Dominaria United Commander—Out of the Box
We got two brand new precons to talk about with the release of the new Dominaria United (DMU) set! In this article, I’ll go over the face commanders, alternate new commanders, themes and card distribution, while also highlighting some of the new cards I expect will do well and stick around in homebrew decks.
As always, the ‘Out of the Box’ series looks at these precons from a Battlecruiser (BC) point of view and highlights how and where to make changes while still staying within the boundaries of the BC power level on the PlayEDH Discord server.
Legends’ Legacy
Face commander breakdown:
Dihada, Binder of Wills is a legendary matters planeswalker that provides your legendary creatures with combat-related keywords. The deck comes with 28 creatures and all of those creatures are legendary, so every creature card in the 99 is a legal target for Dihada’s +2 ability.
You can also filter the top 4 cards of your deck for legendary cards and put those into your hand or graveyard with her -3 ability. If you happen to whiff with this ability, you get some treasure tokens in return, so it’s not all bad even if you hit no legendary cards!
Her final ability makes you gain control of all nonland permanents until the end of turn and I believe this is the first time we’ve seen an ability like this. Most of the previous versions of this effect select a card type, like creatures or artifacts or target just one opponent. Taking over the entire board outside of lands feels very strong—but you will need to get Dihada up to 11 loyalty to achieve this.
Other subthemes in the deck:
Legend’s Legacy has a secondary focus on combat-related keywords such as deathtouch, first strike, haste, lifelink, menace, trample and vigilance. There’s a small amount of token creature generation and trigger copying present as well, but not enough to focus on as your game plan. The deck rounds out with a few graveyard recursion effects and some strong equipment to attach to your keyword-heavy legendary bodies to ensure you can at least attempt to attack each turn.
Thoughts on the new alternate commander:
Shanid, Sleeper’s Scourge continues the legendary matters focus of the deck, providing all your legendary creatures with menace. You get to draw a card for every legendary spell or land you play which makes Shanid feel like a stronger commander at the helm than Dihada. Sadly, the precon only comes with 4 legendary lands and I feel this would have been an amazing opportunity to increase the quality of the land base a little more here compared to other recent precons.
Why slot in 16 basic lands when cards like Eiganjo Castle and Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep would have provided some natural synergy with the legendary theme of the deck? Shizo, Death’s Storehouse did get reprinted here, and the other two legendary lands from that cycle are notably missing—one does have to wonder if this has to do with the fact that they’re currently on The List.
The deck works with either Shanid or Dihada at the helm—both staple keywords on legendary creatures. Shanid provides you with a more reliable source of card advantage in the command zone so I suspect most people will opt to run this card at the helm instead.
Overall thoughts on the 99:
If there was ever a precon that wanted to be pulled apart and turned into a bunch of new decks, it’s this one. There are a number of cool effects on legendary creatures and a lot of effects that would make a nice new theme to build around—but they lack the support to thrive in the base precon.
Zeriam, Golden Wind wants griffins to deal combat damage and is the only griffin in the deck. There are ways to copy legendary creatures or copy triggered abilities, but a ‘cares for creature type x’ only having one creature in a precon feels off.
Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant wants to create a whole bunch of zombie knight tokens, but the deck lacks the actual support to make those tokens into something more threatening than base 2/2 creatures with menace.
Verrak, Warped Sengir cares about paying life to activate abilities which the deck has … zero effects for—and this means that this card doesn’t actually do anything in its own precon! I don’t know if this was supposed to be a card for Standard and they simply ran out of room there, and I think it’s an interesting ability to play around with, but to me boxed precons really shouldn’t have cards that don’t work in the deck they got printed in. Putting Greed, Phyrexian Reclamation or fetchlands in the precon would have prevented this card from just being a glorified Vampire Nighthawk.
I found the artifact count to be quite high (17) for a deck that doesn’t really provide any artifact synergy, and because of this, the precon only seemed to have room for one enchantment. You have a decent chance of drawing an opening hand of mostly lands and artifacts, so at times you may have to mulligan more than you’re used to with a boxed precon.
I’d strongly advise against keeping a hand without creatures! Legend’s Legacy feels pip-hungry at times and the color fixing will need to happen through your lands as only three of the mana rocks present in the deck will tap for colored mana. They tried to offset this with treasure generation but to me the deck felt a little short on actual fixing, especially compared to the Streets of New Capenna 3-color decks.
Playing Dihada without a body to protect her is not a good idea. Dihada costs 4 mana to cast, and you have 10 creatures for 3 mana or less, so I’d goldfish a few opening hands just so you know what a keepable one looks like. Three lands, some mana rocks that tap for colorless and an equipment aren’t going to do you any good without a body to attach the equipment to or a blocker to ensure Dihada survives for more than one turn cycle.
New card highlights:
The Peregrine Dynamo is here for all your double trigger needs and has haste so can be activated the turn it gets played! Step right up and copy your Mindslaver, The Chain Veil or Thran Temporal Gateway triggers for the low low price of one mana and tapping a creature. Terms and conditions may apply!
The Reaver Cleaver - which gets the award for coolest card name of the past few months - turns your combat damage into treasure tokens, and with the amount of keyword heavy creatures in the 99 should have no issue finding a nice target to equip to. Don’t ask me how Zetalpa is going to wield an axe, just be aware that it will happen and it will hurt! And let’s all be happy Ancient Copper Dragon isn’t in the precon as well.
Cadric, Soul Kindler is a weird mix between Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and Sneak Attack. The big difference is Cadric only cares about tokens, not all permanents. I don’t currently have a red-white EDH deck and this card might change that. Delina, Wild Mage; Atsushi, the Blazing Sky; Ao, the Dawn Sky; Feldon of the Third path…the deck basically builds itself!
Upgrades for BC:
Take a good look at the creature base and figure out which ones are there ‘because we wanted this effect on a legendary creature’ and which cards provide actual synergy. Decide whether you want to stay on the equipment and token generation plan too and, if not, get rid of some cards there. I’d also replace some of the non-colored ramp for colored ramp instead and/or increase the amount of fixing by 2 to 3 cards. Let’s try and make all the creature recommendations legendary just to stay on theme!
Junji, the Midnight Sky; Liesa, Forgotten Archangel and Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats are some decent higher mana value creatures to consider. Most of the creatures in the precon want to come out early to protect Dihada, making them cost 4 mana or less. Adding some late game threats in the air that provide you with graveyard recursion or boardwide keywords should make it so you have a more resilient board in the mid to late game.
Baird, Steward of Argive; Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion and Mangara, the Diplomat provide you with some planeswalker synergy, something the deck is currently lacking. Keeping a planeswalker alive for several turn rotations in a 4-way multiplayer game isn’t easy - I realize this deck isn’t planeswalker focused but making it harder to get attacked, providing you card advantage when someone attacks Dihada or trying to increase the loyalty counters at a BC-acceptable pace doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
I will keep recommending Anguished Unmaking until it appears in a precon again - something I started doing since Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Mythos of Snapdax gives you selective board wipe potential which I usually prefer over a ‘destroy everything’ effect, just to keep the game going at a somewhat acceptable pace. I like the flexibility Semester’s End provides-use it defensively to blank combat aimed at Dihada or reset her starting loyalty, or use it in response to a board wipe and be the only one left with a relevant board state.
I’m a bit conflicted on adding Luxior, Giada’s Gift. The idea is to turn Dihada into a creature, meaning it can’t be directly attacked anymore. If you have means of putting +1/+1 counters on Dihada, or other boardwide buffs (like the one provided by Day of Destiny) she also would no longer be put into the graveyard for having 0 loyalty counters. Dihada’s +2 also reads ‘up to one target creature’, not ‘other target creature’, so Dihada is able to self-target. Equip Blackblade Reforged, and Tenza, Godo’s Maul…nothing but upsides, right?
The most common type of removal in precons is creature removal - and a whole bunch of top 100 EDH creature removal spells can now remove Dihada. Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Terminate, Putrefy, Pongify, Reality Shift, Infernal Grasp—the list goes on. None of these could target Dihada before. Most board wipes, be those ‘destroy’, ‘exile’ or ‘damage’ based, don’t hit planeswalkers either.
While hitting someone for lethal commander damage with a planeswalker sounds like one of those games you’ll remember forever, you may actually be helping your opponents by making Dihada easier to remove. Adapt to your local meta and be aware of the risks Luxior brings to your table. If you intend to homebrew Dihada with several tutors for Luxior, consider a few cards like Giver of Runes, Mother of Runes or Blacksmith’s Skill to help protect her.
Limits for BC:
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death are often played together in combo decks with a sacrifice outlet and Murderous Redcap. While I don’t expect people to turn Dihada into a sacrifice-based deck, both these cards being in the precon may result in some sites recommending adding both.
Dihada enabling lifelink and indestructible until end of turn is likely also going to have other upgrade guides push you to use these mechanics way more—be that by increasing the number of creature removal / board wipes or adding cards that are going to heavily impact life totals, like Heartless Hidetsugu or Aetherflux Reservoir. To keep things fair and manageable in our own BC power level, cards like these should likely be reconsidered when making further changes to the precon.
Conclusion: If you like playing around with keywords, triggered abilities and want your creatures to have a minimum of 4 lines of text in their ability box while you’re also micro-managing some tokens and an outlandish weapon arsenal, Dihada is the deck for you. People won’t know what to remove first because technically a third of your deck might as well be a backup commander!
‘So when Zetalpa deals combat damage on the second combat damage step, I’ll copy the trigger on The Reaver Cleaver with The Peregrine Dynamo so I get double the amount of treasures. In my second main phase this allows me to casti Neheb, which triggers Traxos so I can untap it, and triggers Teshar, targeting Krenko in my graveyard to return it to the battlefield—I’ll also draw a card with Shanid on cast and lose 1 life. After that …’
Painbow
Face commander breakdown:
Jared Carthalion is a 5-color Kavu commander! Wait no, he’s a +1/+1 counter commander that cares about colors. Wait no, he’s a graveyard to hand enabler that draws you cards and makes you treasures. If you’re as confused as I am: good! This is exactly what I hoped Jared to be. A small excerpt from our Dominaria United Predictions article:
He obviously won’t be as weird as my initial thoughts, but I kind of want Jared not to become the catch-all 5-color planeswalker staple that immediately kicks Atraxa off her go-to planeswalker EDH throne.
Have it be wacky, or not super powerful, or not an ‘obvious choice’ when building a 5-color deck. Not every commander has to be card-draw color-fixer land-matters engine piece. It’s okay for cards to not be too pushed, and I’d feel better if Jared ends up being ‘mediocre’ over ‘obviously, this is what everyone will be playing now’.
And Jared is just that. He’s not hyper-focused on one theme or synergy which means the odds of you ‘knowing what people are going to play’ when they show up with this commander are relatively low. Kavu tribal? Awesome. Go tall +1/+1 counters? Hell yeah. Self-mill graveyard recursion? Sure! How else would you run Sevinne’s Reclamation, Intuition, Gravecrawler, Dragon’s Rage Channeler and Hermit Druid in the same deck? Kenrith, Codie and Najeela are so overdone amirite gamers? Hashtag EDH send tweet.
You’ll note there is no ‘other subthemes in the deck’-part of the article for the Painbow precon—it’s 5 color weird stuff with a bunch of triggers tied into multicolor spells and that’s what it focuses on as a whole.
Thoughts on the new alternate commander:
Jenson Carthalion makes for a nice little scry engine that creates angel tokens and can color fix you for 5 mana…if you have 5 other mana to sink into him. Due to the way easier casting cost of one green and one white, and the fact that Jenson can color fix you to play the rest of the deck while providing you with a direct upside for casting multi-color and/or all color spells, you’re going to have a faster and easier game with the boxed precon when you swap over to Jenson.
Overall thoughts on the 99:
The one word that comes to mind when looking at the deck as a whole is ‘quirky’. When WOTC mentioned they were going to make a 5-color deck, this is not what I had in mind. 10 Cards (including Jared) cost a minimum of WUBRG and some of them are … just that.
Fusion Elemental is an 8/8 for WUBRG and has an empty ability box. Compare this to Two-Headed Hellkite, which is a 5/5 flying menace haste for one more mana that draws you two cards on attack. This trend in quality difference continues throughout the entire deck.
Your turn one consists of playing a land and passing the turn, unless you were lucky enough to have Abundant Growth in your opening hand. If you do find your Abundant Growth, you will only be able to play it turn one if your opening hand has one of the following:
- A Command Tower
- A Forest, 3/39 lands in your deck are forests
- An Exotic Orchard and hope the mono green player ahead of you in turn rotation didn’t keep a colorless land
- A Murmuring Bosk - which will only enter untapped if you also have your one treefolk card in your deck in your opening hand (Faeburrow Elder).
Tiller Engine is a big enabler in this deck, and a way to fix most of your lands coming into play tapped, so if your opening hand has a Tiller Engine that’s also very keepable.
The precon comes with Path to Exile and actually targeting your own Baleful Strix, Coiling Oracle or one of your expendable token creatures is a viable strategy to ensure you have the right colors of mana available.
I fully agree on not putting Sol Ring in this precon by the way - you have 133 pips to fix for in this deck and Sol Ring tapping for double colorless will not help in making you cast the large number of 5-color cards anytime soon, but if there was ever a time to reprint Birds of Paradise into a precon it should have been this one.
The deck is rather slow compared to other precons and it solves this by…wiping the board. You don’t have to catch up to your opponents if you have nothing to catch up to, right?
In my eyes it could have done with some better ‘trigger/free’ card draw as you’re already having to color fix and tap out most of the time just to get permanents on board and often times you simply don’t have the mana left to cast cards like Abzan Charm or Sultai Charm.
New card highlights:
Mana Cannons is here to shoot your creatures, your planeswalkers or your face! I’m so happy they put a goblin in the gunner seat as well, and it’s nice that it’s not limited to just creatures or just players. In the precon it makes for a decent removal piece and I can’t wait to see this card show up in homebrew decks.
I don’t know who was in charge of trying to balance out Primeval Spawn but they certainly tried to cover all bases in regards to ‘we really want people to play this for 10 mana’. The way the first few lines of the ability box are written are very specific. ‘‘If Primeval Spawn would enter the battlefield and it wasn’t cast or no mana was spent to cast it, exile it instead” makes it so you can’t Reanimate, Sneak Attack or Polymorph it into existence and this design choice feels very deliberate.
Turn one, draw a card, play nothing, discard a card in the cleanup step, throw Primeval Spawn into the graveyard, turn two basic swamp, cast Reanimate targeting Primeval Spawn is totally something you I would try do in a game of EDH if the restriction wasn’t present. It also prevents opponents from stealing this card from your deck for free with cards like Etali, Primal Storm or Mind’s Dilation.
You can get copies of this creature so long you pay for the mana to get the copy, such as with the cards Clone or Clever Impersonator. Activated Sleeper was in the Dominaria United Set and Collector boosters, right?
Iridian Maelstrom is a neat new board wipe for 5-color decks and definitely something to consider in say: O-Kagachi or Progenitus decks. Just make sure you understand the difference between color and color identity—so don’t expect your Go-Shintai or Morophon to survive.
Upgrades for BC:
Let’s get the more boring changes out of the way first. Birds of Paradise, Chromatic Lantern and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. More color fixing! Note how two of these are yet again in green. You’ll almost never see me recommending people to improve the landbase in a precon but this deck was really desperate for some catch all mana fixing. Whichever triome, fetchland, or shockland you have laying around will likely be a decent upgrade here.
Radha, Coalition Warlord; Nael, Avizoa Aeronaut and Sphinx of Clear Skies from the new standard set all seem like cool effects to consider. Honestly, there’s several more cards in DMU that work with domain and I just picked a few that appealed to me the most. Radha makes you go tall, Nael makes for a great filter piece and if you’re giving me the option to Fact or Fiction on a Sphinx then obviously I won’t say no.
Widespread Thieving! When this card came out it, seemed to not really have a home so I’m happy I can finally recommend this card somewhere! The deck is very swingy in nature, but most of those creatures are slow. When you’re already tapping down 5 or more mana per creature, ensuring they can hit the turn they come out will speed up the deck somewhat. Both Rhythm of the Wild and Fires of Yavimaya seem like good choices here.
General Ferrous Rokiric will provide you with some additional blockers meaning you get to swing in those big multicolor chonkers more reliably. Allied Strategies will in most cases be a 5 mana draw 5 and Tromp the Domains makes for a neat not-often played Overrun effect that nowadays gets outclassed by Finale of Devastation or Triumph of the Hordes—it’s a card that’s been in my ‘weird cards’ box for a while and it’s finally getting its time in the spotlight!
Limits for BC:
Xyris is in the list so an obvious ‘that can get iffy’ are wheels. ‘If Windfall resolves I’ll make 21 creature tokens’ doesn’t sound very BC friendly.
‘My mana costs are expensive so I will have to cheat the cards out’ is probably also not where you want to take the deck if you wish to stay within BC’s boundaries. Sneak Attack and most of its variants are likely going to make the deck too fast.
Most BC decks also have a (deliberate) lack of fully optimized synergy, so your deck likely doesn’t need every catch-all solution to continuously tap for 5 colors. While a singular Bloom Tender or Jegantha in a minorly upgraded deck likely won’t be too strong, slotting several of these of effects on top of improving the landbase and ramp and being able to generate 15-20 mana from fixers per turn is probably also too fast for our own server’s BC environment. In the same breath, a deck that has Selvala, Zaxara and Faeburrow Elder should be careful with effects like Freed from the Real or Pemmin’s Aura.
Conclusion:
Jared is all in on WUBRG tribal and multi-color bonuses. Out of the box, you might struggle to play your hand for the first few turns. I expect people to treat this commander like a color identity fixer more so than go to focus or synergy piece of their deck. I’m very interested to see which brews people come up with - especially in the ones that seek to slot Jegantha as a companion.
Ensuring you have the right color mana open in the base precon is going to be your focus every game. Being aware of how and when the deck can run into a very rough early game before you sit down to play is something newer players should be made aware of. Finding an opening hand with access to green, mana rocks or some early accelerants like Abundant Growth, Selvala, Tiller Engine or any of the numerous green ramp spells should be your goal.
Whenever you do literally anything, something will likely happen, be that playing lands, casting spells, activating abilities or drawing cards. Prepare to pay extra attention to your own board state to make sure you’re not missing any triggers.
Painbow doesn’t want to set the best lap time, it seeks to win the 24-hour race instead.
And that’s it for both decks! I’ll be out the country for almost a month so the next few weeks worth of content will be handled by Chief and whoever he decides to bring!
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