Commander Roundup: ONE
Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:01 am
Whee, new set, new commanders, Lesgo.
Atraxa, Grand Unifier
I'm rarely a fan of etb commanders. I want my commander to stick around and do things, not just give a big burst of value and then just be a body on the board. Of course, you can flicker it, but given that she's already drawing you a bunch of cards, is that really necessary? Surely you have other things you could do? And of course there's the issue that she costs 7 mana. I could imagine a deck with a lot of flicker that lets you draw and draw, but I could also imagine falling asleep while waiting for that deck to finish going off.
Power: B-
Design: D
Drivnod, Carnage Dominus
So the first thing that occurs to me is that I don't know why I'd want to run him over Teysa Karlov. They both have the same effect, except that teysa gives you access to white (plus the token buff). I do like having restricted colors, but 2 colors is my happy medium. The other thing going on is that he can become indestructible, and that he has a pretty aggressive body. Not necessarily super synergistic with deathrattles, but it does open the door to playing a lot of board wipes and adding commander damage to your repertoire.
Power: C+
Design: B-
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
I guess Yarok, the Desecrated can just go into any color identity, why not. Honestly I'm not a big fan of having a harsh stax effect on my commander - there's a good chance it will make me a huge target for some opponents, so I'd expect a lot more hate to be pointed my way, and I don't have any control over who the ability screws over either, so I might just be harming potential allies. The etb doubling, on the other hand...meh, not really my thing.
Power: B
Design: C-
Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres
When I think of proliferate, my first thought is planeswalkers. Having Ezuri in the CZ makes it potentially very easy to ult, if basically any planeswalker spends a turn untouched, that thing is going nuclear on your next turn. On the downside, costing 7 is quite a bit, especially if you want to do it more than once. The draw ability is interesting. There are certainly a lot of proliferate cards in UG at this point, and most of them become pretty damn strong if you tack on "draw a card". It's come up in other threads, but I'm not a huge fan of proliferate as a mechanic - I like the minigame of planeswalkers trying to ultimate, and proliferate shortcuts that and makes it relatively trivial, compared to defending your planeswalker for multiple turns.
Power: C+
Design: C
Geth, Thane of Contracts
Sorcery-speed activation, my old foe. I don't like being restricted to my own graveyard either. Geth just makes me want to play Chainer, Dementia Master to be honest. I'll gladly pay 2 more mana in exchange for reversing both of those things, plus no tap cost, plus he buffs instead of shrinks. Geth is less vulnerable to spot removal, but his exile clause is harder to circumvent. I don't hate Geth, but I do think the ground he covers is too closely covered by chainer tbh.
Power: C
Design: C
Glissa Sunslayer
Damn, they massacred by boy. That combat trigger is really...not that exciting. Only triggering once per turn (twice with double strike, but why go to the trouble?) and only if you can get through is so boring compared to the original. And draw a card is not very exciting either, and the removal modes are pretty niche. It's nice that you can collab to attack someone and blow up someone else's enchantment or planeswalker (maybe), but I just don't see much room for her to go. Screams 99 to me.
Power: D
Design: D+
Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut
Funny, yes. But in terms of actually playing it, the big restriction is that colorless has pretty limited options for token generation. Which means you're presumably playing a lot of Ornithopter-y creatures, just cheap bodies with evasion. And of course you're incredibly vulnerable to removal. I don't think there's any world where this guy is actually good, and in terms of playing it I imagine it's pretty boring considering you don't have a lot of decisions to make, but I do like the joke.
Power: D
Design: C
Jor Kadeen, First Goldwarden
They keep making commanders that are supposed to motivate you to put one equipment on a bunch of individual creatures and they just do not get there. The juice is definitely not worth the squeeze. What this guy actually says is "when I attack, +1/+1 and draw a card". Which isn't the worst, but it's definitely not exciting.
Power: D
Design: D
Karumonix, the Rat King
Toxic 1 feels like a pretty unimpressive tribal buff tbh. If you spend a bunch of time getting rats through for damage, and then someone removes your commander, that work presumably becomes irrelevant unless you moonlight in proliferate as well as rat tribal. It also doesn't really help your mediocre tribe get through for combat damage in the first place. Sure, tokens make it more plausible, but those typically don't synergize with the etb effect. I know I'm far more down on tribal decks than most commander players, but looking at this guy just makes my eyes glaze over. He looks so boring.
Power: D
Design: F+
Kemba, Kha Enduring
More "spread out your equipment!" commanders. This guy I like a lot more, though. Giving your equipped creatures +1/+1 is very meh, but being able to pay 5 for a pre-equipped 3/3 at instant speed is interesting. If only Sunforger was in mono-white we could do some real shenanigans. In the current world, though, the best shenanigans I could find was Heartseeker, though the tap cost really reduces the efficacy. I guess it kinda gives flash plus a 2/2 body to the equip cost? Of course we could just do the thing they want us to do, and slap swords onto your tokens and go to town. There's also a handful of decent nontoken cats in mono-white, though beyond Kemba there's not a ton of tribal action. I do wish there was a bit more you could do with her, but I do like how they're thinking.
Power: C+
Design: B+
Kethek, Crucible Goliath
I'm concerned that there's going to be some broken birthing pod garbage deck to come out of this guy, but offhand I can't think of any obvious way to break him. I like how he makes me think really carefully about my curve and how many creatures I want at each mana value. It's interesting that he specifies nonlegendary - my first thought was that you could load him up with legendaries a la Jalira, Master Polymorphist so you hit your good stuff, but on second thought I don't think that makes a ton of sense - you're still restricted by mana values, so if there's a 3mv creature you want to tutor, you could just play 4mv creatures, no reason to make them legendary. If there are multiple creatures you want of different mana values, I guess you could play legends that coincide in mv with the more expensive targets, but that seems niche. If you ran a bunch of etb-value 3-drops, you could tutor recurrable 2-drops like Bloodghast and go ham with Grave Pact. Or you could play etb-value 2-drops and go ham with slower value-generating 1-drops like Dragonmaster Outcast. Or just play a lot of etb-value creatures? I dunno, definitely a lot of ways to build him. Top 3 most interesting for sure.
Power: B
Design: A-
Kinzu of the Bleak Coven
Main thing I can think of here is etb value with sac outlets. Not much point to value-over-time creatures, since they'll just pick off your commander first. You could go for infect I guess, but then it'd probably be easier to just play infect in the first place. Interesting that it's "you control" since you could sac your opponent's stolen creatures and sac for value, but that's not too common in black. The life cost does limit it a little, but Blood Artist obviously goes a long way towards mitigating that downside.
Power: B-
Design: B-
Malcator, Purity Overseer
First thought was to use the splicers to make your golems spicier, but on review there aren't a lot of those available. Of course it's relatively easy to get his trigger off every turn in a properly-built deck, and flicker is another way to get it going. At the end of the day, though, you're just making 3/3 tokens, so it's not exactly an incredible payoff.
Power: D+
Design: C
Melira, the Living Cure
I can't think of one reason to run this over Saffi Eriksdotter. Well, I guess Phyrexian Unlife, but I can't think of a second reason. I built Saffi a million years ago, and outside of combos she's not terribly exciting - you can get double the etb value from a creature, or protect yourself a bit from board wipes, but she's more of a role player in her own deck, and Melira is significantly worse. At least you get Watchwolf stats?
Power: D
Design: D
Migloz, Maze Crusher
In theory he synergizes with proliferate, but in practice each counter does very little - you'd be much better off putting a +1/+1 on him and proliferating that, rather than activating his second ability, or maybe blinking him though that's rare in RG. The artifact/enchantment removal option is nice, but being on-board and in-cz makes it hard to walk into. Biggest selling point really is the 4/4 body, but that's obviously not so exciting here. Feels pretty 99-ish, or maybe just limited-ish.
Power: C-
Design: C
Mondrak, Glory Dominus
More doubling, yay. (imagine that sentence is punctuated with whatever the opposite of an exclamation point is) This guy seems like a pretty easy build, just produce a ton of creature tokens and then scrouge around for a white overrun (Cathars' Crusade? Jazal Goldmane?) to finish the job. The indestructibility is nice protection against board wipes, and some targeted removal, though costing mana makes it harder to hold up. The art is nice looking, but I get serious First Order vibes. At least it's monocolor, so it's not without downsides. Whenever a card doubles something, though, you know I'm running the opposite direction.
Power: B+
Design: D
Ovika, Enigma Goliath
Ovika gives me The Locust God vibes. It's a bit more expensive, and arguably easier to kill. In terms of token production, it's hard to beat the efficiency of Wheel of Fortune in locust god, but ovika is a lot more flexible with how it generates value. Any ovika deck is going to want a lot of ramp, which also gives ovika a solid starting place to produce tokens. Of course you'll also want some overrun effects, but the tokens lacking evasion is an issue. Shared Animosity seems good. Ovika definitely strikes me as the sort of commander that gets removed pretty quickly despite the ward, and in general I don't like commanders that reliably win the game if someone doesn't kill them right away. I'm not positive that's what ovika is, but it sure seems like that's what ovika is.
Power: B
Design: D+
Rhuk, Hexgold Nabber
I've talked about this guy in other threads, but to summarize: why does this exist? Its ability seems so useless to me. Any voltron deck is going to want to load up its commander asap, and he only costs 3. Are you going to fart around putting your equipment onto an Ornithopter, just so you can play your 3-drop on turn 6 and get a "surprise" hit? I think he needs some more text to make any sense to me. My favorite idea was that he puts his equipment onto another creature when HE dies, so at least there's a good reason why equipment might be attached to another creature? Anyway, as-is, he's just terrible.
Power: F
Design: D-
Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold
Interesting callback to Hero of Bladehold. Sorta similar to Hostility insofar as you're trading immediate damage for later payoff. I think the main synergy I notice is wanting evasion, so you can force through attacks both to generate tokens, and to connect with them. Overruns don't really work since you're presumably trying to kill with infect. Behind the Scenes might be good here. The trickiest bit here is getting a single, high-powered creature to connect. I guess you could temporarily boost with combat tricks, but I'm not sure that's worth it for a couple more tokens. Maybe if you're doing it with double strike? It does seem risky to count on your board not getting interacted with, but it's an interesting design at least, if a bit wordy.
Power: C
Design: B-
Skrelv, Defector Mite
Strip away all the extraneous words, and you get down to what skrelv mostly is: Mother of Runes. He can also get a creature through for a point of infect, but doing that once per turn feels glacially slow. Of course, you can speed things up with double strike, untaps, infect creatures, and proliferate. We don't get 1-drop commanders very often, and I like that he's not oriented towards being a voltron commander, while still generating value quickly.
Power: C+
Design: B
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Offhand, I think slobad might not be a combo wombo commander, thanks to the tap cost. I'm happy with Food Chain-type ramp so long as it's not repeatable. I think he's mostly trying to generate value either by ramping out huge artifacts quickly, or by sacrificing artifacts with death triggers and/or etb triggers. That's not the most exciting, but it's a different enough take from Daretti, Scrap Savant that I think it could be cool. If nothing else, it's a very flavorful ability, and I can dig that.
Power: C-
Design: C+
Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
This is probably my favorite of the dominuses. If there's one thing that could use being doubled in commander, it's face damage. I'm hoping that the more equally-applied boost of Solphim will make him less on-rails than Torbran, Thane of all his decks being exactly the same. The indestructibility cost is properly significant, but could be mitigated by madness or flashback or some other grave synergies. It makes Avacyn's Judgment actually a viable card, so that's cool. In general I'd say that face damage is some of the most significant-restrained effects in magic, simply because it's so dangerous in 20-life formats, so I don't think it's likely to be TOO busted. I'll tell you one thing - he's definitely going into my Kaervek the Merciless deck.
Power: B
Design: B
Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus
Yuck, proliferate AND doubling, my favorite. (reverse-exclamation-point again) Being restricted to mono-blue definitely cuts into the planeswalker selection, and makes it pretty difficult to build a big board of +1/+1 counter boys to go along that route, but it definitely speeds up the poison clock. There's 25 proliferate cards available in mono-blue, and a decent chunk of those are 1-shots and/or too trashy to really want to play, so the ceiling might be somewhat capped here. Still, I don't think there's much room for me to like this guy.
Power: B-
Design: D
Thrun, Breaker of Silence
Honestly seems worse than the original version, Thrun, the Last Troll. Guess he should have kept his mouth shut. The hexproof is less reliable, and the regen seems a lot better to me than indestrucible-except-when-you-really-need-it. The trample and +1/+1 is fine, but I'd rather save the mana. If you're putting equipment on him, he'll be pretty evasive quickly enough anyway. At any rate, pretty boring voltron option, not much to see here.
Power: D+
Design: D
Unctus, Grand Metatect
I don't think the +1/+1 artifact buff is enough to get excited about, so I suspect this mostly plays as a tap-ability-tribal commander. Any random 1-drop with a tap ability becoming a looter is nice, Archivist becoming "t:draw, discard, draw" isn't bad. There's not a lot of blue madness, but there's bound to be other graveyard value to be had, especially if you're ripping through your deck. I don't think it'll be very popular, but it's kind of interesting.
Power: C
Design: B-
Venser, Corpse Puppet
Hard to see where this really goes anywhere with that triggered ability. A 3/3 isn't very exciting, especially when it's capped at one, and the flying/lifelink is even more boring. I think I'd just build him as infect with proliferate, and just use the 3/3 as a chumper while everyone tries to kill me before getting poisoned out. Too bad he can't give himself flying. Design feels very limited-focused to me.
Power: D
Design: C-
Vraan, Executioner Thane
Thank god for that once-per-turn clause. Still seems pretty good, but the ceiling is a lot lower. Aristocrats is rarely my thing, and being mono-black is pretty restrictive, but he's definitely going into the 99 for a lot of decks, and he'll be the commander occasionally. Ophiomancer loves him.
Power: C+
Design: C
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus
Pretty huge cost on that indestructibility, considering you're probably trying to play mostly decent-stat creatures. The cost seems pretty conservative here, which I'm happy about, but it's definitely not the sort of thing I'm interested in.
Power: B-
Design: C-
Bonus round: ONC
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa
One of those commanders that wants you to halfway-kill an opponent so you can generate value. That sort of play pattern seems pretty hard to wrap my head around tbh - If you're going to zerg someone down, good value seems like killing them right away to reduce the number of opponents. Someone sitting on 3 poison counters probably isn't going to let your commander live very often anyway. If I wanted to play off the top of my opponents decks, I'd just run Uvilda, Dean of Perfection // Nassari, Dean of Expression. I guess being face-down is something, and being able to cast them indefinitely is nice, but it's not worth the setup cost imo. Plus getting to 3 is super awkward with a toxic 2 commander. I like casting enemy cards, but mashing it together with infect feels very...why?
Power: C-
Design: D
Neyali, Suns' Vanguard
I'd want to build this with flying tokens to take maximum advantage from the draw effect, and decent advantage of the double strike. That's a fairly restrictive set of cards, but the commander does do a good job of bringing that deck together. I dunno, she's fine I guess. There are too many of these damn things, jfc.
Power: C+
Design: C+
Otharri, Suns' Glory
That recursion cost is ridiculously cheap, though it does make the "haste" part pretty irrelevant. As a token producer, Otharri is pretty solid on its own, so anything that synergizes off token production is going to be good. I'd also run at least a handful of rebels to enable the recursion after a wipe, even if it delays you a turn.
Power: B-
Design: B
Vishgraz, the Doomhive
Hooray, let's partially-poison my opponents so I can ram a 7/7 menace through combat for...one more poison counter? I dunno, a lot of this toxic stuff just makes no sense to me, the way it's split between damage and infect. In Vishgraz's case, I'd ignore everything in her text box except the etb effect, and just blink her a ton to generate an infect army. Lot simpler than whatever nonsense she "wants" you to do.
Power: C
Design: D
Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant
I like this as a payoff for artifacts. I like that it rewards you both for having cheap artifacts, and for having big artifacts, and I also like that it gives immediate payoff but doesn't need to actually connect to get value. Realistically I think he's probably mostly a voltron commander, but it could also be interesting to run a bunch of free artifacts and then a handful of huge bruisers like Gate to Phyrexia.
Power: B
Design: B
Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch
Hooray, myr now have a tribal lord, that's definitely a thing we needed. (reverse-exclamation-point) He does do a reasonable job of tying to together the mana-producing myr I guess, but that's a tiny fraction of the available myr. Tbh there's not very many myr around, and many of them are, to put it mildly, poop. So an optimal version of this deck is probably mostly running changlings to meet its quota - literally just "whatever has the myr tag is good enough". I seriously do not understand tribal enthusiasts.
Finally, done. I'd say my top 3 to actually build are:
1) Kethek, Crucible Goliath
2) Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
3) Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant
Atraxa, Grand Unifier
I'm rarely a fan of etb commanders. I want my commander to stick around and do things, not just give a big burst of value and then just be a body on the board. Of course, you can flicker it, but given that she's already drawing you a bunch of cards, is that really necessary? Surely you have other things you could do? And of course there's the issue that she costs 7 mana. I could imagine a deck with a lot of flicker that lets you draw and draw, but I could also imagine falling asleep while waiting for that deck to finish going off.
Power: B-
Design: D
Drivnod, Carnage Dominus
So the first thing that occurs to me is that I don't know why I'd want to run him over Teysa Karlov. They both have the same effect, except that teysa gives you access to white (plus the token buff). I do like having restricted colors, but 2 colors is my happy medium. The other thing going on is that he can become indestructible, and that he has a pretty aggressive body. Not necessarily super synergistic with deathrattles, but it does open the door to playing a lot of board wipes and adding commander damage to your repertoire.
Power: C+
Design: B-
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
I guess Yarok, the Desecrated can just go into any color identity, why not. Honestly I'm not a big fan of having a harsh stax effect on my commander - there's a good chance it will make me a huge target for some opponents, so I'd expect a lot more hate to be pointed my way, and I don't have any control over who the ability screws over either, so I might just be harming potential allies. The etb doubling, on the other hand...meh, not really my thing.
Power: B
Design: C-
Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres
When I think of proliferate, my first thought is planeswalkers. Having Ezuri in the CZ makes it potentially very easy to ult, if basically any planeswalker spends a turn untouched, that thing is going nuclear on your next turn. On the downside, costing 7 is quite a bit, especially if you want to do it more than once. The draw ability is interesting. There are certainly a lot of proliferate cards in UG at this point, and most of them become pretty damn strong if you tack on "draw a card". It's come up in other threads, but I'm not a huge fan of proliferate as a mechanic - I like the minigame of planeswalkers trying to ultimate, and proliferate shortcuts that and makes it relatively trivial, compared to defending your planeswalker for multiple turns.
Power: C+
Design: C
Geth, Thane of Contracts
Sorcery-speed activation, my old foe. I don't like being restricted to my own graveyard either. Geth just makes me want to play Chainer, Dementia Master to be honest. I'll gladly pay 2 more mana in exchange for reversing both of those things, plus no tap cost, plus he buffs instead of shrinks. Geth is less vulnerable to spot removal, but his exile clause is harder to circumvent. I don't hate Geth, but I do think the ground he covers is too closely covered by chainer tbh.
Power: C
Design: C
Glissa Sunslayer
Damn, they massacred by boy. That combat trigger is really...not that exciting. Only triggering once per turn (twice with double strike, but why go to the trouble?) and only if you can get through is so boring compared to the original. And draw a card is not very exciting either, and the removal modes are pretty niche. It's nice that you can collab to attack someone and blow up someone else's enchantment or planeswalker (maybe), but I just don't see much room for her to go. Screams 99 to me.
Power: D
Design: D+
Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut
Funny, yes. But in terms of actually playing it, the big restriction is that colorless has pretty limited options for token generation. Which means you're presumably playing a lot of Ornithopter-y creatures, just cheap bodies with evasion. And of course you're incredibly vulnerable to removal. I don't think there's any world where this guy is actually good, and in terms of playing it I imagine it's pretty boring considering you don't have a lot of decisions to make, but I do like the joke.
Power: D
Design: C
Jor Kadeen, First Goldwarden
They keep making commanders that are supposed to motivate you to put one equipment on a bunch of individual creatures and they just do not get there. The juice is definitely not worth the squeeze. What this guy actually says is "when I attack, +1/+1 and draw a card". Which isn't the worst, but it's definitely not exciting.
Power: D
Design: D
Karumonix, the Rat King
Toxic 1 feels like a pretty unimpressive tribal buff tbh. If you spend a bunch of time getting rats through for damage, and then someone removes your commander, that work presumably becomes irrelevant unless you moonlight in proliferate as well as rat tribal. It also doesn't really help your mediocre tribe get through for combat damage in the first place. Sure, tokens make it more plausible, but those typically don't synergize with the etb effect. I know I'm far more down on tribal decks than most commander players, but looking at this guy just makes my eyes glaze over. He looks so boring.
Power: D
Design: F+
Kemba, Kha Enduring
More "spread out your equipment!" commanders. This guy I like a lot more, though. Giving your equipped creatures +1/+1 is very meh, but being able to pay 5 for a pre-equipped 3/3 at instant speed is interesting. If only Sunforger was in mono-white we could do some real shenanigans. In the current world, though, the best shenanigans I could find was Heartseeker, though the tap cost really reduces the efficacy. I guess it kinda gives flash plus a 2/2 body to the equip cost? Of course we could just do the thing they want us to do, and slap swords onto your tokens and go to town. There's also a handful of decent nontoken cats in mono-white, though beyond Kemba there's not a ton of tribal action. I do wish there was a bit more you could do with her, but I do like how they're thinking.
Power: C+
Design: B+
Kethek, Crucible Goliath
I'm concerned that there's going to be some broken birthing pod garbage deck to come out of this guy, but offhand I can't think of any obvious way to break him. I like how he makes me think really carefully about my curve and how many creatures I want at each mana value. It's interesting that he specifies nonlegendary - my first thought was that you could load him up with legendaries a la Jalira, Master Polymorphist so you hit your good stuff, but on second thought I don't think that makes a ton of sense - you're still restricted by mana values, so if there's a 3mv creature you want to tutor, you could just play 4mv creatures, no reason to make them legendary. If there are multiple creatures you want of different mana values, I guess you could play legends that coincide in mv with the more expensive targets, but that seems niche. If you ran a bunch of etb-value 3-drops, you could tutor recurrable 2-drops like Bloodghast and go ham with Grave Pact. Or you could play etb-value 2-drops and go ham with slower value-generating 1-drops like Dragonmaster Outcast. Or just play a lot of etb-value creatures? I dunno, definitely a lot of ways to build him. Top 3 most interesting for sure.
Power: B
Design: A-
Kinzu of the Bleak Coven
Main thing I can think of here is etb value with sac outlets. Not much point to value-over-time creatures, since they'll just pick off your commander first. You could go for infect I guess, but then it'd probably be easier to just play infect in the first place. Interesting that it's "you control" since you could sac your opponent's stolen creatures and sac for value, but that's not too common in black. The life cost does limit it a little, but Blood Artist obviously goes a long way towards mitigating that downside.
Power: B-
Design: B-
Malcator, Purity Overseer
First thought was to use the splicers to make your golems spicier, but on review there aren't a lot of those available. Of course it's relatively easy to get his trigger off every turn in a properly-built deck, and flicker is another way to get it going. At the end of the day, though, you're just making 3/3 tokens, so it's not exactly an incredible payoff.
Power: D+
Design: C
Melira, the Living Cure
I can't think of one reason to run this over Saffi Eriksdotter. Well, I guess Phyrexian Unlife, but I can't think of a second reason. I built Saffi a million years ago, and outside of combos she's not terribly exciting - you can get double the etb value from a creature, or protect yourself a bit from board wipes, but she's more of a role player in her own deck, and Melira is significantly worse. At least you get Watchwolf stats?
Power: D
Design: D
Migloz, Maze Crusher
In theory he synergizes with proliferate, but in practice each counter does very little - you'd be much better off putting a +1/+1 on him and proliferating that, rather than activating his second ability, or maybe blinking him though that's rare in RG. The artifact/enchantment removal option is nice, but being on-board and in-cz makes it hard to walk into. Biggest selling point really is the 4/4 body, but that's obviously not so exciting here. Feels pretty 99-ish, or maybe just limited-ish.
Power: C-
Design: C
Mondrak, Glory Dominus
More doubling, yay. (imagine that sentence is punctuated with whatever the opposite of an exclamation point is) This guy seems like a pretty easy build, just produce a ton of creature tokens and then scrouge around for a white overrun (Cathars' Crusade? Jazal Goldmane?) to finish the job. The indestructibility is nice protection against board wipes, and some targeted removal, though costing mana makes it harder to hold up. The art is nice looking, but I get serious First Order vibes. At least it's monocolor, so it's not without downsides. Whenever a card doubles something, though, you know I'm running the opposite direction.
Power: B+
Design: D
Ovika, Enigma Goliath
Ovika gives me The Locust God vibes. It's a bit more expensive, and arguably easier to kill. In terms of token production, it's hard to beat the efficiency of Wheel of Fortune in locust god, but ovika is a lot more flexible with how it generates value. Any ovika deck is going to want a lot of ramp, which also gives ovika a solid starting place to produce tokens. Of course you'll also want some overrun effects, but the tokens lacking evasion is an issue. Shared Animosity seems good. Ovika definitely strikes me as the sort of commander that gets removed pretty quickly despite the ward, and in general I don't like commanders that reliably win the game if someone doesn't kill them right away. I'm not positive that's what ovika is, but it sure seems like that's what ovika is.
Power: B
Design: D+
Rhuk, Hexgold Nabber
I've talked about this guy in other threads, but to summarize: why does this exist? Its ability seems so useless to me. Any voltron deck is going to want to load up its commander asap, and he only costs 3. Are you going to fart around putting your equipment onto an Ornithopter, just so you can play your 3-drop on turn 6 and get a "surprise" hit? I think he needs some more text to make any sense to me. My favorite idea was that he puts his equipment onto another creature when HE dies, so at least there's a good reason why equipment might be attached to another creature? Anyway, as-is, he's just terrible.
Power: F
Design: D-
Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold
Interesting callback to Hero of Bladehold. Sorta similar to Hostility insofar as you're trading immediate damage for later payoff. I think the main synergy I notice is wanting evasion, so you can force through attacks both to generate tokens, and to connect with them. Overruns don't really work since you're presumably trying to kill with infect. Behind the Scenes might be good here. The trickiest bit here is getting a single, high-powered creature to connect. I guess you could temporarily boost with combat tricks, but I'm not sure that's worth it for a couple more tokens. Maybe if you're doing it with double strike? It does seem risky to count on your board not getting interacted with, but it's an interesting design at least, if a bit wordy.
Power: C
Design: B-
Skrelv, Defector Mite
Strip away all the extraneous words, and you get down to what skrelv mostly is: Mother of Runes. He can also get a creature through for a point of infect, but doing that once per turn feels glacially slow. Of course, you can speed things up with double strike, untaps, infect creatures, and proliferate. We don't get 1-drop commanders very often, and I like that he's not oriented towards being a voltron commander, while still generating value quickly.
Power: C+
Design: B
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Offhand, I think slobad might not be a combo wombo commander, thanks to the tap cost. I'm happy with Food Chain-type ramp so long as it's not repeatable. I think he's mostly trying to generate value either by ramping out huge artifacts quickly, or by sacrificing artifacts with death triggers and/or etb triggers. That's not the most exciting, but it's a different enough take from Daretti, Scrap Savant that I think it could be cool. If nothing else, it's a very flavorful ability, and I can dig that.
Power: C-
Design: C+
Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
This is probably my favorite of the dominuses. If there's one thing that could use being doubled in commander, it's face damage. I'm hoping that the more equally-applied boost of Solphim will make him less on-rails than Torbran, Thane of all his decks being exactly the same. The indestructibility cost is properly significant, but could be mitigated by madness or flashback or some other grave synergies. It makes Avacyn's Judgment actually a viable card, so that's cool. In general I'd say that face damage is some of the most significant-restrained effects in magic, simply because it's so dangerous in 20-life formats, so I don't think it's likely to be TOO busted. I'll tell you one thing - he's definitely going into my Kaervek the Merciless deck.
Power: B
Design: B
Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus
Yuck, proliferate AND doubling, my favorite. (reverse-exclamation-point again) Being restricted to mono-blue definitely cuts into the planeswalker selection, and makes it pretty difficult to build a big board of +1/+1 counter boys to go along that route, but it definitely speeds up the poison clock. There's 25 proliferate cards available in mono-blue, and a decent chunk of those are 1-shots and/or too trashy to really want to play, so the ceiling might be somewhat capped here. Still, I don't think there's much room for me to like this guy.
Power: B-
Design: D
Thrun, Breaker of Silence
Honestly seems worse than the original version, Thrun, the Last Troll. Guess he should have kept his mouth shut. The hexproof is less reliable, and the regen seems a lot better to me than indestrucible-except-when-you-really-need-it. The trample and +1/+1 is fine, but I'd rather save the mana. If you're putting equipment on him, he'll be pretty evasive quickly enough anyway. At any rate, pretty boring voltron option, not much to see here.
Power: D+
Design: D
Unctus, Grand Metatect
I don't think the +1/+1 artifact buff is enough to get excited about, so I suspect this mostly plays as a tap-ability-tribal commander. Any random 1-drop with a tap ability becoming a looter is nice, Archivist becoming "t:draw, discard, draw" isn't bad. There's not a lot of blue madness, but there's bound to be other graveyard value to be had, especially if you're ripping through your deck. I don't think it'll be very popular, but it's kind of interesting.
Power: C
Design: B-
Venser, Corpse Puppet
Hard to see where this really goes anywhere with that triggered ability. A 3/3 isn't very exciting, especially when it's capped at one, and the flying/lifelink is even more boring. I think I'd just build him as infect with proliferate, and just use the 3/3 as a chumper while everyone tries to kill me before getting poisoned out. Too bad he can't give himself flying. Design feels very limited-focused to me.
Power: D
Design: C-
Vraan, Executioner Thane
Thank god for that once-per-turn clause. Still seems pretty good, but the ceiling is a lot lower. Aristocrats is rarely my thing, and being mono-black is pretty restrictive, but he's definitely going into the 99 for a lot of decks, and he'll be the commander occasionally. Ophiomancer loves him.
Power: C+
Design: C
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus
Pretty huge cost on that indestructibility, considering you're probably trying to play mostly decent-stat creatures. The cost seems pretty conservative here, which I'm happy about, but it's definitely not the sort of thing I'm interested in.
Power: B-
Design: C-
Bonus round: ONC
Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa
One of those commanders that wants you to halfway-kill an opponent so you can generate value. That sort of play pattern seems pretty hard to wrap my head around tbh - If you're going to zerg someone down, good value seems like killing them right away to reduce the number of opponents. Someone sitting on 3 poison counters probably isn't going to let your commander live very often anyway. If I wanted to play off the top of my opponents decks, I'd just run Uvilda, Dean of Perfection // Nassari, Dean of Expression. I guess being face-down is something, and being able to cast them indefinitely is nice, but it's not worth the setup cost imo. Plus getting to 3 is super awkward with a toxic 2 commander. I like casting enemy cards, but mashing it together with infect feels very...why?
Power: C-
Design: D
Neyali, Suns' Vanguard
I'd want to build this with flying tokens to take maximum advantage from the draw effect, and decent advantage of the double strike. That's a fairly restrictive set of cards, but the commander does do a good job of bringing that deck together. I dunno, she's fine I guess. There are too many of these damn things, jfc.
Power: C+
Design: C+
Otharri, Suns' Glory
That recursion cost is ridiculously cheap, though it does make the "haste" part pretty irrelevant. As a token producer, Otharri is pretty solid on its own, so anything that synergizes off token production is going to be good. I'd also run at least a handful of rebels to enable the recursion after a wipe, even if it delays you a turn.
Power: B-
Design: B
Vishgraz, the Doomhive
Hooray, let's partially-poison my opponents so I can ram a 7/7 menace through combat for...one more poison counter? I dunno, a lot of this toxic stuff just makes no sense to me, the way it's split between damage and infect. In Vishgraz's case, I'd ignore everything in her text box except the etb effect, and just blink her a ton to generate an infect army. Lot simpler than whatever nonsense she "wants" you to do.
Power: C
Design: D
Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant
I like this as a payoff for artifacts. I like that it rewards you both for having cheap artifacts, and for having big artifacts, and I also like that it gives immediate payoff but doesn't need to actually connect to get value. Realistically I think he's probably mostly a voltron commander, but it could also be interesting to run a bunch of free artifacts and then a handful of huge bruisers like Gate to Phyrexia.
Power: B
Design: B
Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch
Hooray, myr now have a tribal lord, that's definitely a thing we needed. (reverse-exclamation-point) He does do a reasonable job of tying to together the mana-producing myr I guess, but that's a tiny fraction of the available myr. Tbh there's not very many myr around, and many of them are, to put it mildly, poop. So an optimal version of this deck is probably mostly running changlings to meet its quota - literally just "whatever has the myr tag is good enough". I seriously do not understand tribal enthusiasts.
Finally, done. I'd say my top 3 to actually build are:
1) Kethek, Crucible Goliath
2) Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
3) Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant