Keeper of the Accord

This card simply refuses to let you fall behind. Both its abilities trigger on every opponent’s end step, meaning if you have either the smallest board or the least developed land base at the table, this can generate a stream of tokens or ramp you explosively. Or both. 

While the tokens are nice - particularly in dedicated token or Soldier decks that can make the best use of them - this card’s best utility comes from its ability to ramp you right up to parity with the biggest manabases in play. Yes that will take a few turns if only one opponent is far ahead of you, but if several players with access to green ramp spells have pulled ahead of you in lands deployed, you will likely catch up to them for minimal effort in a single turn cycle. The card advantage and mana development this offers are difficult to match for the price, and it even comes attached to a semi-respectable body to boot. Likely to become a staple in white decks that lack access to more conventional ramp.  

Armored Skyhunter

A niche card to be sure, but one with the potential to do some very broken things. It’s not hard to connect against one of three opponents with a 3/3 flier, which means that in a deck that can take full advantage, this card can quite easily cheat some extremely powerful auras and equipments into play very early in the game. 

You’ll need to make sure your deck has enough auras and equipments to hit, but if you can pull a single Sword of Feast and Famine or a Corrupted Conscience with this, you’ll already be more than happy with the deal. Even better, if you do find an equipment you’ll also get to equip it for free. That means that this card can be truly broken with the most powerful, expensive equipment cards with prohibitive equip costs like Batterskull or Helm of the Host. 

Give this double strike (perhaps with an Embercleave it found for you) and you’ll get two pulls at your deck for each attack. If you find an equipment on the first strike, you’ll even have time to equip it before the second portion of damage is assigned! 

Sphinx of the Second Sun

The ‘beginning phase’ is new territory for Wizards, and looks like an attempt to combine the ‘admin’ phases at the start of a turn into a single keyword. Whether or not you think those three distinct phases needed to be lumped together, the keywording has the potential to allow all sorts of interesting cards like this that manipulate and alter the beginning phase. 

Opposition Agent

A card that will certainly vary in its power level depending on the decks you’re facing, but that can be absolutely oppressive in the right game. Opposition Agent totally shuts down all library-searching EDH staples, including Elvish Reclaimer, Primeval Titan and Demonic Tutor. But that’s only the beginning. 

This card also totally blanks every opposing fetch-land in the game, making them useless while it’s still on the table. All your opponents will achieve by cracking their fetches is to give the lands found directly to you! Even better, thanks to Flash, you can surprise opponents by having the agent enter play while a library-searching ability is still on the stack. You’ll then be able to select whatever legal target you like and cast anything you choose to find, regardless of its colours, and even if the Opposition Agent is later removed. 

 And the possibilities don’t end there. Even in the unlikely event that your opponents offer no library-searching opportunities, you can use Opposition Agent to exploit cards with powerful effects that are designed to be balanced by allowing a library search. It can make Scheming Symmetry a one mana tutor, or be flashed in when an opponent activates your Wishclaw Talisman to steal the best card in their deck. Perhaps the best example of all, which also happens to be in black, is Maralen of the Mornsong. With Opposition Agent in play, she still prevents your opponents drawing any cards, but instead of losing 3 life and searching for any card they choose every upkeep, they lose three life and you search their library for any card you want. A truly cruel way to win if you can assemble it!

Rakshasa Debaser

Expensive yes, but Rakshasa Debaser is great fun and can swing games quickly. As a hard-cast 6/6, the attack trigger will take the best creature from the graveyard of whichever player you choose to attack and put it straight onto the battlefield under your control – and of course you will have chosen the opponent with the juiciest targets. This will be particularly devastating against dedicated self-mill reanimator decks, but by the time you’re casting Rakshasa Debaser the usual carnage of a Commander game will almost invariably have created some targets of opportunity against most deck types. 

Of course, Encore is where Rakshasa Debaser really shines. If you can find a way to get this card in your graveyard and generate 8 mana, each of your opponents will suddenly be faced with a hasty 6/6 that steals the best creature in their graveyard and permanently adds it to your battlefield. If you can copy those tokens with a card like Anointed Procession or Parallel Lives, you’ll swing for 12 power at 3 opponents, and when the dust settles be left with an entire undead army at your disposal. 

Szat's Will

From graveyard abuse to graveyard hate, Szat’s Will is just an all-round excellent card if your commander is in play. Removing the biggest body from each opposing board is already a strong effect, but then immediately exiling them all (along with every other card in their graveyards that might cause you trouble in future) and then giving you what will likely be 5, 6 or in some cases even 10 Thrulls makes it a powerhouse.  

Those Thrulls become chump-block fodder, or far better can be sacrificed for value to cards like Ayara, First of Lochtwain. They are also absolutely perfect victims for a Skullclamp. 

Coastline Marauders

Coastline Marauders starts out relatively unassuming, and by the time it first swings is only likely to be a 3/3 or 4/3 trampler. But like Rakshasa Debaser earlier in our list, the Encore ability is what gives this card the potential for massive impact. 

Encoring this card late in a commander game is likely to generate enormously powerful tramplers hastily attacking each and every one of your opponents. Chump blocking won’t be an option, and even if you can’t kill your opponents outright, they’ll at least be forced to trade some of their better creatures for a token that would vanish at the end of the turn anyway. That’s particularly true if life totals have become precarious, either from early skirmishes or from one too many Ancient Tomb activations. We love the flavour too – this really does give the feeling of getting pillaged by a pirate fleet. 

Port Razer

Speaking of pirate raids, the plundering doesn’t stop with Coastline Marauders. Port Razer is another fun, flavorful design that lets you launch your pirate raid against the entire table. This card allows an aggressive deck to send Port Razer against a single opponent who lacks board presence, whilst potentially sending your main force against your main threat. Then, when Port Razer connects with the weaker player, not only does it untap and create another combat phase, it untaps all of your other creatures. 

 Very importantly, the restriction against attacking a previously attacked player only applies to Port Razer itself. That means that even if Port Razer doesn’t have another board it can attack into, the rest of your board can still swing in wherever you like, including to finish off their original target! Fits best into dedicated pirate decks of course, but is likely to do work in any aggressive red deck. 

Apex Devastator

Cascade, cascade, cascade, cascade. We had to put this card on the list just for that fantastic text box alone! Apex Devastator is a ten mana card, and cheating it into play or reanimating it won’t cut it – you need to generate that mana and cast it as a spell to get the payoff. But if that’s something your deck can realistically do, Apex Devastator should live up to its name. That exorbitantly high mana cost actually becomes an asset when the cascade of cascades starts, and this card will be able to cast a chain of powerful expensive spells up to nine mana each at no cost. 

Of course, you could find a couple of mana rocks and some two drops. But if you hit well, or even better if you have any way of preparing the top of your library before this is cast (we’re looking at you Scroll Rack!) this can create some apocalyptic turns. 

Reshape the Earth

Big, splashy and full of flavour, Reshape the Earth is very far from your typical ramp spell. The enormous nine mana cost signals very clearly that this is NOT intended to build your mana base! This card should be winning the game when you cast it.  

How does dropping ten lands win games? Aside from the obvious massive card and mana advantage on the next turn, the possibilities are endless. Mass landfall triggers, a storm of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle triggers, a huge zombie army with Field of the Dead. in a deck with ten gates, it also gives you the ability to instantly satisfy the win condition on Maze's End!

The critical part of all these and other combo wins is that Reshape the Earth, unlike the vast majority of ramp spells, does not just search up basics. In a well designed deck that means it can both find and trigger your wincon lands, making it extremely reliable. And let's face it at 9 mana it needs to be!

Commander's Plate

This armor is an Eldrazi’s best friend. Just don’t ask how they fit into it. A situational choice at best for commanders with multiple colour identities, this unassuming 1 mana equipment becomes a terrifying threat in a deck with a mono-coloured commander, and even more so for Eldrazi or mono-brown artifact decks with a colorless commander. In those decks, your commander can suddenly become nigh-on impossible for most decks to block or remove, offering the prospect of a swift end at the hands of a bunch of commander damage. 

Decks with colorless commanders will find it hard to justify not including this card. You’ll play it for the protections, but it’s worth noting that the +3/+3 is no joke either, and can significantly speed up the already fast commander damage clock you’ll be creating. 

Jeweled Lotus

And finally, we come to the villain of the piece. Or the hero, depending on your perspective. 

Jeweled Lotus is perhaps the most talked-about card to come out of Commander Legends, and for good reason. Its name and design trigger the PTSD that many who faced Black Lotus before it was banned out of existence still suffer with to this day. But is it as degenerate as its infamous namesake? 

The short answer of course is no. Jeweled lotus’s 3 mana can only be used to cast your commander, vastly restricting its ability to create game winning combos before the game has even really got started. That is very much not to say however that it isn’t a very powerful card. Jeweled Lotus can be played to good effect in almost any Commander deck. It can allow you to rush out commanders that really have no business being in play for many turns yet, and it can do so even if they have very demanding colour requirements. 

Expect to see this card very often catapulting the player that draws it significantly ahead, particularly if their commander is difficult to remove once in play or generates immediate value when it enters. In some cases, this might well put them even further ahead than a turn one Sol Ring, particularly for those running four or five colour commanders. Is it what the format needed? Will it be fun to play against? Those are still open questions, but the design certainly opens up some powerful possibilities, and might offer some much-needed help to more aggressive commander builds.