Back to Innistrad
It's finally here - the long anticipated return to Innistrad, plane of fear and horror. Everyone loves the spooky vibe of Innistrad, with its stitched-together Skaab zombies, resident demonic cults, hordes of werewolves and constant ghostly hauntings. It's Halloween all the time on Innistrad, and it's no coincidence Wizards have timed this release in the run-up to the autumn season.
This set is another flavour triumph as Innistrad sets always are. This time the story revolves around the battle to restore balance to night and day and thereby hold back a rising tide of monsters - yes even on Innistrad there are unacceptable levels of monsters! That theme is nicely reflected in the card design too, especially in the day/night mechanic that we'll talk about below.
So the flavour is on-point, but when it comes to your Commander deck, which cards are frightful and which are devilishly good? Descend with us into the depths of this article to find out our top 10 treats from the plane or horror.
Honorable Mention - Mask of Griselbrand
Griselbrand may be banned for being straight up overpowered in Commander, but who cares when you can cosplay as him?
This equipment is a fun homage to Griselbrand and his key abilities – flying, lifelink, and - by far the most important – drawing an absolute tonne of cards simply by paying life out of your inflated Commander life total. The mask offers you all that classic power, though sadly with some pretty important restrictions.
First, you’re going to need a chunky body to put this on to get a good amount of card draw from that on-death trigger, as well as to take best advantage of the evasion and lifelink.
Second, and even more importantly, unlike the real Griselbrand you can’t trigger that card draw whenever you want. The creature is going to need to die, which means ideally you’ll want access to sac outlets to make sure that happens. Of course, if your opponents let you keep a huge flying lifelinking threat that isn’t exactly a bad thing! Just don’t let it get exiled.
Not quite strong enough to make it to our main list since it adds no power or toughness and is pretty costly to equip, but this card certainly still has potential, and we love the respect being shown by the cultists of Innistrad to the greatest evil of them all.
Not quite strong enough to make it to our main list since it adds no power or toughness and is pretty costly to equip, but this card certainly still has potential, and we love the respect being shown by the cultists of Innistrad to the greatest evil of them all.
10. Vadrik, Astral Archmage
The Day/Night mechanic from Midnight Hunt widens and solidifies the theme introduced with the original flipping werewolves. It’s exactly the same mechanic – casting two or more spells in a turn makes the next turn day, casting none makes it night. That cycle only begins once a card with Daybound or Nightbound enters play, or when a card like Vadrik states that “it becomes day/night” when it enters play.
Importantly for a Commander mechanic, this day/night cycle does not depend on your whole deck working with it synergistically. It can operate quite well on a single card, since once triggered, the cycle continues for the entire game. Since in Commander each turn cycle involves four turns, most games should see quite frequent flips between day and night, much more than in other formats certainly. Vadrik takes full advantage of that, since every trigger increases his power and toughness, in turn increasing the discount he offers to all your instant and sorcery spells. Even his absolute failcase is a one mana discount, which was the ceiling for much-played cards like Goblin Electromancer.
You don’t need to rely solely on day/night flipping to raise his power either – put some equipment on him and start casting frighteningly cheap game-winning instants and sorceries. He looks tailor-made for a Runechanter’s Pike or a Blackblade Reforged.
9. Moonsilver Key
This unassuming artifact makes our list not so much for its raw power but because it will find a home in Commander decks of all kinds. It’s an extremely flexible, colorless tutor that finds a card type pretty much every deck in our format cares about – mana rocks.
It finds your Sol Ring. It finds your Mana Crypt. It finds your Chromatic Lantern to instantly fix your mana.
If that wasn’t enough, Moonsilver Key finds lands too – go get your Ancient Tomb early, or a combo land like Field of the Dead as a late finisher.
This is a card that will always increase the consistency of your deck and offer you a strong mana base every game you play it. It's well worth considering for any deck that needs its mana to be on point, and even more so for decks that can use it to find combo pieces.
8. Unnatural Growth
This might be the ultimate dumb green “go big or go home” creature-buffing enchantment.
Unnatural Growth straight-up doubles the power and toughness of each and every one of your creatures every combat, meaning you’ll hit twice as hard as you should the moment this comes down.
With the appropriate amount of big trampling threats – something green has absolutely no shortage of – this card threatens to smash players out of the game in a single massive swing.
Note as well that this reads “at the beginning of each combat” too, not just your combat. That makes it a surprisingly effective card when you’re on the defensive too, and will likely mean your blockers can outclass just about anything your opponents can throw at you.
The quadruple green mana cost effectively limits this to mono-green decks, but they’re the ones who’ll get most benefit out of it anyway.
7. Lord of the Forsaken
If your deck can reliably cast spells from the graveyard, whether it be via flashback or other abilities, you will want Lord of the Forsaken.
Aside from being a 6/6 flying trampler (like any good six-drop black demon) Lord of the Forsaken offers a cheap sac outlet that can quickly stock your graveyard with goodies. Then, for every 1 life you sink into it, he discounts your spells cast from graveyards by 1 colorless mana. This can enable some very nasty accelerated recursions – we instantly thought of how well he pairs with the original Innistrad classic Spider Spawning, but this works equally well with staples like Unburial Rites and Past in Flames.
Lord of the Forsaken will be at its very best in decks that can guarantee getting the most out of his second ability - decks built around dedicated graveyard recursion commanders like Karador, Muldrotha and Chainer will give him near limitless opportunities to activate.
Lord of the Forsaken will be at its very best in decks that can guarantee getting the most out of his second ability - decks built around dedicated graveyard recursion commanders like Karador, Muldrotha and Chainer will give him near limitless opportunities to activate.
6. Infernal Grasp
Simple, effective, and possibly the most efficient mono-black removal spell available in EDH. It lacks the restrictions of cards like Doom Blade and Go For the Throat, meaning it’s guaranteed to kill whatever you’re pointing it at short of indestructible creatures.
The 2 life additional cost might hurt in 20 life formats, but this is Commander where it’s essentially negligible.
A guaranteed staple for black decks of all kinds, and for our money well worth picking up in multiples if you have more than one black deck.
5. Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset
Teferis are so reliably dominant that the community has almost come to dread each new printing lest it warp the game like recent versions have. So it should come as no surprise that Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset is a very powerful Planeswalker that will be well worth considering for decks that can make best use of him.
This Teferi’s +1 has ‘combo enabler’ written all over it, giving you the ability to untap an artifact, a creature and a land every time you activate it. It even gains two life as a sweetener, just because. Even if you can’t use this to go off with synergistic tap/untap effects, if he just untaps your Ancient Tomb and your sol ring, he’s generating you four mana while untapping a creature to defend him and gaining life. That is exceptional value on a +1 ability.
The plus one is the real action for this Teferi, but his minus two is a very solid draw one that lets you pick the best of your top three and get rid of the weaker cards. And that ultimate – which you will actually threaten to get to in many games since you’ll want to be relentlessly activating that +1 – might as well say “you win the game” given the sheer card and mana advantage it offers. One to be feared.
4. Lier, Disciple of the Drowned
Lier is going to be one of those creatures that simply has to be removed almost on sight. Firstly, if you’re facing any kind of countermagic, those are now dead cards in your opponents’ hands. Yes that goes for your spells too – and Lier being in blue makes that a little more of an issue – but you get to build your deck knowing this is likely to see play and plan accordingly.
Secondly, you essentially get to play every spell in your deck twice.
Giving every single spell you have flashback equal to its mana cost means that this card can single-handedly net you huge card advantage, as well as effectively increasing your hand size. This is especially true if you put it in a deck that has a good assortment of ways to fill the graveyard. This looks like a clear future staple for instant and sorcery focused spells decks everywhere.
3. Morbid Opportunist
It has an unimpressive statline to be sure, for our money Morbid Opportunist is still going to be worth its weight in gold in Commander.
Just by sitting in play, Morbid Opportunist offers constant card advantage from the carnage going on around you, which is right on flavour with its battlefield-scavenging design. Every trade, every creature your opponent sacrifices or has removed represents a card for the opportunist. It even replaces itself when your opponents wipe the board.
Yes there’s a one card per turn limit, but that’s not too bad of a setback in a format with four turns in every turn cycle.
This card will be at its absolute best in decks that can sacrifice creatures at instant speed, allowing you to trigger it once on each of your opponents’ turns if nothing else happens to die. This is its own card-advantage engine in the right build.
2. The Meathook Massacre
Firstly, let’s just talk about how great the storytelling and art for this card is. Shivers down the spine is what we demand from Innistrad, and this card has that in spades. And on hooks.
Spooky design alone isn’t enough to score high in our top ten of course, but thankfully The Meathook Massacre delivers on raw power too. Yes the wrath effect demands more mana investment than comporable effects like Toxic Deluge, but that’s because this comes attached to two permanent effects that will constantly damage your opponents and heal you whenever anything dies. Importantly, that includes when the -X/-X ability resolves, meaning this will both wipe the board (or at least all of the smaller creatures) while healing you and damaging all of your opponents significantly.
When the dust has settled, you get an enchantment that sticks around and continues to offer healing and damage until removed.
This will be particularly powerful in sacrifice decks that can reliably trigger the life loss by killing your own creatures. Even in more midrange black decks though this will still be a constant drain on your opponents whenever they remove any of your creatures or trade with them in combat.
1. Vanquish the Horde
At number one on our list is a card that we think is set to become the premier wrath effect in all of Commander – Vanquish the Horde. Yes white wasn’t exactly hurting for wrath effects, but this card looks better than the entire back catalogue. The vast, vast majority of the time you will want to cast this, there are likely to be at least six creatures on the battlefield. That means you are almost always going to have yourself an unconditional boardwipe for 2 white mana, a level of efficiency even white has never been able to achieve before. It’s so cheap in fact that you will very often get to wipe the board and then casually spend 4 or 5 mana rebuilding the same turn you played it.
Pick up your copy now – we guarantee this will upgrade one of your existing boardwipe options.
Jonathan Widnall
- Jon Widnall