Welcome back to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - the series where we look at every new set and analyze the new potential commanders to see whether they'll be worth building. We look at their potential power, consider whether their design looks fun or interesting, and finally give them a grade based on whether they'll be good (fun to play, a positive contributor to the format) bad (weak and/or uninteresting, not worth building) or ugly (those broken commanders that make you groan when your opponent decides to play them). And sometimes we remember that we're supposed to have a western theme. Yee haw!
We're back in Middle Earth, with WotC making the same mistake the film franchise made and starting with the epic Lord of the Rings, only to sheepishly release the Hobbit afterwards to pick up the crumbs. At least, instead of trying to make a bloated trilogy from a children's book, WotC is releasing the Hobbit as a small set, with a thankfully small number of legends relative to Lord of the Rings. And while there are a couple scene boxes, there aren't any commander precons. So a relatively subdued Universes Beyond release, for once.
But what's this? There's even more spoilers coming out? Yes, it's another mystery booster product, this time packed with 60 new commanders. There's some truly funky designs, in keeping with the chaotic nature of mystery boosters. Here's hoping they aren't all hundreds of dollars, thanks to their limited availability.
We've got multiple sets to go through this time, so let's hurry up and get started. With…
The payoffs for going wide here aren't exactly awful, particularly for a 2-drop. You are a bit gated on getting 1 of each bonus per turn, and obviously the 1 life is pretty inconsequential so you'd better be producing at least 2 reliably. But combining card advantage with growing your squad fills in a lot of gaps for a mono-white token deck, like a miniature Galadriel, Light of Valinor. Enough that I'm willing to say that I think this will be a decent, and easily underestimated, commander.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Having a protection spell face-up makes it a lot less effective, and the body side does nothing. Ironically if you wanted to do anything based around him (like a bad voltron) you're unable to use his protection spell on the most important target.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Pretty efficient for the effect, but not something you can really build around in a meaningful way.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Getting an additional token for every dwarf is a decent payoff, especially alongside an anthem, but there's too few strong white dwarves to make this playable. Plus I don't think it really scales hard enough to be compelling.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
They love this type of design, don't they? Shoehorning in a tribal option even when it's transparently worse than the other build. You can either make an equipment build, which will easily enable storied, take advantage of his free equip, and reliably trigger his draw effect…or you can try to make mono-white dwarves playable I guess. It's not like you're even paid off for trying to do both at the same time, really, since the draw is capped at one for both types. They could have at least made it one draw for each, to pretend like running dwarves wasn't a waste of time. Anyway, rant aside, as a voltron commander he seems reasonably solid, though we've already got quite a few good mono-white voltrons. Reliable card draw plus a free equip puts him in a similar camp as Professor Hojo, but in a more equipment-synergistic color. Voltron is still a hard strategy to make work, but a 2-drop that provides draw and tempo is definitely a strong starting place. And I do have a soft spot for the archetype, even if I have to dock points for the pointless dwarf "synergy".
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Common legends are back. Hooray.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Looks like a great 2-drop for the 99, but not the most interesting commander. You can't always rely on her triggering, and even if it's triggering frequently, you don't really want to be pitching all your spells, so you're probably only making a token half the time, which isn't really enough throughput to make her the centerpiece of a token deck. She'd do much better in the 99 with Belladonna at the helm.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The creature half is pretty unexciting, though a decent role-player in the 99. More interesting is the adventure half. It's a lot more restrictive than a control magic, since you need to have a matching-typed permanent, and it's easier to disrupt, but having a way to permanently-ish remove an enemy commander from the command zone is neat. Would be neater if you weren't mostly losing your own commander, but oh well. You could also give them a poison pill like Taniwha. Still, hard to screw over more than one opponent at a time, and being telegraphed makes the plan a lot weaker.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This looks like a potent card for a 2-drop, but not one that scales well into the command zone. Attacking with a 2/2 also necessitates some kind of protection. He's not awful, but ultimately he's just giving +1 card and +1 mana per turn unless you're doing some sort of flashback deck, which doesn't seem like a strong build to me, particularly in mono.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Great, another common. Looks good in draft?
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Odd combination of abilities, as the first one points towards activated abilities, while the second points towards ETBs. Turning him into a reasonably strong draw engine by activating something on every turn is definitely doable, but I'm not convinced the payoff is worth the effort. And the blink ability seems too expensive to be stronger than, say, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, even if it can hit more targets in theory. The best place for him looks like a creature-based activated ability deck, but I'm not convinced this is enough support to make that interesting in mono-blue.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
If we're going to have common legends, I'm at least glad that some of them are cute. This is cute. I guess you could bounce him in response to the activation. Or activate twice while holding priority. Congrats, Gandalf, you earned yourself an F+.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
It's the blue Ghalta, Primal Hunger. Unfortunately, counting only flying power is a pretty massive knock against this, and an 8/8 is no 12/12 when we're feeding things to greater good, which incidentally isn't in blue. Green is just better set up to take advantage of this type of creature on every level.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Not the worst ETB effect, but not something I'd want in the command zone. I guess you could blow up your own downside creatures, like Phyrexian Soulgorger, but you're still only getting one army for all that work. So, eh.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
A lot of the mythics here seem weirdly low-impact, and Gollum is no exception. He'll probably get to pick all 3 things in fairly short order, but being capped on a once-per-game restriction means that once you've got a 4/2 that drew a card and drained 2—admittedly a good deal for just 2 mana—you're kinda…done? You could sac him and bring him back, but the payoff hardly seems worth it unless it's repeatable and basically free, and that seems unlikely without a lot of overpriced support. Maybe ok in the 99, but even then he's nothing special.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Lots of words for a common, but not much effect.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This might be worse than the common. That etb is way too mediocre to waste time cycling this guy in and out of your grave, and he can't even get a chump block while you're mucking around? Gollum fans are not eating well this set. I guess that's appropriate?
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
He does go infinite with Bloodchief Ascension, so that's something, although it's very telegraphed. Besides that, mill is a bad strategy and he's not an amazing enabler for it, since you'll usually kill someone long before the mill matters, and you're just enabling graveyard decks. The death trigger is okay, and could pretty plausibly become a draw-4, but it takes a lot of setup to do it consistently. There are other black commanders with better card advantage and less support required.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This really doesn't feel rare. Only hitting target opponent with no lifegain makes this a pretty poor blood artist, and the sac effect is pretty small-ball. Maybe fits somewhere in the 99, but not in the command zone.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Storied is pretty easy to hit, between artifacts and legendary lands (or sagas, if you like playing on hard mode). The payoff here is decent, plausibly doming your opponents for quite a bit, and triggers off tokens as well, which is nice. The main problem is that dwarves are pretty weak in mono-red, so you're pretty much going all-in with this burn strat, and the fact that you're constantly wheeling your hand makes it hard to reliably have dwarves to play without having a very high ratio of them, at which point you've got a lot of do-nothings in the deck. One Fresh Start and your whole deck is worthless. At least Purphoros, God of the Forge is hard to kill and can run a lot of comparatively decent cards. This seems like a fragile one-trick pony. At least it's an actual dwarf payoff, I guess.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I love jumping through hoops for a slightly overcosted vanilla.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
He's a decently statted double-striker on the offense, and I guess you could do go-wide equipment if you hate winning. Otherwise he just looks like a low-tier voltron option.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Reads like a common, all right.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Another low-impact mythic. I like this a bit more, because the adventure is pretty solid, even if the creature half gives big "Vivi at home" vibes. It's a nice curveout, providing CA on 2 that won't overflow your hand, and even gets to stay secret (which is very unusual for red). After turn 3 he seems pretty underwhelming and better suited for the 99. But still, having consistent early turns is nice.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Weirdly expensive and telegraphed adventure that I suspect will rarely get played outside of limited (to be fair, this card will rarely get played outside of limited at all). The creature half is an okay mana dork for red, but not nearly interesting enough to want to build.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I forgot how many dwarves there are in this story. Suffice to say, Oin isn't memorable in the book, the movie, or in Magic.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
It would be a great calamity to run this card.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
4 power with flying and haste is already a solid starting point, and generating treasure plus some extra burn is a lot of additional value. He's probably more suited to the 99 if we're being honest, but he's a very strong card, and you could definitely do worse in the command zone.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
We've had a fair number of auto-equip commanders, and I don't see enough payoff to justify going with Thorin over Ardenn, Intrepid Archaelogist or Captain America, First Avenger. The only upsides here are having trample (not a big deal when many good equipment provide evasion) and shooting an enemy creature on etb, which is really contextually useful and not the sort of thing I'm exciting to get on a commander that I probably want to play on-curve regardless of board state. Plus he doesn't cheat further equip costs unless you blink him somehow (good luck in mono-red). Mythics are really not going well so far, are they?
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Yep, that's a common.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There's a lot of value going on here—we get trample counters, we get +2/+2, and we get to draw quite a few cards in pretty short order. It does feel a little capped in power—once you're getting the draw 2, you're just getting another +2/+2 trample each turn, and you're pretty vulnerable to interaction to rely on that +2/+2. So I don't think this is incredible or anything. But for a 5-drop, this does a lot in the midgame, so I think it makes the cut.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Elves have butlers? The Hobbit has some seriously strange vibes compared to Lord of the Rings. This looks like a decent limited beater, but for commander, nah.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I already detest this card. Five mana to ramp by NINE? You'd think that this would be a tribal payoff for halflings, which is sort of is, but why is it so insane just on its own? And it's not even weak to removal, because 3 bodies makes it extremely hard to efficiently kill without a full-on board wipe. It's even more absurd with blink (though admittedly green doesn't have many options on that front). And just to add insult to injury, this barely seems like a character. Get in the ugly bucket, I'm tired of looking at you.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
This is a neat payoff for running a carefully-managed curve. With the right creatures, you can potentially net 8 mana per turn cycle. The great thing is that you need to actually think about how to build your deck to exploit this, instead of just getting 9 mana for doing nothing whatsoever…but I digress. Flash is also a nice bonus on its own, and works nicely with ETB critters like Reclamation Sage, or you could just cast an EOT avenger of zendikar and go for the kill. Yeva, Nature's Herald is a bit long in the tooth at this point, and I like the Radagast as her green flash successor.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I'm not really sure what these abilities have to do with Bard, but they're obviously strong. Six mana is a lot, though. I feel like I'd probably have either one or the other ability for a cheaper cost, so I'm not forced to run a bunch of ramp to support him. Still, tokens cost mana, so ramp isn't an altogether bad thing, and ramp and draw obviously go well together, so there's nothing exactly wrong with him. I do think he's pretty bland, though. Not my cup of tea.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Easy enough to enable, but not much of a payoff.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
If you really want to go dwarf tribal, this is a reasonable choice I guess. He's overpriced and pretty terrible on his own, but at least you've got 2 colors and a reasonably strong payoff. Still, I don't think dwarf tribal is particularly strong, and while this is functional, it's not enough to make them sing, so to speak.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Like Azog, I guess the build here is to include some terrible over-statted idiots like Kalascion, Hunger Tyrant and fling them at things. The payoff here is maybe slightly better, and we get a second color, but costing 5 is rough, and like Azog it doesn't do anything without a way to retrigger its ETB. I can't really see wanting to run this in the command zone.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The Chief Warg At least the Warg itself doesn't need to attack, but jumping through hoops for a phyrexian arena isn't my idea of a strong commander.
This is definitely a novel take on a RW equipment commander. Triggering on both etb and attack, for such a cheap creature, means that cheap equipment rule here, to take advantage of the hone counters as early as possible—Bonesaw and Shuko are good options here, over more value-centric equipment that usually looks more enticing. And of course, first strike takes better advantage of the +1/+0 from the honed-up equipment. I'd expect a good curveout to have 2-3 equipment attached to him by the time he attacks on turn 3, which means he's hitting for around 7 damage. That's pretty aggressive, though still hardly a patch on speed demons like Light-Paws and Slicer. Still, he's a little less vulnerable to removal, since at least he'll leave behind some sweet equipment for someone else to utilize. I'm not sure if he really makes the cut, but he's novel enough that I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Clearly designed around the amass mechanic, but that's probably not the main focus for our format. It's much more efficient to build a wide board of goblin tokens and then put counters on them all simultaneously, which also works a lot more effectively with his second (and probably stronger) ability. The option to go orc is nice, but except for a few outliers, I imagine this will just be a goblin deck to keep the synergies focused. As a card advantage tool that can potentially output some major burn with sufficient, this seems like a commander for a slower goblin build, which I can get behind.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
That's a common I tell you wot.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Having this in the command zone is a bit of a disincentive for your opponents to play artifacts, but still, I doubt people will change their plans too much. Treasures entering tapped prevents this from going infinite without a lot of work, but it's still a solid value play that gives a bunch of mana plus card draw, and a decent-sized flyer. You're still at the mercy of your opponents to some extent, so you'll probably want to run additional treasure as a backup plan. The reliance on opponents makes it a bit inconsistent, plus it makes it less interesting to ramp out quickly, since you'd probably rather wait until more artifacts have been played, but it's still a solid package of draw and ramp in the command zone. Can't complain too much.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Solid stats for an uncommon, but doesn't really do anything.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Pretty vanilla, but honestly still decent competition for a lot of elf tribal commanders, which rarely live up to the power of their 99 (looking at you, Lathril). Both halves are a little anemic on their own, but put together this is okay. Nothing special, but if you wanted a UG elf commander, this is probably the best option.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Dammit, Devoted Druid, why do you always have to ruin everything? Thanks to the little bastard, Thranduil can go infinite pretty easily. Setting that aside, Thranduil is strong but probably not too crazy. Most activated abilities of elves are mana abilities, and a 5-drop that needs elf legends specifically to draw doesn't seem too busted, considering most of the strongest elves are nonlegendary. I'm a lot more concerned about Priest of Titania than Glissa Sunslayer. Of course, the real issue with elves is that they're a very powerful and consistent tribe that doesn't really need a commander to be dangerous, and Thranduil gives that deck all its major colors plus a random infinite. So while I don't think he's too nutty, I'm still probably not going to enjoy playing against him too much.
Final Judgment: Ugly (but only a little)
Final Judgment: Ugly (but only a little)
Greater Good remains a gnarly card, and one that I think flies under the radar more than it should these days. Adding an activation cost does slow down a lot of combos, but reducing the discard makes it easier to get card advantage from smaller creatures, plus the ability to come back for free makes this extremely annoying to get off the field. Doesn't even make sense, really, how are they still eating people when they've been turned to stone? Anyway, I've played with and against greater good enough times to know that the effect can quickly end games with crushing amounts of card advantage, and this having a pretty resilient protection layer makes it look pretty nasty to play against. Not the ugliest thing I've ever seen, but definitely ugly.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
Getting a pseudo-Sun Titan in the command zone for 4 sounds alright, but I'm not convinced. He's really not difficult to block, and lands are some of the better targets for sun titan. Plus I'm just not convinced the value from sun titan is enough to build a deck around in 2026.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Way too expensive, plus way too telegraphed, plus way too dependent on what your opponents are playing. Okay, I guess there's mycosynth lattice, but you probably don't want to signal that so obviously anyway.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
So Tatyova, Benthic Druid is just blue now? I guess he doesn't gain that whopping 1 life. Paying an extra 2 mana for an immediate draw 3 and a big beater isn't the worst trade ever for a ramp deck, but losing green is a massive problem for this strategy. Plus there's a depressingly small number of lands worth blinking in mono-blue. Flipping MDFCs is cool but, for 7 mana, not a huge tempo swing. But he'll probably see play in those Tatyova and Aesi decks.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Even without the limitation on the mana, this would be a weak and uninteresting commander.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I get what they're going for here, but this really doesn't do enough to make me want to play mono-red dwarves, considering he does almost nothing to help them get through in combat. I guess once you're getting hits in, that absurd 10 mana activation becomes plausible and generates more treasure for you, but c'mon. These are dwarves, not goblins. We're not getting our investment back.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Not sure why this has a restriction on the type of token, unlike Peregrin Took and other similar cards. Maybe the mana from treasure could fuel more token production too easily? As-is, though, this seems pretty bad. Getting a treasure instead of a food is an upgrade, but Pippin wasn't anything special despite the lack of type restriction, so I can't see Bilbo doing anything too exciting.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
It's an anthem that draws one card per turn cycle. Might be okay in some 99s, but not enough to build around unless you just desperately want the world's most generic UW creature deck.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Working as a trigger prevents getting blown out by removal mid-combat, but it's weirdly clunky. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite has long been a strong effect, and goblins are a go-wide tribe that would want a big anthem. But Norn has always been more popular in the command zone, and I think Bolg will be too. Broadcasting your wincon in the command zone is a risky move.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There's definitely some strong synergies here, but things dry up pretty quickly. Wolves just aren't a deep enough tribe, even with the handful of battles being thrown in. If you've always wanted a wolf deck, this is a solid enabler, but for someone who wants a strong deck, I think he's a little low on ammunition.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I always hate these kinds of commanders, that want you to build a giant wide board and then, instead of buffing them for a massive alpha strike, attack with one dude. Dwarves don't have a lot of tokens either, so this is both difficult and terrible.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There's a decent number of powerful legendary wizards, but the payoff just doesn't seem that exciting to me. Getting one free spell is nice, but the mana value restriction makes it awkward to build around. Do you include a bunch of giant haymakers and hope you can stick a big army of wizards to freecast them? Or do you play a bunch of cheaper spells, and lose the potential upside when you manage to maintain a wide board? Even if you could reliably get 4 or 5 legendary wizards in play, by the time that happens you probably could just cast the spells normally.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Attacking safely with a 5 mana 3/3 is a decent bit of work, and while the trample does reduce some of the downside of the all-in army strategy, the payoff doesn't seem worth it. We've already got other commanders who can grow armies more quickly and more easily.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I really wish this said "combat" damage instead of "noncombat". It wouldn't be great, but at least it wouldn't be a linear combo machine with pestilence and pyrohemia, which is what this version is. Costing 7 means this is by no means the fastest combo build, but any commander that has multiple 2-card infinites baked in is an automatic ugly.
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
The best dwarf tribal commander in the set by a decent margin. He's sort of a power-only-door of destinies for dwarves, except you can also cash the buff in for mana in a pinch. Still, at 5 mana, and having no protection, and most importantly being a tribal lord for dwarves…he's still not amazing. But if you really wanted to do an honest, straightforward dwarf tribal build, this is undoubtedly the commander for you.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I might have too quick of a trigger for elf commanders, but the strength of their 99 makes them hard to overestimate. Thranduil here does a lot of the gross simic things even setting aside the existing elf suite—landfall to make even more mana is about as simic as it gets, and while 5 is a decent chunk of mana, he's a pretty easy turn 3 play for an elf deck, and will only accelerate their mana more from there. Generating fast tempo is one of the most effective things a deck can leverage to win a quick game, so I wouldn't trust Thranduil and further than I could throw him, and nobody tosses an elf (I would have used that joke on a dwarf, but they were all way too weak to justify it).
Final Judgment: Ugly
Final Judgment: Ugly
Like a lot of other go-wide-equipment builds, I'm not convinced that equipment really looks terribly enticing without stacking it up on a single heavily-protected, heavily-evasive death machine. When I think about some of the best equipment around, like the sword cycle, how good are those if they were just 3/3s with their abilities? Good, but not amazing. That would still be decent if they could be run out on-curve, but Ekthi costing 4 really puts a damper on the whole plan. Even Colossus Hammer coming down as an 11/11 on turn 4-5 really isn't that exciting anymore. Cute design, and not terrible, but not impactful enough to really get me interested either.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I always remember thinking the original pacifism art looked shockingly ugly, despite the great flavor text. As a commander, he's pretty efficient as a draw engine, but being capped to once per turn means he's pretty limited in his power. One draw per turn cycle with setup isn't enough to entice me into a build-around, and mono-white-pacifisms is a pretty tough build-around.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Neither side of this is particularly enticing. Akroma, much as I adore the card, hasn't been good in a very long time, and you're not getting any discount here despite the 3 mana you sink upfront. The front side of the card is okay, but it's just a reconnaissance minus the vigilance, or a gustcloak savior if you prefer. Nice to have, but hard to do too much with.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I am a certified angel tribal hater, but this seems…fine. The flexibility on colors is nice, but only running basics is a bit rough. As a creature, the hit trigger is pretty alright, since angels tend to be pretty high-impact creatures. I don't think it really holds a candle to Giada, though, and angels are just a pretty unsynergistic tribe to begin with, so I don't think this is enough to really get it over the line.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Interesting design, and one that could really ramp up the already-strong white planeswalkers. The biggest awkward point here is that white-based planeswalker decks generally want to wipe the field, which doesn't work as well with trying to build out an army of cat tokens to empower your walkers, but then there are some wipes that avoid lower-power creatures so you can keep the board nice and clean while continuing to build power. The potential to drop Elspeth (pick the version, really) and immediately ult it is pretty spooky, but takes an appropriately significant setup cost. Seems like fun to me.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Yume has a similar problem as Grakk insofar as she can only draw 1 card per turn (and unlikely grakk, can't get extras by casting on enemy turns, boo). But I think she's a lot more fun since she doesn't require as terrible of a build-around, and she also functionally gives you mana while also allowing you to distribute cards to preferred opponents, which could be extra powerful when teaming up against a threatening foe. Now, I don't think this is terribly STRONG, mind you. For one thing, if you ever turn the corner and become the threat, the card basically does nothing, plus you're playing mono-white. But I do think it's fun and unique, and we give points for that sort of thing around here.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
This is probably okay, but it doesn't quite gel for me. Her -X ability is just insulting compared to Tezzeret the Seeker, and while her ult is decent, it's probably far from game-winning by the time you can actually resolve it. That leaves the most interesting ability as her +1, which is reasonably impactful and could definitely help ramp out some stuff, but is woefully unimpactful the turn you play her, which means you kinda need to have the board locked down the turn before, which is tough. You could use her -X to get some extra mana and do something to protect her, but that ability just seems so weak to me. Overall, she's okay, but seems hard to work with compared to walkers that defend themselves better.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Very weird to me that this doesn't generate clues in addition, rather than replacing them. Peregrin Took makes foods in addition, and he's a boring uncommon. There aren't many tokens that would be improved by becoming clues, frankly. Clues are not very strong tokens. And while you could make more of them more quickly than Peregrin, by replacing a big "make 10 tokens" type of thing with clues, clues tend to be a lot less useful in bulk. And to add insult to injury, why is this guy a 1/1? They couldn't make him a 2/3 or something?
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This card looks pretty bad, but it does have some angles. The biggest one is that uncounterable spells will still go through netting the tokens and the spell itself. That said, they really should have printed this before Namor the Sub-Mariner because he basically does the same thing, but without hoops to jump through, for less mana, and with a very threatening body instead of a 4 mana 2/2. This seems like more of a challenge-mode commander by contrast.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
A free brainstorm while you're countering spells isn't a bad deal, but she's mostly just a worse Nymris, Oona's Trickster. We could argue between brainstorm vs graveyarding sleight of hand, but having flash, a decent flying blocker, and an extra color easily make up the difference. And Nymris isn't particularly popular.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Cute, but this is a pretty paltry payoff for going morph. Paying 3 as an ability to create Phantom Warriors is kinda cute, and giving opponents the same option isn't a huge downside since they're not unblockable against you, but it feels like the sort of thing that would have been a lot better 10 or 15 years ago. These days, it's just not efficient enough.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This looks kinda great until you remember that Sokka, Tenacious Tactician exists, and kinda does the same thing but with menace, better tribal support, and 2 extra colors instead of 1. That said, Tolabow's tokens have prowess even when he's not on the field, and he gives access to black or green, which are nice options to have. While I'm not a fan of how similar he ends up being to Sokka, he's still a decent commander, if derivative.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
I misread this at first, thinking it gave a token for every hit, rather than per opponent. Getting 3 tokens per turn isn't awful, and it's nice that she provides a reliable starting place, but I don't think the ceiling is high enough for this to be any better than mediocre.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
While this could potentially grow pretty quickly, ultimately this is just a beater, and not one that's particularly well protected, nor one with evasion. Plus you're relying on your opponents creatures to grow at all. Pretty easy rating here.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Very interesting design here. It's tempting to say "opponents probably won't accept this, so it's just a slowly growing beater", but there's a bit more potential. In particular, if you're allying with an opponent against a stronger player, giving them 4 cards and casting their removal for free is a pretty easy win-win. On the other hand, I think any opponent looking at some sweet bomb in their hand is probably going to feel pretty reticent to take the deal. Ultimately I'll want to see how this plays, and it might end up being a bit underpowered, but there's no denying that the design is interesting and a lot of fun.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Another extremely funky design that looks like fun, but I'm a bit more pessimistic on this one. Until someone actually dies, this is pure upside for your opponents, getting this through for damage isn't trivial, and there's no way to force them to take the deal either, so there's multiple things that need to line up before this achieves more than attacking and blocking. The other problem is that, if your opponents have brain cells, they're going to notice that killing the opponent with the contract counter is going to make you a big problem, assuming they have a good board, and will probably try to make sure to kill you first. I do give points for fun, and this is fun, but I think it's probably too weak and too unlikely to do anything impressive, that the disappointment will outweigh the occasional high rolls.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The damage can add up here, but your opponents have a decent amount of control over it, and attacking with a 4 mana vanilla 3/3 isn't trivial. For a low-power meta this could be decent, but if the games are fast and dynamic, this is going to be doing very little.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There's a lot of things in black that can ping you for 1 damage, but there's not a ton of payoffs for doing so. The commander here is an okay payoff, it grows and it's a Phyrexian Arena when supported, but I don't personally think that's enough to want to go deep on killing-yourself tribal.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Thomil gets points over Dyfed for at least putting up a modicum of protection, but he loses points for not really having any particularly interesting abilities. As a mana rock, he generates the same as a Gilded Lotus, but requires sac fodder to do so. And as a token producer, he's just not that impressive. His ult is easy to get to, but as cool as Lord of the Pit is (I really like the Chippy artwork in particular), it's a pretty big risk for a moderate payout, and one that gets even harder to support in multiples. Could be fun as a lower-powered black sacrifice build, but there are plenty of stronger options.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Menace and lifelink are decent keywords, but phyrexian isn't a super well supported type, and the rulebreaker text here is worse than just playing a 5c commander. I wouldn't go into this tribe for a couple keywords.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Very similar to The Sentry, Golden Guardian, in that they're 5/5 flyers that give away creatures intended to attack your opponents. Balefang seems largely worse insofar as he's more expensive, worse protected, and lacks vigilance, but he does have a few upsides. He prevents lifegain (though the token will lifegain if he ever leaves), and the token being goaded but destructible means it's a safer giveaway—until the 1v1 game, at which point it has protection from your commander and attacks right past him. The token being nonlegendary could be a plus or a minus—if you're forced to give multiples away in the 1v1, it's going to be very painful. I'm waffling, so let me get to the point. The Sentry was not a particularly exciting commander, and this is overall worse, and not cute enough to get meme points from me.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I'm probably biased against this sort of commander, but the payoff doesn't seem compelling enough to me. Browsing through the EDHrec lists that are up currently, there are some decently efficient ways to trigger her, but not efficient enough that I'm actually excited, particularly since most of the actual effects are not great. The most popular card at time of writing is Burning Inquiry, which is still terrible even with the addition of a treasure and a counter, so I'm unimpressed.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
None of these types of effects ever seem to hold a candle to Plargg and Nassari. For 7 mana, I doubt this provides as much value as the 5-drop, and you're at the mercy of being able to get in for damage with an understatted vehicle. Plus it only "fixes" your mana for 1 spell, after that you have to figure out the mana costs on your own. It's okay, but it just seems like a weak and overcosted version of this archetype.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Cute, but too unreliable to interest me. Sure, a lot of strong cards have triggered abilities, but they need to be useful to you, and you need to be able to actually trigger them (notably ETBs are difficult), all on top of whatever theft you need to take control of them. Can't really see it.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The activated ability seems very inconsistent, except as a way to sacrifice your opponents' artifacts on occasion, which they'll probably see coming. The triggered ability is more reliable, since you can sacrifice your own artifacts to grow your commander, but you're ultimately just building a big fatty without evasion, and it can't even attack and use its ability at the same time without support.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
For some reason I thought this was 3 mana initially and thought it looked pretty solid. At 4, it's a much tougher sell. But there are a lot of ways to trigger him, and the payoff is decent since it lets you cast it on your next turn. It's definitely a bit of nostalgia talking, but I think Matoc is decent, albeit not great.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Everyone seems to be building this as curses, which I guess is a thematic choice, but doesn't seem like a strong choice to me. There are a handful of decent curses, but generally I'd rather run good creature auras like Control Magic or Angelic Destiny. As far as his abilities, a 3-drop walker making mana and a token at the same time is a pretty strong rate for a plus ability, and the minus is usable immediately, and provides some major potential draw power. Ramp, tokens, and draw is a solid package, and makes this a solid reason to go into auras/enchantress, even if red is one of the worst support colors.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
A hexproof mana doubler is pretty tempting, but unfortunately I think the hoops this makes you jump through, and the risk it adds, makes it not worth it. Turning lands into creatures is expensive and/or makes you extremely weak to board wipes, turning creatures into lands is extremely difficult, and tokens that make land creatures are extremely rare…and as a result, the commander is extremely mediocre. Earthbending helps a bit, but if you're earthbending just to get +1 mana, surely it would have been more efficient to just play a ramp spell instead.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Being nigh-unkillable with trample seems like a great start for a voltron build, but for 5 mana, I'm not too excited, particularly in mono-green, which has weak voltron support. Low stats aren't the end of the world, but considering how late he comes down, it's a bit rough that you need to invest additional resources into making him relevant on the battlefield. Voltron is generally an aggressive archetype, especially without good control colors to slow the game down, so doing nothing until 5 mana, and then needing support on top of that, is just too slow for an already awkward strategy. Plus he's kinda just boring.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Casting hydras for X=5 once you've already hardcast a 7-drop seems quite uninspiring. By far the most compelling usage I've seen for Glava is with Magus of the Candelabra (and of course, the OG candelabra of tawnos), which becomes a cool +5 mana off a 1-drop, with potential added utility. But as powerful as that is, it's only 1-2 cards in the deck, and the rest of the plan seems pretty bad.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
A very generic planeswalker here, though sharing the common trait of making weird tokens. In this case, the +2 is actually kinda cool, albeit not overly impressive for a 6-drop (I'll take Elspeth, Sun's Champion any day). The minus ability is okay as a reliable draw-3 if you're only running permanents, and the ult is possibly the most generic I've ever seen. Mostly this just seems uninspired. I don't want to only run permanents to make the draw ability good, and the other abilities just aren't really worth building around. If you think the character is cool and want to build a generic permanent-focused green pile, maybe this is a good fit for you, but I don't see a way to make this an interesting build.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Anyone who's played against aristocrats knows how easy it can be to trigger blood artist, but the gating of once-per-turn makes this a lot harder to pop off. Given a couple turn cycles and a sac outlet, we might get there, but it's very telegraphed and easy to interact with, all for a glorified overrun. Given enough time and support, maybe you could get to +6/+6, which would get more interesting, but that's a lot of setup and there's not THAT many squirrel token producers, especially if you're feeding them into the woodchipper to make more food. Squirrels are a tribe that's held up entirely by the power of its commanders (namely chitterfang and squirrel girl), so a commander that might be good for a better-supported tribe isn't good enough to make squirrels worth it.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
As cool as these abilities are, they seem painfully overcosted to me. The black lotus token at -3 is just agonizing, considering you could have cast Gilded Lotus for the same mana value as your commander, and had 3 mana every turn without needing to defend a planeswalker or restore his loyalty between uses. The ult, while not too difficult to get to, being a 3 mana spell is also rough, and your opponents seeing it coming means they'll probably be able to capitalize on it nearly as well as you can (unless you throw down a Notion Thief first). That leaves his + as maybe the most interesting, and while it's okay, I'd much rather have something that generates value for me. Constantly shooting enemy creatures will incline your opponents towards attacking your commander, and shooting face just isn't very impactful.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I am absolutely staggered that this manages to make the (current) top 10 commanders from this set. If this wasn't a legendary sorcery, maybe there'd be some nonsense combo build running 97 lands or whatever, but needing to run out a legend first makes stacking the deck nearly impossible, which means we're playing this card fairly and just…getting a random cheap spell out of the deck. Sure, on recasts it gives bigger potential, but you can still hit the cheap stuff and pay 5 mana for a random 2-drop. Cascade has never been my thing, but usually it's at least good value, like Pantlaza, Sun-Favored. This is just garbage. There are better common commanders.
Final Judgment: Never before seen levels of bad
Final Judgment: Never before seen levels of bad
The way to build this, in my estimation, is probably with blink. Put the trigger on the stack, then cast Ephemerate and enjoy your token doubling. Managing to actually hold the monarchy is just a cool bonus if it happens. Doubling your tokens every turn is a reasonably powerful payoff, and RW are decent colors for token generation, so I could see this being decent. Costing 6 is a bit rough, as is having very little impact the turn it comes down. And yikes, it's a Hill Giant for 6. So I don't think it's quite good, per se, but it's definitely on the cusp of being good. Seems like a fun dark horse build.
Final Judgment: Bad, but just barely
Final Judgment: Bad, but just barely
I guess this could be played straight as a creature-focused deck, using the commander to provide a decent chunk of mana per turn at the cost of life. Personally I think it looks more suited to a combo build though, probably around Gravecrawler or some similar thing. That said, gravecrawler needs a sac outlet, and even then it's just a combo to kill yourself unless the sac outlet provides a wincon, or you have some blood artists sitting around to help. So while I do think it's likely a combo build, I don't think it's a problematic combo build, and if anything, I think it's probably on the weaker side. And while using it straight as a mana generator seems like a decent plan, the life loss does matter, particularly when you're playing fair magic.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Copying a creature every turn is pretty good value, but where I think this really shines is when you can use the enemy copy for extra value, either for political maneuvering, or because it's some kind of stax piece that doesn't really care who controls it, like Vryn Wingmare or even Alabaster Leech if you're feeling particularly nasty (maybe keep a sac outlet on hand). Good value with a creative buildaround is a nice combo for a creative deckbuilder.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Expensive, but I like the abilities here a lot more than some of the others. The plus provides a reasonable defensive board impact, or a plausible wincon if left alone. The 0 is a nice value play that might give you an even stronger defense. And the ult, while somewhat low impact, is easy to get to, and can put a major damper on creature-based decks, particularly in multiples. The main direction here is into noncreature permanents, since you want to take advantage of the 0 while circumventing the ult, though dropping a land into play isn't terrible if you just want to go full spellslinger control. I don't think he's wildly powerful at 6, but he's definitely less of a mess than most of the planeswalkers we've seen.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
The value here is real, especially with triomes or especially prismatic omen effects. That said, this needing to attack is pretty rough for a 7-drop 4/4, and it feels like a real 1-trick pony. A lot of the bonuses aren't very good, either, with the island and plains modes being the standouts, though the swamp mode is a decent way to kill your opponents eventually, and the mountain mode can help make him a less terrible attacker. That said, ultimately this forces you to run a bunch of off-color duals and triomes that are basically useless except as fodder, and/or rely heavily on the 2 cards that make your lands all land types, which seems pretty risky…all on top of being a 7-drop that needs to attack to do anything. That doesn't seem like a recipe for success to me.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
I took a look at the bundled creature types here and…it's not looking great, folks. There are very few non-garbage creatures available (at least there's a few decent changelings, I guess). The payoff is pretty strong, though, particularly since it's pretty plausible to hit a lot of landfall off the right ramp spell. In addition to my general disdain for tribal decks, though, I think this looks like a trap. The primary plan is decent, but it's very reliant on the commander, and most of the deck is likely to be absolute trash-tier without him. If you absolutely must, make sure you've got a lot of protection for the commander, because otherwise you're really begging to get removed from the game by a single control magic.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There's a lot of strange designs in this set, and Itazura is a real puzzler. You're giving away cards to your opponents, so you might want to only give away cards they can't get value from (like counterspells or X-spells), but if nobody is bidding then this is just a ho-hum draw engine with a harsh buildaround. What I think is more interesting is to give away cards that are powerful but don't hurt you too badly, like price of progress and run only basics, or artifact removal when you don't run artifacts, and try to get your opponents to take a lot of damage and blow each other's stuff up so you can swing in with a burn spell to finish them off. Do I think this plan is reliable or effective? Probably not really, but it sounds really funny, and devilishly tricky to build. Sign me up!
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
The nice thing about mounts vs vehicles is that at least mounts can mount each other (phrasing, I know). The other good thing going on here is that the bundle of types has a lot more playables than Homer, especially beasts. The payoff is decent but not amazing, essentially you'll be attacking with only half your creatures, but you get to draw a bunch of cards and give them +2/+2 and make some food, for whatever that's worth. Pretty generic stuff considering the weirdness of the ability, though it does provide some extra value for the steeds that already had their own saddle ability. The biggest risk is that, if you saddle up all your creatures and then Jandor goes missing before the declare attackers step, you just saddled up a whole lot of nothing. So I don't think he's super powerful, but he's…fine. Fine enough.
Final Judgment: Good, I guess.
Final Judgment: Good, I guess.
Just on its own, this is not a bad card. 3mv unblockable that draws a card on hit is solid, and you get 3 great colors. You can either accessorize with other shadow creatures, or run saboteur triggers like dimir cutpurse and use her ability to make them unblockable. The former is definitely faster, since the 3 mana ability is fair but expensive, but the latter is a bit more robust, since it's less dependent on keeping her alive. Most likely a mix of both is good, or go creature-light and focus on control. Not a lot of wrong answers here.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
Stealing cards is usually pretty unreliable as a value engine, and this guy's attack trigger is pretty dubious when he's a 4 mana 3/2. Of course there are other ways to get card advantage from him, and tutoring cards from enemy decks does have some potential. But ultimately I still look at plargg and nassari for comparison, and ask myself "is jester really any better for all that extra effort"? And I don't really think it is.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This seems pretty nuts. There's a lot of popular 1-drop spells to sling, and there's a ton of cheap unblockable, or at least evasive, weenies within these colors, as well as double strikers. Still, as powerful as it is, I see a lot of removal and cantrips at 1mv, but not a lot of ways to advance an actual board position. The spells being cast after damage also means that pump spells don't help to accelerate a clock. That said, if you've got an army of unblockables throwing out removal and draw, I'm sure you can think of something.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
A +3/+3 anthem on a commander would obviously be very strong, but that said, it's only 2 mana off of Collective Blessing, which actually makes your board stronger in combat. There are still a lot of interesting things to do here, though, and combat can be dangerous for an anthem that could be removed, so maybe it's for the best that we save some mana and only get to use them to power up greater good and co. Cute as this is, I think it probably ends up spinning its wheels more than it's actually able to close out the game, but it's a neat effect that I think has some potential, so I'll give it a (narrow) pass.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
There's 2 ways I see to build this, and they're both a bit sus. One option is to just go nephilim tribal, with the whopping 5 nephilim printed thus far, plus some of the better changelings. Out of the nephilim, though, 2 are just bad, 2 are okay, and 1 is properly dangerous—and they have very little in common to tie them together. Plus the curve is a disaster. So as a tribe, I don't think it makes any sense. Alternately, the deck can just focus on ink-treader nephilim, the dangerous one, and use the commander as a tutor for him. Which is fine, but 4 mana for a tutor really isn't exciting, and if the whole deck is built around him, the risk of him getting removed are high, especially when he's a very threatening and removable target (granted, people may not want to wipe the board to kill him…though that could be a bonus). If Zada, Hedron Grinder didn't have enough colors for you, that might be the way to go, but it seems like a bit of a one-trick pony to me.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Joining tribes together is usually pretty dicey, and the payoff here isn't really enough to justify it, particularly when zombies are a plenty-strong tribe already without mediocre cats forcing their way in.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
The anthem effect average out to 1.5 power assuming nothing messes with the counters, which is a decent boost for a 3-drop, albeit not enough to make me want to play the commander just yet. More interesting, perhaps, is the mana doubler, though it only applies to islands, and only happening once every four turns is pretty tricky. You could add proliferate to accelerate the clock, but at that point it's probably easier to just play mana reflection and have doubling online permanently for all mana production. You're especially vulnerable to disruption here too, since it will reset Rikala's counters. That said, a decent buff to the board and an occasional flood of mana isn't awful for a 3-drop. So he's decent, but not great.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Neither half of this looks particularly exciting to me, at least not for 6 mana. The curse sounded fun to copy, until I realized that it's legendary. It's arguably an improvement on Astarion, the Decadent, but he's pretty terrible so that's not saying much.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Goofy name aside, this looks like a monstrously annoying planeswalker and I love it. Goading 2 creatures as a plus ability is pretty dang sadistic, and is a really potent way to protect herself. Beyond just preventing those creatures from attacking her, they also motivate other blockers to stay back, in order to deter the incoming goaded attacks. Add that to her blood artist passive ability, and an easy to achieve (albeit not overly powerful) ult, and this looks like a lot of sadistic Rakdos fun, forcing your opponents to fight each other while you profit.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
The ETB reads like a disaster, but it's not actually that bad, so long as you're playing a sacrifice deck, which you already want to be doing. Paying 3 life is nothing, and turning 3 tokens or bloodghasts into cards isn't a bad tradeoff, especially when you've got a 10/4 indestructible holding down the defense. His draw ability isn't as insane as Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, but it's pretty potent, and the built-in protection Tresserhorn has makes him a lot less likely to eat immediate removal. And a 10-power trampler can't be ignored for long either. It takes a bit of setup to work, but this seems like a serious threat to me.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
It's kinda crazy that, even with zero additional support or max speed, this is basically a 4-power attacker that gives your team +1/+0 for 3. From there, you could either focus on running a bunch of first strikers to power up an elite team, or go for max speed and then spew out some tokens and make them all enormous. Personally I tend to favor the latter approach, since it's less vulnerable to board wipes, but a little of each is probably a safe way to go. Either way, it's easy to get a big power buff, which becomes impossible to block profitably when combined with first strike. As a fan of aggro decks, and the lone defender of the speed mechanic, I approve.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
This one seems like a deceptive buildaround. Sure, there are some decent oozes which become stronger when copied, but by far the best thing to be doing with uugguu, from my estimation, is clones. The first clone immediately dies (saves the need for sac outlets) and gives 2 uugguus, the second clone then creates 6 uugguus, then 18…tripling ever time, basically. While that does become very difficult to remove without a board wipe in short order, I don't think it rises to the level of ugly since it still takes a fair number of clones to create a game-winning army, and it does get severely set back by a board wipe, or well-timed removal.
Final Judgment: Good
Final Judgment: Good
All this time, and Venser is still a 5 mana UW blink walker. I was never a huge fan of the original walker, and time hasn't improved him. Most blink decks don't engage in combat very aggressively, so his passive isn't particularly useful, and his other abilities just feel a bit underwhelming to me from a 5-drop. He's not awful, but time has left him behind a bit.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Presumably the build-around here is some big symmetrical mill (too bad Homer can't help), and then swing in and reanimate something from everyone's graveyard. Of course, shadow makes combat damage a certainty unless he gets removed, but there's still a lot of variance in terms of what you might actually get for your efforts. Some decks will have few creatures, and some will only have very synergy-focused creatures that aren't very impactful alone. Do I need to go back to Plargg and Nassari again? Repetitive comparisons aside, this does have some extra benefit in that you can theoretically have better selection with sufficient mill, and getting 3 good creatures in one swing is obviously powerful. But between the steep price tag, the necessary mill setup, and the reliance on enemy decks, this doesn't seem reliable enough to me, even if the high rolls are mighty high.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
There are basically 3 main reasons to run 200+ card Whtz: to enable him, to enable Battle of Wits, and to enable Yorion, Sky Nomad. Whtz himself is a decent commander when enabled, but still far short of, say, Lyna, Veil of Vengeance, who requires no enabling. Battle of wits is obviously powerful in a deck that can use it, but seems extremely boring and anticlimactic to me. You play it, you hope there's not more enchantment removal than you have counterspells, and then you win. I imagine it gets old pretty quickly. Yorion is a nice blink piece, and definitely a boon to have available reliably, though in terms of efficiency the errata makes him just okay unless you really build around him, which is tough with a huge library. Speaking of which, how big of a downside is having a big library? Well it means you draw your best cards less often, but in fairness there are a lot of cards these days, and not many are peerlessly powerful. It's not hard to imagine a deck of 250 cards that's still packed to the gills with bangers. So I don't think it's a huge cost, but I still don't really think it's worth it. You get a meh commander, an extremely boring wincon, and a decent but inefficient value piece. It seems like a lot of people are excited for this commander, and I'm glad he exists for them, but to me he seems kinda underwhelming.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Typically triggering on endstep is a big upgrade from upkeep, since it makes the first trigger a lot more reliable. But in this case, I think Zagorka is a huge downgrade from Noble Heritage and similar. These sorts of effects are really useful because they tell you who plans to attack you in advance—otherwise, why wouldn't they take the free resources? But a big part of the value there is that you can plan out your turn with that information in hand. If the guy with a huge board is going to attack you, maybe it's time for a board wipe, or to leave mana up for removal. But if everyone takes the value, then you can tap out in relative safety. Triggering on endstep means you lose a lot of that value, because you've already taken your turn. Whatever you left up to interact with, is what you're stuck with. If you overcommitted, figuring that people would take the token and then they didn't, now you're defenseless. On top of that, triggering on upkeep means your opponents don't get you know what you have planned, so you can slam a game-ending bomb after they've all agreed not to attack you, whereas endstep means they have full information about your play, boo. The other problem is that taking the counters on your upkeep means you get first crack at utilizing them, whereas the tapped land tokens will be usable by every other player before you. And finally, giving out land tokens seems a lot, lot more dangerous than counters. Counters are great because they're usually a pretty low value resource, and one that's pretty predictable in its utility. Giving out land for a couple turns, on the other hand, seems like an easy way to group hug your way to an early grave, by powering up opponents tempo in a dangerous and unpredictable fashion. I still like the underlying idea here, but this seems like a pretty harsh downgrade from other versions of the effect, especially since Noble Heritage lets you have an entire additional commander.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
This could be somewhat interesting if it wasn't six mana. Most artifact creatures and equipment are colorless, so the rulebreaker text is nice but still leaves most of your options very restrictive, particularly in terms of synergy pieces. That might be worthwhile if the commander supercharged your artifacts himself, but I really don't think he's impactful enough for the cost. Maybe it's unfair, but compare him to Arna Kennerud, Skycaptain as an equipment commander. Arna can create token equipment copies too, except she can copy multiple per turn, cheats the equip costs, and has a much better body at a cheaper cost. Arna is obviously a strong commander, but Everforger is so far behind that it's laughable. The tempo hit of running out a 6-drop, then playing and equipment, then equipping both of them, is just way too clunky for commander in 2026 outside of a very casual pod. Artifact creatures are better, granted, but it's still not nearly good enough reason to be stuck in mostly-colorless.
Final Judgment: Bad
Final Judgment: Bad
Two sets, with two very different vibes. The Hobbit feels very standard and limited focused, with even the mythics sometimes feeling like pushed uncommons. By contrast, the mystery booster commanders showcase some obviously made-for-commander designs, playing with weird abilities, multiplayer dynamics, and even the rules of the format itself.
And the results are clear: the Hobbit has few good commanders relative to its size (8 of 75, barely 10%) whereas the mystery boosters are solidly over 25% certified good. Mystery boosters also have no ugly commanders, whereas hobbit scores an uncomfortable five, between some truly pushed designs and strong support for already-pushed elf decks.
I think it shows a clear difference in how these products are being marketed. Hobbit is primarily a set for other formats, with a couple really pushed cards to get commander players' attention, whereas Mystery Boosters are more broadly targeted at commander, and emphasize a wide variety of interesting designs, rather than a few pushed attention-grabbers. Unfortunately, getting mystery boosters looks like it's going to be a serious challenge, whereas Hobbit boosters are available at every LGS.
It's time to ride off into the sunset again. I still haven't reached the sun yet, but maybe this time will be the charm.
Until next time, cowpokes.
Whtz is a homunculus. This means he’s good.
I will hear nothing to the contrary.
God help anyone trying to shuffle that deck, though. Couldn't be me.
now don't get me wrong i do agree with take valko theres not enough good phyrexian support yet.
but i do need to point out that menace part is far more scary than what meets the eye for phyrexians, and its quite simply their theme is most poison counters and thats by infect/toxic and menace makes it easier to get threw
though another personal nerve going off they did the guy that translated phyrexian, but this could have been the golden ticket for yawgmoth as a phyrexian heck this is one rulebreaker they would need to do again for him, but clearly his ability would be far better than this.