We’re going to do the Throne of Eldraine review a bit differently this time. I normally grade out each color and the whole set and pick a few favorites. This time, we’re diving right into the favorites, the best of the best. The set is top-shelf, and each color (which includes multicolored and artifact/land) is spot-on. The only cards we’ll leave aside for the time being are those we’ve covered in the last two weeks, the commanders from the Brawl decks. Otherwise, everything is fair game.
To say that this set is flavorful is the understatement of the year. Guy Fieri would look at these cards and scream about Flavor Town.
White
1: Hushbringer
Dies and enters-the-battlefield triggers are such a huge part of the format that Hushbringer will have an immediate and significant impact. I’m not sure how much I’ll play it myself, but I sure will be prepared to deal with it.
I mostly avoided narrower cards on this list, especially the Knight tribal ones, since they’re not so broadly applicable. Although it’ll be a little more expensive to cast, it has worth even if you’re playing only a few Knights. When you play lots, it’s going to get dangerous.
Although it seems like it’ll make a splash in Standard, Charming Prince’s flexibility gives it power in Commander as well. The fact that you return the creature at the beginning of the next end step with the third mode provides lots of play options, such as sweepers or protection from them. Stuff it in a blink deck for more value.
No, it’s not getting banned, because it’s only vaguely reminiscent of Coalition Victory (which is enjoying a great deal of discussion at the moment). Happily Ever After is more like Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance. Plus, you’re giving your opponents an additional card to answer it. As “you win the game” cards go, this one is nicely balanced and provides some compelling play.
A sweet sweeper. Since you’re playing it in your Giant tribal (or at least a high concentration), it’s the only Adventure that made this list. It’s not that the Adventures aren’t interesting; it’s just that there are so many other really good cards that they ended up in the middle of the pack.
Honorable Mentions
Blue
All the “watery women distributing swords” jokes aside, this is a fine, fine card. I’m likely to play it with artifacts that get sacrificed or die for profit. How many times will Solemn Simularcum or Burnished Hart get recast with Emry? Lots, I say.
Maybe it’s the beautiful art; maybe it’s drawing four cards for four mana as an instant. Graveyards are routinely larger in Commander, likely making Into the Story slightly better in this format than in others.
Another card that you’ll be happy to cast with Emry, Witching Well is inexpensive to cast and its activated ability does just want you like—draw cards. It’s even splashable in X/U or X/Y/U decks, since you only need one blue to cast and activate. It’s one of those cards that’s not going to turn a bunch of heads, but is going to do excellent work for you.
You don’t have complete control of when the clock goes off, but you have a good deal. Until it does, it’s a good mana rock that lets you cast the things in your hand so that it’s (close to) empty at midnight. When you’re playing reactive strategies, you’ll frequently have the mana available at end of turn of the player on your right to tick the hand closer to the witching hour.
Make a Faerie, draw a card. Again, Faerie Formation and its ability are splashable since they cost only on blue mana each. Imagine casting this in an Animar, Soul of Elements deck—often a 5/4 flyer for one blue mana, saving you the mana to activate the ability. I’m not a Faerie fan (probably because I got sick of them in Standard way back when), but I’m all over this card.
Honorable Mentions
Black
My pick for the best card in the set. It simply does so much. One of the anxieties of graveyard strategies is getting your nicely setup yard nuked by Bojuka Bog. Now, that will hurt not just the opponent who did it, but everyone else as well. In those reanimation strategies, bringing back those creatures either to your hand or the battlefield deals damage. I’m waiting for someone to say “Traumatize, kill you.” The inevitable sweepers get painful.
Syr Konrad has it all. It’s going to be extremely difficult to stick to my promise of putting only one copy of each new card in to my suite of decks. Syr Konrad fuels every black deck I have.
Speaking of doing everything, people are talking about Rankle plus Waste Not for very good reasons. You have all the flexibility here: if my math is correct, there are eight different options. The nice thing about the creature sacrifice option is that you can attack the player who can’t block in order to get rid of the thing that could block you.
Black is getting all the wow factor cards, it seems. The Cauldron will cost less because of the creatures in your graveyard, which you can then reanimate. Sure, subsequent creatures that die will go into your library—only to be put back into the graveyard by Grenzo, Dungeon Warden. I’ll point out that the ability that puts the cards on the bottom of your library isn’t a replacement, it’s a trigger, so creatures with dies triggers will still go off. It might even be the best of both worlds, as you get the trigger and then the card is safely in your library, not to be messed with by Tormod’s Crypt or Relic of Progenitus.
The way you get more creatures into the graveyard for the activated ability is to mill yourself. I predict this card will be loads of fun and help create crazy battlefield states.
The black hits keep on coming with Wishclaw Talisman. Yes, an opponent gains control of the monkey’s paw. There are multiple ways to just get it back, from Venser, the Sojourner or Animatou, the Fateshifter’s -1 ability in your Esper version (which will of course bring it back untapped and ready to go) to Brooding Saurian in your Golgari, Sultai, Jund, or Abzan deck.
Trample and haste 8/8 for five. Seems okay so far. Gets distracted by Goats. Sure. Provides sacrifice outlets for other players, probably not always desirable, but we’ll deal. The simple answer is to have something like Staff of Domination to just untap Clackbridge Troll after resolving the trigger and before declaring attackers. Even if they do, you gain life and draw a card, so not all is lost. If you want to get really techy, you could blink it with Cloudshift after the trigger resolves. Having haste means it can get right into the Red Zone. Unfortunately Blinky the Eldrazi Displacer brings it back tapped.
If it’s early and no one has creatures besides the Goats, you can always make a deal with that player to attack someone else. In addition to being thematically awesome, there are great strategic upsides to Clackbridge Troll.
Honorable Mentions
Red
It’s not quite double damage, but then again, it’s not doubling damage back to your face. The greatest value you’ll get is going wide with 1/1s. I suspect we’ll be seeing lots of Torbran making appearances in Goblin decks. It’s not tricky, but it sure is effective.
2: Embercleave
Has flash. Good. Costs just two red mana to cast nearly every time. Okay so far. Don’t have to pay to equip it when it enters the battlefield, like our friend Hammer of Nazahn. Nice. Equipped creature gets +1/+1. Sure. We’ve revved the engines a little, but then the rocket ship blasts off with double strike and trample, and somebody’s getting wrecked.
While it would seem that the restrictions make Fires of Invention not particularly playable, it seems relatively easy to mitigate. Instead of casting instants on other players’ turns, you have activated abilities. The two-spell limit—which is a great idea from the development team—is a little tougher to deal with, but you’re building around it. Thankfully, they added the “number of lands you control” clause so that “Armageddon for nothing” isn’t one of the spells. I’m not sure this is great, but I put it in the Top 5 because its restrictions will no doubt breed some creativity.
Such a beautifully designed card from a flavor standpoint. One of red’s issues is card draw, and this effective card draw helps close the gap. Notice that the ability is one long paragraph. That means that even if Robber of the Rich goes away, you’ll still be able to play the card, assuming you fulfill the condition of attacking with a Rogue. Also note that you can’t play lands, since it tells you to cast the card. What’s really sweet is if you cast an Adventure with Robber of the Rich, you’re the one who gets to cast the creature from exile as well, since the abilities are tied together.
This card just makes me happy from a flavor standpoint. Yes, you can have seven of them in your Commander deck. Maybe it’s the time to build Dwarf tribal, led by Depala, Pilot Exemplar.
Honorable Mentions
Green
Okay, hear me out. Turn 2 Hushbringer, Turn 3 Phyrexian Dreadnought plus The Great Henge. And it gives you back the GG right away! Okay, that’s a little ambitious, hand-wise. You won’t always want to wait for the full discount, but there were be plenty of later-game draws of The Great Henge that will not disappoint. Then there’s the whole “+1/+1 counter and draw a card” part. Creatures with persist will be around longer—in fact, with a zero-mana sacrifice outlet and a persist creature, you can go effectively infinite. Of course, you can’t go for-real infinite since you’d deck yourself. Expect to see lots of this really cool card at tables near you soon. Another one that might test my resolve at one card/one deck.
The relevant part of this card for me is the non-prevention of combat damage. That means Fogs, protection, and anything else that might not misbecome the mighty sender. Can’t be blocked by little creatures is fine, especially if you want to buff it up some. Also means no chump blocks if you make this your commander, getting to 21 faster. The extra hit to the planeswalker is just extra spicy sauce on some already-delicious nachos.
The strength here is that it’s an instant. With enough mana, that might be enough to do something with the one (or both) that goes back to your hand, like have an answer to a very tricky problem—such as a Counterspell or a Fog. It’s also nice to be able to save things in your graveyard from targeted removal. All around, just a solid card.
Steelbane Hydra puts me in the mind of a cool older card like Wickerbough Elder or Woodripper. The cost to activate might be a little high, but always having targeted destruction available will get your bacon out of the fire when you most need it. The prevalence of proliferation these days makes Steelbane Hydra or even those older cards viable. Putting more fading counters on your things makes a great deal of sense.
All by itself, Feasting Troll King will get your devotion to green high enough to make something out of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. We haven’t highlighted too many Food token cards in our Commander review. The mechanic is (no pun intended) flavorful, but I’m not sure they’ve done enough with it. I get that not everything can be Treasure or Clue tokens, but I’d hoped for a little more. In the case of the Troll King, if you’ve committed to the Food, then he’ll be tough to keep off the battlefield.
Honorable Mentions
Multicolored
Oko is inexpensive, easily comes down on Turn 2 with a mana creature, and does some strong stuff. Turning a creature, especially a commander, into an Elk is fine. I think I’m even more likely to use that same ability to neutralize a powerful artifact. The exchange isn’t all that great in big creature environments, but there are certainly times when you could use it to great advantage. Arcanis the Ominipotent has a power of three or less.
If you’re not singing the song from Beauty and the Beast when you cast this, then I’m sad for your sadness. Oh, and the card is pretty strong, too. I suspect lots of Solemn Simulacrums and Burnished Harts will be making return trips.
3: Garruk, Cursed Hunstman
In true Garruk fashion (at least the Golgari versions), you’ll need to do some work to get extra loyalty counters on, although I suppose those two Wolf tokens will do a fine enough job.
I’ll do my best to resist the plethora of ways to use Grumgully to go infinite with a persist creature. Fortunately, there aren’t any really good ones in red and only Woodfall Primus in green—but you can make Grumgully one of 99 in a Jund deck, and all bets are off.
It’s less good if you aren’t making at least one copy, then really good if you’re making two. You’re building it into the deck that’s full of both, so that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Honorable Mentions
Colorless Artifact and Land
You don’t really need to cast your commander or attack with it all that many times in order to get advantage from Tome of Legends. In our post-proliferate world, those counters can come in droves. Drawing a card for one mana is the stuff of dreams.
I’m not sure how often untapping the land will be relevant, but when it is, it will be super-relevant. Good on them for making more good cards to help smooth out land bases with basic lands.
One of the most talked-about cards in the set despite being solid and unexciting, Arcane Signet will certainly become a Commander staple, most especially in nongreen decks. If I have to choose between this and Commander’s Sphere, I take the latter, but fortunately, I can have both.
Speaking of mana rocks, one that makes your tribe better is okay by me.
5: Witch’s Oven
I’d most certainly combine Witch’s Oven with Savvy Hunter to get some card draw goodness out of the Food. I get that the bigger creature nets more Food, but since the card is drawn mostly from Hansel and Gretel, who are children, it might have been cooler if the condition for two Food would be a power of zero.
Honorable Mentions
Throne of Eldraine marks a new era in Magic history, changing the way we think about how we get the cards we want. Which type of booster will we get? In the end, whichever one you pick up, it’s going to be filled with outstanding cards for Commander.
Sheldon Menery Deck Database
Check out our comprehensive Deck List Database! Click each section for lists of all my decks.
Signature Decks
These are the decks that define my personal play style to the greatest degree and to some extent lay the original foundation of the format. They’re also the ones you’re most likely to see me bringing along to spell-sling at an event.
The Chromatic Project
The Chromatic Project started as an effort to build at least one deck of all 27 possible color combinations, which was expanded to 32 when we finally got four color commanders. There’s more than one of some combinations, mostly because I have a Temur problem, plus some partner combinations are too enticing to pass up.
Mono-Color
Guilds
Shards and Wedges
Four Color
Five-Color
Partners
The Do-Over Project
The Do-Over Project is the next step after the Chromatic—building a deck with each of the same Commanders, but not repeating any cards save for basic lands (props to Abe Sargent “Next 99” idea). The Do-Over Project is still ongoing because we keep getting saucy new sets with creative and colorful commanders to build new decks with.
If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987) which is just beginning the saga The Lost Cities of Nevinor, ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery Monday Night Gamers.”