Ravnica Remastered is a … well it’s a masters set but only of cards from expansions that took place on Ravnica. Ravnica is the most commonly visited plane aside from Dominaria, the guild concept seems to have really taken hold, and a city full of intrigue has some good storytelling and mechanics are pretty flexible in a place like that. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see Innistrad Remastered and Zendikar/Mirrodin Remastered. Which is good. One of the troublesome parts of a format that contains virtually every card ever printed, is that newer players can’t affordably pick up important staples since lacking recent reprints the prices just rise over time.
Ravnica tends to have a lot of dual colored cards because of the guilds, but this set of reprints went fairly soft on dual colored spells. But seeing the shocklands and talismans reprinted is an unequivocally good thing.
The following represents a list of cards that are generically pretty good in Commander, and worth picking up since these prices are probably as low as they are likely to be for some time on most of these.
Lands
Normally we don’t talk about lands until the end, but truthfully the most impactful reprints are the full suite of shocklands. Commander decks are generally, though not always, multicolor, and the ability to actually cast your spells is pretty important. In an environment where you start with 40 life, paying 2 to come in untapped is far less meaningful, so these shocklands should be considered “enters play untapped” by default. On top of that though, they have the basic land types, which means they can be fetched, using either spells like Farseek (also reprinted) or the crack and fetch lands. The flexibility of having two different land types on each land means it’s relatively easy to mana fix, even for 3+ color decks.
There’s even more tricks with the shocklands, but the bottom line is it’s great they’ve reprinted these, and you should absolutely pick up a full set, since the price will certainly start to creep upwards again.
White
Unbreakable Formation
Solid card to protect your go wide token strategies or to protect against a board clear.
Blind Obedience
This is a solid soft stax piece which just sort of generally slows the game down, with extort on top of it.
Rootborn Defenses
Similar to Unbreakable Formation, this will protect you from a board clear, and also populates on top of that.
Blue
Cyclonic Rift
This card is often a precursor to a win, since resetting the board at instant speed means you can generally go off and combo win on your turn, but it’s also a decent bounce spell for only 2 mana if you can’t afford the overload, and it’s a blue spell that can be pitched to Force of Will or Force of Negation, so just all around strong card.
Muddle the Mixture
Muddle is a decent counterspell but only for winning interaction wars, but what makes it top tier is transmute, letting you grab a 2 cost piece you really need, without even casting a tutor, so it’s generally uncounterable.
Spark Double
Strictly better than Clone, but also can copy planeswalkers, Spark Double comes in with a +1/+1 counter if it’s a creature or additional loyalty, if it’s a planeswalker, but it’s also non-legendary, so you can get an extra copy of your commander or something else that you need to combo off, or just for funsies.
Black
Dark Confidant
Bob, as it’s colloquially known, is a decent non-draw card advantage card that slots pretty nicely into any deck containing black.
Massacre Girl
Fun board clear, and the way it starts by killing off dorks but can trigger up to killing everything on the board.
Priest of Forgotten Gods
This card is frankly bonkers, and tragically underplayed. Forcing 3 sacrifices, adding mana, drawing a card, and also generating 3 death triggers and a sacrifice.
Red
Krenko, Mob Boss
Krenko is a solid token generator and fun for mono red go crazy wide Goblin decks. There are some tricks that will allow you to go infinite with Krenko, like Umbral Mantle and a way to sacrifice Goblins for mana.
Mizzix’s Mastery
Mastery is a super popular finisher for spellslinger decks, being able to flash back your entire graveyard for free in a single turn is wildly powerful.
Utvara Hellkite
Really great in any Dragon tribal deck, Utvara Hellkite turns a few Dragons into a swarm quickly and is a must answer threat.
Green
Protean Hulk
The hulk is an enormous value piece, and also can be used to put together an instant win combo and even protect it. Since the Flash ban, it’s not as popular, but there’s plenty of ways other than Flash to cheat it out, it’s a great piece for Golgari aristocrats decks, mill and reanimate and sacrifice it (repeatedly).
Guardian Project
In Commander, your deck will naturally not have creatures with the same name so this simply reads draw a card whenever a nontoken creature ETB’s without having to modify your list at all. Enormous amounts of card draw for a green deck doing what it was already planning on doing.
Chord of Calling
The utility of this card should be fairly obvious, it’s a creature tutor that has convoke, so in a go wide tokens deck it’s a great way to fetch a finisher like Craterhoof Behemoth.
Birds of Paradise
The OG best in class dork, ramp and mana fixing all in one.
Farseek
Mana fixing land ramp is pretty good, and this does that for you. Especially valuable if you start running the shocklands that have also been reprinted since this will let you fetch virtually any 2 color combination to ensure you are able to smoothly cast your spells.
Utopia Sprawl
Really really solid mana fixing ramp for only 1 mana. The only danger is that it can only be cast on a Forest, which again just makes the the shocklands even more important. You may not want to run this in decks once you hit 4 or 5 colors, unless you are also using OG duals.
Multicolor
Cindervines
This is one of those cards that it baffles me isn’t anywhere. Group slug pings with a seal effect letting you get rid of an enchantment or an artifact and a shock on top of it. Just a really good card that should be in pretty much all decks with red and green, instead of like, none.
Deathrite Shaman
Solid mana dork that can also be used to shut down recursion strategies, gets a lot better with fetch lands.
Mayhem Devil
This is another really underplayed card. Mayhem Devil often goes really berserk, anyone using Treasures, aristocrats, or even just the extremely solid fetch lands, you’ll be getting pings all over the place, as well as potentially shutting down opponents’ decks.
Rhythm of the Wild
Haste is good, really nuff said, but making your creatures uncounterable on top of it is really solid. There’s also the niche case where you might want the +1/+1 counter instead.
Colorless
Cloudstone Curio
This is a notorious combo piece and can also generate a ton of value.
Signets
Seeing a reprint of all the signets in one place is always good. 2 Cost comes into play mana rocks that allow you to generate 2 different colors of mana are pretty solid.
Shocklands
We opened with the shocklands, but it’s worth revisiting. Pick up a set.
