Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2013

Prossh, Skyraider of Kher by Michael Komarck

Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2013

Welcome back to Retrospective Reviews! This week's article is going over the second full release of preconstructed Commander decks. As stated before, my goal with these articles is to dig deep into the decklists over the years and look over how they have changed and evolved.

In the first outing, Commander, the decks had problems but the spirit was there, and it turned out great numbers, causing the staff at Wizards to immediately start work on a successor. No product at the time could be designed, printed, and shipped in under a year, so there was a gap year (filled by Commander's Arsenal) as the time hastily began work on the sequel.

Commander 2013 Overview

I have a very personal connection to these decks, as Nature of the Beast was given to me as my first Commander deck, and my regular playgroup consisted of the other three decks in a weird, evolving biodome. I have a lot of fond memories of these weird and wacky decks.

They released on November 1, 2013, at $29.99 MSRP. As the previous release had been wedge-themed, they decided to shift to doing the five shards. Before their release, there were a total of 43 shard-colored commanders; adding ten new options was a nice boon for players at the time.

These decks had a theme going through them, making designs that specifically interacted with the Commander format. There was another deck design shift: 2011's decks back-up commander could lead the deck and not ask you to change too much about it. In the 2013 release, each deck's new commanders actively incentivized differing builds. Just like before, I won't talk too much about the reprint commander's offerings, as the slim shard options means that it was difficult to pick something that could lead these new decks.

Did these experiments pay off? Let's find out!

Evasive Maneuvers

This year's Bant release came with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician as the face, a twiddling Bird Wizard who could dodge the commander tax at instant speed. Roon of the Hidden Realm brought blinking to the discussion as the new back-up commander here, with the reprint commander being Rubinia Soulsinger. With these three very different leaders at the head, what kind of deck could be inside?

Is there a coherent deck theme?

If you squint, sure.

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician wants creatures with tap effects, Roon of the Hidden Realm wants creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers. There's some sort of Bant Goodstuff shell that falls in around them, but nothing that actually makes the deck genuinely have a unique feeling on its first outing. I'll be saying this a lot this review, but the deck theme is split and begs for you to strip out a lot of it to make whichever commander you pick actually sing.

How many cards help the theme?

This week's article is going to have to operate slightly differently, as each deck has two very clear themes. Evasive Maneuvers has twiddling and blinking themes. Of the 61 nonland cards in the deck, 35 encourage the twiddle plan, while only 22 encourage the blink plan. Things get worse when you start cutting for quality. This isn't about optimization or turbo-power, this is more about cutting out near-unplayables (Aerie Mystics is not a card I saw hit the table and do anything, ever). Derevi, Empyrial Tactician only wants 25 of the 61 nonlands, less than half. Roon of the Hidden Realm and his blink engine only want about 18.

Okay, so the deck needs upgrades out of the gate. What does it offer a new player in terms of a collection?

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

1. Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
2. Bane of Progress
3. Basalt Monolith
4. Thousand-Year Elixir
5. Sword of the Paruns
6. Conjurer's Closet
7. Darksteel Mutation
8. Arcane Denial

These hit at around $36 today in combined value and, minus the face commander, all see regular play in various 99s. Nothing sweeter than hitting your opponent's commander with Darksteel Mutation or laying out the artifact player with a Bane of Progress!

... am I the Bolas?

High Utility, Low Price

1. Farhaven Elf
2. Fiend Hunter
3. Flickerwisp
4. Wonder
5. Acidic Slime
6. Karmic Guide
7. Blue Sun's Zenith
8. Krosan Grip
9. Selesnya Signet
10. Swiftfoot Boots

Blue Sun's Zenith remains a solid card in 50K decks on EDHrec, even after four side-grade cards have been printed. That shuffle clause still has its uses. Including Command Tower, Sol Ring, and the seven noncommander value cards, we have a total of 19 cards that'll dodge the bulk bin if your foray with Evasive Maneuvers ever ends. Not great!

What kind of legacy does it have?

I'm not going to go on any lengthy tirades about Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. Cheating the command tax is universally derided as a bad idea. Gavin Verhey has since called even the successor to this design, Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, a mistake that he wishes he could have adjusted to avoid this critical problem. These days, Derevi herself sits at the number 5 spot for Bant commanders, leading Pod, Stax, and Bird decks with a bright target on her back. Untapping things is a difficult theme to get right, as it seems so many artifacts enjoy being tapped or untapped at opportune times, but I hope the format gets a fun version of the archetype.

Roon of the Hidden Realm would go on to the number 7 spot for Bant commanders and the number 2 spot for Blink commanders, second only to his majesty himself, Brago, King Eternal. Roon is more low key than Derevi, but his legacy is also a lot healthier.

This is a rocky history to be sure, but Roon is a bright spot within it.

Eternal Bargain

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic borders on a swear word in some playgroups, what with giving you a free effect from the command zone with zero deckbuilding restrictions. Sydri, Galvanic Genius pivots the lifegain theme towards artifact synergies, while the reprinted Sharuum the Hegemon sneezes out game-ending combos with any three artifacts.

Is there a coherent deck theme?

Not even if you squint. There is a lifegain deck, and there is an artifact deck in Eternal Bargain. Sydri, Galvanic Genius and Filigree Angel try to glue these themes together, but a light breeze would snap them back in two again. Looking at the available reprints, I see why Sharuum was picked: she's the most exciting of the bunch! But it makes an awkward package.

How many cards help the theme?

If you're popping out with Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, you'll want to cut 19 of the cards to remove the largely non-synergistic artifact theme and another 18 for quality of life concerns; Brilliant Plan is in only 323 decks on EDHrec for a reason. Having only 21 good nonland, noncommander cards out of the box feels bad, but Sydri, Galvanic Genius has it worse as the back-up. While she grants lifegain incidentally and may take some of the lifegain payoffs as a result, her decklist won't really go in that direction long-term. Only 27 noncommander, nonland cards are on-theme, 19 of which would make a final cut.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

1. Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
2. Divinity of Pride
3. Phyrexian Delver
4. Lim-Dûl's Vault
5. Toxic Deluge
6. Phyrexian Reclamation
7. Sanguine Bond

Total value here is around $51, with $11 of that being Oloro himself. Sanguine Bond is more of a combo card, and Divinity of Pride only really wants to be in a lifegain deck. The rest are either solid inclusions or supreme staples, like Toxic Deluge.

High Utility, Low Price

1. Myr Battlesphere
2. Deep Analysis
3. Nihil Spellbomb
4. Swiftfoot Boots
5. Nevinyrral's Disk
6. Sharding Sphinx

Things get a little dicey with the utility section. Most of the cards are suited to a specific theme, or bad enough that the average Commander player wouldn't play them, or both! Including precon regulars Command Tower and Sol Ring, this precon can offer about 13 cards to a new player's collection. Let me be clear that I'm not offering a specific criticism on this, just noting it as part of the character of the deck. It's a good example of how this round of preconstructed decks were trying to present an actual theme deck (or... pair of theme decks), though the lack of solid-rate cards also played into this.

What kind of legacy does it have?

Oloro's experiment with command zone effects is universally loathed. The raw power of it means Oloro has stayed in the number 2 spot for Esper commanders at 7500 decks, with back-up commander Sydri, Galvanic Genius found at number 15 with only 2100 decks to her name, a little over a fourth of Oloro's. Much like Derevi, Oloro's design space would be revisited once more in a more fun, but still very dangerous, manner.

I can't, in good conscience, call Oloro a net positive for the format. Lifegain was certainly a difficult archetype to make work in Commander, but launching it up with a broken card like this is unhealthy. Playing with effects from the command zone is fascinating design space, but we already had a format for that:

Anyways! I'm sure we won't talk about any more format-warping cards this article. Hold on while I take a sip of this coffee and read over the next decklist...

Mind Seize

I remember hunting for listings of Mind Seize on eBay because I never saw any in local stores, ever. They came in two flavors: more than double MSRP or half-MSRP but with two cards not included. Baleful Strix was around $8 at the time, but the real prize was True-Name Nemesis. That wacky little multiplayer Merfolk tore up single-player Legacy for months. Because of them, later print runs of Commander 2013 would include extra copies of Mind Seize just to make sure they could eventually get into the hands of players who actually wanted to play Commander with them!

This deck included Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, whose mechanical experiment involved caring about how many mana you spent to cast your commander, with a back-up being a real boogeyman: Nekusar, the Mindrazer, a card that would go on to define the Wheels archetype.

Is there a coherent deck theme?

Mind Seize most closely heralds back to Commander as being basically Grixis control with a loose push towards big spells. Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge would escalate throughout the game, able to cast more and more instants and sorceries from anyone's library while exiling more and more cards from everyone's library. The deck as a whole, however, doesn't... work to help pay that off. Jeleva isn't exactly big and only has one form of evasion. It also has four X spells that don't work with Jeleva's ability but could be considered a part of the control deck build. Things get harder with Nekusar, the Mindrazer, which certainly has become synonymous with a singular strategy. Only by looking at the decklist and seeing things like Arcane Melee might you realize that this was intended to be a politically minded control deck, aka Group Slug.

This wouldn't be the last time the Grixis slot didn't actually commit to and support its theme.

How many cards help the theme?

Jeleva's Big Spells theme has about 39 nonland cards that at least try to support it, but only around 18 are worth really running. Tack Annihilate onto the list of terrible cards with great names! It may have been better back in 2013, when there were only 30 mono-black instants of mana value 5 or more. We've doubled that to 60 since then, although not many of those are all that playable. It's an altogether iffy package, diluted by the political theme from Nekusar, the Mindrazer. He's not doing much better, though, with 30 cards supporting his weird card-draw political control deck. Only 13 of those cards would make it into any kind of real first draft of the deck.

...Buy singles, I guess.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

1. Jace's Archivist
2. True-Name Nemesis
3. Nekusar, the Mindrazer
4. Illusionist's Gambit
5. Tempt with Reflections
6. Temple Bell
7. Propaganda

The value cards here add up to about $21. Hard to say how things would have shaken out, but this is the lowest of Commander 2013 in total, which I would blame mostly on True-Name Nemesis causing mass buyouts of the decks. The closest modern day comparison would be Timeless Wisdom, a deck whose list is essentially 99 bulk cards and Fierce Guardianship. That weird little Merfolk would eventually see a reprint in Battlebond, and its price would slowly drift from $30 to its current $4 price. Only the bottom four cards are really likely to make it into a deck unless they're being built around, but the top 3 are certainly worthy cards when used correctly.

High Utility, Low Price

1. Augur of Bolas
2. Baleful Strix
3. Guttersnipe
4. Incendiary Command
5. Armillary Sphere

It's probably a stretch to call Augur of Bolas a useful card. This deck is just... not very well put-together. There are 10 nonland cards one could pull out and use for building future decks effectively.

What kind of legacy does it have?

Jeleva's "mana spent matters" mechanic would go on to be repeated in other cards in other ways, and I think it's one of the healthier dips into Commander design space. Her battle-specific big spell casting would go on to make a splash in the format in the form of Narset, Enlightened Master and Cecily, Haunted Mage. She's the 16th most popular Grixis commander, which isn't bad!

On the whole, Mind Seize will forever remain infamous in my heart for those disparate eBay listings, the havoc it wreaked on Legacy, and the slow build of Wheels as a strange, recursive source of discourse in Commander Twitter. Everyone, discard your current argument and draw seven more.

Power Hungry

Prossh is a boss, y'all, what can I say? This lizard does it all. He spits out tokens, he eats them for damage, he goes infinite with Food Chain! The backup commander, Shattergang Brothers, is an anomaly for Commander 2013 in actually being synergistic with the face commander's strategy! Does the rest of the deck follow?

Is there a coherent deck theme?

This is the one deck where the two themes genuinely line up well enough that any of the three options could lead it well enough. Prossh take sacrifice towards a more aggressive strategy, while Shattergang Brothers have a more controlling angle. Coherent!

How many cards help the theme?

There is a singular core "sacrifice" theme, but still divided between the Voltron and control flavors. If you run this out with Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, 49 of the nonland cards pretty handily go with the plan, while Shattergang Brothers only want about 29 of them.

This precon is still stricken with that weird problem of a high density of cards like Capricious Efreet that are... cute. No matter the commander, I'm cutting down the initial list of nonlands to 20 before building it back up.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

1. Goblin Sharpshooter
2. Ophiomancer
3. Tempt with Vengeance
4. Spoils of Victory
5. Goblin Bombardment
6. Night Soil
7. Primal Vigor

I remember when Tempt with Vengeance was only $2. Now these 7 cards are worth about $80 together, but that really looks like a lot of "not very well reprinted" going on here. Anyways, Ophiomancer is useful in just about any deck running black as a deterrent even if you can't sacrifice the Snake token regularly. Primal Vigor is good if you're going very heavy on tokens or counters but always has the risk of helping opponents as much or more. Goblin Sharpshooter is a combo-oriented card that can wipe out boards when given deathtouch but can fit into a couple of archetypes. The rest are similarly versatile, with Spoils of Victory being a mediocre Farseek but still technically slots into any green deck.

Decent collection starting here.

High Utility, Low Price

1. Viscera Seer
2. Sakura-Tribe Elder
3. Stalking Vengeance
4. Armillary Sphere
5. Swiftfoot Boots
6. Spine of Ish Sah
7. Curse of Predation

I was surprised by Stalking Vengeance, too, but it's in about 1% of possible decks on EDHrec; could be precon effect! Seems like a useful piece, though, so I'm keeping it here? Anyways, 7 cards plus Command Tower, Sol Ring, and the value cards brings us up to 16 cards for general collections.

What kind of legacy does it have?

The Shattergang Brothers is still a commander that pops up from time to time, while Prossh remains an incredible pillar of the format. As one of my friends has had a Prossh deck since 2013, this Dragon looms large in my mind especially, but this creature's versatility allows it to run from weird Kobold tribal to Food Chain combos without feeling out of place.

This deck has had a tremendous effect on the format, one I feel leans positive.

Nature of the Beast

My specific start with Commander started with this little pile of 100 cards. I cracked it open and played repeatedly against tuned decks -- losing horribly, but getting a better and better sense of how to tune a deck. Because this deck... needed tuning.

Is there a coherent deck theme?

Marath wants you to spend more and more mana and dump it into various effects. Gahiji wants to pump up creatures attacking opponents. And dear old Mayael, my forever Commander, wants to pull big creatures from the deck.

This deck is three themes stapled together with an overlapping token strategy and two "Beasts matter" cards. It comes together as an alright aggro deck full of finishers, but it's a tough sell full of weird non-bos. As much as I love Mayael the Anima, I have frustrations with this deck, which I'll try to set aside for the purpose of the analysis here.

How many cards help the theme?

This deck's primary themes can, if you squint, be fudged into differing flavors of tokens. Marath, Will of the Wild pushes for a big mana spin on tokens, with its weird activated ability to go along with that, while Gahiji, Honored One has a political bend to its ability. To that end, they actually do a... decent job at maintaining parity.

The primary theme has 33 nonland cards really supporting it, with 19 that could make a final deck. This precon's secondary theme hits at 28 on-theme cards, 17 of which are final deck worthy.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

1. Avenger of Zendikar
2. Darksteel Mutation
3. Homeward Path
4. Wrath of God
5. Tempt with Discovery

These are all incredibly sweet cards that verge on staples in their own right. Homeward Path is only going to be more and more necessary as various flavors of UBx Theft decks rise in popularity.

High Utility, Low Price

1. Spellbreaker Behemoth
2. Rampaging Baloths
3. Krosan Tusker
4. Boros Charm
5. Hull Breach
6. Cultivate
7. Harmonize
8. Swiftfoot Boots
9. Behemoth Sledge
10. Fires of Yavimaya
11. Warstorm Surge

People like smashing face and protecting their face-smashers. It's good stuff! The deck has about 18 collection-building non-land cards for those picking it up.

What kind of legacy does it have?

Neither of its face commanders are more popular than its reprint option, the first of its kind in this series so far. Mayael the Anima is the 14th most popular Naya commander, beating out Marath, Will of the Wild in the 15th slot by 400 decks. Seeing as Gahiji, Honored One is in the 21st slot with only 632 decks, not a lot of an impact to be found here.

Marath's "counters determined by mana spent" would be used a few more times in the future, so a small impact on the format but ultimately a positive legacy here.

And hey, it's why I'm writing this article now! Maybe that counts?

Conclusion

These decks were produced in the early days of Commander, where archetypes had no representing leaders and what makes a decent running engine wasn't quite understood. Most of these decks wanted you to break them into three piles: front theme, back-up theme, chaff. They were pulled too tight between giving exciting new offerings to multiple players and still creating an introductory product that possessed an interesting "path to upgrade", a delicate tightrope they would continue to work on for many releases to come.

They also presented dangerous territory with the design space they attempted to uncover. I personally believe that Commander-specific cards are interesting and fun, but these pushed the outer limits. The best that can be said about some of them is that they warned off possible future designs while still being relatively limited in total impact.

Commander is still a brave new format here, and these decks show it. And that's not all bad.

Join me next time when another controversial decision is made in the form of planeswalker commanders!