As promised, the Command Zone released a video talking about one of the four new Commander 2019 decks, and Wizards of the Coast revealed the full deck list simultaneously on the Mothership. Follow that link to see the list, you can also watch the YouTube video of the Command Zone directly on that page. Feel free to do that and then you can come back for my commentary. Monday’s deck reveal was of “Faceless Menace,” the Sultai-colored Morph-themed deck. The only thing I’ve noticed is that there are a couple of cards that I can’t seem to find spoilers for although they are present in the deck list, so I cannot comment on those just yet. As themes go, this one heavily leans on the Morph mechanic, which looks to be very powerful and synergistic. However, the mechanic simply isn’t interesting to me as a playstyle, so I don’t think I’m going to pick this one up. Still, let’s take a look at the cards, you might find some of this more appealing than I do.

Alternate Commanders:

The alternate commander suite is very much on theme, but the only one that I think is remotely intriguing is Volrath. His ability to place counters on creatures to make them weaker and then simultaneously be able to copy that creature while remaining a 7/5 is pretty decent. I can see him being his own general and probably being pretty decent due to these colors. Rayami is probably a voltron commander at best. Someone in one of my MTG groups pointed out that Grismold goes very well with Night of Souls’ Betrayal – which is an enchantment that gives all creatures -1/-1 so that he’s getting +4/+4 at the end of each of your turns, but then he’s probably still going voltron and it’s not as if he doesn’t die to removal. So all around I think Kadena herself should remain the obvious choice for commander of this deck.

New Cards:

Each of these preconstructed decks contain a ton of reprints, so there are only a few brand-new-to-the-format cards. Those are pictured above, outside of the couple that I mentioned are not online yet for some reason (Mire in Misery and Voice of Many are the missing cards). I also did not include already spoiled cards, you can check those out in older The War Report posts. There are some things here, but the only card I’d really like to own is the Apex Altisaur, as it would slot into Gishath quite nicely. Road of Return is pretty good, particularly for expensive commanders. I don’t like Sudden Substitution, but I’m sure there’s some trickery to be had with it. The Gift of Doom aura is blah. Thieving Amalgam and Scroll of Fate are great for the morph theme but otherwise fairly useless. Lastly, the Pendant of Prosperity is great for group hug themes but probably not used much otherwise. So overall I’m not really into the new cards made for this deck, and I can safely say there aren’t even reprints I’m dying to have that are included, though some are good cards if you don’t already own them.

Notable Reprints:

I’m not going to go over all of the reprints because they are old news, but I will say that the above are good cards for your collection. Seedborn Muse if fantastic in basically any green deck, but better in those that will abuse it. Deathmist Raptor was one of the beast creature cards that was changed to a dinosaur once the tribe became recognized during the Ixalan block. This is the first reprinting of the card with the new creature subtype. Strionic Resonator is a great card for commanders with triggered abilities, while Thespian’s Stage is a land that combos with several other lands to do fun things. Lastly, Vraska the Unseen is one of my favorite versions of the Planeswalker, though it wasn’t exactly expensive prior to this. Still, these are a nice pick up and if you really enjoy the mechanics in this deck I think it’s going to perform pretty well against the other decks and we haven’t even seen those yet.

The Flashback-themed deck is being revealed in a few minutes. I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts on that.