Hello happy people!!! Today I wanted to look at my favorite (new) cards from the recently released The Brothers' War Commander. There are some awesome new cards for kitchen table formats like multiplayer, Five Color, Highlander, Type Four, and Commander. I will also add in three honorable mentions into my Top Ten, and then next week we'll turn to Jumpstart (2022).

Ready for my Top Thirteen? Let's do it to it!

Honorable Mention #1 - (#13 Overall) - Sanwell, Avenger Ace

Our first person to kick things off is this 3/1 mono-White legendary Pilot that costs two. A bit low in the toughness, hence its relatively low rankings. All damage dealt to Sanwell is prevented while you are attacking with artifacts. Then if you tap it, you can look at the top 6 and cast a Vehicle or artifact dork from among them. Note that you still have to spend the mana for it.

This is obviously great leading a Vehicle or Artifact Creature deck. You can tap him to crew a Vee and then get the tap ability to cast a Vehicle without drawing it, and then you don't have to endanger it. There might not be a deep card pool for Vehicles, but they are pretty popular as a deck archetype. For example, over at EDHREC.com there are 13,550 Vehicle decks registered in the Commander format. That makes it the 19th most popular archetype, so getting a new legendary dork that has more to offer is great. It's very strong in the 99 of other leaders if you want to add more colors. Also, if you are adding in Red, don't sleep on that first ability. You can cast a damaged based instant sweeper like Starstorm and keep Sanwell alive. You can also more reliably swing to get the tap without worrying about the lower toughness. Nice pair of abilities. Also note that this is card flow from the Command Zone for White.

Honorable Mention #2 - (#12 Overall) - Wire Surgeons

This Human Artificer features a solid 6/5 body with the old fashioned but flavorful fear. Most will have some to block, just like your flying, but few will be able to always block. This also gives all of your artifact creatures in your graveyard encore equal to their mana cost, so you'll attack each foe with a copy of that dork with haste, and they get sacrificed and you exile the card so it's a one-trick pony. That means that ETB dorks will trigger three times in a four-person game. Also note that the copies are not exiled but sacrificed, so they die. That also gives you three bodies to sacrifice to effects like the in-color Attrition or the next door Goblin Bombardment. I also love this with a fellow six-drop in the base set this was released in called Disciples of Gix that search your library for three artifact and put them into your graveyard. Just make sure they are creatures. Love that combo. Enjoy the Surgeons!

Honorable Mention #3 (#11 Overall) - Hexavus

This is a name check on the previously printed Pentavus. It arrives with 6 +1/+1 counters, an on-curve 6/6 with flying. Then you can pull counters off it for one mana each to load flying counters onto other dorks. You can also spend a mana to pull any counter on another dork to give it a +1/+1 so it can grow very quickly and people will have to respect it. It's colorless so it fits into any deck in Commander. But it also plays nicely with another beloved archetype in that format - +1/+1 counters. It has 38,129 decks registered on EDHREC.com and that's good enough for fifth. It also plays well with the generic counters matter Bant archetypes that was just released and is Standard-legal, where you can grab all sorts of counters for this. It arrives to the battlefield as a 12/12 with Doubling Season, and then one mana and pull off makes two flying counters, and one mana and pull off gives this two back, so it'll grow by +1/+1 each iteration, and is an infinite combo with any color or no of mana. Love this thing loads, right?

#10. Scholar of New Horizons

This is a Grizzly Bear of fun and frolicking. You can tap it and remove a counter from itself or another thing, and search your library for a Plains and if a foe has more lands, toss it onto the battlefield tapped. Note a couple of things here. First, you can net any Plains, not just a basic, so you can get a dual or tri land like Hallowed Fountain. Secondly, unlike the previous card, you can remove a counter from any permanent as long as you control it. Vivid lands? Enchantments? Auras? You can also use this to help you by removing -1/-1 counters from your things like wither against you or your own ways of getting -1/-1 counters like Serrated Biskelion.

#9. Farid, Enterprising Salvager

Hello mono-Red sacrifice fans! I've got just the thing to scratch your itch! He's a 3/3 size body for just three mana and can easily be cast early. As nontoken artifacts you control die, make an artifact Scrap token. That's a death trigger in the Command Zone. That means that you'll get death triggers for things like Disciple of the Vault as well as arrival triggers. Then you can spend two mana anytime you want, sacrifice an artifact, and do one of three things. Goad? Give a permanent power boost to Farid and evasion for the turn? Discard and draw? Farid combines card flow, goading, and pumping for a Commander Damage kill. And that's both a sacrifice engine and a death trigger on one card. That's very strong as the leader of a mono-Red sacrifice artifact theme.

#8. Tawnos, Solemn Survivor

Our lowest-hitting potential leader in this group is Tawnos. For two Blue and generic mana you get an Esper identity leader who is easier to cast from the Command Zone and arrives very early on. You can tap this 1/3 for two generic mana and make a token that that's a copy of a target artifact token you control and mill two cards. So, you can only copy tokens that also artifacts. That's certainly build around-able, but it's more limited in power, hence it hitting my 8 spot overall.

You could copy 1/1 artifact Myr Battlesphere tokens or the 1/1 Soldiers made in this Standard set or Treasures or Clues. Then you can tap him with three colored mana and one generic and sacrifice two artifact tokens and you exile an artifact or dork from your graveyard. Make a copy of that card and it's an artifact. Also note that's only usable at sorcery speed.

That's a lot of brakes, but what you wind up with is a very synergetic brew and you are in a color combo named after its love of artifacts, so you have loads of options out there to build around in your colors.

#7. Machine God's Effigy AND March of Progress

Hitting roughly halfway on my list are these two similar cards that are both rocking a Blue color identity. The Effigy is a four-drop artifact that taps for one mana, obviously a bit pricey. But if anyone controls a creature then you can copy it and tap it for a Blue mana, and it's an artifact too. Making a tap for mana Mulldrifter seems pretty good from where I am sitting.

The March is a cheap sorcery that copies an artifact creature you control, so it's cheaper but more limited since just artifact creatures that you control are copied. But it fits into Spellslinger molds by giving you an option triggering instant/sorcery matters things. And then you can overload it for 7 mana and copy all of your artifact dorks, which could be quite a few in a dedicated artifact brew. Not a bad pair to hit here, right?

#6. Thopter Shop

Once a turn, as your artifact dork dies, draw a card. Note that this counts tokens. I love this with deathtouch given to your small stuff since not only will no one want to trade down their four-drop for your 1/1 Gold Myr equipped with Basilisk Collar, but they really don't want to also give you a card in addition, so that's a no-fly zone. You can also tap this for three mana to make a 1/1 artifact token with flying, and that will shut down flyers as well with the Collar. Also, no one wants to block an attacker with deathtouch that also will draw you a card, like attacking under a Bow of Nylea with a Stonecoil Serpent or Pilgrim's Eye. It's also reliable card flow for White. That's just good stuff, and the synergy of death triggers for artifact creatures that die while also providing them with flying is why it hits my list just outside of my Top Five.

Speaking of which, what did hit? Three Commanders, one colorless artifact, and one mono-Red card. Ready?

#5. Ashnod the Uncaring

Check out this Grixis version of Ashnod. She has deathtouch a value in multiplayer we already discussed above. You can copy a non-mana activated ability on an artifact or a dork you control if you sacrificed something to do so. So, as an example, if you sacrificed an artifact to your Goblin Welder to recur something, do so again! You sacrificed and Welder is a dork. If you sacrificed a dork to mill to an Altar of Dementia, then copy it, because Altar is an artifact. But if you sacrificed to Phyrexian Altar make a mana, then you cannot copy it, since that's a mana ability. It also stops you from copying Treasure sacrifices. Nasty. She's a very strong fun thing. And doesn't work just once/turn like a lot of recent powerhouses, so you can net loads of copies for free, no tap no mana, nothing else. That's why she made my Top Five.

#4. Blast-Furnace Hellkite

This 5/5 fun Dragon does cost a pricey nine mana. But you get a flying double striker so you are dealing 10 damage each attack evasively. It also gives all creatures attacking your opponents double strike, not just yours. That's very powerful politics, since your foe's can attack each other for double strike and kill fast. I love this with Commanders that force attacking like Fumiko the Lowblood who forces your foes to attack. Very nice.

And it has artifact offering. You can cast it with flash and sacrifice any artifact and then drop its casting cost by that mana cost. So, for example, if you sacrificed Solemn Simulacrum, then that's a flashable five-drop 5/5 that you can play as a combat trick to kill a flyer coming your way. I also love this with Hijack effects, steal an artifact or artifact creature, swing or tap, then after combat sacrifice to cast. If you have 9 mana, you can cast this instantly by sacrificing a token like a Treasure. This is also the best card in this set for Type Four with infinite mana but just one spell per turn, so this is a first turn play there. Love this thing loads!

And then there were three...

#3. Mishra, Eminent One

This has the same cost and color as Ashnod, but with a much bigger size at 5/4. It's on-curve. Then he has an ability that triggers on your combat. You can make a copy of a non-creature artifact you control that becomes a 4/4 with haste and a different name. It gets sacrificed later. Now let's unpack that a bit, shall we? First the name change is actually quite important here and opens up a brand-new line of deckbuilding options. Legendary artifacts can be copied and attacked. So, something like Drach'Nyen, just printed and in your colors, can be copied and attack with the copy.

Also note that this triggers in your combat step. That means it's the only trigger that can easily be done more than once, and, again, you are in the color of that ability. I am speaking about Relentless Assault effects that give you another combat step, another token and note that the tokens don't die until your end step, so you can get two attacks in with the first token copy. Also note this is a death trigger not an exiling, so it can trigger things like Blood Artist and Disciple of the Vault. I love this with ETB artifacts you can see that value again with Drach'Nyen or Spine of Ish Sah. Nice synergy here, right?

#2. Scavenged Brawler

This powerful colorless artifact creature has a 4/4 size and four evergreen keywords: flying, vigilance, lifelink and trample. That's two evasions in trample and flying which is very hard to stop, and two other useful abilities. With vigilance and double evasion, it can attack an open player and then hold the fort to block with a 4-power flying threat. This is very similar to the powerhouse Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Nice!

Then you can spend five mana at sorcery speed to self-exile this from your graveyard to give a dork counters of those keywords as well as four +1/+1 counters, so eight total counters. That's a lot of math, sorry. But the result of that is a powerful dork that, when answered, can come back once. That's very strong in most formats. Where it's even better is in this format you might have heard of called Commander. There this can be used on your Commander to give two evasions, lifelink, vigilance, and massive power boosts to win the game much faster with Commander Damage. Do it on the precombat turn after your Commander has been around a turn to be able to attack, and then swing out of nowhere and stay back. Also note that this has value in a self-mill brew where you can mill yourself and then if this gets milled, you can just use it and it's a dork to trigger Sultai's Sidisi, Brood Tyrant to make a token. Can you see why this fun thing hits my penultimate spot on today's countdown?

#1. Urza, Chief Artificer

Our top-scoring card is this banner legendary dork from his Commander deck. He costs six mana for a bit small for the cost 4/5 size. Then your artifact dorks get menace, so he is an Anthem on a stick for them. Then he triggers in your end step and makes an artifact dork with size equal to your artifact count. That's a repeatable win-con in the Command Zone and he makes them harder to block with menace. Then he has affinity for artifact dorks, so his cost drops by generic mana equal to your count and the Command Tax can just be ignored with the affinity if you have enough dorks.

Just like the Construct suggests, I really like this with artifact tokens like the recent Soldiers, Thopters, Myr, Servos, and more. They'll pump your Constructs as well as give you more than enough bodies to keep on bringing out Urza. He's pretty bonkers with affinity of any type in the Command Zone being pretty unbelievable, and when combined with the win-con and the lord that it provides for that same affinity, nothing else could make this.

Remember when you used to be able to have to build a deck around a Commander's theme? Well, now everything is in the Command Zone, like the sacrifice and death trigger of Farid on an-curve 3/3 for 3 to a win-con, Command Tax breaking, Lord for one type all on one card. Crazy...

Anyways, those are my choices for the Top Ten from this set including three honorable mentions. Next week we'll look at my favorite new cards from Jumpstart (2022). What did you think of my list? Anything in here you'd swap? Just let me know, and have an awesome day!