Wilds of Eldraine brings with it two crowd-pleasing Commander Precon decks in Virtue and Valor and Fae Dominion, but also some exciting Set Booster-exclusive cards. There’s even some bonus Set Booster cards that were originally planned for a cancelled JumpStart product.
Today we’ll review the highlights of these ancillary cards. Should you pick them up for your Commander collection? Are they good enough for your latest brew? Let’s find out.
WILDS OF ELDRAINE JUMPSTART… SORT OF
There had been an intention to release a Wilds of Eldraine Jumpstart booster product, but somewhere during the product design life cycle, Wizards decided that actually, no. We’re shelving Jumpstart for now. Still, not to let good designs go to waste, they’re available in Set Boosters and Collector Boosters.
First up, let’s get those cards flowing. Malevolent Witchkite suggests Dragon Warlocks really can choose a patron that’s not Hell-aligned, but I fear that that’s mostly my Baldur’s Gate 3-playing-self musing about how we got from Hellkites to Witchkites.
This dragon offers you a Bargain: cards, plenty of them, for sacrificing artifacts, enchantments or tokens. You’ll recognize this effect from Reprocess or God-Eternal Bontu.
The key difference here is you can’t sacrifice just anything. I’m not sure it’ll come up often enough to outweigh the fact you get a 5/4 Flyer for sticking to the small print.
Rowdy Research, in the right deck, will cost three mana, on average — and that’s because you’re also going to cast this when opponents attack not quite as wide as you might. If the floor is three mana for three cards (and it can go as low as one), then I’m pretty happy with that.
If you’re building Beluna or Gorion to take advantage of the deluge of Adventure cards in Wilds of Eldraine, then for sure pick this one up. It rewards you for what you’re already trying to do.
Speaking of being rewarded for doing what you were already going to do, plenty of white decks will be enthused to see a curve topper that keeps the cards coming.
This attacks pretty freely in Adeline, for instance, and will trigger off of making treasures and tokens you might produce when casting spells or attacking. It’s just a crying shame that it couldn’t be “at the beginning of each end step.” Probably would have had to cost 1WWWW for that, at the least.
Onto more deck specific cards now, which I usually leave out of the main Set Review, given they’re not generally worth discussing in depth. On this occasion, I think both Experimental Confectioner and Provisions Merchant are worth shouting about. They give Food decks an endpoint for making and eating food — tokens to go wide with or ways to convert into a game-winning attack.
If you’re not doing busted stuff tapping artifact tokens and draining everyone with the likes of Marionette Master, then these are worth a look. Maybe even if you are!
I’m not sure Ogre Chitterlord is that good, but I wanted to review it because it’s a new Titan. It’s nowhere near as good as Sun Titan or Primeval Titan, but I appreciate that we’re still getting new cards in that “cycle” in 2023.
If you’re going Rakdos Rats instead of mono black, it’s probably worth testing out.
Wizards has noticed that playing Evacuation in Commander is just not it. That’s good, because it means we get new blue board wipes that try to be ostensibly blue, but with the design constraints that they should try and advance the game too.
When you resolve it and bounce all creatures, Faerie Slumber Party gives you up to six 1/1 flyers in a four-player pod. That’s pretty deece considering they can potentially survive a rotation and start getting in to trigger anything from drawing cards to Goading.
THE ACTUAL WILDS OF ELDRAINE SET BOOSTER EXCLUSIVES
The cycle of iconic monuments from Throne of Eldraine that includes The Great Henge and Circle of Loyalty was certainly… imbalanced, to say the least. Wilds of Eldraine seeks to make up for that misstep with a new cycle in Set Boosters.
This time around, they grant the Monarch and have differing effects based on whether you retain it through to your upkeep (just like Commander Legends’ Court cycle).
Court of Ardenvale offers recursion and reanimation, a tidy upgrade over the dire Circle of Loyalty.
Court of Vantress might just be the best one. It’s a Estrid’s-Invocation-meets-Mirrormade that straight up copies stuff instead if you have the Monarch.
Court of Locthwain peels cards from the top of libraries into exile, which you choose to cast for the rest of the game. It lets you cast one of them for free if you’re the Monarch, which is solid.
Court of Embereth gives you tokens, and a more resounding burn effect based on the number of creatures you have, if you’re the Monarch. This has a lot more utility than the CMR red court.
Finally, Court of Garenbrig continues the new trend of buffing smaller bodies that started with Tribute to the World Tree. If you want one, you probably want the other.
All of the Courts are playable, but what about some new Commanders? There are two three-color options to choose from:
Maybe you love Korvold and can’t play him at more Casual tables. Well, now you have one that’s a little more chill. It probably builds similarly to Baba Lysaga, so if you liked that approach, you might enjoy Korvold too.
Your other option is Aristosnacks. “Baker’s Treat, by Golem Taffety” wants to convince you he’s another color combination for food decks. It also wants to convince you it’s a Bant Golems Commander.
In practice, it’s neither, and more akin to Sauron, the Necromancer or Shelob, Child of Ungoliant (which we have a deck tech for, by the way). The main thing to remember is that Academy Manufactor is a non-bo; it replaces everything with one of each basic token. Sorry to be Drury and Lame.
Throne of Eldraine was always adamant it could make mono-color decks relevant again. Does Throne of Eldraine achieve this?
It’s pretty good, yeah, as long as you’re not playing too many artifacts. Look at it like a mono-color upgrade over Thran Dynamo that’ll sometimes draw you a few cards.
WILDS OF ELDRAINE COMMANDER
Most people I speak to are hyped for the Faeries precon. Tegwyll offers card advantage in the Command Zone, which is always good.
If you want to reject modernity and embrace tradition, however, Alela offers an arguably more interesting premise. In fact, you don’t even really have to build it as a Faeries deck at all; you can go all in on Instant speed and Flash spells instead.
If you’ve been trying to slip Portal Mage into your decks and finding it’s the 101st card, then Misleading Signpost has you covered. It might be bold to say, but this feels like a new blue staple. You can hold up interaction and ramp?
Flash clones are always great. Clones that grant themselves Flying are always great. On an-type Faerie as well? Yeah this card’s good.
It’s obviously good in Alela or Tygwyll, but don’t sleep on it for the likes of Raffine or even Otrimi.
Faerie Bladecrafter is Gary’s lil’ sister, but for Faerie decks. It’s pretty straightforward, sure, but that doesn’t take away from the fact it’s a major role player. It gives the UB deck the reach it needs to end a game.
Nettling Nuisance feels dastardly at three mana. I genuinely think it would be a lot worse at four.
Giving opponents tokens can occasionally backfire, but much like Faerie Bladecrafter, this card aims to give the Faeries deck a little more oomph in moving life totals.
Six mana to blow up the board and give yourself three tokens is OK, but nothing to write home about.
Being able to do it at instant speed, though? Damn. I’m glad this is restricted to tapping flyers, because otherwise it would be an instant staple.
Ellivere is a four mana green creature that rewards you for connecting with… you guessed it… a card!
All jokes aside, Ellivere is awesome. She makes arguably the strongest role token, which is a +1/+1 for each enchantment you control. That’s bonkers good.
Did I mention she also draws you cards? Good in the CZ or the 99, for sure.
Songbirds’ Blessing might have you praying you hit your Eldrazi Conscription, but I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. It’s repeatable card advantage that helps you sneak your best Auras around counter spells.
You don’t necessarily need to run it with with Scroll Rack, but it might help. Light-Paws decks will snap this up.
Ah, a Voltron card. >:D
Unfinished Business is sweet. I’d argue that any five mana, sorcery speed recursion spell has to be a little pushed these days, especially considering games aren’t as grindy and most removal is exile-based.
Being able to bring back not one, not two but three permanents with this — most often your prime Voltron creature and two of their favorite, game-winning toys — is going to feel decidedly excellent.
Sure, you can mess around with Scroll Rack and Hall of Heliod’s Generosity, maybe Enlightened Tutor or Moon-Blessed Cleric, to set this up. And at that point, you’re paying two mana to get the top aura cheated into play and enchanting something.
That’s pretty reasonable, but I’d consider that to be this card’s ceiling.
Well, the other ceiling is pumping oodles of mana into it to make a giant Ouphe. I’m just not sure Knickknack Ouphe is going to hit those numbers in the decks it’s designed for. Sanctum Weaver and Mirari’s Wake are kill on sight, and who even has a Serra’s Sanctum these days?
Closing things out is Loamcrafter Faun. I’ve found myself gravitating away from Eternal Witness as a “staple” more and more these days because games just don’t go on long enough that you value the repeatable effect over a one-shot spell that’s more mana efficient/has synergy for your deck.
For the same three mana, you can discard a bunch of lands and get back multiple nonland permanents back to hand. This has way more use cases and is deceptively good. It both fuels graveyard synergy and gets back key pieces.
END STEP
And that, along with my Commander Set Review, closes out our review of the new Wilds of Eldraine cards. There seems to be a little something for everyone — not only archetype wise, but also at different ends of the power scale and the budget scale. Let us know what you’re brewing up on Twitter.
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.