Commander Set Review: Dominaria United

Today, I review the new set, Dominaria United, for Commander. I've separated the cards that, I think, will see more play at casual tables, so their motives and where they might fit in well, in my opinion.

If you have any tips or cards that you also found interesting, leave them in the comments at the end of the article.

The lands in this set are interesting, but even though they are good in multicolored decks, they are difficult to find as they are an annoyance to search with traditional ramp spells (which in theory would be their advantage over other lands that generates two colors).

Its basic land types that in theory should make the search easier, but you don't have so many cards that search for lands by type and already place them tapped to be worth searching for these lands. Even so, they can be very useful on budget lists.

Plaza of Heroes

It's a great land which will probably go into almost any deck, as it allows you to generate mana of any color for any legendary card. In the worst case, you have your legendary card in the commander, in addition to being able to generate mana of any color from any of your legendary permanents, greatly improving your mana base.

Moreover, you can still exile it to give hexproof and indestructible to a legendary creature of yours for four mana, and it's always useful to have this effect attached to a land slot.

White had good additions in this set, but I see that it was very focused on generating tokens and these didn't come out with good potential to be relevant in Commander.

The cards that caught my attention in this color were precisely the ones not focused on this part:

Serra Paragon

It works like a mini Muldrotha, the Gravetide and can reanimate permanents, but only those that cost less than 3 mana. It ends up being excellent as a recursion mechanism and even card advantage, since you're not drawing, but you're increasing your range of possible cards to use — all in a 3/4 body with flying.

Destroy Evil

This removal is very interesting. It's not exactly the strongest removal in the format, but it manages to take big troublesome creatures or enchantments.

As it doesn't give anything back to the opponent and is a two-mana instant, it can be a good addition to your decks with white looking for more versatility to remove things from the game.

Take Up the Shield

This combat trick is a good way to protect an important creature while strengthening it, as it allows you to attack without fear of losing that big threat to an opponent's spell, or forcing them to exchange multiple creatures to kill a larger threat, in addition to making it indestructible.

Defiler of Dreams

One of the best Phyrexians in the set. Good body, evasion, and turns blue mana required by permanents into Phyrexian mana, which can speed up your game.

In addition, it is still a strong card advantage tool for blue-based decks not focused on instant and sorceries, being a support for these decks that escape the main color.

Silver Scrutiny

This spell is very interesting, as you can draw 3 cards for 5 mana in the pass, being only 1 mana more than an Harmonize.

It will probably be a great addition to more Control/Tempo decks that will be able to use it in the pass to fill up their hand a little, or on their turn for greater mana values.

This time, black let me down a bit, as it didn't have that many interesting cards — Also, since we're talking about the Commander world, then the kicker cards in this set count as multicolor*.

Braids, Arisen Nightmare

This Braids won't be banned in Commander, I think — unlike its old version (Braids, Cabal Minion), this one doesn't make the table unfun for opponents.

Even though it costs less mana, it allows opponents to choose whether to sacrifice permanents of the type you sacrificed or lose life, and you draw a card. And even if she enters turn one, which is quite possible since she's one Dark Ritual away, she won't stop your opponents from playing.

The Reaver Cleaver

This artifact is sure to cause a stir when it enters the battlefield, being a machine in equipment decks, especially if you manage to somehow evade its equip cost and start hitting it on the turn you bring it down.

Commanders synergistic with this card are: Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist, Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale, and Bruenor Battlehammer.

Mana Cannons

This entire set has a theme of multicolored spells, so much so that one of its mechanics is domain, which focuses on how many basic land types you have in play. This card has no hint of colors other than red in its identity, but it will only work well in multicolored decks.

I found this effect very fun and strong in decks with mostly multicolored spells: all your spells with more than one color gain the potential to Burn and remove creatures from opponents.

I recommend Mana Cannons in the deck of a card that I will talk about next.

And now we come to the color that was very fond of this set, green received many interesting and strong cards to include in their decks.

Silverback Elder

This creature is a 5/7 for five mana that does a little bit of everything, ideal for decks with many creatures, and allows you to take different approaches while casting your creatures, working exactly the way you need them at the moment.

Defiler of Vigor

Of all the defilers, this one is by far the strongest. In addition to the standard effect of replacing your permanents' green mana with Phyrexian mana, it gives all your creatures +1/+1 counters every time you cast a green permanent, which is pretty cool.

Defiler of Vigor will turn those 1/1 elves into bigger and bigger creatures, useful in any deck with green creatures and permanents.

If an opponent casts it, remove this creature from the table before they have to use a die truck to represent the size of their creatures.

Threats Undetected

This card is very interesting, for 3 mana you will get the best creatures in your deck, as long as they have different powers and an opponent will choose two for you to return to the deck.

It accentuates a very fun side of Commander, politics. This card won't be good in all decks, and it won't be good in all games either - it all depends on the opponent chosen to define the cards and what is defined with them.

Other than that, It is a creature tutor that gives you two creatures, allowing you to find one that solves a problem on the table and another to advance the game.

I know you probably noticed the fact that no lords appeared during the review, and this is the reason: there were so many lords released that I put them in a separate category.

Being one of each color and two multicolored, all of them, in addition to the effect of improving the creatures of the tribe, have auxiliary effects. The most interesting ones are the red one, which helps in the card advantage when your Goblins die, as well as the green one, which allows you to pay an extra mana to draw cards, solving the biggest problem of creature decks.

King Darien XLVIII, is a commander that powers up all tokens you control, creates tokens, and can also sacrifice himself to ensure their protection — like a good king.

The last of the multicolored ones is Ramses, Assassin Lord, which in the name already suggests, is a lord for assassins. It has the secondary effect that when you deliver a lethal blow to an opponent with an assassin, you win the game, making it easier for this tribe to end the game in multiplayer.

Last but not least, we have the colorless and multicolored cards. I'll start with the single colorless card and then move on to the multicolored ones.

Tiller Engine

This artifact creature has an ability that has the ability to resolve the manabase of your decks for you. This opens up the possibility for many players who have always wanted to build 4 or 5 color decks without spending half a salary on lands.

You will still need to have lands and ramp capable of being used on the turn they are cast, but it will make it much easier.

Another interesting strategy is to use this beast in a deck of Archelos, Lagoon Mystic, and using effects to keep it tapped, so all lands will enter tapped, but yours will be untapped later!

Ramirez DePietro, Pillager

Ramirez DePietro is an old Magic legend — this is his third iteration. Of them all, this is the coolest and most interesting, replenishing some of the mana used to cast spells with treasures and making your pirates steal opponents' cards.

Guaranteeing you cards to use and also the hatred of your opponents, great as a pirate commander and also a great card within a pirate deck.

Jhoira, Ageless Innovator

Like Ramirez, Jhoira is already in her third different version in Magic and remains very faithful to the main theme of the character, artifacts. Unfortunately, she doesn't fully converge with her version of Dominaria who cares about casting artifacts.

Now it puts them directly onto the battlefield, each turn gaining more counters and allows you to play a larger artifact, so you don't need to spend mana to cast it.

This is a strong but controlled mechanic. It costs two mana and dies to Lightning Bolt, so it's easy to deal with if it's a problem at the table — but if they don't, her controller can place a God-Pharaoh's Statue very early in the game, while playing smoothly.

Jenson Carthalion, Druid Exile

If you wanted a commander to use in your 5 color deck, this is one of the best available. Along with its mechanics, Mana Cannons will also be a great card in the deck.

It also filters mana for you, allowing you to use colorless mana and tap it to generate one mana of each color.

Another good point for Jenson is his low cost, in addition to having green as its main colors, making it easier for you to speed up keeping this color as the base of the deck next to white.

If you have access to protections for it, you can use cards that reduce the cost of activated abilities like Biomancer's Familiar to make it generate more mana than it costs to activate it.

We have reached the end of this review, stay tuned for new articles, have a wonderful week and good games!