MTG Foundations is, for the most part, a set all about Standard. The whole Foundations product line is intended to draw in new players, and Standard is the easiest format for them to grasp. That said, the set has plenty of cross-format implications too. As with most modern Magic sets there are a ton of goodies for Commander here, including some very tasty new legendary creatures to build around. If you’re looking to build a fresh deck to celebrate Magic’s fresh start, you’ll want one of these legends to head it up. These are the best new Commanders from the MTG Foundations main set.
5 | Alesha, Who Laughs At Fate
- Mana Value: 1BR
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Text: First Strike. Whenever Alesha attacks, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
Raid — At the beginning of your end step, if you attacked this turn, return target creature card with mana value less than or equal to Alesha’s power from your graveyard to the battlefield.
The original Alesha is a very popular Mardu Commander, and the follow-up is even better in my eyes. While she can no longer cheat out expensive creatures with low power, Alesha can now reanimate something the turn she enters play. Crucially, she can do so without spending any mana.
This makes the new Alesha a much more aggressive Commander than the original. You can play recklessly with your early creatures, safe in the knowledge that she’ll get them back free of charge later. Because her reanimation effect cares about mana value, you’ll want to stuff your deck with 1-3 drops. Ideally, most of these will have Haste to trigger Raid.
Just going all-in on Aggro is definitely a viable strategy here, especially since Alesha scales up her own stats over time. The beauty of this card is its flexibility, however. Aristocrats decks are very popular in Commander, and this is an easy way to reanimate most of the key creatures for that archetype. Between Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Blood Artist, Alesha can grab both your payoffs and enablers right off the bat.
However you choose to employ her talents, Alesha is clearly one of the best new Commanders from MTG Foundations. Don’t be surprised if it becomes a serious Rakdos staple in the coming months.
4 | Loot, Exuberant Explorer
- Mana Value: 2G
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 1/4
- Card Text: You may play an additional land on each of your turns.
4GG, Tap: Look at the top six cards of your library. You may reveal a creature card with mana value less than or equal to the number of lands you control from among them and put it onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom in a random order.
From a new Aggro staple to a new Ramp staple, here’s the second coming of Magic’s latest mascot: Loot. Unlike Alesha, the original Loot hasn’t exactly set the Commander world on fire. This new take more than makes up for it, however. If there are two things Commander players love doing, they’re building up mana and having a good outlet on which to spend it. Loot offers you both of those things in one neat package.
Playing an extra land each turn will get you to your huge green monsters quickly. It’ll also get you to Loot’s ability, which is a bit of a monster in itself. Digging six cards deep and dropping a six+ cost creature, at instant speed no less, is a powerful play. The fact that it’s repeatable is even better. Pair this with a Sensei’s Divining Top/Fetchland shuffle engine and you can all but guarantee a great hit every turn off of this.
To top, it all off, Loot just has very solid stats. Four toughness lets him survive a lot of removal, especially in the early game when his ramp effect is most relevant. While I think Loot will do most of his work in the 99 in the end, it says a lot about his power that he’s on our best Commanders list too.
3 | Kykar, Zephyr Awakener
- Mana Value: 2WU
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 3/4
- Card Text: Flying.
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, choose one —
• Exile another target creature you control. Return that card to the battlefield under its owner’s control at the beginning of the next end step.
• Create a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying.
Both of our previous entries have been fairly linear in nature, but Kykar is a different story. There are a number of directions you can take this brainy Bird, and none of them are clearly superior to the others.
One way to build him is to lean into a blink theme. Using Kykar’s first choice to exile and return your creatures can result in a ton of extra value from enters and leaves effects. This also works at instant speed, so you can use instants to protect your creatures from opposing removal. Since the creatures come back at end of turn, this isn’t as abusable as some similar effects. It’s still very potent, however.
Alternatively, you can lean more into a go-wide ‘Flying Matters’ build. Cards like Favorable Winds and Empyrean Eagle can turn your humble 1/1 Spirits into a seriously nasty air force. You can also run Spirit support like Supreme Phantom and Drogskol Reinforcements to ramp the pressure up further.
You could also mix and match the two styles, and play a kind of hyper-agile Spirit Typal deck. Kykar can be played in a variety of ways, which makes it a very interesting Commander indeed. Finding the right balance of creatures and noncreatures for the deck will be a good deckbuilding challenge, too.
2 | Tinybones, Bauble Burglar
- Mana Value: 1B
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 1/3
- Card Text: Whenever an opponent discards a card, exile it from their graveyard with a stash counter on it.
During your turn, you may play cards you don’t own with stash counters on them from exile, and mana of any type can be spent to cast those spells.
3B, Tap: Each opponent discards a card. Activate only as a sorcery.
Of the three Tinybones cards we’ve seen so far, Bauble Burglar is by far the best for Commander. It’s also the one that captures his ‘master thief’ persona the best. Each time an opponent discards while Tinybones is out, you get to exile the card and play it later. Who needs a good deck when you can dip into your opponents’ instead?
We’ve seen plenty of effects like this in the past, but Bauble Burglar has a couple of nuances that make it particularly effective. Firstly, since they get Stash counters, the exiled cards aren’t tied to a specific instance of Tinybones. This means if your opponent removes him, you can replay him from the command zone and regain access to all previously stolen cards.
Second, the ability lets you play lands as well as spells. A lot of effects like this specify ‘cast’ to prevent you from doing this, but Tinybones knows no such limit. He’ll steal your opponents’ lands and add them to your own pile of stolen goods, no questions asked.
This passive ability alone would make Tinybones worth playing, but the fact he can force each opponent to discard for four mana is the icing on the skeletal cake. In a normal Commander game, that equates to a +6 swing in card advantage: you take three cards from your opponents and add three to your ‘hand’ via Tinybones’ effect. He’s not quite as devastating as Tergrid, but the MTG Foundations Tinybones may just be the next best thing when it comes to discard Commanders.
1 | Zimone, Paradox Sculptor
- Mana Value: 2GU
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 1/4
- Card Text: At the beginning of combat on your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target creatures you control.
GU, Tap: Double the number of each kind of counter on up to two target creatures and/or artifacts you control.
Topping our list of the best new Commanders in MTG Foundations, it’s the latest version of Zimone. At first glance, this looks like your typical overcosted Simic mythic. It piles on the pressure eventually, sure, but until then it’s slow and underwhelming. Once you see Zimone in action, however, you’ll see that this isn’t the case at all.
Putting a +1/+1 counter on two different creatures the turn she comes down makes Zimone a pretty good deal even just on pure stats. If needed, she can buff herself to help shrug off removal, though a 1/4 body is already solid. Alternatively, she can also create ‘Hasty’ power by buffing creatures you had in play before. Even in Commander, it doesn’t take long for this ability to start doing serious work.
The real juice here is Zimone’s counter-doubling ability, however. Obviously, it plays very nicely with her first ability, rapidly turning your creatures into unstoppable threats, but the fact that it can also hit artifacts gives it potential as a combo tool as well. The Millennium Calendar can win you the game much faster when you can double its counters twice a turn, and it’s great for doubling up charge counters too.
Overall Zimone does a lot of different things, and she does them very well. She’s flying under the radar a bit right now, but I expect that to change very quickly once players get a chance to test her out.
