The 20 Most Underrated Commanders From Last Year 

*janky/tough build commander comes out* Demo: I am SHOCKED this isn’t popular

There's so many commanders being released it's easy to lose track now days lmao

I have a Samut, Vizier of Naktamun deck, and it is one of the most fun decks I own. It just feels like you're playing the game on fast forward. You drop creatures and swing immediately, every turn. And there are a ton of unique cards that help out the deck. Anything that makes things tapped and attacking. A bunch of things give a buff to creatures as they come into play.... It's so fun, and you draw like crazy. One of the best parts is that because it draws so much and because it only cares about creatures that came out this turn, the deck basically ignores board wipes. I wipe the board myself a lot of the time, because I can recover faster than anyone else.

So happy to see my boy The Watcher in the Water on here. In my experience a lot of players ignore it until it's too late because its not an immediate threat. I've had a huge amount of fun playing it, it can certainly be run as a sort of "aggro" mono blue deck. Keep Watch is such a hilarious card to run, especially if an opponent swings out against you with a swarm of tokens, chump their swing with tentacles and then put an absurd amount of stun counters down (and probably actually untap the Watcher). I've also overrun opponents by having Eldrazi Monument out and wheeling a giant hand with Tolarian Winds.

I adore my Saint Traft and Rem deck. It's a token deck that plays no token synergies except the commander itself and never has an issue getting multiple each turn. Every turn is a little minigame to try to get them tapped 3x. Your idea to add Crackleburr was CLUTCH. That thing does so much work in the deck.

The reason Saint Traft/Rem Kromulus had the convoke ability added is because he was the secondary commander in one of the MOM precons, Kasla, the Broken halo. It's all based around jeskai convoke. If you just build it from scratch you could go any direction, sure, but I think they wanted it to work seamlessly with the rest of the precon.

Demo thanks for dropping these cards. Very informative 👍

i just built a saint traft and rem karolus deck. its pretty fun. i use vehicles to have a tap outlet every time i want to, and a bunch of untap abilities. intruder alarm is hilarious... i love to play it (the help from your discord was apreciated=) )

I want to say that I'm not surprised a lot of these aren't popular, but these are some really fun builds! This was a good video to do. The Master Formed Anew + Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake... He really could be a blast to play. It's pretty easy to force this. This would be really fun to build around. You make solid points with a lot of these commanders and I would love to see more people do these unique build arounds.

Me: Oh wow, that's such a unique commander and deck you're playing! Also me: I'm playing Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow...

As someone who is terrible at deck building but has lots of commanders I’d love to build; would really like to see your takes on an updated Polukranos list and how you could take Watcher in the Water on. Two cards I can see the potential in but can’t make work. Great video!

I broke my Brion Stoutarm deck to build a Kethek one. I reused all my "threaten" to steal and sac my opponent's creatures. I don't regret it ! :)

I built othhari after u spoke about it in a video previously and I will say it is absolutely bonkers good. It’s practically unkillable and has an immediate impact when it enters the battlefield

I have the Thirteenth Doctor Inside my Vhal+Raised by Giants deck. That deck was build as a "human tribal" and that card gave me one game 😺

Thanks for this list. I can bring a fresh new deck to my LGS

Nice Video, Shelob was on my sight couple month ago. But a friend told me to do another challenge instead: Build a Deck around Bilbo, Retired Burglar. So thats also veeeeery underrated. Build it of course with a Dwarf, Dragon, Ring-Tempt/Blink an treasure/artifact subtheme like an aristocrats deck. Pumping the treasures into big dragons und damage triple effects. Max the Ring-Tempt in Turn 4 or 5. And still very budget friendliy for around 90 $

I run 13th and Yaz and it's one of my favorite decks because of the build around. I focus on casting from exile and library to get big chaotic value. The biggest card that clicks is Passionate Archeologist. With two commanders that enable it, it's exciting to do a big cascade on your opponents.

People play monoblack shelob in the golgari one; Not only because it's stronger but also because having access to green makes you ramp and that means more black shelob activations in a turn.

I do have a water in the water deck, I built it as mono blue aristocrat back when I was trying to design an aristocrat deck for each mono-color, only really have green/blue from that and a start on colorless.

You mentioned my sharae deck so of course i gotta smash that like button and leave a comment haha

I was really excited by Rem Karolus and Saint Traft the first time I saw them as I really liked the flavor of the team up, but I never built them because I assumed that they would be too weak. When I first saw you pushing them as underrated I honestly kinda rolled my eyes because I was still pretty convinced they weren't any good. But after seeing you recommend them multiple times I decided to give them a go since I have a jeskai tokens deck that has been in major need of a total rework and I'm extremely glad I decided to give these guys a chance. Turns out Saint Traft and Rem Karolus are actually quite strong, after some testing I've been absolutely blown away by how easy it is to create the angel tokens. I think the big thing I missed was that I think you should have mentioned is that Vehicles make it very easy to tap these guys whenever you need to. Another thing that's worth mentioning is that extra combat effects often let you tap and untap them all at once. Anyway thanks for the suggestion these guys have been extremely fun to build and I'm extremely excited to go out and play them at my LGS later this week.

just made my polukranos deck a few weeks ago and really digging it so far

Hey Demo! Ever had a look at Hidetsugu and Kairi? It's a fun and strong commander that I've built, never seen you mention it. I think there's a couple of ways on how to build it.

Omarthis is amazing, I have used him in the 99 in mono white and selesnya colored reanimation decks as a source of card advantage/sack fodder. My selesnya Samwise Gamgee deck revolves around him, as he cares about nontoken Creatures entering to create foods that you then can sack to regrow Historics. It is rather easy to manifest your whole library. My wincon also revolves around having a lot of creatures out - I wanna flip a manifested Rotpriest and cast some multitarget spell like Eerie Interlude giving every opponent 10 poison counters. For my white aristocrat combo deck w/ Mikaeus, the Lunarch I run a lot of colorless mana dorks that I can easily put counters on and thus create a massive Omarthis rather quickly and then sac or swing depending on the boardstate. Very fun card and can be used in so many ways! Have not tried him as a commander yet though.

Are we getting the yearly update vid of your commander decks soon?

Just saw a samut deck on commander at home and it was really cool to see as a deck, i dont like gruul but did enjoy the uniqueness of the deck.

Curious to see what you do with Meneldor .. Gilded Drake is one of my favorite removal pieces.

The meneldor deck Idea look really fun. I have cracked the bird from murder at Karlov and i was thinking about some Idea to play it. I really hope you choose to build this deck. Look a ton of fun.

A commander I really enjoy that I don't see a lot of is Moira and Teshar, with the ability to (basically) free unearth a nonland permanent in your graveyard with haste whenever you cast a historic spell, and I put in some big creatures with nasty etb effects and blink cards, and it's pretty strong.

13th Doc landed a home in my Perrie the Pulverizer build, but it's a bit weird to make a commander. Polukranos is one of my favorite jank city decks because I built Hydra Stickers, lovingly called Polly want a Sticker? Notably, most hydras are 0/0 and trash reanimation targets ....unless you've changed the power/toughness with a sticker! The wurmcoil effect is just bonus! Plus, getting abilities to stick to Polly is great because they stick around through all visible zones. All around fun

I have three of these commanders built and took a fourth apart. Ayara I knew I had to build immediately. She's a great deck and built around the front ability with etb abuse. It's the kind of deck that doesn't seem like it's doing much then bam! You are in control and winning the game. Love it. Otharri is just fantastic. One of my strongest and most fun decks. Kinzu is another etb abuser with some lifegain as well. A lot of fun and a regular I reach for. I tried Polukranos and just found him way too slow for the groups I play in. Ended up taking it apart unfortunately. Saint and Rem I made a vehicle list for and was very excited to try it but never built it. I'm currently doing a Zangief deck and considering a Mazzy enchantress with all the new Eldraine cards.

I have Watcher in the Water in my binder - I've tried to brew a deck for it a bunch of times but it just keeps ending up feeling like way too much durdling for the payoff. I'd be interested to see what you put together.

I just built The Thirteenth Doctor and Peri Brown. When I crafted it, there was only 1 other deck with this pairing on edhrec (there's 7 now... 3 are mine lol.). It's a +1+1 counter deck going for flash convoking historic spells on everyone's turn.

20:18 this commander is one of my favorite commanders, it runs my Convokens deck. It's incredibly powerful

The other thing I like about the Master is that he works with steal strategies (or in a mirror match). You can only exile a creature you "control," but you can have him copy any creature exiled with a takeover counter on

what do you think of legolas, counter of kills? im currently making a scry commander deck thats kind of built around him and i wanna know your thoughts.

Korvold 2 is one of my favorite decks in a long time. The goal is to not be greedy, and just ride out the June value engines the deck wants to run.

I built Polukranos, Engine of Ruin as soon as it got spoiled. Super fun and powerful as well!

I haven't tried Ayara as a Commander, but she makes an amazing lieutenant to Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa. Just include a Sundial of the Infinite and ways to search for it.

I’m definitely gonna build a mono-black Shelob deck, that card is really sick. I built Child of Ungoliant first for Spider Tribal. Really new to magic and tribal decks seemed like a cool concept remind me of pile decks from yugioh.

I play a Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel deck and it's really fun. I have 12 slots for big, splashy blue spells that I randomly cycle in each game from a stack of about 25. It is surprisingly easy to get to 4 Chorus counters and drop things like Subjugate The Hobbits that would otherwise never see play. It's the only mono Blue deck I would even consider playing

I built a Samut deck. Very fun. My Table asked me to not bring it anymore as it was slightly too powerful (it was ^^).

i built a deck with Shagrat of the LOTR set, infect and LD. One of my favorite deck.

Commander surplus definitely has a lot to do with it. I did build Polukranos and it was kind of fun but it's just a lot of mana to get to the back side and he becomes a huge removal target.

The master, formed anew is EASILY my favorate! The fact that it also stacks, so you can build your commander each time throughout the game to make it versatile, is absolutely flawless! Use some cards that reduce mana cost to get around the commander tax, and you'll quickly be able to get an absolute BEAST out for very cheap, entirely custom tailored to whatever you need. Although I kinda wish it had green, there's a lot of green creatures I really like, but I can't be too picky Aside from that, Polukranos is second place, completely uncontested. Absolutely love hydras, without a doubt my favorate tribe in the entirety of magic, and the fact they got such a useful commander was a massive uplifter for me that year. Though I am sad that it doesn't really support the hydra strategy, but at the same time I'm greateful that it introduces a new strategy for the tribes arsenal, making it WAY harder to counter your deck overall. Personally I think they could have added a small ability involving counters, either for the front or backside without feeling unnessecary or going overboard, which is why it gets second place despite being my favorate tribe, compared to the master whose only design flaw is a minor personal preference

I've got a watcher in the water deck. Its such a fun and strong one

I have one of the 88 shelob decks 😂🎉, it had got an above avarage win % (i run almost all the creatures that say destroy target creature) also a lot of mana rocks in order to abuse the carddraw option. The ability to exile is Great to shutdown reanimator theme decks, i dont use it to play my opponents creatures 😁

I actually am building the Watcher in the water deck and you can go infinite on your opponents turn with something like arcanis, + something that turns him into a kraken and a sac outlet or just intruder alarm.

Love me some Samut action; dropped him into one of my decks and have not been disappointed at all

One commander that I built that released last year and is super unpopular is Geth, Thane of Contracts with only 84 decks on EDHRec. It is tough to build around with its passive of giving your other creatures -1/-1, but it has a decent reanimation ability only costing 3 mana, but the route I went with, inspired by EDH Jank Center, was using Geth’s -1/-1 ability to auto kill any 1/1 creature tokens I made and drain opponents using some of the typical black aristocrat cards. Definitely not my best aristocrat deck, but still fun to play.

The Balrog of Moria if I had to take a guess after looking at how many decks another verson of him having over a thousand decks was from the main set, The Balrog Durin's Bane. He has a cost reduction based on sacrifice and can't be blocked except by legendary creatures. He also has an on death trigger that while not as strong can also destroy an artifact so there's some flexibility if it comes out.

You should do a deck tech on the watcher of the water deck!

My buddies Balrog deck is super fun to see in action

Golum says what? This GAME?! ive been playing this guy wrong in my Frodo/Sam Food and fellowship all of last year. Thought it said this “TURN”… Thx for clearing that up!!

Carmen is secretly cracked as a aristocrat's voltron commander. Built in evasion, has a fantastic synergy with fetch lands. Has a few 3 piece combos that can pump her infinitely

As budget player it would be awesome if you could include price on screen with your vids. Thanks for the cool vid

So I built the new Korvold because I wasn’t enjoying my Baba Lysaga deck that much. It’s not overpowered at all but a lot more fun and challenge to pilot compared to a lot of Jund good stuff commanders! You’re defo right, its name puts people off!

Carmen seems fun! Right up my alley.

I got so many legendary creatures from the Baldur's Gate box I bought. I wish there was a deck for all of em

I tried out Malcom on my mono blue turns shell but turns out kefnets zombie that I was using before is slightly better. Being able to snag turns at instant speed instead of being locked into doing it only on my turn. He is solid in the 99 tho.

LOVE Sharae. Built a merfolk spellslinger deck with her that managed to play both of the other two Azorius legendary merfolk. Just put a bunch of ETB merfolk in the deck, tapping creatures matters cards, and a bunch of blink spells and I pretty much had full control over every game I played. All of this just because her art is so pretty. MTG needs more two-tailed mermaids.

So i built polukranos and my biggest gripe is it has to transform, so it's either a 10 mana commander or a commander that takes 2 turns to even start utilizing. Stack on top of that he's got no built in protection and you're essentially using all your resources to cast the same guy over and over

Saint Traft and Rem Karolus is my favorite commander deck to play right now.

Hey demo. I built Korvold and had lost of fun doing it, for the reasons you are stating. However i found that Korvold also suffers from the same-name-recognition problem in games, where people are killing it very fast just because it shares the name Korvold. I found that even when i had an empty board and other players were more a threat than me, they other players would still target Korvold. And i think it’s because of the name-stigma. They even Said stuff like “well its Korvold, i gotta kill it, its powerful!”. So i have taken it apart since.

I built an Otharri Rebels deck (all of the maindeck creatures were rebels). Certainly not the most powerful way to build this commander, but it was a blast to play. I've also been having a lot of fun with my Omarthis deck. Unfortunately, Omarthis came out in the same precon as the most popular colorless commander of all time.

The beard looks fantastic

I have an Otharri deck, and I agree that it should be more popular. Admittedly my list functions on the back of expensive pieces, but Otharri single-handedly packs such a punch that it could still dominate with a really good draft deck assuming it has synergy. Especially if you open vessel of volatility. A turn 2 or 3 Otharri backed up with a deflecting swat is magnificent. Since I'm a divergent transformations list it's got tons of deck space for instants to play around most things after that first untap with Otharri. Even without non-token creatures, there's no shortage of ways to amplify the damage output, if not go outright infinite. Every game with it has either ended up with Otharri sustainably locked down before getting in 3 swings, or Otharri archenemy snowballing out of control.

Carmen is great pick for this list. She's so explosive and because she works in so many different directions you can build a deck where almost every card has some sort of direct synergy.

I put Omarthis in the 99 of a lot of decks, great to grab with Ranger of Eos/Ranger Captain

For Gollum, Obsessed Stalker, you can equip Psychic Paper to any creature and change their name to Gollum's and that would trigger Gollum's ability.

I think it’s getting easier for cool cards to fall through the cracks because there are just so many commanders released each year. Majority of players aren’t full time on Magic and so you gotta Marie Kondo which decks you end up putting together.

I have a Rem and Traft deck. It's nuts.

I've made a deck with the Master, formed a new a weeping angel deck, so when I get my weeping angel which is just a normal artifact creature can finally make my angel the commander we deserved lol

Even better with the Master is if you gain control of an opponent's creature that is outside B/U color pie, THEN cast your commander and exile their creature, but you gain the ability, and they can't do anything about you copying it over and over again because it's in exile.

Otharri is absurdly strong and the only reason I don't run him myself is because I am trying to conceptualize a Zabaz, Glimmerwasp as my Boros deck and am fine-tuning a Yuma, Proud Protector deck.

Another point on the Master, Formed Anew is if you steal their creature, that still can get the takeover/exile treatment.

Palokranos is an awesome selesnya commander I built mine with the lifegain strategy cause the 6 lifelink is actually a lot lol

I absolutely want to build omarthis at some point when we have a few more cool colorless cards that work with him. Like please there's just not enough yet T_T

As a complete noob to the format, Rielle, the Everwise looks very interesting to me as an izzet commander - turning a 'wheel' effect into a mass-draw for yourself is a bit spicy.

I built Carmen. I've played it a handful of times in two separate pods and she draws a lot of hate.

Anyone playing kinzu should try out promise to aclozat. Giving you populate in black alongside a sac outlet is exactly what you want.

I just finished building a Hydra edh deck a few weeks ago and if Gargos wasn't so amazing Polukranos would be my commander. I'd be happy if I could just put him in the deck

Sharae plays out a lot like Bennie Bracks. I run a pauper edh build where I have a bunch of creatures with tapdown abilities so I can trigger Sharae 3-4 times a round. It's pretty fun.

Ayara is my favorite deck!

I like Carmen, any deck that will pay me off for playing Smokestack in slow pods is always fun.

I'm surprised more people aren't playing the new Malcolm. I threw together a deck for him when i opened a copy and it's fun even with just random big jank I had lying around. Slap double strike on it and you only need to hit twice. He flies so you're almost guaranteed to be able to hit someone at the table. And then the double strike means you can cast two spells per turn for free. Of course you put Omniscience in the deck and then you're off to the races. You can pretty easily get the fourth counter on turn 4. Cast it the end of turn 2, swing turn 3, proliferate somehow, turn 4 give it double strike, bam.

Rules check on Balrog of Moria: If you choose to exile it (as part of its own death trigger), can you pull it back to the command zone or does it stay, as chosen, in exile?

Cathodion is so good in Korvold. Sac it and you just have to pay jund to cast Korvold thanks to it being an artifact creature and its death trigger generating 3 colorless. Then it also counts as two permanent types in your graveyard as well

Kinzu plus Altar of Baal would be raaaaad! You can exile the token to get the creature back and loop etbs forever

Kethek reminds me of Dreamshape Shaman. You could run both to double dip.

Amusingly, I don't actually like stun counters in my Hylda deck. I want the tap triggers so I get the effect. You can't tap an enemy that's already tapped. ETA: Of course, as I said in the video where you discussed Hylda, I'm not playing her as a tap deck, I'm playing her as a vaguely tap-themed Elemental Tribal deck

Traft and rem have potential to go infinite with intruder alarm. I think I'm going to try and build this deck. Since we're in Jeskai we can play stuff like recruiter of the guard and imperial recruiter to get ourselves a card called chief engineer. With chief engineer we can make a majority of our deck artifacts making them free. Intruder alarm will make us go infinite if we have a draw engine set up. This probably has a high chance to fizzle but it would be amazing to see it happen. Or he could honestly just attach paradise mantle to this commander with a intruder alarm in play and just make infinite tokens that way.

I've been trying to find something to do with the Dimir Master, but the amount of card slots needed to find whatever card(s) you want your commander to be is unappealing.

I think potentially a big reason the 13th doctor doesn't have as many decks as the other doctor commanders is because she's just a really unpopular doctor. To a lot of people, she kicked off a significant downward trend in Doctor Who viewership. Her casting and the direction the show has gone created a lot of tension that resulted in a lot of people just turning off the show. The Doctor Who set has already shown that it isn't getting the instant buy-in that something like 40k did and so the vast majority of people playing those cards are Doctor Who fans who just don't like the 13th doctor that much in general.

I love my polukranos deck. Wins through tokens in a non combat way.

Here's a neat tech for Gollum, Obsessed Stalker. Use Psychic Paper to give another creature unblockable and change its name to Gollum, Obsessed Stalker and then proceed to hit players with it. Gollum's end step trigger only cares that they were hit by a creature with that name even if it wasn't actually Gollum itself.

I went and built a Watcher in the Water deck after watching this 😁

i can see the Balrog(LTC), Kinu, and Kethic would work in a deck together throw in Syr Konrad and Ayara, first of Locthwain

I have a 13th Doctor/Yasmin chaos deck that I think is one of my dumbest but most fun decks in my relatively short time playing

I think I might just start uploading more builds online. I won't have to buy the cards and I can still scratch that itch when new sets come out.