Hello Happy People! Happiest of Days to you and yours! Today we are taking a deep dive into the cards that were printed in the five decks that came along in the Commander set that was printed with Streets of New Capenna. We'll be looking at the normal Top Ten, as well as double my normal Honorable Mentions (from 2 to 4) as well as getting a cycle in here and two similar cards in one spot so it's really my Top Nineteen, but that's not as sexy of a title. I won't return to this next week as we are now in the spoilers for Battle for Baldur's Gate, so this is the last time I have a Top Ten dedicated to this set and that means we will be unable to do my normal look at my favorite art from the set. Insert sad face here. The sets are too fast these days to do justice too with my Top Tens to stay current. Since this is my only Top Ten in this set, I really pushed myself into some deep waters here.

As a reminder, I am including cards in this list that are good in not only Commander, but general multiplayer, Type Four, Five Color and Highlander and other casual formats.

Ready? Let's get started!

Honorable Mention #1 - Damning Verdict

Hitting at basically the 14 spot on today's countdown is this 5-mana sorta Wrath of God. It won't destroy creatures with counters on them, and it does cost one more mana than Day of Judgment. It's meant to be in a deck that loves counters like the Azorius and Bant counters matter archetypes they just created in this set or in a +1/+1 counter Abzan, Selesnya or Bant theme. In those decks you should have most or all of your dorks rocking the counter, so this won't hurt you too much, and unless your foe is running the same theme, you should destroy all or most of their stuff. Sometimes they might accidentally have a countered dork like Fertilid or Walking Ballista in a non-counter matters brew. In the right deck this will often play out as a 5-mana mono-White Plague Wind. Nicely done!

Honorable Mention #2 - Mari, the Killing Quill

Our 13 spot heads to this Vampire Assassin. Before I talk about Mari, let's talk about my thoughts on Tribal. I don't enjoy it when legendary Tribal lords just do some variation of +1/+1 and a keyword like flying or haste. I like a deck that has a unique feel that represents its flavor, like Goblins or Rebels that feel very different from each other despite being commonly beloved tribes. Compare the Five Color tribe of Slivers and their Commanders with the very different enablers and feeling Allies, even though they both want to go wide with their tribe and share a Five Color identity.

Enter Mari. This 3-drop 3/2 will exile, with a hit counter, opposing dorks when they die. Nice exiling of dorks to prevent them from getting recurred from their graveyard. Then when your Assassins, Rogues, and Mercenaries have deathtouch including Mari. Then when they deal combat damage to a foe, you can pull off a hit counter and make two Treasures (as a reward for killing them) and draw a card, nice card flow. See how this is a mechanically unique ability that also fits their flavor? Love her lots! She is built up here.

Honorable Mention #3 - Agent's Toolkit

According to everyone that I have talked with, read, and played against, Simic is the most heavily played two color combo in Commander. It combines ramp and recursion and answers like Cultivate and Beast Within and Eternal Witness and Krosan Grip with card drawing and counters like Fact or Fiction and Counterspell.

This artifact slides right in. The Clue token arrives to the battlefield with 4 counters which you can dole out to your creatures when they arrive to the battlefield. Then after all the counters are given out you can sacrifice this Clue for two mana and draw a card, so it never fully takes a card. It's also a Clue for things that care. My favorite counter is the deathtouch one as something like Mulldrifter or Reclamation Sage getting a deathtouch counter can really play keep away as folks may not want to swing with bigger things and trade down. Nice artifact for the masses.

Honorable Mention #4 - Life Insurance

Because of how popular Aristocrat builds are at the kitchen table, I always make sure to highlight new cards that play into that dynamic. It's the fifth most played archetype over at EDHREC.com. This archetype is about sacrificing your stuff with Viscera Seer for gain and then unleash triggers like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat. Then you ideally recur something like Reassembling Skeleton or Bloodghast over and over again for more goes.

That where this card enters. This enchantment that has extort so as you cast things you can spend a black or white mana to drain a life from your foes. Then when things die, (including your foes) you make a Treasure and lose a life, and if you are gaining a life from your triggers this is just a mass maker of Treasures over time. Combine this with a commonly played Treasure maker in this deck (Pitiless Plunderer which only works on your stuff) and if you control both then you can sacrifice the Skeleton, and bring it back with your two Treasures over and over again. Good synergy here! Welcome to the Aristocrats Stage Opening.

Top Ten(ish) Time!

#10. Indulge // Excess

This is a fun aftermath card! The first will double your creature count into 1/1 Citizens if you attack with them all this turn and will make them tapped and attacking. That wants to get cast in decks that go wide like aggro and tokens. Then the back half will create a Treasure for each tapped dork, so you will want to cast this right after so that you get double your initial creature count in Treasures, which is great in many brews at the kitchen table. They play quite ably together but can be cast apart as well. Nice tool for the masses to love and embrace.

#9. The Beamtown Bullies

The second highest scoring gold Commander is this Ogre Devil Warrior! For 4 mana you get an on curve 4/4 with haste and vigilance. Nasty! And then you can tap this on a foe's turn to drop a dork from their graveyard to the battlefield goaded and with haste and it gets exiled. That's a great, flavorful way to force people to attack each other and keep the game moving even after removal or things dying in combat. You can drop it, swing, keep it untapped, and then tap on your foe's turn. It's very synergetic with cards that add to your foe's graveyard like milling, discard, and draw sevens. Lovely to see this Jund leader here!

#8. Smuggler's Share

Some think this is the clear powerhouse in this set and some think it's pretty overrated for the top spot on a countdown like this, so your move may vary on the 8 spot.

Let's do a deep dive. At the end of each turn, yours and your foes, this triggers. Did a foe draw 2 or more cards this turn? Draw a card for each one who did. Did a foe drop two or more lands under their control? Make a Treasure token for each one who did. If you are running this in a Group Hug deck giving people extra cards on their turn with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos, then this easily can be triggered for three cards in a 4-player game. Then if you have cards that will let them drop another land, then you can make three Treasures.

Outside of a Group Hug brew, where are you running this? You might make one Treasure each pass in a normal game with the occasional fetchland or Rampant Growth and land drop in the same turn. I'd rather run other more reliable Treasure makers. This might draw you one card per turn, if that's what you want, you can just run something like Phyrexian Arena or Staff of Nin. They play around it, just crack that Evolving Wilds on their foes turn or cast that Opt they drew on another turn, and such. It's hard to rely on, but in many faster, heavily competitive, and cEDH metagames this could be a very reliable source of ramp and card flow.

#7. Smuggler's Buggy

Again, some may wonder why the Buggy is hitting higher than the Share, but that's because it's a more reliable card flow and ramp, and colorless too so it fits into more decks. Although it is potentially slower, so I rate it just one slot better.

On arrival to the party it brings a hideaway card as a party favor. Then when it smashes a foe's face, you can cast the party favor for free and bounces back to hand to leave the party for a while, but no worries, as it'll return with a new favor. This is more reliable card flow and casting a spell for free, but without haste you cannot use it more than once/turn so equip it with Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots. It's colorless so it fits everywhere, but ideally you want to turn that four-mana cost into a bigger free spell, so big sorceries like Expropriate, Insurrection and Plague Wind (see also for our #1 below) leap to my mind, as well as fat dorks like Darksteel Colossus, Akroma, Angel of Vengeance, Avacyn, Angel of Hope and shoot even Spirit of the Night. Good card and nice free effects over time!

#6. Writ of Return

For five mana you can Zombify a dork from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped, one more than you'd normally spend and tapped but there is a secret power here - cipher. When you have finished casting it you can choose a dork you control and cipher it. And then when that dork smashes your opponent's face, you get a free copy of Writ of Return. A free Zombify each combat step is worth the extra generic mana and tapped status. This will trigger twice with double strike. I love it with evasion on a Commander and tossed it into my "Politics with Tivit" build earlier this week. It's also strong in decks and builds where you already have an infrastructure of unblockable or evasion like Esper Fliers or Dimir Ninjas or Rogues or alongside things like Sun Quan and Archetype of Imagination. This is a very strong powerhouse until the dork is answered. The power gained over time is worth the price of admission!

Now what hits the Top Five?

#5. Bennie Bracks, Zoologist

You want more reliable card draw in your White builds? Bennie says "Hello!" This 4-drop 3/2 with convoke can draw you a card if you created a token that turn. That's up to four cards in a four-player game. That works quite ably in the Token decks like Boros and Naya and Selesnya that use his colors, and most token decks do lean into that color. Also note that token decks that aren't making dorks also can really draw a bunch of cards like Bant Clues and Boros Blood under Odric and more.

Imagine this with Smothering Tithe! Given that flexibility, Bennie is the Sram, Senior Edificer of this set. Sram draws you a card for each vehicle, aura, or equipment you cast so he can lead any of these, and thus he leads 1,296 decks over at EDHREC.com, which is huge for a mono-white leader. He's in 34,732 decks, or a full 7% of white brews. Already Bennie is leading 208 decks and in 1,901 in just a few weeks, and that's pretty good from where I am sitting. Our own Stephen Johnson has built a mega-fun deck around him here.

#4. Grand Crescendo

This really fun instant plays multiple games. It's an X maker of dorks with just an investment of 2 to start, so that fits token brews that seek to go wide. You can wait and do so at the end of a foe's turn, and then untap and swing. You can also use this when you've swung and look open and then make some 1/1 dorks and block. Also note that this will give all of your stuff indestructible for the turn, the tokens as well. That means your chump blockers won't die and you can cast this for just two mana in response to mass removal to save your team (although spend more if you have it). Love its flexibility here a lot! It's our highest scoring mono-White card, but there are three gold cards left to score...(hint hint)...

Three slots and eight cards left!!! Ready? Let's do this to this!

#3. The Confluence Cycle

Cycle Time Baby! This is our cycle to create. This slate of sorceries and instants have all three colors of those Families combined with generic mana. Each has three options and you can chose one more than once. Let's turn to each of these cool ones in alpha order:

Brokers is an instant that can proliferate three times which is amazing in +1/+1 counter matter brews and Bant planeswalker brews. Phasing out in response to removal both targeted and mass is nice on an instant. Countering any ability is nice as well, from activated to triggered. You can counter both the cycle to draw a card and it's trigger from something like Krosan Tusker or Decree of Annihilation, and then do the other. Good trilogy of options.

The Cabaretti one is a pricier 6 mana sorcery but has three nasty abilities. Making a token copy of any dork you control with haste for the turn is really strong with a powerful game winner like Carnage Tyrant or netting ETB triggers like Flametongue Kavu and Eternal Witness. Hydra Omnivore three copies with haste? I think you might win that game! Exiling up to three artifacts and/or enchantments is great power and exiling is the ideal removal as it slips past indestructible. Giving your stuff +1/+1 and first strike up to three times can serve as a nice Overrun, although I prefer the first two usually, but it's a nice option if you can grab the win on a crowded board.

Maestros is also a 6-drop sorcery. It can return up to three (mono-colored) instants and sorceries from your graveyard to your hand which will love a deeper deck in those like the Spellslinger brew in Commander. It can -3/-3 a dork and then slip past indestructible as well. You can also goad up to each opponent in a four-way game, which is nice. Good stuff and each board position could have nice value here.

The Obscura one is a four-drop instant, quite cheap and fast. You can turn a dork into a 1/1 without any abilities as a combat trick or to kill them with Infest/Pestilence/Pyroclasm style removal. It can connive up to three times which is nice looting card flow. You can also Raise Dead a dork. All three are pretty nice, and the cost and speed can't be beat.

We finish with the Riveteers. You can draw a card for a life, you can shoot opposing dorks (and planeswalkers) for a damage, and you can ramp a land from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. All three are pretty useful effects for the cost and combining them is nice and you can always just draw three cards if you need them. I love this cycle in Type Four where you have any amount of mana but just one spell per turn, and I really adore the triple token maker there that wins games.

#2. Scepter of Celebration AND Mask of the Schemer

Here is the two-for-one that I alluded to above. The pieces of equipment each cost 1 color mana, 2 generic mana, and then when they deal combat damage to a player, they get a X powered ability equal to the damage dealt. The Scepter gives +2 power and trample, so it boosts the damage potential by two and lends it an evasive ability. It will make that many 1/1s tokens which is a win con in Voltron and go big decks since you could easily toss this onto a 7/5 dork and then smash for now 9 for 9 dorks which could easily go wide after the Voltron threat is answered. The Mask will connive equal to the damage dealt, which means you'll draw that many cards, discard that many cards, and toss +1/+1 counters for your non-lands discarded onto the equipped dork. That scales up quickly, and your 6/6 flying Commander could easily be a 10/10 after one hit and then 17/17 after another. These are both game winners in the equipment game that stick around after removal answers your dorks. Good tag team.

What's my top card overall?

#1. Anhelo, the Painter

...could there be anything else here? This guy is broken for Commander Play as the leader of a deck in said format. He brings a popular three-color combo with counters (Counterspell, Negate, Swan Song), card draw (Ancient Craving, Fact or Fiction, Wheel of Fortune), mass removal (Cyclonic Rift, Damnation, Mizzium Mortars), targeted removal, discard stealing (Dominate, Treachery) and other answers. And you only have to spend the minimum three mana for Anhelo, and he has deathtouch to play keep away. The first time you cast an instant and sorcery each turn you can get a free copy for sacrificing a dork with a power at least 2, which is pretty easy to do. You can load this guy down with powerful spells and token makers to get the powerful Fork'ed stuff. Our own Stephen Johnson made a Zombie token deck around him here. Extra turns like Time Warp? Extra card draws like Brainstorm? Extra game changers like Torment of Hailfire? I see you. This is here solely for Commander as he doesn't have much to offer Type Four or Five Color.

And there we go! So...what did you think about my Top (Nine)Te(e)n List? Anything in the wrong order or missed? Just let me know!