We very quickly found ourselves at home with commander. There is plenty of guides out there. Some from wizards. Some from others. Me and my spouse took the basic layout and made some own twists to balance it the way we wanted it. We call it hillbilly commander.
This is how we play Magic commander. HillBilly style.
Deck, 100 cards. Any cards from any sets is ok. If a card is found to be to powerful we will rotate it out eventually.
20 life
Draw 7 cards, with one full re-draw, after that you draw 1 less card each re-draw.
1 Legendary creature as the commander
40 basic lands
10 Ramp spells (or similar)
10 Draw spells (or similar)
5 Board wipes (or similar)
5 target removal (or similar)
29 Whatever you want
Restrictions:
No plains walkers.
No legendary cards other that the commander.
No special lands.
Only one copy of any card, except basic lands.
Despite not having more than 1 copy of any given card we feel that it is relatively easy to have a coherent deck. Both of us have a theme and game plan and the decks do preform the way they are intended.
What makes this so great is that even if we have played 4 games already, we still haven’t gone through all cards. These decks and builds will last us a long time without feeling boring.
If you are sitting on a bunch of old magic cards and have someone to play with, then why not try it out?
Commander is general played with 3-4 players and then 40 life’s instead of 20. Plus some other rules. So I can recommend you to go and check the more “excepted” rules for commander as well.
Have fun!