Hello happiest of people today! Today we are looking at the best most definitive cards from our latest Commander Legends and D&D set, Battle for Baldur's Gate. As with the first one, this set has a ton of amazing card for kitchen table play, it's really Commander heavy, but there are also great cards for Type Four, multiplayer, Five Color, and general Highlander that will make my list as well. This is a fun deep dive into the world of this set, and we'll spend a few weeks on these lists as this is a very top-heavy set with loads of powerhouses printed, since they won't go to the Standard or Modern formats first, they are pretty powerful in threat level.

Ready? Let's get started!

Honorable Mention #1- Mighty Servant of Leuk-o

Our third highest scoring colorless card and our second highest charting vehicle (Major hint there...) is this fun thing! This is a colorless vee so it fits into any deck, which is why it charts. This is a bigger 6/6 trampler than the 3 mana it costs but a 4 crew. The first time you crew it each time, you can draw two cards if it was double crewed and you smash face, I really like in in Zombie token decks since they have loads of spare 2/2 tokens running around to double crew it. Nice card flow and trample suits the combat damage trigger. Another good vehicle for your casual decks!

Honorable Mention #2 - Baldur's Gate with a Shoutout to Basilisk Gate

Hello awesome Gate fans! Normally the best land or cycle hits #1 in my set review so something really strong must be hitting higher than this at the 11 spot. This is a fun themed land that is basically a Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx level of power for one nonbasic land type rather than Swamps. As you tap this colorless land for 2 mana and then can get one color of other Gates you control, which is a pretty easy choice to drop and we have plenty of new Gates to choose from as well! The Guildgate cycle is pretty cheap on the cost, and I doubt this will be too pricey, so this is a nice budget mass color maker there. Gates away my friend, Gates away!

Also, a shout out to another 2 mana tap for a big effect Gate, Basilisk Gate which can pump up a Commander by a bunch in a Gate brew, and win much more quickly with Commander Damage. Although it can only be activated at sorcery speed, hence its inclusion here as a shout out, rather than a proper spot.

Top Ten Time!

#10. Sapphire Dragon

Hello fans of flexibility! This Negate/Mahamoti Djinn split card is pretty good. Sure, each half costs one mana more than the split half, but you can add in interaction in your creature spots or a creature in your interaction slot and then a beater later to close out the game, and you can get both effects for one card. This is just as powerful as a modal spell, but arguably better since you can get both halves, not just the best one for that situation. And a Negate is never useless later in the game as a top deck, unlike the Modal lands where a tapped land wasn't that heavily desired later and the spell isn't playable. Love this thing in Type Four, it's a nice blue card for Five Color, and it's a valuable card I like for Cube. Good Adventure card, and my favorite uncommon in set!

#9. Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes

Our penultimate planeswalker is this 3 loyalty Gruul option, and it's a lot of fun, it comes with a 1/1 Hamster with haste and trample to block attacks on it, and then you make another each of your upkeeps if it's not on the battlefield, to keep on blocking. Nice! Then you can +1 them to put three +1/+1 counters on a trampler or haster, like the token, or suggesting a haste and/or trampler brew. Nice synergy with Boo and others, and then you can -2 them to sacrifice a dork you control and shoot a target where that was its power, another cool way to play into Boo who just got built up last turn and you'll make another for free, so that's fun synergetic card that...can be your Commander!

#8. Dynaheir, Invoker Adept

Did you see what I did there? If you've played the initial game then you know that Minsc and Dynaheir are a pair, not a couple, but she is his "witch" that he must protect at all costs even at his life, and when she dies just before the second game begins bad things happen to Minsc. Dynaheir is a Commander eligible in a beloved three-color combo that has Blue for counters and card flow, Red and White for removal like Chaos Warp and Wrath of God, and then loads of good stuff like Cyclonic Rift and Esper Sentinel and ramp like Land Tax and Smothering Tithe. She is a four drop with haste and then a nice 4/4 size. She gives haste to tappers of abilities like mana (Silver Myr) card flow (Arcanis the Omnipotent) and pingers (Prodigal Pyromancer) which is a nice and new place to play into. You can tap her to Fork an activated ability of 4 or more mana, which is pretty nice here. Good stuff for carving out a new place in this color combo - tappers matter.

#7. Nautiloid Ship

Our highest scoring colorless card, third artifact, and top vehicle is this fun thing. Four mana for a 5/5 flying is okay, but a bit slow, and crew 3 isn't great for a 5/5 just two power increase. When it arrives to the party, you ETB a graveyard, which is a nice emergency brake on the many graveyard issues happening, so it's a colorless Bojuka Bog. When you smash face to an opposing player, you can put a dork you exiled on the battlefield under your control, which is likely with its flying, and then you can tap it in future turns to keep up, if your first crew was answered. That's a very strong combo and keeps up the mana free card flow until answered or you run out of free creatures. Love its potential a lot!

#6. Gale's Redirection

Five mana instant, and then you can exile target spell, which is better than a normal counterspell like...Counterspell...that will let you answer things that aren't normally counterable like Urza's Rage. Then you roll a d20! You can cast it from exile no matter what # you get, and then you can either spend mana to cast it with mana of any color usable and then you can get it for free with the higher roll. Either way it's pretty nice and plays into a fun space. It's arguably one of the best cards for Type Four from the set (Rules are - infinite mana but just one spell per turn so counters are good there since they cannot be overwhelmed by casting more spells than you have mana, and a five cost counter is first turn able there). Great card to add to your counters that do something else like Access Denied and Desertion. Love it loads!

What made my Top 5?

#5. Elminster

I love this planeswalker for kitchen table play! Like Minsc and Boo above, this one also can be used as a Commander. 5 mana for a 5 loyalty 'walker is fine. This can +2 to draw a card and scry two which is nice card flow, and then -3 to exile the top card of your library and then make a number of 1/1 flyers equal to the mana value, which is also very strong in Type Four with its elevated casting costs and low land count. It can also scry matters nicely into some fun Azorius brews. Enjoy it loads!

#4. Robe of the Archmagi

Our highest charting equipment. This is a fun three mana four equip (usually, note the tribal synergies for Commanders with those tribes) which keeps it at the 4 spot on this countdown. Each time your dork deals combat damage to a player....you draw that many cards. This is downright nasty in decks with newly unblockable Commanders led by Rogue's Passage and Sun Quan or with unblockable or evasion themselves (Dromar, the Banisher; Brago, King Eternal) or with another combat damage trigger you are running around with (Medomai) as well as loads more of powerhouses. It rewards going tall, not wide, decks like Voltron and the connive Esper decks we just got from Streets of New Capenna and then loads more, and it's quite the competent darling. This thing draws all of the cards!

#3. Balor

This is a very on curve 5/5 flyer for five mana. It can trigger when it swings and if it dies, when it with three triggers for different foes, which scales up the more foes you are facing. The first will force the targeted foe to draw three and discard three at random (good for discard punishing decks like Megrim), sacrifices a non-token artifact (not a Treasure, Clue, Blood, or Food), and the Balor shoots them for the damage to the cards in their hand (nice). Do the first for someone mana screwed to help them out (there is always someone) and then the last two to folks breaking an artifact like Skullclamp or Mind's Eye and then punish the other for holding a full grip. This works multiple times over turns, like swinging over and over again, and then really plays well in extra attack decks with things like Aggravated Assault. It's a synergetic card with a load of builds.

Two cards left!

#2. Monster Manual

Our highest artifact and Green card and 4 cost (and 3 cost too) and Adventure card is this fun 4 mana artifact that can tap for two to send a dork from your hand to the battlefield, ignoring its cost. This already existed as the heavily played four mana to drop and four to use and colorless Quicksilver Amulet. Played in 10,318 decks over at EDHREC.com so it's pretty commonly seen at the kitchen table quite often, and this is a green version, but two to tap so you can more easily cast and use it on the same turn without frumping around. Getting a free extra creature each turn without counting as your spell is also pretty good for Type Four. You can also do the three-mana sorcery to mill 5 and send a creature from into your hand, which is nice in self-mill brews like Sultai that then want to do things with that milling. Love this Adventure loads!

#1. Archivist of Oghma

This flash 2/2 Hate Bear is pretty powerful. As your foes search libraries, you'll gain a life (good for lifegain decks like Selesnya, Orzhov or Esper) and draw a card. Note that cracking a fetchland counts as searching their library, so folks might not break that Terramorphic Expanse or their Polluted Mire unless they are needed, which is still a win for you as you slow them down. Cultivate? Farseek? Demonic Tutor? Stoneforge Mystic? You have so many ways to make this work in your brew. You can also flash this out to draw a card when their search effect is on the stack to draw a card and then keep on drawing. This will be heavily abused in Commander and it will likely be the broken Esper Sentinel or Hullbreacher of this set.

Thanks! This set has tons of powerful cards and thus your mileage may vary, we'll come back to this list a few more times over the next few weeks!