Commander 2019
Aug 2019
Four decks exploring morph, flashback, token populate, and Madness — each with a face commander and standout three-color strategies built around their respective mechanic.
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Commander 2019 Precon Decks — click to analyze
Four Mechanics, Four Strategies
Commander 2019 explored four of Magic's most beloved replay mechanics — morph, flashback, populate, and madness — each paired with a three-color commander who pushed the mechanic to new extremes. The design philosophy focused on giving each mechanic a commander who not only enabled the core strategy but fundamentally changed how players interacted with it.
The four decks offered distinct playstyles ranging from the combo-oriented Merciless Rage to the political token strategy of Primal Genesis, ensuring that the 2019 release had something compelling for every style of Commander player.
Faceless Menace — The Morph Mastermind
Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer makes the first morph or megamorph creature you cast each turn free, eliminating the two-mana face-down cost that has always been morph's limiting factor. Additionally, whenever any face-down creature enters under your control, you draw a card — converting every morph play into a cantrip and making the deck one of the most card-efficient precons ever released.
The Sultai deck houses a deep roster of morph creatures whose face-down disguises conceal effects ranging from board wipes to massive power boosts to graveyard recursion. Opponents can never be certain what any 2/2 face-down creature will become — that uncertainty creates a persistent pressure even when you're not flipping anything. The deck rewards players who memorize their morph creature roster and deploy each face-down at the moment its flip ability is most devastating.
Mystic Intellect — Flashback for Free
Sevinne, the Chronoclasm prevents all damage dealt to it and copies the first instant or sorcery you cast from a graveyard each turn for free. The combination of protection and free copy creates a commander uniquely suited to flashback-heavy strategies where replaying instants and sorceries from the graveyard represents the primary game plan.
The Jeskai deck pairs Sevinne with a library of instants and sorceries that have flashback, jump-start, and other graveyard-cast modes, enabling turns where a single graveyard spell becomes two with Sevinne's passive. The deck builds resource advantage through repeated graveyard access, with Sevinne surviving longer than expected due to his damage prevention and generating consistent value through each protected combat step.
Primal Genesis — Populate the Biggest Token
Ghired, Conclave Exile creates a 4/4 Rhino Warrior token when he enters and populates whenever he attacks — creating a copy of the largest token you control each time combat is declared. The Naya deck builds toward turns where Ghired attacks with a 4/4 or larger token in play, populating the biggest one into two and then four through repeated attacks.
The populate strategy scales geometrically with token size. Unlike go-wide token decks that create many small tokens, Primal Genesis focuses on creating or copying one massive token and then multiplying it. A single 8/8 becomes two, then four — four 8/8 creatures represent enough pressure to close most Commander games within a few combat steps. The deck includes multiple other populate effects alongside token-creation spells to accelerate this doubling curve.
Merciless Rage — The Madness Combo Engine
Anje Falkenrath taps to draw a card and discard a card, then untaps whenever you cast a madness card. This untap trigger is the key to the deck's power — with enough madness cards, Anje can effectively cycle through the entire library in a single turn, functioning as a tutor engine that digs for any specific card. The Rakdos deck is built almost entirely around madness cards to maximize the number of untap triggers per activation.
The deck operates in two modes: the fair mode where Anje provides consistent card quality by looting through the library turn after turn, and the combo mode where you deliberately chain activation after activation to dig for a game-winning card. The transition between modes is seamless — Anje's untap ability naturally moves the deck toward combo without requiring specific setup, making it one of the more consistent combo-adjacent precons ever produced.