Spoiler season for Commander 2019 has finally finished, and as such I can go over the final decklist. The Rakdos-colored madness-themed commander deck is led by Anje, and though she seems pretty good for the mechanic I’m not overly interested in it. I was surprised that there are quite a few cards in the deck that I would like to own though, but that’s due in part to them not being madness-centric. I should also note that some of the spoilers that were missing from some of the previous decks that I covered have finally showed up, probably because they were included in more than one of the decks so I’m sure WotC didn’t want them spoiled early. First up, the alternate commanders:

Alternate Commanders:

Chainer is a character that has existed previously, but I’m not too interested in this version. The recursion is nice and giving recurred creatures haste is a boon as well, but that’s all he does and it’s not that interesting. Greven is a little better, as you can sac a creature to draw some cards and lose life, and then he gets +1/+0 for each life lost, so perhaps a good voltron commander. Having menace is some nice evasion as well, so he’s probably the better Rakdos commander here, and he enables the madness theme, but so does Chainer in this form. K’rrik is pretty awesome, but I’ve already talked about him. There isn’t another multicolor commander in this deck due to it being the only one that isn’t a wedge deck, so mono black is it. I guess there are a couple of other legendaries included that you could build as well, but they don’t seem to be on theme.

New Cards:

Of these cards, the two I like the most are the Bone Mizer and the new curse. Curses have been a thing for a while, and many people have found ways to make curse based decks, and I’m sure those are annoying to play against. The new one has already been broken with some recently released cards where you can essentially pay life to gain more life and draw out your deck. Whatever the case it’s not bad by itself. I really like the Bone Mizer though and want a copy for my zombie deck. It already relies heavily on discard and recursion effects, and having the option to discard creatures, spells or lands in order to get tokens, card draw or mana is nice. Honestly you can’t lose with that card. Some of the other new cards are pretty good too, and Aeon Engine already has Uno memes dedicated to it.

Notable Reprints:

The new art for Solemn Simulacrum is quite nice. Ob Nixilis is a great Planeswalker addition to any collection. I’ve been meaning to grab a Geth for quite some time just to have, and Magus of the Wheel is one of the better wheel-on-a-stick cards. Lastly, Geier Reach Sanitarium is a little bit of group-hug, but card draw on a land is never a bad thing. It’s great for colors that need the help in that department!

Missing Spoilers:

As I mentioned there were some spoilers missing in previous posts, and these are them. Bloodthirsty Blade is an interesting way to staple the goad keyword to a creature, and because it was in more than one deck it didn’t get revealed until the end. The same goes for Mire in Misery and Voice of Many, thought the latter was spoiled the next day after being missing the first. Mire in Misery is some new enchantment removal for black that is a color that struggles with it. However, being conditional, it’s still not very good. It’s precon good, but not EDH good, if that makes sense. The Voice of Many is fine in creature heavy green decks, Emmara being one token themed deck I can see really benefiting from it. Nothing too exciting though.

Overall I am still only interested in buying the Populate and Flashback decks. They have the most value for my buck. I might buy a few singles from this deck only because they are likely to be at their cheapest point due to this reprint, but none of them are very expensive to begin with. It’s sort of a lackluster year, but I have trouble saying it’s worse than last year. I hope come 2020 we get another awesome year like we did in 2017. We’ve been spoiled and subsequently let down.