Commander Insight: Star Trek at Low Rarity

Draft chaff enjoyers, circle round.

It's time to review cards you just might find discarded on tables or lingering near trash bins at the end of draft night. 

Consider combing through the piles to pull some new inclusions for your commander staples box. 

At the end of each card description you'll find a few cards to grease your deckbuilding wheels. 

Without further ado, in alphabetical order we bring you…

Anthropological Mission 

The first few times I thought about this card, I assumed it was four mana and maybe just a bit too slow. 

At three mana, Anthropological Mission is set up to be an all star among spell slinger decks. And with a Geist of Saint Thalia to further reduce the cost, Anthropological Mission can quickly become a premier source of recursive draw.

Given that commander is full of mana rocks, removal, permission, and sweepers, this mission is where we're at. 

But, if we want to go harder into building around Anthropological Mission, we can choose a commander that creates an army for us and benefits from having many cards in hand, like Alandra, Sky Dreamer. 

Combadge 

The limited enthusiasts behind the popular podcast Lords of Limited sometimes refer to “rectangle theory” to assess the strength and value of cards. For each game piece produced by a card, we add a rectangle. 

Combadge makes a combadge. Two rectangles for one seems worth the price of admission. Though if one combadge goes down, both are useless.

To make use of the combadge, we can lean into commanders that 1) benefit from having a bunch of equipment lying around, like Bruenor Battlehammer, 2) benefit greatly from having our creatures damage our opponents, like Fynn, the Fangbearer, or 3) benefit from having a unique artifact token to copy, like Tawnos, Solemn Survivor. 

With five colors worth of commanders to visit with Combadge, I hope to pick up a small stack for my commander staples box.

Conquest Mission 

Unlike the plans from Marvel Super Heroes, these missions only get better the more we do what they ask of us.

Considering rectangle theory again, Conquest Mission produces a lot of game pieces and isn't even gated to a “once per turn” clause.

We are clearly looking for a artifact commander here who can reward us for having a mass of (preferably attacking) artifact tokens.

Soundwave, Sonic Spy allows us to steal spells out of our opponents’ graveyards while Alibou, Ancient Witness rains down damage on our opponents. 

Exploratory Mission 

Ok, ok. This one is a lot more narrow.

But, if we hit a modal double-faced card with a land on the backside, we can play the land to retrigger Exploratory Mission if (and only if) we can play additional lands this turn or cracked a fetch for our first activation.

The more colors we play, the more modal double-faced cards we can play, the harder we can go into an “oops, all spells” deck in commander.

So, we know we will play green at least, want to benefit from landfall, and could potentially lean into a strategy that seeks out enchantments and counters and can make use of a lot of red mana. 

Dal R'El fits the bill for the first two objectives and Eivor pretty cleanly gives us outs to making all three objectives work. 

Gabriel Lorca, Mirror Menace

Another rectangle.

Whenever we face a dilemma, we can pay B to return Gabriel Lorca from our graveyard to our hand. With Monument to Endurance in play and a way to discard, we can face three dilemmas each turn, turning Gabriel Lorca into an instant-speed activation that reads something like “BBB - Draw a card. Create a Treasure. Each opponent loses three life.”

Psychic Frog is an excellent start for discarding cards for value, though options for discarding abound, including spellshapers, token makers, ramp, and draw.

And once we are discarding, finding value for Gabriel shenanigans can include Cryptcaller Chariot, Cool but Rude, and even Syr Konrad, the Grim.

Sprinkle in a commander that helps us face a dilemma, and our Gabriel Lorca engine is online. 

Gray and Adira, Forever Joined

Gray and Adira play in a well-loved and well-worn design space that has gotten a few big boons over the past year. 

Cards that encourage multiple combats and multiple copies of your commander either go hard or go infinite beside Gray and Adira. Muddle, the Ever-Changing gets a whole new toolbox of creatures to copy once Gray and Adira remove the Legendary supertype from your team, and Arthur, Marigold Knight becomes his own battle partner.

Not to mention, generating Combat Celebrant tokens means game over for your opponents.

Artful Dodge, Distortion Strike, Combadge and the like all do excellent work pushing through our combat-centric beaters.

Hemmer, Fixing What is Broken

Hemmer is here for spaceships, vehicles, and the graveyard.

The nostalgic side of me wants to see Hemmer alongside Tradewind Rider and Opposition, but there are just better ways to do that strategy and, nowadays, just better strategies.

Teaming up with Shorikai, Genesis Engine to crew, filter, and fill the yard for Abhorrent Oculus will buy us time while we wait for Wizards to print a blue white escape titan. 

Locutus, the One Who Speaks 

Cheap anthems, even when relatively narrow, are great.

It's hard to imagine we would often want to discard Locutus to deal damage, but a removal spell, no matter how narrow, that gets around Rule of Law style restrictions deserves at least some consideration during gameplay.

With either Breya, Etherium Shaper or Karn, Gilded Guardian in the command zone, Locutus is a clear inclusion.

Resistance is Futile

Let's test the value of modality. 

Given the option: would you prefer a slow Go for the Throat or an expensive and narrow Unearth?

Possibly, the answer could be neither, but if we think of Resistance is Futile as a monoblack charm and have a reason to want to choose the second mode (Locutus, anyone?), this is worth testing among a removal suite.

Rules of Acquisition 

Donate and Harmless Offering just got a new modal friend with plenty of political potential. 

On one side, we can steal an opponent's commander and gift them three cards (unless we have a Narset, Parter of Veils).

Or, we can take something less critical to our opponent's mission–something like a Propaganda, for example–to use the draw three to make an ally at the table. 

Or, we can play the evil side and hand out Kobayashi Maru Scenario, Nine Lives, and Forbidden Crypt. 

However we do it, donate strategies are well loved among the community, and Rules of Acquisition will fit right in.

Happy brewing!