Greetings! Today marks the start of Commander Masters previews!

I'm taking a moment away from working on my weekly "Commanderruminations" column to kick off the previews for what looks to be a really exciting reprint set for commander players. Masters reprint sets have proven to be a great way to make hard-to-find and expensive cards available to newer players who are still building up their collections. They also offer new artistic interpretations of old favorites and can make for a unique draft experience for those who enjoy drafting.

We already know about Jeweled Lotus, The Ur-Dragon, Capture of Jingzhou, Personal Tutor, and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds getting reprints with new art. I'm honored to be able to share CoolStuffInc's Commander Masters preview card, courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, with you... or should I say preview cards?

You may remember these big boys from a few years ago.

Regal Behemoth showed up at the end of the summer of 2016 in Conspiracy: Take the Crown. That multiplayer draft set gave us the "monarch" mechanic, which gave whatever player was the current monarch an extra card at the end of their turn. The trouble with becoming the monarch is that everyone wants that end step draw and they need to do combat damage to you to take it. Monarch is one of the best mechanics I've seen to help speed up the casual game and incentivize combat.

It's worth noting that Regal Behemoth in its first printing had a creature type of Lizard. This reprinting allows Wizards of the Coast to give us a new version with the card's current creature type, Dinosaur. Not everyone knows that the words on a card don't always match the way Wizards wants us to play that card, but if you ever have any doubt you need to look up the "oracle" text on gatherer.magic.com or on most online Magic card databases. Oracle text is for the text in the text box of a card, but these lookups should also give you accurate creature types for older cards that may have been changed.

A year and a half after Regal Behemoth showed up, Ixalan block brought us more Dinosaurs than we knew what to do with. The block was made up of two sets, Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan. The latter was a smaller follow-up set that introduced the Ascend mechanic. Ascend would give you a benefit for having the "city's blessing", which you would gain if you controlled 10 or more permanents. Ascend is a great fit for commander, as players often get up to 10 or more permanents by the mid-game. Our second preview card, Wayward Swordtooth, lets you play an additional land on each of your turns. Its only major drawback is that it can't attack or block unless you have the city's blessing.

Landfall and Big Mana

While these Dinosaurs don't rise to the level of staples in today's EDH, there are plenty of decks where they could fit in really well. They're such solid cards, I could see this reprint making their friendly Green faces a slightly more common sight in casual games. They're being reprinted as rares, but any deck interested in playing extra lands and making big mana will want them in the 99 if they're in Green and they don't mind having a Dinosaur or two in the mix.

If you're focused on playing heavily on theme, which isn't uncommon in casual Commander, you might recoil at the thought of a Wayward Swordtooth alongside all of the elves in your Mina and Denn, Wildspeaker deck, or whatever build you've been using to scratch that landfall itch. I'd suggest that a 5/5 body for three mana, one of which must be Green, is a good enough reason to declare Wayward Swordtooth an official mascot for your elves. Heck, you can even tell tablemates that it's an elf in one of those big, puffy dinosaur costumes as you drop extra lands and get extra landfall triggers.

Regal Behemoth is a harder card to fit into your average Commander deck. At six mana, two of which must be Green, this guy has a 5/5 body and a neat party trick. If you're the monarch, when you tap a land for mana, you add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Not only does that double the mana output of any land that taps to produce one mana, it also helps to fix your colors. The drawback is that everyone will want to steal your crown from you, as that extra mana goes away when you're no longer the monarch.

Both of these Dinosaurs work with landfall and big mana decks really nicely.

If you're going to try to dig deep into your deck with a Genesis Wave or Animist's Awakening, you'll be happy to have both of these Dinosaurs on the battlefield when it resolves. If you have a legendary creature on the battlefield, Kamahl's Druidic Vow is another great "X" spell that will let you drop lands and legendary permanents onto the battlefield. You might want to have a few flyers or blockers with reach to better protect that crown, because everyone else will be counting the number of lands on your field, doing some simple math and realizing that they could be in serious trouble if you able to untap on your next turn with what is effectively a mana doubler on the field.

If you're able to drop an extra half dozen or more lands onto the battlefield, even if you lose the crown you'll be well positioned to make some big plays and impact the game on your next turn. You might even be able to remain the monarch by suggesting that anyone who takes it from you will incur your wrath.

I can think of no better excuse to say, as ominously as possible, "target acquired."

Finding a Commander

If you were to open Wayward Swordtooth and Regal Behemoth and decided to put them into a deck, where would they fit best?

You'll have to be in Green, and you'll likely want to be building a slightly more casual EDH deck; but, beyond that, your options are quite open. The most obvious fit would be a deck with a Dinosaur in the command zone.

If you wanted to keep things simple, Ghalta, Primal Hunger might be an easy choice. You'll stay in Green and you'll probably be looking to make lots of mana, play big creatures and win through combat. A better fit might be Gishath, Sun's Avatar, a 7/6 dinosaur in Naya colors (). Gishath has trample, vigilance, haste and a combat damage trigger that will let you reveal cards from the top of your library and put any Dinosaurs you find directly onto the battlefield.

Zacama, Primal Calamity is probably the best pick out of all of the possible Dinosaur commanders for our two preview cards. It has a 9/9 body with vigilance, reach and trample, and when it enters the battlefield you get to untap all lands you control. Big mana has few better outlets than Zacama, as she'll let you pay three mana to deal three damage to target creature, destroy target artifact or enchantment, or gain 3 life.

If you don't want to play a dinosaur deck, there are other options that might work really well with today's preview cards.

Tatyova, Benthic Druid has a landfall trigger that lets you gain 1 life and draw a card. Wayward Swordtooth's extra card draw will help you get your extra land drop, and those extra land drops will help you get to six mana, where you can drop your Regal Behemoth and really go crazy.

Omnath, Locus of Rage might be an old model, but it can still get the job done. At seven mana, Regal Behemoth might be very helpful for getting enough mana to cast him. Omnath's landfall trigger works nicely with your Swordtooth's extra land drop ability. Another Gruul option to consider is Nikya of the Old Ways. Making one extra mana per land is good, but how would you feel about two extra mana? You could play some really big Hydras with both Regal Behemoth and Nikya on the field. If you do want to play a big noncreature spell you would need something like Temur Sabertooth to let you bounce your commander to your hand. Just don't forget to float all of your mana first.

This is just a sampling of commanders you might use for your shiny new Dinosaurs, but I like to think outside of the box. If I were to build a dinosaur deck, I'd go for something a bit different.

Kenrith, King of the Dinosaurs

I put together a decklist for nearly every column and this is no different, but I bet you didn't think you'd scroll down to see Kenrith, the Returned King reimagined as Kenrith, King of the Dinosaurs. No, this isn't a secret, hidden new version of Kenrith being printed in Commander Masters. It's just the commander I would pick for a Dinosaurs deck if I were to build one today.

My reason might be a bit convoluted.

If I'm building dinosaurs so I can run my two preview cards, I'll want to lean into another of my favorite mechanics - enrage. Dinosaurs with the enrage keyword do something cool when they take damage. If I equip Nemesis Mask to a creature with enrage and send it into battle, every creature able to block will be forced to block, giving me a pile of damage triggers. I'll want to tutor up Nemesis Mask so I'll want to be in Blue for Fabricate and Black for Diabolic Tutor. If you want to push your budget up a bit, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Grim Tutor and other Black tutors could be included along with Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory in White.

My plan is to use Kenrith to command a Dinosaur army. The deck will try to maximize the number of enrage triggers I can get out of a single dinosaur by using Nemesis Mask to force every blocker to block it. Wayward Swordtooth and Regal Behemoth will fit in nicely, but they're usually going to be support cards rather than a central focus of the deck they're in.

My goal is to see a Polyraptor turn into a dozen Polyraptors, or a Ripjaw Raptor draw me a boatload of cards. Silverclad Ferocidons could force each of my opponents to sacrifice so many permanents that they won't be able to recover. It's a crazy idea, and the list below definitely needs refining, but I like it and I may well build it in paper once I get my hands on those shiny new preview cards.

Kenrith, Dinosaur King | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kenrith, the Returned King

• Creatures (38)
• 1 Apex Altisaur
• 1 Bellowing Aegisaur
• 1 Body of Knowledge
• 1 Boros Reckoner
• 1 Brash Taunter
• 1 Broodhatch Nantuko
• 1 Cacophodon
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Frilled Deathspitter
• 1 Gishath, Sun's Avatar
• 1 Heartwood Storyteller
• 1 Imperial Ceratops
• 1 Keruga, the Macrosage
• 1 Marauding Raptor
• 1 Needletooth Raptor
• 1 Nezahal, Primal Tide
• 1 Ohran Frostfang
• 1 Overgrown Armasaur
• 1 Polyraptor
• 1 Ranging Raptors
• 1 Raptor Hatchling
• 1 Ravenous Daggertooth
• 1 Regal Behemoth
• 1 Ripjaw Raptor
• 1 Rona, Herald of Invasion // Rona, Tolarian Obliterator
• 1 Runic Armasaur
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Siegehorn Ceratops
• 1 Silverclad Ferocidons
• 1 Snapping Sailback
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spitemare
• 1 Sun-Crowned Hunters
• 1 Thrashing Brontodon
• 1 Trapjaw Tyrant
• 1 Urban Daggertooth
• 1 Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients
• 1 Wayward Swordtooth

• Instants (8)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Give No Ground
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Valor Made Real

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Commune with Dinosaurs
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Patriarch's Bidding
• 1 Rampant Growth

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
• 1 Kumena's Awakening

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blazing Sunsteel
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Nemesis Mask
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (39)
• 1 Swamp
• 10 Forest
• 2 Island
• 3 Plains
• 4 Mountain
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Indatha Triome
• 1 Ketria Triome
• 1 Luxury Suite
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Savai Triome
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Spire Garden
• 1 Training Center
• 1 Undergrowth Stadium
• 1 Vault of Champions
• 1 Zagoth Triome

Buy This Deck Export text format

If you look carefully you'll see that I added some creatures which don't have enrage but still do something when they take damage. Rona, Herald of Invasion // Rona, Tolarian Obliterator was the inspiration for this list, though Body of Knowledge, Boros Reckoner, Brash Taunter and Boodhatch Nantko could also be fun to throw into battle. I could easily see myself drop out a few creatures and throw in Lure, Roar of Challenge, and Shinen of Life's Roar as additional ways to force all creatures to block one of my Dinosaurs. I threw in Give No Ground and Valor Made Real as instant-speed ways to have one of my creatures block all attackers. Nemesis Mask is great, but I also want a way to abuse enrage triggers when I'm on defense.

This turned out to be a very budget-friendly deck, as least by my Standards. I have the possibly bad habit of throwing staples into my lists, as good cards are good and generally make your decks stronger. Staples also tend to push deck prices up a bit. If you wanted to take this concept and tune it up a bit, you'd probably want to drop out the triomes and load in some shocks or fetches. Stoneforge Mystic and a few better tutors would cost more, but would also help you get Nemesis Mask out more easily.

You have Kenrith in the command zone so you might be tempted to throw in Dockside Extortionist and a sacrifice outlet, but I think that would shift the focus of the deck over to a combo wincon. That's fine if that's your style, but it's likely to become a fundamentally different deck as a result.

Final Thoughts

Whether you're excited to see some fun Dinosaurs get reprinted, or I've inspired you to go build your own enrage-themed Nemesis Mask deck, I hope you enjoyed this Commander Masters preview.

If you enjoyed my take on Kenrith, Dinosaur King and would like to see my take on a wide range of new commanders, please check out my Commanderruminations column every Monday morning here on CoolStuffInc.com. I write about a fairly wide range of power levels, though I don't usually dive into super budget builds or true cEDH builds. My sweet spot is right in the middle, building and writing abouit low and mid-power Commander all the way up to high power and occasionally fringe cEDH decks.

You should also check out the many other fantastic commander writers here at CoolStuffInc.com. We cover a lot of new legendary creatures every week and there's a new article going up every day or two written with commander players in mind.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can join me back here next Monday!