Okay, we’ve had the Wizard and Sorcerer, and here we are with another caster, the Warlock. In Dungeons & Dragons, the Warlock class gains power from a pact with an otherworldly patron and are the strongest damage dealers among the casters.
That backstory tends to put them firmly in black, color pie-wise, but adding any other color works here, even white can make sense if you’ve gone for a specific patron or alignment.
For now, we’ll stick to mono-black. There’s a wealth of Commander gameplay in just that color, with so many strategies open before you even consider another color. It’s also perfect, flavorfully.
The really hard part is capturing a spellcaster in black. They need to deal damage without red, and cast things like Power Word Kill, rather than strictly drawing cards or bringing the lightning. That means you need to figure out who your Warlock is, and what they want to do.
If you’re basing this on a character, it’s a little easier, but if you just want to sell the Warlock class, this is probably top-down, in that you pick a commander who fits the Warlock concept and build around them with powerful spells rather than too much of a creature focus.
Warlocks are powerful necromancers, if built correctly, although Fifth Edition makes that a little hard. Despite that, it’s the best way to build a Commander deck and the closest crossover with Magic. Warlocks can kill people and raise their corpses, or summon zombies and demons.
Ghoulcaller Gisa is a great match here, but lacks the patron, she’s just a necromancer. Still, she can sacrifice a creature to make zombies, which is a rough match for the D&D spell Finger of Death.
Chainer, Dementia Master, makes a little more sense as a Warlock, since he’s a Minion who could conceivably have a patron, but less sense too, since he can reanimate basically anything and Warlocks aren’t that powerful in 5E.
So we’re not there yet, we need someone who embodies the dark magic of the Warlock, and has made an oath they definitely shouldn’t. There are two Commanders who fit the bill. First, Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath.
Ob is a planeswalker commander, and represents his human form, before he became a demon mobster. He deals direct damage and gains you life, he summons demons and he can build to an ultimate that feels like a huge, dark, evil spell. He’s basically an ideal Warlock. Look at that art – he knows it too.
The other option is Liliana, Heretical Healer. Lili is a bit less straight-up evil than Ob Nixilis, so you can match her to the alignment you want for your Warlock, giving you another angle on the class. She’s not a very strong creature, but in flavor terms, her transformation into the necromancer who makes pacts with demons to gain power is perfection.
Her planeswalker side is not quite as fitting in flavor as Ob Nixilis, but as lore goes, she’s absolutely a Warlock. If you know the Magic story, you’ll want her at the head of a deck representing the Warlock class.
The options to support either of those commanders are vast. You can go deep into necromancy, or have a varied spellbook like a D&D Warlock, lots of kill spells, some card draw, some damage and some reanimation with strong demons to capture the feel of a patron being part of your power.
Really, Warlock is easy once you get past the choice of Commander, and you have tons of flexibility.
