16 New Commander Decks to Try Out Next (2026)

Last updated on January 5, 2026

New Perspectives | Illustration by Darek Zabrocki

It’s safe to say that Commander has absolutely exploded in recent years: it’s now the most popular format by a long shot! The sets released in the last year (even the last few sets alone) have featured some incredible legendary creatures. Sadly, not all of them have received the attention they deserve.

I’ve combed the cards to select a bunch of commanders from the last dozen or so sets that I think are worthy of your attention. Some you may know, while others may be strangers. Why are these commanders so good, and which cards and strategies do they work best with?

Let's find out!

#16. Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods

Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods (Murders at Karlov Manor) | Illustrated by Peter Diamond

This Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods deck pulls double duty in several ways with payoffs for playing with cards face down and turning them face up. Then it has a payoff when you sacrifice your face-downs and bring them right back and cheat on the huge morph costs. When you don't beat down with the huge threats in here, you can aggressively use face-down creatures that you're happy to trade.

The card draw can be clunky in this deck, but Yarus gives you card advantage in two ways, and you can't forget about granting haste to your whole team, including the ones you just brought back to the battlefield and turned up. So if you were interested in or enjoyed the Murders at Karlov Manor Commander deck Deadly Disguise, you'll like putting Gruul cards in play with this deck.

#15. Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior Stax

Narset Transcendent | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior could be called a hate bear thanks to it's status as a 2-drop. It is not the most threatening card on its own, and that is often a huge benefit.

The plan is to use stax cards to keep the game at your pace, punish players for tapping things and to win the game with cards like Approach of the Second Sun. If you keep your pieces concise, there are a number of Azorius combos that you could swap in to finish the game in your favor. This deck is full of card advantage and board wipes so your timing of when to use resources takes practice. Like the best blue and white commanders, this one frustrates your opponents so be sure to direct them to the other more threatening players while you set up your winning play.

#14. Niko, Light of Hope Value

Niko, Light of Hope | Illustration by Aurore Folny

The easiest build path for Niko, Light of Hope utilizes the usual UW flicker suspects since the activated ability, well, flickers. But that seemed strange to me, given that the Shard copies don’t enter the battlefield. Chipping away with Cloudblazer copies seems fine, but I wanted to do more with the copy ability.

This deck focuses on attack triggers rather than enters abilities. One Cityscape Leveler or Silverwing Squadron trigger contorts a game, so why not go for two, or more? I’ve added some enters support, largely to flicker Niko for more Shards, but the deck mostly wants to get into the red zone with Overlords and Titans and other powerful creatures.

This list wants to play lots of expensive cards, so it has a deep pull of Game Changers, primarily to turbo out its threats and end the game much faster than one might expect of an Azorius deck.

#13. Kraven Control

Kraven the Hunter | Illustration by VGreg Staples

Kraven the Hunter keeps a watchful eye on all your opponent's biggest threats. Table politics in Commander can really help you knock off the biggest threats and you get a card off of it. It's a small bonus really. Of course, you know your decklist also includes all-stars of EDH removal like Assassin's Trophy, Shoot the Sheriff, and Avatar of Woe.

With all the biggest threats cowering, value from black enchantments like Phyrexian Arena and Grave Betrayal, or death triggers on Massacre Wurm can be your win condition.

#12. Ygra, Eater of All Aristocrats

Ygra, Eater of All | Illustration by Chris Rahn

I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to make Food work in Commander, but I always came up short. There simply weren’t enough ways to make Food, and the payoffs were too weak.

Ygra, Eater of All changed everything: It allows you to use Greta, Sweettooth Scourge and Gilded Goose to enable traditional aristocrat payoffs like Midnight Reaper and Blood Artist. Ygra packs away the strategy’s key weaknesses, though it makes you rather reliant on the commander.

#11. Bello, Bard of the Brambles Midrange

Bello, Bard of the Brambles is a simple commander that marries enchantress decks with artifact strategies by uniting them beneath everybody’s favorite guild motto: Gruul smash!

Making enchantments and artifacts into 4/4s provides excellent pressure, but also plenty of synergies: Red and green decks have cared about powers of 4 for a while, so you get excellent card advantage from the likes of Furious Rise and Garruk's Uprising. This deck excels at drawing cards and playing lands, so it’s a fundamentally powerful strategy.

#10. Infinite Guideline Station Multicolor Matters

Infinite Guideline Station | Illustration by Piotr Dura

Infinite Guideline Station has nearly infinite directions it could go, this list in particular wants a multitude of multicolor matters cards. Faeburrow Elder, General Ferrous Rokiric and Aragorn, the Uniter are especially good. They lead to a go-wide strategy that excels with anthems, and a combination of new and old ones work just fine here, Anthem of Champions for it's low cost and Tempered Steel because you'll certainly build some robots with this deck.

Flex the ramp package to what you have on hand, and the ones that are the most versatile. Chromatic Lantern is classic and Leyline of the Guildpact much newer, but this is where you put some life into the sterile spacecraft as commander.

#9. Mendicant Core, Guidelight Artifacts

Mendicant Core, Guidelight | Illustration by Zezhou Chen

Of all the start your engines! commanders in Aetherdrift, Mendicant Core, Guidelight is among the most promising since it warms up your engines nice and early. This artifact brew focuses on going really, really wide. That enhances this commander’s power, of course—a commander damage win is surprisingly achievable—but it mostly amplifies the power of artifact creature lords like Urza, Prince of Kroog and Illustrious Wanderglyph.

Going wide gives you access to potent card advantage tools like Caretaker's Talent, Thopter Spy Network, and Research Thief. If you can’t get overly aggressive, your commander grinds through your opponents’ resources with additional copies of Portal to Phyrexia and Unidentified Hovership. It’s a flexible deck that often poses an aggressive start with the tools to handle the late game.

#8. Mr. Foxglove, the Cheater

Mr. Foxglove | Illustration by Anna Podedworna

In an exclusive Draftsim interview with Mr. Foxglove, we got one legible quote: “Chumps pay for spells.”

Cards like Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, Avacyn, Angel of Hope, and Apex Altisaur warp games, so you want to get them out as soon as you can. Preferably with Mr. Foxglove putting them into play for nothing, though you can also make do with Show and Tell, Natural Order, and similar effects. If you absolutely must, you can ramp them out thanks to Simic’s () egregious mana acceleration.

Surrounding these battlecruisers is a whiff of group hug thanks to cards like Kwain, Itinerant Meddler and Rites of Flourishing. These fill two roles: Firstly, they encourage your opponents to send early pressure elsewhere until you become a surprise problem. Secondly, letting your opponents draw cards helps Mr. Foxglove because its card draw relies on your opponents having a bunch of cards.

#7. Loot, the Pathfinder Midrange

Loot, the Pathfinder | Illustration by Ernanda Souza

Loot, the Pathfinder isn’t the kind of commander I generally go for: just a textbook’s worth of generic value. But these commanders aren’t inherently bad. Commanders like this Loot, or the other two Loots for that matter, don’t do anything in particular, so they can do pretty much anything.

This deck focuses on Displacer Kitten, arguably the best card to pair with Loot. It’s also incredible with, say, Etali, Primal Conqueror and Nissa, Ascended Animist. But you could easily remove all those cards and zero in on Illusionist's Bracers and Training Grounds for activated ability shenanigans, or build some kind of Voltron list that exploits the keyword soup that Loot cooks. Consider this proposed list a canvas with which you can modify to show off what you think the best generic Temur deck looks like.

#6. Arabella Aggro

Arabella, Abandoned Doll | Illustration by J.P. Targete

Arabella, Abandoned Doll plays a simple and straightforward plan that capitalizes on tokens and uses some of the strongest white and red token generators available in the Boros colors. Krenko, Mob Boss, Increasing Devotion, and Charismatic Conqueror make sure one attack from Arabella turns into lots of damage.

Several cards act as both enablers and payoffs for dropping tokens, Windcrag Siege, Dollmaker's Shop, and Elspeth, Sun's Champion. Slip in a Reconnaissance for the times when you need to attack and get Arabella out of harm's way, or swing every token to pull wins out of Hellrider and Cavalcade of Calamity.

Without some of the big time token doublers, this can still be very functional and celebrate a budget build behind the uncommonness of this commander's rarity.

#5. Kotis, the Fangkeeper Auras

Kotis, the Fangkeeper | Illustration by Evyn Fong

Kotis, the Fangkeeper tends to get through to opponents thanks to it's low power, indestructibility and evasion offered by the Dimir side of its color trio.

Once you lean heavily into Kotis as a voltron commander, the theft aspect comes as a natural payoff on cards like Ancient Cellarspawn. One of the main reasons to boost Kotis is to reduce the chance you whiff on the cards exiled.

Access to green ramp and the draw from enchantress cards makes up for not getting to steal your opponent's lands. You can also mix and match lots of interaction options that include black's removal, blue counterspells, or green's hexproof as budget protection. All this means Kotis is a flexible and durable commander that gets to have fun with cards outside of your deck.

#4. Muerra, Trash Tactician Ramp

Muerra, Trash Tactician | Illustration by Volkan Baga

The most important resources in Commander—and Magic in general—are card advantage and mana. Putting both effects on a single commander is bound to break something—look at Prosper, Tome-Bound or the rightfully banned Nadu, Winged Wisdom. I won’t pretend Muerra, Trash Tactician is on their level, but it has that ever-potent combination.

This deck doesn’t focus on raccoon synergies, scant as they are; instead, it focuses on Muerra as a card that snowballs and takes over the game. You want to ramp into big spells that trigger the expend 8 ability, with the central concept assuming that the first expend 8 trigger gives you the cards to trigger it on your next turn, and so on.

Supplementing all this mana and card draw are a host of cast from exile synergies with cards like Flaming Tyrannosaurus, Nalfeshnee, and Passionate Archaeologist giving your spells a little extra oomph to push you over the finish line. This deck’s straightforward game plan and simple synergies make it an excellent starting point if you’re new to Magic or Commander.

#3. Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh Midrange

Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh | Illustration by Mandy Jurgens

Investing counters into a creature typically means you don’t want to sacrifice it, but Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh shirks this convention by rewarding you for loading legendary creatures down with power, then throwing them away.

This deck focuses on counter distribution more than sacrifice themes, but it has a few cards like Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Fain, the Broker to cycle through your legends once you need less bodies and more cards. Perhaps the coolest card in the deck, or at least my favorite, is Meren of Clan Nel Toth, which benefits from every element of the deck.

#2. The Jolly Balloon Man Combo

The Jolly Balloon Man | Illustration by Campbell White

The Jolly Balloon Man lends itself well to a grindy, value-oriented game plan; it’s like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker that’s harder to combo with, but easier to cast with more options.

This is primarily a combo deck. I’ve added all the Kiki-Jiki combos (plus Mana Echoes to let your commander go infinite with Restoration Angel and whatnot) plus the incredible nonsense that arises when you copy Nesting Dovehawk or Ocelot Pride, then copy the copies to teach your opponents a thing or two about exponential growth.

All that token production goes hard with Impact Tremors variants that enable perfectly “fair” wins with copies of Reverent Hoplite and Evangel of Heliod. Toss in a few Panharmonicon effects to reapply all those enter abilities, and you end up with a powerful combo deck that gets out of hand astonishingly fast.

#1. Ketramose, the New Dawn Flicker-Control

Ketramose, the New Dawn | Illustration by Maaz Ali Khan

Control decks in Commander have a distinct weakness: They need to get through a lot of cards when attempting to control three players. Ketramose, the New Dawn offers a powerful angle as a flicker-control commander, primarily serving as a source of card advantage for this deck.

The first layer of interaction relies on literally exiling your opponents’ cards with Swords to Plowshares and Vanishing Verse and the like; making your spot removal cantrip on your turn is huge. But the next layer comes from the flicker strategy. Magic has tons of creatures like Ravenous Chupacabra and Loran of the Third Path that kill things when they enter, which are already valuable two-for-ones; once you flicker them to kill an additional creature and draw a card off Ketramose, you’ve built a powerful card advantage engine that your opponents will struggle to keep up with.

Wrap Up

Command Tower | Illustration by Evan Shipard

All of these commanders are worth a try, and I enjoyed putting this list together. If you’ve got most of the cards already, or snag a cheap Commander precon just to break it up for all its pieces, all the better!

What do you think of the commanders? Which ones have you encountered so far? Which ones are you looking forward to trying out? Let me know in the comments below or over in the official Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!