Commander Anthology

May 29th, 2017

Release Date: June 9, 2017

Commander Anthology Box

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Evasive Maneuvers – Commander – Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Kaalia of the Vast

Heavenly Inferno – Commander – Kaalia of the Vast

Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury

Guided by Nature – Commander – Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury

Meren of Clan Nel Toth

Plunder the Graves – Commander – Meren of Clan Nel Toth


  • Derek Niles

    The planechase anthology had a MSRP of $150 I think but now its down to $90, I wonder if this one will sell for more considering Heavenly Inferno is currently selling for about $200 (although all the cards in it are about $120) or if it will do something similar.

    • Happy The Cat

      my guess is that it will just take longer for it to drop off. the big reason Inferno and all the season one decks cost soo much more is that they didn’t print nearly enough of them to start, so what this will end up doing is dropping the price for all the high dollar stuff in Kaalia’s deck by a bit.

      • Derek Niles

        Sounds about right, I wish they did the original run all together instead of one from each season though

        • Happy The Cat

          same, I was hoping for Zedruu or the ban list commanders. I’ve either traded them off or they were played by someone who, at the time, didn’t really care about card condition.

          • TJ

            They haven’t banned any of the commanders they have released for the commander decks themselves.

          • Happy The Cat

            I can think of a few on the dual commander lists that show up in the commander decks

          • TJ

            None of the ones banned are “partner” commanders. Here the official EDH ban list https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/634fa687eead5948da1919cd1af110e5609b42f31eb556e4a6df3803bf9ff6dc.png

          • Robert FakeLastName

            why did they think hulk was a good idea to unban?

          • TJ

            I have no idea, Inonly play commander chase and this is more or less the only ban list I keep up on. Why I don’t know though.

          • Kahai

            Cause they wanted my foil i paid 5 bucks for to get to 100 dollars. :D

          • Happy The Cat

            cause he’s honestly not as scary as he used to be, sure Flash can make him a bit op but most of the time the board you fetch can be wiped pretty easly in edh, and with 40 life unless you fetched dorks to cast your commander you probably won’t be having that much damage stick to people. lets compare this to other stuff Flash can do, for example, Arcbound Overseer. now, modular 6 is already bad enough, I mean I just got +6/+6 on any creature I have, but then you have commanders like Animar, Daxos ,Shu Yun, and countless other aggro blue+ commanders can just beat you with that, heck Animar can then cast stuff like Wurmcoil for free after modular 6.
            there are just other things that Flash can get away with nowadays that a handful of dorks and a buff banner for two doesn’t really matter as much

          • Robert FakeLastName

            hulk gets any number of creatures with total cmc 6

          • Happy The Cat

            … I know, but in edh the maximum number of creatures he can fetch is 21, and 5 of those die if you dont buff their toughness when they enter. Meanwhile the Animar player has a pro white pro black 7/7 that gets bigger every time they play a creature, and their creature spells cost 6 less right now so they can play a Magma Giant for rr and reset your board to just an 0/3 defender.
            I really don’t know why people have started treating me like I don’t know the game all of a sudden, but it’s starting to get annoying when people try to call me on stuff they don’t seem to understand themselves.

          • Robert FakeLastName

            hulk + blasting station = game. sac hulk to station get karmic guide + 1 cmc. then station untaps and you sac hulk again getting saffi + cmc 4. it is not about the number of creatures you get but the quality.

          • TJ

            I missed most of everything after Urzas Saga until Timoe Spiral and didn’t even know what the card did until a little bit ago, seems fairly easy to deal with though, exile this, exile that, drop Mycosynth Latrice and steal it from the library. Sometimes I wonder why they ban and unban what they do, then I remeber, I play sealed and kitchen table and there are actual competitive events for those formats.

          • Happy The Cat

            You seem to have misunderstood me. by dual commander, I’m talking about a format that features a 2v2 setting and banned commanders, of which include:

            Breya, Etherium Shaper -Commander 2016
            Derevi, Empyrial Tactician -Commander 2013
            Edric, Spymaster of Trest -Commander 2011
            Erayo, Soratami Ascendant – Saviors of Kamigawa(not a Commander card, but still on the list)
            Marath, Will of the Wild -Commander 2013
            Oloro, Ageless Ascetic -Commander 2013
            Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary -Urza’s Destiny(like Erayo, makes the game super unfun and onesided)
            Tasigur, the Golden Fang -Fate Reforged (cause he was broken AF in a hard control deck)
            Vial Smasher the Fierce -Commander 2016(oh, hey! he’s one of your partner commanders you were saying aren’t on a banlist!)
            Zur the Enchanter -Coldsnap(anyone who’s played against the super-duper soldier team can tell you why this guy is on the list.)

          • TJ

            I can’t find this list you posted here. I Posted the official list from MTGEDH and this from Wizards website and none of theone here are listed, with the exception of Rofellos.

            25 cards with the Card Type “Conspiracy.” Click here for list.
            9 cards that reference “playing for ante.” Click here for list.
            Ancestral Recall
            Balance
            Biorhythm
            Black Lotus
            Braids, Cabal Minion
            Chaos Orb
            Coalition Victory
            Channel
            Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
            Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
            Falling Star
            Fastbond
            Gifts Ungiven
            Griselbrand
            Karakas
            Leovold, Emissary of Trest
            Library of Alexandria
            Limited Resources
            Mox Emerald
            Mox Jet
            Mox Pearl
            Mox Ruby
            Mox Sapphire
            Painter’s Servant
            Panoptic Mirror
            Primeval Titan
            Prophet of Kruphix
            Recurring Nightmare
            Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
            Shahrazad
            Sundering Titan
            Sway of the Stars
            Sylvan Primordial
            Time Vault
            Time Walk
            Tinker
            Tolarian Academy
            Trade Secrets
            Upheaval
            Worldfire
            Yawgmoth’s Bargain Respond with the link where those Dual-Commanders are so that I have that list as well. Thank You!!

          • Happy The Cat

            first of all I know the ban lists, so there isn’t a reason to post that, secondly, even I I somehow didn’t know it, somebody has already copy/pasted a picture of the ban lists.
            last of all it’s the dual commander rules, try looking those up.

          • TJ

            Found it, thanks. I posted the picture form the EDH site, then was on Wizards ACTUL site and find they now keep it on their site as well. My wife and I play nearly every night and I hadn’t realized they broke Commander down into two separate “formats”. If I had known of an alternate ban list, I wouldn’t have responded in the matter in which I did. Cut a guy some slack.

          • TJ

            Also, you meant duel commander vs dual commander, which is why I wasn’t finding the links.

      • TJ

        There really wasn’t a lot of high value stuff in Kaalia to start. They left the best angels of the time out. Considering it only takes 120 dollars to build the Kaalia deck, card by card and Kaalia is almost 40$of that, the leave the average card value at less than 1$ each

        • Happy The Cat

          but, again, like I said, most of the value from the deck is due to wizards not running nearly enough of the OG commander decks, that cards that cost a lot for the decks aren’t the reprints but the cards that they made just for the decks. if you go through the deck list most everything that costs more than a two dollars are either commander staples, cards that see play in other formats, legends who get price padding since they can be generals, or cards that only have been printed in that deck.
          for example, Avatar of Slaughter. Honestly didn’t belong in the deck, isn’t a dragon, angel, or demon, and if it had been printed in standard there is no way a nonfoil would have broken a dollar. But thanks to it being in Kaalia’s deck it’s sitting up at over $3 without a foil.

          • TJ

            But is only because it hasn’t been reprinted. Most of the Commander only cards are way cheaper. The vast majority of cards don’t even hit 5$. I wish wizards would have kept their printing platform from the first set, vs a knee jerk reaction with the second that has kept through the other sets. Or at least came up with a middle ground. Instead they over print them.

          • Kahai

            They certainly over printed two years ago, but last years were fine. I remember still seeing c15 at big box stores well into 2016, but c16 is gone from big box stores. Sure LGS’s might have them in stock, but they sold much better than the year before.

          • TJ

            A lot of vendors take to putting the product somewhere else. Some have gone to putting them into boxes with other decks and selling them together.

          • TJ

            Can still find them around here, SoCal, well it took some guy weeks to get his hands on Attaxa, but between the 3 Targets and 4 walmarts within 10 miles of each other, they’re relatively accessible here for now.

          • Happy The Cat

            all they want to do is sell product, and with stuff like Commander where they make super powerful cards that often times will even effect eternal formats, so as long as they will be selling a bunch of product, they’ll be printing as much as they can. sure they wont be hitting high resale but wizards doesn’t really care, it’s not their market. and with resale prices being lower that means cards like Sol Ring or Skullclamp now have reasonable price options for causal formats. Meanwhile a player seeing a deck with sol ring and skullclamp and all the other good cards along with a Commander and other cards that already add up to the price tag and they will think it’s a good deal.

          • TJ

            I’m not overly worried about re-sale. All product I buy gets opened sleeved and put the rest in waterproofed boxes to protect them in the event of water. I need to get the whole thing insured. I know wizards is in the business of making money, it just seemed a little more enticing with a slightly smaller print run, but that’s just me.

    • TJ

      Not likely to fall off, only other way to get foil Kaalia, is Commanders arsenal

  • Aurore

    This is annoying because it only has a fifth of the decks. Honestly I’d much prefer if we just got reprints of the 2011 ones and ignored the other years for now.

    • Kahai

      I was most displeasured when i found out it wasn’t a straight reprint of the original decks. :(

      • Aurore

        Especially since the prices on those are so much higher than the other decks (except maybe 2013)

  • Kahai

    I already have all the decks… but just those life counters (and being a premium product) i will be getting this.

    Note for anyone wondering: I almost exclusively buy premium product.

    • Zombie

      I mean, you could just buy the life counters individually from places like Star City Games…

      • Kahai

        Yeah, i already have some pre ordered. I don’t open premium product i buy.

        • Mr.Mayhem631

          So if you only buy premium product… And you don’t open it… How do you play Magic?

          And why do you waste money on useless boxes?

          • Kahai

            They gain value better than other products. And it’s an ego booster. How many people do you know purchased Commander’s Arsenal when it was released?

            I rarely buy singles, and boosters i open are usually prize packs.

          • Now I’m curious… do you expand your actual play collection much then? It sounds like you don’t really buy cards to play with, mostly as collectibles you don’t open. Maybe I missed something.

          • Kahai

            I collect the premium product. Not even as a investment thing, i’m just obsessed with it being special cards.

            But you are right, i don’t buy packs or singles very often.

          • I see. Interesting. ^_^

            I just try to get as many cards as possible — usually buying tons of used cards — because I love messing around with countless strategies. Then again I’m not really that good at the game so probably none of them are good. xP

  • Bige Boiy

    only complaint is freyalise insted of teferi or daretti
    looks good otherwise

    • David Chacon

      Cant complain they literally did the most popular deck from each cycle.

      • Tolle

        How was the green the most popular?

        • Happy The Cat

          cause her deck still costs the most. right now she’s sitting at ~$12.50, which is putting her around $7-10 ahead of the other lists. money equals popularity in Wizard’s eyes so we get her again, instead of the deck with Goblin Welder, Wurmcoil, Caged Sun and Solemn Simulacrum to boot.

          • Zombie

            Or Wizards could just look at sales figures of the Commander products and see which is selling the most.

            Which is what they did.

            Freyalise is an extremely popular Commander in general, and her deck sold very well. Demand for her is high, hence the higher price than Daretti, Ob Nixilis, or Nahiri.

            Her and Teferi are far and away the most popular C14 products.

            Daretti is objectively the “best” general from the C14 decks, however to optimize his deck requires an immense investment, whereas optimizing Freyalise and Teferi is far less financially crippling.

          • Happy The Cat

            m8 people paid $40 just for her when the decks came out, the rest of the deck, outside of Titania and Song of the Dryads the deck was completly worthless. If wizards had printed a mono green elf that wasn’t just a lord by another name at any point in the last 3 years her price would have dropped immensely. heck, if they gave us just Imperious Perfect, but knocked it’s cost up g and stapled legendary to it Freyalise would already have dropped $10 off her price tag. all elves want is a mono green commander that can make them more elves, they’ll even put up with it being a 5 mana pw that dies to bolt as long as it gives them board.

          • Zombie

            I said the demand for her was high, not her deck.

            Her deck was by far the most popular, and this is how you get a reprint to lower prices due to current low supply.

            Think first next time.

          • Happy The Cat

            I- do- did you just jump in the argument for arguments sake? cause if you scroll up from here a bit you can see where a new good friend of mine Jonathan Reynolds says:
            “According to EDHREC, Freyalise was the fourth most popular (second to last) of the planeswalkers as a commander, but she was the third most popular as a card in the 99.
            EDHREC website /sets/c14”
            so, unless I don’t understand how placements work, she is not only not the most popular, but she’s almost the least popular of all 5. now this could be due to the fact that edhrec lists different decks, and most of the time if you are building elves there isn’t as much wiggle room for it like red tinker or true blue control or white equipment have.
            Literally, the only reason her deck is getting reprinted is cause it costs the most, not cause it’s the fan favorite.

          • Giby86 .

            Objectively? Oh, zombie. You never learn.

          • Zombie

            Assuming completely tuned deck lists, Daretti is the single best general of the C14 releases, and his signature tag-along spell, Scrap Mastery, can outright win games by turn 4 consistently.

            It comes mostly from the archetype that he enables, and that’s blisteringly fast and linear Red/Brown Combo.

            Even tuned, the other generals just can’t compete. Daretti is just too strong of a value engine, and he makes his threats far too hard to permanently answer consistently. Either you get ground down by Daretti himself, or the player drops a Scrap Mastery after tutoring a Mycosynth Lattice and you’re left to scoop it up with no permanents in play to actually scoop up.

            Not to mention Daretti Combo is an immensely strong deck outside of the C14 vacuum.

            In my local EDH league, the only general I’ve played that I’ve yet to surpass with my 20W-5L league record with Breya is Daretti, who sits at 24W-1L.

            The only loss came from Azusa. But it was fully foiled so I enjoyed the beating while it happened.

          • Giby86 .

            Yes, but none of your arguments have the least bit of relevance when determining the “best” general in a non-competitive format. Nobody cares about which general allows you to win more, or more consistently. Nobody who actually plays Commander, that is.

          • Mr.Mayhem631

            Sorry, but competitive commander is a thing. You sound like the sort of person who’d like to pretend that’s not true rather than the sort who just doesn’t know, but competitive EDH is very much a thing and it’s totally possible for one general to be better.

            Not that I’m advocating for Zombie’s intelligence, of course, I still remember that Sin Prodder argument.

          • Giby86 .

            “Competitive commander” is an oximoron. People who created the format did so SPECIFICALLY to have a strictly non-competitive format. People use the same ruleset to play competitively, I know that, but it should be crystal clear that is NOT commander in any shape or form. It exists, but it’s something else entirely. So no, there are no “better” generals in commander.
            Also, let me prevent the obvious counterargument that “this is my opinion”. It’s not. Read this, by Sheldon Menery, one of the creators of the format and one of the current curators: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/34491_Exclusive-Updated-Commander-Philosophy-Document.html

          • Tom Lessor

            Wizards only sells the Commander sets as 5 piece master cases, one of each deck. So they don’t have the sales data of the individual decks.
            Source: I’m an LGS owner

          • Zombie

            Wizards sells 5-deck bundles to LGS’s, yes. Obviously.

            Did I say they would be looking at that? I said sales figures, obviously implying those for the specific decks.

            They can easily crowdsource the information they need from retailers, both physical and online.

            Source: I’m a person with common sense.

          • Tolle

            I am going to have to ask where you got those numbers because they are way too low.

            Second I need you to provide evidence of where wizards says “price = popularity.”

          • Happy The Cat

            well, mtgGoldfish still has their page for the decks, and all of them are on their deck/card price listing thing.
            I cant post links cause this site gets mad at me, but the url path is /shop/Commander-2014#paper

      • Happy The Cat

        I dunno, I’d say that Freya was possibly the least popular out of 14, only reason to get her deck was that she is $10-15 cause other mono green elf legends are kinda just bland lords, but the deck is filled with cards that even at the time there were better versions of. I mean the deck has Seer’s Sundial in it. the only deck that should be in belongs to an 8 mana Iron Golem.

        • Jonathan Reynolds

          According to EDHREC, Freyalise was the fourth most popular (second to last) of the planeswalkers as a commander, but she was the third most popular as a card in the 99.
          EDHREC website /sets/c14

          As I recall it, White was the hardest to get deck by far, followed by red, then green. Black and Blue were both pretty easy to come by in a Walmart or Target.

  • David Thacker III

    the freyalise’s one is the only one i dont care about the i was hoping the jeleva deck was chosen to

    • Tolle

      They wouldn’t do Jeleva and Derevi. I would have preferred Deretti instead of freyalise though

  • Deadly Berry

    Didn’t realize that Freyalise was that popular.

    • David Chacon

      Elves are the most popular tribe around, and are extremely easy to use, along with the fact if youre shoeing new people to magic, this is the deck most people would recommend since like i said its easy to learn with. Daretti, and nahiri are immensely strong, and popular, but freyalise sold the most hence why its here, i personally would’ve preferred nahiri, but cant complain

      • Insight66

        It was the eyepatch, put her miles ahead of the competition that year.

      • But… but elves suck. =<

        *plays black*

        • Dave

          There are black elves though. :P

          • Yes but they have never been considered a black race, and any elf-centric deck will almost never be black or significantly black.

            Also I prefer Horrors, Spirits, Elementals, and Demons. =>

      • Happy The Cat

        actually I’m pretty sure she sold the least, I remember an article that daretti ,nahiri and teferi outsold ob and freya so hard that the second run didn’t have green and black in it. the only reason she costs so much in comparison now is that she doesn’t have nearly as many copies floating around. which is why Wizards chose her, her deck costs the most now. If you need more proof Daretti actually sees(or at least saw) eternal play, so he had the most printings and even got reprinted in c16, which is why he now costs $2.

  • Jonathan Reynolds

    But what if I just want one deck and 8-10 spindowns…

    • Kahai

      Buy the spinners on ebay.

  • dogbert9999

    I really want the Heavenly Inferno Deck. Is it legal to play this version of the deck in an actual EDH Magic sanctioned event? I mean the cards will all be in deck sleeves… Or do i need to build this deck using official magic cards.

    • Mr.Mayhem631

      These *are* official Magic cards. There’s nothing special about them, you can play them anywhere.

    • TJ

      What he said, magic no longer releases cards that can’t be used in what formats they are built for. That’s why they stopped making the Championship decks with the special backs.

  • TheAlchemist86

    Does anyone know what the MSRP will be? My local shop sells them at MSRP till they run out. But I have read anywhere between $50-$190 and he didn’t know last time i called.

    • Kahai

      MSRP: 164.99 USD ~ from the mothership product page.

      • TheAlchemist86

        Damn that’s still pretty high, but i guess it is worth it considering Kallia alone is worth almost $50.But since he sells at MSRP i can still save $30 compared to buying at the other local shop. Thanks for the info i can prepare for the dent my paycheck will take from this. lol.

  • Willem Swarts

    Does anyone know if these commanders are printed foil? I’m waiting to get a Derevi and Meren foil for my EDH-cube…

    • Kahai

      Yes, they recently had an article saying that the front commander will be foiled.

      • Willem Swarts

        Sweet..!

      • chad

        kaalia foil is 60 bucks and i don’t think she is getting a printing outside of commander, so she will stay that high for a while

  • Reyos Blackwood

    Sorry not interested, already got all four of these when they came out, and not so interested in getting duplicates of these specific four.

  • Matt Wasser

    Plunder the Graves is the only one of these decks I did not get and one of the few I did not get because I was low on money. I am not buying three decks I already have for one I don’t. Maybe I could find that one deck at Walmart or target.

    • Hedronal

      Or on the internet.

      • Matt Wasser

        true, did not think of that

    • Harry Palm

      Yeah, Wizards should’ve called you and found out what decks you already have to avoid this problem.

      • Matt Wasser

        that they should have, lol

      • Yeah I mean it’s not like anyone actually posts offhand comments about their interest or lack thereof in products without expecting to be personally catered to.

  • Happy The Cat

    I hope that token box in the middle is much bigger than it looks, cause It’d be disappointing to have to store everything for four of my casual edh decks in more than this container. it looks the size of one of those that comes with a Fat Pack, and that’s not even half of what I need for my Rhys deck.

    • Hedronal

      Given these are commander decks, I think the casing goes deeper into the back, enough to fit a non-small amount of tokens. Also, the whole product comes in that box, so I certainly hope tokens fit in there. Sadly, they’ll likely only fit while unsleeved.

      • Happy The Cat

        well, like I said it looks like the box is about the size of their 1 inch boxes. that isn’t going to fit all the tokens for a casual Rhys deck, I use the box that came with Mimeoplasm’s deck right now and I still run out of saplings or elves every now and then, and i’ve got like 25-30 of each.
        the worst part is that it looks like the spinners lock it in, so you would have to take them out to put a bigger box in, and they are why I want the box!

      • Happy The Cat

        welp seen it now, that middle part doesnt hold tokens at all, it’s a blurb about each commander. but the boxes for each deck are big enough to fit a sleeved deck and the 20 tokens each deck comes with.

        • Hedronal

          Wait really? Enough individual box space for a Fully Sleeved commander deck plus 20 tokens in the individual boxes? No fooling?

          • Happy The Cat

            yep, star city games has a video of them playing it for commander vs, go check it out. the boxes look a lot better than they do in these pictures though(as in not cardboard)

          • Hedronal

            Non-cardboard boxes with room for full sleeves plus tokens… They at whichever part of WotC finally upped their game. To them who made that happen in any way: Thank you.

          • Happy The Cat

            I does make sense though, cause there are two people who are going to get this, one will be the collectors who if they even take the plastic wrapping of the anthology is a surprise, or the people who actually wanted the decks and stuff, so giving them 4 commander sized deck boxes is great.
            but still would have liked a token box :(

  • potatogod442

    I kinda want it, but 160 is a bit too steep for my bank account right now.

    • Deanimator

      My LGS did it for 140. A lot of them seem to be discounting it.

  • Jonathan Reynolds

    Well, I bit the bullet and ordered it for $150 for the Kaalia deck and life counters. Maybe I can sell the other three decks to some newer, more casual friends for $25 each. I think that would be a win for everyone…

    • Happy The Cat

      you can probably sell of the parts of each deck for a pretty penny, Freyalise is a $12.50 commander only card and this will be her first time foiled, actually all the commanders but Kaalia are getting their first foil here, Meren has gone as low as 6th most viewed on edhrec since she came out so her foil will probably also fetch a a good amount in a month or two.

      • TogetherAlone

        I would basically count this as Kaalia’s first foiling as her last one was an extremely limited supply in commanders Arsenal.

  • Kahai

    Video of the product. In case anyone wanted to now what you’re paying for. The deck boxes look much better than any deck box WotC has ever given us in the product itself.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYz9pHKvfw

  • Jonathan Reynolds

    I’m jelly.

  • Jojo The Magical Elf

    What does 00000 Arrows mean

    • Lord Reptile

      Borrowing 100,000 Arrows. It’s just a typo.