For being a rat king, he's not really much of a lord for rats. He's a decent standalone card, providing free tokens (albeit pretty crappy ones) and grave hate (albeit at sorcery speed). He looks pretty decent in the 99 of some token decks, and is a snap keep for rat tribal decks, but I doubt he'll ever be at their helm.

Final Judgment: Bad

The body and buff are both very unimpressive, even if there was no sacrifice required for the latter. That leaves the end step trigger. It's nice that it triggers each turn, and Flitterfang could potentially create a fairly significant amount of food, but it's still nowhere near interesting enough to be worth building.

Final Judgment: Bad

Forefathers one and all, bear witness…to a pretty boring commander. It's pretty easy to activate Goddric by playing baubles, creating treasure, etc, but the payoff isn't terribly exciting. A 4/4 flying haste firebreathing commander for 4 is admittedly a fairly fast clock, but he doesn't generate any value or do anything besides bash, so I suspect he'll be among the least popular commanders from the set.

Final Judgment: Bad

Imodane is a variation on a similar sort of mono-red burn commander we've seen in Toralf, God of Fury, Solphim, Mayhem Dominus, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, etc. Burn-type removal is typically a bit anemic in a commander setting, but it can hit some pretty extreme numbers (hi Shivan Meteor) that are paid off here. Could definitely surprise people with a sudden kill via Barrel Down Sokenzan (who even remembers that card?). Burn is a tough slog in commander, and you're very weak to sac outlets and removal. Plus mono-red lacks tutors, so you can't really rely on a Nahiri's Wrath CMC-maxing strat. High-damage instants are rare, and sorcery-removal is a lot less effective. The symmetry is obviously very strong, but it also means you lack most of your political ability, and could easily kill your allies accidentally while leaving up the primary threat. Besides the obvious burn spells and some ramp and draw, I think the next most important thing will be damage doublers, which can send your damage stratospheric easily. Overall, I do think Imodane is a strong commander, but I think she's too vulnerable and predictable be able to keep it together versus more wary and/or powerful opponents.

Final Judgment: Good

Finally a use for Reckless Amplimancer. There are lots of creatures that could fit into Agatha's game plan, depending on how hard you want to commit to increasing her power. You'd need a robust plan to fully exploit the invoker cycle, but I think the most effective build will probably have somewhat humbler plans to get her power to 3, 4, or 5, most likely with auras, though some equipment is efficient enough to warrant consideration. You'd obviously want to focus on activated abilities that can be activated repeatedly, where the difference between an activation cost of 2 and a cost of 1 means a twofold increase in power, so having a plan for a specific power probably makes the most sense. The setup cost doesn't seem very high here, and the results could be fairly explosive with the right creatures. She even provides a trample outlet for the myriad of self-pumping creatures (like the amplimancer) that could suddenly migrate from draft chaff to deadly threat - though I think there will be better options except for a few outliers like amplimancer.

Final Judgment: Good

Ash is limited fodder, plain and simple. The trigger isn't too difficult to satisfy, but a grizzly bear that grows +1/+1 once per turn cycle isn't commander viable. You could take extra combat steps to increase the growth, but c'mon. Just run a real commander instead.

Final Judgment: Bad

I'm always nervous of commanders for whom an inopportune removal could spell sudden death, and Eriette definitely falls into that camp. If you suddenly find yourself sans commander, you could be in a lot of trouble if you were relying on her defensive ability. Lacking blue counterspells doesn't help either, though white does have some decent protection options. Her lifedrain ability does potentially shore up your life a bit against the possibility of an alpha strike, though it's awfully slow as a standalone wincon. I'd imagine you'd want a lot of cheap, cantripping auras, as well as the role tokens from Eldraine, so that you aren't running out of gas while setting up your board. Unfortunately even if you've protected your commander, all this work can be undone with a board wipe, so you might want to hedge with a few curses or enchant lands or something, so that you're still draining for something. I don't think the plan is overall very competitive - it does seem far too slow and easy to disrupt - but she's an interesting option.

Final Judgment: Good

Tragically not part of a commander set, and thus not privy to the "counters equal to mana spent" clause like Gyrus, Waker of Corpses, Marath, Will of the Wild, or Kurbis, Harvest Celebrant, The Goose Mother's fairly efficient stats drop off with repeat castings. That said, it's decent the first time around, and blue green can certainly ramp it into a major threat for the late-game, efficient or no. I doubt it'll be worth worrying too much about food production, since you're limited to sacrificing once per attack - better to just ramp and plan to recast it for more food later. Bounce or sacrifice to enable recasting for greater mana values seems like a good way to move from a midgame value engine into a late-game lethal push, but besides that it seems like a pretty self-contained wincon for a control deck. You could throw in a few pieces of equipment or counter doublers or something, but I think the biggest strength here is that it doesn't need the support. Blue green is decent control colors (obviously blue carrying most of the weight) but not amazing. I don't think it's the most exciting option, but it's serviceable.

Final Judgment: Bad

Greta can turn your food into clues, more or less, or into counters - though limiting this to sorcery speed is a huge knock against it. If food was free, she'd be pretty strong, but I don't think food production is generally efficient enough to make her abilities interesting. Take Tireless Provisioner, the most popular food-producing card. Using the food to sac for draw essentially just turns it into a worse Tireless Tracker, and the counter ability is significantly less interesting. She's more interesting than most uncommons, but not really commander-worthy.

Final Judgment: Bad

Hylda is a unique option for UW, a payoff for tapping down enemy creatures. And quite a payoff indeed - creating an army of 4/4s and then powering them up further is a lot of value for just 1 mana each. In terms of efficiency, repeatable tapdowns tend to be fairly expensive since they're highly costed for limited (though single-target auras like narcolepsy or can create a lot of triggers over time on the cheap), so I suspect the most powerful version of the deck focuses primarily on ramping until it can dump an EOT Ensnare, pay 15 mana to create 9 4/4s and give them each +6/+6, and swing for surprise lethal. Of course, that build falls flat against creature-light decks, but it only takes one token player to open the floodgates. Nice thing too, you don't pay the mana until the tapdown has successfully happened, so until that point you've got shields up. Alternatively, Icy Manipulator and company make a decent engine to churn out large-ish bodies or draw, and you don't need a wide board to make it work, though it's easier to be set back by a board wipe. By far the nastiest synergy is Opposition, though, which gives you a way to lock down the whole board with enough mana, and win in short order. Either way, the payoffs are big enough that I think Hylda is a transparently powerful commander, and will be potentially frustrating to play against, though I don't think she quite gets into ugly territory - in part because she's at least unique and likely combat-focused.

Final Judgment: Good, bordering on ugly

Apprentice to Melek, Izzet Paragon apparently. Johann cuts off a couple mana and lets you keep your topdecks to yourself, at the loss of copying the spells or being able to do them more than once per turn. Happily, the latter can be worked around by casting instants on enemy turns, which is necessary to be a remotely interesting CA engine. While the tradeoffs are reasonable, I've never really liked Melek, and instant/sorcery heavy RU decks tend to be a lot less fun to plan than they look, at least in my experience. Way too much screwing around and wasting everyone's time. It doesn't help that few instants are effective wincons, which means you're pushed further into screwing-around-forever territory.

Final Judgment: Bad

Another limited uncommon. The etb is decent, but not really interesting enough to think about blinking, and the growth ability isn't really compelling enough for a 4-drop. Enchantments don't tend to go to the graveyard on their own, and I can't see running a bunch of sacrifice fodder enchantments just to get an extra counter. Most likely she's made to exploit the role enchantments from the set, but that's definitely not going to scale to commander power levels.

Final Judgment: Bad

I know there are some Faerie fans out there, and I can understand not wanting a six-drop Oona, Queen of the Fae to helm a tribe of tiny dudes, but there are multiple UB faeries in the precons for this set that are orders of magnitude more powerful than Obyra. Draining for 1 life each really isn't enough firepower.

Final Judgment: Quite Bad

It's worth taking a brief pause to note that a 4/2 menace for 3 is a pretty damn good rate. Probably not relevant to how most Rowan decks will be built, but it does bear mentioning. Rowan really got the better end of the stick over Will in almost every way - 4/2 menace is far more interesting than a 2/4 vigilance, paying life is much easier to do cheaply than gaining life (hi Necropotence), and black and red have a lot more fireball-style finishers to abuse massive mana with. Rowan easily manages to get into scary territory here - play a derpy Blood Celebrant, and as soon as Rowan is online you can Ensanguinate the table for your life total minus 1, or outright kill them with Torment of Hailfire. Everything except Rowan's ability can come out of nowhere, and even the tap ability can be mitigated with the right haste enablers. I believe Rowan will be a kill on sight commander - and even that might not be fast enough.

Final Judgment: You ain't got no alibi, you UGLY.

Um…yeah, that's not exactly something I want to use for a commander. Even if I was to take it seriously, commanders that boost their own power by requiring you to play other large creatures are clunky at best, and there are much more powerful mana dorks in the command zone.

Final Judgment: Bad

Oh look, it's Hylda's little sister. If Hylda hadn't been printed, Sharae might be somewhat interesting, but even if you only want the draw power, Hylda is probably better with the scry, even if it does cost 1 extra, since it can trigger multiple times per turn. Sharae does provide the ETB, but that's pretty small potatoes compared to losing the rest of Hylda's power. The only reason you'd want to run this is if Hylda ends up being a kill-on-sight commander and you'd prefer to avoid being archenemy. Bit of a bummer that they couldn't design Sharae to not stand quite so directly in Hylda's shadow.

Final Judgment: Bad (shakes fist at Hylda)

Is there a reason to play this over Trostani Discordant, King Darien XLVIII, or even Maja, Bretagard Protector? Nah, not really, no. If you care about the enchantment token so much, there are enchantress commanders that are leagues more powerful. Sorry Armont.

Final Judgment: Bad

I assume kindliness is supposed to be ironic here. Talion is definitely going to be annoying to play against. The best numbers to choose will probably be 2, 3, or 4, depending on your meta's curves. How many cards will he draw? Unfortunately, all those numbers are less than or equal to his cost, so your opponents will probably play out some of them before he comes down, but I think he'll probably give at least a card or two per turn cycle. If you assume the heaviest point in the curve has about a quarter to a third of a deck's spells, he'll draw one card for every 3-4 spells, which sounds about right - though of course creatures could increase that number by a little bit with power/toughness matches. But is that good enough? There's very few ways I can imagine to synergize with him, given that he's entirely dependent on your opponents - and loading up extra punishment for casting spells probably means your opponents will hesitate casting spells more, rather than giving you more free value. He does have a decently sized body, and asks basically nothing of you, making him a decent control commander, but I think the annoyingness of his ability will draw a lot of unwanted attention. Finally I do have one quibble about the design: why bother restricting it from to 1 to 10? Would picking 11 be too strong?

Final Judgment: Good (just barely - I confess I do like picking numbers)

That's definitely a name. His deathtouch activation isn't quite useless, as it does make blocking the tokens pretty unpleasant, but I think the main value Totentanz provides is in fueling the typical grave pact shenanigans. I'm surprised to say that, from what I can see, there hasn't been a BR commander that makes a creature token when a nontoken creature dies (plenty in other CIs, but none that are both black and red), and he's priced to move as well. Now, is he exciting? Not really, but he is functional.

Final Judgment: Good

Looting is a pretty middling ability for a deck that plans to cast big spells, to be honest. Big spells inherently ensure that you're stocked with things to do since you can usually only do one thing at a time - it's the cheap decks that are at greatest risk of running out of gas. So I don't count the looting ability for much, especially when it's functionally putting you down 3 mana for the turn. As far as the mana ability, it's pretty middling. 3 for a 2-point ramp is pretty standard for mana dorks, typically without restrictions. That said, having it in the command zone means you could make a pretty reliable plan of T1 mana dork, T2 Troyan, T3 6-drop, which is nothing to sneeze at. The closest we've had to this commander in UG before is the 4-drop Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, though he has a lot more durability and late-game potential for the extra cost. Commanders with similar abilities in other CIs have seen little play. I think Troyan is a pretty functional commander - but I doubt he'll see much play either, because he's just kinda boring.

Final Judgment: Bad

Will Will measure up to his sister? Short answer…no. While he can definitely do some stuff, the simple truth is that gaining life tends to cost something, whereas losing life is damn near free. So you can't realistically expect to play a 40-mv spell on turn 4, but he can fuel some very large draw spells a little later into the game. Unfortunately the discount is fixed when he activates, so barring untaps there's probably not much point in casting big X-mana lifegain like Heliod's Intervention. But in fairness, having something as innocuous as a Healer's Flock, or a Steel of the Godhead on Will, could give you a discount that makes Grand Arbiter Augustin IV envious. You can't cast Eldrazi like Rakdos, but you can ramp out multiple mid/late-game threats pretty quickly. If this sounds a little unenthusiastic, it's probably because it's a lot harder to picture than Rowan's disgustingly explosive potential, but I do think Will does have the potential to be fairly strong, even if he's definitely living in the shadow of his sister.

Final Judgment: Good

This set has too many sorcery-speed restrictions. Yuck. Anyway, Yenna falls into this set's GW enchantment synergy vortex, but she's at least more interesting than the typical enchantress builds since she wants exciting, splashy enchantments that become powerful when doubled up. In that regard she's similar to Calix, Guided by Fate. She costs more, and she can't copy the same thing more than once (at least until one of them dies), but she also doesn't need to tussle with combat, which is a pretty big plus. She can also copy auras repeatedly, though most popular auras are relatively cheap and so are a bit less exciting to copy. I don't think you'll want to go all-in on auras, but probably a selection of the better ones will make the cut. As far as regular enchantments, there are a lot of mana doubling enchantments that become even more stupid when copied, anthems that let you go massively wide, sagas which will naturally fall off and can be copied again…lots of strong options, more than I have time to go through. Suffice to say that Yenna definitely has a lot of potential. I don't think she'll be too oppressive considering it's a tap ability with significant setup and an activation cost, but I do think she'll do some pretty powerful stuff on occasion.

Final Judgment: Good

Wow is that a boring payoff for adventures. They cost 1 less, but only on the second half? Yuck. Her own adventure also means forgoing her efficient stats to get a draw spell that has to be weaker than, say, Tidings. Honestly if someone forced me to build Beluna at gunpoint, I'd probably just ignore adventures, play it on-curve, and beat people up with a 4/4 trample for 3. Maybe not technically the worst but miles away from interesting.

Final Judgment: Bad

It's funny, I've seen a lot of people going "ugh, another RW equipment commander" online, but Kellan is by far the most exciting equipment commander to me. So many of them are either awful, or they just care that you have an equipment, not that the equipment is any good. Plus a bunch of them also work with filthy dirty auras, yuck (which, to be fair, so does Kellan - shame on him). But the most important thing about Kellan is that Kellan is now the de facto commander for Sunforger decks. And he's not even a bad equipment holder after that, either. His awkward go-wide static ability is kinda…dumb…idk why you'd put a bunch of equipment (or auras, blech) on him just so you can go wide with other creatures. But a 2/2 double striker is a rock solid base for any number of equipment, including the Swords of X and Y, Jitte, and anything else with a damage trigger. All his costs are quite cheap too - you aren't paying a tax for his flexibility and value. His adventure is functionally identical to Open the Armory except it also draws you an Iroas's Champion. I could see either going all-in on Sunforger with a lot of instant-speed re-equips, powerful instants, and graveyard recycling, or a straightforward voltron deck with powerful swords and such, or a mix of both. Or you could do auras, I guess, if you have absolutely no standards.

Final Judgment: Good (enchantment decks are boring fight me) (you can play darksteel mutation if you want I guess)

Syr Ginger sure does have a lot of fairly irrelevant words. The planeswalker clause is…nice, I guess, but not particularly relevant. You can't exactly rely on the hexproof, and the haste is unlikely to be online by turn 2. It's also a bit awkward that it incentivizes you to leave enemy planeswalkers alive, but mostly I don't think it'll matter much. The sacrifice ability is also pretty meaningless. I'm sure it'll come up every once in a while, but given that all Syr Ginger can do otherwise is combat, I expect you'll usually want to keep him tapped and attacking. Which leaves his growing ability. It's pretty aggressively costed, and a pure-artifact deck can probably trigger it pretty regularly. You've also got access to the vast majority of equipment. Does that make him a good voltron commander? Eh, not really. I'd much rather have a color so I have access to decent removal, if nothing else, and I don't think the growth ability will be so fast that a similar effect couldn't be better achieved by other means.

Final Judgment: Bad

I love payoffs for casting spells during enemy turns, and I also like payoffs that are limited to once per turn, to avoid the dreaded thirty-minute solitaire session. Alela could technically be a faerie tribal commander, but I think it's much more effective to just roll with the ones she provides for free, especially since her damage trigger is limited to once per opponent, so she doesn't pay off for a huge faerie swarm. Overall the payoffs aren't crazy here - the existence of cards like Marisi, Breaker of the Coil and Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer show that goad can be done much more efficiently - but I think Alela pokes and prods in the right ways to be a strong control commander that doesn't draw too much hate down upon herself.

Final Judgment: Good

Brenard reminds me most of Hofri Ghostforge, who also gave a second life to dead nontokens. Brenard has a different (more powerful) color identity and a lower cost, plus he gives the food ability for whatever that's worth, but his tokens are defaulted to 3/3s and don't return to the graveyard. I think those tradeoffs land squarely in Brenard's favor, and Hofri is no slouch in the command zone, so Brenard is likely pretty strong. I'd expect him to helm a very similar deck, with lots of etb and death triggers, though maybe with less focus on reanimation since Brenard is one-and-done with his trigger. Not something I find super compelling, but I do think he'll be pretty popular.

Final Judgment: Good

When I read in the mechanics document that commander had a special role only available in the precons, I knew it was gonna be some dumb nonsense. It's a curse being so right all the time. All the rest of the roles feel like roughly-equivalent little tokens, and of course the precons come in and add a very powerful and popular entire card (Ethereal Armor) into the pile. Treasure tokens, food tokens, clue tokens, and…emrakul tokens. One of these things is not like the other. Blech. Anyway, Ellivere suffers from the same weird disease as so many other commanders, where she's motivated to get into combat yet her abilities only help other creatures. If the ability just triggered at the start of combat instead, she'd make vastly more sense to me. Instead you've gotta protect her for combat and swing her into the red zone, just so she can buff up some other guy? Dumb. But setting that aside, Ethereal Armor is a powerful card, and handing them out like it's Halloween at Willy Wonkas is going to rack up some big stats quickly. It's still weak to interaction, as with most aura-based decks, and the lack of voltron synergy makes it a lot slower than it otherwise could be, but it's definitely a threat that will need to be watched out for. If I was building the deck - ha, imagine - it's probably a pretty typical enchantress deck, just with some decent evasive beaters to gift the roles onto. Yawn.

Final Judgment: Bad. Ugly. Idk, both. I can't do both? Fine, just ugly then.

Lil Wayne is over here showing Elivere how to make a commander that looks like an actual magic card instead of a "look at me, I'm for commander!" card. Look at him playing all nice with the set's mechanics instead of completely revamping them in a desperate attempt to appeal to a commander audience! Without synergy, he's pretty middling - essentially a King Darien XLVIII for nontokens that gives a few minor upsides. But he can be powerful for enchantress strategies, especially with anything that easily enters and leaves the battlefield frequently like Whitemane Lion. I don't think he's overly strong, and honestly the differences in roles aren't very significant in the context of a big splashy format like commander, but I'm still going to give Gylwain major points for staying in his damn lane.

Final Judgment: Good

Hoo boy, Korvold's back in town. Scary though he is, this Korvold has a significantly lower ceiling since his relevant trigger is limited by combat steps (though he does play quite well with double strike). His discount is interesting, though it caps fairly low and is probably not worth too much effort to focus on when you could just ramp instead. Baubles and fetches make artifacts and lands easy, but the others probably aren't worth the squeeze. Somewhat strange since his payoff trigger doesn't require sacrificing on an ongoing basis - in fact it's probably easiest to mill or discard yourself into a high permanent-type count. If you can draw 3 on hit you're probably feeling okay, but I Korvold does require a lot of setup which doesn't overlap well with many other cards, and the payoff seems relatively low for a commander of his cost. Not awful but certainly a shade of his former self - thank god.

Final Judgment: Bad

Tegwyll is the only real choice for a faerie tribal commander, so he's not really facing any competition. As a lord, he's pretty solid. Stat boosts are definitely relevant for a tribe of small creatures, and they can go wide enough that the draw ability can equate to a lot of extra gas (though not optional, so don't get too low on life!). It's a little awkward that the draw ability only works when your stuff is dying, so he's not very compelling when your stuff is still alive - probably worth including at least a handful of sac outlets so you can cash in if necessary. Still, I do prefer a lord that doesn't immediately draw the hammer of god down upon himself (Hi, Kyler, Sigardian Emissary), and the price is right. Tribal decks aren't my thing, but if faeries are your thing, I think you'll be okay with Tegwyll, even if he's not crazy strong.

Final Judgment: Good