Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2017

Kess, Dissident Mage
by Izzy

Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2017

There's no time like the present to dig up the past! It's time for another Retrospective Review! This entry's focus in Commander 2017, released August 2017 at an MSRP of $34.99, which featured major shifts in how the product would be designed by a) cutting a deck from the line-up and b) not having the decks conform to a cycle of color identities (not mono-colored or enemy-colored pairs, etc.).

These decks would stick with the "three new commanders" started from the previous year. The face commander tied directly into the creature type, one back-up commmander played up the sub-theme, and the other back-up was... tenuous. More on that later.

So, six years ago! What was the far-off year of 2017 really like for Commander...?

Commander 2017 Overview

In the first ever outing of what would come to be known as a biodome release, Commander 2017 set out to still strike a resonant theming without relying on the kind of color combinations. Gavin Verhey elected to go with a very popular one: creature types!

This release brought one more change to Commander: Eminence. Eminence meant your commander would affect the game even from the command zone, something only ever seen on Oloro, Ageless Ascetic

. This would be incredibly divisive, to say the least. It was not returned to for almost six years (Hi, Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir

!). I acknowledge that it's frustrating to have an effect that opponents cannot interact with, but (much like Partner) I'm (mostly) fine with it. That being said, I have had a The Ur-Dragon

deck since 2017, so I'm not a good judge.

With that lengthy prelude out of the way, let's pore over some decks!

Feline Ferocity

Everybody wants to be a Cat.

Or at least play them.

For our first decklist, it's Selesnya Cats! The designers had noticed that cats were a popular creature type with almost zero support. Before 2017, the only card that incentivized a Cat deck was Raksha Golden Cub

... and Kemba, Kha Regent

if you squint. By building a Cat Commander deck, the designers had a chance to push the creature type to more tables.

Arahbo, Roar of the World

held fast as the face commander, letting you "cast" a free, Cat-specific Giant Growth

once per turn. The previous Cats printed had heavy affiliation with Equipment, so Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith

would push that way. Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

would be the third and final new commander, using the Equipment to go all-in on a Voltron strategy and dismissing the Cat swarm technique entirely.

What did the deck do for the theme?

Feline Ferocity is the Cat deck. Cats didn't have a single good option until 2017. The deck also tied kitties to the idea of Equipment, which would allow for a lot of easy mix-and-match deckbuilding. You could go all-in on the Equipment synergy of white, combined with green's "power matters" theme for a powerful deck.

Arahbo remains the best Cat commander, but I think that has more to do with the fact that Kaheera, the Orphanguard

is the only option that's been printed in the years since.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

On release, Feline Ferocity weighed in at around $135 and has since appreciated to $186, and $140 of that more or less comes from these 15 cards. Bonkers! The very first set of Secret Lairs included OMG! Kitties, which was maligned for lack of a value. With the normal versions of those cards now running for more than the price of the deck, well, people have underestimated the love of Cats.

High Utility, Low Price

Something to reckon with in this era of preconstructed decks would be that the more specific theming means that decks would come with fewer "generic" cards. I almost included Hunter's Prowess

on this list out of some misguided attempt to not seem overly critical of the deck.

All the same, there are some sweet pick-ups here, and the deck has a total of 28 cards (don't forget about Sol Ring

and Command Tower

!) that a new player could easily slide into another deck or trade binder.

What kind of legacy does it have?

Cats are the twelfth most popular creature type to play (on EDHrec at time of writing). Its Eminence here is likely the least offensive; people nowadays are saying Arahbo is outclassed! Can't say I disagree: other commanders do the "massively pump a single creature" better (Xenagos, God of Revels

for one), and the go-tall competes with the innate desire to go-wide. All the same, when you want to go for a Cats deck (no dogs, Rin and Seri, Inseparable

!), Arahbo is the go-to.

This deck's legacy? Adorable.

Arcane Wizardry

The second deck on our list is Grixis Wizards! Leading up to the deck's release, Magic had 600 Wizards in the game, 300 of which were blue. Black had 70, red contributed 30 or so. Why red, with so few Wizards? Dominaria (2018) was around the corner and would be bringing an Izzet Wzards theme, cementing the archetype in those two colors going forward.

Leading the deck would be Inalla, Archmage Ritualist

, who could Heat Shimmer

your freshly cast Wizards for 1 mana. The most popular back-up commander would prove to be Kess, Dissident Mage

, who could cast one instant or sorcery from your graveyard per turn, a powerful effect that we would see riffed on in future commanders. The most unique of the bunch was certainly Mairsil, the Pretender

, a strange "assemble your own supreme engine" combo commander.

With that out of the way, let's look at the list.

What did the deck do for the theme?

There's a meta layer to this deck. The Themed Biodome came with some concern: what if a player hates the theme? To solve this, they decided that one of the four decks would be an odd one out, while still paying homage to what was going on. How did they pull this off? Well, just as Cats were tied to Equipment, Wizards were tied to instants and sorceries! So, if you're not a creature player, this deck gave you an option to re-tool it into a spellslinger deck.

Because of that, this deck is somewhat split and not entirely dedicated towards making Wizards a fully functional deck in their own right. All the same, Wizards are in the top ten because of Inalla herself. Before the deck, Wizards were very under-served as a theme. Of note is that Inalla incentivized Wizards with enters-the-battlefield effects in a way that would better suit allies as an effect, while later Wizards would pivot towards spell synergy. That is an active conversation to be having, as Wizard decks leaning towards spellslinger end up being just bad spellslingers. Whatever the final call is on the archetype is still up in the air.

I think it muddled the way forward for Wizards as theme, and the backdoor strategy of making sure players who weren't into the creature type theme a deck hampered what this could have been.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

On release, Arcane Wizardry would be worth $160, but has since fallen to about $93, $50 of which comes from these seven cards. It'd be a lot less if Kindred Dominance

ever got a reprint! This might be one of the worst showings from a single Commander deck since the 2013 set.

High Utility, Low Price

Look, I know three-mana-value rocks are out of favor (unless they're Cursed Mirror

, etc.), but if Darksteel Ingot

has no place in the format, then I want no part of it!

Other than that, this deck makes up for the lack of value by having a lot of generic utility spells as part of its desire to be a control deck that didn't go in on the creature type. There's a total of 26 cards here that could find a home elsewhere, even if it's someone else's collection to fund other decks.

What kind of legacy does it have?

Wizards are in the top ten of all decks, but Inalla, Archmage Ritualist

herself is in a weird place. She has the unfortunate "problem" of a one-card combo: Wanderwine Prophets

. Sure, it requires a lot of mana and a clear enough board state, but this is commander. This has a detrimental effect: she becomes one of those commanders. The kind that you flip over and either have to hope the table believes you when you say it's "not that kind" or that they don't run enough removal to blaze down your actual plan. Not a great spot to be in.

On the other hand, Kess, Dissident Mage

has maintained the number two Grixis commander to this day and provided an early blueprint for graveyard-based spellslinger. Truly, she saves the precon's legacy single-handedly.

Vampiric Bloodlust

A fascinating little set was creeping around the corner: Ixalan would come out two months after Commander 2017 and bring 11 white Vampires, and Rivals of Ixalan would bring 10 more unique white Vampires. If the folks at Wizards hadn't had the foresight, those brand new Vampires would have been without a home for years. I believe this specific plan paid off and eventually led to the Commander line being entirely tied to a single set release, starting with 2020.

Of course, the deck may have been popular for... other reasons. Edgar Markov

's Eminence ability would be the go-to example of why the mechanic was bad. Licia, Sanguine Tribune

is the back-up commander most closely tied to Vampire's myriad ways of manipulating life, while Mathas, Fiend Seeker

is a strange political card.

What did the deck do for the theme?

Pushed it, that's for sure. Vampires had a way to go full aggro in a way that they never had before and which no other commander has tried to enable them to do again. The main man would churn out tokens and then pump the whole time on swing. Licia would prove pleasantly important to the lifegain theme, though ultimately drowned out in due time. I will say that this deck needed, more than the others, a second commander that actually played well with the main theme. Edgar Markov

may never be obsoleted or compared with in terms of raw power for a Vampires deck, but that's the problem. A second commander that wasn't as juiced would still let players put all their favorite Vampires together without worry over becoming "that player".

So while this put Vampires on the map, it also brought them up to a Turbo Commander deck level that could ruin the fun for many.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

Vampiric Bloodlust debuted at a worth of $134 and has since climbed to $209. That ballooned value is easily explained by Edgar Markov

's $80 price tag (the other 14 cards add up to an extra $100). Unless he slips into Commander Masters, I don't see him dropping anytime soon.

This deck would also give us format all-star Teferi's Protection

, which has stayed at almost $30 even post-reprint.

High Utility, Low Price

Vampiric Bloodlust really made use of the lifegain/aristocrats nature of Vampires to put together a list of solid cards that could easily go elsewhere. There are 34 cards here to add to the collection, and some impressive hits all in all!

What kind of legacy does it have?

Edgar Markov

is a menace, which is wild, because he can be blocked by a single creature.

Yuk yuk.

He got banned in Duel Commander, and he's somehow the go-to name for why Eminence is busted when one of the competitors enables a combo. He's got more decks than literally every other Vampire commander combined. I genuinely think that could be alleviated if Wizards ever printed another Vampire commander in his color combination, but it's impossible to say right now (and they apparently are hesitant to do it because they don't feel like it would be wanted).

There's not a lot else worth saying, certainly not about the back-up commanders: an unfortunately detrimental legacy.

Draconic Domination

AAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGH.

My special boy.

Dear reader, I will do my best to render this retrospective unbiased, but my "Here Be Dragons" Secret Lair will tell you I'm incapable. I could write endlessly about the Dragon creature type, but I'm past 2000 words now and need to wind down.

Dragons are red's iconic creature type, and one has been shoehorned into almost every single world in Magic's history-- even when they don't quite fit. Due to their popularity, Dragons get to bleed into the other colors more than any other iconic. Even before the deck came out, there was a legendary dragon in each three-color combination, and 2015's Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir handed off plenty of Dragon creature type rewards across the five ally pairs.

This made Dragons the perfect candidate to show off the strength of the biodome method: making something that was impossible under the previous five-deck model! A five-color Commander deck couldn't have been released normally, as it didn't fit into any color combination cycles.

The face commander would be The Ur-Dragon

, whose Eminence ability reduced the cost of all your Dragon spells by one. If it were any creature type other than Dragons, this may have caused riots, but the over-costed lizards needed it at the time. The subtheme for the deck would be hardcore ramp, heralded by Ramos, Dragon Engine

. The final back-up commander was O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami

, the lore-based card that ended up disappointing to most.

What did the deck do for the theme?

It's important to understand that, before Ur-Dragon roared into the scene, only her Scion of the Ur-Dragon

was in town if you wanted a WUBRG Dragon commander. Scion is a very cool commander! But Scion hit that weird spot of being a Timmy-looking card that Spike loved more, like Kaalia of the Vast

. So it goes. Your other, realistic options for a solid Dragon-themed deck were Bladewing the Risen

and Atarka, World Render

(yeah, yeah, Zirilan of the Claw

and the other four Fate Reforged Dragon lords-- I said realistic at the time).

With Dragons being printed in all five colors, it was important that a properly Timmy commander for the tribe be printed, and Ur-Dragon definitely hit that spot. Unlike the other tribes, Dragons would eventually get several more excellent commanders that enable a five-color deck (and thanks to the number of three-color Dragons, Ramos, Dragon Engine

wasn't a bad swap in the first place). This means that someone can opt out of the Eminence problem if they so choose, and it's something I hope happens for the other creature types displayed here.

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

In 2017, the various singles of Draconic Domination would total $130 and proceeded to skyrocket all the way to its modern pricing of $213, almost $160 of which is displayed above. Notable hits here are the $70 The Ur-Dragon

, $15 Scalelord Reckoner

(funnily enough, I and a fellow Dragon enthusiast almost cut this from initial builds), the $15 Utvara Hellkite

, and the $10 Kindred Discovery

(which seems to have begun bouncing back from its recent reprint).

As someone who bought the deck, Wizards, please... reprint it. In an Anthology, if y'all do those. Just... put it back out there. Let others experience my raw joy.

High Utility, Low Price

Frontier Siege

is under-appreciated. (It is not, however, Outpost Siege

, a mistake an earlier draft made-- caught by an eagle-eyed commenter!) This deck, on the whole, suffers from Way-Too-Many-Tapland-Itis, and its ramp package barely mitigates that. I invested a lot of my upgrades into the manabase specifically. Commander 2016 saw checklands and painlands included, and I feel like a splash of that could have helped out here.

All the same, 33 cards for a collection is a great start, especially when the potential trade value is so immense!

What kind of legacy does it have?

The Ur-Dragon

is currently in the fifth spot of all-time commanders, but I expect that to change with the reprint (there's only a couple hundred decks between it and number four, barely a thousand between it and number three). Its Eminence ability remains contentious. It's not as hated on as Edgar, but where it lands beyond that is up in the air. If I'm being honest, I'd have to rank it as the second most-egregious card with actual Eminence (third if we count Oloro), but it feels better due to the noble goal of trying to make big, dumb beaters viable in the format.

This isn't to say anything of Ramos, Dragon Engine

, who enables wacky thing like Charms.dec and X-spells.

I would personally be incredibly sad at the removal of this deck from the format, even with later, fairer options. Choosing to play all five colors and having all the best cards in Magic available at your fingertips, only to choose to run Dromoka, the Eternal

is hilarious. Jolly good deck, one that enables cards that wouldn't be played anywhere else.

Conclusion

Commander 2017 would be the last set of decks where every single face commander was designed to experiment with the rules of Commander. In 2013, every face card did something quirky. In 2014, we got our first ever planeswalker commanders. 2015 saw experience counters allow for commanders to build over time. 2016 brought us Partner. While decks have had a one-off design that fiddled with things or returned to the well (experience, Partner, and even Eminence!), the designers have become a lot more conservative in the years that followed.

It's fitting that the last of the "Commander rules" experiments would be the first of the "shared theme" experiments, and creature types made this a truly memorable set. I believe that the decks did miss by only making the face commander care about the creature type and that, once again, there was a wide expanse between the precon's power level and the true power level of the commander. All the same, this was a great year for the format, with all four decks being loved to this day.

Join me next time, with the return of planeswalker commanders in Commander 2018!

Kess, Dissident Mage by Izzy

Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2017

Commander 2017 Overview

Feline Ferocity

What did the deck do for the theme?

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

High Utility, Low Price

What kind of legacy does it have?

Arcane Wizardry

What did the deck do for the theme?

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

High Utility, Low Price

What kind of legacy does it have?

Vampiric Bloodlust

What did the deck do for the theme?

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

High Utility, Low Price

What kind of legacy does it have?

Draconic Domination

What did the deck do for the theme?

How desirable are the cards?

Value Cards:

High Utility, Low Price

What kind of legacy does it have?

Conclusion

Ciel Collins

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Kess, Dissident Mage
by Izzy