There were a whopping 398 unique new legendary cards printed in 2023 that could be your Commander, well over one for every day of the year. Chances are good that at least a couple of them appealed to your deckbuilding interests, but with a volume this large, it’s entirely possible you might have overlooked some cool ones along the way. I’m here to help!
These are the new commanders that I thought were the coolest designs of the year specifically as a deck’s commander. I’ve built a few of them, and a few more I want to build around, but even the ones I’m not building, I’m glad the Commander community at large has these cards available. Here’s my list in alphabetical order!
Agatha of the Vile Cauldron
Mana costs related to activated abilities are a lever that Magic designers use to balance out the power of cards, so being able to reduce those costs is a sweet effect. There’s a reason why Training Grounds is such a popular enchantment in blue Commander decks!
Boros already has this sort of effect attached to a legendary creature you can run in the command zone with Zirda, the Dawnwaker, but it’s nice to get another one in Gruul with Agatha of the Vile Cauldron. Now, Zirda’s discount is set at two, just like Training Grounds, but Agatha’s ability is on a sliding scale tied to her power. There are many cool things you can do in an Agatha deck, and if you want to read more, I did a deep dive you can find below.
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant
Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant is an incredibly flavorful design calling back to the beginning of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where Bilbo has a big birthday party celebrating his 111th birthday (or, as they said in the book, his “eleventy-first birthday”). His incredibly powerful ability requires a lot of lifegain, considering you start a Commander game at 40 life, but there are a ton of ways to do it in the Abzan colors, and Bilbo’s static ability even helps out a little bit. The fact that Bilbo exiles himself for the big finish is also a flavor win, since Bilbo “disappears” in the middle of his party and slips away from the gathering.
I loved the design of Bilbo so much that I built a deck around him. You can read about it below.
Brenard, Ginger Sculptor
Another card from our return to Eldraine makes the list, this time from the Wilds of Eldraine Commander cards. What’s so cool about Brenard is that he makes an awesome Golem commander, especially since the Bant color combination covers all the various “Splicer” creatures that boost Golems and create one or more Golems when they enter the battlefield. The fact that Brenard lets you exile and copy a Splicer that dies, except it’s a 1/1 Food Golem artifact creature in addition to its other types, is synergistic gold.
I did a deep dive on Brenard if you’d like to dig deeper.
Commodore Guff
Commodore Guff is a serious deep cut from Magic lore. Players have been clamoring for a Guff commander for years, and 2023 finally made that happen!
What I think is cool about this “planeswalkers matter” planeswalker commander is the restraint shown in making it just three colors rather than five. There are so many planeswalker cards now in Magic that a five-color commander would have just been a pile of the best of the best, but narrowing the choices leads to more interesting deckbuilding decisions. I haven’t built a Commodore Guff deck yet, and I’ve not yet played against one, but I love that this exists and can’t wait for an opponent to play this in a pod sometime in the near future!
Gandalf of the Secret Fire
What’s cool about Gandalf of the Secret Fire is how Gandalf’s ability subverts what you’d expect from a Jeskai spell slinging deck. Many go-to cards that you’d cast on opponents’ turns would be Counterspell and its ilk, but giving Counterspell suspend won’t do much for you.
That’s not to say you can’t play any way to counter your opponents’ spells, but you need to run modal spells like Cryptic Command that can still be useful when cast during your upkeep a few turns later. Building a deck around Gandalf of the Secret Fire really makes you think carefully about your card choices to maximize its power.
Ghalta and Mavren
While a lot of the video-oriented Commander content tends to focus on efficient commanders with a low mana cost, I’ve always thought higher-cost commanders are much cooler and more interesting to build around. Ghalta and Maven costs seven mana, which isn’t unreasonable for a green deck with access to high-quality ramp spells like Skyshroud Claim, and boy does it deliver a lot for that seven mana! You get a 12/12 trampling monster, plus a powerful and flexible ability that triggers whenever you attack, so you don’t have to wait until Ghalta and Mavren itself attacks to get the benefit.
I did a deep dive on Ghalta and Mavren if you want to dig in further.
Gylwain, Casting Director
It’s neat they created a commander that plays with the new Role token Aura mechanic, but what makes Gylwain, Casting Director super-cool is the table talk fun you can have each time Gylwain’s ability triggers.
“Ah, Sovereign Okinec Ahau, I have just the perfect Royal Role for someone of your noble stature!”
“Umbra Mystic, I’ve written this Sorcerer Role especially for you. You’d be perfect, so do tell me you’ll take it?”
“Kodama of the West Tree, I think you’d slay as the Villain of my play. Would you kindly take on this Monster Role?”
Hidetsugu and Kairi
I haven’t really seen Hidetsugu and Kairi much around the Commander tables, but I really love that it exists so that creative deckbuilders can figure out ways to dome people’s life totals for huge amounts when Hidetsugu and Kairi die – often exactly when you want it to! I envision blink shenanigans alongside instant-speed return-from-graveyard effects like Not Dead After All.
Hylda of the Icy Crown
Usually tapping down creatures as a core strategy leads to long, boring games of Commander, so I think it’s really cool the abilities of Hylda of the Icy Crown support going aggressive, something you don’t often see in Azorius. Creating 4/4 creature tokens is no joke, and adding +1/+1 counters to each creature you control can really add up when you’ve got a fair number of creatures. This is a fantastic design that inspired me to build a deck around it, and you can read about it below.
Indominus Rex, Alpha
Sultai word salad creatures united under one toothy-mauled Dinosaur Mutant! Drawing cards, stocking the graveyard with creatures to reanimate later with countless black spells, what’s not to love? This is one of the decks I have in the planning stages, and it’s been fun figuring out the various angles I want to go with it. I recently picked up a cool new art version of Oversold Cemetery from Dominaria Remastered that I think would be perfect in this deck!
Karumonix, the Rat King
I have a fondness for Relentless Rats and have had a Commander deck with a bunch of them in it for years, and I know others love Rat Colony decks. But the decks do run out of steam quickly in the face of mass removal, so I think it’s awesome Rat deck fans have a commander that can help refuel with its enters-the-battlefield trigger. Giving your Rat team toxic 1 provides an interesting poison angle that may or may not warrant some precious slots in your deck.
Kellan, the Fae-Blooded
I think it’s really cool to have an Adventure card you can cast from your command zone, and Kellan makes for an awesome Boros build-around for an Auras- or Equipment-matters Commander deck. I did a deep dive on Kellan you can read about below.
Narci, Fable Singer
First, an aside on Tom Bombadil.
We finally got our five-color Saga commander with Tom Bombadil this year, and if you’d like to read more, I did a deep dive on him below.
But since then, I’ve squared off against Tom Bombadil a few times and I think he’s a bit too good—opponents are highly incentivized to keep him off the battlefield, which can make for a bit of a frustrating experience. Which leads me to turn my eye to another Saga commander released in 2023: Narci, Fable Singer! I know the Saga life drain is threatening as well, but I feel that narrowing the colors to three and not necessarily chaining one Saga after another makes Narci a little less “kill on sight.” What do you think?
Osgood, Operation Double
I’m not familiar enough with Doctor Who to know this character, but as a Commander card I think it’s a very cool build around and can’t wait to see what people come up with! You immediately want to try to make as many non-legendary copies of Osgood as you can, and then you want to cast spells from anywhere other than your hand so you can… investigate? Is that worth all the trouble? Figuring that out is the intriguing part, isn’t it?
Samwise Gamgee
Between The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and Wilds of Eldraine, Food strategies got a huge boost this year, and I think Samwise Gamgee is one of the strongest Food-matters commanders we’ve got. There is no end to the cool historic permanents you can recur with Samwise, including legendary creatures that will also set off his triggered ability to make more Food. I built a Brawl deck on Arena with Samwise, and it’s a lot of fun! I also built a Commander deck that is mostly Halfling typal, and I love it; you can read about it below.
Slimefoot and Squee
Commanders that bypass commander tax can be problematic, but I think the design for Slimefoot and Squee hits that sweet spot. You’ve got to jump through some hoops to get the payoff – get a creature worth animating into your graveyard, get Slimefoot and Squee from your command zone into the graveyard, have a Saproling on the battlefield, have four mana to activate Slimefoot and Squee from the graveyard at sorcery speed, and boom—payoff! I love that you can make the deck as explosive or as durdly as you want – you can try to reanimate some game-ending monsters like Etali, Primal Conqueror and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, or you can just get back a Mycoloth that’s met an untimely demise.
If you want to read more, I did a deep dive on it, linked below.
Susan Foreman
It’s super-cool that they created a card that interacts with the planar deck, and it can live in the command zone, either as the commander or as a doctor’s companion! Fans of Planechase are sure to be excited about this one.
The Master, Multiplied
The Master, Multiplied is a brilliant design; all of the abilities work fantastically together and make for an excellent build-around commander that definitely feels villainous! I just had to build this deck myself, and recently got it sleeved up and ready to villainate. If you want to read more, I wrote a deep dive.
Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch
The cute Myr finally got their commander, and it is cool that it is all five colors, letting you run all five of the mana Myrs. When I wrote my deep dive on Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch, it was incredibly expensive, but it’s good to see the price has come way, way down these days.
Xavier Sal, Infested Captain
Xavier Sal, Infested Captain is another fantastic design that somehow manages to be both niche – needing a deck that cares about both populate and proliferate – and also wide open, since there are so many approaches deckbuilders can take.
The artwork suggests one route, and that’s a Thallid deck filled with Fungus creatures that use spore counters that can be proliferated and create Saproling tokens that can be copied with populate. Of course, making another 1/1 Saproling seems small-ball for Xavier’s ability, so I’d be on the hunt for something that can make much bigger token creatures, such as The Skullspore Nexus, or copy spells like Cackling Counterpart.
Which of the new legends printed this year were your favorites? What cards did I overlook that are on your coolest of 2023 list?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
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!
