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Ten Commanders that Should've Been in Innistrad Remastered

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Last week saw the release of Innistrad Remastered and to celebrate I put together a lengthy article talking about ten of the best commanders in the set. What surprised me as I put it together, though, was just how few legends were in Innistrad Remastered as a whole. In total, there are 16 - excluding Westvale Abbey // Ormendahl, Profane Prince and the melded Hanweir, the Writhing Township - and one of them is outright banned in Commander (Griselbrand). Surprisingly, this left a rather large and unexpected void to be filled.

When you look at Innistrad as a larger whole, it's shockingly flush with legends. By my count, there's about 105 potential commanders with art depicting a character on Innistrad (you can see a list here). That's quite a substantial number, and as such, I thought it would be fun to look at the cards left out of Innistrad Remastered and find ten legendary creatures that should've been in the set. Each of these can make a great commander for you to build around, and should hopefully give you some ideas on what deck you should build next with your new Innistrad Remastered pulls.

Let's get right to it and check through the cards!

Anje Falkenrath

Anje Falkenrath

When you first read Anje Falkenrath, it feels like there isn't a ton going on with the card. It's just a looter that doesn't attack particularly well. In truth, the card is a powerful madness enabler. This alone made her a tremendously popular commander and one of the hotter precons to get from the Commander 2019 set. It's a very narrow theme with minimal support, but taking the best of what madness had to offer while also making new designs for it proved quite exciting to players at the time.

Much of this remains true. In fact, I'd almost recommend getting the precon - Merciless Rage - itself. You'll get most of the cards you need for a functional madness deck and can easily upgrade it using the handful of cards that have been released since, such as Terminal Agony from Modern Horizons 2. It's such a shame, though, because it would've made for a really cool Limited inclusion as well. Not only are there a handful of awesome madness cards in Innistrad Remastered, but there's also flashback and other general graveyard synergies that would've made it an awesome card to have in the mix.

Ghoulcaller Gisa

Ghoulcaller Gisa

Innistrad Remastered included Gisa and Geralf as a way to conveniently include both famous Innistrad legends without sacrificing two slots. It's a respectable inclusion - which is why it made it into my best-of Commanders list for the set - but I think we lose something by not also including the original Ghoulcaller Gisa. Most of Geralf's solo outings besides the recent Geralf, the Fleshwright aren't particularly memorable, so it's understandable why he wouldn't get one here, but Gisa is a whole other story.

This iteration of Gisa is simple: sacrifice a zombie, make more zombies. What makes it such an enjoyable commander is just how low her opportunity cost is. Sacrifice one zombie, make more. Then since you have tokens, you always have fodder to sacrifice away at the end of opponents' turns, meaning your army of zombies can continuously grow larger and larger. Load up your deck with a variety of reanimation spells and suddenly you can recycle massive zombies over and over and dominate the game.

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Gisela is an immensely popular Commander card. Even if you don't play her in the command zone, she's still excellent in the 99 as well. That gives her a tremendous amount of versatility in how you can play with her. These days, it's clear she's played much less heavily in favor of better and more aggressive Boros commanders that can come down more quickly. This is reflected in the fact that the card which commanded a $20+ price tag for years can now be had for about $2-3. That's still an awesome option for getting your hands on such a powerful card that's still great no matter how you play it. No doubt this one was left out in favor of giving Brisela, Voice of Nightmares a reprint, but it still would've been great to see the original Gisela make an appearance the way Sigarda, Host of Herons did.

Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart

Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart

Greymond feels a little weird and I'd wager that there's decent odds you don't even know what it's from. That's because it's a reskin of the card Rick, Steadfast Leader from the Walking Dead Secret Lair drop for the Universes Within rerelease. Every legend from this drop - as well as the ones from the Stranger Things crossover lair - were later reskinned as legends of Innistrad. Many of these are rare and a few are somewhat hard to come by. This is particularly true of Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart, which bears a near $50 price tag. Reprinting it, as well as perhaps one or two other Universes Within variants, would've been a massive boon to collectors. It also helps that Greymond makes for an excellent human typal Commander deck, which also works great in Limited where humans get to shine a bit.

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus

Seeing Kraum, Ludevic's Opus being excluded from Innistrad Remastered feels especially odd to me. While being another legendary creature from a Commander precon, Kraum is far more infamous than Anje Falkenrath is. Thanks to the partner mechanic, there was a time where Kraum was seen as one of the best things you could be doing in Commander when paired with another powerful partner creature. With time, this was overtaken by more powerful options from the same decks like Thrasios and Tymna, but Kraum should also be getting his due in a set like this. He was likely left out of the set due to the lack of additional partners to work efficiently off of in a Limited setting. Make no mistake, though: this is still one Innistrad legend you should try out if you never have before to understand just how much nonsense the card gets up to in the command zone.

Lier, Disciple of the Drowned

Lier, Disciple of the Drowned

Do you like casting spells over and over again? So does Lier! There's all kinds of combo shenanigans you can get up to with this legend in many a Constructed deck and that translates reasonably well to Commander as well. If you can get a high enough of a spell count going, it's not difficult to do something like a classic High Tide into Brain Freeze or Temporal Fissure strategy to take opponents out in quick succession. Lier is a little limited by the fact that recasting spells causes them to be exiled, but if you play your cards just right, it can be a very rewarding experience for Commander Johnny and Jenny players everywhere.

Olivia, Crimson Bride

Olivia, Crimson Bride

Olivia Voldaren was included in the actual Innistrad Remastered set and as such made it onto my top commanders list for the set. Make no mistake: Olivia Voldaren makes for an awesome vampire commander if you're not looking to shell out for a copy of Edgar Markov. That said, we'd already seen a handful of reprints of that iteration of Olivia and it would've been nice to see a focus on a different side of her for a change. Rather than turning creatures your opponents control into vampires, this Olivia brings back creatures from the graveyard. This makes her less of a vampire-focused deck and much more about reanimation, providing a cool alternative take for the popular Innistrad character.

Slogurk, the Overslime

Slogurk, the Overslime

GURK! GURK! GURK!

This sweet legend from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt came out with a rather tepid reception, with players noting that you could do cool things with the card yet it was too difficult to make work in a meaningful way. Leave it up to the brewers, though, as members of Sanctum of All found ways to make it into a viable option. The resulting Four-to-Five Color Legends deck ended up being one of the best Standard decks of 2024 pre-rotation and was notoriously tough to pilot.

Given this reputation, it would've been great to see Slogurk represented in Innistrad Remastered as a nod to its powerful run. Beyond that, though, it would just be great to have it included as a sweet potential Commander option. Simic players everywhere love getting lots of value out of playing lands and Slogurk allows you to do creative things by pulling lands out of your graveyard once you use them. You could go the classic route of utilizing channel lands from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty or find ways to reuse copies of, say, Demolition Field. It's a complex build-around card that's extremely rewarding if you're willing to put in the time to make it work.

Toxrill, the Corrosive

Toxrill, the Corrosive

Maybe it's a good thing Toxrill was left out of the set because as far as commanders go, this is easily one of the saltiest ones around. Players hate going toe to toe with this mighty slug, and it's caused it to be marked as one of the top 10 saltiest commanders of 2024 according to EDHREC.com. That's a lot of salt for a slug to handle! This heavy salt factor hasn't done a thing to prevent it from being an incredibly popular card, though, and as such it commands a $20 price tag that's likely only going to go up without more reprints. Maybe it was good to keep the stock low to keep those sodium levels equally low, but for players out there who like to make their friends miserable, this one's a great time.

Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver

Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver

Gisa, the Ghoulcaller may have been a potent zombie commander omission, but you'd be hard pressed to find one more glaring than Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver. This legend has become the zombie typal commander of choice, proving to be so popular it's currently ranked number 14 on the EDHREC.com list of top commanders. So, why omit such a popular commander? Well, the answer to that is pretty simple.

In short, Wilhelt was the face commander for the recent Undead Unleashed Commander precon that was released alongside Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Until recently, the deck was quite readily available, meaning players had a pretty reasonable amount of access to the card. Innistrad Remastered was likely put together during this time of ready availability so it's no wonder the card was left out. Instead, Wizards opted to include other Dimir legends like Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Gisa and Geralf. If you're looking for a powerful way to build a classic Innistrad zombies deck, though, Wilhelt is absolutely the card to get.


That just about wraps things up for Innistrad Remastered. The set has been really cool to talk about and I've thoroughly enjoyed taking a look back on one of Magic's most classic planes. I hope you find some cool new legends to make your next Commander deck around. Try some spooky new things, experiment, and above all: have fun! May all your Commander nights be a terrifyingly good time.

Paige Smith

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