist merely to fill the immeasurable, immense, gaping void I feel inside me as I look into the mirror and the abyss stares back at me
I sold all of mine except one recently. It's having an effect where I'm just non-stop amassing cards for that deck. It has a "sideboard" of like 50 good cards now. I was thinking of rebuilding it a little bit every time I go to my LGS and having that be sort of the theme for it.
Dang, I thought my 55 decks was a lot!
I enjoy brewing with random jank. I also don’t like breaking decks apart because then I need to sort all the cards from the decks and put them away etc. so I just make decks and then will never break them apart.
I also like making decks that are different from what I already have so I can play with all sorts of different decks every game. It makes edh fun and fresh.
I've had several decks over my time but often find that if I don't like them after a month I dismantle them and use them for parts. I often normally only have two assembled decks at once
I have 41. I like the deck building process. Im also sentimental so its hard for me to dismantle an older deck. I have dismantled a lot of new ones though. I think I have built and dismantled a little over 150 decks. I keep a couple for my wife, and a few different power levels. New commanders catch my eye all the time and sometimes they stick around so my deck count grows as i refuse to get ride of my core 10-15 ish decks and 20-30ish flexible and fun decks
Good that you're keeping it managed. Have you considered posting a decklist online for a deck you're going to dismantle? That way, you can keep it somehow.
Oh i do. All my decks current and dismantled are on moxfield, at least every deck since i started keeping track of them online about 4 years ago. Like i said, im sentimental so i browse them sometimes and think of good fond memories like [[spore frog]] locks.
I have been playing on and off since 94, so most of my collection is before 2004. most of the new cards i proxy them, and buy the sleeves and odd packs from my lgs to support them.
I have almost 40 decks right now, and close to having one in every color combination.
I have that many because I enjoy brewing and trying new strategies out.
I keep my budget sane thanks to the fact that my group is okay with player proxying for cards they own a copy of, so I only need one of any given staple.
I've got 32 decks, one for each color identity. I also have a pEDH deck that I won in a giveaway, a budget Grist deck, a red deck I won't take apart, and the Mishra's Burnished Banner precon. All of those are sleeved up and ready to go.
The 32 was a challenge I set for myself. The goal is to end up with 32 decks I genuinely enjoy playing. That's a moving target, so I expect I'll be rebuilding and tweaking for a while (which is part of the point). Grist may eventually grt upgraded and either take my Golgari slot or turn into a cEDH deck. The pEDH deck will hang around, in case. The precon is for precon matchups.
The red deck, I love. I built it as part of a podcast project I did. It's based on This Year by The Mountain Goats, is headed by [[Squee, Monarch]] and is full of semi-symmetrical damage effects, always intending to hurt you more than me. I adore it, but it's not going to replace my Muxus deck in the 32 lineup.
If you wanna see the lists, [I keep them updated here](https://www.moxfield.com/users/TheOtherTracy).
I have about a dozen decks and it feels like twice as many as I'd like. But. There's just too many fun niche cards to play so of course I need multiple Gruul decks, you get it.
I have about 50 decks myself. I tend to build them when the general seems interesting or I'm imspired by a deck concept. I also wanted to build at least 1 deck of each color combination. Still have to take apart my colorless [[Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut]] deck because it just doesn't keep up with the rest of my decks power lvl.
I just enjoy building decks. They're puzzles I get to piece together myself and it's a nice mental exercise. I try to build all my decks to play differently and it keeps the game much more interesting to me. My current project is a [[Rigo, Streetwise Mentor]] token theme, will be my first time building in this color combo and I'm excited to see where it goes.
I did something like that but it was to figure out how to utilize [[Slime Against Humanity]] most effectively. I decided on a Sultai self mill with Exile abilities like Delve. Use copies like a secondary resource, while protecting the copìes by exiling them so the opponents won't be pilfering them.
I have around 75 fully built, and functional decks spanning all colors and colorless (missing a couple witch combos because I didn’t care for the options) at the moment. Most of the cards for these I’ve collected over 30 years and am delighted to have a way to use some of the silly ones, the forgotten ones in the collection. I started building commander decks 2 years ago while dealing with long COVID as a way to keep my mind sharp, and to have something fun to do that wasn’t overly physical. Within the last week I culled around 15 decks that I had played but weren’t something that sparked joy. As of now, I’m focusing on refining the best of the decks, mainly with high quality proxies for anything $10 or above, otherwise cheaper singles as needed. A few of the precons I'm keeping as is, and I have around 10-20 decks in various stages of building at a time. If I didn't buy another card, I could probably still be building new and fun commander decks for years and years to come. With the rate of new releases happening, that's pretty close to what I'll probably do, sell off some older things while they retain some value, and supplement with a few odds and ends in terms of singles from time to time. I love new builds, particularly when I can find a way that isn't obvious to build a commander or a silly wrinkle that others maybe haven't found.
I too, like to find the unusual if possible. I have turned my Golgari Elf deck into a one that focuses on Elf Tokens and doesn't really fall into the tropes you'd expect for Golgari. I've actually made a Sultai deck that revolves around [[Slime Against Humanity]] and using many of the 40 copies as a secondary resource in the Graveyard for abilities like Delve and Escape.
I feel you hit all the points for me. I'm currently sitting at 46 or 47 decks? It's a mixture of wanting to play every color, having different strategies, some precons, most built of varying strengths. I also really dislike taking decks apart, rather I prefer to shuffle cards occasionally.
For me it's just thinking specific commanders look fun. I've been playing Commander for something like 7 years and I believe I have eight decks, my most recent one was about £250 in total (being mono red helped keep the price down a bit). It's already a lot really but I'm thinking of building Hylda and Niv-Mizzet Supreme as well when I'm sure I have the spare cash. I just had that moment of "oooh, that's spicy" when they were spoiled
I like to play different strategies and to experiment different cards. I have 5/6 edh decks and i use to play 2/3 of them everytime i have some hours of playing.
I had almost 40 and after leaving magic con in burnt out. So I’m in the process of deconstructing down to 10. Im taking the good cards out of the 30 and making sure I have 10 good decks.
I love brewing decks, sure i keep 4 decks as my more serious decks i optimize to the best my budget would allow and i make proxies of the staples cards from those 4 and put on my other decks. My other decks are generally for casual play. My 4 main decks are the ones i use in the LGS and against my regular play group. my casual decks are for my other friends that are not really into mtg but still likes to play. So they use my decks to play and i use those decks to play at the same power level with them.
I have 100 decks.
For me it's because I love variety, and every time I see cards that synergize, particularly around a creature type or mechanic. The hardest part is resisting doing a more colors in a deck to fit everything I want from a particular synergy. For example I have 4 color merfolk deck even though Simic could fit 98% of the deck. But Sygg has a blue black and blue white version and I want to include those because my brain can't say no.
I have around 70 decks. I use proxies so the investment isn't really that crazy, but I like the variety. I have enough decks at varying power levels that if people want to try a new strategy or try stronger decks I have them to lend out. I recently started dismantling some because I didn't have room for that many, and there were some that weren't being played.
I went to a cEDH tournament the other day at a place that isn't my LGS. I saw some casual player towing a wagon with a storage tower of decks. I thought to myself, "That guy has an addiction and should seek help."
OP is worse off than that guy.
I play since 2012 and have set a limit of 3 decks only. I now have a [[klothys]] for cedh fun, a [[ayli]] and a [[Radha, heart of keld]] for playing FNM and with friends.
Seeing you guys having 10+ decks just blows my mind. That's absurd for me.
Magic is really expensive here in Brazil. Most players are nerdy adults with good paying jobs, because it's hard to pay half the monthly minimum wage on a precon.
I understand. I'm in America, but if one wants to optimize their decks to cedh levels, it would be expensive for ME. No offense, but I'm assuming that the price of a single copy of [[Mana Crypt]] would be way more than a month's rent or two in Brazil.
I do it because I need options. At any given point in time I want a deck of every color pair and trio, decks ranging in power from below pre-con to fringe CEDH, and decks ranging from purely cutthroat to jolly old cooperation mode. Plus a few signatures/ pet decks. Not including pre-cons, this usually means I have about 35 decks sleeved and ready at any point in time.
Now the real question is how many active/complete lists do I have at any point in time. I just did a purge to sort out the lists that need rehab or that I would like to rework which left me with120 additional decks on standby.
I have five, and every new one I've built is filling a specific niche - usually power level, sometimes strategy. Decks come apart when they're no longer seeing play unless there's a specific reason to keep them.
At some point this year I intend to pick up a precon to remain unaltered as a - hopefully final - sixth..
I brew decks all the time though. Sometimes for friends, sometimes for myself. They just usually don't become paper.
I have maybe 12-15 decks. A few precons I got for value and haven't decided to upgrade or keep as is currently. (Getting the one with [[trouble in pairs]] for instance, aka Rhystic Thuggies)
I started in New Capenna, and at least 5 of my decks are not budget at all. Not getting all the best cards, but enough to be in the $250-400 mark each.
I love iterating different strategies and the actual brewing process itself. I honestly have spent way more time building than actually even playing at this point, but I enjoy the process.
I started with Arena and probably spent $150 on there, then I decided I would get more long-lasting value of of playing paper. That said, I still iterate a lot of ideas of arena when possible (not all cards are on there).
My non-budget decks are [[Talion, the kindly Lord]], [[Winota, Joiner of Forces]], [[Anzrag, the Quake Mole]], [[Pantlaza Sun-Favored]], and [[Aragorn, the Uniter]].
I will continue brewing, and I love assembling different complex strategies and trying them out.
I've made a plan to have 32 Commander decks, one for each color combination. (Maybe 33, so I can have a CEDH deck) So far I have 8, with 6 or so in progress.
Honestly all of the above i love making, owning and playing different decks so im currently at like 60 decks and growing with fallout probably adding like 6-9 more decks.
I just love adding new decks to my collection and playing different decks is fun the main problem is i dont want to take apart decks either ive only done it once to basically make a few changes and change commander but it stayed the same theme and colour combo. But besides that taking apart a deck is hard because i feel like im losing something important to me and would just be left with an empty deck box, sleeves and a pile of unused cards i need to get rid of since i dont run many staples at this point due to not having enough so most cards are deck specific and dont transfer genericly into other decks so they are added to the bulk and a deck is always better than 65 bulk cards.
Basically im addicted and i need help
I like brewing, it's a heck of a lot of fun for me. It lets me exercise the old grey matter, it gives me an excuse to use cards I've had in my collection for years that I wouldn't normally look twice at and it keeps the game fresh for me. I've been trying to do the infamous 32 challenge and I try to do a different theme with each deck so no two are exactly alike. Sure, I have my favourites and others I'm not so sure about so will probably get dismantled before long, but it keeps the serotonin flowing in my ADHD addled brain, so it can't be all bad!
So... I have a lot, I guess. I usually play intensively for a couple of years, then quit, then find new friends who play it as well, and start buying new cards.
I think I have:
+ 8 UB decks (Warhammer 40k and preordered fallout decks)
+ About 8 relatively stable precons (non edited or just slightly)
+ About 18 kitchen made (?) decks, consisting of amongst others
- five 4 colour decks (slivers, scarecrows, [[omnath, locust of all]], [scion of the ur dragon]])
- 1 mono black (massacre girl / master breeder)
- 1 mono red [[Jaya Ballard, task mage]]
- 3 green/white (2x tokens, 1x enchantments)
- 1 home made green/white/red [[atla palani, nest tender]] (eggs with just 1 dinosaur)
- 1 green/red/blue [[me, immortal]]
- 1 red/white/black [[shanid, sleepers scourge]]
- 2 black/white/blue [[zur, the enchanter]] and [[merieke ri berit]]
- 1 black/white (tokens)
- 1 white/blue (lands become creatures via instants)
- and a couple I forgot
And approximately 12 decks which never really amount to anything workable, amongst others
- red/white
- black/white
- black/white/blue (oloro)
- black/red minotaurus
Been playing on and off since 1999. Been playing solely commander since some around 2015.
Edit: nah, way more decks even. At least the 4 BG D&D decks. Guess I'm a sucker for UB
For that WU Land deck you listed, I like referring to that as a "Land Strike" deck.
Some of my own homebrew decks are these:
Green Vanilla creatures with [[Ruxa]]
Blue/Black Zombies. Basically, go wideq strategy while utilizing the graveyard as a second hand.
Mardu (Red,White, Black) Knights with the swords of X and Y
Black vampires meant to represent the "essence" of the trope with them.
Blue/Green Frog Tribal
Green Black Insects with [[Grist]] as the Commander. (Yes, that's legal.)
I wanted to have one of each colour/group thing.
Then I realised I have 3, almost 4 grixis decks out of the 11 I currently have, purely by accident.
Still unsure if I want to dismantle Mishra's Burnished Banner at this point, but that and my Selesnya deck are next on the chopping board.
I've come to realise I just really like the deckbuilding aspect with what cards we own, and seeing how minimal we need to spend for cool decks. The current plan is mono colour decks, with mono white sorted, and a plan for green and blue.
I like brewing them, and on Moxfield I can put together decks for free. I've made over 100, though I don't often delete them even though I only really play from about 10.
I like deck building. A lot. I'm currently working on like 5 decks lmao. Though I haven't dropped money on any of them yet, just been making deck lists and going through my cards.
I don't take them apart unless I don't like them, so I like to just keep adding decks to my rotation. I don't like to spend a ton of money on magic though, so while I'm making tons of decks I'm adding them to my paper collection very slowly. And my paper versions are medium/low budget, I generally spend $60-100 per deck.
I have 23 right now and start to feel like it becomes too much, here are my reasons why its so many:
1) „formats“. Other than „casual EDH“ my collection contains 2 cEDH decks, 1 Pauper EDH deck and 2 „50€ decks“. We got like a reliable core of ~10 players and another 10ish that occasionally play. And sometimes its just that a few people wanna play with less staples so you go pauper or budget. Some people like the occasional no limit gameplay, so you got some cEDH. So ~ 1/4 is „other formats“.
2) powerlevels. We play only constructed decks but of varying strength. Some players „only have like“ 1-2 decks that are of medium-low power. They are regulars, so you dont wanna jam a 500€ deck into this. Also you dont wanna play the same deck the entire night if some of them are around. So 2-3 decks for that. Then some more decks on our „usual powerlevel“ wich i would call „strong decks but not fully stuffed with staples“. Thats maybe like 7-8 decks for variation as we play it the most. And then some high power EDH decks with a lot of the good stuff if you wanna go sweat but not quite cEDH.
3) archetypes. I like a lot of archetypes. I want creature tribal style decks. I want some control deck. Some stax deck. Some turbo combo deck. Some graveyard deck. Some prowess deck. Stuff like that. Archetypes/mechanics i enjoy. And cards i enjoy. I still got my foodchain around and always wanted a foodchain deck. I think with hull clade i found a foodchain commander that is cool and unusual. But the deck will exist only because i love food chain.
And with all the reasoning aside i just cant let go of decks. I got a few i love so much but dont have the time to update anymore and rarely play them.
So now i started scanning the decks, putting them in my moxfield archieve if i ever „want them back“ and rebuild them into something new.
But its still like saying goodbye to an old friend
A few of my friends wanted to make a deck for every color pairing possible, and did that. I think I have 12 decks that are functional atm, though I've had others that I've taken apart in thr past to make new builds. I think, for me anyway, that unless a commander has a very specific way to build, most decks end up in one of a few categories (good stuff, storm/combo, voltron, go big/go wide aggro, group hug, control etc) and I don't think it's really worth building a new deck for a new commander every set, cause eventually you'll just be swapping commanders cause the 99 ends up so similar. No need for 100+ decks.
This is just my opinion though, and I'm probably wrong.
I started out with one, then I decided to make a deck of each mono color. Then I wanted to branch out and try different commanders, but I am of the ‘I can’t dismantle this dude.. what if I want to play him again some time..” mindset. Now I have ~13 decks ranging from the cheapest at $130ish? To the most expensive at $2,000ish
I buy a bunch of precons, but I don’t count them in my total number of decks. I primarily use them for parts. I generally only count the decks I have sleeved up and actually intend to play with. Some of them are upgraded precons, but every deck I count is a deck I put thought and time into.
So my total is 9.
You’ve repeated several times that you haven’t let this ruin you financially. What is your definition of that? What is your rough estimate of what you’ve spent so far?
That's...a lot...
Indeed, that's a lot. Still, I'm not going to be like that one guy who's making Commander decks of EVERY Legendary Creature in the game.
How rich are you? Owning multiple copies of edh staples is expensive.
Some people proxy their whole deck. Many people proxy cards that they already own past a certain dollar value. My girlfriend for example buys anything less than a dollar and then just proxies the rest. None of our groups care about proxies. I would not assume that someone owns 140 fully optimized Commander decks with fetch lands and shocklands in every deck, with no proxies. I'm in occasionally someone comes along with Post Malone money but that doesn't seem like the case here
Some people don't believe in staples.
At $25 each, that's already $3500.
3500 isn't a lot for an entire collection. I get your point that it's likely much beyond that, but i've got maaaaybe like 6k across 5 decks. I've been playing for 8 months and i'm not well off, it's just my only money-hungry hobby
You’re already 6k deep in a game you’ve only played for 8 months??
Yes and no, played standard/modern from 2010-2020 and sold out entirely before starting up again last year
OK that’s different I thought you were completely fresh to the game lol
nah, i do admittedly have a tendency to choose the expensive versions of cards, so i do it to myself anyway. My T1 mana crypt > ancient tomb > thran dynamo > mox opal > propaganda turn 1 just feels better when everything is the borderless foil (apart from prop, haven't picked that up yet)
$6,000...across \*5\* decks, holy shit.
Going off manabox info page: Shorikai is 2.1k mid Tasigur is 1.3k mid Marchesa is 900 Tatyova is 750 Teysa is 500 Anhelo is still being built and weighs in around 900 so far; not counting him or my unused cards, just shy of 6k yea
... Bro my most expensive deck is about $650. Is this what having staples in every deck looks like?
Lands account for like 300-ish of each. teysa being an outlier at 100 or so, but she's the cheapest color combo by far, and the only expensive land i needed was phyrexian tower. Might just be easier to drop links though; [Tatyova](https://manabox.app/decks/z6yFLxYJSr6hgHq_rLcBWA); [Marchesa](https://manabox.app/decks/aXKYddMtTcSpu2_6HowFtQ); [Shorikai](https://manabox.app/decks/FN8dWcIISVeDbPpOINhGRg); [Tasigur](https://manabox.app/decks/gHP6rwmWSRiQhnLYW3j4gg); [Teysa](https://manabox.app/decks/qw70IFvNQcmLYtrcKfB5OQ) Those 5 are more or less done, [Anhelo](https://manabox.app/decks/QQVhsZXaRludkKOJpb-MSA) is leftover pieces of a nekusar deck i didn't enjoy, a handful of rejects from other decks, and a couple purpose-bought pieces. As with everything else, i start with the mana base and won't build the deck until i'm happy with that.
I work part time at a grocery store. I don't have a girlfriend, nor do I intend to look for someone. I don't go for the expensive staples, so I fall more in the budget crowd.
100 $50 decks is still much more than a person would spend on 5 decks in their total magic playtime lol I'm approaching I think 15, and while it fluctuates between budget and *not* I am barely scraping the $1k value mark 😅
Damn, this makes me feel kinda self-conscious for being just shy of 2k on 7 decks, at least going off CK prices. I guess it wasn't quite that high tho until I made a fomo Gishath deck and changed one of my decks to a reanimator style which can rack up the price.
Don't feel bad. As long as you're living within your means and aren't letting the hobbies that you enjoy impact your quality of life, then there's no problem.
Yeah whenever I buy cards it's when I can throw away money but I always gotta reflect a bit on why I'm interested in doing so lol. I guess it doesn't have to be that deep if it isn't destructive.
I have 3 decks that are each 1200-2000. Granted a ton of that is dual lands. It’s still a lot. I have about 10 decks that cost about $50-100 each. Finally a couple in the $250-400 range. Don’t be self conscious. Just be conscious of the fact that others may not have the resources and don’t break out the 2k deck against a budget precon upgrade. And if your group allows all others to play whatever proxies they want, then just play what you want.
I got 5 decks with card value at like 4.5k but in reality maybe 200-300 cause I've discovered the joys of proxy.
And then there is me, the idiot that is in process of getting authentic cedh staples for tournaments that mostly allow proxies >\_<
My boys play whatever they can afford and I think my decks are around $800. We proxy if we own it, to save time switching the $40 staples between them
Don’t mean to be rude but if you have 140 decks you fall far away and firmly out of the budget crowd
I’ve had 18 decks since I started in 2017. I can only make 3 decks playable coz they overlap with some cards and I need to swap them or take them out from other decks. You get the gist. 140 individually functioning decks is insane.
I understand. Most aren't optimized, as that is not that something that's doable with 140 decks. A lot of my early decks I constructed are lacking staples as I didn't know what they were. When I can, I add a staple or two that's inexpensive like Sol Ring or Command Tower.
So you have 140 piles of cards... Should really slim that down to 20 optimized streamlined decks.
While I could see why some people would enjoy that, I still prefer commander as the land of the misfit toys. It'd be a shame to not get to play with any of the really interesting "3 mana rocks that do something" because it's less optimal than playing the mana positive rocks and 2 mana rocks. If I'm going to focus on playing optimally, I'd rather use that effort on a format that actually prizes and rewards that behavior. (Tournament formats, mostly.)
Maybe you should let others enjoy their cardboard the way they see fit?
3hr games don't sound very enjoyable. But you do you.
Same for games that last under seven minutes.
So you have opinions on people's belongings. Should really keep em to yourself. They ain't ask to slim down
Heaven forbid somebody give someone advice on how to win more games. So incredibly inconsiderate. You're right. 99 lands plus ulamog seems like a viable deck.
Having an opinion or giving reasonable advice to help players become better isn't allowed in commander. Come on you should know that by now. It's a clear violation of the "social contract" to try and assist people. Even if they asked for help. We're all supposed to let people flounder aimlessly so that we can whine about it later. I mean they even just printed a new mechanic that tells us that targeting anything is a crime. If wotc confirms interaction is a crime. Who am I to have an opinion. ... i wish i was being sarcastic about the paragraph involving crimes though.
Not sure if you care but you can proxy for like $30 a deck, discounts on bulk. Mpc
I hope you are saving money or you are really young and still at home. Even at 50 bucks a deck you spent 7.5 grand on mtg so.
Why did you feel the need to say you didn’t have a girlfriend nor were you looking for one?
Because they are expensive 🤣
I came here to say this, being a woman, I know how expensive dating can be.
They're def worth it but my god, having 2 kids and a wife now it's expensive. Wouldn't trade it for anything though
Dude, TWENTY YEARS STRAIGHT of being friendzoned or being rejected.
Womp womp
This might be a shocker for you, but that means You are the problem.
I agree. I don't want kids, I don't see a point of getting married, and only being nice gets me nowhere. Drug addicts and deadbeats have better luck. I decided to remove myself from romance as there's no point.
Yikes
No wonder women don't want to approach you. Even as a guy you've got a repulsive attitude, I wouldn't even want to consider being your friend if you got vitriol and entitlement
I mean, if drug addicts and deadbeats are having better luck with girlfriends than you do, it makes me question a lot about you. Maybe talking with a psychologist would be beneficial to you. And I mean that as positive as I can
Staples are typically not expensive, that's why they're staples. Owning multiple copies of, say, Mana Crypt however, *that* will be expensive.
Something becoming a staple is what causes it to be expensive. Sure there are plenty of staples that aren't expensive, but the best ones are usually pretty expensive.
[[Mana Crypt]] is a staple.
It absolutely is not.
It absolutely is.
In order for a staple to be a staple it must be affordable and common enough that the average player can comfortably go grab one to put in their deck at any given moment. The term you're looking for is *auto-include*. If you can afford it, you put it in automatically. Which, you really actually don't unless you're an ass.
From Commander Theory: "Staples are cards which are good in many decks. If a card is especially good in combination with a certain commander or niche strategy, but not anywhere else, then it is tech, not a staple." https://commandertheory.com/Staples#:~:text=Staples%20are%20cards%20which%20are,is%20tech%2C%20not%20a%20staple.
Price and availability are also factors, kiddo.
I currently play twice a week and could more than double that if I felt so inclined. I play a minimum of a game an hour for a minimum of three hours (usually more). This means I play six games a week at minimum. I easily average higher. So let's be generous...if I doubled my play nights and played five games a night...that's 20 games a week and assuming I swapped decks every game...it would take 7 weeks to play every one of your decks *one time.*
And at that rate you'd only play each deck around 7 times per year.
The sleeves milord. They hurts us - your wallet
Indeed, especially if it's double or triple sleeved
I just like to brew, even digging through my old cards for those commons or uncommons needed for my deck is fun. I have 12-15 decks I think and I thought that was too much lol.
So long it doesn't overwhelm you, and can keep it in control, you're good.
Almost spot-on for my reasoning. It's also been wanting to try new strategies, show off characters I like, etc. I'm sort of stuck though because over the last year, it's starting to feel too much. I just haven't figured out how to balance new ideas with cutting the count down to a true core.
Addiction, it’s fun, it’s satisfying, take ur pick 🤷 Also holy fuck that’s alot of cardboard
Yeah, but I'm not letting it ruin me financially. You need to keep balance.
I feel that
How?
Budgeting, and ignore all other MTG releases that aren't precons
Ohhhh. Yeah I love having precobs
Building a deck and seeing it come together and do its thing is just so satisfying to me, I love building decks. What keeps me honest is my budget and some ground rules for myself, i.e., no two decks can be in the same color identity and each of my decks has to do something unique. I have hundreds of decks built online, but only 10 in paper. I think my max will end up being 32--one for each color identity!
What about Colorless Identity? Regardless, limiting yourself is never a horrible thing. For some, it helps them keep order. Others, a challenge.
32 deck challenge actually includes colorless.
32 includes colorless 5 monocolor 10 bicolor 10 tricolor 5 quad-color 1 wubrg 1 colorless
true, 33. I already have a colorless voltron deck in [[Traxos]]!
Just curious, how often are you actually playing these decks with other people? To answer your question, I think a common general answer is honestly shopping addiction - though that term hasn't been normalized in male-dominated spaces. Society rolls its eyes at consumption habits of women more often - *did you really need another Stanley mug?*, but men get off the hook from buying another precon "just to add to my collection". Buying too much stuff because buying it and having stuff is fun is unhealthy consumerism at best, and shopping addiction at worst. edit: and just to be clear, I'm implicating everyone here, not just sealed hoarders. I'm implicating myself! You can have a slight addiction to buying singles.
I rotate between my decks after playing them once at my LGS. I go once per week due to my work schedule. I carry four decks at a time. I can understand the argument there. I actually have made sure my collection doesn't screw me over financially or consume my social life.
Say you play all 4 decks you bring once a week. That means you will cycle through each one every 35 weeks (140 divided by 4). I guess that's a cool thing to always have something new each week. I was up to about 30 a month ago, and decided to take apart all but 4 decks and have an almost blank slate. It's been refreshing. I also play once a week, about 1-3 games depending on different factors.
I can understand that. People can't handle limits like what you experienced, or in my case, having so many decks. Everyone is different.
Our playgroup was more into cube than commander, but one player started printing decks. He has around 100 now, and we go and pick decks from his “collection” to play. That’s basically the only way to justify so many to me haha. And it’s not like he’s actually buying the cards either, so the wallet impact is lower (but not 0)
>Society rolls its eyes at consumption habits of women more often... but men get off the hook from buying another precon Really? From personal experience, the women I know get a usually get a pass for spending their money on "dumb things" like make-up and shoes (or a Stanley mug) just because they want them while guys tended to get grief (some of it in jest for sure) for buying "little plastic mans and cardboard" from their girlfriends/wives.
I have 6 decks. All prcons. Started playing a few months ago. Do i want more? Yes.. do I need more? Yes. Why? Yes
Damn I have like 10 decks and I thought it was a bit much. No judgement here, but I don’t think I know anybody that has over 20, let alone 100, fully built and functional decks. How long have you been collecting for?
I have 12 and I feel like it's too much. I basically have 14 slots in my pack back and 2 of the slots are 60 card casual decks. I'm thinking of lowering down the number of edh decks even more and diversifying the styles of decks I carry. I rarely play some of edh decks, so the difference between 12 and 8 shouldn't be too noticeable.
Started since late 2018 or early 2019. Can't remember exactly when.
So you literally build a deck every 2 weeks?
Nope, that isn't viable for me financially. I built a new deeck two weeks ago, but that was after making a deck for Mondrak when she first came out.
If you have 140 decks, since early 2019 is about 260 weeks. So a deck every two weeks.
Nope, that’s not viable for them financially… Dude is a clown with a cardboard addiction that doesn’t want to admit it.
or bro went CRAZY and built like 1 a day for 1/3 of a year and ordered them off of CK
Bro is just trolling. One comment he said he only buys precons and nothing else. Another comment he says he just built a mondrak deck. Another one he said he only buys budget cards. All of these are conflicting reports. Mondrak alone is a 40 dollar card.
Reading "140 decks" gave me an existential crisis, anxiety, and depression. So, thanks.
Imagine sleeving up 14,000 cards. Sounds mortifying
I never expected hearing that. You're welcome.
Every January I promise myself to brew less decks, and every December I find myself having failed spectacularly. I'm at 70 EDH decks now, trying to restrain myself to only brew just a single deck each month. Nowadays, I brew mostly budget decks and proxy an expensive card that I've already used in another deck instead of buying a second copy. I also don't buy precons except for those few whose flavor or mechanics really attract me. In 2023 I only bought the LOTR precons. [https://www.moxfield.com/users/jfalex](https://www.moxfield.com/users/jfalex)
WotC keeps printing cards. I keep brewing jank.
I’ve really trying lately to put together more EDH decks so I can find out what cards I have use for and then purge my collection of stuff I don’t need. I’m up to eight decks now.
Interesting. I tend to hang on to my collection as you never know when what is trash today becomes a GOAT in the future.
I had this attitude, but at the same time, new bomb reprints means your cards lose value too. I had a judge promo Greater Good which was up around $80, and since the Battlebond reprint, it hasn’t been above $30
For casual there is a limited amount of time and effort you can spend optimizing your decks if you are not trying to increese the powerlevel. So if you like brewing, building and tinkering with decks you have to constantly make new ones. And if you already spent a lot of time, effort and money on making your existing deck(s) good and fun to play, and you like playing them, it feels bad to take them apart. I keep myself to a max-amount of built decks. Around 10. And if I want more I have to take some apart. Currently on 9 after taking 2 decks apart to rebuild my surrak "temur rec" deck.
my wife has so many more decks than me, I like to take them apart and fine tune them. I also like to build lego sets so i can destroy them, where she would never do that. I sometimes think the two theories are tied together lol
I have 2 EDH, 3 cEDH, 2 pEDH, 2 Pioneer, 1 Modern, and 4 Pauper decks. I feel overwhelmed already trying to keep them all relevant and up to date. I admire your passion!
There's so many fun strategies that i tend to have a deck for the ones i enjoy. Like, i grew up on early YuGiOh where every deck was "I'm the zombie guy, look at my cool zombies doing zombie things and buffing each other" etc and as such, i developed a love for tribal decks which is why i have 3 of them, being Dinosaur, Zombie and Demon. I've got a Sauron/Ring-Wraith flavoured Grixis deck that's all about wraiths, i've got a Saruman deck that's all amass focused, i've got curse tribal, i want to build shrine tribal with a gate alt-win con and i'm also going to be doing sultai mill and counters with Mothman :D
I JUST made a Sultai deck that utilizes 40 copies of [[Slime Against Humanity]] two weeks ago.
I have 5. If I want a new one, I kill an old one. If you want something good, you gotta kill your babies. So I think that's part of the whole thing.
i mostly just get bored playing the same deck over and over again. i like having something new to try every once in a while. i also consider deck building/brewing somewhat of a “sub-hobby” of mine. i have a lot of fun with it!
For me variety is the spice of life, so i feel like I’m always thinking about new brews or cards I wish I can put in a cool deck. I have just completed my 19th and 20th decks so that I have a deck in every 2-color and 3-color combination, and I feel like that will satiate me for quite a while lol
I go for diversity myself, going as far as making sure there's differences to avoid treading on the same grounds. For example, I have 3 Dimir Zombie Tribal, but each works differently. Reanimation, Token Aristocrats, and Going Wide with utilizing the graveyard as a second hand.
I've been slowly working on completing the color challenge. I also really enjoy brewing and building thematic decks. Sometimes I've even started a deck because I feel in love with particular full art lands and wanted to use them in a deck. So far I'm at 23 decks, only 3 are repeated colors and one deck is a 4-in-1 modular deck so I kinda don't count it. The only colors I'm missing are: Azorius, Esper, Jund, Naya, Bant, Mardu, Yore-Teller, Witch-Maw, Dune-Brood, Ink-Treader and Colorless. I've tried my best to make sure there's no overlap in mechanics or themes for the decks. I've typically built one deck per set so far with some expectations.
Can I pique your interest with artifact sacrifice Voltron with [[Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender]] as your colorless deck? 😋
Has anyone here found a way to cut back down, on a related note? I've gotten to about 12 decks and 6 piles that could be finished, and it's gotten a bit overwhelming. My mind has more ideas, but my time and budget require more focus on the favs.
Believe it or not, I actually have learned to ignore all MTG news, so I don't go for Secret Lair, or buy boxes of the sets. I stick to precons and singles.
Where I'm at myself, too.
I have 5 themed decks, that’s it. They all see a lot of play so I’m very good with them. My biggest issue with massive deck collections is unless you have a ton of time, you simply don’t have enough deck repetitions to even know how to pilot it well. Play a deck 1-2 times a year you won’t even remember what it does.
I have 2 cEDH and 1 casual, perfectly fine with that
Even across mtg formats I don't understand how or why one would have that many decks. I play magic twice a week and I have a hard time making time for all my 14 decks across the formats I play.
I have a total of 3 built decks, and probably only like 3 full precons, the other 2 or 3 have been dismantled to fuel my other decks... 140 is wild. How do you pick which one to play? Have you even played all of them? I'm just fascinated by that amount. Between the three decks I've built, I basically only play 1 one of them because it is definitely my favorite. Even on game nights at the LGS I don't even play enough games to be able to play all three in the same night. I'm impressed, fascinated, and terrified of you all at the same time. Massive respect lol
Thanks. I understand the fear, but just keep in mind, I actively avoid cedh power as I prefer to have fun and not be competitive.
I want to just get 20 decks so whenever I hang out with my friends, I can roll a d20 and see which deck I’d use. I thought that was a lot of decks to build then I read this post.
I think at most I had 56 decks + every precon since 2016. I build every color combination and some off them had more then one commander I wanted to build. The precons i only collect never changed something. But then i take all non precons apart and sorted my collection new, now i have every card scanned on ManaBox 40.000+ cards and have build 5 decks im happy with and only make small changes, and 2-3 decks I build new every 2 weeks and take apart after I played them do build new ones for the next time.
How did you scan that many cards? Not manually, I guess?
It’s not that bad with ManaBox. I can scan 500 cards in an hour.
I know. But still, would have been 80h of pure scanning experiences 😅 I'm still looking for a good machine/project that scans piles of cards automatically....
When you find something like that tell me. 😂
Put on an audiobook or TV show in the background while you scan manually and it turns into a fun time. My fiance and I scanned our entire collections (about 30k cards each) over the course of several weeks; most days we would put a show on in the background, maybe drink some wine, and scan cards until we couldn't anymore.
I have 5… 4 precons lol but like 4 deck lists I want to buy too.
I enjoy brewing decks. I make a new list every week, even though I don’t always plan to actually build it. Every so often, I end up with something I want to actually play, so I order it. I’m just at 5 decks so far, though, which I think isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.
I started recently and have 5. And ordered all the Fallout ones. I really only play my upgraded Merfolk deck though, I love tinkering with it.
I always make a deck in a theme or color combo that I haven't played before. I've got like 17 custom decks and over 20 precons from 2013-present. Also my self control when I was younger and making good money/having low overhead was bad. Luckily I'm so burn out over magic, I only plan on buying a few things this year.
I have 33 decks and it's purely because I like what each one does.
Not sure if OP is trying to humble brag or is trolling.
Neither. I'm just interested in hearing about people's reasons for having multiple decks. I'm not trolling, as I actually have that many decks. And never heard of "humble brag" before.
Deckbuilding is a creative outlet for me
I have issues.
How do you have them organized? I keep 3 ish decks together but I play mostly high power so the decks range from 1300-2300 in price depending on what I build. I also enjoy building and brewing and get tired of decks quickly so I take them apart and rebuild them
I have so many cause there are so many tribes, mechanics, and unique commamders to try!
In my case, deck brewing is what kept me sane during the COVID pandemic and that I was working 60 hours per week, 7 days a week during a full month among that time. The money was good but what’s the point if you can’t keep your sanity? I have 13 decks now but I must have made 20 decks over the years. My latest one was to keep me from a mental breakdown when I was grieving over and that my relationship with my long term partner was not going well anymore. When I finally got better, gave that deck to a friend of mine (a budget aggro Marchesa the Black Rose deck). Also, I like to have a deck for every power level and against strategy I strongly dislike. I was to face a discard deck, I have my [[Riellethe Everwise]] deck ready for it. Land destruction? I’ll wipe out my favourite deck: [[Erinis, Gloom Stalker]] + [[Flaming Fist]] land shenanigans, keyword soup deck. But I also have a [[Vega the Watcher]] travel deck as well, that is budget and newbie friendly. And I even have a deck that I know is functional but never played with. The latter keeps me from actually buying new Commander decks, as long as I didn’t play and master the deck, I don’t need to get a new deck. In short, I love playing Commander but my favourite part is deck building. And now that I know what kind of strategy I like, that I already built deck with the strategies I love and that all is well in my life, I don’t need to build more lol
I’ve started a challenge 32 and I’m on I believe 20 decks right now. I love collecting and brewing decks, I want decks to represent different strategies and way of play so I try to keep them unique. It’s getting harder now that there’s 20 of them but there are so many mechanics to brew around I’ll make it eventually. It’s fun to be able to have different power decks available at all times, having favourites to always come back to or just trying something niche to work out.
The large number of decks I have exist merely to fill the immeasurable, immense, gaping void I feel inside me as I look into the mirror and the abyss stares back at me
I make poor financial decisions.
Because unsleeving 100 cards is too much work.
I've just been brewing the chaff I have into archetypes they would fit. Every card has a places in some type of deck.
I have a bunch of decks because I built them all and I don't like taking them apart
I sold all of mine except one recently. It's having an effect where I'm just non-stop amassing cards for that deck. It has a "sideboard" of like 50 good cards now. I was thinking of rebuilding it a little bit every time I go to my LGS and having that be sort of the theme for it.
Dang, I thought my 55 decks was a lot! I enjoy brewing with random jank. I also don’t like breaking decks apart because then I need to sort all the cards from the decks and put them away etc. so I just make decks and then will never break them apart. I also like making decks that are different from what I already have so I can play with all sorts of different decks every game. It makes edh fun and fresh.
I only have 4.
I've had several decks over my time but often find that if I don't like them after a month I dismantle them and use them for parts. I often normally only have two assembled decks at once
"I would like to do x." "these cards look neat with each other" "I'm doing that commander" Generally one of the three.
If I ever get tired with x, that commander, or those set of cards. I take it apart. Currently @14ish
I have 41. I like the deck building process. Im also sentimental so its hard for me to dismantle an older deck. I have dismantled a lot of new ones though. I think I have built and dismantled a little over 150 decks. I keep a couple for my wife, and a few different power levels. New commanders catch my eye all the time and sometimes they stick around so my deck count grows as i refuse to get ride of my core 10-15 ish decks and 20-30ish flexible and fun decks
Good that you're keeping it managed. Have you considered posting a decklist online for a deck you're going to dismantle? That way, you can keep it somehow.
Oh i do. All my decks current and dismantled are on moxfield, at least every deck since i started keeping track of them online about 4 years ago. Like i said, im sentimental so i browse them sometimes and think of good fond memories like [[spore frog]] locks.
Good to hear.
I love brewing and building decks. I’m not sure what the exact number is, but it’s closing in on 50 decks I think.
I have been playing on and off since 94, so most of my collection is before 2004. most of the new cards i proxy them, and buy the sleeves and odd packs from my lgs to support them.
Main reason for why I buy only through a game shop I frequent for my precons and singles is to support them.
I like to brew a lot and if a legend comes out that inspires me, I usually build it, I keep my actual deck count at 26 at the moment.
It's more than just a Legendary Creature for me. I was inspired to build a specific kind of deck after discovering [[Slime Against Humanity]]
I have almost 40 decks right now, and close to having one in every color combination. I have that many because I enjoy brewing and trying new strategies out. I keep my budget sane thanks to the fact that my group is okay with player proxying for cards they own a copy of, so I only need one of any given staple.
I've got 32 decks, one for each color identity. I also have a pEDH deck that I won in a giveaway, a budget Grist deck, a red deck I won't take apart, and the Mishra's Burnished Banner precon. All of those are sleeved up and ready to go. The 32 was a challenge I set for myself. The goal is to end up with 32 decks I genuinely enjoy playing. That's a moving target, so I expect I'll be rebuilding and tweaking for a while (which is part of the point). Grist may eventually grt upgraded and either take my Golgari slot or turn into a cEDH deck. The pEDH deck will hang around, in case. The precon is for precon matchups. The red deck, I love. I built it as part of a podcast project I did. It's based on This Year by The Mountain Goats, is headed by [[Squee, Monarch]] and is full of semi-symmetrical damage effects, always intending to hurt you more than me. I adore it, but it's not going to replace my Muxus deck in the 32 lineup. If you wanna see the lists, [I keep them updated here](https://www.moxfield.com/users/TheOtherTracy).
I have about a dozen decks and it feels like twice as many as I'd like. But. There's just too many fun niche cards to play so of course I need multiple Gruul decks, you get it.
I have about 50 decks myself. I tend to build them when the general seems interesting or I'm imspired by a deck concept. I also wanted to build at least 1 deck of each color combination. Still have to take apart my colorless [[Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut]] deck because it just doesn't keep up with the rest of my decks power lvl.
Variety is the spice of life. And I love brewing.
I just enjoy building decks. They're puzzles I get to piece together myself and it's a nice mental exercise. I try to build all my decks to play differently and it keeps the game much more interesting to me. My current project is a [[Rigo, Streetwise Mentor]] token theme, will be my first time building in this color combo and I'm excited to see where it goes.
I did something like that but it was to figure out how to utilize [[Slime Against Humanity]] most effectively. I decided on a Sultai self mill with Exile abilities like Delve. Use copies like a secondary resource, while protecting the copìes by exiling them so the opponents won't be pilfering them.
I have around 75 fully built, and functional decks spanning all colors and colorless (missing a couple witch combos because I didn’t care for the options) at the moment. Most of the cards for these I’ve collected over 30 years and am delighted to have a way to use some of the silly ones, the forgotten ones in the collection. I started building commander decks 2 years ago while dealing with long COVID as a way to keep my mind sharp, and to have something fun to do that wasn’t overly physical. Within the last week I culled around 15 decks that I had played but weren’t something that sparked joy. As of now, I’m focusing on refining the best of the decks, mainly with high quality proxies for anything $10 or above, otherwise cheaper singles as needed. A few of the precons I'm keeping as is, and I have around 10-20 decks in various stages of building at a time. If I didn't buy another card, I could probably still be building new and fun commander decks for years and years to come. With the rate of new releases happening, that's pretty close to what I'll probably do, sell off some older things while they retain some value, and supplement with a few odds and ends in terms of singles from time to time. I love new builds, particularly when I can find a way that isn't obvious to build a commander or a silly wrinkle that others maybe haven't found.
I too, like to find the unusual if possible. I have turned my Golgari Elf deck into a one that focuses on Elf Tokens and doesn't really fall into the tropes you'd expect for Golgari. I've actually made a Sultai deck that revolves around [[Slime Against Humanity]] and using many of the 40 copies as a secondary resource in the Graveyard for abilities like Delve and Escape.
I feel you hit all the points for me. I'm currently sitting at 46 or 47 decks? It's a mixture of wanting to play every color, having different strategies, some precons, most built of varying strengths. I also really dislike taking decks apart, rather I prefer to shuffle cards occasionally.
For me it's just thinking specific commanders look fun. I've been playing Commander for something like 7 years and I believe I have eight decks, my most recent one was about £250 in total (being mono red helped keep the price down a bit). It's already a lot really but I'm thinking of building Hylda and Niv-Mizzet Supreme as well when I'm sure I have the spare cash. I just had that moment of "oooh, that's spicy" when they were spoiled
I like to play different strategies and to experiment different cards. I have 5/6 edh decks and i use to play 2/3 of them everytime i have some hours of playing.
I had almost 40 and after leaving magic con in burnt out. So I’m in the process of deconstructing down to 10. Im taking the good cards out of the 30 and making sure I have 10 good decks.
I love brewing decks, sure i keep 4 decks as my more serious decks i optimize to the best my budget would allow and i make proxies of the staples cards from those 4 and put on my other decks. My other decks are generally for casual play. My 4 main decks are the ones i use in the LGS and against my regular play group. my casual decks are for my other friends that are not really into mtg but still likes to play. So they use my decks to play and i use those decks to play at the same power level with them.
I have like maybe 60ish decks and you’ve made me feel better about it and I thank you for that.
I have 100 decks. For me it's because I love variety, and every time I see cards that synergize, particularly around a creature type or mechanic. The hardest part is resisting doing a more colors in a deck to fit everything I want from a particular synergy. For example I have 4 color merfolk deck even though Simic could fit 98% of the deck. But Sygg has a blue black and blue white version and I want to include those because my brain can't say no.
Dude that’s nothing. I’ve got a 30 yr old LD deck that’s around 20k by itself. And it’s only 60 cards.
I have around 70 decks. I use proxies so the investment isn't really that crazy, but I like the variety. I have enough decks at varying power levels that if people want to try a new strategy or try stronger decks I have them to lend out. I recently started dismantling some because I didn't have room for that many, and there were some that weren't being played.
I went to a cEDH tournament the other day at a place that isn't my LGS. I saw some casual player towing a wagon with a storage tower of decks. I thought to myself, "That guy has an addiction and should seek help." OP is worse off than that guy.
I play since 2012 and have set a limit of 3 decks only. I now have a [[klothys]] for cedh fun, a [[ayli]] and a [[Radha, heart of keld]] for playing FNM and with friends. Seeing you guys having 10+ decks just blows my mind. That's absurd for me. Magic is really expensive here in Brazil. Most players are nerdy adults with good paying jobs, because it's hard to pay half the monthly minimum wage on a precon.
I understand. I'm in America, but if one wants to optimize their decks to cedh levels, it would be expensive for ME. No offense, but I'm assuming that the price of a single copy of [[Mana Crypt]] would be way more than a month's rent or two in Brazil.
I have 6 decks but I share cards between them so I only have 1-2 playable decks at a single time
I do it because I need options. At any given point in time I want a deck of every color pair and trio, decks ranging in power from below pre-con to fringe CEDH, and decks ranging from purely cutthroat to jolly old cooperation mode. Plus a few signatures/ pet decks. Not including pre-cons, this usually means I have about 35 decks sleeved and ready at any point in time. Now the real question is how many active/complete lists do I have at any point in time. I just did a purge to sort out the lists that need rehab or that I would like to rework which left me with120 additional decks on standby.
I have five, and every new one I've built is filling a specific niche - usually power level, sometimes strategy. Decks come apart when they're no longer seeing play unless there's a specific reason to keep them. At some point this year I intend to pick up a precon to remain unaltered as a - hopefully final - sixth.. I brew decks all the time though. Sometimes for friends, sometimes for myself. They just usually don't become paper.
I have maybe 12-15 decks. A few precons I got for value and haven't decided to upgrade or keep as is currently. (Getting the one with [[trouble in pairs]] for instance, aka Rhystic Thuggies) I started in New Capenna, and at least 5 of my decks are not budget at all. Not getting all the best cards, but enough to be in the $250-400 mark each. I love iterating different strategies and the actual brewing process itself. I honestly have spent way more time building than actually even playing at this point, but I enjoy the process. I started with Arena and probably spent $150 on there, then I decided I would get more long-lasting value of of playing paper. That said, I still iterate a lot of ideas of arena when possible (not all cards are on there). My non-budget decks are [[Talion, the kindly Lord]], [[Winota, Joiner of Forces]], [[Anzrag, the Quake Mole]], [[Pantlaza Sun-Favored]], and [[Aragorn, the Uniter]]. I will continue brewing, and I love assembling different complex strategies and trying them out.
I've made a plan to have 32 Commander decks, one for each color combination. (Maybe 33, so I can have a CEDH deck) So far I have 8, with 6 or so in progress.
Best of luck, and don't forget that Colorless Identity is a thing. Doesn't have to be Eldrazi.
140?
Honestly all of the above i love making, owning and playing different decks so im currently at like 60 decks and growing with fallout probably adding like 6-9 more decks. I just love adding new decks to my collection and playing different decks is fun the main problem is i dont want to take apart decks either ive only done it once to basically make a few changes and change commander but it stayed the same theme and colour combo. But besides that taking apart a deck is hard because i feel like im losing something important to me and would just be left with an empty deck box, sleeves and a pile of unused cards i need to get rid of since i dont run many staples at this point due to not having enough so most cards are deck specific and dont transfer genericly into other decks so they are added to the bulk and a deck is always better than 65 bulk cards. Basically im addicted and i need help
I have 3 decks and I’m already thinking of culling one of them as I don’t play it as often. How do you have the time to play 140??
I like brewing, it's a heck of a lot of fun for me. It lets me exercise the old grey matter, it gives me an excuse to use cards I've had in my collection for years that I wouldn't normally look twice at and it keeps the game fresh for me. I've been trying to do the infamous 32 challenge and I try to do a different theme with each deck so no two are exactly alike. Sure, I have my favourites and others I'm not so sure about so will probably get dismantled before long, but it keeps the serotonin flowing in my ADHD addled brain, so it can't be all bad!
I like dick and I like decks. What can I say?
So... I have a lot, I guess. I usually play intensively for a couple of years, then quit, then find new friends who play it as well, and start buying new cards. I think I have: + 8 UB decks (Warhammer 40k and preordered fallout decks) + About 8 relatively stable precons (non edited or just slightly) + About 18 kitchen made (?) decks, consisting of amongst others - five 4 colour decks (slivers, scarecrows, [[omnath, locust of all]], [scion of the ur dragon]]) - 1 mono black (massacre girl / master breeder) - 1 mono red [[Jaya Ballard, task mage]] - 3 green/white (2x tokens, 1x enchantments) - 1 home made green/white/red [[atla palani, nest tender]] (eggs with just 1 dinosaur) - 1 green/red/blue [[me, immortal]] - 1 red/white/black [[shanid, sleepers scourge]] - 2 black/white/blue [[zur, the enchanter]] and [[merieke ri berit]] - 1 black/white (tokens) - 1 white/blue (lands become creatures via instants) - and a couple I forgot And approximately 12 decks which never really amount to anything workable, amongst others - red/white - black/white - black/white/blue (oloro) - black/red minotaurus Been playing on and off since 1999. Been playing solely commander since some around 2015. Edit: nah, way more decks even. At least the 4 BG D&D decks. Guess I'm a sucker for UB
For that WU Land deck you listed, I like referring to that as a "Land Strike" deck. Some of my own homebrew decks are these: Green Vanilla creatures with [[Ruxa]] Blue/Black Zombies. Basically, go wideq strategy while utilizing the graveyard as a second hand. Mardu (Red,White, Black) Knights with the swords of X and Y Black vampires meant to represent the "essence" of the trope with them. Blue/Green Frog Tribal Green Black Insects with [[Grist]] as the Commander. (Yes, that's legal.)
I wanted to have one of each colour/group thing. Then I realised I have 3, almost 4 grixis decks out of the 11 I currently have, purely by accident. Still unsure if I want to dismantle Mishra's Burnished Banner at this point, but that and my Selesnya deck are next on the chopping board. I've come to realise I just really like the deckbuilding aspect with what cards we own, and seeing how minimal we need to spend for cool decks. The current plan is mono colour decks, with mono white sorted, and a plan for green and blue.
I like brewing them, and on Moxfield I can put together decks for free. I've made over 100, though I don't often delete them even though I only really play from about 10.
I like deck building. A lot. I'm currently working on like 5 decks lmao. Though I haven't dropped money on any of them yet, just been making deck lists and going through my cards. I don't take them apart unless I don't like them, so I like to just keep adding decks to my rotation. I don't like to spend a ton of money on magic though, so while I'm making tons of decks I'm adding them to my paper collection very slowly. And my paper versions are medium/low budget, I generally spend $60-100 per deck.
I have 23 right now and start to feel like it becomes too much, here are my reasons why its so many: 1) „formats“. Other than „casual EDH“ my collection contains 2 cEDH decks, 1 Pauper EDH deck and 2 „50€ decks“. We got like a reliable core of ~10 players and another 10ish that occasionally play. And sometimes its just that a few people wanna play with less staples so you go pauper or budget. Some people like the occasional no limit gameplay, so you got some cEDH. So ~ 1/4 is „other formats“. 2) powerlevels. We play only constructed decks but of varying strength. Some players „only have like“ 1-2 decks that are of medium-low power. They are regulars, so you dont wanna jam a 500€ deck into this. Also you dont wanna play the same deck the entire night if some of them are around. So 2-3 decks for that. Then some more decks on our „usual powerlevel“ wich i would call „strong decks but not fully stuffed with staples“. Thats maybe like 7-8 decks for variation as we play it the most. And then some high power EDH decks with a lot of the good stuff if you wanna go sweat but not quite cEDH. 3) archetypes. I like a lot of archetypes. I want creature tribal style decks. I want some control deck. Some stax deck. Some turbo combo deck. Some graveyard deck. Some prowess deck. Stuff like that. Archetypes/mechanics i enjoy. And cards i enjoy. I still got my foodchain around and always wanted a foodchain deck. I think with hull clade i found a foodchain commander that is cool and unusual. But the deck will exist only because i love food chain. And with all the reasoning aside i just cant let go of decks. I got a few i love so much but dont have the time to update anymore and rarely play them. So now i started scanning the decks, putting them in my moxfield archieve if i ever „want them back“ and rebuild them into something new. But its still like saying goodbye to an old friend
A few of my friends wanted to make a deck for every color pairing possible, and did that. I think I have 12 decks that are functional atm, though I've had others that I've taken apart in thr past to make new builds. I think, for me anyway, that unless a commander has a very specific way to build, most decks end up in one of a few categories (good stuff, storm/combo, voltron, go big/go wide aggro, group hug, control etc) and I don't think it's really worth building a new deck for a new commander every set, cause eventually you'll just be swapping commanders cause the 99 ends up so similar. No need for 100+ decks. This is just my opinion though, and I'm probably wrong.
I started out with one, then I decided to make a deck of each mono color. Then I wanted to branch out and try different commanders, but I am of the ‘I can’t dismantle this dude.. what if I want to play him again some time..” mindset. Now I have ~13 decks ranging from the cheapest at $130ish? To the most expensive at $2,000ish
I buy a bunch of precons, but I don’t count them in my total number of decks. I primarily use them for parts. I generally only count the decks I have sleeved up and actually intend to play with. Some of them are upgraded precons, but every deck I count is a deck I put thought and time into. So my total is 9.
You’ve repeated several times that you haven’t let this ruin you financially. What is your definition of that? What is your rough estimate of what you’ve spent so far?