Favourite number of colours

[kombatkiwi]

A big part of commander is the colour-identity aspect of the general that limits the number of colours you can play. What is the number of colours that you most enjoy in a commander deck?

I like 2-colour decks the most.

With 1-colour decks it is often difficult (unless they are heavily artifact or synergy based) to include enough cards that do unique (or even powerful) things, and you end up with an issue along the lines of "I'm playing counterspell, I guess I add Memory Lapse/Mana Leak/Arcane Denial too? now what?"

With 3 (or 5, if it floats your boat) colours, you have the opposite problem. Each colour has a sizable number of 'auto-includes' and once you have put these in your deck you've taken up so many slots you don't have the ability to build a deck that does anything interesting (this is especially true for a lot of the G/x creature-ramp decks).

This is why I tend to brainstorm for 2-colour commanders. Perhaps this is more of an issue of how much you are able to build around particular generals (giving you more incentive to play cards other than generic 'staples'). I value having a ton of synergy with the general, even if it makes my decks more vulnerable to counterspells/spot removal. It's commander! I want the general to do something important and play more obscure cards that people don't often see. One of my friends thinks along the opposite line, and for a lot of his decks the commander is plan B. I'd be interested to know what you guys think in terms of how you value the number of colours and the importance of the general.

[TsumiBand]

Yeah it does kind of feel like too many colors leads to too many staples, which just turns a deck from being commander-based into three color EDH Good Things.

I think though, that this is a reflection on the commander more than the colors. If the commander fosters synergy with cards that are good - or waiting for the missing piece to become so - then the general becomes one of the most important cards in the deck (Kaalia, Wort the Raidmother, Uril, countless others). If your commander doesn't seem to do that, you just have a figurehead (or whatever the kids call it) that puts you in a few colors because it does.

From my own experience -- I've been trying to make my Ghost Council of Orzhov deck get mileage out of actually casting GCoO, but it seems like every time I put in a grip of cards that makes the deck seem better, I'm moving it away from actually caring about GCoO, which is a shame because the card strikes me as an engine waiting for a frame. There are synergies, sure, but by and large it feels like the deck's best win is via Opalescence, so invariably I build towards that card while also trying to make sure I don't forget about Ghost Council. Also, I'm pretty happy with my Sedris list, but he's generally only good because of Deadeye Navigator. I genuinely have no compunction about not casting Sedris and just going for Mike-Trike or DENchron and blowing suckers out with tried-and-true combo wins.

I cannot back this up with maths or a list of known Win The Game cards but I would hazard a guess that enough auto-includes and two-card wins exist in just about any given color combination in EDH to warrant this being an issue more often than not. So I really don't think that it is about the colors you choose but the commander in question. If it is strong enough to warrant building around, then doing so makes sense even at the expense of auto-includes (beyond shit like Sol Ring obviously, some staples are just fucking staples). If not, then just play like Reaper King or Atogatog and go to town with junk.edh.dec.