Hello happy people! I hope that you are having an amazing day today! Today we'll be taking a look at what I think are the best cards from the Commander set that debuted with Crimson Vow. In order to make my list, these cards must be good in casual formats like the aforementioned Commander or things like Type Four, Five Color, Highlander, Cubes, and multiplayer. Sometimes a card debuts in these sets that are clearly planted for Legacy or Vintage play which aren't that powerful for Commander, like True-Name Nemesis. If any are here (they aren't) they won't make the cut here either.

Today we are looking at a Top Ten with two Honorable Mentions. Let's kick this thing off!

Honorable Mention #1 - Breathkeeper Seraph

I have added this to my pickup list for my Type Four Stack (which you can find over here at CubeCubra.com - Type 4 Stack - List - Cube Cobra). It's the only generally playable one of the soulbond cycle from this set, as the others just aren't where I generally like to be. Type Four, as a reminder, is a format where you have infinite mana for things, as much as you need, but can only cast one spell per turn. Also, if a spell has an alternate casting cost, like Force of Will's pitch-ery, then if you cast the alternate costs, you get the spell for free without counting as your spell for the turn. Consider this card in Type Four, with an expensive tag team. Play the big dork on your first turn, and then this follows up and then soulbonds and now you both have anti-destruction boots on. Both survive the mass removal spells that are all over the format. You can come back from sacrifice removal like Barter in Blood that gets past indestructible stuff. You can soulbond together when you come back. If you have enters-the-battlefield triggers like Rune-Scarred Demon then you get that again. It's a good card for the format, but in others it's pretty solid as well, even with mana costs engaged for the same reasons. Great use of soulbond! Also, a shout out to Mirage Phalanx which is also in my Type Four wish list.

Honorable Mention #2 - Shadowgrange Archfiend

I love the power of this 8/4 Demon for seven easily splashed mana. As you can see, when this bad boy enters the battlefield, each opposing player has to sacrifice their biggest powered dork and then you gain life equal to the highest power among them. Normally for sacrifices like this, your foes will sacrifice their little baby like their Llanowar Elves or their Mulldrifter rather than their Avenger of Zendikar or their Deep-Sea Kraken. However, with this, they cannot hide their beef or Eldrazi Titans behind a smaller sacrifice, their biggest power gets sacrificed. That's pretty good and sacrificing gets around indestructible. Also note that the madness of just three mana and 8 life is easily paid in Commander with a 40 life start and the potential life gain of its trigger. It really increases its power. It's also fine in Type Four as madness is an alternate cost so you can drop it for free with madness, and it's another target for my Type Four Stack.

10. Midnight Arsonist

Check out this 4-drop 3/2 Vampire that will destroy things of an artificial nature on the battlefield when he arrives. Note that he'll destroy as many things as you control Vampires, which makes him amazing in tribal deck with those dorks as well as fine on his own as a Red Uktabi Orangutan. It's not a "may" effect so you have to blow up something, but it also doesn't count mana rocks, so one will lose their Sol Ring or Arcane Signet. Good card for the removal suite!

9. Olivia's Wrath

Who likes to kill stuff? I do! The Wrath of Olivia is nice. It's five mana and it gives -X/-X to an entire Non-Vampire team equal to your Vampire total. Note that a toughness to 0 will die as a state-based action and will take out indestructible stuff. Another tribal card, sure, but check out how heavily played they are at the kitchen table, and they love going wide. In Commander, Edgar Markov is one of the top ten most played leaders in the entire format. Power unfurled.

8. Occult Epiphany

Ah yes, the card too good for Type Four! Draw X cards? Discard that many? Make some dorks? All at instant speed? What is there not to love here? It's very strong for Commander play in decks with extra mana sitting around like mana rocks and dorks and lands. It's amazing card at the end of an opponent's turn and then you untap and cast stuff. It's broken with powerhouses in the format like Laboratory Maniac. It's amazing in graveyard-cares decks to fill up with graveyards matters stuff like flashback or reanimation targets. It's just powerful. Love it loads!

7. Glass-Cast Heart AND Arterial Alchemy

Blood matters a lot in this set. I built two Blood caring(ish) brews that are each running half of the Rakdos color combo in the set. The first was using the Black half of Old Rutstein to make Blood matters stuff as well as Treasures, Dorks, Clues, and other tokens that could dig in deeply. You can check it out here. Then I built a Boros Blood Matters brew around Odric, Blood-Cursed the following week and I dug deeply into the Red Blood matters half of Odric including the Arterial Alchemy. You can find this deck here - Commanding Odric with Crimson Vow | Article by Abe Sargent (coolstuffinc.com))! Blood definitely matters, and each of these two cards play very strongly into this detailed aspect of the card. I really love the Alchemy since it plays into a different mechanical space that token support like Clues or Treasures. Way to go, Idaho!

6. Ethereal Investigator

As I mentioned in my Type Four conversations online about including this card in our Type Four stack where investigate cards can be paid immediately, "This is better the more players you have." I mean we run cards like Mulldrifter (which is also free if you evoke it), Cloudblazer, Sphinx of Uthuun, and Sphinx of Enlightenment for card flow from a dork, but if you are running around too many duels, then this is essentially a mana 2/3 flyer that replaces itself and makes 1/1 Spirits with flying on your 2nd card drawn each turn, so one with the Clue after you sac it. That's... not that great, not even for Type Four, but if you are running a multiplayer game in Commander or Type Four or Five Color then this is very strong, and only requires a single Blue so it's easier to cast. Good stuff!

Top Five Time!

5. Haunted Library

This card began this list at my #2. I review the spoiler of a set online, and then copy over all images in order of where I think they hit. Then I wait a day or two and come back to the ordered list and move things around. This began an admittedly distant #2 and then I dropped it here to #5, which is still pretty nice. If it were in the color of creature destruction (Murder) rather than exiling (Swords to Plowshares) then I would rate it higher. As you can see, as your foes' bodies die, then you can spend a mana to make a 1/1 Spirit flyer. And that's pretty good. Also note that it works on any body your opponents lose, not just non-tokens. Pretty nice! It still has value in color with mass removal things like Day of Judgment. It dropped to do some lack of inter-color synergy, but it's still rocking and rolling. I love it in combination with black as that color will both add destruction removal targeted effects (Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit) as well as mana making to use it (Cabal Coffers; Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth). Love it loads at the Commander table in multiplayer where you have multiple foes to trigger its power.

4. Breath of the Sleepless

I included the newer Zombie loving card "Necroduality" in one of my previous Top Ten lists, and what I said about it remains true for Breath of the Sleepless as well. In many tribal builds, they all have similar feeling things. One lord gives you a +1/+1 to your tribe, another gives first strike, another menace or trample, and then they all feel the same. What I like about Breath of the Sleepless is that giving your Spirits flash feels different than other tribal enablers, just like Necroduality's ability to Clone a non-token Zombie is pretty nice and unique as well. It also has an additional ability to tap a foe's dork when you flash a creature, which is pretty nice in Simic Flash builds with loads of flash dorks like Torrential Gearhulk and Snapcaster Mage running around. It's also strong as an adjunct to any Spirit deck that is playing blue. Great tribal addition to the game!

3. Storm of Souls

A Mono-White mass recursion card? Nasty! Six mana, and you can bring back all creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield, and they stick the landing and aren't exiled at the end of the turn, although it is exiled so it's a one-of in Commander and other Highlander formats. Also note that these dorks are just 1/1s, with flying, and Spirits, so this is a flavor win. That means you are getting a ton of ETB triggers from your renewed bodies, like Solemn Simulacrum or Mulldrifter or Flametongue Kavu. All of your dorks keep their abilities. I ran this is my midrange version of Torens, Fist of the Angels you can find here. Here are the commonly run themes that this works quite ably in:

1. Blink - In Blink builds that have loads of ETB abilities to abuse, this can bring them all back for another round of triggers, and then you can blink them with your blink effects and then get another trigger and their normal size restored. It's amazing there.
2. Hate Bear - In decks with loads of Hate Bears, this is very powerful as well, since you'll get them all back. You don't really care if a Hate Bear powerhouse like Drannith Magistrate or Aven Mindcensor is now a 1/1 flying Spirit. This is a great way to dial yourself back into the game after the inevitable mass removal spell that slipped past your spells like Counters and Teferi's Protection.
3. Midrange - Much like blink decks, Midrange builds regularly lean into the card advantage of longer-term things like creatures with ETB abilities. This is powerful in those builds as well.
4. Aristocrats - There are a number of builds that run cheap one and 2-drop fodder and then sacrifice them to engines for various game winning effects and death triggers like Blood Artist. If someone swept your board, you can get back your death triggers (Zulaport Cutthroat), sacrifice engines (Viscera Seer) and fodder after a mass removal spell would have otherwise stopped you.

Good synergies for this card!

2. Imposing Grandeur

This was originally #3 on my first take, as mentioned above, but I really do like it as a #2 as well! This is a five-mana sorcery that is very strong since it's discard and draw is set. Instead of traditional versions of this ability in Red (Discard your hand, draw that many plus one; discard any number of your choice, draw that many plus one) this has a different take. You may discard your hand (it lets your foes do the same) and then draw card equal to your highest mana cost for your leader. It also scales poorly with cEDH where most leaders are very cheap, so your foe may not want to discard their hand to draw a single card from their Isamaru, Hound of Konda or two from Baral, Chief of Compliance. It's better the fatter your Commander is, and with a more traditional slower Commander metagame with a bunch of 5s, 6s and 7s, this is actually feels like a modern Wheel of Fortune that's nicer since folks aren't forced to discard if they don't want to. It's very strong, but it's nowhere near our top card, but I love it as a #2 tool.

1. Umbris, Fear Manifest

Let's take a look at this Dimir legendary leader of a new archetype for Commander! As you can see Umbris is a 1/1 Nightmare Horror for five mana that's pretty easy to cast in Dimir decks and gets +1/+1 for each card your opponents own in exile. This is an opposing-exile-matters style brew which is pretty nice. And then when it, or another Nightmare or Horror arrives to the party, a target exiles cards from their library until they exile a land, which suggests exiling milling. Exiling milling is better than normal milling since the cards cannot be used again with flashback, disturb, reanimation, or check abilities like delirium or threshold. Lots of Commander brews use their graveyard as a second hand, so you don't want normal milling filling it. This is also in the colors of exiling counters (Dissipate), exiling targeted removal (Vraska's Contempt), exiling milling (Oona, Queen of the Fae), exiling discards (Mindleech Ghoul), exiling combat damage (Dominator Drone) and exiling graveyards (Nihil Spellbomb). That's makes this very synergetic, and I built a deck for your consideration here - Mastering Fear with Umbris | Article by Abe Sargent (coolstuffinc.com). As of right now, there are 907 decks registered over at EDHREC.com and it's a huge hit. Welcome to the format!

And there we go, all done! What did you think of my 13 cards from this set? Anything in here missing or in the wrong order, just let me know! Have an amazing day and weekend! Next week we'll look at my choices for the best 10 pieces of art from Crimson Vow.