Top 10 Modern Horizons 2 Spoilers for Commander

Modern Horizons 2 - Not Just for Modern

Modern Horizons 2's spoilers aren't even complete yet at the time of writing, and it already looks to be one of the strongest sets in recent memory. It's fun too, with some playful designs to compliment the set's raw power. Anyone who's seen Dermotaxi knows immediately this is a set that can never be accused of taking itself too seriously!

Of course, the clue is in the name that Modern Horizons 2 is designed primarily with Modern in mind, and that's clear with the suite of hate cards targeting staples of the format - Tron in particular was clearly targeted in this set with cards like Void Mirror and Obsidian Charmaw. There's also a whole cycle of powerful Evoke elementals that can be case for free by discarding a card. Many of these are aimed at early combo disruption, hand disruption and graveyard hate, and will certainly make life more difficult for combo decks that rely on opponents being tapped out to safely go off. But all these modern-focused goodies don't mean other formats have been left out. There are plenty of cards here that were clearly included with the unique needs of Commander in mind, and we've broken down the best of them for you right here.

But all these modern-focused goodies don't mean other formats have been left out. There are plenty of cards here that were clearly included with the unique needs of Commander in mind, and we've broken down the best of them for you right here.

Honorable Mention - Garth One-Eye

Garth may not quite be strong enough to actually make our top ten, but he is a richly deserved honorable mention. This card is an homage to some of the most beloved cards from Magic history, and he feels completely at home in a set aimed at Modern and other formats that reach back into the richness of Magic’s past designs.

Garth’s design is totally unique, essentially allowing players to create token copies of named cards which can then be cast for their printed mana cost. Those cards are carefully chosen to be classics from each of the five colours of magic, with an additional slot for perhaps the most notorious card of all time – Black Lotus. For a lot of players, this card’s main USP is that he offers a route to legitimately cast a lotus without having to remortgage their house!

While his design is undeniably great, what holds Garth back in terms of raw power level is that almost all of the cards he casts have been long surpassed in power level by more modern designs. Shivan Dragon just isn’t as exciting of a play as it was 15 years ago. Even the feared Black Lotus’s power is massively diluted as a turn 6 play, which is what it generally will be at best assuming you have perfect rainbow mana to play Garth on turn five. Of course, he is nothing to be sniffed at, and will still net you six cards plus however many you draw off his Braingeyser if your opponents allow him to remain in play. He represents a fun new five colour option in Commander, and it’s very much worth noting there that if Garth leaves and reenters play (including returning to the Command Zone) the cards he can name are no longer considered to have been chosen when he is recast, meaning they can all be selected again.

10. Kaldra Compleat

Another homage to a much-loved concept from the past, Kaldra returns in Mordern Masters 2 in the form of Kaldra Compleat. This card is for everyone who ever loved the concept and promise of Kaldra but found assembling all the pieces of the original too difficult or unreliable. With Kaldra Compleat, Wizards give you your whole Kaldra in one fell swoop. A great deal to be sure, but of course the downside is you’ll need to find 7 mana upfront, and an equally punishing 7 mana to re-equip this if the Living Weapon token dies.

The equipped token is protected quite well by indestructability, but of course there are much better equip targets of course. Decks that can mitigate that extremely high equip cost are likely to make the best use of Kaldra Compleat – Syr Gwn, Hero of Ashvale can equip to herself or any other knight for free, making her a (deep breath) 10/10 First Strike, Trample, Indestructible, Haste, Vigilance Menace that exiles any creature it damages. Oh and if she’s your commander that’s 10 trampling commander damage per turn. Halvar, God of Battle is another great option that also short-circuwits the equip cost and offers another top-tier equipment into the bargain via Sword of the Realms, but there are endless possibilities.

9. Chatterfang, Squirrel General

OK, who ordered the squirrel tribal commander? Well he’s here anyway in the form of Chatterfang, Squirrel General.

Modern Horizons 2 actually has a pretty absurd amount of squirrel tribal support, with cards like Squirrel Sanctuary and Squirrel Sovereign offering some decent squirrel tribal options.

Squirrels have always been a firmly tongue-in-cheek tribe, but if you fully commit to building around Chatterfang he actually threatens to generate hordes and hordes of adorable little critters. If you have ways to further increase token generation, your opponents are pretty quickly going to be facing down a tidal wave made of pure squirrels, something that’s sure to wipe that dismissive smirk off their faces. Plus – presumably because Chatterfang has near-total disregard for the lives his small furry soldiers – he can sacrifice them in their dozens to bring down any conceivable creature. With Chatterfang in play, even Ulamog himself isn’t safe from the squirrel menace!

8. Carth the Lion

Carth is the commander superfriends players have been dreaming of.

Once in play, Carth really doesn’t offer your opponents great options. In the right deck, he threatens an endless stream of planeswalkers with his on-death triggered ability, so effective removal options against him are limited to exile, bounce and similar effects. Even then, as a relatively cheap commander he'll be coming right back from the command zone over and over again. And if your opponents choose not to remove him, he just sits in play blocking with his sturdy 3/5 body and adding a loyalty every single time you trigger a loyalty ability on any planeswalker you control.

That extra loyalty throws the careful balance of some Planeswalkers totally out of kilter, and allows them to rush toward their ultimate at often double the speed they normally would with their +1 abilities, or even with + 0 abilities. For some, the effect actually allows them to ultimate immediately as soon as they enter play – Garruk, Cursed Huntsman is a great example. Needless to say, that is a very big deal, and with Carth as your commander and a suite of well-chosen planeswalkers it’s pretty consistent and hard to disrupt.

7. Master of Death

Master of Death looks like a very strong new toy for graveyard decks, as well as for zombie decks that care about the graveyard.

As the name implies, Master of Death is not much fazed by dying. For a mere one life (a neglible cost in Commander), you can return a Master of Death in your graveyard to your hand, making this one of the most reliable and efficient recursive creatures available. Even better, every time you replay Master of Death, he will surveil 2 again, further fuelling your graveyard with all of your other graveyard-matters cards.

The 3/1 body isn’t a complete joke either, and will allow him to trade very effectively against early game aggressive threats. And you can just about guarantee whatever poor creature he’s trading with won’t shrug off dying quite so easily!

6. Sword of Hearth and Home

Dual colour swords are back in Modern Horizons 2, and Commander players are getting a doozy in Sword of Hearth and Home. There will be massive debate about where this sword ranks in comparison with staples like Sword of Feast and Famine, but in Commander specifically, Sword of Hearth and Home looks like it will deliver exactly what players want. Assuming you can land hits with this sword – and this is made much easier by +2/+2 and the two colour protections it offers that will often make the equipped creature unblockable by some of your opponents – you get two very relevant and useful effects in addition to the raw damage.

Firstly, you can flicker creatures you control to retrigger their enter the battlefield effects – think Mulldrifters and Eternal Witnesses as just a couple of realistic examples. Secondly, and much more consistently, every hit landed lets you both ramp and fix your mana by finding any basic in your deck. The fact that this comes attached to a colourless artifact that can find a place in any deck will make it very attractive for colour combinations that struggle for traditional ramp options. Many of those – like Rakdos or Boros – want to be aggressive anyway, and Sword of Hearth and Home looks like a slam-dunk include for them.

5. Ignoble Hierarch

Jund gets a gift in this set with a not-so-subtle replication of Noble Hierarch, one of the all-time strongest mana dorks in Magic history.

This little goblin dork not only generates every Jund colour of mana (allowing him to function as fixing as well as ramp), he also comes with exalted, which will work particularly well with commanders that want to attack personally. As a goblin, he's even part of a relevant tribe, as if he needed more going for him.

Yes he has zero power, but how often do mana dorks swing for meaningful amounts of damage anyway? And that power loss is more than made up for by all the exalted triggers he’ll give you. A no-brainer for any Jund deck.

4. Damn

This card presumably got its name because when people read it in playtesting they said "Wait, is that a 4 mana boardwipe strapped to a removal spell? Damn!"

This card is exceptionally flexible,offering cheap targeted removal when you need it, and a Wrath of God when you need everything to die.

Putting single target removal in Commander decks can feel painful at times simply because of the card disadvantage it generates against the two players you're not targeting when you use it. With Damn, you're essentially getting free targeted removal along with your boardwipe.

The key drawback of this card, and the reason it isn't a strictly better Wrath of God in Commander, is that you need to be running both black and white to play it. That's a restriction that will limit the amount of play it sees, and it's also the reason it doesn't quite make our top three. With that said though, it's hard to imagine the deck with access to both black and white that wouldn't want a copy of this in the 99.

3. Timeless Witness

Eternal Witness has been a staple in Commander for years, but with Timeless Witness, Wizards have pushed the envelope further in offering even more value. This card offers Eternal Witness’s familiar “graveyard recursion strapped to a 2/1 body” utility to green decks with the added upside of Eternalise to repeat the effect in the late game and get double value.

The Eternalized version even comes with a much more relevant 4/4 body into the bargain, but the main attraction here is of course the double recursion. This isn’t just a straight upgrade to Eternal Witness because of that additional mana cost, but it’s certainly a consideration to run alongside it. The most dedicated ramp decks may even see this card as pretty much a straight upgrade given they will be able to easily absorb the slightly increased cost and reliably reach the Eternalize cost. One to consider for almost any green deck.

2. Esper Sentinel

This card looks like a must-play in all kinds of white decks. Esper Sentinel is essentially a Rhystic Study for noncreature spells strapped to a body, all for a single white mana. That is a pretty incredible deal, and offers white a fantastic early play that threatens some much needed card draw, or at least constantly taxes your opponents’ mana.

The fact that the tax effect cares about Esper Sentinel’s power matters too. In human or soldier tribal this will be pumped by all your lords, and in equipment decks it has the potential to increase the tax to four, five or even six mana per non-creature spell. In that sense it has the ability to scale better than Rhystic Study in a deck that can offer it extra support. Even if you can’t, do not be a afraid to run this anyway – even if its power never rises above 1, it is more than good enough to deserve a slot in the vast majority of white decks.

1. Urza's Saga

It's not very often that the top spot in one of our set review lists goes to a land, but this one fully deserves it. It's about as ridiculous as a land can get, particularly in Commander for reasons we'll explore.

Let's walk through everything Urza's saga offers you. On turn one, and for the next two turns, it functions as a colorless land. On turn two, it adds the ability to tap paying two mana to create an artifact creature that gets pumped by all your other artifacts. And finally, and the ability that completely pushes this over the top in Commander, it lets you search your library for any artifact card costing 1 or less and put it into play. Yes, that's an artifact tutor effect on a land.

The flexibility the tutor offers is excellent in dedicated artifact decks, which this is clearly built for. However, it's a fair bet that this will be a high pick for pretty much any Commander deck that can absorb a colorless land, simply because it is guaranteed to find the ubiquitous Sol Ring if you haven't already drawn it (and if you have, you should be winning anyway!). One to watch, and one to pick up for any deck with at least a couple of targets for the tutor.

Card Crate Blog Team

Jonathan Widnall

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Jun 02, 2021
Jon Widnall

Modern Horizons 2 - Not Just for Modern

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