With the Commander decks releasing this upcoming Friday (June 17th, MSRP of $30 each), some stores have already gotten their shipments...and unfortunately for WotC busted them open for deck lists and singles.
But thank goodness for the community they did, because they've shown what a deal these decks can be!
Before I get to the actual deck lists, though, I want to point out a few common themes among them.
COMMON THEMES IN COMMANDER THEME DECKS
1) Each deck comes with a Sol Ring and a Lightning Greaves. Yes, every single Commander theme deck comes with nearly $15 worth of cards right off the bat!
2) Each deck comes with one of the 5 Planar Chaos Legendary Dragons, each of which is from one of the "wedges". This gives you a familiar card to start using as your Commander.
3) Each deck comes with 2 new tri-color "wedge" Legendary Creatures to also potentially serve as your Commander.
4) All decks have a new 2-color "enemy pair" Legendary Creature as a Rare.
5) All but 1 of the decks have 3 of the old Ravnica Signets (2, Artifact, EFFECT: 1, TAP: Add [insert allied color pair mana symbols here] to your mana pool.). The only one to not have them? Political Puppets.
6) Each deck has only 1 new card in common between all 5 of them: Command Tower.
Yep, you read that right! A card that's only good in one format, Commander, and is inherently limited to one per deck. Hey, look on the bright side of it: A playset only consists of 1, and you'll get it in any deck you buy! :) And on another bright side, we finally have a card that's strictly better than Reflecting Pool. ha ha!
7) Every deck has 3 of the new "Vow of [something]" Enchantments. What are these "Vows"? Well, for example...
All the Vows have some common themes:
a. They are all mono-colored Enchantments.
b. They all cost 2C (2 plus their color).
c. They all provide a power/toughness boost (usually +2/+2, but green love beatdown!).
d. They all provide an on-color ability addition (green is Trample, white is Vigilance, etc.)
e. They all have Pacifism-like abilities in that the creature can't attack you or a Planeswalker you control.
These could be good in regular casual, I think! Here are all 5 Vows for their Power/Toughness boosts and granted abilities:
1) WHITE: +2/+2, Vigilance
2) BLUE: +2/+2, Flying
3) BLACK: +2/+2, Intimidate
4) RED: +2/+2, First Strike
5) GREEN: +3/+3, Trample
Each Commander theme deck will have the 3 Vows for their colors (so for example, Political Puppets, a RWU deck, will get the Red, White, and Blue Vows)
I've tried to hunt for more similarities, but I can't find a lot where every deck had the same theme. Feel free to point out more as you find them in the lists.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...the actual lists!
(These lists are taken from this post on the MTGSalvation forums.)
Mirror Mastery
Devour for Power
Heavenly Inferno (Personal Note: This is the one I'm picking up.)
Political Puppets
Counter Punch
Well, what do you think? Are these decks worth the $30 MSRP? Are any of them just utter crap? Remember, these decks are meant for multiplayer Commander use, so judge their inclusion in the decks accordingly. Though feel free to judge the new cards in more of a regular 60-card idea for Legacy and Vintage only.
I hope you've enjoyed the (few) previews here. This week I'll start tackling M12 for its release on July 15th (and Pre-Release the weekend before that, July 9-10). Look for more posts this week on the new Core Set! Until then, take care.
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