Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Commander Review

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was a set that brought to Commander two new mechanics.

-"Venture into the dungeon", every time you activate an effect like this ability, two things can happen, if you are not in a dungeon, you will choose one to "venture". If you are already in a dungeon, you will advance through the rooms of this dungeon until you finish it. For a better explanation of how this mechanic works, visit an article about it clicking here.

- The second mechanic is Rolling a D20. Some cards have effects that call for a D20 roll to determine what will happen, the higher the result, the better the card's effect.

All colors came with cards that are relevant to Commander, and I've broken them down into colors for easy access.

These were the points I used to define them:

• How versatile the card is, whether it will be useful in all decks, or good support for an existing strategy.

• How relevant or different its effect is, whether you already have cards doing something like that for less mana, or whether it's an entirely new effect.

This card is strong, a Prime Speaker Vannifar for artifacts, and it has 2 mana value, half the cost of Vannifar, all decks that use artifacts as their main strategy will have one more tutor to use now.

Using this card will be perfect in decks that benefit from ETBs of creatures and artifacts, like Yorion, Sky Nomad lists, it is more of a support for the mechanic.

This card has an interesting mechanic, if you attack with your creatures you can return blocked creatures to your hand, and you draw a card if any were not used, this is interesting for Ninjas and another interesting way to take advantage of effects of ETBs.

Well, the classes in general are good, as they have a lot of value in a single card, the Wizard enters for one mana and already guarantees you will not have a maximum number of cards in your hand, on the second level you will pay 3 mana to draw two cards, this is strong, as you are not actively using a card to draw cards this is actively better than having a card in your hand that draws two cards, not to mention the third level of the class which gives a +1/+1 counter for a creature every time you draw cards.

They banned Griselbrand from Commander for being too strong and guaranteeing plenty of cards, but Asmodeus manages to get in its place perfectly, and it still costs less mana to be cast. And 4 mana to draw the 7 cards and put them into your hand. This card is superb and can guarantee you many cards in your hand at a small cost of life for those starting with 40 life.

This card scares people when you have enough mana available, your opponents will try to block the equipped creature at all costs, there are some artifacts, and even a land that makes a creature unblockable, which can end the game if you have enough mana available.

One of the few things black couldn't deal with were enchantments, but we've had other color pie breaks like Feed the Swarm, Mire in Misery, and Pharika's Libation, now it will be easier for monoblack decks to deal with this kind of permanent.

More goblins for the tribal decks, this makes these little threats a little bigger and can still deal good damage to a troublesome target.

There is no sideboard in Commander, but there is a Wishboard, which can have ten of any cards you don't have in your deck, this allows you to use out-of-game cards to solve situations, it's good to see another one of these cards coming to shake Commander a bit.

One more way to create tokens, and it can still generate more than one, it adds a lot of value in combat and can even help in the strategies of Godo, Bandit Warlord entering and searching for a Maskwood Nexus and transforming all of your creatures into samurai, to attack for infinite combat.

This dragon generates a lot of value, your opponents will think twice before taking damage from your creatures, if your creatures have trample or deathtouch, I wouldn't want to be your opponent if this big guy is on the board.

Good support for elves, with the ability to generate a lot of mana to keep this deck even more consistent.

Costing 2 mana and being a card advantage engine, while allowing you to have more lands in play is excellent, I can't imagine a deck that would be worse off having a Gretchen on its list.

Just by entering the battlefield, this enchantment will already threaten your opponents, as each of your creatures that deals damage to them will be one less card in their library, and later in the game when you progress through this enchantment, it will allow you to cast these exiled card.

Copying creatures is always good and Volo knows how to do it, he's a value-generating machine, so if his deck is quite varied in terms of creature types, he's sure to make a big impact on the tables.

This card brings one more strength to the artifact decks, it can be either your commander or one of the 99. Either way it will make a difference with its effect, a commander list has already been made, and it's in another article in Cards Realm, of which you can access it here.

As shown in this article, it is quite offensive and manages to secure good trades while generating value, with its free equip costs once per turn.

7 mana to put a big dragon on the battlefield and fill your hand with lots of dragons. Tiamat as commander can re-establish your hand when cast and has a good body to threaten your opponents, as guardian of dragons she is great, casting a dragon and then choosing 5 more for your hand is strong and can greatly impact your games.

Two colorless mana per round to draw a card, this card will help decks that normally have a hard time keeping the hand full, not to mention that because it's a colorless artifact it can enter any deck.

All these lands are good and do something, it can be expensive, but it can still be useful, I found it interesting how they incorporated the monsters' homes as lands that with the right amount of mana you can call the monster that inhabits that home, the Temple of the Dragon Queen will most certainly enter any non-mono colored dragon deck.

All the Planeswalkers are good, but they seem to me to have been made for the Standard, their abilities don't seem to be that relevant to the Commander and hardly one of them would be able to stay in the field long enough to be able to activate their best ability; and even if they did, they are not strong enough to be relevant.

For example, the Lolth, Spider Queen: she may be able to activate her best ability early, in a deck that is geared towards this, but her effect isn't as strong on EDH. Making your opponents lose up to eight life per turn with a planeswalker's final ability isn't as impactful, as is Grand Master of Flowers, preventing a creature from blocking or searching for a creature of a specific mana wouldn't have any impact on Commander, as well as spending 4 mana and 4 turns, with luck, to turn him into an indestructible 7/7 dragon with flying. If you managed to put any of them on the field and use their final ability, maybe you could have already won the game if they were other cards.

This set was packed with fun and interesting cards for Commander, with different and creative mechanics, and also brought more support for existing decks, while making it possible to create new decks.

I hope this article makes you interested in some cards mentioned here, and maybe convinces you to build a deck with it, or put it in one of your decks.