Ten Sorcery Spells That Are New Classics in Commander

What new Sorcery spells should be making the cut in your Commander decks? Kristen is here with a list of ten of the best!

Last week, I looked at ten Sorcery spells that had aged really well in Commander. This time around, I will cover ten new classics: sorceries that have landed with impact, and continue to impress me. 

Sorceries have to do some heavy lifting to be taken over Instants with similar effects. It’s no coincidence that the strongest and most popular sorceries do something a little unique that similar Instants can’t quite do. These “new classics” offer us unparalleled flexibility, below-rate effects, and big tempo swings. 

TEN SORCERY NEW CLASSICS

Gruesome Realization

With cards like Deadly Dispute and Fell Stinger in the format – let alone Skullclamp – it’s pretty easy to overlook this Brothers’ War uncommon. If you read last week’s article on Sorceries that aged well, you might come to the realization that yes, having some modality that helps with token armies is good, actually. It’s not as gruesome as a Massacre Girl, but it’s nice to have in the deck; drawing this as a draw spell in certain matchups can give you a sizable tempo swing. Three mana and two life for two cards in Black isn’t the worst rate, either. 

Volcanic Torrent

Volcanic Torrent has quickly become one of my favorite red spells, knocking Volcanic Offering out of contention (a sadly too expensive spell nowadays). Volcanic Torrent excels in decks with a low mana curve or decks that can cast spells for free, or really any deck that can produce a lot of mana. One-sided wraths are fantastic, and this is in the sweet spot for five mana. You get to dig for a free spell out of it too. What’s not to love?

Rite of Oblivion

It’s funny; maybe this article series could have been called “a treatise on why not to play Utter End anymore”. Much like Vindicate last week, there are plenty of cards I’d play over Utter End in 2023.

Rite of Oblivion: The Final Season Part 1 & 2 ends your opponent’s fun, and then ends it all over again, at the cost of a few acceptable losses. Before I hear any rumblings of how costly this is, consider first that it’s any nonland permanent, not just a creature, that you sacrifice. Many decks can leverage this with recursion, or simply get value by discarding or milling Rite of Oblivion in the first instance to get access to a “free” spell in the yard. 

Damn

While it’s true that some of these new classics are spells that you might not have considered, Damn needs no introduction. Damn is back at it again with modality, and what better way to be modal in a removal spell than to offer single-target removal and the option to wipe the board instead?

In Orzhov, I’d be taking this over Wrath of God and Damnation every time, because flexibility is King. 

Reconstruct History

I’m just gonna come out and say it: Reconstruct History is the Boros Harmonize. Except, probably better?

Harmonize gets you three cards, but Reconstruct History gets you a choice of cards you’ve already played to great effect. While this spell can get you up to five cards, the common amount will be three. But even two spells is sometimes more than enough: a draw spell and a protection spell, or a removal spell and an engine piece, or simply two things your opponents thought they’d seen the last of.

Reconstruct History gets better when you experiment with card types to shore up the card’s weaknesses: creatures and lands. By running artifact lands or enchantment creatures, you can maximize how many cards you can draw off of it. And most Boros decks can fit in a ‘walker like The Eternal Wanderer, Daretti, Scrap Savant, or Nahiri the Harbinger. 

Recommission

From one recursion piece to another – that incidentally, can be grabbed as a Sorcery with Reconstruct History!

Recommission is the second Brothers’ War entry on today’s list, and another recursion spell. If your commander is 3 mana or less, and you like to attack with it? Well yeah, you’re going to enjoy getting a counter on it. The ability to also return key artifacts adds on to the value here, allowing you to grab back key engine pieces, combo pieces, or equipment. What’s not to love?

Irenicus’s Vile Duplication

There has been a real deluge of four to five mana sorcery spells that clone your creatures recently. Picking one can be difficult, but I want to make a case for Irenicus’s Vile Duplication. First up, it bypasses the legend rule, which already makes it better than a whole swath of contemporary effects. What’s more, it grants the token flying. 

While you can take versions of this spell with Rebound, or Retrace, or other random trinket text, I contend that giving the token flying is pretty damn strong. This can be the difference between getting combat triggers or not, and often, the difference between lethal damage or not too. 

Lich Knight’s Conquest

I don’t mean to repeat myself, but we are back to recursion spells again now. Maybe there’s something to be said about recursion’s place in the format, and how busted it would be to have instant speed versions power creep their sorcery analogues? Because let’s face it, attacking and blocking would be a complete nightmare if we got some of the more pushed recursive effects at instant speed.

Either way, Living Death is one of my favorite magic cards, and sometimes I find myself wanting to run more than one copy. Scrap Mastery is nice if you’re doing that sort of thing, but if you’re not, then pick up a copy of Lich-Knights’ Conquest, yesterday. 

Incarnation Technique

Incarnation Technique is a bit of a sleeper, in my opinion, and I think it’s because people don’t evaluate it in the right way. Graveyard hate has become quite easy to splash into most strategies these days. Most kindred decks have ways to interact, there are cheap artifacts, mana rocks, and of course lands, like Scavenger Grounds. The best way to play around this is to have some juicy self-mill to fill ‘er back up again.

Incarnation Technique gets you 10 cards deep for five mana while returning two creatures to play. It can target the opponent likely to have the least juicy targets, and it can be set up to be one sided with cards like Leyline of the Void. What’s more, if you mill multiple bodies, your other spells might be able to generate even more value. 

Anything with Proliferate Stapled to It

Picking the last card for this list was tough, so I instead went with a broad “cycle”. Some cycles are so strong that they carry all of the value from a set; lands, usually, or powerful creatures. Sometimes, though, that “cycle” is less complete (not in all colors) or it’s at differing rarities and is more of a theme. 

In the case of All Will Be One’s Proliferate cards, it’s more of a general theme in the set. All of the sorceries with proliferate stapled to them are really good. They’re going to be really good for a very long time. They of course overperform in Superfriends decks, but any deck with counters can leverage these as a free “sidegrade” to existing cards that end up ostensibly being more like upgrades than sidegrades. 

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Although it’s always going to be best to take the majority of your interaction at instant speed, Sorcery spells offer a lot that you don’t get for the same price on instants. They can be flexible, powerful, and offer unique effects. We often play at sorcery speed anyways to remove threats, so consider some of these new classics for your brews. What’s a pet sorcery of yours? Let us know on Twitter X.