Commander 2019: Week 1 Spoilers

Spoilers have officially started for Commander 2019! The pre-constructed Commander products in the past have always been high value decks and I don't expect this year's to be any different. Over the month of August I'll be writing up posts with the new cards that exist in Magic from the Commander products as well as some overall thoughts.

New Commanders

The Good

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is going to be insanely strong. I think there are going to be a lot of broken combo decks as K'rrik basically gives you free mana for all of your spells and black has enough ways to gain life back. I think it'd be really fun to try a K'rrik Voltron build using as many one or two mana black pump spells you can cast in a turn to one shot a player. K'rrik gets bigger for every black spell you cast and, if you can cast all instants, has the ability to get to 21 damage in a single turn pretty easily with enough draw. Could be fun!

Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero has a lot of potential to do broken things. Returning things from your graveyard is powerful in Commander and Gerrard can do that whenever you decide to kill him. The only issue with this is that Gerrard has to go to your graveyard to return those creatures and artifacts to the battlefield, so he may be a tough sell as a Commander. We'll see what happens, but giving him flash is a fantastic place to start.

The Bad

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer feels very pigeon holed. Her abilities only matter with Morph-like abilities and there aren't a ton that exist. I think this Commander season will have more printed, but that doesn't make her much better. I think most of the Kadena decks are going to look the same with not a whole lot of extra ways to build her.

Ghired, Conclave Exile seems just okay. Of all the "box front" Commanders shown, he's the deck I"ll probably try out as I like tokens, but just populating on attacks isn't that big of a deal. I suppose we'll need to keep an eye out for some strong tokens, but a 2/5 on attack without any tokens on the battlefield isn't too great. I bet the best part about Ghired is making a 4/4 when he enters the battlefield and that'll probably be the route I go with a deck first before trying to populate anything.

The Ugly

Anje Falkenrath feels a lot like Kadena, but has a few more tricks up her sleeve. Anje can, at the very least, be used a rummage effect, with the other potential of untapping if she discards a Madness card. Madness is another pigeon hole feel and is a theme being pushed. I think Anje will be able to do a little more than Kadena as she can dig through your deck easier than Kadena can, but overall, I think Anje is just going to be a reason to print more Madness cards.

Sevinne, the Chronoclasm is another strong Wizard and I'm worried, with K'rrik, about their powerlevel. I think K'rrik will be stronger than Sevinne for general uses, but I see Sevinne having a "net deck" build that will be really busted by abusing Flashback style cards. Flashback is already a very good ability in multiple formats, but getting a second copy of a card from Sevinne is crazy good. I'm not looking forward to running into Jeskai Ascendancy decks for the next year.

Other Cards

The Good

Sevinne's Reclamation is pretty awesome! Like it was said above, using cards from your graveyard is really good in Commander and we already know how good Sun Titan is in this format, too. Sevinne's Reclamation will have an easy home in most decks running white.

Scaretiller is a just fine card. I think it's an easy artifact to run in most decks, specifically mono red and mono white. Nice to have a ramp tool on an attacking creature and, don't forget, this ability triggers whenever you tap Scaretiller, so Freed From the Real it all you want.

The Bad

Anje's Ravager isn't great unless you're running a discard or graveyard deck. Anje's Ravager seems really good in Anje's deck as you can Madness off of the Ravager's effect, but outside of those niche uses, this card is going to collect dust.

Ghired's Belligerence has a really high ceiling. There's potential for this to make A TON of tokens, but it's going to take a lot of mana to make it worth it. I like the card idea a lot, but cards like Devil's Play and Banefire don't get played much already and Ghired's Belligerence can only hit creatures and costs an additional red mana upon cast. I think there's a few cool things that could happen, but otherwise, this card is bad burn.

The Ugly

This Week's Winner:

Sanctum of Eternity is an auto include in any deck that cares about their Commander. Voltron decks have a way of existing now, too! This is going to be a card that, if it's not in every Commander 2019 box, will drive the price of whatever deck it's in very high, so keep your eyes on this card and where it lands.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the new Commander decks look really pushed for theme. I'm not a fan of releasing Commanders that only have one build direction and definitely half, maybe three quarters of the decks are pushed towards one play style. I wouldn't mind if these cards were in the 99 other cards and weren't the "iconic Commander" for the set. These new Commanders make me feel that the box sets are going to be full of a lot of dud cards that are only going in one direction (madness, populate, flashback, and morph).

I'm hopeful for more amazing cards in the next few weeks! A few duds at the beginning of spoiler season is just fine with me and I'll keep my expectations high as Commander product is one of my favorite parts of the year. There will be more posted as they're released, so keep an eye on Tails Plays Magic over the month!