Conquering the Commander Cube: Commanders For Your Cube Part 2
Riku of Two Reflections by Izzy
Greetings, Commander players! Today we complete the "Commanders For Your Cube" list. If you haven't read part 1, I recommend that you do so. In part 1, we covered the first 10 commanders that I recommend for a beginner cube. Today, we close out the list with the final 10.
As a quick reminder, I'm using the following criteria for choosing commanders:
Number of Colors
As mentioned in prior installments of Conquering the Commander Cube, color variety is important in allowing players to develop a diverse pool of cards during their draft. I find the sweet spot to be 3-4 colors, as 1-2 colors tends to limit players too much during the draft, and five colors tends to be too easy for players, as it doesn't require as much creativity or selectivity as lesser numbers of colors.
Diversity of Strategies
Commanders with multiple possible strategies tend to be better-suited for cube drafts, as they allow players to shift strategies during drafts as their card pool starts to take shape. This includes open-ended commanders that can adapt to fit a myriad of different strategies.
Conducive to Fun
Fun is the name of the game when it comes to Commander (or any game, really!), so we want to make sure to avoid toxic, frustrating, or overpowered commanders, as they can quickly kill the fun of a play session.
I'm also sticking with three-color commanders for this series, as they offer a nice balance of color variety and deckbuilding challenge.
With that, let's jump into our list of commanders!
Nethroi works well with any creature-focused deck, particularly ones packed with small and mid-sized creatures. Players only need to cast Nethroi once or twice per game to get enough value from Nethroi.
Tayam gives vigilance counters to creatures that you play, and it also offers a payoff with its second ability. While Tayam is a self-contained engine, it works best with larger counter strategies, such as +1/+1, shield, etc. Players will want to draft cards that will allow them to activate Tayam's ability as consistently as possible. Also note that it allows one to retrieve permanents, so players may choose to have a mixed permanent strategy.
Riku is a commander staple, and he works particularly well in cubes given his versatility in the kinds of spells that he can copy!
Xyris is a fun group hug commander that rewards you when opponents draw cards and also allows you and your opponents to draw cards when they are dealt damage by Xyris. This creates fun group dynamics and thus lends itself well to politics strategies as well.
Jan Jansen is a great catch-all artifact commander that offers payoffs for sacrificing both creature and noncreature artifacts, so players can build artifact strategies around the first ability, second ability, or both!
Kelsien is a fun direct damage commander that players can build burn and ping damage strategies around.
Roon is flexible in that he can be used for flicker strategies where players want to repeat enter-the-battlefield effects, or it can be used as temporary removal, for targets do not re-enter the battlefield until the end of the controlling player's next turn.
Toluz is an excellent commander to build discard strategies around, though the card is plenty powerful on its own, allowing for card advantage and providing plenty of value even if it is only activated a handful of times throughout a game.
2.) Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second
Jinnie Fay is the quintessential tokens commander, allowing a high degree of flexibility in the kinds of tokens that players create throughout the game, whether it be Dogs, Cats, or neither.
Ruhan is a fun chaos commander that will also help to avoid personal vendettas during games, as its ability targets players at random. Do note that Ruhan's ability triggers on every one of its controller's turns, and it must attack if able, so it works best with aggro and heavy attack strategies.
Final Thoughts
And those are my final ten commander recommendations for a Commander cube. I hope that the recommendations proved useful. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or recommendations. Until next time, happy gathering, Commander players!
