Top Dominaria cards for commander and brawl.

Dominaria's official release is this week and it is full of goodies for commander and brawl players. Today I will be taking a look at my top cards for each format. Which cards stand out the most and make the biggest impact on the format?

I want to take a moment to talk about cards that will not make this list. Cards like Karn's Temporal Sundering, a card that is really good, but doesn't honestly do anything new, will not be on this list. My list will consist of new approaches and cards that get me excited to see print. (also reprints will not make the list)


In no particular order


Top Cards for Both Formats

Helm of the Host

The ability to make multiples of any legend is absolutely absurd. One easy infinite combo with this is to copy Aurelia. Never attack with the original and even if the copy gets killed there is a new combat phase that brings in a new Aurelia.

This isn't what excites me about the card though. I want to see it copying a silly lord commander like Sliver Legion or Seshiro the Anointed. I had an old deck that played with a ton of silly tribal cards meshing them together and being able to copy some of those legends was really good.

In Brawl it can also be used to double up on your commander's ability, for example it will get you more locusts by copying locust god or more mana from Rhada.

Karn

Karn is the best planeswalker in this set. He has a place in any artifact based deck. Just making the creature with p/t = to the number of artifacts you control will be worth the 4 mana investment. Drawing one of the top 2 cards of your library is fine, since your opponent gets to pick which one, and the -1 to get the one they don't want you to have will be relevant. He is solid splashy value in commander.

In Brawl, it's possible to use him as your commander. A colorless deck is typically more fun to build than play, in my experience at least. A quick count, I saw 19 colorless lands in standard, so it's possible to run without basics. Aside from the role of commander, he's going to play the same value engine roll in any artifact heavy deck in brawl as he will in commander.

Lyra Dawnbringer

Lyra is a very cool card and will play a key role in any angel deck. We can use her as the commander or just part of the angelic legion. In tribal play baneslayer sees play and Lyra is a baneslayer that helps the tribe.

In Brawl there is a lot less support for playing angel tribal, but that's ok. She can play the commander role or just be a high value creature. Either way, I'd expect to see alot of her as brawl continues to develop.

Muldrotha

Muldrotha is proof that wizards doesn't feel that Karador was a mistake, if nothing else. The move to blue from white and letting her add enchantments, artifacts, planeswalkers, and lands to the list of cards that she can replay throws her power level though the roof. She will quickly be making people's top 10 best commanders ever list. I really can't say enough about how good she is in both formats.


Primevals' Glorious Rebirth

 

 

This is a card made for EDH if there ever was one. The nod to the original Elder Dragons in the flavor text makes that even more obvious. There will be many decks that are made on the backbone of this card. Legends trade power for only being able to use one on the battlefield at a time. Singleton formats do not card about that limitation. Most decks play with many legends already, but their value just increases when you know you have access to a powerful resurrection spell that will bring them all back.

 

This also gets back planeswalkers. Obviously it's a staple in every Super Friends deck ever, even if it is the most boring place to put it. Outside of  superfriends most decks still use a few value commanders and bringing them back with the rest of your legendaries is going to be really powerful.

Aryel

 

Aryel is the card that has me most hyped in this set. This is tribal done right! I wrote about her in debth last week, so check that out.

I will probably make two decks with Aryel at the helm, very soon. One for commander and one for brawl.

Top Commander Cards
Cards that don't work as well in brawl due to the limited card pool to support them or just due to differences in the format.

Lich's Mastery

 

 

What I find interesting about even thinking about using this card is that I don't want it for the typical Lich ability. I want to try this card out as a card draw engine for a lifegain deck. Exiling cards from my hand shouldn't be too much of a problem if I'm drawing 4-5 per turn and we can also exile cards from our graveyard. 

 

There is also the idea that if you are playing Red or Blue you can donate it to your opponent before forcing a big hit and clearing a large portion of their board.

 

Squee

I've recently seen people both highly enamored by this new version of squee and saying he wont see any play. Obviously, any card will see play somewhere, but squee is the type of card that entire deck archetypes can be built around. He will only ever cost you three mana and he is fodder for anything. Squee is the type of card that people see other's scoffing at and build around because of that. Never count out the immortal goblin.

 

Top Brawl specific

Cards that will be cool in brawl, but there are better choices in commander.

Slimefoot

Slimefoot is really neat. Saprolings have a good bit of support in post dominaria standard (mostly from dominaria) and black/green is a popular color combination. Being a more creature based format than standard will let the blocking with saprolings effectively stall out the game until you can wrestle control of the board away from your opponents. He will see a lot of play in Brawl. 

As for commander, he won't take Ghave's deck away from him. He could see play in the 99, but that deck is already pretty tight with synergies. Maybe he will see play in a more watered down version. 

Closing

That's it for today. I could keep adding to this list, but honestly it isn't one card that really has me excited about this set it's the combination of cards and how they work together. Being able to fully explore these themes in a new format where they can be properly highlighted has been a lot of fun for me as well.