Six decks, six different
ways to win

Pick six commanders at random and you'll usually get six decks that all "go wide and swing," or six that all "ramp into a big spell." We picked these six on purpose, to make sure they didn't: each one wins through a mechanic none of the other five lean on. Four of the six, plus the mechanical diversity, were requested directly by a Deckaugur user; we picked the remaining two specifically to fill the gaps that were left.

Every deck below was assembled the same honest way: start from nothing but the commander, run Deckaugur's real findSuggestions ranking (the same one WHISPERS FROM THE LIBRARY shows you mid-build), fill 99 slots role-coverage first and synergy score second, then grade the result with the same gradeDeck function behind every grade badge in the app. The scores range from 50 to 90, on purpose, because a synergy-ranked list isn't automatically a great deck, and seeing exactly where each one falls short is more useful than six decks that all happen to look perfect.

The six

Baba Lysaga, Night Witch (B/G) sacrifices up to three permanents of three or more different types for a drain and a draw, not an aristocrats deck in the usual sense, it wants artifacts and enchantments in the yard, not just creatures. Lathril, Blade of the Elves (B/G) is classic Elf tribal: combat damage becomes tokens, ten tapped Elves becomes a drain for ten, the highest grade in the series, because her own payoff tag and the deck's win condition are the same tag. Niv-Mizzet, Ghost Counsel (W/B) is a brand-new printing with no spells-matter text at all, lifegain converts into card draw instead, and it's the strongest deck in the series: the card is five days old as we publish, and we ran our set-ingestion pipeline specifically so it would be in the pool for this article. Bello, Bard of the Brambles (G/R) turns artifacts and enchantments of mana value 4 or more into hasty, indestructible, card-drawing 4/4s, an unusual build-around whose mana-value gate the engine can't see, only a human deckbuilder catches that part. Urza, Lord High Artificer (U) and Aurelia, the Warleader (R/W) are our own picks, to cover the two resource axes the other four don't touch: artifact ramp and combo, and an extra combat phase instead of more cards or more creatures.

Why grade them at all

Every deck here could have been curated by hand to look impressive. We graded them instead because the gaps are the actually useful part: Bello's missing removal and Baba Lysaga's missing ramp aren't failures of the exercise, they're exactly what you'd find auditing a real deck built the same way, and exactly what the scoring system is built to surface. If you're building any of these six for real, read the grade breakdown in that commander's own article before you finish the list, it tells you precisely which role to go shopping for next.

Further reading

• How synergy scoring works: what the score measures and why warnings fire.
• The Commander Deckbuilder Guide: how EDHREC, Moxfield and Archidekt work, and where Deckaugur fits.
• Audit your Commander deck in 30 seconds: paste any of your own lists in to see the same breakdown.