Dungeons and Dragons - Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
Instead of printing a bog-standard core set this year, Wizards have decided to appeal to a new cadre of fantasy gaming fans by partnering up with Dungeons and Dragons, one of the greatest fantasy roleplaying franchises of all time. The result is a set that does a great job of capturing the flavor of adventuring, exploring dungeons tackling monsters and fighting huge dragons.
Ordinarily, core sets don't offer much for Commander players outside of reprints, and this core set replacement is designed in a similar way to appeal to new players and to offer a great draft experience. The set is definitely fun to draft, but those tightly-focused draft mechanics like rolling dice and venturing into dungeons - while they are undeniably great flavour wins - will not have a lot of relevance in formats like Commander where the archetypes just don't have enough support.
That's absolutely not to say though that this set shouldn't be of interest to Commander players. There are a few gems here that have potential in EDH, and we've picked out the best of the bunch for you here. So strap on your + 2 Mace, grab your Leather Armor and let's venture into the set together.
Honorable Mention - Bard Class
Wizards created an entirely new type of enchantment for this set called classes. They’re a fun design, and while none are quite strong enough to make the top 10, they deserve to be shown off here. Class cards capture both the importance of classes in classic D&D and the importance of levelling up, and we think they’re a huge flavour win all round.
Bard class is our pick of the bunch for Commander since it synergises so well with really any Gruul Commander, particularly ones with a high CMC that you expect to die fairly regularly.
Bard Class offers your Commander a +1/+1 counter when it enters play, along with every other legendary creature in your deck. Then, with another RG investment, it permanently discounts all your legendary spells by the same amount, meaning the investment immediately pays for itself as soon as you cast any legendary spell with RG in the cost, and continues to accrue mana advantage from there.
Finally, if you can pump five mana into this thing to get it to Level 3, every legendary spell you cast for the rest of the game will start accruing card advantage for you to the tune of up to two cards a turn (assuming you can find the mana to pay for them). That’s a lot of value in colours that sometimes lack card draw.
Check out some of the other class cards from the set as well to fill niches in specific deck types - Cleric Class for example looks great for lifegain decks, and Sorcerer Class looks like a great option for storm decks.
10. Lair of the Hydra
It’s not complicated, but it is very flexible. In an emergency, for just 2 mana this can become a chump blocker to absorb a lot of damage from a big creature on the ground. Its main use though will be as a big threat that survives wraths, and can threaten to hit a player for a huge amount of damage after a board wipe if you have the mana to pour into it. You don’t need to hit for 20 damage with this though – it works fine as a sink for whatever mana you can’t use in a turn as long as one of your opponents doesn’t have great blocks. Best of all, it doesn’t even enter tapped if you draw it in your opener.
There are some other pretty strong utility land options in the set too, and while for our money Lair of the Hydra is the best of them, it’s worth checking out Hall of the Storm Giants, Treasure Vault, and Temple of the Dragon Queen.
9. Old Gnawbone
This is pricey dragon, but one that knows better than most how to pay you back for that big mana investment.
Old Gnawbone’s ability can generate a huge amount of treasure if you can attack with a decent amount of power. Because the ability applies to your whole board, that shouldn’t be too difficult to set up in a dedicated creature deck, and your opponents won’t get a whole turn cycle to react since you can play this thing pre-combat and get the benefit immediately.
Of course, if unanswered even on his own he is a massive evasive threat that pays for himself in mana invested if he connects even once. Gnawbone is even stronger in decks that care about the total number of artifacts you control, or that can get any additional value out of treasures.
8. Tiamat
The dragons just keep on coming, this time with Tiamat. It’s only right and proper that a Dungeons and Dragons set should offer great dragon support, and Tiamat goes overboard with the theme. This is five separate dragon tutor effects stapled to a single card, one that you could even consider as your commander in five colour dragons. Some other options like Scion of the Ur-Dragon are arguably better choices, but Tiamat is surely a must for the 99 in any 5 colour dragon deck.
We didn’t have space on our list for all of the new dragon tribal support in this set, but if you’re thinking of building or improving a dragon list, cards like Minion of the Mighty and Orb of Dragonkind are well worth checking out.
7. The Book of Exalted Deeds
This card offers solid value to a dedicated lifegain deck from its triggered ability alone via a steady stream of evasive angels, but it’s the activated ability that really has us excited. For WWW, you can effectively turn any angel you control into a Platinum Angel, forcing removal from your opponents before they can even think about winning. This allows players to get around the weaknesses of Platinum Angel, particularly its lack of inbuilt protection. A hexproof Sigarda that says “you can’t lose the game” or an indestructible Avacyn, Angel of Hope is going to demand much more specific answers from your opponents than a standard Platinum Angel.
The Book of Exalted Deeds is already making waves in Standard via its infuriating combo with Faceless Haven, which when activated counts as an angel to be targeted by the book, and can then be swiftly allowed to revert to a land that some decks will simply never be able to deal with, making the game unwinnable. That combo of course is open to Commander players too, and although it’s much more inconsistent in a 99 card format, it will give you a good chance of being unbeatable if your opponents can’t answer a land.
6. Guardian of Faith
Mass protection spells like are staples in the format for good reason given the huge importance of wrath effects, so it’s always great to get another option for a similar effect to the archetypal Teferi's Protection.
How does Guardian of Faith measure up to the OG? Well, it doesn’t protect you from damage and spells in the same way, and it can only protect your creatures. Those are significant drawbacks, but Guardian of Faith comes with some upsides. The most obvious is that it grants you some board presence in a pinch with the 3/2 vigilance body at flash speed. On top of that, it grants more flexibility by allowing you to choose which creatures to phase out, meaning you can protect a key attacker for example that’s being removed at instant speed without disrupting the rest of your attack.
Teferi’s Protection is still the superior card, but this is a great additional option if you want multiple versions of a similar effect, all attached to a creature that’s in two relevant tribes to boot.
5. Oswald Fiddlebender
This little gnome might seem unassuming, but he has some major potential, particularly for dedicated artifact decks. His ability functions like a significantly cheaper Birthing Pod for artifacts instead of creatures, and anyone who has played with or against that card knows the potential of that effect to nullify removal and tutor for the exact answer you need.
In a well-built deck, Oswald is a cheap, repeatable tutor that cheats the card you tutor for into play. You just need to make sure you can reliably chain up through your artifact mana costs to build up to the really scary stuff. Even if you’re not building huge sacrifice chains to tutor your scariest expensive artifacts, by doing something as simple as sacrificing a treasure, Oswald can still find your Sol Ring and consider his job done even if he does nothing else for the rest of the game.
4. Volo, Guide to Monsters
Volo looks like a great guy to have a beer with. And also to build a deck around.
This loveable raconteur has the most potential of any card so far on our list as a Commander in his own right. His ability suits a singleton format exceptionally well since providing a variety of creature types so that he will reliably make copies for you is so much easier than in formats where you’ll always want a full playset of the best creatures.
Of course, that copying ability is going to be best with creatures that have great enter the battlefield effects – cards like Mulldrifter spring to mind in his colours. Of course you can also just copy massive powerful creatures and force your opponents to answer them twice!
It’s important to note that the copies are tokens too, which gives him some excellent natural synergies with Simic token decks that can create even more copies via cards like Doubling Season. Why play singleton like everyone else at the table when you can have an army of copies of your best creatures running around?
3. Orcus, Prince of Undeath
Flexible, impactful and always relevant, Orcus looks likely to become a Rakdos staple for builds that can find the necessary mana to fuel his X cost.
For 7 or 8 mana, Orcus is a Toxic Deluge for 3 or 4 that also gives you a 5/3 flying trampler. That’s already excellent, and a great game plan for Rakdos decks that reach the late game and are starting to fall behind on board.
Even more powerful though is the second option, which in a deck with lots of cheap aggressive creatures threatens to return an army of creatures that get to attack immediately, and then proceed to stick around permanently alongside the flying demon that raised them. Just be sure to pack enough signets and similar to get that X as high as possible.
2. Circle of Dreams Druid
Have you ever wanted a Gaea’s Cradle but didn’t want to remortgage your house? Well now you too can add G for each creature you control!
Yes, we know this comes with mana cost and is more vulnerable than Gaea’s Crade, but there’s a reason that land's effect is so feared. At the very least this will demand removal from your opponents, and if it sticks around in a deck built to support it the ramp it offers is enormous. It also happens to be an elf, so it will surely find a guaranteed home in every elf tribal deck in the format.
The triple green cost may restrict this mostly to mono green or at least two colour decks running heavy green, but those decks will want a copy for sure if they have any decent number of creatures to pair with it.
1. Asmodeus the Archfiend
The mighty Griselbrand this is not, but it still comes close enough to warrant the top spot on our list. There is a very good reason that Griselbrand is one of very few cards band in Commander. Paying seven life to draw seven cards is just so exceptionally strong in a 40 life format, especially when it comes attached to a massive demon.
So why are Wizards playing with hellfire again here? Well, it’s a classic ability, and fans of Griselbrand will be very happy to see it return on a playable card. This is clearly an attempt to give players a change to enjoy that ability in a ‘fair’ way. How have they toned things down? Well, firstly, it’s going to cost you a total of ten mana instead of seven to get your first seven cards, even though Asmodeus can come out a turn earlier. Asmodeus himself, while still a sizeable body, loses both flying and – importantly – the lifelink which allowed Griselbrand to pay for his own ability every turn if he could connect in combat. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Asmodeus comes with Binding Contract, a replacement effect that forces you to exile cards instead of drawing them. That means that any card you draw for any reason will cost you life and mana to put into your hand, and if Asmodeus dies, you won’t be able to access those cards at all.
It remains to be seen if all those nerfs will make Asmodeus too weak to see frequent play, but he clearly has huge potential. Players were quick to notice for example that there were ways to access the ability without Binding Contract ever taking effect, most notably via Necrotic Ooze. If you can break him, Asmodeus will reward you handsomely.
Jonathan Widnall
- Jon Widnall