Magic: The Gathering is a fantastic card game, but the Commander format has given it even more legs.
It revolves around a central Commander that helms your deck, giving it a ton of personality as players gravitate towards their favorite legendary creatures to build around.
Wizards of the Coast finally recognized the format in 2011, beginning a deluge of preconstructed decks that are playable right out of the box. We’ve got a full list of them, but for now, we’ve narrowed down our top 12.
These aren’t presented in any real order, but let us know which ones you’ve played!
The Most Powerful Magic: The Gathering Commander Precons
Heavenly Inferno – Commander 2011
Heavenly Inferno
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Heavenly Inferno is one of the first Commander precons, and its strength lies in its flexibility. The Commander, Kaalia of the Vast, helps you bring creatures into play, whether they’re Angels, Demons, or Dragons.
Because of that, you can easily swap out a bunch of Angels and Demons for Dragons, or lean into two of them if you’d prefer. As with some others on this list, it can get out of hand pretty swiftly.
Guided By Nature – Commander 2014
Guided By Nature
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It’s not often we get mono-color decks in recent years, but Guided By Nature is a mono-green powerhouse helmed by a Planeswalker in Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury.
Freyalise brings more tokens into play, includes removal, and allows for card draw, and she’s flanked by big-hitters like Siege Behemoth and Rampaging Baloths.
Tyranid Swarm – Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K
Tyranid Swarm
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How many +1/+1 tokens are enough? You’ll never have to find out, because Magus Lucea Kane can dish out plenty and give you double X-cost spells, while the Swarmlord turns your creatures with counters into card draw.
Tyranid Swarm is a deck that truly does feel like a ‘swarm’, and can give you big creatures to attack with, and plenty of tokens back to defend if you’re smart.
Necron Dynasties – Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K
Necron Dynasties
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This mono-black Warhammer deck costs a pretty penny these days, with its Commander, Szarekh, able to mill cards to put more creatures into your hand.
I personally prefer to use Imotekh the Stormlord as my Commander, though, letting you create token creatures as you use recursion and power up a creature during combat.
Mutant Menace – Universes Beyond: Fallout
Mutant Menace
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I hate this deck. It’s a pain to deal with, causing plenty of mill and life loss for the whole table, but there’s no denying it’s effective.
The Wise Mothman, its Commander, dishes out rad counters and then grows in power as those counters mill cards and wound your opponents. Nasty business, truly.
Endless Punishment – Duskmourn
Endless Punishment
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A deck that’s so effective at dealing damage it can make Commander matches take half as long to complete, Endless Punishment is a great deck that gets even better if you swap out Valgavoth with Master of Pain.
This 5/5 stops opponents from gaining life, has Menace, and turns the mana cost of every first spell of a player’s turn into damage against another player. Given how expensive spells get as the match wears on, that can be a big, big hit.
Sliver Swarm – Commander Masters
Sliver Swarm
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A deck that’s all about Slivers, a creature type that’s relatively minor on its own but buffs every other ally with the same type.
This five-color precon is a problem for everyone at the table, helmed by the Sliver Gravemother that can help bring cards back from the graveyard as attacking tokens. Oh, and it means you can have multiple copies of Legendary creatures, too.
Eldrazi Incursion – Modern Horizons 3
Eldrazi Incursion
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An Eldrazi deck with five colors and a Commander that can copy spells and activated abilities for two generic mana, Eldrazi Incursion is great off the bat, but becomes positively vile with the right upgrades.
If you prefer, you can use Morophon the Boundless to make Eldrazi spells cheaper and give creatures of that type +1/+1.
Eldrazi Unbound – Commander Masters
Eldrazi Unbound
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Another Eldrazi deck, this one puts Zhulodok, Void Gorger as your Commander and lets you enjoy double Cacade on spells with mana value 7 or higher – ouch.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion, is another Legendary Creature in the deck. It costs a lot, but acts as a 12/12 with Menace and gets you card draw.
Vampiric Bloodlust – Commander 2017
Vampiric Bloodlust
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There’s a reason that Edgar Markov remains the de facto vampire-type Commander in Magic: The Gathering. His Eminence ability, which triggers even if he’s in the Command Zone, means this 4/4 with First Strike and haste can create Vampire tokens as you cast spells of that type, and he empowers them with +1/+1 when he attacks.
Teferi’s Protection is here, too, with this being the kind of deck with no real weaknesses that’s easy to pilot as well.
Food and Fellowship – Universes Beyond: Lord of the Rings
Food and Fellowship
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The Lord of the Rings Commander Decks were all solid, but Food and Fellowship wins out for its strength in just about every aspect. Sam generates Food tokens to gain life, then Frodo is tempted by the Ring as you consume them, with each of the Partner cards feeding into a cycle.
It’s not all Shire-friendly, either, with some true wrath coming in the form of Toxic Deluge, spot removal like Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, and cards like The Gaffer to turn that lifegain into more card draw. A great, well-constructed deck.
Veloci-Ramp-Tor – Lost Caverns of Ixalan
Veloci-Ramp-Tor
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The kind of deck that steamrolls the precons it launched alongside, Pantlaza, Sun-Favored helms this dinosaur deck and helps you bring more and more creatures into play with the Discover ability.
With cards like Wakening Sun’s Avatar being a non-dino board wipe and comically large beasts like Apex Altisaur, this deck is wild right out of the box.
For more on Magic: The Gathering’s Commander format, be sure to check out our rundown the best decks you can buy right now, as well as an early look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles precon, Turtle Power.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
