LOTR: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Let's get the obvious out of the way: Doran exists. It costs 1 less, gives you access to thrice as many colors, has more toughness which also equals more damage, and doesn't require any cost in order to acquire the butt-fighting ability. But on the other hand, Bill is the cutest magic card of all time. Look at that bib!

Final Judgement: Good, of course! *puts hands over Bill's adorable ears* but actually bad

I'm never a huge fan of stax pieces in the command zone. Too much potential to draw hate and create a 1v1 fight right out of the gate. That and his sacrifice ability make Boromir a much more natural fit in the 99. If I was building around him, I'd focus on making board wipes asymmetrical, but that's pretty underwhelming for the setup.

Final Judgement: Bad

Eowyn has a fairly strong showing considering her relatively minor status in the books, but this is the clear runt of the litter. She's not awful in a limited sense - her stats are reasonable, she's got multiple abilities that do something…but it's not very much. Very reminiscent of Danitha Capashen, Paragon, but Danitha has first strike and vigilance built-in, along with the more valuable lifelink. Eowyn can target other creatures, but you probably don't want to anyway, and equipment can potentially prevent targeting which is awkward. Danitha is barely played, and Eowyn is significantly worse.

Final Judgement: Bad

Morbid Opportunist is a popular card, and a commander with a similar trigger could potentially be popular. Unfortunately Faramir pulls back a bit too hard - only triggering on your own turn, only triggering for your own creatures, and requiring waiting until endstep to get your card back. For 4 there are plenty of commanders that essentially guaranteed a card draw every turn without conditions. In exchange, we get the second trigger, but between tempt being hard to come by in mono-white, and a single token being a minor payoff, it doesn't do much to move the needle.

Final Judgement: Bad

This Frodo overlaps a lot with Ardenn, Intrepid Archaelogist. Cheap white creatures that circumvent equip costs. Frodo has the advantage of being cheaper, a decent combat ability that lets him attack with impunity (and survive your white damage-based wipes, few though they may be), and interestingly the minor upside of working through shroud from lightning greaves. But he doesn't work with some equipment (most of the best equipment is in the 2-3 range, but not all, notably not colossus hammer which is very effective with Ardenn), he can only equip one at a time, and of course he doesn't get a partner and the extra color that implies. The curveout of Frodo into a Sword of X and Y is certainly tempting, but ultimately the only noteworthy upside relative to Ardenn is maybe being a turn ahead, with a lot of substantial downsides. All that said, Ardenn is a very strong option, so being close to him still leaves Frodo as a strong option, if not exactly unique.

Final Judgement: Good

This iteration of Frodo is a very self-contained win condition. You just need a very solid manabase, ideally with as many WB untapped duals as possible so that you can play him on 1 while still activating his third ability on three. The first ring temptation trigger makes him difficult to block, and the ring temptations can't be lost once you've acquired them. He is somewhat vulnerable to removal since he functionally costs 6, but with the splitting up of costs he's not too bad to get back in action, as long as you weren't hoping to do anything else. The obvious thing is to ensure you can protect him with equipment, instants, and mother of runes, and then the rest of the deck is free to be used however you like, probably with interaction since you don't really need other threats and WB has a lot of good options. Other ways to tempt could be worthwhile too, especially to catch people with the kill trigger off-guard. As far as the design, it's fun to have a figure of destiny in the command zone. I do think it'll get boring fairly quickly as most games will play out similarly, but I don't think he's strong enough to qualify as "ugly".

Final Judgement: Good

A first read of Gandalf might lead you to assume you're looking strictly for artifacts and legendaries with etb/ltb triggers. Probably the most obvious archetype available is an eggs build, which is likely the strongest option, but he's actually significantly more versatile than that. For example, if you play a lot of legendary lands - 26 available currently in mono-white - any landfall triggers you have could be doubled. Being mono-white is a knock to his competitive viability, as is his relatively high cost, but he's still undeniably powerful, and quite flexible as well. Personally I'm a bit tired of trigger doubling commanders, but hopefully his limitations make him more interesting than obnoxious.

Final Judgement: Good, potentially ugly

We get it, Gandalf is super freaking white. Let's get the boring bits out of the way - on his own stats, Gandalf isn't too impressive, and his death trigger probably isn't worth using 99% of the time while he's your commander. But as a board buff for a token deck, he can put in a lot of work, and the lack of toughness boost doesn't matter too much for those sorts of decks. Getting +3-4 power is enough to enable some pretty big alpha strikes, and the scry can ensure you're hitting has to set them up in the meantime. He's ultimately kind of a color-restricted weaker Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, but at least he's less vulnerable to getting killed mid-combat.

Final Judgement: Good

If you've ever wanted to play a mediocre limited card for a commander, here's your big opportunity. If forced, I guess I'd play it with with some saboteurs to enable their triggers, but white doesn't have a ton of saboteurs, for 5 mana I'd rather give them evasion with a Sword of X and Y, and Landroval can only jump one creature at a time so duplicates will not avail you. You absolute masochist.

Final Judgement: Bad. Very Bad.

Rosie at least has more legs than Landroval among the uncommon mono-white crew. Her etb is uninteresting, but her token trigger is at least okay. All your creature tokens are essentially +1/+1 (but better, since you have flexibility on where you put it) and you get extra value off smothering tide, as if you needed it. Still terrible by conventional standards, of course, but at least she does something.

Final Judgement: Bad.

If you could somehow get a heartless summoning Samwise could be a temptation machine (no, sac outlets won't work). I guess Mirage Mirror works, though it's a lot of effort. Realistically there's not a lot that Samwise can do that can't be done better by, say, Saffi Eriksdottir. He can return fetchlands, but I really want my commander to do more than that. I don't love etb effect commanders on the best of days, but his isn't really worth the effort to blink either. He's okay-ish in the 99, though, if you want tempt triggers.

Final Judgement: Bad

Saradoc isn't half bad at spewing out tokens. Not as effective as Myrel, Shield of Argive, granted, but still decent. He does have an added ability that does its best to make up the difference, but I don't think it really gets there. If you're playing a lot of small creatures and generating tokens, you're probably a lot more interested in going wide with anthems rather than pumping them into a single large threat - especially not one with just 4 toughness. I could see Saradoc in the 99, but in the command zone I don't think it really does enough.

Final Judgement: Bad

Bill has one of the strangest abilities I've ever read on a card. If you're wondering, there are 13 non-changeling horses in blue, but none of them (save akroan horse, but that's hard to get on your side in the first place unless your opponent happens to be playing it) are worth playing just to give them away for 3 treasure. There are a few ways to create horses, probably the best of which is to use imagecrafter to turn creatures like grid monitor into horses. But…then your opponent can just choose not to block. At least the donation can be to a non-defending player, so maybe you can make a deal…in order to make a deal. Or you could force a block, though there aren't many ways to do that in blue. I guess I also need to mention the first option, but that's pretty weak - you're either letting him die, which isn't worth the card, or you're equipping him up, at which point it's not worth the mana. As silly as he is, I think Bill makes a fun "challenge run" commander. Terrible, yes, but not boring.

Final Judgement: Bad (but fun)

Elrond is so uncommon he could hide in a crowd of commons. If someone forced me to build him - and they'd have to use severe and unrelenting force - I'd probably try to use mass token generation to do some deep scrying, but that's an absurd amount of effort for a very middling payoff. Leave Elrond where he belongs, in a pile of draft chaff left behind at prerelease.

Final Judgement: Bad (but not fun)

As much as I love casting things with flash, mono-blue is not the most exciting place for it. Blue is already loaded with strong instants, and most strong sorceries are doing things that instants can do, just a bit more efficiently, or don't gain much advantage from being an instant. The tempt trigger makes tempt cards more interesting, for sure, but there's not enough tempt cards in mono blue to do much work. So unfortunately, I don't think this gandalf really does anything of substance, even if he looks compelling on the surface.

Final Judgement: Bad

What a strange set of abilities just begging to be exploited. My experience piloting Golos and putting lifelink counters onto Sorrow's Path taught me that being able to move ability counters around can be very powerful - Tekuthal, Inquiry dominus could enable making all your permanents indestructible (eventually), and Crystalline Giant could enable all sorts of shenanigans. Move that deathtouch counter onto your Prodigal Sorcerer, perhaps? The biggest downside is that I'm sure tracking all the different types of counters is going to be an absolute nightmare. I'm skeptical that she's actually going to be good, but she's damn efficient at what she does. I just wish she had an additional color, but we'll work with what we have.

Final Judgement: Good

Mono-blue legendary tap ability tribal? That is one narrow archetype. There are a decent number of cards within that range that have strong abilities, but a lot of them require synergies or cost mana, which might become difficult if you're trying to activate them multiple times a turn. I think you're probably better off using her with tap abilities broadly, especially since she can target lands, artifacts, etc with her first ability. Speeding up the clock on things like magistrate's scepter and lux cannon is potentially interesting, though probably not particularly powerful. Maybe the better option is to use her to ramp out huge stuff of expensive mana rocks - a thran dynamo on 4 lets you play practically anything on 5. I don't expect she'll see much play, but she's not awful.

Final Judgement: Bad

Second time around for the eagles, and they almost saved it, if it wasn't for that pesky Thassa, Deep Dwelling. Meneldor has a pretty solid trigger, which thanks to Thassa we already know can be quite strong, but unfortunately he's a lot less reliable and less durable than thassa, plus he takes an extra turn to get going. His only advantage is that eventually he might kill someone with commander damage, but Thassa could do that too, if she wanted to. Which she usually doesn't. But hey, eagles, good effort this time at least.

Final Judgement: Bad (would have been good, if only Thassa didn't exist)

Color confusion aside, Saruman is about what you'd expect for an uncommon legend. He does the set mechanic, and he does it as a reasonable rate for limited, but unfortunately doesn't really do anything at constructed power levels. Casting two spells is easy enough with cantrips, but getting a 2/2 or 2 +1 counters wouldn't be exciting on a 5 drop even if they were free. If you can sac the body for good value AND cast two spells on multiple opponents turns as well as your own, he might start to do some work, but that seems like an excessive amount of effort.

Final Judgement: Bad

A strong contender for worst limited rare, the watcher is still quite interesting as a commander. While individual draw spells (i.e. brainstorm) can be pretty powerful as enablers, I think it will be easier and more effective to set up engines like merfolk looter and, most obviously, Rhystic Study, to take maximum advantage of the trigger. Sac outlets will also likely be desirable, both to ensure the tentacles die and to time the stun counters for maximum effect, though mono-blue doesn't have as many good options as you'd like. The "payoff" of an eventual 9/9 for 5 isn't terribly exciting, but the tentacles themselves are pretty solid, especially once you get enough engine power going. It is a significant limitation that you can't directly tap anything, though.

Final Judgement: Good

Gollum is surprisingly decent for an uncommon. 3 power on a 2-drop commander is pretty rare, he's got a death trigger that makes trading unappealing, and he provides a sac outlet while in the graveyard that ensures he's consistently cheap. Unfortunately a lot of his potential rests on whether repeatedly bringing him into play and killing him is worth it, and the tempt triggers alone don't really do that much. He's a decent option for a grave pact-y sort of deck, but there are loads of better options for that already. If you're playing some strange mix of saboteurs and aristocrats, and you want someone unobtrusive in the command zone, maybe Gollum is your guy, but otherwise he's more of a 99 card I think.

Final Judgement: Bad

I've got a minor bone to pick with the wording on this card. Why does it ask you to choose land or nonland, and then your opponent chooses true or false? Why not just have them guess land or nonland - it's the same result with fewer steps. I guess it's a flavor thing. Anyway, this Gollum is more interesting than the uncommon version, but I don't think there's much build-around that's possible for him. Barring some weird politics where you convince an opponent that they want you to draw (maybe reveal a board wipe on top of your deck to someone who's behind?), you're going to have a difficult time getting what you want. If you're desperate for lands, your opponents can just guess you have lands on top and deny them to you, and (more likely) vice versa. As a voltron commander, at least he's never truly risked in combat, but he's also got solid odds to lose his attack and all the damage and triggers you might have gotten, and it's not optional. So I think at best he's just a 2 drop "value" engine that sometimes draws you a card and hits for a couple damage. Funny, yes, flavorful, yes, good, no.

Final Judgement: Bad

At just 2 mana, Gorbag is a potentially efficient way to draw and ramp. Unfortunately, he's in the wrong color. There are very few black goblin token creation, and the orc tokens are typically armies which can't really go wide, only tall. There are a few okay individual orcs and goblins, but you probably don't want to sacrifice them just to cycle. If he was mono-red he'd be great in a Krenko deck or something, but in black he's hardly playable without a lot more support.

Final Judgement: Bad

Despite looking awful at first blush, Gothmog isn't terrible since his deathtouch ability affects any tokens you might create - zombies, faeries, myrs, etc. Deathtouch can be a big deterrent to attacking and blocking at lower powered tables. One big weakness is that Gothmog dying mid-combat might suddenly make a lot of your trades into losses, but I expect most people won't be thrilled to burn removal on a janky uncommon, and there are a way undying-esque ways to protect him in a pinch. He's certainly not strong, but he's a lot more viable than most of these uncommon legends.

Final Judgement: Bad

Much like Boromir, I don't like having the hate piece on the commander, and unlike Erebos, God of the Dead he's squishy enough to eat removal against an opponent who is too greatly effected. The sac outlet is pretty much the bare minimum to qualify - it's a tap ability with minimal effect, and even if there was a Bloodghast-tier recursive legendary creature in black (there absolutely isn't) to where the amass was functionally free, it would still be mediocre. Limited fodder at best.

Final Judgement: Bad

Lobelia hanging out in the command zone is a bit of a telegraphed play when you're sitting on open mana. And the end result, while potentially decent, isn't the sort of lasting impact I'm generally looking for from my commander. She might be the best commander for an all-in revel in riches build? Flash makes her much more likely to catch people with a surprise win, with removal into commander right before your turn. Outside of that, there's a couple ways to abuse treasures in black - grim hireling, ruthless technomancer. Generally I'd prefer something with value over time like Fain the Broker, and I don't think the archetype is strong to begin with, but Lobelia's a fun offbeat choice at least.

Final Judgement: Bad

Ugh, commanders that want you to use the set mechanic without personally enabling it can be really annoying to build. At least black has more options than blue, but it's still not much unless you're willing to run all 9 nazgul. Alternately, you could just focus on etb effects and such so that having the tempt trigger isn't so important - especially since you need to send the token into combat already, so survival isn't exactly guaranteed. Why would you run this over, say, Chainer, Dementia Master, who doesn't require tempt, doesn't require going into the red zone, lets you reuse creatures potentially, and can be used multiple times per turn at instant speed? Fair question. Sauron doesn't cost mana to use, but that's where the upsides pretty much end. He's technically fine, but he's still just not that interesting.

Final Judgement: Bad

Does any human alive remember Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis? With 62 decks on EDHrec, putting him below He Who Hungers, I expect not. Is this guy better than Nefarox? Well, he's got 2 less toughness and lacks exalted, but he puts a (pretty minor) restriction on the sacrifice and doesn't need to attack alone for the trigger. I think that leaves him marginally better, but honestly the fact that it's even close is shocking. This is a super cool and intimidating character, why would you make him a near-clone of one of the least interesting black legends in the format?

Final Judgement: Bad

A mythic big-name character with art as orange as his expansion symbol seems like it would be awesome, but the head of the Nazgul is a big letdown. His defensive trigger sounds exciting but it's ultimately pretty unimpressive since your opponent gets to dictate when it happens, you have to soak damage to get it to do anything, and most decks will be able to work around it pretty easily, plus it can be rendered irrelevant with an alpha strike. Gothmog, the mediocre uncommon, does a better job of deterring attacks. Beyond that, the Witch-king is just a hard-ish to kill flyer with on-curve stats. At best he's a mid-tier voltron option for mono-black, but personally I'd rather have something that comes out faster - five is an awkward amount of mana to accelerate to ASAP since it requires fairly heavy commitment to fast mana to reliably come out before turn 4. At least he mirrors his counterpart in the movies: intimidating looking but ultimately disappointing.

Final Judgement: Bad

Looks like a very solid card in limited. In commander, big meh of course. 5 power haste for 5 is fine but Zurgo Helmsmasher vastly outclasses him. And the token is far from guaranteed, not that it's really worth worrying about.

Final Judgement: Bad

I like a lot of what's going on with Eomer. He's flavorful, he's cheaply costed, and he's got some potential power. My biggest concern is that, when compared to something like Aurelia the Warleader, he's maybe not worth all the effort. Aurelia costs 2 more, true, but she has no condition on the additional attack step, brings her own evasion, and an additional color. If Eomer wasn't limited to once per turn, he'd have some high-roll potential that could outpace aurelia, but as-is you need legendaries, and probably a sac outlet, which could cut significantly into other synergies you might want, such as attack triggers. All that said, maybe I'm going soft after so many bad legends, but I think Eomer does manage to squeak into "good" territory, if only just.

Final Judgement: Good

Red is certainly capable of generating a lot of non-human tokens. And as a global buff, Erkenbrand isn't awful, in fact I expect he may see some play in goblin tribal decks. That said, I don't think he's nearly as interesting of a build on his own - making the tokens is typically a lot more valuable to have reliably than buffing them. Marton Stromgald isn't exactly pulling numbers these days and Erkenbrand seems like a typically worse version.

Final Judgement: Bad

And we're back to limited trash. I don't even have much to say about Gimli - he's got unimpressive stats and a triggered ability that hardly does anything while also being very telegraphed. He certainly pales in comparison to the Legolas counterpart, itself mediocre, but at least more interesting than this. I don't even like his name - who introduces someone by calling them "counter of kills"? Battlefield accountant, more like.

Final Judgement: So bad.

Getting a mana when you cast a spell has proven to be powerful in the past, however the once per turn restriction limits this significantly. Especially since historic spells without flash can't be cast on enemy turns, so getting more than one treasure per turn cycle is fairly difficult. There's a little synergy with artifacts, since you can use treasures as additional free artifacts for purposes of sac outlets or cards that care about artifacts entering, total number of artifacts, etc, but the ceiling is pretty low on his synergy there. You can run a bunch of incidental historic spells, or even just run other treasure generation, and focus on the goad ability, but being limited to once per turn makes it less exciting than, say, Kitt Kanto, Mayhem Diva. I don't hate him, but I really don't see any path for Gloin that does much of anything exciting.

Final Judgement: Bad

There's potential for Grishnakh to do something, theoretically. Yes, it's an etb trigger on a red commander, where blink is brutally hard to come by, but once the army gets big enough you're getting a Threaten and +2/+2 every time he enters. Being restricted to nonlegendary, though, renders any chance he might have had immediately void. All that work and you can't even steal an enemy commander? Yikes. Very bad.

Final Judgement: Bad

Celeborn almost looks mildly interesting until you realize he can only scry once on his own, no matter how many elves you attack with. With the right build you could probably make him reasonably large, but just being large isn't nearly exciting enough for all that setup. Most of the scry cards available are limited fodder anyway - much like Celeborn himself.

Final Judgement: Bad

The payoff is (arguably) there for Elanor (Who? Never mind). What isn't there is enough mono-green food creators. Existing ramp options like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Azusa, Lost but Seeking are a lot easier to build around, and even with a guaranteed source of food, Elanor is just ok - functionally turning a food into a Rampant Growth that gains 3 life once per turn. For other, likely multicolor, commanders who use food, Elanor will likely find her place in the 99, but in the command zone she's a miss.

Final Judgement: Bad

Fond memories of jamming Ironroot Treefolk aside, Treefolk are pretty bottom-of-the-barrel as a tribe. And a 7 drop that ramps puts additional demands on the deck to find something useful to do with that mana. Vigilance as a tribal bonus on a 7 drop is an insult, frankly. The Upwelling effect is okay, but I don't like it nearly as much on commanders that are easy to kill. If you want the upwelling, Omnath, Locus of Mana is a lot cheaper. If you want ramp, there are dozens of options, but Grand Warlord Radha comes to mind as being similar while not committing you to a terrible tribe. And if you absolutely must run treefolk for some reason, Doran, the Siege Tower is probably a lot more impactful. I just can't really see any reason to run this big dumb clunker.

Final Judgement: Bad

I can't really fathom why this card exists. For such a powerful character at rare, she is shockingly bad. Her stats are bad, she can't put a counter on herself to enable her own attacks, and her trigger is just overall extremely low impact, especially for a five drop. She'd be weak if she was a 3/3 for 3, but at least she'd look like a rare. This version is worse than most of the uncommons - and this set doesn't even have good uncommons.

Final Judgement: Baaaaaaaaad

The trigger isn't really worth the setup here, and you're unlikely to catch anyone too unaware on a bad block when this is so face-up. You don't have nearly as much control as you'd like, even with multiple scrys either.

Final Judgement: Bad

Finally, a decent legend. Legolas provides something green control decks generally lack - the ability to efficiently kill enemy creatures. Cantrips can play either side of the field, fight spells do twice as much, and combat tricks are substantially more versatile and effective and finding lethal. His cost is dirt cheap, too. The most similar legend is Gargos, Vicious Watcher, which doesn't require the growth before removing things, but he's also a fight instead of a bite, and he's 6 instead of 3. As someone who got good effectiveness from Gargos as a green control commander, I think Legolas will be a solid alternative.

Final Judgement: Good

He's a grizzly bear that makes food. Do I really need to say anything? There's not many halflings in mono-green, and precious little to do with them except sacrifice them for life. Limited fodder at best.

Pippin is definitely superior to Merry at creating food, as he synergizes with the wide swath of existing green token creation. On top of that, he provides a much-needed outlet to do something with it beyond merely gaining a modest amount of life. In a world where Marneus Calgar exists, getting a draw off three token producing events isn't the most efficient, but he is cheap. Better than you'd expect for an uncommon, but still just decent.

Final Judgement: Bad

Quickie (as his friends call him) is one of those tribal commanders that don't really act like tribal commanders - it's a powerful (ish, it's still uncommon) trigger, but it doesn't care about the size or stats of the particular creature you're summoning beyond having the treefolk tag. So he incentivizes a lot of cheap changelings, and whatever the cheapest treefolk available are. Ultimately, he's a 6-drop commander, treefolk are so bad that his trigger does little to save them, and there aren't enough universal automatons to make this look remotely reasonable. But I just wanted to point out that, in addition to power level, Quickie sucks from a design perspective too.

Final Judgement: Bad

Radagast does a pretty solid beast whisperer impression, and he's definitely going to see a ton of play in the 99 accordingly. At least he doesn't do much for elfball decks. But how good is he in the command zone? There's a few hurdles to jump through on your way to unlimited cards - you need to be casting creatures big enough that you can hit a follow-up reliably, and you need to avoid too many overlapping creature types for the same reason. That part gets somewhat tricky in a mono-color deck, since a lot of green's most popular creatures are elves, elementals, and humans. Especially vexing since, in order to abuse the cascade of creatures, you'd ideally want a lot of creature-based mana ramp, but those are nearly all elves of low mana value and thus have little synergy with Radagast. As such, I think he'll be significantly weaker than a beast whisperer in the command zone, and is probably better suited to the 99 in multicolor decks with a wider variety of creature types. He's not bad, but I think he'll be disappointingly difficult to go off with.

Final Judgement: Good

Multicolor legends finally, but we're off to a rocky start. Six is a lot, so it's pretty disappointing that its etb and attack trigger is pretty middling. Aron, Benalia's Ruin is an utterly uninteresting and unplayed commander who likewise can put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control each turn, and he costs 3 instead of 6, plus he puts one on himself. Sure, he requires sac fodder, but A+A require not dying while attacking, as a 3/6 for 6, so I think sacking a bloodghast every turn seems like a comparatively minor ask. Mikaeus, the Lunarch can likewise put counters on all your creatures much more quickly and efficiently. A+A do include a lifegain trigger, which is worth something I suppose, but the fact that they're being compared to commanders that cost much less and aren't commonly played is a pretty strong indicator that it would take a lot more than some lifegain to make them compelling.

Final Judgement: Bad

The ring tempting commanders really don't appeal to me very much unless they can trigger it themselves. Otherwise you're relying on a pretty small set of cards to come up, and a lot of them are limited chaff. The ability counters are a fairly decent payoff - obviously first strike and deathtouch are a nice combo, lifelink could be good on a large creature, and vigilance is…fine I guess. Making another creature the ringbearer feels a little counterintuitive in commander since commander damage can be significantly more valuable. The ability to duplicate counters is more versatile, and potentially combo-worthy, although I haven't found any so far. Anything you can put onto Aragorn you could presumably have put onto the other creature to start with, and Aragorn himself is just a Centaur Courser by default, so it does feel a little small-ball for commander.

Final Judgement: Bad

I'm not generally a fan of kitchen sink commanders with tons of colors and abilities, but honestly I kinda dig Aragorn. Do you build him with a ton of multicolor spells to get as many triggers as possible from each spell, or do you load up on cheap cantrips so you can cast more spells in total? Do you spread yourself across all the abilities, or do you focus on one particular aspect - white for a go-wide token deck, green for a voltron deck, red for a burn deck, or blue for a control deck? None of his abilities are obviously overly strong, so the build doesn't seem obvious to me, and I'd consider that a pretty good sign.

Final Judgement: Good

Holy cow that is a lot of mana to scry 2. Ignoring that ability, Arwen isn't completely irredeemable. There's a pretty fair amount of incidental scry available in blue and green, and being able to throw it around can unlock some additional synergies and combat activation threats. And she comes in at a nice cheap pricetag as well. I don't think the scry cards are quite cohesive enough as a deck to love Arwen, but for an uncommon in LTR being almost a playable deck is pretty high praise.

Final Judgement: Bad

The baseline of a 2/2 indestructible for 3 is already a solid starting point for Arwen, especially in the color of endless board wipes. There's certainly a build where Arwen picks up several dozen swords, wipes the board three or four times, and goes goblin mode on your opponents' faces. But if you're wanting something a bit more complex, the indestructibility being a rare type of counter opens some doors for proliferating it and moving it around, such as with Nesting Grounds, or just letting her protect other creatures with her activated without endangering herself. Also acquiring more counters makes this even more appealing, and further empower proliferate shenanigans. I like this design as it can create some real creativity in deckbuilding, and maybe even be a viable replacement for my Sorrow's Path Golos deck, tragically cut down in the prime of its life.

Final Judgement: Good

7 power and haste with evasion is a pretty strong statement, especially with cost reduction and a nasty death trigger. Even removal probably won't feel great. We've seen from Dargo, the Shipwrecker that cost reduction from sacrifice can power out a commander quite quickly, and while the Balrog can't be made as cheap as quickly as Dargo, he's a lot more threatening on the board. It is much more difficult to go infinite with him, since sacrificing him alone can't offset the rising commander tax, but if you do pull it off at least you get to wipe your opponents boards while you're at it. I'd expect to play Balrog in a treasure focused or aristocrats deck, to add a constant threat of commander damage lethals in addition to whatever else the deck is doing.

Final Judgement: Good

I don't think I'm heating up a particularly hot take when I say this card is unreal bad. This isn't planeshift anymore, a 7/7 trample for 5 with a downside is not exciting, especially not in commander, and especially especially not with that particular downside. People are killing each other's commanders all the time, losing yours every time that happens sounds agonizing, plus you can't even kill enemy commanders without shooting yourself in the foot. And it's not exactly easy to counteract the tuck trigger either - you'd need a sac outlet as well as recursion in most cases. But whatever, I'm not saying anything you didn't already know. This guy is maybe the biggest disappointment of the set. What makes it even dumber is that Durin's Bane conveys the same flavor, but more accurately, so this isn't even a flavor win.

Final Judgement: Bad that fell into a pit of bad

The good news about Bilbo is that, assuming he's your ring bearer (retirees being the best people for dangerous missions into enemy territory), he's very likely to have good attacks, thus ensuring treasure. And if he should tragically die, you can enable the further ring bearer abilities once he's back in play. On the other hand, a 3 drop that gives you 1 treasure per turn isn't exactly exciting, and as a 1-power 3-drop with minimal evasion once buffed, he's not a natural voltron either. Maybe he should stay retired.

Final Judgement: Bad

Take Meriadoc, make him less stat efficient, and disable the ability to stock up treasure, and we've got Butterbur. At least he adds a color? I would have preferred red or blue, though, as they have better artifact synergy. I like replenishing resources like Opiomancer, but once per turn cycle is glacially slow too. Limited filler is limited filler.

Final Judgement: Bad bad bad

Black white already has plenty of strong sac outlet commanders, so Denethor has an uphill battle. Unfortunately, as a sac outlet, he's pretty underwhelming, with 2 being far too much mana for such a minor effect. His trigger is nice for replenishing the creatures you've sacrificed, but there are plenty of token producers that are a lot more efficient too. The design is okay, but the power level is too weak to be interesting.

Final Judgement: Bad

Elrond wishes he was as good of a payoff for scrying as his daughter (not the uncommon one. No, not the mythic one either obviously. Or the other mythic one. Oh my god there are so many versions of these characters, it's driving me insane). Getting a couple counters is okay, but most good scrys aren't super deep, so you're probably only getting 1 or 2. Which, actually I might take it back - the uncommon Arwen might be a better payoff too, since at least she comes out early. Eldrond's other ability is pretty middling - if someone is targeting your stuff with a spell or ability, it's almost certainly removing it. It dulls the sting a bit, but it's still almost certainly a bad trade for you. Rayne, Academy Chancellor hasn't been interesting in a very long time, and Elrond doesn't add enough to change that.

Final Judgement: Bad

4 mana is a solid rate for a Duplicant, and 3/4 haste is decent stats as well. Unfortunately outside of her etb effect she doesn't do much, but at least she's in white for blinking purposes. If you just want a commander to kill things, there are probably more efficient choices, and which don't have weaknesses to low powered utility dorks, but she's at least okay. More of a 99 card than a commander.

Final Judgement: Bad

Faramir is weird because he looks like he wants you to be great at predicting future attacks, but in reality both sides of his ability are so close in power level that it's not really clear whether you'd prefer to get attacked, or not attacked. In a vacuum, drawing a card is probably stronger, but in a token deck the tokens are likely stronger. Either way, you probably aren't too invested in which side of his ability triggers. A 4-drop that draws a card every turn is pretty mid, and there are plenty of existing options that do similar things. A 4-drop that makes 3 tokens every turn could be spicy in the right context, but your opponent has control over whether you get them, and if they're making attacks into you it's probably not great for you. I would have preferred him if he gave you a bigger reward for one side of the other, so you have a clear goal - either forcing attacks or playing pillowfort - rather than a unsynergistic value engine that's just okay on both halves.

Final Judgement: Bad

Among the most iconic names of the franchise and they wasted it on this? And we're giving the good versions of the character names infested with commas? Bleh. As far as abilities, getting tempt triggers is a very minor incentive for playing legendary tribal compared to existing options. And his attacking ability is…well geez, what's the point mister Frodo? Don't you want your ringbearer, and your commander, to get through for damage? He's too small to kill anything noteworthy in combat, and if you buff him up, then your opponent is going to want to block anyway to avoid commander lethal. That line is about as close to flavor text as I've ever seen. Honestly a disgrace.

Final Judgement: Badly bad with a side of bad

Considering Galadriel doesn't directly provide tempt triggers, that first ability is somewhat limited in its application. But luckily the second ability works quite well without it. Getting a free ramp when you scry - at least most of the time - is pretty awesome. The biggest downside I see is that a lot of the time it will be at odds with how you'd like to scry, especially with small numbers - if you get a scry 1 off Lifecrafter's Bestiary and see a good creature on top, do you bottom it in the hopes of getting free ramp, or keep the creature? You can probably dump most of your library into play pretty quickly off Retreat to Coralhelm alone, though, so the power level is definitely there. I don't think she's overpowered, but she's a quality payoff for something that's not typically rewarded, and possibly the only good scry-payoff commander from the set.

Final Judgement: Good

Another iconic name, but at least this one lives (partially) up to the hype. He certainly demands some thought. A spellslinger build is obviously his home, but his triggers aren't exactly made equal. Tap or untap a permanent can be situationally useful to stop attacks or get extra tap value, or a 1 mana rebate at minimum. Three damage to each opponent would be great, except that the once per ability clause makes it very hard to machine gun your opponents Guttersnipe style. The third option is the clear prize, here, and a big incentive to run bigger, splashier spells. Unfortunately, within blue, the best option is, and will forever be, time magic. Blech. At least we've got red to offer some other options, though we all know they're not as powerful. And then finally the last ability is protection in a pinch, or a way to reset his abilities at the cost of recasting him and losing a draw - though you might prefer to use a blink spell. Note that it's not optional once you've used the other abilities. Overall I think the first two abilities, while they could be strong without the single-use limitation, are mostly flavor text because of it. So he's mostly a repeatable 5-mana Fork, at least if you're going to commit hard to him. Less-committed versions maybe run him with cantrips for incidental damage and value, but that doesn't seem worth it to me. He's nowhere near the nastiest turns commanders that already exist, with his high upfront cost one-use limitation, so I don't think he's powerful enough to be properly ugly, but despite his interesting design I don't think he does anything well enough to be a worthwhile payoff without turns either. So I think I have to put him into bad, unfortunately. If only his other abilities were a bit more compelling he might have made it over the fence.

Final Judgement: Bad

Okay, for real this time. Rare Gimli is an unusual RG aristocrats commander. Every sacrificed creature gives you a +1 counter, the second gives you indestructible, and the third gives you a fight, though since he's indestructible it's effectively a bite for practical purposes. Having removal on tap without mana is definitely nice to have, especially in RG which lacks strong creature removal. The counters, along with indestructible (and the threat of indestructible) make him a decent voltron option, and his cost is quite reasonable as well. The main difficulty is the lack of aristocrats support within RG. You can replace recurring creatures with tokens, but sac outlets are somewhat limited, and your payoff is vulnerable to non-destroying removal. In another set I might grade Gimli bad, but compared to most of this chaff, he's well above par, and I do like that he enables a novel archetype, so with a gentle toss from an elf, he clears the hurdle into good.

Final Judgement: Good

Great, more birds. At least this one is gold, maybe it's got a chance to be playable? Yeah, nah. Gwaihir might be the worst of the three. The discount is tough to pull off on-curve, and vigilance is still a terrible tribal payoff for something this expensive. Birds are a barely functional tribe in the best of circumstances, and vigilance is far from sufficient incentive. So he's basically just a mediocre voltron, easily outclassed by, off the top of my head, Dragonlord Ojutai.

Final Judgement: Bad

That is one hell of a resilient commander. On the surface, he looks like spirit tribal, and he is sorta, but the thing he really likes is anything that can target all your creatures at once. Cauldron Haze, Eerie Interlude, Scapegoat, Semester's End, Heaven's Gate, Touch of Darkness…okay, I think that might be all of them. Which is kind of a problem for the deck really taking off on targeting alone. But it's still a very strong response to any kind of board wipe, and provides a shield around all of your spirits that does a pretty solid job of deterring removal. Unfortunately it also prevents most of your own targeted cantrips from working properly, so I don't think there's much value to targeting your own stuff outside of big multi-targeting spells like those mentioned. You can always burn removal to protect pieces of your board from a wrath, but that's a pretty desperate play. Overall I doubt King of the Oathbreakers is overpowered since his ability to create tempo is somewhat limited, but he can create some pretty sticky boards and his abilities are definitely unique and cool, despite the yawnworthiness of tribal. br />
Final Judgement: Good

I'm a mystified as everyone else about what that second ability is supposed to be about. Best guess I've heard is some weird flavor about elvish eyesight. Anyway, for our purposes, it's pretty much irrelevant - if it wasn't limited to once per turn there'd be some combos with Oracle's Insight. It's still okay, but it's only one draw per turn and a fairly high risk plan, so mostly ignorable. The other triggered ability isn't exactly terrible, but it's not very exciting either, especially in UG where there aren't a lot of mass removal options. Theoretically it could get bit, sure, but that's pretty dependent on your opponents, and not very durable. No real reason to build this version of Legolas, stick to the rare one.

Final Judgement: Bad

Monologue Tax as a commander is pretty interesting - the ceiling is quite high for a 2-drop, and it even triggers for yourself, so even with no support you could create 4 treasures per turn cycle theoretically. The life loss is pretty insignificant, although you might want to include at least some lifegain in the deck just in case. Debt to the Deathless comes to mind as a way to recoup any lost life while taking advantage of the big mana you'll be generating, but there are lots of spicy bombs you could ramp out off Lotho. His power does depend on how tuned your opponents' decks are, but most decks are looking to double spell as soon as possible, and you can probably get at least 1-2 treasures on your own efforts. For a pretty minor character, Lotho is a lot more interesting than plenty with a lot more screen time.

Final Judgement: Good

Hardened Scales is a popular effect, and Mauhur brings it to the command zone in a very different color identity. But there's a catch - armies, goblins, and orcs only. The obvious intention is to use this with amass, but amass is pretty awful in commander so that's probably not a high utility. Orcs aren't too common either - LTR introduces some, but only a few are properly viable in the format. Goblins are much more popular, but with both goblins and orcs, most of them don't really use +1 counters very often. As boring as it is, I think the most effective way to use Mauhur is probably just to go voltron - he's a decent statline as a 2/2 menace for 2, and anything that gives him counters becomes significantly more interesting. There aren't too many of those either, but maybe add in a few outliers from the other categories - Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, Taurean Mauler, Dreadhorde Invasion - and you might end up with something vaguely playable. Hey, for a LTR uncommon, that's high praise.

Final Judgement: Bad

A 2/2 haste for 2 is a decent starting point, but unfortunately Merry doesn't do too much to rise beyond it. Conditional first strike is so middling it barely warrants a mention, and the draw trigger is a decent amount of work to make viable. The obvious point of comparison is the recent Jor Kadeen, Goldwarden, with the same cost, a keyword, and a conditional draw ability, but at least Jor's works with the thing you probably wanted to do anyway, namely make your commander bigger rather than run other random legends that you're risking in combat. And Jor saw basically zero interest. Merry, if anything, looks worse.

Final Judgement: Bad

Another mediocre etb effect commander. This one theoretically could create a decent sized token given time, and at least he's in a decent blink color in blue (and black could ape the effect with recursion or undying). But on the other hand, he costs 5 and he doesn't do anything else. His stats suck too as the cherry on top. Not even close.

Final Judgement: Bad

This looks like an absolute beating in limited. In commander, meh. It's decently large, but if you're ramping hard enough to make it properly large, then you could have just played something bigger with nastier abilities. The attack trigger is pretty weak in a commander setting too. It just doesn't really scale into the format.

Final Judgement: Bad

Mother of Runes was a favorite of mine for a long time, and Pippin essentially does that (well, more Giver of Runes but whatever). Card type is nearly the same utility of not better - he can protect from any enemy targeting, or make the target unblockable by choosing creatures. Mother of Runes can only make a creature unblockable if all defending creatures share the same color. A 2/2 Vigilance Ward 1 isn't a bad body for 2 either, though his ability naturally motivates a more support-focused commander, to protect your other creatures or ensure they go unblocked. But if an attack is free, he can take it, and ward is a nice add on a small utility dork, as compared to a serious threat, and just adds to the total annoyance your opponents will need to chew through before removing your primary threats. Surprisingly, I find myself liking this version of Pippin - he's unassuming, but anybody who's played a mother of runes on 1 knows how great it feels that all your future threats are safe and secure.

Final Judgement: Good

The bar is low for a cheap commander, and Imrahil's ability is strong enough that it has potential. Drawing a second card on your turn is relatively easy, and adding a 1/1 to a cantrip is a significant boost in value. Triggering on enemy turns is a lot harder, though some cards (i.e. Brainstorm) can simplify things. I generally like white blue as a go-wide archetype because blue countermagic can shore up the weaknesses to board wipes, alongside white's disruption of enemy boards if you're falling behind. Much like Pippin, Imrahil's advantage is that he's not very obtrusive, and casting a cantrip on your turn is a fairly low bar to get a steady stream of tokens. I don't think he's quite good - Baird, Argivian Recruiter isn't too exciting and much easier to use - but he's probably one of the best uncommons we've seen so far.

Final Judgement: Bad

Why is Samwise the only one of the hobbits whose full name card is a rare instead of a crappy uncommon? And unlike Merry and Pippn, he actually provides something relatively powerful to do with the food tokens he generates. Only triggering on nontoken is somewhat restrictive - you could try to do some blinking to maximize the triggers, but it might be more effective to just play a normal creature deck and assume you'll have enough gas to keep going. If you're returning artifact or legendary creatures, or I suppose sagas that transform into creatures, you'll be able to recoup a third of the food already. I don't suspect the Samwise deck is terribly focus on him, since you only potentially need one historic card to recur if it's the right one, but I think a GW creature-focused deck will get some solid value if he's in the command zone. Or maybe I'm just desperate to see a card with a decent name make it into the good category. Go to hell Frodo Baggins, seriously.

Final Judgement: Good

Saruman of Many Words would be more accurate. Luckily, they're all pretty interesting words. The ward cost is definitely no slouch, a pattern we'll see again soon. It's not exactly hexproof but it's not far off. His trigger is really interesting, though - he wants you to cast two spells, but you'd really prefer that the second spell has a decent enough mana value so that you can cast stronger spells from enemy graves. Luckily, it helps fill graves itself, but it lets you cast from existing cards, so if you know you want to cast a certain spell you can do it. Sidebar, I like the theft via exile pattern since it means people don't need to handle each other's cards as often - as someone with some pricey cards, I hate other people holding onto them for extended periods and potentially walking off with them accidentally. Anyway, being restricted to instant, sorcery, and enchantment does mean it can be difficult to develop a real board via theft, since a lot of people use those card types for more utility categories like removal, draw, and ramp, which don't really win the game on their own, so focusing entirely around Saruman may be ill-advised. I imagine you'll want a mix of cheaper, cantrippy-type spells to enable double-spelling, followed by heftier ones that will give you good options for theft. Instants are ideal since you can trigger Saruman multiple times per turn cycle, but since it can be difficult to develop a real board with instants you probably don't want to overcommit too hard. Overall, it seems like a difficult build, and one that will play out differently, of course, depending on your opponents. At 6 mv and unreliable results, I don't think Saruman will be overly powerful, but I do think he'll be awesome, and that's definitely good in my book.

Final Judgement: Good

Another rough ward cost, though of course one that most anyone should be able to pay in theory. Running a bit of removal would be well-advised, though, since you can remove their commander in response to the ward trigger and counter their removal, which would be savage. That said, I'm not so sure that Sauron will be a terribly high priority removal target, despite being a big spicy 6 drop. As far as what he actually does, he makes a largish army, and then if he gets them through blocks, he can throw away his hand for 4 new cards. He can also replace his hand when something else gives you a tempt trigger I suppose. I have a bit of a hard time with that trigger, though, because most of the time when I'm playing grixis I'm not too excited about the prospect of throwing away my well-sculpted (and potentially large) grip of control spells in exchange for something else at random, especially when it's only four cards. The potential to hit four lowrolls is very real. If Sauron was red white, it would be a lot more appealing, but grixis just doesn't feel like the right colors to churn through value to me. Damia, Sage of Stone was never my favorite because I didn't want to empty my hand to get maximum value, but at least she drew you up to seven instead of four, and she didn't require getting through in combat either. I still think Sauron is pretty cool since he's hard to kill profitably and he can just kinda sit back and make a big army, and you aren't forced to trade hands unless you actually want to. But, spoiler alert, this is the best version of Sauron and he's still pretty mid at the end of the day, if we're being honest.

Final Judgement: Good, but just barely.

This was one of the first cards spoiled for the set, and initially my thought was "wow, that's really unimpressive". Now with the full set spoiled, I can admit that it's probably in the top quarter of legends, which is pretty embarrassing. The etb effect is okay, although being in the CZ it's telegraphed. I imagine you'll want to run some sac outlets to take maximum advantage of it, but I can't say I love the play pattern that you'll have to use your removal trigger at the time you want to cast your commander - if there aren't good targets but you want to get your commander in play, I guess you just waste it? The activated is fine I guess, but there are certainly more impressive buffs. Still, at least he's pretty easy to use, he doesn't have any requirements to use his ability except mana and even if you lack a wide board at least he pings for 2. Not an amazing rate but I've seen worse. A month ago this card looked horrendous, but after going through all these clunkers he's almost looking decent. I think I'm losing my mind.

Final Judgement: Bad, and keep the voices out of my head please

Alright, I do enjoy the meaning of haste bit, but setting that aside I don't understand why anyone likes this card. I've seen in compared to Alesha, but Alesha costs 3 instead of 5, and pulls from graves instead of hand. That's a pretty huge difference since Shadow is probably going to run out of stuff to put onto the field pretty quickly, whereas Alesha can keep bringing the same etbs back on and over, or fill the grave via mill, etc. Of course there's the horses having haste thing, but horse tribal is possibly worse than treefolk and adding a keyword is a small boost, so it barely merits a mention. Shadowfax is an uncommon, so it being mediocre is hardly surprising, but I do find the interest around it to be. Cute to look at, but I'm definitely not playing this thing.

Final Judgement: Bad

Shagrat echoes a lot of Frodo, Determined Hero's energy. The difference between 2 and 4 for a voltron commander is pretty significant, though - you either run two turns slower, or you run ramp pieces and still run 1 turn slower - and Shagrat doesn't even have the benefit of triggering on etb. He can equip things outside of Frodo's narrow range, but that's a fairly minor upgrade given the equipment that exists. Having two colors is better than one, although white is probably the best support color for voltron between efficient equipment tutors and control spells. So color-wise it comes down to preference. Shagrat can steal equipment, but this is also a pretty minor upgrade, especially since a lot of equipment plays badly when borrowed - swords of X and Y always trigger for their controller, not the controller of the creature. So finally we've got the amass token - a free chump block most likely, as it doesn't contribute to the obvious commander damage plan, and if you're swinging often with a lot of equipment, even a large token is probably just redundant. That's a lot of small tweaks to the Frodo/Ardenn formula, so I can imagine someone wanting to build Shagrat, but I think in terms of effectiveness he wouldn't be my preference for a voltron compared to other options.

Final Judgement: Bad

I want to like this card. It's definitely some fun design, and unlike Drana and Linvala your opponents might be more willing to walk into it. Unfortunately, while I'm a huge fan of utility lands myself, the typical commander pod seems to be relatively light on them, and even in the best case scenario there aren't many utility lands that are really worth getting excited about on a 4-drop. Despite all the fun-sounding text, I can't really imagine him being much more exciting than a Pillarfield Ox.

Final Judgement: Bad

Frankly how dare Shelob make spider tribal look so cool. We all know this thing is getting a good rating, but let me take a few stabs at criticizing her. Deathtouch on an 8/8 is borderline pointless, but less pointless than giving your other spiders ward 2 while Shelob is on the field. Shelob's own ward ability is unimpressive compared to Sauron and Saruman - at 6, any removal used against her will almost certainly tempo roll you, and it won't be enough to dissuade the caster in hardly any situation. The best you'll get is the satisfaction of maybe slowing down their development for the turn. As far as the main ability, it's noteworthy that it doesn't need to be combat damage, so Viridian Longbow or similar could do some major work. Lure or other forced combat tools could do the same. You probably can't expect your opponent to put any sweet ability dorks in front of a spider willingly, so those sorts of things will likely be necessary to get any great value from the trigger. Luckily it can affect both commanders and tokens, although the former is a lot more likely to be effective. I don't think Shelob will be too powerful exactly - she's still expensive, and requires risky setup to do much of anything, but when you have copies of all your opponents' commanders strung up as food tokens, it's going to feel amazing.

Final Judgement: Good

There's a lot of text, but the practical upshot is that, as long as you're playing a sacrifice deck, you'll probably get a free land on your endstep, in addition to the tempt triggers of dubious value. Smeagol himself, with 4 power and low toughness, makes a pretty bad ringbearer, and you probably want to focus more cards on keeping up with the sac triggers than voltronning Smeagol. You also probably want some other incidental tempt triggers, as they also ramp you as a bonus. That, and at least a couple payoffs for big mana and/or enemy mill. Seems reasonable to me.

Final Judgement: Good

In an effort to make Shadowfax look interesting, Strider exists. Between him and Merry, it seems like someone was under the impression that first strike is a huge freaking deal. Anyway, I don't need to explain why he sucks, it's obvious that he sucks. When Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor absolutely blows you out of the water, even without his first ability, that's not a good sign.

Final Judgement: Bad to the bone

There's a bit of tension in the design here - on one hand, you want cheap human tokens to trigger Theoden as much as possible. On the other hand, giving a 1/1 human token double strike isn't exactly a big game, so you want something bigger and more impactful to actually generate value from the trigger. If the goal is commander damage, there are a lot of options that require a lot less buildaround, such as Reyav, Master Smith. If the goal is a wide-ish board of tokens plus a couple larger double strikers, then maybe Theoden makes sense, but that seems pretty loose to me.

Final Judgement: Bad

The requisite five color commander. Sagas didn't have any obvious home in commander, since Satsuki, the Living Lore is honestly terrible. Despite that, Satsuki is relatively popular, so something actually viable like Tom is going to see a ton of play. As far as the design, as long as you have 2 staggered sagas in play, he'll keep finding you new ones for free, but anything beyond 2 will get wasted. There is some play to this, though, as proliferate or similar can enable you to perform the final chapter on enemy turns and thus circumvent his restriction. This is a good design space, I think, since being fully unrestricted would encourage less strategic play and less strategic deck construction. I don't think Tom is going to manage to achieve ugly status, despite his somewhat worrying hexproof indestructible combo and constant stream of value - running a bunch of sagas means the value will be fairly random, and he can only achieve his hexproof/indestructible status if you're exceeding the two sagas he supports naturally. Despite the wrinkle of his once-per-turn restriction, I think he'll be a little samey to build since the pool of good sagas isn't huge, and five color commanders aren't my favorite, but it's probably good the sagas have a fully supported deck now.

Final Judgement: Good

As a payoff for Rakdos aristocrats, having one large commander isn't very exciting. There aren't a ton of BR goblin commanders, but Wort, Boggart Auntie looks like the clear choice to me. He could potentially steal a win with commander damage, but I think the bigger half of that will be that nobody pays attention to you playing a janky-looking trash-tier commander. Too judgy? You try reviewing all these things and see if you don't get a little testy by the end.

Final Judgement: Bad

If you ever loved Goldnight Commander so much that you wish it could be your commander, you're now in luck, provided you're okay with playing human tribal. That effect can definitely be strong, but narrowing it down to humans only is a pretty big blow, as a lot of tokens producers make other creature types. I think I'd probably rather play Jazal Goldmane as a payoff commander in a wide white deck. And Beregond also seems likely to be pretty boring and repetitive to play. I'm off it.

Final Judgement: Bad

Gaining 3 life on your own turn is something a lot of white decks are easily capable of, but gaining life on enemy turns is significantly trickier. The good news is, if you do manage to achieve it, there are a (small) handful of other cards that reward you with angel and/or horse tokens. But there aren't enough to be reliable, and while the Gaffer isn't awful, he's probably not worth the effort of trying to gain 3 life on enemy turns, and a 3-drop that draws one card per turn cycle at the expense of running a lifegain seems just okay. Heliod, Sun-Crowned is probably destined to remain the mono-white lifegain commander of preference.

Final Judgement: Bad

Blink is a popular archetype, even within mono-white, so I'm sure Gilraen will see at least some play. That said, she's a bit vanilla compared to something like Preston, the Vanisher. The option to get counters on your creatures is nice, but lifelink and vigilance probably aren't the ones you were hoping for - they likely don't have much synergy with a blink deck, or sheer raw power to make it exciting or an alternative synergy line. Overall she definitely has more of a 99 feel.

Final Judgement: Bad

He wasn't very great in his uncommon version, but the rare precon version of Gwaihir delivers a much more interesting take. It does have a lot of moving parts between the lifegain and the jump-worthy creatures, but from a flavor perspective it's a slam dunk, and it seems pretty fun to ride an army of mounted eagles down on your opponents. I don't think it'll be very good - he costs 5 and requires a lot of commitment to the board - but he makes up for it by being a cool mechanical take.

Final Judgement: Good, just barely

I don't really get what this card is doing here. This would be a boring rare in limited, let alone commander, and as a commander he's absolutely atrocious. I guess it's got the right flavor going on, but did that activation cost really need to be so expensive? I'm way off it.

Final Judgement: Oh so bad.

Just what I want on my commander…islandcycling. Monstrosity is functionally a 10 mana commander, there's no reason to play it otherwise. I guess you could blink it and pay the 5 on etb, but honestly if you want to play a blue commander that keeps everything tapped, it would be a lot simpler to play Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor, and absolutely nobody bothers with him. Can't really see anybody bothering with this guy either.

Final Judgement: Bad

Playing Gollum is going to involve 2 distinct phases: first, you need to tag all your opponents with the Gollum emblem. Then, you've got a sort of Sanguine Bond that affects all opponents, and you can proceed to the next phase, where you play as much lifegain as you possibly can. There are a few stumbling blocks along this very linear plan: one is that your opponents might not want to be tagged, and if they have a creature small enough to block gollum, and especially if they have a few, that could become an issue. You can run equipment and the like to attempt to resolve this problem, but that does potentially dilute the lifegain a bit. The second issue is that gollum needs to be in play during your endstep or else all that precious lifegain goes to waste. I'd recommend some lightning greaves at a minimum, and maybe some protective spells like Undying Evil as well. I think Gollum will be a somewhat scary commander to play against, as nobody likes getting a negative emblem, but I don't think black has the lifegain to become too powerful, and his weakness to removal is a significant mitigating factor. While I think the design is interesting, I also think it's likely to lead to very boring gameplay, so I can't really grade it too highly on that aspect.

Final Judgement: Good, just barely.

Surprisingly, I think Lobelia actually does alright for herself in her commander deck interaction. Egg decks have proven that there are loads of artifacts that love getting sacrificed, and casting free random spells is a decent payoff. The biggest limitation is that, with no control over what she hits, the odds are somewhat high that she'll whiff on some or all of them. Gonti, Lord of Luxury has already paved the way for blinking black theft commanders, though, and Lobelia has an okay backup ability when she's out of good spells to cast. I don't think she's good by any means - theft can be particularly hard to win with because people's stolen cards will leave as they die, so you're often getting weaker as the game closes - but theft is just a fun archetype.

Final Judgement: Good

Shelob knocks it out of the park yet again, albeit in a similar way. Turning dead enemy creatures into some counters and draw is fine, but not thrilling at a rate of 3 mana. More interesting is returning them, though at full price plus 2 you'll probably want to commit to some big mana - something mono black excels at. Big mana also makes it safer to commit to her as a standalone wincon, since she'll be much harder to price off the field. She also plays a bit of a grave hate game, which could be powerful or could mean she eats a lot of removal, depending who you're playing against. I do like that her abilities are instant speed, which gives her lots of room to play as a MBC deck, holding up mana for removal or to use some of the corpses she's stored up just before your turn. The biggest risk is that she's not very effective against commanders or tokens, unlike her multicolored version.

Final Judgement: Good

I get serious Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas vibes here - a reasonably costed double striker with the ability to grow, but the trigger condition REALLY isn't something you were planning on doing, to the point that you're probably better off just ignoring it and boosting power with equipment as per normal. A 1/1 double striker for 3 isn't exactly amazing, but there aren't any cheaper commanders with guaranteed double strike, and the treasure creation could definitely accelerate your tempo. Ultimately I think he's probably too boring to really get played much, and while the potential treasure synergy is fun, his low stats mean you probably need equipment to get him through, and then you're just making a voltron deck. Probably easier to stick to Reyav, Master Smith

Final Judgement: Bad

I always thought Denry Klin, Editor in Chief was an interesting design that didn't see enough play. Arwen is basically just a more boring version of that. Well, that's not quite fair - she doesn't work with ability counters, but she does work with tokens, and with non-counter ways to boost her toughness. That might make her better overall, but it definitely doesn't make her more interesting imo. And much like Denry, she seems easy to disrupt, especially without blue's countermagic to defend her.

Final Judgement: Bad

A board-wide buff is definitely the sort of thing elves are interested in, but is Haldir worth it? The activated is very expensive, and he himself is expensive too if you want to make it worth it. On top of that, he doesn't grant evasion. Haldir is okay, but I think he's fully eclipsed by Ezuri, Renegade Leader. Ezuri gives trample, he's cheaper, and he can protect from removal. And Ezuri has seen a significant drop in popularity as people move towards multicolored elf decks - even the comparatively weak Abomination of Llanowar is close to Ezuri's EDHrec numbers. I'm putting a lot of stock in EDHrec here because elfball is pretty far from the sort of thing I'd consider interesting - and if it's not interesting, and not likely to be popular even among elf afficionados, I think it's safe to call it a miss.

Final Judgement: Bad

Legolas is very similar to Gimli - they're both 3 drops with saboteur triggers and a questionable growth trigger. As before, I don't recommend building around the counters, in fact even less so since Legolas replaces double strike with reach - horrendous trade - and a so-so evasive ability. He can't be chump blocked as easily, but that's about it. Personally I'd probably rather have the treasures than the cards as well, making Legolas just overall much less interesting than the already mediocre Gimli. If you really want to play mono-green legendaries and draw cards, might I suggest Reki, the History of Kamigawa?

Final Judgement: Bad

Rarely does a commander card look so much like a limited card. The only semi-interesting thing about Aragorn is his blocking prevention, which really isn't the sort of thing that impresses in a commander setting, especially when it's so telegraphed and your opponents have so much ability to interact with it. Plus it happens at the time you least need it, when you've already successfully defended the monarchy, so it's not even worth building a saboteur deck around.

Final Judgement: So very bad

I feel like WotC has to be messing with commander players to print a legendary creature, in a commander precon, with cycling. Ignoring that part, it's a pretty uninteresting commander. It's a big upgrade on Yidaro, Wandering Monster (is the cycling supposed to be a callback to Yidaro? Why would they do that?), and it's definitely going to annoy your opponents, but I can't see being that excited to ramp up to 7 just to play a fat beater. And unlike The Balrog, Durin's Bane it can't be easily recast and is easier to block, so it's not necessarily an upgrade on that card.

Final Judgement: Bad because cycling

I probably don't need to say that this is more a meme than a realistic dream. Besides the fact that 111 is a ton of life to amass, Bilbo's ability being a tap ability means your opponents will have to be paying zero attention in order to pull this off cleanly. If you do manage it, pulling your entire library into play is hardly necessary - pick your favorite two-card infinite and grand abolisher and you're done. So we've gone to some pretty absurd lengths to effectively get a slight upgrade on a Tooth and Nail. That's a boring conclusion for what looks like an exciting celebration, but at least it will be difficult enough to pull off that you probably won't see it happen anyway. Go ahead and cry if you want. It's your party.

Final Judgement: Bad

Boromir is a totally fine, boring commander. The card advantage and selection he gives you isn't bad, but it's not really synergistic or interesting enough to justify building as a deck. And his stats are just okay, so you'll probably need some equipment to protect him in combat.

Final Judgement: Bad

Holy moly this might be the strangest design I've ever seen. Let's break it down a bit. What are you trying to get out of this trigger? There are two potentially good results - either you get a lot of votes, and thus draw a lot of cards, or you get no votes and get to put a permanent out for free. The worst result would be getting one vote and only drawing one card. The best way to take advantage of this trigger is to load your deck up with big scary permanents, so that whenever you receive no votes you get a massive advantage. That will most likely mean your opponents will vote for you to prevent you from taking that advantage, but then you're likely to draw a lot of cards, and could even vote for yourself if you're sure other players will vote for you, in order to get an extra draw. There's some big mind games going on with this card, but is there power? It's easy to get excited about what's happening for you, but even if you get a good result you'll likely be helping your opponents significantly. Getting no votes means your opponents are collectively drawing a lot of cards, and getting all the votes means they're putting permanents into play for free. And at the end of the day, ancient Arcanis the Omnipotent costs just 1 more mana and guarantees a draw 3 with no symmetrical downsides. So I don't think Cirdan will be strong no matter how synergistic the build or tactical your mental game, but it's such a cool and weird design that I kinda love it anyway. If group hug must exist, let it be like this.

Final Judgement: Good

Starting with the obvious, Eldrond is an etb effect, so any deck built around him will presumably want some blink. The choice given to your opponents is expropriate-esque, in that they have to either give up something of theirs or give you something probably more powerful, but which costs them nothing directly. Since you can't force either side of the vote, your goal is to make sure that both sides are as advantageous to you as possible. The theft will naturally be pretty strong against non-token decks, at least as long as they have creatures at all. But the counters could be a bit of a flop if you're not set up for it, so I think the best fit for Elrond is in a fairly wide deck, likely tokens. So then is the assumed fail case of "etb: put 3 +1 counters on your board" a good commander at mv 5? I think it's pretty decent, but not terribly exciting. The theft sounds way more fun, but since there's no practical way to force it you probably can't expect it to happen often unless the opponent is generating something relatively worthless, at which point it's not that much fun anymore. Maybe you'll occasionally get a decently sized beater on the assumption that not being able to attack the owner is almost as good as controlling it, but for anything with relevant abilities you can probably forget it.

Final Judgement: Bad

I want to say Eomer sucks, but he does enough things that I don't think I can. It doesn't take a huge number of humans to make him a pretty scary threat, and near Ravenous Chupacabra from the command zone, plus he gives you the monarch as a cherry on top. Big fatties are generally vulnerable to removal, but his etb effect is strong enough that I don't think it'll feel too bad. Humans are plentiful enough that you shouldn't have to warp your deck too much to get a couple on the field before him, but it does mean you probably won't want to play him as a pure voltron build, since it will significantly weaken his etb trigger. A few equipment wouldn't go amiss as a way to protect him and get him through for lethal, but when you're paying 5 for a commander you don't want to dedicate too much more mana to making him stronger. Eomer does provide a pretty clear plan for victory as a very large, scary attacker, so I'm not completely sure what your other humans will be doing, but you're damn sure running Mother of Runes to make sure Eomer remembers his sack lunch when he goes on the warpath.

Final Judgement: Good

I really do not vibe with that art. It looks like one of those secret lairs where the artist tries to make a realistic version of something a kid drew. For once, though, Eowyn is a pretty powerful payoff for a tribal deck, albeit one from the school of Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign (motto: It doesn't matter what's in your rules text, it's what's on your type line that counts). Two hasty tokens every turn is solid, and it only takes twice to start drawing cards as well. To top it off, her stats are reasonable for her cost. You probably don't need to commit too hard to the tribe for her to payoff, since even tokens will do. One Castle Ardenvale and you're already set. Tokens is probably the natural route to go anyway, to complement her ability and go as wide as possible. I'm not too excited by this kind of design personally, but at least she's got some legs.

Final Judgement: Good

Interesting design, let down by the fact that there's not nearly enough voting cards, let alone good voting cards, to justify running him. At time of review, I haven't seen all the cards, but based on the power level of Sail into the West I feel pretty comfortable saying this guy is going to be absolutely horrific. Maybe in twenty years or so he'll be playable.

Final Judgement: Bad

Faramir has a decent payoff - you might not be able to control who takes the crown away from you, but with enough density you can always get it back again, and get some tokens as a bonus. Or just pay the iron price and get into the red zone after it. Unfortunately, without a decent density of legends, there's a strong chance there won't be a monarchy to usurp, so you're somewhat railroaded into the legendary tribal plan, and a lot of the popular legends are niche buildarounds that might not work very effectively in your deck. And then the payoff is decent but it's not amazing, and the focus on legends makes it somewhat harder to synergize around the tokens. Overall, Faramir isn't awful, but I don't think he's quite interesting enough to want to build around it.

Final Judgement: Bad

Never before has a commander been so irrelevant on the battlefield. Cotton's ability to generate tokens is okay, but not efficient enough to be interesting on his own - something like Rhys the Redeemed or Queen Allenal of Ruadach can probably do a lot more work given time. Cotton is somewhat unique in giving a large burst of tokens all at once, which frees you up to focus on anthems and ramp, but I think that will still leave it relatively weak. I think the payoff is meant to be the food tokens, which activate a lot of synergies within the archetype, but they all feel pretty limited/precon focused and not something with a lot of room for growth.

Final Judgement: Bad

These two have a lot of text for what amounts to not that much. It's awkwardly a bit off-curve too: Frodo comes out naturally on 2, followed by Sam on 3, and don't you wish you had just one more mana so you could sacrifice that damn food token? But you don't, so now you have to wait until the next turn before you can start the train rolling. And then it's another turn before you finally get a card out of it. So despite their low costs, it's not until turn 5 that you're finally getting something of any actual value out of the pair. I don't see a lot of synergy points either - reducing the cost of sacrificing food is very uninteresting in commander, where you'd prefer to do just about anything else with food except use their innate ability. Tempt has a pretty low ceiling on its own, and the final big payoff being drawing a single card on attack is very underwhelming. Equipment isn't even synergistic as it weakens the effectiveness of the first, and probably most useful, tempt trigger. Turns out Frodo and Sam are stronger separated than together.

Final Judgement: Bad

Galadriel misses again. Neither ability is particularly interesting for a 4-drop, but I want to spend some time talking about voting and why this is a terrible place for it. Most voting cards, your opponents are likely to have different views on the options - Council's Judgment, for example, nobody wants to vote for their own permanents, and may see different permanents as most needing of removal. For Galadriel, though, your opponents will almost always be seeing completely eye to eye, because their different circumstances don't generally affect either result. Whichever is best for you is the one they don't want. So you can probably expect most Galadriel votes to be 3v1 against you. There's only two exceptions I can think of: if the tempt trigger can give you a lethal attack against one opponent, or if someone else is so far ahead that you're all teaming up against them, and then the other two players might throw you a bone. Both of those circumstances are really narrow, though, and you have little control over them. Into the dumpster with you, Galadriel.

Final Judgement: Bad

I've spent some time thinking about this, the fifth version of Gandalf, and my conclusion is that he's pretty bad. It should go without saying that a 5-drop that gives you a card back when you play more 5 drops isn't really worth it in a world where plenty of 4-drops give you a card per turn unconditionally, so the hope here is for the copy ability. Time magic would be the normal obvious answer, but I don't think the average commander deck runs enough sorceries for that to be a realistic option. The only spell type I think you'll have a >50% chance to copy will be creatures. Which is not a terrible thing to copy, but it's kinda slow. It would still be decent except that for some reason Gandalf decides that he needs to celebrate his successful hits by letting all your opponents draw a card? Screw that noise. I'm not running a charity here.

Final Judgement: Bad

Always the worst names with the best abilities, isn't it? Ah well, I've always loved chaos wand, so getting that on a commander (in good colors) is certainly interesting. The option to run him as voltron is nice, but I'm kinda glad that his low power means he won't necessarily be a huge removal magnet unless you decide to take him in that direction. Chaos wand obviously doesn't dictate too much about the direction of the rest of the deck - maybe a mild "cast from exile" theme, or some spellslinger triggers - but I think Grima is fun enough to play that his likely low synergy will be acceptable.

Final Judgement: Good

Oh come on, Witch-king of Angmar is so much cooler of a name! Why did they waste it? This guy is by far the most effective version of the character in commander, but honestly I find him pretty boring. Spellslinger decks have proven that casting a large number of spells is trivial for the right build, and this guy's payoff is fairly absurd. Talrand, Sky summoner is still a solid commander, and this guy is out here making 9/9 menaces for the same setup, with an added color to boot. I might be overreacting, but by god, somebody's got to be ugly, and it doesn't seem like anyone else is stepping up to the plate.

Final Judgement: Ugly

Neither Merry or Pippin look very impressive on their own, but given enough time they eventually do something decent-ish. Artifacts not normally being able to enter on enemy turns, you'll probably want to play a decent amount of artifacts in your deck to trigger Merry, and then use Pippin's ability to trigger Merry on enemy turns. That said, Pippin's buff is decent but it's not that impressive given the huge buildup. Your opponents will have loads of time to prepare for your offensive, and you can't easily activate it more than once in a turn either. I do appreciate that there's a lot more going on here than with Sam and Frodo, both in terms of the eventual payoff and in terms of having synergies to build around, but I still think the total package is just okay, not great.

Final Judgement: Bad

After getting lulled into a sort of hypnosis by the endless waves of trash commanders in this set, it's tempting to almost like Radagast. Okay, the ward ability is pretty useless, and warding your tokens is even more useless, but at least he's got some upside, right? A 2/2 flyer for free is a decent payoff, isn't it? And then you remember that Talrand, Sky Summoner has existed for a decade and has the same trigger for every one mana cantrip instead of casting a single spell that occupies your entire turn. Buh bye, Radagast.

Final Judgement: Bad

Again with ward being granted to things other than your commander, and too small to be a significant obstacle. The amass trigger is more interesting, but much like Sauron (the mythic one. The one with amass. The one we already talked about that's mythic with amass) a single large creature with no added benefits really isn't that exciting. And unlike traditional spellslinger commaners, Saruman doesn't work so well with cheap cantrips. He's probably closest in build to grixis versions of Vial Smasher the Fierce, but Vial Smasher comes with a partner, a lower cost, and a more immediate impact. Saruman has the advantage of being more directed, but still, I don't think it will be interesting enough to justify.

Final Judgement: Bad

Treebeard is most similar to Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn, sharing her cost and roughly approximating her effect. He's type restricted, but he has ward and trample, triggers his ability immediately, comes with two food, and crucially can target himself. The big question is whether the type restriction is an issue - I think it most likely means he's just dumping the counters on himself and going to town. That's a little risky, but it's easy to gain a ton of life and he comes with evasion and protection, so he could certainly catch people unprepared and dish out a beatdown. I don't think it sounds terribly interesting, but you could definitely do worse.

Final Judgement: Good

Wow, Lord of the Rings? That's the name of the thing! And eight freaking mana too, this is going to be insane, right? What does he do? You get a 5/5 when he's cast, that's pretty much flavor text on something this expensive, but okay. Mill five cards for some reason? …okay. And reanimate a creature? I mean, that's a lot better than the first two things, but this is a freaking 8 mana commander. The Mimeoplasm can do better for 5 mana. Sauron is a 9/9 trample, so you are getting a lot of beef, but Mimeo can still easily do better, and he's not even that popular anymore. Decent sized piles of beef just isn't enough payoff for an 8 drop, not even close. But alright, we've got one last ability, on the biggest, baddest, most expensive dude in the whole set. The main, eponymous villain. Maybe this can salvage this card. Maybe it can salvage this whole set. Whenever an opponent's commander dies…okay, that's a fairly rare trigger, this could be good….the ring…tempts…you.

Final Judgement: BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD