The Top 5 Underrated Commanders of 2023

Even by modern standards, 2023 has been an absolute boom year for new commanders. Thanks to Commander precons releasing with every expansion, Dr. Who and other Universes Beyond tie-ins focused on the format, and new legends appearing at uncommon in almost every set, there’s a constant stream of potential commanders entering the game. 

It used to be that there were few enough that one person could reasonably maintain physical decks for every single commander choice. In 2023, that would have meant creating 396 new decks – that’s 20% of all commanders ever printed in just the past 12 months.That sort of variety isn’t strictly a bad thing, but it is hard for even enfranchised players to stay aware of them all!

There’s sure to be another huge parade of exciting commanders arriving in 2024. So before we leave this year to the history books, I want to celebrate some of my favorite new commanders from this year, who – statistically speaking – you might not have looked into.

Idris, Soul of the Tardis

Abilities which modify card text are one thing I’m always on the lookout for, as it’s an easy way to unlock new and interesting interactions. Being able to transfer the abilities of certain artifacts onto a legendary creature already creates a ton of possibilities, but the favorable wording of Idris’s trigger allows for even more fun. 

Flickering her can move a lot of artifacts in and out of exile while keeping their own abilities in play. Liquimetal Torque and similar cards can let Idris exile ANY permanent. Temporarily gaining control of opposing cards lets you use Idris as removal and steal their best abilities. Strionic Resonator and Panharmonicon even let Idris have multiple artifacts imprinted at the same time, which has a lot of dangerous implications.

I love decks where the commander brings some defining characteristics, but is still the starting point for the rest of your game plan, rather than the endgame. The Soul of the TARDIS offers that kind of unique, open-ended power and has actually made me excited to play Izzet – I can’t think of much higher praise than that!

Don Andres, the Renegade

There’s already quite a few commanders who try to support a “steal your stuff” theme, but it’s proved a difficult archetype to get right. 

There’s a lot of unknown variables for one legendary creature to account for: which cards you’re going to steal, how you’re going to get them under your control, how long you’ll have them for and what you want to do with them. Don Andres does one of the better jobs I’ve seen at covering all the relevant forms of Magic piracy under one banner, and offering incentives that open up your possibilities of what to do with all that captured booty! 

Giving stolen creatures +2/+2 and the “mostly unblockable” combo of menace plus deathtouch is a big enough boost to make opportunistic Act of Treason effects feel potent, especially if you can steal something with a good “combat damage to player” trigger. If you can permanently steal an army with Control Magic or enemy-targeting reanimation, then that can quite easily become a win condition.

But the real x-factor here is actually the Pirate typing! To me, the highest goal for this kind of deck is to make opponents feel jealous of what you can do with their cards, and getting to turn on Admiral Beckett Brass or Ramirez DePietro, Pillager with newly-recruited “Pirates” definitely fits that bill!

It may seem bland in comparison that the Don “only” makes Treasures to reward you for stolen spells. But another issue with this kind of commander is being able to pay off-color costs to activate abilities of (or with some older stealing effects, even cast) the stuff you steal. Making treasure deftly covers for that flaw while still rewarding our somewhat-janky plan in a manner most befitting a proud pirate!

Amalia Benavides Aguirre

Amalia’s certainly been getting plenty of attention over in Constructed, so perhaps this bloodthirsty adventurer’s conquest of Commander is only a matter of time as more players adapt to Lost Caverns of Ixalan. I’d like to think so, because this combination of bargain casting cost, scaling potential and flashy cool effect is extremely notable in White/Black!

At first glance, this might seem like a commander with a rather one-note gameplan, but I think Amalia is much more open-ended than she first appears. Yes, you’re probably building some kind of “soul sisters” deck to rapidly rack up incremental lifegain triggers and bring her 20-power trigger into play. But you can also use equipment, auras and other +1/+1 counter effects to bolster her power and access that built-in sweeper much faster – or trigger it more than once!

Even when Aguirre’s wrath of god isn’t accessible or relevant, the sheer amount of exploring she gets up to can easily load your graveyard for reanimation effects. Meanwhile the extra lands she draws can fuel discard costs in the same way Land Tax would! That’s a lot of unexplored areas ripe for exploitation – which I’m sure is just the kind of thing Amalia herself would love to hear.

Kethek, Crucible Goliath

I love it when a sac outlet specifically cares about the size of the things you’re feeding it, if only to shake things up from the well-trodden Korvold path of “sacrifice as many tokens as possible”. Instead, we’re looking for chances to tip the balance of the implied exchange – and luckily there’s plenty of ways to get creatures with a high printed cost into play for less so we can flip something nearly as big off Kethek’s trigger.

We could discount their casting cost with mechanics like Affinity, or cheat them in temporarily using Sneak Attack or the Unearth ability. We can steal opposing creatures and sacrifice those, of course, or we could make token copies of our highest-cost thing and then sacrifice those – since mana value is one of the properties which is copied, even onto tokens.

The “nonlegendary creature card” wording allows for another sneaky bit of optimization. Making the vast majority of our early game creatures legendary – which is more plausible than ever in this commander-rich climate – ensures that Kethek’s polymorphing will only hit whatever high-value non-legends we deliberately include in the deck.

The once-per-turn nature of the trigger puts a pretty firm limit on the raw power we can extract from our Crucible Goliath. But it still feels like we’re left with some fun design space to explore, and this Phyrexian Beast strikes me as something that would really rock the lower-power casual tables. 

Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood

I wasn’t sure if I would end up featuring a green commander in this article – but then I realized this magnificent specimen wasn’t even in the top #1000 most played! That’s quite rare for any legend from a preconstructed deck, and it’s even more surprising given Xolatoyac’s sporting one of the all-time most popular abilities in the format.

I went into a lot more detail on how to use Xolatoyac’s mechanics when I wrote the Explorers of the Deep precon review and upgrade guide, so take a look at his section in that article if you want some suggestions for how to utilize this friendly fish. With so much potential in his abilities, I can only assume that he’s being overlooked because he’s the non-merfolk option in a merfolk-themed product. It certainly can’t be the fault of the art or flavor: who could say no to a whole lotta axolotl?

GOING MAINSTREAM IS OVERRATED

Even in a format that prizes novelty and individual expression, there will inevitably be certain commander choices which outshine the rest of the metagame and attract large followings. It takes a strong combination of availability, archetype fit, raw power and cool flavor to propel these cards into the limelight – Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice is not #1 by accident!

But that relationship doesn’t mean that the cards in the bottom 50% of commander popularity are necessarily weaker or less dynamic choices. Oftentimes it’s just a case of their mechanics being slightly more narrow to build around, or just that the card is less well known; popularity and visibility tend to form a self-reinforcing cycle. 

If you’re already excited to specifically build around Yuriko or Kenrith, then I think you should absolutely go ahead with that. But if you’re still undecided, why not dig a little deeper into that backlog of recent commanders you half-remember? Chances are you’ll find your own hidden gems, and end up with a stronger and more memorable identity for your next deck.