What should I cut from my Commander deck?

Cutting is the hard part of building a Commander deck. Every card in the pile got there for a reason, and the deck holds 100 cards with your commander included. These are the checks EDHTuner runs when it picks cuts. You can run them by hand, or paste your deck and let it do the counting.

1. Get down to 100 cards

If your deck runs over 100 cards, EDHTuner names a trim, the cuts that bring it down to 100. Any Game Changers over your bracket's limit come first in it.

2. Check your Game Changers against your bracket

Game Changers are the cards Wizards marks as outsized for the bracket system. Brackets 1 and 2 allow none of them, and bracket 3 allows three. Brackets 4 and 5 have no limit. When you are over, EDHTuner names exactly as many Game Changer cuts as it takes to get back to the limit.

3. Count what your cards do

EDHTuner counts how many of your cards do each job a Commander deck needs. Here is the number it aims for in each job, beside the median of the 10,794 popular decks we counted on Moxfield.

Falling short of these numbers is common. 75% of those decks run fewer than 12 card advantage cards, and 47% run fewer than 10 targeted disruption. The deck numbers page says what each job covers and splits the medians by bracket.

Some decks get a lower number. EDHTuner aims for four targeted disruption and one mass disruption in a voltron deck, eight targeted disruption and one mass disruption in an aggressive deck or one built on big creatures, and one mass disruption in a deck built on its own creatures. At bracket 5 it aims for seven card advantage and one mass disruption. Your deck's results say so when one of these numbers applies.

Protection has no fixed number. At bracket 3 and up, when your whole plan runs through your commander, EDHTuner aims for two cards that keep it alive, and each counterspell in the deck counts toward them.

4. Cut from the jobs you have too much of

When a job runs at least two past its number in the table, EDHTuner looks there for cuts. A cut like that says why, as in "you have more card advantage than you need." A job you are short on is where it suggests adds instead.

5. Keep the cards your plan runs on

EDHTuner reads your deck's themes from the rules text on its cards. A card that pays off one of those themes stays out of its regular cuts, and so do both halves of a two-card combo it knows when your deck runs both. Some cards still have to go now and then, like when the deck is over 100 or over its Game Changer limit.

Play data comes second to the card text. EDHTuner reads EDHREC's numbers for your commander, and when they are the only reason for a cut, the cut says so in plain words. The methodology page covers how much weight that gets.

6. Test the land count on its own

Lands get their own check. EDHTuner plays your deck at several land counts on the same shuffles and gives you a verdict measured on your own curve. Across the decks we counted, the median is 34 lands.

How EDHTuner shows its cuts

Its cuts come in groups, and each group's heading says why its cards are there.

• A job's name, like card advantage, when the cut is about how many cards you run for that job.
• "Already covered by another card" when another card in the deck does the same job.
• "Less common in decks like yours" when play data is the whole reason.
• "Traded out to make room" for cuts that free a slot for something your deck is short on.
• "Some of the easier cuts" for the rest.

If a cut is wrong for your deck, click the padlock on that card. EDHTuner won't suggest cutting it again in your browser. Every suggested swap is also playtested, and the how it works page walks through that.

Paste your deck, or a Moxfield, Archidekt or MTGGoldfish link to it, and EDHTuner runs every check on this page for you. It's free and needs no account.

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