Latest Spoilers Suggest Small Tweak for Partner Commanders

Last updated on October 18, 2025

Thrasios, Triton Hero | Illustration by Josu Hernaiz

Have you seen any of those new PlayStation Secret Lair commanders? How about the legendaries from next year's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set? If you've been following previews lately (and boy howdy are there a lot of those), you might've noticed a tweak on an old favorite.

Looks like the classic partner mechanic for Commander is getting a sort of makeover, and there might be some incidental template adjustments on a few older cards. Better yet, one particularly wordy angel commander is getting a slight buff that's really easy to miss.

Swing Your Partners Round and Round

Tymna the Weaver | Illustration by Winona Nelson

Partner is a mechanic that allows you to play with two commanders in the command zone, so long as both of them have the partner ability. This lets you expand on your deck's color identity, and having two commanders can be immensely powerful to begin with, since it's essentially like starting every EDH game with a 9-card hand. The first wave of 2-color partners even produced some of the most dominant cEDH commanders, like Tymna the Weaver and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus.

Since its induction in Commander 2016, Magic has riffed on the idea of double commanders with a bunch of similar mechanics that only work within their own shells. These include:

• Friends forever (Stranger Things)
• Doctor's companion (Doctor Who)
• Backgrounds and “choose a background” legends (Baldur's Gate)
• “Partners with” (multiple sets, always with direct pairings).

And now, we're seeing a bunch of new partner abilities debuting in upcoming sets, which include:

• Partner — Survivors (The Last of Us Secret Lairs)
• Partner — Father & son (God of War: Norse Secret Lair)
• Partner — Character select (TMNT Commander)

The difference is, these newer pairings actually use the “partner” text, whereas the older spin-offs don't. At least, not yet. It's possible there's an errata in the works that'll change these older cards to become subsets of partner instead of being off on their own as completely isolated abilities. For example, if we ever see friends forever reprints, we might see the ability reworded as “Partner — Friends forever”. This errata has not been confirmed yet, but the latest batch of partners seems to suggest it'll be a sweeping change to the mechanic.

This is cool for a couple reasons. First, it allows Magic to print cards that directly reference the partner ability, which would cover all of these cards instead of newer ones with the modernized template. Second, it means the groups can be expanded upon on an individual basis. You could totally imagine a new set following TMNT using the “Character select” ability again, which would let you combine those cards with the existing TMNT legends. Ok, I guess this was already possible with or without the word partner, but it just feels right to call it partner within the context of MTG.

The background ability probably doesn't change though, since it works slightly different than other variations.

Now On to the Angel

Sophina, Spearsage Deserter | Illustration by Bartek Fedyczak

Speaking of partners, remember Akroma, Vision of Ixidor from Commander Legends? This keyword soup commander bestows a buff to each creature for each keyword is has. Hiding at the end of that list is partner, which guarantees Akroma always buffs its command zone partner, even if it has no other relevant abilities. This is the only card in MTG that specifically references and interacts with partner, which means every time new partners get added to the game, Akroma gets new tools to work with.

Chances are we'd need to see more cards that specifically reference partner before any sort of realistic partners-matter deck comes to fruition, but unifying all the existing mechanics under one blanket is a nice step towards allowing that to happen. Assuming the older cards even change at all; again, there's been no word of previous “partner” mechanics receiving this errata.