The Journey Begins: Building Your Deck

As with any new format, it can be a daunting task to create your first deck. Can I play my favourite Commander cards? What do the manabases of the format look like? Is my boy Doran, The Siege Tower even playable? Most of these questions will be answered soon!

The first thing I like to do when building any Canlander deck, not just the first, is to have a starting point to build from. Most of the time I have 3 areas that I like to start from: A particular Colour combination, A particular Strategy/Archetype, or a particular card I want to play. Having an idea of even 1 of these factors is a start, if you can get 2 in mind, you’re golden. 

Let's say you’ve always wanted to play a deck with Monastery Mentor, that is already narrowing down the type of deck you likely want to look into. For one thing, choosing Mentor means you’re going to be a white deck, as well as likely a slower deck since Mentor isn’t really seen in Combo or Aggro decks. From here the 2 most obvious routes would be a control deck or a token strategy. Control would lead you down the UW route, while tokens would likely lead to WR or WB decks, perhaps with a third colour. This goes to show how even a single card can help you narrow down your options, and help you work out the deck for you.

The Second Hurdle: Don’t Durdle 

With Canlander being a 1v1 format another key part of deck building is making sure you can win the game, and win it effectively. Canlander is a rather fast format and so making sure that your win cons are as efficient as they can be is always important. 

Different decks will go about winning the game in different ways and it’s important that you always know what that way is. Often the faster Aggro and Tempo decks won’t have a specific card in mind when it comes to winning the game. Their win-con will be whatever creatures, burn spells and such they play getting the opponent's life total to 0. Control decks on the other hand will likely have a handful of cards that they aim to win the game with. Not that control can’t win the game with Snapcaster Mage beats or a flurry of burn spells, but it’s a lot more likely that they aim to use the ultimate of a powerful Planeswalker, or cast an Entreat The Angels to make a board of Angels.

When thinking about the win conditions for your deck it’s always important to think about what your game plan is. Are you wanting to kill your opponent as quickly as possible? Are you looking to control the game and outresource your opponent? As well as think about how you expect the game to end. This may sound obvious but it can be easy to include cards that seem good in practice but when looking at the deck as a whole don’t fit in with what you want to be doing. Some extreme examples of this would be including Inferno Titan in a burn deck or Goblin Guide in a Jeskai control deck. Burn ideally doesn’t want the game to reach turn 6, so a 6 drop is far from what that deck wants. Similarly, Jeskai Control is aiming for the game to go on for a long time and Goblin Guide doesn’t help you in those sorts of games.

One of the most important things to think about when building a deck for the format is making sure that you’re going to make the most out of your cards. One of the biggest mistakes I see is players playing too many ‘do nothing’ cards. Do nothing cards are cards that often cost relatively large amounts of mana that don’t immediately impact the game. Possibly the most well known, and loved, example of a do-nothing card in Canlander is Doubling Season. Doubling Season is a fantastic card in Commander, a format that is much slower than Canlander and therefore a format where high cost, high impact cards run rampant. The issue with doubling Season in Canlander is twofold; it costs too much mana, and it doesn’t reliably impact the game. 

To help illustrate the issue with cards like Doubling Season in the format let's compare it to a format staple enchantment; Sylvan Library. Library is another card that doesn’t immediately impact the board, so why is it so much better than Season? The biggest reason is of course the mana cost. Library can come down on a much earlier turn than Season can, or on a later turn while also allowing you to have mana up to cast something else, like a threat or a counterspell. The other reason, however, is the important one, and that is that Library impacts the game every turn, it takes a turn to get going, but every turn after that it lets you look at, and possibly keep more cards. Season only works when backed up by yet more cards, if you don’t have those cards, it’s worthless.

When building a canlander deck you want your cards to be as useful as often as possible, if they don’t immediately affect the game you want them to consistently affect it every turn. A card like Wishclaw Talisman does nothing the turn it’s played, but can lead to a game-ending turn further down the line. Whilst a card like Metallurgic Summonings costs so much more mana, doesn’t immediately affect the board, and requires yet more cards to be used to make it do anything.

It’s Time To Talk Mana

Of course, it’s all well and good talking about what spells are the best to play, but you need to be able to cast them too. Luckily the manabases of Canlander are relatively simple, especially if you have any experience with other singleton formats. 

A good starting point for the manabase of your deck is to know what numbers you’re going to want to be looking at. Aggressive strategies will be looking at a lower land count, somewhere around 32-34 should do. You want to make sure that you have enough lands to cast your spells but not so many that you’re drawing too many when you could instead be drawing spells that actually kill your opponent. Control decks will often look towards the higher end of land numbers, around 36-38. Control decks want to be making sure that they hit their lands every turn so that they can cast any spells that they draw, if a control deck falls behind on lands it can be easy to become overwhelmed by the opponent. Finally, midrange decks, as you likely guessed already, normally play somewhere in between Aggro and Control decks, often around 34 lands. 

When looking at the number of lands that you play it is also a good idea to consider that some lands won’t actually help you with your mana, lands like Dark Depths and Maze Of Ith are popular includes in the format but don’t make mana themselves.

While the number of lands you play is very important an equally important part of your manabase is what lands you play. Obviously, you’re going to want to have a good balance of colours so you can cast your spells, but lands can do much more than just make mana.

Earlier I mentioned that Aggro decks play low land counts so that they don’t draw 2 many lands, since they want to draw cards that kill the opponent, to further help with this most Aggro manabases play a plethora of lands that can help get their opponent's life total to 0. Lands such as Mishra’s factory, Mutavault, Barbarian Ring and Ramunap Ruins all see regular play in the format, as they give aggro decks that extra damage they need, whilst also letting them cast their spells. 

It’s not just aggro decks that make good use of utility lands, it’s rare to see a manabase without a few utility lands, Wasteland especially is a format staple, allowing you to hit your opponents ability to generate the colours they need, or to deal with their own utility lands. 

Not every utility land is created equal, however. As previously mentioned, Canlander is a fast format and as such you want the vast majority of your lands to enter untapped. Aggro decks will very rarely play any lands that enter tapped at all, while control decks may play the odd land that does so but will often have to carefully time when it comes down, you don’t want to need a fourth land for a Wrath only for that land to have to enter tapped. The most common examples of playable tapped lands in the format are the Creature Lands, such as Treetop Village or Celestial Colonnade. These lands entering tapped can be awkward at times but their ability to block incoming attacks, deal with planeswalkers or even get in for lethal means that they are often considered worthwhile in Midrange and Control decks. A land entering tapped has to be worth it in this format, the scry from a temple won’t be enough.

Get Brewing!

Should you still be struggling for ideas, websites such as TappedOut and MTGGoldfish have plenty of decklists that you can look at for inspiration. My personal tapped out can be found here. I have a whole heap of different decks that you can look at as well as a gauntlet that I try my best to keep updated as sets come out.

Hopefully, this article has helped you get some idea of what deck, or decks, you want to build for the format. Certain decks are better than others in the format but it’s amazing just how many strategies are viable in the format; whether you want to port over a reliable staple like Jund Midrange or make a 5 Colour Cascade Stax deck. The deck-building of Canadian Highlander is by far the most difficult part of the format, but also the most rewarding, the format lets you play with nearly every Magic card out there and the options are endless. 

Canadian Highlander: The Best Format You’re Not Playing

Canadian Highlander is an upcoming format in the Magic scene. It is also my favourite format and, in my opinion, the best the game has to offer.

Often described as Constructed Cube, Canadian Highlander (or Canlander for short) is a 1v1, 20 life, 100 card Singleton format. The format doesn’t allow for sideboards or any other kind of outside of the game cards, like Companions or Commanders. Imagine the perfect Cube deck and that’s pretty much how it feels to play a deck in Canlander.

The format plays like the majority of other 1v1 formats but the bit that makes Canadian Highlander special is the deckbuilding. Where other formats outright ban cards that are causing issues in the format, Canlander uses a points system. Every Canlander deck can have 10 points and while most cards are 0 points, cards that have proven too powerful or problematic have been assigned various points values from 1 all the way to 7 (as of writing). As an example, a pesky creature like True-Name Nemesis is 1 point, Demonic Tutor (arguably the most powerful tutor in the game) is 4 points, whilst some of the most powerful cards the game has ever seen, such as Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall, sit at 7 points each.

The points system allows the format to feel fresh and to balance itself without stopping players from playing with their favourite cards. If you want to play Black lotus in a deck then go right ahead, however, that does mean you can’t play cards like Demonic Tutor alongside it. The points list is ever changing, with cards being added, removed, or just otherwise changing points to fit with the everchanging game of Magic. As an example, in 2019 Black was seen as a weak colour in the format, and so DT was taken down to 3 points. This points reduction caused a surge in powerful storm decks playing DT and Lotus as their 10 points, this was seen as too powerful of a strategy and so DT was reverted back to 4 points. Had this been any other format a card would have likely had to have been banned, however, for Canlander a simple tweak of the points sorted that problem nicely.

For the specific points list, as well as a list of what VERY few cards in the format are banned, head on over to the official Canadian Highlander website. This website, as well as the format itself, is overseen by "The Council". The Council is a group of players in Victoria, where the format originates, that decide on points changes, rules changes and making sure the format stays as fun, and healthy, as possible.

Where to Start?

Entering a new format can be a daunting task, especially one with all of Magic’s history to pick cards from. To start, I would always suggest building from a deck you play in another format. This could be Death and Taxes because you play it in Legacy, Jund Midrange because you play it in Modern, or even Elves because you play it in Commander.

This isn’t to say, however, that the decks will look or play the way you’re used to. As an example, I adore Legacy Death and Taxes, and so as you may expect it was one of the first decks I built for the format. In Legacy, D&T plays almost like a control deck, taxing your opponent's spells and mana whilst chipping in with an array of white dorks. The Canadian Highlander rendition of the deck doesn’t have the luxury of multiple Wastelands/Rishadan Ports, or the consistency of having a Thalia or Aether Vial early in the game, and so it plays much more into the weenie route, whilst hurting the opponent in many different ways. Cards such as Sanctum Prelate no longer have a place in the deck, whereas cards such as Linvala, Keeper of silence and Aven Mindcensor become archetype staples. This is a 20 life format and as such you can’t afford to durdle like you may well do in formats like Commander, you are at half the usual life and it’s 1v1, your opponent will be out to get you from turn 1!



Always remember to keep the points list in mind when building your deck. If you are using a former commander deck as the starting point for your deck be aware that it will likely be way overpointed, a Sol Ring alone is 4 points after all! This can work in your favour too though, are you wanting to build an artifact deck? Now you have access to Tolarian Academy and Tinker!

When building a deck for Canadian Highlander you will often find yourself playing cards that would otherwise not be good enough in other competitive formats due to the singleton nature of the format, when you have 4 copies of Fatal Push in your deck cards such as Go For The Throat or the recently printed Eliminate get pushed to the wayside, whereas in Canlander those cards are very playable replacements for Pushes 3-4. This example can be most prevalently seen in red decks, where Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings are often seen burning opponents and killing small creatures alongside the likes of Incinerate, Arc Trail and even Shock and its variants.

It’s Not Just About Winning

It’s very easy to look at this format and assume it’s a format played by the richest and most competitive of players, but I personally feel like it couldn’t be further from that. Price is an issue that I will go into in a coming piece as that’s its own can of worms, but the whole point of the format is to have fun and to play what you enjoy. I got into Canlander because I bought a mana drain for my 1v1 Commander deck, only to realise it was banned in the format, so I got a friend to help me try out a format where I could play it and we didn’t even get a full game in before we realised it was something special.

Canlander lets you play with cards you would otherwise never dream of playing with, whether those be pointed cards like Black Lotus and Time Walk, or just cards that don’t quite reach the required power level of formats like Legacy or Modern. Cards that were once format staples that have fallen by the wayside have found a place in this format, standard staples of old such as Sphinx’s Revelation and Lingering Souls, former modern staples like Kitchen Finks and Vendilion Clique, as well as cards that never really saw any play at all like Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer.

You Really Can Play Anything

If you’re interested in looking into pre-existing decks for the format I have a gauntlet of sorts that I keep regularly updated with new set releases, it can be found here. (https://tappedout.net/mtg-deck-folders/gauntlet-2/)

This gauntlet was made both so that I have a plethora of decks to play and choose from, but also to show people just how varied the format is, there’s everything in here from Aggro, Tempo, Midrange, Control and combo. A lot of the decks have variations in other formats, D&T for example has Modern and Legacy variants as mentioned earlier, however, some of the decks here are wholly unique to Canlander, they just wouldn’t work in other formats. Paradox Academy for example is a deck that utilises cards like Paradox Engine and Tolarian Academy, cards that are either banned or not strong enough to see play in formats like Commander or Modern. Flying Men is one of my absolute favourite decks, utilising cheap fliers and lots of interaction to win. Flying Men is also a deck that would be laughed out of the room in any other 1v1 format, and just doesn’t have the power to win in a format like Commander with 3 opponents and 120 life to get through.

While Canlander shares a lot of similarities with other formats it sits in a very unique position, a position where a deck with all the best modern and legacy staples, can still lose to a deck full of 1 mana 1/1 fliers. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Give It A Chance

Canadian Highlander is the purest form of 1v1 Magic. It’s a format that lets you loose, lets you play with all the toys that Magic has to offer, gives you the chance to use the most powerful cards ever printed, to do the most powerful, or most dumb things. You’re as likely to see a Black Lotus letting a storm player pop off as you are to let a Mono Green player cast a T1 Questing Beast. It’s a format where for every Lightning Bolt or Tarmogoyf you die to, you’ll just as likely die to a creature or spell you haven't seen cast for years, if ever before. It’s a format where I’ve cast Time Walks, Tinkers, Tutors and True-Names. And it’s also a format where I’ve killed people by attacking them turn after turn with literal actual Flying Men. Canlander is the format that saved my love for Magic, and I hope you can learn to love it as much as I have.

Questions? Comments? Want to talk about the format? I’d love to hear from you! 

I can be found on Twitter @ForceOfWilko. Thank you so much for reading!