For each new set, I write an article discussing the new legendary creatures and the nonlegendary cards that I think will be relevant in Commander.
The Set Overall
My feelings about Commander 2016 are a bit complex. I think that 4C is dangerous for the format because so many colors make the allure of Goodstuff much stronger than in a two- or three-color deck. The commanders printed in this set would have to be both very focused in what they do and relatively strong in order to make the benefits of synergy outweigh the benefits of just running a pile of good cards.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ll go into more detail about why I believe that the Commanders aren’t focused or strong enough when I discuss them individually, but my initial builds made me feel as if I was handicapping myself when I eschewed the many, many staples available in their colors for cards that would support their mechanics.
That said, there are many positives about this set of precons. In terms of the quality of the reprints and new cards in these decks, they blow any previous Commander deck our of the water (rare lands in the manabases!). I also think that Partner is an incredible innovation, and despite the fact that its full potential was not realized (more on this later), I would love to see more of it in the future, once Wizards figures out exactly what people need from Partner commanders.
The Four-Color Commanders
Atraxa is probably my favorite out of the 4C commanders because proliferate is such an open-ended mechanic; she easily supports themes as diverse as planeswalker control, poison, and +1/+1 counter aggro. The only criticism I have for her design is that she’d be much stronger if she triggered at the beginning of combat, so that you could add additional +1/+1 counters before you attacked or tick up your planeswalkers so you could afford higher loyalty costs in your postcombat main phase. Otherwise, she’s a gem, and she makes several archetypes much more viable than they used to be.
Atraxa +1/+1 Counters
I think this deck beats out the previous best commander for WBG counter aggro (Anafenza 1.0) because she has the power to add multiple counters per turn (albeit a little too late to affect that turn’s combat step). When you have a field full of dudes with counters on them, this adds up to a substantial boost in power over time relative to Anafenza’s single counter per turn (especially when you consider that Atraxa proliferates the same turn she drops, whereas Anafenza usually has to wait a turn to attack).
Atraxa Superfriends
I won’t deny that losing Red hurts the 5C superfriends deck. Chandra, Flamecaller was a very strong contributor to that archetype, and the creatures+lands board wipes that Red offered were often game-winners for the deck. However, those wipes and the playable Red walkers only totaled up to 8ish cards, so the deck is still largely functional. Plus, having a Commander that actually contributes to the planeswalker strategy is a huge boon; I had made do with Sliver Hivelord in the past because he was really good at blocking and surviving board wipes, but I wasn’t kidding myself that he was the ideal Superfriends commander. Atraxa is still not perfect (why couldn’t she proliferate earlier in the turn?), but she’s much closer to it than any legend who has come before her.
Atraxa Infect
This deck is a lot less tuned than the other Atraxa lists I built, so take it with a mountain of salt. It’s mostly there to demonstrate that a non-Skithiryx infect could be viable with Atraxa at the helm.
Breya Artifacts
I’m more disappointed with
Breya than any other 4C commander because I don’t think her rewards are sufficient to make committing to artifacts worth your while. The thopters certainly have their uses, but two of the three modes on her activated ability are blanks unless you’re in the extreme late game (good luck winning a Commander game by trading board position for small chunks of life), and the board control option, while useful, isn’t going to be something you use very often because the activation cost is so steep.
Breya’s color identity is also somewhat problematic because it has access to so many Goodstuff effects that are just waaayyy better than the existing rewards for committing to artifacts. Running Fabricate or Treasure Mage
when you could be running Demonic Tutor or Vampiric Tutor
makes you feel like a dummy, and the narrow artifact reanimation effects tend to come at a worse rate than White and Black’s creature reanimation, which is more generally useful, to boot.
The artifact deck needed strong rewards from its commander to overcome the pull of Goodstuff, and Breya failed to provide them.
I didn’t bother building a list for these guys because they are obviously intended for Group Hug, and that archetype, by definition, defies any attempt at optimization. You’re on your own, huggers.
Saskia Voltron
Saskia is essentially a hasty Kalemne with a better color identity, which makes her a very powerful option for players looking for a Voltron commander. Check the above list for some ideas about how to exploit Saskia’s potential to kill multiple players out of nowhere (Overblaze is especially notable for the 3x damage boost).
Yidris Storm
He’s one of the best storm commanders ever printed. It’s not too difficult to build your deck so that every single cascade hits either mana or card generation, so you basically only have to connect with him a single time and then you can ride an avalanche of cards and mana to victory.
The Partners
If you were expecting me to do a write-up for all 105 combinations of partners, I’m sorry to disappoint you. For each of the partner commanders in this section, I will talk about what a deck in their base colors looks like and which (if any) of the other partners have strong mechanical synergies with the chosen commander.
Akiri doesn’t provide a whole lot of direction except play artifacts and swing, so equipment-based Voltron is the obvious direction to take her. I look for three characteristics when evaluating a legendary creature as a Voltron commander:
High ratio of power to CMC
Haste
Evasion
Ability to protect self
Unfortunately, Akiri has none of these qualities, which makes me very skeptical about her as a commander.
Moreover, none of the other partners really help her much. Bruse may be able to double her power, but then it begs the question: why not just target himself and use him as your Voltron commander? Then you can use your other partner on someone who can actually contribute, unlike Akiri.
I’ll start by saying that I love that Wizards decided to make a mythic legendary creature out of the least important character ever and I’m even more pleased that they made him look like he came straight out of a Victorian-era circus. Bless this
fat, hairy, bald, mustachioed muscleman and his ox.
As a commander, I think that he’s pretty comparable to Kalemne, with the added bonus of helping you double up on saboteur triggers. If you want to do RW voltron, he’s a pretty solid option.
Partner synergies
Bruse can partner with Ikra to pursue a lifegain theme, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Reyhan is all about conserving and consolidating your power, which has a lot of natural synergy with the double strike that Bruse offers.
Bruse will help you double up on Silas Renn’s triggers in a !G artifact deck.
Ditto Tana and her token generation trigger.
I’m a big fan of “toughness matters” as a theme and I was kinda hoping we’d see it explored on a commander other than Doran, whose hyper-efficient stats put the deck at cross purposes between dealing 21 commander damage and turning Indomitable Ancients sideways.
Unfortunately, Ikra is not the viable alternative I’d been hoping for. Lifegain is a pretty anemic reward when life totals already start pretty high, and there aren’t many ways to actually capitalize off of lifegain; the quality of lifegain triggers in these colors drops off precipitously after Sanguine Bond, Defiant Bloodlord, and Well of Lost Dreams.
However,
Ikra becomes much better
once you factor in the additional cards you get access to when you add in a complementary partner. Blue and Red might not care about lifegain much, but White has some spicy cards to add to an Ikra deck.
Partner synergies
Any white partner will give you access to White’s high-toughness creatures and lifegain synergies.
Bruse, especially, helps Ikra to pursue a lifegain theme.
Sidar Kondo has a big butt and helps you connect with your low-power, high-toughness beaters.
All it does is grow big, which relegates it to Voltron. I don’t doubt that it’ll get a decent amount of counters during each round of turns, but not being big on the turn you drop it is a big downside because it won’t benefit from haste granters; every other Voltron deck gets a head start on their commander damage relative to this guy because he basically enters the battlefield tapped.
Partner synergies
Bruse will cut down the number of swings needed to get to 21.
You don’t have any control over his trigger, so there are few ways to build around it (Thought Reflection, Alhammarret’s Archive, and that’s about it). That leaves a hasty, evasive body with a decent amount of power, which points to Voltron.
Partner synergies
Bruse will help you deal commander damage.
Kydele Kard Draw Kombo
Kydele builds into a combo deck centered around drawing tons of cards, generating an obscene amount of mana, drawing more cards, and eventually dropping a combo piece that will allow you to untap Kydele for less mana than the amount she taps for, thereby generating infinite mana.
Partner synergies
Thrasios offers a way to translate Kydele’s infinite colorless mana into a win.
Any Black partner gives you access to tutors, which will make her combos much easier to assemble.
Ludevic seems like a cool character, so it sucks that the card he’s immortalized on is terrible. Not only are you giving the most valuable resource to your opponents every turn, but the ability doesn’t even effectively deter them from attacking you; all they have to do is send one saproling somewhere else and Ludevic gladly gives them a reward, blithely ignoring the other 20 damage that went straight to your face. Shame on Wizards for giving Ludevic a lame design, shame on Wizards for wasting a partner slot on that design, and shame on Wizards for wasting another Izzet commander on something other than artifacts, coin flips, chaos, or any of the other mechanical overlaps between Blue and Red that aren’t boring card draw.
I’ve long held that team buffs of less than +2/+0 are basically negligible in Commander, so don’t go trying to use him as a token aggro commander (especially when Tymna kicks the stuffing out of him in this regard).
The resemblance to Meren is unfortunate because he’s worse than her in like five different ways:
He’s more expensive
He’s smaller
He will never reanimate, only recur
He has to survive all the way until your upkeep to get you your free card
Green has a better creature suite than White
Fortunately, there’s something we can do about that last point…
Partner synergies
Any Green partner will give you access to awesome recursion targets.
The biggest weakness of the +1/+1 counter aggro deck is board wipes, a problem that Reyhan doesn’t really solve. She may be able to recoup some of your losses when you’re up against spot removal, but she’s useless when all your creatures die at once.
That said, there are some interesting uses for her. Greater Good draws you successively larger amounts of cards when you recycle the counters with Reyhan (or Death’s Presence, I guess), and all that counter-placing will get you more value out of your Hardened Scales, Primal Vigor, and Doubling Season.
Partner synergies
Any of the White partners will give you access to the dozens of White +1/+1 counter enablers.
Ishai is another source of +1/+1 counters to spread among your dudes.
I could imagine him being used as a commander for White and Green saboteur creatures, although most of the powerful ones are either too big to qualify for his bonus or they already have some form of evasion. Great with Spawnwrithe, though.
I’m a little disappointed that they spent the WG partner slot on an effect that didn’t need to exist when it could have done much more for the format if they had used it to print an Enchantress commander. A WG partner commander that supported enchantments would not only enable the WG enchantress archetype that players have been playing for years without a relevant commander, but thanks to the other partners, it would also enable offshoots like Abzan enchantress, Bant enchantress, etc etc.
I wish Wizards had spent more time thinking about what archetypes are capable of spreading across multiple color identities when they designed the partner commanders.
Partner synergies
Silas Renn would be a great partner because he gives Kondo access to all the great Blue and Black saboteur creatures, including Silas himself.
Ikra rewards you for playing Kondo and other low-power, high-toughness beaters.
Tymna gives you a reward for getting in with your evasive weenies.
While he looks like a commander for an artifact deck, I think the existence of the Mindslaver combo makes him better suited to a control deck with a combo finish. Blue and Black support this strategy by giving him access to the tutors and counterspells you need to assemble and protect your combo, as well as plenty of ways to answer opposing threats.
Partner synergies
Adding a Red partner could turn him into a Grixis artifact commander, but you’re still going to be operating under the tyranny of the combo and Black’s efficient tutors. Can you resist the temptation?
That beefcake Bruse will double up Silas’s combat damage triggers.
Sidar Kondo grants Silas the evasion he’ll need to farm his saboteur trigger.
The division between Voltron decks and token decks rests on the difference between going tall (loading up your commander with auras and equipment to get to 21 damage ASAP) and going wide (spreading team buffs across many bodies to maximize the total stats being granted). Tana is in an awkward position because her trigger incentivizes going tall (more damage = bigger reward) but the reward itself incentivizes going wide (more bodies = bigger total increase in power from team buffs). As a result, it seems very difficult to optimize her because the deck will always be pulled in multiple directions.
Partner synergies
Bruse can help Tana double her token production.
Ravos provides a minor buff to your Saproling army.
Sidar Kondo will help both Tana and her Saprolings connect.
Tymna will help you generate cards off of your Saprolings.
Thrasios doesn’t offer a whole lot of direction for a deck, but he could be useful in a draw-go control build as a way to use up your excess tempo. Great with Training Grounds.
Partner synergies
Kydele gives you extra mana to feed into Thrasios.
Any Black partner can use its tutors to help Thrasios assemble infinite mana combos.
Tymna the Weaver
Tymna’s requirement that you deal combat damage to multiple players leads to a very different sort of Orzhov token deck than Teysa 1.0′s sacrifice combo deck.
One important difference is that Tymna places a much higher premium on tokens with in-built evasion, such as Bird tokens and Spirit tokens. Tymna can also run more spot removal spells and other cards that put you below card parity because her trigger will keep your hand full of gas.
Overall, I think Tymna’s easy card advantage and low cost make her one of the best partner commanders, and possibly one of the best Orzhov commanders.
Partner synergies
Sidar Kondo helps your ground tokens break through so Tymna can generate more cards each turn.
Tana provides you with token fodder to attack with and/or feed into your sac outlets.
Dealing direct damage is pretty weak in a 40-life format with multiple opponents and doing things at random is absolutely terrible. Dumpster zone.
The Maindeck
In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:
Spread
1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster).
2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks).
3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions).
4: This card is effective in most decks in this color.
5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.
Power
1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block.
2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well.
3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse.
4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents.
5: This card has a huge impact on the game.
Spread: 2
Power: 3
This seems like a no-brainer in any Votron build, as it’s less fragile and more efficient than the equipment that grant double strike and it can potentially be used as a political tool. Excellent card.
Spread: 2
Power: 4
I don’t think it will be especially difficult to get 4+ tokens off of this, at which point it becomes one of the most efficient token generators in the game. A powerful tool for token decks.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Helping opponents is not my cup of tea, and the only benefit you get is a slight pillowfort effect. A smart opponent will take the counters to build up their army and then decline for a turn so they can kill you.
Spread: 3
Power: 1
Damage prevention is even worse than lifegain, which, as I’ve said above, is not very good in this format. Even in the decks that can trigger her multiple times (Angus Mackenzie, Gisela 1.0), she’ll never be more than a vanilla beatstick. Also, why isn’t she a ½?!
Spread: 3
Power: 2
Assuming you usually play in 4-player pods, this will range from being decent to being unplayable as the game progresses. Given how many choices White has when it comes to board wipes, there’s no reason to play this.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
Very few decks run Devastation Tide, and this card will be worse on average. Other cards it’s worse than: Cyclonic Rift, Evacuation, Kederekt Leviathan…
Spread: 1
Power: 3
This is basically only useful in Blue Superfriends decks and Ezuri 2.0, but jumping straight to an ultimate or doubling the size of your army are powerful rewards for running this guy. Just make sure that your deck is able to protect its planeswalkers long enough for this guy to skate on over.
Spread: 4
Power: 3
I’ll take my free blockers and ETB triggers, thanks.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Even if your metagame does have a huge number of Equipment, wouldn’t you rather have Steal Artifact? Or Kukemssa Pirates? Or Confiscation Coup?
Spread: 4
Power: 3
I think this is good, but it’s going to take some road testing before I feel very confident in that assessment. Assuming you’re running Goodstuff and you have very few situational cards, I think this is mostly going to be a three-mana Fathom Trawl, which seems solid.
Spread: 3
Power: 1-5
Okay, this card is so situational that it’s very difficult to make general statements about it. If you choose two opponents, they could screw each other over, but they could also team up against the guy who just cast Cruel Entertainment and play each other’s turns perfectly to spite you. You can also choose yourself and an opponent if you’re fairly confident that your board and hand is Mindslaver-proof, but as a Mindslaver aficionado, I can tell you those situations are pretty rare, and there’s a chance your topdeck will screw you anyway.
Spread: 3
Power: 1
Let’s say you’re in a 4-player game. You’re player A, you enchant player B, and players C and D watch it happen. There are 24 possible orders in which those four players can die:
ABCD
ABDC
ACBD
ACDB
ADBC
ADCB
BACD
BADC
BCAD
BCDA
BDAC
BDCA
CABD
CADB
CBAD
CBDA
CDAB
CDBA
DABC
DACB
DBAC
DBCA
DCAB
DCBA
Of those 24, the Curse does nothing in the games in which you die before B, and you probably should have run a card that actually helped you win instead. The Curse also does nothing in the games where you and B end up in the finals. If you look through all the possible death orders and eliminate the ones where the Curse does nothing, you’ll be left with the bold death orders above. Count them up and you’ll see that the Curse only does anything in 10/24 games, or 41.67% of the time. That doesn’t even factor in the games where the Curse gets destroyed before the player dies or the games where they die before the Curse accrues a decent number of counters, both of which could easily happen.
Seems like a bad card.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
The thing about spot removal is that it’s not about card advantage. If you want card advantage, play a board wipe instead. Spot removal is about removing a threat that is going to kill you right now (ex: someone is targeting a Zealous Conscripts with a Kiki-Jiki), and you’re willing to sacrifice card parity in order to do it. To that end, the most important element of a spot removal spell is how cheap it is, because you’re going to be holding up mana on your opponents’ turns in order to cast it, and a cheaper spell means a smaller potential loss of tempo if your opponents don’t cast any threats and you held up that mana “for nothing”.
At three mana, Curtains’ Call is slightly better than Reckless Spite, which, at three mana, is not a great spot removal spell by virtue of the fact that it costs three mana. The fact that it has a good ratio of creatures killed to mana spent doesn’t matter, because it’s unlikely that there are going to be two lethal threats on the board at the exact same time. You may have picked up a free card, but how much tempo did you have to wager to do it, relative to a hyper-efficient removal spell like Snuff Out, Vendetta, or Dismember?
Curtains’ Call only gets worse after players start dying off, to the point where you could be holding up five mana to wait for your chance to kill a decent threat.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
It doesn’t play as nicely with combo decks as the original Will and it can’t be recurred, but the power is undeniable. Assuming it lives long enough for you to activate it, this could produce a mountain of card advantage for you.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
This is only playable in exceptionally counter-heavy metagames, and even in that situation, it’s a little bit ugly. You don’t want your spot removal to be sorcery speed and you don’t want your card draw to be conditional, so this card is a bit of a red-headed stepchild.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
There are only a handful of creatures that deal so much damage that it’s worth playing them in Commander. Heartless Hidetsugu is one of them. Charging Cinderhorn is not.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
You’re not going to use this on your opponents’ creatures because it’s so inefficient, and you’re not going to use this on your own creatures because it’s so hard to control.
Spread: 3
Power: 1
It doesn’t keep your opponent from using the threat, so this card doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
I don’t know if people are really shy about attacking in your metagame, but in most of my playgroups, this does nothing except ensure that my opponents get free stuff for doing that they had planned on doing anyway.
Spread: 1
Power: 3
This guy’s utility is mainly limited to decks that can get him into the graveyard without paying his mana cost (ex: Daretti, Malfegor); I’m willing to pay six mana for an instant-speed Wheel of Fortune, but no way in hell am I paying 12.
Spread: 2
Power: 2
A Green To Arms! is better than a White one since it can net you mana when you untap mana dorks. The potential upside of drawing cards if one of your opponents decides to block is more than outweighed by the downside of untapping their stuff since there’s no guarantee anyone will actually help you.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Even in a deck built around +1/+1 counters, this is an ugly card. Giving away free counters might be relatively harmless compared to giving away cards and mana, but you have to ask yourself: if +1/+1 counters are so bad that I don’t mind giving them away, then why am I running a card that does nothing except generate them?
Spread: 3
Power: 2
The problem with a card like Primeval Protector is that it’s only good in the late game, and at that point, a single round of counters doesn’t have enough of an impact. Primeval Protector is competing against Craterhoof Behemoth, Thunderfoot Baloth, and Decimator of the Provinces, all of which provide at least double the buff and evasion, to boot.
Spread: 4
Power: 2-3
With three opponents, it’s great; with two, it’s decent; with one, it’s mediocre. Overall, I think I might prefer more efficient spells or creature-based recursion that is more easily searched up and/or recurred.
Spread: 2
Power: 2
Cast a sweeper after attacking with the team seems sweet, but the fact that it doesn’t protect against your opponents’ sweepers makes me pretty skeptical of this card. I know Iroas is in a different color identity, but the fact that he costs half as much to do the same things is a pretty good indicator of the Chieftain’s power level.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
This thing is so completely outclassed by the other options in these colors that it’s not worth discussing.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
The haste is a nice touch, but Black’s best single target reanimation spells cost somewhere between 1/6 and ½ of this card. Don’t run it.
Spread: 1
Power: 3
There aren’t a whole lot of UW token builds (Derevi, Kangee, and…?) but the decks that can play it definitely want it. 4 bodies for five mana is a decent rate even if they didn’t have flying; as it stands, this card is a gift.
Spread: 4
Power: 2
I was already uncertain about whether Return to Dust was efficient enough to play, so I’m really wary about spending another mana just for the privilege of getting my 2-for-1 on an opponent’s turn. Contrast this with Nature’s Claim and despair.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Incredibly expensive and unlike most other finishers at this price point, it’s not certain that it’s going to get the job done.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
Your meta would have to have an insane amount of equipment for this to be worthwhile, because it’s definitely not good enough if you’re only attaching your own.
Spread: 5
Power: ????
50% of the time, things are going to go badly, and 25% of the time, things are going to go really badly. But hey, maybe you’re lucky.
Spread: 1
Power: 3
First off, the Silence effect is a bonus, not the main reason to run the card. You should probably only play this in a four-color Voltron deck (which basically just means Saskia) as the ratio of mana spent to power gained is too low in three-color, two-color, and monocolor decks.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
A Workhorse with less combo potential that only works in four-color decks. I’ll pass.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
It’s only worthwhile in 3+ color decks and even there, it’s worse than Gilded Lotus. The ability to split up your mana production is pretty sweet, though.
Spread: 5
Power: 2
The fact that you can pay a different type of mana to cycle it and get immediate access to the color you need seems like a big improvement over
Evolving Wilds, as does the fact that it won’t mess up your curve when you play it.
Wrapping Up
Please let me know if you disagree with any of my ratings or if there are some uses for one of the new cards that I may have missed. Thanks for reading!