Goonhammer Reviews: Magic The Gathering’s New Vehicle Commanders

The debut of Edge of Eternity’s preview season kicked off with a bang this Friday, supplemented with the announcement of a potentially huge change for the Commander format. As of Edge of Eternities, releasing in August, Legendary Vehicles & Spacecrafts (think vehicles but crewed in installments) can be your Commander. At first, this seems a rather massive change, as surely there’s quite a possible shakeup that comes with adding a whole new card type to the pool of legal Commanders. There are varying opinions, which we’ll get into, but as far as numbers go it’s only a mere 21 new potential cards in the Command Zone, and the power curve between them is quite wide.

This is the first major shakeup we’ve had since the most recently shift towards brackets and the Game Changer system, and critically affects everyone, not just those choosing to delineate their decks into brackets. This has been explored before, by way of Shorikai, Genesis Engine, the most popular Azorius Commander of all time by EDHREC stats. Overwhelmingly the response to Shorikai has been positive, and it seems obvious that this was likely a catalyst for the change when it debuted in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Still, this is the first time since the printing of Grist, Hunger Tide that the codification of what a Commander can be has changed, this time to reflect any card with a power & toughness box on its front half…and uh, Grist.

That being said, there’s another clear reason this may be a change coming now, and that’s the inclusion of Spacecraft into the bucket. We’ve only seen one so far, which we’ll be going over, but I have a hunch that some of the burden of Commander’s overwhelming popularity is borne by the amount of the new subtype in Edge of Eternities. This is a pretty blatant way to balloon the impact on Commander EoE might have, but ultimately the format rarely raises more than a few options to a level of popularity where you’ll see it multiple times per night. Are any of these liable to receive that status? Counting the only Legendary Spacecraft we’ve seen, that makes 22 cards worth talking about in the context of this change to the format, and there’s certainly a few possibilities for your next Commander!

The Good

The Vehicles in this category have legitimate potential to be build-arounds, with cohesive gameplans and enough upside to offset the awkwardness that can sometimes come with being a non-Creature Commander. These are your cardboard Ferraris.

Saffgor: Starting off with a bang, Weatherlight Compleated asks you to jump through a few hoops in order to get going, but the ability to draw on any death trigger is absolutely diabolical. In Colorless, you have access to plenty of Eldrazi Spawn/Scions, Myr tokens, and more, as well as all of the best colorless sac outlets. On top of that, I have a feeling that people are going to get oneshot by the ship equipped with Luxior, Giada’s Gift. In terms of the Colorless offerings, I would say the ship is ready to set sail.

Loxi: A cheap draw engine is a really great way to fuel a lot of cool strategies in a colorless deck, and my initial thought is that you could totally use this to run a more combo/control focused artifact playstyle by sacrificing small creature tokens and playing almost aristocrats-y with a combo finisher. You also could use this just to run a cool alternate Eldrazi playstyle that wants to get out of the gates quicker than the other options, so the world is your oyster here.

BPhillipYork: There are some cheap loops you could run to turbo out the draw ability, and having a commander that draws cards whenever they die is fairly useful. But without a cheap crew option it’s going to be difficult getting this running that quickly, and even then it’s not particularly big.

FromTheShire: As alluded to here, one of the big issues the Vehicles can run into as commanders is their color identity, or in many cases lack thereof. Colorless decks can certainly be made to work, but there is no doubt you are dramatically curtailing your options for both card and effect selection. Weatherlight Compleated is hands down one of the best at dealing with those restrictions in its deck by synergizing extremely well with the cheap creature/ token generating options, having built in evasion, and a built in draw effect which is rather hard to find in colorless. The fact that all of your Eldrazi tokens don’t even require you to find your sacrifice outlet quickly is huge as well, as without them you can easily wind up relying on things dying in combat all game which would make this extremely swingy at best at getting online.

 

Saffgor: The first Spacecraft we’ve seen, The Seriema undercuts what could have been an exciting card with the word ‘creature’. We have a host of ways to tutor for Legendary Creatures, and in being Monowhite I doubt this is the preferred option. Still, the Indestructibility synergizes with White’s ability to boardwipe, and blinking the ship is a possibility to find key pieces. While I’m not especially excited about this ship, the mechanic as a whole is a great new design twist.

Loxi: I think this doesn’t make a particularly exciting commander just because I think legends tend to be a more toolbox oriented playstyle, and having access to more colors just means you get more tools. You don’t even really need to play five colors for that, but I think being stuck to mono white and having a commander that really just offers protection and a one off tutor is a bit bland. I do think this isn’t too shabby of a vehicle overall though, maybe just not at the helm of the deck.

BPhillipYork: There’s a lot to unpack here, clearly the rules change was made to accommodate these “space ships” as commanders and likely centerpieces of the set. The station mechanic is a kind of interesting one, obviously intended to represent more or less crewing up a ship, and needing a certain amount of charge counters lets you build up to that number over a time. Once achieved, it’s a permanent and an artifact creature that you can swing with. The Seriema has multiple abilities working to make it function fairly well as a commander, the triggered fetch upon entering, and giving legendary creatures indestructible. Those play particularly well with mono-whites propensity to Wrath of God, as well as White’s ability to generate lots of small creatures and benefit from doing so. So this is likely a card worth building decks around, though there’s some conflict between something that protects other legendary creatures and a desire for a horde of weenies.

 

Saffgor: This is a shockingly good card for Bracket 3 and below. Card advantage, a reasonable body, and the ability to cheat Commander Tax or even loop it from the yard; this boat doesn’t look exciting, but it’s perhaps the best way to build Monoblue Vehicles or Pirates we’ve yet had.

Loxi: Bident of Thassa in the Command Zone is very good, ask anyone who’s sat down at a table with Edric, Spymaster of Trest, and while his asymmetry is part of his playstyle, sometimes being able to just get juiced on your own terms has some merit of its own. Even if you don’t play around the recursion I think this is solid for any Rogue/Flying Men playstyle.

BPhillipYork: Built in Reconnaissance Mission is pretty solid, blue has many ways to make creatures unblockable or give them evasion, and this means you just know you’ll have the effect on the turn you want it. It’s a fairly linear, predictable deck, but dropping out an unblockable or ramp, unblockable or ramp, unblockable or ramp; and then dropping a draw 2-3 every turn is really consistent and just dumps a lot of resources into your hand. Then you’ll need tons more ramp to keep taking advantage of all that draw. There’s also a lot of these effects running around, which could lead to a scenario where you are drawing 10+ cards per turn. This isn’t exactly great but it’s kind of fun to imagine a deck that’s wincon is Thassa’s Oracle, but it’s “fair” as in you don’t just deck yourself but hand draw your deck out.

FromTheShire: Um actually I believe you all mean Coastal Piracy? How very dare you. Put some respect on your elder’s names. Yeah turns out there’s a reason this has many names, and it’s that it’s an extremely good effect. Card draw and Blue, name a better pair. Even with as much love as they’ve gotten I don’t think it’s worth building around the graveyard clause but there’s certainly a track record of cheating on your taxes winding up very powerful.

 

Saffgor: As someone with Monored brainrot, I actually want to be fairly bullish on the Titanic. Coupled with cards like Aggravated Assault, Haste enablers, and the Welders, it can do very silly things, and if you suit it up (potentially even with Assault Suit it can be fairly aggressive and above-rate. You also get to crash the Titanic, over and over again…flavor win?

Loxi: If you’re trying to play fast, and I’m talking like really fast, but you think the metagame is for suckers, this might be an interesting choice honestly. With one pump spell this can bank an absolutely bananas amount of mana to use to pop off pretty early in the game. Playing a commander that’s just a one or two time mana generating cruise missile probably isn’t for everyone, but I can see some merit for hyper aggressive strategies that want to set up fast and hard on turns 3-4 for a really stupid midgame power spike.

BPhillipYork: I think is fun, really kind of sad it doesn’t have white, because there’s a lot of Boros artifact and creature reanimation that’s slightly goofy but definitely you could play around ramming your spaceship Titanic over and over. Goblin Welder would work hilariously well with this, but it’d be really hard to ensure you actually get it.

FromTheShire: Um actually I think you all mean Ball Lightning… oh wait. Not having haste built in is sad but this is the reddest red card there is, and it’s great. There’s always going to be at least one person fully open to slam this into the face of, and making that many untapped Treasure tokens is just asking for wild shit to happen and I’m here for it.

 

Saffgor: This is the only card of the bunch I’ve seen murmured about in cEDH circles, and I can see why. This can draw you a truly obscene amount of cards, and between extra turn spells and extra combat spells (being in both the correct colors) you could dig yourself to another wincon fairly readily. The issue stems from lacking evasion, and that may be what kills the card at stronger tables. Still, a potent option nonetheless.

Loxi: Being a three drop is really what sells me on this, as it’s got a pretty low opportunity cost for quite a bit of punch if you have a lot of artifacts (read: any artifact deck). I’m with Saffgor in that this lacking evasion does hurt it a bit, and frankly crew three does make it slightly harder to get out early, but I think if you kit this out right and support it with outside sources of evasion this will just net you some crazy wheels.

BPhillipYork: This would roll out pretty quickly and let you start drawing a lot, if you deck is built around aggro artifacts, artifact ramp, and Treasure you could conceivably be drawing a lot, very quickly.

FromTheShire: The good news is you’re in Blue, aka the color of unblockable, and care heavily about artifacts, aka the things that are usually used to give some form of evasion soooo I think you can put these puzzle pieces together. It’s maybe not consistently drawing 7 on turn 4 but the fact you’re having that conversation is an indicator of the potential power here.

 

Saffgor: Another 60 card format menace, but this chariot of Cats actually does some interesting things in Commander! Being better than just a Populate, as this can copy non-Creature tokens, I quite like the concept around this card in the Command Zone, but it’s probably outmoded by Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds.

Loxi: Copying tokens is really strong, but really I wish this had access to blue so you could access other ways to make token copies of things. The one interesting case I have for this over Ghired is that you might be able to make some more janky combos happen because the token doesn’t come in attacking; while this is likely a downside in most cases for green, it does mean the tokens you make are safer from getting blown up in combat.

BPhillipYork: This is likely one of the most impactful new commanders. It pops out and generates it’s own crew and then duplicates tokens. There’s lots of ways now to end up token versions of things, so this is an easy way get going then make a token army. Backed up by things like Doubling Season this has the potential to get somewhat out of hand, but largely you’re liable to get copies of medium to large vanilla beasties because most of the “make a token copy” spells are in blue or red. Nonetheless it’s pretty just all around solid.

FromTheShire: However will the green tokens player get out of hand, I just can’t picture it. It won’t be a full on boogeyman but this is going to be a strong deck.

 

The Jank

While not every Vehicle comes with added features like ‘a cogent gameplan’, these have the jank factor that may inspire brewers to find a new beloved jalopy. Still, you can absolutely make these work.

Saffgor: This is the second Colorless lands-matter Commander we’ve gotten from Final Fantasy, the first being Ultima, Origin of Oblivion. Where Ultima makes your lands tap for more, Regalia gets you more of them, and in a weird way I prefer the latter? Of course, it does less at face value, but part of the benefit of being in Colorless is the fact that all your lands are utility lands, so using the car as a Hasty toolbox is quite neat.

Loxi: If you haven’t played vehicles before, don’t sleep on how nice Crew 1 is, as it means you can basically always have this ready to go as long as you have something on board. I like this card a lot as a commander for Eldrazi/Karnifacts just because there is not a lot of reliable land ramp in the colors (or there lack of), so having a reusable piece of ramp that also can grab nonbasics (meaning you aren’t stuck with having to jam a bunch of Wastes) is absolutely the fuel that some of those archetypes need to get going. It might not be particularly exciting, but it gives you an option that can be way more useful at some tables just by being faster. Vroom Vroom.

BPhillipYork: To me this seems like a pretty hilarious way to run something like an Eldrazi deck, “hop in we’re going to warp reality.” 4 Colorless and a crew 1 means you can get it out quickly and it will let you keep ramping until you have enough mana to bring out the huge Eldrazi titans, which seems like a fun, if not good, deck to build around.

FromTheShire: It’s nice that this helps pay for the commander tax when you inevitably get this killed in combat spinning the wheel. A slid effect but not busted with the colorless limitation.

 

Saffgor: For those that want to build Parhelion, I have terrible news—I think The Prydwen is just better. While the tokens it makes aren’t evasive, if you’re churning through Artifacts it’s going to make an absolute ton of them, and White has more than a few tricks to loop an effect like this.

Loxi: Yeah I think this is absolutely bonkers for a token strategy, and while I do think it’s a bit expensive and a removal magnet on principle of sometimes having two typings, I think this will pay dividends really fast if you can untap with this as it’s basically just an artifact that can be an extra body when you need it. There’s something nice about not having to be forced to attack with this to gain it’s benefits.

BPhillipYork: This has a lot of potential to create a truly gross horde of fairly beefy, well let’s be honest they should be paladins not knights, but oh well. 6 Mana is a significant investment, but getting tons of artifacts into play is usually pretty easy. And there’s some fairly easy loops to be made meaning you could generate infinite tokens without too much difficulty. At that point crewing it seems a little pointless.

FromTheShire: It’s a damn good thing this is nontoken artifacts, I’ll tell you that much. Even so this can be extremely strong, and with the ways white can bounce creatures to hand with things like Whitemane Lion, can reanimate, and can double tokens and triggers, this can easily lead to Eggs style storm turns. Played fairly I guess this might still slot in Jank but I think this is very much a real deck.

 

Saffgor: Markedly less exciting than its Phyrexian alter ego, this Weatherlight just functionally draws a card on combat damage. Not worth being in Colorless, that’s for sure.

BPhillipYork: This is a pretty solid commander that’s going to allow a colorless deck to get pumping out evasive commander damage quickly and continue to ramp. Since colorless mana is generally going to be easy to generate a fair amount of, you could get this hitting as early as turn 4 quite likely and then use it to develop a game plan.

FromTheShire: We’re already into doing it for the love of the game territory here I think, but it’s a great game. Drawing an extra card per turn isn’t particularly impressive in current Commander, but if you’re ancient like me and grew up on the Weatherlight Saga being able to run this as your commander is pretty cool actually. I know I will be one of the many oldheads brewing up a deck with this to see how much of Urza’s Legacy I can assemble and what I can do with it. No not the set, THE Legacy. Go google it, ya darn kids!

 

Saffgor: This is kind of a sidegrade to The Reality Chip, but lacking Haste and only being able to use its effect on your turn reveals it’s a strict downgrade.

Loxi: I wish this wasn’t 4 mana, because I can see this being potentially a fun commander for artifact focused blue strategies that want to manipulate their library, but it’s a tad expensive as is.

BPhillipYork: Potentially this can be a piece in a combo deck that runs a lot of artifacts and cost reduction and then basically just plays out the whole deck in one turn. That’s a lot of pieces, but having one of combo pieces in the command zone is pretty good. More or less a storm and Aetherflux Reservoir engine with Sensei’s Divining Top as it’s default. As a combo deck though that’s fairly unfun, aggressive, and doesn’t really fit the goofy theme of a giant whale ship, and also there’s better ways to build more robust versions of the same thing.

 

Saffgor: What I said about The Lunar Whale applies here, though the addition of a treasure and Red do help some things. Building this as a weird storm Commander could work, but in Izzet you’ve got better options.

BPhillipYork: This is really pretty solid to build around. It’s like that whale but way way better. The combination of red and blue lets you set up a situation where you are storming off in a really nasty way, with several potential payoffs, and far easier to set up.

FromTheShire: Yeah adding Red makes all of the difference, cause now you can add Soldier of Fortune to deal with those pesky lands. Fun but on average not too crazy unless you’re loading up with extra turns, and at that point what isn’t crazy?

 

Saffgor: Monoblack reanimator is a coveted archetype, and a crowded one, but this is a reasonable option indeed. Being fairly cheap, cheating Commander Tax for casts 3+, and having a bit of evasion makes this a competent package. I doubt it’s ever the single-best option for its archetype, but you could do much worse.

Loxi: I don’t love this because I do think it’s a little expensive as a whole package to actually make better use of this than reanimating something the more traditional ways. You have to crew it, get it in for combat damage against a player, and then sacrifice it to get your reanimation. It’s a fun concept but I think it’s really slow and telegraphed for what ends up being 8 mana if you want to try your hand at a second use.

BPhillipYork: This is a fun sort of way to just reanimate huge fatties in black. You know you’ll get it out on turn 3-4 and you just need to hit a way to mill or search for something to put in your yard early, and then you can move into midgame with a big threat on the table, and the ability to get it back without jacking up your commander tax repeatedly. Keep in mind you can choose not to have something trigger the commander replacement ability and just let it sit in your yard. But then if your yard gets reshuffled, someone tries to exile it, or something like that, you can choose to activate the replacement effect then. It’s a fairly safe way to take advantage of a reanimating commander like this and not worry it’ll get buried in your library.

FromTheShire: Solid territory for me. It’s a little expensive yes but it’s very repeatable, and you know you’re going to have it every game which goes a long way. Plus if you can’t make loads of mana in mono black what are you even doing? Is Cabal Coffers a joke to you?

 

Saffgor: Our first dedicated Colorless blink Commander! A timeless archetype, but is a Brago, King Eternal for Creatures only good enough, especially in Colorless? I doubt it, but people absolutely will try it for the novelty.

Loxi: Part of the issue is that the archetype just doesn’t have enough gas, even if I love the concept here. So many colorless creatures either have cast triggers, such as the Eldrazi Titans, or are cards that feel a bit inefficient in general, like Meteor Golem. While I think cards like that definitely have some play here, it does mean you’re going to be drawing at straws for playable cards that don’t make your deck a durdle-fest like blink can accidentally become in a lot of cases.

BPhillipYork: You could do some sort of cool things with ETB effects, The Ozolith and modular creatures and other such with this. You can always overcrew things, so that’s kind of an interesting twist, but it’s probably going to be hard to really get a lot of mileage out of this.

FromTheShire: A wildly good commander held down by being colorless, I still think this is better than you think. There are things like Bronze Walrus to scry, Biblioplex Assistant for spell recursion, Canoptek Scarab Swarm for graveyard hate and token generation, Canoptek Spyder and Circuit Mender for card draw, Duplicant for exile, Scampering Surveyor, Myr Battlesphere, Pentavus, Pilgrim’s Eye… see how many you can double up on with a single Roaming Throne, or just reset your Throne over and over for whatever you need to be doubling. Who doesn’t want a Solemn Simulacrum and Triskelion every turn? Again I personally don’t think I would call this Jank.

 

The Junk

Given the vast majority of Legendary Vehicles were not designed with this rule in mind, it follows that many of them don’t remotely cut it in the format. These get scrapped for parts, or potentially just played in the 99.

Saffgor: While probably not good, bringing Sui Black to Commander is a bold proposition made by this card. I don’t think it’s good, but if you want to live on the edge, this could potentially work.

Loxi: You’ll pay for the whole ride, but you only need the edge. If you want to live fast and die fast, here you go.

FromTheShire: I don’t hate having a Greed effect in the Command Zone honestly.

 

Saffgor: A French vanilla card unless you manage to bounce it to your hand, pass.

BPhillipYork: Given it’s likely intended gameplay loop is a cycle into reanimation and using pilots to get it going, it seems like quite a stretch to run mono-white and your commander payoff is merely a big fat flyer.

FromTheShire: The crew is only 3, I don’t think that’s making you want to get this into your hand to cycle or particularly requires Pilots at all. This is like the most literal battlecruiser commander and y’all need to play more of those games. You’re stuffing this deck full of ramp to get it out in reasonable time, and beyond that you have kind of a blank slate to do what you want. Mass Vehicles? Stax? Voltron? The world is your oyster. I know combat damage isn’t cool anymore online but I promise you lots of games still get ended by it, and starting out 3 shotting people like the OG’s of the format is still solid.

 

Saffgor: Comically bad. It isn’t even on-rate!

BPhillipYork: I can’t imagine why you would bother with this, it’s another of “4 mana or more noncreature” spell triggers, which, sure, you know, whatever, but to get a 5/3 flier for a turn, and it does nothing else for you.

 

Saffgor: This is awful! And a Mythic?

Loxi: I have never seen this outside of Limited but boy was this shit a bomb there. Turns out this bomb is shit here though, sadly.

BPhillipYork: The most play this card really ever saw was likely in Abzan Greasefang, Okiba Boss decks in pioneer. It’s fine in an environment like that, but in a 4-player game, ramping up to 5 mana to get a repeatable colorless Lightning Bolt isn’t much to get all that excited about.

 

Saffgor: I hate to say it but this is probably just worse than The Prydwen. As explained above, it’s too pricy, and with only one trigger per turn, too slow.

BPhillipYork: It’s a cool like, idea, but getting up the 8 mana to get this out it just doesn’t have the payoff. You’re gonna pay 8 mana to wait a turn and then get 2 Angels. Angels are nice, but that’s just way too much mana to get to get it going, and it’s very much a one trick pony. Assuming no interference whatsoever, you’re looking at winning the game 9 turns after you drop this bad boy onto the table. Bad Parhelion anyway. Where is Parhelion I, if it cost 4 and made 1 Angel that would be way way better.

 

Saffgor: This was a menace in Standard, but not in Commander.

BPhillipYork: It doesn’t seem like you would ever do this.

 

Saffgor: Truly terrible, but at least a bit funny.

BPhillipYork: It just doesn’t even do anything, even if you pull off the condition. At least it should destroy a target creature with defender every time it attacks, that would mean it was doing something.

FromTheShire: Well this one at least has huge do it for the meme potential.

 

Saffgor: Comically bad.

BPhillipYork: I just can’t see anyway to really make this good.

 

Saffgor: Assassins in Colorless basically don’t exist, but why does this have Islandwalk, and Jackdaw doesn’t? If we could transplant that keyword, that’d be lovely, thanks.

BPhillipYork: Other than a couple of changelings there’s much really much of a way to crew this in a mono-color deck, and even if you did it uh, becomes an Assassin and draws you a card which is pretty who cares.

Final Thoughts

Saffgor: On the whole, this change added, in our estimation, around 10 new Commanders that will actually see any modicum of play to the format. For those that jump to the hasty assumption that most of these cards won’t see the light of day, I ask you: Could you find some whimsy in your heart? I think either Weatherlight Compleated or The Indomitable is my favorite existing option, but both of them shine a spotlight on archetypes in their colors (or lack thereof) that had few compelling options. Turns out, if a card has ‘Draw a card’ in its text, it might have some teeth. We’re definitely curious to hear what other people are thinking about this change though, in the context of it being a clear sell for Edge of Eternities. If WotTC is pushing for this now, we should expect about a dozen Spacecraft, many made for the Command Zone, to arrive in August.

Loxi: Arguably the most important thing to note is how this might impact design spaces in the future, the reality is that these cards weren’t really designed with the idea of being a commander in mind. A lot of modern “staple” commanders are often pretty tailor made for the role, so the ability for them to sneak in legendary vehicles into sets that are a bit better suited for the job can set an interesting standard for how WoTC is willing to make some tweaks to how the format plays going forward.

Regardless, the brewers in the audience likely can’t wait to get cooking with some of these options, and there’s much fun to be had here, even if the majority of these new Commander choices fall behind the curve on power. This change on the whole may mean that, should a high enough density of non-Creature Commanders see play, our removal suites change with it. Most people have stories of moments when Shorikai evaded the grasp of their interaction, doubly so under the protection of cards like Humility. Oftentimes, restrictions breed creativity, and goodness knows there’s restrictions abound when you’re dealing with a Vehicle in the Command Zone.

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