Magic Review: WotC Commander Decks Part 1

Just in case you’ve been living under a Magic rock for the past year or so, Wizards of the Coast has decided to support the popular casual format known as commander by printing their own commander decks. After an agonizingly long wait, the commander launch parties are almost here, so make sure to get out there and play commander June 17th-20th at your local game store.

It’s hard to put into words how excited I am for these new decks. Not only do they contain many, many powerful commander cards for only $30 per deck, but they represent the willingness of WotC to directly support user-created content. That alone is worth more than any one card or deck. WotC has published other multiplayer specific decks in the past with Archenemy and Planescape, and it’s no secret that commander has been extremely popular in the WotC offices for years. You only need to look back at the last few blocks to realize they’ve been somewhat subliminally supporting the format with one or two awesome new legendary creatures per set. But the most pertinent parts of these decks are the commander-specific cards, i.e. the cards that are just plain bad in traditional Magic or that are simply unplayable in any other format (Command Tower, I’m looking at you). These cards in particular signal a change in R&D’s design philosophy, and, personally, I’m all for it. I love being able to use every card in Magic in most formats, but I think it’s about time that WotC started targeting casual Magic players in a more overt way than just printing an Un-set once in a while or printing a Knowledge Pool every so often.

One thing to note is that each deck has the following three cards; Lightning Greaves, Command Tower, and Sol Ring. Now, these cards won’t make it into EVERY commander deck, but they are some of the staples for most players. Sol Ring in particular is awesome and I’m ecstatic that WotC chose to reprint it. Now the price of Sol Rings online might actually be reasonable. Overall, I’m glad to see these cards in every deck, as most players will try to find them or want them anyway. A couple other cards I think could have been in every deck are Whispersilk Cloak and Nim Deathmantle, but those cards are much more readily available right now than the other three. Wizards probably just wanted to leave space for new, more exciting cards in the decks. I’m annoyed that Champion’s Helm is only included in one deck but  people should be able to pick one up fairly cheaply after the decks are out I hope.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at the actual decks themselves. First of all, I just want to say that the art on the new cards is astounding. I don’t think the artists ever get enough credit, so I just wanted to make sure you, constant reader, noticed how great the new cards look. Unless you’re just a Spike playing purely for the competition, the money, the fame, and the glory, in which case what are you doing reading a post about commander in the first place?

Anyway, on to the decks. Keep in mind as you’re reading this that I haven’t playtested any of the new cards, and that all of my opinions are purely speculation-based at this point. First up is the White/Black/Red deck Heavenly Inferno lead by Kaalia of the Vast.

See what I mean by the art being amazing? Kaalia is outstanding, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. It’s kind of a Yugioh! card, and by that I mean that it focuses a lot on getting big monsters into play and attacking with them, and that’s about it. Now, I’m not knocking that kind of play, and I’ll even play this kind of Timmy deck every now and then. But it’s just not my style. That said, Kaalia is going to win A LOT of games by herself and this deck is one of the best of the five. One of the most political cards in the decks, Mana-Charged Dragon, is part of Kaalia’s army, and that card will make you a lot of friends around the table if you play your cards right. Now, Kaalia doesn’t have a huge body herself, so you will probably have to protect her through cards like Master Warcraft and Path to Exile, but as long as you’re playing huge threats, your opponents will likely be making some tough choices and take some heavy hits if they do choose to block your cleric all-star. Unfortunately, I’m not too excited about the other two new commander options included with this deck. Basandra, Battle Seraph is not a fun card to play and furthermore goes against much of the core strategy of the deck. Tariel, Reckoner of Souls, is not much better; with only a 4/7 body for seven mana, the ability to take random creatures from an opponent’s graveyard is not very exciting. He does have flying and vigilance, so at the very least he can be a small beater, but to make him good you are going to have to commit other cards to him. Luckily, the deck is still great despite the underwhelming commanders. You can always rely on Oros, the Avenger if you want a real alternative. And Kaalia still rocks.

My rating of this deck (compared to the other four):

Fun factor: 4/5
Value of Cards: 5/5
Competitiveness:  5/5
Overall: 4/5

Up next is the Blue/Red/Green deck Mirror Mastery, headed by the wizardly Riku of the Two Reflections.

I don’t know what to think about this guy. He’s broken, obviously. And probably not in a good way. This card and deck are almost purely for the Johnny players and that’s fine. But I know that Riku decks are going to make lots of games frustrating, annoying, and not fun for lots of people. The backbone of commander is its casualness. Everyone who sits down to play commander enters into an agreement to have fun at all costs. And if the wrong player is piloting Riku, at best that player will be focus-fired on for the majority of each game. At worst, it will make people stop playing commander, at least with that pilot, and that’s a serious issue. In my opinion, Riku is just a little too easy to exploit and his abilities are not all that creative. But time will tell if Riku is as overpowered as I think. Animar and Edric, on the other hand, are a lot more interesting cards, and I would probably choose Animar or Intet for my commander if were to use this deck, just for the sake of everyone having a better time. This deck does have access to Day of Dragons, another great political card like Mana-Charged Dragon, but that’s one of the only cards in this deck that excites me. The rest are big creatures like Hydra Omnivore (admittedly the king of all beat-sticks) and cute tricks like Chain Reaction that I could probably use my own cards to fill in with instead. Overall, this deck doesn’t excite me that much, mostly because of the subpar main legendary. Most people will probably still have a good time playing this deck and I may buy it after I purchase the other four decks, but this is the one I’m least excited about.

My rating:

Fun factor: 2/5
Value of Cards: 4/5
Competitiveness: 4/5
Overall: 2/5

Well, that’s all for now. Soon after I started this review I realized there’s way too much material for me to cover in one night (I write these articles the day they get published don’tcha know). Join me next time for the rest of the commander decks and, hopefully, lots more thoughts on individual cards.

Until next time, lamp out.