menu

Commanded by Planeswalkers

Are you a Quiet Speculation member?

If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.

At San Diego Comic-Con 2014, this happened:

teferi-temporal-archmage-deckbox

Let me zoom that in for you:

tef2

Do you see that last line? "Teferi, Temporal Archmage can be your commander." Mind: blown.

Mark Rosewater confirmed that this will be a cycle of mono-colored planeswalkers at the forefront of this year's Commander decks. So we can expect five of these. Interestingly, as I understand it, Teferi is no longer a planeswalker in the current storyline. What we're seeing here is a retroactive look back at the planeswalker Teferi once was. Will the other five planeswalkers in this cycle also be from the past? Did anyone mention Urza?

From a play perspective, planeswalkers as commanders is a huge change. One wonders if the rules committee was consulted before these were sent to print. [EDIT: It seems that, yes, the EDH overlords were privy to this move.] Wizards of the Coast is ostensibly hands-off with the format, so it would be surprising if they printed something so barrier-breaking like this without at least running it by Sheldon Menery and the rest of the team. Some local playgroups have already adopted rules allowing any planeswalker to serve as commander, so it's not like this hasn't been considered before. Don't be surprised to see more playgroups adopt this mentality, or if these planeswalker-commanders are extremely overpowered, it would be equally unsurprising to see playgroups discourage their use altogether. This move may be exactly what players want from the format, or it could be pushing the power level just a little too far. We can't really know until we see how these cards perform.

From a financial perspective, I have no idea. At least one of these decks will be a snap-buy at MSRP, but since these planeswalkers will only be available in these sets, all five could be at that level. Until more spoilers and preorders start going up, it's hard to make any kind of financial predictions at this time.

From a business perspective, it's a little shocking that R&D has taken such a bold new direction so soon. The previous iterations of Commander decks sold like crazy. I still have never seen a copy of Mind Seize in the wild (except for at $60-plus), and even the "bad" Commander decks all disappear from the shelves eventually. This product was already going to sell out, so pushing something so crazy and powerful and new like this seems mistimed. Why not wait until interest in the product line is waning to reinvigorate it with something so radical?

I'm sure WOTC has a plan, but let's hope it's not printing five new planeswalker-commanders every year. That will get out of hand very quickly. On the other hand, can you imagine the outrage in 2015 when we're back to legendary creatures as commanders? It seems like R&D has set up a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation, but they surely have a strategy for the format. It will be interesting to see what that is moving forward.

Avatar photo

Danny Brown

Danny is a Cube enthusiast and the former Director of Content for Quiet Speculation.

View More By Danny Brown

Posted in Commander, Free, SpoilerTagged

Have you joined the Quiet Speculation Discord?

If you haven't, you're leaving value on the table! Join our community of experts, enthusiasts, entertainers, and educators and enjoy exclusive podcasts, questions asked and answered, trades, sales, and everything else Discord has to offer.

Want to create content with Quiet Speculation?

All you need to succeed is a passion for Magic: The Gathering, and the ability to write coherently. Share your knowledge of MTG and how you leverage it to win games, get value from your cards – or even turn a profit.

3 thoughts on “Commanded by Planeswalkers

  1. At first thought, I didn’t think a new Commander set so soon was a good idea. However, with it being a singleton format and everything it draws from the four yearly standard sets anyways, the new cards don’t seem like much of a strain and will help keep the format fresh. Even if every year your typical commander deck were to get as many as 10 to 15 new cards swapped in, the majority of player constructed Commander decks remain mostly unchanged thus preserving each deck’s identity. Financially however, I can’t help think more printed product = declining value for existing collections.

  2. I can remember that they confirmed last year that they will print commander decks every year. So it’s not a surprise I guess.

    they reprinted mind seize in bigger supply, so every town connected to the outside world has plenty of affordable mind seize decks now. Online, you can buy it for 30€, the others for 15€.
    It’s clear that supply is high enough now, WOTC can do fast reprints to answer supply problems. And one of the hottest legacy/vintage cards from recent past is in it. So I can’t imagine new PW’s will be a problem at all. They will probably not affect legacy/vintage.
    So I don’t understand why this can go out of hand?

    Also, we could possible see a nykthos reprint (or a similar commander only variant) in those decks.

  3. Seriously,

    #1 If only 5 PW can be our commander, it’ll not be THAT great

    #2 Commander can win with commander damage… I’m not sure have a PW in command zone is the best choice to do…

Join the conversation

Want Prices?

Browse thousands of prices with the first and most comprehensive MTG Finance tool around.


Trader Tools lists both buylist and retail prices for every MTG card, going back a decade.

Quiet Speculation