The Command Zone deck template
The Command Zone’s template is a checklist for a 100-card Commander deck: how many cards should ramp, draw, remove and wipe, how many lands to run, and how many slots are left for your plan. Paste a decklist below to see how yours compares.
The six targets
| Role | Target | What counts |
|---|---|---|
| Ramp | 10 | Mana rocks, mana creatures, spells that fetch lands, and rituals. |
| Card advantage | 12 | Card draw and wheels. |
| Targeted disruption | 12 | Spot removal and counterspells. |
| Mass disruption | 6 | Board wipes. |
| Lands | 38 | Every land, including the two-faced cards that are a land on one side. |
| Plan | 30 | Everything else: the cards that do what your deck is built to do. |
Why the targets add up to 108
A deck has 99 cards beside its commander, but the targets total 108. That is on purpose: one card can count in more than one row. A two-faced card that is a removal spell on one side and a land on the other is both targeted disruption and a land. The more of your cards do two jobs, the more room is left for your plan.
How your cards are mapped
Each card’s roles come from how it is classified across recorded Commander decks, not from reading your list’s categories. Lands are counted by card type. The plan is every card that fills none of the other rows. If your commander is in the list, it is counted like any other card. Cards we do not recognise are listed separately and left out of the counts.
The targets are guidance, not a guarantee of deck strength. A deck that leans on its commander for card draw can run fewer draw spells; a fast deck may want fewer lands. Use the differences as questions to ask of your list.
See the template in a full deck
Every budget deck on this site is built with this template: the roles are filled first, in the order above, and the remaining slots go to the cards each commander’s decks play most distinctively.
Find a budget deck built with the template →
The template is by The Command Zone ↗. The mapping of cards to roles is Budget Bauble’s own.