We’ve just got our first look at Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate spoilers! As the second set designed for a limited Commander experience, this set has plenty of flavorful mechanics and powerful cards that should spice up your next EDH night.
Set Details
Before we talk about individual cards, let’s take a look at the set as a whole.The is meant to be drafted, so each color has general strategies to build around.
- White wants to make lots of tokens and go wide. This color rewards you for attacking multiple players and for having permanents leave the battlefield (such as small, expendable tokens).
- Blue seems to really leverage flyers and other evasive creatures. Whether they have saboteur effects or synergistic creature types, such as dragons, blue wants to sneak through damage.
- Black, as usual, cares about the graveyard and sacrificing creatures. These themes fit naturally in the world of Baldur’s Gate, and they’re common themes for black cards.
- Red cares about dragons, treasure, and dealing damage. These are some classic D&D tropes, and a pretty natural fit for how WOTC has handled red recently.
- Green is also tapping into its typical strengths: ramping and going tall. Ramp is a huge part of Commander, so it should be no surprise that it’s a huge part of this set.
There are also plenty of new and returning mechanics in Battle for Baldur’s Gate, but we’ve already covered them in separate articles. You can check them out once we’re done going through all the new, exciting cards!
RELATED: MTG Background: How It Works and What It Does
RELATED: MTG Initiative: All Your Questions Answered
The Best Baldur’s Gate Spoilers
Of course, mechanics and archetypes are all well and good, but let’s move on to the best part of any new set: new cards! There are plenty of new cards, so I’ll only cover the most exciting spoilers.
5/26/22 Spoilers
WOTC has put a huge emphasis on new designs for white cards, and there are plenty of great examples in Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the last day of spoilers brought even more great white cards.
White decks often love going wide, and Ancient Gold Dragon can give you an instant
If your deck is looking for more defense, though, then consider running Windshaper Planetar. Not many cards let you change the target of attacks and for good reason. This is a powerful effect that can ravage the attacking player’s
5/25/22 Spoilers
As a set made for EDH, Battle for Baldur’s Gate has no shortage of fun, new commanders to try out. Neera, Wild Mage provides a new take on Izzet by letting you cheat in big, splashy spells. Cards that let you opt, like Thassa, God of the Sea and Jace’s Sanctum, will be crucial for this deck, as well as cards like Brainstorm that let you set up the top of your deck. No matter what spells you include, though, Neera lets you fully embrace chaos.
Of course, not every card in this set is new. There are plenty of great reprints, too, including Traverse the Outlands. This card has only been reprinted in The List, and it’s a great ramp option for decks with big beaters. Getting four, five, or even more lands for just five mana can propel you into the lead.
The recent trend in EDH has been to include more cheap ramp, but that doesn’t mean a card like Traverse the Outlands can’t pull its weight in the right build.
5/24/22 Spoilers
There’s been no shortage of treasure in recent Magic, and Ancient Copper Dragon is a treasure-generating machine. Out of all the spoilers we’ve seen from Baldur’s Gate, this one might be the best of the best.
On average, you’ll get ten treasures when this connects with a player. You’ll likely double the amount of mana you have access to, and even a low roll gets you good value. A couple of extra treasures are nothing to scoff at, especially when you get them with a big, flying beater.
If you’re looking for the perfect deck to play cool dragons like Ancient Copper Dragon, look no further than Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm. Temur is a great color combination for this strategy, and copying all of your dragons sounds like a ton of fun. Miirym looks like a great build-around for any Timmys or Tammys that want to pack a punch.
Dragons aren’t the only threat in Baldur’s Gate, though: powerful demons are also waiting to strike down foolhardy adventurers. Balor can do a ton of damage quickly, and it looks like a great answer card.
Do you play against blue or green decks with tons of card draw? Deal them some extra burn damage. Too many utility artifacts at the table? Make your opponents sacrifice them? Worried about tutors? You could make them discard whatever they searched for. In the right meta, Balor can punish all your opponents at once.
5/23/22 Spoilers
If you’re a fan of slinging spells, then today might’ve brought you one of the best spoilers so far: Font of Magic. Four mana for a do-nothing enchantment might not seem like a good deal, but this card can save you tons of mana in the right build.
If you slot this in a deck with partner commanders, you can guarantee that it’ll save you more than one mana per spell, too. Putting this in a deck with Krark, the Thumbless and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces seems too good to pass up.
Next, we have another enchantment that does nothing on its own, but it has a ton of explosive potential. Legion Loyalty isn’t the sort of card you play in the mid-game and hope to get value from.
At eight mana, you should hopefully be casting this and winning the game shortly after. Giving myriad to all your creatures doesn’t just triple your potential damage, it also triples any combat-related abilities. This is a finisher that white combat decks should definitely consider.
Finally, we have the cutest (and in my opinion, coolest) spoiler of the day: Displacer Kitten. Flicker decks often use non-creature spells, like Ephemerate or Conjurer’s Closet, so this kitty just lets you do more of the same.
You can also use it to blink a creature in response to a removal spell, fizzling it and getting an ETB effect again. I love flicker strategies, and Displacer Kitten is a great new piece for the archetype.
5/22/22 Spoilers
Mass reanimation spells can turn the tide of a game, but they’re often expensive. Ascend from Avernus can cost a lot, but white also likes having cheap, efficient cards. You could pump just two or three mana into its X cost to return a decent chunk of your graveyard to the battlefield.
In decks like Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle, this card fits in perfectly. Some decks might require you to pay a lot more, but take a good look at your mana curve and see if Ascend from Avernus can provide some (relatively) cheap value.
5/21/22 Spoilers
Sivriss, Nightmare Speaker is a one-card engine. It’s a sacrifice outlet, a source of mill or card advantage, and it threatens your opponents’ life totals. None of these themes are new to black, but they’re wrapped up in such an efficient package that it’s hard to ignore its potential.
Since you can also choose Sivriss’s background, you can pair it with any other color. An open-ended commander like Sivriss can breed creativity, so take a closer look if you want to delve into Magic’s dark side.
5/20/22 Spoilers
I’m really enjoying the cards that use d20s in Battle for Baldur’s Gate, and Lae’zel’s Acrobatics is no exception. Flickering your whole
You can use this to avoid
In recent sets, we’ve seen plenty of white cards that offer card draw. Archivist of Ogmah is an especially interesting example of this because it lets you draw whenever an opponent searches their library. Between tutors and ramp, this happens quite a bit in an average EDH game. Even drawing just once or twice can make this creature worth casting, and you’ll often get more than that.
Jaheira, Friend of the Forest can create a ridiculous amount of mana. Turning all of your tokens into mana rocks or mana dorks can create an engine that spirals out of control. Your treasures become Moss Diamond and your 1/1s become Llanowar Elves. As long as your deck pumps out tokens, you’ll be able to pull of some wild plays with your new pal.
5/19/22 Spoilers
If you love tinkering with artifacts, then you’ll want to take a close inspection at Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter. Making extra mana is always strong, but so is making more artifacts. Even just sacrificing artifacts can create a powerful value engine.
Cards like Marionette Master, Mayhem Devil, and Reckless Fireweaver can convert that value into damage, but there are plenty of directions you could take this deck.
Wizards of Thay has a fascinating design. Reducing the cost of your spells is a useful effect for spellslinger decks, and so is giving your sorceries flash. When you need to pull off some explosive turns, though, or if you have free attacks, you can triple its mana reduction thanks to myriad. I’m a big fan of how this set is using myriad, and I’d love to see more creative designs like this one.
5/18/22 Spoilers
If you’re a new player, or getting back into Magic after a break, I’ll let you in on a little secret: treasures are very strong. Mahadi, Emporium Master is just the next card that proves this by letting you make a ton of treasure quickly.
In aristocrats strategies, you can get plenty of death triggers on your turn. What I really like about this card, though, is that you get treasures for killing your opponents’ creature, too. If you wipe the
RELATED: The Top 10 MTG Black Board Wipes
A D&D set wouldn’t be complete without rolling dice, and I think Wyll’s Reversal is one of the best we’ve seen so far. Changing the target of a key removal spell is already a strong baseline, but copying that spell can lead to huge blowouts. If you’re running a deck with big creatures, consider testing your luck with Wyll.
5/17/22 Spoilers
WOTC has been giving white more and more pieces of card advantage and ramp recently, and Battle Angels of Tyr is the next in line. What I like most about this card is that it helps white decks stay aggressive and pressure the other players. With myriad, you can deal a ton of damage at once. With the Battle Angels, you’re also likely to get at least one ability to trigger on every attack.
Many D&D fans were disappointed that Elminster was absent from the first crossover set, but here he is! Not only is he a powerful planeswalker, but he’s also a legal commander. They really tried to deliver on the idea of a wise, powerful wizard, and the scry mechanic works well here. Using that extra knowledge to help cast spells and summon allies certainly captures the concept of an archmage.
Volo, Guide to Monsters was the most popular commanders from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, and now he has another card. Volo, Itinerant Scholar works a bit differently, but it still cares about having lots of different creature types. With the background mechanic, you can also choose to pair Volo with any other color, giving you even more choices in deckbuilding.
End Step
Those are all the spoilers I have for now! As WOTC reveals more cards, keep coming back to get our takes on the best new cards you should be playing. Until then: stay safe, adventurers, and I’ll see you again in Baldur’s Gate!
