Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2019
Dockside Extortionist by Forrest Imel
Retrospective Reviews: Commander 2019
There's no time like the present to dig up the past: it's time for another Retrospective Review! We're here to talk about Commander 2019, released August 23, 2019, at $39.99 each. It followed the formula established in 2017, but it would be the last in the line to do so. I believe that it being the last Commander deck release of its kind had a clear impact on how it was designed. Namely: they wouldn't get another chance to throw in some cool legacy characters in the normal Commander deck line, so they really went all-out here! Five characters from the Weatherlight saga got cards!
Four years ago this August, an era of preconstructed design would end. What kind of note did it ring out? Let's dive in!
Commander 2019 Overview
In the final biodome of the era, Wizards of the Coast continued the shared theme idea and settled on keywords. Each deck would be built around that keyword, introducing a commander that cared about it in some way and some new cards with it. The keywords chosen would be madness, populate, flashback, and morph.
At the time of their announcement, we the players had no idea they would be the last set of precons to exist independent of a set. Even so, these four keywords made a lot of sense to build around. All four keywords had fans but none had a dedicated commander. Other than morph, they also tied into a broader playstyle that could be interwoven to give players alternate build paths if they got tired of the relatively narrow version offered by the face commander.
Merciless Rage
Our first deck is Merciless Rage, the first ever black-red preconstructed commander deck! Something I forgot to mention back in 2017's article was that an ally-colored cycle of precons had gone unreleased by the time they switched to the biodomes. It wouldn't be until 2021's Draconic Rage that each ally color pair would finally have a precon release.
Alright, side-bar aside, Merciless Rage was the deck that focused on madness. Once thought of as green-blue due to its first outing, madness eventually settled as a black-red mechanic thanks to its affiliation with the vampires of Innistrad in Shadows Over Innistrad. Leading the charge would be the fittingly flavorful Anje Falkenrath, who could rummage and be untapped when discarding madness cards.
The first back-up commander was Chainer, Nightmare Adept, a fascinating pseudo-reanimator. He lets you discard one card in your hand to cast a creature card from your graveyard, which means bonus value from madness cards, but also allowed for the broader black-red theme of a graveyard deck. The other back-up option was Greven, Predator Captain, a unique sacrifice voltron commander that leant away from the deck's themes the most. The notable "bonus commander" in this deck would be K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. It's not often that I discuss the bonus commander, but this one certainly made an impact by turning all black mana symbols into Phyrexian mana!
What did the deck do for the theme?
The 99 only has 19 cards with madness in it (out of a total of 37 possible red or black cards with madness printed at the time). The deck has plenty of discard rewards and ways to get creatures out of the graveyard, which synergizes nicely enough with the back-up commanders. This helps shore up the fact that most madness cards just don't cut it in commander.
As for that core theme, Anje Falkenrath remains the queen of madness. She has firmly planted madness's place in the format under her banner, even if she has a tendency towards Worldgorger Dragon combos, which even shows up in cEDH. She has an otherwise straightforward gameplan, but I like there being decks in the format that enable weird, otherwise bad cards.
How desirable are the cards?
Value Cards:
...and that's it. There's $20 in this deck once you cut out the chaff. This deck demonstrates one problem with a specific keyword-based theme is that the cards won't have much application or desire elsewhere. However, I will express disappointment. There could have been better, more desirable reanimation spells here. Clear strike-out.
High Utility, Low Price
- Doomed Necromancer
- Magus of the Wheel
- Chainer, Nightmare Adept
- Solemn Simulacrum
- Chaos Warp
- Beacon of Unrest
- The Eldest Reborn
- Warstorm Surge
Fair play: at the time of printing, Solemn Simulacrum and Chaos Warp were not below $2, but so it goes. Also, come on, not even a Terminate or a Dreadbore?!
Including Command Tower and Sol Ring, there's twelve cards in here for most players to use elsewhere with ease and that's... sad.
What kind of legacy does it have?
Anje Falkenrath and Chainer, Nightmare Adept are in the top ten black-red commanders. Anje was only pushed out of the top three by more-recently printed commanders. As for Chainer, he's pulling double-duty as a popular inclusion in the 99!
Even Greven, Predator Captain is fairly high for a second back-up, just barely out of the top 20 (if two of my readers go build a Greven deck, he'll climb back in!).
The decklist was definitely not for general collections, but the commanders have had a positive and interesting legacy.
Primal Genesis
Our next precon is the red-green-white deck, themed around the populate keyword. The keyword's only outing was in Return to Ravnica, where it was on 13 cards, all in green and white. This deck cut the worst five and replaced them with five brand-new populate cards. Thanks to populate naturally synergizing with any token-making, this low count ended up being fine and fun. The real twist of the deck was pushing populate into red!
As the face commander, Ghired, Conclave Exile represented the power red added to populate by allowing you to put the copied token creature directly into play attacking. Adding red also meant that various Heat Shimmer effects put in serious work.
This deck's back-up commanders represent a near-equal shift in terms of synergies. Atla Palani, Nest Tender highly incentivizes Egg tokens and thereby rewards lots of populating to crank them out faster in order to polymorph out big monsters, but is more about synergy than downright aggression than Ghired. Inversely, there is Marisi, Breaker of the Coil, who wants you to punch opponents quickly and often to send the game careening to its conclusion with a board full of goaded creatures! He likes tokens, he creates a wide army that's harder to block, but nothing about his design actually demands a populate build.
What did the deck do for the theme?
Ghired, Conclave Exile is the premiere populate commander and in the top ranks of token commanders. The addition of red specifically allowed its unique token-making to get a spotlight. Red populate has even been revisited once! Ghired's greatest contribution to the token theme is showing off the power of large tokens. The traditional go-wide looks aggressive, but just as often leads to stalled boards until someone gets a Craterhoof Behemoth or similar overrun effect. Ghired makes it actually aggressive with the focus on populating big donks to beat down with.
I'd also like to give a shout-out to Idol of Oblivion for being a cool token-based card draw engine that has since been reprinted.
How desirable are the cards?
Value Cards:
- Marisi, Breaker of the Coil
- Ohran Frostfang
- Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
- Farseek
- Second Harvest
- Lightning Greaves
- Elemental Bond
- Song of the Worldsoul
This deck rachets up the value from Merciless Rage, thankfully, to a decent $54. Ohran Frostfang is the bulk of it at $22 thanks to a lot of weird little things about it: must-haves for snake-themed decks, deathtouch decks, token decks, snow decks, and it came out the year before Commander deck cards started showing up in collector boosters of the set.
High Utility, Low Price
- Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Feldon of the Third Path
- Rampaging Baloths
- Garruk, Primal Hunter
- Explore
- Beast Within
- Cultivate
- Harmonize
- Momentous Fall
- Shamanic Revelation
- Idol of Oblivion
- Mimic Vat
- Intangible Virtue
- Colossal Majesty
Thanks to the token theme, there's quite a few cards worth using in a less populate-themed deck. All in all, 24 cards here are worth adding to the collection!
What kind of legacy does it have?
Atla Palani, Nest Tender is the number two Naya commander of all time, only beaten by Gishath, Sun's Avatar. Atla has a diverse range of deck type possibilities, and I love that for her. Ghired, Conclave Exile is at a steady number eight, and his twist on the archetype is great. The Big Token experiment has continued in later commander precons like the Quandrix deck helmed by Adrix and Nev, Twincasters or in the newly-released Ghalta and Mavren. Even Marisi, Breaker of the Coil has only recently slipped to the number 11 spot, thanks in part to the further proliferation of goad commanders.
I think this deck has a solid legacy, one that represents the better parts of modern commander decks. Namely, adding unique decks to the format without bringing an over-powered commander or strategy.
Mystic Intellect
I'll go ahead and mention this deck's controversial card printing: Dockside Extortionist. This well-hated goblin went from rising star to "please ban this card" at breakneck speeds, thanks to how every single nob on this card was dialed to MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. [Insert long rant that is essentially a sarcastic read-aloud of Dockside Extortionist's stats.] The card is busted, shouldn't have been printed as it was, but it provided a strong boost to a color that was still sorely lacking at the time. I sold mine for about $35 and felt good about getting the precon it came from for free... and then the gobbo cracked $70.
This is why commander players never sell cards...
As for the deck itself, the blue-red-white flashback deck actually... didn't name flashback on any of the commanders and didn't exclusively reward flashback on any of the original cards. This is an interesting quirk. There are actually four mechanics in the deck that allow you to cast instants and sorceries from your graveyard: flashback, retrace, jump-start, and aftermath. Flashback is certainly the most popular, but excluding the others would make the deck worse for very little gain.
The face commanders for Mystic Intellect was Sevinne, the Chronoclasm, who copies instants and sorceries you cast from your graveyard. The first back-up commander was Elsha of the Infinite, a Future Sight for noncreature spells, far more open-ended overall. The weird back-up commander was Pramikon, Sky Rampart, a Mystic Barrier in the command zone.
How did things play out?
What did the deck do for the theme?
Jeskai spellslinger didn't take off because of this deck, if that's what you're asking. Sevinne, the Chronoclasm doesn't provide solid value on arrival and his immunity to damage didn't provide enough of a long-term deck-building hook either. I've still got a Sevinne deck that I've tried to tune for a few years, but he's just not that good on his own. Ultimately, that's fine? There are plenty of mediocre commanders that are still fun.
How desirable are the cards?
Value Cards:
...Dockside Extortionist being $55 means he absolutely crushed the value of the rest of the deck, not that it had just a ton of value to be had. Elsha might have been more? Who's to say? The other four cards are, collectively, $10. Hm.
High Utility, Low Price
- Burnished Hart
- Talrand, Sky Summoner
- Guttersnipe
- Sun Titan
- Faithless Looting
- Increasing Vengeance
- Sevinne's Reclamation
- Ignite the Future
- Deep Analysis
- Divine Reckoning
- Increasing Devotion
- Dusk // Dawn
- Armillary Sphere
- Ghostly Prison
- Jace's Sanctum
In total, we have 22 cards here worth adding to the collection for some reason or another. There's a decent spellslinger core in here that you really have to spend time building out, but it's there. Unfortunately, there's just a lot of limited fodder. I will not be spending six mana to flashback a naturalize variant just because Sevinne will let me copy that. No wonder they pushed Dockside Extortionist so hard. Had to to make the deck feel normal.
What kind of legacy does it have?
Sevinne, the Chronoclasm goes into the bin of "face commanders vastly outshone by one of their back-up options" with Ghired, Conclave Exile, Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, and... quite a few others actually. He had the misfortune of being an early shot at "commander with static ability that lets you copy instant and/or sorcery spells" (he was only the third that could copy any instant/sorcery, and only the second that could do it without an additional mana cost) and there were other problems with the design. Namely, most of the flashback and friends cards were created for non-commander formats, and some of the good ones are a nonbo with being copied (Echo of Eons).
Elsha of the Infinite and Pramikon, Sky Rampart are both in the top ten in Jeskai, and they have interesting places in the format. If that was all there was to the deck, I'd wrap up with a comment about its decent long-term effects and the legacy of its experimental design.
But there's this goblin I mentioned earlier.
Look, commander is a fundamentally broken format, and we all pretend it's not for the sake of having fun, but Dockside Extortionist just does not feel close enough to the bounds of fun. I don't know how cEDH feels about it being a staple or if it's truly additive there, so I won't speak on it.
I will say that, even now, a copy of Dockside Extortionist will run you $55. You can go on eBay right now and pick up a full Mystic Intellect for $60. Do with that what you will, true believers!
Faceless Menace
For the last deck of the biodome, we turn now to the black-green-blue deck, the morph-themed Faceless Menace. Morph premiered in Onslaught block and returned in Khans of Tarkir block, specifically getting a blue-green draft archetype there. It's had a lot of interesting lessons over time and quirky rules. It's a mechanic that plays incredibly well in limited but has trouble in constructed-- especially these days, where a 3 mana 2/2 chafes against even the most casual of players.
Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer bolstered the morph theme by playing one per turn for free and turning all morphs into cantrips. Neither back-up commander here can be considered even a pivot from the main theme. Morph has no "broader" equivalent aside from, perhaps, colorless or vanilla, neither of which would have been viable attempts at the time in the context of the deck. Volrath, the Shapestealer is an interesting, customizable commander that can become other creatures. Rayami, First of the Fallen is a commander-style Cairn Wanderer, able to permanently build up to a massive keyword warrior over time.
What did the deck do for the theme?
There's little to talk about here. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer proved to be a hit. She cemented morph's place in commander and even encourages a cute flash sub-theme with the quirk of her cost-reduction. The deck is fun! I don't think she completely obsoletes the other secret morph commander, Animar, Soul of Elements, since red and black provide some different fringe benefits to the table and Animar has other unique synergies.
Shortest section ever, but that's because there's not much to it: the deck was a smashing success!
How desirable are the cards?
Value Cards:
- Seedborn Muse
- Apex Altisaur
- Farseek
- Tempt with Discovery
- Overwhelming Stampede
- Thran Dynamo
- Reliquary Tower
- Thespian's Stage
This deck's value was okay but once again hamstrung by all the slots dedicated to limited fodder to make sure the commander actually worked properly. Ultimately, it reaches $48 here thanks to the inspired choice of Seedborn Muse. Spend all your mana on your turn doing normal things, then spend your opponents' turns morphing up your creatures! Good stuff.
High Utility, Low Price
- Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Grim Haruspex
- Explore
- Reality Shift
- Road of Return
- Cultivate
- Putrefy
- Strionic Resonator
I remember when Strionic Resonator wasn't technically bulk, but here we are. What a weird time. These decks also made the weird decision to print Sakura-Tribe Elder with art originally exclusive to a promo. This split the community for a little while. They technically repeated this when releasing the Secret Lair with the Praetors, but that was a fuzzier issue. I don't know if they've done it again-- let me know!
The deck had 18 cards really worth slotting into your binder or regular collection, which... oof. Overall, these decks really showed the perils of a narrower theme making it that much harder to slot in worthwhile reprints-- but then, is that really the point of these decks? Or is the point a gameplay experience? It's a careful balancing act, but these decks didn't quite nail it in my opinion.
What kind of legacy does it have?
Kadena's actually in the top ten for Sultai commanders, and I love that. She's got a card draw reward, sure, but she's not the same level of pure, molten value as Muldrotha, the Gravetide and their ilk. Any commander encouraging you to sleeve up Icefeather Aven is aces in my book!
Volrath, the Shapestealer is that pleasantly strange commander with unique synergies unseen anywhere... until the mutate precon came along next year and accidentally gave us a second Sultai precon where a commander in the deck themed around a keyword starting with "m" cared about having creatures with weird effects your commander could supplant. Wild.
Conclusion
Commander 2019 represents a weird moment in the format and the product line as a whole. It had changed and evolved and grown. Commander 2018 and Commander 2019 both contained cohesive, straightforward decks that held little excitement for those interested in other build paths. This was in direct contrast with the earlier products in the line, who were scattered and esoteric in deck-building but contained absolutely beloved forever-gems of the format.
It's hard to say what might have happened if 2019 and 2011 had been swapped-- would Ghired be a permanent boogeyman? Would Volrath, the Shapestealer have Ghave's reputation? Were the Commander 2011 decks iconic because of legitimately exciting designs or just because they got in the door first?
The modern-day commander decks are genuinely better, in my opinion. Commander 2016 and Commander 2017 had uniquely good reprints and resonant designs, to be sure, but I remember the struggle to get those decks due to fast mark-ups.
Last year saw the release of 24 preconstructed decks. This year will see 23 released, as well as the 100th Commander preconstructed deck released when Commander Masters drops. Decks released now have a pretty focused theme and can get pretty niche and/or weird with it. It's great! I think commander is in a better spot than ever and I think the decks are, on the whole, improved.
But I enjoyed this trip through the early years of a burgeoning format, shaky and unsure of itself, and I hope you did, too. Join me next time, as Retrospective Reviews leaves the commander format to talk about... Duel Decks!
Catch you then.
