Earlier in the year, I put out two separate articles where I made decks utilizing the awesome Magic Online exclusive product called the Commander Workshop. This release gives players thousands of cards to build decks with for only $40, many of which are rare and expensive cards in paper. The digital client provides an excellent means to distribute these cards in an affordable manner and also allows players to build fairly respectable decks with a limited card pool.

Given this, it's become a personal favorite topic of mine to revisit, particularly with how many legends you can possibly dig up. There's 200 in the Commander Workshop alone, and several more in the base account you start out with in the first place. So with the first article, I covered five legends of varying uses to show the range a bit. Then with the second article, I focused more heavily on four of the more popular commanders per EDHREC.com. That's only nine total legends - hardly scratching the surface of what's possible!

Because there are still so many possible options to choose from, I wanted to tackle it yet again and come up with a few more cool decks - especially as a member of the MTGO creator program. The great thing is that while these lists are crafted using a Magic Online only release, the decks can just as easily be built in paper too. Restrictions breed creativity and that makes these decks more interesting, not to mention in some cases a bit easier to put together since you're relying a little less on high-end staples.

So, with all that in mind, let's jump right into it! I'm gonna kick things off right away with a personal favorite of mine: Animar, Soul of Elements.

Animar, Soul of Elements

Workshop Animar | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Animar, Soul of Elements

• Creatures (46)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Alloy Myr
• 1 Artisan of Kozilek
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Beanstalk Giant
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Blightsteel Colossus
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Champion of Rhonas
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Elvish Piper
• 1 Etali, Primal Storm
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Garruk's Packleader
• 1 Haywire Mite
• 1 Incubation Druid
• 1 Intet, the Dreamer
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Master Biomancer
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Myr Battlesphere
• 1 Mystic Snake
• 1 Oblivion Sower
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Rattleclaw Mystic
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Stonecoil Serpent
• 1 Stratus Dancer
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Trygon Predator
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1 Xenagos, God of Revels

• Instants (5)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Krosan Grip

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Genesis Ultimatum
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Guardian Project
• 1 Simic Ascendancy
• 1 Temur Ascendancy

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (38)
• 1 Mountain
• 4 Island
• 8 Forest
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Barkchannel Pathway // Tidechannel Pathway
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Frontier Bivouac
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sheltered Thicket
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• 1 Zoetic Cavern

Buy This Deck Export text

I've been around and playing Commander for quite a long time now, having been introduced to the format in 2010. As such, I was enjoying the format right when the first round of preconstructed Commander decks was released. While the Mirror Mastery precon primarily focused on the nonsense you could get up to with Riku of Two Reflections, I was honestly far more excited to get my hands on a copy of Animar.

I love playing big creatures as much as the next Commander gamer, and Animar provides a way to do so with ease. The more creatures you play, the cheaper your future ones get. This means you can get your Animar big enough that you can even play something like an eldrazi titan for free! Imagine getting to cast a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth for zero mana, drawing four cards, then gobbling up your opponents' permanents with the annihilator trigger. It's an absolute beating!

I actually tried to do something a little different for this list, though. I remembered my friend Ian Dixon (who you may have seen around social media) played an Animar morphs deck - or Animorphs for short. You played morph creatures face down, and soon you'd cast them for free, but you'd still have to pay full value to turn them face up. Seems like a good place to start, right? Well unfortunately this was one of the points where we hit a bit of a snag.

As far as I can tell, there are only eight total cards with either morph or megamorph activations in Temur colors. Lots of solid cards like Den Protector, Icefeather Aven, and Willbender aren't included in this collection. Instead, we're left with a smattering of options such as Stratus Dancer, Rattleclaw Mystic, and Akroma, Angel of Fury. I'd hardly call any of these bad, but the numbers here are so few and far between that it makes it difficult to build a full deck around them. As such, the deck looks a lot more standard fare for what you'd expect out of an Animar list.

Cheap creatures like mana dorks, Haywire Mite, and Coiling Oracle act as easy ways to beef up your Animar quickly to get you to the real meat and potatoes of the list. With how many are mana dorks as well, this only helps to bridge the gap to those pricier cards that much more. From there you can go up to casting copies of Solemn Simulacrum and Phyrexian Metamorph for free or getting dirt cheap Mulldrifters and Bloodbraid Elfs for even more value. All this culminates in your big finishers to provide a truly exciting list for players of any skill level to pick up and have fun with.

Korvold, Fae-Cursed King

Workshop Korvold | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Korvold, Fae-Cursed King

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Academy Manufactor
• 1 Arasta of the Endless Web
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Bloodline Keeper // Lord of Lineage
• 1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
• 1 Cult Conscript
• 1 Dragonmaster Outcast
• 1 Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1 Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge
• 1 Glissa, Herald of Predation
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Haywire Mite
• 1 Izoni, Thousand-Eyed
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Mayhem Devil
• 1 Nether Traitor
• 1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Reassembling Skeleton
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Sporemound
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Squee, the Immortal
• 1 Tendershoot Dryad
• 1 Tireless Provisioner
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

• Instants (4)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Tear Asunder
• 1 Terminate

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Creeping Renaissance
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Lich-Knights' Conquest

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Dictate of Erebos
• 1 Grave Pact
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Revel in Riches
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Zendikar's Roil

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Bolas's Citadel
• 1 Bootleggers' Stash
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Goldvein Pick
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Witch's Oven

• Lands (38)
• 1 Mountain
• 4 Forest
• 4 Swamp
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Canyon Slough
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Field of the Dead
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Grim Backwoods
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Sheltered Thicket
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Woodland Cemetery
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Buy This Deck Export text

Next up is another massively popular in Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. Both he and Animar crack the current top 25 commanders per EDHREC.com, and it's not hard to see why. Players love sacrificing stuff for value, which has led to Aristocrats being a popular sort of strategy for many years. This makes Korvold perfect for this style of deck, as he not only enables your sacrificing strategy, but also gets bigger and draws you cards. What's not to love?

Typically, with a deck like this, I'd look for creatures that come back from the graveyard fairly easily. Unfortunately, a number of the usual suspects weren't included in this card pool. There's no Bloodghast, Dread Wanderer, or Bloodsoaked Champion to pull from here. Heck, there's not even a Sanitarium Skeleton in the mix! I was able to find copies of Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton, though, but while both are excellent options they're not quite enough to carry the entire deck.

As such, I put a fairly heavy focus on tokens with this list. Korvold allows you to sacrifice any permanent, so the more tokens you can make of any kind, the better. Thankfully, this doesn't mean you only need to rely on creature tokens. If you have the means to repeatedly make treasure or clue tokens, you can toss those to the greedy dragon for easy value. There's no ways to generate your tokens, so if the ones in this list aren't to your fancy, just swap them out with the ones you're more interested in!

Additionally, there's some solid secondary payoffs to sacrificing stuff. Both Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos are in this card pool and they let you kill off some of your creatures only to take your opponents' stuff with them. If you happen to have a copy of Liliana, Dreadhorde General down, you can even draw some cards as well, or dish out some damage if you have a Mayhem Devil. And of course, there's the obligatory Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat finisher strategy, because what kind of sacrifice deck wouldn't be complete without them?

Chainer, Dementia Master

Workshop Chainer | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Chainer, Dementia Master

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Abhorrent Overlord
• 1 Armix, Filigree Thrasher
• 1 Ayara, First of Locthwain
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Cavalier of Night
• 1 Corpse Connoisseur
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Doomed Necromancer
• 1 Filth
• 1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Gravebreaker Lamia
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
• 1 It That Betrays
• 1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Mindslicer
• 1 Murderous Rider
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 Pack Rat
• 1 Putrid Imp
• 1 Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1 Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum

• Instants (8)
• 1 Defile
• 1 Bitter Triumph
• 1 Doom Blade
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 1 Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit
• 1 Infernal Grasp
• 1 Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire
• 1 Soul Shatter

• Sorceries (15)
• 1 Beacon of Unrest
• 1 Beseech the Queen
• 1 Breach the Multiverse
• 1 Buried Alive
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 1 Mutilate
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Persist
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Reanimate
• 1 Sign in Blood
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Unmarked Grave
• 1 Victimize

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 The Eldest Reborn

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Coldsteel Heart
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Mirage Mirror
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

• Lands (38)
• 25 Swamp
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Blast Zone
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Cabal Stronghold
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Mortuary Mire
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Westvale Abbey
• 1 Witch's Cottage

Buy This Deck Export text

One thing I've yet to cover with any of these Commander Workshop articles are mono-colored decks. Let's face it: players love to jam a bunch of colors in their decks, so the majority of popular lists end up being multicolored. However, I'm a huge fan of Chainer, Dementia Master, a classic legend from the earlier days of my Magic career, so when I saw him here I had to put together a list.

This isn't the first time I've written about Chainer either. Back in 2022, I wrote a whole PreDH piece on him for much the same reason I wanted to put something together here. I can't resist covering the classics, after all! Here you're following much of the same core logic. The main goal is to reanimate stuff, so you're trying to fill up every player's graveyards with as many creatures as possible for you to pull from.

Getting your opponents' creatures into the graveyard is the easy part: simply use a ton of powerful removal spells. You're a Mono-Black deck, so there's absolutely no shortage of options there. Classics like Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Infernal Grasp, and Defile all make this extremely easy. You also gain plenty of options for board wipes too with cards such as Damnation, Mutilate, and Toxic Deluge being available thanks to the Commander Workshop.

The other part is trying to fill your own graveyard. Unmarked Grave, Buried Alive, and Corpse Connoisseur are all excellent ways to do this. You can also make use of some decent discard outlets too, like Putrid Imp and Pack Rat. The best cards, though, are ones that fill up your graveyard while also picking off your opponents' creatures. These include the likes of Bitter Triumph, Bone Shredder, and Armix, Filigree Thrasher.

All of these provide you the means with which to get a whole bevy of big creatures. If your opponents don't have much to offer, there's plenty enough in this list to pull from. Grave Titan and Noxious Gearhulk provide one heck of a beating, and both Rune-Scarred Demon and Razaketh, the Foulblooded enable you to tutor up anything you need. The biggest of all, though, is It That Betrays - a massive eldrazi that steals away the cards your opponents sacrifice, making it fitting for a deck such as this. A great way to get up to some real shenanigans!

Rienne, Angel of Rebirth

Workshop Rienne | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rienne, Angel of Rebirth

• Creatures (41)
• 1 Aurelia, the Warleader
• 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1 Baird, Argivian Recruiter
• 1 Balefire Liege
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Brion Stoutarm
• 1 Dauntless Escort
• 1 Djeru and Hazoret
• 1 Dragonlord Atarka
• 1 Drizzt Do'Urden
• 1 Faeburrow Elder
• 1 Firemane Avenger
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 General Ferrous Rokiric
• 1 Good-Fortune Unicorn
• 1 Grumgully, the Generous
• 1 Hajar, Loyal Bodyguard
• 1 Halana and Alena, Partners
• 1 Huntmaster of the Fells // Ravager of the Fells
• 1 Incubation Druid
• 1 Iroas, God of Victory
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Karametra, God of Harvests
• 1 Katilda, Dawnhart Prime
• 1 King Darien XLVIII
• 1 Kogla and Yidaro
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Maja, Bretagard Protector
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Rith, Liberated Primeval
• 1 Ruby, Daring Tracker
• 1 Saffi Eriksdotter
• 1 Sigarda, Font of Blessings
• 1 Sylvan Caryatid
• 1 Torens, Fist of the Angels
• 1 Ulasht, the Hate Seed
• 1 Xenagos, God of Revels
• 1 Zacama, Primal Calamity

• Instants (4)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Eladamri's Call
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Bard Class
• 1 Garruk's Uprising

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Tome of the Guildpact

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Domri, Anarch of Bolas
• 1 Xenagos, the Reveler

• Lands (38)
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 5 Forest
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Branchloft Pathway // Boulderloft Pathway
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Castle Ardenvale
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Scattered Groves
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Wooded Bastion
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Buy This Deck Export text

If Chainer was focused on making a viable mono-color option with this limited card pool, this is the polar opposite. Rienne, Angel of Rebirth is all about multicolored cards all the way down. Not only does she make your multicolored creatures bigger but also brings them back to your hand when they die. This provides the deck a far more aggressive slant, fitting for a Naya colored commander.

What surprised me when going through this pool of cards was how few multicolored options there actually were. Don't get me wrong, there were still plenty. This list still is chock full of multicolored creatures, after all. However, it's made up almost entirely of the majority of options available in Naya colors. That doesn't enable for a lot of wiggle room, so if you're looking to build a Rienne list with just the Commander Workshop pool, you're not going to be able to take things much further than this. You'll need to put in further investment, though thankfully that's probably not difficult to do with the bevy of solid multicolored options in recent years.

Make no mistake, though, the cards on tap here are quite good. Some actually end up being better than they typically might in a Commander deck thanks to the list using this particular commander. Consider cards like Firemane Avenger and Huntmaster of the Fells // Ravager of the Fells. Both of these cards rock and were each Standard powerhouses once upon a time, but in Commander they often fall flat by being too easy to deal with. Here, though, you don't mind it if they die because they can then come right back for even more value!

This aspect scales with several other cards as well. Getting another enters trigger off a Dragonlord Atarka or Zacama, Primal Calamity is huge, providing opponents with incentive to not take them out. You can also reutilize certain value creatures as well. Ulasht, the Hate Seed gets smaller and smaller the more you use its ability, so if it dies you can just replay it and reset it once again. Cards such as Dauntless Escort, Qasali Pridemage, and Saffi Eriksdotter also allow you to sacrifice them for value only to bring them right back and do it all over again.

These four lists provide just another example of what a killer value the Commander Workshop is if you're looking to get involved on Magic Online. Even if you don't necessarily enjoy playing online, it's still a solid option to just build decks to try out before you build them in paper to jam with your friends. I know I love it because it lets me continue to brew up all kinds of new decks, and I'm still itching to make even more.

If you're still looking to stick to paper play, that's fine. Perhaps give these decks a try and see how they work for you. Best of all, once you have them in your hands, you can upgrade them further with cards in your own collection. I for one would slam a Bloodghast into that Korvold deck so fast your head would spin! Regardless of how you build your lists, though, you're bound to have an awesome time at your next Commander night. Perhaps consider giving one of those nights a shot online for a change?

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal