Marvel Super Heroes releases June 26, and alongside the main set and Jumpstart products, there are four Commanders decks. Wakanda Forever is the green and white Precon that features artifacts, big swings, and the Monarch mechanic.
WAKANDA FOREVER COMMANDERS
Wakanda Forever features two main Commanders.
T’Challa, the Black Panther is the face Commander, and most of what the precon is built around. When he enters or attacks, you create a tapped Vibranium token, which is for all intents and purposes the same token as the Powerstone tokens we got in The Brothers War and Dominaria United. In short, you can use their mana only for spells that are artifacts, but you can use them for all activated abilities and other costs.
Additionally, when you cast bigger artifact spells, you can put two +1/+1 counters on T’Challa. This is the more obvious build around for the deck, and basically you end up with a GW Artifacts deck with a Voltron finish, and a counters sub theme.
Shuri, the Black Panther is the alternate Commander, and to me, the more interesting one. She comes down as a two drop, rewards you for attacking with drawing cards, can play into GW’s lifegain mechanics, and buffs your team if you go wide enough and put enough artifacts into play. She suggests focusing on artifact creature tokens like Thopters, Servos, Gnomes and Constructs, and on a lifegain payoff, too.
Overall the precon feels a little disjointed – it wants to do too many things, and if you draw setup for one part of the deck and payoff for another, you might sometimes feel like your deck is a little undercooked. It might even be that there’s a third Monarch deck hiding somewhere in the midst of all of this counters and artifact stuff, but that deck is currently the most unsupported in the stock precon.
That said, the new cards are powerful, and there’s few obviously cuttable cards, as the power level is quite consistent. Once you lock in on an upgrade path, you’ll know better what to cut.
TOP NEW CARDS IN WAKANDA FOREVER
Each Marvel Super Heroes Commander Precon features 40 brand new cards, which is a lot. Here are a few of the highlights in this one.
Dora Milaje Elite is a heck of a two drop. It’s a 2/2 First Strike, which is already good, and can make you a Vibranium token when you’re behind on lands. Remember that these mana rocks are indestructible, which means they can’t get wiped easily. What’s more, you can sacrifice it to give your Legendary permanents indestructible until end of turn. As well as being fantastic in this precon, it’s great for Commanders like Kassandra, Eagle Bearer, who cares about Legendary equipments, and loves a great two drop to wield them.
Bast, Panther Goddess is typical God-fare: an indestructible beastie with a condition on it that prevents it attacking too early. It reminds me a lot of Arahbo, which isn’t a bad thing – and that makes it a fab pickup for Cat decks.
Okoye might be my favorite card in the precon. She can set up an annihilating counter attack on anyone brave enough to take your crown, which means you likely get to keep the Monarch all game.
Storm, Queen of Wakanda is an anti-flier card if ever I’ve seen one, and one that can help push through a lot of damage in the air, too. Her attack trigger is capable of finishing the game in one fell swoop, much like Okoye – plus, she helps keep the Monarchy.
King Solomon’s Frogs is a sweet removal spell option, especially when paired with flicker effects. It’s a handy tool to help you stay the Monarch when it matters, too – cracking it in an opponent’s end step to get those sweet untap triggers off of the Courts.
Finally, Vibranium Strike Gauntlets offer a solid card draw equipment that complements Mask of Memory and Sword of Fire and Ice with some buffs, trample, and an auto equip. This one is good even outside of this deck, and I’m eyeing it up for The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster.
TOP REPRINTS IN WAKANDA FOREVER
There are some sweet reprints in Wakanda Forever, too. Helm of the Host is arguably the most exciting, and one of the more powerful equipments available in a format that revolves around Legendary Creatures.
Hammer of Nazahn gets a great reskin in Black Panther’s Claws, and is the kind of card you definitely want to keep as an include if you’re adding more equipment to T’Challa.
There are a few good hits manabase wise, too, with both Bountiful Promenade and Birds of Paradise helping to fix you.
MARVEL-LOUS UPGRADES
When deciding how to upgrade this deck, I’m going to divert from my usual tried-and-tested $50 budget upgrade formula, and instead offer multiple upgrade paths with some ideas on where to take the deck.
The first of these paths is to stick entirely to on-theme cards, i.e., other Marvel universe cards.
Black Panther, Most Dangerous is a great attacker if you’re going a little wider in your Shuri or T’Challa deck. Vibranium will help ensure you can Power-up in a timely fashion. Captain America, Liberator can dig you out an evasion equipment to help push through T’Challa damage, and if you go down a more equipment oriented Voltron route, can be a good alternate attacker with T’Challa. Whichever deck you’re on, Winter Soldier, Reborn Avenger is a great version of Sun Titan that you can run on-theme.
Big artifacts are still the name of the game here, and Hulkbuster Armor is a great way to get T’Challa over the top for lethal hits. Cosmic Cube is a great value engine that triggers your Commander when cast (and also when you dig for cards with it, and cast those). Arc Reactor is an improvise-ready Thran Dynamo that can be powered out quicker when you focus on artifacts.
If you choose to focus on Shuri, then Heroic Feast might be right up your street. You can build Shuri into a go wide deck with the best of GW’s lifegain technology, and feast like there’s no tomorrow. Keeping your artifact count high means banking on evasive artifact creatures that can profit from Shuri’s buff. Viv Vision does just that, and you can stack the triggers so hers resolves after Shuri, netting you another card.
Look beyond this set to Spider-Man and Secret Lair products, and you’ll find all sorts of cards that can make their case for an inclusion. There’s a reskinned Teferi’s Protection, the Black Panther, Wakandan King from the original Marvel Secret Lair, and even Iron Spider from Spider-Man.
BEYOND MARVEL: T’CHALLA
Looking beyond Marvel for T’Challa specifically, there are a great number of cards that can further your Voltron/Big Artifacts strategy. The first of which is Machinist’s Arsenal, a handy Equipment that’ll trigger T’Challa while also providing a sizeable buff to whoever carries it.
The Monarch is a great subtheme in the deck, and leaning into it a little more with Court of Garenbrig is a great place to start. It’ll give you countless counters and really threaten that Okoye assassination.
Vibranium can help you cast nonartifact spells if you have Jaheira, Friend of the Forest in play. If you add a sneaky bit of treasure production too, you end up with a great way to make your mana even better.
Ironsoul Enforcer works especially well for a more Voltron focused T’Challa gameplan, allowing you to reanimate big artifacts when you attack.
Terrasymbiosis was one the best cards in Edge of Eternities, a set I look back on quite fondly. Slamming it into your Black Panther deck is going to give you good results, as it’s a draw two each turn at the floor.
BEYOND MARVEL: SHURI
If you’re instead playing Shuri, you want to be going wide as you can, while stacking artifacts. This likely means adding some mana dorks to the list, and though Ornithopter of Paradise is the obvious one, you also likely want some one drops like Avacyn’s Pilgrim.
Elspeth, Storm Slayer is a bananas power level card, and it’s because of how flexible she is. If you’re building with Shuri, Elspeth is exactly what you want. The jumping your team and growing them part is game-ending at just five mana.
Dyadrine is also exactly the kind of card you want, as it combines card draw, artifact creatures, and go-wide, while playing into the counters synergies in your deck – the perfect Shuri upgrade.
Arguably the hottest Shuri upgrade is probably Illustrious Wanderglyph, the Tendershoot Dryad of white. This one floods the board with Gnome tokens, and gives them a big buff as long as you have the city’s blessing.
Thousand Moons Smithy leans into the artifact creature side of things (which is arguably the easiest way to go wide with Shuri) by granting you free constructs once you have it flipped, whenever you tap the land side to cast a spell.
END STEP
However you upgrade the Wakanda Forever precon, you’re going to want to do something personal with it – whether that’s upgrading with solely Marvel cards, or picking Shuri or even Okoye to lead it.
Personally, the path I’m more interested in might be the least obvious – but I think one that’ll give a potentially great deck: Okoye leading a monarch deck with GW subthemes of lifegain and counters, with cards like Storm as support.
How will you upgrade your Wakanda Forever deck?
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.