How to build Commander Spock

Commander Spock casts a spell for free when its mana value is no higher than the number of differently named lands you control. So this list is a mana base before it is anything else: thirty-eight lands, and no two of them share a name.

Thirty-eight lands, and not one name appears twice

Spock counts names, not lands, and in an ordinary Commander deck almost all of the gap between those two numbers is basics. A dozen Forests are one name. Every nonbasic is a singleton already, so making the two numbers identical only asks the mana base to stop doubling up. This one runs a single Forest, Island and Plains, with a Snow-Covered Forest, Snow-Covered Island and Snow-Covered Plains beside them. The snow versions are separate cards with separate names, so each counts as a name of its own, and they keep their basic types, so anything that fetches a Forest, Island or Plains still finds them.

With no name repeated anywhere in the 38, the number Spock checks is simply how many lands you have out. Every land drop raises it by one, and so does every land he flips. Field of the Dead asks the same question, seven or more lands with different names, which here just means seven lands, and from that point on every land that enters makes a 2/2 Zombie.

There are no fetch lands, and that has nothing to do with price. Cracking one gives up a name to get a name, so the count goes nowhere on the turn you use it, and the shuffle wipes out whatever you had set up on top of the library. Krosan Verge is the one land in the list that sacrifices itself and still comes out ahead, because it hands back two lands for itself, a Forest card and a Plains card.

The price of all those names is tempo. Eight of the 38 always come in tapped and fourteen more depend on a condition. Five of the eight are Temple of Plenty, Temple of Mystery, Meticulous Archive, Lush Portico and Hedge Maze, which scry or surveil as they arrive, and setting the top card is worth a tapped land in this deck more than in most.

Green has the most sources, 26, because green is what the first two turns spend, and that is enough to see a green source by turn two on the play 92 percent of the time. Blue has 23 and white 21. White is lightest on purpose, since it pays for removal and flicker, which can wait a turn. The real squeeze is the three-mana cards that want two green: Courser of Kruphix, Captain Pike, Fullness of Time and Eternal Witness find their second green source by turn three only about three times in four. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth makes every land on the table a Forest once it is down, your opponents' included, which settles the problem for the rest of the game but does nothing before it shows up.

Sol Ring is the only ramp that does not end in a land

A mana rock makes mana and does nothing to the count, and the count decides how big a spell Spock can cast for free. A land from Farseek does both. So the ramp here is lands. Farseek, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Growth Spiral, Skyshroud Claim, Wood Elves, Elvish Rejuvenator and Hour of Promise put them onto the battlefield, while Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Oracle of Mul Daya raise how many you are allowed to play. Sol Ring is the exception and earns the slot on speed alone, because a first-turn Sol Ring puts Spock out on turn three.

The search effects are picked for this library in particular, which holds exactly six basic lands. Anything that can only find a basic runs dry quickly, and the budget rung below shows what that costs. Farseek finds any land with the Plains or Island type, which takes in all three shock lands, the triome and the three surveil lands. Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Wood Elves and Skyshroud Claim each find any Forest card, and there are eight of those.

At five lands, fifty-five of the sixty-one spells are free

The curve is built to sit under the count. Eleven of the sixty-one nonland cards cost one, thirteen cost two and eighteen cost three, so even three lands put 42 of them within reach of a free cast. Spock costs five, so on the turn you can cast him you will normally have five lands, and the ramp often makes it six, which puts 55 or 59 of the 61 under the line. Thirty-eight of the 99 are lands, so a reveal is a land a little under four times in ten, and with five lands out a nonland reveal is free nine times in ten. The card in hand is the rare result.

The handful above the line are the ones you are happy to wait for. Deep Space Scan, Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Ancient Greenwarden and Austere Command cost six, Avenger of Zendikar seven and Craterhoof Behemoth eight. Each is a card you would be glad to draw anyway, and each one turns free a land or two later. Deep Space Scan is the best of them, since it draws a card for each differently named land you control, which in this list is your land count again.

Some cards are worse off a free cast than they look. A spell cast without paying its mana cost has X equal to zero, so there are no X spells in the list. Overload is an alternative cost and cannot be stacked on a free cast, so a Cyclonic Rift that Spock flips bounces one permanent rather than everything an opponent owns. Evoke works the other way for Mulldrifter. Spock casts it as the whole creature, so you draw two and keep a 2/2 flier. Kicker and other additional costs can still be paid.

Set the top card with the trigger already on the stack

A reveal is only random if you let it be, and about a dozen cards here exist to decide it in advance. The rule that governs all of them is timing. Your draw step comes before combat, so a card you put on top at the end of an opponent's turn is in your hand before Spock can attack. Arrange the top while his trigger is waiting to resolve instead.

Worldly Tutor shows why. It puts a creature card on top of your library and it is an instant, so cast it in response to the attack trigger: find Avenger of Zendikar, let the trigger resolve, and with seven lands out the Avenger costs nothing. Cast the same card at the end of the previous turn and all it does is choose your next draw.

Scroll Rack and Brainstorm go a step further, because they put a card from your hand back on top. That means the free cast is not limited to whatever happens to be next. Hold the expensive card, send it back in response to the trigger, and Spock casts the one you picked. Sylvan Library does it in your draw step. Of the cards you drew that turn, two go back on top unless you pay 4 life apiece, and the best spell is the one to send back. Sensei's Divining Top looks at three cards for one mana and returns them in whatever order you like.

The temples and surveil lands do a small version of that as they enter, and Retreat to Coralhelm can do it on every land after it. Mystic Sanctuary goes further than any of them. When it enters untapped it puts an instant or sorcery from your graveyard back on top, so the Deep Space Scan you cast last turn can be the next card Spock flips.

Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya and Captain Pike, Fullness of Time let you play lands from the top of the library, and that matters because a land is the weakest of the three outcomes. Play the land off the top as your land drop and the reveal gets the card under it. Pike also lets you look at the top card whenever you like, so you know before declaring attackers whether the swing is worth the risk. Coiling Oracle is the commander's own trigger in a two-mana body, a land onto the battlefield or a card into your hand.

He triggers more by entering than by attacking

Both halves of the trigger count, but only one of them is safe. An attack sends a 3/5 into three boards, and Spock is worth more alive than any card he could flip. Entering is the half you control, so most of the support here is flicker.

Ephemerate is the best value in the list. One white mana exiles Spock and returns him, which is a trigger, and if you cast it from your hand, rebound casts it again in your next upkeep for a second one. Restoration Angel does the same at instant speed and leaves a 3/4 flier behind. Teleportation Circle, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Soulherder each blink a creature at the beginning of your end step, so with any one of them out Spock triggers once more every turn without ever attacking. Panharmonicon doubles every one of those, and Strionic Resonator copies whichever of his triggers is on the stack, the attack one included. None of it costs anything later either, because commander tax counts casts from the command zone, and a flicker never sends him there.

Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are for the turn he arrives. Haste lets him enter and attack on the same turn, two reveals from one cast, and the shroud or hexproof is what keeps him on the battlefield to make a third. Retreat to Coralhelm makes his own attack safer. When the reveal is a land, its landfall trigger can untap him, so he still stands guard on your opponents' turns.

Seven lands is also where the deck starts to win

Nothing in this list wins early, and the finish runs off the same number as everything else. Once Field of the Dead sees seven lands with different names, every land that enters is a 2/2 Zombie. From then on Spock flipping a land is a Zombie, Skyshroud Claim and Hour of Promise are two each, and Scapeshift is one for every land it fetches.

Avenger of Zendikar is the other army. It makes a 0/1 Plant for each land you control, a big number by the time seven mana comes easily, and each land after that puts a +1/+1 counter on every one of them. Ancient Greenwarden makes every landfall trigger in the list happen twice, Field of the Dead's and Avenger's included, and lets you play lands back out of the graveyard. Craterhoof Behemoth is how either army ends the game in one attack.

The core list

Every one of the hundred, at the cheapest paper copy you can buy right now. Hover over a name to see the card.

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Cheaper means a random top card, and bracket 4 means a loop

The budget rung costs at least $122 against the core list's $548, and what it mostly gives up is control over the top of the library. Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Sylvan Library and Worldly Tutor go, and Crystal Ball, Halimar Depths, Augur of Autumn and Brutalizer Exarch do the same jobs slower and more narrowly, but still aimed at the card Spock is about to turn over. Field of the Dead and Scapeshift leave as well, which puts the finish on Avenger of Zendikar and Overwhelming Stampede. The mana gets worse in two ways worth knowing before you build it. It runs 39 lands and more of them enter tapped, and three of its new ramp cards, Cultivate, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Search for Tomorrow, can only find basics, of which this library holds six, so they stop finding anything by the middle of the game. Search for Tomorrow is best suspended on turn one for a single green. None of the three Game Changers survive, so nothing in the rung holds it above bracket 2.

The bracket 4 rung starts with an interaction worth stating plainly before anyone sits down with it. Ghostly Flicker exiles two of your artifacts, creatures or lands and returns them, so aim it at Spock and Mystic Sanctuary. With three other Islands out, the Sanctuary comes back untapped and both of them trigger. Stack the Sanctuary's trigger to resolve first and it puts Ghostly Flicker from your graveyard back on top of the library, then Spock's trigger turns it over and casts it for free, aimed at the same two permanents. That repeats for as long as you choose. Each pass brings a land into play, so with Field of the Dead out every loop is another Zombie, and with Avenger of Zendikar out it is another counter on every Plant. Two cards plus the commander is an infinite combo, and a table that has not agreed to bracket 4 should not have to find that out in the middle of a game.

Everything else in the rung is about certainty and speed. Enlightened Tutor and Mystical Tutor join Worldly Tutor in putting a card on top, so with a trigger on the stack you can name what Spock casts. Crop Rotation fetches Mystic Sanctuary at instant speed. Displacer Kitten blinks Spock whenever you cast a noncreature spell, the free ones included, so a run of noncreature cards on top becomes a run of triggers. Natural Order finds Avenger of Zendikar or Craterhoof Behemoth without waiting. Force of Will, Fierce Guardianship and Cyclonic Rift protect the turn it happens, and Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe and Ancient Tomb are the card flow and fast mana a table at that level already expects. That is thirteen Game Changers and at least $1,056.

FAQ

Do snow-covered basics count as different lands for Commander Spock?

Yes. Snow-Covered Forest is a different name from Forest, so one of each counts as two differently named lands, where two Forests count as one. That is why this build plays one of each basic and one snow-covered copy of each, which gives six basics with six different names.

What colors is Commander Spock?

Green, white and blue, which is Bant. Those three are his color identity, so a deck he leads cannot play red or black cards.

Is Commander Spock good?

Yes, in a deck that keeps its spells cheaper than its land count, and much less so in one that does not. Every trigger is worth at least a card, and with five lands out nine nonland reveals in ten are free. The catch is that he has to enter or attack to do any of it, so the deck around him decides how often that happens.

Can Commander Spock cast an X spell or overload Cyclonic Rift?

He can cast them, but not to much effect. X is zero on a spell cast without paying its mana cost, and overload is an alternative cost that cannot be added to a free cast, so a Cyclonic Rift he flips returns one permanent. Additional costs such as kicker can still be paid.

Does Captain Kirk, Boldly Going belong in a Commander Spock deck?

He fits the colors and triggers on entering or attacking too, but this build leaves him out. His trigger puts a basic land into your hand, and a library built for different names holds only six basics, so it soon has nothing to find. Wood Elves does a similar job straight onto the battlefield for three mana.

When can you play Commander Spock in Commander?

He is playable from 13 November 2026, the day Star Trek Commander releases. A deck checker that turns him down before that morning is reading the calendar, and one that still turns him down afterwards is working from old data.

How much does this deck cost?

The core list is at least $548 at the cheapest paper copy of each card, and that leaves out Spock and the four other new cards, which have no price yet. The budget rung is at least $122 and the bracket 4 rung at least $1,056.