Howdy pardners, welcome to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Where we've had a cowboy aesthetic since before it was cool.
I have to admit that these articles haven't committed to the bit nearly as hard as WotC, who has thrown themselves into the wild west tropes with their typical complete lack of restraint. That said, though I know some people don't like it, I'm happy with any aesthetic that isn't sharing an IP with another franchise.
For those just joining us, we're looking at every potential commander from the new set and evaluating them based on their potential power, and on how interesting their design is, according to a world-renowned expert (me). Then we pass judgment on whether they're good (a fun build, good addition to the format), bad (weak or uninteresting), or ugly (I will groan whenever someone plays them against me).
Let's ride!
Free blink is a decent payoff, but being mono-white and needing to safely attack makes Fortune pretty limited. Gilraen, Dunedain Protector was a decent, but unpopular commander, but she didn't need to attack safely, she could blink as an instant, could blink multiple times via untaps, and gave out ability counters too. That's well worth the cost of activation, so I don't think Fortune has much room to maneuver.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Future Sight is a very strong effect for 3 mana. This isn't as good, especially since every land is a brick, but plotting blue's selection of answers sounds really nasty - imagine staring down 4 free counterspells on the other side of the table. *Checks set notes* Oh god. You can only cast plotted cards as sorceries? That is…so awful. Why would WotC do that? It doesn't affect very many cards in the set anyway, and since they're face-up you're already losing the surprise value. And then they put the two commanders who can plot other cards BOTH in blue? Jeez. I guess he could still provide decent CA, but sacrificing instant-speed interaction in mono-blue? Yikes, I'm so off it.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I see two directions for Geralf to go - either as a spellslinger build that makes a 2/2, then a 3/3, then a 4/4, or as a zombie tribal build that uses him as a reverse-order tribal Cathar's Crusade that only affects the current turn's creatures. The second one sounds a fair bit stronger, potentially ugly in black, but he's in mono-blue, which significantly limits the potential and makes his just okay. If you want to play mono-blue zombies, he's probably your best option, but more likely he's destined for the 99 of blue-black decks.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Committing a crime is really, really easy. There are quite a few 1-mana cards that can tap to crime (Relic of Progenitus, Scrabbling Claws) or 1-mana activations that crime (retribution of the ancients), or of course you could just use the removal you wanted to run anyway. So there is some build-around required but the potential is extremely high here. Within a couple turns, I'd expect that it becomes easy to crime on every turn, netting 24 power and toughness of menace zombies every turn cycle, on a 5-drop that has ward. I expect Gisa is going to be a must-kill, and that means it's a must-ugly for me.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
From our examination of Gisa, it's going to be pretty easy to trigger Kaervek as often as desired, but how does his payoff compare? Casting spells from your grave has a very Toshiro Umezawa vibe to it, but Kaervek is a lot more flexible since he can cast permanent spells, and he's easier to trigger. That does make me wonder if there's some Underworld Breach-style obnoxious combo nonsense potential here, but I'm hoping it's more limited without the ability to cast colorless artifacts or to cast the same spell multiple times. Assuming there's not a combo build here, I think Kaervek is solid though maybe not exciting enough to garner a ton of attention. He requires a decent amount of buildaround, both in terms of criming and in terms of worthwhile things to cast, and the spells still need to be paid for plus can't be reused. But in this set, even the mediocre commanders are still pretty solid.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
For a 1-drop, Tinybones has a lot of potential value, but realistically he's pretty trash. If you replaced his latter ability with Curiosity it would be much, much better (especially early-game where you probably won't have targets or the mana to cast them), and it still wouldn't be very exciting as a commander. It's tricky to design a 1-drop commander that isn't absurdly busted but still generates relevant value late-game. Tinybones looks like good value for a 1-drop, but realistically he's going to be much too low-impact to be a satisfying commander.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I guess this is a card? Honestly it looks like it could be a non-legendary uncommon. You can trigger it every turn, but the payoff just isn't interesting enough to consider building.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker has been in the format since its inception. So what variations does Calamity bring? The big selling point is that she gives an additional copy, but she costs one more mana, can't easily activate her ability more than once (i.e. by untapping kiki-jiki), can't activate on enemy turns or in response, can't use tap abilities or on-attack triggers for the copied creatures, doesn't have (easy) infinites, and needs to get into combat as a below-curve attacker. Kiki isn't particularly popular these days, so I doubt Calamity will generate much excitement - but that's not to say she couldn't be a competent commander. An early Dockside Extortionist would certainly make for some explosive plays, and there are some other solid inclusions. But by modern standards, she's pretty mid overall.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
A lot of good crime enablers are artifacts, so Magda has an excellent selection of synergy pieces to start generating treasure. Magda, Brazen Outlaw could do extremely broken things with treasure, but a 4/4 flaste is a fair bit more limited, so I could definitely see Magda builds that focus on the treasure just as treasure, and/or only crack the treasure into dragons when going for lethal. Overall I like this design a lot more than the original - letting old Magda live for any length of time was very dangerous, whereas this Magda is more restrained while still being quite strong. I dig it.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Not needing to tap in order to double your counters makes Bill pretty scary - both because he could be difficult to stop, with his low cost, from entering and immediately boosting your team significantly, and because he could potentially do it multiple times per turn with some ramp (which, incidentally, triggers his landfall). If he was multicolor I think he'd make it into ugly territory, but in mono-green I think - think - he'll be tolerable. He does want a decent board presence in order to really go off, which makes him weak to removal and wipes. Still, in the late-game, he could go from zero to hero very quickly, so don't underestimate him.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
There's a few points of comparison for Akul - Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Kaalia of the Vast would be my first thoughts. Rakdos has a much higher ceiling, being able to put multiple things into play in a turn, and Kaalia has a much easier build-around, since she doesn't need to set up anything other than attacking with her - and she also provides pseudo-haste. Sacrificing three creatures is no joke, especially on-curve, which means I doubt you'll be able to activate him before turn 4 very often. When you do activate him, it's a strong ability to be sure, but for the amount of build-around I think it's probably reasonable. His body is also quite efficient, but not crazy. I'm not personally a fan of what Akul is doing - cheating big things into play isn't really my bag - but I think he's a reasonable take on a familiar formula, and not one that will cause too many groans despite being fairly strong.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I guess they put the restriction on her etb trigger to avoid infinites with Saffi Eriksdotter and loyal retainers? Still, it makes it pretty uninteresting for synergies - I'd say enjoy your free fetchland and call it a day. Her tap trigger is pretty vanilla as well - while it's relatively easy to support with vehicles and mounts (and a couple lands even) Arcanis the Omnipotent has been in the game as long as I have, and draw 3 is a hell of a lot stronger than impulse 2. So I can't really see much hype for a worse ability that needs support. She does provide fodder for cast-from-exile synergies, but I think you've got better, cheaper options that require less support.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
For an uncommon, this guy packs a lot of punch. Making extra tokens (with lifelink, even) is solid value, and the sac outlet isn't bad either. BW aristocrats already has a lot of options, so I doubt he'll see a ton of play in the command zone, but I don't think he's a terrible choice by any means.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Glad to see the card naming department is still cashing those checks. Bonny looks like an absolute house in limited, but in commander I'm less sure. A single biggish token isn't so exciting off a 6-drop, and the attack trigger is fine but I liked it more when it came on Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath who started generating value faster, and kept his costs low so you could keep up interaction. Bonny looks very boilerplate Simic, but in a boring way, not a broken way.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
That is a ton of setup cost. You need to double spell, you need to have a junk artifact, AND you need to win a coin flip? Admittedly, either side of the coin is potentially useful, but I think the majority of the time you'll be looking for the copy mode, and either way you can't really plan around a particular result. The flavor is pretty strong here, but in terms of the deck actually playing out the way you want it to, I think it's going to bust a lot more than it's going to boom.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Similar to Bell Borca, Spectral Sergeant in terms of cost and value generation, but Bruse needs to attack, which is pretty awkward considering he's just a 4/3 for 4. The double striking oxen are fine and all, but if you're putting in the effort to make Bruse a good attacker, it seems like you're doing a voltron thing so what's the point of the oxen except as chump blockers? They aren't even good replacement equipment holders, since they lose their double strike when Bruse isn't on the field. I'd take Borca any day, and he's not interesting either.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
We can basically ignore the plotting discount, since there are very few plot cards worth seriously considering for commander. Discounting the various flashback-adjacent mechanics, and spells you cast from exile (though, without red, there's a lot less impulse-draw unfortunately) is fairly strong, especially at just 2 mana, but I still have a hard time seeing this as a viable commander. I don't think those various mechanics are going to be able to build a cohesive deck. That said, he's still a decent option, which makes him a lot stronger than most uncommon legends from previous sets.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Back to my real job: negging Eriette until she cries. I didn't like the first version, despite her popularity, and I don't like this one either. Control magic is a powerful effect in commander, since yoinking enemy commanders can be very disruptive, but you know what does a great job of being a control magic? Control magic. In order for Eriette to put in work, you'd either want so many theft effects that there aren't enough printed to satisfy you - in which case you really ought to consider diversifying your interaction - or you want to use auras to simultaneously steal and buff your targets. Which I think is the best way to go, but needing to use auras that are more expensive than their targets is a major issue when most of the best auras in the format cost 1-3 mana. God forbid someone rolls up with Gishath, Sun's Avatar - hope you drew your eldrazi conscription. And while it's great that she doesn't need to stay on board to retain control, she does need to survive until the aura resolves or you've just buffed your opponent's creature. The weakness of control magics has generally been their sorcery speed and their weakness to interaction, and Eriette doesn't really solve either of those issues. So I don't see much point to her.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Another uncommon that kinda knocks it out of the park. Ertha is similar to [[Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier, but with a lower ceiling and higher floor. The fact that she can target the same creature multiple times, provides an extra body, and can copy stuff that targets players, gives her a fair amount of potential. Perusing Agrus shows a lot of great abilities to copy - Jaxis, the Troublemaker, Mother of Runes, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Scavenged Brawler, Brash Taunter, etc. She can target enemy creatures for value as well, with abilities like catapult master (bad example but you get the idea). Seems like a lot of potential.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
This…this has to be insane, right? He's only 3 mana, and he makes all of your nontoken creatures into copies of Trostani, Selesnya's Voice (minus the lifegain and activation cost, and only to tokens you just made). And he can even copy treasures and such? It's hard for me to imagine that this doesn't spiral out of control really, really quickly. Just thinking about a simple runout - 1-drop on 1, 2 1-drops on 2, ghired on 3, Advent of the Wurm on 4 for 25 power on turn 4. That's pretty insane and that's not even with good cards. The design is cool, but was it really necessary for it to be so absurdly efficient?
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
The stats alone are pretty strong here, and the trigger seems highly dangerous to let resolve, given decently sized sac fodder. I don't think it quite merits an ugly, since it does need a good supporting creature, and to go into combat and connect before doing anything super exciting - which does make him relatively easy to anticipate and stop, if necessary - but he's on the watch list. Don't leave him unattended around your pets.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Gravedigger has gotten a lot more powerful these days, eh? The uncommons have some major hits this set, but Rutstein seems more designed more for the 99. No way you're playing this over, say, Meren of Clan Nel Toth for your green-black creature-based recursion deck.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This looks like a beating in limited, but it doesn't really get there in commander. I generally expect a commander with "draw an extra card on your turn" with no restrictions or downsides to cost about 4 mana - Lu Xun, Scholar General for example. While you can certainly build around this restriction to make it easy to trigger every turn, the payoff is what I'd expect to receive for no buildaround, so I don't see much point in doing so.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Jolene, Plundering Pugilist Oof, one treasure per combat? That is a harsh restriction, especially when compared to the likes of Magda. That sac ability is pretty awful too, can't imagine wanting to pay that much mana for such tiny pings. Rack up another miss for the uncommons. Power: F+ Design: D Final Judgment
What a maze of restrictions we're navigating here. So if an opponent makes a bunch of tokens at once, you get all of them, but if they make them individually, you just get the first. And you only drain 1 point even if you make a bunch of tokens at once, but if you make them individually you drain 1 for each. So basically he can't drain more than 1 life per turn off enemies creating tokens, but you still get the extra tokens off Benevolent Offering or whatever. And if you're creating tokens yourself, you'd rather make them one at a time. There are a decent number of ways to force opponents to create tokens (hello Forbidden Orchard!), but of course you don't want to go too crazy with that since it's limited to once per turn. Otherwise, producing your own tokens is always good money. Combat calligrapher seems perfect for this sort of deck. This does seems fairly complicated when other token commanders have made the job a lot easier, and there are definitely more efficient ways to win than via those tiny pings, but it is an interesting design space, so I'm curious to see how people build this out.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Quick refresher on casting from outside the hand - we've got casting from exile via impulse drawing, suspend, mind's desire-type freecasting, copying uncast spells, madness, cascade, etc. We've got casting from graveyard via flashback, retrace, aftermath, jump-start, certain forms of reanimation. Casting from deck via…panglacial wurm? I think that's a reasonably exhaustive sampling. Okay, but what are we getting as the payoff? We get to cheat the cost on a spell, but permanent only is major bleh given so many casting-from-outside-the-hand abilities only work with instants and sorceries, and it means no abusing the 0mv suspend-only spells. It's also tricky to line up the costs of your spells with the cards in your hand, and realistically the payoff just seems…fairly low to me? Okay, you can save a couple mana here and there, but you can't really cheat huge things into play without wrecking your curve and having a nonfunctional deck. I don't think he's complete garbage or anything - he's got a solid body, and freecasting a sword off a Oona's Grace seems fine - but he reads like he's going to destroy the format and I think he's just okay.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
It's been a while since Jori En, Ruin Diver, hasn't it? Overall I think the tradeoff is worth it - 1 more mana for flying and a +1 counter when you trigger them. That gives the deck a bit more direction, since the trigger doesn't just give you little bits of card advantage, but also a long-term wincon to build towards. That said…in a set with this much power, Kraum is looking pretty anemic. He's still a reasonable option, but he doesn't exactly stand out as a strong commander. And I can't give much design credit for something that's so similar to an existing card.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There sure are a lot of commanders that steal enemy cards in this set. Jasper is priced to move at just 3 mana, and scales reasonably quickly (pun…intended?). But he doesn't let you play lands, and you can only cast until end of turn. Unfortunately, while I do think he looks pretty fun, my experience playing many different commanders that rely on enemy cards for their game plan is that it's never going to be a strong strategy. Not only are there tons of misses when enemy decks are synergy heavy, but you also lose chunks of your board presence as players are removed from the game. So while I do think he's efficient at what he does, I don't think I can consider that thing "good" at nearly any price.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
With the usual suite of crime gear, Lazav has some pretty impressive growth potential, grave hate, and the ability to protect itself with the right support. A significant downside compared to Lazav, Wearer of Faces is that he can only become a specific creature one time, so Phage the Untouchable is good for a single kill shot, but that's it. But, do you really need her when your commander could reach 21 power on its own somewhere around turn 8? I expect you'll want to run some hexproof and indestructible targets, and maybe a couple big threats like Phage, but if you're running symmetrical mill you can probably count on some decent hits from your opponents from time to time. Not the most powerful card, but pretty reasonable, a neat design, and at uncommon? Well played as usual, Lazav.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I spent a bunch of time brainstorming for this commander, eyes gleaming with the possibility of doubling-up my counterspells. Guess I should have read the reminder text. There are few enough good RU instants and sorceries as it is, and now we're cutting out all the counterspells and significantly downgrading the removal. That is rough. It still feels good to get extra value when you fire off a Prophetic Bolt, but if someone is scared of your floating removal hanging around, they can kill you on their turn to prevent you from using it, and you're unable to use it to defend yourself. She's still not awful, but man it is hard to look at her objectively after contemplating all the cool things she could do if they hadn't made plot suck.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy wasn't even a full set ago! If you're running out of ideas, you can slow down, wotc. Anyway, I wasn't hot on Lavinia and I like this even less. At least her mana ability had some relevance to her trigger, this guy replaces that by being a decent small beater because…? Red maybe has more ways to synergize with having a decent number of artifact tokens than white does, but still, this is a dud.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Most of the crime triggers are limited to once per turn, but not Marchesa, which means now we need to think about how many crimes could be committed in a single turn with no holds barred. I'm not sure if anything goes easily infinite, but there are cards like Tetzimoc, Primal Death that easily turn Marchesa into {1}{b}: Slight of Hand which is pretty nuts, or you could stack up Relic of Progenituss to give you even cheaper triggers, though limited in number. Hell, even just casting the answers you already wanted to cast give you strong value. No matter what you do, you're going to be ripping through your deck quite quickly, filling up both your graveyard and your hand. And like Ghired, I'm left wondering - was it really necessary that this card is so efficient? Three mana seems like a fair price to WotC for this firehose of card advantage? The design would be fine at a more conservative price point, but when it's coming out so quickly and easily, I know I'm going to be groaning whenever this gets played against me.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
Miriam is a truck whisperer too, apparently. Which is good, because mounts definitely don't have the depth to make this viable, so I anticipate her as a vehicle deck primarily - white is a nice color for it, to run board wipes that leave your vehicles standing. Getting a wide field of vehicles crewed and attacking is fairly tricky - the payoff might be forgettable, but at just 2 mana Miriam's efficiency makes her surprisingly strong. The hexproof might look pretty unimportant, considering your opponents will still get a chance to kill them on other turns, but with vehicles it means they're never vulnerable to creature removal, so it's a nice addition. Another solid-looking uncommon, when these are usually complete junk.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I'm nervous around Obeka - multiplying something that many times just has to be dangerous. That said, having perused the available upkeep triggers, I think she's probably strong but tolerable. The courts from CMR and WOC are among the strongest hits, but she still needs to have significantly boosted power and get through for damage in order to take advantage, which is an appropriately high setup cost. I'd still be quite wary of her, since she does have the potential to generate a ton of threat off something as innocuous as brute force, but as long as you stay on your toes I think she can reasonably be contained. So I'll cautiously let her into the good girls club.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
The thing that pops into my mind when looking at Rakdos is the infamous Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. Rakdos does need to sacrifice creatures, and generally non-tokens, in order to get value here - a big dropoff compared to fetchlands and treasure - but the upside is that you can dig deep with a single sac, he comes with his own sac outlet, he comes with protection, and why not, he comes with trample too. He could even steal cards from the opponent, though that will probably rarely be worthwhile. Mana value is harder to exploit than power or toughness, but this is still a ton of value from a 5-drop on multiple fronts. There are a surprising number of high-mv creatures in BR that either let you alternative-cast them be sacrificing creatures (Demon of Death's Gate, Delraich), or can get major discounts (Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, Dargo, the Shipwrecker, which alongside the plethora of fast mana I suspect will allow you to storm-combo through your deck basically the turn you cast Rakdos. Not sure if he's worse than Korvold or not, but he's definitely up to no good.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
There are more "choose two" modal spells than I would have thought, and of course there are tons of charms and the like with "choose one", and a few stray "choose three" (the confluences). So I think you can trigger Riku a pretty significant number of times. But the payoff…hmm. The first mode is pretty close to replacing the card, but the latter modes are pretty minor - he's not exactly built for combat, so you'd need to waste a lot of choices on the second mode before he becomes a threat, and 1/1 flying tokens are a similarly slow plan to build from. But the root of the problem, I think, is that modal spells just don't play super well together. It tends to be a lot of stuff without a lot of impact - lots of removal, but not a lot of development. So I'm pretty dubious that Riku is going to actually be able to do much, though I do think the design space is cool.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Maybe it's a bit gauche to compare a new commander to a particularly broken one, but whereas Rakdos holds up next to Korvold, Roxanne really doesn't hold a candle to Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. She costs a whopping three extra mana, and only applies to artifacts which are also tokens? Ouch, that is rough. And attacking with a 4/3 for 5 doesn't sound like a great idea. So we're mostly left with the ability to conjure the most begrudgingly playable card from M15 draft on etb…yeah, that doesn't really get there.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I really had to take a step back to think about what all this synergizes with - my first thought was blink, but he also triggers off reanimation, ninjutsu, self-reanimation like bloodghast, mana cheat, ornithopter, of course plot…probably plenty of other things I'm not thinking about. For just a 2-drop, he has the potential to generate a lot of card draw. I'm not exactly into him - he's so open-ended, and "do X draw a card" is pretty boring design, but I can't deny that he's powerful. But I don't think he's so easy to enable that he'll be obnoxious - you do need to commit to something.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I have no idea what Selvala is like as a character, but I know as a card that whenever she shows up I hate her. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds is a very strong and obnoxious commander, and this has some of the same infinites plus another color and a lot of free token generation. I don't think this version will be quite as bad as HotW, and played fairly I don't think it will be too awful to play against, but between the ramp, the value, and the infinite potential, I think I'll still be groaning when someone's playing her.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
As per a recent discussion, Boros players have gotten a lot of interesting variety over the past few years, and Taii is no exception. Between drawing cards, blowing up enemy boards, and potentially melting faces with big burn plays, she looks like a lot of fun, and very on-theme for RW. She does have some potential with the guttersnipe crowd to become obnoxious, but considering the mana required to make that happen I think she'll be more tame that other similar effects (such as ojer axonil, deepest might).
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
We've had a good run of uncommons, ranging from decent but a bit underpowered, up to a few legitimately sweet commanders…but it couldn't last forever. Vial Smasher is about as boring as they come, with a heavy buildaround that provides very little payoff.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Long time character, first time commander. The obvious point of comparison for Vraska is Shelob, Child of Ungoliant, as they both turn enemy creatures into noncreature tokens that retain their abilities. Shelob has the advantage of not requiring extra mana to do so, returning them untapped, having ward and a tribal buff, and the ability to copy enemy tokens and commanders (and anything else that might not stay in the graveyard long enough for Vraska's trigger to resolve). Vraska has the advantage of costing half as much, making comparatively-more-valuable treasures, being able to steal creatures that die from sources other than fighting your creatures, and functioning as a sort of grave hate. But another thing I really like about Vraska that has nothing to do with the power of the card is how much it simplifies playing it - Shelob needs to keep a detailed roster of all her food tokens and what abilities they have, whereas Vraska has the cards on-hand to make it easy to see what everything does. Ultimately I think both are very cool designs - my only real criticism is that they can lead to pretty grindy decks running a ton of removal, which isn't always fun for everyone.
Final Judgment: So good
Final Judgment: So good
I mentioned earlier that I expect a commander with unconditional "draw an extra card on your turn" to cost 4. Wylie costs 1 less, and her condition is fairly easy to meet - vehicles being probably the easiest method - but it's enough of a hurdle that I can't see wanting to play her. How many deck slots do you need to dedicate to tapping her before she's a reliable draw engine? Enough that I'd much rather just pay a bit extra, or run something with a higher ceiling so that I can actually get paid off. Design is cute and all, but if I want to play a GW vehicle/saddle deck, I'd take Miriam over Wylie all day, every day.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Having played many commanders that yoink enemy cards (including the original Gonti, Lord of Luxury), trying to cobble together a wincon from enemy cards is unreliable to say the least. So many cards rely on synergies to reach full effectiveness, potentially including the commander. And to make matters worse, when enemies start getting eliminated, so do your resources. That said, given a very efficient means of using stolen cards - Plargg and Nassari for example - it can still assemble enough random crap to get across the finish line. Unfortunately for Gonti, he's not remotely efficient. Being capped out at 3 cards per turn really isn't impressive given the massive setup cost required to hit all three opponents, and the only advantage you get tempo-wise is a 1-mana discount. This might have been at least interesting if you weren't capped at one card per opponent, but as printed the ceiling is low and the floor is bottomless. I'm way off it.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Similar setup to Gonti in principal - hit each opponent with 1 creature each to get value. Unfortunately Mardu colors are a lot less evasion-heavy, and being restricted on creature types definitely doesn't help. At least Olivia herself has built-in evasion, but it does mean that additional flying outlaws are less valuable since they're blocked by the same things Olivia is. Having taken a look over the options available, there are surprisingly few evasive outlaws - so much so that I wonder if it's even worth attempting the tribal aspect. Might be better to just use Olivia to get 1 treasure per turn, and generate your other treasures from other sources. Either way, I don't think the payoff is worth the effort - plenty of other commanders give more reliable anthem effects. She's not awful, but awkward to build and not impressive.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There are a few easy points of comparison for Stella - Jori En, Ruin Diver of course, and Rootha, Mercurial Artist is a good stand-in for all the spell-copying commanders. Her first ability is strictly worse than Jori En's. Her second ability looks comparable to Rootha, cheaper but with more setup required, which seems fair enough - but it being a tap ability means that there are a plethora of ways to go infinite with any spell that untaps a creature, either with some side benefit, or with a magecraft trigger on board. That's a pretty enormous swath cards, so suffice to say that, sight unseen, you'd be well advised to kill Stella on sight, or at minimum hold up reliable answers in case shenanigans ensue. On top of that, there's the pervasive problem with all blue spell-copying commanders - the best spells to copy are time magic, which isn't exactly an enjoyable play pattern. Put those together and Stella is a commander I'd be very wary of. The design is still fun in a vacuum, so perhaps I'll keep her together as a precon. But I'd trust somewith playing Stella as a constructed deck about as much as an ornery alligator.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
Rarely do I go back and forth as many times as I did for Yuma. The cost discount is excellent and, with a decent fetch count, could make him cost 3 for the whole game. But his other abilities don't seem to add up to too much. Strong with MLD, which is fairly annoying, but not the end of the world. The tricky part is getting enough 4/2s to matter reliably. There are 25 deserts available in his colors, but getting more than 1-2 in the graveyard per turn seemed like a long shot without life from the loam, which is very difficult to tutor for these colors. So I was set to call him "bad", but then when trying to think of free discard outlets to pair with loam, I remembered an obnoxious little number called greater good. Which, with 25 deserts, is just enough to average out to cycling through your deck…until you hit anything with dredge, at which point you can become more and more secure in your loop until you have enough 4/2s to kill everyone (anger in the yard, and an eldrazi titan to recycle so you don't run out of cards). And GG is much easier to tutor. Non-deterministic infinite combos and MLD incentives? Sorry Yuma - you're going to jail.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
Another "cast 2 spells" payoff in UR - Jori En sure is getting a lot of company this set. I think Eris is my favorite of the new batch. The easiest way to set up the trigger for these cards is playing a bunch of cantrips, but then drawing an extra card doesn't really point you towards much of a game plan beyond spinning your wheels. Even obvious spellslinger stuff like Guttersnipe isn't that impressive when your plan is to only cast 2 spells per turn. Eris takes the opposite tact, instead of being a value generator she's a wincon. And not a bad one either - making a 4/4 evasive token that buffs itself is no joke, and with her discount she could come out pretty quickly and consistently. Incidentally, the discount is quite interesting - there's some tension between running a bunch of 1-mana cantrips, and having a wider variety to ensure she comes out quickly (though this can be mitigated with cost discounts like delve, and/or discard to jettison expensive spells early). She is gated to 1 dragon per turn under most circumstances, but with enough instants that can still build up an army quite quickly, and buff them for lethal swings. I generally like the incremental nature of the "cast two spells" trigger, and with Eris providing a more structured direction for the strategy to go, I think she's a winner.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Outside a few isolated examples of more interesting options, most of the best triggers available to Felix are equipment (primarily swords) and draw (ophidians and coastal piracys). Equipment I don't see the point of - if you want to double-trigger equipment, play one of the many double-strike commanders that cost much less (I recommend Kellan, the Fae-Blooded). The draw power stuff - eh, for five mana I'm not very impressed. Felix himself isn't very evasive, so you need to add evasion to ophidians, or play evasive bodies to trigger your coastal piracy…Either way, Felix really doesn't help much until you've done a lot of work already. Looks pretty slow and clunky to me.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The floor is pretty decent here for the option to recur lands - fetches or cyclers are easy inclusions to guarantee value. But I don't think that's enough on its own (at least not in multiplayer - 1v1 you can strip lock to your heart's content). And that's when we run into the problem that treefolk are a bad tribe, and plants are even worse. And the buff, while decent, isn't as capable as, say, Tovolar, Dire Overlord of taking a trash tribe and boosting it to relevance.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Off the bat, I want to vent my annoyance that they've overcomplicated the design in order to nominally support outlaws as a tribe, rather than just turn the treasure into 3/3 haste vigilance creatures. Are you really going to run outlaws just for the tribal bonus? Seems like a flimsy excuse to justify his presence in the outlaws precon. Anyway, that aside, Vihaan has some reasonable pop-off ability - the timing of his trigger makes it difficult to prevent him from attacking (removing Vihaan before combat gives them an opportunity to cast him again before going to combat and getting the trigger - though removing him before declare attackers will remove the haste, if he's relying on just-created treasures). Turning a lot of treasures into a wincon isn't necessarily that difficult, and Vihaan does it in a fairly predictable way compared to firing off a sneaky Torment of Hailfire. But having the threat available consistently simplifies construction down to "just make a bunch of treasure and let Vihaan do the rest". I think he's pretty borderline on both power and design…
Final Judgment: Bad because of the tribal support, ha.
Final Judgment: Bad because of the tribal support, ha.
Loot seems like the perfect commander for the player who wants to turn their brain off and just play random stuff. He's anti-synergistic with instants, lest we tax our mental faculties with using interaction, and he only lets you cast your cards this turn, so you've got your turns planned out for you by RNG. Just keep playing stuff until you win or lose. He does create a lot of potential CA, and the setup cost is fairly low, so there's no denying the power available here for only 3 mana. But I don't think he's too crazy, both because of the aforementioned limitations, and because he doesn't provide any tempo advantage. Not my cup of tea at all, but it's probably good that this sort of commander exists for people who like it.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I don't think it's a hot take to say that there's a lot of power in this set. Of late it seems like WotC has been really ramping things up - after a bit of a peak somewhere around original Eldraine, it seemed like things were being reined back in, but this year it seems like we're back with a vengeance. That said, I do think WotC is perhaps doing a better job of creating more interesting designs that aren't only rawly powerful - while there are quite a few commanders I'm not looking forward to facing here, there are also a lot of really interesting ones, even amongst the uncommons (which are often mediocre).
Certainly it feels like a breath of fresh air after Fallout. The art is more vibrant, and the designs feel more inspired. Obviously I have my reservations about UB conceptually, but I don't think it's just my bias when I say that OTJ looks like a much more interesting set for commander players than PIP, despite the fact that PIP was designed exclusively for commander.
Recent sets have been a bit off for me - PIP was boring and MKM had some really obnoxious designs - but I'm fairly excited for this set. Most of the commanders here have reasonable potential. I am a bit trepidatious about some of the power levels, but even the commanders that look potentially busted mostly look interesting busted, not Voja, Jaws of the Conclave busted.
It's time to hit that lonesome trail. Ride off into the sunset. Round up a posse. Other western phrases.
So long, Cowpokes.
I think you are underestimating Roxanne. Comparing her to one of the most broken commanders of all time isn't fair. She costs more than double, is in worse colours and doesn't have a build-in mana outlet/wincon.
I think she's closer to the Titans. While her stats are way worse, she triggers on etb AND attack. Pairing her with haste lets you shoot 4 damage and provides enough mana to recast her, if she dies. She sits somewhere between artifacts, token synergies, midrange, and ramp strategies. There is probably a fun deck for mid-powered tables with her at the helm.
And come on: She's a cat throwing meteors while singing her own theme song. How cool is that?
A D may have been a little overcritical, but I still think she's pretty underwhelming. The damage, at sorcery speed, is minimally useful imo, and I think there are much better ramp commanders. Comparing her to one of the best commanders maybe isn't fair, but the power level is high enough in this set that I think a lot of them can fight in that arena.
How do you know her theme song? And is it Roxanne by the Police? I'm assuming it's Roxanne by the Police.