Commander 2016 Info and First Impressions

commander 2016 first impressions

Today we got our first real look at the upcoming Commander 2016 product. The first batch of cards have been spoiled, and you can see all of them over here. We got a ton of information thrown our way that lays out what we should expect for the rest of the spoiler season. This article will be a follow-up to my Commander 2016 Predictions back when Commander 2016 was first announced, to see how well my predictions stood up and what new predictions/inferences we can make with all this new info. Let's get started!

The Four-Color Main Commanders

The commanders showcased at the front of each pre-constructed deck will be four colors: each will have a converted mana cost of four, one of each color. Since Wizards of the Coast put up an image of the products over here, we pretty much know every single main commander already:

The resolution is too small for me to read, but the good folks at Reddit have made early attempts at deciphering them. These card translations are incomplete and what is translated may not be 100% accurate, but they are probably very close to the official texts:

Breya, Etherium Shaper WUBR Legendary Artifact Creature - Angel When ~ etb, create a 0/1 blue artifact creature token with flying. Tap, sacrifice an artifact: choose one - ~ deals 4 damage to target player.

Target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn.

You gain 4 life. 6/6

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Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder UBRG Legendary Creature - Ogre Wizard Trample Whenever Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder deals combat damage to a player, if you cast spells from your hand this turn, they gain cascade. 5/4

Saskia the Unyielding - BRGW Legendary Creature - Human Berserker Vigilance, Haste When Saskia the Unyielding enters the battlefield, target a player. Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, it deals that much damage to the targeted player.

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Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - RGWU Legendary Creature - Human Soldier At the beginning of your end step... ???

And finally, the first officially spoiled commander:

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Atraxa, Praetors' Voice is an amazing new commander with a wide variety of "build around me" options. Her main draw—a free repeatable proliferate each turn—synergizes with a truckload of cards and mechanics, including +1/+1 counters (Kalonian Hydra), energy counters (Aetherworks Marvel), poison counters (Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon), loyalty counters (Jace, the Mind Sculptor), and all sorts of miscellaneous counters (Vivid Marsh). She effortlessly accommodates any of these themes, though the initial buzz on forums seem most interested in her leading Superfriends. I'll be discussing Atraxa very soon in an upcoming Budget Commander (promise!).

My Predictions on the Main Commanders

I predicted that the main commanders would have two of their colors represented in their casting cost and the other two in their activated abilities. My reasoning was that Mark Rosewater had explained difficulties designing straight four-color cards in the past, because there are too many colors fighting for representation, and you need to design around the missing color (what this four-color card isn't about). Mark went on to say one successful way to make them is by conveying two guilds working together. By separating the colors between the casting cost and activated ability, you can clearly show how each color is contributing to the card. It also makes these cards easier to cast, which is important in preconstructed decks working with a very restrictive mana base. We've seen this template done successfully with the tri-color cards in the Khans of Tarkir block, such as Soulfire Grand Master.

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It turns out I was wrong in my prediction: the main commanders are straight four-colors in their casting cost. Wizards released two articles explaining the process of designing Commander 2016, which you can read here and here. They actually tried the template that I advocated and said it didn't work out. Here's what Mark said about it:

Three-color legendary creatures with an off-color activation The design team knew they could design three-color legendary creatures. Two of the previous Commander decks had been built around them. To make them have a four-color identity, all they would need to do was have an off-color activation using the fourth color. There are ideas that sound interesting in concept up until you actually design cards—this idea falls into that bucket. A two-color hybrid legendary creature with a different two-color hybrid activation Imagine a red-green creature with stats and abilities that overlap red and green (like a 4/4 trampler). Then imagine an activation using a different hybrid activation, like a white-black activation that gives the creature lifelink until end of turn. This execution had a few problems. First, while the first creature usually turned out okay, further designs got harder and harder as you used up the small amount of hybrid design space between the two colors. Second, color identity is already a little tricky, and hybrid mana made it a lot more confusing when we did testing.

So they tried designing commanders with the color identity split between casting cost and activated abilities, but it didn't work out. I'm curious for more information on to why it didn't—I came up with some pretty sweet examples myself, so I'd like to see where the flaws are.

This hopefully means that the designers are confident that the preconstructed deck's mana bases are so tight that you'll have the right mana to cast your commander on turn four consistently. That's a tall order in a preconstructed deck not loaded with expensive mana fixing, but it's possible. If they actually managed it, then great! If not, then not being able to cast your commander in a timely manner is going to be very annoying.

I also predicted that the non-Green commander would focus on Artifacts, since Green historically has been the only color not on board with assembling contraptions. I was correct about this one: our non-Green commander, Breya, is all about artifacts.

New Keyword: Partner

While the main commanders will be four colors, the other commanders will be two colors, with a unique twist to "combine" them with the new partner keyword. You can have two commanders if both of them have the partner keyword.

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Both commanders contribute to the deck's color identity, so if one commander is Blue/Black and the other is Red/White, your deck can include cards with Blue/Black/Red/White symbols. It's a brand new way to achieve four-color decks without having to build around a four-color commander. You also track commander tax and commander damage individually for each commander. You can read about the new mechanic in more detail here.

Individually, these partner commanders look weaker than the main four-color commanders, but paired up they offer at least two unique advantages over running a single commander:

Versatility. With two commanders at your disposal, you may choose to play the commander that would best suit your current game state. If you're looking to get back that Sol Ring from your graveyard, cast Silas Renn, Seeker Adept. But if your small utility creatures need help getting in combat damage, cast Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. Consistency. Since the commander tax applies individually to each of your two commanders, it should be easier for you to keep at least one of them contributing to the battlefield at any time. This is especially helpful for cards that are activated by commanders, such as Thunderfoot Baloth.

I LOVE this new keyword! It's a fresh new rule to the format and it feels very simple and intuitive to me, sliding in elegantly into the existing Commander framework. It is also modular in that you can choose any two commanders with the partner keyword, not a specific coupling, so Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder can partner up with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix, Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa, or anyone else with the partner keyword. Of course some pairings will be more synergistic than others, but their abilities are open-ended enough that we should see an interesting and diverse set of decks emerging. I can't wait to see what combinations people come up with and really want to see this keyword show up in future commander products as well!

New Mechanic: Undaunted

Cards with the undaunted mechanic cost 1 less to cast for each opponent. So if you have three opponents, your undaunted card costs 3 less. This is an elegant way of making cards scale in power for multiplayer games; the more opponents, the cheaper the undaunted cards become. Simple, yet powerful. I love it.

Quick note: the undaunted mechanic works very well with "converted mana cost matters" cards, such as Vial Smasher the Fierce.

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Wizards has identified the correct direction to build new Commander cards: multiplayer scaling. Commander is unique in that it's a multiplayer format, so make cards that specifically excel in multiplayer! They knew this for at least a few years now, but previous implementations of this philosophy into actual card design has been hit-or-miss. I loved the myriad mechanic from Commander 2016, but hated the uninspired melee mechanic from Conspiracy 2. It shows that they're on the right track designing mechanics for multiplayer formats!

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I expect to see more cards that scale for multiplayer in the future. It's an easy thing to design with tons and tons of room for creativity. How about a sorcery that costs UU, draw a card for each opponent? How about a creature that enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each opponent? You can do tons of stuff here.

Returning Mechanic: Basic Landcycling

We've been told that a few mechanics are returning in Commander 2016, but the one that got highlighted so far is basic landcycling.

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Basic landcycling is a superb choice to bring back for Commander 2016. One of the biggest issues that design has to tackle with these preconstructed decks is the mana base: four-color decks need really good mana fixing, the best mana fixing is often very expensive, and Wizards has an unspoken policy to limit the monetary value of these types of products. So building a solid four-color mana base on a budget can be tricky.

The best land fixing a five-color deck can have usually starts with a lot of fetchlands (Windswept Heath) and dual lands (Taiga), then flexible tutors (Demonic Tutor) for a handful of the best mana-fixing available (Chromatic Lantern). That's obviously off the table for the Commander 2016 decks. Instead of running a small quantity of the best mana fixing and loads of flexible tutors to fetch them consistently (and then fetch other things once you have the fixing), you need to compensate by just running a lot of less optimal fixing to make sure you always get some early in the game. Put too much fixing in your deck, however, and you end up getting flooded and not having enough cards that actually affect the board.

Enter the landcycling cards: these cards provide good effects on the board, but they can also be cycled away for that land you need. That flexibility costs about 1 mana extra compared to a similar card without cycling—compare Sylvan Reclamation to Return to Dust—but the extra cost is well worth the flexibility in a four-color deck. This is an elegant and budget-friendly way to make sure the mana fixing in the Commander 2016 is smooth. Great choice. I don't expect reprints of older basic landcycling cards however, since most of them sucked. The new ones revealed so far are pretty good.

Commander 2016 Lore

The lore seems to be all over the place for this product, much like earlier Commander products. We get to see glimpses of multiple planes from multiple time periods, some from around the Weatherlight storyline's time period (Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa), and some presumably near the current storyline's time period (Atraxa, Praetors' Voice). Mark Rosewater mentioned that he uses supplemental products to give important (or fan-favorite) lore characters representation in cards if they hadn't gotten representation before, so someone like Sidar Kondo popping up isn't a surprise. This style of random glimpses across Magic's universe has been the norm for most Commander products.

I had hoped that Wizards would break the mold this time and form a cohesive story for this set like they do with normal sets, telling us the story of Alara now that the Conflux has happened and the plane of shards has now become whole again. I think that story would've been uniquely suited for a four-color set. However, Alara is such a popular plane and Wizards constantly makes callbacks to it, I suppose they'd rather save that story for a main block instead. I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't do it here though.

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Reprints and Price Spikes

Back when I did my initial predictions, I made a list of cards I feel will get reprinted. The list hasn't changed much, so it's worth checking out.

From my list, Birds of Paradise, Exotic Orchard, and Explosive Vegetation have already been reprinted in Conspiracy 2—they can still be reprinted in this set as well, but now I believe only Explosive Vegetation will see a reprint. Command Tower and Commander's Sphere have already been confirmed to be in Commander 2016.

Now that we know what each deck is about, I could make a much more robust list of possible reprints for each deck, but since we're already in spoiler season, I think it's too late for that.

In terms of price spikes, any of the best mana-fixing for four-color decks—Chromatic Lantern, Coalition Relic, Mana Confluence, etc.—that isn't reprinted here will probably see a price spike. And of course, the blinged versions of the best mana-fixers are going to see a price jump too.

What other cards will spike depends on the popularity / power of the new commanders. Thankfully, none of them stand out at first glance as absurdly powerful, so it's hard for me to guess at which ones will be popular. I think Atraxa, Praetors' Voice looks the most fun and likely the most popular, but it's too early to tell which way people will build her. If Breya ended up being an overpowered artifact general, then I'd recommend jumping on cards like Mox Opal, but I think she's pretty tame considering other options.

First Impressions

I love the new partner keyword; it's elegant and intuitive, and I love the future implications for the Commander format. I'm also a fan of the undaunted mechanic and multiplayer-only mechanics that scale with your foes.

I hope the four-color main commanders are easy to cast out of the box. This isn't a problem for properly tuned decks that put money into their manabases, but it would be annoying if the preconstructed decks stumbled to cast them. I'd like more information on why the alternative ways of designing four-color commanders failed when my quick examples seem solid.

The lack of cohesive storyline behind the product isn't surprising but I feel like it's a wasted opportunity.

The cards themselves are pretty solid. I'm most excited for Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, Prismatic Geoscope, and the partner commanders in general.

Next Up: Atraxa Deck Tech, Commander 2016 Lore!

My brain is buzzing with Atraxa deck builds and options. I can't wait to share my ideas with you all!

There's also another idea I've been kicking around: a Vorthos article explaining all the lore in Commander 2016. If you guys like the sound of that, please let me know! As always, you can reach me through the comments section below or tweet me @BudgetCommander. Thanks for reading!