Hello awesome folks! I hope that you are having an awesome day today! Last week I looked at my Top Ten cards plus three honorable mentions from the Warhammer 40k Commander decks. (It's here). They have quite a lot of cards that are pushed for kitchen table play formats like Commander since they are only legal there (and in Vintage and Legacy), so I am doing another Top Ten this week for formats like Commander, Type Four, Five Color, multiplayer, Highlander, and more. We might hit this up next week as well or move to the Un sets, I am unsure of which direction I want to head it just yet.

Ready?

Honorable Mention #1 - Grey Knight Paragon (#26 Overall)

Check out this flashable 4/4 five cost in mono-white! On arrival to the battlefield it can destroy an attacker. Instant speed spells often destroy attackers in White, but this leaves behind a 4/4 dork, and the potential for massive card advantage is very strong here. For example, imagine that you are tapped out and the player to your left attacks you with everything but their Commander.

• You tap five, and then make this, and then kill their best attacker.
• You block a 2/3 or 3/4 that attacked you, saving that damage from you and killing that dork.
• You now have a 4/4 blocker to block other attacks this round in multiplayer and keep your shields raised and prevent attacks
• You now have a 4/4 that can swing, block, or force an answer on future turns.

See how good a flasher 4/4 ETB destroy an attack is? It's just pushes things your way massively. It's strong in any control build that includes white, but it has enhanced value in Superfriends in multiplayer where you can kill two attackers on your planeswalkers and keep a blocker for future rounds; blink where you can abuse this ETB at instant speed, and then midrange that would love the card advantage it brings to the table. Love this thing loads.

Honorable Mention #2 (#25 Overall) - Shard of the Nightbringer AND Shard of the Void Dragon AND Heirophant Bio-Titan

This trio is so fun! This first one is an 8/8 for 8 with flying and the ETB to drain half of the life total of a foe and you gain it. This does require you to cast it, but in black with all the Cabal Coffers and similar effects that seems pretty doable, and it leaves behind an on curve 8/8 flyer. The second one is a 7/7 with flying for 7 mana and it has two abilities - when it swings you force your foes to sacrifice a nonland permanent and when an artifact dies from any place on the battlefield, put two counters on this. No one will crack a Treasure while you are wielding this bad boy, and another on curve threat is here. The third is a 12/2 with vigilance, reach and ward 2 and costs 12 mana in Green, but could cost much less if you remove +1/+1 counters for each colorless mana to drop. Note that this cannot be chump blocked by dorks with 2 or fewer power and vigilance is very strong on a beater since you can attack the open player and keep a nasty 12/12 back and not really open yourself to a ground-based counterattack.

This are fine on their own in kitchen table play in their respective brews that they suggest, but they are amazing in the Type Four format, with infinite mana, but just one spell per turn unless you pay the alternate cost on something like a Force of Will. A first turn Bio-Titan or Shard that gains you ten life and steals it from your buddy is hard to answer. They are a nasty Trinity of Terror for your deckbuilding considerations. Love their power loads here!

Honorable Mention #3 - (#24 Overall) - Birth of the Imperium

This is a massively powerful Saga. This is a five-drop Esper Saga. On arrival to the battlefield, it'll make a 2/2 dork with vigilance for each foe you have, so in your typical four-player game that's six power and toughness across three bodies with an ability for 5 mana, so if it is answered then, you already made out. Chapter 2 sees each foe sacrifice a dork, so that's up to three dorks you'll answer. Then on the final turn you'll draw two for each foe with fewer dorks, likely with that second chapter. Even if it's just one, and one player had nothing to sacrifice, that's two removals, two cards drawn, and 6 power and toughness with vigilance made, for five mana. That seems worth the cost of arrival, and you can toss this in various decks from tokens to control, but I like it in 4 colors but not red Atraxa, Praetors' Voice.

#10. (#23 Overall) - Chronomancer

This two-drop 1/1 flying artifact critter can tap for a mana to sacrifice another artifact to draw a card, so it's an artifact version of Vampiric Rites or Carnage Altar that sacrifices artifacts instead of dorks for cards, and in this case, isn't repeatable, but just takes one to tap, so that's cheaper. There are tons of Treasures running around in decks, as well as Food, Blood, and Clues to sacrifice for cards as well as mana rocks after your mana is set, artifact lands, artifacts targeted for removal, and loads more. Artifacts are the second most played archetype over at EDHREC.com and Sacrifice matters hits another Top Ten at #10, and then you net all of those triggers like Disciple of the Vault. It's very strong card advantage over time and a sacrifice engine on a stick.

#9. (#22 Overall) - Mortarion, Daemon Primarch

This is an easy to cast six-drop 5/6 with flying. Then you get an EOT trigger to spend X mana and make X 2/2s with menace, which is pretty spicy. But that X cannot be greater than your life lost this turn. That makes this a life loss Commander eligible dork. That works with so many cards! Greed, Necropotence, Read the Bones, fetch lands, pain lands, K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, loads more. This is so easy to do just accidentally that I cannot imagine actually getting to do it intentionally. Don't sleep on the menace either, since you are making tons of dorks that are harder to block, they are much more likely to slip through. It's so spicy, and I love it from the Command Zone or in the 99 of a life matters brew (which is the #1 archetype over at EDHREC.com). This is also good at the head or in a Group Slug brew where you punish everyone but your foes more.

#8. (#21 Overall) - Dark Apostle

This Hill Giant is a 3/3 for four with a tap ability, which cascades your next non-dork spells this turn. This works quite well in...

• 1. Cantrip Brews - A lot of decks that include red have cantrips that are cheap and replace themselves. Getting two from one is great fun!
• 2. Spellslinger - Both Jeskai and Izzet have loads of instants and sorceries to cascade and triggers like Guttersnipe.
• 3. Storm - If your deck is intending to cast a bunch of rituals and then a big storm count, this works well top add to your storm count there.
• 4. Cascade - There is a cascade matters archetype out there!
• 5. Planeswalkers - Walkers are not dorks so they will trigger this and getting free cascades work there.
• 6. Artifact/Enchantment - These two will also trigger this each of your turns and the mass card draw of Enchantress brews with a card draws and cheap costs like Wild Growth and Rancor should get in a few triggers.

It's very strong!

#7. (#20 Overall) - Drach'Nyen

Hitting at a nice even 20 is this six-drop equipment. It has "exile a dork" on arrival to the battlefield so it's a Duplicant in equipment form. Then you can equip for two and give your equipped dork menace and +X power where X was the exiled card's power. I also love this in Type Four since you combine removal with a big threat and most dorks there have a pretty big power like the aforementioned Trinity of Terror. Exiling matters loads to remove potential issues permanently without the ability to get used or reused. I also love this in Equipment brews that already have the infrastructure to drop this for free and search it up as well as artifact decks where this can be a removal spell in artifact form and Voltron decks looking to win with their Commander and then other brews just looking to tether exiling removal to a threat. This is on my second list since it's sorcery speed and two colors making it harder to run in Commander, but it's fine elsewhere.

#6. (#19 Overall) - Abaddon the Despoiler

This five-mana 5/5 with trample is on curve and a legendary to lead your stuff. This will let you cast spells in your turn with mana value X or less with cascade where X is the total life your foe's have lost. A simple upkeep life loss trigger like Subversion will let you cast cascade up to three in a four-player game. And will do so multiple times. I love this with Dark Apostle above. This is great at leading a brand-new deck, your Grixis foe's losing life. You'll get the counters and card draw of Blue, the targeted and mass removal of Black and Red combined with discard, bounce, land removal and loads more. It's a very deep color combo for support, and then you can lean on cards like Subversion, Court of Ambition, Sanctum of Stone Fangs, etc. Or you can just...you know...attack and then get the cascade after in your combat step - see Rogue's Passage and Whispersilk Cloak for that route. It's very strong at the Commander table!

What makes my second Top Five? All mono-colored cards.

#5. (#18 Overall) - Toxicrene

This is a 2/4 with reach and deathtouch that costs 4 mana. Flying and reach with deathtouch really play keep away and keep folks from trading down in a multiplayer environment, like the Multiplayer Classics Thornweald Archer (5720 decks at EDHREC.com) and Vampire Nighthawk (25798 decks, ditto). Then your land can tap for any color of mana, so this is Chromatic Lantern on legs. This also works for your opponents' stuff, so it's like a Mana Flare or Heartbeat of Spring that helps everyone. However, lands lose all other abilities so that Cabal Coffers or Volrath's Stronghold now cannot do anything other than tap for mana. That is massively good, and you can build around it just like you built around Heartbeat of Spring in the era of mana burn by having X cost spells, mana sinks and even costed spells. This is very strong the more colors you have and it's an essential in Five Color, the format. It's also going to be loved by some foes in a multiplayer deck, like that 5C Sliver brew that gives them al of the colors, and might be willing to assist you in protecting it against the removal that that Rakdos Cabal Coffers deck sends its way. It's nice in Group Hug as well as in Selesnya and Bant Hate Bear decks to help you and sort of help and hurt your foes at the same time. Love it loads!

#4. (#17 Overall) - Their Name is Death

There arethree styles of mass removal in the game and this is third. Here they are:

1. Cheap Limited Stuff - This section includes cheaper mass removal spells like Wrath of God, Damnation and Day of Judgment that cost little mana but have no flexibility and lesser power.
2. Pricier Flexible and/or More Powerful Stuff - This is the section where you are spending more mana, but have more flexibility and/or power in your options. Take Austere Command, which sweeps two of four options but costs more.
3. Pricier But Doesn't Hit Your Stuff - This section is those that you can build around and prevent your stuff from getting removed, I call this deck archetype "Sweep and Keep." Examples include Boros decks that lean on damage-based removal with Protection from Red dorks, tokens heavy with Hour of Reckoning, and artifact creature dorks with this six-mana sorcery.

You can see how strong this is in artifact creature decks built around things like Solemn Simulacrum, the aforementioned Duplicant, Steel Hellkite, Burnished Hart, the mana Myr, the previous hitting Chronomancer, Etherium Sculptor, Phyrexian Metamorph, Ethersworn Canonist, Esper Sentinel, and so much more! Enjoy this new Sweep and Keep deck builder.

#3. (#16 Overall) - Nurgle's Conscription

I really enjoy the power of this five-mana instant. This will Reanimate a dork from a foe's graveyard only, but in multiplayer that shouldn't be an issue. Then you can do this at instant speed when someone attacks to block and kill their attacker and keep your dork and be up a card, or at the end of your foe's turn, and then you untap and swing with the new dork. It also exiles their graveyard as well, so that's a Bojuka Bog stapled to a Zombify, at instant speed. That's really strong at shutting down the massive (ab)use of graveyards at the kitchen table while also not hitting your graveyard and getting a card for yourself so you don't lose a card when you cast this exiler of graveyards at instant speed unlike most effects like the Crypt.

This doesn't require a Reanimation brew to work since it hits an opposing dork's graveyard and then exiles it. I love this in Dimir Mill to make sure that you aren't giving them fuel and get card equilibrium. This is also strong in control looking for answers outside of counters and removal, midrange looking for value, and self-sacrifice decks looking for fuel for their stuff while also impacting the board state by exiling for a turn. This is a very flexible card at the multiplayer table and it's going into many decks.

#2. (#15 Overall) - Sicarian Infiltrator

Our second highest-scoring card today and 15th overall is this 1/2 with flash and squad two that draws you a card on arrival to the battlefield. That means that for five mana you get 2/4 power and toughness for two bodies and two cards, so in some places this is better than Mulldrifter with flash, being bigger, scalable, across two bodies but without flying and evoke three but you can flash out three or four for solid cards later. This is a flashable combat trick to chump block or gang tackle a force that swings your way while replacing your hand giving you pure card advantage for the cards drawn and virtual card advantage with the trades and that's a pretty good combo in one card, and certainly hits my 15th spot overall.

What hit number one? Great question! Let's look...

#1. (#14 Overall) - Anrakyr the Traveller

(Two "ll"s is not how "Traveler" is spelled). Our top scoring card is this five-drop 4/4 legendary option in the Command Zone that's on curve. It's also an artifact for Their Name is Death. When this attacks, you can cast an artifact from your graveyard or hand for no mana for life equal to its casting cost. That is...nasty good. Free stuff in the Command Zone has a long history of being broken, and artifacts that this could cast for free are nasty, from sacrificial ones like Expedition Map and Oblivion Stone to ones that you can recast after removal like Skullclamp and Sol Ring and Mind's Eye. And that's without planning around it.

With that you can drop powerhouses from your hand like Blightsteel Colossus, from your graveyard like Spine of Ish Sah and then add in some sacrifices to get them to your graveyard for most casting, or milling, and ways to protect your attacking dork like Whispersilk Cloak that gives it shroud and unblockable, and then win. We all know how abusive Bolas's Citadel is, and getting one in the Command Zone is pretty nasty, even just once, and once you've attacked, and just for artifacts. It's still massively good.

And there we go! What did you think of my second list? Anything in there in the wrong order or that missed? Just let me know!