MTG: Birds of a Feather – Top Five Creature Types
When you’re building an army, you want to make sure your fighters can work together. That’s where typal decks come in.
Welcome Planeswalkers and Praetors to our ongoing series about the best casual experience in Magic: Commander. For the uninitiated, Commander is a semi-casual format for Magic: the Gathering, where you use a deck of 100 cards led by a legendary creature, your Commander.
Aside from basic lands, you are only allowed one copy of each card in the deck. Moreover, you can only include cards in your Commander’s “color identity” or artifacts. Each color and color combo has a unique playstyle and a wealth of mighty generals to lead your deck to victory. EDHRec.com is a great source for Commander info and can give you ideas to build your next Commander deck or tune an existing one.
When building your deck, there are lots of themes you can go with. You could build a Blink deck to maximize ETBs, a Landfall deck to get mana advantage, or a Hatebear deck to…be a jerk. One of the most popular ways to play, however, is typal. That means every (or almost every) creature in your deck is the same creature type. With so many out there, it might be a little difficult to pick which one you want to build. Well, worry not, reader, as I’ve collected the five most popular from our friends over at EDHREC.
Dragons
Surprising no one, the most popular creature type to build around is Dragon. In a fantasy game, everyone wants to build a dragon army, and the options in Magic are vast. Whether you want to follow a domain Commander like Tiamat or the Ur-Dragon or want a more focused approach like Miirym, there are plenty of options to get your flaming air force off the ground.
Elves
Another unsurprising entry, Elf decks have taken the format by storm. Whether you want to cascade off your casts in Simic, get swole with Selesnya, or drain your enemy with Golgari, you’ll find something for every playstyle in the humble realm of the elves. I myself have several decks built around Elves, from my Lathril token deck to my Ezuri beatdown. Whatever you want to do, there’s probably an elf for that.
Zombies
A highly popular, trope-friendly deck, the Zombie horde decks are the ones usually led by a non-Zombie creature. While there are plenty of food Zombie Commanders, like Wilhelt and Grimgrin, the best Zombie decks are usually led by Gisa and Geralf or The Scarab God. Whatever leader you choose, though, the playstyle is usually the same: hit hard and fast with buffed-up Zombies or drain your opponent without attacking. Zombies are not an easy deck to counter, so try to figure out their style fast.
Vampires
One of the OG typal decks, Vampires are still going strong thanks to their constant support. Almost every plane in the Multiverse has Vampires, and they usually fall into Mardu colors. While a lot of modern Vampire decks drop the Red and just go full Orzhov, it’s hard to deny the king of the bloodsuckers: Edgar Markov.
Humans
Rising to prominence in Innistrad and then going absolutely bonkers with Tales of Middle-earth, Human decks can produce a lot of punch for such humble creatures. While Boros and Selesnya had a stranglehold on this type for many years, Eowyn and the other heroes of Middle-earth brought Jeskai and even Domain to the forefront. My money for the top spot is on Eowyn, but any Human commander you choose will give you surprising versatility, especially with recent reprints.
What do you think of these creature types?
