Assassin’s Creed Commander Set Review

Universes Beyond: Assassins’ Creed releases July 5th, and you’ll be able to get your hands on cards celebrating the rich lore and tropes of Assassin’s Creed. Which cards are worth a look for your Commander decks? Kristen has a Commander Set Review to fill you in. 

You can find other recent Commander set reviews here:

• Modern Horizons 3
• Thunder Junction
• Karlov Manor
• Lost Caverns of Ixalan
• Doctor Who
• Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth

UNIVERSES BEYOND: ASSASSIN’S CREED

According to Wizards’ Loremaster Jay Annelli, the set features cards from across the main games, with cards from Chronicles games featuring too. The rough breakdown is as follows:

The set isn’t designed for draft, and so the heavier focus on Humans and Equipment means you’re unlikely to find a card for a Dragons deck here. It does have a lot of Assassins, though… plus some Pirates, Warriors and Knights (Templar). 

ACR SET REVIEW: WHITE

Caduceus, Staff of Hermes, passed to Kassandra in Odyssey, allows her to build-her-own Serra Ascendant. The stats this gives you for the mana investment are honestly really good. Sure, it won’t save you in the late game nearly as well, but you’re running equipment tutors, right? Equipment toolbox is a thing. 

Fall of the First Civilization is a really sweet wrath. You drop this on turn 3 and immediately top up your hand (and so does the player who is also trailing behind those with Sol Ring starts). You then exile a Sol Ring or similar early drop problem, before simplifying the board, and slowing down bursty starts. If you’re brave enough to play this, you will find it performs well.

Haystack is an absolute flavor win. As a top down design, I can’t think of a better way to communicate this goofy part of Assassin’s Creed. As a card? Yeah, it’s also just a really powerful effect for equipment decks. Repeatable phasing out to keep your yoked up attacker in the game is great.

I’m not sure the “modern day” part of AC has as many fans as the epic historical settings, but whether you’re a fan of Layla Hassan or not, she’s a solid roleplayer in any historic themed deck. Mardu and Abzan legends matter or Equipment, it matters little. 

Senu is a nice little bit of value on a decent body to equip things to. I like it a lot in equipment decks, for the same reason I like putting swords on Giada, Font of Hope. One nice thing I like about its card advantage ability is that it comes in attacking, not tapped and attacking, meaning if it has haste you can scoot it off once more after using it to chump block with. 

Tax Collector is a nice piece of soft-stax that gets better in decks that can flicker or make token copies of it, and also play at tables where the effect is in demand. This is a smaller subset of tables than the average card, but I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t see any play at all. 

Templar Knight is white’s Shadowborn Apostles/Dragon’s Approach. If you wanted to build that deck in white, now you can! Tutoring out Legendary artifacts sounds pretty fun, and I think you can make some decent brews with this. My only concern is that it lacks the tutoring or card advantage of black or red decks so might fall a little less consistent. Hard to say without solid playtesting though.

It’s a hard life reviewing Magic cards, but I will do What Must Be Done. Incidentally, this card is actually pretty sweet for Enchantress decks, or decks like Dihada that want to reanimate Historic things anyways. It’s a costlier reanimatiion spell that has a wrath stapled to it. Now will you run more wraths? Pretty please?

ACR SET REVIEW: BLUE

It feels like Arna Kennerud was in development alongside this set, because she’s getting hooked up. Assassin Gauntlet is fantastic in a deck that wants to go wide with equipped creatures or otherwise use small to medium sized bodies, like Assassin’s or other types grouped as Outlaws. As previously mentioned, you want this in your Arna Kennerud deck, because you get to tap stuff down every time she triggers and makes more Gauntlets. Wild.

Ballad of the Black Flag is a solid self-mill piece in a deck that wants to have one big stormy turn. Much the like sea itself, the ebb and flow of this card will not betray how much of a roleplayer it is until your opponents have played against. Not the most universal card, but again – solid. 

Become Anonymous is possible thanks to today’s sponsor, NordVPN is another really cool top-down design. It’s very much a tricksy kinda blue card – incidentally, my favorite type of blue card. What you want to be using this for is either top of library manipulation first, or as a “protection” spell for a key piece that gets targeted by removal. 

Crystal Skull asks you if you’d consider a four-mana rock if it also gave you Future Sight for an arguably easy to build around theme. If the answer is yes, then get ready to pop off. A great pickup for dedicated artifact decks. 

Desynchronization is a reasonable include if you’re in blue and either all in on artifacts or legends-matter (or I guess if you’re that one Atraxa Sagas player). It’s a relatively low cost to bounce token armies and enchantments, two things blue decks sometimes struggle with. It’s very meta dependent, though, and might be pretty dead versus some decks.

Eagle Vision is solid card draw. Two mana for three cards is going to be easy to achieve most of the time, so I’m all in on it.

Leonardo da Vinci is a very strong mono-blue Commander option. Getting to cheat in expensive artifacts like Darksteel Forge and Akroma’s Memorial ahead of curve is exciting, and the real payoff comes when you opt to turn them all into Juggernauts.

I think this will be one of the more popular Commanders of the set.

ACR SET REVIEW: BLACK

Desmond Miles is the original pilot of the Animus technology. As another top-down design, it works really well – delving into the past. As a roleplayer in an Assassin’s deck, you can’t really go wrong – he’ll connect with some regularity. Still, it’s a guy in a hoodie, which makes me chuckle.

Hemlock Vial is a black egg, which we don’t get very often. They do usually take a thousand-years, after all 😉

In truth I see this as being viable in some shells that care about pinging and giving creatures deathtouch. It’ll enable Piru, the Volatile to reach past that initial 7 damage, for instance. 

Oh hey, it’s another equipment for Arna Kennerud. In truth, it’s always cool to see “colored” equipments, especially outside of Boros. This one feels steep for five mana, but I think it’s largely worth it. 

Restart Sequence is a card well worth running if you can reliably turn it on. Plenty of black Commanders want to be attacking, and so in decks as varied as Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor to Yuriko it’ll find homes. Two mana for that effect is really good.

The Revelations of Ezio is solid in an Assassin’s deck. It charts the story of Ezio well, in my opinion, and is a must-include if you’re building the five color Ezio, or a mono-black or Dimir variant.

Roshan, Hidden Magister is one of the more exciting payoffs in the set, especially if your commander is the Karlov Manor Etrata. It’s been a while since the likes of Kadena got a new card, and this should slot in nicely. 

ACR SET REVIEW: RED

Slicer has proven to be a formidable option to get life totals moving, even seeing play at cEDH tables. How good is Alexios? Well, the fact it’s a little slower to come down means it’s maybe less good in the Command Zone for cEDH min-maxing, but it will see play in the 99s of both that and Winota, and its still a very viable option for more casual tables. 

Hidden Footblade features Shao Jun from AC Chronicles. It’s also the latest in a long line of effects that grant haste for one mana. I like this one quite a bit, as it’ll function like a combat trick a lot of the time, and it does just enough to compete with Lavaspur Boots and Rabbit Battery to be worth a look. 

Cheap extra combats are always worth a look, and a three mana option that untapped all of your creatures and not just the one like Seize the Day is one I’m interested in. It’s easy to make treasures by attacking or dealing damage these days, so a three mana extra combat is actually more powerful than it looks.

The Spear of Leonidas all but has “Partner with Kassandra”. In a vacuum, it’s a solid set of options for three mana, particularly as you don’t have to deal damage to get those options. I like this a lot more with free-equips and/or with Kassandra. 

ACR SET REVIEW: GREEN

I was initially a little low on this card, but after chatting with some friends of my discord, I think it’s a little better than when I first evaluated it. I think it’ll excel in decks like Lathiel or other Selesyna lifegain decks, and is worth a look in those builds. 

Aveline de Grandpre is weirdly a Golgari card, I am only now noticing. Which means she shouldn’t even be here. But I’m leaving her here, to make a point and to remind players that she is, in fact, not mono green. 

As a card? She’s great for decks that care about deathtouch, which weirdly there are a bunch of in mono-green. Sorry Fynn. 

Hunter’s Bow is a two mana removal spell that leaves behind some reach and ward. When judged like that, the card is actually quite good. Ward {2} does a lot of heavy lifting, so if you run a lot of fatties and lose to the Angels or Dragons player, this is the card for you. 

If you’re still having trouble in your meta dealing with flyers, then suiting up your Palazzo Archers with some +1/+1 counters is an excellent deterrent. It becomes akin to a Sphere of Safety in a sense, and if your opponents do spend a removal spell on it, you’re probably okay with that, because your more dangerous haymaker or Commander emerges unscathed. 

Do you attack a lot with your Commander? Well, here’s a strictly better Cultivate. Much like how Entish Restoration is a better version of similar effects if you’re enabling Ferocious, Viewpoint Synchronization just seems a really obvious include. 

Did it need to be printed? Not really. Has it been long enough that cultivate can be power-crept? Indisputably. Is it healthy to have cards that feel like auto-includes? Not really. Are you going to play it anyways? Yes.

ACR SET REVIEW: MULTICOLOR

So I want to clear something up immediately, and that’s that despite being a 2/2, Kassandra is really quite good. Think of her as a card draw anthem, and a nice free tutor for a way to double that draw, because that’s what she’ll do most often. I find it hard to review her without the context of The Spear of Leonidas as well, and I think as much as it feels like the Spear should have auto-equipped, I think it’d be tough to justify her at even four mana for that much value. Even better than she looks. 

Sokrates, Athenian Teacher is essentially a way to fog damage at the cost of a lot of cards. Giving opponents cards will no doubt give them answers in the end, but in the right build, this could be a tricky piece of a bigger plan. 

After Odyssey comes Origins, and we get Bayek and Aya. Bayek is a powerful team-wide doublestrike anthem for historic creatures, and what’s cool is he can be a combat trick. Aya meanwhile has solid keywords and produces tokens, which in the right deck can provide just what you need. I’ll be trying her in Aurelia, the Law Above. 

Cleopatra is comin’ at ya, along with a whole host of legendary creatures on the beat down. She triggers when any legendary with counters dies, meaning you can of course play Generous Patron and use her Allies trigger politically. Solid card, honestly. 

Basim is a Hidden One, and can’t be blocked on a turn where you cast a Historic Spell, plus you get to draw a card. If you’re running a Yuriko list with a lot of legendaries or rocks, or you’re playing “jam all the Assassins into one deck” then this is a solid card for that strategy. He also makes a weirdly good Dimir equipment Commander.

Basim features in Valhalla, where he meets the protagonist, Eivor. Eivor in game here is a real chonker, especially with haste. The Synergy here is for Sagas, and so the upper end of the deck is kinda capped right now. That said, You can still build a solid Sagas deck here, and the art by Justyna Dura is awesome.

You’re essentially getting three build-around Naya legends for the Sagas build, with Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe and Havi, the All-Father slotting right into this build also. Sigurd is sweet, and might be better in the CZ than Eivor in all honesty. Havi meanwhile offers a recursion engine. They’re all decent, but I think I like Sigurd in the zone. 

Altair is basically the Mardu option for building your Assassins-matter deck. It’s quite all in, given you’re exiling your creatures from the yard, but I feel like it’s going to be the kind of deck where you jam extra combats, Roaming Throne, and make some nonlegendary copies of Altair, and go off. 

The headline Commander from the set is Ezio Auditore da Firenze. A five color Assassin that doesn’t really feel like it’s a 5c card, which is perfect design, IMO. The flavor is of Ezio building the Brotherhood, and it’s on point in my opinion. This’ll be the most popular Commander from the set, and it’s easy to see why. It’s Ezio, and it has a cool trigger that allows you to assassinate another player. 

Shao Jun is not from the upcoming AC: Shadows. She’s not a Ninja, for starters, but more importantly, she’s from a Chronicles game set in China. She’s also really cool, and I kinda wanna build around her? An Izzet treasures/artifacts build, with some Dragons and Equipment, plus Shao Jun in the zone? I’m into it.

Avast! It’s Edward Kenway, here to tempt the Admiral Beckett Brass players into playing with a Universes Beyond Commander. I think this one looks like a lot of fun, and I don’t usually enjoy Grixis decks. This kind of deck does kinda build itself, but that doesn’t mean its always Linear. This is a casual Commander with a casual payoff. 

Adewale, Breaker of Chains feels like one of those sweet build-around Limited cards. As it stands, he’ll be a great blocker in your Vehicle led decks that also crews like a champ. 

Jackdaw is kinda absurd. You can essentially discard your hand and draw 6+ cards with ease, and if you’re making treasures or other artifact tokens, that could be as many as 10+ cards. Just… wow. 

Mary Read and Anne Bonny function great in the 99 of a pirates deck, but are also superb Commanders in their own right. If you build your deck right, it shouldn’t be an issue discarding the right card types, and I’m convinced this has combo potential. A quick check tells me it does.

Haytham Kenway is a Knight lord for decks like Council of Four and Sidar Jabari which also tucks one creature from each opponent under it until it leaves play. Haytham might well be one of the most powerful cards in the set, I’ll be honest. It’s just so much value.

Shay Cormac is also pretty strong. Shay is the first card that can remove all of the protection abilities including Ward from opposing permanents until the end of the turn. It also provides more synergy for decks using bounty counters which can improve the card draw in those decks. Altogether a great card for one mana. 

Arno is fine, I guess, and goes in 5c Ezio, Altair, or in non-ACR Rakdos decks.

Ratonhnhaké꞉ton (pronounced like this) is AC3’s protagonist, and makes for quite the fearsome equipment Commander. A different strategy than the more brash and in your face Boros style, you instead lie in wait, sculpting the perfect moment for a player assassination. I love the flavour of it and how it meets gameplay. Sword of Hearth and Home gets a lot better here. 

Evie and Jacob Frye have Partner with, which is cool if you want to run them in the Command Zone. Together they build a graveyard based recursion engine, one that can slot into existing decks to thanks to curving Evie into Jacob fairly freely. The extra rider of providing unblockable with Evie takes these from medium to firmly playable.

Reaching the present day, we have Shaun & Rebecca, Agents. They pair with the Animus in much the same way that Kassandra pairs with the Spear of Leonidas. The long and short of it is that Shaun & Rebecca are Bant Lazav, and function in a very similar way, as long as they have access to the Animus. I think that’s a strategy worth exploring, don’t you?

Outside of being played with the future support agents, The Animus is a reasonably costed piece of graveyard hate that can give you extra value. It’s like Mimic Vat, in a way, but exchanging the token making for continual grindy control over graveyards. 

Bleeding Effect is named for the effect this set is having on my wallet that people who use the Animus experience. In practice, this is a Kathril or Akroma piece that makes your Entombs and Buried Alives that much better. Using the “big flapper” Zetalpa as an anthem piece is neat. 

ACR SET REVIEW: THE REST

Capitoline Triad is pretty powerful, and I can see this costing very close to free with little effort. Being able to get an emblem after self-milling is a neat new way to do it, and in the right deck, this is easy to achieve. 

The iconic Apple of Eden is kinda like a mix of Thoughtseize and Memory Jar, letting you cast from the opponent’s hand. In practice the effect is pretty underwhelming for a casual environment, but I think in practice this could potentially be a disruption piece in high level play. Maybe a little too expensive for cEDH, but you never know. 

Move over Trailblazer’s Boots. Get your Ezio cosplay and replica Bilbo’s Ring, and you’ll never be blocked again. All jokes aside, Brotherhood Regalia is very good, and likely to be a mainstay in the format going forward. 

Speaking of cards likely to stick around in the format, Excalibur, Sword of Eden seems pretty cracked from my testing so far. In decks that jam historic stuff it’s virtually always going to cost between free and {3} mana, and getting such a large power buff without taking the plummet from Colossus Hammer is a strong proposition. Really good in Kassandra, too. 

Hidden Blade is a neat combat trick that sticks around after. We’re getting a lot of cheap Flash equipment with “until end of turn” effects recently, so consider how cost reducers for artifacts factor into the equation, because that can turn them from meh to medium pretty quick. Add a payoff like Eivor Battle-Ready or Arna Kennerud and you’re cooking. 

Mjolnir’s next wielder might well be Hylda of the Icy Crown, but I think there’s something to be said about putting it in decks that appreciate that extra level of “burn”, playing cards like Balor. It’s not just a tap-creatures-down kinda card, but with Equip 4, you have to be pretty in on tapping stuff down to justify it. 

Smoke Bomb is another banger when it comes to form meeting flavor. Dropping this ensures that your stuff survives, and provides a nice little buff on the way out. It’ll be good in Voltron decks for sure. It’s also anti-Nadu tech. 

Staff of Eden, Vault’s Key, is a sick little card draw engine for theft and cast-opponent’s-stuff decks. It even steals something when it enters. I see this being pretty damn playable, especially in versions of those decks that make treasures, can ramp with green, or can do big mana stuff with devotion and cards like Cabal Coffers. 

Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine is perhaps the most sci-fi piece of First Civilization tech in Assassin’s Creed. Here, it acts as a way to get free creatures from the yard to play. Is it a little slow? Yes, probably. Does it synergize with decks that care about cards being put into exile? Also, yes. Laelia, the Blade Reforged would enjoy this one, among others. 

Abstergo Entertainment is the new Scavenger Grounds, and for one more mana, it returns a card before it pops off. In practice I think it’ll be hard to hold up that extra mana, but stranger things have happened. It’s still worth a look, IMO. 

ACR STARTER DECKS

Most of the cards in the starter decks are understandably lower-powered, but there are some hits. Eivor, Battle-Ready has a really hot attack trigger that’ll have you scrambling for your Bloodforged Battle-Axe, Arterial Alchemy and Bludgeon Brawl; if you run Eivor in the 99, the Raven Clan War-Axe will also help pull them out.

White decks not in red get an Inventory Management effect in Battlefield Improvisation. It’s not as powerful (lacking split second, and requiring attacking) but it’s still really solid.

Surtr, Fiery Jotun feels pretty damn powerful all things considered. Lightning Bolt for casting a historic spell? I can see this getting out of hand quickly. While the obvious “combo” is to run something like Ornithopter and a way to bounce it back to hand, this will still do a lot of work in legendaries-matter shells like Dihada or Djeru and Hazoret. 

Escarpment Fortress is a great pickup for your Walls deck, but it’s also not bad at all for white go-wide decks. Extra card draw is always appreciated in mono-white, and with cards like Pearl Medallion and Defiler of Faith in your deck, you can bring the initial cost right down. 

Bureau Headmaster is a stunning little uncommon for Boros Equipment decks, and I’d be hard pressed to find a deck that doesn’t want to run this. Cost reduction on cast and equip is virtually unheard of, and on a two-drop no less. 

Ezio, Blade of Vengeance is a solid card draw engine for those Assassin decks. While it’s coming down a turn later than a Coastal Piracy, it’s a really chunky 5/5 deathtouch, which is very hard to block or deal with in combat. It’s also an Ezio for Dimir Assassins, which is perhaps more key. 

Achilles is one of the better Assassin lords in the set, with Menace coming in handy to trigger additional instances of Freerunning if you’re on 5C Ezio. 

Finally, Rooftop Bypass generates Assassin tokens with Menace, which is perfect for triggering Freerunning, and also for Ninjutsu, a mechanic that pairs well with the Assassin card type in general. 

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

And there we have it – the Assassin’s Creed universe, on Magic cards! I think they did a really good job with the top down designs, and the artwork is also fantastic for the most part. There are plenty of cards here worth a brew – what’s got you fired up?