Kristen Gregory’s Commander Class of 2023

CAG member Kristen sits down to talk about the decks she’s built, unbuilt, and upgraded through the year. How many will make the cut for a new year of Commander?

Last year I put up my Commander Class of 2022. It was a fun look at the decks I’d tried to build and make work through the year. Looking back can teach you lessons about your decks, the format, and yourself. What makes you inspired and what grows uninspiring can inform your next project. Which decks earned their place? Which left me yearning? Which left me burned, with lessons learned? 

COMMANDERS THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT

Shalai got deconstructed for a fairly innocuous reason, all told. I’ve been playing Angels decks since I picked up the format, and I just needed a break. It’s kinda funny that we haven’t gotten a dedicated multicolor Angels Commander since Wizards’ big push to deliver tailor-made Commanders, with Giada being the only real nod to mono-white. 

Shalai is a fine Commander, but because she doesn’t provide card advantage or mana/cost reducing, games can be pretty feast or famine. As soon as I needed a few cards from her 99 for other builds, I felt it was a fine time to retire her, for now. I’m confident we’ll get a new Angels Commander soon. I’m hoping for Naya, though I’d accept a Selesnya or Boros one. 

Liesa was a fun build, and I really enjoyed casting my favorite magic card – Living Death – as often as possible. Cards like Prowling Geistcatcher even allowed me to pop off and win in other people’s turns. So, why the deconstruction?

Well, there’s only so many times you can play a five mana Commander that doesn’t replace itself, and acts as a lightning rod for removal. Too many games felt like a tempo loss given opponents were often incentivized to get rid of her when she hit the table. At that point, it’s time to consider whether there’s a Commander worth running in place of her that can provide you with consistency.

Considering I already had Hofri Reanimator, a deck with similar play patterns, I decided to just retire the deck until I found a new reanimator Commander that spoke to me. 

Speaking of similar play patterns: Sisay. There’s only so many times you can play a Sisay toolbox before realizing that you reach for the same tools every single time. I’m not sure whether it was my playgroups or the state of the format, but I also found that the redundancy I’d built into that toolbox was very rarely needed; there wasn’t enough incoming removal or disruption to warrant so many failsafes.

Now, legendary decks are super fun, and I ended up building Dihada at the end of last year. Turns out they want quite a few of the same cards. I think we have a Highlander situation in my deck drawer!

Ah, Miirym. A true feast or famine style deck. Miirym, when it worked, was a force to be reckoned with. It could dominate a game, make oodles of dragons, burn life totals, and was otherwise a really good time. Until it wasn’t.

Games with Miirym ended up either dominating the pod, or not doing much at all. A six-mana must-answer Commander is a huge time-walk, and waiting to deploy it when you had 7-9 mana total in order to cast interaction and protection could sometimes mean the game was over before you got to pop off. What’s more, the quantity of ramp needed to secure reliable turn 5 Miirym deployments meant that sometimes all you drew was ramp, which led to non-games. A shame, but I like to feel active in games, even if I lose them. 

Cosima Landfall was exceedingly fun to pilot, but all told, she took too long to win games. My janky combos that often required three or four cards to instigate required a control gameplan. This control gameplan was fun for me, but less fun for the pod. Whilst it’s true that I could have solved this issue in a number of ways – not least by adding two-card combos instead – that wasn’t really what I was looking to do. 

When you combine this with the fact that the deck was always trying to put a square landfall peg in a round mono-blue hole? Well, the magic eventually wears off, and you end up realizing it’s better to not go down with the ship. I did consider, for a moment, changing her to a Voltron-esque build, but decided against it. 

Massacre Girl is an interesting tale, and one I go into in more depth in my Defense of Dictate of Erebos article. In short, she became a sticking point in pre-game chats that often had players adjusting what they wanted to play in order to not get “screwed”. In some regular playgroups we could engineer less touchy pod-mates, and more opportunities to play her, but in untrusted play, too many players would try and game the situation by putting away tokens decks. 

Turns out people hate a board wipe in the Command Zone. Who woulda thunk? 

Ur-Dragon Changelings was always a cute deck, but eventually the novelty wore off. If you haven’t built a changeling deck with fun payoffs and enablers, I do recommend it. For me, however, the magic wore off, and I found myself unwilling to constantly monitor it for upgrades – and unwilling to try a rebuild, too. 

THE BOROS RENAISSANCE 

I’ve always loved playing Boros in Commander, and while Aurelia remains a little expensive at six mana, I’m always game to play new Boros strategies. A number of them piqued my interest this year, but in order to brew them, two more of my decks had to take a break. 

One of my older decks, Sylvia & Khorvath bowed out in order to free up my card pool for brewing. It’s a deck I might revisit in the future, particularly as new powerful dragons are printed all the time. It also shared a lot of design space and play-patterns with a certain former Planeswalker that was released this year…

Duke Ulder was super fun, but in some ways, he suffered similar issues to Miirym. Unless you could keep the cards coming, you’d eventually lose tempo recasting him, and struggle to stay in a game. What’s more, Myriad proved to be a double-edged sword. 

Early in the game, hitting everyone proved to be detrimental to forming alliances or making deals. It also put everyone’s back up, and led to more removal than seemed fair being aimed at Duke or the stronger bodies he was capable of granting Myriad to. Later, Myriad gets weaker, so the deck felt like it struggled to close. All in all, the deck just didn’t do enough to warrant a long-term service. 

Now, onto the Boros decks I built this year. You can actually read more in-depth about these decks, and see decklists, in this Boros article. 

Agrus Kos is a lot of fun to play. Thundering Raiju gets the job done, and surprises opponents with just how quickly math can kill. He took a lot of includes from my Duke Ulder deck, and ended up on a Soldier sub theme. Defiler of Faith was a powerhouse for the deck, and the Backup cards from March of the Machine took the deck to new heights. 

Ultimately, I ended up deconstructing Agrus. While he’s a supremely interesting design, he feels like a design from a bygone-era – as do many of the Commanders in Jumpstart 2022. Four mana at baseline, requiring a board, and requiring mana for his ability? It’s a huge ask in Boros, easy to disrupt, and often just one too many hoops to jump through when other players are drawing cards for breathing. 

Neyali is probably the best Boros go-wide/tokens deck available. She’s a potent Commander, offering some of the best card advantage in RW. You can build up your board with low-investment pieces and assemble a win condition from forgettable commons and uncommons, and she synergizes with game-ending cards like Strixhaven Stadium and White Suns’ Twilight – a combo that can remove multiple opponents in one fell swoop. 

She also picked up multiple cards over the year, from Forth Eorlingas! to Song of Totentanz. Ultimately, I deconstructed her, in pursuit of another token deck. This year more than ever I found myself not wanting to have archetype crossover in my decks, instead opting for a more flexible approach. If I wanted to try a new Commander in the same design space, then I’d just deconstruct and start fresh. It was pretty freeing and an approach I think I’ll stick with going forward. 

Ferrous didn’t last long, but was an experiment in light of format shifts. Due to the prevalence of single-target removal and dearth of boardwipes in many of my playgroups, I built a Commander with natural immunity to popular removal spells, and with the advantage engine of spawning 4/4s every time I cast a spell.

I’m happy to report that Rokiric worked as intended, and I’d recommend him as a Commander if you have a playgroup that doesn’t play enough wraths. Experiment over, he was immediately retired. This is the year of Boros, baby, and I had more decks to get through. 

Nahiri is one of my favorite characters, and I leapt on the chance to build her right away. I found the deck to be a blast to play, and it unlocked a different approach to equipment, utilizing Living Weapon equipment to go wide, and with Nahiri as a finisher. I wax lyrical about her here, so I’ll just leave a few observations before we move on. 

Scroll Rack is a trap, and a one-off Brainstone felt better; Sensei’s Divining Top can also be a trap, so don’t spend too much on spinning it. Spells from exile like Delayed Blast Fireball are phenomenal, and the thematic include of Declaration in Stone led me to realize it’s really good in the format right now. 

OTHER FRESH DECKS

I didn’t build only Boros decks this year.

Celestine was a sweet build, but ultimately felt a little slow and cumbersome for the average table I played at. She only really started to get going when games felt like they were beginning to wrap, and I think that’s partly due to mono-white still lacking impressive ways to “turn the corner” and enough reliable card draw that doesn’t warp deckbuilding. 

Kels was intended to be a theme deck with a somewhat narrow theme: sexy ladies doing crimes. In the end, Kels lacked synergy with the rest of the 99. I swapped her over for Rilsa Rael, Kingpin, before deciding that Marchesa, the Black Rose could shore up my card advantage and recursion, while letting me play Laurine, the Diversion and Undercity Uprising. 

Adeline took a lot of cards from my Neyali build, and it was a treat to see how the likes of Myrel, Shield of Argive and Beregond of the Guard enabled boards to get out of control quickly. The deck thrived on card draw, and when you chain pieces like Skullclamp and Chivalric Alliance, it all comes together. However, mulliganing well is a big part of playing Adeline, because if you run out of gas you can just fold. 

My final new build of the year was Sarkhan, Soul Aflame. In many ways, he feels like a fairer version of Miirym. The ceiling is lower, but the early and mid game is less variable, and you can leverage some of the more interesting dragons and clones to make a dragon deck that’s a little lower to the ground. If that makes sense. 

I’ve enjoyed this deck a lot, and I’m going to continue tweaking it. Kindred decks usually end up mainstays. 

COMMANDER CLASS OF 2023

Of the decks I’ve built this year, only Nahiri, Forged in Fury and Sarkhan, Soul Aflame graduate to 2024. I’ll likely tinker with Marchesa the Black Rose a little too, but I’m more interested in building Raffine, Scheming Seer and Felisa, Fang of Silverquill. Joining them are my mainstay decks; a couple of new ones from last year, and the ones I’ve not put down since I built them.

Rakdos Treasure continues to impress me, and provides lots of fun lines. The deck functions off of cheap commons and uncommons for the most part, and picked up Vat of Rebirth and Spiteful Banditry this year… along with Mirkwood Bats. 

Hofri Reanimator is my main Boros deck, and has received some sweet pickups this year, from Redemption Choir to Brass’s Tunnel Grinder. I feel like a rebuild is on the cards, as I’ve got a lot of cards to consider for the deck that I haven’t managed to side in yet. 

Dihada Reanimator received the biggest overhaul this year, thanks largely to Tales of Middle Earth. Legendary-matters decks are always in a state of flux, and testing out new cards in Dihada this year has been a lot of fun. Lich Knights’ Conquest is fantastic. 

Lathril is my Elves deck, and I keep coming back to it because I enjoy the gameplay. Jumping through some hoops to build around her life drain mechanic is infinitely more interesting to me than playing a Craterhoof Behemoth, and the deck has picked up a bunch of new cards this year from disparate sets and products. 

Edgar Vampires is currently on the workbench as we speak, with Ixalan’s Vampire Precon offering the chance to rebuild the deck from the bottom up. It’s been a great year for Vampire decks. 

Sigarda got some excellent pickups too, and remains a favorite deck of mine to play. I’m testing out the many new Selesnya Auras cards, from Ellivere to Yenna, Cosmic Rebirth to City of Death. Calix has earned his spot though, I’ll tell you that. 

Syr Gwyn is my Voltron Equipment deck of choice, and I’m really happy with where she’s at. I’ve recently added Forge Anew, Eowyn, Fearless Knight, and Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress. I also decided that Chance for Glory was a much more fun Sunforger target than Comeuppance, and I’ve had a blast with it since. 

END STEP

I played a lot of Commander this year, but I found myself more readily moving on from decks once I’d rinsed them for all the novelty I had. I also like to make sure I don’t have much overlap between archetypes, which, aside from Reanimator, I’m achieving pretty well. In 2024 I’m committed to building a couple of Control-Combo decks. I also need to end my love affair with costly Commanders and build a couple of two and three drop ones. What about you?