Commander 2014

Commander 2014 hits shelves tomorrow, Friday 11/7/14. Here at Wizardden.com you can pick yours up at $34.99 a piece or if you want to get all five of them at once it'll run you $154.99. With that in mind lets take a look into the decks.

Before we take a look at the decks as a whole lets get the value out of the way. As it stands today there are no True-Name Nemesis or Scavenging Ooze type gems, but there are some that are drawing some attention. Containment Priest, Daretti, Scrap Savant, and Dualcaster Mage are all holding a $15 price tag prior to release. The priest and mage in particular we will likely see some of in legacy builds, though where the priest already has a solid home in Death and Taxes the mage may struggle to find a good home. The rest of the walkers are finding a home with the much needed reprinting of Wurmcoil Engine at the $8 mark. I have my eye on Masterwork of Ingenuity, Hallowed Spiritkeeper, Scrap Mastery, as well as the new lands, Arcane Lighthouse and Myriad Landscape. All of these cards are unique and powerful granting them homes in more and more EDH decks as time goes on. Inversely as more decks want to play these cards they will likely be much harder to find.

 Now for what really matters, how much fun are the decks?

Going in WUBRG order lets start it off with Nahiri, the Lithomancer and Jazal Goldmane leading the white deck. This token equipment deck is reminds me of the best Kemba, Kha Regent decks I have seen in the past. It has many of the lesser know yet super relevant cards for this type of build. It looks like a lot of fun to play and other than adding in some more powerful equipment and the Puresteel Paladin, Leonin Shikari, Lightning Greaves set the deck is really good right out of the box.

 Teferi, Temporal Archmage and Stitcher Geralf bring us a blue deck of drawing cards, confusing your opponent with morphs and instants, and big blue creatures. It is hard to judge how this plays just seeing the decklist. I can tell however some refinement and direction toward a stronger control, leviathan beat down, or twiddling milling zombie nonsense makes for a formidable deck.

Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath and Ghoulcaller Gisa bring us black deck in the deepest sense of the phrase. Lose life and sacrifice creatures, in exchange for drawing cards, killing creatures, and bringing back the dead. If you enjoy playing black than this deck will be a blast. Flavor wise this is my favorite of all five of the decks as it nails everything that is black magic. Get yourself some tutors, the rest of the mana doublers, and even more over powered black bombs and the deck is a true force to be reckoned with.

Bringing the chaos and forge is Daretti, Scrap Savant and Feldon of the Third Path. This particular red deck takes an approach that seems to be growing in popularity lately, artifact red. Out of the box this one seems the most formidable but is obviously susceptible to some well placed hate. Fun cards like Wurmcoil Engine with the artifact reanimation make for a very durable board state with continuous pressure. First additions should probably mana increasing artifacts and some good old Mycosynth Lattice shenanigans.

Bringing all the might and regrowth of green is Titania, Protector of Argoth and Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury. This one looks like everyone's first mono green commander deck. Personally I did start with Omnath, Locus of Mana and over the last four years it has grown in power and depth. This seems like a great deck for newer edh players as it provides a simple base to work with and you dont feel outclassed since you can put down some serious pressure.

Once they start getting opened up we'll see just how good they are, come down to Wizardden.com and pick yours up before they're gone. This has once again been Ariel, and thank you for reading.