Commander 2018
Aug 2018
Four Commander decks each fronted by a planeswalker commander — artifact innovation, enchantment mastery, top-of-library fate manipulation, and Jund land engine.
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Commander 2018 Precon Decks — click to analyze
Planeswalkers Lead the Charge
Commander 2018 introduced a design experiment that had been discussed for years: planeswalker face commanders. The rules were updated to allow planeswalkers with the special designation to be used as commanders, and the four 2018 decks each featured a planeswalker as the face card and primary strategic engine. The result was a set of precons with distinctly different gameplay patterns from creature-commander decks.
Each planeswalker commander brought unique loyalty ability interactions to Commander — Saheeli's token and cost reduction for artifacts, Estrid's untap engine for enchanted permanents, Aminatou's blink and fate manipulation, and Lord Windgrace's land recursion and reanimation. The 2018 decks are widely considered among the strongest precons ever released, with several face commanders going on to become sought-after singles.
Exquisite Invention — Saheeli's Artifact Empire
Saheeli, the Gifted creates a 1/1 Servo token and reduces the cost of your next artifact or artifact creature spell by the number of artifacts you control. The multiplicative nature of this reduction creates a runaway engine: more artifacts generate more Servos, which reduce costs further, which enable casting more artifacts each turn. The Izzet deck builds to turns where massive artifacts cost effectively zero after Saheeli's reduction.
The cost reduction doesn't cap, so a board with ten artifacts reduces the next artifact by ten mana. Combined with Saheeli's passive token generation, the deck can reach critical mass surprisingly quickly where enormous artifact creatures or powerful artifact spells become free. The deck rewards building a high artifact count over the first several turns before deploying Saheeli and immediately benefiting from the accumulated reduction.
Adaptive Enchantment — Estrid's Untap Engine
Estrid, the Masked provides three distinct abilities: a +2 that untaps all permanents with Auras on them, a -1 that creates an Aura Mask granting indestructibility to any permanent, and a powerful ultimate that generates cascading enchantments. The +2 is the most commonly used ability, enabling turns where Estrid untaps multiple enchanted lands for enormous mana generation — effectively turning the enchantress strategy into a mana acceleration deck.
The Bant deck pairs Estrid's untap ability with a deep enchantress package of creatures that draw cards whenever you cast enchantments, creating a self-sustaining loop of enchantment casts and card draws. Each enchantment played draws a card, which might be another enchantment, which draws another card, while Estrid's +2 untaps the enchanted lands to pay for the next one. The deck is capable of chaining through significant portions of the library in a single turn through this loop.
Subjective Reality — Aminatou's Fate Manipulation
Aminatou, the Fateshifter draws a card and puts another card from hand on top of the library at plus one, blinks a permanent you own at negative one, and her ultimate shifts all permanents — giving each player the permanents of the player to their left. The blink ability is Aminatou's most frequently used tool, enabling repeated ETB triggers from powerful creatures while also protecting your key permanents from targeted removal.
The Esper deck is built around a suite of creatures with powerful ETB abilities that generate ongoing value when blinked repeatedly. Drawing spells, tutors, removal effects, and ramp artifacts all appear as ETB triggers that Aminatou recycles each turn. Combined with the top-of-library manipulation from her plus ability, the deck maintains both a consistent draw quality and a blink engine that can generate enormous value per turn cycle.
Nature's Vengeance — Lord Windgrace's Land Engine
Lord Windgrace is one of Magic's most powerful value planeswalkers in Commander, offering three abilities that each generate significant advantage. His plus two discards a land to draw two cards, his minus three puts two land cards from the graveyard onto the battlefield, and his ultimate reanimates any creature from any graveyard. The combination creates a self-sustaining loop where you trade lands for cards and then recover those lands.
The Jund deck treats lands as a resource to be cycled and recovered rather than permanently depleted. You discard lands to draw into spells, then Windgrace recovers the discarded lands to maintain mana development while generating card advantage. The deck includes land-sacrifice outlets, land fetch spells, and high land counts to support Windgrace's abilities, with the ultimate serving as a late-game reanimation threat against any graveyard on the table.