Commander Masters Precon Review – Eldrazi Unbound!

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Mike Carrozza - August 1, 2023

Hello! Welcome to my set review of Commander Masters Commander preconstructed decks!

I’ll be going through each of the Commander decks and talking about the new cards chiefly, while highlighting worthwhile reprints.

I’ll be starting the series with the colourless Eldrazi Unbound deck. This deck is first because it feels like the most complicated to evaluate. Let’s look at the new cards from the deck, starting with the new legends.

Zhulodok, Void Gorger

Beginning with Zhulodok, the deck’s face commander, we have a card with banger art. A new Eldrazi 7/4 for 5C, Zhulodok gives colourless spells of seven or greater mana value double cascade. It’s a great payoff for the hoops you need to jump though.

Luckily when X is on the stack, it counts toward the mana value, so your Astral Cornucopia can cost you 9 mana, tap for three and you’ll get two cascades under 9 for it. What if you hit a Meteor Golem as you cascade? Well, you do that two more times!

This deck can be a lot of fun, but it’s going to be a little scary. That said, you need to enable the strategy as much as possible. I’d recommend a copy of The Immortal Sun or even Cloud Key if you’ve got a particular type tipping the scales. I don’t foresee Zhulodok being particularly popular outside of the precon, but it’s really cool.

Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate

We have gotten a few pretty cool colourless legends lately with The Peregrine Dynamo and Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter. Omarthis joins the ranks of colourless legends that folks are excited to figure out.

I’ll be absolutely honest: I am not into this card so much. Because of the requirement for colourless creatures to be the ones getting the +1/+1 counters for Omar to grow, I don’t see it in many other decks and straight up will likely just be in the command zone and nowhere else.

From the looks of it, Arcbound creatures with Modular seem to be all over Omarthis’ EDHREC page and stuff like Liberator, Walking Ballista, and Hangarback Walker are highly synergistic.

I feel like I’d have to see this in action to really get it, but I don’t know that the juice is worth the squeeze, personally. Enjoy, all those who love it!

Abstruse Archaic

I love the Archaics as a concept and hope we see a ton more. I love the art. Wandering Archaic is very fun and I think these cards are cool as hell.

Abstruse Archaic is true to its name only allowing the targeting of colourless sources but not mana abilities until you realize how many great colourless abilities there are.

Artifacts like Sword of the Animist, Strionic Resonator, Meteor Golem, even stuff like Lifecrafter’s Bestiary whose colour identity is green is still colourless. There are lots of great artifact abilities that aren’t mana abilities.

What else is colourless? Lands! Bojuka Bog in hand and don’t know which opponent to target? Luckily, the land is colourless and for one mana, you can copy the grave hate with the Archaic’s ability. While you can’t copy Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx’s ability, you can absolutely copy a Blighted Woodland ability or… Strip Mine’s abilitiy! Spicy!

Let’s not forget that Devoid is a silly mechanic that exists and there might be something good to do with those, but frankly nothing stands out to me just yet.

Calamity of the Titans

A colourless board wipe that exiles feels like it’d be automatically slotting into every deck, but this requires you to reveal a colourless creature from your hand, not only giving away information, but also requiring more than just playing a card to do what Farewell does. Does this keep your creatures in play with mana value less than the revealed card? Yes, it does. But does that matter when most of what you’ll be playing in decks with this will be massive? Nah.

I don’t like this one, but have fun, colourless decks!

Darksteel Monolith

This card feels like a trap, but it’s undoubtably very powerful. Imagine having a Shimmer Myr in an artifact deck and just dropping stuff like Spine of Ish Sah at instant speed because the Monolith lets you cast on each turn. I foresee this getting more shine in decks with Goblin Welder and the like but they’ll have to leave their Sharding Sphinxes at home.

Desecrate Reality

Desecrate Reality is in a sweet spot of just enough value to be good but also cool enough to want to see it. Having even targets isn’t a problem when you can hit 0 mana cards like lands, so your seven mana spell isn’t just dead in hand. That said, having a Thran Dynamo or Sol Ring plus Scavenger Grounds for the three colourless Adamant ability means that you’ll be getting something crazy from your graveyard easier than you’d think. I like this a lot.

Flayer of Loyalties

This card is, in a word, hilarious. You can’t flicker it out reanimate it for its trigger, but if you do, you’ve still basically got Eldrazi Conscription on a 0/0 which is sick.

Casting this means you can Threaten an opponent’s creature but don’t forget that you can “gain control” of your own creatures. So yeah, why not target your own Cold-Eyed Selkie? Draw cards, force some sacrifice, hit like a truck. This card is cool and very silly.

Rise of the Eldrazi

This card is going to get cast from so many graveyards with Mizzix’s Mastery or Surge to Victory, that’s my prediction.

I love the flavour of this card. I love that it’s named after a set, much to the chagrin of those selling cards at shops. Sorting these in the online databases isn’t easy!

This card is 12 mana for all of the Eldrazi Titan’s cast abilities. I am in love with the flavour of this and will try it in my Zaffai, Thunder Conductor deck for sure, but this is the most win-more card I’ve seen in a long time.

Skittering Cicada

We’ve got a new Shimmer Myr for colourless cards specifically. Ultimately, it gets bigger if you play more colourless spells but I think this most likely will see play just in colourless decks or artifact decks that need the redundancy of a partial Shimmer Myr.

Ugin’s Mastery

A colourless enchantment is very fun to see. There aren’t many out there that have a colourless colour identity. Eldrazi Conscription, Urza’s Saga, and technically Faceless One are the others in this very exclusive club. Greatest Show in the Multiverse counts too if you have a fun playgroup.

Ugin’s Mastery is a fun card that makes me feel like it’ll be relevant again when we revisit a Morph commander like Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer. When you cast a Morph creature on its Morph side, you are indeed casting a colourless creature, so you get two for the cost of one. Then if you manifested a creature, you can pop it back up. I really like Ugin’s Mastery, it’s just about triggering it and having stuff worth flipping.

Here are notable reprints!