Best Prebuilt Commander Decks: A Universes Beyond Review
Universes Beyond (UB) products have undeniably become a significant part of Magic: The Gathering. While opinions on their integration vary, their impact, especially on the Commander format, is undeniable. Many UB sets were specifically designed as Commander products, resulting in a substantial influx of new legendary creatures. With over 500 eligible commanders from UB products, the average player is more likely to encounter a UB commander. This article explores some of the best prebuilt Commander decks within the Universes Beyond umbrella, considering their unique mechanics, power levels, and overall playability.
Universes Beyond commanders are legendary creatures printed in Universes Beyond sets-sets that adapt non-Magic IPs, including Final Fantasy, Doctor Who, The Lord of the Rings, and Warhammer 40,000, to name but a few. It's important to note that this review focuses exclusively on UB-exclusive cards, excluding reskins.
Top Universes Beyond Commanders: A Deep Dive
Here's a look at some notable Universes Beyond commanders, ranked and analyzed for their strengths and weaknesses:
#40. Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant: Bilbo is a dream commander with a win condition so unlikely to hit, it becomes a cause for celebration when it does! Successfully reaching the magic number with Bilbo should result in an immediate game win.
#39. Henry Wu, InGen Scientist: Henry Wu provides sacrifice decks with a valuable resource: a sacrifice outlet. It also presents a unique deckbuilding challenge, requiring a careful balance of human and non-human creatures. This ensures the right ratios of sacrifice fodder and outlets for optimal performance.
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#38. Lotho, Agent of the Shadow: Lotho is a strong card that generates a significant amount of Treasure for an Orzhov card. The additional mana provided by Lotho can be invaluable in Commander.
#37. Lord of the Nazgûl: The Lord of the Nazgûl enhances token strategies, similar to Talrand, Sky Summoner, by creating larger tokens and adding black to the mix.
#36. Sergeant John Benton: Sergeant John Benton adds intrigue to Commander games by forcing opponents to weigh the life cost of drawing cards. With Selesnya's creature-pumping capabilities, John Benton can consistently deliver powerful attacks.
#35. Y'shtola Rhul: Y'shtola Rhul offers a unique effect: additional end steps. This can be exploited with powerful effects like Agent of Treachery and Primordial Mist.
#34. Cloud, Midgar Mercenary: Cloud stands out by allowing players to double the triggers from equipment they control.
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#33. Tom Bombadil: Tom Bombadil allows players to access the best stories through sagas.
#32. The Celestial Toymaker: The Celestial Toymaker decks often have a relatively small pool of cards to draw upon.
#31. The Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler: This Doctor and companion pairing is a common and strong choice. The Tenth Doctor enables combo wins, while Rose Tyler grows large enough to threaten a win through combat.
#30. Ian Malcolm, Chaotician: Ian Malcolm escalates the theft mechanic by allowing all players to steal from one another. This unique approach sets it apart from other theft cards.
#29. Captain America, First Avenger: Captain America is a flavorful and powerful equipment commander.
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#28. The Master, Multiplied: The Master, Multiplied can win the game if opponents don’t interact with the myriad copies, but it’s more often used to keep around the temporary tokens generated by red cards.
#27. Magus Lucea Kane: Magus Lucea Kane is a powerful commander that doubles X-spells.
#26. Anrakyr the Traveller: Anrakyr the Traveller reanimates artifacts with a simple attack trigger.
#25. Aragorn, King of Gondor: Aragorn, King of Gondor can be seen in traditional EDH from time to time as a monarch card.
#24. Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER: Cloud provides rewards for equipping creatures.
#23. Will the Wise and Lucas the Sharpshooter: Will the Wise and Lucas the Sharpshooter play well together thanks to the innate synergy between one commander that produces Clues and the other that uses them.
#22. Dogmeat, Ever Loyal: Dogmeat cantrips the turn it comes into play and provides further card advantage by fetching Junk tokens whenever you attack with equipped or enchanted creatures. Naya is a great color combination for equipment and auras, so it has plenty of synergies to draw on. You can even flicker Dogmeat over and over for more and more cards.
#21. Éowyn, Shieldmaiden: Éowyn hits incredibly hard and floods the board with humans.
#20. Ezio, Auditore da Firenze: Ezio gives access to all the juicy new assassins ACR gave us as well as the old classics, not to mention an ability that lets you deal 25% less damage to your opponents to win.
#19. Tom Bombadil: If you want to have a jolly good time with sagas, you can draw on Tom Bombadil to access all the best stories you can think of.
#18. Dr. Madison Li: Dr. Madison Li is one of the most popular energy commanders.
#17. Tidus, Yuna's Guardian: Tidus is a good-stuff commander themed around +1/+1 counters.
#16. Emet-Selch, Unsundered: Emet-Selch's value lies squarely in Hades, Sorcerer of Eld. It’s just Yawgmoth's Will on a stick! A well-built Hades deck ought to win the turn it flips, or at least aim for it.
#15. Mr. House, President and CEO: Mr. House has cornered the market on dice-rolling mechanics. It often produces multiple Robot tokens a turn to overwhelm your opponents, and you can cash in Treasure.
#14. Marneus Calgar: Marneus Calgar supports an archetype with card draw. This commander sets up ugly board states where you have a Bitterblossom trigger in your upkeep, some planeswalkers that make something during your main phase, a Veteran Soldier in combat, and you’re suddenly drawing 10 cards a turn while presenting a lethal strike force. Oh, and it has no shortage of combos with cards like Nadir Kraken.
#13. The Wandering Minstrel: Building around towns doesn’t give you anything because the synergies within are so scant. But building around an Amulet of Vigor in your opening hand every game? That’s where this card’s power lies: You can exploit bounce lands like an Amulet Titan deck.
#12. Storm, Force of Nature: Giving storm to cards that weren’t supposed to have storm sets up wild turns unlike anything else.
#11. Iron Man, Titan of Innovation: Iron Man gives artifacts the Birthing Pod treatment. You always start with something since Iron Man makes a Treasure, which you can often transmute into a Sol Ring.
#10. Y'shtola, Night's Blessed: If you’re building a control deck, you really want card advantage out of the command zone, which Y'shtola provides in spades.
#9. Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos and Slicer, Hired Muscle: They’re some of the best aggressive commanders in the game. These commanders excel because they can attack four times a turn cycle, providing far more pressure than the most suited up Voltron commander in other colors.
#8. Aragorn, the Uniter: Aragorn is one of the most popular and powerful LTR commanders because everybody loves a multicolor good-stuff pile, and this card does it better than most. It takes very little for this 4-color commander to snowball away with a game.
#7. Caesar, Legion's Emperor: Caesar combines aristocrats and tokens into a delightfully aggressive shell.
#6. Deadpool, Trading Card: Deadpool plays best with red’s many copy effects to create clones of Deadpool that permanently rob your opponents of relevant text boxes and replace them with memes and shattered dreams.
#5. Be'lakor, the Dark Master: Be'lakor is a massive creature that wins the game quite easily without a dash of holy water. It often lends itself to a demonic flicker deck, both to exploit the enters ability and to burn your opponents out.
#4. The Wise Mothman: The Wise Mothman takes an intriguing approach to Sultai counters, incorporating black into the traditionally Simic archetype by tying your counter production to self-mill.
#3. Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph: Ghyrson Starn is an Izzet commander that amplifies pinger effects.
#2. Galadriel, Light of Valinor: Galadriel offers disguising value just for playing creatures.
#1. Vivi Ornitier: Vivi is an astoundingly powerful commander. It deals plenty of damage, but the mana production is far more alluring. In addition to those cards, you can exploit the power-based ramp with combat tricks like Wild Ride and Monstrous Rage that become rituals in Vivi’s hands.
Edge of Eternities Commander Decks: A Detailed Examination
Edge of Eternities marks Magic’s first real foray into outer space. The set includes two Commander decks designed to flesh out the setting. These decks include spacecraft as alternate commanders, and are in 3-color combinations.
Counter Intelligence: A Jeskai Artifact Powerhouse
Counter Intelligence is a Jeskai artifact charge counter deck. It uses an artifact creature build as the backdrop for a charge counter/proliferate strategy, which means you’ll grow large creatures with +1/+1 counters while you charge up other artifacts like Darksteel Reactor and Lux Cannon.
- Kilo, Apogee Mind: Kilo is the face commander, and it’s an exciting one, too. Open-ended proliferate has always been sweet.
- Inspirit, Flagship Vessel: Inspirit is the alternative spacecraft commander. It strikes me as an interesting choice if you want to lean heavily into a charge counter build.
Counter Intelligence is a massive win on the value side. It has 10 cards in the $2-5 range, just one in the $5-10 range, and an impressive five cards between $10-20. Darksteel Reactor goes in very few decks, but Cyberdrive Awakener and Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus are great in decks built to use them. You also get two excellent money staples in Swan Song and Ripples of Potential.
The mana base is functional but bad, and it makes little attempt to do anything interesting besides fix mana. Counter Intelligence has Glittering Massif as an addition to the cycling duals from Amonkhet, and Radiant Summit as part of the tango land cycle from Battle for Zendikar.
Patrolling Peacemaker is an awesome design. Depthshaker Titan can just end a game on the spot. Kilo, Apogee Mind has the potential to crack various top commander lists. Backed by an incredibly strong suite of money reprints, Counter Intelligence is a whammy of a Commander precon. You’ll get your money’s worth, a highly customizable new commander in Kilo, tons of artifact support cards, and great Commander staples across the board.
World Shaper: A Jund Lands Sacrifice Strategy
World Shaper is a Jund deck with a specific strategy of sacrificing lands. The face commander is Szarel, Genesis Shepherd, a Crucible of Worlds in the command zone that also pumps up your board while you fiddle around with sac engines. If Szarel isn’t your speed, feel free to board Hearthhull, the Worldseed instead. Air Force Jund seems way more blatantly powerful than the Jeskai spacecraft from Counter Intelligence. It’s a strong draw engine, sacrifice engine, and landfall enabler all in one, and the fully stationed version seems like it’d just kill the table with the right setup.
This deck is a steaming pile as far as reprint value goes. World Shaper has six cards in the $2-5 range and four in the $5-10 range. Nothing beyond that, with Moraug, Fury of Akoum as the most valuable reprint.
Hearthhull, the Worldseed is an excellent card for lands decks. World Shaper is a fine deck, but just fine. It’s got a recognizable theme with a small enough twist to make it distinct, and a spaceship-load of great new additions to land decks in Commander. It fails pretty hard when it comes to reprint value, but I’d expect some of these newcomers to maintain a premium price tag.
tags: #best #prebuilt #commander #decks #universes #beyond
