M21 Commander Reprints

Honorable Mention - Dual Lands

M21 reprints the full cycle of Temple dual lands that tap for two colours while allowing you to Scry 1. These are important and valuable parts of many Commander mana bases. They’re a little slow, but offer some nice card selection. You’ll want them for almost any Commander deck.

M21 also offers a full cycle of lifegain dual lands like Scoured Barrens. These are taplands too, but gain you a single life as they enter play. They're not as effective as the scry lands outsider of a dedicated lifegain deck for sure, but these are a great way to improve your EDH mana base even if you're on a tight budget.

10. Scavenging Ooze

Scavenging Ooze is graveyard hate on a stick. With so many Commander decks relying on graveyard recursion or other graveyard shenanigans, the Ooze lets you answer those strategies by removing cards from yards at instant speed if you can hold up a single green mana. Importantly, the ooze generates card advantage whenever it eats a dead creature, adding power and toughness and gaining you life every single time.

In a multiplayer format with lots of wrath effects there will be plenty to feast on, and an unanswered Ooze can grow out of control surprisingly quickly. This card fits well in most decks that run green, particularly if your play-group have a special love for abusing their graveyards.

9. Azusa, Lost but Seeking

A very unassuming 1/2 for 3, Azusa’s power lies entirely in her ability. Commander is a hugely mana-hungry format, and Azusa offers explosive turns that can add three or more mana to your mana base for the rest of the game. Even if you can’t continue to play lands at such a rate, the explosive starts she offers are still very valuable, particularly as your opponents won’t be able to easily peg you back with cards like Vandalblast in the same way they could if you developed an artifact-based mana base.

If you can trawl up enough lands to play two or three per turn consistently, Azusa can really start to show her true potential. Paired with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya or Exploration that allow you to play multiple cards per turn or play cards off the top of your library, or Ramunap Excavator that let you play them from your graveyard, Azusa can see you at least doubling the rate of your mana growth compared to players who are putting down a pedestrian one land a turn. If you can couple her with powerful land-matters cards like Avenger of Zendikar, you can take over the game simply by playing lands, all the while fuelling your high-impact, expensive plays.

8. Rewind

A counterspell with an important twist, Rewind lets you untap up to four lands as it resolves. The extra casting cost is a very significant downside compared to a card like Counterspell, but the land-untapping effect can be extremely valuable in some decks with lots of ways to use that extra mana at instant speed, or that want to hold up multiple counterspells per turn.

Use this with lands like Lotus Field or Ancient Tomb to have it actually generate mana whenever you counter something. You can also pair it with a ‘spells matter’ commander like Talrand, Sky Summoner or – for maximum oppressiveness – a counterspells-matter card like Baral, Chief of Compliance.

7. Ugin, The Spirit Dragon

"Eugene" is a classic character from Magic history, and a very welcome reprint given his historically high price. This particular version has an exceptionally strong board-wipe effect that hits every type of coloured permanent. That effect can even be set to hit exactly the right CMC so that it will damage your opponents’ boards more than yours. He has added value in Commander because, as a colorless planeswalker, he can find a home in any deck that can comfortably reach 8 mana.

Ugin is at his absolute strongest in colorless decks where his board wipe will often hit most nonland permanents your opponents control whilst completely sparing yours. He will also fit in well as top end in any ramp deck, and can help those decks catch up if the time they have spent building their mana base has caused them to fall behind on board.

6. Opt

It’s so hard to argue with opt’s effect at the price of a single blue mana. Even without any synergies, Opt very cheaply digs you up to two cards deeper into your deck whilst getting rid of draws you don’t want. This is a valuable effect in itself in a singleton format, especially if you’re urgently looking for answers. But Opt is of course by far at its best in decks with spells synergies, either those that care about casting spells or having them in the graveyard. Commanders like Kykar, Wind’s Fury that generate the same value for every noncreature spell cast regardless of cost will benefit greatly from good quality cheap cantrips like Opt.

Opt’s low casting cost and card selection also pairs well with commanders that want you to cast multiple spells per turn, like Jori En, Ruin Diver. Best of all, there are double synergies to be had from Niv-Mizzet, Parun, whose two abilities trigger on both the card draw from Opt and the fact that an instant is being cast, netting both an additional card and directing damage to any target.

5. Palladium Myr

It isn’t fancy or complicated, but Palladium Myr does its job well. Once you can untap with it, it generates two mana a turn as a healthy accelerant, even if by no means the strongest in the format. Importantly though, it offers this acceleration despite being colorless, meaning it can be an important piece in decks that otherwise struggle with ramp because they lack access to green.

Decks with Eldrazi commanders will certainly want Palladium Myr, as will some mono-red decks that can struggle to keep up on mana. It’s particularly cute in decks that can support cards like Padeem, Consul of Innovation, who gives artifacts hexproof, or with Saheeli, Sublime Artificer who creates a servo when the Myr is cast and can tick down to have other artifacts copy the Myr and generate even more additional mana for the turn.

4. Fabled Passage

We dealt with the other land reprints in this set in the honorable mentions, but Fabled Passage is a land that deserves a slot on the list of its very own. This land had its first printing quite recently in Throne of Eldraine, and its rapid reprinting in M21 is a reflection of its huge popularity since then.

The card is Evolving Wilds on steroids, allowing you to search up any basic land, but crucially untapping that land if you already control four or more. This allows it to act as excellent fixing in four or five colour decks whilst not slowing mana development in the same way that the tap lands those decks often rely on. You’re very unlikely to regret adding a copy of this to your decks with the greediest mana bases, but that still need to spend their mana efficiently.

3. Heroic Intervention

Board wipes are so important in Commander, where spot removal targeting only a single player’s creature is so much weaker than in two-player Magic. So a card in green that can allow your creatures to simply ignore cards like Wrath of God for only two mana can completely turn a game on its head. This makes the card best in decks that like to build big, dominating boards of creatures, including token decks and more traditional creature decks. It won’t save you from exile wipes like Ugin’s, or from -X/-X wipes like Languish, but many of the most popular wraths will be completely blanked.

The Intervention can also act as a form of counter magic for targeted effects in green decks, preventing some of the most popular spot removal like Swords to Plowshares, or mind control effects like Corrupted Conscience that might otherwise turn your biggest threat into your biggest problem.

2. Solemn Simulacrum

One of the most familiar and reliable creatures in Commander, Solemn Simulacrum is like a warm, comfy blanket made of value. There really is very little way to go wrong with a Solemn. When it enters the battlefield, it ramps and fixes your mana. When it dies – perhaps from being sacrificed or making a block – it pays for itself a second time by drawing a card. Even better, as a colorless creature, it can go in literally any deck that wants it.

Perhaps not as powerful as when it was first printed, Solemn Simulacrum can still pull its weight in many decks. There is some overlap with Palladium Myr here in that this card goes well in colorless and mono red decks looking for a bit of ramp and card advantage, as well as helping with artifact synergies. It’s even stronger in red decks that have commanders that can take full advantage of it, like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Feldon of the Third Path, both of whom can create a token copy that can repeatedly trigger both its ETB ramp ability and its card draw effect on death.

1. Cultivate

Our number one on this list, and by a clear margin, is Cultivate. This unassuming common is in a whopping 50% of all known green Commander decks, and it’s not hard to see why. Cultivate is not only a built in two for one accelerant, pulling two lands from your deck and putting one into play tapped, it’s also an exceptional source of fixing that can find two separate colours you’re missing. It’s for the last reason that it will always be at its absolute best in decks needing to support three, four or even five colours, but there are many decks with simpler manabases that will want this just for the reliable ramp and card advantage it offers.

Cultivate is at its absolute best with a landfall commander like Omnath, Locus of Rage that can make sure you generate advantage from it even when you draw it in the late game, but it will perform for you in pretty much any deck with green.