Harry Potter Commander Deck · 100 Proxy Cards · MTG EDH · Hogwarts

A fully custom Harry Potter Magic proxy Commander deck, ready to play straight out of the envelope: 100 proxy cards with original artworks, built around a school, four houses and one boy the Hat could not place. This is a five-colour (WUBRG) deck led by Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Why five colours? Because the Sorting Hat is a five-colour card and always was. Gryffindor is red-white: nerve, chivalry, the reckless charge. Slytherin is blue-black: ambition and self-preservation, in that order. Ravenclaw is blue: wit, learning, the answer to the door-knocker's riddle. Hufflepuff is green-white: patience, loyalty, hard work, fair play. The Hat considered every one of them out loud, in front of four hundred people — so the commander is legally five-colour, and the whole deck is built on having all four houses on the table at the same time.

Targeted power level: Bracket 4 — two all-custom infinite combos, fast mana, a deep tutor package, and the hardest single piece of removal we have ever printed.

Deck Strategy

The whole deck is one sentence: get one of each house onto the battlefield, and everything you own switches on at once.

Sorting is the original mechanic. When a creature with sorting enters the battlefield, it becomes the house of your choice — Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff — in addition to its other types. On its own that does absolutely nothing: it is a type-line edit. What it feeds is House cup, an ability word on eleven cards that only switches on while you control all four houses at once. Half the named cast is born into a house and can never change it, so sorting is how the anonymous bodies, the Student tokens and McGonagall's animated suits of armour fill the gaps. The practical effect is unusual for a five-colour deck: this one wants four different creatures on the table, not one enormous one.

Incantation is the second mechanic, and it is the reason the deck plays twenty-four legendary humans instead of a dozen fatties. A spell in this world is a word plus a wand plus somebody to hold it, so casting one out of your graveyard costs a Wizard, not just mana: tap an untapped Wizard you control, pay the incantation cost, cast the card from the graveyard, then exile it. Every body on your board is a second Expelliarmus, a second Expecto Patronum, a second Fiendfyre.

• Horcrux — six permanents carry the keyword: Tom Riddle's Diary, Marvolo Gaunt's Ring, Slytherin's Locket, Hufflepuff's Cup, Ravenclaw's Diadem and Nagini. While you control any one of them, Lord Voldemort is indestructible and cannot be exiled, and when he would leave the battlefield anyway you sacrifice a Horcrux and he walks straight back on. He is not hard to kill because he is big — he is hard to kill because the table has to remove six other permanents first.
• The Deathly Hallows — the Elder Wand, the Cloak of Invisibility and Marvolo Gaunt's Ring, plus the legendary enchantment that pays them off. Control all three and you are the Master of Death: hexproof, and five life drained out of every opponent every end step. The Ring is also a Horcrux, so the deck's two win conditions physically fight over one card.
• The cast — Harry, Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore as a planeswalker, McGonagall, Hagrid, Snape, Sirius Black, Lupin, Mad-Eye Moody, Molly Weasley, Neville, Luna, Ginny, the Weasley twins, Dobby, Fawkes and Cedric Diggory — against Voldemort, Bellatrix, Draco, Umbridge, Quirrell, Pettigrew, Nagini, the Death Eaters, the Dementors and a Hungarian Horntail.
• Avada Kedavra is the hardest removal spell in the whole line, and it should be: it cannot be countered, it destroys a creature or planeswalker, that permanent cannot be regenerated and cannot come back from a graveyard this turn, and its controller loses 2 life on the way out.
• Two infinite combos, both entirely custom. The Time-Turner + Gringotts Vault: the Vault taps for three and untaps itself for three, and the Time-Turner copies any activated ability for {2} — copy the untap, net one mana, repeat. Fawkes + Nagini: the phoenix returns to the battlefield every time it dies, the snake eats another creature for free to drain one, so you sacrifice the bird over and over until the table is dead. Bellatrix doubles the clock.

Thirty-five lands, and they are the places rather than a mana base: Hogwarts Castle, the Great Hall, Diagon Alley, Knockturn Alley, Gringotts, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, the Forbidden Forest, the Chamber of Secrets, the Room of Requirement, the Quidditch Pitch, the Astronomy Tower, Azkaban, Godric's Hollow, Little Hangleton Graveyard, the Shrieking Shack, Malfoy Manor, the Burrow and Number Four, Privet Drive. Five tokens — Student, Dementor, Inferius, Treasure and Patronus Stag — come in the box.

Average mana value 3.0, built to close around turn five.