MTG Commander Masters promises some exciting new Magic: The Gathering Commander decks, including a deck featuring Slivers, and one, Eldrazi Unbound, starring the Eldrazi. But a comment from Magic’s head designer Mark Rosewater implies that the Eldrazi in this deck are more bound than its title suggests. Instead of an Eldrazi tribal deck featuring loads of the faceless, noodly creeps, Rosewater admits the designers “chose to make the deck more about playing giant colorless spells rather than specifically referencing Eldrazi”.
Obviously, that’s one hell of a bummer for fans who were expecting a deck stuffed full of lovecraftian Eldrazi, especially since they’ve been up for preorder for some time; it’s likely some people will have made their purchasing decisions based purely on the name and face commander. And of course, these Commander Masters EDH decks are pricey.
In Rosewater’s article, he explains that designing a colorless deck has significant challenges due to the lack of card options available. For instance, “there aren’t a lot of colorless instants, so it’s tricky giving the deck enough ways to be reactive”. While that’s obviously true, each Commander Masters deck has 10 new cards, so Wizards could’ve printed cards to compensate for the biggest holes in the colorless identity, while keeping up the clamoured-for Eldrazi theme.
It’s obviously far too early to condemn the deck as a dud, and even if it’s not the primary focus of the deck, hopefully Eldrazi Unbound will still contain a substantial Eldrazi subtheme – with new Eldrazi cards and a reprint of at least one of the expensive Eldrazi titans. Still, this does ring some alarm bells. It rather smacks of the recent March of the Machine Phyrexians deck, which was actually an artifact deck that didn’t really care all that much about the MTG creature type on the tin.
If you’ve not been keeping track of all the Commander Masters news, we’ve gathered together the top Commander Masters spoilers for you. And our Commander Masters release date guide contains everything we know about the upcoming set. Speaking of upcoming Magic: The Gathering sets, our guide to the MTG release schedule has everything that’s coming up in 2023.