A Commander deck, not an actual cube.

Philosophy:

• This deck aims to win through normal combat damage. While Doran can function as a Voltron since he comes out so early and hits so hard, that's not really the aim of the deck and so deckbuilding choices should not push in that direction too much. That being said, occasionally winning through Commander damage is fine as a secondary option.
  • Lieutenant creatures aim to protect Doran, since it needs to be on the field for the deck to function. They do not tend to make Doran more deadly, since the primary win condition is not intended to be Commander Damage.
• Some fun synergistic themes include: treefolk, skulk.
• This deck tends to play somewhat "honestly", not doing anything that seems broken.
• Since Doran needs to stay out on the field for this deck to function, this will lean towards the most reliable protection that also keeps Doran out on the field. That being said, Doran is also cheap enough to recast multiple times.
• Mana base prioritizes color fixing to be able to drop Doran as early as turn 3 and card filtering (cycling) to keep up steam in the mid/late game. Ramp is not a priority since Doran already has a very low cost. Mana base does not skew heavily into green, so it tries not to have too many green costing mana sources.
• In keeping with the spirit of casual Commander, this deck intentionally eschews pure unsynergistic card draw, and lockout strategies in favor of variance and fun.
• Deck prefers sustained card draw without sacrificing tempo
• Deck has a mini theme of mana tappers with high toughness combined with untap/vigilance effects, allowing me to both use them for mana and attack. This is fun to see, but need to see if I can protect them sufficiently so they aren't at risk of dying in combat. If I can get this to stick, it would add a nice unique spin and feel to the deck. Having a good concentration of mana tappers that can also serve as attackers also lets me increase the density of relevant creatures that the deck is able to get out and increase the overall utility of the average card (without necessarily needing extreme amounts of card draw); this lets it build a bigger board and also feel like its cards are more relevant, in some sense replacing lands and pure combat-oriented creatures which are more situational. This notion of higher utility creatures might be something that helps give the deck more oomph and interest; this includes creatures that can attack and protect Doran as well.