Mystery Booster Commander Edition is on the horizon, and it brings with it a whole Smörgåsbord of new Commander options. There are dozens to choose from, but these are the ones that have us putting our brewing caps on. Here are three new Mystery Booster Commanders you could have a lot of fun with.
MYSTERY BOOSTER COMMANDER EDITION
Myster Booster Commander Edition is a new update to Mystery Booster, and it’ll start rolling out at MagicCon and Festival in a Box later this year. It features a bunch of new cards for Commander, including some rather interesting Rulebreaker Commanders. We have a deep dive on the product and the Rulebreaker mechanic, so head on over to catch up.
Today, let’s look in more detail at some of the regular new Commanders in the set.
TSAGAN, RAIDER WARLORD
The first one we’re excited for is an Arena Alchemy card. Tsagan, Raider Warlord uses the Start your engines! mechanic from Aetherdrift. You get to buff your board when it attacks for each creature you control with first or double strike, and while you have Max Speed, Tsagan itself gains deathtouch while the rest of your board all get first strike.
Cheap evasive bodies with relevant keywords are the order of play here, along with ways to generate value once they get stuck in there. Thankfully you can get all of this and more in Mardu, and there are plenty of fantastic creatures you can curve out with that meet the criteria.
Getting up to Max Speed require getting in there for damage, and while doing that reliably mostly comes down to turning sideways quickly ASAP, you can sneak damage through in other ways – from Far Fortune, End Boss’ attack trigger to just dropping a Sand Scout and getting a dual-colored Desert to ping an opponent, increasing your speed.
Your reward for going deep on this angle of attack is getting to play keyword soup payoffs. Odric, Lunarch Marshal is the obvious one – and the one that glues the deck together. Alongside him you get to use the fantastic Bleeding Effect from ACR, which provides keyword sharing to your board even when your creatures bite the dust. Don’t underestimate how deathtouch plays well with first strike, either – All-Out Assault finds a solid home here.
Tsagan looks like a really fun aggro deck, and one that we think is gonna end up underrated.
SELENIA, THE CURSED HEART
Selenia, the Cursed Heart is a revisit to Selenia, Dark Angel that uses some amazing Quinton Hoover artwork. It’s also a really interesting exercise in figuring out how to end life totals quickly.
Orzhov is already the color pair with mastery over life and death, and this flying lifelink Angel says that when she dies, you curse an opponent to lose twice the life they ordinarily would if they would lose life. If you’re tired of the two-card combo of Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood, then this might be a fun one to figure out. You’re essentially dropping a fast-acting Wound Reflection on an opponent when Selenia dies.
Your deck will need to be full of sacrifice outlets like Ashnod’s Altar and Warren Soultrader, but also ways to get creatures back quickly, like Malakir Rebirth and Feign Death. Putting those effects in the manabase – in Phyrexian Tower, and High Market – and onto repeatable effects is the way to go. Nim Deathmantle is a little expensive, but Resurrection Orb is a new riff on it worth a look.
Where this deck functionally ends up is as a less combo-centric Ratadrabik deck with a much more focused approach to ending the game. With all of the tech you can put in to keep Selenia cycling in and out of the yard, you can run other creatures that love that same tech: Kokusho and Junji being two of the best options.
VENSER, VISIONARY TRACKER
The issue with UW flicker decks is that they very often end up being played as very slow incremental control decks. Where a Jund deck like Henzie seeks to snap off as much value as possible – getting ETBs, Attack and Dies triggers, and combat damage – a UW flicker deck plays less of its cards at sorcery speed, and most of the permanents it’s seeking to flicker are a lot smaller, presenting less damage. You also don’t get the burn and lifedrain you would in reanimator, either, making these wins feel like they take way too long… well, at least to the rest of your pod.
This is why I feel like Venser, Visionary Traveler is an exciting option for UW flicker decks. Those creatures coming back into play get two +1/+1 counters, which increases your clock considerably. Your flyers – Flickerwisp, Brago, Restoration Angel – all suddenly hit for four, five or even six damage, which translates into much faster kills.
While the best options remain Ghostly Flicker, Ephemerate et al, you do have more reason to look at Teferi’s Time Twist and Semester’s End in a deck like this. Furthermore, you have both the Ozolith and Resourceful Defense to keep those counters around before dumping them onto a sizeable threat to try and end a player.
You’d maybe be surprised to find that there’s a push to marry up UW with modified in recent times, and between SP//dr, Piloted by Peni, Iron Man, Armored Avenger and Biorganic Carapace, there are plenty of ways to combine those counters with UW flicker goodness.
Oh, and did we mention Venser can bounce a permanent of each opponent for his {-2} ability? That’s pretty sweet, too.
END STEP
There are so many cool new legends to think about with Mystery Booster Commander Edition, and today we’ve covered just a handful of the ones that have our brains ticking over. Which ones are you most excited to build?
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.