Commander Masters brings with it four preconstructed Commander decks. The decks span four of the most popular archetypes: Slivers, Eldrazi, Enchantress and Superfriends. Each deck comes with 10 new cards, but what are the best highlights in each Commander precon? Pour a coffee and take a seat as we review what’s on offer.
SLIVER SWARM
First up, the Slivers deck. Currently for Commanders, The First Sliver and Sliver Overlord give you card advantage, the latter and Sliver Queen are combo outlets, and Sliver Hivelord and Sliver Legion are there to increase staying power and damage.
Sliver Gravemother offers something different; punishment for your opponents who repeatedly wrath your board, with a way to have multiple legendary Slivers in play. While this can be used as a combo card (to do weird stuff in Changeling decks), it’s probably going to head to the 99 of your First Sliver deck, or command your swarm if you’re just getting in.
As far as the other new Slivers, there are two I’m opting for in my build.
Sliver decks have never had the best card draw within their creature base, opting instead for running the best of what’s available in the five colors. This can be expensive, though, so cheaper draw effects are always great.
Capricious Sliver fills that role. It’s on theme, it’s on type and it’s giving you many options each turn.
The other Sliver I have a lot of respect for is Taunting Sliver. If you’ve ever played against Bothersome Quasit, you’ll know exactly why I’m giving this thing a wide berth. It’s eating removal for sure, especially if my opponent is making sliver tokens.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen what mass goad can do, then check out Rachel’s deck on Extra Turns.
The Slivers deck isn’t just about Slivers, though. Well, technically it is, but it also gives options for those of us who love smushing different creature decks together.
The alternate Commander, Rukarumel, might sound like a dessert, but she offers such a breadth of deck building directions that she’s far from a one-note sugar hit. For those who enjoy pick ‘n’ mix decks like The Ur-Dragon or Morophon Changelings, Rukarumel lets you hone in on one creature type while benefiting from all that Slivers have to offer.
She’s Arcane Adaptation in the Command Zone.
Descendants’ Fury makes me wanna build Kykar all over again (and I can, because he has a sick new reprint art in Commander Masters). This can trigger up to three times each combat (once for each opponent) and it lets you dig through your deck to find the goodies. This enchantment has many applications, but what you should be excited about are these:
- Commanders like Kykar, that generate creature tokens from the Command Zone. You can then use these tokens to dig through your deck.
- Reanimator decks. Sure, you can apply reanimator building strategies to popular creature decks, but really this gives you the opportunity to build a toolbox in the same way you’d build around Pyre of Heroes.
I just realized, this is an Angel Reanimator card, isn’t it?
Speaking of Angels, the GW versions will be overjoyed to see some more card advantage for their builds. For the Ancestors can be fired off twice, or just pitched and cast later from the yard.
On average it’ll draw you two cards, but if you build with it in mind, you can have Scroll Rack or Reinforcements turn this into quite the refill. It also fits pretty well in Scry builds, like the Tales of Middle-earth Elf decks.
Titan of Littjara is a new format staple. It’s a six mana hand-refill on a body, every time it enters or attacks, for whatever type-matters deck you want that can play blue.
Dragons? Boom. Spirits? Kapow. Rogues and Ninjas? Slot it right in. This is the big draw of the precon when it comes to new cards.
PLANESWALKER PARTY
Most superfriends decks are Atraxa decks, so it’s nice to see another option — with red, no less.
Commodore Guff is the face-Commander and also an intentional localization joke, because where I come from, Guff means… many things. He provides a win condition in the CZ: draw and burn.
I’m a lot more interested in Leori, though, because we can run ALL of the Chandras, or Ajanis, or whatever and also gain bonus activations. Bonus activations are the best.
Chandra, Legacy ire is another Chandra, but arguably one you should be interested in picking up. Every End Step she turns up the disco inferno, fueled by her superfriends.
Chandra, Legacy of Fire (and I had to look that one up) is the glue that will tie together any Planeswalker deck deep in red. Rituals grant you big turns.
From one mainstay ‘walker to one I’ve never seen before: Vronos, Masked Inquisitor. I had to look this one up, too, and my assumption was correct: he hails from Innistrad. He was unceremoniously slaughtered by Garruk when charged to find him by Avacyn way back when, and it’s cool to see him in card form for the first time.
As a piece for Superfriends decks, I’m quite impressed. He protects the rest of your team in multiple ways, both proactive. Great for protecting the journey to Ultimate.
If you want one card for your Atraxa deck, it’s probably Gatewatch Beacon. It’s Oath of Gideon, kind of, but also a mana rock. It’s unlikely to run out of counters to give provided you keep proliferating.
Onakke Oathkeeper does a lot for two mana. It’s a 0/4 blocker at minimum that taxes opponents for attacking your Planeswalkers. Later in the game you can also use it to reanimate a walker.
It’s possible to pitch it and activate it earlier, too. But given the cost, the benefit here is in instant speed activation and ability to bypass most counterspells. Most walkers will be six mana or less up front, anyway.
ENDURING ENCHANTMENTS
Anikthea, Hand of Erebos doesn’t excite me nearly as much as Narci, Fable Singer. It might be because Narci draws cards and has an in-built clock.
Honestly, she’s pretty dang good, and helps keep the game moving. Anikthea is a little more cerebral and asks you to build around the yard. There’s some interesting builds there for sure, but “card draw… yum”.
Enduring Enchantments has some stellar Constellation/Constellation adjacent cards, with Composer of Spring likely to be the one to watch. It’s a fantastic tool for ramping that gives you something else in the late game. At two mana, it’s hard to say no to.
Ondu Spiritdancer is another copy-effect, like we recently saw on Calix, Guided by Fate. Calix comes down earlier, it’s true, but having more than one of this effect in your deck isn’t exactly bad. And besides, you might not want to play GW.
Of the two “fatties,” I can take or leave enchantment-Ghalta. Demon of Fate’s Design, however, lets you approximate Bolas’ Citadel by casting one enchantment spell per turn with life rather than mana.
It’s also a 6/6 Flampler that borrows from Hoard-Smelter Dragon in a decidedly less impactful way. But putting your own enchantments in the yard is a net positive when playing with Anikthea, Narci, Femeref Enchantress and Starfield of Nyx, so…
A board wipe that keeps on giving, Cacophony Unleashed does require a hefty chunk of mana to get there. Once you do, however, you get to clear the board while leaving yourself a suped-up Angel’s Tomb in play. If you were going to run Extinguish All Hope, you may as well run this instead. Or why not both?
There’s good removal in this deck. Ghoulish Impetus might be the best of the lot. Part pseudo-fog, part removal spell… all value. Slap it on something you’re scared of, watch as creatures trade and then do it all again. Genuinely feel like this one is going to be slept on.
Battle at the Helvault rewards you for running Oblivion Ring effects. To get maximum value out of it, you’re either using EtB creatures or the aforementioned effects, as you have to tuck some of your stuff under it too. That way, you can reset your O-rings and capture whatever comes out of the Helvault again. Getting a token Avacyn is pretty nice, too.
ELDRAZI UNBOUND
Zhulodok ain’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but some much needed card advantage for colorless decks in the CZ is nothing to sniff at. It’s a great Eldrazi Commander, and for big chonky colorless spells, too.
The alternate Commander, Omarthis, is pretty cool, but feels less splashy than Zhulodok for sure.
Rise of the Eldrazi now has a title card, and it’s a treat. You get to sample parts of each of the OG Titans for twelve mana (three of which have to be colorless). It’s big and splashy and terrifying. I love it! You can also cast this frightfully early in a Belbe deck, so there’s that.
Ugin’s Mastery helps with card advantage, too, but helps you get those hard to flip manifests sorted out by way of an attack trigger. It’s probably best in Morph decks, but still fun here.
It’s at least a little more exciting than Skittering Cicada, which is mainly just an additional copy of Urza’s Battlethopter. It does get big though if you stack expensive critters.
Flayer of Loyalties has Backup. Sort of. I mean, it’ll probably get your back up.
Borrow a creature, power boost it, make it horrible to be on the receiving end of for a turn… and when that’s over, you’re staring down a 10/10 Trample Annhilator 2. Yeesh.
Desecrate Reality takes colorless removal up a notch, granting multiple targets and potentially even some reanimation for your seven mana. I like this one a lot.
Calamity of the Titans gives an additional board wipe to colorless decks, which they’ve really needed. I mean, in the traditional sense; you’ve still got Nev’s Disk and Oblivion Stone, sure. But something other than All is Dust and Ugin is very welcome. Perfect for this kind of deck, hard to play outside of it. Winner.
END STEP
The Commander Masters precons house some new designs that are likely to become sought-after classics over time. If you’re not fancying a full deck, perhaps this review has helped clue you in on the exact upgrades you might enjoy playing with.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer, and member of the Commander Advisory Group. 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.