There are 36 new legendary creatures in the brand new MTG set Secrets of Strixhaven. But while some of these commanders are top of the class, others will struggle to graduate. For every super-powered MTG commander worth building a deck around, there's another legend that you'd struggle to fit into your 99.
Below, you'll find six of the most interesting, most powerful legends in this set. We've overlooked the precon commanders this time around, though all five are extremely good too.
6. Abigale, Poet Laureate
Most of the students we met in Lorwyn Eclipsed have returned to Strixhaven in a deeply disappointing form, but best-bird Abigale is the exception. Her new card is deceptively powerful. It doesn't look like much at first, but Heroic Stanza pairs brilliantly with keywords like Heroic and Repartee, making for a strong budget build-around.
5. Mica, Reader of Ruins
Mono-red is a hard color combination to make work in EDH, but Mica is giving it the old college try. The Ward cost can be easily ignored in commander, but copying any instant or sorcery for the meagre price of sacrificing an artifact is, given the proliferation of artifact tokens in recent years, more difficult to overlook.
The obvious spot for Mica is a treasure deck, copying spells (but not costs) of cards like Unexpected Windfall and Seize the Spoils to create a load of card advantage and a pile of shiny treasures. Storm-Kiln Artist is the best friend of any Mica player, but I can't decide if the best route to victory is through artifact pingers or copying a massive burn spell.
4. Aziza, Mage Tower Captain
Another spell-copying commander, but this one encourages a go-wide strategy rather than treasures. Aziza is a super cheap, super cool build-around. You want spells that spit out tokens here, combined with some big finishers you can copy to give your opponents a bad time.
3. Blech, Loafing Pest
Now we have Blech, I'm no longer searching for Blex, as this bigger pest seems significantly stronger, that mass buff making it effortless to build up a frightening army. This card works particularly well with the new pests which gain you life as they attack, but there'll be plenty of space to throw in your favorite creepy crawlies from the grab bag of creature types Blech likes to loaf with.
2. Berta, Wise Extrapolator
This clever frog has several powerful abilities, giving you free mana when you put +1/+1 counters on her, naturally ramping you and growing bigger over time with her Increment ability, and tapping to turn your spare mana into big fractals.
This is the sort of stuff Simic players adore, and I have no doubt theory-crafters are already dreaming up 15 different ways to make her go infinite.
1. Witherbloom (and the other Elder Dragons)
Okay, I admit it's a bit of a cop-out putting five different cards at the top of a six-card list, but seriously, how do you choose between these excellent dragon commanders? They all make for awesome spell-slinging decks, and the one that's best for you will depend on your preferred color combination and keyword ability. While Prismari and Quandrix are a little less unique than the other three, that doesn't make them less powerful.
While they all deserve a mention, in the end, I think Witherbloom stands just slightly above her esteemed colleagues. While this card has the highest mana value, it's the only one that comes with a cost reducer, and one that gels nicely with what this Golgari deck wants to be doing - making a load of tokens and then using them to cheat out big spells.
Whereas the other decks can get into serious trouble the second the commander itself is dealt with, Witherbloom can be recast with relative ease. A board wipe will still be crushing, though, so make sure you play Heroic Intervention in this deck.
What's your favorite Strixhaven legend? Let us know over on the Wargamer Discord.