Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate looks like it’s going to make a big impact on Constructed Commander, and the Limited format looks like a ton of fun as well. I’m very excited to draft it, but we’re not here to talk about draft today. We’re here for my full Constructed-focused review of this fantastic new set!
As a reminder, my focus is on social Commander rather than competitive EDH. These days, I’ve been leaning more toward a desire to play three 40-minute games in lieu of one two-hour slog, but I’ll be talking about cards from the wider social perspective. My goal when playing Commander is for everyone to have fun but also for me to have a good shot at winning the game – or at least doing the thing my deck set out to do – so if that’s your mindset as well, these reviews will probably resonate with you. I won’t be reviewing reprints, so you can just assume I feel the same way about Fireball as I did before we found out it was in this set. I also don’t review every card – if I feel they’re not worth mentioning, I don’t give them a write-up, but we all know there’s a deck out there for every card. In particular, if I don’t mention a card with one of the set’s core mechanics, my thoughts can likely be summarized as “Decent in a deck focused on that mechanic, not great outside of it.” When you inevitably disagree with a review (or think I skipped something good), please feel free to tweet at @RagingLevine with your thoughts!
Please note that all of the cards in this review are from the main set – the cards exclusive to the preconstructed decks will be in a separate set of articles.
One other note: for each commander with Choose a Background, I’ll let you know which background I’m most excited about pairing with that commander in Constructed!
Agent of the Iron Throne |
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| This Background turns your commander into half of an Aristocrats payoff card, so you want to make sure creatures and artifacts are going away. Perhaps Lulu, Loyal Hollyphant wants to turn to the dark side and become a sacrifice payoff? Or maybe we stay mono-black with Shadowheart or Sivriss? Gut, True Soul Zealot provides us both a sacrifice outlet and access to a second color, and you know sacrifice decks live in the world of Rakdos, so that’s my pick. |
Agent of the Shadow Thieves |
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| We talked about using this with Alora, Merry Thief earlier, and I’m still on that plan with some Ninja creatures to make unblocked attackers even more exciting. We can play other Dimir saboteurs from the classic Shadowmage Infiltrator to newer entrants like Thief of Sanity too. |
Altar of Bhaal |
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| Exiling a creature instead of sacrificing it seems like it would make this worse, and it does, but once you get things set up, the Bhaal’s in your court. You can generate lots of tokens with cards like Bitterblossom and Endrek Sahr, and those tokens will pay huge dividends as you sacrifice them to return actual creatures from the graveyard! I think Endrek Sahr provides the best home for this Altar, but Beledros Witherbloom and Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools are great choices as well. |
Ancient Brass Dragon |
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| This gets creatures out of any graveyard, not just our own, so any commander looking to mill everyone and then reanimate things is likely to be interested – new entrant Captain N’ghathrod is a great choice, but so are Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and even Szadek, Lord of Secrets. Casting this for seven and waiting to attack is a bummer, so mill this yourself and bring it back with Makeshift Mannequin or Footsteps of the Goryo! |
Astarion’s Thirst |
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| This is going to be worse than a lot of removal spells most of the time, so if you don’t need the +1/+1 counters on your commander, don’t slot this in. Four mana is a lot to pay, but if you’re already playing something like Vraska’s Contempt, you want the counters on something like Elenda or Juri, and you can stomach the value proposition overall, go for it. |
Blood Money |
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| At least the Treasure tokens are tapped. This costs seven mana for a reason – you’ll cast this, other players will have a whole turn cycle to rebuild, and you’ll make up for that with your hoard of Treasure. This will hurt a ton in decks that feature Cabal Coffers, Crypt Ghast and other big mana Swamp synergies that allow them to cast this and other spells in the same turn. It’ll also hurt in any deck that can sacrifice the tapped Treasures for value in the same turn and go off with Disciple of the Vault or another piece of sacrifice synergy. |
Call to the Void |
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| This is a really fun subgame. As long as each player controls more than one creature, you’ve got a destroyer’s dilemma. If you have an indestructible creature, you should of course choose that, but the real excitement comes from trying to figure out what your opponents will pick from their boards, what they’ll pick from your board, and whether I can choose the wine in front of me. Get ready for arguments about “no, I didn’t pick THAT Elf token, I picked the other one!” |
Cloudkill |
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| I love that this is castable for a big value of X even when your commander is in the command zone, but I think it also shines with planeswalker commanders. That said, it is a six mana wrath that doesn’t offer extra value, so unless your commander has a Progenitus-level mana value, I’d look elsewhere most of the time. |
Criminal Past |
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| If you’re putting creatures in your graveyard on purpose, this works – if you’re not, it doesn’t. Amber Gristle O’Maul wants you to discard your hand, so that might be the best choice here. You could stay mono-black with Viconia, but I’d rather add red and get the madness synergies going. |
Cultist of the Absolute |
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| Who wants to become a Lord of the Pit? This doesn’t give trample, but Wilson, Refined Grizzly already has trample, so why not make some Saprolings, Thrulls or other expendable tokens and do some serious commander damage? Skanos Dragonheart can also take on some of the power of dead Dragons, so that might be a secondary fun avenue. No matter what you do, you need to be focused on commander damage; otherwise, this likely isn’t worth it. |
Elder Brain |
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| Aside from 20-year-old Futurama references, this card has a lot to offer. Unlike the Ancient Brass Dragon, Elder Brain doesn’t need to hit – it just has to attack for you to get access to a whole new hand of cards. It’s nice enough to leave the victim with a new brain… er, hand, so it’s not a huge feel-bad – it just gives you enormous card advantage. I can’t wait to double this trigger with Isshin! |
Eldritch Pact |
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| The coolest scenario I can come up with involves casting this at an opponent with a Tormod’s Crypt so they have to Crypt themselves and not me. This costs so much mana, and then you probably lose some uncontrolled, wild amount of life. Maybe you’ve already hit the ultimate on Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, but if that’s the case, you’re full up on cards already! In all seriousness, a lower-powered K’rrik deck might love this. |
Intellect Devourer |
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| Your opponents get to choose what they pitch to the Devourer, and you can only play the cards until the Devourer leaves play, but on the upside, you can actually play lands. If you’re purposefully playing other peoples’ cards or want to cast spells from exile (yes, it’s Prosper time), the Devourer is a fun option, but if you’re not playing that type of themed deck, I’d pass. |
Pact Weapon |
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| What a bizarre card – it’s a reanimator enabler, a Platinum Angel and a Dark Tutelage all rolled into one. The discard cost is what makes me think reanimator, though perhaps madness is the answer here – either way though, you’re taking a risk with your life total because both options involve cards with high mana values. I suppose you could choose not to attack with the creature if that’s an issue. If you are at zero or less life, blowing up Pact Weapon or removing the creature are both ways to turn off the “can’t lose”, so beware. |
Ravenloft Adventurer |
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| Hit counters, you say? Well, we can either try to accumulate them with Etrata or turn them into value with Mari. You don’t get to win with Etrata until she deals combat damage to a player, but this makes it way easier – that said, I might rather build mono-black Assassin/Rogue tribal with Mari. Exiling creatures that die under your opponents’ control isn’t irrelevant either, as so much of commander involves recursion. Throw in the initiative and we’ve got a sweet one here. |
Safana, Calimport Cutthroat |
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| Three Treasure tokens per turn is just an absurd amount of value. We need to make sure we have the initiative, and we’ll want to be venturing as well, so Dungeon Delver is the natural pick alongside Safana. That said, using the Treasures with Street Urchin is an option as well, and using them to play the free cards off Tavern Brawl could be interesting. I think blue has better venture options though, so I’d rather stick with that to augment our initiative cards. The other option to use the Treasures for value is Clan Crafter from the preconstructed decks, and that actually might be the best call. |
Sarevok, Deathbringer |
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| We definitely want to pump Sarevok up if we can, and what better background for that than Raised by Giants? It shouldn’t be too hard to make sure we have a permanent leave the battlefield on our turn in a Golgari deck, as that’s one of the most recursion-focused color pairs for sure. The other option is to go with something like Street Urchin and leverage red’s instant speed power-pumping ability. |
Scion of Halaster |
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| This Background both improves your draw step and helps fill your graveyard, and I think Erinis benefits greatly from that equation. You don’t need to draw as many lands when you’re returning them from the graveyard to the battlefield, and it’s not hard to build in some self-mill synergies in Golgari. |
Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar |
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| Shadowheart has huge draw power as long as you’ve got something serious to sacrifice. If you’re flooding the board with tokens to sac, turn them into little Ancestral Recalls with Inspiring Leader and Shadowheart’s activation! You could also go with Cloakwood Hermit to ensure a steady stream of sacrifice fodder, but it’s easy enough to make tokens in bulk in an Orzhov list that I’m more interested in upping their utility both with and without Shadowheart’s activation. |
Sivriss, Nightmare Speaker |
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| Another sacrifice-focused commander, Sivriss gives your opponents a choice: bolt yourself or give me a card. That makes me all the more interested in pairing this with Cloakwood Hermit to make sure we’re activating this every turn, but it’s possible adding blue could really help Sivriss untap and get re-activated repeatedly. If that’s your idea of fun, I’d throw Candlekeep Sage in here, as people will definitely try to blow up your engine! |
Viconia, Drow Apostate |
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| As long as your cemetery is oversold, Viconia gets you value in your upkeep. Mono-black with Scion of Halaster is an option for getting cards into your graveyard faster, but the best option here really just involves picking your favorite color pair for this recursion ability and using an appropriate value Background. |
Amber Gristle O’Maul |
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| This is an interesting one – Boros features more myriad, but Rakdos gives us more madness opportunities. I’d actually lean toward Rakdos, as this works well with encore as well. Heck, discarding our encore cards to Amber is probably a great way to enable things! Flashback, unearth, reanimation… yeah, let’s turn Amber into an Agent of the Shadow Thieves to make sure she can attack with impunity or give her a Criminal Past to push past blockers using menace while also taking advantage of our graveyard. |
Ancient Copper Dragon |
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| More Treasures? I mean, yes, of course we can pair this with Ingenious Artillerist or any other card that cares about artifacts entering or leaving the battlefield. It’s not too hard to use Sneak Attack, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded or Ilharg, the Raze-Boar to get this onto the battlefield with haste, but putting Lightning Greaves on this and just sending isn’t a bad call either. |
Balor |
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| What an enormous pile of value. You do have to attack with this before you get any of that value, but even if it dies without swinging, you still get a trigger. The Burning Inquiry mode is a little weird and maybe not the most fun, but forcing players to get rid of their mana rocks and dealing huge damage to players hoarding cards sounds like a fun time to me. I’d be tempted to add this to decks that can generate additional combats or decks that can reliably give all of their creatures haste. |
Bloodboil Sorcerer |
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| I’m so happy to see more goad cards getting printed, and this one is pretty great. Adding two mana to the activation cost makes it hard for this to get too out of control even with heavy Treasure or creature token generation to lean on, but determined players will find a way to make it work. If my Juri deck were on a lower power level, I’d try this in there, but a deck that steals creatures temporarily and wants to goad as well should be very excited – I’m thinking a Ziatora deck with Riveteers Ascendancy and some theft effects. |
Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind |
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| Just noting the haste here – this is the premier Orb of Dragonkind in my dragonmind. |
Caves of Chaos Adventurer |
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| A four-mana 5/3 is going to trade down a lot, so attacking with this for value more than once might be a bit difficult. That said, if you need the initiative, you’re going to play all of the cards that say “initiative” on them in your color identity because there just aren’t that many of them. If you can make this unblockable with someone like Alora, who then lets you replay it to progress further via gaining the initiative some more, I’d put more value on this. |
Descent into Avernus |
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| Do you like damage? Do you like Treasures? Speed up your games with Descent into Avernus! Any aggressive Treasure-based deck is going to love this, and other players are going to be firing their enchantment removal at this in a hurry. It does have to make it around to your upkeep before it starts to have an effect, but Juri, Ziatora, Magda, Galazeth and many other Treasure-focused commanders will absolutely love this. |
Dragon Cultist |
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| I put together a fun list with this and Gale, and I think that’s a really fun option, but Skanos could absolutely use this to jam out some additional value in a Gruul Dragons list. The damage doesn’t have to be done to a player, so just getting chump-blocked is fine – you’ll just need to give Skanos that extra +1/+1 to make things happen, as he’s sized just slightly too small at base level. |
Elturel Survivors |
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| An interesting variation on Coastline Marauders, these peasants pack a punch and come with one more point of toughness with an increased mana value as a downside. Four mana is certainly more than three, but playing a mana rock on turn two, following up with this on turn three and then bashing on turn four will yield plenty of damage to the table and make it easy to attack someone vulnerable with the main copy. |
Firbolg Flutist |
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| For six mana, this had better be a heck of an enters the battlefield ability. It’s decent – stealing a creature for a turn and giving it myriad is a great way to squeeze some extra advantage out of a Mulldrifter or anything with a solid trigger. Just grabbing a large creature is fine, but again, we’re spending six mana on this – the best thing to do with this card is certainly to blink it if possible or copy the trigger otherwise. |
Ganax, Astral Hunter |
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| A Dragon that hoards Treasure? What a surprise! We could set ourselves up in Rakdos with Agent of the Iron Throne to get more damage out of our Treasure tokens, or in my favorite universe, we go Izzet with Feywild Visitor to get more Dragons and, therefore, more Treasure triggers. Throw in Galazeth Prismari, Goldspan Dragon and Ancient Copper Dragon to really get things moving along nicely. |
Guild Artisan |
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| So if you’re in dethrone mode, you get two Treasures when you bash with your commander. Since we really want to add color identity here, we could use Jaheira to give the Treasure tokens the ability to tap for green mana forever! That’s right, it’s not just creature tokens. Commanders that want to attack, like Skanos, could work here, and Lulu loves it when Treasures get used on our turn. The possibilities are endless, mostly because Treasures are great. |
Gut, True Soul Zealot |
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| Little baby Sek’Kuar here wants someone to attack to get that trigger going, but as a 2/2 for three, Gut’s probably not heading to the red zone. Instead, we can build up some extra tokens with Veteran Soldier and white’s many “when this attacks, make more tokens” options – that way, we can convert those tokens into 4/1 menace Skeletons and continue to smash. Cards like Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance that generate hasty attacking tokens will be some of the best friends Gut could ask for, and don’t count out Jadar, Ophiomancer and similar. Sacrificing the 4/1s to Greven, Predator Captain sounds fun too! |
Ingenious Artillerist |
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| Treasure, Treasure, Treasure. That’s what this is all about, of course. Pairing this with big Treasure generators like Ancient Copper Dragon and, of course, Dockside Extortionist, is an easy win, and adding in more Treasure synergy like Xorn, Mayhem Devil and Reckless Fireweaver turns things up to 11. Unpleasant. |
Karlach, Fury of Avernus |
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| An extra combat connected to our commander? Where have I heard that before? Luckily, this effect has a limiter on it, and even if you copy Karlach without the legendary type or copy the trigger, you only get your creatures untapped during this specific combat. Karlach wants to bash, so any of the “get your commander attacking” Backgrounds are fine, with Hardy Outlander being a solid choice for giving +5/+5 to another attacker. That said, Haunted One from the preconstructed deck card pool is a great option too – load up on Barbarians like Plundering Barbarian, Zalto, Tiger-Tribe Hunter and yes, Godo. |
Livaan, Cultist of Tiamt |
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| Livaan is an interesting spellslinger commander, encouraging you to play larger noncreature spells to pump up your creatures. This probably manifests best in playing mid-sized instants after blockers to empower unblocked tokens from cards like Murmuring Mystic, but I like the idea of combining this with Sword Coast Sailor and using Livaan to deal serious commander damage when attacking unblockably toward the current highest life total player. Throw in cards like Artful Dodge and Slip Through Space just in case you have to attack someone else and you’re really making something happen. |
Popular Entertainer |
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| You don’t get to goad for each creature that hits, but if you manage to hit everyone, you’re really going to get things moving. Going wide with this makes the most sense to me, so I’d be interested in combining this with Abdel Adrian, our lone non-red token generating commander that’s Background-compatible. The more I see of the Background stuff, the more I think “this will be great in Limited but somewhat limited in Constructed.” |
Storm King’s Thunder |
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| This is a scary one. It’s very costly, only getting really good once X>3 when you compare it to something like Repeated Reverberation, and it can sit in your hand while you wait for something good for a while. You can probably only afford to copy cheap spells with this as well, so make sure it’s something powerful like Jeska’s Will or something that offers you massive card selection like Ponder or Preordain. Just copying a Lightning Bolt or similar a few times is unlikely to win you the game or really be worthwhile. |
Street Urchin |
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| Staple a sacrifice outlet to your commander! Now who could possibly want that? Well, Lulu for one, in order to trigger that end step ability. Viconia could also use it to put creatures back into the graveyard so that the cemetery is oversold once again. Basically anyone can find a use for this, but I think it’s best in Orzhov or Boros where you can easily generate a huge amount of creature tokens or other fodder to churn through with this. |
Swashbuckler Extraordinaire |
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| I love the idea of using this with Ognis to leverage the tapped Treasures the turn they enter the battlefield. This also works well with Jolene, the Plunder Queen, since you’ll be generating tons of extra Treasure everywhere you turn. Make sure to throw in a Professional Face-Breaker for some extra Treasure! |
Tavern Brawler |
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| I love that this turns our commander into a source of additional cards – the power boost is secondary, though it can be useful. Safana can use her Treasures to help cast these additional cards, while Skanos stands to gain a ton of power from any Dragons we flip and wants to attack regardless. While Vhal cares about toughness rather than power, you can still use that activated ability to cast the cards from Tavern Brawler, so it’s an interesting pairing. |
Wand of Wonder |
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| Between Ancient Brass Dragon and this, I feel like they’ve really nailed the level of splashiness we’re looking for in d20-rolling cards. You’re always going to hit multiple choices in instants and sorceries (unless your opponents are somehow out of both of those card types), and that means that even if you roll 1-9, you’ll be getting a free spell for your trouble. A 20 should feel like a critical hit, and this one definitely will! The only trouble here is that you’re spending eight mana before you get any impact, but if your power level is right for Wand of Wonder, it should be a lot of fun. |
Wild Magic Surge |
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| Another piece of red “destroy anything” removal, but this one is (nearly) guaranteed to bring back a card that shares a type with whatever you blew up. This is going to be a good “cool story generator” in Limited and a backup Chaos Warp for mono-red decks that really feel like they need a second copy. Chaos Warp isn’t exactly costly money-wise, but if you’re on a rarity restriction, this could matter too. |
Wrathful Red Dragon |
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| Blasphemous Act much? Explosive sequences aside, I’d play this in Vrondiss or any deck that is putting Dragons into situations where they might actually exchange combat damage with other creatures. This card is really powerful if you can hit your Dragons with some damage that will injure them without killing them, so getting some 4/4s and then Flamebreaking or similar seems like a great plan. |
Wyll, Blade of Frontiers |
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| It’s a shame Wyll comes with no preinstalled evasion, but if we want to maximize our die-rolling potential, we’ll probably want to go Izzet. That means Sword Coast Sailor is in play, but we could also go with Shameless Charlatan – that way, once we build up sufficient counters on Wyll, we can copy something more threatening (perhaps something with flying or trample) and really bash hard. |
Wyll’s Reversal |
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| As long as you have a creature with power four or greater, you’re at a 50-50 shot to hit the better outcome. Obviously any spell like this is contextual based on how good whatever you’re copying is, but when you consider how much better this is with Wyll or another die roll fixer active, it’s a solid version of this effect if (and only if) you’re looking for an effect like this already. |
I always enjoy your work, but I wanted you to know that this article helped me finally find a Commander for my Boros Tribal Goblin deck, and I’m beyond grateful. My favourite MTG content is anything with your name at the top!