Commander 2016
Nov 2016
Five four-color Commander decks featuring the first partner commanders, letting players run two legendary creatures simultaneously and unlocking radical new deck-building space.
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Commander 2016 Precon Decks — click to analyze
Partners Change Everything
Commander 2016 introduced the partner mechanic, allowing players to run two legendary creatures as commanders simultaneously if both have the partner keyword. This single mechanical addition fundamentally expanded Commander deck-building by enabling color combinations and strategic pairings impossible with a single commander.
The five precon decks each featured one non-partner face commander (a four-color legend representing each set of four colors) alongside partner commanders included in the 99 that could be used as the commander pair in rebuilt versions. The four-color commanders themselves were some of the most sought-after cards from any Commander precon release, with Atraxa in particular becoming one of the most popular Commander decks in history.
Breed Lethality — Atraxa and the Proliferate Machine
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice proliferates at the end of each of your turns, incrementally growing every counter type across all of your permanents. The power of this effect lies in its universality — every +1/+1 counter on every creature grows, every loyalty counter on every planeswalker advances toward an ultimate, and every poison counter on every opponent accumulates toward lethal. Atraxa turns time itself into a resource.
Breed Lethality is built around maximizing the number and type of counters in play when Atraxa's proliferate trigger resolves. Planeswalkers provide loyalty-counter targets, infect creatures contribute poison counters, and a suite of proliferate-matters cards supplement Atraxa's passive with additional proliferate triggers throughout the turn. The deck's inevitability comes from the compounding nature of proliferate — counters that grow each turn become overwhelming within a few cycles.
Invent Superiority — Breya's Sacrifice Engine
Breya, Etherium Shaper enters with two 1/1 Thopter artifact creature tokens and can sacrifice two artifacts to choose from three effects: dealing three damage to target player, gaining life, or reducing a creature's power and toughness. This flexibility makes Breya a versatile removal spell, life reset button, and damage engine all in one, while also incentivizing playing a high density of expendable artifacts.
The four-color deck treats Breya's sacrifice ability as a combo enabler rather than a standalone value generator. The most powerful Breya lines involve artifact recursion that continuously returns sacrificed artifacts to hand or battlefield, enabling repeated activation of Breya's three damage ping in an infinite loop. Even outside of infinite combos, the deck's artifact synergies generate enough sacrificial fodder to use Breya's ability multiple times per turn cycle.
Entropic Uprising — Yidris's Cascade Chain
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder grants cascade to all your spells until end of turn whenever it deals combat damage to a player, converting every subsequent spell into a potential bonus spell from your library. A single Yidris hit can cascade through multiple layers of free spells depending on the casting order and deck composition.
The four-color deck balances the aggression needed to connect Yidris attacks with the high-impact cascade targets that make each connection worthwhile. Haste enablers, evasion, and combat tricks all serve to maximize Yidris combat damage opportunities, while the spell suite prioritizes cascade-worthy targets with high impact regardless of what free spell they cascade into.