It feels like the neverending hype machine already has up looking toward Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, and while I do have to admit that I'm excited for the prospect of returning to an Eldrazi-less Innistrad to see what the plane is up to post-Emrakul (or is she still in the moon? Is she the moon? I don't remember).

But I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves and forget about the goodness that was D&D: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. This set broke a ton of new ground for Magic, and it's easy to lose track of that in the midst of so many new things in the game. But this is the set that gave us keywords-as-flavor-text! That blew my mind the first time I saw it, but it makes complete sense and honestly matched the way I looked at most ability words anyway. Magicis at its best when it innovates in ways that somehow feel natural, and that's exactly what Adventures in the Forgotten Realms brought us, both in terms of cards and the entire crossover aspect in the first place.

A Brief Rant About Blocks

Quick aside here, but does anyone else miss the concepts of Blocks? When I first started playing, we got three sets spread out throughout the year, all taking place on the same plane with similar mechanics throughout. We'd get an intro with the first set and then an exploration of that with the next two. Mirrodin-Darksteel-Fifth Dawn, etc. Now, there were a lot of problems with that that they tried a bunch of things to solve - in particular the third set was always lackluster (Dragon's Maze or Avacyn Restored), pushed to make it relevant, had a weird gimmick (Alara Reborn being all multicolored cards) or a curve ball like Rise of the Eldrazi or New Phyrexia (completely upend everything that came before). I'm sure sales lagged heavily in that cycle so Wizards had plenty of reasons to change things up (which they tried to do multiple times), but that also came in a world where Standard was the most important format. All in all, I get the downsides they were contending with.

But it sure felt easier to keep up with.

Would like to see more blocks again, probably not a full three set but two would go a long way. That said, Strixhaven came through for me on this so not sure exactly what happened with KLD besides the pandemic.

— Corbin Hosler (@Chosler) August 11, 2021

I'll be honest, I had no idea that there were 10 realms of Kaldheim and each was very different. Now maybe that's a little more in-depth than something like knowing the five color pairings of Strixhaven or original Ravnica, but it sure does feel like a ton of work by the creative and story team just gets left on the cutting room floor, and the story (such as it is) has to move at breakneck speed. I'm not asking for a return to the Jacetice League where we have a three-year long story building to something, but the strain on all of the above with the one-set model has caused plenty of its own problems.

So, I'll say I'm a huge fan of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow coming out as a two-parter this year. It's the right call for a world people are already invested in, and while I wasn't one of the people who disliked Shadows Over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon (I actually loved the Lovecraftian twist), I get why it failed to meet some peoples' expectations. Giving the plane room to breathe with a two-set return is the right call.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled DND Commander

I may fancy myself as a new era Magic historian, but that's not the only reason I've been going back and reviewing recent sets. With the breakneck pace of releases, I'm trying to keep up with my own handful of Commander decks and any new cards I may need to add. That means a lot of looking back to see what has slipped through the cracks over the past year or so, and Coolstuff's writing team has produced a ton of great content around these cards worth checking out. With that said, let's look at the top commanders according to EDHREC for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms!

Minsc, Beloved Ranger may be quite, well, beloved by the community, but it actually barely eeks into the Top 10 from the set. That came as a surprise, but the commander sitting atop the list certainly wasn't a surprise.

1. Prosper, Tome-Bound

Abe Sargent just did a great job covering the deck here, and I recommend checking that out. You can also check out Jason Alt's take here!

Prosper, Tome-Bound has been the most-built deck from the set by far, and it's easy to see why. Red-Black is a color combination that tends to get very weird cards that don't necessarily fit into a coherent strategy. Much of that can be owed to the fact that Red is just a tough color to make work in Commander since its effects don't tend to scale very well to four-player games, but Prosper gives a very clear direction.

"Whenever you play a card from exile..."

That line is enough to get the wheels turning in any deckbrewer's mind. The expansion of Red's slice of the color pie to include playing cards from exile (see Light Up the Stage) has been an absolute boon for the design space, and now Prosper gives you play-from-exile tribal. Add in the Treasure aspect - itself a newly pushed mechanic with some fun uses - and how that ties into Black cards like Revel in Riches, and you've got a recipe for a really sweet commander.

2. Volo, Guide to Monsters

Abe also covered this one!

Blue-Green definitely "suffers" from an embarrassment of riches in Commander. Combining ramp and card draw and 40 starting life will tend to do that, and we've seen no shortage of your Thrasios, Triton Hero swath of value cards. Uro, Tatyova, the Simic value train is a nonstop route with no exits.

So, the introduction of a Blue-Green commander that doesn't play into those tropes is actually really sweet, which explains why it just edges out the third commander on this list. Sure, copying spells isn't exactly brand-new tech, but getting copies of creature spells on the stack is relatively newer space, and the fact that Volo has a built-in "drawback" to achieve that - you have to spread your creature types around to get the value - pushes deck-building away from the usual suite of 40 value staples and forces deck-builders to go a little deeper into the tank. It's a neat throwback to the original joy of Commander deck-building, and it's a home run of a design.

3. Galea, Kindler of Hope

This one came as a bit of a surprise to me. We've seen plenty of Equipment commanders at this point, and there's a couple of enchantment commander options in Bant already. So, what makes Galea so special?

It turns out putting jamming both of those concepts together and stapling a little bit of card advantage to it is pretty popular. As a 4/4 for 4 mana, Galea can pick up some enchantments and do its best Uril, the Miststalker impression and get to work on commander damage, or it can go the more traditional Enchantress route. And, of course, all the Lightning Greaves you were already playing can also come off the top of the library. Plus free equips open up all kinds of possibilities with expensive equip costs! After thinking it through, Galea really is just a nice does-it-all package.

4. Sefris of the Hidden Ways

Sefris isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it sure does open up some fun deck-building with its ability to venture into the dungeon repeatedly.

We always see creatures with [INSERT SET MECHANIC] when they print a new set with a new mechanic, and often they end up by the wayside after a short time. I don't know if that will happen with Sefris, but I love that it gives an alternative way to reanimate cards; three-mana creatures that spend no mana to reanimate aren't exactly easy to come by. Now, Sefris certainly makes you jump through some hoops to get there, but with cards like Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker and Radiant Solar, there's a nice little puzzle to be completed with Sefris.

5. Tiamat

Kendra Smith covered this one here!

I have no idea how this wasn't higher! Honestly, before doing the research on this I would have expected Tiamat to be top three easily, and it wouldn't have surprised me if it were #1. That said, there's all kinds of five-color Dragon options already, and paying 7 mana for a commander these days isn't exactly popular - notice that none of the others on this list cost more than four.

But I think this is less of a power level development and more about a creativity one. Writing this up, the thing that stands out from the top four commanders is that they all push deck-building in subtle but distinct ways - Prosper and Volo enable entirely new archetypes, while Galea and Sefris more or less tread new ground. Tiamat, on the other hand, is simply another big dorky Dragon. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But it's a lot more likely to slot into the 99 of the Dragon deck you already have built than it is to encourage an entirely new design.

Of these, Prosper is definitely my favorite, so I was glad to see it land at #1! Are there any commanders from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms that people are sleeping on?

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler