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It wouldn’t be a Magic: The Gathering set without brand new preconstructed Commander decks, and Dominaria United’s are two of the most out-there decks we’ve seen yet. While Jared Carthalion’s Painbow deck utilised all five colours, Dihada, Bender of Wills’ Legends’ Legacy instead cares about throwing as many legendary permanents into play as possible.
As we’ve come to expend from Commander precons, Legends’ Legacy includes a mix of reprints, cards debuting in Dominaria United and, most excitingly, ten brand-new cards designed specifically for the Commander format. Here’s every new card you can play with alongside Dihada.
The Full Deck
As mentioned, the main theme of this deck is legendary permanents. Dihada can buff them up your legendary creatures, which is helpful considering every single creature in the deck is legendary.
For game-enders, you’ve got Urza’s Ruinous Blast to exile everything that isn’t a legendary, before swinging in with an army of creatures buffed by a Heroes’ Podium. You’ve also got enchantments like Day of Destiny and artifacts like The Circle of Loyalty to work with your creatures, and even some legendary lands like Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and Shizo, Death’s Storehouse to up the legendary count.
Dihada, Bender of Wills
One generic, one red, one white, one black legendary planeswalker – Dihada:
Five starting loyalty
+2: Up to one target legendary creature gains vigilance, lifelink, and indestructible until your next turn.
-3: Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put any number of legendary cards from among them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard. Create a Treasure token for each card put into your graveyard this way.
-11: Gain control of all nonland permanents until end of turn. Untap them. They gain haste until end of turn.
Dihada, Bender of Wills can be your commander.
The face commander of this deck is none other than Geyadrone Dihada, a planeswalker whose centuries of scheming and manipulation have led her into numerous battles with fellow Dominarian planeswalkers Jared Carthalion and Dakkon Blackblade.
As you’d expect from a deck called Legends’ Legacy, she’s all about you having legendary permanents in play. Not necessarily casting them, though, which means you could find ways to cheat and steal to build up your board state before swinging in.
She has a decent starting loyalty of five, which gives you the chance to hopefully tank at least a few hits from opponents’ creatures, but with no inherent way to protect herself she isn’t going to be a new, format-defining planeswalker.
Shanid, Sleepers’ Scourge
One generic, one red, one white, one black legendary creature – Human Knight – 2/4:
Menace
Other legendary creatures you control have menace.
Whenever you play a legendary land or cast a legendary spell, you draw a card and you lose one life.
The secondary commander of this deck is bizarrely a more appealing one than Dihada herself. Shanid can help keep you stocked up on legendary creatures to cast, while also being evasive in combat and helping close out the game once you’ve built a big enough board state.
Losing one life in a format like Commander is absolutely nothing, especially in the white/red/black Mardu colours which have bountiful lifegain anyway. You might be better-served running this as the face of the deck and just putting Dihada into the 99.
Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant
Five generic, one black, one red legendary creature – Dragon Skeleton – 6/6:
Flying, haste
Whenever Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker, for each creature card in your graveyard, create a 2/2 black Zombie Knight creature token with menace.
Bladewing doesn’t lean too hard into the legendary theme of the rest of the deck, but could easily be one you build an entire deck around. Though it’s expensive at seven mana, it’s fast and evasive enough to ensure you’re making a bunch of Knight tokens each turn.
Play with some self-mill effects to fill up your graveyard with creatures, throw in some Zombie and Knight-tribal tools to buff those tokens up, and Bladewing is an interesting take on the Rakdos (black/red) colours we rarely see.
Cadric, Soul Kindler
Two generic, one red, one white legendary creature – Dwarf Wizard – 4/3:
The “legend rule” doesn’t apply to tokens you control.
Whenever another nontoken legendary permanent enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay one generic. If you do, create a token that’s a copy of it. That token gains haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.
Cadric has an interesting concept behind it – making token copies of legendary creatures without needing to get rid of all but one of them could open up some scary synergies. The problem is very few of those synergies are actually in this deck, which makes it more a neat bonus and something you’d want to build around as its own thing.
Combine the legendary tokens with some of the white populate tools like Eyes in the Skies, Rootborn Defenses, Wake the Reflections, and Trostani’s Judgment, and you’ll be able to make nearly unlimited numbers of tokens that don’t need to exile at the end of the turn.
It’s also a great fit for a Boros (red/white) blink deck, something that doesn’t happen too often. By repeatedly blinking your legendary permanents, you can keep paying to produce more and more tokens and potentially steal the win there and then. You won’t be building a whole board state the same way you would with populate, but there are far more ways to blink available to you.
Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendant
One generic legendary artifact:
Flash
If a player would begin an extra turn, that player skips that turn instead.
Pay four generic, tap, exile Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendant: Return to the battlefield all artifact, creature, enchantment, and land cards in your graveyard that were put there from the battlefield this turn.
An answer to that one annoying player whose entire deck is focused on getting infinite turns and then doing nothing with them, Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendent controls the flow of the game in both directions. It stops your opponents from shooting off into an extra turn, while also helping you rewind to before a board wipe if needed.
The addition of flash, and the flow cost of one generic mana, will make this a terror for any blue player. It’s now no longer just counterspells that can mess them up, but also this sneaky little artifact nobody will see coming.
Moira, Urborg Haunt
Two generic, one black legendary creature – Spirit Wizard – 3/2:
Whenever Moira, Urborg Haunt deals combat damage to a player, return to the battlefield target creature card in your graveyard that was put there from the battlefield this turn.
Out of all the legendary creatures in this deck, Moira is probably one of the ones least-equipped to being its own deck. While the reanimation of any creature is good, you’ll need to jump through a lot of hoops to benefit from it: getting a creature into your graveyard, and swinging and hitting with Moira (who lacks evasion) is a big ask.
If you can pull it off, though, the results can be spicy. Take Fleshbag Marauder, for instance. Play it, sacrifice it to itself and force everyone else to sacrifice a creature, then do it all again on combat damage. Or why not a Gray Merchant of Asphodel to speed up just outright winning the game?
The Peregrine Dynamo
Three generic legendary artifact creature – Construct – 1/5:
Haste
One generic, tap: Copy target activated or triggered ability you control from another legendary source that’s not a commander. You may choose new targets for the copy. (Mana abilities can’t be targeted.)
Dominaria United’s decks seem to be dropping all kinds of incredibly powerful, incredibly cheap artifacts that’ll really have an impact on the wider Commander format. While this isn’t quite on the level of Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendant or Tiller Engine, The Peregrine Dynamo could still see a decent amount of play in a whole host of decks.
The one thing letting it down is that one clause that prevents it from copying your commander. It only pushes it from “absolutely broken” to “very, very good” though, and any deck running more than a couple of legendary creatures should consider popping one of these in for the value.
The Reaver Cleaver
Two generic, one red legendary artifact – Equipment:
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 and has trample and “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player or a planeswalker, create that many Treasure tokens”.
Equip: three generic.
Although Commander has been utterly inundated with Treasure tokens recently, this feels like a good way to make generating them difficult enough to be worthwhile. Your opponent will either let some through, giving you Treasure, or they’ll be pushed into throwing more creatures at your attacker to prevent the ramp.
Not to mention that Dominaria United is already giving us some of the much-needed Treasure hate with cards like Temporary Lockdown. We’re gradually seeing a format with more ways to get Treasures out of the way and stop them becoming this big ball of game-winning resources they have been, so maybe the Reaver Cleaver won’t be as oppressive as first impressions suggest.
Verrak, Warped Sengir
One generic, one white, one black legendary creature – Vampire – 2/2:
Flying, deathtouch, lifelink
Whenever you activate an ability that isn’t a mana ability, if life was paid to activate it, you may pay that much life again. If you do, copy that ability. You may choose new targets for the copy.
This goofy looking Vampire could, surprisingly, be a nasty commander. There are lots of ways to pay life for effects, and in Commander and its higher starting life total, that isn’t as risky a play as it could be in other formats.
This is best used in two situations. The first are cards that only let you trigger the effect once per turn or require something to be tapped, like Gilt-Blade Prowler or Tavern Swindler. The second are abilities that combine paying life with mana, like Phyrexian Reclamation, Forsworn Paladin, or Blood Celebrant. This is because you don’t need to repay every cost associated with the abilities, just their life costs.
Zeriam, Golden Wind
Three generic, one white legendary creature – Griffin – 3/4:
Flying
Whenever a Griffin you control deals combat damage to a player, create a 2/2 white Griffin creature token with flying.
The final new card coming in the Legends’ Legacy deck is, weirdly, a Griffin tribal commander. It’s a creature type that has been very underserved before now, but the last place I’d have expected to see it.
There are lots of griffins in Magic, but this is only the second-ever legendary one, following the likely-related Zuberi, Golden Wind. Zeriam is arguably a better commander for the tribe though, as it can easily snowball into a massive flock of Griffins nobody could defend against. Combine it with cards like Griffin Aerie and Griffin Canyon to support your flock before swooping in for the kill.
Don’t forget that Griffins are also linked to enchantments. Transcendent Envoy reduces the mana cost of Auras you cast, and Griffin Dreamfinder can return enchantments to your hand from the graveyard. Put them together and you’ll have all the pieces for a frightful flying-and-enchantment tribal deck.