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One of the best parts about the Magic: The Gathering Commander format is that nearly any card is powerful. In the right deck, even weird cards like Dovescape could be a complete game-breaker. However, some of the cards available this year were significantly stronger than others. On top of that, some had the potential to warp multiple formats.
I looked through some of my favorite cards in the Commander meta of Magic: The Gathering and what was going on around the internet. While every Magic player’s opinions and decks will be different, these cards usually dominated the game and will likely continue to do so into 2023.
What were the most impactful Magic: The Gathering cards in Commander?
5) Farewell
While yes, Farewell is a little on the costly side, especially for a boardwipe card, it’s easily the best boardwipe in all of Commander. When it comes to Magic: The Gathering, having access to cards that clear the field of battle is crucial.
But Farewell is great, because it gives you choices. When you cast this spell, you can choose one or more of the following, and all the ones in play get exiled.
- Artifacts
- Creatures
- Enchantments
- Graveyards
Is your opponent running an annoying, enchantment-heavy prison deck? Maybe they’re all about their obnoxious graveyard retrieval. Whatever the threat, you can exile it from the game. If you are running all artifacts, but nobody else is, you can remove all non-artifacts from play and have an unstoppable force to stomp out others.
Sure, you might have to exile some of your own cards too, but if other players slow down or stall completely, that’s just a small price to pay.
4) Black Market Connections
Whenever I run a Black deck, I’m going to make sure I have plenty of ways to get life back. This is due to cards like Black Market Connections. This gorgeous 3-drop Enchantment has a trio of useful abilities that you can activate at the cost of your life points. During the pre-combat phase, you pick an ability, trigger its effect, and lose that much life.
- Sell Contraband: Create a treasure token. Lose 1 life.
- Buy Information: Draw a card. Lose 2 life.
- Hire a Mercenary: Create a 3 power, 2 toughness colorless Shapeshifter creature with Changeling. Lose 3 life. (Changelings have all creature types)
No matter what you need to get an advantage on the board, it’s likely that this Magic: The Gathering card will provide it for you. You can even choose multiple of these abilities at each turn.
3) Defiler of Vigor
The Defiler of Vigor seldom leaves one's memory. There’s something special and satisfying about a Commander deck built around obnoxious, big, green creatures.
This creature, with its 6 power, 6 toughness, and trample, also lets you pay 2 life when casting a green permanent. Suddenly, those permanents cost less. However, this does not change the amount of colorless you play.
You don’t have to pay that 2 life, though. Since Green Magic: The Gathering decks can also easily ramp up their life totals, it’s not a big deal. It’s great to play a bunch of 1-drop elves for no mana and then get your life back.
However, that’s not what makes this card scary. When you play this Magic: The Gathering creature, anytime you cast a green permanent spell, all of your creatures gain +1/+1.
This will make any creature-heavy deck a threat. I would love to see it in a Bolas’s Citadel deck, filled with low-cost green creatures. The board state will quickly spiral out of control as you grow in power.
2) Ledger Shredder
When Ledger Shredder was first teased, I wasn’t sure that it would be such a beast. However, it’s an amazing card. It’s a 1 power and 3 toughness flyer at a bargain - 2 mana. However, whenever a player casts their second spell at each turn, Ledger Shredder connives.
Connive is an ability that has you draw a card and then discard one. If you discarded a nonland, this creature gains a +1/+1 counter. Since it says players instead of you, it can quickly spiral out of control.
Many decks gain advantages from utilizing this. Reanimator decks love having a constant way to pitch powerful creatures to the graveyard, for example.
Not to mention how often people counterspell in Commander games. All of these players must consider if it’s worth making you stronger at the cost of countering others. The more players in the game, the stronger Ledger Shredder is.
The Value Bird is nothing to sneeze at. Ledger Shredder is a card that brings amazing value to all of your games, and there’s rarely a bad time to play it.
1) Boseiju, Who Endures
Many talk about how great the Kamigawa Channel lands are, and I tend to agree. Boseiju, Who Endures, is an absolute beast. These cards, regardless of format, tend to be must-own assets. However, the green Legendary Land is arguably the best.
You can choose to pay 1 green mana and discard it from your hand, to destroy an artifact, enchantment, or nonbasic land an opponent controls. Sure, they get land with a basic land typing, but you’re deleting one of their most powerful cards in exchange. It can also cost 1 green mana if you have at least one legendary creature.
What makes Boseiju, Who Endures amazing in Commander - or any format - is its reactive ability. Only a handful of cards can stop the ability once you’ve triggered it, so your opponent doesn’t get to react on most occasions.
For this reason, it’s a threat, no matter what you do. Furthermore, there are ways to pull it back to your hand or to put it in play from the grave. Therefore, it’s never gone forever.
Plenty of Magic: The Gathering cards almost made this list, but I wanted to highlight a few of my absolute favorites. These cards were incredibly strong for one reason or another and were a valuable asset to any Commander deck they share a color with.
