Hello! I hope that you are having a fun and safe day today!

Today I want to take a look-see at my favorite choices from Commander 2020 for casual play at the kitchen table. What will dominate? From Commander proper to other all-stars, what do I like out of the set? What am I targeting? Let's look!

#10. Tidal Barracuda

Let's kick off our list with this Fish! Tidal Barracuda is a cool name with a cooler ability. Everyone wants to give their stuff flash. I do! I love cards like Vedalken Orrery and Leyline of Anticipation that will en-flash my stuff! Tidal Barracuda one-ups this idea for multiplayer formats by giving everyone flash. Your foes! Yourself! Everyone! You all get the fun sensation of playing at instant speed. That means fewer folks will be looking at killing your thing as they want the flash. However, they can only flash on each other's turn, not on yours. In fact, they can't cast anything on your turn. No counters. No removal. No Fogs. Nothing! Enjoy the card!

#9. Bonder's Ornament

It may be boring, but mana matters. To be fair, card drawing matters too, by the by. Netting both in the same card is a pretty good use of resources. You can run this out there in colors that could use the card drawing such as Boros, White, and Red. It's reliable. Even if all of your foes ran this in their deck, it's unlikely they will have drawn it as well (and if they do, that's a fun story). It's both a mana smoother and a hand smoother. Enjoy it!

#8. Dredge the Mire

One spell. Many creatures. Sure, they choose - you'll get the worst creature in each graveyard. But for four mana this is a lot of card advantage. In a typical four-person game, you might get one early drop like a Llanowar Elves, and then two decent mid-range creatures like a Flametongue Kavu and an Avenging Druid or something. Since your foes are playing a format with more than 20,000 cards, then you know it was a good one. You'll get their evoked Mulldrifter and their Birds of Paradise. They worst creature in their graveyard will be great, especially en masse with this!

#7. Nesting Grounds

Hello Giant Fan land! Are you a Giant Fan of counters? Do you really like playing with them? Is proliferate one of your favorite abilities? No worries! I have the permanent for you! It's Nesting Grounds, and you'll love it. Blow loyalty counters from one planeswalker to another! Drop +1/+1 counters! Move -1/-1 counters from your creatures to your foes'! Take their good counters and upgrade your things! There are so many ways to use and abuse this. Please note two issues with Nesting Grounds that drops it down to #7 on my list. Firstly, the counter doesn't change. Some counter-moving effects say, "If the second permanent refers to any kind of counter, the moved counter becomes one of those counters." That means a loyalty counter moved to your Triskelion from your planeswalker remains a loyalty counter. Weird. Secondly, you can only do this as a sorcery. For example, if you had this untapped with mana and an indestructible counter on a creatures you could move it around to protect anything you needed as it is being targeted. But that's not possible here. It's still a fun tool for Giant Fans of counters though! Are you one?

#6. Obscuring Haze

Throughout the history of this game, we've had many Fogs. Most offered the ability to prevent all combat damage, including your own. A few were build-around-able, like a trample damage allowed Fog and similar ideas. Here they skipped past all of that and just made the perfect Fog that doesn't need any deck building to support it. All opposing creature damage? It's prevented. It doesn't have a combat restriction, it'll shut down direct damage from them as well. In addition to being the best Fog already, it can also be free with a very common ability. This is crazy good.

#5. Tayam, Luminous Enigma

Hello fans of counters, graveyard fun times, and card advantage! Pretty much anyone around the block qualifies! Here is the leader for you, in the colors of graveyard manipulation and recursion from Karmic Guide to Buried Alive to Regrowth! You have tons of creatures with counters that you can play around, like Spike Weaver, Spike Feeder, and the -1/-1 persist of a Kitchen Finks that you may very well want to remove so you can keep recurring it! Tayam rewards grinding wins and offers massive card advantage over time! And don't skip past that vigilance counter giving either, as it's much better in multiplayer than in duels. Enjoy your Tayam!

#4. Dismantling Wave

What makes Dismantling Wave so strong is that it rocks two forms, one of which is great and the other of which is even better and at instant speed and hard to counter (and draws you a card to replace itself). The first ability is cheap! You get a bunch of targets gone for just three invested mana. There are tons of these effects running around like Sylvan Library, Land Tax, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and more. Lightning Greaves? It's rare a Commander deck doesn't run many cheap artifacts and/or enchantments and drop them to help them set up.

Take advantage of that early game and drop this as early as turn three to clean up the house! You can keep this in your hand for a later sweep of all unsightly artifacts and enchantments, and so do nicely. A traditional Counterspell won't do anything to a cycling trigger, but even if someone counters the cycle trigger to wipe, you'll still draw a card. Trust me, I've won enough games won on the back of Decree of Justice that I know the power of a cycling trigger well. Dismantling Wave is perfect for the modern metagame in Commander!

#3. Verge Rangers

Who doesn't like Green cards that play into this space? Oracle of Mul Daya? Courser of Kruphix? Dryad of the Ilysian Grove? There are tons of powerful heavily played Green cards that do this. Now Verge Rangers are in the color of Land Tax and Tithe, not Cultivate and Crop Rotation. They'll net you lands only if someone else has more. But folks, this is Commander where ramp is everywhere. Someone always has more lands than you! In the rare case they don't, this is still an on-curve 3/3 for three mana with first strike and the ability to let you look at your library's top card. This is amazing!

#2. Manascape Refractor

Hello Maze of Ith! Hello Academy Ruins! Hello Volrath's Stronghold! Hello Dust Bowl! Hello Winding Canyons! Hello Rogue's Passage! Hello Alchemist's Refuge! Hello Kessig Wolf Run! Hello Inventors' Fair! Hello Hall of Heliod's Generosity! Hello Mishra's Factory! Hello Diamond Valley! Hello Phyrexian Tower! Hello Shizo, Death's Storehouse! Hello Castle Vantress! Hello Nesting Grounds! In Commander and other multiplayer formats, folks lean hard on non-basic lands with abilities. They add in Strip Mine and Dust Bowl in colors that can't destroy lands. They add in land-creatures for control builds. They add in powerful abilities that are hard to answer. You get them all! And those mana costs are able to be paid by you as well, so you too, can Kor Haven in your Dimir deck. This is perfect!

#1. Xyris, the Writhing Storm

Meet your next broken Commander. With any draw seven effect such as Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune you can draw a ton of creatures and make a ton of 1/1s. In a four-way match, this makes 21 1/1s. It's in both colors with the draw 7s from more expensive five-mana Time Reversal to the five-mana Reforge the Soul to Memory Jar and more. You could easily have a deck with 10 draw 7s. Drop Lion's Eye Diamond and then discard your hand to cast Wheel or Windfall with a foe with 7 cards in the grip. But then what? You have a wait a turn to swing? But you've likely drawn free mana like Lotus Petal and Mana Crypt, another draw 7, and you have the colors of haste from effects like Anger, and the color of Time Warp so you take another turn and then win the game with 42 or 64 tokens punching faces. This deck builds itself, it's nasty, reliable, and consistent, and plays the same way every time and there are enough Time Walks and draw seven to play consistently every time.

I hope you enjoyed my list. Anything in here you agree or disagree with? Just let me know! Thanks for your time and have a great day!

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