Commander 2019 Speculation

[Sheldon]

Here's my speculation:

You're going to enjoy yourself.

[Sinis]

I have, every year (with the exception of Commander's Arsenal) preordered a set of EDH decks. This year is no different.

My only prediction is that we'll see reprints of the Battlebond dual lands.

[TheTuna]

I expect to pick up the full set this year as well. Might even get two, one to crack for parts and the other one to keep playable as-is. Precon-level Commander has made for some of my favorite and most memorable games.

I hope the recent comments by WotC about the reprint value being such crap last year leads to something like this.

One $15-$20 card in EVERY deck, keep em at $40.

If the rumors are true, a Populate deck is a fantastic place to reprint Parallel Lives or Anointed Procession. It'd be much like reprinting Privileged Position in the Selesyna guild kit; enough value to make the enfranchised purchaser feel good, but not enough to spike the price.

[MRHblue]

Here's my speculation:

You're going to enjoy yourself.

Would that have been your prediction for last year? Because a lot of us were VERY disappointed in the cards.

[pokken]

If they do it in every deck it'll be fine. Gotta avoid making one deck worth a a hundred and the others 17.

I hope the recent comments by WotC about the reprint value being such crap last year leads to something like this.

One $15-$20 card in EVERY deck, keep em at $40.

Yeah I would be fine with that. I hope for better because there're a bunch of really absurd cards out there (oracle being my favorite example - but there is a list of nonsensical 40 dollar cards a mile long).

[Hermes_]

Here's my speculation:

You're going to enjoy yourself.

Don't you dare tell me how to feel! lol

[bobthefunny]

Someone linked this on Salv:
https://www.blackfire.eu/product.php?id=33368

and linked it here too:

From https://www.blackfire.eu/product.php?id=33368

If that's accurate, then these colors are pretty easy slots to start with, especially as they typically try to tie the Commander products into recent themes/sets in order to allow easy access to cards to modify the decks (think of the recent vampires deck releasing near Ixalan). I expect the decks to be two or three color, but if there are three color decks, then the main pair is likely easier to call.

madness - This is a pretty easy rb, especially after the last innistrad. Green has historically had some place in madness decks, while u for looting/wonder could work well as well. RUB can tie well into reanimation themes on top of the madness/discard, with things like Sedris, the Traitor King. Since the recent RB madness has been themed with vampires, a white splash could fit here for the Ixalan support.
My guess: BR

flashback - Flashback as referenced on cards has usually been ub - thrink Wrexial, the risen deep or Dralnu, Lich Lord - however r has often had a lot more support in color. Kess, Dissident Mage is a recent print that falls right into these colors.
My guess: UB, possibly red - but having two decks share RB seems odd. Especially since the themes are so similar.

morph - Morphs are in every color, but Morph support has typically been UG (Secret plans). Blue has some of the more popular and powerful morphs, followed closely by green, but this is a bit harder to pin colors on. Red would give an oppurtunity to toss Akroma in, because that's always funny.
My guess: UG.

populate - wg - wg has always been the populate colors, but as far as token support goes, I'd love to see some u added in here as well. Blue has much better token (copy) creation, which is far more interesting to populate. That said, white and green have some decent token copy support, especially with abilities like eternalize.
My guess: wg maybe a third color.

Red and White are underrepresented in those color pairs.

[Dragonlover]

I'm hoping the morph deck is Sultai, then my Storrev deck has a reasonable chance of picking up some new toys. Won't lie, I'm a bit bamboozled as to how you base a deck around flashback.

Dragonlover

[TheTuna]

I'm hoping the morph deck is Sultai, then my Storrev deck has a reasonable chance of picking up some new toys. Won't lie, I'm a bit bamboozled as to how you base a deck around flashback.

Dragonlover

Madness seems even trickier than Flashback. Madness feels like it has very few existing cards which are well-suited for Commander. Also, while it seemingly lends itself to forcing everyone to discard en masse, those effects are no fun for new players, so they would not be likely to appear in the deck. It'll be quite interesting to see how they pull it off if the leaks hold water.

[mention]bobthefunny[/mention]
I agree that we're probably not likely to see either R or W appear in only one deck. The Populate deck could very easily be Naya, which would give R another slot. I guess W would have to be in Morph or Flashback, but it doesn't feel like a great fit for either. Maybe this is a point against the leak?

[Cyberium]

They need new Hellbent cards in that madness deck.

EDIT: Morph deck could also be WU, since blink can be utilized to turn creature face up, as seen in the past with Astral Slide and Exalted Angel.

[Hawk]

Madness: An odd choice, as there are 52 Madness cards across 5 colors, but the vast majority of them are awful in Commander. People aren't clamoring to slam Basking Rootwallas and Reckless Wurms and tokens off of Gisa's Bidding or slinging Fiery Tempers and Strength of Lunacys in a 40-life format. I imagine base-black for this deck; black allows for a reanimator and/or Vampire and/or Zombie and/or Hellbent subtheme and reprints of From Under The Floorboards, Asylum Visitor, and Big Game Hunter (as far as playable, interesting reprints with the mechanic go) . The deck could also have Cycling and utilize Archfiend of Ifnir and Faith of the Devoted. From there it's anyone's game - White plays well with those two tribes and has great cycling support despite having the least historical support for Madness itself, Blue allows for a Circular Logic and Welcome to the Fold reprints and looting support but is the color in highest demand this round, Red has rummaging, Avacyn's Judgment, plenty of Vampires and Zombies and Hellbent cards, and a bunch of mediocre french vanilla madness cards, green has Fauna Shaman, Wild Mongrel, some zombies and graveyard shenanigans, and a pair of iconic french vanilla madness cards. Red feels most likely and white least but anything is possible.

Flashback: A less odd choice - like Madness we are spread across 5 colors, but unlike Madness there are 117 cards with the mechanic and plenty of much-beloved stuff among those cards. Blue feels essential - it has the most and best support cards with direct support in the form of Secrets of the Dead, River Kelpie, Quiet Speculation, and Runic Repetition and indirect support with anything that rewards slinging spells (like Murmuring Mystic and Jace's Sanctum among many, many, many more). In terms of cards with the mechanic for reprints Snappy is unlikely but blue brings Think Twice, Deep Analysis, and Cackling Counterpart - none of them are super valuable but all are reasonably popular. Red has the next most support with Burning Vengeance and general looting/rummaging/spellslinging support, plus stuff like Crackling Drake that counts spells in Exile. Black isn't far behind with Dralnu, Lich Lord and has the most beloved flashback spells (Chainer's Edict, Mystical Teachings). Grixis with Kess, Dissident Mage is possible. Green and White feel super unlikely - white doesn't really interact with this stuff. Green does and has a lot of fan-favorite cards of varying levels of power (Moment's Peace, Increasing Savagery, Chatter of the Squirrel) but feels like it adds the least to the deck.

Morph: Morph is in all colors (with 195 cards including MegaMorph!) and has been popular enough to come back twice since its original bow in Onslaught so it makes sense to have a true "Morph"mmander. This deck could be any colors as long as it's base Simic as almost all the good supporting cards for this are in Blue (Ixidron, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Ixidor, Reality Sculptor, Unblinking Bleb, Aphetto Runecaster), Green (Pinewalker, Temur War Shaman, Trail of Mystery, Salt Road Ambushers), or both (Secret Plans). From there anything from Simic up to a full 5-color list is possible, and its impossible to call what's most likely - white has the best support cards purely because Mastery of the Unseen exists, while Red has Animar, Soul of Elements and more fun cards with Morph and black has just generally fun morph cards. Black is least likely imo.

Populate: Will obviously be GW, and as it's only ever existed there but tokens is for everyone it could move into anything as a third color. Or fourth. Or fifth. Or just be a Selsnya list.

[Kajarak32]

I really hope they shift those mechanics into colors that don't already have them as a focus. That'd make these much more interesting because if these are in their typical colors, they don't feel like they could produce anything very novel.

Morph is already a well-developed strategy in Animar. I guess more support in those colors would be good? But I can't see then printing something better than him on those colors for it.

Flashback is the most boring of these since Kess just fits this so well already. Again, I'm just struggling to see how this can be approved upon.

Populate could use some improvement I guess, but it seems uninteresting to me. I am more hopeful about this one though.

Madness interests me, but seems very hard to make playable in commander unless it's wheel or heavily rummage/loot based. And then it might feel less "madness-y". Really hope they figure out how to make this cool though because we don't really have a successful deck for this right now.

Overall, this info has made me cautiously pessimistic about this year already. That said, this is literally all we know and that's not much with such generic and open-ended info. Really hope this year blows last year out of the water since it felt like a dud for me.

[Serenade]

Flashback legends could reduce the cost of the ability, provide an alternative cost, be a Sedris replica, deal with RFG cards, or have abilities like River Kelpie or Flayer of the Hatebound. Lots of ways to take it!

I could see madness interacting with cycling. Maybe the Ancient Excavation cycle could be completed!

[Hawk]

I really hope they shift those mechanics into colors that don't already have them as a focus. That'd make these much more interesting because if these are in their typical colors, they don't feel like they could produce anything very novel.

Morph is already a well-developed strategy in Animar. I guess more support in those colors would be good? But I can't see then printing something better than him on those colors for it.

Flashback is the most boring of these since Kess just fits this so well already. Again, I'm just struggling to see how this can be approved upon.

Populate could use some improvement I guess, but it seems uninteresting to me. I am more hopeful about this one though.

Madness interests me, but seems very hard to make playable in commander unless it's wheel or heavily rummage/loot based. And then it might feel less "madness-y". Really hope they figure out how to make this cool though because we don't really have a successful deck for this right now.

Overall, this info has made me cautiously pessimistic about this year already. That said, this is literally all we know and that's not much with such generic and open-ended info. Really hope this year blows last year out of the water since it felt like a dud for me.

See, I hope the opposite - it'd be really frustrating to get an Izzet Populate deck (even if Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer players would leap for joy at it) and then be unable to build a commander deck using old and new populate cards together, or get a Mardu Morph deck that then forces me to run Reaper King or something if I want to use all the new shiny cards alongside Secret Plans. I definitely hope to see things stretch to A new color, but I think these decks really need to be in "core colors" (so Simic Morph, Izzet Flashback, Black Madness, Selesnya Populate) to get me really excited to invest in a new deck.

[BaronCappuccino]

None of those mechanics really excite me, but I predict flashback being the rare, expensive deck with four decks worth of reprint value, Populate being an okay but not exciting starting deck for newbies, and madness and morph collecting dust on store shelves through 2025.

[ilovesaprolings]

I hope they will give us at least 3 tricolor decks.
All the mechanics have the potential to be great in a tricolor deck.
If they give us a bicolor, i hope it's the madness one.
Also, white looks underrepresented, they have to give it to another mechanic other than populate so... jeskai flashback?

[hyalopterouslemur]

I would be VERY surprised if they reprinted anything currently worth more than $10 unless that price is solely tied to scarcity. What I would expect is they reprint a bunch of stuff that only crept up because of being a single printing. Black Market for example in the last set (or was it the one before?) But there is almost zero chance they reprint expensive staples to avoid the True Name Nemesis effect.

Yeah, like, I really don't think Oracle of Mul Daya's price is tied to scarcity more than to just her value in green ramp. Even then, those really old cards (My Unlimited Mana Vault is no doubt going to stay over $100.) would send the price through the roof with Legacy players. And an allegedly casual format's precons are not where Legacy players should be going for cards.

[ISBPathfinder]

Given the themes we have heard:

Morph: I am going to guess this is a 3+ color deck that includes blue. I say this from the standpoint that blue seems to have some of the better morph cards and some cool morph support like Ixidor, Reality Sculptor and Ixidron. I think it will likely be 3-5 colors from the standpoint that morph cards tend to be better when there are more possibilities of what they can be and to be honest when it comes to commander a lot of morph cards don't really shine. So my thoughts would probably lean heavier towards this deck possibly being 5 color but I could see as few as 3 colors. I suspect we might see some sort of tribal buff to face down cards or some sort of value on flip or something of that sort for morphing in the commander. Reducing the cost to turn face up or place a card face down might also be nice.

Populate: Obviously it comes from what was a GW mechanic so its probably safe to assume that its likely going to be a GW deck. I am not really sure what I would speculate it is going to do but it seems safe to say probably GW tokens (a safe assumption lol). Populate is strong as a mechanic from the standpoint that it can make copies of real cards so if I were to throw a dart in the dark I would say its likely that turning real creatures into tokens might be something they experiment with. If you were to make a token copy of Eternal Witness for example and then populate it, that's kind of the thinking I am thinking with where I think you might see it go.

Madness: RB seems to be the primary color of madness cards with GU being lesser used but still colors that get this mechanic. White essentially doesn't involve itself here even though there is like one card that does. I would guess RB to be among colors that we will see here. Its likely we will see some discard effects as well among what gets printed for this as another support mechanic.

Flashback: The go to flashback cards that are icons of magic would be Faithless Looting, Snapcaster Mage, and Lingering Souls. As far as colors go it has seen cards in essentially every color. I would have a hard time really nailing down what colors I expect it to be though as it could be any color combination up to 5 color. I could possibly see this one sort of offsetting whatever colors are chosen for the morph to balance out the use of colors a bit. It is tough to really make much of a guess here given that in a lot of cases we haven't really seen a lot of support cards for this sort of effect. Secrets of the Dead, Burning Vengeance, and River Kelpie make me sort of think maybe UR though but I could easily be missing some other sweet tech support.

As for what I am excited for.... I think the madness and flashback ones appeal to me a bit more being sort of cool mechanics with value added to them. Populate is the one that speaks the least to me offhand from a mechanical standpoint. I like the idea of morph but I find many morph cards to be very underwhelming for commander so I would need to see a big reason to run them from the command zone. I will wait to see what everything is but from a mechanics standpoint alone I am far more interested to see the madness and flashback cards / commanders.

[Hermes_]

it sounds like for this will be another time in which i might just go for singles

[ISBPathfinder]

it sounds like for this will be another time in which i might just go for singles

I assume every year that is where I will be generally speaking and I let myself be convinced otherwise rather than assuming I will want all of the decks until I see the contents. If you have been playing commander for a long time a lot of times the reprints can really fall off in importance. I probably have at least 30 sol rings by now and generally I will buy like.... a deck now each year assuming one has enough demand cards or enough cards I want / need that have value to them.

[toctheyounger]

it sounds like for this will be another time in which i might just go for singles

I assume every year that is where I will be generally speaking and I let myself be convinced otherwise rather than assuming I will want all of the decks until I see the contents. If you have been playing commander for a long time a lot of times the reprints can really fall off in importance. I probably have at least 30 sol rings by now and generally I will buy like.... a deck now each year assuming one has enough demand cards or enough cards I want / need that have value to them.

Pretty much same boat here. Less on account of being a veteran (by comparison to some of you guys I'm very much not), and more on account of having a pretty established count of decks that I'm really happy with playing, and unless something really, really calls to me in dulcet tones, I'm just not interested in yet another new deck. There's only so many you can play. I can be swayed by reprints, but they've really got to be clutch to make me shell out for the sealed product.

That being said, I bought the esper collection last year not expecting much from it, and I've really enjoyed playing Varina, Lich Queen. These themes I really don't know about though. Not a huge fan of morph or populate, madness stands a chance of being quite weak, so I'm probably leaning towards flashback as the deck I'm most interested in, and even then it's probably only for singles for Dralnu, Lich Lord.

[MRHblue]

The singles worth having just have too much scarcity to make that road worth it to me. I would much rather buy them all, support my local shop, and be glad when I scryfall something and it has a Commander printing, know I have a copy.

[motleyslayer]

I'm really excited to see where they take this year's commander products now that they're based off mechanics.

[vandertroll]

Do you think that there's a possibility for adding twists in those mechanics? For example adding the ability to copy nonland permants in the populate deck in order to add more colors and make it more interesting?

[MRHblue]

Doubtful as populate is a static keyword, as are madness and flashback. Morphs have existed in more than one flavor.