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Commander 2016 Predictions


Commander 2016Commander 2016

Commander 2016 has been announced! Here is what we know about it:

  • Five new decks
  • Four-color Commanders
  • 56 new cards
  • Release Date: November 11, 2016
  • $34.99 MSRP

No cards have been spoiled yet, but we still have enough information to begin making educated guesses on at least some of its contents. Let's break it down!

Four-Color Commanders

There's long been a demand by some in the Commander community for four-color legendary creatures to be used as commanders, something we've never had in the history of Magic: the Gathering. Some have asked for the Nephilim creatures from Guildpact, the closest we've ever gotten to four-color legendary creatures, to be given legendary status through errata so they'd be legal commanders. Mark Rosewater has denied the errata request, saying:

"I admit if I had the nephilim to do over again I would probably make them legendary, but that doesn’t mean we will ever retroactively make that decision. The nephilim are as we made them for good or for bad. Changing things retroactively is a far greater negative than finally giving Commander four-color generals." - Mark Rosewater

Interestingly, he did acknowledge a year ago that four-color commanders was something they'd do eventually in one of the yearly Commander products:

"With us making a Commamder [sic] set a year, the question is “when” and not “if”." - Mark Rosewater 

The news of four-color commanders isn't a complete surprise, though personally I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

What Will Be the Lore Behind Them?

Lore-wise, the only other four-color creatures in existence are the Nephilim. I have never read the books where they appear, but my research indicates that there are more of these monstrosities than just the five we saw in Guildpact. According to MTGSalvation, all Nephilim can absorb power from other beings, and the five mentioned Nephilim grew in power by feeding on a dragon corpse. If Wizards wants to, it would be very easy for them to have the four-color commanders be five new Nephilim that grew enough in power to be worthy of legendary status.

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As much as I'd love the main cycle to be brand new Nephilim, I think it's unlikely to happen. Why? Because, according to Mark Rosewater, the original Nephilim weren't well-received:

"They were slammed in our market research. Players hated them [Nephilim]." - Mark Rosewater

MaRo believes that the Nephilim weren't well-received because they didn't fit in the Gatecrash set both in mechanics and in story, and their designs were subpar. None of that would indicate making new Nephilim to lead Commander 2016 would be a bad idea. They would "fit" in the set by virtue of building the set with them in mind instead of jamming them into a pre-existing world, and the problems of four-color design are being tackled anyway, so that issue is moot. Still, the bottom-line is that the Nephilim were poorly received the last time around, so there is an inherent risk to bringing them back even if you think you fixed all the issues from the first iteration. Maybe Mark Rosewater is incorrect on why they flopped? Maybe people didn't like Nephilim for other reasons? Maybe the consumers are tired of Old God / Lovecraftian horrors after a year of Eldrazi in Battle for Zendikar block, and possibly more in Eldritch Moon? Even if the Nephilim could be well-received at some point, it may not be the right time to re-introduce them.

I don't think the main new legendaries will be Nephilim. I think they will be brand new creatures that we've never seen before, which is typical for the Commander product line (the exception being Commander 2014, when the commanders made appearances in past stories but were never given card representations before). If previous Commander sets are any indication, these commanders will come from a variety of planes, planes that we've already visited in previous sets and others to be visited in future sets.

However, each Commander deck has always had an alternate legendary creature to lead the deck tucked away in the 99. If Wizards wanted to bring back Nephilim, that's where they'd be: a new version of them, better than ever, and most definitely legendary this time around.

If Wizards also wants the new main commanders to have a shared story (which they haven't done before), the only fitting pre-existing plane I can think of would be Alara. In the Shards of Alara story, we saw a plane that was split into five shards, each representing a three-color combination — Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya — recombine into a single plane in an event called the Conflux. With the inhabitants of the color shards being suddenly introduced to other color combinations, new alliances and conflicts were born. I could imagine the four-color commanders representing an alliance of two shards against a common enemy. For example, an alliance between Bant (White dominant) and Esper (Blue dominant) could lead to an "Ethercaste Knight" type of guild that opposes their common enemy, Jund (Red dominant). I think there's cool story potential in there. Check out the flavor text of these cards as examples of these potential alliances:

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How Will They Function?

There's a few ways to go about printing four-color commanders. The most obvious way would be to print cards that need exactly four different colors to play, like the aforementioned Nephilim. However, there's a reason why we haven't seen those types of cards: they're extremely difficult to design. Again, we read Mark Rosewater's thoughts on designing them:

"The major problem is that it's nearly impossible to design four-color cards that actually feel like four-color cards. Why? Because there are just too many colors fighting for attention to get a feel. The biggest thing about four-color cards is the missing color, but you can't design about what's missing, as that's the only thing the card isn't allowed to have, color-pie-wise. I do think there is a way to design four-color cards, but it requires some context (such as two guilds working together, interestingly enough)." - Mark Rosewater

I'll come back to the bolded part in a moment!

It's hard to give four-color cards a sense of color identity because they can do way too much. It's almost impossible to find mechanics that strongly resonate with four colors. Two-Colors is easy. Lifelink is usually shared by White and Black, Hexproof is usually Blue and Green, First Strike is usually White and Red. Three-Colors is when it starts getting difficult: self-mill is done in Black/Green/Blue, "can't be countered" is usually found in Green/Blue/Red, and ... well, it gets tough. Usually you have to mash together color-specific keywords to convey a three-color card: for example, Zurgo Helmsmasher shows Red with Haste and "must attack," White with Indestructible, and Black with "+1/+1 counter if creature dies." That's a lot of abilities needed to convey color identity, and it's a lot to ask the reader to understand how each mechanic reflects the color identity.

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With four-color commanders, you'd need even more abilities to convey identity. I could imagine a WBUR commander having Prowess to symbolize Blue/Red, Lifelink for White/Black, Flying because all those colors can do it but Green can't, and then some extra (non-Green) ability to be special. So, something like this:

Etherium Godclaw
WBUR
Legendary Creature - Artifact Beast
Flying, Lifelink, Prowess
When Etherium Godclaw deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card, then discard a card. If you do, exile target nonland permanent with a converted mana cost less than or equal to the converted mana cost of the discarded card.
4/4

Now, this may actually be a fine card, but it probably fails to convey how each ability fits with its identity. It's also hard to establish identity without the card ending up looking like a jumble of abilities with no cohesion, especially for newer players who haven't memorized the color pie. Another important problem: paying all four different colored mana to cast the commander may be difficult/inconsistent in a preconstructed deck! You might have five lands in play, but not have the WBUR to cast your commander. Not good for a beginner-friendly product. Maybe this card could work as the alternative commander in the 99.

Thankfully, we have another way to set up multicolor cards, which we've seen most recently in Fate Reforged:

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Here we see three-color creatures: one color establishes the "base" card, then the other two colors establishes the activated ability. This method is much easier to understand what each color contributes to the identity. Looking at Soulfire Grand Master, you know immediately that giving stuff Lifelink is a White thing since it's on a White card. Then you know that returning your instants and sorceries back to your hand must be a Blue/Red thing, because the activation cost tells you. This design is beautiful in terms of conveying the right information to the reader and teaching them color identity in the process. It's better to design like this than to have Brutal Hordechief cost 1WBR and lose focus on which mechanics are attached to which colors. It's also much easier to cast your commander on time, even if you don't have the mana to activate its ability immediately. At least you can participate more in the game and feel like you're doing something.

Now, back to that bolded quote from Mark Rosewater:

"I do think there is a way to design four-color cards, but it requires some context (such as two guilds working together, interestingly enough)." - Mark Rosewater

I believe this is the path Wizards will go with the four-color cards. They will feel like two guilds working together, on the same card. We simply build on the multicolor card template that was well-received in Fate Reforged. Have one two-color combination establish the "base" card, and then the other two-color combination establish an activated ability. For example, we could have a Blue/Black creature in terms of casting cost and basic abilities, but then it also has an activated ability that costs White/Green. Something like this:

Anointed Graverobber
1BU
Skulk
When Anointed Graverobber deals combat damage to a player, each player puts that many cards cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
WG, exile target creature card from a graveyard: Put X +1/+1 counters on Anointed Champion and you gain X life, where X is the exiled creature's toughness.
2/2

Again, I just whipped up this card in a minute as an example. It might be decent or awful, but that's not the point: we're focusing on the template for four-color creatures here. I think this method is the way to go because it better conveys the color identity and how everything fits. Also, any of the colored mana symbols could be hybrid mana symbols to make them even easier to cast. I feel like this is the way Wizards will do it.

What Reprints to Expect

Without revealing any of the cards in the deck, we can already have a good guess on about 40% of the cards in the decks — the mana base! Four-color decks, like five-color decks, need strong mana-fixing to be consistently playable. The quickest way to turn off beginners from playing Commander is if the preconstructed decks struggle to cast their own spells. Wizards needs to get this right. Thankfully, they've come a long way with constructing mana bases since the first Commander set (I still have nightmares from Political Puppets' mana base), and the latest sets have solid fixing and ramp, so I'm confident that this product will be no different.

Mana fixing options range from cheap (tri-lands, Rupture Spire) to astoundingly expensive (full sets of fetchlands, shocklands, and original dual lands). Since Wizards is not one to cram hundreds of dollars into these preconstructed decks, we can assume that most of the mana fixing will be in the cheap/bulk range, with one or two $5 cards tossed in.

Let's look at the Lands, Mana Rocks, and Other sources of fixing:

Lands: Likely Reprints

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Command Tower is pretty much an auto-include, and likely the best land we're going to get in the deck. Next would be the tri-lands from Shards of Alara and Khans of Tarkir — hopefully 4 per deck. Then we have some options:

It's certainly possible that they'll toss in a couple lands that tap for two-colors as well, such as the Filter Land cycle (eg. Darkwater Catacombs), Battle Lands cycle (eg. Canopy Vista), Guildgates (eg. Izzet Guildgate), or any from the dozens of other cycles.

I'm also confident that Wizards will give us a brand new mana fixing land for Commander in this product. If done right, it could be an inexpensive, staple mana fixer as the premium mana fixing lands keep going up in price. I would propose something like this:

Command Citadel
Land
Whenever you cast your commander, put a charge counter on Command Citadel.
(Tap): Add (1) to your mana pool.
(Tap): Add X mana of any one color to your mana pool, where X is the number of charge counters on Command Citadel.

Lands: Possible Reprints

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These three lands offer premium standalone mana fixing for a four-color deck. They're more than a couple dollars, but none are too expensive that a reprint is out of the question. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of these (likely City of Brass) shows up in at least one of the preconstructed decks.

I know there's speculation that the fetch lands might get reprinted here, but I highly doubt it. A Flooded Strand is not good mana fixing for a four-color deck unless you have fetchable dual lands, like Sacred Foundry and Canopy Vista. There's no way Wizards would be putting that much money into these products. If these decks were two-color then I'd be optimistic, but not in this case.

Expect a price spike on any of these cards if they aren't reprinted.

Mana Rocks: Likely Reprints

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Even if you're not drawing the right lands to play your spells, mana rocks are available to fix mana and keep you moving forward. We have a ton of great options here that are also cheap:

Wizards can fill the preconstructed decks up with sweet mana fixing cards that are all less than a dollar each. No problemo.

Mana Rocks: Possible Reprints

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Chromatic Lantern and Coalition Relic are two of the very best mana rocks available for four-color decks, and two of the best (most popular) mana rocks in Commander. They're in desperate need of a reprint as their prices go up and up. It would be great for the format if they got reprinted, and this set is the best opportunity to do so. Fingers crossed!

Gilded Lotus has had reprints before, but it's a solid mana rock, so it would be great here too.

Some of you might be surprised that I added Sol Ring to the list. This mana rock is a format staple that goes into every deck possible, and the only reason why its price remains low is due to Wizards reprinting it every single year without exception. History points to them including it once more, but if there was any year where they could get away with not reprinting it, it would be this year, when colored mana-fixing takes precedence. I think they'll include it, but it's possible they won't.

Expect a price spike on any of these cards if they aren't reprinted.

Other Fixing: Likely Reprints

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Since four out of five of the decks will feature Green, we'll undoubtedly see some amount of Green mana fixing to balance things out. Green is the undisputed king of ramp and mana fixing. I'd expect most of these cards to show up:

Other Fixing: Possible Reprints

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Of the expensive non-land, non-artifact mana-fixing, I think Birds of Paradise is the most likely to be reprinted. It's a powerful card, too powerful for Standard these days, but it's a beloved staple that would be welcome in a Commander set. Bloom Tender would be a wonderful surprise, but I think it's too expensive to be reprinted here.

If Birds of Paradise or Bloom Tender don't show up in any of these decks, you betcha they'll go up in price, especially Bloom Tender, whose supply is not close to Birds' level.

Putting it Together: Sample List

Here's a quick prediction of what the four-color mana base will look like, including lands and ramp/fixing:

Summary of Predictions:

This is what I'm expecting from Commander 2016 so far:

  • The main four-color commanders will not be Nephilim, but they may show up as alternate commanders.
  • The main commander will have two different colors in their casting cost and two more colors in an activated/triggered ability (possibly hybrid mana), similar to the three-color creatures in Fate Reforged.
  • Cards not seeing a reprint listed in my potential reprints will quickly see a price spike once the full spoilers are revealed.

And since I'm predicting things, I've got one more:

  • The four-color deck without Green will have an Artifact theme (and will cause price spikes with associated artifact cards).

Green is the only color that almost never synergizes with Artifacts. Also, there's a lot of vocal demand for more Artifact generals, particularly a Blue/Red one. Making the non-Green deck focus on Artifacts would be an easy theme to build around and satisfy that part of the community.

That's All, Folks!

Do you agree or disagree with my predictions? Do you have any predictions of your own? Let me know in the comments below or tweet me @BudgetCommander. Thanks for reading!



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