A message from Don, the founder of EDHREC:

In this article, Josh goes through a new collaboration between EDHREC and Scryfall. These two websites do complementary things already and it's hard to build a deck without using both of them. Scryfall has become my and many of my friends' go-to card search website recently due to its ease of use, up to date data, and advanced syntax. However, one thing that always annoyed me was that search results had tons of EDH unplayable cards and you have to scroll through many results to find what you need. This feature uses EDHREC's data to help bubble reasonable cards up to the top of your searches and make brewing with Scryfall even more efficient.

Today I have the pleasure to introduce everyone to an exciting new integration between EDHREC and Scryfall. We've teamed up with Scryfall combine our resources to help you find cards for EDH on their website.

What is Scryfall?

Scryfall is a Magic: The Gathering card database and search engine and is one of our personal favorites. It allows visitors to search for cards based on a free range of filters and keywords. It offers pricing data in addition to the basic filters, so budgeting your next deck becomes a breeze. They have color identity filtering included, which is a must for Commander players.

One key feature is being able to sort search results by a number of factors, such as price, CMC, and toughness. Now you can organize your search results by their EDHREC rank! A card's EDHREC rank is based on how many decks in EDHREC's database have that card in it. It also weighs newer decks slightly higher, this way you know what people are playing today. This means when you're building your next deck, with Scryfall, you can instantly see which cards are being played more in your search criteria. This works both as a boon to understanding what may help more within particular query and understanding what players are not playing at all. The best part is the time you're going to save by not having to scroll through hundreds of cards to find playable choices.

How to use the new feature

On the Scryfall search page, there is a box with "sorted by" to the left of it. Click on that drop down menu and towards the bottom there is a new sort filter called "EDHREC Rank." Simply click on this filter and your current search with be reorganized to show the most used cards first and the least used last.

Sorted by Name at First:

You can see this list is filled with cards that would normally not make any decks. Abzan Guide was a great draft pick, but falls extremly low on the playability in Commander. In fact, it's only in a total of 32 decks.

Sorted by EDHREC Rank After:

Here we can see cards that are abundantly played in Commander. Aetherflux Reservoir is in the same place as our above Abazan Guide, but is played in 8124 decks!

Quick Uses

I personally use this feature now to try and narrow some of my more obscure ideas down. I'm a fan of life gain decks in Commander, even though most of us think they're underpowered. I've recently wanted to look at some outlying colors for this theme. I used this new feature to filter down to all green cards that have life gain in their text. This what I got after I applied the EDHREC rank Filter.

Each one these cards peaks my interest enough to consider adding them. These cards along bring a certain power level to any green deck. Using this sorting ability has drastically lowered my deck building time for this idea. The idea itself may not be the strongest, but with these suggestions, I can see what cards are on the top end of my mono green life gain deck. In case you're wondering how bad the bottom end gets for this search, Rysorian Badger is in the bottom ten. However, it might make the cut with that amazing art!

Parting Thoughts

This new level of organization will help the newest and most experienced deck builders among us. I will be using this feature for many of my decks in the future. The time alone I can save is the reason enough to use Scryfall and the EDHREC ranking, but also being able to see what cards may not be seeing play is also helpful. I joke about Rysorian Badger, but truthfully, that card has some niche play as graveyard hate within my life gain theme. I know you will enjoy using this new feature as much as I do. If you use this to help build a deck let us know in the comments down below!