The 10 Best Cards in Aetherdrift Commander Precons

Aetherdrift Commander precons have some eye-catching new Commander cards in, even if you’re not all in on energy or reanimator. Let’s look at 10 of the Best Cards from the Aetherdrift precons, Eternal Might and Living Energy.

Eternal Might and Living Energy release on February 14th, but if you’d rather pick up some singles, then here’s our recommendations for the cards we’re excited about.

10 BEST CARDS FROM AETHERDRIFT COMMANDER

10. LOST MONARCH OF IFNIR

The Lost Monarch of Ifnir is a fantastic draw engine for Zombies decks that also provides some finishing power. Zombie tokens are notoriously easy to block, and in the case of the Decayed ones, don’t stay around to swing a second time. Giving all of your zombies Afflict 3 means that you have guaranteed damage for just swinging out. Either they take the damage, or they lose life blocking. Multiples of three stack up quickly.

Not having to take a creature from the milled cards, and instead choosing anything in your yard? That’s how we like to do it. I love that it’s also a 4/4 for four, and that Ifnir is such a cool part of Amonkhet. 

9. ACCURSED DUNEYARD

Whatever flavor of Zombie deck you have, it can run Accursed Duneyard. The same is true whether you’re on Kykar or Ranar, Edgar or Strefan, or even running a Nazgul deck with Tales of Middle-earth cards. Getting a nice bit of regenerate in the manabase is wonderful boardwipe insurance, and now that you can run Urza’s Cave – a land tutor effect, that puts a land into play! – in your manabase, you can see lands like this more often. 

8. STRIDEHANGAR AUTOMATON

This thing sits on the ground and blocks for days, so that’s already a good start. It makes your Thopters twice as lethal, which is useful for converting them into damage. More importantly, it gives you a bonus Thopter whenever you make any other kind of artifact token. Whether that’s a Clue, Food, or Treasure, or Brudiclad, or Thopter Assembly, or Wurmcoil Engine… once you Thop, you can’t stop. 

7. WIZENED MENTOR

Everyone loves Charismatic Conqueror, except, you know… everyone who has their stuff come in tapped in order to deny you your god-given right to some 1/1 tokens. White weenie has had a lot of love in Commander in the last couple years, and getting another two drop that can start pumping out 1/1 tokens to help you curve out is a real boon. Zombie’s aren’t the most universal creature type in white, but non-Zombie decks can still enjoy the fact that the token itself is white, and a 1/1, so it’ll be useful for anything that requires that – like a Court Street Denizen, for example. 

Besides that, it makes stuff to feed to Skullclamp. What more do you want?

6. AETHERIC AMPLIFIER

We love a good three mana rock here, and Aetheric Amplifier is a pretty flexible one. It fits in an Energy deck, sure, but it can also go into decks with Experience, +1/+1 counters, and all kinds of other counters. Superfriends decks can also use this too as another repeatable way to ultimate Planeswalkers early.

There’s not much more to say here really – it’s a solid rock, and the decks that want it really want it.

5. HASHATON, SCARAB’S FIST

Do Scarabs have fists? I can’t say that I’ve studied God-chimera entomology, because I’m not an expert (which I know is a tautology). 

What I am an expert in, however, is card evaluation. This two-drop is rather excellent. It comes down early, and is unassuming enough to not be removed (except as collateral in a wrath). When you’re ready to, you can discard a fattie and pay {2}{U} to get a 4/4 Zombie token copy of it. This is powerful for a number of reasons, not least because it lets you circumvent paying six, seven, eight or more mana for a haymaker, and instead enjoy its EtBs and other triggers for a smaller investment.

What’s more, it doesn’t exile it from the yard, so you’re free to cast Reanimate or Animate Dead or other variants to fish the original out when you want, too. This is such a sweet build around, and honestly really splashable in reanimator decks in general – or decks like Raffine, that Connive a lot.

4. PEEMA TRAILBLAZER

Peema Trailblazer is a monster of a three drop. Chances are, you can swing with this at someone to get the ball rolling, on curve, and in the right deck, you’re easily able to buff it with more +1/+1 counters to get the job done. The exhaust ability is really strong; a hand refill that costs zero is always good. 

Now, your opponents can respond to you paying six energy, but given you can do this at any time, you can choose when the best moment is to cash it in. At least if they remove the Trailblazer, it still checks for your other creature’s greatest power, so provided it isn’t your only creature, you’ll still draw.

3. AETHERFLUX CONDUIT

Hey, it’s a piece of Aetherflux Technology. You guessed right, too – it does something to do with the number 50.

Aetherflux Conduit, for the low-low price of 50 energy, lets you draw seven and cast any number of spells from your hand for free. Now, notice this is time-gated as an ability – after you draw 7, you get the opportunity to free cast stuff. This isn’t “until the end of the turn”.

Still, it’s a really strong ability, but not even the reason I’m excited by this card. The Conduit’s main attraction, to me, is generating oodles of energy. Getting energy for each mana you spend is an insanely good rate, and it’s a good reason for this on a six drop – because getting that kinda generation early is kinda nuts. By the time you can drop this, you’ll have engines in play to take advantage of it. What a card!

2. SAHEELI, RADIANT CREATOR 

Saheeli, Radiant Creator is one of the more interesting energy Commanders for me, because she’s in many ways not quite so parasitic as the other designs. A Saheeli deck is still going to want to go deep on energy, sure, but it can also afford to splash for the best kinds of permanents that can be copied. As we’ve learned with Bello from BLC, getting smacked with chonky artifacts and enchantments hurts. These 5/5s can be a copy of any permanent, and hit like a truck.

Copying the right permanent can unlock some sweet synergies and degenerate lines of play.

1. RENEWED SOLIDARITY

Renewed Solidarity is such a monster pickup for white token decks, and it’s not even funny. A three mana anthem that gives you bonus tokens for any tokens you made in your turn that survived to the end step? Sign me up.

While it’s not guaranteed to get all your Humans off of Adeline, due to them being chump blocked – and you’ll be cashing in the tokens from Kykar to cast spells, more than likely – this is still a super strong enchantment that many, many decks can capitalize on.

For all of the decks that have tokens coming in swinging, you can still assemble the wombo-combo of Renewed Solidarity + Iroas, God of Victory, or Reconnaissance, or Dolmen Gate, anyways. And let’s be honest – a 2/1 is harder to chump than a 1/1, so there’s that too.

END STEP

The Aetherdrift Commander decks will be here before you know it, and it pays to be read up on what’s included so you can spend wisely. Only interested in a few bits? Singles might be the best option. I think I’ll pick up a Renewed Solidarity at least, but is it bad that the Lost Monarch of Ifnir is making me wanna rebrew Zombies?!