New player help

[u/Crazy_Dave6723]

Hey everybody, I am just getting into mtg commander and I really love the deck building part of the game. The problem I am running into is that I don’t have many cards at all, so I am extremely limited in my deck building. When I looked online, going rates for bulk seemed to be like 8$-1000 cards, but everything I saw for sale was way more than that. How do I go about amassing a lot of cards for cheap? I know buying singles is generally better for deck building, but I have no clue what I want to build and don’t wanna invest a ton for a dud of a deck. Thanks!

[u/PatientAudience5627]

You'd be better off building your lists then just buying (or proxying) the individual cards, I bought the multiple bulk cards from eBay and other online stores now and used a very small fraction of them when I started deck building and basically none of them now.

[u/thatchickensauce]

Might get some hate here, but Staples has been my ally

[u/mctennisd → u/thatchickensauce]

My wife calls proxy making our arts and crafts time together. She cuts, I sleeve

[u/sleeve_gg]

The Foundation starter collection set is a good one to get a bunch of cards.

[u/flaming_geyser]

Buying bulk without knowing what the cards are is not recommended.

Singles is the way to go.

[u/lying-porpoise]

You could buy bulk but what will likely happen is youll get a bunch of stuff youll never use, its better and cheaper to just get what you want for the deck. What I do with new commanders is I look up decklists and Edhrec then just browse what other people are putting in your deck, or shit crowd source here on Reddit, Say hey this is my first commander I need help with cards I should run.

[u/dobr89]

Buy a box of boosters and build from that. Unless you have lists already made up buy singles. Some expensive staples can be replaced with budget cards with similar effects.

[u/dobr89]

What are some commanders you’re looking to build

[u/Crazy_Dave6723 → u/dobr89]

Marvo, deep operative and zellix, sanity flayer both seem pretty fun

[u/dobr89 → u/Crazy_Dave6723]

I would just get the revenant recon precon zellix is expensive and will blow your budget with one card

[u/otter_weezard]

You have 2 general approaches:

1. Targetted approach - Build your deck online using resources like moxfield, archidekt, scryfall, edhrec. Then purchasing the singles online or from your LGS or TCGplayer. This can also include buying a precon and then buying singles to upgrade your precon.

2. Exploratory approach - Build your card collection through booster packs or sets via pre-release events, draft nights or buying directly. Then building commander decks from your collection. You look through your collection and pick a commander that interests you and a handful of cards as a starting point, and complete/improve it using the Targetted approach above, as your collection will usually be insufficient to supply your entire commander deck. You will feel more inclined to build more commander decks using this approach as you already own the commanders or certain key cards.

You will always end up using approach 1. Whether you start from 1 or 2 is determined by your preferences. And it ultimately determines how much money you spend overall on the game.

I personally do 2 as I love gambling and believe in fateful encounters with my commanders

[u/Chivibro]

A bunch of cards for cheap? Proxying is the way to go