It has been a busy time over at Wizards of the Coast. On February 21st, Wizards of the Coast announced the release of Commander Masters on August 4th, 2023. If you’re not familiar with Masters sets they are sets with mainly reprints of cards that have not been reprinted in awhile that generally follow one of the more popular formats in Magic the Gathering. For this Master set the focus will be Commander and what they have shown us so far looks exciting. Let’s dive in!
Products
Commander Masters are going to have a nice array of products for players. They will be doing their typical Draft, Set, and Collector Booster Boxes for the set. In addition, they will be releasing four new Preconstructed Commander Decks. We can’t be too surprised by this since every year Wizards of the Coast will do a big Commander Preconstructed Deck release once a year and this falls in line with this trend. The big thing with this is the themes of these decks and how exciting they seem to be. These are typical themes you would see with popular Commander Decks but, in my opinion, not what you would exactly expect. Let’s take a look.
The first deck they announced is a completely colorless deck named Eldrazi Unbound. This one surprised me the most because while Eldrazi Commander decks exist, they aren’t the most common. With Eldrazi Commander decks, the whole point is to ramp up mana and play the big and devastating Eldrazi cards to completely take over a game. I am excited to see who they will choose as a commander for this deck. I feel like they would have to make a new commander that would maybe center around making the Eldrazi cards cheaper to cost or maybe have a way to cheat them out.
The next deck announced was the Abzan (White-Black-Green) Enduring Enchantments Deck. Wizards of the Coast have released Commander decks that focus on enchantments but, by the look of the name, I feel they are going to go a route of making your enchantments come to life to destroy your opponents. This is another deck where they may choose a new card to be the commander for this deck but, I would love to see something like Myrkul, Lord of Bones except having the enchantments come back as creatures or something of that nature.
Next on the Commander Masters Preconstructed Commander Deck list is one they have named Planeswalker Party in the Jeskai (White-Blue-Red) colors. This is going to be a Jeskai Superfriends Deck. This means its primarily going to be Planeswalker cards and its going to be a lot of fun. I love decks that center around Planeswalkers and I have a feeling the commander of this deck will be a Planeswalker that is going to make the other Planeswalkers extremely deadly.
Finally, we have the last deck that will be all five colors and it is named Sliver Swarm. Yes, the crazy people at Wizards of the Coast are giving us a Preconstructed Sliver Commander Deck. This makes me both happy and afraid. I am happy they are giving people a starting point with a Sliver Commander deck because I always find it hard to start building one of these decks. On the other hand, Slivers are freaking scary! They come out quick and can really end a game quickly. Now, I know they aren’t going to reprint Sliver Queen (I really want them to though) but, if they were going to this would be the time to do it and make her the commander of this deck.
Spoilers
With the announcement of Commander Masters, they have shown three spoilers for the set that are just plain good. The first spoilers is Jeweled Lotus that originally released with Commander Legends and has been a huge staple piece for most commander decks. They will be releasing normal, foil-etched, and frame break borderless versions of Jeweled Lotus. They will be doing the same treatment for the next spoiler, which is The Ur-Dragon. Last, they are bringing a card back from Portal: Three Kingdoms in both normal and foil-etched versions named Capture of Jingzhou.
Dates to Remember
As we mentioned at the start of this article, Commander Masters will be releasing on August 4th, 2023. Of course, this is assuming nothing happens with distribution and printing of course. According to the Wizards of the Coast website, they have allowed preorders to start on Amazon and at local game stores. This seems really early for a product like this. Typically, I have seen preorders start maybe three months before release but, this is six months before they release. It makes me wonder if this is going to be the new trend for preorders or if there is something else going on here. On May 16th, they will be giving a first look at the set which is typically where they begin showing some spoilers for the set to get people excited. From July 28th to the 30th is when there will be WPN Premium Store Preview Events for the set. Finally, August 4th, 2023, is the official launch date for Commander Masters where the cards will become fully legal for Commander, and I assume other eternal legal formats.
Closing Thoughts
I am extremely excited for the Commander Masters set to release. Wizards of the Coast knows that Commander is their most popular format, and it is nice to see them really show that they know that with an announcement like this. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Preconstructed Commander Decks to see how I can upgrade them or see if they are just that good right out of the box. I hope your just as excited as I am for Commander Masters!
