MTG's 10 Best Commander Decks of 2024

As we reach the end of 2024, it’s a perfect time to look back on the year and take stock of what Magic: The Gathering products have released throughout the year. Here, we’ll be taking a look at the best Commander decks that Wizards of the Coast has released this year.

In that timeframe, there have been 24 main new Commander decks released, and we’ll be looking at the best ten commander pre-constructed decks of 2024. Evaluation will consider several factors including:

• Playability out of the box
• Uniqueness
• Value (in reprints and new cards)
• Best Cards (new and old)

The list will give a brief run through of the deck, and mention five of the best cards in it, though we will be omitting general staples unless there is a reason to mention it specifically. No one needs me to tell them 10 times why Sol Ring is good after all. Archetype staples are fine, but color or generic ones aren’t going to be mentioned here. Reprinted decks (like the Lord of the Rings ones), and secret lair ones, were left out of the consideration.

#10 Tricky Terrain

A number of decks were on the edge of the top ten here, but Tricky Terrain wins out due to the high reprint value, and that there’s some exceptional lands in the deck including combinations like Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage. While the deck plays out in many ways more like a typical Simic ramp deck, there are a lot of good cards, and a number of them are worth a fair value. You can easily modify it to play more uniquely, or take advantage of the unique abilities of Omo, Vesuvan Queen.

Best Cards

• Thespian’s Stage: The premiere utility copying land, Thespian’s Stage is a strong card in land focused decks by becoming an extra copy of whatever land you want.
• Dark Depths: With Thespian’s Stage and Vesuva in the deck, Dark Depths is even more easily able to create a 20/20 Merit Lage token that is indestructible and flying.
• Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth: A high value land, which helps mana fixing a lot by turning everything into forests.
• Planar Nexus: Able to be all non-basic land types makes Planar Nexus a perfect fit for decks that care about multiple land types.
• Avenger of Zendikar: Ending games for land decks since its release, Avenger of Zendikar is still a premiere end-game threat for these decks.

#9 Deep Clue Sea

I talked about how to upgrade Deep Clue Sea earlier this year, but I think it’s one of the best preconstructed decks of the year, and the best of the Murders at Karlov Manor ones. Some very good reprints are combined with a clear plan to create clues, draw cards, and profit. It has the ability to go tall, go wide, or win outside of combat in ways that work with the core engines of the deck with Morska, Undersea Sleuth. The value here is pretty high in reprints, but many of the new cards are narrow.

Best Cards

• Academy Manufactor: Great in decks that want artifact tokens, the Manufactor might be the best card for the deck overall, as it turns all your clue creation into mana and life too.
• Bennie Bracks, Zoologist: A good valued reprint, here Bennie will be drawing you cards on your clues, so you can draw cards while you prepare to draw cards.
• Tireless Tracker: Turning all your land drops into clues is pretty good, but Tracker also grows, giving you another go-tall option beyond Morska, Undersea Sleuth.
• Koma, Cosmos Serpent: Making strong tokens each upkeep, while being difficult to destroy is why Koma is one of the iconic cards from Kaldheim.
• Adrix and Nev, Twincasters: A lot of competition for this spot, but Adrix and Nev’s ability to double all tokens, while having ward makes it notable as a strong card here.

#8 Animated Army

From Bloomburrow, comes the powerful racoon Bello, Bard of the Brambles, who leads an army of high priced non-creature artifacts and enchantments to beat down on opponents. For a deck that is reliant on its commander, there’s precious little protection for him, but a lot of good artifacts, enchantments, and big, high powered beaters like Etali, and Ghalta, Primal Hunger to beat down on your opponents. The deck plays well out of the box, but it can suffer from relying on Bello, and some amount of divided focus, with sub themes of treasure, token, and ramp.

Best Cards:

• Esika’s Chariot: A great vehicle from Kaldheim, this reprint brings the Freya-inspired chariot here, where it can be crewed by creatures, or be animated by Bello.
• Wildsear, Scouring Maw: This is a Bello deck, but Wildsear might be the stronger card, and much as a RG big Enchantment/Artifact deck is unique, an RG Enchantress deck is too.
• Pyreswipe Hawk: Another of the new cards, Pyreswipe Hawk gets bigger from your big artifacts, and if you cast big spells with it in play, you can swipe your opponent’s artifacts.
• Greater Good: A classic enchantment from Urza’s Saga, Greater Good is a welcome reprint always, and here it works well with the high powered creatures to draw cards.
• Tendershoot Dryad: A great token card that quickly spirals out of control with saproling counts as it adds another each turn, including your opponent’s turns.

#7 Endless Punishment

Led by one of the most popular new commanders of the year in Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls, Endless Punishment is a group slug type deck that seeks to constantly pain your opponents, and profit from it. Each turn when your opponent’s are hurt for the first time, you grow your commander and get more cards to keep on going. There’s fairly good value in Endless Punishment with good reprints and desirable new cards, and a powerful commander, as long as you know you’ll probably be public enemy number 1.

Best Cards

• Kederekt Parasite: An Underworld Dreams on a small creature, this little guy is a constant pain in your opponent’s sides, even if they are drawing a lot of cards.
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Affectionately known as Gary, the Merchant here is a good black win con, and while this deck isn’t abusing him as many do it’s still a strong card.
• Syr Konrad, The Grim: Whenever a creature goes to the graveyard, Syr Konrad is spotting it and giving thin cuts to your opponents, in a way that supercharges Valgavoth.
• Star Athlete: One of the better new cards, as his ability to play politics, be a punisher, and be an early evasive threat are all valued.
• Suspended Sentence: One of the recurring suspend spells, this one in black lets you keep killing a key creature every few times, and is a nice card only found here so far.

#6 Miracle Worker

While Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls stole the spotlight of the Duskmourn Commanders, Aminatou, Veil Piercer leads what is probably the superior deck. Playing around with miracles, getting massive discounts on big enchantments, whether cheated in via miracles or by recursion. Aminatau is strong as a commander as an enabler for her own strategy with surveil, and there are some strong reprints included.

Best Cards

• The Master of Keys: The secondary commander for the deck is also very strong, and has even seen peeks from the competitive EDH scene, as a cheap enchantment reanimator.
• Demon of Fate’s Design: If you end up drawing a high cost card and can’t miracle it, you can use this to let you pay life instead of its mana value attached to a strong creature.
• Inkshield: One of the strongest Fog variants, Inkshield turns each point of damage prevented into a 2/1 Inkling for you to counter-attack with.
• Hall of Heliod’s Generosity: The enchantment version of Academy Ruins, this card is great here at setting up dead enchantments to be miracled into play.
• Doomwake Giant: One of the strongest constellation cards, Doomwake Giant for one black is almost unfair, and this giant will keep creatures well under your thumb.

#5 Scrappy Survivor

Everyone’s favorite post-apocalyptic dog leads the Scrappy Survivor deck and its brand new Junk tokens that allow you to impulse draw. This deck is all about suiting your creatures up to battle with enchantments and equipment. This theme manages to hold the deck together despite its wide variety of legendary creatures representing different parts of Fallout lore with their own things going on often. A low mana curve, workable theme, and solid card advantage from the command zone make it play pretty well. There’s a lot less reprint value in this deck (outside of Heroic Intervention), but instead there’s a whole bunch of new cards, and everything has new art.

Best Cards

• Codsworth, Handy Helper: For white voltron type decks, Codsworth is destined to be a staple. Have him give Captain America some gear for some cross universe synergy.
• Preston Garvey, Minuteman: Done harassing you in Fallout 4 to do your chores, Preston is here to give you lots of extra mana with your enchanted lands by untapping them.
• Pip-Boy 3000: A powerful modal equipment, Pip-Boy 300 will often net you extra mana on attack, but sometimes it might grow a creature or loot a card for you.
• Silver Shroud Costume: A protection spell tacked onto an evasion equipment, the flash makes this a good alternative to Whispersilk Cloak.
• Puresteel Paladin: One of the best equipment support cards, Puresteel Paladin draws cards, and makes equipping free if you have enough artifacts.

#4 Squirreled Away

Holy Bat… I mean Squirrel Girl look at that reprint value. Squirreled Away combines a popular typal theme, with tokens and food, with a lot of really good value. A strong archetype works well to make it playable, even if the deck is sometimes a bit indecisive about how it wants to use its tokens. If you can get it for retail price, this deck is a steal valuewise.

Best Cards:

• Chitterfang, Squirrel General: Probably better than Hazel in many squirrel decks, Chitterfang is still the definitive Squirrel commander.
• Beledros Witherbloom: A valuable reprint that makes tokens all the time, and lets you untap your lands by using excess life that you have.
• Beastmaster Ascension: This is one of the best go-wide finishing cards, and included here as a way to make your creatures all super pumped, so only 3 Squirrels can kill Emrakul, rather than 15.
• Swarmyard Massacre: One sided board wipes are strong, and doing it for 5 mana is extra strong.
• Academy Manufactor: Still one of the best token makers in business, and this deck creates a decent amount of food, with this turning that into treasure and clues too.

#3 Hail, Caesar

An aristocrats deck, Caesar, Legion’s Emperor is a powerful commander who sacrifices his minions for more minions, cards (knowledge), or damaging opponents. The deck has many other cards that also benefit from this, or create tokens. One thing holding this deck back a bit is that there are some cards that don’t fit as cleanly as they tried to represent various characters, notably Mr. House, President and CEO who is a good dice roll deck leader, but doesn’t fit here.

Best Cards:

• Pitiless Plunderer: A classic for aristocrats decks, this little guy makes you treasures whenever your stuff dies, paying you off for sending your troops to an early grave.
• Securitron Squadron: Squad returns from the Warhammer pre-constructed decks here letting you make copies of it, and all of them will make future tokens bigger.
• Assemble the Legion: A super appropriate reprint that makes you more and more tokens each turn to overrun your opponent.
• Black Market: Like Pitiless Plunderer, Black Market tracks creature deaths and gives you mana, but instead of a one time payout, this enchantment gives you mana each round.
• Ruinous Ultimatum: 7 Mana, destroy all your opponents stuff. It’s very clean, simple, and powerful.

#2 Eldrazi Incursion

From Modern Horizons 3, we bring you the second eldrazi deck of the past two years, this one led by the powerful Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. Ulalek is very strong, and lets you double up on all your eldrazi for a low cost of two mana, while that trigger also doubles any other abilities and spells on the stack. There’s a good range of mid-range eldrazi in the deck, working with the copious amounts of ramp to get them out, and pay to copy them. The deck plays really well out of the box, although it does have some complexity with Ulalek - go with Azlask for a more straightforward approach.

Best Cards:

• Glaring Fleshraker: A cheap eldrazi, who makes eldrazi spawn whenever you cast a colorless spell, and pings your opponents when colorless creatures enter the battlefield.
• All is Dust: First printed back in Rise of the Eldrazi, All is Dust is still the best sweeper for colorless decks, as a 7 mana one sided board clear of almost everything.
• Morophon, the Boundless: Created as a lord of whatever creature type you want to run, Morophon is also a pretty good card itself, and fits in here pretty well, making Ulalek free.
• Endbringer: A pinging, card drawing, pacifying eldritch abomination that untaps itself each turn is very strong.
• Ugin, the Ineffable: Make your spells cost less as a planeswalker, has what is both a token and draw ability for +1, and has a flexible removal ability.

#1 Mutant Menace

Back to the Fallout decks, my choice for the best commander deck of 2024 is Mutant Menace, led by The Wise Mothman. Mixing a variety of counters, proliferation, graveyard play, and everything all together is for a really strong deck, with a bunch of new cards, and valuable reprints. Mothman himself is a very strong commander, and is a powerful enabler for the deck.

Best Cards:

• The Master, Transcendent: While not as simply powerful as Mothman, Fallout 1’s final boss, The Master offers interesting combo type approaches to things.
• Watchful Radstag: Don’t underestimate this seemingly innocent creature, as it serves as basically a Scute Swarm for counter decks, and grow out of control quickly.
• Nuclear Fallout: A board wipe that also radiates players, it fits here extremely well and can work in a variety of decks.
• Radstorm: Not at its best here, but this storm spell is powerful in the proper deck, as mass proliferation can kill  opponents with poison or any number of things.
• Inexorable Tide: One of the best proliferation enablers, this will grow your creatures and the radiation counts just as you play the game.

It’s been a fairly good year for Magic: The Gathering preconstructed decks, with a rich variety of decks. Share your thoughts on this year’s preconstructed decks in the comments, and if you are looking at picking up a commander deck for Christmas (for yourself or someone else) I hope this helped.