Modern Horizons 3
Jun 2024
Four Commander decks released alongside Modern Horizons 3, carrying 60 cards printed here for the first time — Eldrazi, energy, Lhurgoyf recursion and land typal.
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Modern Horizons 3 Precon Decks — click to analyze
The Precons That Came With Modern Horizons 3
The Modern Horizons 3 Commander decks released on June 14, 2024 alongside the main Modern Horizons 3 set. There are four of them, and they matter more than the usual accompanying precons because of how much of the set code is new: of the 320 distinct cards printed under M3C, 60 had never been printed in Magic: The Gathering before — eight mythics and fifty-two rares. That works out to fifteen brand-new Commander cards per deck, which is what Wizards' own product listing claims and what Scryfall's data confirms.
Each deck is a 100-card ready-to-play list with two foil legendary commanders, a foil-etched display commander, a Collector Booster Sample Pack containing two alternate-frame cards, ten double-sided tokens, a deck box, a life wheel and a strategy insert. Collector's Editions of all four were also sold, with the ripple foil treatment applied to every card in the deck.
Two foil commanders per deck is the detail worth noting. Each of these decks ships with a face commander and a second legend in the same colours, so there are eight new mythic legends across the four products rather than four, and the alternate in each box is a genuinely different deck to build rather than a throwaway.
The Four Decks and Their Eight New Commanders
Eldrazi Incursion is fronted by Ulalek, Fused Atrocity, whose mana cost is five hybrid pips each payable with colorless or a colour. Whenever you cast an Eldrazi spell you may pay two colorless to copy every spell you control and every other activated and triggered ability you control. Devoid makes Ulalek itself colorless, but those hybrid pips give it a five-colour identity, so the deck runs a full rainbow mana base. Its alternate is Azlask, the Swelling Scourge, a three-mana Eldrazi that banks an experience counter whenever a colorless creature you control dies and then pumps the team and hands your Scions and Spawns indestructible and annihilator 1.
Tricky Terrain is Simic, not five-colour, despite the size of its ambitions. Omo, Queen of Vesuva costs two and a hybrid green-or-blue, and whenever she enters or attacks she puts an everything counter on a land and a creature. A land with that counter is every land type at once; a nonland creature with it is every creature type at once. Her alternate, Jyoti, Moag Ancient, makes a 1/1 Forest Dryad land creature for each time you have cast your commander from the command zone, then pumps your land creatures every combat.
Creative Energy is Jeskai and the first precon built around Kaladesh's energy counters. Satya, Aetherflux Genius has menace and haste and copies one of your other creatures tapped and attacking every time she attacks, handing you two energy; the copy is sacrificed at the next end step unless you pay energy equal to its mana value. Cayth, Famed Mechanist is the alternate, giving your other nontoken creatures fabricate 1 and tapping to populate or proliferate. Graveyard Overdrive is Jund, led by Disa the Restless, who puts any Lhurgoyf permanent card onto the battlefield the instant it reaches your graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield — milling one, discarding one or having one countered all read as casting it free. Coram, the Undertaker is the alternate, letting you play a land and cast a spell each turn from cards milled into any graveyard that turn.
How Strong Are the Modern Horizons 3 Commander Decks?
Stronger than the average precon, and Eldrazi Incursion is the reason. Modern Horizons sets are built for a higher-powered format than Standard, and the Commander decks attached to this one inherited some of that: the Eldrazi deck in particular assembles a large amount of mana and then converts it into copies of everything, which is a faster and more explosive plan than a typical Bracket 2 list runs. It was also by far the best-selling of the four, and its Collector's Edition was priced above the others.
The other three sit closer to where precons normally land. Tricky Terrain is a value deck that takes time to set up, Creative Energy needs a board before Satya does anything, and Graveyard Overdrive depends on drawing into its Lhurgoyfs. All three are fair games of Commander out of the box, which the Eldrazi deck is not always.
That spread is exactly why it is worth analysing a precon rather than assuming. Open any of the four decks below and EDHcheck gives you its power level, its WotC bracket and a card-by-card breakdown, including which cards are Game Changers and which two-card combos are already in the list. If you are considering upgrades, it also shows what those upgrades would do to the bracket before you sit down opposite three other people who brought unmodified precons.