As the year winds to its end, we all naturally get introspective about the things we experienced this year; since this is a Magic site, I thought I’d share my thoughts on Commander cards released this year. Organizing these sorts of things can be a bit tough, but I decided to come up with some broad categories and then pick one card from each of the sets with brand-new cards with Commander implications. In some of the Commander products, there weren’t enough noteworthy new cards to pick one for the list, but I tried to be as thorough as possible. Here are the sets included in the review, and set order is how each card is listed in each category.
- Kaldheim
- Kaldheim Commander
- Strixhaven: School of Mages
- Commander 2021
- Modern Horizons 2
- Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
- Forgotten Realms Commander
- Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
- Midnight Hunt Commander
- Innistrad: Crimson Vow
- Crimson Vow Commander
Time Spiral Remastered was released this year, but since it was an all-reprint set, I didn’t include those cards in my categories. I did, however, really love so many of the card style treatments, particularly the old-style ones!
Okay, let’s dig in!
Coolest Commander
If you do a search in Scryfall of all the new legendary creatures released this year, the list is a whopping 185 cards! So, it was challenging to pick one commander per set as the “coolest.” I fully acknowledged something being cool or not is totally subjective, but as one of the eldest EDH fans out there, I’ve got a pretty good thumb on the pulse of Commander cool. I wrote about many of them in my weekly column here on StarCityGames.com, so I won’t go into a whole lot of extra detail here.
For me, it has to do with exploring new deckbuilding spaces rather than a retread of mechanics or tribes we’ve seen before. Codie, Vociferous Codex begs the question: can you, should you, build a deck with no other creatures in it? Osgir, the Reconstructor brings Boros a brand-new way to build an artifact-heavy deck. Nadaar, Selfless Paladin lets you delve deep into dungeons, providing incremental advantage loot to carry you closer to victory. Old Stickfingers asks, what if the only creatures in your deck are reanimator targets? And Chatterfang, Squirrel General brings a long-awaited Squirrel commander as a black-bordered card. If you like building new decks and exploring new spaces in Commander, 2021 brought the heat.
Best Epic Card Play
Sheldon Menery and the Rules Committee have cultivated a format where cards that make for epic storytelling thrives! Commander encourages fun and social games where everyone can sit down and have a good time each game. And what makes a game even better is when there’s some play that’s so cool, so memorable, that people will want to talk about it later. Those are the sort of games I strive for, and one of the first steps to getting those games is to put cards in your deck that lead to memorable plays. 2021 brought us north of 1,800 brand-new cards to sift through for our Commander decks, but for my money, these are the cards that you put in your deck, knowing they can lead to some wild games.
Maskwood Nexus is first on the list because it came out in Kaldheim, but I’d probably rate it the #1 Commander card of the year. I’ve seen people do some wild things with Maskwood Nexus; I recall playing in one game where someone had a bunch of Treasures and Magda, Brazen Outlaw on the battlefield. They sacrificed five Treasures to search out an artifact, Maskwood Nexus, and then sacrificed five Treasures to search out a Dragon — which was Craterhoof Behemoth, which got every creature type including Dragon thanks to Maskwood Nexus. Considering they had a moderately sized battlefield presence, the creatures attacked and killed us all with over 100 points of damage to spare.
I’ve seen Pact of the Serpent used a few times as a decent card draw spell in black tribal decks, but I keep waiting to see someone who’s gone buck-wild with token generation die to a Pact of the Serpent; I know it will happen one day. While I haven’t run across Cultivator Colossus in a paper game of Commander yet, I have run it myself on Magic Arena and can certify that the card is bananas in Standard and Alchemy and have no doubt it will do some spectacular things in a card pool as vast and amazing as Commander.
Best Utility Card
Utility cards aren’t usually splashy or epic, but they are the lubrication that keeps every Commander game humming along, so I wanted to make sure I made space to recognize these workhorse cards that often go unsung. I find myself putting these cards in lots of different decks and am almost always thrilled to draw one from my deck.
Outland Liberator is like a Qasali Pridemage with upside that’s easier on your mana. Sure, you have to track day and night while it’s out there, but the times when it’s transformed into Frenzied Trapbreaker and you get to snipe an artifact or enchantment without sacrificing it are going to feel great! And I know Aristocrats fans of self-sacrificing strategies everywhere are bonkers over Prowling Geistcatcher, thankful that the designers let that second paragraph trigger from it leaving the battlefield rather than dying so you won’t get hosed by exile effects or bounce, but you can even use those sorts of effects yourself to leverage it even further.
Predators’ Hour is speculative on my part since it just came out with Crimson Vow Commander, but I’ve got high hopes! Particularly in aggressive decks and go-wide strategies, this is a fantastic way to recoup some much-needed card advantage in ways that will no doubt lead to some wild plays as you play out cards from your opponents decks later in the game.
Best Creature
Picking the best creature from each set that provides something amazing in a game given the chance was tough, but I think this list came out solid. In some cases, I think the card is overpowered; for instance, I think Liesa, Forgotten Archangel is obnoxiously good and often miserable to play against, particularly as a commander, and there’s no question that Hullbreaker Horror is frustrating to face down. But they are hands-down powerful and impactful creatures.
Some of these I think are still flying under the radar. Why aren’t people jamming Froghemoth is just about every green deck they have? Trample and haste make it the perfect card to come down after a battlefield sweeper, and munching key cards out of a graveyard deck’s graveyard will put a serious crimp in their style while potentially growing Froghemoth in size. Stalwart Pathlighter’s coven ability should be relatively easy to manage in a creature-heavy deck, and being able to attack freely and follow up with a battlefield sweeper like Wrath of God that won’t affect your own creatures is awesome!
Of the new creatures in Crimson Vow Commander, I love Crossway Troublemakers for Vampire decks. I appreciate it encourages attacking, makes your attacking Vampires hard to effectively block, and you can take advantage of the ability immediately if you’ve got some Vampires on the battlefield already. Plus, it has a way to recover from sweepers that you can take advantage of yourself if you’ve got sacrificial fodder.
Best Land
Several of the Commander sets this year didn’t have a new land card or didn’t have one worth mentioning, but the other sets provided some real gems. Tyrite Sanctum is my personal favorite and I’ve tried to put it in just about every one or two-color Commander deck I have. Not only can it be useful in +1/+1 counter strategies or used twice to make a legendary creature (perhaps your commander) into an indestructible threat, but it’s just funny making some legendary creatures into “Gods” — Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer can become a Monkey Pirate God; Chatterfang, Squirrel General can become a Squirrel Warrior God; Lonis, Cryptozoologist can become a Snake Elf Scout God.
The last two lands on the list, Shipwreck Marsh and Shattered Sanctum, are stand-ins for the entire ten-card cycle of two-color lands that are perfect for Commander and are easily Top 5 best lands you can include for color-fixing in your Commander decks.
I want to give a special shout-out to all the lands from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms getting the incredibly cool Module treatment, with open borderless art and design reminiscent of cover art from classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. As a longtime superfan of D&D (I went into in depth in this article here and in a Twitter thread here), I was blown away by all of them and collected at least one of each that has been put in a binder along with other nostalgic stuff I loved about the set. Hall of Storm Giants slightly takes the top honors from the set, but I think all of the creature-lands are fantastic and should be part of your Commander deckbuilding stock.
Best Artifact
Perhaps as a response to Commander players moving away from three-mana rocks to two-mana rocks for their color-fixing and acceleration, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has started giving us three-mana rocks with cool upsides to make them worth the extra mana, and several of them made this list. We’ve got Strixhaven Stadium, which actually has a built-in way to kill an opponent if you can deal combat damage to them to get ten or more point counters on it.
More ways to encourage creature combat in Commander? Count me in!
There’s also the incredible Cursed Mirror, which enters the battlefield as a copy of the best creature on the battlefield, has haste, but then at the end of the turn it turns into a pumpkin mana rock. This is basically a Heat Shimmer that leaves behind a mana rock (assuming the creature doesn’t get killed), and has potential for blinking, bouncing or other recursion.
Sword of Hearth and Home is one of the best of the Sword cycle for Commander hands-down; the protection ability is very relevant and its combat damage trigger is bonkers. The basic land search is especially good in nongreen decks, and the blink ability lets you take advantage of many creatures with fantastic enters-the-battlefield triggers. But wait, there’s more — the blink ability targets a creature you own, so if an opponent has stolen one of your creatures, you can use the Sword of Hearth and Home to get it back. You can still find copies of it for under ten dollars — including right here at StarCityGames.com — so make sure to pick up a copy or two for your Commander decks. You won’t regret it!
Best Enchantment
While I didn’t aim for color diversity when making my picks, as a Commander fan I’m glad to see each of Magic’s colors represented here among these awesome enchantments! All of them support a variety of strategies and are great tools for deckbuilding. My favorite of the bunch is Glorious Sunrise, a Swiss Army knife of utility: whether you want a mini-Overrun, a post-combat mana boost, card draw, or a little bit of extra life, this green enchantment has you covered.
I also really love The Meathook Massacre, but unfortunately, it’s a mythic rare that’s a tournament staple in Standard and people run multiple copies despite it being legendary. I wasn’t fortunate enough to open one in random Innistrad: Midnight Hunt set booster packs, and I can’t justify spending over $40 a pop for it, so I’ll just wait until it rotates out of Standard and have my fingers crossed the price drops. I’m looking forward to putting it in several of my black decks!
Best Instant
I know Tibalt’s Trickery has done some crazy things in tournament formats, but I love it for the crazy things it can do in Commander, especially coming from a player who doesn’t have access to blue mana. No one is going to expect you to say, “Wait, I counter that!” on their game-winning spell, but the story doesn’t end there — it’s just beginning! Will its resolution reveal an X-spell and just fizzle, or will the player hit a spell that’s nearly as devastating? Nobody but Tibalt knows, but we’re going to find out!
Similarly, I love Chef’s Kiss out of a non-blue deck for some disruptive and fun interaction if someone is targeting you or one of your permanents with something diabolical.
Ruinous Intrusion feels a little expensive, but I think it’s comparable to Crush Contraband, a format staple. Not even counting +1/+1 counter synergies, but the potential to use this as a combat trick really pushes it to the top of the list of artifact and enchantment interaction in creature-heavy decks. I cannot wait to target a Blightsteel Colossus with this card!
Best Sorcery
Some of these sorcery spells have small effects and some have big effects, but I think all of them are very good at what they do. Rise and Shine was an all-star in a recent game with Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth as my commander and a battlefield full of Clue tokens. I love the incredible flexibility of You Find a Cursed Idol, with a useful third mode so it doesn’t just rot in your hand if there happens to be no artifact or enchantment worth destroying on the battlefield.
And I’m over the moon with Secret Rendezvous, providing white with much-needed raw card drawing with a drawback that can be turned into political leverage in a Commander game.
Before we get to the last two groups, allow me a disclaimer: proclaiming a card as overrated or underrated is highly subjective and is in no way intended to slight anyone who may hold a different opinion. The beauty of Commander is that there are a ton of fans from across the playstyle spectrum, and one person’s trash is likely another person’s treasure. However, presenting strong opinions is fun, so let’s get to it!
Overrated Cards
All of these cards are ones I recall people being quite excited about all over social media, in videos, and Twitch. In my opinion, they haven’t really lived up to the hype. I feel bad putting Toski, Bearer of Secrets on here because I absolutely adore the card, but wow is it so easy to get rid of if you want to, or simply block it if you need to. You really need to have a bunch of other creatures capable of attacking and getting through in order to leverage its ability, and if you have a bunch of other creatures capable of attacking and getting through, you’re probably already doing pretty well. For one green mana more you get Ohran Frostfang, which also happens to be an excellent blocker.
Prosper, Tome-Bound is far and away to most popular commander from the Forgotten Realms Commander decks according to EDHREC, but I just don’t see it. For four mana I’d expect something a bit more impactful than a slow source of virtual card draw with a Treasure attached.
The problem with these sorts of temporary “cast from exile” cards is when you run across cards you don’t want to play. What if the land you exiled doesn’t provide the color you need to cast a vital spell that turn, so you play one from your hand and that exiled land stays exiled? What if you reveal a sweeper like Damnation but you currently have a dominant battlefield presence? And yeah, I know you can lean into that with cards like Florian, Voldaren Scion and Reckless Impulse to get more Treasures out of Prosper, but the juice just doesn’t seem worth the squeeze to me.
I remember a ton of hype over Treasure Vault but have rarely seen it do anything interesting in Commander outside of Osgir, the Reconstructor. For me, sacrificing lands for a temporary boon is a huge cost in Commander where I want to make as many land drops as possible to cast big spells on or ahead of time and to be able to pay commander tax throughout the game. Maybe it’s doing bonkers things in cEDH, and since that isn’t a format I get to play in, I’m just missing out?
Underrated Cards
If you’re looking for sleepers and hidden gems, this section is for you. I’ve seen some of these do surprisingly cool things, and some of them are still much better than they appear in theory for me, but I trust my gut when it comes to Commander card evaluation. I’m really surprised I don’t see more of Saryth, the Viper’s Fang in green decks. Giving the rest of your team either deathtouch or hexproof depending on their state of tap is useful in a variety of ways, and she doesn’t stop there. You can even untap another target creature or a land you control. I’ve taken to putting Saryth alongside Fynn, the Fangbearer in my one- or two-color green decks as a way to build your own Triumph of the Hordes while each still being decent cards on their own.
I have a bonkers Yedora, Grave Gardener deck chock full of wild morph strategies, but I also think the card is just good for big mana decks and decks that want landfall triggers or just a lot of lands.
Doom Weaver just came out in Crimson Vow Commander, but I have a really good feeling about it. It’s a heckuva blocker, but the potential to draw a ton of cards when you pair it up with a big creature is what really gets my mind going. Imagine having an Elder Gargaroth on the battlefield when you play Doom Weaver and soulbond the two together and then attack. Does your opponent kill it and let you draw six cards? They can’t rightly chump block it because it has trample, and meanwhile you’re churning out value in the form of drawing a card or making a 3/3 Beast, and since it has reach and vigilance it’s around to block too.
Or imagine a scenario with a sacrifice outlet and Deathrender. Cast a big creature, soulbond it to Doom Weaver, and equip it with Deathrender. Sacrifice it, draw a bunch of cards, put a big creature from your hand onto the battlefield, and attach Deathrender to it. Soulbond with Doom Weaver. Rinse, repeat. Weeeeee, drawing cards is fun!
So, what do you think? Are there cards you feel should be on the list that I missed? Or if you want to know my rationale behind any of my choices that I didn’t go into detail about, let me know!
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
