Delney looks like he's setting up a saboteur deck, or at least that was my first thought, but there aren't a ton of saboteurs in mono-white and his evasion-granting ability is pretty mediocre anyway. There are a ton of utility dorks in white, though, and a lot of them have triggered abilities. Stuff like Wall of Omens become a lot stronger when doubled up, and 3mv is dirt cheap for a Panharmonicon. I don't think a mono-white triggers deck has a super high ceiling, but he's definitely a strong commander in a vacuum.

Final Judgment: Good

Taken at face value, trying to kill enemy creatures in combat with wither and then draw cards seems very very bad. Commander doesn't have nearly enough blocking to make this viable, and things that black would typically use to kill enemy creatures in combat - i.e. deathtouch - don't work to trigger her draw ability. So I don't think the wither text is very relevant, but you can definitely draw a lot of cards off Mutilate and other -x/-x board wipes. I doubt that's exciting enough to get a lot of people interested, and it's also terrible if your opponents are playing around it and/or aren't playing go-wide decks, and also it's going to be very hard not to kill massacre girl in the process each time. But she's not completely dead in the water, I guess.

Final Judgment: Bad

Power creep be damned, every time Krenko comes back he gets worse. Krenko's first ability has an okay payoff, but does require fairly significant setup, and let's be real, is much much weaker than Krenko, Mob Boss is without needing to fiddle around with artifacts. His second ability plays into the artifact sacrifice, but none of the package looks like it puts enough power into play quickly enough to be anywhere close to the original, or even Krenko, Tin Street Hooligan, as an aggro deck. It just doesn't scale up in the same way.

Final Judgment: Bad

Agrus starts out strong with the keywords, but his triggered ability is…hmm. Not my favorite. The issue I see is that it's so incredibly telegraphed and so incredibly slow. If you target your opponents stuff, you're giving them a ton of time to deal with the problem. It does help that it's an ETB trigger, since at least removing him will still let you trigger him again, but it still seems really slow, and any kind of blink plan seems like too much effort and works counter to any voltron strategy, which would normally be an obvious choice for a double strike boros commander with an attack trigger. And since there are plenty of better double strikers available in the colors, I don't see much reason to want to play Agrus.

Final Judgment: Bad

Turning clues into Sphinx's Revelation sounds decent, but honestly I'm kinda off it. It reminds me of Nin, the Pain Artist, who isn't super popular but costs 1 less, 1 less to activate, and lets you sacrifice an easier-to-acquire resource. A big draw spell is great, but you can't spend an entire turn on one multiple times in a game most of the time, and using the command slot for it isn't that great. By the time you sacrifice the clue, you've already put in an overhead of 6 mana, so the draw is painfully inefficient. And having a huge draw spell in the CZ can be a dangerous proposition - if you include a normal amount of draw in the deck, then the commander could be useless. But if you don't, and the commander gets removed, then you could run out of gas. I do like that he can activate EOT, unlike Elenda and Azor, but I don't think he's efficient enough to be a good commander choice.

Final Judgment: Bad

Yes, yes, holy moly, get it out of your system. Unsupported, Anzrag has a very efficient statline but not so efficient that it's exciting on its own. Rafiq of the Many has been swinging for 8 since 2008, and he doesn't die to a Sedge Scorpion. The extra combat steps line makes him impossible to chump block, but with only 4 toughness it's not so difficult to find a stack block to kill him, and anyway a 3-turn clock isn't crazy fast or anything, and it takes a decent amount of work to make him a 2 or 1-turn clock. So I think the voltron route is fine but not overly exciting. At his best he's basically a 8/4 unblockable, which sounds insane but this is commander and voltron sucks so it's still just mid, especially without Rafiq's protective options in blue and white to prevent people and killing Anzrag once he starts to threaten lethals. That said, there are some funky options with fogs that could have serious potential as a combo build, considering that most of the pieces are extremely interchangeable - fog + any viable tap ability creature + enough mana to activate Anzrag's ability = win. That is still very vulnerable to disruption, so I don't think it's top-tier by any stretch, but I do think that being able to threaten wins from multiple angles makes him potentially compelling.

Final Judgment: Good

An early spoiler and a boring one. Going wide when your commander is a big hasty flyer feels like a chore, and getting more than a mediocre draw engine relies on your opponents having wide decks and playing into her. The ceiling is fairly high, but I doubt it happens often, and the payoff for herself is just not enough for a 5-drop.

Final Judgment: Bad

A 1/4 deathtouch is an excellent statline for getting through in combat, but the payoff is…dubious. I've played a lot of Gonti, Lord of Luxury-adjacent commanders, and let me tell you, relying on enemy cards can be very inconsistent in an era of hyper-specialization. With a full deck of assassins, you could get a lot of triggers (at least potentially - a lot of assassins aren't very evasive), but actually getting something more than a 2/2 may not happen very often. Where I do think there's some fun to be had is with Arcane Adaptation to make all your face down tokens into assassins themselves, thus making them relevant even without flipping over. Add some evasion (discarded Wonder for example) and you've got some nonsense going. That's a lot of work for the payoff, so I don't think it's particularly good, but it is fun at least.

Final Judgment: Good

Ezrim is a pretty straightforward control finisher. The stats aren't awful, evasive, provides some extra life, and hexproof should make it pretty difficult to kill. You probably want more than 2 artifacts unless you're happy with just providing hexproof, though mana rocks and other incidentals are probably enough to do the job in most cases, so I doubt you're going big on artifacts since the payoff is pretty small. There's maybe some room for an eggs build using it as a sac outlet, but I think the activation mana cost makes it too inefficient. Overall, a pretty boring commander, but by no means unplayable.

Final Judgment: Bad

There's a lot going on here, so let's break it down. Stat-wise, Izoni is obviously awful, which wouldn't be a huge issue except that, like many commanders in this set, she has an attack trigger. Considering the effort needed to make her attack safely as a 6-drop, plus getting material into the graveyard, I really don't think that ability is worth too much effort. If things line up and you can do it, go ahead I guess. The spider tokens are almost certainly not the primary way to want to be feeding her activated ability, which is significantly more interesting. There are a lot of ways to produce tokens - Bootleggers Stash and Old Gnawbone come to mind, as long as we're ramping out Izoni. But is Izoni worth all that effort? Personally I'm skeptical. Izoni just looks undercooked to me.

Final Judgment: Bad

Judith has gotten a major commander upgrade since the last iteration. Her first ability is disgustingly strong, since decks without counterspells will basically be powerless to prevent it from creating 1-sided board wipes with End the Festivities and similar. Once it's on the stack, it's too late, Judith's work is done. She also works as a pseudo-Guttersnipe to close out games via spellslinging, though a sac outlet may be advised to speed up the clock and avoid embarrassing Cyclonic Rifts. I think smart players will play around Judith to some extent, by not overextending, but there's only so much that a go-wide deck can do. On the other hand, less fair decks won't have any problem handling Judith, as they can go out unexpectedly before she gets the chance to set up a wipe or churn out enough damage. So, a casual killer mostly, I think, a la Tergrid, God of Fright, and I think she'll be about as welcome at many tables.

Final Judgment: Ugly

Kellan continues his quest to make adventures pseudo-evergreen. And I do like the adventure side of him, and how it curves nicely into him. What I'm less enthused about is his actual body on the board. Artifact decks, or any deck with a powerful and important artifact, are probably going to be pretty motivated to keep him off the table, and unlike Agrus Kos, he doesn't have an ETB to dissuade them. He's also a medium statted creature, so not really a worthy voltron. I guess you could make an eggs build, but he's not nearly explosive enough to be in the top ten choices for that deck. Overall, he looks like a great limited card and a pretty awful commander.

Final Judgment: Bad

It took me a moment to see it, but underneath the disguise this is clearly just Narset, Enlightened Master version 2. Replace hexproof with ward, first strike with menace, up the cost but give it haste, and instead of top 4 we have to sacrifice creatures, but can potentially dig deeper. I think it will be quite possible to dig very deep, since the deck can be stacked with token generators and theft effects. While losing white is meaningful, most of the extra turns and extra combat step cards are in red and blue, and they only grow in number. By my count, there's at least twenty eligible effects, not including ones that make you lose the game afterwards. So for an EV of 1 hit, you'd need to sacrifice 5 power worth of creatures each time, which seems likely to be quite easy to me if the deck comes together. Maybe there will be a tame version of this deck that's not obnoxious, and I do hope I'm wrong about the potential power level, but my assumption until proven otherwise is that allowing the card to attack will be a probably, but not guaranteed, game over, which is exactly where I really hate my commanders to be. At least it's not fully hexproof?

Final Judgment: Ugly

Before we consider anything else, just on the first ability, Lazav is decent if unexciting. A 2/3 for 2 that provides some grave hate and card draw is a decent place to start. Shapeshifting abilities can be difficult to analyze, but I'll do my best. Lazav has some pretty significant setup compared to, say, Shameless Charlatan - he needs something in the grave, he needs to attack to exile it, and he needs clues to fuel him (though of course he provides some on his own). He can pull off some shenanigans with early discard - T1 Putrid Imp T2 Lazav T3 discard Phage the Untouchable seems pretty strong. But then your combo is easily broken by any removal, and your key piece is in exile. I do think those sorts of combos have a role to play in the deck, but probably more as a mid/late-game finisher than something you deploy ASAP. As such, I don't think running more than a couple discard outlets makes sense - probably a focus on the ones that are good cards in their own right. Overall, I don't think anything Lazav does pushes the envelope too much in terms of power, but with all of it put together, I think he's decently powerful with a cool design.

Final Judgment: Good

A big fat non-evasive body is a weird (ha) payoff for a spellslinger deck. I don't think many decks will focus too much on that aspect of Melek, and more likely will use it as an incidental wincon, perhaps after a spell-based wipe to clear out blockers. Certainly the more interesting ability is his spell discount, which promotes running mv 4+ instants to get maximum value. Happily, as a once-per-turn ability, it's difficult to abuse too much, but it does enable a lot of otherwise-weak counters, draw, and removal, each with strong upsides for the extra mana you're not paying. In my experience, instant-focused decks often lack good ways to close out the game, but hopefully Melek will make that easier by being a fairly easy 1-shot for a spellslinger build. For being a mythic, I think he's a little underwhelming, but I am glad to see an izzet spellslinger that isn't incentivizing casting 30 cantrips in a row and then winning via time magic.

Final Judgment: Good

The rainbow niv mizzets continue their apology tour for being such a miserable bastard of a card in 2/3 of his izzet versions. This version looks okay but not amazing. His only evasion is flying, and the trigger doesn't start getting interesting until you have quite a bit of support for it. That said, I think there are a lot of strong 2-color cards, so building around him isn't such a huge downside. It does commit you to multicolored permanents, though, which isn't necessarily ideal for a commander trying to get through for combat damage. Hardly any good equipment is multicolored, and most permanents aren't directly helping with your goal either. The best stuff is probably auras, especially the cycle from Lorwyn that includes Steel of the Godhead and Clout of the Dominus. Beyond that, I think the deck will mostly be running cards that are decent but not as good as what it would prefer - i.e. knight of autumn instead of a stronger artifact/enchantment answer. The payoff is solid, but I've not been impressed with the Invasion/Planar chaos dragons because actually connecting with a non-trampling flying commander isn't always reliable.

Final Judgment: Good

In 1v1 this might be an actual choice, but in multiplayer this ability is almost guaranteed to be worth 2 cards. You'd need to be very far ahead to where every other player really don't want you to draw, AND all three opponents would need to have 2 reasonably expendable nonland nontoken permanents. Possible, but really unlikely. So how good is a 6 mana 6/6 flample that draws you 2 cards per turn in 2024? I'm inclined to say it's good but not great. Six is pretty expensive for a commander and I'd prefer to have something more synergistic than goodstuffy. At least it does provide a wincon as well as draw, but BR isn't amazing at protecting its stuff so it's vulnerable to disruption and needs a significant amount of ramp to keep up with the cost.

Final Judgment: Bad

The obvious point of comparison for Teysa is Tymna the Weaver - Orzhov 3-drop 2/3s that draw cards based on hitting opponents. Teysa lacks partner and needs mana to turn the clues into cards, but she is much better at getting through blockers and provides her own army in a can given some time. Turn 4 it's very unlikely that she can't get through against someone, and then you're getting a clue which gets a spirit, which gets more clues and more spirits. You can definitely run more clue generation in the deck to make more spirits, but that doesn't move the needle too far for me - I think she already provides a sufficient number for most cases. The bigger problem is that I'm not a huge fan of non-blue control decks, which is what a slow grindy plan like this looks like to me. Without counters, winning this slowly sounds like a risky plan. White does have some decent anthems that could accelerate your plans, but Teysa still doesn't grow the army particularly quickly unless you want additional clue production plus an artifact sac outlet, at which point you're probably better off just playing something else if you want tokens so badly. So I think we're mostly stuck with the slow token production with CA built in. Which is cool but not super strong.

Final Judgment: Good

Yuck. Any commander that can draw that many cards that easily is not going to be fun to play against. There are enough cheap high-toughness creatures that this can probably come out T3 pretty regularly, potentially multiple times through commander tax, and then if anyone lets it through things are going to get very stupid. Now, true, running enough high-toughness garbage creatures is going to dilute the efficacy of card draw by quite a bit, but it also means that once he connects a single time he'll never cost more than 1 mana for the rest of the game. What's especially annoying is that, in multiplayer, you know someone is going to be sitting there with a llanowar elves in play or whatever, and won't want to chump block, so we get to add obnoxious political implications to the list of things I hate about this as well. If this had been, say, a 2/6 or something, I could have tolerate it a lot more, but fifteen toughness is just stupid design and I hate it.

Final Judgment: Ugly as sin

This looks absolutely brutal in limited. 8/7 across 2 bodies, some with trample and some with lifelink, plus a pseudo-removal ability? Insane. In commander, though, not so much. He's expensive, somewhat-above-curve stats don't matter, he's not a good voltron target, and the removal is too slow and predictable to kill anything important.

Final Judgment: Bad

Tomik has a rock solid stat line. Unfortunately that's about it. The payoff of disincentivizing attacks, but in a pretty minor way that doesn't actually protect your stuff, isn't that interesting imo. One creature can attack you with no penalty, and a huge army only loses 3 life and lets you draw a card, so it's not exactly devastating. To cap it off, I really hate the wording on this card. "Attacks with creatures" has to be one of the stupidest sounding phrases in magic-ese. What the hell else would you attack with? Enchantments? I'm sure there's a really good reason why it couldn't be worded "Whenever two or more creatures attack you and/or planeswalkers you control, the attacking player loses 3 life and you draw a card" but I don't care. It's probably just for 2HG and nobody plays that format (nor should they).

Final Judgment: Bad

My initial read of Trostani v3 was "okay, decent voltron commander, otherwise boring", until I noticed that its abilities can target ANY creature. Meaning that no attack or block is safe while Trostani has 2 mana to rub together to give a creature sudden deathtouch. And double strike makes letting through creatures far more dangerous as well. Vigilance is obviously the runt of the litter, but it's also a cheap way to incentivize someone attacking elsewhere. And, of course, to top that package off, Trostani can be a 4/4 double strike that starts at just 3 mana, so has a pretty reasonable built-in wincon. Strong and simple, I like it. Amazing how much more interesting a card can become just by removing targeting restrictions.

Final Judgment: Good

Oh thank god this one isn't Birthing Pod. While ostensibly its modes are meant to play together - and maybe they will in limited - in commander, this can realistically go two ways. Either you're cheating stuff in - cards with downside etbs like Phyrexian Dreadnought, strong morph triggers, dudes you really don't want countered, etc - or you're making a ton of colorless creature tokens to go wide. Happily neither of those sounds terribly dangerous, so it's good to see that Vannifar has mended her ways. While the first one is more interesting, I'm a little dubious that there's enough good targets for it to justify the commander. I guess we'll have to see what EDHrec digs up.

Final Judgment: Good

Bleh, I liked Voja more when it was just a vanilla token for Tolsimir. As its own card, I'm not threatened by wolf tribal, but a pseudo-craterhoof for elves in the command zone is something I could definitely do without. I'm at least glad it doesn't have haste, but ward 3 is annoying and seems unnecessary considering all the other stuff this does. I expect this is one of those commanders that you'll be forced to kill every time it comes down, and then the owner will whine about how you're always targeting him. You have eight elves in play, dude, and I have eyes.

Final Judgment: Ugly

Ashcloud Phoenix is finally about to have its time in the sun. Yarus is a funky new take on a morph commander, and I like him a lot more than Kadena. There are a couple obvious directions to take him - the first two modes together turn all your morphs into hasty ophidians, which probably isn't exciting enough in 2024 but it's not nothing. More spicy is the ability to flip your morphs by killing them. This could be done with a sac outlet, but having looked through all the available morphs, none of them really stand out enough to me that they'd actually be terribly scary after casting a 4-drop commander, paying 3 for the morph, and then finding a way to sacrifice it somehow. You could just use the ophidian plan as a way to get them killed and thus flipped, or you could try other ways to get creatures into play face-down, such as Scroll of Fate. Unfortunately I don't think there's enough support to really make this a major thing, though, and RG can't reliably search for artifacts to lean on the scroll. Overall I think this leaves Yarus as not particularly strong outside of the phoenix combo, but it's a far more interesting payoff for morph than Kadena is, so props for that much at least.

Final Judgment: Good

The only mono-color commander from the precons, Tesak has a lot of abilities to go through. To pare some down, while "other dogs you control have unleash" is a nice piece of flavor, it's probably pretty meaningless as the number of strong red dogs is, charitably, one (Komainu Batte Armor). And unleash on Tesac is mostly just a flavorful way of saying Tesac is a 4/4 haste that can't block. The last two abilities are slightly more interesting - essentially a mono-red Grand Warlord Radha that gives haste to your countered creatures. Red isn't exactly the epicenter of counter synergy, though. In fact looking through red/colorless cards that mention counters (sorted by EDHrec rank - every day I thank lord scryfall for adding that sort option), there's practically nothing that enters with counters and is good to attack with. We're looking at…Stonecoil Serpent? Woof. Yeah, sorry, that dog won't hunt. So it's just a mono-color Radha, basically.

Final Judgment: Bad

Duskana has a pretty decent combination of abilities for a low to the ground, creature-based, hate-bear type of deck. The ETB can be useful to avoid running out of gas - something that sort of deck can have trouble with - and the attack trigger means your dorks punch well above their weight. It does all look pretty fair to me, I don't see Duskana being something I'm scared to see on the other side of the table, and I don't think +3/+3 is enough to make her a super efficient go-wide commander, especially without access to 1/1 tokens, but I think she's basically fine.

Final Judgment: Good

Had to laugh at someone online saying Feather was the better Zada, Hedron Grinder. Thank god they're wrong, Zada definitely gets an "ugly". New feather is also decidedly weaker than old Feather, the Redeemed, despite the stat upgrade. That's not to say this Feather isn't interesting, though. The two main angles I see that this Feather covers and original Feather doesn't is that this Feather lets you target enemy creatures, so you could fork removal spells (ideally one that doesn't kill Feather, though I struggle to find a good one…Shock? I guess you could give her protection after casting the removal?), and this Feather lets you copy auras (Ethereal Armor is an obvious choice, and stuff like Shiny Impetus let you take advantage of both new modes - or go big and multicast an Eldrazi Conscription). That's some decent new ground to cover, so I think this Feather is a solid new option for RW, even if it's not as strong as some older commanders.

Final Judgment: Good

I think Kaust is the first three-color two-drop commander we've ever seen, which is neat. In terms of function, he's really similar to Yarus - they both turn face-down creatures into ophidians, and flip them for free. Honestly, so similar I'm surprised they'd release them both so close together. Kaust has less potential explosiveness than Yarus (Yarus having haste, wrath protection, phoenix combo, and the ability to flip multiple creatures in a turn), but that low cost is quite nice, and enables an easy 2-3 curve into whatever morph you want. He's also got a wider selection of morphs with access to white. Unfortunately, the morph options are still quite weak. Sure, flipping a turn 4 Akroma, Angel of Fury sounds pretty cool, but it's also weaker and more expensive than just playing a Serra Ascendant - and most white decks don't even run that card. Kaust is also very on-board and aggressive by necessity, which will likely lead to frequent games where he appears threatening, eats removal or a board wipe, and loses all relevance. Neat design, but I don't think the power is there.

Final Judgment: Bad

How many good clash cards do you think exist in UB? If you guessed zero, you'd be correct! In fairness, innocuous filler like Research the Deep is fine, and Captivating Glance is probably underrated, but it's still a very low number of cards and I don't think they're going to change the direction of the deck. The primary plan is to attack with Marvo, and then have perhaps a 50/50 chance to get a free spell. That number is probably optimistic - 40% of the time you're hitting lands, which is a guaranteed loss. A normal deck, clashing with another normal deck, has perhaps a 30% chance. To have a coin-flip chance you'd really want to minimize the number of actually-castable low-curve ramp, answers, draw, etc and maximize the number of big chonky 8-drops. That could be reasonably explosive on occasion, but it doesn't sound very functional, especially when factoring in the risks of the commander getting removed, or even just having bad attacks. And if we're building a normal deck, I'm not really in for a 30% chance at casting one spell for free. Clash was a bit of a trap back in the day, and I suspect it still is now.

Final Judgment: Bad

Surveil has a lot more viability than clash, and more is being printed all the time - the fetchable dual in MKM is an easy way to give Mirko his first counter quite reliably. He's also got some nice keywords to play offense and defense. The biggest knock I have against him is that his payoff seems…tricky. We've seen a similar commander in the popular Meren of Clan Nel Toth, but Meren has some major advantages - she doesn't lose her counters when leaving the battlefield, she can reanimate the same thing repeatedly, and she can return the creature to hand if she's not capable of reanimating it. All three of these are significant knocks against Mirko. The last one makes deckbuilding particularly difficult - if you jam a bunch of cheap dorks into the deck, you'll be "wasting" the higher-value triggers later, but if you run a bunch of fat creatures, you'll be bricking for the first couple turns. This is especially tricky since the suggested play pattern involved milling via surveil, which gives a very limited selection of potential targets compared to discard or dredge or Entomb. The finality counters also run contrary to Meren's common early-game patterns of resurrecting ramp creatures to accelerate her endgame, and further exacerbates the problem of creature selection. But Mirko does have a lower cost, and better control colors, and more combat viability, so there are definitely plusses. I think he's likely a more balanced Meren, that doesn't focus as much on the reanimation and sees it more as an occasional payoff rather than the only goal.

Final Judgment: Good

You're positive that's not a merfolk? Okay, if you say so. Morska looks like a very straightforward control commander, offering a reliable CA engine rather than a reliable finisher. Typically I think of 4 mana being the expected cost for a card that draws one card per turn. Morska only costs 3 and gives Spellbook, but requires some extra mana to get the card. That's not a great tradeoff, but there are some other angles here - artifact synergies, triggered abilities, activated abilities. I'm a bit skeptical that those add up to enough, with only one trigger per turn cycle, but maybe there's something there. More interesting is her ability to grow - it's limited to once per turn, but if it's triggering on every turn it could get to a lethal range fairly quickly. But she lacks evasion, so she's still a fairly mediocre finisher. Control in general is a very strong archetype, and Morska fits the role well enough, but as an individual card I think she's nothing too exciting.

Final Judgment: Good, just barely.

Interesting take on the new suspected mechanic. Nelly's draw trigger is solid insofar as it can easily trigger off normal attacks - in fact, it incentivizes them - but can also be forced by her other ability. Like a lot of commanders in this set, she has an attack trigger without a great body for it, but being able to take out a blocker and decent toughness means she'll probably have a good attack somewhere - and she can even suspect herself in order to make her more evasive. I don't think the power level is crazy high here, but I do think she's in a good spot to be stealthy strong. She neutralizes blockers, but gives away menace. She forces attacks, but then gives away cards for doing so. It's hard to get too upset about being targeted by her, all while she's sowing discord and getting CA. If she was in a different, more control-oriented color identity, she'd be a lot stronger, but she's still pretty solid, and I like the design a fair bit.

Final Judgment: Good

White definitely gives access to much better dog options than Tesac (two dog tribal commanders in one set? But different decks? Weird). That said…it's still pretty limited. And very few of them have natural evasion. Sophia does provide some potentially significant boosts to the tribe, creating two tokens per hit which translate to life, cards, counters, or could be used with artifact synergies. And of course there are changelings available that are okay. I can't really take her seriously, though, without a stronger selection of dogs available. When the sixth most popular is Ainok Bond-Kin, we're in trouble (though I suppose it has a little synergy here). Getting those first couple hits seems difficult with most dogs being small and non-evasive, and there are very few dog tokens so you're committing pretty heavily, both in terms of board presence and in terms of deck construction, to be getting good value from the sacrifice activation. Another commander with future potential, but without the support to really get there right now.

Final Judgment: Bad

Pretty interesting growth mechanism here - since you only tap the food, you could be creating 3 more tokens every turn, even with no other support. The most obvious comparison is Myrel, Shield of Argive, who shares the color identity, mana value, stats, and general theme. Myrel can ultimately grow her army faster - benefits of exponential growth - and blocks enemy interaction (for better or worse - I know I'm a lot more likely to kill Myrel unnecessarily to make sure I'm not prevented from interacting when I really need to). But Apothecary White does have the advantage of producing food tokens for various purposes, being much stronger against board wipes as long as the food persists, and not needing to personally attack means less need for protective equipment. Overall I like this design a lot more than Myrel, and despite looking a lot weaker I think she's actually a pretty decent alternative for a token-producing mono-white commander. Just throw in a few evasive creatures to get the ball rolling and the rest of the deck is flexible for whatever you want.

Final Judgment: Good

I suspect this design might have something to do with the new "Clue" format this card is included within. Otherwise, this just seems pretty bad to me. The first ability sounds okay but I think is ultimately pretty uninteresting since clue tokens are nearly the cheapest to produce artifacts around. Turning treasures into clues is kind of a lateral move, and food is an upgrade but not a huge one - and blue isn't really a food color. Baubles seem like a good fit, but the rate really isn't that great when all is said and done. Arcum's Astrolabe and Chromatic Star just become Divination, and even Ichor Wellspring is just Concentrate. Splitting the costs, sure, but for a 5-drop I'd really want a lot more. So then there's the unblockability, but Peacock herself is a weak attacker, and blue already has much more efficient ways to grant evasion. For one more mana, there's Sun Quan, Lord of Wu who just grants unblockability to all your creatures all the time. There's some minor clue-matters synergies around, but not enough to make this interesting.

Final Judgment: Bad

This guy is the apex of "has an attack trigger but sucks at attacking". A Grey Ogre? Really? Couldn't get a 2/4 or even a 3/2? The attack trigger seems like borderline flavor text - the support needed is definitely not worth the payoff. Maybe it works out occasionally, but not something I'd count for much. The cast trigger is more interesting, but I'm skeptical that you could reliably draw 1 card per turn. Even if you do, I don't think that's terribly exciting - Phyrexian Arena sees a lot less play these days]] - and the setup is major. Honestly a dumb miss - could have easily been made decent by adding a decent keyword or a couple more stats, so that attacking was a realistic option.

Final Judgment: Bad

Scarlett also has abilities that look like they must be designed for "Clue" - haste on a Hill Giant? And an aggro ETB effect on a commander with a value-over-time ability? Just a weird mess of text. I'm inclined to almost completely discount the first couple abilities, since red has virtually no ways to exploit it beyond an alpha strike on a single opponent the turn you cast Scarlett. So that leaves a impulse draw once per turn, which there are much better options for. Prosper, Tome Bound and Laelia, the Blade Reforged come to mind. So I really can't imagine wanting to play Scarlett.

Final Judgment: Bad

Green and White are the clear winners of the 5 mono-colored commanders from CLU, but Green is a lot harder to evaluate. My first thought was "oh, punisher mechanic, probably bad" - but that's a gross oversimplification when you'll get somewhere in between a free Decree of Savagery and two and two-thirds black lotuses. Because your enemies are voting which to give you, the goal is to make both options as beneficial as possible for you. I think you're somewhat forced to go somewhat wide in order to make the counters option threatening - if it's just your commander and a sakura-tribe elder, everyone will choose counters and you won't get a ton of value (+4/+4 on your commander could be a lot worse, though the lack of evasion hurts a lot). But I don't think you need to go too wide before the counters become threatening enough that people stop voting for it. Once you deter them from voting for counters, you also want some ways to exploit the big mana from treasures, to prevent flooding out. Mana sinks and X-spells are a good fit. The deck requirements of "have a decent number of creatures" and "have some mana sinks" (with perhaps a smattering of "have some ways to protect your commander"), that's a lot of flexibility still left in the build. Overall I think that makes Green an interesting design, and one I'd be curious to see in action.

Final Judgment: Good

The plan here is presumably to cast two spells on your turn, then crack the clue using Lavinia's mana ability. That makes her a Jori En, Ruin Diver with extra steps, and Jori isn't that exciting. There are a few angles - artifact synergies, using Lavinia's mana to do other things, etc - but there are also downsides, like not getting the card right away, and needing extra mana to draw more than once per turn cycle. So I don't really see it.

Final Judgment: Bad

Amzu is pleasantly open-ended - you could go flashback, retrace, aftermath, reanimator, self-recurring cards like Veilborn Ghoul, or self-mill and exiling with cards like Relic of Progenitus...all potentially interesting options. Exiling and reanimator probably have the potential to make the biggest stuff, but something reliable like retrace sounds like a solid plan, especially if you can do it on enemy turns. The ultimate payoff is reasonably strong - not insane, but there's enough flexiblity with the rest of the deck that you can do a lot of stuff you already wanted to do, and get your wincon as a bonus. Seems like a solid way to build a deck.

Final Judgment: Good

For a five-drop, this is not a strong enough tribal payoff. The keywords are nice, but soldiers tend to be small so a lack of stats is brutal. And haste is probably the strongest, but is at odds with the activated ability since you'd ideally want to tap out playing a bunch of hasty soldiers, rather than keep mana open to activate his ability. I'd say the best plan is probably to ignore the keywords, cast some big token-producing instant, then untap and activate his ability two or three times - but that's still not THAT much damage. Boros doesn't really have a soldier tribal commander (Baird, Argivian Recruiter, arguably) so if you're desperate to do that specific thing, then Mustard qualifies. But outside Boros soldier fans, I don't see the appeal.

Final Judgment: Bad

Played fairly, Lonis looks pretty weak to me. Evolve has a pretty low ceiling, and the counter-giving ability isn't that exciting either. Getting counters onto Lonis via non-evolve means is pretty easy, but then you're hung up on the cost of cracking all those clues. Increasing Savagery being turned into a 14 mana draw 5 doesn't really sound that great. But there are multiple infinite combos available - Extruder can go off on turn 4 (three with a mana dork) to make an infinite power Lonis, and any means of copying Lonis without running into the legend rule (Spark Double for example) goes infinite with an artifact sac outlet, while also producing infinite clues and doing whatever the sac outlet does, infinite times. There are plenty of tutors for those cards, so I'd definitely be wary of those combos when playing against him. I don't think either combo is strong enough to make him a major threat, but his "fair" version seems bad enough that I expect most Lonis decks to be pretty focused on the combo approach, and that's annoying. So Lonis goes to the dog house.

Final Judgment: Ugly