Commander 2017 Conclusions and Additions

Commander may be a small release in terms of new cards but as it is a set that bypasses standard and modern it is one of the few places you can expect things to be most unfair. We have had some of the best cards in cube courtesy of the Commander sets and on the whole Commander sets add some of the highest percentages of the new cards to the cube. That all being said it does seem as if there is a decline in the power of the Commander sets in what they offer for cube. Commander 2016 was the poorest contributor to date although much of that was down to how many gold cards were among the new stuff. Commander 2017 has very few obvious cube cards, the least so far at a total of three and only one of those a high powered card with relatively wide application. It does however have a reasonable number of interesting and potentially playable cards that at least merit a little testing. Only a few of the Curses seem like they might add something desirable, new and interesting to the cube. The rest are narrower and more towards the top end. I do not expect many, perhaps even none, of the cards I will trial to last long in the cube. There are some nice generic tribal offerings as well from 2017 which I expect to add a decent amount to the power and range of a lot of the less tribal decks. Nice tools though they are, they are only going to see use in constructed cube goings on like so many of the cards in this release. I would love to see more cards that push the colour pie such as Curse of Opulence from these less design restrained sets. I would also love to see Wizards take the opportunity to print more cube cheap staples that they don't want to make available in modern or standard. The cube could really do with new Birds of Paradise style cards and more black one mana discard. It could do with lots of things I doubt they will ever print in a normal set! They did this to some extent with the 3 mana Wrath card Toxic Deluge. More that would be great.


Go directly to the cube, do not pass go, do not collect £200;


Territorial Hellkite
The Ur-Dragon
Fortunate Few


To trial out;

Curse of Opulence
Curse of Disturbance
Kheru Mind-Eater
Alm's Collector
Stalking Leonin
Heirloom Blade
Bloodforged War Axe
Fractured Identity
Teferi's Protection
Patron of the Vein
Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist
Kess, Dissident Mage


For the cube constructed reserves;


Mirror of the Forebears
Herald's Horn
New Blood
Kindred Discovery